This review is transcluded from Talk:John Higgins/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Nominator: Lee Vilenski (talk · contribs)

Reviewer: Asilvering (talk · contribs) 16:33, 21 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hi there! I'll do a brief look now and should get through most of the rest this weekend. Any edits that are sufficiently minor to not bother you with, I'll do myself, but of course feel free to dispute/revert any that you disagree with. -- asilvering (talk) 16:33, 21 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

GA review (see here for what the criteria are, and here for what they are not)

1. It is reasonably well written.

   a (prose, spelling, and grammar): b (MoS for lead, layout, word choice, fiction, and lists):

2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.

   a (reference section): b (inline citations to reliable sources): c (OR): d (copyvio and plagiarism):

3. It is broad in its coverage.

   a (major aspects): b (focused):

4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.

   Fair representation without bias:

5. It is stable.

   No edit wars, etc.:

6. It is illustrated by images and other media, where possible and appropriate.

   a (images are tagged and non-free content have non-free use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):

7. Overall:

   Pass/Fail:

1. We shouldn't need any citations here, since this should all be attested in the body of the article. -- asilvering (talk) 16:55, 21 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

1. File:John Higgins at Snooker German Masters (Martin Rulsch) 2014-01-29 09.jpg: I suggest removing this image as there is already a photo of him at this competition in the infobox, and that one is a better photo. -- asilvering (talk) 16:55, 21 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
2. The other two images check out. -- asilvering (talk) 16:55, 21 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
3. Any chance of finding an earlier photo and a later one? We just have two photos from 2013/2014. If it's impossible to find any compatibly licensed photos of him, can you think of any relevant images you could include? Mostly just looking to break up this wall-of-text where possible. -- asilvering (talk) 16:55, 21 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

   I do wish there was indeed more images, but we do struggle with snooker images. The earliest is 2008, if that's of help. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 09:56, 26 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Gosh, I hate to do this, Lee Vilenski, but this looks like a drive-by nomination? You're #30 for authorship and #24 by number of edits. What's going on here? -- asilvering (talk) 01:10, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

yeah, I'm not really sure why I nominated this. I'm making my way through the article to get it up to snuff if you do fancy reviewing it, but I could totally understand why you wouldn't want too as it should be in place before the article is nominated. Apologies. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 11:33, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'll happily leave the review open for a bit if you think you'll be able to get through it relatively quickly. If you're not up for doing that in the next week or so it might make more sense to withdraw the nom? Up to you. -- asilvering (talk) 03:19, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, I've been through the article and done some work. To my eye it's a lot better looking and flows to a greater degree. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 09:45, 26 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Crud. I was leaving this alert in my inbox on purpose so I wouldn't forget about it, but now I've clicked on it. You're now liable to vanish into my graveyard of forgotten open tabs. Please do ping me if I don't get to this by this weekend. -- asilvering (talk) 20:06, 27 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Lee Vilenski, I tried to go through and do a typical prose check, but I quickly got pretty stuck - there's almost nothing in the first three career subsections after all, just match results, basically a database in prose form. I'm not seeing analysis or even summary. I think this is a big problem for 3b, but also for 1a. It looks like it would take a lot of work to condense this down into appropriate summary style. But maybe it will be easier to clean up than it looks. What are your thoughts? -- asilvering (talk) 02:47, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I don't really know what you are expecting. It's pretty typical to have a career summary that talks about tournament results and career rankings. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 06:56, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Sure, but it doesn't really talk about them - all it does is state the scores. If a chart or a database would be a more effective way of getting information across, we're not really looking at encyclopedic information. I note that Ronnie O'Sullivan, for example, has a much more effectively narrativized career summary. -- asilvering (talk) 07:26, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That O'Sullivan article is a mess. He's also the most polarising figure in the sport. We don't want a list cruft, what we do is summarise what the player's career was like. If they constantly state crazy things and get disqualified from tournaments, then we mention that. Our job is to state how the player got on first and foremost in their career. Per our MOS, we don't comment on whether or not a player played well, or how easy/good a shot was, so we comment on how they got on in the tournaments, if they defeat someone notable and the like. The summary style is done on the O'Sullivan article, because we split off the actual career summary to Professional snooker career of Ronnie O'Sullivan because it was so long.

See other GAs that don't do this, Ding Junhui, Kyren Wilson, James Cahill (snooker player), Marco Fu, etc. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 07:37, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Nominator, reviewer, any further progress on this review? Ideally, it should be wrapped up pretty soon. —Ganesha811 (talk) 15:39, 14 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry both, was ill and got behind in everything.

Lee Vilenski, I agree that we don't want listcruft. That isn't what I was suggesting. What I am saying is that this effectively is a list, just in a harder-to-read format. For example, there are twelve paragraphs that cover 2011-2017, and most of them are almost entirely lists of match results. There's some stuff in here that could be usefully pulled out into a narrative, like the bit about how he kept changing cues, etc, but it gets very buried in the list of results. 2017-present covers about the same amount of time and is less than half the size. -- asilvering (talk) 18:37, 14 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hello to both - this review has been open for well over a month and should be closed if consensus cannot be reached soon. —Ganesha811 (talk) 13:47, 6 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Lee Vilenski, are you planning to do any edits to the article? -- asilvering (talk) 17:35, 6 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm still not really sure what you require from the article. You are looking at a career section about how a player got on with their career. It is going to have results of how the player got on in tournaments. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 21:44, 6 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I've tried a few different ways to explain this now, so I'm at a loss for what more I can give you. It seems that you are hoping I will simply drop the issue and pass the article? But I won't do that, because it isn't simply a prose issue; it affects several of the other criteria. The problem appears to be that it is sourced mainly to primary sources (match results, database listings, etc). In this case that dependence doesn't cause a WP:OR problem, since the article uses those sources mostly just to say "he won 10-7 against so-and-so". Instead, we end up with a series of facts with no unification or summary; it's just a list of individual primary sources, not a new tertiary source. The potential for this problem is one of the many reasons why wikipedia guidelines emphasize using secondary sources.

The lead looks pretty good to me, but it's not really an accurate summary of the article, as required by the GA criteria, given the problems I just described. I'd much prefer that the article changed to match the lead than the other way around. The personal life section contains disconnected facts as well: for example, it mentions his marriage and children, then what sports teams he likes, then his child, then an incident where he was drunk on a plane. I haven't done a full source check, but aside from the primary source issues I mentioned above, I also notice that the mathematics article mentioned at the end of the personal life section (which does not belong here as it is about his career, not his personal life) is about a complex networks approach, which is really rather different from being a complex mathematical study.

Since this article is a long way from meeting criteria 1 and 3b, and additionally has at least some criterion 2 concerns, I will unfortunately have to fail this article. -- asilvering (talk) 22:31, 6 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That's absolutely fine. At no point was I expecting you to just pass the article. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 22:36, 6 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you (and sorry for the fail). -- asilvering (talk) 22:38, 6 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This review is transcluded from Talk:John Higgins/GA2. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Nominator: Lee Vilenski (talk · contribs) 16:48, 17 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Reviewer: It is a wonderful world (talk · contribs) 17:53, 1 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Lee Vilenski I'll review this. I note the previous nomination was failed due to lack of a cohesive narrative, and you haven't made many edits to the article since then. I think the previous reviewer's criticisms stand and I will elaborate below. However, I don't think the issues are severe enough that they cannot be fixed up to a GA standard in the timeframe of the nomination – provided a decent amount of work is put in. I note that your talk page says you are on holiday, so feel free to ignore this review until you get back. IAWW (talk) 17:53, 1 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I commented on the two biggest problems I see with the article below. I think these should be addressed before I continue the review, as they are relatively major in the context of a review. IAWW (talk) 17:55, 1 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hi @Lee Vilenski, I noticed you have been active over the last few days. Any progress on this? IAWW (talk) 07:42, 6 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, it's been a bit manic with the final of the world snooker championship. I'll take a look now. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 13:42, 6 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Fair enough, those articles take priority to be fair, given how much attention they are probably getting. IAWW (talk) 21:16, 6 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The lead omits a summary of his career before 2011 and his major career wins over his whole career. IAWW (talk) 17:53, 1 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I've reorganised the lede and added a paragraph on his main title wins. I totally agree we stated info about him as a player (and career), but didn't really cover the four world titles or anything like that. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 14:01, 6 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Looks much better. I'll wait for secondary sourcing to be found on the early career stuff, and then will do the prose review. IAWW (talk) 21:19, 6 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

"Early professional years, first world championship" and the first two paragraphs of "After the first world title" rely almost entirely on primary sourcing. I'm sure there exists a plethora of secondary sources available for these sections, and they should be added. Without secondary sourcing, I believe this section would be insufficiently notable to be included in its entirety, so it would unnecessary detail and fail under criterion 3b. IAWW (talk) 17:53, 1 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I struggle a little to do things with the press items around that time as a lot of it is pre-internet or archived. BennyOnTheLoose, sorry to bother you, I know I ask a lot. Any chance you've got old Snooker Scenes from around this time, or have some print sources from 1990-99? Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 14:05, 6 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Most likely. I have a few wiki-things to do first, but should be able to take a proper look in the next few days. Regards, BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 20:27, 6 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you IAWW (talk) 21:15, 6 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, there seem to be quite a few issues with references, and I don't have time to deal with all of them. It seems like date of birth and birthplace are not referenced. "In 2006, Higgins was escorted off a plane for being drunk after losing the Malta Cup final to Ken Doherty, but he became teetotal in preparation for the 2007 World Championship" is not supported by the cited source, which seems like a BLP violation. "ending Hendry's eight consecutive years in the top spot" is not supported by the cited source, which has a note that "These rankings are unofficial as I have calculated them myself". Examples from the first paragraph of Early professional years, first world championship section are below. BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 23:50, 6 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@BennyOnTheLoose, thank you very much for this. I should have spot checked this section before getting you to dig up secondary sourcing. In this case, the article clearly needs a full source-text integrity check to meet GA criterion 2, as evidenced by the seven issues in the sourcing of the first paragraph of the first section alone. Therefore, I will fail this nomination as this is too much work to be done in the timeframe of a GA review. IAWW (talk) 07:24, 7 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• "The following year, Higgins turned professional." - unreferenced
• "He reached the last eight of the 1993 British Open during his first season on the tour, before losing 3–5 to Jimmy White." - unreferenced
• "Aged 19, Higgins" ... "This was the first ranking title of his career." - unreferenced
• "making him the first teenager to win three ranking events in a single season" - not supported by cited sources
• "He reached the finals of the 1995 Welsh Open, losing 3–9 to Steve Davis, and the 1995 Masters, losing by the same score to Ronnie O'Sullivan." - unreferenced
• "His first time playing at the World Snooker Championship in 1995 he lost 3–10 in the first round to fellow Scottish player Alan McManus." - unreferenced
• "his fourth ranking title at the inaugural 1995 German Open beating Ken Doherty 9–3 in the final."- not supported by cited source

This article draws quite a lot of edits, but all the recent ones seem minor and constructive.

Appropriately tagged.

It would make sense to link "2013 German Masters" in the second image caption, as is done in the other captions. IAWW (talk) 17:53, 1 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

A few more images of him at different tournaments could be added. IAWW (talk) 17:53, 1 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This article relies almost entirely on newspapers and primary sourcing. I'm sure some decent print sourcing is probably available based on some of the snooker FAs I have seen, which would improve the quality of the sourcing significantly and bring this article to meet WP:BESTSOURCE. IAWW (talk) 17:59, 1 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]