Talk:Emergency Wetlands Resources Act/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Dana boomer (talk · contribs) 20:33, 24 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hi! I'll be reviewing this article for GA status and should have my full review up shortly. Dana boomer (talk) 20:33, 24 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately, I am failing this article's nomination for GA status, as it is nowhere near ready.

The article is completely lacking sections on the history of and reaction to this Act - sections absolutely necessary to meet the broadness criteria of GA. A good bit of what is now the lead would probably better fit in a "History" section, and then the lead should be re-written to be a proper summary of the entire article, as is specified by WP:LEAD.
The majority of the article is basically a copy and paste of the entire Act, with a few words moved around. This is inappropriate. If readers want to read the Act, they can go to the government website and read the Act. What Wikipedia is here to do is give a brief, readable, accessible summary of the Act, then provide a background on how it came into being (History) and what various people/organizations/scholars think of it (Reaction). There should be no more than, probably, a couple of paragraphs on each subchapter, and they should be paragraphs - prose, not endless lists of statements, that provide a readable summary. Then a couple of paragraphs on amendments to the Act (or this information can be added to the paragraphs on each subchapter). Things like "1994 – Paragraph (1). Public Law 103-437 substitute “Natural Resources” for “Interior and Insular Affairs” after “Committee on”." are unnecessary - the general public doesn't care that a committee name was changed. If people want to get that deep into the minutia, they can go to the government page. Again, you're looking for a readable, accessible summary for laypeople.
Every single source is to the Act itself or a government page. You need reliable, third-party sources that describe non-government views of this Act. What do conservation organizations say about it? What do legal scholars say about it? Take a look at this Google Scholar search, which has tons of articles that mention the Act, and from which a fairly broad scholarly perspective can likely be gleaned. A Google Books search turns up similar possibilities.
The first sentence of the article should state which country this Act is in and whether it's a federal or state law.
Unencyclopedic language like "This of course superseded" and "A rather amazing diversity" - it's editorializing.
The external links section is quite long and includes quite a few links that are only very tangentially related to this topic. I would suggest trimming to the most pertinent. Also, some of these may provide good background and reactions and so could be used as sources. Links should not generally be duplicated between sources and external links.

I would suggest that the nominator(s) look at current GAs such as Hawaii House Bill 444, Defective Premises Act 1972 or others listed at Wikipedia:Good articles/Social sciences and society#Law to better understand the compactness of the bill description and the discussion, in third-party sources, of reactions to and scholarly works on the Act. I realize that a good bit of effort has gone into this article over the past few weeks, and it is currently more informative than it was as a few-sentence stub. However, it still needs significant work to be of GA quality. I feel that the work needed is significant enough to be best completed outside of the pressures of GA, but invite the nominator(s) to bring the article back when they feel they have addressed the above issues and the article complies with the good article criteria. I will be watching this page, so please feel free to ask any questions you may have here. Dana boomer (talk) 21:02, 24 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Dana,

Thanks for the review and pointers, I'll see if I can't get to them soon. This week I'm a bit flooded with exams and finals are around the corner, but I have until the 30th of April to make some changes before the professor grades the article for the final grade in the class. Smorris80 (talk) 00:32, 25 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds good. Like I said, please let me know if you have any questions - I know that this is probably a bit different than most of the writing you're used to for school (or at least it is for most students) and it can be a bit difficult to get the hang of WP sometimes. Hope to see you around after your class ends! Dana boomer (talk) 02:14, 25 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]