Talk:Shortwave listening/GA1

GA Review

Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch
Nope, not even close to GA.

• Intro is two sentences long. That's way too short.
• Many, many, many, many unsourced paragraphs throughout.
• Just a few statements that are weaselly:
  • "Many hobbyists use even less-expensive portable receivers with good results"
  • "Under good band conditions with no adjacent channel interference, a wide bandwidth (i.e. 8 kHz or better) can produce quite pleasing shortwave audio reception."
  • "Perhaps the most widely used pure PC shortwave radio (manufactured continuously since 1998) is the American made RX-320D DSP receiver."
• There MUST NOT be external third party links within the text itself (this occurs twice in the PC controlled shortwave radio receivers section).
• I omitted an improper use of "you can" in the aforementioned section.
• "Here is a partial list" followed by a list is redundant. Also, said list could easily be made prose.
• Did I mention that almost all the paragraphs are unsourced?
• What makes this a reliable source?
• Lots of informal tone too, such as "The ramp-up of digital shortwave broadcasting..."

Overall, this article is a hot mess of weasel words, how-to advice and technical information that is far too inaccessible for the user. Half the time, I don't even know what you're talking about. It needs a near-total rewrite before it would even be B-class, much less GA.

(Also, the GAN template was never placed on the article talk page.) Reviewer: Ten Pound Hammer, his otters and a clue-bat • ^{(Many otters • One bat • One hammer)} 19:57, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

One suggestion. Move the elaborate descriptions in "PC controlled shortwave radio receivers", "Shortwave radio control software" and "Software-defined radios" to Receiver (radio) as this technology applies to all radios, not just shortwave. Everything necessary can be adequately summarized in one paragraph under the "Equipment" section and sourced to PASSPORT TO WORLD BAND RADIO or similar reference work. - LuckyLouie (talk) 20:14, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

Comment - I've made some basic improvements to the article such as consolidating sections, relocating overly technical material, and removing well-meant but unsourced observations. I've also added a basic lead section. The article still needs thoughtful expansion (rather than frantic additions of lists or marginally relevant "filler") and citations in order to qualify for GA. However I believe I made its present state more coherent and a good foundation for future improvements to be made. - LuckyLouie (talk) 16:52, 29 April 2010 (UTC)