Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/Facebook/1

Facebook

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

Result: No action, so keep by default. The article has much improved since it was nominated for reassessment thanks to the efforts of Gary King. Geometry guy 20:11, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

I am requesting a reassessment because I believe this article fails section 2 of the GA criteria. As I brought up in the FAC, the article has fundamental sourcing issues and sometimes completely misrepresents its citations. I've only checked in-depth the first five paragraphs of the article, but I found significant, troubling sourcing issues in most of the citations. I also believe that the prose could be much improved, but am unsure whether that is salient for the looser GA prose standards. I have copied below my concerns that have yet to be addressed since the FAC. BuddingJournalist 05:06, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Concerns from User:BuddingJournalist copied over from the FAC

Still an oppose Prose is still awkward in many places. Structure of sections is often odd. Examples:

• "A cash flow statement was leaked, showing that during the 2005 fiscal year, Facebook had a net loss of $3.63 million." Awkward passive. Leads to readers asking: "Was leaked by whom?"
• Funding section is all over the place, chronologically.
• Why does the Features section begin with a short and incomplete comparison between it and MySpace?
• "Facebook has a number of features for users to interact with." "Over time, Facebook has added several new features to its website." Throw-away generic sentences. Note the presence yet again of the redundant "website".
• "a News Feed was announced, which appears " Conflict between past (passive again, too) and present.
• "while others were concerned [that would ease readers here] it made it too easy for other people to track down individual activities (such as changes in relationship status, events, and conversations with other users" Reader has to keep track of the relationships between the various "others".
• "Marketplace has been compared to Craigslist by CNET, which points out..." Try reading this sentence out loud.
• "Gifts, allowing users..." Isn't Gifts already explained earlier?
• "when its growth had fallen " Why is the perfect used here? Why not the straightforward and stronger "its growth fell"? In fact, the prose uses perfect tense in odd spots throughout. "Application spam has been considered..." Unattributed passive. Source given for this sentence does not contain any of its claims. I hope this is just a random mistake.
• "they asked him to build for them." Context? When? Were they fellow Harvard students at the time? First source does not match the title/author/publisher given. Again, I hope this is just a random mistake. I'm a bit concerned though...the two sources I randomly checked had errors.
• "The Syrian government cited the ban was on the premise that..." BuddingJournalist 01:19, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Source checking Changing to strong oppose. I was concerned about the sources from my findings above, so I decided to do a more thorough check:

• "More than 70 million people worldwide visited the website in April 2008." Does not match source.
• "The company dropped The from its name after purchasing the domain name facebook.com in 2005" What is the source for this? The given "source" is just the homepage of "facebook.com" before it became the current Facebook.
• "Press Room. Facebook (January 1, 2007)." Title and publication date are incorrect.
• "This expansion continued from April to June when it opened to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Boston University, Boston College, Northeastern University, and all Ivy League schools" Does not match given source.
• "At the end of the school year, Zuckerberg and Moskovitz moved to Palo Alto, California." Does not match source. Source says that Facebook moved its base of operations.
• "Zuckerberg called it "the next logical step"" Source does not put this in quotation marks. A big no-no! You cannot attribute this to him in quotation marks when he did not say this. Source also says the high school version launched in September 2005. No exact date given.
• "Initially, high school networks required an invitation to join, but this was changed fifteen days later to allow anyone to join." Given source says nothing about this.
• "By the end of the year, more than 2,000 colleges and over 25,000 high schools throughout seven countries including the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom had networks on Facebook" I could not find these statistics in either of the given sources.
• "Facebook had expanded membership eligibility to employees of 10 preselected companies by April 26, 2006, including Amazon.com, Apple Inc., and Microsoft." Nothing this specific in the given source. Only states that: "Currently, to join Facebook, you have to be associated with...[a] recognized company such as Microsoft or Apple".

This is all from the lead and the first two paragraphs of the History section; this means that a majority of the references in this part of the text had issues. This is quite disconcerting, to say the least. BuddingJournalist 01:41, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

I haven't yet had a chance to check out all of the citation examples you've listed, but what I've seen so far concerns me. Majoreditor (talk) 17:00, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

I've started checking BuddingJournalist's concerns. Some of them, such as "More than 70 million people", have been resolved; others haven't. It will take some time to check through the references. Majoreditor (talk) 02:59, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Indeed, although what the current phrase in the article "visit regularly" means is anyone's guess and is far too unspecific for a good encyclopedic article. I fixed the "quotation" that was bugging me. BuddingJournalist 13:03, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Note that someone has now gone ahead and changed the 70 million figure to 80 million, which certainly doesn't match the source. BuddingJournalist 15:24, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Whoops; thought the source still said 70. BuddingJournalist 16:03, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

I've got a different view on the whole thing as a web developer (specializing in Facebook Applications web development), so if there are any issues with references, I'll try my best to help. As I said below, though, I don't want to be attached to any other articles until I'm done with the one I'm working on, so I will just pitch in here and there when I can answer a question. Anyways, the source for "80 million people worldwide visit the website regularly." has the quote "More than 80 million active users". Perhaps it is not clear on the site, but what this means is that 80 million people visit the website in the past 30 day period. The term is explained more here on Mashable; however, that is a blog, so it cannot be used as a reference. But, it explains the term pretty clearly. Gary King (talk) 15:49, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

So "regularly" = at least once a month? This should be made clear and sourced, instead of just leaving it as the nebulous "regularly". BuddingJournalist 16:05, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

It was "in April 2008" before, but I will change it to something else now. Also, do you mean you want another source for it? I don't know if I can find one in mainstream news because they don't usually go in as deep with definitions like this. Gary King (talk) 16:08, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Not sure what you mean by "it" in "source for it". It's not about what I want; the article's text should match what its sources say. http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics has nothing about people visiting "once a month". I would not rely on that page anyway, since it is quite unclear what "80 million active users" means from that webpage (timescale, definition of "active"). I highly doubt that there isn't a third-party reliable source for Facebook's web traffic. BuddingJournalist 01:40, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Changed. Gary King (talk) 01:48, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

• Weak Delist. Too many references cite Facebook.com. There's enough independent sources which are more trustworthy and reliable. For example, rather than citing a Facebook source for web traffic, why not use comScore data published by a third party (NYT, AdWeek, etc.)? This has the makings of a Good Article but the editors must use better quality sources. Majoreditor (talk) 03:08, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

• I alerted Gary and offered my services to help on this one. giggy _(:O) 09:22, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the help; however, I am trying to focus on working on only one article at a time these days (I haven't done major article work in the past week or two at all.) I still hope to bring the article to FAC again one day, which shouldn't be too far from now, but it needs a lot of work so I will do it when the article(s) that I am currently working on are done. Gary King (talk) 15:39, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

• Things should be better now. Gary King (talk) 20:47, 13 June 2008 (UTC)
• Comment. There have been no further comments here and this GAR has been on the books for some time, so it is time to revisit and close if possible. I have checked out the use of Facebook itself as a source, per Majoreditor's concern. This seems to be better now: although there are quite a few citations to Facebook, only the following conflict with GA requirements in my view:
  • [36] for One of the most popular applications on Facebook is the Photos application, where users can upload albums and photos. Analysis and/or opinion.
  • [39] for Initially, the News Feed caused dissatisfaction among Facebook users; some complained it was too cluttered and full of undesired information, while others were concerned it made it too easy for other people to track down individual activities (such as changes in relationship status, events, and conversations with other users). Commentary, analysis and opinion. Even though this is critical of Facebook, it should not be sourced to Facebook.
  • [40] for Since then, users have been able to control what types of information are shared automatically with friends. Users are now able to prevent friends from seeing updates about different types of activities, including profile changes, Wall posts, and newly added friends. Would be much better to have an independent viewpoint.
  • Privacy proponents have criticized the site's privacy agreement, which states: "We may use information about you that we collect from other sources, including but not limited to newspapers and Internet sources such as blogs, instant messaging services, Facebook Platform developers and other users of Facebook, to supplement your profile."[77] Another clause that received criticism concerned Facebook's right to sell a user's data to private companies, stating: "We may share your information with third parties, including responsible companies with which we have a relationship." Here [77] is only sourcing the what the privacy agreement says. The fact that these points have been criticised requires another source. The last paragraph of the Privacy section also requires a better independent source for the issue and the criticism.
  • Facebook has more than 80 million active users worldwide.[81][82]... The website is the most popular for uploading photos, with 14 million uploaded daily.[81] This is entirely sourced to facebook: [82] is not an independent source, because it is simply quoting a Facebook platform manager.

That's all! Geometry guy 17:08, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

All done Gary King (talk) 19:46, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

That looks better. The last paragraph of "Privacy" could still use another citation, but I'm ready to close this GAR as keep/no action, unless objections are raised in the next 2-3 days. Geometry guy 20:06, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

It's better. I'll move from weak delist to neutral. Majoreditor (talk) 00:02, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Woohoo! Gary King (talk) 20:16, 8 July 2008 (UTC)