Talk:Hungerford massacre/GA1

GA Review

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch

Reviewer: PARAKANYAA (talk · contribs) 00:26, 27 December 2023 (UTC)

Hi! I'll review this.

Rate	Attribute	Review Comment
1. Well-written:
	1a. the prose is clear, concise, and understandable to an appropriately broad audience; spelling and grammar are correct.	Generally quite good, but some tweaks/criticisms (I will come back to this and add more later) In lead: "shooting himself" - say either "killing himself" or "shooting and killing himself", the way this is phrased it's ambiguous if he died. second sentence in second paragraph of lead is too long and a bit of a run on sentence, maybe split into two Update: "despite there having been no opportunity to investigate such causes." this is written confusingly. rephrase? "and he was also a member of the Wiltshire Shooting Centre" confusing in relation to previous sentence, was he approved to use the guns there? "until the police informed him of the welfare of his mother" - this might just be me being american but the usage of "welfare" here is odd. is he asking if she's okay? "his gun had either jammed" - weird usage of had here, remove?
	1b. it complies with the Manual of Style guidelines for lead sections, layout, words to watch, fiction, and list incorporation.	Everything looks good here, except per words to watch I don't think the word "speciously" is needed in the health and motive sectiuon. Seems like editorializing and the rest of the sentence makes it clear the connection is dubious
2. Verifiable with no original research:
	2a. it contains a list of all references (sources of information), presented in accordance with the layout style guideline.	No issues here, pass.
	2b. reliable sources are cited inline. All content that could reasonably be challenged, except for plot summaries and that which summarizes cited content elsewhere in the article, must be cited no later than the end of the paragraph (or line if the content is not in prose).	I'll check the specific citations later, but from a quick overview, it seems to rely a lot on the report. While primary sources are allowed, I think this article would benefit from a wider variety of used sources. While a lot of the specific details would obviously only be in the report, I believe some of these facts could be backed up by other (secondary) sources. The formatting on a lot of the citations is not very informative (for example, using "www.telegraph.co.uk" instead of "The Telegraph", or the unformatted Google News Archive citation (you can get page, heading, issue etc from google news archives usually) but that's just a bit annoying and not a fail criterion for GAs. I am not sure the Trakt.tv source is reliable. UPDATE: Citations 25 and 31 are cited to tabloids of questionable reliability, however they are not marked unreliable and are "less bad" than most tabloids. Replace them if you can I suppose but I won't fail over it. The "Crime Investigation UK" source concerns me, I can't really get a read on its reliability. 19, 21 and 23 are press photos - are those usable as sources? Are there any non-report sources for the content of the report? Any secondary sources reflecting on it? That would be good.
	2c. it contains no original research.	Every spot check I performed from online sources was good and accurate to the text. Can't access the book sources but I will assume good faith. Will do more checks after source problems are addressed
	2d. it contains no copyright violations or plagiarism.	Only things earwig showed were attributed quotes which don't seem to be unnecessarily long, looks good.
3. Broad in its coverage:
	3a. it addresses the main aspects of the topic.	Seems fine
	3b. it stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style).	No issues here.
	4. Neutral: it represents viewpoints fairly and without editorial bias, giving due weight to each.	No big issues here.
	5. Stable: it does not change significantly from day to day because of an ongoing edit war or content dispute.	No edit wars, no large content changes, seems good here.
6. Illustrated, if possible, by media such as images, video, or audio:
	6a. media are tagged with their copyright statuses, and valid non-free use rationales are provided for non-free content.	All images either have valid fair use rationales or are commons. Pass.
	6b. media are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions.	All are relevant and have relevant captions. The only issue/criticism I have is, should the image of Ryan be moved down to the perpetrator section? I suppose since it's a spree shooting there's not one image but that is usually a bit non standard for these kinds of article. I'm not sure if those Kartographer type maps can be moved into the infobox but if it can maybe it should? Not a big issue though.
	7. Overall assessment.

Thanks, PARAKANYAA. Will be chipping away at your recommendations (particularly the reliance on the report source) when I can! Just wanted to leave a note here to show I wasn't neglecting this! MIDI (talk) 11:41, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, no rush. I'll get back to the prose and "main aspect" check soon. PARAKANYAA (talk) 19:34, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Source review:

News sources

• 1, 9, 28, 33, 40, 48, The Guardian - good
• 2, 41, 43, BBC News - good
• 5, 11, 51 The Daily Telegraph - good
• 7, Gazette and Herald - I am unfamiliar with the british local press but this seems like a bog standard local newspaper. probably fine
• 12, The Herald (Glasgow) - good
• 18, BerkshireLive, local paper, seems fine
• 19, UPI - good
• 21, African Concord, seems to be a very very obscure African newspaper. Okay I think
• 26, Daily Mirror. Seems to be no consensus (described as the "least bad" of the british tabloids, not a ringing endorsement). It's not too big of a deal here I think, as it's only citing a family member of his about where his ashes are. Maybe should be replaced if you can find something else saying this.
• 29, Police Professional, seems ok
• 32, Evening Standard, no consensus on reliability, but said to be more reliable than most tabloids and newspapers like that, so replace if you can but if not too big of a deal
• 39, Associated Press - good

Books

• 3, looks good
• 14, looks good
• 15, Cawthorne, seems fine
• 17, looks good
• 25, looks good
• 37, looks good
• 42, looks fine but I remember hearing something weird about this publisher before so I should probably check - checked, looks good
• 45, looks good
• 46, this is an SF publisher? check later - looks good
• 47, looks good
• 49, looks good

Other

• 4, - the official report - good, mostly, reliable but primary, can be used just maybe a bit less as I said before
• 6, is this a documentary or a reenactment/dramatization?
• 8, this one confuses me. is this some guy's random website? does he have relevant credentials? if not i think this has to be replaced. Does he have credentials?
• 10, 12, Crime Library. I've used this site before but I have no idea if this site is considered reliable by Wikipedia, but I've never had any issues with it. I'll check later
• 16, Crime + Investigation UK, unsure, - update: seems okay?
• 20, 22, 24, this is just a press photo
• 17, the act itself, which is fine, good to have secondary source that backs it up though
• 34, Recherches Sociologiques et Anthropologiques, seems good
• 36, looks good
• 38, looks good
• 44, unsure of the reliability of stuff like this but probably good, will check later - seems fine
• 50, this is a zine, unsure of how this works out, will check later - seems fine

I'll finish this later.

Besides the source review one thing I'm curious about with the coverage is the reactions: did the royals really not say anything? I know they did with the Cumbria shootings, but I'd be quite surprised if they didn't say anything about this one, which seemed to have a more dramatic effect on society. Generally I feel the reactions section could probably be expanded. PARAKANYAA (talk) 11:35, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

Right now I think the biggest thing is swapping out ref #8 (Josephs) – the article relies on it for a few statements and I agree its authority is questionable. To answer your question, #6 is a documentary. MIDI (talk) 09:36, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

@MIDI (sorry for the late response) yes that looks good. If #6 is a documentary that's alright then. The report being cited a lot isn't that big of an issue now that I think about it, since it would be the most accurate on what events happened when. I will continue with the prose review and check the sources I wasn't sure about. PARAKANYAA (talk) 20:50, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

@PARAKANYAA, @MIDI, what's the status? -- asilvering (talk) 02:13, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

On this now. MIDI (talk) 09:36, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

@MIDI I have some minor prose suggestions and questions about the sourcing (see table above) PARAKANYAA (talk) 03:57, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

@PARAKANYAA: I should have some time today (or more likely tomorrow) to throw at 1a and 2b, which look like the (main) sticking points at the moment. MIDI (talk) 10:00, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

@MIDI It's been a while and my worries over the sourcing remain unaddressed. I think I may have to fail this. Apologies :( PARAKANYAA (talk) 08:17, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.