Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/Natural family planning/1

Natural family planning

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Result: Endorse fail. See the comments below for some suggestions for improving the article. Geometry guy 19:13, 9 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I don't normally start GARs myself, but there appears to be a need in this case: see this discussion. I would urge editors not to rehash talk page arguments and arguments on the WikiProject Good articles page. A reassessment usually works better once the initial frustrations have died down a little. Geometry guy 20:27, 1 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

As i was the original reviewer do i have to be a part of this? Realist2 (talk) 00:58, 2 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

No, it is not essential. Geometry guy 06:58, 2 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. The article had enough MoS issues to warrant failure. Stubby sections and paragraphs, overreliance on list-like bulletpoints ... I could go on, but you get the point. I lean toward endorsing the fail and suggest that the article's editors work to address concerns before considering re-nomination. Hopefully the involved parties -- reviewers included -- can learn from this GAN experience and move forward. Majoreditor (talk) 02:42, 2 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Endorse fail. Take a look at the article, and you'll see many small, undeveloped sections, unreferenced statements, and long lists. The aricle really doesn't need to be reassessed, unless you want to emphasise the fail. Noble Story (talk) 03:05, 2 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Before you fail it i would like to add my concerns if i may. Seeming as my reputation was on the line even though i consulted another reviewer on this whole issue who agreed with me, i feel like the bad guy. Realist2 (talk) 15:29, 2 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

There is no reason to feel like the bad guy. You acted in good faith with the aim of improving the encyclopedia. The purpose of this GAR is not to apportion blame, but to determine whether or not the article meets the good article criteria at the moment. All we can determine here is whether the outcome of the GAN was reasonable (the outcome was not to list the article as GA); the process by which this outcome was reached and the conduct of editors involved is not part of the GAR remit. Geometry guy 18:24, 2 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

OK i think i understand, as long as this isnt going to reflect badly on me ill stay out, but i fully intend to defend my actions if needs be. I will leave it to you guys then. I honestly hope you have more luck than we did. Cheers. ;-) Realist2 (talk) 18:46, 2 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Endorse fail. This is not GA standard at the moment, and is sufficiently far from the standard that a straight fail of the nomination would have been entirely reasonable. It does deserve a review, however, and the review process got side-tracked by arguments about stability and ownership. As I started this GAR, I will provide a fairly thorough review now.
1. The prose is poor and there are MoS issues. I attempted to fix some of the problems, including spelling and grammar errors, wikilinking, dashes, and weak prose. There is much more to do. I'm not sure I've sorted out the confusion between "systems" and "symptoms", and there is lots of weak prose, such as "...which NFP users make use of to either try to avoid or to achieve pregnancy." The lead is inadequate as a summary of the article, and the article doesn't meet the criteria for embedded lists. As Majoreditor points out, the sections and paragraphs are stubby, and many of the sentences are too; the article reads badly. For example "When taught in the context of Catholicism, this church teaches that orgasmic acts outside of intercourse, such as consummated masturbation and oral sex, are morally incompatible with the correct practice of NFP. Some couples are not comfortable with this restriction. Periodic abstinence also limits spontaneous sex."
2. Many controversial statements are inadequately cited (the above being one). The article has plenty of good references, but they are not deployed very effectively. No less than four sources support the statement that "More commonly, Catholic sources extol the benefits children bring to their parents, their siblings, and society in general, and encourage couples to have as many children as their circumstances make practical." On the other hand the section on Lactational amenorrhea is completely unsourced.
3. The article fails to be broad and is confused in its focus. I am stunned that there is no non-Christian commentary on NFP, particularly in view of the sentence encouraging couples to have as many children as possible. I am sure there is plenty of material asserting the irresponsibility of this attitude given world population growth. The confusion about the focus was an issue raised the GAN review discussion, and I agree with the concern. The article begins with a hatnote to say that it is about NFP as described by the Catholic Church, but only the "Theology" section comes close to maintaining this focus. The rest of the article discusses natural birth control techniques with or without reference to doctrine as it sees fit.
4. This brings up the issue of neutrality. If the hatnote is not limiting the scope of the article, what is it doing? Well, the article is certainly lacking in secular approaches to natural birth control. It mixes prohibitions against any orgasm outside of intercourse with the questions about whether NFP allows for more spontaneous sex, without even mentioning the implicit contradiction there.
5. Stability was raised as an issue during the GA review. I think it is unfortunate that this was a major focus, as there is so much else wrong with the article. The problems above may be a consequence of instability and ownership issues, but I have not studied the article history carefully enough to have an opinion on this.
6. The only image in the article is very good: it adds significant insight into what is involved in adopting one of the systems for NFP. The image has been nominated for deletion, but it is a clear "keep". I'm somewhat less happy with the Infobox, which is obscure to new readers. There needs to be a link somewhere which explains what the template is about, as in {{Birth control methods}}. It is interesting that the article does not use the latter template, and distances NFP from other birth control method. I think that summarizes some of the problems which the article has.

Possibly it was unnecessary to have a GAR on this, and if the interested parties agree, I'd be happy if it were closed sooner rather than later. I do detect, however, an old misperception that articles should be GAs if they have lots of references to reliable sources, and not otherwise. References serve a purpose, and it is that purpose which matters, not the references themselves. Geometry guy 20:28, 2 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed aside from my concern about stability, depth was the other issue, apparently this habit only occures within the catholic community (something i always found hard to believe). I found byself asking.

When was it endorse/how?
Who else endorses is?
Who else uses it?
If only catholics use it why doesnt the article make that crystal clear?

The article leaves you with more questions than answers something insiders dont seem to grasp, the article isnt for catholics who know everything about it, it is for outsiders to learn. Realist2 (talk) 20:50, 2 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'd like to thank everyone for participating in analyzing the article; certainly the advice will be a great help in moving forward with improving the article. One of the main concerns numerous people have had is the scope of the article. The disambiguation statement at the top and the lead make it clear that the article covers the method of family planning observed by the Roman Catholic Church.
I see the article as covering a very specific topic: the type of family planning approved by the RCC. It's not a POV fork of fertility awareness, but rather a discussion of a more specific topic. With regards to the controversial statements: there are some statements in there that warrant sourcing, but I feel there is a distinction between a controversial statement and stating someone else's controversial statement. (No doubt the Catholic Church's statements are controversial in the modern world, but multiple sources don't seem necessary.) Nonetheless, I will do my best to double-source material that is objected to; it really won't be hard to find multiple sources for the teachings of the Catholic Church.
I think it's important to include dissident views, but the views that I've found have been mostly split into Catholic and non-Catholic: e.g. I don't know how the Hindu faith views NFP. I feel like those specific are topics best suited for another article, such as religious views on birth control. Given this, do the reviewers still feel there are scope issues? If so, how would those best be addressed in light of the fact that this is an article about a Catholic topic?
As for the prose itself, I'll do my best to work on the problems presented. Is it possible to put this article on hold again, while we take the time to work out the kinks in it? - Chardish (talk) 22:59, 2 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm a big advocate of using GA Hold to resolve minor issues with articles. However, this article needs a bit more than minor adjustments. I'd suggest taking time to address the issues Geometry Guy raised, work out differences, and then re-nominate. It will be a lot less stressful if you're not working under time constraints. Just a thought. Majoreditor (talk) 23:27, 2 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

That could be the best thing to do if multiple people feel the article is very far from GA status. It also depends on how many editors would be willing to work to improve the article. Would you care to respond to the questions I have above re: scope? Since that's an issue multiple reviewers have, it would be good to get clarification, especially since multiple editors of the article disagree with that criticism. - Chardish (talk) 23:42, 2 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The question of scope depends in part on whether "Natural family planning" is a uniquely Catholic term. I don't know the answer - the article doesn't discuss that topic. Majoreditor (talk) 02:53, 3 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think it's somewhat telling from these two Google search queries that NFP is intrinsically linked to Catholicism: [1] [2] So we have roughly 40% of all web pages on a specific family planning method mentioning a specific denomination of a religion in the same page...this seems like far, far higher than coincidence. - Chardish (talk) 06:34, 3 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Im sure other groups use the the technique even if they dont specifically call it "Natural family planning". Realist2 (talk) 05:18, 3 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

When I first started looking at the article the edit history worried me, the vandalism, pov pushing etc, i had seen it somewhere before. I remembered then, oh yes ive seen this on the Michael Jackson page. The page was semi protected, but it didnt help, with controvesial issues like that their was always going to be a problem. So I thought long and hard about how i could minimise bad edits. What i began to realise was that when it came to controversial issues, even if it was sourced, unless the source was there right in front of them, they would always start messing around. So I sourced every other line, TWICE. I only see half as much vandalism now, sad iditors realise that if something is sourced enough they will only be reverted so they dont bother. When I advised you to multi source everything, i was doing it to cut down on the bad edit history. A stable article that is over sourced is better than an unstable article.Realist2 (talk) 23:36, 2 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If and I repeat if you can resolve these issues within a set number of days 7-14, i do not object but encourage it going back on hold. I question is wether or not its possible. Realist2 (talk) 23:40, 2 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. Concerning scope, it is completely fine that the article is about the Catholic conception (forgive the pun) of natural family planning. It declares as much in the hatnote, and there is already an article on the wider usage of natural birth control methods. However, once that declaration is made, the article must stick to its guns: an article on Catholic NFP is primarily about theology, sociology and practice, not science. At the moment the article handles the theology quite well, starts to lose focus when it discusses the practice of Catholic NFP, and is rather weak on the sociology of Catholic NFP. Geometry guy 09:44, 3 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]