Talk:Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Jezhotwells (talk) 10:11, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

I shall be reviewing this article against the Good Article criteria, following its nomination for Good Article status.

Checking against GA criteria

1. It is reasonably well written.

   a (prose):

   • The article at present, although reasonably well written, consists of a number of disjointed short paragraphs, some only one sentence long. Can you do anything to improve the flow? A little more explanatio of terms when introduced would not go amiss, either.
   • Lead: Can we do something about the single sentence at the end? This information is not in the main body of the article. The lead should summarise the whole article. Also the terms signatories and parties could do with explanation in this context, as they obviously have specialist meanings here. What is the difference between them?
   • Not sure why Investigations and Decisions are separate sections. Surely they could be combined?
   • The Optional Protocol required ten ratifications to come into force. What this actually should say is something like The Optional Protocol required ratifications from ten signatories before it came into force. You do need to sepll things out a little more. I should have to look up the text every time. This applies throughout the article, not just this one instance.

   b (MoS):

   • Complies sufficiently, although note comments about the lead above

2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.

   a (references):

   • The referencing style is confusing. for instance it took me a momment to realise that OP-CEDAW referred to "Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women". Ok, you need to put the link to the Protocol in a works cited section, rather than ELs and then cite it. The same with "Report on Mexico produced by the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women under article 8 of the Optional Protocol to the Convention, and reply from the Government of Mexico". You don't need to put citations in the lead as everything there should be covered at the substantive mention in the body of the article.
   • All the referncing is to primary sources. You need to introduce facts and opinion from oputside the UN, backed by reliable third party sources.

   b (citations to reliable sources):

   • As noted above primary sources only.

   c (OR):

3. It is broad in its scope.

   a (major aspects):

   • As noted above, needs comment from outside the UN, opinions from politicians, why didn't the USA join, etc., assessment of the effect of the protocol on national law, legal opinions, comments from Human Rights groups, etc, etc. At the moment because it is all sourced from UN sources there is no real context.

   b (focused):

4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.

   Fair representation without bias:

   • Hard to tell until RS from outside of the UN is introduced.

5. It is stable.

   No edit wars etc.:

6. It is illustrated by images, where possible and appropriate.

   a (images are tagged and non-free images have fair use rationales):

   b (appropriate use with suitable captions):

7. Overall:

   Pass/Fail:

   • OK, on hold for seven days for above issues to be addressed. Please leave comments here. Jezhotwells (talk) 11:02, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

   Fail as per note below response section. Jezhotwells (talk) 14:58, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Response

1.a.

• Lead The final sentence in the lead, with information on the numbers of signatories and parties, is standard in all articles on UN human rights treaties. It is placed in the lead because it belongs there - it is essential summary information. It is not duplicated elsewhere in the article because of a desire to avoid long and boring lists of who is and is not a member, or short sections stating membership (that's what the map is for, though some articles are using infoboxes, and this one probably needs one).
• Terminology this is an article on a specific treaty, not an article on the basics of international law. Definitions of "signatory", "party" and "ratification" belong in the latter, not here. I have added wikilinks to the relevant articles.
• Investigations and Decisions as noted in the lead and the summary, the OP includes both complaint and inquiry mechanisms. "Decisions" refers to the former, "Investigations" to the latter. I have changed the title of the "decisions" section and reworded the start of the "investigations" section to clarify this.
• ratifications Ratification implies signature, therfore your suggested phrasing is redundant. However, I'll tweak it to clarify that it needed ten instruments of ratification or accession.

2.a

• OP-CEDAW - I've used the abbreviation because "Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women" on every reference is a bit of a mouthful. The abbreviated form is noted at its first usage, right at the top of the article, as required by moS.
• I've moved the treaty text to the references section.
• Report on Mexico is cited at the top of the references; generally it is acceptable to use an abbreviated form for a previously cited work. however, I've recited it with the URL at its second point of use, to save people from having to look up two inches.
• Cites in the lead - cite early, cite often! Better to overdo it than underdo it.

3.a

• this is the most troublesome part. Most of the article is summarising the OP and its decisions. It is entirely appropriate to use the primary sources for this. If I want to know what something says, I read it, not some stuff produced by a third party.
• I have relied upon UN sources for the non-summary sections because that is what is available. This is an enforcement mechanism, not a major treaty. There is an extensive secondary literature on CEDAW itself, but not very much on the Optional Protocol (in part because it is relatively new, and in part because it has not yet generated an extensive jurisprudence like OP-ICCPR). Those articles which have greeted it have tended to skip over the history and origins and focus on the mechanics - which as noted above I prefer to rely on primary sources for. Comments from human rights groups have been limited to "yay, its in force". The OP has no real effects on national law, and there have not yet been assessments of its effectiveness in enforcing CEDAW.
• Why didn't the USA join? - The US can't join OP-CEDAW because it hasn't signed up for the primary treaty; its reasons for doing so belong on the CEDAW page, not this one. I could put in a whole section with that one sentence, but it would be blatant and pointless US-centrism.

--IdiotSavant (talk) 14:20, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

1. • It seems that you do not understand the concept of what a good article is about. As you have basically rejected all recommendations for improvement, and in fact by wikilinking signatories to signature and parties to ratification, rather than explaining the difference between those in the context here as requested, and further confused the referencing, and rejected any nother attempts at making the article readable and accessible, I am going to fail this now. You may take this to WP:GAR if you disagree. Jezhotwells (talk) 14:57, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

I will certainly be doing that. It seems your major problem is that you are ignorant of a specialist subject and want it spotted with baby definitions. Articles should be accessible, but this is as ludicrous as definining "atom" or "equilibrium" in an article about a specific chemical process - its what wikilinks are for (and the ones I've linked to are, sadly, the appropriate ones; if you have a problem with them, feel free to improve those pages - but I'm not going to be held responsible for poor content elsewhere in Wikipedia that I have had no hand in editing).

WRT referencing, again, it is appropriate to use primary sources when explaining the basic meaning of a document. If an article calls for a basic summary of a legal case or the plot of 1984, it is approriate to do it by direct reference to the text, not by Cliff's Notes. Secondary sources are for sections on interpretation and assessment. If you would like such a section in this article, feel free to say so - but the problem is that as a procedural adjunct to CEDAW, there is not much to interpret, and as a relatively new and underused treaty, there are only a handful of decisions to assess. While it is common to have a "controversy" section on UN human rights treaties, disagreement is centered on the primary treaty - and by definition, OP-CEDAW is only joined by states which agree strongly with CEDAW and wish to be bound by it. Again, I could add a section for this, but it would be very short, and look very odd, and likely attract questions from the next reviewer about why it is there at all.

Finally, I can't help but feel that this is more about your affront at your power being challenged. You're supposed to work with me to resolve difficulties. I've explained why I think in many cases your criticisms are unjustified due to the scope of the article, while in other cases are based on a misunderstanding of its contents. Can the former be resolved through a scope-warning at the top (e.g. a link to CEDAW as the primary article)? Can the latter be resolved through textual changes? Do you want a "commonly known as OP-CEDAW" to make it even more obvious what the abbreviated name is? Or would you prefer every treaty and report reference used the full title (note that reviewers of other similar articles have gone for abbreviations)? A bigger summary? Is the repeated mention that the treaty includes both a complaint and an inquiry mechanism not enough to allow the average reader to understand that these are two different things? I've received such guidance on other articles. So please, tell me what you want to see. --IdiotSavant (talk) 23:30, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Here are some good 3rd party reliable sources for you to be going on with, found in 30 seconds of googling: UK government commissioned reaction to this protocol, Australian reaction for and against, Canadian Interpretation, Sri Lankan Interpretation, Japan Federation of Bar Associations position on the optional protocol. There are many more such sources to be found. It isn't easy to make a good article some hard work needs to be done. Jezhotwells (talk) 00:50, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

useful, completely out-of-date, Article 13 document, Article 13 document, little value. An Article 13 document is a pamphlet explaining rights under the OP to citizens of the relevant country; its not an "interpretation", it is PR. However the UK document did highlight the UN bibliography on the subject, which pointed to some useful stuff by Amnesty. It also had this to say:

There is a rather surprising lack of secondary literature on the workings of the Optional Protocol, and all of this in any event appears to concentrate primarily upon the circumstances giving rise to the treaty. There appears to have been no published evaluation of the Optional Protocol since its entry into force.

That's from a fairly recent assessment (2008), and it matches the results of my journal trawling.

There is some stuff I can go on here, primarily around fleshing out this history a bit. Its clear that I also need to mention Article 13 in the summary, which would allow the Canadian document to be cited as an example. But there is a real problem here, in that the sorts of sources you seem to want largely don't exist. --IdiotSavant (talk) 03:30, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Right, I've removed cites from the lead as per your request, added an infobox with information on the number of parties (though this has played havoc with the formatting, rewritten the genesis section to use non-UN references, rewritten the summary section to mirror the article-by-article sumary of other treaties (and better distingusih between complaint and inquiry mechanisms) and added a section on "Impact" which refers to that UK assessment. What else do you suggest? --IdiotSavant (talk) 06:17, 17 December 2009 (UTC)