Talk:Central Intelligence Agency/GA1

GA Reassessment

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GA Sweeps: On hold

As part of the WikiProject Good Articles, we're doing Sweeps to determine if the article should remain a Good article. I believe the article needs many changes to meet the criteria and to remain listed as a Good article. In reviewing the article, I have found there are several issues that needs to be addressed:

1. Normally, I would delist an article with so many citation tags, but if attempts are being made to address the tags, then it will continue to remain on hold. All of the tags need to be addressed, and there are other sections also lacking cites. As a rule of thumb, source any statement that a reader with no knowledge of the topic would likely question.
2. The lead should at most be four paragraphs. It's probably best to combine the last two. See WP:LEAD for guidelines.
3. "In its present form, the CIA has an executive office and several agency-wide functions, and four major directorates:" The four directorates are listed but no explanation is covered on the last two. I think it would also be beneficial if this list was converted to prose. Also, it's not necessary to bold the font for the directorates (or the other occurrences in the article, save the lead).
4. "The overall U.S. intelligence budget has been considered classified until recently." How soon is recently? Last year? Last five?
5. "...and there have also been accidental disclosures:[14]..." The citation should be moved to the end of the details about the disclosure.
6. Throughout the article there are multiple short subsections with only a few sentences. Some of these can be combined (or the details can be expanded). In addition, there are multiple single sentences. To improve the flow of the article, either expand on these or incorporate them into other paragraphs.
7. "This office, among other functions, works with the entertainment industry." In addition to needing the citation, working with the entertainment industry to do what? Gather intelligence or assist in making films/TV shows? Or maybe both?
8. "There is an Office dedicated to Iraq, and regional analytical Offices covering:" Is an entire office dedicated to the one country just because of the current war or for another reason? If it's not the only office to be dedicated to a single country then it likely doesn't need to be mentioned (or the others do).
9. "See details of work in this area in CIA activities in the Near East, North Africa, South and Southwest Asia" Instead of "see", use the {{see also}} at the beginning of the section. Fix any other occurrences throughout the article.
10. The article jumps back and forth between using "US" and "U.S.". It would be a good idea to choose one and stick with it (don't worry about the sources that use it).
11. "As such, the National Clandestine Service (NCS; formerly the Directorate of Operations) is responsible for collecting foreign intelligence, mainly from clandestine HUMINT sources, and covert action." This is the first occurrence of "HUMINT" so it should be explained here what it stands for instead of a few sections later. It would be a good idea to sweep the article and fix any other occurrences of the first instance of acronyms/uncommon terms.
12. "The CIA has always shown a strong interest in how to use advances in technology to enhance its effectiveness This interest has historically had two primary goals:" The goals should be converted to prose as well.
13. "Many intelligence services cooperate." Among the U.S. or between countries?
14. "There may even be a deniable communications channel with ostensibly hostile nations." This is risking OR, so add a cite to be safe.
15. Unless there is some guideline for the layout of agency articles, wouldn't the organizational history benefit from appearing before all of the prior sections? I'd figure learning about the establishment of the agency would be most important before learning about all of the different offices and its operations. Feel free to correct/argue against this rationale.
16. All of the dead links need to be fixed. The Internet Archive can help.
17. Throughout the article there are inconsistencies in the formatting of dashes, extra/missing punctuation, and other grammar issues. It would be a good idea to copy this article into Word and run the spell/grammar checker.
18. Within the headings of the "Organizational history" section, there is inconsistency between how the years are listed (some use parenthesis, and the last one has the year come first). Make sure they are all uniform.
19. "CIA operations by region, country and date are discussed in detail in the following articles:" These were already mentioned in the first section of the article.
20. "Major sources for this section include the..." Instead of mentioning the sources used, actually use those source to provide citations for the statements that need them.
21. Some of the references only have the title and access date. The citations should be as detailed as possible by including author, title, date, publisher, access date, etc. The citation templates at WP:CITET can be helpful in formatting references easier.

This article is obviously an important topic, and because of its large size, a lot of work is needed to maintain and improve it. Because of the amount of changes required, the article is going to differ significantly afterwards. I will likely need to re-review the article again after the above issues are addressed. While many of these are easy to address and will not require much time, some will definitely take a while to accomplish (mainly the sourcing). Due to the amount of the workload, I am going to present two options. I can leave the article on hold for a week at a time, where I will check the ongoing progress and will keep the article if all of the issues are addressed within a few weeks. Or, if you believe the above issues will take more than a few weeks or can't be addressed at this time (lack of sources to find cites, for example), I can fail the article now. The article can then be re-nominated at WP:GAN once all of the above issues are addressed, or I can re-review the article for you. Let me know what you would consider the best option. --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 06:41, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks a lot Nehrams2020, this is really helpful, a good review, and I have been needing someone to help me figure out what needs to be done on this for a while now. As for the options, I am not certain what is best, I mean, I plan on working on all of the above as soon as I can, but I am currently away right now and will not return until the weekend, so unless some charitable editor comes along, I don't think you will see any progress on this article until at least the weekend. However, I can promise to work on it as soon as I get back, and from that point on you should see some steady improvement. So, if you are willing to allow for a week of inactivity, then I would prefer you leave it on hold. On the other hand, a week of inactivity is certainly a while, and I completely understand if you would rather fail it now and let me re-nominate at a later date. Please let me know what you think is best. (Morethan3words (talk) 23:11, 22 June 2009 (UTC))

Thanks for the reply. I know that you have the best intentions for the article and that you will be continuing to improve it. But another thing to consider is that this article is still available for readers to see. With all of the citation tags and issues I mentioned above, it's hard to illustrate to readers what a GA is based on the state of this article. It's my recommendation that based on the time you're away, as well as the time it will take to improve the article that delisting it is the proper course of action. I'll always be around, so when you address all of the issues (or have questions on any of them), you can just let me know on my talk page and I'll be happy to help you out. I have no problems re-reviewing the article (unless you want somebody else to) once it's re-nominated at GAN. It's always hard to see an article delisted, but in the long term (as well as for current readers), I think it's the best option. --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 23:32, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

I understand, and thanks for your efforts. You do seem to be pretty reasonable about this and please count on me coming back to you once I have addressed the above. Cheers, - Morethan3words (talk) 20:12, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

GA Sweeps: Delisted

Per the above comments, it appears that the issues will not be able to be addressed in the coming weeks. As a result I have delisted the article as it still has a way to go before meeting the GA criteria. Continue to improve the article, addressing the issues above. I look forward to seeing the further improvement of the article, and don't hesitate to contact me if you need assistance with any of these. I'll be happy to re-review the article or at least give it another look if you want to nominate it at GAN. If you disagree with this review, a community consensus can be reached at WP:GAR. This is an important topic, and I'd like to see it return to GA and hopefully FA at some point. If you have any questions, let me know on my talk page and I'll get back to you as soon as I can. --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 00:28, 25 June 2009 (UTC)