Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/Spanish Civil War/2

Spanish Civil War

Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch • Watch article reassessment page • Most recent review

Result: Closing as delisted. IsThisUseful, you're complaints about comprehensiveness and relying on one source have been refuted. Keep in mind GA 3a is not on the same level as a featured article's comprehensiveness; I'm assuming the main points have already been touched. However the article is delisted by the points brought on by AnotherClown. DragonZero (Talk · Contribs) 09:36, 29 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The subject of this article is important - the Spanish Civil War - a subject which has been researched by a wide range of academics of varying nationalities. Bonafide copy editors, with the best of intentions, have attempted to extend the article in order to give it a similar length to the very well writen good article in Spanish Wiki. Unfortunately as a result of maintaining the unusually narrow range of sources, the article now appears as though it is the paraphrasing of one main source, Thomas, whose book was written in 1960, though re-published more recently. This article was previously subjected to community assessment for doubtful quality and the view that the article was not of good article class was unanimous on both occaisions. There was not one single view that the article was of good article class. I cannot see that a topic of such importance can have good article status when it relies to such an extent on one source which is out of date. I recommend that this article good article status be withdrawn until it can reflect a similarly broad range of sources as the Spanish wiki article. Translation from Spanish to English has been suggested and a notice has been posted on the Spanish article last year. Similarly the the English article has been tagged for improvement by could also be considered. An editor who has a fascination with war articles has unilaterally promoted the article to good article, though previous discussion indicated that although there were a small number of participants in the discussion, the view was unanaimous.Isthisuseful (talk) 10:24, 7 March 2015 (UTC) Also, I put the article forward for editing in order to bring it up to good article class. An experienced editor took on this task but found the number of sources far too limited and agreed that the article was paraphrasing Thomas. For information the discussion about the article's status took place twice by way of RFC and to be doubly sure that this article is not being unfairly demoted from good article category I will post a further RFC.[reply]

A machine translation of the Spanish article is already superior to the current version in English. A page for translation has been created and is being progresssed.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Isthisuseful (talk • contribs) 21:00, 2 March 2015

Comment: G'day, you state that the article was previously subjected to community assessment for doubtful quality and the view was that it was not of good article class. Can you please provide a link to this discussion? The last community GAR that I can find is this one: Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/Spanish Civil War/1 from August 2013, where it seems the vote was in favour of keeping. Likewise, could you please specifically state which GA criteria you believe that the article fails? I had a quick look, and from what I can see there appears to be a reasonable number of citations to authors other than just Thomas, for instance Beevor, Alpert, Preston, Jackson, Bieter, Howson, Westwell, Payne, Santos, etc. So at least from my superficial look it appears like the article uses a reasonably broad range of sources (I'm not an expert on the topic, though, but at least from a lay perspective it seems ok to me). Which source from the Spanish article do you think should be added? Finally, please do not cast aspersions about other editors' motives, as it is not conducive to creating a collaborative editing environment. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 10:12, 3 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

→I am sorry that your friend is upset that I have put the article which he promoted to good article forward for community assessment. My understanding is that page is to discuss the merit of the article rather than whether I have done the right thing by asking for community reassessment. I have put my comments on my talk page and I'm happy to have that discussion there. Isthisuseful (talk) 19:28, 12 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Good Article Criteria:

Well-written:

the prose is clear and concise, it respects copyright laws, and the spelling and grammar are correct; and

it complies with the manual of style guidelines for lead sections, layout, words to watch, fiction, and list incorporation.[2]

Verifiable with no original research:[3]

it contains a list of all references (sources of information), presented in accordance with the layout style guideline;[4]

all in-line citations are from reliable sources, including those for direct quotations, statistics, published opinion, counter-intuitive or controversial statements that are challenged or likely to be challenged, and contentious material relating to living persons—science-based articles should follow the scientific citation guidelines;[5] and

it contains no original research.

Broad in its coverage:

it addresses the main aspects of the topic;[6] and

it stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style).

Neutral: it represents viewpoints fairly and without bias, giving due weight to each.

Stable: it does not change significantly from day to day because of an ongoing edit war or content dispute.[7]

Illustrated, if possible, by images:[8]

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

images are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions.[9]

Reasoning that Good Article Criteria are not met:

Above are the good article criteria as requested. The article reflects an Anglo-Centric view of the Spanish Civil War at time of British raprochment with the dictatorship in Spain in the 1950s & 1960s. This view, which is the view in the two source books which are the primary source of the article, was accepted in Britain in the 1960s but it is no longer current. The article paraphrases Thomas and presents the Spanish Civil war in terms military battles and particular artists that were notable at the time. This creates a very oddly shaped article which is lacking in historical analysis and perspective, in particular the historical causes of the Spanish Civil War, something which is fundamental to historical understanding, are almost ignored. The majority of historical reasearch into the Spanish Civil War has taken place much more recently that the 1960s and 1970s when the dictatorship was still in place. This makes the article out of date and unsuitable for good article status. Isthisuseful (talk) 19:10, 12 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, so to clarify, could you please confirm that you are saying that you believe this article does not pass the "broad in its coverage" and the "neutral" criteria? Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 12:22, 13 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I'm having a hard time with the repeated assertions that the current article is largely based on Thomas' 1961 book: there are a mere 20 cites to the 1961 book, out of 264 book cites in the whole article. The general assertion that the sources are outdated doesn't seem to hold water either: a quick analysis of the book cites shows that 14% are pre-1990 and 86% post-1990 (by comparison, the Spanish article is 5% pre-1990 and 95% post-1990). I certainly don't see (1) an over-dependence on Thomas 1961 (in fact the Spanish article cites it 11 times), nor (2) a preponderance of aged sources. Can we drop the 'based on Thomas' and 'outdated sources' arguments which don't seem supported by the facts, and instead focus on the quality of the sources and any deficiencies in the content of the article, please? Maralia (talk) 03:34, 21 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: @Isthisuseful: - you state: "the historical causes of the Spanish Civil War, something which is fundamental to historical understanding, are almost ignored..." The article has a background section which at approx. 800 words is admittedly fairly short; however, it appears summarise what is obviously a fairly broad topic, with more details available in the main article at Background of the Spanish Civil War (4,800 words and currently an GA/A class article). Given the length of the main article (already 130 kb) it seems appropriate to me that it would use summary style in this fashion. However, I am not an expert on this topic so I'm unsure if it is a good summary or not. Perhaps you might explain what is missing from this section that you feel is relevant? Equally, as you seem to be fairly knowledgeable on the topic, might it not just be easier and more productive for you to amend the article yourself and add the information you believe is missing (respecting of course the need to provide references per WP:V and in keeping with WP:UNDUE) rather than continually open GARs? Anotherclown (talk) 08:51, 21 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Further to my last - while I disagree with many of the criticisms levelled at the article by the nominator (specifically coverage), and I agree with Maralia's points IRT sourcing, I do feel that there are a few issues with this article that do require rectification for it to retain its GA status, specifically:

References - there is quite a large amount of unreferenced text (most of which seems to have recently been tagged by an IP). I've gone through and added citations where I could find them, and this has resulted in some rewording to fit the sources I have available; however, five "citation needed" tags remain and these will need to resolved IOT meet criteria 2b;
In addition there are a number of inconsistencies evident in referencing style, as well as a few citations which are unclear (e.g. "Thomas. p. 628") which lacks the year of the work therefore making it unclear which long citation it corresponds with (if any); and
There are some obvious MOS issues, specifically to do with overlinking per WP:REPEATLINK.

There may be other issues but this is just what I have noticed so far. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be many editors around at the moment that are interested in working on this article I will continue to attempt to work through some of these issues myself, although if others are interested I would welcome their assistance. Unfortunately due to the limited sources I have available to me I would say it is likely I will not able to find all the citations necessary in particular, so unless these are added by someone else this article may indeed need to be delisted. Anotherclown (talk) 02:03, 31 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: I agree that the Spanish version is much more complete, still as of today in November 2018. One of the main areas of concern to me was the lack of assessment of the consequences of the War. I have added a small section dedicated to some of these topics, adding more recent sources from both Spain and the United States. However, I feel the page needs much time and energy put into it to completely change its structure and content. Sections such as "evacuation of children" and "death toll" can surely be incorporated into other broader topics. The current page is very confusing. KGLAP (talk) 10:45, 17 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]