Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/Nissan Leaf/1

Nissan Leaf

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

Result: This article no longer meets good article status on the grounds that it is too long and contains numerous issues with poor sourcing.Challenger.rebecca (talk) 01:56, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

Article has grown far too large

• The current version of this article has grown to 17,522 words (readable prose, excluding infoboxes, captions, etc). The version that was assessed as GA back in 2010 was only 5,062 words. There is no hard and fast rule, but Wikipedia:Article size says that when an article reaches 50kb readable prose, it's about time to consider splitting or pruning. This beast has grown to more than double that, 104kb.

Note that article size is not a GA criterion, but an excessively large artilce can have problems with criteria 1 Well written (prose is clear and concise, complies with MOS), 3b (staying focused) and 4 Neutrality, giving due weight. The obvious issues here are poor organization, such as the battery discussion in multiple places, and excessive detail. There is a great deal of consumer guide style analysis of costs that is not likely to belong in an encyclopedia. None of the FAs about cars are anywhere near this large, but are in the 6k to 7k word range. Many GAs about cars are only 2,000-3,000 words, and none of them exceed 7,000 words. Holden Commodore is the longest one, a car made for almost 40 years, and it's only 6,800 words.

I have to ask again: Why is this article so long? What is special about this topic? The Mitsubishi i-MiEV electric car is only 6,600 words. What's the reason? --Dennis Bratland (talk) 16:52, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

Partial list of other issues

This article would fail GA based on its size alone. It doesn't make sense to asses the problems in all 17,522 words since the GA version of this article would have closer to 5,000 words. Once it's down to a reasonable size, then a detailed assessment would be worthwhile. Here is a partial list of some of the issues with the current version, just to get a sense of how much work needs to be done to get this back to GA quality:

• Grammar and punctuation errors:
  • "With the 24 kWh electric vehicle battery (total capacity; usable battery capacity is about 21.3 kWh[34][35]) it consists of 48 modules and each module contains four battery cells, a total of 192 cells, and is assembled by Automotive Energy Supply Corporation (AESC) – a joint venture between Nissan, NEC and NEC Energy Devices, at Zama, Japan"
  • "Nissan stated in 2015 that until then only 0.01 percent of batteries, produced since 2010, had to be replaced because of failures or problems and then only because of externally inflicted damage."
  • "(In the United States models, only comes with SL trim.[49])"
• Repetitive reference to 10 year life span "The battery pack is expected to retain 70–80% of its capacity after 10 years but its actual lifespan depends on how often DC fast charging (480 volts DC) is used and also on driving patterns and environmental factors.[33][41] Nissan said the battery will lose capacity gradually over time but it expects a lifespan of over 10 years under normal use". "Is expected to last 10 years" and "Nissan expects a lifespan of over 10 years". Which is it?
• Overlinking United States, United States Environmental Protection Agency, battery pack, model year, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, Sweden, United Kingdom
• Promotional language:
  • "Some vehicles have already covered more than 200,000 km (120,000 miles) with no battery problems" The fact that some exceed the expected average is normal; that's where averages come from.
  • Most of the paragraph on battery life is sourced to Nissan's claims rather than independent sources.
  • A list of bullet points devoted to Nissan's advice for battery maintenance
  • Buried at the end of the section, only two sentences spent on evidence that the batteries are not quite as good as initially claimed. This should be rewritten giving more prominent placement to contrary views, and most of the content should come from the assessment of independent experts, not Nissan's claims.
  • Wikipedia's voice argues against the critics of the battery: "Nissan reported that in Europe only 3 of 35,000 Leaf batteries had failed."
  • Costs of battery pack are given. WP:NOPRICES requires reasons why we are including street prices, such as comparison with similar products and reasons why these prices are of special interest. Same goes for prices of battery replacement program.
  • Also contains a list of prices by country, again without justification per WP:NOPRICES.
  • Further down, a section on battery issues is forked off from the main battery section. It cites crowdsourced information. Why do we introduce the topic of battery failure in the first battery section, and don't mention that this is incomplete, and that we are going to revisit it in depth later? Wouldn't it make more sense to consolidate everything about the batteries under one heading, so that the positive claims can be set directly against the negative criticisms, and the defenses of the criticisms? Forking different points of view from one another is poor style, and not considered neutral.
• WP:WEASEL, WP:EDITORIAL, WP:ALLEGED: "It is notable...", "actually", "claimed", "However" --Dennis Bratland (talk) 03:08, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

• comment I've split off the market/sales section into a different article. It's messed up the refs in both places, but the referencing bot should hopefully sort that out soon. The length is down to just over 50k readable prose now.GliderMaven (talk) 15:59, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

• That's a good start, but it's hard to believe that you could take a 17,500 words article, and quickly chop off 8,000 words from a single section, and have the result still be a Good Article, if it was to begin with. The basic questions are: why are some sections of this article so incredibly long? The development section is a brief two paragraphs, then the Specifications section runs to over 5,000 words, although I think that's a mistake. There's sub sections on range for each iteration, and a sections on operating cost, Total cost of ownership, payback time etc, that don't belong under Specifications. It hasn't been thought out at all. Why don't any other car articles break the fuel economy section down into 3 sub-sections on operating cost, total cost of ownership, and payback time?

  I'll note again that large swaths of this excessive detail only cite Nissan as the source. No article should devote so much space to paraphrasing product press releases. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 17:02, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

Further notes

• Development history
  • Run on sentence "Nissan also developed the Nissan Hypermini, ran a demonstration program and sold limited numbers for government and corporate fleets in Japan between 1999 and 2001"
  • Very long and confusing sentence. Which one included an 80 kW electric motor? Does the US EPA have a "driving cycle, navigation system, and remote control and monitoring via a cellphone"? Or does the car (is it the EV-11 or the Tilda?) have an 80 kw motor, 24kw battery, a navigation system, remote control, and monitoring? "Unveiled in 2009, the EV-11 prototype electric car was based on the Nissan Tiida (Versa in North America), but with the conventional gasoline engine replaced with an all-electric drivetrain, and included an 80 kW (110 hp)/280 N·m (210 lb·ft) electric motor, 24 kWh lithium-ion battery pack rated to have a range of 175 km (109 miles) on the United States Environmental Protection Agency's LA-4 or "city" driving cycle, navigation system, and remote control and monitoring via a cellphone connection through Nissan's secure data center to the car'"
  • The source here is described as "Abuelsamid, Sam (2009-07-27). "Nissan shows off new Versa-based electric vehicle prototype". In fact, it is simply a copy of a Nissan press release [1].
  • "Goodwin, Antuan (2009-04-02). "Test-driving the Nissan EV-02 electric car". cnet. Retrieved 2010-04-25." sounds like an objective review, but in fact none of the test drive is in this article. It's just another collection of statements from a Nissan marketing guy.
  • Two of the five different sources in this paragraph are press releases, though only one is marked correctly.
  • The Development section is too short, and lacking in substantive details, instead favoring a list of advertised features that Nissan chose to tout. What do independent experts say about the development history of this car? What about it's intended market niche? It's goals? Did Nissan want to profit off this car? Burnish it's green image? Develop new technology? Why did they develop it? Were there problems during development? Such a long article but it's lacking in important details.

• Battery replacement program
• this source (Blanco, Sebastian (2013-06-20). "Nissan Leaf battery replacement will cost $100/month, offers new pack at any time". AutoblogGreen) is a preliminary announcement of the program, which is short on the final details of how it would work. We devote a whole paragraph to the June 2013 version of this program, then add another paragraph that traces the development of it to the June 2014 version. How important is it to devote space to every detail of the program, including incremental versions of it?
• The Blanco source above does point out that the existence of battery replacement is a "change of heart from Nissan", an admission that their original lofty claims about their batteries were overoptimistic. Why was Nissan wrong about their batteries? How did it affect the business model of the Leaf? How did car owners feel about this? Did they think it was a bait and switch? This is a topic we should cover more here.
• We have a forked off "reported issues" section below that tackles all this in depth, but why do we leave the reader hanging with these questions? While a criticism type section is allowed, the essay WP:CSECTION makes a strong case that a better organization is to integrate the issues in context. So battery problems go with the battery section. Now we have broken chronology: 1) Nissan rolls out the car promising batteries that last 10+ years. 2)consumer complaints, controversy, lawsuits 3) battery replacement program 3.5) what was the reaction to that anyway? 4) class action settlement. Besides the reasons for integration in WP:CSECTION, simple chronology argues for telling the battery story once, in one place.
  • Since this article has a bloat problem, we also want to avoid redundancy when possible. When you have to tackle the battery in 3+ different sections, and you're telling the events out of order, you have to do some review to keep the reader up to speed. This article can't afford to waste space on review and repetition.
  • I expect this issue is going to come up again and again. Most components of this car are covered in the same way as the battery, out of order, and in multiple sections. So the need to consolidate applies everywhere, not just the battery. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 22:21, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

I think it's great that you are taking a detailed look at an old Good Article, but I think you're looking for the Wikipedia:Good article reassessment. That is for reassessing articles that are currently listed as Good Articles but may not meet the criteria anymore. The nomination process is for evaluating articles which are not currently listed as Good Articles. Knope7 (talk) 01:51, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm not the least bit surprised that I have failed to follow your 1,000 bureaucratic rules to perfection. Pretty sure that's about par. The point is, this article hasn't been anywhere close to GA status for years. (And the editor most responsible for driving it away from GA status has reverted everybody else's edits on the grounds that it's a GA!)

But I can't just say, "Hey, GA people, fix this" because they will always say, "No, too busy." So I'm doing it myself. Obviously that doesn't meet whatever byzantine hoops are required, but I'm pretty sure the outcome is the same.

This thing needs to be delisted. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 02:08, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

Moving from GAN to GAR and listing as a community reassessment per discussion at User talk:Dennis Bratland. BlueMoonset (talk) 02:42, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

Comments etc from others

Comment: The references are not in very good shape:

• The following references are dead or seem to be dead: #93, #83, #70, #66, #60, #69
• These can't be found: #30, #5, #65, #16
• These require registration/subscription: #116, #88
• This one can't be found: #6

So, not sure that GA Criteria 2A is being fulfilled in this case. Also...the SIZE of this article - it's insane! If you printed it out this article would come to 40 pages! I think it needs to heavily-edited and then what's left could possibly be split into sub-articles. Shearonink (talk) 06:41, 31 March 2017 (UTC)