This review is transcluded from Talk:Assessment on COVID-19 Origins/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Nominator: Mr. Lechkar (talk · contribs) 21:00, 9 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Reviewer: Femke (talk · contribs) 15:20, 12 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'll be reviewing this one over the weekend. My initial impression is good, but I feel we are missing context in terms of other reports. Where there follow-ups we can link to or describe? —Femke 🐦 (talk) 15:20, 12 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Do I understand it correctly, that there are three documents? Not quite clear from the lead. The full declassified report should likely be cited or linked somewhere (the infobox?) Its name is slightly different from the title here. Should the word 'Updated' be added in the first sentence? Do you know why this paper cites the report as if it's from 2023? Was something else released later?
• There is some redundancy in the first paragraph
• It would be good to add more information about the conclusions in the lead, such as the finding that it wasn't a bioweapon, and that it was likely not geneticaly engineered. The two potential origins were natural (4/5 agencies with an opinion) or accidental labl leak (1/4 with an opinion)
• The WHO has an overview of reports published: [1], which might allow you to give context. In terms of GA criteria, I'm mostly concerned about broadness
• There were some reactions in the scientific literature as well, less partisan than Biden or China: [2][3]

• Citation 13 and 14 seems to be dead (they redirects to main page), and I would give an original title + translated title and possibly webarchive
• In terms of copyright: it's best practice to use the {{Source-attribution}} template when closely paraphrasing or copying from public domain.

Overall, it looks like a good start, but the lead should be more specific and the article should include something about the reactions from the scientific community. Spot checks were all okay. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 17:53, 12 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Overall, I made an attempt to address the reaction from the scientific community in this revision, as well as partially expanding the lead and linking the dead citations to archived versions.

As to regards the title of the article, I'm still not definitely sure about that currently. When the article was originally created in 2021, I had it translated/titled based on the original French version, which also used the title "Assessment on COVID-19 Origins" and not the full title as cited by the declassified report. On the other hand, while I agree the WHO report may provide relevant context, it was released only two months ago and I'm not sure whether it could be appropriate to include sources from a more recent timeframe not corresponding to the information that was publicly known at the time the report was declassified in 2021; this is also the same reason why I don't have any plans to consider whether the original document was updated as you may have speculated.

Thank you for the feedback in any case. Mr. Lechkar (talk) 19:23, 12 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think the paragraph about the scientific community reaction gives too much weight to the lab-leak hypothesis. It seems to imply that Hanage was also leaning into that hypothesis, even though he welcomes the report for leaning more towards the natural origin cause. Overall, it's fine to give some current perspective, as long as it's very concise.

In terms of the title: you can compromise. MOS:TITLE gives us leeway to use the common name / shorter name, whereas usually in the first sentence the full name is used.

Minor thingie, but the very first citation is not needed, and links to the summary, rather than to the report, which might confuse readers in the way I got confused earlier. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 20:15, 12 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I addressed your most recent concerns just now. Regarding the title itself, I chose to use the document's filename (Declassified Assessment) in accordance with MOS:TITLE, rather than what was visually presented within the document (Updated Assessment) which I viewed as not being contextual to the overall topic. I also tried my best to remove a bit of the focus on the lab-leak hypothesis in the relevant paragraph, added the perspective of the WHO in the reactions section, and used one overall link to the full assessment document which includes the summary that was originally cited. Mr. Lechkar (talk) 20:37, 12 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This has changed the article scope to be much smaller. I would maintain the original scope. The title of a document is not the same as the filename. I don't see anywhere iN MOS:title that that's an appropriate source for the title. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 06:58, 13 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Mr. Lechkar: I'm almost ready to pass, if you could just address my last comment. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 08:20, 14 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Femke Actually, the policy to be addressed is WP:TITLE regarding the naming of articles in general, not MOS:TITLE which covers styling (i.e. italics and such), but your assessment still stands; henceforth I might suggest using the name "Updated Assessment on COVID-19 Origins" (found within the starting pages of the document) as the full title. Mr. Lechkar (talk) 17:43, 14 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

As the article title itself is not part of the criteria, I'm happy to pass now that the first sentence has been adjusted. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 17:48, 14 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]