Talk:International Criminal Court investigation in Kenya/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: H1nkles (talk) _{citius altius fortius} 16:31, 19 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

GA Review Philosophy

When I do an article review I like to provide a Heading-by-Heading breakdown of suggestions for how to make the article better. It is done in good faith as a means to improve the article. It does not necessarily mean that the article is not GA quality, or that the issues listed are keeping it from GA approval. I also undertake minor grammatical and prose edits. After I finish this part of the review I will look at the over arching quality of the article in light of the GA criteria. If I feel as though the article meets GA Standards I will promote it, if it does not then I will hold the article for a week pending work.

GA Checklist

GA review – see WP:WIAGA for criteria

Is it well written?
A. The prose is clear and concise, and the spelling and grammar are correct:

B. It complies with the manual of style guidelines for lead sections, layout, words to watch, fiction, and list incorporation:
Is it verifiable with no original research, as shown by a source spot-check?
A. It contains a list of all references (sources of information), presented in accordance with the layout style guideline:
Refs should be at the end of sentences and make sure every quote has a ref in a consistent location.

B. Reliable sources are cited inline. All content that could reasonably be challenged, except for plot summaries and that which summarizes cited content elsewhere in the article, must be cited no later than the end of the paragraph (or line if the content is not in prose):

C. It contains no original research:

D. It contains no copyright violations nor plagiarism:
Is it broad in its coverage?
A. It addresses the main aspects of the topic:

B. It stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style):
Is it neutral?
It represents viewpoints fairly and without editorial bias, giving due weight to each:
Is it stable?
It does not change significantly from day to day because of an ongoing edit war or content dispute:
Is it illustrated, if possible, by images?
A. Images are tagged with their copyright status, and valid non-free use rationales are provided for non-free content:

B. Images are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions:
Overall:
Pass or Fail:
My issues have been addressed. I made some comments for improvement below. I'll confidently pass it to GA now. H1nkles (talk) _{citius altius fortius} 16:16, 28 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I think it is a travesty that you have had to wait since April for your article to be reviewed. Unfortunately I won't be able to review it today but I will start the review and I should have it completed this week. H1nkles (talk) _{citius altius fortius} 16:31, 19 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Lead

This sentence is poorly written: "The period of violence and unrest followed national government elections, including a presidential election, that took place in Kenya in December 2007, in which the official results were disputed." The subject of the sentence is vague and the wording could be trimmed. Consider a rewrite thus: "National government elections took place in Kenya in December 2007. The official results were disputed and a period of violence and unrest ensued." I'm not sure if that's what you're trying to say because the way it is written is unclear.
Make sure when you use abbreviations that you identify what the abbreviation applies to. I see that you use ICC, which I assume stands for the International Criminal Court, which you do spell out but then put (ICC) in parentheses after it so that the reader directly applies ICC to the International Criminal Court.
"...the vote had been rigged..." "Rigged" is a slang term, I recommend changing to "fixed" or redoing the sentence to work in the term "voter fraud" or something along those lines.
Per WP:LEAD the lead should be a summary of the entire article. It should not introduce facts not listed in the article. It should contain a "skeletal" outline of all the subjects raised in the article. There are a couple of issues with the lead:

The term "Ocampo six" does not appear in the article, at least as far as I can see, this should be added or removed from the lead.
There is information in the article but not in the lead, specifically the charges brought against the 6 individuals.
Suggestion that the location of the hearing be changed.
Kenya's and the International community's response.

The sentence you pointed out has been replaced with better wording. The abbreviation ICC has been introduced in the lead and the word "rigged" has rightly been removed. I have also added a second paragraph to the lead and have included some of the information you recommended.

Background

An election is not a poll, I recommend changing that word.
"Vote-rigging" is linked to the Electoral fraud article. That term is better than "vote rigging" IMO.
"Violence continued until a peace deal was agreed between Kibaki and Odinga...." I think there's a word missing, perhaps peace deal was agreed "upon" between Kibaki and Odinga. Not sure but the sentence doesn't sound right the way it's written.
One-line stub paragraphs are not good, consider expanding or combining. H1nkles (talk) _{citius altius fortius} 17:01, 20 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Those corrections have been made. References to vote-rigging have been replaced by better language. The single-sentence paragraph is incorporated into the previous paragraph.

Waki Report and referral to ICC

"Kofi Annan, who mediated in resultion discussions with Kibaki and Odinga which resulted in the coallition government, agreed accords with the two parties, one of which was the instigation of a tribunal, chaired by Kenyan judge Philip Waki into the violence and the actions of the police." There are multiple issues with this sentence. First "resultion" isn't a word, are you trying to say "resolution"? If so then "in" should be "a" and remove "discussions with" and replace with "between". The rest of the sentence is confusing. The subject is Kofi Annan, but what else in the sentence applies to Annan? Can you help me understand what you're trying to say here?
Is the "report" in the Waki Report a formal title? If so it should be capitalized in the body of the section. If not then it should not be capitalized in the section title.
"The Waki List has so far not been made public, and it is assumed that it contains more names than the six who were accused by Ocampo, consequently there have been calls in Kenya for either the ICC or Judge Waki to release the list." The reference you use does not support this statement. First the reference is an editorial column and as such carries no credible weight as a source other than to say that the Waki List has not been released. Second the reference does not claim that more names are on the list than the 6 who are indicted, nor does it say that this is the reason it should be made public. The editorial column says that in the opinion of the writer he has no confidence in the Hague and that the Waki List should be made public so that the people named therein would be politically hamstrung and then when they leave office they can be handed over to The Hauge and Ocampo for prosecution. Please check your references to ensure that they support what you're saying in the article and try to avoid opinion columns to support statements of fact. See WP:VERIFY for thoughts on credible sources.

Also it's a red flag when I read words like "assumed" or "probably". Make sure assumptions are supported by references.

I added a couple of ^{[citation needed]} templates to this section. As a rule of thumb any assertion, quote, or statement of fact should have a supporting reference. The first ^{[citation needed]} template was put in because you state that this was the first case in which the prosecutor decided to investigate in this manner. Should be referenced. The second ^{[citation needed]} template is there because you have a direct quote and those should always be referenced.

Several sentences have been re-written and clarified. As for the bit about the calls for the release of the list, I changed to wording from "assumed" to "may contain" and changed the source from the opinion piece to a news article. I put references in where you had put in your ^{[citation needed]} tags. The reference was already in the article but I have now added an in-line citation next to the specific claims, and for the quote by Judge Kaul

Charges

"On 8 March 2011 Pre-Trial Chamber II issued its verdict that there were reasonable grounds to be believe that the six suspects named by Ocampo had committed crimes against humanity and issued summonses for their appearance in the court." "...to be believe..." Do you mean "to be believed"?
The first paragraph in this section starts with past tense and then ends with present tense. Make sure the sentences are either all present or past tense. In this case past tense is fine.
Your write up of the first case is good but the second does not explain the results of the decisions against Kenyatta and Muthaura.

I removed the word "be" to make the sentence coherent and put the whole paragraph into the past tense. With the second case, I think the information was there but I had put the two decisions in different places. I have now put all the information together in the same paragraph and re-worded some of it for clarity

Pre-trial phase

Your quote template is not complete.
Again one-sentence paragraphs should be combined and expanded.
Is there anything else that came out of the initial hearings? The quote is good but I'm wondering what else was discussed or decisions made. H1nkles (talk) _{citius altius fortius} 18:12, 20 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Per WP:HEADING the titles of sections and subsections should not be capitalized (except for the first word) unless the words are proper nouns.
Punctuation has been an issue throughout the article. I've made some fixes but you should check the entire article. Refs go after the punctuation, not before.
How do the victims want to participate? Do they wish to address the court or are they seeking financial damages? This isn't clear from the article.

I completed the quote template. It had been complete when it was put in but obviously damaged when I edited the article subsequently. I went through the article de-capitalising headings as well, and improved the punctuation errors that I could find. Also I have added some more information about how victims participate and clarified that they can both address the court with their observations and also seek damages. As for what came out of the initial hearings, there wasn't much more no. The initial hearings are mainly to establish the identity of the suspects and formally confirm that they are aware of the proceedings, and also make an order for the charge confirmation hearings to take place. I suppose I could add some more info about the court process to clarify this if you think it would improve the article.

Response within Kenya

At times the "statute" in the "Rome Statute" is capitalized, other times it's not, please be consistent.
"This motion did not itself repeal the Rome Statute, but rather compelled ministers to introduce legislation that would do so." I don't think Kenya is trying to repeal the Rome Statute, but rather trying to withdraw from the Rome Statute (see first sentence in this section). There's a big difference. Can you clarify? I'm speaking only from what I read in this article.
UN Security Council is linked twice, once is enough and please capitalize Security Council in the second mention of the term, it is a proper noun.

I have now capitalised the Rome Statute throughout and also the second instance of UN Security Council. With the repeal, I have again clarified that ministers are obliged to repeal the International Crimes Act, which is essentially the Rome Statute as it appears in Kenyan law. It is also the parliamentary ratification of the Kenyan signature on the Rome Statute (without ratification the president's signature on the treaty is not binding, hence even though the USA is a signatory to the Rome Statute it was never ratified and so is not in force). I think this is clearer now

International response

Was there any other response than just from the US? No other nation responded?
Not sure what the final paragraph adds to the article. It seems tangental and a bit biased within the context. Not that the assertions about the ICC only handling court cases from Africa isn't true, I'm sure it is, but why include it in this article?

I have added some more information to the final paragraph. I believe that it is relevant as part of the international response. The paragraph now contains the fact that the AU has formally endorsed the Kenyan government's position in opposition to the ICC, hence making it more relevant to the Kenya case. Also for balance I have included a quote from the ICC deputy prosecutor on the issue. I agree that what was previously in the paragraph was insufficient to warrant inclusion

References

The key to references is consistency. Make sure all the entries are formatted the same. There are some issues with the consistency of your references:

Sometimes BBC News is italicized, other times it's not. It should not be italicized.
In some refs you put in the publisher as Daily Nation, in others the Daily Nation is in the title of the article. If Nation.co.ke is the same as Daily Nation, then make the publisher Daily Nation for each ref from the Daily Nation. Does this make sense?

As state above, opinion articles are not viewed as being credible. Use them with care. I'm not saying eliminate them but wherever you can, please replace them with better sources.

I have removed the reference that you mentioned (the opinion piece) and replaced it with a better source. I think this was the only opinion piece in the article. I also went through every reference and formatted them with the {{citation}} template. This should give them all the same style. Some of the references had been formatted by a bot at some point, and so were in a different style to the ones I formatted myself with the {{citation}}. Now I think they are all the same.

Overall

At this point I do not think the article meets the GA criteria. Here are my reasons:

There are some poorly worded sentences that make it difficult to understand the author's intent. I've listed the most egregious ones here I feel as though a good copy edit would help immensely.
A lot of punctuation errors, I've tried to fix as many as I could find but this should be addressed.
The lead is ok but information in the lead that isn't in the article should be either removed or put into the article. Also info in the article should be summarized in the lead.
The article is fairly well sourced but I'm concerned about the use of opinion pieces as sources. I listed my concern about ref 10 and that it does not support the statement.
I put in two ^{[citation needed]} templates that should be addressed.
The final paragraph about Africa's issue with the ICC seems a bit biased, I'm open to discussing this point if you feel strongly that it should be left in the article.
Consistency w/in the reference formatting is important.

I will place the article on hold for one week pending work. If you have problems or questions please discuss them here so that the review can remain complete. If I don't respond w/in a day or two please ping me on my talk page. Thank you for your work on this article, it is commendable to try and improve article quality. Keep up the good work. H1nkles (talk) _{citius altius fortius} 19:12, 20 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Improvement

I've got through a fair few of these problems now, I should be able to get through the rest of them tomorrow morning and I'll provide a description of what I've done Pi (Talk to me! ) 20:30, 26 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

OK, I have changed the specific problems you mentioned and also have read through the whole article again for punctuation, grammar and sentence structure. The references are improved where necessary and some further information has been added to clarify some parts which were unclear before. It'd be great if you could have another look at the article now. Thanks again for doing the review, it's much appreciated and hopefully I'll be learning more about it so that I can start doing a few reviews myself in future. Best wishes, Pi (Talk to me! ) 14:58, 28 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Reply

Well done, there has been a lot of work done here and the article is much better. I'll make a couple of suggestions here but I think it now meet the GA criteria so I will pass it to GA. Here are some suggestions for fixes:

The ref in the first quote is after the quote, while the ref in the second quote is after the person's name. I'm not sure what the requirements are but I like it after the name. Either way it should be consistent.
There is hardly ever a need to have a ref floating in the middle of a sentence. I found one and fixed it, I'd check throughout. Placing refs at the end of the sentence is fine 99% of the time. Only when discussing extremely controversial subjects would you want to ref a statement w/in the sentence.
Be sure to reference the Obama statement. I think the ref is in the introductory sentence but it should also go after his name.
Refs 4 and 42 need publishers. Otherwise the references look much better.
That's it for the review I'll pass it to GA now, you mentioned an interest in doing GA reviews yourself one day if you'd like some suggestions or guidance on doing them I'd be happy to help. Just shoot me a line on my talk page. Best of luck to you! H1nkles (talk) _{citius altius fortius} 16:13, 28 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]