Talk:Mahalia Jackson/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Belovedfreak (talk · contribs) 00:36, 26 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It would be great to have a really good, well-developed article on Mahalia Jackson. Although this is a good start, unfortunately, it's not up to GA standard yet. This is not an exhaustive review, but hopefully there is plenty here to work on. It would be counterproductive to put this on hold for a week, because quite a lot of work needs to be done, and sources added. After addressing the points raised here, I would recommend taking this to peer review before a further GA nomination.

GA review (see here for what the criteria are, and here for what they are not)

It is reasonably well written.
a (prose): b (MoS for lead, layout, word choice, fiction, and lists):
see below
It is factually accurate and verifiable.
a (references): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR):
see below
It is broad in its coverage.
a (major aspects): b (focused):
see below
It follows the neutral point of view policy.
Fair representation without bias:
On the whole neutral and well-balanced, just a few parts need tweaking (see below)
It is stable.
No edit wars, etc.:
The article gets a fair amount of traffic, minor vandalism and incremental editing, but I see no edit warring or content disputes
It is illustrated by images, where possible and appropriate.
a (images are tagged and non-free images have fair use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):
I can't see any problem with the two free images used
Overall:
Pass/Fail:

Prose/style

For the most part, the article is reasonably well-written (I have made some minor changes eg. "So Halie's mother would rub her legs down with greasy dishwater." has been masquerading as a full sentence for years. It's still not clear why her mother would rub her legs with greasy dishwater, or what that has to do with her not getting an operation for bowed legs.) It could however do with a full copyedit from one person. Inevitably, a well-trafficked article like this, with many small changes from multiple editors over a long period of time, ends up not flowing too well. Some parts could be made clearer. For example, "Aunt Mahala was given the nickname "Duke" after proving herself the undisputed “boss” of the family." — I'm not really sure what this means.
Good article criterion no. 1b concerns the lead section. Per WP:LEAD, this section should adequately summarise the main points of the rest of the article. At the moment, it's a bit on the short side. I would expect to see some details of her early life, as well as more detail on her career in the lead. It is often easier to tackle the lead once the rest of the article is sorted, especially if more material is to be added to the article as a whole.
Following on from that, the lead shouldn't include details that are not in the rest of the article (usually expanded on). Here, for example, it says that Jackson was referred to as the "Queen of Gospel". Although this title is repeated later, it's not explained who referred to her as this, whether it was during her career or posthumously etc.
Manual of Style/Words to watch is also covered by the GA criteria, so be careful of things like "criticized by some gospel purists" (who in particular?), "Jackson's estate was reported at..." (reported by whom?), "Some reporters estimated..."

Accuracy/verifiability

The article is someone lacking in inline citations. Although every fact does not need an inline citation, for GA, there should be citations for "direct quotations, statistics, published opinion, counter-intuitive or controversial statements that are challenged or likely to be challenged, and contentious material relating to living persons". Many of the facts presented in this article would be difficult for the average reader to verify as it's not clear where they come from.
"Mahalia refused to sing secular music..." this claim has been questioned on the article talkpage (no answer provided). The editor there makes a good point that there are recordings of Jackson, that appear to be secular. WP:V requires that we go with what the sources say, but this is clearly a controversial point that needs looking into.
All sources used need to be reliable. Some of the ones used here are questionable. For example, I'm not aware that NNDB meets our guideline, and editors in this archive discussion from earlier this year seem to agree. There is a citation to a geocities site (labelled as webcitation.org, which is misleading because webcitations.org is not the publisher) - there is no evidence that this site is reliable.
There are three dead links in references

Broad in coverage?

I'm by no means an expert on Jackson, but I'm not convinced that the article as it stands is broad enough. IT doesn't need to be "comprehensive" at GA, but there have been several biographies written about her, none of which appear to have been used. For someone so influential, there must also be plenty of commentary/analysis by musical historians, some of which should be included here. Using some good sources would also help with the WP:V issues.

Neutrality

For the most part the article is well-balanced and neutral, but it strays into hyperbole in a few places. (eg. "...selling an astonishing eight million copies", "In addition to sharing her singing talent with the world...")

Also consider

"In popular culture" sections are usually problematic, and this one's no exception. It's completely unsourced, but many of the items are actually not really needed in this article. We don't need to know every time a Mahalia Jacksom song has been played in a film. Some of the factoids refer to parts Jackson had in films; these should be incorporated into a (sources) prose section on her acting career.
A separate article of her discography would be great. In the meantime, I'm not convinced by a list of her "well-known songs". Who has decided that those particular songs are "well known" and deserve a mention?

Please let me know if you have any questions. --Beloved Freak 13:52, 29 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks very much for the thorough review. I only have this article on my watchlist to catch vandalism, and I don't know anything about her beyond what is in this article, nor do I have much interest in her music. I was frankly astonished that this article was nominated to be a GA, and didn't catch it until a few days later, thanks to some sloppy watchlisting. Hopefully someone with more time and interest can improve this article further. Graham87 05:21, 30 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you very much for the review/comments. I think the article has good potential for getting to GA status. I don't know a whole lot about her at the moment, but it shouldn't be too difficult to find some relevant, decent sources to fix up citations and expand it a bit. Great tips, thank you again. OttawaAC (talk) 01:47, 31 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]