Wikipedia:Peer review/Psychoactive drug/archive1

Please, leave comments on what could get this article up to Featured Article status. Jolb 20:58, 21 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think we're getting close. Looking at the Featured Article Criteria, I think the places this article falls short are:
- 1e (Stability) This is an unstable article because there are so many different perspectives on this topic. Just look at the talk page and revision history for evidence of that. Drug users want this article to talk about subjective effects and reference their drug of choice, anti-drug people want it to focus on addiction and abuse, psychopharm people want it to focus on the hard science. We end up in a tug-of-war between these extremes that is hard to reconcile. We need to keep this article at the highest level of information and link to specific articles that provide more information on those topics with less noise from the competing POV's. This article is starting to fall in line with that philosophy, but I am concerned that it will take some vigilance to keep it headed in that direction.

- Additionally, There has previously been an ongoing edit war surrounding the chart. Now, I'm a fan of the chart and think it has some value, but we have to admit that it is controversial and that the citations it lists are not immediately verifiable, either because they are publications that few of us have access to or because the websites they direct us to don't have anything that looks remotely similar. While Thoric fought hard to defend this chart against claims of it being original research, I think there is little doubt that it is at least an original synthesis of information, and as such, has dubious status as enyclopedic content. But then, there are so many people who love the chart and feel that it clarifies a murky subject, and those of us with more knowledge of the subject have to admit that there is some validity to this classification, even if it is overly simplistic. I think anyone who visits this article for the first time will feel the pull between these two perspectives, which undermines the authority of this article. As long as this issue remains outstanding, I see this as the major roadblock to Featured Article Status.

- 2a (Lead section) I think the intro to this article isn't strong enough. The statement on abuse and dependence is worded poorly and doesn't sound authoritative enough, and the assertion that psychedelics can be used to treat chemical dependency, while sourced, is still a controversial claim. I am giving this one some thought and will attempt a revision. The lead section should also reference the legality issue to give a complete overview of the article's contents.

- 3 (Images) We need more. Thanks for the Timothy Leary pic, Jolb! Images for the addiction and legality sections would be nice (maybe we can find some public domain movie stills depicting these issues?). An image depicting neurotransmission might also be appropriate for the "effects" section.

Another thought. We should expand the section on "drugs as status symbols" to include more detail on the cultural implications of psychoactive substances, including their acceptance in mainstream culture and drug counter-culture.