Talk:GhanaSat-1

Good articleGhanaSat-1 has been listed as one of the Natural sciences good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.
Good topic starGhanaSat-1 is part of the Birds-1 series, a good topic. This is identified as among the best series of articles produced by the Wikipedia community. If you can update or improve it, please do so.
Article milestones
DateProcessResult
February 16, 2018Good article nomineeListed
July 7, 2018Good topic candidatePromoted
Did You Know
A fact from this article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "Did you know?" column on July 25, 2017.
The text of the entry was: Did you know ... that GhanaSat-1, the first Ghanaian satellite in space, is used to monitor the country's coastline as well as broadcast Ghanaian songs?
Current status: Good article

GA Review

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Reviewing
This review is transcluded from Talk:GhanaSat-1/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Codyorb (talk · contribs) 21:38, 8 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Commencing GA review. I'll begin the review soon. Codyorb (talk) 21:38, 8 February 2018 (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):
    Clearly written, MOS followed.
  2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.
    a (reference section): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR): d (copyvio and plagiarism):
    Throughly referenced with reliable sources. No copyright violations found.
  3. It is broad in its coverage.
    a (major aspects): b (focused):
    Summarized well, without going too far into detail.
  4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.
    Fair representation without bias:
    Neutral.
  5. It is stable.
    No edit wars, etc.:
    Article stable.
  6. It is illustrated by images and other media, where possible and appropriate.
    a (images are tagged and non-free content have fair use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):
    All images properly licensed.
  7. Overall:
    Pass/Fail:
    Congratulations! This article meets the criteria well.

Codyorb (talk) 21:45, 8 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Review reopened

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Per a discussion at Codyorb's talk page, this review is being reopened, and further work will include contributions from Mike Christie, who has agreed to give a second opinion on the state of the article, given that Codyorb is new at reviewing, and some significant issues have since come to light. BlueMoonset (talk) 05:09, 14 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Review by Mike Christie

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I'll copyedit as I go; please revert if I make a mess of anything.

  • [1] is a dead link; it needs to be either replaced, or given an archive link.
    • Technically, per GA rules I specifically do not have to. But just for you :) Kees08 (Talk)
      I always thought WP:GACR 2 covered this: "Verifiable". Do you mean that one should accept on good faith that a dead link used to support the material given? Not an issue, since you fixed it, but I'm curious; I always point out dead links in GA reviews and am now wondering if I'm not supposed to. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:12, 15 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      I think it is dumb and I tried at some point to get it changed, I should probably try harder. Per note 5 on the criteria, it is verifiable if it is not a bare URL. I always bring them up, and make sure I say it is optional to fix them, or I fix them myself. Kees08 (Talk)
      You mean you think it's dumb that a dead link is OK? If so, I agree; I may post at WT:GACR to see if there's any support for modifying that. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 23:36, 15 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      Yes, that is what I meant. You should find a conversation about it on the talk page, or in the archives, I specifically remember there being one. Should let you know what each sides arguments were and who to ping in the next debate. I was going to send it to RfC, I have never done that though and do not know how. Kees08 (Talk) 01:57, 16 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • The external link for the Birds program doesn't really belong in this article; it would be more natural from the article about Birds. I'd suggest making "Birds program" in the lead a redlink to Joint Global Multi-Nation Birds Satellite; Googling reveals a fair amount of coverage, so I think it will eventually get an article of its own.
    • Hm, I was going to just call it Birds Project, but I suppose that works as well. Kees08 (Talk)
  • What makes the following websites reliable sources? I'm not saying they're not reliable, just that I can't find evidence of their reliability from their websites.
    • heavens-above.com
    • space.skyrocket.de
      • You haven't heard of Gunter's space page? Just kidding, but really, it is a pretty popular citation source in spaceflight, along with astronautix. Generally deemed reliable.
    • face2faceafrica.com
      • New York based company on Pan-African news, see about page. I used it a lot when I was writing articles on African topics.
    • amsat-uk.org
      I would deem an amateur satellite (and radio it seems) group to be a reliable source for the purpose I am using it for (a pretty amateur satellite, no offense) and on how to retrieve data from it. Kees08 (Talk)
      • I have not used this source before, because I usually do not write about satellites. They have a Press page that may help determine they are notable...not sure what you would need specifically to say defacto if they are notable or not.
    • newsghana.com
      Site doesn't exist anymore as far as I can tell...so I replaced it with another source (state run China agency) and removed the other material. Kees08 (Talk)
    • ghanaweb.com -- I see the story cites rainbowradiooline.com as a source, for which I can't see evidence for reliability either.
      Added Tech Crunch, which I thought was reliable, but I do not write articles that need that source often. Kees08 (Talk)
    • ghheadlines.com -- a news aggregator, so again the real question is probably the reliability of the underlying source. Here that's "Pulse", which I don't see much information about.
      Removed Kees08 (Talk)
  • Have you considered using material from the newsletters at the Birds page? I just glanced at them but there seems to be quite a bit of information there, including the names of some of the students in Ghana, for example, which would be a nice touch.
    • I did, but they are primary sources, so I tried not to use them. I specifically did not put student names in any of the articles because I was not sure if that was a notable factor just kind of trivia. Thoughts? Kees08 (Talk)
      Well, fair point. I think it would be OK to use them for uncontroversial information. For example, "One of the missions is to measure the atmospheric density at low earth orbit" (first newsletter) is a little more detail than we currently have in the article. The mention of uploading a song (second newsletter) is a bit of colour that wouldn't hurt. I think the student names would be fine; it would be trivia if they weren't really part of the project, but there's nothing gimmicky about it -- they really worked on the satellite. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:53, 15 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      And I've struck the point since it's not a problem, just a suggestion. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:00, 15 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • The lead is too short; it should summarize the main information in the article. See WP:LEADLENGTH for some guidance; this article is well under 15,000 characters, so we only need one or two paragraphs, but the lead should be "a short, but useful and complete, summary of the topic". For example, you could add the cost, more details about the sensors and operations, and a note about plans for the next two satellites.
  • The "Background" section gives information about the Birds program, most of which is repeated in the "Design" section. I'd suggest getting rid of the redundancy by combining the two sections and eliminating the duplicate information; you might also consider getting rid of the subheadings, which make for quite short sections.
  • All five satellites had to be identical to each other in the class of a 1U CubeSat: I'd suggest linking CubeSat, either here, or earlier if the revised lead mentions them (which it probably should). Also, I'm not sure what this sentence means. Do you just mean the satellites all had to be CubeSats? If so I'd rephrase; this is a complicated way of saying a simple thing.

Kees08: I'm going to pause the review here, because if some of the sources turn out not to be reliable, some rewriting might have to happen; and the same thing is true if you add more information from the newsletters or any other source. I'll go back through the article again once those points are settled. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:57, 14 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Mike Christie: I am going to ping you now on what I have done, and make sure my answers to 'are these sources reliable' are satisfactory before I continue. Thanks! Kees08 (Talk) 07:53, 15 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Re the reliability of the sources, see this, which is a useful reference. I've struck the Gunter and f2fafrica as Gunter is an expert and f2fafrica is a media company (though it would make me happier if there were more evidence of editorial process instead of just listing a couple of people's names as founders). Is there something similar we can show for the others? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:00, 15 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Mike Christie: I think I am ready for you to look at this again. Kees08 (Talk) 06:45, 16 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Looks good; promoting to GA. I'll drop you a note if/when I post to WT:GACR. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 09:22, 16 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]