Wikipedia talk:Peer review/Manuel Noriega/archive1

How to proceed from here?

I'm sorry about the confusion towards the bottom of my review, Vanamonde93; that is on me, not you, so no need to apologize in advance. I would have taken more time to try to sort it out, but when the FAC was archived while I was still trying to sort the mess I had from working in the car, it seemed like I owed you a timely response here, so I threw up my hands and posted what I had. (In retrospect, if I had put a placeholder on the FAC, the Coords would have known I was working, but I think we would have ended up here at PR in any case.) The problem arose because ... I travel back and forth to our cabin all summer, which is a six-hour trek each way. My husband enjoys the actual driving, while I get bored as an oyster, and put off reading articles as work I can do in the car from an iPad hotspot connection (and the connection is spotty, which could be how I lost some pieces). As I was reading, I was clipping text from the article to the Notes Utility on my iPad, and emailing the sources to myself, thinking I would connect them all when I could get on a real computer. But when I caught up on a real computer a few days later, I had 35 emails, some sources lost along the way (I spent an entire day trying to find the source that said Dignes was not credible because no one can remember that much detail on conversations, and was never able to re-locate it), and an impossible task to connect which source explained which concern from the article.

Feel free to pester me about anything, knowing that I may not be able to reconstruct all the pieces, and that is my problem, not yours. I apologize in advance for all my typos; I prefer to use my iPad as much as I can, because sitting at a computer has been difficult since a large tree fell on me and tried to kill me; my brain healed, but my back and neck did not. My advice is to not approach this work as a checklist, and to not overfocus on any specifics towards the bottom of my review, rather take a big picture approach to the work needed here. The main problems are missing biographical content and that Dignes's POV is jumping off the page. More content on biographical, less on US intervention and France, trial etc (which can all go to sub-articles), so some thought needs to go in to how to better use summary style to sub-articles. (See my notes on controversial topics that grow too large at this essay I just wrote to help medical editors).

My suggestion is to take a lot of time to immerse yourself in reading every source I've added here (knowing that I lost some, so when a source references another source, that's the trail to follow, as that's where I lost pieces) before even attempting to correct individual issues. (Particularly if some content may end up moved to a sub-article.) As you read the sources, some of my commentary may become more clear, as you may be able to connect more of the pieces. I may have also mixed up Gilboa and Scranton in a few instances. At any rate, immersing yourself in broad reading about Noriega/Panama (even articles which you may not end up using) will help towards developing a bigger picture than that which is painted by Dignes ("trendy journalists who blame the US for Noriega") ... there are Panamanian issues about how he came to such power that need to be worked in.

I also want to emphasize that I think the article may be where it is because of the (concerning) absence of Panamanian voices on Wikipedia. It appears (from the talk page) that all other involved editors fell away, and you were operating in a vacuum, where no one was saying, "well, yes, that is true, but this is also true and offers another viewpoint".

Do you need help with Spanish translations, or are you comfortable reading Spanish? Regards, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:51, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

@SandyGeorgia: I do not intend to do more than pruning and copyediting until I've read through more sources. My Spanish is still rather mediocre; I'm okay reading, with help from google translate; but when it comes to using content from those sources, I will likely ask someone to stand by to check my work. The absence of Panamanian voices...perhaps. With some experience editing our content about South Asian politics, I know for certain that familiarity with a culture is no guarantee of good content...More critique from people familiar with Panamanian history may have helped, but at least part of the problem was that I didn't think through where I was going with the article when I first wrote it. Most things I've gotten through FA, I've started by reading every source I could find (or when there's too many, at least a broad sample...) and so even initial rewrites are done with FAC as a potential goal. That wasn't the case here, because I first did the minimal work required to have this at ITN/RD, then filled it out a little with available sources for GAN; and when I went back to it earlier this year, I didn't account for this history. Vanamonde (Talk) 16:14, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

This may also be a more difficult case than typical. If any of the books written were stellar (none of them are), then you could have eeked out a good FA by using those book sources. But since none of the books about Noriega/Panama are particularly stellar (according to the reviews), you have a much harder task here to use a blend of sources to achieve a good FA. And that task could be helped along by more voices saying "yes, but ... " Solider on !!! I have ALWAYS believed that a strong oppose is the best and fastest route to FA. Best, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:29, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

Where do the rest of our GAs and FAs stand?

You may have noticed I have been raising this concern since my return to Wikipedia :) I have focused particularly on trying to deal with the fact that almost none of Wikipedia's medical FAs are actually FAs, and almost every one of them needs to go to FAR. (See User:SandyGeorgia/sandbox2#MedicalFAs; I wrote User:SandyGeorgia/Achieving excellence through featured content after the Anatomy project newsletter editor asked me to put something together to guide them in the FA process.) But every now and then I find time to dig in to a FAC review, which I wish I could do more of, but Life Happens.

When Karanacs and I were FAC delegates, we had the Dispatches Workshop which worked to guide editors in the content review processes, generate interest, and reward quality. And I would regularly recuse, take off my delegate hat, and do a deep dive on an article as an example to reviewers of what the delegate (now called Coords) needed to see. And I provided data about reviews, showing which editors' reviews were most helpful in determining whether to promote or archive. (What we have today is which editors are reviewing-- without an indication of how helpful those reviews are.) What I did was score every review as +3, +1, 0, -1 or -3 depending on how helpful they were in actually assessing an article vs. WP:WIAFA such that I could decide whether to promote or archive. For example, an unqualified oppose or support ("drive-by !vote") got a negative three. An oppose that strenuously engaged the criteria with examples of all problems, or a support that thoroughly engaged the criteria and gave me the info I needed to promote, got a plus three. I didn't publish my spreadsheets, but looking at which editors did MOST reviewing and comparing that to which editors did BEST reviewing allowed one to read between the lines about who was doing poor reviews.

FAC used to have many reviewers who took deep dives into articles (Karanacs, Ealdgyth, Laser brain, Awadewit, me, and quite a few others); at some point that changed to nitpicking prose, and I think I know what caused that. Tony1 effectively reviewed for prose issues. That means, he looked at an article and said "good enough" or he said, "go away and get a copyedit and come back"; FAC was not peer review, and an article was either prepared or not. (Notice on my review here that I have one brief section of prose nitpicks ... if there's more than that, the article should be sent away for a peer review or copyedit, not reworked at FAC). The absence of Tony1 has caused a big problem at FAC in terms of pulling faulty prose up to standard, which should not be happening at FAC, which needs to focus on POV, comprehensiveness, sourcing, etc. To my knowledge, the reviewers who are still taking deep dives into articles are SarahSV and Fowler and fowler. (There may be others; I haven't kept up very well, as there have been considerable issues at WPMED that have sidelined me from more active FAC reviewing.) But FAC seems more interested lately in insulting and chasing off deep-dive reviewers-- something that was never allowed by Raul654 or me ... ALL criticism should be entertained, since Coords are empowered to ignore that which does not engage WIAFA.

I am quite dismayed that we see negligible effort to re-invigorate FAC today, where volume is one-third of what it was years ago, or to review outdated FAs at FAR, or to publish something like the Dispatches to encourage better reviewing and recognition of top reviewers. I estimate that one-third to half of our FAs ... aren't. That is my answer to your direct question about where they stand. As to GA, it has never had any significance, as it is only one person's opinion that an article is "decent", and is more defined by what the article is not. I don't even consider it a useful step on the path to FA. This was not always the case. In the days of Geometry guy and Eric Corbett (then Malleus), I could at least look at who promoted that GA and know that some of them were good. But Geometry guy also worked with FAC to fasttrack GA demotions when we revealed that an article that appeared at FAC shouldn't be GA; as far as I know, no one is doing that sort of work today, and there is no attempt to remove poor GAs just as there is little attempt to remove poor FAs.

One particular concern is that GA, MILHIST A-class, and FAC have all become essentially prose nitpicks, with little attention paid to sourcing, comprehensiveness, POV, or even to the little technical matters. MILHIST may strip me of my WikiChevrons with Oak Leaves for this criticism, though :) I hope you can see why I say we need to re-invigorate peer review if we are to re-invigorate FAC, and which is why Ceoil and I have worked to provide examples of how to more effectively engage PR. Best, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:25, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

That makes a lot of sense. Whenever I've had Mike Christie review my work, though, he's always gone in pretty deep, and I have a fair degree of pride in my speculative fiction FAs. I do think the GA process retains value; as I've gotten tired of repeating, there's very many topics, especially outside the anglosphere, that don't have good enough sourcing for FAC, but which can still reach a basic common standard. We can agree to disagree about that, though. Vanamonde (Talk) 16:37, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

Yes, Mike is QUITE a serious reviewer (I should have mentioned that), but he also does not have enough time to devote to FAC reviewing. When he does, it's serious ! (I am sure there are many I have left out ... ) Best, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:41, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for the compliments, both. I do plan to do more reviewing, though part of the reason I'm not doing so currently is because I acquired some non-FAC obligations, a couple coming from failed FACs that I'm trying to help the nominator with -- Squirm, Manilal Dwivedi and a couple of others I may not be able to get back to. One day I'll retire in RL and have more time here ... And I am always up for one of Vanamonde's articles or lists since it's nice to be able to review something where I genuinely feel I'm an expert. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 20:08, 1 October 2020 (UTC)