Talk:Manila hostage crisis/GA2

GA Review

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Reviewer: – Quadell ^(talk) 18:33, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

Rate	Attribute	Review Comment
	1. Well-written:
	1a. the prose is clear, concise, and understandable to an appropriately broad audience; spelling and grammar are correct.	I made proofreading improvements as necessary. What I could not fix myself, I have listed in the #Manila hostage crisis prose problems section below. Addressed, see below.
	1b. it complies with the Manual of Style guidelines for lead sections, layout, words to watch, fiction, and list incorporation.	The lede and infobox are quite good, and the "See also" is appropriate, but the "External links" section is a bit of a mess. This section is most useful for official sites about the subject, such as Toyota's official site in an article about Toyota, but that doesn't apply here. Most (or all) of these links should be either included as sources and footnoted directly, or should be removed. See Wikipedia:External links for more guidance here. Also, there are many youtube links to (presumably copyrighted) news reports which are not in English. These are not appropriate in the English Wikipedia. Trimmed. No problems.
	2. Verifiable with no original research:
	2a. it contains a list of all references (sources of information), presented in accordance with the layout style guideline.	There are areas for improvement. For one, sources in English should be used whenever possible, so that readers of the English Wikipedia can more easily check facts and get more information. (So if an English news source confirms a statement, that source should be used, rather than a source in Tagalog or Chinese.) Also, the article would be improved if there were separate sections for Notes and References, as is done in Temple Beth Israel (Eugene, Oregon) or Augmentative and alternative communication. However, I don't think either of these should be barriers to passing GA status. See response below.
	2b. reliable sources are cited inline. All content that could reasonably be challenged, except for plot summaries and that which summarizes cited content elsewhere in the article, must be cited no later than the end of the paragraph (or line if the content is not in prose).	Inline citations are used correctly.
	2c. it contains no original research.	Except for one possible problem listed in the #Manila hostage crisis prose problems section below, there is no original research detected. Addressed, see below.
	3. Broad in its coverage:
	3a. it addresses the main aspects of the topic.	All basic questions seem to be answered by the article.
	3b. it stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style).	The diversion into precisely which news stations carried live coverage, in the "negotiations" section, is unnecessary and detracts from the flow of the article. See response below. There are problems with the "List of hostages and other casualties" -- see my extended comment below. The "reactions" section is longer than the description of the actual events, but is far less notable. Not every newspaper's response is a noteworthy addition to this article. I understand this often happens when an article is added to by enthusiasts on an ad hoc basis, but a Good Article will give appropriate weight to this section. Most of this content should be forked into a separate International reactions to the Manila hostage crisis, and what's left should be shortened dramatically to just the basics.
	4. Neutral: it represents viewpoints fairly and without editorial bias, giving due weight to each.	All points of view are covered.
	5. Stable: it does not change significantly from day to day because of an ongoing edit war or content dispute.	Not a problem at this time.
	6. Illustrated, if possible, by media such as images, video, or audio:
	6a. media are tagged with their copyright statuses, and valid non-free use rationales are provided for non-free content.	No problems here.
	6b. media are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions.	Good images, but some captions need improvements. Dates should be in prose style, and "incident place" sounds clunky. Perhaps the two "mourning poster" images could be combined (using {{Multiple image}}) with a caption such as "Mourning posters in English (left) and Chinese (right) were hung where the incident occurred." Suggestion adopted! Good images, good captions.
	7. Overall assessment.	Currently the article does not qualify for GA status. However, if all concerns are met within a reasonable time frame, the GA nomination will pass.

Manila hostage crisis prose problems

• The parenthetical comment "...Gregorio Mendoza, ranked senior police officer-2 (SPO2, equivalent military rank: corporal), walked out..." needs to be made into prose.

  I defer this to HTD, as I have no idea how Philippine military ranks work. I adopted HTD's solution.

• Paragraph 2 under "Assault" reports twice, in two different ways, that the bus driver escaped and told police that everyone died. These should be combined in a rewrite of that paragraph.

  Refactored the entire paragraph.

• "During this round of shootings, Leung told of how her husband shielded her with his body and saved her from physical harm; Ken Leung died from the gunshot." Who told this? There were multiple Leungs. Since her husband is named, she should be too.

  Amy Leung. I rewrote that sentence.

• In the "Philippine government investigation" section, there is the following. "It was reported on September 7 that Ombudsman Merceditas Gutierrez and her deputy Emilio Gonzales III rejected an invitation to attend a hearing; police officers earlier testified they overheard Mendoza accusing Gonzales of trying to extort money from him." These two sentences are joined by a semi-colon, which is normally used to indicate a close relation between them, but it isn't clear what the link is. If a reliable source suggests that Gonzales declined to attend a hearing because of this accusation, then you can state this clearly. If not, then the synthesis is original research, and the second sentence should be removed or moved to a more appropriate location.

  I turned the semi-colon into a full-stop, plus a few minor prose changes. That should make it align with the source in tone.

• In the same section, there is a list of eight "failures". Some are complete sentences, while others are sentence fragments. These should be consistent.

  Changed all into complete sentences.

• In the same section, I do not understand this sentence. "In turn, coroner Michael Chan Pik-kiu rejected an offer for four witnesses from Manila to testify through video, saying that their offer to turn up was not promising, as some other Filipino witnesses had already failed to testify as scheduled." Are we sure this is "in turn", as a response to Lim and Moreno's refusal? Why would he say their offer to "turn up" was not promising, when they offered to not "turn up", but instead testify through video? Can you reword this sentence for me?

  Changed "in turn" to "later on" to avoid giving a false implication. Also removed "to turn up" - this is the original wording (turn up in front of the camera, rather than in person), but if it's confusing then let's change it to something better. Deryck C. 08:16, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

  It's still confusing to me -- (Why should previous failures to show up in person lead the coroner to reject a video interview?) -- but the source gives no elucidation, and I can't blame the article for that. Great work on all these points, by the way! – Quadell ^(talk) 12:25, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

  Because "turn up" means "to the camera" throughout the sentence. See also [1] (in Chinese; this is an archived copy in a forum, the original is no longer available online). Since you find it really confusing, I'll add "by video" onto the text as well... Deryck C. 15:47, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

  Ohhhh! That makes more sense. – Quadell ^(talk) 16:01, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

The above prose problems are all resolved. I'm just waiting to see what happens with the "reactions" section before I mark 1(a) as passing. – Quadell ^(talk) 17:23, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

Not sure how to deal with that yet; I'll tell you after I finish merging the casualty table into the text. Deryck C. 16:07, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

Problems with the "List of hostages and other casualties"

Articles should be written in summary style, and long lists should be avoided when not necessary. I know that the victims of the tragedy are certainly important to their families, but they are not otherwise notable, and naming each in a list detracts from the article. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a memorial.

I examined many Featured and Good articles on similar topics, and these generally avoid long lists of victims in this way. For example, Jena Six, Moors murders, Pendle witches, Toa Payoh ritual murders, Kauhajoki school shooting, 1990 Strangeways Prison riot, etc., each could have included lengthy lists of victims or defendants, but opted for a prose format to match Wikipedia's style. September 11 attacks originally contained a list of victims, but this was moved to Casualties of the September 11 attacks, and even that article merely summarizes information about the casualties, and does not attempt to list them all. (That article was nominated for deletion several times, and was only kept because it is currently a summary, and not a list of otherwise non-notable people.)

Those individuals who are notable in the article have already been mentioned in the prose section. The list should be removed. – Quadell ^(talk) 15:45, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

I'm currently in the process of merging selective information from the table into the main text. That means copying full names into at least one prose location where the person is mentioned, to make sure the article remains searchable and unambiguous after removing the table itself. Deryck C. 16:02, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

Response: notes and references

Efforts have been made to cite an English source for everything. However, bearing in mind that English is an official language but not an everyday language in both Hong Kong and the Philippines, some information of local interest (which Wikipedia should cover) will need to cite Chinese or Tagalog sources.

I don't think separating notes and references is a good idea for this article, as separation is only useful when you want to cite a work multiple times with different page numbers or accompanying footnotes. That isn't the case for this article.

That's fine. – Quadell ^(talk) 17:16, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

Response: live television coverage

I think the fact that there was worldwide non-stop TV coverage of the incident is important to the article, as the TV coverage played a crucial role in the incident (as explained in later sections). I removed the list of TV stations, but only because I can't find an RS which gives the list. The only source I found was this one, marginal in terms of RS, and from its date of publication and content it is likely to have drawn on this article as a source, so I'd rather not cite it. Deryck C. 16:56, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

Excellent, this problem is resolved. – Quadell ^(talk) 17:17, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

Final verdict

Due to the remaining concerns about article focus, I'm opting to not pass article at this time. If those issues are fixed, it should be renominated, and I expect it will pass easily. – Quadell ^(talk) 20:03, 18 July 2011 (UTC)