Talk:International Tennis Federation/GA1

GA Review edit

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Reviewer: Saskoiler (talk · contribs) 23:23, 11 March 2016 (UTC)Reply


I'll be reviewing this article against the good article (GA) criteria. More to come as I get going. Saskoiler (talk) 23:23, 11 March 2016 (UTC)Reply

Criteria edit

Good Article Status – Review Criteria

A good article is—

  1. Well-written:
  2. (a) the prose is clear, concise, and understandable to an appropriately broad audience; spelling and grammar are correct; and
    (b) it complies with the Manual of Style guidelines for lead sections, layout, words to watch, fiction, and list incorporation.[1]
  3. Verifiable with no original research:
  4. (a) it contains a list of all references (sources of information), presented in accordance with the layout style guideline;
    (b) 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);[2]
    (c) it contains no original research; and
    (d) it contains no copyright violations or plagiarism.
  5. Broad in its coverage:
  6. (a) it addresses the main aspects of the topic;[3] and
    (b) it stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style).
  7. Neutral: it represents viewpoints fairly and without editorial bias, giving due weight to each.
  8. Stable: it does not change significantly from day to day because of an ongoing edit war or content dispute.
  9. [4]
  10. Illustrated, if possible, by media such as images, video, or audio:
  11. [5]
    (a) media are tagged with their copyright statuses, and valid non-free use rationales are provided for non-free content; and
    (b) media are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions.[6]

Review edit

  1. Well-written:
  2. Criteria Notes Result
    (a) (prose) The prose lacks clarity in many places.   Fail
    (b) (MoS) The article does not comply with the manual of style guidelines, and will require much work to make it compliant   Fail

    Examples of poor prose:

  • It was at this time that two compromises were reached: the title 'world championships' would be abolished and wording would be 'for ever in the English language'. - I don't know what this means.
  • In 1977 it dropped the word 'lawn' from its title, recognising that most tennis was no longer played on grass. - "It" is not obvious from the context here, and the rest of the sentence is sloppy.
  • ...and in time it is hoped that every tennis player worldwide will have a rating. - Hoped by whom?
  • Once players can ‘serve, rally and score’ they should have a rating to help them find players of a similar level to play with. - Like the previous example, this is not encyclopedic language at all.
  • Grand Slam events are actually held by ITF, not held by ATP/WTA, in which that many people may think that the ITF only held the smaller tournaments (ITF Men's/Women's Circuit, lower than any other levels). Grand Slam is also the highest level of the world tennis, even the ATP/WTA Year-end Championships. - Awkward and confusing.

Manual of Style:

  • Lead section - The first sentence of the lead is appropriate, but the remainder of the details probably belong in a "History" section. Conversely, the lead needs to summarize the key aspects of the article, and it presently is silent on grand slams, ITF circuits, ITF world champions, etc. For an example of a better one, see FIFA.
  • Layout - There are significant problems with layout caused by the imbalanced level of detail throughout.
    • ITN and IPIN probably need to be given different section names, since the acronyms are not helpful to the casual reader.
    • Grand slams are mentioned first inside the "Function" section, but then there's an entirely separate "Grand Slams" section.
    • There's a random "Records" subsection that doesn't belong at all.
    • There is an "ITF World Champions" section, which includes a "See also" to ITF World Champions (okay). But then the main "See also" section repeats the link to ITF World Champions (not okay).
  • Words to Watch - I did not specifically check these due to the large number of other issues with this criteria.
  • Fiction - n/a.
  • List Incorporation - There are sizable lists of ITF champions in tables (taking up about half of the entire article) that do not need to be in this article at all. They are already included, in full, in the subsidiary article. (Although, for readability I prefer the more compact format used in this article.)


  • Verifiable with no original research:
  • Criteria Notes Result
    (a) (references) A "References" section does exist. However, there are bare inline references used following the world champion tables, and these are not included in the "References" section.   Fail
    (b) (citations to reliable sources) There are 16 citations at the time of this review. Nine of these are to ITF-published sites, so these are certainly reliable. The remainder are from reliable sites (e.g. WTA; mainstream media). Unfortunately, several of the citations consist only of a bare title and URL (or, in one case, just a URL), so there is no way to determine the citation source. For example, we have "The Circuit's Differences", but no indication what the source of this information is. References #5 (history of the ITF) and #12 (IPIN registration) are both currently dead links.   Fail
    (c) (original research) There does not appear to be any original research.   Pass
    (d) (copyvio and plagiarism) A paragraph in this article appears to be copied almost directly from a cited source. For example, see this comparison concerning the paragraph about the controversy with the Tunisian Tennis Federation.   Fail
  • Broad in its coverage:
  • Criteria Notes Result
    (a) (major aspects) The article currently fails to address all of the main aspects of this topic.   Fail
    (b) (focused) The article currently fails to present a balanced set of information.   Fail

    Aspects of the topic which appear to be missing entirely include:

    • Administrative structure of the ITF (presidents; committees; voting/non-voting members; etc.)
    • Regional associations
    • ITF's role in Olympics/Paralympics (on par with its role in Grand slams, Davis Cup, Fed Cup - all of which are mentioned)
    • Coaching, development, officiating, rules
    • Drug testing, anti-doping
    • Beach tennis (Other divisions -- wheelchair, pro, seniors, juniors - are all mentioned, but this one is not, despite being under ITF jurisdiction)

    The level of detail provided in the existing sections is not balanced. For example:

    • The history is sparse (okay), but it is biased toward the location of the headquarters and ignores many other items (not okay)
    • Regional associations are missing entirely, and national associations are only mentioned by linking out to them. Contrast that with the ITN, IPIN, and Controversy topics which collectively cover about half of the prose. (Controversy section... that's good to have. But ITN and IPIN seem like really trivial topics to include when there is so little other prose.)
    • Controversy section mentions two items from 2013, but article has no mention at all about the betting scandal (in the news around 2016 Australian Open) or anti-doping involvement (in the news right now)
    • In section "ITF World Champions", there is (1) no prose and (2) Sizable tables listing men's, women's, and junior ITF champions. Instead, summary prose should replace the tables, which are duplicated in the background article:ITF World Champions.
  • Neutral: it represents viewpoints fairly and without editorial bias, giving due weight to each.
  • Notes Result
    There is no biased language. The unbalanced selection of information to include in the "Controversies" section (where both items reference Israeli tennis entities) could be interpreted as biased selection. I don't believe this was intentional, but should probably be addressed.   Neutral
  • Stable: it does not change significantly from day to day because of an ongoing edit war or content dispute.
  • Notes Result
    There is no evidence of a recent edit war or dispute. Indeed, there have only been 13 edits in the past 4 months before today.   Pass
  • Illustrated, if possible, by media such as images, video, or audio:
  • Criteria Notes Result
    (a) (images are tagged and non-free images have fair use rationales) The only image in the article is an ITF logo. This image appears to have a valid fair use rationale, similar to other international sport federations (e.g. IAAF).

    Although the article passes this GA criteria as-is, I'd like to point out that a natural image for future improvement of this article would be some sort of world map showing member associations. These are present on several international sport federations. e.g. FIFA, IAAF, FIBA, FIVB, BWF

      Pass
    (b) (appropriate use with suitable captions) The image is very appropriate for this article. There's no caption, but that's okay because of its use within the infobox.   Pass

    Result edit

    Result Notes
      Fail This article needs a great deal of work to make it compliant with good article criteria. The main deficiencies are:
    1. the selection of material is not balanced, emphasizing some very minor details and ignoring others of equal importance entirely.
    2. the relationship between this "main" ITF article and the many subsidiary ITF articles needs to be better understood. In many cases, this article can simply contain summaries, and then link off to the appropriate, more-detailed sub-articles.
    3. the prose quality and adherence to the GA manual of style guidelines needs much attention

    By the time those changes are made, this will be an entirely new article, and not simply a slight tweak on this existing article. For that reason, I'm closing this review now with a "fail" result.

    Discussion edit

    I have a question, why all pass/fail blanks are replaced by "ask the 2nd opinion"? Could you give me more opinions of yourself about this article? 333-blue 00:02, 12 March 2016 (UTC)Reply

    I haven't started the review yet. I will gradually be adding comments and assessment, section by section. Saskoiler (talk) 03:23, 12 March 2016 (UTC)Reply
    Fully agree with the fail result. This article is nowhere near GA status yet (it currently has a 'start' quality rating). Not sure why it was nominated, unusually by an editor who has done virtually no work on the article.--Wolbo (talk) 01:09, 17 March 2016 (UTC)Reply

    Additional notes edit

    1. ^ Compliance with other aspects of the Manual of Style, or the Manual of Style mainpage or subpages of the guides listed, is not required for good articles.
    2. ^ Either parenthetical references or footnotes can be used for in-line citations, but not both in the same article.
    3. ^ This requirement is significantly weaker than the "comprehensiveness" required of featured articles; it allows shorter articles, articles that do not cover every major fact or detail, and overviews of large topics.
    4. ^ Vandalism reversions, proposals to split or merge content, good faith improvements to the page (such as copy editing), and changes based on reviewers' suggestions do not apply. Nominations for articles that are unstable because of unconstructive editing should be placed on hold.
    5. ^ Other media, such as video and sound clips, are also covered by this criterion.
    6. ^ The presence of images is not, in itself, a requirement. However, if images (or other media) with acceptable copyright status are appropriate and readily available, then some such images should be provided.