Talk:Millwall F.C./GA1

GA Review

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There is a lot of good work here, the article is nearly unrecognisable from what it was a few months ago. However, the issues present are probably too much to justify putting the nomination on hold while they are resolved, so unfortunately this is a fail.

I'll start off with a caveat to say I review featured article candidates more often than GA nominations, so my reviews are perhaps pickier than some.

Prose and layout

• Sections on famous fans are discouraged. From various discussions over the years at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Football, the consensus is that if someone's support for a club is notable it should be mentioned in their article, not that of the club. In particlar, the fact that Ian Tomlinson was wearing a Millwall t-shirt is of little relevance.
• The "Nicknames" section could do with expansion into a section incorporating information about the colours and crest per the suggested layout for football clubs.
• Little things like a greengrocers' apostrophe in one of the most passionately contested local derby's in football and the odd run-on sentence suggest a third-party copyedit would be useful.
• The definition of "contributed greatly to the club's history" for the notable former players section is unclear.

Referencing

• It would be useful to break down some of the Complete Record references using page numbers.
• Many paragraphs in the history section are unreferenced. Any sentence containing information that cannot reasonably be regarded as common knowledge should be referenced. For example, It was not unusual for Millwall to attract thirty or forty thousand spectators to a game, especially at their second ground at East Ferry Road. should be referenced. The same goes throughout; every record listed in the "Statistics and records" section should be referenced. This is probably the single biggest issue preventing a GA pass.

Neutrality and stability

• Addressing the topic of hooliganism in an appropriate manner is no doubt the biggest challenge in writing an article about Millwall. However, at present, aside from a couple of sentences at the start, the "Supporters" section reads mostly as a rebuttal based on incidents reported in the past few years. Whether merited or not, Millwall fans have a reputation for hooliganism. The question that needs answering by the section is why that reputation came about. There is a wealth of information available on the topic (by which I mean scholarly sources rather than the hooligan "memoirs" that would probably be better placed on the fiction shelves in many cases). A quick Google Books search yields freely-viewable titles like No one likes us, we don't care: the myth and reality of Millwall fandom and The roots of football hooliganism: an historical and sociological study. The 1985 Kenilworth Road riot is not mentioned at all, yet it led directly to Thatchers plan for ID cards. Away from hooliganism, though alluded to elsewhere, the section fails to mention that the club's support mainly draws from the surrounding areas of south and east London.
• A certain amount of recentism creeps into the history section. When a 16 year period including a 3 year unbeaten run gets a single paragraph, do we really need to know that the club had a strong record against top half teams last season?

Images

• File:CasandTed88.jpg has an external website given as the source, but is tagged as being released into the public domain by the uploader.
• Without a discussion about the crest itself, File:MillwallFCLeapingLionCrest.png may well not be regarded as appropriate fair use.

Reviewer: Oldelpaso (talk) 11:01, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

Comments

Thanks for the review. I've put a fair chunk of time in to transforming the article over the past few months and wanted to grasp what it truly needed to become a Good Article.

Resolved issues

• Nicknames has been expanded in to a section with crest and colours, as per suggested layouts.

• Did a copy-edit myself, changed derby's to derbies and other minor grammatical fixes.

• Defined Notable former players requirements section more expansively.

• Broke down Complete History book references by page number.

• Every record in statistics and records has a reference.

• Removed superfluous facts from recent years and buffed up the unbeaten home run section.

• Removed disputed image, File:CasandTed88.jpg which is most likely copyrighted.

• Addressed supporters and hooliganism. I linked to the main Kenilworth Road riots and West Ham riots articles. Completely re-wrote it in chronological order of problematic history. I traced back to 1906 from your The roots of football hooliganism: an historical and sociological study suggestion. Good call!

Issues outstanding

• the crest, File:MillwallFCLeapingLionCrest.png can be obtained from the club itself, like nearly every football crest displayed on wikipedia. Is this not allowed? I see featured clubs' pages, such as Arsenal, Man Utd and Gillingham ( File:GFCOldBadge.jpg ) have Non-free media use rationale - non-free logo's. Either way, this can be deleted.

• Removed the Ian Tomlinson mention, famous fans can be entirely removed. Would a famous fans section, which is now placed at the end of the article (in the In popular culture section), prevent a GA classification? Thank you. NoOneLikesUs (talk) 02:30, 1 October 2010 (UTC)