Talk:2005 Women's Cricket World Cup final/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Harrias (talk · contribs) 12:32, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

Initial comments

In general this is a good looking article, but I don't like the use of bullet points to summarise the group stage matches. WP:BODY suggests that "Bullet points should be minimized in the body of the article, if they are used at all". I would suggest rewriting that whole section into flowing prose, also removing the reptition present. In the scorecard, would it be possible to place the names of the umpires and other details besides the main scorecard, in order to minimise the white space? MOS:FLAGS suggests that if the flags are used for the umpires that the nation should also be written nearby, as no everyone is aware that is the South African flag! In general, I think using {{cr|AUS}} three lines in a row is overlinking, and given that you have linked it many times earlier in the article, it could just be written as "Australia". If you are going to use it, it should at least be {{crw|AUS}} to link to the women's team! Is there any more information on the match itself? At the moment the details are overpowered by the rest of the article. Harrias ^talk 12:41, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

I will wait for you to address these comments before continuing with a more detailed review. Harrias ^talk 12:41, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

I have just asked Stfg, the one who copy-edited this article, to comment on this because some changes were made by him. ♛♚★Vaibhav Jain★♚♛ ^{Talk Email} 14:30, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

Immediately after the part quoted, WP:BODY continues: "however, a bulleted list may be useful to break up what would otherwise be a large, grey mass of text, particularly if the topic requires significant effort on the part of readers". The version before I started to copy edit exhibits just such a wall of text.

What is going on here is that essentially the same type of information is being presented for each of seven rounds, for each of two teams. In what is essentially a data presentation, clarity trumps elegance. You see this a lot in the "Critical Reception" sections of pop music articles, with critic-1 said this, critic-2 stated that, critic-3 commented the other, and then we start on the pretentious words like opined and POV words like noted. Such is not good writing, more like a parlour game, and it can be very disctracting.

I hope this helps to explain why I presented it that way. Am watchlisting in case you want to come back on it. Regards, --Stfg (talk) 14:55, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

Made some changes to the flags. However I guess that it can't be aligned with the scorecard. As of the details, you also know how tough it is to find information about women WC finals. I initially added information about how id each of the wicket all, but it was removed during the copy-edit because it was possibly undue. ♛♚★Vaibhav Jain★♚♛ ^{Talk Email} 15:04, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

Not so much undue as overly detailed. Feel free to restore those details if the reviewer wishes you to. --Stfg (talk) 16:26, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

 Done Added some details. ♛♚★Vaibhav Jain★♚♛ ^{Talk Email} 06:27, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

Comments by Sarastro
Harrias asked me for my view on the bullet points. I've never seen a match article on any sport use a bulleted list like this to summarise so much information. I can see no need for bullets, and if such an approach was necessary or required, a table may be more economical. But in my view, it should be written in prose, and it is the job of the authors to prevent a wall of text. For examples, the best cricket ones (by Harrias himself, though he would be too modest to suggest them!) are the GA 2009 Women's Cricket World Cup Final or for a prose summary of results, the FA Somerset County Cricket Club in 2009. In other sports, perhaps some football ones like the the GAs 1933 FA Cup Final, 1998–99 Manchester United F.C. season or 1984 European Cup Final or maybe the FA 1923 FA Cup Final. Also, returning to cricket, the aftermath section of the FA First Test, 1948 Ashes series is similar. All of these successfully use prose to summarise previous (or subsequent) rounds, and I think these are the best models to follow. Personally, I would not pass a GA with a bulleted section like this. Sarastro1 (talk) 12:39, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

 Done. ♛♚★Vaibhav Jain★♚♛ ^{Talk Email} 12:51, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

Fair enough, I'll put this one down to experience. Thank you for considering it, Harrias and Sarastro. --Stfg (talk) 15:34, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

• It's been over two weeks since the above was discussed and decided. Can the detailed review please now proceed? Many thanks. BlueMoonset (talk) 23:57, 22 October 2012 (UTC)
• Please resume it ASAP. I may not be active for some days after 27 October. :( ♛♚★Vaibhav Jain★♚♛ ^{Talk Email} 05:09, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

Apologies for the delay on this, I lost it amongst my Wikipedia desk, and then went away on holiday! The review continues ahead:

Lead

• "It was the culmination of the 2005 Women's Cricket World Cup, the eighth tournament of the series." - I wouldn't describe it as a series, perhaps change to: "It was the culmination of the 2005 Women's Cricket World Cup, the eighth such tournament."
• "Their top scorer was Australian vice-captain Karen Rolton, ..." - The use of "Their" already tells us that she is Australian, so you can remove that from the sentence.

Group stage

• This section is definitely a mess; I can understand, reading it, why Stfg changed it to a list of bullet points. As he suggested, it repeats the same information over and again, and to be honest, it certainly isn't up to GA standard. I would suggest making more use of the match summaries (such as this) and rely less on the scorecards themselves. For example, Australia's first match: Jenny Gunn's top-score is reasonably irrelevant to Australia (who are the focus of the section) so I would cut the bit on that match down to something like: "Australia's first match of the tournament was against England, who elected to bat first, and scored 169/7. The match was abandoned due to heavy rain before the Australian innings could be played." I would suggest a thorough copy edit of this section, to provide more pertinent information to the article itself. Avoiding listing too many bowling figures would be a suggestion, and it isn't always important to list who won the toss and what they chose to do. If you do want to include this sort of information, it can be presented in a more organic way: "After chosing to bat first, Australia.." (for example). You include a lot of short sentences that could be merged with those around them, especially when stating who Australia play next. ("Their next match was against South Africa.", "Then Australia took over Sri Lanka.")

The prose issues in this section, in conjunction with the very limited match summary lead me to suggest that this article isn't currently ready for GA status. I would suggest a peer review, in which I would be very happy to help you work through these issues, and would be happy to go into more detail, or work on the copy edit itself, and then another shot. I apologise again for the long delay in this review, and if you have any questions, feel free to ping me on my talk page. Harrias ^talk 16:06, 2 November 2012 (UTC)