Talk:Pittston Coal strike/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Dana boomer (talk) 17:28, 13 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Hi! I will be reviewing this article for GA status and should have the full review up shortly. Dana boomer (talk) 17:28, 13 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

GA review (see here for criteria)

It is reasonably well written.
a (prose): b (MoS):
~~The third external link dead links (where it says "click here").~~

~~There are several dab (disambiguation) links in the article, which can be seen with this tool. Although resolving these is not required by GA criteria, it is a nice thing to have fixed.~~

There are a lot of really short (one and two sentence) paragraphs in the article, which make it choppy and harder to read. Please combine these with other paragraphs or expand them into paragraphs in their own right. As a general rule of thumb, paragraphs should contain at least three sentences, and successive short paragraphs tend to be a no-no.

~~The Some mines involved with the strike section should be converted into prose (as opposed to a list) and probably incorporated into the prose in its chronological place in the previous section.~~

Events leading to the strike section, "Up until 1987 the Pittston Coal Company worked in cooperation with the Bituminous Coal Operators BOAC." What does the Bituminous Coal Operators have to do with the British Overseas Airways Corporation (which is what that link goes to)?

UMWA should be made consistent whenever it appears, rather than having various letters left out. I have corrected these as I have found them, but please take another run through and make sure they're all correct.
It is factually accurate and verifiable.
a (references): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR):
In the Bibliography section, the Beckwith, Karen reference link takes me to the website's home page, not the article page. Also, what sort of thesis is this paper? Undergraduate or graduate? Undergraduate thesis are generally not considered reliable sources because they are not peer reviewed; however, graduate thesis are usually peer reviewed, and so are usually considered reliable.

~~There are a few citations that need to be converted into short format (author, page) to match the others.~~

These are looking better, but still need a bit of standardization. Some have commas, others done, some have periods, others don't. I don't really care what format you use, just keep it all the same.

I tagged a few places that need references, and included hidden text explaining my reasoning, which can be tossed when the references are provided. A couple of the places that I tagged feel slightly like original research, and so really need references.
It is broad in its coverage.
a (major aspects): b (focused):
It follows the neutral point of view policy.
Fair representation without bias:
It is stable.
No edit wars, etc.:
It is illustrated by images, where possible and appropriate.
a (images are tagged and non-free images have fair use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):
Overall:
Pass/Fail:

I have taken a first look through of the article, and overall it looks like a nice bit of work. I need to take a closer look at the prose and sourcing, which I will do later this afternoon. I should have the full review up by late evening. If you have any questions, please let me know! Dana boomer (talk) 17:38, 13 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

For now, I'm going to place the article on hold to allow the above issues to be resolved, and then when that has happened I will go back through and thoroughly review the prose. At this point, from the brief look I have taken, there is quite a bit of copyediting work that needs to be done. There are many sentences that have redundant words or clauses, or that are poorly structured. I would suggest that you thoroughly read through the article after resolving the concerns listed above and try to tighten the prose a bit. Again, please let me know if you have any questions - I have this page watchlisted so I will immediately see any comments the next time I log in. Dana boomer (talk) 20:59, 13 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I see that quite a bit of work has been happening on the article. Please just leave a note here when you consider the above issues addressed, and I will finish my review. Keep up the good work, Dana boomer (talk) 23:36, 17 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I think that I read through and checked everything that needed to be done, if you want to take anoter look at it now. Thank you so much for all your help, it is really making this project much easier. Megzie113 (talk) 21:31, 19 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

(undent) Overall, the article is looking much improved, especially the prose, although further work is still needed. I have begun with just the lead tonight, and will hopefully get to the rest of it tomorrow. I apologize for the slow response on this review - RL just got quite busy for me :) In the meantime, please take another run through the prose and address the few issues that I didn't strike above. Dana boomer (talk) 01:25, 21 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Again, I apologize for the slow response times! The work that has been done on the article over the past few days looks great. I have finished my prose review of the article, and just have a few more comments before I pass the article to GA status:

In the article, sometimes dates are given in day month year format and other times in month day, year format. This needs to be standardized.
The Pittston strike section, "Many efforts of civil disobedience". Maybe "many acts of civil disobedience"?
The The Pittston Strike of 1989 section appears to be simply a summary of the article, which is what the lead is supposed to be. This ends up with this section and the lead basically repeating each other. I honestly can't see a need for the Pittston Strike section, unless it serves some other purpose than to be a summary of the article.
Strike tactics, "found creative ways for their message to be heard". Such as what?
Violent actions, "Although the UMWA wanted the Pittston strike to remain nonviolent, there were some people who failed to comply." You just said this in the preceeding paragraph, so the sentence can probably be removed.
Same section, "The strike lasted until a settlement was finally agreed upon in February 1990." The reader already knows this, no need to repeat it.
Civil disobedience, I added a fact tag where I would like to see another reference.
Since the Camp Solidarity section is already a subsection of the Civil disobedience section, what would you think of combining the two? They are both rather short, and successive short sections made the article choppy-feeling and harder to read.
Is it really true that the final case decisions are still in court today, 20 years later? The reference that you are pulling from is from 1996, so they are not a good source for whether the court case is still active.
Overall, be on the look out for redundancy and editorializing in the article. The goal of Wikipedia is to present the facts as scholars/reporters see them, with no editorializing on our feelings towards the issue. The goal to aim for is to be able to write an article on a controversial subject and at the end have no one able to tell which side you are on or which side you sympathize with.

Once these issues are taken care of, the article should be good to go for GA status. Let me know when you think the above have been dealt with. Dana boomer (talk) 18:36, 25 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I think I got through most of the points, I'm just trying to find places where the writing seems one-sided now. Thank you so much for your help! Megzie113 (talk) 12:26, 26 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Everything looks good, so I'm passing the article to GA status. Very nice work! If you feel an urge to take the article to FAC, which I think would be a great idea, I have a few more suggestions for you:

Get the article copyedited by another outside editor. I would suggest asking User:Malleus Fatuorum, a wonderful editor who takes special interest in helping students working on WP for class projects.
Get an image expert, possibly User:Awadewit or User:NuclearWarfare, to check over the image licenses.
Work on finding out if the court case has been resolved. This information will be needed to meet the comprehensiveness requirement at FAC.
Just generally get comments from as many outside users as you possibly can before taking it through FAC. This might include posting a request for comment on the talk page of related wikiprojects (listed on the article talk page).

I think this would be a great article to take through FAC, once a few more rough edges are trimmed off. It has improved greatly just during the GA process, and the work you did before that was very nice as well. Please let me know if you have any questions, Dana boomer (talk) 21:58, 28 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]