Talk:South Huish

Review

(version at time of review)

This article is promising and plenty of good sources have been identified. In particular, the source for the nature reserve is exceptional, I'll use that for detailed analysis. I'll also generalise to your other activity.

There are three major problems, which are all caused by the same thing, and have the same solution:

1. The article is difficult to read as it consists of a series of short sentences. It should have a narrative with each fact flowing into the next, instead of being a series of often disconnected bullet points. The sentence "South Huish Reserve is in the ownership of the National Trust." has no obvious connection to either the sentence before or after it.
2. The fact selection from the sources is poor. So there is a nature reserve in the parish? That's interesting, what else can you tell me? The fact the NT owns the land? That's one of the least interesting points in the source!
3. The amount of information extracted from the sources is abysmal. Instead of giving one fact, grab a whole bunch of them. For instance: "The South Huish Nature reserve is in the north of the parish, in a shallow valley cut of from the sea by the dunes at South Milton Sands. The reserve contains a lake and surrounding reedbeds and is visited by up to 200 bird species each year. The reserve has been managed by Devon Birds since 1994, and is now owned by the National Trust. There is no public access, but the reserve can be viewed from nearby points."

The solution to the problems should be obvious: Don't just find lots of sources and extract one fact from each. Extract a lot from them. Once you have a good source, it takes minutes to provide a decent amount of detail. Its better to have too much than too little. The nature reserve is a minor aspect of the parish, but if you can write a paragraph about that, a para about the history, one about Galmpton, one about Hope Cove... suddenly this isn't "is this article good enough to be on WP" but "should we reward its author for writing a good article"?

If you can write a lot more information about obviously notable subjects, you could write decent length articles about anything. If you can write a decent length article about any subject, then the article itself is likely to amply demonstrate notability. You don't have to argue "its a CP therefore its notable", the article speaks for itself. On the flip side, if you can't find enough to write a decent length its a good bet the subject isn't notable, and you could add that text into a suitable parent. If you do that there is a MUCH lower risk of your articles ending up at AFD, and your sanctions could be terminated quickly.

Could you also let me know when you are "done" with this article?--Nilfanion (talk) 22:23, 30 January 2019 (UTC)

Thanks Nilfanion I'll start working on those points tomorrow. Crouch, Swale (talk) 22:33, 30 January 2019 (UTC)

Obviously done and/or lost interest in this one. That's fine - there is no point leaving it as is to see if you will try to improve further. It also means I feel free to rip this apart, rebuild and expand (something I will do over the next month).

One problem is your use of units. The source might say South Huish is 3 3/4 miles SW of Kingsbridge. That doesn't mean 3.75 miles - and it DEFINITELY doesn't mean 6.04km - both of which imply a level of precision not intended by source. It is much better to round that sort of figure off. "About 4 miles" is a much better way of describing that. Excessive precision is bad.

The key point to take away is don't extract ONE fact from a source, extract ALL the facts. Then decide which are actually pertinent. A WP article is not a compilation of trivia found in passing mentions of the subject. It is an overview of the subject.

You should be able to find several facts in a reasonable source, and use that to write a decent sentence. If an article reads like a primary school kid describing their holiday "I went to the beach. It was sunny. I built a sandcastle. It was big and had a flag on it." then its on the wrong track. If you can get away from that writing style your articles will be much less objectionable even if they are short stubs.--Nilfanion (talk) 21:13, 28 February 2019 (UTC)

This article has 15 (yes short) sentences, numerous references and clearly on a notable topic. Isn't that enough?

I have changed them as suggested.

That can easily create copyvioes if too many facts are extracted. Some sources do include multiple facts (like the marsh).

I though the main point was that I create article on clearly notable topics that are well referenced, which this is. The exact style is less important. Crouch, Swale (talk) 21:58, 28 February 2019 (UTC)

This subject is clearly notable, and you could use it to demonstrate that you can write well about something when lots of sources are available. You don't have to progress this article further if you don't want to - I left it alone to give you opportunity to improve as much as you want. If you are done, I'll do what you can't/won't do and make this high-quality.

Sentence count isn't relevant. Its much better to use conjunctions, combining short sentences with related facts into longer ones. It makes for a better read. And if you can merge sentences like that, with no information loss, its an indicator that the subject might be non-notable.

The number of sources isn't relevant either - once you get past the critical level needed to demonstrate notability. This article has more sources than some featured articles.

Copyvios result from copying the source word-for-word. If you paraphrase the source, writing the facts in your own style its fine. If you dig into the source on the nature reserve, it actually gives a better overview of the history of the parish than this article - that could all be safely used in this article.--Nilfanion (talk) 22:39, 28 February 2019 (UTC)