Talk:Order theory/GA1

GA Reassessment

I am reassessing the GA status of this article because I do not believe it currently meets the Good article criteria. I raised concerns already in September last year: in short, the lead section and history section need work, and the article is inadequately cited. I will expand on these concerns in the template below. As essentially nothing has changed since last September, and the article is still a long way from meeting the criteria, I very much doubt a prolonged discussion would be of benefit, so I intend to delist within a few days.

Despite the criticism, I appreciate the work that has gone into the article, and it has many fine qualities, not least the enthusiasm for the subject that the article conveys. The fact that it does not meet the good article criteria does not mean it is not a very useful contribution to the encyclopedia! I wish any editors who want to continue to improve the article all the best. Geometry guy 19:13, 29 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Rate	Attribute	Review Comment
	1. Well-written:
	1a. the prose is clear, concise, and understandable to an appropriately broad audience; spelling and grammar are correct.	Although enthusiastic, there are many problems with the prose. I give some examples below, which illustrate other issues as well. There are examples of poor English, lack of clarity, opinion, sentences which seem to be opinion even when they are not, textbook writing, and, more generally, a lack of encyclopedic tone.
	1b. it complies with the Manual of Style guidelines for lead sections, layout, words to watch, fiction, and list incorporation.	The main issue here is the lead section. The first sentence fails to define the subject and the remaining three sentences are self-references ("This article..." etc.) The last two sentences could be made into a hatnote, or incorporated into the body of the article. As a whole, the lead completely fails to introduce and overview the subject in an accessible way, and it also completely fails to summarize the contents of the article. Even more obviously, it is way too short.
	2. Verifiable with no original research:
	2a. it contains a list of all references (sources of information), presented in accordance with the layout style guideline.	The article appears to be well sourced, with reliable textbooks/monographs in the references. A greater diversity of source material would help, but this is hard to assess, as the article has only two rather inconsequential citations.
	2b. 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).	It isn't good enough simply to list four books (one of 600+, one of 400+ and two of 300+ pages) as sources without providing the reader with any clue how to use these sources to verify the content of the text (or to find out more about the subject) beyond reading them all from beginning to end. The list on the left is a pretty lenient citation requirement (I had a hand in that!), but even here, a generous interpretation is needed to excuse the presence of only two footnotes, no Harvard references, and no other implicit or explicit references in the text to any of the sources. There are plenty of statements here that might be considered opinion or counter-intuitive, and several that could be challenged. Further, the criterion has a footnote which strongly encourages following the scientific citation guidelines; these recommend regular citation (at least once per section) to indicate where even uncontroversial material can be found.
	2c. it contains no original research.	It is hard to tell, without citation, the extent to which the opinion and structure of the article contain some original research by synthesis.
	3. Broad in its coverage:
	3a. it addresses the main aspects of the topic.	Although I am not an expert on order theory, I believe the basic content of the article is very broad. I have two concerns, one obvious, one tentative. The obvious concern is the history section, which is very short, essentially uncited, and has almost nothing to say about the origins of order theory, or its development as a subject in its own right. The tentative concern is whether this article is not a bit dated, based as it is on universal algebra and lattice theory. There are hints of this in the category theory section: it is pretty obvious that many of the concepts here are category-theoretic, and one would hope that there are more modern sources incorporating such a viewpoint.
	3b. it stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style).	By and large, the article stays focused on the material, even if it digresses a little bit in point of view. I'm at least willing to give it the benefit of the doubt here.
	4. Neutral: it represents viewpoints fairly and without editorial bias, giving due weight to each.	One would have thought neutrality could not be an issue for a mathematical article, but this one is full of sentences which at least appear to be opinionated, advocating what a good thing is order theory, abstraction, duality etc.
	5. Stable: it does not change significantly from day to day because of an ongoing edit war or content dispute.	Perhaps too stable :) - it needs a bit of a shake-up!
	6. Illustrated, if possible, by media such as images, video, or audio:
	6a. media are tagged with their copyright statuses, and valid non-free use rationales are provided for non-free content.	No problems here!
	6b. media are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions.	The article has only one image, and it has a reasonable caption. However, the article would benefit from more images in my view. Even a photograph of a mathematician who has worked on the area would add to the article by providing a human touch.
	7. Overall assessment.	With significant failings on several of the criteria, and uncertaintly about many others, this article cannot be listed as a GA for the time being.

Please add any comments on the reassessment below, not in the table. I will update the table accordingly, either striking or removing comments if necessary. Meanwhile, here is a random selection of sentences from the article with problems.

"For a quick lookup of order-theoretic terms, there is also an order theory glossary. A list of order topics collects the various articles in the vicinity of order theory." With some rewriting, this might survive as a hatnote.
"Orders appear everywhere - at least as far as mathematics and related areas, such as computer science, are concerned. The first order that one typically meets in primary school mathematical education is the order ≤ of natural numbers... Indeed the idea of being greater or smaller than another number is one of the basic intuitions of number systems in general..." Opinion, fact dressed up as opinion, and confusion: are we talking strict or non-strict order here?
"Whenever both contain some elements that are not in the other, the two sets are not related by subset-inclusion." Ugly, opaque prose.
"This more abstract approach makes much sense, because one can derive numerous theorems in the general setting, without focusing on the details of any particular order. These insights can then be readily transferred to many concrete applications."^{[citation needed]} Opinion.
"While many classical orders are linear..." What is a "classical order"?
"Many advanced properties of posets are mainly interesting for non-linear orders." According to whom?
"Hasse diagrams can visually represent the elements and relations of a partial ordering." There has to be a better way to say this!
"An instructive exercise is to draw the Hasse diagram for the set of natural numbers that are smaller than or equal to 13, ordered by | (the divides relation)." Textbook style.
"This is important and useful, since one obtains two theorems for the price of one." A bargain. And an opinion.
"However, quite often one can obtain an intuition related to diagrams of a similar kind." Demonstrates the deep insight of the writer; adds nothing for the reader.
"For example, 1 is the least element of the positive integers and the empty set is the least set under the subset order." Which partial order on the positive integers? (Okay, I know it is true for both of the obvious ones.)
"The notation 0 is frequently found for the least element, even when no numbers are concerned." Poor prose, unnecessary opinion.
"Since the symmetry of all concepts, this operation preserves the theorems of partial orders." Grammatically incorrect.
"Monotone Galois connections can be viewed as a generalization of order-isomorphisms, since they constitute of a pair of two functions in converse directions, which are "not quite" inverse to each other, but that still have close relationships." More insight that adds nothing for the reader who does not already share it.
"Basic types of special orders have already been given in form of total orders.". Once other concerns are addressed, copyediting by a fluent English speaker would be helpful.
"More complicated lower subsets are ideals, which have the additional property that each two of their elements have an upper bound within the ideal. " As above.
"Although most mathematical areas use orders in one or the other way, there are also a few theories that have relationships which go far beyond mere application." Wears multiple opinions as badges on its sleeve.
"As explained before, orders are ubiquitous in mathematics. However, earliest explicit mentionings of partial orders are probably to be found not before the 19th century. In this context the works of George Boole are of great importance. Moreover, works of Charles S. Peirce, Richard Dedekind, and Ernst Schröder also consider concepts of order theory. Certainly, there are others to be named in this context and surely there exists more detailed material on the history of order theory." The entire content of the history section apart from the only cited sentence: poor prose, poor style.

That's all for now. Geometry guy 21:40, 29 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

With no sign of activity, I will now delist the article. I hope that editors will return to the article in the near future, as there is lots of good material here to build on, and hope that the above review will help them when they do. Geometry guy 19:02, 1 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]