Talk:Sociology/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Jezhotwells (talk) 23:10, 27 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I shall be reviewing this article against the Good Article criteria, following its nomination for Good Article status.

As this is such a detailed article, I will probably not post any comments here for a day or so. Jezhotwells (talk) 23:10, 27 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

First Impressions: This article is generally well written, covers all major points, well referenced and very close to GA status. Points which do need addressing below.

Section: Positivism and anti-positivism

Today, scholarly accounts of Durkheim's positivism may be vulnerable to exaggeration and oversimplification Implies that they were not vulnerable in the past to this?
As a nonpositivist, however, one seeks relationships that are not as "ahistorical, invariant, or generalizable"[40 would like a clear statement that it is Weber saying this.

Section: Twentieth-century developments

During the Interwar period sociology was undermined by totalitarian governments for reasons of ostensible political control. After the Russian Revolution, the discipline was "politicized, Bolshevisized and eventually, Stalinized" until it virtually ceased to exist in the Soviet Union. In China, the discipline was banned along with semiotics and comparative linguistics as "Bourgeois pseudoscience" in 1952, not to return until 1979. The second sentence jumps to post WWII without explanation and then the next sentence (During the same period, however, sociology was also undermined by conservative universities in the West.) appears to revert to the interwar period. I assume that a chronological structure is intended here. It certainly needs tidying up to make it more coherent.

Section: Epistemology and ontology

Whereas positivism has sometimes met with caricature as a breed of naive empiricism, the word has a rich history of applications stretching from Comte to the logical positivism of the Vienna Circle and beyond. By the same token, successful positivism would be open to the same critical rationalist non-justificationism presented by Karl Popper. This is, to say the least, rather unclear. Does reference 87 relate to these two sentences and the three preceding?

Section: Scope and topics

For Simmel, culture referred to .... Simmel links to a disambiguation page, please link to the right person, presumably Georg Simmel Emile Durkheim's The Division of Labour in Society was published in 1922, whilst Max Weber's Economy and Society was released in the same year - clumsy, simple and would be better. tan whilst.

Disambiguations that need fixing:

I realise that not all can be fixed as appropriate articles have not necessarily been created. But please take a close look at these and consider why they are wiki-linked.

References:

1. 54 [1] returns 403 forbidden
2. 60 [2] is dead
EL [3] Brazilian Socialogical Society is dead
1. 119 [4] is dead
EL [5] International Internet Sociology Group is a dead link

On hold. Jezhotwells (talk) 19:37, 28 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I have disambiguated all the listed terms, and improved/simplified the language in all the sections you listed (Durkheim issue, and Kuhn & Popper).

The one point I haven't changed is the paragraph in the 20th century developments section dealing with the banning of sociology. I see what you mean, but there's no way the whole 20th century developments section could run in complete chronological order. All we can do is make it clear this paragraph refers to the academic standing of a discipline, and not the theory of a social science.-Tomsega (talk) 22:18, 28 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Dead links = now corrected/removed --Tomsega (talk) 23:32, 28 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

OK, it looks like all is in order. Jezhotwells (talk) 17:29, 29 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Checking against GA criteria

GA review (see here for criteria)

It is reasonably well written.
a (prose): b (MoS):
It is factually accurate and verifiable.
a (references): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR):
It is broad in its coverage.
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:

I am now happy to pass this as a good article, thanks for all of your hard work. Jezhotwells (talk) 17:29, 29 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Other Comments

This article has been improved significantly over the past two months and I am confident that, although it is not featured status, it certainly deserves higher than its current B rating.--Tomsega (talk) 11:26, 19 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Not a reviewer comments: Having experienced quite a few GANs, here's one thing to address: more citations. Ideally, every sentence should have a cite; currently, there are unreferenced paras and even sections = fail. PS. Reading "Scope and topics" section, which I like a lot, does however raise concerns about it being comprehensive - just as I noted in my comments at Talk:Subfields of sociology. PPS. While the GA can do without delving into this and still be relatively comprehensive, here's a field that needs much expansion: Category:Sociology by country, currently containing only two entries... --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 17:31, 11 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Over the last three weeks, I have added 20+ new references to the page, updated and substantially rewritten the history and 20th century sections, with new dates and fundamental chunks of information previously missing. Though the article is not of featured status (and I don't think it ever will be, based on various limitations), I don't think it is far off Good Article status. Any more ideas? We some reviewers!!! --Tomsega (talk) 01:29, 29 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from article contributor:

Re. Jezhotwells: The phrase, "ahistorical, invariant, or generalizable" is not Weber's own; it's from a chapter on Weber in a social theory textbook.
The "Sociology and other academic disciplines" section needs a little work. It had said a bit too much about social anthropology (a problem I've just tried to fix), whereas it says very little about psychology. Sociology-psychology comparisons pop up frequently in textbooks, and they're important because social psychology is something of a grey area, and gives a better sense of the disciplines' similarities than of their differences. (Case-in-point: The introductory course I took in social psychology was offered, with identical requirements, for either psychology or sociology credit, and the student got to choose.) Perhaps a reasonable (and verifiable) difference to note would be the relative prominence of critical and hermeneutic approaches in sociology, whereas critical psychology is hardly known amongst psychologists, while hermeneutic approaches (e.g., psychoanalysis) are frequently looked down upon.
The citations should be standardized, so that all are in a single format, or are at least in some proper format. Raw URL's (e.g., <ref>[http://www.somewebsite.com]</ref>) are inelegant and, unless the reader actually clicks on them, relatively uninformative.
Overall, however, great work: Tomsega and others have taken what used to be a mess of an article and turned it into something articulate and presentable.

Cosmic Latte (talk) 16:01, 29 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hoorah!! Now... let's get to featured status! ;) --Tomsega (talk) 19:50, 29 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

PS. Removing duplicate transclusion. Might be about time to archive the talk page. --Tomsega (talk) 20:02, 29 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]