Talk:Windows 7 editions/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Noiratsi (talk · contribs) 20:47, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

GA review – see WP:WIAGA for criteria

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I think this is an excellent article with a tendency to favour information over explanation.

1. Is it reasonably well written?

   A. Prose quality:

   Overall some excellent writing. See suggestions at the end for minor points.

   B. MoS compliance for lead, layout, words to watch, fiction, and lists:

   I'm failing this point for several reasons.

   • The lead contains information not included in the rest of the article ("the features for all editions of Windows 7 are stored on the machine")
   • Lists are used without context.The list guidelines recommend that lists should have a lead paragraph where appropriate. For me, this article suffers from not having any sort of introduction to the 'Main editions' and 'Special editions' sections. What is a 'main edition'? What is a 'special edition'? What are 'derivatives'? Some sort of explanation is required - we need to know what it's a list of
   • The lead fails to summarize the article. I'd suggest rewriting the lead once the above point about lists/sections without introductions has been addressed. Once each section has an introductory summary it may be easier to see what information needs to be included in the lead. It should summarize the whole article, giving appropriate weight to each element - see WP:LEAD for comprehensive guidelines.
   • The sections 'Upgrade editions' and 'Upgrade compatibility' have a lot of confusingly duplicated information and there is confusion regarding terms like 'in-place upgrade'. At one point 'in-place upgrade' is used when I think 'anytime upgrade' is what is meant. I'd also like to see more context given to the concept of an 'upgrade', though that's not in itself a reason for a fail I don't think - expanding the introductions to each section might help
   • A reference is given again as an external link (http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/products/compare) - though obviously that's a very minor issue, not worthy of a fail on its own.
   • Use of images seems unbalanced - Windows Thin PC has an image which doesn't seem to me to add very much. Since the rest of the article has no images, it's odd to include one in this relatively minor section.

2. Is it factually accurate and verifiable?

   A. Has appropriate reference section:

   B. Citation of reliable sources where necessary:

   C. No original research:

3. Is it broad in its coverage?

   A. Major aspects:

   Though the Windows 7 'E' edition made huge news, it was never actually released so I think you can get away with not mentioning it. Maybe something to consider, though.

   B. Focused:

   Pass, overall, but I'm not entirely sure about the section on Windows Thin PC, which tells me very little about the product and far too much about the various release dates.

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 tagged with their copyright status, and valid fair use rationales are provided for non-free content:

   B. Images are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions:

   Pass, but see above for points about balance and relevance.

7. Overall:

   Pass or Fail:

   The quality of writing and information in this article is outstanding. It fails because of lead, list and layout issues, notably a lack of explanation and summary given in the lead section and in the introductions (or lack thereof) to the many lists on the page. I'm failing the article rather than putting a hold because I think the attention it needs may constitute a significant change to the article.

   Other notes:

   • "UNIX application support" might be better presented as a single link - i.e. remove the separate link to UNIX as it may cause confusion. In any case 'application support' is not an appropriate linktext for the article it's currently linked to.
   • Home-Basic is hyphenated at one point in the lead - why?
   • the acronym "VLK" is used without expansion at one point
   • a sentence reads "Home Basic, along with..., include" - I think this should be a singular "includes".

This is a good GA candidate and I encourage re-nomination once the article has been fleshed out with a little more friendly and explanatory prose! --Noiratsi (talk) 22:55, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

A further comment - this is my first GA review and I think the way I wrote some of these comments made it sound like I was judging based on personal opinion rather than on the criteria set out. Hopefully that's not how it came across, but if it did I'd like to make it clear that while lots of the comments I made are just personal suggestions, the actual reason for failure is based, I hope, purely on the GA criteria. I don't want to edit this review dramatically now that it's posted, but I've learnt from this and in future reviews I intend to be more careful to separate comment and assessment :) --Noiratsi (talk) 10:08, 12 December 2012 (UTC)