Talk:David Meade (author)/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Freikorp (talk · contribs) 09:12, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

• Is it reasonably well written?

Resolved issues

"In The Washington Post article, he said" - this needs rewording. "In a September 2017 Washington Post article ..." would be much better.  Done "Meade has appeared on Coast to Coast AM with George Noory and has been interviewed by the BBC in London and on American national TV and radio program Glenn Beck Program." - when did these interviews take place? Years would probably be sufficient. I’ve removed the BBC part from the article since I can’t find sources for when he was on BBC. It did say on his website that he was on BBC but there isn’t sources as to when. I did added the dates he appeared on Glenn Beck and Coast to Coast AM. "He first predicted Nibiru would hit the Earth in October 2017,[24] but moved it forward to September 23" - why and when did he move the prediction? He hasn’t said why he moved it to 9/23/2017. "An Orange County, California TV station accidentally warned viewers of his prediction" - when did this happen? Did they later apologize? I’ve added the dates and how the alert was caused. "Meade told The Washington Post that his September 23, 2017 prediction" - when? It is unknown as to when he said his prediction was based on bible codes. "He used the number 33 for his September 23 prediction" - this needs some clarification. How does one make a prediction using a number? I’ve clarified the 33 part and in detail stating that "Jesus lived for 33 years" and that "Elohim, the Canaanite god who was later adopted as the supreme god of ancient Israel, is mentioned 33 times in the Bible". Better, but is there any indication of how he used the number to come up with that specific date? The reader now understands the number 33 has religious significance, but what does the number 33 have to do with September 23, 2017? He stated 33 is the significant number for his prediction. I added in the article that 33 is the significant number for his prediction. "He also claimed, in a Glenn Beck interview," - when? September 21, 2017. "He also made predictions that North Korea would launch ..." - when and where were these prediction made? For North Korea, he said that back in September 2017 and he also stated that they would use a Russian submarine from a California coast, not a ICBm missile that NK hasn’t been testing since November 2017. "In 2018, Meade made predictions for that year, such as North Korea becoming a world-class superpower in March. In an interview he predicted the Nibiru would destroy the Earth in spring" - both these statements appear to be attributed to the same reference, however, as they are two separate sentences this leads one to think the two predictions were made separately. Were they? They were both predicted by him. He interviewed with Paul Begley and he first stated that Nibiru would destroy earth in spring. Until he came up with a month. Yes but were both predictions made in the same interview? If they were, this needs to be clarified to the reader. Yes. I’ve even made some changes to the 2018 paragraph section. I mentioned Paul Begley in the article as well. "He announced that April 11, 2018 would be the start of the apocalypse" - when and where did her make this announcement? I’ve clarified it with the sentence “In a article on Soul Ask, Meade announced that April 11, 2018 would be the start of the apocalypse[45], but stated in a article published by International Business Times on February 15, 2018 that the apocalypse would begin in March 2018”. "In a article on Soul Ask" - as there is no wikilink for Soul Ask, what it is needs to be described to the reader. I.e if it was a newspaper, you'd need to say "In a article in the newspaper Soul Ask ..." Be warned Soul Ask is likely to be one of the websites I challenge in the source review. Their 'About Us' section gives no indication of the editorial oversight [1]. The article in question also is not attributed to a journalist, meaning there's no way to see if there person who wrote it is an experienced journalist. I'm certain the source fails WP:RS I added "In a article on the website Soul Ask". Thoughts? As a general rule it would be a good idea to clarify what type of website it is. News website/conspiracy theorist website/Christian blog website or whatever it is etc etc. Also keep in mind even if you do find an appropriate description for it it's still going to be challenged in the source review. I removed the website and changed the source to the skepticism multimedia website Disclosed TV, along with the sentence mentioning it. It’s really unknown to which website Soul Ask is, honestly. I really appreciate the effort you're putting into this, but be warned this new source may not satisfy reliability standards either. We can cross that bridge later though if you'd like to focus on other issues now. Identifying reliable sources can be tricky at first. You could read Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources, or failing that you can nominate sources at WP:RSN and have more experienced editors make a ruling on them. If nominating a source at RSN make sure you specify the article in question being edited (so obviously in this case David Meade (author)), the specific article at the website in question and the specific statement being used in the article. Don't just ask something along the lines of 'Is Disclose.tv a reliable source?' I mention this purely for your own personal knowledge as you may find it helpful down the track, "were labeled as hype" - I'd put 'hype' in inverted commas  Done

1. Is it factually accurate and verifiable?

   A. Has an appropriate reference section:

   Reference No. 4 features the quote "researcher, investigator, and writer". That's far too generic a statement to require adding a quote into the actual reference itself. I'd lose it. Also don't give sentence fragments as quotes. If you are going to keep it, please list the entire sentence. Same issue with reference No. 5: "lists 13 books under Meade’s name, all were self-published" - this needs to be a full sentence.

   I’ve expanded the sentence a bit to “He is also a writer, researcher and investigator who has written and self-published at least 13 books”.

   Ok, but you still need to fix others, such as the other example I listed above.

   Right, I've fixed a few issues myself so this is now the only remaining issue with how the references are formatted. You don't actually need to put quotes into references. The main reason you'd do this is if the source was behind a paywall or offline, so the easy solution would be to just delete them all. Otherwise make sure they are all full sentences, and attribute them where appropriate. For example in the quote in the source by Gajanan, Mahita you should definetely mention who is making that quote. So let's say the quote was made by David Meade. In this case, format the '|quote=' parameter accordingly: '|quote=Meade, David: [Whatever David Meade said]'.

   For the quotes, I've added the author to who is saying it as you said.  Done

Resolved issues

There's A LOT of inconsistency in the reference section. Reference No. 1 does not have a retrieval date, yet reference No. 2 does. They all need to be consistent. The publications need to be listed consistently as well. Reference No. 1 is attributed to "Washington Post" , whereas reference no. 2 is attributed to "The Washington Post". I can see the same issue later on with "NewsWeek.com" and "NewsWeek". Reference No. 2 has the publishing company (Nash Holdings LLC), whereas reference No. 1 does not. You need to pick a specific format and then stick with it for every single reference.  Done Better, but there's still a few problems. There's still a lot of inconsistency with whether sources have retrieval dates. In reference No. 35 the retrieval date is actually formatted differently from all the rest (2017-09-23 - as apposed to other sources which say 'September 23, 2017'). You either need to have retrieval dates for all sources or none at all, and if you have them they all need the same date formatting. Reference No.35 is fixed.  Done on that one. Ok, but you still need to fix all the retrieval dates. I’ve fixed most of them to “date=“. Most isn't good enough, let me know when all of them are consistently formatted. Also are you aware of the difference between date= and accessdate=? So date= is the date the article was published. accessdate= is the date the article was last checked to see if it was still online. There are almost always two different dates. Accordingly you can have both, you just need to be consistent. So either have accessdates for every source of for none. All have been changed to “date=“. I’m aware with the differences between the 2. There's 11 sources that still have retrieval dates. The first one is reference No. 17 (Mack, Eric) and the last one is No. 49 (Mind reader with same name as David Meade receives death threats after failed prediction) Several sources do not have dates though dates are readily available at the source itself. I.e the Kluger, Jeff source has no date though clicking on the link reveals it was published on September 19, 2017.  Done You've fixed the example I gave, but I'm sure there are several more. Reference No. 6 isn't attributed to a date though clicking on the website clearly shows it was published on September 16, 2017. Have you clicked on every single reference without a date of publication and made sure they do not have a date of publication listed at the article? I fixed reference 6 (changing url, publisher/work, added author name). I say the reference 6 part is  Done. Reference No. 6 isn't attributed to anyone at all. Why isn't this attributed to its publisher, Fox News? Same issue with reference No. 7. I'm not even going to point out the others. Make sure every reference is attributed to its publisher. I’ve added Fox News to work. I’ve Wikilinked it as well along with other references. Reference No. 42 ("North Korea, Yellowstone and Nukes Triggering Supervolcanoes") still isn't attributed to a publisher. Also I don't think the quote from the article in the reference "Why is David Meade predicting a Kim Jong-un nuclear attack on Yellowstone?" adds anything of value. I'd remove it. In general try not to add more information than is needed to references. Fixed the Yellowstone part.  Done Also hows reference 2? Reference 2? The Guarino, Ben one? Well I'm really confused as to why you've listed Jeff Bezos as the publisher. It's my understanding he's not the publisher, he's the owner. Also if you're going to list the publisher as well as the work for one reference you should make an effort to do it for all of them. It's not a requirement to have both, and there is an exemption to the rule whereby you shouldn't list both if they are pretty much exactly the same. So if the work is Time magazine and the publisher is Time Inc. you wouldn't have to list both. On a similar note, you need to present all the publishers in the same manner. For example, you can't list half with their common name (I.e "The Washington Post") and others with their base url in lower case (I.e "coasttocoastam"). The later needs to reformatted to Coast to Coast AM. Every single publisher listed in lowercase needs to be reformatted to how you would describe the website if you were writing it in a sentence. Wikilink where possible.  Done Go through and make sure one by one that they have all been fixed. I can see at least one that hasn't been (I.e politicianreviews). Fixed the politicianreviews part to Politician Reviews Checklinks find a few issues, nothing major though: [2] Also anything in brackets in a wikilink should be piped out. So Time (magazine) should be changed to just Time. Inverse (website) should be changed to just Inverse.  Done Why is the authors name in Reference No. 21 (JERRY GADIANO) all in capitals? And why is the there a date in brackets in the title? Also reference No. 19 and Reference No. 21 are the same reference. Get rid of one and format the other accordingly so you can use one reference twice as opposed to having two identical ones. Fixed both parts. Don't forget you can give a reference a name so that it can be used multiple times yet still only appear once in the reference list, like reference No. 1 and No. 2 does. This is completely OK, just don't use the same reference twice so that it appears twice in the reference list. Reference No. 42 (Paul Seaburn) lists the work as "Mysterious Universe" and the website as "mysteriousuniverse.org.". You don't need both, so drop the 'website' parameter. Same issue with 'Glenn Beck' and glennbeck.com.  Done There's still one instance of glennbeck.com alongside 'Glenn Beck'.  Done When you look through the references, note that some of the publishers are listed in italics (I.e The Washington Post), while others are not (I.e Canada Free Press). This is because some reference use the 'work=' parameter, which displays italics, and others use the 'publisher=' parameter, which does not. This, like everything else, needs to be consistent. It is possible for a reference to have both the work= and publisher= parameters filled out, however, when it comes to websites you need to have a consistent policy on which one of these parameters you use if the source is only attributed to one website/journal/newspaper etc. What about now? I'm seeing two instances of 'Glenn Beck', one of 'Mysterious Universe', one of 'Discloce.tv', two of 'International Business Times' and one of 'Canada Free Press' not appearing in italics.  Done There's some inconsistency in how sources are listed as self-published. Some say 'Self-published on [publisher]', one says 'self-published by David Meade' (this also needs a capital on 'Self') and one just says 'self-published' (again, with no capital). These need to be formatted consistently. Since David Meade is already listed as the author, saying 'self-published by David Meade' is a bit redundant. I'd either say 'Self-published on [publisher]' or just 'Self-published'. When I do the source review I may challenge whether these sources should be used at all though.  Done Most of your references use first= and last= parameters. Two however are using author=. When you use first= and last= it automatically formats the last name first, followed by a comma and the first name in the reference. When you use author=, it displays the authors name exactly as you've written it in the parameter. Due to this you've got most of your sources appearing like this: 'Darnay, Keith', but then you've got two formatted differently: 'Christopher M. Graney' and 'James David Manning'. Like everything else in the references, this needs to be formatted consistently. If you're unsure what to do with the middle name, just have it follow the first name in the first= parameter. So in this case you should format it "|first=James David |last=Manning". I don't think Christians In Pakistan is a reliable source. Also if the article is attributed to something like 'Web Desk' don't format those words as if there were someones name. Just leave the author blank, or attribute it to something like 'Staff'.  Done

• B. Citation to reliable sources where necessary:

Are you aware Andrew Carrington Hitchcock is a white supremacist? I understand you've only used him for non-controversial information but this source definitely fails WP:RS and definitely shouldn't be the kind of source we are encouraging people to use. Incidentally the fact that David Meade has been willing to be interviewed by him speaks volumes about the kind of human being Meade is. Have you searched to see if any more reliable source have commented on the fact Hitchcock interviewed Meade? If they did that would definitely be worth mentioning. In any case I think you should get rid of all of the Hitchcock sources, but you are most welcome to take any source I question to WP:RSN for a third opinion. If RSN says the source is reliable I'll accept it.

I wasn't aware until you told me. I do agree that interviewing Carrington shows what kind of person Meade is; the guy is a lunatic false prophet who has failed so many times and only cares about his stupid books. I've removed the Carrington source and replaced it with Fox News, so  Done deal with it. I do need help with the date part for Fox News though, if you don't mind fixing it to how most of the refs are when it comes to date; same with ref 29. Thanks!

Right, so in the citeweb template if an article has an author and a date the date will appears after the author's name. If there is no author, for some reason the date will appear at the end of the reference. I'm not sure why they made it work that way, but they did. It's not going to be an issue in terms of passing or failing this.

You should only ever use self-published sources if more reliable sources cannot be found. The sentence "he has written books related to politics, such as The Coup D'état Against President Donald J. Trump and The Coming Clinton Economic Collapse" is currently backed up by two self-published sources. Are you absolutely certain a more reliable source hasn't commented on the fact Mead published these books (or others like them, we don't have to specifically use these two books if he's written others).

I’m certain.“Writers-web-service”, “Ebookit” and Amazon are the only websites his books were cited.

Well actually I just did a search myself and several other sources you use mention them. 'The Coup D'état Against President Donald J. Trump' is mentioned in sources by Newsweek and Bustle which are currently used in the article [3][4] and 'The Coming Clinton Economic Collapse' is mentioned in a Washington Post article which is already being used as well [5]. The fact that these reliable sources mention them means you definitely should not be using self-published sources. I'll make the change myself.

Same issue for what references 22 and 23 and then 31 and 32 are used to back up. Are you certain you can't attribute any of this information to a more reliable source?

There isn’t really any sources for his books but “Writers-web-service”, “Ebookit” and Amazon.

I don't think Disclose.tv. is a reliable source. Clicking on the author link for that article [6] also gives us no information about him. If he listed qualifications or other publications he had written for (and that we could verify) it might be acceptable, but as it is I'm confident the source does not satisfy WP:RS.

Right, so just either replace Disclose.tv with a more reliable source or just get rid of that statement attributed to it entirely and we should be good to go. Freikorp (talk) 21:36, 15 March 2018 (UTC)

I removed the source, however I tried to look for reliable sources, but I couldn't find one. I removed it from the article, but if you would like to put it back in the article with a reliable source, feel free to do so. However, you can also fix the sentence as well.

• C. No original research:
• Is it broad in its coverage?

  A. Major aspects:

  B. Focused:

• Is it neutral?

  Fair representation without bias:

• Is it stable?

  No edit wars, etc:

• Does it contain images to illustrate the topic?
• A. Images are tagged with their copyright status, and valid fair use rationales are provided for non-free content:
• B. Images are provided if possible and are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions:

  The 'Woman of the Apocalypse', unlike the Pyramids, is not household knowledge. Accordingly your image of it needs a more specific caption. You need to inform the reader how this statue is related to the phenomena. Simply adding information in brackets that this is a depiction of said woman should be sufficient.

  For the Woman of the Apocalypse image, what do you think I should change my caption to?

  I've modified it myself. Also I'm personally OK with two pictures but as the pyramids are only loosely associated with the article don't be surprised in the future if someone thinks that image should be removed.

• Overall:

  Pass or Fail: I can't consider passing this until the references and prose issues are cleaned up. That's a fair chunk of work, so I'm going to wait until that is done before I start looking at the reliability and verifiability of sources. Freikorp (talk) 09:43, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

@Freikorp: Exactly. Good thing it’s on hold. I have to address the issues first, then we talk. I’ll address all issues regarding the article. —LovelyGirl7 talk 15:41, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

I really hope this GA review is being an educational experience for you, and will help you in preparing articles in the future prior to GA nomination. Just for your own information, there have been a lot more issues with this article than you would expect to find in an article being nominated for GA. Some reviewers might have quick-failed it accordingly. There's also been a lot of instances where you've said something has been completed, though searching shows that there are still outstanding issues. This along with the fact you said you were certain other sources did not mention Meade's other books yet a quick google search was able to find me several does not sit well in your favour. I'm going to keep this open and I very much hope it will be improved to a point where I can pass it, but just so you know I'm going easy on you only because it's your first nomination. I definitely would have failed it by now if it wasn't. Keep in mind the feedback I've provided and try and make sure these issues are sorted out before nominating articles in the future. :) Freikorp (talk) 14:07, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

OK, I'm happy to pass this now. Congrats. Freikorp (talk) 01:44, 16 March 2018 (UTC)