Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/Mountain railways of India/1

Mountain railways of India

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

Result: Kept Good articles are not concerned about article titles unless they fall foul of other criteria (see Wikipedia:What the Good article criteria are not#Beyond the scope). I see no issues with asking for a good article to be copy edited, and if anything a completed copy edit should make it adhere more to criteria 1a. Although stability is never a good reason to delist an article, the article has been stable for a while now. Broadness was brought up along with examples, but the Kanga Valley and Lumding-Badarpur lines are now mentioned in the article. Good articles don't have to be perfect, merely good. AIRcorn (talk) 06:01, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

While the recent cleanup edits have removed several of the article's deficiencies, it is still not quite at GA.

Some of the issues:

It is mis-named, and badly misnamed. This is an article about the UN heritage sites, not about mountain railways in India. Simply looking briefly at existing railways with wiki articles, the Kangra Valley Railway and the Lumding–Badarpur section are or contain mountain railway, and are active or intact. Looking at defunct system, or systems since converted such as Cherra Companyganj State Railways and some of the Satpura narrow-gauge lines will obviously expand the list much farther. The article is not broad in coverage,but restricted to a small portion of its nominal subject.

Much of the sourcing is from a touristic/passenger POV, emphasizing picturesqueness, and, because of that, it was (and related articles were), until recently afflicted with touristical glurge in their sourcing, with both the accuracy and NPOV problems such sources bring.

Finally, an article just undergoing a major re-write is, by definition, not stable. Give a month or three first. An article can't be both a "good article" and in need of major editing. Anmccaff (talk) 20:00, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

• Just two responses: 1) The UNESCO site is called "Mountain Railways of India," so I think the name is proper. And if not, it can easily be changed; and 2) The Guild of Copy Editors has a board where people can request a CE when they are thinking of nominating their article to become a good or featured article. So it isn't fair to say that getting a copy-edit means the article is bad. I recently did a CE on Steller's sea cow, which is currently being nominated as a FA. Just my opinion. I didn't write the article, I just edited it, but I don't think it's fair to strip it just now. El cid, el campeador (talk) 02:27, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

The UNESCO cite originally covered only one of the railways, then two, then three...what do you think the second two were before UNESCO designation? I'd suggest since they were, in fact, "mountain railways" located in "India" that they were examples of "mountain railways of India" from their building, and UNESCO's designation is superfluous. There are other mountain railways in India still, and there were once even more of them, to say nothing about the mountain railways in what used to be India.Anmccaff (talk) 19:24, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

It isn't a question of whether the article was "bad", but if it met and meets Wiki's rubric for good articles. If you had to change it, it may not have been good before, and it certainly isn't "stable" if it's recently been changed. Anmccaff (talk) 19:24, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

• Keep-If the article is badly named, request a move. All claims seem sourced. Some of the sources-though I can't say all-might be biased. The article itself seems neutral enough. I also don't understand how an article that recently underwent major changes cannot be considered a good article. If that "major editing" helps the article, why would you nominate it for delisting? Display name 99 (talk) 01:12, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

If the major editing improved the article, then the article is not stable. Stability imples that it has settled on a version that needs no substantive improvement, which obviously isn't the case if it was just substantively improved. Give it a week, or a month, or whatever, but don't claim, as editfests seem to far too often, "instant stability." Anmccaff (talk) 19:24, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

If the article grossly fails to meet one or more of the GA criteria, we can talk about demoting it. But to suggest that an article ought to be demoted after it was "substantially improved" falls nothing short of pure insanity.

Did you read the definition of "stability" at WP:Good article criteria? I'm guessing you haven't in a while, so I'll quote it for you. It declares that the article must "not change significantly from day to day because of an ongoing edit war or content dispute." So there's no edit war or content dispute, just somebody improving the article's quality. And somehow that's a reason to downgrade it? Perhaps before the article was not GA worthy. Now it seems as though it is. My suggestion for you is to read the GA criteria, determine what it means, contemplate your actions carefully, and to stop punishing people for making Wikipedia better. Display name 99 (talk) 19:51, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

Yes, I have read it recently, have you considered that the only reason I (and possibly others) are not actively editing is to give the question here a chance to be settled? If you'd prefer, I'll mark up all the sections that are dubious, &cet. There certainly is a content dispute; we have an article supposedly about "mountain railways of India" which ignores most examples of them, and almost all historical examples. Huge amounts of potential content are missing.

Next, you are assuming that the article now meets standards; as mentioned explicitly above; I feel it does not, since The article is not broad in coverage,but restricted to a small portion of its nominal subject.

Finally, stop assuming that something you don't agree with is aimed at "punishing people for making Wikipedia better; perhaps I don't see this as making Wikipedia better. In fact, I see labeling this in its current form a "feature article" as making Wikipedia a laughingstock. Anmccaff (talk) 20:06, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

Your previous posts focused most heavily on the article not being stable. I was responding to that. The discussion that we are having here does not count as a content dispute. A content dispute would be marked by frequent reverts or drama on the talk page. The idea that an article should be delisted because of a major improvement still sounds just as ridiculous, but your expanded emphasis on the broadness issue seems to have more credibility. Perhaps El cid, el campeador could expand the scope of the article's coverage so that it will better quality as a GA. Display name 99 (talk) 20:41, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

The discussion that we are having here does not count as a content dispute....but it would, you know, were it elsewhere. Should I move it there now? The idea that an article should be delisted because of a major improvement still sounds just as ridiculous. To you, perhaps. As I see it, if it needed major improvement, it probably wasn't given a very good GA review, or it may have suffered from accumulated bad edits. Either way, it has never had a GA review in in its current form, and allowing it to keep the status either because it had once met it, or because someone had mistakenly thought it did, is just silly. Anmccaff (talk) 20:57, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

The only reason for this dispute is because you nominated the article to be delisted. You're basically saying that because you nominated an article for reassessment and thus caused a content dispute, the article should be delisted because of that very same dispute that you initiated. By that logic, every GA reassessment that resulted in any kind of discussion whatsoever-as I imagine nearly all do-would result in the article being delisted simply because of the discussion. Can you see the absurdity in that way of thinking? Display name 99 (talk) 21:04, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

The reason I nominated it is because it isn't a very good article, even if it is slightly improved from when it was a very bad article. The content disputes mentioned above haven't been settled, or even addressed. Until they are, the article is not stable. Nothing in the least absurd about that; but there is a tiny bit of absurdity in the idea that "goodness" is a permanent irrevocable condition. Anmccaff (talk) 21:14, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

PS:[Here]'s the original "good" article. Do you think this is now essentially the same article? Do you think this article, in its 2010 from, should have passed GA review? Anmccaff (talk) 21:24, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

I can take a look at that. But did you notice this edit, which seems to have removed a whole lot of content? Maybe it includes some of the missing material that you're referring to. If so you can challenge it. Display name 99 (talk) 01:29, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, before that it was more in-line with the putative subject, although it had some other major failings., too. Anmccaff (talk) 17:41, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

I think this article has, by now, gone through so many changes since evaluation that a reevaluation is unquestionably needed; does anyone now disagree? Anmccaff (talk) 17:46, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

...going twice.... Anmccaff (talk) 18:36, 25 July 2017 (UTC)

Gone. I've removed the Good Article, which appears to be justifiable from the conversations above. Anmccaff (talk) 19:43, 8 August 2017 (UTC)

Sorry, Anmccaff, that is not how a Good Article community reassessment works. The GA stays on until and unless the reassessment is closed as "delist", and any closure has to be made by an uninvolved closer. Since you opened this, you are clearly not uninvolved. As for a reevaluation, that is what this page is supposed to be: a reevaluation by the community against the GA criteria. Unfortunately, in this day and age, it can take a long time to get enough folks here to do that work. I notice that this article had an enormous revision by MRI SCAN, who was on Wikipedia during the final week of July, and also added the copyedit tag. Perhaps if other participants here and other editors on the article, including Display name 99, El cid, el campeador, Mackensen, and Punyaboy could do the assessment. If all that's really needed is a copyedit, then a request at WP:GOCE/REQ for a GA-level copyedit could get the article there in the next few weeks. Display name 99, with all the recent changes, would your assessment still be "Keep", or is the article no longer there? BlueMoonset (talk) 15:26, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

Anyone who was involved on the initial evaluation might want to step back from it too; they labeled as a good article something contaoning an entire section of rather obvious folkloric falsehoods. Anmccaff (talk) 17:35, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

The original GA reviewer from 2010 hasn't edited here since June, and the editor who originally nominated it retired a year ago. I don't think that will be an issue. BlueMoonset (talk) 17:58, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

I don't think MRI Scan's edits helped any. But these could be undone or discussed here or on the talk page. One of Amncaff's concerns was that the article was not broad enough in scope to cover its title. I found one edit which removed a lot of information, posted it above, and suggested he challenge it. So far, I'm not aware of any attempt to do so. Right now, I don't think that the article meets GA criteria. But if either of these things are done it might. Display name 99 (talk) 19:25, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

Well, I requested this article for copy edit at WP:GOCE few months back. All the above dispute started because of the same. Apologies for the same. However please find my observations.

As of today, the article has same sections what it had back in mid 2016. A user Mackensen had restored mid 2016 version of article after this dispute started. After that another user MRI Scan, only made the article grammatically better (It appears so).

Restoration by Mackensen answers "One of Anmccaff's concerns was that the article was not broad enough in scope to cover its title. I found one edit which removed a lot of information, posted it above, and suggested he challenge it. So far, I'm not aware of any attempt to do so." comment by Display name 99. (The edit referred by Displayname99 was done by user DeadatRail sometime in late 2016 which was subsequently undone by Mackensen restoration)

So now only thing required is a re copy edit. Should i request it again at WP:GOCE requests?

But even after that, even if article is send for and is certified a GA or FA, it will be a GA or FA only, it will still not be a complete article. There are many railways in India which are or contain mountain railways, such as Mumbai-Pune railway line, etc. These lines were never part of this article, not even when it was a GA. Now the big question is how to find out all the mountainous railways in India. As far as i checked on the internet, none of the sites gives complete info, not only that most sites don't even mention all the railways mentioned in this article. If this stuff is done then the article will be complete article as well as a GA/FA.

(Also linking El cid, el campeador and BlueMoonset)

Punyaboy (talk) 05:51, 10 September 2017 (UTC)

Comment We have now had, for over three months, an article that starts out with a template pointng out that it This article may require copy editing for grammar, style, cohesion, tone, or spelling. You can assist by editing it. (July 2017) (Learn how and when to remove this template message), and yet it is still, by some kind of magical thinking, a "'Good Article" . It is well past the time to put that idea out of our misery. Anmccaff (talk) 19:57, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

The article has now been copyedited by the Guild of Copy Editors. Where this leaves the other issues I don't know. BlueMoonset (talk) 18:05, 8 January 2018 (UTC)