Talk:Leeds 13/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Mike Christie (talk · contribs) 10:40, 23 April 2023 (UTC)

I'll review this. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:40, 23 April 2023 (UTC)

No images to review. Earwig finds no issues.

• What makes artdesigncafe a reliable source? Per this page it's a one-man operation. It seems you're using it primarily as an index to other writings on the Leeds 13; can it be replaced by those other sources?
• Per this page, The Big Issue in the North can be edited by anyone, so even though it says edits are checked, we can't treat this as a reliable source.
• What makes jeanneworks.net a reliable source?
• There are a dozen or more unsourced sentences throughout the article.

Spotchecks -- footnote numbers refer to this version:

• FN 18 cites "In the week before the event, the group hid in their student accommodation. Using a hired suntanning bed and fake tan". Verified.
• FN 8 cites "At this point, only the students, their associates and airport staff knew the holiday had not taken place. Even their tutor Atkinson thought it had. He commented on the group's good fortune that their return flight had arrived on time." Can you quote the supporting text from the source?
• FNs 36 & 40 cite "However, other responses to the exhibition as art in itself were negative. Most media reports included a re-run of Going Places; some suggested The Degree Show was another hoax containing forgeries." I don't have access to the second source; can you quote the supporting text from it?
• FNs 38 & 37 cite 'They also created the catalogue, wall labels, advertising and website. The borrowing continued in the introductory essay, a literary collage of art writing. It explained the concept with "As Hugh McDiarmid said 'the greater the plagiarism the greater the work of art.' If we can accept this dissident posture we can take this exhibition as a work of art in itself."' Can you quote from FN 37?
• FN 3 cites "The group were interested in the art exhibition phenomenon and two types of relationships in the art world." I don't see what supports the second half of the sentence in the given source.

I'll wait for you to respond to these before continuing with the review. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:56, 23 April 2023 (UTC)

• On reflection artdesigncafe is not a reliable source so I've removed references to those two web pages. One of them is the group's bibliography that I've retained as an external link.
• The Big Issue in the North is also unreliable so I've replaced it with Leeds Student/Chapple (1998), available online, where on p. 3 a Leeds 13 member is quoted as saying "If people think [the holiday] is unacceptable then they're making presumptions about what is or isn't art."
• I have only found two sources that say Leeds 13 contributed to A Christmas Pudding for Henry: jeanneworks and Leeds 13's official website both unreliable. It was a minor project without any publicity outputs in the group's bibliography so I've removed the paragraph on ACPfH. Jeanne van Heesvijk is a Dutch artist who organised ACPfH for Henry Moore Foundation External Programmes. I've contacted the Foundation to ask whether they know of any publicity outputs on the project and Leeds 13's contribution.
• FN 8 I've added the Atkinson quote from McIntyre (1998). There's a scan of that article distributed by the University of Leeds Press Office on the Leeds 13 official website at http://leeds13.pbworks.com/w/file/16040099/18%20MAY%201998%20PRINT%20Yorkshire%20Post.tif (see the commented out url on the reference).
• FN 40 says "... questions were being asked about the authenticity of some of [Leeds 13's] work." It was also distributed by the Press Office and can be found at http://leeds13.pbworks.com/w/file/16040079/08%C2%A0JUN%C2%A01999%C2%A0PRINT%20Yorkshire%C2%A0Evening%C2%A0Post.tif .
• FN 38 only contains the McDiarmid quote so I've removed that reference. The important part is the second sentence where Leeds 13 conclude that an exhibition could be a work of art in itself. Barnes (1999) has the two sentence version from "publicity blurb" but he attributes the first sentence to "an artist" not McDiarmid see http://leeds13.pbworks.com/w/file/16040080/08%C2%A0JUN%C2%A01999%C2%A0PRINT%20Yorkshire%C2%A0Post.tif . I suspect the version on The Degree Show website (FN 37) is the original which Barnes and others adapted for their articles.
• FN 3 the two types of relationships is the first three sentences of that paragraph. Maybe the reference should be on the end of the third sentence? I got relationships between people in the art world from the title "No Artist is an Island", para 5 for questions about the interests of private sector art patrons and para 8 for "relationships in which art exists". Relationships between artworks is para 6 "work of art is never self-contained" and para 9 "significance of a piece of art".

Thanks for the insightful feedback. Arnhemcr (talk) 06:50, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

I've looked through your changes and I think you've addressed all or nearly all of what I was concerned about, but there are still uncited sentences, and I'd like to get those taken care of before I read through the article and make more comments. From your comments on FN 3 I think I'm not making myself clear on what I mean by uncited sentences, so I've gone ahead and added a "citation needed" tag to the end of the relevant sentences. Can you either replace those with citations, or move an existing citation to cover these? When that's done I'll take another look. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:56, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

Thanks, the citations needed were most helpful. I think I've sorted them all out by either adding a citation or removing the sentence that needed one:

• formed a collective for studio practice. - added Leeds 13 (1999a) para 3
• The group called their end-of-year project Going Places. - added Leeds 13 (1999a)
• The donations were not spent. - added Llewellyn (1998) paras 9-10
• before the event at the airport. - removed subsequent sentence needing citation
• in an artist's statement published by The Guardian. - removed subsequent sentence needing citation
• The students took turns sharing the holiday story and photographs with journalists. - removed subsequent sentence needing citation
• the group decided to reveal the truth early. - the planned reveal is cited in the previous sentence, the actual reveal in the next section
• They also accused the group of further damaging the reputation of artists. - removed subsequent sentence needing citation
• He labelled them Neo-Publicists. - added Rugoff (1998)
• Leeds 13 showed Going Places holiday photographs, props and clips of television news coverage. - added Royal College of Art (1999)
• were art objects. - removed apparently for sale and added Makel (2000) and Wainwight (2000) para 6 and 7
• Leeds 13 would put forward the exhibition as art in itself and present it as their project The Degree Show. - added Leeds 13 (1999b)
• Read concluded that the exhibition had stimulated debate on the nature of art. - added Sherwin (1999)
• It sounds like a complete abrogation of responsibility as a degree show." - removed subsequent sentence needing citation
• Their appeal was successful and they all received first class degrees. - added Utley (1999)
• In March 2000, Leeds 13 revisited Going Places at the f.k.a.a. exhibition. - added Wainwright (2000) and Makel (2000) from linked section Going Places / Exhibitions
• removed sentence using Leeds 13's bibliography, an unreliable source, to identify and date their last project
• that challenged both the rules and the rulers of the art world. - added Glinkowski (2000)
• Walker wondered whether the art students should have studied public relations or journalism. - added Walker (2001)
• moved Perry (2013) from middle to end of sentence
• and Going Places was one of history's famous hoaxes. - added Vice Media (2022) 0:28

The cns have been commented out so you can find them in Edit mode. I'll remove the comments once they're no longer useful.

I have scans of the cited newspaper articles, news releases and content from books that are not online. Most of the content comes from the Leeds 13 official website with a few gaps filled by purchases or people being generous enough to share. Happy to share this content with you by Dropbox or emailed archive file if needed. Thanks. Arnhemcr (talk) 05:40, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

Thanks -- will have a look, probably this evening, and I'll let you know if I need access to any of the sources. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:07, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

More notes

Sorry about the delay getting to this; I got busier than I expected yesterday.

First a note about formatting: replying in a separate section, as you've done above, is fine if you prefer it, but you might find it easier to just thread your reply inline, indenting after each bullet that you want to reply to. See this GA review to see what I'm talking about. It's not obligatory to do it that way, as I say, but usually both nominator and reviewer find it easier -- that way you don't have to copy the point you're replying to, and it makes it easier for the reviewer to see what's been addressed by the nominator.

There are still a handful of uncited sentences. In a couple of cases I could see they were covered by the citation just before, so I moved that citation to the end of the sentence or paragraph, or took it from somewhere nearby. The remaining uncited bits of text are:

• "A prelude in an art space would set the Spanish theme and gather the guests before the event at the airport."

• Online citation added (and thanks for the inline edits suggestion) Arnhemcr (talk) 11:41, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

• "The students took turns sharing the holiday story and photographs with journalists." I would guess the same three citations from just before this sentence would cover this too, but I don't have access so I can't be sure.

• Sentence removed as only around four of the thirteen were quoted in the media before the reveal. Arnhemcr (talk) 11:41, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

• "the group decided to reveal the truth early": the whole sentence is "But given the intense interest and the possibility the hoax could be exposed, the group decided to reveal the truth early." The first part is cited to the podcast. I listened to the podcast the other day but I don't recall if it mentions that this is the reason why the revealed the truth early; if it does, then that citation can be moved to the end of the sentence.

• Offline source FN 21 in the previous sentence covers the original plan, reveal in the next edition of Leeds Student on 5 June. The next section covers the actual reveal on 19 May around two and a half weeks early. I've made the offline and registration-only sources available to view at https://www.dropbox.com/sh/mbt7rv89zz7lm6d/AAAFL6niHo9rQ638VyuLgL5fa?dl=0 Arnhemcr (talk) 11:41, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

• "They also accused the group of further damaging the reputation of artists." I don't have access to the source just before this so I can't check if it covers this.

• See Dropbox Arnhemcr (talk) 11:41, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

There's no need to retain the old "citation needed" tags in comments, by the way, unless you find them useful.

• Will remove them in due course Arnhemcr (talk) 11:41, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

I have some concerns about the prose as well.

• There are some short sentences which make the prose very choppy. For example, "They decided to produce a conceptual work with an activity not generally accepted as art. Then they hoped the media would distribute news of the work to the public. To be newsworthy it had to be controversial." This would read much more naturally as "They decided to produce a conceptual work with an activity not generally accepted as art, and to make the work controversial so that it would be covered in the media." Another example: "... and were granted £1,126. The only business sponsor identified by the media was the owner of a local art shop who gave £50. The donations were not spent." "and were granted £1,126, which included £50 from the owner of a local art shop, though none of the grant money was actually spent."

• I ran the text through Hemingway Editor that highlighted too many long and very hard to read sentences for my liking. Maybe I over-corrected, but will take your point and have run this time tomorrow. Arnhemcr (talk) 11:41, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

If you could take a pass through and try to smooth some of these transitions between sentences, I think that would help the prose a good deal. Once you've done that I'll read through again. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:19, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for your continuing efforts. Arnhemcr (talk) 11:41, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

I've struck the two that you've dealt with. I'll keep an eye on this and will take another look when the other points are addressed. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 21:40, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

I'm working through finding the right citation for each sentence and have commented generalisation sentences and citations repeated from the previous sentence. I'm up to Going Places / Holiday and response and will continue tomorrow. Then I'll look at the prose. Arnhemcr (talk) 12:34, 27 April 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the update. There's no hurry; so long as you're working on it the review can stay open. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:37, 27 April 2023 (UTC)

For each sentence, I have added a citation or added the citation name as a comment where the same citation continues to be used on successive sentences. I now realise this is what you have needed all along so thank you for your patience. It is my first article to be reviewed so something of a learning curve.

I also reviewed the prose having read Wikipedia:Making technical articles understandable. My intended audience are general readers. To assess the prose, I removed citation numbers and full stops in quotes, that throw off sentence count, then fed the resulting file through the tools recommended on that page (I've saved that file on the Dropbox above). Here are the results:

• Hemingway Editor: reading age US grade 10, I believe 15–16 year olds, adverbs and passive voice within limits, 61/187 sentences hard to read, 25/187 very hard to read - mostly quotations with in text attribution
• Readability of Wikipedia: 56 so 67% of Wikipedia articles are harder to read

And that is the level I was aiming for: accessible to those in mid to late secondary education and hopefully those for whom English is not their first language. I look forward to your thoughts on this approach.

Please continue the review at your convenience. Thanks again. Arnhemcr (talk) 11:28, 28 April 2023 (UTC)

Re the citations, I'm not sure we're on the same page yet! Typically comments are not used for citations; they are only visible to editors, and the citations have to be accessible to readers as well as editors. Editors do vary in how they approach citing generalized statements such as "Adding to the controversy, the group would appear to misuse financial donations on the holiday". Some editors do as you have done, which is to say that it's a summary of the paragraph that follows and does not need to be independently cited. That's OK so long as everything in the statement really is cited specifically in part of the paragraph. Personally I like to cite the generalizations too, since when other editors come along and move material around in an article, it's very easy for that sort of statement to get detached from the subsequent sentences with the supporting citations, and it then appears to be uncited.

A good point and well made. A series of sentences that all have the same citation (see Rugoff below) looks repetitive to me but if that's what you'd prefer then I will turn the comments into citations. Arnhemcr (talk) 11:31, 29 April 2023 (UTC)

See my comment a couple of points below, which addresses this as well. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:24, 29 April 2023 (UTC)

I also think it's difficult to make sure that the generalized statement doesn't add anything in the name of summarization. For example, what in the individual citations supports "appear to misuse"? The comments about the money in the Leeds Student are almost in the other direction -- Ruth Wilkin says "we gave you that money for a reason", implying that giving the money back didn't absolve the students from the accusations of misuse of the grant.

I will take another look at the generalised statements. The one you highlight certainly needs work! Arnhemcr (talk) 11:31, 29 April 2023 (UTC)

I've removed that generalised statement (and the very short sentence at the end of that paragraph) by adding a second paragraph covering the deceptions to Concept. I've reviewed and am happy with the other five generalisation comments but have made the scope of each one explicit. Arnhemcr (talk) 00:28, 30 April 2023 (UTC)

I'm not clear what you mean by adding the citation name as a comment where a citation continues to be used. Can you give me an example of what you're referring to in the article? I see comments after a great many sentences now, but I can't tell what they're for.`

Paragraph "Leeds 13's place in art history ..." is six sentences that all cite Rugoff (1998) and nothing else. So I've put citations on the first and last sentences then put comments containing Rugoff (1998) for the four sentences in between. Where one citation is used on just two successive sentences, I've generally put the citation on the first and put the citation name as a comment on the second. Arnhemcr (talk) 11:31, 29 April 2023 (UTC)

That does explain it, but the rule for inline citations is that they cite everything before them, back to the previous citation or start of the paragraph, and comments aren't regarded as citations even if they contain the same information. So the usual approach is this: "Sentence 1. Sentence 2.[citation]" where the citation covers both sentences. It's also common to do this: "Sentence 1.[citation] Sentence 2.[citation]" As with uncited summary statements, the argument for doing this is that when text gets moved around by other editors, having the citations attached to each sentence reduces the risk of losing the text-source link. It's not necessary to do that, and from your comments a couple of points above you agree that's an ugly approach, but using comments as you are doing is quite non-standard and won't be understood by most other editors. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:24, 29 April 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for your lucid explanation. I've reworked the article Sentence 1. Sentence 2.[citation] style and removed the commented citation names. Arnhemcr (talk) 00:28, 30 April 2023 (UTC)

Re the reading difficulty, reasonable people can disagree on what makes good prose. Breaking up sentences can make it harder to articulate a chain of reasoning or connection, since it cuts out conjunctions and relative clause structures. I don't think the short sentences are enough of a problem for me to fail the article, but I think they're not particularly good writing.

I will go through and see whether I can merge the shorter sentences into their neighbours. My concern is that beyond a certain number of words—the number can be discussed by reasonable people—increasing sentence length can correlate with decreasing comprehension. Arnhemcr (talk) 11:31, 29 April 2023 (UTC)

Having merged sentences there are now just four sentences under ten words. Hemingway Editor rating remains grade 10, adverbs and passive voice still within limits with -6 sentences overall since last time, -3 hard to read but +8 very hard to read (58/181 and 33/181 respectively). Arnhemcr (talk) 05:12, 30 April 2023 (UTC)

One other, minor, point: I think you must be writing the article offline and pasting it in to the edit window -- is that correct? I ask because when I edit the article I see a lot of line-feed control characters; it looks to me as if you must be using a Mac. These characters don't affect the final display, but they do affect the view in the edit window. You might try pasting your edits in as plain text, which I think should be a paste option in Safari, or Chrome if you use that. These end up getting cleaned up by other editors. It's a minor nuisance, but it has nothing to do with whether the article is a GA or not.

I generally edit online in text mode but sometimes cut and paste via FreeBSD a Unix-a-like. I find having sentences starting in the first column on the left makes it easier to follow the line of text to the citation or comment on the right. Arnhemcr (talk) 11:31, 29 April 2023 (UTC)

-- Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:47, 28 April 2023 (UTC)

I've responded to one point above. It sounds like you're going to make another pass to address the outstanding comments, so I'll wait for that and will take another look then. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:24, 29 April 2023 (UTC)

I've been through the citations and hopefully they are now as required. The generalisation you highlighted has been removed and I'm comfortable that the others summarise the citations in their commented scope. I've gone as far as I am comfortable in joining short sentences to their longer neighbours; the Hemingway Editor grade is unchanged. Thanks. Arnhemcr (talk) 05:12, 30 April 2023 (UTC)

I've looked through again. A couple of last things:

• The sentence starting "To date (April 2023) ..." has no citation. The comment at the end implies a citation would be possible from the group's website.
• The following sentence is unsourced, and is a deduction from the previous sentence, but it goes beyond what we can logically deduce -- the group might have abandoned the website but continued to work together. I would cut that if it can't be sourced -- a reader can interpret the information as well as we can.
• Not a requirement for GA, but there's a template, {{As of}}, that can be used to mark potentially dated statements such as "To date (April 2023)". It has the advantage that it allows editors to easily find cases where the statement has become very out of date and needs to be checked again. This is just an FYI; up to you if you want to use it.

We disagree on the prose, but it's good enough for GA, so it's not an issue for this review. Just the two points above now. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:27, 30 April 2023 (UTC)

I've dropped the last sentence and rewritten the previous one saying as of 2023 A Play on Grass is the last Leeds 13 project listed on their official website with a citation.

Thank you for your time, patience and responsiveness as a reviewer. This was my first attempt at a GA and your advice has been invaluable in getting the article across the line. Thanks again. Arnhemcr (talk) 06:04, 1 May 2023 (UTC)

Glad it was a positive experience! It's an interesting article and I enjoyed reviewing it. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 09:46, 1 May 2023 (UTC)

Last fixes look good; passing. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 09:46, 1 May 2023 (UTC)