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GA Review

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Reviewer: Tim riley (talk) 10:31, 6 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think this review will take very long. The article has all the makings of a GA, but before I cut the ribbon there are some points about the prose that need to be addressed:

  • Lead:
    • Memory may be playing tricks, but I think we may elsewhere have agreed to differ about what words it is and isn't appropriate to bluelink. See WP:OVERLINK – I'd lose the lot in the second sentence of the lead, myself, except for "research library".
    • "A significant budget" – a dubious adjective: what does it signify?
  • Historical background
    • "the Document Supply Centre is in Yorkshire" – that is, at Boston Spa? Not clear.
    • George III – bluelinked twice within a few lines: the second link should go.
  • Legal deposit
    • blue link should be at first not second mention in this para.
    • "Chris Mole introduced and passed a Private Member's Bill" – Mr Mole may have introduced it, but it was Parliament that passed it – given that you mention the Act immediately afterwards, I'd lose "and passed".
  • Using the Library's Reading Rooms
  • Material available online
  • Business and IP Centre
    • "The Business & IP Centre is separated into two distinct areas": – it is not at all clear what these two areas are.
    • "It is available for free" – horrible vulgarism – "free of charge", I beg!
    • "You must have a reader pass "– this sudden switch to addressing the reader as "you" is jarring and inappropriate.
    • "A reader's pass": this is the third form in which this phrase has appeared in the article – earlier it is "reader pass" and earlier still it is capitalised.
    • The four bullet points read like a marketing blub rather than an encyclopaedia article – "protect your ideas" and so forth.
  • Philatelic Collections
    • "are held at the BL" – first use of the abbreviation – rather late in the article for it to seem natural. I'd say "St Pancras" here, I think.
    • Why does the Head Curator get a name check here when his compeers in departments listed earlier do not?
      • Good point, I think that the head curators (originally they were Keepers in the British Museum library) are notable academics in their own right (an unambiguous case for WP:PROF could be made for each of them and I would strongly support the creation of stand alone BLP articles considering how poorly British academics are represented on :en) and consequently the article would benefit from more of them being named and wiki-linked to (see Category:Employees of the British Library). I think this is an ongoing area for improvement and accept there may be good arguments both ways on inclusion. In this case I believe that Beech is the longest serving curator (at 28 years, c.f. Michelle P. Brown) and so there might be a fair case for keeping his name here on that basis whilst we consider how many others to add articles for, though if you still feel this is a weak rationale I'll take him out on the basis of consistency. Fæ (talk) 16:25, 6 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Happy with whatever you decide on this. Again, at FAC you might get a hard time, but as I read the GA rules this is by no means a show-stopper. Nor is anything else in my list of quibbles, with the exception of the four bullet points in the Business and IP section, which really don't meet GA/MOS standards. The rest is just fine-tuning. Tim riley (talk) 16:41, 6 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Highlights of the collections
    • Rather a subjective heading, and I reckon you'd have trouble with it at FAC. For present purposes, is there a BL leaflet or some such which you can quote as listing these highlights?
      The BL lists 15 highlights which somewhat overlap the 15 items listed in the article. I would definitely remove the Stein collection from the list of highlights (especially as there is no Wikipedia article specifically on the Stein collection) as this should be a list of notable individual items rather than subcollections. BabelStone (talk) 11:07, 6 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
      •  Done I have trimmed the list based on the 'official' highlight list on the BL website. This may be debatable and I have previously thought about saying more about the 100+ 'Treasures' as identified on the BL smart-phone application. Again this might be an area for improvement rather than needing to be fully resolved for GA. Fæ (talk) 16:37, 6 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Transport connections
    • I love the logos – most appealing to the eye!
  • References
    • I think you need to check the capitalisation of the titles cited at references 1, 2, and 11, to make sure you have fairly reproduced the original capitalisation.
    • Ref 4 incorrectly quotes the page title.
    • Ref 31 needs the URL piping.
  • Further reading
    • "Giles Mandelbrote (Hrsg.)" – showing my ignorance: what do the characters in brackets mean?
      Herausgeber apparently, which means "editor" or "publisher". To my complete surprise there appear to be hundreds of unexplained uses of "Hrsg." or "Herausgeber" in articles on the English Wikipedia. Definitely should be translated to English (ed.). BabelStone (talk) 11:21, 6 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
       Done I have nabbed a version straight from GBooks, it was missing an author anyway. Fæ (talk) 16:43, 6 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Once these points are addressed, I can proceed with the formal review, which I think will be easy from the reviewer's point of view. Tim riley (talk) 10:31, 6 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]


Give or take the odd straggler from the above we are there, I think. I am much relieved at the improvements in the Business and IP section, and everything else was of secondary importance. So, reaching for the champagne to break over the bows:

Overall summary

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GA review – see WP:WIAGA for criteria

  1. Is it reasonably well written?
    A. Prose quality:
    B. MoS compliance:
  2. Is it factually accurate and verifiable?
    A. References to sources:
    Well referenced
    B. Citation of reliable sources where necessary:
    Well referenced
    C. No original research:
  3. Is it broad in its coverage?
    A. Major aspects:
    B. Focused:
  4. Is it neutral?
    Fair representation without bias:
  5. Is it stable?
    No edit wars, etc:
  6. Does it contain images to illustrate the topic?
    A. Images are copyright tagged, and non-free images have fair use rationales:
    Well illustrated
    B. Images are provided where possible and appropriate, with suitable captions:
    Well illustrated (Wouldn't mind a bit of trimming of some of the lengthier captions.)
  7. Overall:
    Pass or Fail:

Thanks for the quick reply and your efforts in providing a detailed review. I intend to chip away at the comments I have yet to go through for their improvement value rather than for GA status. Cheers Fæ (talk) 20:01, 6 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Finished sweeping up the remainder, let me know if I've missed something or missed the intent of a comment. Thanks Fæ (talk) 21:19, 6 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Looks good to me. Loud applause! Tim riley (talk) 22:11, 6 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
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