I am bringing this up for community reassessment since I believe the recent individual reassessment by User:Adam Cuerden was largely in error, seen at Talk:Fullmetal Alchemist/GA2. Specifically, his arguments eventually boiled down to how the article was structured instead of applying the GA criteria to the content in the article itself. Furthermore, his suggestions for restructuring would not be without controversy, as has been the subject of much debate recently with article families such as Ghost in the Shell and Neon Genesis Evangelion, but that's beside the point. Adam appeared to be intentionally finding fault with the article so that he could eventually delist it, which goes against the general spirit of GAR which is meant to help editors improve an article back to GA-level, so this is also one of my arguments for a flawed review.
I do not believe the article warranted a delisting, because in its current form, it largely exhibits qualities and structure that have been apart of WP:ANIME for many years now, something which had been decided by consensus and then written into WP:MOS-AM. Specifically, the project has featured articles such as School Rumble and Tokyo Mew Mew which share the same general structure of Fullmetal Alchemist, so I do not believe Adam's issues with how the article is structured should be taken into account when applying the GA criteria. Not that the article didn't have some other, relatively minor issues in comparison, but those could have been fixed if Adam gave editors the time needed instead of a speedy delisting. Adam did bring up some concerns about how the article needs a general copyedit, and there was also a little bit having to do with sourcing (there is at least one {{ cn}} template in the article, and some other concerns with a few sources), but his assessment in regards to criterion 3 is largely in opposition to how WP:ANIME has treated articles in the past, like in the two featured articles I linked above.
So does the article have some problems? Sure, it probably does, but they are relatively minor issues that could easily have been worked on and therefore had its GA status retained instead of having a near-pointless delisting almost entirely based on the structure of the article. If there was going to be a discussion about the structure of the article and how to organize its information, then GAR is clearly not the place to do so.-- 十 八 21:00, 5 September 2013 (UTC)
Here is a copy-paste from that assessment as to why I failed it. Given it's broken down by the GA criteria, I don't think that's a fair assessment at all. Adam Cuerden ( talk) 21:13, 5 September 2013 (UTC)
“ | The more I look into this, the worse it looks. Here's a summary of the issues:
The organization of this article is a mess. WP:LEAD is ignored completely; the lead does not reflect the article's content in the least; noone would ever expect that this was the only article on Wikipedia where the first anime's reception was covered, for example (And, whilst GA may not look at the overall structure of groups of articles, suffice to say: the article tree around Fullmetal Alchemist is appalling; instead of actually attempting to discuss any spinoff, it's just bad, half-hearted lists of incomplete plot summaries.) Trying to follow any thread in this article is made very difficult due to poor structure. For example, discussion of the animé takes place over four different sections ("Differences in the first anime adaptation", "Production", "Anime series", "Anime reception", and, particularly in "Anime reception", does a terrible job specifying which animé is being discussed. If the article is meant to be on the manga, all but a paragraph or two on the animé should be spun off to Fullmetal Alchemist (anime); and that article should have a {{ for}} template at the top directing people to the article on the second anime. It is insane to try to cover the anime in full in the article on the manga. Alternatively, if an overview article is preferred, both the manga and anime should be spun off, and this article trimmed down into a concise overview. As it is, the structure is terrible, it's confusing, and nowhere near GA level. More simply, it's just not very well-written. Impenetratble sentences like "As the plot continued, however, she felt some characters were maturing and decided to change some scenes, resulting in some sketches of the faces of the characters being improvised." or weird sentence structures such as "as commented by Viz to avoid references to Christianity." abound. A complete copyedit is necessary.
It has a citation needed tag; there seems to be no rush to fix this. I'm also not entirely convinced every sentence in the lead appears later, but it's hard to be sure on that. Going more in-depth, several references are to the various branches of Amazon.com, and one is to this page on About.com, which is, at the very least, a dubious source. Finally, the plot summary section seems dubious from the view of original research, since it makes statements about the anime following the manga up to a certain point, then diverging, which seems like it should need a citation.
If this is meant to be an article on the manga, this is not a very good article on the manga. One would expect to find at least a bit of critical analysis in a good article on the manga, a bit of discussion of themes, and so on. Perhaps it would seem a bit more in depth if it didn't have all the other material in. If this is meant to be an overview article, it fails to present itself as such. The lead fails to set up the structure of the article, so, while main points may be there, they aren't particularly accessible by users.
WP:SS is in the GA criteria, so let's review against. It fails to use appropriate spinoff articles, instead somehow making horribly inappropriate subarticles: A list of episodes of the anime is not a substitute for an article on the anime when it means you have to leave lengthy reception section on the anime, amongst others, standing completely inappropriately in the manga article. A sane spinoff would let you move most of the anime discussion to the article on the anime, giving a good, tight overview article on the manga. This article fails far too comprehensively to be fixed. Adam Cuerden ( talk) 15:22, 5 September 2013 (UTC) |
” |
Okay, let's try this a different way, since this seems to keep coming back to the same points, when the other ones not being discussed are surely enough to fail GA over. Here is a list of all, or at least most, of the major points I think this article fails, feel free to comment after each point, in fact, I would prefer you did, since I cannot see how this does not fail if even a few of these points remain.
Adam Cuerden (
talk)
00:36, 6 September 2013 (UTC)
This seems to be a "simple argument" over whether a "failure" result at a GAN/GAR was justified. In such cases, there are two choices one is to open a community reasssessment (which was done here); the other is to fix the problems and renominate at WP:GAN.
Adam Cuerden is right the article this morning has {{ citation needed}} flags, but looking at the article's history they were added in 5th September 2013 and they seem to have been added by Adam Cuerden. I've had a quick look at the lead and for a start I believe that it lacks neutrality, it reads more like a "sales pitch", for instance: ".... has enjoyed exceptional sales of 50 million volumes sold as of 2010" (its now 2013 so that is somewhat out of date); and "Reviewers from several media conglomerations had positive comments on the series and it remains an all-time favourite amongst Western and Japanese readers." (all-time favourite is hyperbole, the word "popular" could be used its more neutral). The article as it reads today is non-compliant, perhaps only marginally, but I doubt there is any case for overturning the last GAN Talk:Fullmetal Alchemist/GA2 as being flawed (the article appears to be non-compliant).
It is going to take some time to work out whether the last review was flawed, but I suspect that this community reassessment may well result in no action being taken, it's probably unlikely to result in a relisting at GA-level. At best, its going to result in a list of more "problems" that need to be addressed. There have been cases were a reviewer has added {{ citation needed}} during the review and then used the present of these flags as a reason for failing the article. All that happened in those cases, was that the reviewer got criticised. The articles had to be "fixed" and renominated at GAN.
There are arguments above over whether the lead is compliant with WP:Lead and/or a WikiProject Lead guidance document. WikiProject guidelinks don't over-ride Good Article requirements, but they can be taken into account in deciding whether the scope of the article is "right". So, trying to argue that the lead is compliant with a WikiProject Lead guidance document is irrelevant.
So, think about what is the main aim of this reassessment, is it "reviewer bashing" or gaining GA-status, perhaps its a bit of both? As, I stated above, I doubt that this community reassessment will result in a "listing" verdict, but it is likely to result in suggestions of how that article can be improved so that its more likely to get through GAN at its next nomination. Pyrotec ( talk) 09:54, 6 September 2013 (UTC)
I disagree with some of the comments here, while the adjectives used are similar to those used to sell a product, the works are indeed very prominent and iconic, dropping the adjectives wouldn't hurt at all though. As someone who knows the original material the problem is more basic for the GA criteria. The plot of the manga and not of the anime, movies or novels. The section for the first anime is fine, but the wording is weak and it is lacking in some major aspects that could be handled better. The last line "The story concludes in the film adaption Conqueror of Shamballa." does nothing for me as a reader. Production is lacking and missing Brotherhood and is unbalanced with manga production. The media section is what I expect for a topic overview of the page, while I'd prefer less release info in place of a better summary it is not too pressing if a detailed page exists. As it stands there is no such page. Some of the music issues have chronology issues that make it confusing, i.e. "The music for Fullmetal Alchemist was composed and arranged by Michiru Oshima, who won the 5th Tokyo Anime Award in the category "Best Music" for Fullmetal Alchemist the Movie: Conqueror of Shamballa." This leads you to believe the movie was first and the music for the anime was made after. Zero plot or story summaries for the video games, which have their own pages, an oversight here because it only consists of five titles. Reception is the problem, it divides the manga and the anime and novels, but it should give the full picture of the reception of the whole work including the general response to the games. The way it is broken up would be perfect for individual pages and they give the feeling of being tacked on and providing no feeling of the "whole". Also missing would be the themes found within the work and the cultural impact. While not important for every individual work, I'd expect this as a topic overview at the minimum. Yes, some of it is in the production section, but it needs to be dedicated in my eyes. Cultural impact is a big one, with Super Comic City having 1,100 doujin circles doing Full Metal Alchemist. Avoiding such material violates the broad criteria. Even in terms of pure content, the article is woefully inadequete. ChrisGualtieri ( talk) 17:13, 6 September 2013 (UTC)
This needs to be closed as failing or promoting to GA still. It seems to have really boiled down to structure preference. DragonZero ( Talk · Contribs) 05:38, 26 September 2013 (UTC)
I'm now closing the community reassessment with a "not listed" outcome. There was no overwhelming evidence produced here that the original review was "flawed", so the status quo is to be maintained. The last review, WP:GAN, produced a "not listed" outcome and I'm keeping the current status of "not listed". I would suggest that the way forward is to improve the article and renominate it at WP:GAN, preferably in view of the outcome this GAR after undergoing a WP:PR first. I wish the article well. Pyrotec ( talk) 18:36, 1 October 2013 (UTC)
I am bringing this up for community reassessment since I believe the recent individual reassessment by User:Adam Cuerden was largely in error, seen at Talk:Fullmetal Alchemist/GA2. Specifically, his arguments eventually boiled down to how the article was structured instead of applying the GA criteria to the content in the article itself. Furthermore, his suggestions for restructuring would not be without controversy, as has been the subject of much debate recently with article families such as Ghost in the Shell and Neon Genesis Evangelion, but that's beside the point. Adam appeared to be intentionally finding fault with the article so that he could eventually delist it, which goes against the general spirit of GAR which is meant to help editors improve an article back to GA-level, so this is also one of my arguments for a flawed review.
I do not believe the article warranted a delisting, because in its current form, it largely exhibits qualities and structure that have been apart of WP:ANIME for many years now, something which had been decided by consensus and then written into WP:MOS-AM. Specifically, the project has featured articles such as School Rumble and Tokyo Mew Mew which share the same general structure of Fullmetal Alchemist, so I do not believe Adam's issues with how the article is structured should be taken into account when applying the GA criteria. Not that the article didn't have some other, relatively minor issues in comparison, but those could have been fixed if Adam gave editors the time needed instead of a speedy delisting. Adam did bring up some concerns about how the article needs a general copyedit, and there was also a little bit having to do with sourcing (there is at least one {{ cn}} template in the article, and some other concerns with a few sources), but his assessment in regards to criterion 3 is largely in opposition to how WP:ANIME has treated articles in the past, like in the two featured articles I linked above.
So does the article have some problems? Sure, it probably does, but they are relatively minor issues that could easily have been worked on and therefore had its GA status retained instead of having a near-pointless delisting almost entirely based on the structure of the article. If there was going to be a discussion about the structure of the article and how to organize its information, then GAR is clearly not the place to do so.-- 十 八 21:00, 5 September 2013 (UTC)
Here is a copy-paste from that assessment as to why I failed it. Given it's broken down by the GA criteria, I don't think that's a fair assessment at all. Adam Cuerden ( talk) 21:13, 5 September 2013 (UTC)
“ | The more I look into this, the worse it looks. Here's a summary of the issues:
The organization of this article is a mess. WP:LEAD is ignored completely; the lead does not reflect the article's content in the least; noone would ever expect that this was the only article on Wikipedia where the first anime's reception was covered, for example (And, whilst GA may not look at the overall structure of groups of articles, suffice to say: the article tree around Fullmetal Alchemist is appalling; instead of actually attempting to discuss any spinoff, it's just bad, half-hearted lists of incomplete plot summaries.) Trying to follow any thread in this article is made very difficult due to poor structure. For example, discussion of the animé takes place over four different sections ("Differences in the first anime adaptation", "Production", "Anime series", "Anime reception", and, particularly in "Anime reception", does a terrible job specifying which animé is being discussed. If the article is meant to be on the manga, all but a paragraph or two on the animé should be spun off to Fullmetal Alchemist (anime); and that article should have a {{ for}} template at the top directing people to the article on the second anime. It is insane to try to cover the anime in full in the article on the manga. Alternatively, if an overview article is preferred, both the manga and anime should be spun off, and this article trimmed down into a concise overview. As it is, the structure is terrible, it's confusing, and nowhere near GA level. More simply, it's just not very well-written. Impenetratble sentences like "As the plot continued, however, she felt some characters were maturing and decided to change some scenes, resulting in some sketches of the faces of the characters being improvised." or weird sentence structures such as "as commented by Viz to avoid references to Christianity." abound. A complete copyedit is necessary.
It has a citation needed tag; there seems to be no rush to fix this. I'm also not entirely convinced every sentence in the lead appears later, but it's hard to be sure on that. Going more in-depth, several references are to the various branches of Amazon.com, and one is to this page on About.com, which is, at the very least, a dubious source. Finally, the plot summary section seems dubious from the view of original research, since it makes statements about the anime following the manga up to a certain point, then diverging, which seems like it should need a citation.
If this is meant to be an article on the manga, this is not a very good article on the manga. One would expect to find at least a bit of critical analysis in a good article on the manga, a bit of discussion of themes, and so on. Perhaps it would seem a bit more in depth if it didn't have all the other material in. If this is meant to be an overview article, it fails to present itself as such. The lead fails to set up the structure of the article, so, while main points may be there, they aren't particularly accessible by users.
WP:SS is in the GA criteria, so let's review against. It fails to use appropriate spinoff articles, instead somehow making horribly inappropriate subarticles: A list of episodes of the anime is not a substitute for an article on the anime when it means you have to leave lengthy reception section on the anime, amongst others, standing completely inappropriately in the manga article. A sane spinoff would let you move most of the anime discussion to the article on the anime, giving a good, tight overview article on the manga. This article fails far too comprehensively to be fixed. Adam Cuerden ( talk) 15:22, 5 September 2013 (UTC) |
” |
Okay, let's try this a different way, since this seems to keep coming back to the same points, when the other ones not being discussed are surely enough to fail GA over. Here is a list of all, or at least most, of the major points I think this article fails, feel free to comment after each point, in fact, I would prefer you did, since I cannot see how this does not fail if even a few of these points remain.
Adam Cuerden (
talk)
00:36, 6 September 2013 (UTC)
This seems to be a "simple argument" over whether a "failure" result at a GAN/GAR was justified. In such cases, there are two choices one is to open a community reasssessment (which was done here); the other is to fix the problems and renominate at WP:GAN.
Adam Cuerden is right the article this morning has {{ citation needed}} flags, but looking at the article's history they were added in 5th September 2013 and they seem to have been added by Adam Cuerden. I've had a quick look at the lead and for a start I believe that it lacks neutrality, it reads more like a "sales pitch", for instance: ".... has enjoyed exceptional sales of 50 million volumes sold as of 2010" (its now 2013 so that is somewhat out of date); and "Reviewers from several media conglomerations had positive comments on the series and it remains an all-time favourite amongst Western and Japanese readers." (all-time favourite is hyperbole, the word "popular" could be used its more neutral). The article as it reads today is non-compliant, perhaps only marginally, but I doubt there is any case for overturning the last GAN Talk:Fullmetal Alchemist/GA2 as being flawed (the article appears to be non-compliant).
It is going to take some time to work out whether the last review was flawed, but I suspect that this community reassessment may well result in no action being taken, it's probably unlikely to result in a relisting at GA-level. At best, its going to result in a list of more "problems" that need to be addressed. There have been cases were a reviewer has added {{ citation needed}} during the review and then used the present of these flags as a reason for failing the article. All that happened in those cases, was that the reviewer got criticised. The articles had to be "fixed" and renominated at GAN.
There are arguments above over whether the lead is compliant with WP:Lead and/or a WikiProject Lead guidance document. WikiProject guidelinks don't over-ride Good Article requirements, but they can be taken into account in deciding whether the scope of the article is "right". So, trying to argue that the lead is compliant with a WikiProject Lead guidance document is irrelevant.
So, think about what is the main aim of this reassessment, is it "reviewer bashing" or gaining GA-status, perhaps its a bit of both? As, I stated above, I doubt that this community reassessment will result in a "listing" verdict, but it is likely to result in suggestions of how that article can be improved so that its more likely to get through GAN at its next nomination. Pyrotec ( talk) 09:54, 6 September 2013 (UTC)
I disagree with some of the comments here, while the adjectives used are similar to those used to sell a product, the works are indeed very prominent and iconic, dropping the adjectives wouldn't hurt at all though. As someone who knows the original material the problem is more basic for the GA criteria. The plot of the manga and not of the anime, movies or novels. The section for the first anime is fine, but the wording is weak and it is lacking in some major aspects that could be handled better. The last line "The story concludes in the film adaption Conqueror of Shamballa." does nothing for me as a reader. Production is lacking and missing Brotherhood and is unbalanced with manga production. The media section is what I expect for a topic overview of the page, while I'd prefer less release info in place of a better summary it is not too pressing if a detailed page exists. As it stands there is no such page. Some of the music issues have chronology issues that make it confusing, i.e. "The music for Fullmetal Alchemist was composed and arranged by Michiru Oshima, who won the 5th Tokyo Anime Award in the category "Best Music" for Fullmetal Alchemist the Movie: Conqueror of Shamballa." This leads you to believe the movie was first and the music for the anime was made after. Zero plot or story summaries for the video games, which have their own pages, an oversight here because it only consists of five titles. Reception is the problem, it divides the manga and the anime and novels, but it should give the full picture of the reception of the whole work including the general response to the games. The way it is broken up would be perfect for individual pages and they give the feeling of being tacked on and providing no feeling of the "whole". Also missing would be the themes found within the work and the cultural impact. While not important for every individual work, I'd expect this as a topic overview at the minimum. Yes, some of it is in the production section, but it needs to be dedicated in my eyes. Cultural impact is a big one, with Super Comic City having 1,100 doujin circles doing Full Metal Alchemist. Avoiding such material violates the broad criteria. Even in terms of pure content, the article is woefully inadequete. ChrisGualtieri ( talk) 17:13, 6 September 2013 (UTC)
This needs to be closed as failing or promoting to GA still. It seems to have really boiled down to structure preference. DragonZero ( Talk · Contribs) 05:38, 26 September 2013 (UTC)
I'm now closing the community reassessment with a "not listed" outcome. There was no overwhelming evidence produced here that the original review was "flawed", so the status quo is to be maintained. The last review, WP:GAN, produced a "not listed" outcome and I'm keeping the current status of "not listed". I would suggest that the way forward is to improve the article and renominate it at WP:GAN, preferably in view of the outcome this GAR after undergoing a WP:PR first. I wish the article well. Pyrotec ( talk) 18:36, 1 October 2013 (UTC)