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Reviewer: Daniel Case ( talk · contribs) 02:25, 24 April 2022 (UTC)
OK, this has waited over a year—far too long—for a proper review. I will take it.
As is usually my practice, I will be printing it out for red-pen review, and then doing a light copy edit so that the article won't be quick-failed on those ground. Hopefully within a week of that edit (which I hope I can get to within a week of this post), I will be back to you with my comments. Daniel Case ( talk) 02:25, 24 April 2022 (UTC)
OK. Finally. Fifteen months after this article was nominated, we're here.
I will begin, as I always do, by discussing what I like about the article:
It is comprehensive and covers the subject exhaustively (It better, at this length). I learned some things I didn't know I didn't know.
And to my great relief, given this length and my experience reviewing other articles of this length, it was coherent. I never felt like I was getting lost. It arranged and presented its content in a manner whereby the transitions felt logical. It did not seem to spend an inordinate amount of space on any subjects of dubious relevance. My copy edit wound up taking the article down only by 1K ... that suggests to me that there was a 'little fat, so to speak, but not a lot.
And for the most part, it was written in a consistent voice (albeit one with a lot of non-native English influence, like many missing articles and odd word choices, that I had to correct when copyediting). Too often when I have reviewed a large GA (and sometimes even a small one), one can tell it was written by three different people at different times. That is too often the result of the expand-and-nominate method of getting to GA. This does not seem to have been the case here, for the most part. At least one person seems to have taken charge.
It is also generally well laid-out and illustrated. The images make sense with the text they are next to. There are no galleries, or other sections where people passing by decided to just stick something in that they thought looked cool. No vast desert of whitespace created by a complete lack of awareness of how to use formatting tools available in WML or, even, general principles of page layout. If I sound harsh on that score, you should see some of the nominations I've reviewed.
I should also thank the nominator for the edits he made while this article was pending after I had accepted the review. He addressed some of the issues with part of the text (specifically, the quote under "telecommunications" and the entire "Resource management" subsection, which were deservedly deleted) that I had identified in my hard copy and, most importantly, all the issues with the footnotes. Thanks! All I needed to do with the latter was add some access dates.
OK, now, what needs to be addressed in order for me to promote this article to GA:
This is not to say that it is too long to be a GA. Certainly a lot of the considerations under SIZERULE have been heeded ... there seem to have been many articles spun off already. But I think more could be done, and in my comments below there are many areas where this article could be made shorter without losing anything important.
I did not address this in my copy edit because I felt this was a content choice that the nominator or another editor should make, not the GA reviewer. But in that department, it also occurs to me that some of the historical detail in the second graf should/could be better left to the body of the article. If you'd like me to tighten that intro up later, just ask (I've done this a lot). Till then I will be tagging the article appropriately.
In the future, also, the article should eschew the passive voice and much of the overly formal and bureaucratic phrasing that I trimmed. Perhaps this, too, is characteristic of Indian English, especially where the writer's first language is not English, I don't know, but it is (or was) hard on the reader.
Conversely remember that it is not only Indians who may be reading this, and thus shorthand like "PM Modi" and the many other abbreviations of agencies that went unnamed (although they were linked), as common as they may be in Indian media, need to be written out so non-Indian readers can understand them on first reference.
I would assume "programme", would be preferred, expected from a Commonwealth country ... except that Australia is a Commonwealth country as well and "program" is TMU the preferred spelling down there, as I learned when developing Museum of Contemporary Art Australia to GA status earlier this year. Figure it out.
I am also not sure if the table of facilities afterwards is totally necessary ... some of the information is repeated elsewhere in the article, and while some of those facilities certainly are relevant, again, we have some that are only mentioned this one time.
I think they very much do here; it would certainly resolve this puzzling choice to use the non-editable introductory semicolon for some of this sections but the bookended equals signs for others. I should also point out that much of the S-TIC paragraph simply reiterates information already given in the table above, as does some of the information in the first sentence of the Directorate graf immediately below it.
As for the list of other facilities, again, some are mentioned later but others are only mentioned there. Is it really necessary to have this list in the article? I am beginning to think that this entire section might be better spun off as a separate list.
OK, lastly, it doesn't have to be done but I think it would be nice if someone could find or take a picture of ISRO's headquarters in Bangalore and put that in the article ... there are plenty of places it could go. All our other space-agency articles have some picture like that.
After putting this punch list together, it should be no surprise that I am putting this nomination
The work that needs to be done can be done. I am willing to give you more than the usual week to do it. If you feel you can't do it even in an extended timeframe, I would be OK with failing it so you can fix and renominate at your convenience. Just let me know.
Happy editing!
Daniel Case ( talk) 05:40, 12 June 2022 (UTC)
OK. I have let this review go now for almost three weeks, during which no one has responded here, and there appears to have been almost no work on the article. In fact, the only result of this whole process is that someone has given me a virtual cup of tea by way of thanks (which I do appreciate, but that should have been the prelude to a feast).
I could take this occasion to ask more seriously for someone to work on this, but ... it has been almost a year and a half since this was nominated, and frankly that would just be needlessly prolonging things that have perhaps been prolonged too long (Is this a record? I wonder). So, since none of the issues I raised have been addressed, this will be a
✗ Fail.
If the issues above are addressed, it can and should be renominated. Again, happy editing! Daniel Case ( talk) 05:25, 4 July 2022 (UTC)
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Reviewer: Daniel Case ( talk · contribs) 02:25, 24 April 2022 (UTC)
OK, this has waited over a year—far too long—for a proper review. I will take it.
As is usually my practice, I will be printing it out for red-pen review, and then doing a light copy edit so that the article won't be quick-failed on those ground. Hopefully within a week of that edit (which I hope I can get to within a week of this post), I will be back to you with my comments. Daniel Case ( talk) 02:25, 24 April 2022 (UTC)
OK. Finally. Fifteen months after this article was nominated, we're here.
I will begin, as I always do, by discussing what I like about the article:
It is comprehensive and covers the subject exhaustively (It better, at this length). I learned some things I didn't know I didn't know.
And to my great relief, given this length and my experience reviewing other articles of this length, it was coherent. I never felt like I was getting lost. It arranged and presented its content in a manner whereby the transitions felt logical. It did not seem to spend an inordinate amount of space on any subjects of dubious relevance. My copy edit wound up taking the article down only by 1K ... that suggests to me that there was a 'little fat, so to speak, but not a lot.
And for the most part, it was written in a consistent voice (albeit one with a lot of non-native English influence, like many missing articles and odd word choices, that I had to correct when copyediting). Too often when I have reviewed a large GA (and sometimes even a small one), one can tell it was written by three different people at different times. That is too often the result of the expand-and-nominate method of getting to GA. This does not seem to have been the case here, for the most part. At least one person seems to have taken charge.
It is also generally well laid-out and illustrated. The images make sense with the text they are next to. There are no galleries, or other sections where people passing by decided to just stick something in that they thought looked cool. No vast desert of whitespace created by a complete lack of awareness of how to use formatting tools available in WML or, even, general principles of page layout. If I sound harsh on that score, you should see some of the nominations I've reviewed.
I should also thank the nominator for the edits he made while this article was pending after I had accepted the review. He addressed some of the issues with part of the text (specifically, the quote under "telecommunications" and the entire "Resource management" subsection, which were deservedly deleted) that I had identified in my hard copy and, most importantly, all the issues with the footnotes. Thanks! All I needed to do with the latter was add some access dates.
OK, now, what needs to be addressed in order for me to promote this article to GA:
This is not to say that it is too long to be a GA. Certainly a lot of the considerations under SIZERULE have been heeded ... there seem to have been many articles spun off already. But I think more could be done, and in my comments below there are many areas where this article could be made shorter without losing anything important.
I did not address this in my copy edit because I felt this was a content choice that the nominator or another editor should make, not the GA reviewer. But in that department, it also occurs to me that some of the historical detail in the second graf should/could be better left to the body of the article. If you'd like me to tighten that intro up later, just ask (I've done this a lot). Till then I will be tagging the article appropriately.
In the future, also, the article should eschew the passive voice and much of the overly formal and bureaucratic phrasing that I trimmed. Perhaps this, too, is characteristic of Indian English, especially where the writer's first language is not English, I don't know, but it is (or was) hard on the reader.
Conversely remember that it is not only Indians who may be reading this, and thus shorthand like "PM Modi" and the many other abbreviations of agencies that went unnamed (although they were linked), as common as they may be in Indian media, need to be written out so non-Indian readers can understand them on first reference.
I would assume "programme", would be preferred, expected from a Commonwealth country ... except that Australia is a Commonwealth country as well and "program" is TMU the preferred spelling down there, as I learned when developing Museum of Contemporary Art Australia to GA status earlier this year. Figure it out.
I am also not sure if the table of facilities afterwards is totally necessary ... some of the information is repeated elsewhere in the article, and while some of those facilities certainly are relevant, again, we have some that are only mentioned this one time.
I think they very much do here; it would certainly resolve this puzzling choice to use the non-editable introductory semicolon for some of this sections but the bookended equals signs for others. I should also point out that much of the S-TIC paragraph simply reiterates information already given in the table above, as does some of the information in the first sentence of the Directorate graf immediately below it.
As for the list of other facilities, again, some are mentioned later but others are only mentioned there. Is it really necessary to have this list in the article? I am beginning to think that this entire section might be better spun off as a separate list.
OK, lastly, it doesn't have to be done but I think it would be nice if someone could find or take a picture of ISRO's headquarters in Bangalore and put that in the article ... there are plenty of places it could go. All our other space-agency articles have some picture like that.
After putting this punch list together, it should be no surprise that I am putting this nomination
The work that needs to be done can be done. I am willing to give you more than the usual week to do it. If you feel you can't do it even in an extended timeframe, I would be OK with failing it so you can fix and renominate at your convenience. Just let me know.
Happy editing!
Daniel Case ( talk) 05:40, 12 June 2022 (UTC)
OK. I have let this review go now for almost three weeks, during which no one has responded here, and there appears to have been almost no work on the article. In fact, the only result of this whole process is that someone has given me a virtual cup of tea by way of thanks (which I do appreciate, but that should have been the prelude to a feast).
I could take this occasion to ask more seriously for someone to work on this, but ... it has been almost a year and a half since this was nominated, and frankly that would just be needlessly prolonging things that have perhaps been prolonged too long (Is this a record? I wonder). So, since none of the issues I raised have been addressed, this will be a
✗ Fail.
If the issues above are addressed, it can and should be renominated. Again, happy editing! Daniel Case ( talk) 05:25, 4 July 2022 (UTC)