Talk:Reparative Therapy of Male Homosexuality/GA1

GA Review

Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch

Reviewer: Markworthen (talk · contribs) 00:57, 11 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

~~I am currently reviewing this article~~. - Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) (I'm a man—traditional male pronouns are fine.) 00:57, 11 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I have withdrawn my offer to conduct a GA review of this article. - Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) (I'm a man—traditional male pronouns are fine.) 05:14, 11 April 2020 (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.	The prose is definitely better than most articles, but needs some work to reach Good Article status. Here are some examples from the Introduction (lead; lede). I have copied-and-pasted only the plain text, i.e., no italics or bold, no hyperlinks, etc. A word or words in [square brackets] should be added to make the sentence grammatically correct, more comprehensible, etc. {My comments are italicized and contained within single curly brackets}. Reparative Therapy of Male Homosexuality: A New Clinical Approach is a 1991 book about conversion therapy by ~~the~~ {unnecessary} psychologist Joseph Nicolosi. Nicolosi~~, who draws on work by previous authors,~~ {unclear why this is important, best to leave out of lead; vague} maintains that the form of conversion therapy he promotes, "reparative therapy", does not remove all of a person's homosexual feelings, but can help men who do not wish to be homosexual to either become celibate or ~~prepare for heterosexual marriage~~ {vague}. He views male homosexuality as a developmental problem that often results from problems between father and son. The book was ~~first~~ {unnecessary} published in the United States by Jason Aronson in 1991. {The entire sentence is (IMHO) not necessary since the infobox contains the publication date, although this is, to some extent, a matter of preference.} ¶ The work, which advocates a therapeutic approach that departs [from] {grammar - probably just a typo} traditional psychoanalytic technique, influenced the practice of conversion therapy.
	1b. it complies with the Manual of Style guidelines for lead sections, layout, words to watch, fiction, and list incorporation.
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.
	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).
	2c. it contains no original research.
	2d. it contains no copyright violations or plagiarism.	Neither I nor Earwig's Copyvio Detector identified any copyright violations or plagiarism.
3. Broad in its coverage:
	3a. it addresses the main aspects of the topic.
	3b. it stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style).
	4. Neutral: it represents viewpoints fairly and without editorial bias, giving due weight to each.
	5. Stable: it does not change significantly from day to day because of an ongoing edit war or content dispute.
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.
	6b. media are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions.
	7. Overall assessment.

Thank you for reviewing the article. I note with regret that you have made changes to do it that do not appear to be supported by reliable sources. For example, you added the following to the lead: "The book remained available on the Amazon platform, but only from other booksellers." No reliable source was provided for the claim that "The book remained available on the Amazon platform, but only from other booksellers", so that statement must be removed, as an unacceptable form of original research, per WP:NOR. If my disagreement with you about this or other issues means that you fail the article, so be it. I am not concerned with getting the article passed above all else: my main concern is with keeping the article accurate. Doing all concerned a favor by stating this directly and at the beginning of this process. Freeknowledgecreator (talk) 01:47, 11 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The original sentence was: "The book remained available from other booksellers." I edited to: "The book remained available on the Amazon platform, but only from other booksellers" because that's what I thought the original sentence meant. I understand now that the original sentence meant: "The book remained available from other booksellers other than Amazon." As such, the sentence is not necessary, so I deleted it (diff).

I made edits to the article as an act of goodwill, i.e., I do not want to critique an article without making (hopefully) helpful edits myself. If you identify an edit I made that contains inaccurate information or any other error, please edit the article directly instead of commenting on my edit here. Thank you. - Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) (I'm a man—traditional male pronouns are fine.) 01:59, 11 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Correction: If you identify an edit I made that contains inaccurate information or any other error, please edit the article directly, and if you wish to comment on my edit, please create a new section, instead of commenting on my edit within this Good Article review section. Thanks - Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) (I'm a man—traditional male pronouns are fine.) 02:24, 11 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

I flatly disagree with you that the definite article should not be added before "psychologist". It lowers the quality of the article to remove it. I say this based on my experience with previous discussions of the issue. Freeknowledgecreator (talk) 02:46, 11 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I flatly disagree with you that "who draws on work by previous authors" is unclear in importance, or vague, or that it is "best to leave out of lead". Its importance should be perfectly obvious. It makes a fundamental difference to how a reader views a work like Reparative Therapy of Male Homosexuality. It makes all the difference in the world whether an author like Nicolosi is putting forward basically original or novel ideas, or whether his ideas are basically derivative of other authors. Nicolosi's ideas about homosexuality and its causes are anything but novel. He is essentially just restating other people's ideas, in slightly different form - the "who draws on work by previous authors" part makes that apparent. As for "vague", vagueness refers to lack of clarity. It is perfectly clear what the statement means and as such it is not vague. You should not have removed it. Doing so lowers the quality of the article. Freeknowledgecreator (talk) 02:58, 11 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

You state that "departs from traditional psychoanalytic technique" is ungrammatical. If you believe it is ungrammatical it is up to you to explain why. I am open to suggestions about that sentence should be written instead. Freeknowledgecreator (talk) 02:45, 11 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

You state that "prepare for heterosexual marriage" is vague. No, it is not. Vagueness means lack of clarity about meaning. It is clear what "prepare for heterosexual marriage" means. Freeknowledgecreator (talk) 02:47, 11 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The suggestion that the lead should not include the publication date sentence seems to fly in the face of the manual of style's lead section standards, one of the GA criteria that this review needs to adhere to, and infoboxes should not be used as a reason to limit prose material in the lead. The information should remain (though the word "first" is unnecessary as noted). BlueMoonset (talk) 02:50, 11 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I basically agree with the above comment. I note that In a previous good article discussion (eg, the good article review of The Homosexual Matrix) the inclusion of information of this kind was insisted on. Freeknowledgecreator (talk) 02:54, 11 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, I am going to withdraw my offer to conduct a Good Article review and let someone else do it. - Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) (I'm a man—traditional male pronouns are fine.) 03:53, 11 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

It is peculiar that you would do this without giving the slightest indication of why, but whatever. Freeknowledgecreator (talk) 08:04, 11 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Because you almost immediately started to sharply criticize my GA feedback and my good will attempt to "pitch in" by conducting some edits myself, and because you did not respect my request to discuss edits in a new section on the Talk page; instead, you insisted on using the Good Article review as the platform to immediately criticize my review in painstaking detail. Of course, you have a "right" to immediately dispute a Good Article review, to post criticism, and to do so on the GA review page, but when you choose to respond in that manner, it communicates disrespect and a lack of appreciation, and creates a strong disincentive to conduct the GA review, at least for some Wikipedians. Your almost immediate criticism and insistence on critiquing the review on the GA review page, after being asked politely to not do so, suggests that you have a strong attachment to this article, a conclusion buttressed by the fact that you created the article, wrote almost the entire article yourself (97% of the edits are yours), and nominated the article for GA review. - Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) (I'm a man—traditional male pronouns are fine.) 15:26, 11 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

So you expect me to be dishonest and not say that I disagree with your comments, even when I think they're wrong, because expressing disagreement with you would be disrespectful? Why would you expect me to automatically agree with you? Wikipedia is not an environment where one editor can automatically call the shots over other people and expect them to be deferential; disagreement is normal here. Did it occur to you that being dishonest with you and not saying that I think you're wrong about something when that is exactly what I think would be disrespectful? Why can't you value honesty? I find it unusual, at the very least, that you would use your "request to discuss edits in a new section on the Talk page" as a reason for discontinuing the review. Freeknowledgecreator (talk) 00:25, 12 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]