Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/Peak water/1

Peak water

Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch • Watch article reassessment page • GAN review

Result: Endorse fail. See comments below. Geometry guy 14:19, 22 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The reviewer the article completely forgot that this article is being assessed against the GA criteria instead of some loosely arbitrary article grade.

Well-written
Factually accurate and verifiable
Broad coverage
Neutral
Stable
Illustrated

We can look at individual issues, but these could have been given some time to correct.

"If the problem is easy to resolve, it might be better to be bold and fix it yourself. Otherwise state which criteria were not met on the article's talk page. Please detail the article's flaws to help other editors improve the article for another GA nomination." There were more issues than I felt could be fixed with a few quick edits. Failure is no barrier to another nomination if the article is improved per my suggestions. Daniel Case (talk) 17:24, 12 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

[...individual issues and responses to them moved to the talk page of this reassessment for ease of reference...]

OK ... I get an F if it were a paper. But it's Wikipedia. I'm looking for collaboration on the article.Kgrr (talk) 15:47, 12 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Then ask on the talk page for the appropriate projects. That's what they're there for. GAN is for getting a thumbs-up or down. Daniel Case (talk) 17:24, 12 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. Sometimes articles get dramatically improved during the review of a nomination, or an individual or community reassessment. However the primary purpose of the GA process is to assess articles against the GA criteria so that articles which meet them are listed as GAs and those which don't aren't. Reviewers can, if they want, list every possible concern for nominators to fix, or even fix the article themselves, but when there are many issues both may be impractical. In such cases it suffices for reviewers to give illustrative examples and/or point to general problems, and fail or delist. GA isn't a mechanism for collaboration, even if it sometimes results in collaboration. We all want to improve the encyclopedia, but we all have limited time and our own priorities. Geometry guy 21:41, 12 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Endorse fail. The review could have been more tactful, but it points to several clear GA problems with the article. It fails criteria 1a ("The peak usage sparks debates similar to those about peak oil." is unclear prose, and there are grammatical errors too), 1b (the lead doesn't summarize the article, and words to avoid are misused), 2b (and perhaps 2a: what source supports "Once an aquifer is contaminated, it is not likely that it can ever recover."?). It also fails on neutrality (criterion 4) in spades in the "Issues defy easy solutions" section. Even the section title fails WP:NPOV. This is an encyclopedia: its purpose is to inform its readers, not to tell them what they should do: we let the reader decide for themselves. At the very least the usage of "should" needs to be replaced by "can be".

Finally, there is a more serious issue: GAs should not contain plagiarized material, especially if it is copyrighted. This may be an issue here and I have given some examples (which I discovered before reading the "cut and paste" concern in the GAN review) on the talk page. Geometry guy 21:41, 12 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Endorse fail. Of particular concern are the criteria 1 and 4 deficiencies. The article's editors may wish to contact the folks at Wikiproject Environment for collaborative assistance or submit the article for peer review. Majoreditor (talk) 14:31, 14 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]