Talk:University of Bristol admissions controversy/GA1

GA Review

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1. Well-written - Problems exist and should be dealt with, but aren't irreversibly widespread by any means. Here are the specific problems I encountered that had to do with writing and organization:

(a) Prose is clear

• Basically stolen from source verbatim: "Bristol admitted taking an applicant's background into account in order to be fairer to students from less successful schools when setting offers for its courses" Done Removed
• I'm having trouble discerning a clear thematic organization of the lead; it seems to jump around a bit. Once the rest of the article's organization is set, I'd go through and try to summarize each section in the lead. (see WP:LEAD) Done
• The controversy wasn't sparked by those concerns, it was those concerns, so I think the first couple sentences can be combined or reworded. Done
• "The admissions policy allowed the awarding of slightly lower offers to promising applicants from schools with poor academic records." What does "slightly lower offers" mean? How can one offer of admission be lower than another? Or is something else meant by this? Perhaps this is just a detail or term of the UK university admissions process that I'm not aware of; if so, I think an explanation is required, or at least a wikilink to somewhere else to provide context. If not, then a rephrasing or clarification is in order. Done
• I think "state school" with a link is quite clear now for both US and UK readers, and I'm wondering if we can replace all instances of "independent school" with "private school", since that term is more widely used in the US and apparently holds the same meaning in the UK.

I think that state school is the correct term to use although in reality we are talking about comprehensive schools benefiting from the admissions policy. As for the private schools they prefer "independent" as it emphasises the fact that they are independent of the state but “private” is the term most Brits would use. I've added a footnote as not all private schools are considered public schools!  Francium12  11:32, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

Well, I guess the best thing to do is to use whatever is technically correct and is in the sources. You can argue me on this one, but I think that the footnotes are unnecessary if you just link to corresponding articles. — DroEsperanto (talk) 21:42, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

• Put the bulleted list of students into paragraph form. Done
• Throughout the article, there are a number of subjective words and qualifiers, such as "top private schools" and "intense media coverage". These are both vague and a bit peacocky, and I think should be replaced with more neutral and specific descriptors.
• Sometimes univeristy is capitalized and sometimes it is not. The article should be consistent and use just one (I think lower-case is better, although I'm not sure).
• "4 students with 10* at GCSE and 4 As at A-level were rejected." In general, abbreviations should be expanded and preferably linked to their article; as an American, I have no idea what a 10* at GCSE means, and a quick look at the appropriate article would be helpful.

 Done Linked to terms  Francium12  22:25, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

• The section headings are somewhat non-descriptive. Response to what? Reaction to what by whom? I think the article's organization would be better served if the content were presented in a sort of timeline fashion (e.g., "Bristol's actions", "Boycott", "Response by Bristol", "Media/political reaction", "Resolution").
• An explanation of who the National Association of Head Teachers is, their notability, and a link to "head teacher" would be helpful. (The term isn't really used in the USA, and it therefore somewhat confusing to most American readers, although we can guess at the meaning.)
• The use of the word inclusive is a bit vague and euphemistic. A more precise word would be better. Done
• "...the policy of offering lower offers to exceptional students from state schools and disadvantaged backgrounds was in order to satisy the Government..." A bit awkward: perhaps "the policy of xyz was instituted to satisfy abc"?
• Since it's background information, I think that the "Admissions statistics" section should be somewhere in the beginning of the article. Perhaps a new section called "Background" would be in order, combining Bristol's previous admissions policies and statistics, info about how British schools usually do things, and whatever else is needed to understand the article.

(b) MoS compliance - no blaring errors that I can see

2. Factually accurate and verifiable

(a) References in appropriate section

(b) Cites things that need to be cited from reliable sources - some controversial statements, statistics and important facts, and attributions of opinion are uncited or unclearly cited. All the references need to be checked to make sure they say exactly what the source says and don't engage in synthesis or OR.

• the quotes around "perfect" bother me; if it's a direct quote, then it should be attributed and if it's not, then it's POV'd as it's asserting doubt on the critics' claims. If the latter's the case, I'd reword it to something like "denied students who believed that based on their academic record should have been accepted" or "denied students with multiple A-levels" or whatever (I'm not an expert on British testing, haha).

 DoneI have toned it down to strong academic records, removed quotation marks and linked it to the section mentioning the academics leaving the reader to decide how good the grades are.  Francium12  12:05, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

• Dead link [1]
• "In response to the controversy the university introduced a new, more transparent admissions policy. An independent review into the system found that there was no bias in the admissions system" Those are both controversial statements and must be cited.

 Done Added references and changed independent review to a review by the Independent School's Council  Francium12  22:29, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

• (Still in the process of combing through the article's references)

(c) No original research - Some synthesis

• "While right-leaning papers such as the Mail and the Express criticised the discrimination they state was practiced, papers on the left such as the Guardian argued that better coaching in top-schools meant that applicants from poor state school actually had a greater natural ability." Pointing out the political leanings of the newspapers constitutes WP:SYNTHESIS. Neutralize this and cite it.

3. Broad in its coverage:

(a) addresses main aspects of the topic The article is 90% there, but there are some content gaps that I think should be addressed:

• Now that the title has been changed, the date of the controversy needs to be mentioned in the lead
• Some more context is required; weren't top UK universities previously accused of not accepting public school students? Also a brief description of relevant info about the UK admissions process is necessary for non-Brits.

 Done Added context section  Francium12  18:27, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

• Article references a boycott more than once, but never actually says when it happens, by whom, and what it consisted of. This seems like a major detail that needs to be discussed more thoroughly. Also it is discussed in the lead, so it needs to be mentioned elsewhere per WP:LEAD.
• How was media attention attracted to these students, and at what point of the year? I never really got a sense of how it all started and when.
• New admission policy is mentioned in the lead but never expanded upon in the body of the article.

(b) no unnecessary digressions

Stays on-topic the whole way through.

4. NPOV

• I know I was the one who suggested it initially, but the context and admission statistics sections seem a bit POV'd/OR to me when separated from the rest of the content. To bring attention to the selectivity and the widening participation policy in the UK seems to give extra credibility to Bristol's argument. Also, since there is controversy surrounding whether or not Bristol was changing its policies, the content of the section (that they were changing their policies and it was part of widening participation) doesn't seem appropriate, and the comparison to widening participation seems to be OR as far as I can tell. I think the context info should be integrated into the rest of the text where appropriate or removed, and that perhaps the admissions statistics section should be integrated into the subsection on Bristol's response/rebuttal to the controversy, and should be make more neutral (instead of saying "Bristol's acceptance rate was x%. This led them to argue Y", say "Bristol argues 'Y because of our x% acceptance rate'"). I also think the Laura Spence affair can remain in the See also section.

Here is my current recommendation for how it should be organized:

• Rejection of student applications/Initial criticisms - containing the initial criticisms by the students and parents; where did the controversy come from?
• Response - should include all responses that took part in the controversy. There should be a subsection on the boycott (which should include both a paragraph on what the boycott consisted of and how the organizers justified it, and a paragraph on criticism/support for the boycott), a subsection on media coverage, and a subsection on government.
• Conclusion - information on how it ended. Information on the study must be presented neutrally. Saying it "cleared Bristol of all wrongdoing" is taking sides; saying that "the study concluded that Bristol had not been acting wrongly" is better. (Also, the sentence about the study is unclear. Private school students had a 98% acceptance rate into Bristol? That's how it reads to me). Attribute who says Bristol's new admissions policy is more transparent, and describe it briefly. I think a response of the initial critics to the study is appropriate, since the article doesn't indicate that the study had any effect on anything, just that it cleared Bristol of wrongdoing in the opinion of Wikipedia. I would also be interested to know what was happening between 2003 and 2005.

• "then-head of the Commission for Racial Equality Trevor Phillips used his high profile position to criticise the fact that his daughter who attended a top independent school had been rejected from Bristol despite excellent exam results." The statement that he "used his high-profile position" to make a point is contentious. Please attribute or remove.

 Done POV removed. He has now been quoted verbatim as in article  Francium12  22:19, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

• The article requires a thorough sweeping of words to avoid. In many places, article basically constructs people's arguments for them instead of saying who said what. Let me know if you'd like specific examples.
• The coverage of Bristol's drop in admission is misleading and one-sided. The article should include Bristol's statement that it does not believe the drop to have to do with the boycott, and rather that it is just random fluctuations in the rate of applications. The article that is cited states this, so to omit it is to misrepresent the source.

I saw that as mere PR talk but yeah it should be added for balance.Added Done

• The "see alsos" to "Social engineering" etc. seem very POV'd to me. I agree that they're relevant related topics, but I don't think they should be put there, because doing so asserts that what Bristol was doing was social engineering; perhaps linked in-text when those phrases are used would be best.

 Done Probably better to link to terms like positive discrimination and social engineering in the article  Francium12  12:24, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

• Move Toynbee's criticism to the media section; having just one criticism of the students with no opposing viewpoints in the beginning of the section invalidates their whole argument. I think it's best just to use that section about information about the students, and put the responses in their appropriate section.

5. Stable

No edit wars, and topic is in the past so it itself is stable

6. Image use

(a) Proper licensing - image released by author under GDFL. One more would be nice, but only if it supplements the text (i.e., if it was of Sushila Phillips or another involved party, but not a photo of a chapel at Bristol).

 Not done Cannot find a good image to use. Amazingly Trevor Phillips does not have a publlic domain image on his page. Nothing to steal from Flickr. Eric Thomas' image cannot be used as it is fair use.  Francium12  18:15, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

(b) Caption The caption seems a little peacocky/boostery and should be substantiated with details or changed. As the caption of the only image in the lead, maybeit could serve as a concise, one-sentence summary of the issue, or perhaps just a literal description of the image ("So-and-so hall at University of Bristol").

 Done I once attempted to change the caption to Wills Memorial Building and I was reverted as it was seen as attempting to down play the alleged elitism. There is some stuff on the socio-economic make up of the University here [2] and here [3] that could be used in some way  Francium12  10:59, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

Result

I don't think I'm going to pass this this article for now. While it is far from being stub- or even start-class and has a breadth of good-quality sources and information, I think that there are some major problems with the clarity of what happened, the organization of the article, and the neutrality of the presentation that will take some time (longer than 7 days) to address. When they are, though, I think this article will make an excellent GA, and probably has a future as a FA. In the meantime, I encourage you to use the above as a starting point for improving the article (and the consultation of WP:WTA) and to renominate once you think the issues have been addressed. — DroEsperanto (talk) 01:15, 31 August 2009 (UTC)