Talk:Wanda Gág/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: David Eppstein (talk · contribs) 00:47, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

GA review – see WP:WIAGA for criteria

1. Is it well written?

   A. The prose is clear and concise, and the spelling and grammar are correct:

   Only minor issues found.

   • "In 1921 she became a partner in a business venture called Happiwork Story Boxes; boxes decorated with story panels on its sides.": second independent clause has no verb.

   B. It complies with the manual of style guidelines for lead sections, layout, words to watch, fiction, and list incorporation:

   Section order ok; lead appropriately summarizes body (but see 2c below); the incorporated list of publications is an appropriate thing to include for this kind of article.

2. Is it verifiable with no original research?

   A. It contains a list of all references (sources of information), presented in accordance with the layout style guideline:

   Many issues, some serious because they make verifying the references difficult:

   • The inline links to web sites for the list of selected prints need to be removed. WP:EL does not permit external links in the body of an article, and these largely appear to fail our standards for reliable sources. If a better source for the selected prints cannot be found, that part of the list may need to be removed itself, or maybe better replaced with a list of prints in notable museums with footnotes sourcing them to the museums holding them.
   • The use of long references followed by shorter references is ok, but you might consider using the {{sfn}} templates to make links from the shorter references back to the long references (this is not required for GA).
   • References are not very consistently formatted. Some of them appear to be in Citation Style 1, as would be generated by the {{cite}} series of templates; it would be helpful for all to be in the same style.
   • Footnote 5 (Philadelphia Museum of Art) inappropriately lists the name of the museum as part of its title and the name of the website where the name of the museum should be.
   • Footnote 8 (Cox, Minnesota History) is missing its title and the journal title is not italicized. Same for footnote 50 (Pincus-Witten).
   • Footnotes 12, 16, etc. point to "Gág" with page numbers but because they have no year and the whole article is about Gág it is impossible to tell what publication is intended. It should be spelled out in full of the first of these references. Is it maybe "Growing Pains"? If so it should be moved out of "Further reading"
   • Footnote 14 (UPenn library) and 61 (Whitney Museum) again give the website hostname where the name of the institution hosting the web site should be.
   • Footnote 24 (an article in The New Yorker?) is missing both title and author, as is footnote 31 (an article in The New York Times), footnote 34 (an article in the magazine John Martin's House), footnote 42 (in New Ulm Journal), footnote 51 (Horn Book), and footnotes 54 and 57 (New Ulm Journal again).
   • Footnote 56 references an entire book (without a specific page number) for a simple fact that should be much easier to source (the Newbery Medal, strangely here called the Newbery Honor).
   • Footnote 59 has the wrong title (it is using the object description as a title).

   B. All in-line citations are from reliable sources, including those for direct quotations, statistics, published opinion, counter-intuitive or controversial statements that are challenged or likely to be challenged, and contentious material relating to living persons—science-based articles should follow the scientific citation guidelines:

   There are some major issues with reliability of sources here, enough to make me wonder whether anyone even looked at these sources while setting up for a GA nomination:

   • Footnote 38 (Popova) appears to be a personal blog, not likely to be considered reliable. Same for footnote 46 (Rohmann), 47 (Dubosarsky), and 49 (one-minute reviews).
   • Footnote 45 is totally broken. I have no idea where the reference should really point or what its title should be, but this title and link is not about Gág. It does not support the claim it is used as a reference for. Same for reference 48 (HMH books).
   • Footnote 55 is a bare-URL reference that should be cleaned up. Also it's a deadlink. And it's not clear (because not accessible) whether it would be reliable if it weren't dead.
   • Footnote 58 is a deadlink with an uninformative title
   • Footnote 60 goes to an archived copy of a search page, not useful as a reference.
   • Footnote 61 link does not mention Gág.
   • Footnote 63 is an untitled bare-url deadlink.

   C. It contains no original research:

   Footnoting is appropriately thorough. Taking most claims in good faith from the offline sources. But see issues above re individual problematic footnotes, as well as the following:

   • The footnote in the lead for oldest still in print should be moved to or repeated on the place in the body of the article where that same claim is repeated in more detail, which appears to be the caption for one of the images.
   • Is there a source for the publication list, from which its completeness can be verified?

   D. It contains no copyright violations nor plagiarism:

   Although Earwig came out with a high 42.5% similarity score, compared against http://dla.library.upenn.edu/dla/ead/ead.html?q=Wanda+Gag+Papers, the actual similar text did not look problematic (mostly proper noun phrases).

3. Is it broad in its coverage?

   A. It addresses the main aspects of the topic:

   Coverage of her life looks appropriately thorough

   B. It stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style):

   I didn't see any material that went into too much detail.

4. Is it neutral?

   It represents viewpoints fairly and without editorial bias, giving due weight to each:

   There do not appear to be significant disagreements that need to be represented.

5. Is it stable?

   It does not change significantly from day to day because of an ongoing edit war or content dispute:

   Nominator is a major contributor to the article and has been gradually improving it over a long period of time; there do not appear to be any recent disputes.

6. Is it illustrated, if possible, by images?

   A. Images are tagged with their copyright status, and valid fair use rationales are provided for non-free content:

   Some serious issues with image licensing here:

   • File:Gág preparing Lithographic Stone.jpg I'm not sure this is a required part of the process, but where is the evidence that the check for a missing notice of copyright renewal was ever performed?
   • File:Wanda Gag-Millions of Cats.jpg is missing a required US public-domain explanation tag.
   • File:WandaGagSiesta.jpg is also missing that tag. (It claims that the photographic reproduction of a PD image does not have an additional copyright, correctly, but we also need to know that the original image itself is out of copyright.)
   • File:GagHouse.JPG has contradictory licensing tags: It claims both to be freely licensed, and not to be. If not, it needs a fair-use rationale. If so, this should be cleared up.
   • File:Gág Statue.jpg should probably be deleted from both Wikipedia and the article per Commons:COM:FOP US unless the sculpture can be shown to be outside the US in a part of the world where this is allowable or the artist of the sculpture released the sculpture under an open license. Photographic images of recent 3d artworks in the US are usually copyright violations. Alternatively, a case for fair use of the image would need to be made, beyond just decoration of the article.

   B. Images are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions:

   The article is heavily illustrated with images of, by, and about Gág, as is appropriate for the topic. All captions look ok (but see 2c re one caption's sourcing).

7. Overall:

   Pass or Fail:

   There are serious sourcing and image licensing problems to be overcome. If that can be done, the overall structure of the article looks ok with only minor other changes required. Putting this on hold to provide time for the necessary improvements.

—David Eppstein (talk) 01:56, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for your input David.

I addressed most of the issues you brought up with these exceptions:

Reference formatting seems to be at the mercy of the bots, I got rid of the dead wood, that should help. I should have vetted them.

The old references from The New Yorker and The New York Times were in general review sections, no titles or authors indicated, page #s are correct.

The Newbery Medal and Caldecott Medal are different than the Honor awards, the wiki links lead to complete lists.

Maria Popova is an established and respected writer, that reference may be an exception to the usual rule.

I took all the selected prints out of the main article and put them below Further Reading. I eliminated any that weren't from established museums.

The images are a bit of a muddle, I removed The Millions of Cats cover and the statue picture. The Gag house pic seems to be PD, the author has given it a CC license for it. He's a regular contributor and always has CC BY-SA 4.0 (most lenient) releases on his work.

The litho pic is well over 70 years old, never been published, image search brings up only copies of this article.

Thanks again.Dktrfz (talk) 04:53, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

If the litho pic was unpublished, its copyright clock would start when it was published. I suggest you consider its copyright more seriously rather than using image search as the basis for that sort of decision, pay attention to formatting references using cite templates rather than plain text, and pay attention to putting the full and correct metadata into the references, which I have requested in this review and you have not done. It is not acceptable, for instance, for the entirety of a reference to be "New York Times, December 15, 1929", as if you expect readers to track down a copy of the entire newspaper from that date and read it cover-to-cover to find the relevant information within it. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:47, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

Hi again, I thank you for the effort you've put into this David but it is becoming obvious that this procedure is beyond my ken. Fail it or delete the request, I won't be pursuing the matter any further.Dktrfz (talk) 21:44, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

Ok, closing as fail. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:47, 22 November 2021 (UTC)