User:Antandrus/QA

Some general notes on QA, article quality, observations, and so forth. Most I keep off-wiki, but some will be here for obvious reasons.

Random article test

I'm particularly on lookout for embarrassing crud: vanity pages, vandalism, copyvios, attack pages, crap. Secondarily on lookout for other documentable problems with quality. What would the press think? A random visitor? A representative of a paper encyclopedia? Someone looking for useful information on the topic in question?

First ten (3/11/2007)

• anonymous pipe decently written, highly technical but wikilinks help with technical terms; one cat; referenced.
• List of countries with foreign nationals in Lebanon good list; well-sourced; one cat
• Ilya Miloslavsky, 16th century boyar; tagged (maybe incorrectly) as a stub: I made a few copyedits. 4 cats. Unreferenced.
• Beacon Batch, hill in Somerset. Has pic. Categorised as stub, decently written.
• Merredin, Western Australia. Town in Australia; extensive history section; well-written and referenced. Pictures. Nice job.
• Don Hillsman II, pencil artist and inker for comics. Little info, but good list of his work, with external links. Stub. Unreferenced (the external links may be the refs, not clear)
• Vic Richardson, Australian cricketer. Good sport article. Could use small copyedits. Unreferenced (ext link is probably reference)
• Blue Jean Magazine, defunct girls magazine. Contains several paragraphs with useful information. Needs a brushup to reach encyclopedic tone, and the links need to go in a separate section. Unreferenced.
• February 26, 2003. Aren't these a little redundant with the date and year articles? Made minor copyedit; decently written items. Looks good. Unreferenced.
• Lukla, town in Nepal. Even has a picture. Copyedited to remove second-person writing. Useful information, decently written. Unreferenced, but external link may be the reference.

Comments on first ten: no vandalism found. No seriously substandard articles found. Expansion would be useful on several. No "cruft" encountered (that's an opinion). I haven't found anything I would remotely consider for deletion, or even a cleanup tag, or NPOV tag. However, six of the ten have no references.

Second ten (3/11/07)

• Orthodox Church in America Diocese of the Midwest Unreferenced, short, but useful; probably the external link is the source
• Sparta Township, New Jersey Originally a Rambot article, now a nicely-written article on a place, complete with history section, references, etc.
• Juliet Clutton-Brock Completely unreferenced stub about a living person.
• Green Carnation Unreferenced article about a band. Plenty of images, no sources except the band's own website. All images are "fair use".
• Nathan D. Baxter Unreferenced article about a living person.
• Sharon Duce Stub about a living actress. Unreferenced; only external link is to IMDB.
• Timeline of women's suffrage Completely unreferenced, but good-looking and readable list of events.
• Romanian Naval Forces Fixed a spelling mistake. Nicely formatted, unreferenced except for the external link.
• Starting Out Stub on a failed Australian soap opera. Unreferenced.
• Las Vegas, New Mexico Decently written; contains a lot of good useful information; contains a little weed-patch of trivia about movies filmed there, but it's not as bad as some I've seen and seems generally acceptable. Unreferenced except with external links.

Comments: only one of the ten was referenced with cites. Many are probably sourced from the external links, but that is not made clear anywhere. No vandalism or gross POV found. Two were originally Rambot articles, and have developed nicely. Three are completely unreferenced articles about living people.

Third ten

• Image editing Has a cleanup tag; could use copyediting and expansion; has a lot of good, useful information, with pictures (obviously); however it is unreferenced.
• Ella Mitchell Tiny stub about a probably living actress. Unreferenced.
• Staplehurst Disambig page. Nothing to see here.
• Elisabeth II of Bohemia 14th century Bohemian empress. Could use copyediting; has a good family tree; completely unreferenced.
• Sickle cell trait Decently written medical stub. Unreferenced, no external links.
• Desmond Rebellions Good history article on 16th century Ireland. Lists sources; reads well. Good work.
• SH-60 Seahawk Well-developed, referenced article on a US Navy helicopter. Images, subheads, history and variants and lots of good information. Nice work.
• Chenier, disambig page. Looks pretty good; even mentions the opera.
• At-Tahrim, 66th sura of the Qur'an. Contains the complete text in English (who did the translation is not given) but little else. Commentaries? significance in contemporary Islam? tagged as a stub. Top lines about who it was revealed to should have a reference.
• Just a Gigolo (1931 film) Tiny stub about an old Hollywood film. Has an image, no references or links.

Comments: Only two of the ten are referenced. No vandalism or gross POV found. No obvious spelling or grammar errors found to correct.

Fourth ten

• Man marking Football article, marked as a stub; reads decently. Unreferenced. Could use some copyedits but I'm not sure if mine would be correct.
• National Council on Compensation Insurance Well-written little article on this agency. Unreferenced, but has an external link, which is presumably the source.
• Princess Victoria of Savoy-Carignan Short article on an 18th century aristocrat from Savoy; could probably be greatly expanded. Copyedited. Has a source.
• Trunking Networking article. Seems expandable, but reads well and is well-referenced.
• Lorillard (disambiguation) Disambig page.
• Middle frontal gyrus Anatomy article, should probably be marked as a stub. Obviously expandable by someone with real medical knowledge. Good images. Unreferenced.
• Camp Lake Township, Minnesota Utterly untouched Rambot article. Guess no one there edits Wikipedia; at least it's not vandalised. US Census is the reference.
• Tidal force Good explanatory article, but unreferenced. Images, has external link.
• ACB League Play-Off 2004/2005 Basketball stats and information, more like a list than an article. Unreferenced but for an external link.
• Henri de Régnier French poet. Short but good article, rather unchanged from the noble 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica, which of course is the reference.

Five unreferenced. No vandalism or gross POV. Some minor copyedits made. No embarrassments.

Fifth ten

• Henrietta, Missouri Rambot article, essentially unedited except by Willy on Wheels (fixed). US Census is the reference.
• Vic Crowe, Welsh footballer. Well-written but short, marked (probably incorrectly) as a stub. Unreferenced.
• Sir William Moore, 1st Baronet Unionist member of House of Commons. Dry but factual; contains a reference.
• Partap Sharma Indian writer. Parts good; other parts disastrously written, heavy with fanboy POV. Really outta line. Worst POV of the 50. References but no inline cites.
• Rutland-1-1 Vermont Representative District, 2002-2012 Vermont district. Geographic references. Minimal but acceptable article; start, not stub.
• Point Retreat Light, lighthouse in Alaska. Well-written, marked as stub. Unreferenced.
• American Financial Group Decently written stub; fixed a spelling; no references, but has external link
• Santa Barbara, California Rather familiar photos; layout needs help; needs a history section, but I know this article well; parts need cleanup; unreferenced in large part.
• Evangelical; disambig page
• John Tradescant the elder, English naturalist. I removed a disastrous irrelevant run-on addition in the first sentence (not vandalism). Has references by no inline cites.

Gross POV found; no vandalism; four are unreferenced; no inline cites at all; several copyedits made.

Overall assessment

Only one of the fifty has inline cites. 31 of 50 are completely unreferenced (not counting a couple disambigs--about 35 if so). One article was badly, badly POV and in need of major repair. No outright vandalism found, but some incompetent schoolboy edits. Close to 100% of the articles had useful information. About ten percent needed repair of spelling or punctuation so badly I did it on the spot.

I found no garbage pages. No vanity, no non-notables, no crufty-cruft. (The alleged "Star Trek" or "MMORPG" or "popular music" overemphases of Wikipedia did not show in this random selection of 50.) Ran into only one article I have written partially myself (contained many of my photographs).

I would rate, in my completely subjective way, 14 of the 50 as "pretty good" articles. None would pass as featured quality but a couple have a shot at "good article" on a good day and if the phase of the moon is right.