Talk:Pope Benedict XVI/GA2

GA Review

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Reviewer: Khazar2 (talk · contribs) 14:43, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

I'll be glad to take this review. Initial comments to follow in the next 1-5 days. Thanks in advance for your work on this one! -- Khazar2 (talk) 14:43, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

Review

This article contains a lot of good information, and I want to open by thanking everybody for their work on this so far. The article draws on a range of sources, demonstrates no serious neutrality problems at first glance, and appears to cover all "main aspects" of Benedict's career.

I think it does have some areas in which it needs to improve before being listed as a Good Article. I've listed specific concerns below, but to summarize, the article appears to need some additional citation, to better summarize its contents in the lead, to delete or merge the redundant "overview" section, to update the most recent events (Benedict is presumably no longer awaiting the end of the papal conclave to choose his successor, unless nobody told him yet), and to address various clean-up tags on the article. The article also appears even on a fast read to need some minor copyediting (I've done a bit of this as I went). On a more general note, while the article has many excellent sections, it still doesn't read in other places as a very coherent whole--lots of one-sentence paragraphs and lists of meetings, statements, and events.

In short, this nomination seems to me a bit premature. I'd suggest taking a leisurely readthrough of the article, doublecheck that everything of significance is cited (particularly interpretation or quotations), that the language is up-to-date, and that the clean-up tags have been addressed. Since these concerns seem to me fairly extensive, I'm not listing the article for now, but I hope the nominator and other editors will continue work on this important topic. I've added some more specific comments below. I apologize in advance that these are so ridiculously out of order--I was bouncing back and forth in the article to double-check different aspects, and noting issues as I went.

Hope this helps, and again, thanks for everyone's efforts on this top-importance article! -- Khazar2 (talk) 16:25, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

sounds good, I guess I didn't catch some of that in my look through. I fixed all the citations (except one was something about Benedict and a kitten, the angelqueen one). -- Aunva6^{talk - contribs} 02:54, 29 March 2013 (UTC)

Terrific--thanks for taking a look at those. -- Khazar2 (talk) 03:11, 29 March 2013 (UTC)

I must have missed a couple, I know of at least one dead ref... i'll fix it -- Aunva6^{talk - contribs} 17:30, 29 March 2013 (UTC)

Specifics

• The lead appears to need some work to properly summarize the article per WP:LEAD. Some information appears in the lead which does not seem to appear in the body, such as the pope's views on art and the sacred. Some details in the lead, like his tutoring Cardinal Schonborn, seem comparatively trivial. In contrast, large sections about interfaith dialogue, the sex abuse scandals, and views on political and moral issues don't appear to be touched on.
• On a related note, I'm not sure of the value of a four-paragraph "overview" section in the article. Providing this overview is the purpose of the lead, making this section unnecessary and redundant. I'd suggest merging this content with the lead, or deleting this section entirely. Repeating content unnecessarily is problematic for criteria 1a and 3b.
• Some tags, including a "broken citation" tag, a "who" tag, a "dated info" tag, and a "citation needed" tag need to be addressed.

 Done -- Aunva6^{talk - contribs} 04:28, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

• This paragraph appears in need of update: "There he will stay until after the conclave to elect a successor completes its task[dated info]. Afterwards he will return to the Vatican, where the monastery Mater Ecclesiae located in the Vatican Gardens[176] will serve as a retirement home."

 Done -- Aunva6^{talk - contribs} 04:28, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

• This is a small point, but I don't believe it's necessary to write "Pope Benedict" instead of just "Benedict" in every instance that his name is used. Generally the MOS recommends that a title be used the first time a name is introduced ("King Henry V said...") and dropped after that ("Henry invaded France").
• "According to a Vatican spokesman, Benedict spent the first day as pope emeritus with Archbishop Georg Gänswein and, among other activities, watched the news in Italian" -- this seems rather trivial; I'd suggest cutting.
• Angelqueen.org, the source used for the Pope's kitten's name, does not appear to be a reliable source on first glance, and is a dead link besides; if no other source exists for this info, it's probably not significant enough to include anyway.
• What does the abbreviation "Bl. Pope" in the caption mean?
• Considering that we have a sub-article for Benedict's bibliography, I don't think it's necessary to list all 65 of his books here. It's probably enough to just mention that he wrote 65 books, and leave the full list for the subarticle.

 Done -- Aunva6^{talk - contribs} 03:29, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

• The article has a number of one-sentence paragraphs that could be combined into more coherent wholes.
• ""it was, if not Ratzinger, who? And as they came to know him, the question became, why not Ratzinger?" -- I'd suggest attributing this quotation to its author in-text
• "International Society for Krishna Consciousness" -- is this meeting significant enough to need a full subsection in the article? If so, perhaps some quotations from notable sources could be added to discuss its significance in his papacy. If not, I wonder if this could be merged elsewhere and simply noted in passing.
• The following statements/sections appear to me to need citation:
  • " the Financial Times gave the odds of Ratzinger becoming pope as 7–1"
  • " In April 2005, before his election as pope, he was identified as one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time"

 Done -- Aunva6^{talk - contribs} 03:35, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

• • "Ratzinger most clearly spelled out the Catholic Church's position on other religions in the 2000 document Dominus Iesus which also talks about the Roman Catholic way to engage in "ecumenical dialogue"."
  • " though he increasingly chose less reformist themes than other contributors to the magazine such as Hans Küng and Edward Schillebeeckx."
  • "In 2007 Benedict sent a letter at Easter to Catholics in China that could have wide-ranging implications for the church's relationship with China's leadership" (the "wide-ranging implications" appears to be interpretation of a primary source)
  • "Only creative reason, which in the crucified God is manifested as love, can really show us the way."
  • The block quotation in "Global Economy"--this appears to be from Charity in Truth?
  • "Thus, he said that prayer is "urgently needed... It is time to reaffirm the importance of prayer in the face of the activism and the growing secularism of many Christians engaged in charitable work.""
  • "Tone of papacy" paragraph