Talk:Music of the Trecento/GA1

GA Reassessment

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Starting GA reassessment as part of the GA Sweeps process. Jezhotwells (talk) 20:25, 19 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Checking against GA criteria

It is reasonably well written.
a (prose):
b (MoS):
It is factually accurate and verifiable.
a (references):
Large swathes of the article are unreferenced, so it will be delisted. Jezhotwells (talk) 20:35, 19 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
b (citations to reliable sources):
Assume Good Faith. Jezhotwells (talk) 20:35, 19 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
c (OR):
Possibly, unl;ess all statements are referenced. Jezhotwells (talk) 20:35, 19 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
It is broad in its scope.
a (major aspects):
b (focused):
It follows the neutral point of view policy.
Fair representation without bias:
It is stable.
No edit wars etc.:
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):
Overall:
Pass/Fail:
Large amount of completely unreferenced statements. Delisted. Informing major contributors and projects. Jezhotwells (talk) 20:37, 19 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I need to ask how someone can know whether an article follows NPOV if the assessor doesn't know any of the points of view on the topic? If he or she hasn't read any of the sources cited and doesn't know the field how do he or she know that the article doesn't present fringe views that no medieval musicologist would ever agree with? Assessments should be done by people who can tell if the article is Original Research or not even if all the sources are removed. It's not at all bad to say that someone might not be qualified to assess a particular article. I know that I'm not qualified for 99.9(99?)% of WP's articles; maybe the GAR squad can focus their energies on contacting people outside WP who might be able to assess and help improve an article. -- Myke Cuthbert (talk) 21:46, 19 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I personally don't care enough since I think GA is an irrelevancy, but if you want to keep this as GA (again why bother), just go slap on refs to the relevant generica from the Cambridge or Groves series. That is more than sufficient for these GA drive-bys. They are rarely qualified enough to check more in-depth references and should be more than placated. Eusebeus (talk) 22:08, 19 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Hi, please bring this to WP:GAR if you disagree with the assessment which was made against the criteria at WP:GACR which have changed significantly since the article was first promoted. If much of the article was sourced from one book, then that needs to be made clear with in-line citations, specifying page numbers. If statements, paragraphs and whole sections are unreferenced, then it is not possible to determine if WP:OR was involved, which is what I said above. Wikipedia articles are written for the general reader, they should be able to go to the library and check the books or articles to determine if the statements are supported. WP:GACR states: (a) it provides references to all sources of information in the section(s) dedicated to the attribution of these sources according to the guide to layout;. As large parts of this article failed that criterion, it was de-listed. Thanks. Jezhotwells (talk) 22:19, 19 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

General Comment I know you boys have adduced your own criteria, but that's why I say who cares. Where in the how-to review process does it state that reviewers should have some kind of general knowledge of the subject in order to be able to make an assessment in the first place? Nowhere. That's why the GA has no credibility. Before you reviewed this article, did you think "hmm, I should go to Groves or the New Cambridge to bone up on the topic?" Doubt it, right? Look, I can slap a reference for something like

Greater independence of voices was characteristic of the music of this generation, and points of imitation are common; in addition, the uppermost voice is often highly ornamented. Landini's music was particularly admired for its lyricism and expressive intensity: his fame has endured for six hundred years, and numerous contemporary recordings exist of his work.

but how, exactly, are you going to be in any kind of position to determine whether my reference is itself reflective of the mainstream view? Are you familiar with what does and does not constitute the main academic resources in this particular field? Likely no. So what we have are reftag beancounters who hide behind the bogus principle of the "general reader". Textbooks are written for the general reader, but they are not edited or peer-reviewed by them. Before you decided to delist, did you pass by the Classical Music project to ask if any of the participants - including a number of editors who have musicological training - could take a look to see if the content was controversial or inaccurate or incomplete? Again no. You counted up the ref tags and said "hmmm not enough references, imma delist."

Frankly, these GAR's would be more credible if we had reviewers that were capable of providing some kind of content-driven responses (i.e. claim 'x' remains a matter of conjecture) rather than simply counting up the number of ref tags. In that event, your more general plaint regarding lack of cites would be received more sympathetically. Note, btw, I am not attacking you specifically; this is a problem with GA in general. I have actually done GA assessments but stopped after I realised that the whole thing was a waste of time b/c of the lack of even suggesting some kind of knowledge in the review process.

I appreciate your good faith in these efforts, but reviewing a topic about which you have no specific knowledge when a number of editors who do have that knowledge have worked on it comes across as so much rudeness and the GA folks should know better. Eusebeus (talk) 23:14, 19 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]