Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/Matthias Blübaum/1

Matthias Blübaum edit

Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch • Watch article reassessment page • Most recent review

Result: Keep given improvements to article 17:34, 11 June 2018 Barkeep49

I have been going through Good Articles with tags on them [1] and came across some articles on chess players with issues. A discussion has started at Wikipedia:External links/Noticeboard#links to interactive chess games regarding one of the issues. It inspired me to look at other Good articles on chess players and I came across this one. While it might be premature to delist articles for having external links in the prose until that discussion is exhausted, there are other major problems with this one that I believe fail it from being a Good Article. Considering I am involved with Chess now I wanted to go the community route, even though I know it is slower and poorly attended.

The main problem here is the prose. It is pure WP:Proseline. The whole article career section reads like a diary and it could easily be replaced by a table. It contains far to many single sentence paragraphs. For example compare it to Emanuel Lasker. There is also nothing on his playing style, strengths or other aspects of his play outside results. It fails criteria 1a, 1b (Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Layout) and 3a. This is ignoring the notable games section, which I consider problematic on other Chess biographies. To be fair most of this was mentioned at the review, but I feel it has not been addressed adequately enough to pass as a Good Article. AIRcorn (talk) 10:35, 24 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Comparing Lasker and Blübaum is comparing apples and oranges: Lasker was world champion for a longer time than Blübaum has been alive. There naturally is going to be less coverage of Blübaum. Blübaum also does not really have a "playing style"; this is the case for the majority of players of his level. There are passing mentions of his playing style with general statements such as 'he has good endgame technique', but no in-depth coverage to support a playing style section.

The notable games section was added after the GA review and before the discussion at WT:CHESS began. I am fine with removing it but that is a larger issue beyond just this article.

The issue of numerous short lines could be addressed simply by combining some of them. I do not know what you mean by replacing the prose with a table. Hrodvarsson (talk) 21:31, 24 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I was more using Lasker as an example of how the prose could be better. Combining the sentences does not fix the underlying problem to my mind, which is the WP:Proseline. Count the number of sentences that start "In [date]......". That is what I meant by it could be replaced with a table. I don't literally mean that it should be, just that the article could easily be a list of Matthias Blubaum games rather than a biography. I will admit it is common for information to be presented in this way in sports biographies, but I am of the opinion that we should strive for better if we want to classify the article as good. This is open to the community so others may disagree. AIRcorn (talk) 06:28, 25 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The quality of an article is going to be relative to the available sources. I have attempted to reword the career section into a less formulaic prose, but it is difficult to do this without engaging in OR as there are few sources that give an overview of Blübaum's career. Lasker's career, comparatively, has been reviewed by many RS. Hrodvarsson (talk) 22:40, 26 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Aircorn: I have further improved the article, please tell me if the issue still exists or if there are other actionable suggestions. Hrodvarsson (talk) 23:53, 30 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Prose has definitely improved. The lead could maybe be expanded a bit. Could we at least have references for the notable games section? AIRcorn (talk) 09:05, 2 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I have removed the notable games section. There is some discussion of the games in RS but not as in-depth as I would like. I may re-add later with appropriate referencing. The most "notable" game (Anand) is mentioned in the career section in any case. Hrodvarsson (talk) 23:33, 2 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Much improved. Thanks. @Barkeep49: Unless you have anything to add I would be fine with you closing it. AIRcorn (talk) 02:14, 3 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Katolophyromai seemed to bring up similar concerns during the initial GA review in January of this year. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 23:18, 28 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]