Talk:Norton Internet Security/GA2

GA Review (redux)

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GA review – see WP:WIAGA for criteria

1. Is it reasonably well written?

   A. Prose quality:

   B. MoS compliance:

2. Is it factually accurate and verifiable?

   A. References to sources:

   B. Citation of reliable sources where necessary:

   C. No original research:

3. Is it broad in its coverage?

   A. Major aspects:

   B. Focused:

4. Is it neutral?

   Fair representation without bias:

5. Is it stable?

   No edit wars, etc:

6. Does it contain images to illustrate the topic?

   A. Images are copyright tagged, and non-free images have fair use rationales:

   B. Images are provided where possible and appropriate, with suitable captions:

7. Overall:

   Pass/Fail:

Although the article has improved a great deal since the last nomination, Norton AntiVirus needs to be merged into this article before it can become a GA. Yellowweasel (talk) 01:43, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

NAV and NIS's feature set change year to year. It's going to be hard to merge them; and it's probably not going to be pretty for quite a while TechOutsider (talk) 05:36, 28 February 2009 (UTC)TechOutsider

Not sure I agree with yellowweasel on merge - In fact, I'm sure I don't. Article B has no relevance to Article A in a GA review. If Norton Internet Security does indeed meet all the criteria for a GA, then it becomes a GA. Whether or not Norton AV should be merged into Norton Internet Security is an entirely different proposal. I'm not saying I agree one way or the other at this point on whether I believe that the two articles should be merged. I will admit, that the article would fail the stability point if a merge was pending. Perhaps the merge proposal should be resolved before this GA attempt goes much further. Just a thought. — Ched ~ ^(yes?) 03:13, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

To clarify a bit - I don't dispute that NAV should be merged with NIS, but rather that the merge is the reason NIS should fail GA. At this point I would fail NIS under the stability point. Once it's done, and not being changed on a regular basis (and is not being disputed) - then is the time to review for GA. — Ched ~ ^(yes?) 03:43, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

The two articles have been merged. I hope I can get another review soon ... TechOutsider (talk) 22:20, 2 March 2009 (UTC)TechOutsider

Note: Editor Yellowweasel has apparently retired prior to any resolutions of the concerns. — Ched ~ ^(yes?) 01:10, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

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Note: I'm handling the assessment from here. I've struck out some some checklist items used incorrectly by the original reviewer. –Whitehorse1

Other matters

Concentrated activity in a small amount of time, with well-meaning people incorrectly using and overwriting various templates, left things somewhat messy (beyond what a bot or script could deal with). I've attempted to fix this for you:

• Peer review. You opened a 2nd peer review, which had helpful responses from User:Mattisse. In accordance with the Peer review request removal policy, as that listing has been inactive for two weeks, I have closed the peer review for you and included it in the Article History above.

• RFCs. I think the template errors happened because the parameters inside the template weren't used.

• I think there's been some confusion over Good article reassessment. This is not uncommon! You created a subpage of this talk page for reassessment – since deleted, and you'd commented about this article at the reassessment project area on a subpage for a specific article. Despite its name, it's not a mechanism for articles you want to nominate for another assessment (to become a Good Article), when they've previously had a review/assessment but were failed/unsuccessful. Instead, it's a specialised separate procedure for cases where a disagreement over a review cannot be resolved among the editors involved, where discussion is needed to determine whether a nomination was inappropriately failed or inadequately explained. Because no reassessment was fully set up, I've omitted it from the Article History, removing references to it from this page.

• The former-user that opened the 2nd GAN review overwrote the 1st review failed template, changing it to on hold; that was incorrect and is now cleaned up.

• Some missing assessment links and twice-linked peer-reviews, along with project banners gave a 'cluttered' feel. I've combined these.

Assessment comments

Significant confusion has stemmed from poor or inexperienced GAN reviewer feedback (User:Gary King is an exception; his comments were valid and in line with guidelines). The 2nd review—the one that was left open, marked a number of requirements as having been met, when they were not. A lot more work is needed on the article.

A Good article nomination with basic problems can be failed without conducting a full review. However, even when – as here – one has to ultimately fail an assessment, more detailed feedback helps meet the overall goal of article improvement. In the hope of helping contributors improve the article, and as conflicting comments have been made during its various nominations, I am providing detailed comments.

Overview

First I'll quickly run through how the article stands against the various GA-criteria:

Criteria 1: 'Prose / MoS compliance'. There are many MoS problems in the article. More on this later.

Criteria 2: 'Factually accurate and verifiable according to information in reliable sources.' This criterion is not met. More on this later.

Criteria 3: 'Broad yet focused in its coverage'. This is the most significant problem of the article. Again, more on this later.

Criteria 4: 'Written from a neutral point of view.' Probably met this requirement in the existing content.

Criteria 5: 'Stable and does not change significantly from day-to-day.' While there is no edit warring or content dispute, the article is far from stable with under construction templates, merging and restructuring.

Criteria 6: 'Images are tagged with their copyright status, and valid fair use rationales are provided for non-free content.' This requirement is not met.

Image use

The Norton image is used with claims of valid use since it's 'web resolution', and in the non-free use rationale you've said "yes" under Low resolution. Only, it's quite high resolution. It clocks in at a resolution of 0.48 megapixels (825 x 585 = 482,625 pixels). Scaling down by the browser may make it look slightly blurry but it's a high-res image: see from this direct link to the image how sharp it is? This "Dispatches" article on Reviewing non-free images might be of use. Also, your answer to "Replaceable?" is "no" – you're meant to give a touch more detail. ;) Invalid fair-use claims tagged (with {{subst:dfu}}) may be deleted seven days after they are tagged, if a full and valid fair-use use rationale is not added, under the Non-free content criteria Policy. You need to adjust the image or, remove it.

Other prose areas

• The lead needs to be a short summary of the important aspects in the article, including only information found elsewhere in the article. You only mention a few of the important points.
• The "Critical Reception" section is an embedded list; prose is more appropriate. The section title doesn't match its contents: There's no 'critic' commentary summaries there, nor information on how the products were viewed in the marketplace or industry.

Really isn't much recent information on market share. Sure, everybody knows that "symantec protects more people from online threats than anyone else in the world", but that's bout it. Is this article just disadvantaged because of a lack of primary sources? TechOutsider (talk) 21:12, 9 March 2009 (UTC)TechOutsider

So, I'm going to emphasize Norton's resource usage ... market share over the years ... and detection ... ok? TechOutsider (talk) 23:51, 10 March 2009 (UTC)TechOutsider

Broadness & Sources

There are clear problems from overuse of primary sources. A Good Article should use and reference reliable third-party secondary sources.

The vast majority of the article is built on and references primary sources – specifically Symantec Corp., and companies purchased by them such as Securityfocus.com.

Reliability

For example, the statement "Magic Lantern has not been spotted in-the-wild yet." shows several problems. You reference it to a mailing list web archive, containing a post by a random person in November 2001; that is not a reliable source. All the post does, is briefly quote and link a theregister.co.uk article, so it's puzzling why you don't just link the register article itself or, better still, use a better quality source. Second, you use the term 'yet' there, but go on to support it with 8 year old sources. They even pre-date the earliest versions of the application (according to your article) by 5 years.

A few more sources jump out as unreliable; here, let me give you some examples: you cite a Wikipedia article - 'Magic Lantern (software)' - as a source (never do that), geekstogo.com is an open computer help forum, askdavetaylor.com is a guy's blog—while he's written a book on introductory Unix he's not an authority on the article's topic area. The 'about us' section of the av-comparatives.org site tells us it "tests mainly on behalf of the vendors", which instils little faith information is unbiased. Another source you use is "quarterbacks.org". Now, when I visit that site, leaving aside its many images for a moment…the main page title is "Cheerleaders, Hooters Girls, Bikinis Image Galleries – Beer!" - need I say more?

I did not add the ML section; some anon. editor did.

I noticed quarterbacks.org was a questionable source; however I did not link to the main site. TechOutsider (talk) 21:25, 7 March 2009 (UTC)TechOutsider

• "You" is a generic you, not necessarily you personally.
  
• It's still in the article. GA reviews look at the article as a whole, not just the bits the particular nominator added. The reader is presented with the entire article.
• The reference link was one directory below the site top-level directory: http://quarterbacks.org/Norton/. Basically: either a source is reliable or it's not.

Incidentally, while I'm commenting, a couple of quick wiki tips:

• your signature repeats after its timestamp, you can adjust it at Special:Preferences.
• when indenting a comment using colons usually all of the comment is at the same indentation level; the next person to comment indents their reply further; that way anyone can see at a glance a clear thread of discussion with each level from a different person.
• please, try to always use an edit summary; it makes things *so* much easier for anyone browsing the history or a watchlist. :) Whitehorse1 22:27, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Anyways, I was referencing to a letter sent to Eric C. Theregister.com article simply provides a quick summary of the letter TechOutsider (talk) 21:18, 9 March 2009 (UTC)TechOutsider

Scope

The article must be broad yet focused in its coverage. In its present form the article doesn't go far beyond a product info. sheet. Going down the ToC, it starts with the platform needed to run the product, then there's a section on features of the product. You follow that with a section giving features of all the previous versions. Next, you have a Macintosh section, giving features of that version. It's followed with a largely superfluous support offerings section. Most of the Criticisms section is just 'known bugs & issues'.

Final comments

Sure, there are MoS problems. For example inline citations should go directly after punctuation without any space, some bare links in references, you should use plain roman text not bold face for product names, and external links should generally not be used in the body of an article. However, these don't take a great deal of work or time to fix. The underlying problem of the article is a consequence of the sources used to build it.

Think Google Scholar not Google web search. Consumer magazines, while okay for limited use, review all sorts of hardware & software, but someone who specializes in reviewing security software, for example, would be more interesting to read and have more nuanced opinions. Look over recent good and featured articles paying attention to what sort of things they talk about and the sort of sources they use. Since Wikipedia articles are supposed to be based on the work of experts (WP:ATT, WP:RS), computer security articles should be sourced to critics and academics who study those areas as much as possible.

Using experts, broadly defined, from the fields of antivirus research, computer security etc. as sources – rather than consumer forums, computer magazine reviews, and the vendor – is what will lead to an article that is truly "good". –Whitehorse1 18:12, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

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First of all, I never got around to thanking you. Anyways, I looked at the FF article and edited the lead. TechOutsider (talk) 23:14, 9 March 2009 (UTC)TechOutsider

Anyways, I see that you edited an older version of the article; it changes many times a day. However, I still believe that the underlying issues are present in all the versions of the article up to now .... TechOutsider (talk) 23:17, 9 March 2009 (UTC)Techoutsider

About the Mac section. Symantec once had a product called Symantec AV for Mac, now discontinued. I cannot find enough information; if it is included in the article, it will be at best a footnote or a sentence. TechOutsider (talk) 23:20, 9 March 2009 (UTC)TechOutsider

You're welcome, TechOutsider. I felt you deserved a lengthier examination of the article, following the inefficient handling before.

Trade magazines online might have aggregate sales figures, market share data, or top selling product lists; I don't know any particular titles though. Your plans on what to emphasize seem logical to me. The FF article is good—as is your new lead! Another worth looking at is the "Rosetta@home" article, to see what editors included & how they structured it. I made a few small changes, during the review; mainly small referencing/style changes.

Fewer sources is a barrier for many topic areas. When reliable sources haven't written much on a topic you can consider the topic in a wider context. Just off the top of my head as an example, if the underlying engine or a variant is used by the company for a corporate networking product line, and industry or academic sources have written about it, then you can include that. That's the heavy-lifting of research. Sometimes there are ways to cover topics more broadly; ultimately though you can only work with what's available. Regarding the Mac product, if it's the predecessor of this product it's probably worth including, yes – if only as a cited passing mention.

You've already made strong improvements to the article since its review. If you continue developing it with a broad yet focused scope, relying on decent sources, it can only steadily get better. As conclusion of the review process I'll now close this review page. Do continue to make good use of the article talk page to reach a wider audience. Good luck with your article.
Be well, Whitehorse1 23:33, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.