Talk:K-Meleon/GA2

GA Review

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Reviewer: Colin M (talk · contribs) 18:24, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

I see that this article had a failing review in December of last year, so I'm going to start by focusing on the issues raised in that review.

The MOS:LINKONCE issue is still present to some degree. For example, end user is wikilinked twice in the "Customization" section. I also spotted two WebKit links in the body, and at least three links to Mozilla.

A related issue is MOS:OVERLINK. There are a number of links that seem unlikely to be helpful to the reader, because they refer to terms they will almost certainly be familiar with and which are not especially salient to the content at hand. e.g. wikt:stand-alone, computer file, public library, programmer. I'd consider trying to reduce the link density, especially since there are a lot of technical terms and entities that really do need to be wikilinked.

I don't regard either of the above as major issues though.

The main problem area identified in the previous review was sourcing, particularly citations not verifying the content to which they were attached. I'm going to spot check some arbitrarily selected citations to get a sense of how this is looking now.

(I'll refer to citations by number, using this version. I'm just going to jump to a few random spots in the article and list some that have potential issues.)

• 1. Personal blog. A charming example of early web design, but not sure it's appropriate to verify the claim of "quickly attracted attention to the project".
• 8. Also appears to be self-published blog.
• 23. Not seeing how this verifies the claim. The mention of K-Meleon in that article seems to be by the author of the article, not a quote from Mozilla.
• 50. Verifies the claim, but is a self-published blog source. Probably should not be relying on it unless the author is an established subject-matter expert, which I'm not seeing evidence of.
• 52. This is a forum post written by a developer, so it's okay as a WP:PRIMARY source, but we shouldn't be relying on too many of these in constructing the article. (Also, technically the text of the forum post doesn't precisely verify the claim that this was the first release to use XULRunner, but it's close enough that I'm not inclined to make a big deal of it.)
• 54. Primary source. I'm not seeing how this verifies the claim that this was the final version to support Windows 2000.
• 84. Seems to be another self-published source. Also, my French is rusty, but it seems like the source says that M-Meleon does support Firefox extensions (though it doesn't implement the entirety of the chrome). How does it verify the claim that it was "not compatible with those previously used by other Mozilla applications"?
• 86. Primary source. Also doesn't exactly verify the claim, though I can see how it's in the right neighbourhood.

This is just a sampling and is far from exhaustive. My main concern at this point is that the article relies on a lot of primary sources (which should be used sparingly) and self-published blog sources (which should be used not at all). I also have some concerns about some citations not supporting the claims they're attached to. This article is really impressively detailed, but you might have to think about cutting it down if there are significant chunks of information that can't be verified in reliable secondary sources.

I'm inclined to conclude the review at this point since it seems like it would take a lot of work to get this up to GA level, but I want to give you a chance to respond in case you disagree. Colin M (talk) 18:24, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for looking through the article, fixing errors, and providing feedback. Go ahead and conclude. I'll respond to your comments below, but I'm not disputing.

For the blogs that you mentioned, I'm adding alternative sources. For developer blogs, I'll add a comment in the ref tags. Source 84 is a KM developer and a few other blog sources are KM developer blogs. Your French is fine; perhaps it's not clear what it would mean to support the format without implementing the chrome? Each version of each Mozilla application uses its own chrome or user interface. The XUL-based extensions were mainly written to target specific versions of specific applications. I've added the release announcement referenced in source 23 as its own reference.

This article is really impressively detailed, but you might have to think about cutting it down if there are significant chunks of information that can't be verified in reliable secondary sources. This is why I say conclude. Relying solely on secondary sources yields much information about K-Meleon's beginning and it's now somewhat bizarre support for legacy platforms, but between those two masses is a sea dotted with islands of trivia some larger, some smaller. I would much rather provide the reader a coherent article and than an incoherent, but technically proper, article.

Thanks again, Rjjiii (talk) 04:17, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

I understand your ambivalence. I sometimes miss the early days of Wikipedia when there was a more relaxed attitude toward WP:OR and primary sources, and I certainly can't blame you for wanting to preserve as complete a history of the topic as possible. Colin M (talk) 17:16, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

A few last comments:

I think that leaving the review open briefly after a QF decision is a good way to handle reviews. It feels respectful, and I appreciate it.

Also, it goes past completeness or nostalgia. I do appreciate your analysis and don't want you to feel that I'm disregarding it. I've already acted on it in the past few edits to improve the article.

My position is that I'm fine with following Wikipedia's policies if they serve the reader or even if they have minimal impact. I'm not willing to (intentionally) write something false, misleading, or confusing. In this article, for example, the in-depth coverage on early betas (combined with the tendency of later articles to draw from that early coverage) means that secondary sources generally say that K-Meleon does not support extensions and that Thibault is the lead developer. In reality, K-Meleon supported multiple extension formats (none of which took off like those of Firefox), and it has had a string of lead developers including Doozan, Erikson, and Boissonnade.

Thanks again and take care, Rjjiii (talk) 05:26, 17 March 2023 (UTC)