Wikipedia:Featured article review/Baby Gender Mentor/archive1

The following is an archived discussion of a featured article review. Please do not modify it. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page or at Wikipedia talk:Featured article review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was removed by YellowAssessmentMonkey 00:47, 1 September 2009 [1].

Baby Gender Mentor

Review commentary

Featured article candidates/Baby Gender Mentor

Featured article review/Baby Gender Mentor/archive1

Notified: Johntex, ... WikiProject Molecular and Cellular Biology, ...Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine

I am nominating this featured article for review primarily because of 1c concerns. It was promoted to FAC in January 2007

There are many dead links, and links that go to irrelevant pages that do not contain the information cited.
Many of the references go to pages that are marketing or selling the product, pages of the developer of the product or blogs. They are not unbiased and neutral.
There have been long-standing tags on the article requesting citations.
Although the article is covered by the WikiProject Molecular and Cellular Biology, there are almost not references that fulfill the requirement of WP:MEDRS. Rather, the references seem to reinforce that this article is about this product for which it appears there is little scientific evidence that it is reliable or works as advertised.

There are also 1d concerns; for example, there are some promotion quotes included in the article from those that are selling it, but none from the scientific community giving an unbiased view.

Regards, —Mattisse (Talk) 22:23, 28 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. Done; thanks. ~~The two images need alt text as per WP:ALT.~~ Eubulides (talk) 05:49, 29 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Reply from original FA nominator - Hello, I am the author that worked this article through the original FA and I will try to address the remarks above.

"There are many dead links, and links that go to irrelevant pages that do not contain the information cited." - Please cite specific examples and I will address them. All of the links went to relevant information at the time of FA listing. Please note that Wikipedia does NOT require the removal of a link just because it is not working at a given point in time. Websites sometimes go offline or get restructured; sometimes this is only temporary. The link may come back to life and it may not. Even if it is dead, it may still be a useful guide to a reader who is trying to find this informaiton.
"Many of the references go to pages that are marketing or selling the product, pages of the developer of the product or blogs. They are not unbiased and neutral." - "Many" is a weasel word, according the WP:MOS. Yes, "many" of the links give the manufacturers viewpoint. That is entirely appropriate for presenting their side of the story. "Many" of the links go to other sources. There is no problem with having "many" links to the manufacturer of the product. The overall tone of the article is certainly not an advertisement, nor is it biased in favor of the manufacturer. Therefore, the links are not a problem.
"There have been long-standing tags on the article requesting citations." - I checked a version from 2 weeks ago. As of that point in time, there were no major tags on the article. As of 2 weeks ago there were 2 references that someone wanted verification on because the cited sources are apparently not currently on-line. Again, there is no requirement that every source be available online. We cite plenty of out-of-print-books, magazine articles that have never appeared online, etc. I'd prefer to see each source accompanied by a live link, but that is not an absolute requirement.
I'll examine this statement in two parts
1. "Although the article is covered by the WikiProject Molecular and Cellular Biology, there are almost not references that fulfill the requirement of WP:MEDRS...." - this has nothing to do with whether the article if FA or not. Any wikiproject can come along and find a thin connection to an article and slap their talk-page tag on it. I've seen articles with 10 wikiproject tags on it!! That doesn't mean that article must meet the requirements of those projects to be FA. WikiProjects don't control FA.
2. "Rather, the references seem to reinforce that this article is about this product for which it appears there is little scientific evidence that it is reliable or works as advertised." - yes, exactly. The available scientific evidence seems to say that this test does not work and may even be fraudulent. That is reflected 100% in this article, which is how it should be.
"There are also 1d concerns; for example, there are some promotion quotes included in the article from those that are selling it, but none from the scientific community giving an unbiased view." - again, on the whole I think the article is very fair. Any educated reader who read this article would come away with the idea that the product is no good and possibly fraudulent. I don't see any bias in favor of the manufacturer at all.
The two images need alt text as per WP:ALT. - I am not familiar with WP:ALT. I will read up on it and come back to reply and/or fix that issue.

Best, Johntex\^talk 00:03, 30 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Update: I have now added Alt text for the two images. Johntex\^talk 02:21, 30 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

All the dead links are tagged on the article; the tags were removed by a revert. Please do not revert the tags if you want to know what the problems with the article references are. All the links that do not give the information purported are tagged on the article; again you reverted the tags. Please do not remove the tags without fixing. The tags are there to inform you of what needs fixing. I stand by my opinion that the article appears to promote the product and there are not balancing views from the scientific community. It has a banner on the talk page that it belongs to Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine (recently added) and Wikipedia:WikiProject Molecular and Cellular Biology, therefore it should follow WP:MEDRS for reference citations. Regards, —Mattisse (Talk) 00:25, 30 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This is the version of the article that tags the dead links and those that do not provide the information cited.[2] Please use this version to address the link issues I have raised. Regards, —Mattisse (Talk) 00:31, 30 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Great, thanks. I can refer to that version; no need to have all the tags in the live version. Johntex\^talk 02:19, 30 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Also, if you look at Talk:Baby Gender Mentor, you will see that my concerns have been voiced there repeatedly over the years by other editors. Regards, —Mattisse (Talk) 01:13, 30 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think this is an accurate reflection of the discussion on that page. If you look at the time stamps, you will see that discussion occurred over a period of about 5 days. This was one incident; it is not like people have repeatedly voiced any concern "over the years".

What happened was this: When the article was selected to be the Main Page FA, there were some people who were worried that having ANY product featured on the Main Page was akin to serving as an advertisement for that product.

If you will please re-read the discussion, you will see that other people joined in the discussion on the other side: saying that Wikipedia has articles on many things, and that includes products. Any of those articles can make it to the main page. You will also see people saying that they don't see how this can be interpreted as any kind of advertisement. Johntex\^talk 02:19, 30 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

But this is a product that appears to be unreliable and possibly a scam. Also, most of the references go to either product pages, or to sites that sell the product. —Mattisse (Talk) 15:15, 7 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Note to FAR reviewers: Please consider this version [3] in evaluating the article, as the nominator has again reverted the tagging of dead links and inaccurate links, so that the problems are not evident in the "live" version. —Mattisse (Talk) 16:04, 30 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

To Johntex: it was unhelpful of you to remove the dead link/verification needed tags from the (live) article. This is a wiki where many users collaborate to improve the content. If you leave the tags in place, other editors (including myself) would find it easier to find and correct the highlighted problems. Axl ¤ [Talk] 19:06, 30 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I've never thought this was a particularly brilliant article -- good, and maybe good enough, but with odd flaws. For example, ref [32] is to Pamela Prindle Fierro. "Vanishing Twin Syndrome". About.com. [4] Why the heck are we citing About.com for the percentage of pregnancies that involve vanishing twins? Can't we cite proper papers or medical textbooks? Or is this statistic so generally rejected that we have to stoop to what is essentially a self-published source? WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:33, 30 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Note It is very unfortunate that the editor is working on the version of the page that reverted the links marked {{deadlink}} and links marked {{Failed verification}} and {{rs}}. These included many named references that were repeatedly cited. The editor should agree to check the this version before declaring that these link problems have been rectified. Altogether, approximately 40 citations fell into these categories. Many links are to unreliable or irrelevant sources. I don't understand all the links to the "vanishing twin" issue. Regards, —Mattisse (Talk) 19:21, 2 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Sample of dead or dysfunctional or misleading links:

Many sources are unreliable or have very limited reliability, and some are used repeatedly. Examples:

Some sources are irrelevant:

—Mattisse (Talk) 00:49, 6 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

FARC commentary

Suggested FA criteria concern are citations, alt text. Also note the recent change to WP:WIAFA (1c) requiring "high-quality" sources. FAQ? YellowMonkey (cricket photo poll!) paid editing=POV 02:37, 11 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Delist per above concerns (many, many "[dead link]" and "[not in citation given]" links; editor reverted the tags[5] without fixing problems); too many links to commercial sites; concerns about source quality). I don't understand the many reference citations to the "vanishing twin" issue, at least three to PMID articles. What is the relevance to the apparently fraudulant Baby Gender Mentor? Seems at best like WP:UNDUEWEIGHT. —Mattisse (Talk) 16:42, 11 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: Not sure it looks too bad at first glance - is work still being done actively on this? Cirt (talk) 06:05, 26 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. I have gone through the article once again and marked the many, many {{deadlink}} and {{failed verification}} tags. Before when I did this, the tags were reverted without the article being fixed. I don't think anyone but me has really checked the article out and looked at the citations. I am at a loss how this article ever passed FAC to begin with. It has a lot of seemingly relevant (but actually irrelevant to the topic) information to give it a clothing of respectability, like so many links on the "vanishing twin" stuff. Basically, this is an article about a fraudulent product. Please check that the numerous faulty links (which I have checked individually) are actually fixed and not just reverted without fixing.[6] Also, there are links to blogs and old {{verification needed}} tags in the article. Many links are to the company sites and to press releases. —Mattisse (Talk) 23:20, 26 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Delist per Matisse's comments. A lot of tags need to be repaired, but I think it can be done. JKBrooks85 (talk) 02:50, 27 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.