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Reviewer: Hoary ( talk · contribs) 04:22, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
I hope to start on this some time in the next few days. -- Hoary ( talk) 04:22, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
First, a technical note. As I view the article, I see one instance of {{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link) and eight of {{cite news}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link). That's nine syntax errors.
When you edit the relevant section of the article, you're likely to be told Script warning: One or more {{cite news/journal}} templates have maintenance messages; messages may be hidden (help).
Unless you also provide a Wayback Machine or other archive link, you shouldn't specify url-status=live (see Template:Citation/doc#URL). Please remove these superfluous instances of "url-status=live" (or of course add relevant archive links, so that the instances will be superfluous no longer). -- Hoary ( talk) 05:04, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
(No they weren't.)
I quote:
I parse this as entailing:
I see no evidence for the second. The author derived conclusions from the analysis. The university did not. Not even the university's Department of Economics derived a conclusion, as far as I know.
Nominator, please rethink and reword. -- Hoary ( talk) 22:59, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
This WP article makes considerable use of a paper by Pickard:
However, on both the front cover and page one of Pickard's paper, I read "Harry Pickard". -- Hoary ( talk) 09:01, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
Nominator, some fairly straightforward (I think) comments, requests, suggestions. You are of course entirely free to disagree. But if/where you'd like to comment, please don't do so within the following set; instead, please do so below it.
-- Hoary ( talk) 09:01, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
Some space is, properly, given in the article to the cost of the leaflet to British taxpayers, and to the indignation that this incurred. However, here's a comment from a barrister on payment:
This may be worth a mention. (Incidentally, the article in its current state doesn't seem to mention the European Union Referendum Act 2015.) -- Hoary ( talk) 23:52, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
Pickard, Henry (26 January 2018). "How the government's pro-remain leaflet shaped the EU referendum". University of Sheffield. (The link provided to it is now dead; the page can be found here.)
The author's name isn't "Henry Pickard"; it's "Harry Pickard". To say that it's published by "University of Sheffield" isn't wrong, but it should really be "Sheffield Political Economy Research Institute".
This is currently cited three times. Let's look at all three.
But the UK isn't just England. (Incidentally, "UK" could well have been Pickard's little slip. But if it was, then that web page shouldn't have been cited for this particular purpose.)
The bit about 16 including the covers is an addition. (Actually this shouldn't need any citation: the leaflet is a good source about such an attribute of itself.)
Year of publication is of course an addition. This reference could be moved immediately after "Sheffield". Simpler and better: skip the reference to this announcement, and instead refer at the end of the sentence to Pickard's 2019 publication. -- Hoary ( talk) 01:33, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
Various (8 April 2016). "Response to Government leaflet from the UK in a Changing Europe". London: UK in a Changing Europe. here.
This is currently cited four times. Let's look at all four.
(That's two of the four citations together.) Unsurprisingly, Hix doesn't directly rate its effectiveness (which would require an empirical study, such as Pickard's). He hedges ("looks to me like", "quite"). This is unlikely to have been mere throat-clearing: Hix would, I presume, have had the opportunity to phrase this as he wished. The article's summary drops such nuance, and is much cruder than the original.
But UK in a Changing Europe attributed all of this to its director, Anand Menon, who may or may not have been writing on behalf of the organization.
Whitman here isn't as clear as he could have been; but he seems to me to be primarily criticizing the assembly of the leaflet. I suppose the summary here is OK, though it's hard for me to understand and looks to me like the product of insufficient digestion. -- Hoary ( talk) 01:33, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
Mason, Rowena; Stewart, Heather; Grierson, Jamie (7 April 2016). " £9m pro-EU leaflet is necessary and right, says Cameron". The Guardian.
This is cited four times. One citation doesn't seem problematic. The other three are very close to each other:
In the first of these three, "a decade or more of uncertainty" should be in quotation marks. -- Hoary ( talk) 05:04, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
Landale, James (7 April 2016). " EU referendum: Government to spend £9m on leaflets to every home". London: BBC News.
This is cited five times. Three of the five citations don't seem problematic. As for the other two:
Internal polls aren't independent polls (if anything, they're the reverse). (And the people wanted more information not just from any "RS" but from the government.)
"Linked to exports to the EU" really should be in quotation marks: not only to avoid an (arguably somewhat nitpicky) claim of plagiarism, but also because "linked to" is vague (as Angus Armstrong points out in the "UK in a Changing Europe" page that's cited elsewhere). -- Hoary ( talk) 05:04, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
Three/four days ago, I decided that I should investigate the use of some cited sources. I can't claim that my choice of four -- Pickard's announcement, UKC response, Guardian article, BBC article -- was random: I was unable/unwilling to look at sources behind paywalls, and I chose sources that were cited rather frequently and thus were likely to be important to the article. But within those constraints, there was no cherry-picking; and I didn't look at the use of any source but remain silent about my finding.
Three/four days ago, I was generally impressed, but disturbed by what seemed to be a tendency to sloppiness in paraphrasing the sources that I did look at. Now I'm happy to see that all the problems I specifically pointed to have been fixed, but I feel obliged to look at the use of a few more sources.
1. "Clark, Morris & Lomax 2018": OK
2. "Government's £9.3m pro-EU leaflet under fire from Brexit campaigners" (Yorkshire Post): OK
3. Andrew Glencross, "Fact Check special: Government leaflet that makes case for Britain staying in the EU" (The Conversation)
This is used in two places. One use isn't at all problematic. As for the other, the article now tells us that "Andrew Glencross of the University of Stirling said that there were 'good reasons' to accept their logic".
The issue here is the antecedent of "their". The "logic" that Glencross describes is, as I understand it, that:
Apologies for any inaccuracy in that, but I'm pretty sure that Glencross does describe a causal chain. This is missing in the article, which lists a number of claims with which Glencross agrees and which he believes are causally related, but (to me) doesn't show any particular "logic". So I'm not so happy with this particular paraphrase. OTOH (i) it's not bad (it doesn't seem to say anything that he's unlikely to believe), and (ii) the others I looked at are good. (Tl;dr: It's OK.) -- Hoary ( talk) 01:34, 6 February 2023 (UTC)
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Reviewer: Hoary ( talk · contribs) 04:22, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
I hope to start on this some time in the next few days. -- Hoary ( talk) 04:22, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
First, a technical note. As I view the article, I see one instance of {{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link) and eight of {{cite news}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link). That's nine syntax errors.
When you edit the relevant section of the article, you're likely to be told Script warning: One or more {{cite news/journal}} templates have maintenance messages; messages may be hidden (help).
Unless you also provide a Wayback Machine or other archive link, you shouldn't specify url-status=live (see Template:Citation/doc#URL). Please remove these superfluous instances of "url-status=live" (or of course add relevant archive links, so that the instances will be superfluous no longer). -- Hoary ( talk) 05:04, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
(No they weren't.)
I quote:
I parse this as entailing:
I see no evidence for the second. The author derived conclusions from the analysis. The university did not. Not even the university's Department of Economics derived a conclusion, as far as I know.
Nominator, please rethink and reword. -- Hoary ( talk) 22:59, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
This WP article makes considerable use of a paper by Pickard:
However, on both the front cover and page one of Pickard's paper, I read "Harry Pickard". -- Hoary ( talk) 09:01, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
Nominator, some fairly straightforward (I think) comments, requests, suggestions. You are of course entirely free to disagree. But if/where you'd like to comment, please don't do so within the following set; instead, please do so below it.
-- Hoary ( talk) 09:01, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
Some space is, properly, given in the article to the cost of the leaflet to British taxpayers, and to the indignation that this incurred. However, here's a comment from a barrister on payment:
This may be worth a mention. (Incidentally, the article in its current state doesn't seem to mention the European Union Referendum Act 2015.) -- Hoary ( talk) 23:52, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
Pickard, Henry (26 January 2018). "How the government's pro-remain leaflet shaped the EU referendum". University of Sheffield. (The link provided to it is now dead; the page can be found here.)
The author's name isn't "Henry Pickard"; it's "Harry Pickard". To say that it's published by "University of Sheffield" isn't wrong, but it should really be "Sheffield Political Economy Research Institute".
This is currently cited three times. Let's look at all three.
But the UK isn't just England. (Incidentally, "UK" could well have been Pickard's little slip. But if it was, then that web page shouldn't have been cited for this particular purpose.)
The bit about 16 including the covers is an addition. (Actually this shouldn't need any citation: the leaflet is a good source about such an attribute of itself.)
Year of publication is of course an addition. This reference could be moved immediately after "Sheffield". Simpler and better: skip the reference to this announcement, and instead refer at the end of the sentence to Pickard's 2019 publication. -- Hoary ( talk) 01:33, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
Various (8 April 2016). "Response to Government leaflet from the UK in a Changing Europe". London: UK in a Changing Europe. here.
This is currently cited four times. Let's look at all four.
(That's two of the four citations together.) Unsurprisingly, Hix doesn't directly rate its effectiveness (which would require an empirical study, such as Pickard's). He hedges ("looks to me like", "quite"). This is unlikely to have been mere throat-clearing: Hix would, I presume, have had the opportunity to phrase this as he wished. The article's summary drops such nuance, and is much cruder than the original.
But UK in a Changing Europe attributed all of this to its director, Anand Menon, who may or may not have been writing on behalf of the organization.
Whitman here isn't as clear as he could have been; but he seems to me to be primarily criticizing the assembly of the leaflet. I suppose the summary here is OK, though it's hard for me to understand and looks to me like the product of insufficient digestion. -- Hoary ( talk) 01:33, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
Mason, Rowena; Stewart, Heather; Grierson, Jamie (7 April 2016). " £9m pro-EU leaflet is necessary and right, says Cameron". The Guardian.
This is cited four times. One citation doesn't seem problematic. The other three are very close to each other:
In the first of these three, "a decade or more of uncertainty" should be in quotation marks. -- Hoary ( talk) 05:04, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
Landale, James (7 April 2016). " EU referendum: Government to spend £9m on leaflets to every home". London: BBC News.
This is cited five times. Three of the five citations don't seem problematic. As for the other two:
Internal polls aren't independent polls (if anything, they're the reverse). (And the people wanted more information not just from any "RS" but from the government.)
"Linked to exports to the EU" really should be in quotation marks: not only to avoid an (arguably somewhat nitpicky) claim of plagiarism, but also because "linked to" is vague (as Angus Armstrong points out in the "UK in a Changing Europe" page that's cited elsewhere). -- Hoary ( talk) 05:04, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
Three/four days ago, I decided that I should investigate the use of some cited sources. I can't claim that my choice of four -- Pickard's announcement, UKC response, Guardian article, BBC article -- was random: I was unable/unwilling to look at sources behind paywalls, and I chose sources that were cited rather frequently and thus were likely to be important to the article. But within those constraints, there was no cherry-picking; and I didn't look at the use of any source but remain silent about my finding.
Three/four days ago, I was generally impressed, but disturbed by what seemed to be a tendency to sloppiness in paraphrasing the sources that I did look at. Now I'm happy to see that all the problems I specifically pointed to have been fixed, but I feel obliged to look at the use of a few more sources.
1. "Clark, Morris & Lomax 2018": OK
2. "Government's £9.3m pro-EU leaflet under fire from Brexit campaigners" (Yorkshire Post): OK
3. Andrew Glencross, "Fact Check special: Government leaflet that makes case for Britain staying in the EU" (The Conversation)
This is used in two places. One use isn't at all problematic. As for the other, the article now tells us that "Andrew Glencross of the University of Stirling said that there were 'good reasons' to accept their logic".
The issue here is the antecedent of "their". The "logic" that Glencross describes is, as I understand it, that:
Apologies for any inaccuracy in that, but I'm pretty sure that Glencross does describe a causal chain. This is missing in the article, which lists a number of claims with which Glencross agrees and which he believes are causally related, but (to me) doesn't show any particular "logic". So I'm not so happy with this particular paraphrase. OTOH (i) it's not bad (it doesn't seem to say anything that he's unlikely to believe), and (ii) the others I looked at are good. (Tl;dr: It's OK.) -- Hoary ( talk) 01:34, 6 February 2023 (UTC)