Talk:Tony's Cronies/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: J Milburn (talk · contribs) 22:42, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

This is an interesting topic and one worthy of encyclopedic coverage, but I'm not convinced that this article is quite there yet. I feel there's a slight tinge of anti-Blairism and the research could be a little better. Specific comments are below.

• Is there any reason you're using such an unflattering picture of Blair?
• ""Tony's Cronies" was a term in British politics and media" It is a term that was given to x/used by y- it hasn't stopped being a term
• "These included granting life peerages and public appointments" "These" would refer to the people, but you are using it to refer to Blair's actions.
• "The term originated after the 1997 United Kingdom general election when the Conservative Party referred to people awarded positions of power by Tony Blair as "Tony's Cronies", as the Labour Party had won the election." This is not what the source says: "William Hague and the Tories have joyously seized upon the notion that a self-serving network of pals, “Tony's cronies”, are running Britain." The source doesn't say that the Tories invented the phrase, or even that they used it, just that they criticised Labour for the phenomenon which could be referred to as Tony's cronies.
• As we've potentially got BLP issues here, do your sources specifically refer to the people you name as Tony's cronies (or, at least, say that they have been referred to as Tony's cronies)?
• "as replacing the House of Lords with a "house of cronies."[6]" Be aware of MOS:LQ
• "These regular appointments of new peers on apparent favouritism" This is somewhat non-neutral
• "when Labour gave Lord Hollick, a friend of Blair, the chairmanship of the South Bank Arts Complex as a personal gift" Again, non-neutral, and again, I'm not seeing that in the source.
• The Daily Mail isn't an appropriate source for a political controversy like this. (Also, periodicals, including journals, magazines and newspapers, should have their titles italicised.)
• This article is sourced entirely to newspapers/politics periodicals rather than academic research, and so it's a little cursory. A quick Google Scholar search throws up doi:10.1093/pa/52.4.677 (which has a lot on the phrase itself and the kinds of issues it evokes), doi:10.1111/j.1467-923X.2006.00759.x (which ties the phrase/phenomenon to think tanks, something not addressed in this article) and doi:10.1111/j.1467-856X.2007.00292.x (which talks, though perhaps only briefly, about the phrase and compares Blair's approach to that of John Howard). These are all solid journals from well-known publishers- nothing obscure. There are plenty of other hits, too. While this article currently works as a C- or perhaps B-class article, you're going to need to delve into this kind of material before it's ready for GA status.

As this is a short article which has only recently been nominated and there does seem to be a fair amount of work to do, I am going to close the review at this time. My three particular concerns are about neutrality (a few things are said in Wikipedia's voice which probably shouldn't be), reliable sources (The Mail should really go) and, most importantly, breadth of coverage- the fact that you're relying only on news sources means you're going to miss important material/analysis. Once these issues have been looked into, this article will likely be ready for renomination. J Milburn (talk) 22:42, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

I appreciate that there is more information on it. However the first academic document you mention, I cannot access it and I believe I would also have trouble doing the same for the others. Are there more easily accessible versions of those that I will be able to access? The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 23:14, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

There are others who can help you access this kind of material (see WP:LIBRARY, and I don't mind helping people source the odd article myself), but if you're going to work on articles of this sort regularly, you may want to apply for access through Wikipedia (see Wikipedia:The Wikipedia Library for more details about that). I was under the impression that you were a student (apologies if I've got that completely wrong...), meaning that you would have access through your university library. (Public libraries/college libraries also sometimes have access to some academic databases, but I wouldn't rely on them...) I appreciate that resources can be harder for some people to access, but sometimes you really need access to particular kinds of resources (or even particular specific papers/books) in order to push articles to the higher levels. J Milburn (talk) 23:33, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

OK, so for the first academic source you mentioned. Which level of WP:Library would you say would have that in, so I know which one to apply for? The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 12:43, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

It's not really worth applying for access just for one article- if you send me an email, I'll send you a PDF of the article. J Milburn (talk) 15:18, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

(Though it won't be for a few hours- I'm currently connecting via a very slow network...) J Milburn (talk) 15:22, 6 January 2015 (UTC)