Wikipedia:Featured article review/History of the City of Burnside/archive1

The following is an archived discussion of a featured article review. Please do not modify it. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page or at Wikipedia talk:Featured article review. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was delisted by Nikkimaria via FACBot (talk) 9:41, 11 April 2020 (UTC) [1].

History of the City of Burnside

Notified: WP Australia notice board

Review section

This is a 2006 promotion whose main editor, Beneaththelandslide has not edited for ten years. It's second-highest editor, YellowMonkey (former FAR delegate) is also gone. Since the FAR needed notification on 28 January, there have been minor cleanup attempts, but the article still has uncited text, MOS cleanup needs, and Buidhe's comments on talk need to be looked into. If someone could take an interest in this article, it should be an easy FAR save; the work needed here does not seem insurmountable. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:39, 6 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I have advocated for trimming and merging the article to City of Burnside based on its short length and lack of independent RS. (Other users agreed with me on the merge). I disagree that it can be rescued under today's FA standards. b uidhe 14:50, 6 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I would not oppose a merger with City of Burnside. That said, I'll see what I can do with copyediting. – John M Wolfson (talk • contribs) 15:16, 6 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I still disagree with merging, particularly strongly if perfectly good history content is pruned to do so. The Drover's Wife (talk) 15:52, 6 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I am unsure here, and suggest that Casliber might provide guidance. There are four books listed in the sources. Only one of them has an ISBN, but all four are listed as being available through the National Library of Australia. But the publishers on all of them are the City or the Club, so not independent, and readers outside of Australia cannot verify text. So, yes, we seem to have very few independent reliable sources here. Need an opinion from both Cas and Ealdgyth on whether we can salvage this as an FA. On the history of a city, do we care if all sources are from that city, and cannot be obtained by readers outside of Australia? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:04, 6 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The article is also using a 2006 archived version of the City's website, when we have an updated version. Frankly, I'd almost rather de-feature this than try to fix it, when we have no current active editor to help sort all of this out. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:10, 6 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I've got access to three of the four sources (not the golf club) if I'm willing to head across town to the specialist history library. It largely depends on how severe people think the problems with this are - it's not worth the time if it's not salvagable, and I'm not a great lover of long-form writing so I might need a bit more guidance than usual if I did. I would note that any decision that the sorts of arrangements where a municipality funds a historian to write a local history and then publishes the book are "not independent" and not usable in FAs effectively means that virtually any history on this or similar geographic place could never be taken to FA due to a lack of publisher interest. (For example, the history of anywhere in the entire region I'm from or it overall would be in exactly the same sourcing situation as this article.) The Drover's Wife (talk) 21:19, 6 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I feel much better knowing that we can verify something to a source, then, if needed; if that is the case, then, I don't believe a merge is warranted. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:27, 6 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I disagree that local history sources can't be used. All sourcing requirements are guidelines and WP:MED is alot stricter than other areas. To satisfy comprehensiveness there are many occasions we have to resort to primary sources in more esoteric areas, and a large number of fairly uncontroversial facts about a local district's history are not extreme enough to absolutely necessitate secondary sourcing 100% of the time. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 22:19, 6 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Good enough for me; so unless we can cite the uncited portions to the City's website, we have to rely on Drover to cite the uncited. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:23, 6 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Could you perhaps run over the article with CN tags for anywhere that needs a cite in your opinion? (I don't know if the way I would do things usually meets FA standards and if I'm going to head across town I'd like to only do it once). Most of the "establishment of district councils" section actually probably doesn't need book sources (I'm the one who wrote most of our SA council articles) so I might try and fix that up a bit right now. The Drover's Wife (talk) 23:32, 6 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I went through. We will need to get a consistent citation style when you are done, but this looks doable. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:02, 7 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Ugh. I just had a crack at sourcing some of the district councils section and I think this article has bigger problems than I thought: I sourced one paragraph and found three minor errors of fact and one claim that's dubious (the original gazetted boundaries are more complex than the article suggests and as I'm not a local I can't really tell how far out they are). I expect the rest of the article is a bit better given the book sourcing but I don't know that I'm interested enough to through with that fine-toothed a comb: I don't think this is a case of merely double-checking the existing sources and filling in a few gaps. We have much better digitised sources than we did in 2006 (all legislation, all gazettals, an early Adelaide newspaper covering the area) and I'm concerned that enough liberties and assumptions were taken in their absence to make fixing this to FA standard a difficult job. The Drover's Wife (talk) 00:12, 7 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I also went through and found some dubious sourcing. We have several choices at this point, since articles stay in the FAR phase for two weeks. We can fix it ourselves, or we can hope someone shows up who will. If not, it moves to FARC in two weeks. I am always willing to do cleanup, if someone else can do the text and sourcing-- otherwise … let me know. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:10, 7 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Move to FARC, beyond the attempts by myself and User:The Drover's Wife (which we both though insufficient), there has been no improvement. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:34, 20 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- Yep. This needs too much work for a fly-by save from editors not interested in the subject. The Drover's Wife (talk) 23:55, 20 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

FARC section

Issues raised in the review section mostly concerned sourcing and verifiability. Nikkimaria (talk) 13:26, 21 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Delist unless issues are fixed. False information in a FA is very concerning. b uidhe 22:15, 21 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Delist I have done some copyediting and removed some duplinks, and would be happy to do more copyediting and keep were this the only issue. However, the above raised concerns about sourcing give me pause. I do not agree that the sourcing being from the city is an issue, given the relatively niche nature of the topic. Furthermore, while I raise some note about the preponderance of Warburton in the references, it appears to be the main book on the topic. Bromell is mentioned in the bibliography but never in the references, however, and given the title it seems like it can be of use in the article. Furthermore, only 14 of at least 136 pages of Coleman, another book specifically about the City's history, are used in the article. Given all this, and the CN and clarification tags, I have no confidence that this would pass a modern FAC and feel that this should be delisted barring a large amount of work in the near future. – John M Wolfson (talk • contribs) 21:33, 22 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- One of the problems with the city sourcing is that we may have circular sourcing, via Wikipedia. It's hard to tell. The sourcing issues here are more problematic than the prose. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:44, 22 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  - All of the books in the Bibliography predate Wikipedia's existence. Having said that, the sourcing isn't terribly available online so I can't do spotchecks; agreed that sourcing is the main issue here. – John M Wolfson (talk • contribs) 22:35, 22 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    - I don't think there's a problem with the reliability of the sources used, but there enough issues with the accuracy of the article content (at least in the bits that were previously uncited) to make it too big of a job for me to save. The Drover's Wife (talk) 00:26, 23 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Delist: tagged for unsourced statements, lacking reliable references and needing clarification. DrKay (talk) 09:58, 4 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Closing note: This removal candidate has been delisted, but there may be a delay in bot processing of the close. Please leave the {{featured article review}} template in place on the talk page until the bot goes through. Nikkimaria (talk) 19:41, 11 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.