Talk:Winchester/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Ritchie333 (talk · contribs) 13:36, 18 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Happy to review this - an article well worth trying to get to GA status.

General

Have all the action points in Wikipedia:Peer review/Winchester/archive1 been addressed?
There is one disambiguation link : St. Catherine's Hill which should be St. Catherine's Hill, Hampshire
winchestercitywomen.co.uk appears to be a dead site
oxjamwinchestertakeover.co.uk appears to be a dead site
Other dead links are History of Winchester Guildhall, MOD training education, David Nicholls One Day book review
- All of the above should hopefully be done? I've replaced all dead links and added more references in the article. As for the peer review, I'll check if anything is outstanding. ☠ Jaguar ☠ 14:04, 18 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, that all looks fine now. Thanks! Ritchie333 ^(talk) ^(cont) 14:30, 18 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Lead

The article is 23K of prose, which requires 2 or 3 paragraphs. My gut feeling is that the lead could include a little more, but I'll make a more informed decision when I've read the rest of the article.
I am confused by the references to "Winchester", "England", "South England" and "City of Winchester". I know they all refer to different entities, but to a non-UK resident, they could be confusing. It might be worth trimming some of these down.
- I've hopefully made this more clear, the City of Winchester is a district which is explained in the lead, and I've labelled 'South England' to the actual region of South East England to make this clearer. I'll clean up as I go through. ☠ Jaguar ☠ 14:23, 18 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
At the recent GA review of Ashford, Kent, we reached a consensus it was good to have some distance information in the lead. How far is it from London by road might be a useful statistic to pop in. Also, remember any information that goes here needs to be added in the body - I'm not sure we explicitly say anything in the body about it being next to the South Downs and along the course of the Itchen. A "Geography" section (which could merge with "Climate") would accomplish this.
The second paragraph has two sentences that both start "Winchester". To avoid repetition, the second one could simply say "the city".
- I've replaced this in all parts in the article. ☠ Jaguar ☠ 14:23, 18 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
"and the famous public school, Winchester College." - famous to whom, exactly?
- Reworded.
"have led Winchester to become one of the most expensive and desirable areas of the country" - I'm a little concerned this information is slightly out of date, in the body it says Edinburgh overtook it as the most desirable place to live in 2007.
- I've replaced this with a newer reference coming from December 2013. ☠ Jaguar ☠ 20:50, 18 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

This also needs doing in the body (currently under "Media and culture" but may be worth moving to "History") Ritchie333 ^(talk) ^(cont) 07:56, 19 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

History

"Settlement in the area dates back to prehistoric times" - I'm a little uncomfortable by this sentence. How about "The area around Winchester has been inhabited since prehistoric times"?
- Done
"all in the near vicinity" - how about "nearby" instead?
- Done
The book citation "Cunliffe B. Wessex to AD 1000 1997" needs a page number
"Although in the early years of the Roman province it was of subsidiary importance to Silchester and Chichester, over time it came to eclipse them both" - do we know when exactly? Would be nice even to give it a century (1st? 2nd?)
- Done
"the city covered an area of 144 acres (58 ha), making it the fifth largest town in Roman Britain by surface area" - this claim does not appear to be in the source given (PJO Archaeology).
- Clarified and re-worded
Is localhistories.org a reliable source? It claims the town was founded in 70 AD, while other sources date the foundation back even further.
"Its Old English name was Wintanceastre" - needs a citation (as historic spellings can vary, as noted in numerous entries in the Domesday Book)
- Clarified, ref added
"The Saxon street plan ...." the majority of this paragraph is cited to a single source (The Struggle for Mastery p44) - is that correct?
- I've added more references to back the paragraph up
"the judicial quarter in the south-west; the tradesmen in the north-east" - should be an "and" instead of ";" here
- Done
"The medieval city walls, built on the old Roman walls, are visible in places. Only one section of the original Roman walls remains" - does this mean that only one section of the medieval wall is visible, or that several bits of the medieval wall exist, but only part of it dates from Roman times?
- Clarified
"A serious fire in the city in 1141, during the Rout of Winchester, accelerated its decline" - suggest "The city suffered a serious fire during the Rout of Winchester in 1141, which accelerated its decline". Also this whole paragraph is unsourced
"However, William of Wykeham (1320–1404)" - I don't think we normally have dates lived listed in the prose
- Done
"Middle ages" should be wikilinked
- Done
"organised a small riot" - quotation should not be in italics
- Done, I think this could have been a typo.
The section about the Buttercross is probably better suited in the "Landmarks" section
- I'm not sure, the Buttercross paragraph does contain a lot about its history and the history of the city, should this be kept and a new paragraph about the Buttercross be created in the Landmarks section? ☠ Jaguar ☠ 20:47, 18 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
"The novelist Jane Austen died in Winchester on 18 July 1817 .... " - this paragraph is unsourced
- I've sources the entire paragraph
The "Further learning" section is partly unsourced and would sit better in "Landmarks" or possibly "Education"
- Moved this into the landmarks section

Climate

This section doesn't have any prose. You could talk about how Martyr Worthy is the nearest Met Office station, and summarise the local geography (per the earlier suggestion that the overall location in the lead isn't in the body).

Governance

I'm not sure about some of the prose here, "Steve Brine ... beat Martin Tod" just sounds wrong. How about stating who is the current MP, then mention any notable MPs before that. Definitely worth mentioning that Gerry Malone lost his seat by two votes - I lived in the area at the time of the '97 election and there seemed to be campaign posters all over the place - it was a very marginal seat!
Some of this section is unsourced - though I'm not sure any of it is honestly "material likely to be challenged"

More later.... Ritchie333 ^(talk) ^(cont) 13:36, 18 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the review, I'll address those points one by one! ☠ Jaguar ☠ 14:03, 18 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Landmarks

"Winchester Cathedral, the longest cathedral in Europe, was originally built in 1079" - does this mean it was the longest when built, or is it the longest now?
"It contains much fine architecture" - "fine" according to whom?
"Dodson, Aidan. The Royal Tombs of Great Britain." - needs a page number
"The ancient Pilgrims' Way travelling to Canterbury begins at Winchester" - does this mean specifically at the cathedral, or simply in Winchester generally? If the latter, it probably wants moving.
The last two paragraphs about the Cathedral are unsourced
Wolvesey Castle and Palace is unsourced
"Winchester is well known for the Great Hall" - well known to whom?
The Winchester Military Museums source appears to simply be an advert for visiting the museum and doesn't really cite anything preceding it - most of this paragraph is unsourced
The paragraph on the Hospital of St Cross is unsourced
Canterbury is linked twice in this section
"the Guildhall dating from 1871" - the source supplied suggests work started in 1871 and it opened in 1873
The same source is used to cite the City Mill, but the word "mill" does not seem to appear in the source. I wonder if this is simply the wrong source being used here?
Same problem with demolishing part of the old town - it's not in the source supplied.
The second half of the last paragraph in this section is unsourced

Education

I'd merge the primary and secondary school sections together
"Both schools often top the examination result tables for the city and county" - the source supplied is for Midhurst Rother College and only talks about one year's exam results, not a general high performance
University of Winchester should be wikilinked
Winchester School of Art is unsourced
Peter Symonds College is unsourced

Sport

A lot of content here is unsourced
The first sentence about Winchester City FC is too long and probably wants to be reworded

Transport

"Road" and "Roman road" can probably be merged. This section wants expansion, there are Roman roads running in all directions from Winchester, as can be easily glanced from an OS map. I would also mention where the M3 goes, and regarding bottlenecks, I would definitely mention the history of the old A33 Winchester Bypass (a horrendous bottleneck from my memory) and Twyford Down here as it was a major national news event that gained saturation television coverage at one point.
Bus services could mention the Park and Ride - one runs on the old Chesil branch line and one has a car park on the site of the old bypass, so definitely worth bringing up
The section on rail could do with noting when the stations opened (1839 for City, 1885 for Chesil). Also worth mentioning that part of this line is on the Park and Ride and part of it is now the A34 King's Worthy Bypass
I'm not sure that the source titled "Winchester Bus & Train Travel Times" would mention the closing date for Chesil station. Chesil's own article states it closed in September 1961

Law courts

This section can probably be merged with "Governance" and is largely unsourced - particularly the Rose West murder trial.

More later. There seems to be quite a lot of unsourced material in here that will need to be sorted out. Ritchie333 ^(talk) ^(cont) 16:45, 18 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Media and Culture

This section has significant problems. There are many one-sentence paragraphs, and too much unsourced content. The list of notable people is especially problematic - for instance the article claims that Frank Turner has a prominent association with Winchester, but his own article doesn't even mention the city. Lucy Pinder's own article only states she was born in Winchester (her article implies she grew up in Southampton and supports the football team) I would only include people who have a notable connection with Winchester, rather than just someone who happened to grow up there. For instance, when we took Ashford, Kent to GA, we left in John Wallis and Simone Weil, but left out most other people.
"the award-winning Blue Apple Theatre" - rather than just saying "the award-winning", which I think falls under the "word to watch", mention the specific awards it has received
- Blue Apple's own website doesn't mention them winning any awards, so I think it's safe to assume "award-winning" is spurious unless someone comes forward with a reference to show otherwise. VerityH (talk) 14:30, 12 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
"Peter Symonds College" is already linked in an earlier section
The assessment of the town being a good place to live may be better off in another section, perhaps "History"? It's not really anything to do with Media and culture.

Winchester in fiction

Most of this section is unsourced. I don't think the section title is a particularly good one - we already know the article's about Winchester. I've checked a number of other town and city GAs, including London, Rhondda and Canterbury, and none of them have an "in fiction" section. I would take the historical entries (once sourced!) that talk about a specific part of the city and merge it into the appropriate place.
I'm not sure the citation for Captain Scarlet is reliable, or indeed whether this needs to be specifically mentioned in the article at all.
I don't think the information about Death Note is important enough to be mentioned here. This, and other information should be carefully reassessed to see if it can be moved to another section. If not, it should probably go.

International relations

I'm surprised that Laon is the only place twinned with Winchester - aren't there any others?
The last paragraph in this section is unsourced. I'm surprised at the claim that Le Kremlin-Bicêtre is named after the city.

Images

Image copyrights are all okay
For captions, you don't need a full stop when there's only one sentence
It might be nice to have a picture of the station or the football grounds, and put in the appropriate section, if one exists

Title

You might want to consider moving this article to Winchester, Hampshire, and moving Winchester (disambiguation) here. In the last 90 days, this article got 57,949 hits while Winchester rifle got 73,435. That might be sufficiently close to lead to people searching for "Winchester" not getting the page they expected. (The pub in Shaun of the Dead is not named after the city!) However, all that is outside of the scope of this review. Ritchie333 ^(talk) ^(cont) 08:15, 19 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Summary

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

It is reasonably well written.
a (prose, no copyvios, spelling and grammar): b (MoS for lead, layout, word choice, fiction, and lists):
It is factually accurate and verifiable.
a (reference section): 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 and other media, where possible and appropriate.
a (images are tagged and non-free content have fair use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):
Overall:
Pass/Fail:

I have to be honest that there is a lot of work still required to get this up to GA status. Particular problems are the sourcing, lack of focus in some of the later sections, and the general section layout. However, there's nothing at this stage that I feel is completely insurmountable, so I'm going to put the article On Hold pending improvements.

If I had to make one recommendation, it would be to visit Winchester soon (if you don't live there) and pop into one of the bookshops (IIRC there is a good one on St George's Street though it's been well over 10 years since I've been near it). Town bookshops tend to have a dedicated "local history" section where you can find a selection of good book sources to use, provided you pick one that's not self-published. As well as being professionally written, they condense historical facts down to what a layman reader finds important. That's exactly what we should strive to do with articles. Ritchie333 ^(talk) ^(cont) 08:33, 19 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I would like to flag up that I have posted a comment at Talk:Winchester#Winchester the Anglo-Saxon capital? about an issue that I think needs dealing with before the article passes GAN. Dudley Miles (talk) 21:07, 19 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Epilogue

I'm sorry, but I think I'm going to have to call time on this review. As I said, this needed substantial work to get to GA status, and we seem to be going backwards now. I think we need to go through and check all the offline sources to properly confirm the article's verifiability, and that's pretty much a deal breaker at this stage. Once we've checked through the existing sources, we can then revisit the layout and structure and hopefully meet back for another GA review in a month or two. Ritchie333 ^(talk) ^(cont) 13:20, 20 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]