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2014 Scottish independence referendum was nominated as a good article, but it did not meet the good article criteria at the time (January 21, 2016, reviewed version). There are suggestions on the review page for improving the article. If you can improve it, please do; it may then be renominated.

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A fact from 2014 Scottish independence referendum appeared on Misplaced Pages's Main Page in the Did you know column on 14 September 2009 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows: Did you know ... that the Scottish Referendum Bill 2010 proposes that a referendum on Scottish independence be held on St. Andrew's Day 2010, Scotland's official national day? A record of the entry may be seen at Misplaced Pages:Recent additions/2009/September.

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GA Review

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

This review is transcluded from Talk:Scottish independence referendum, 2014/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Wugapodes (talk · contribs) 04:24, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

Will review. Wugapodes (talk) 04:24, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

Checklist

GA review – see WP:WIAGA for criteria

1. Is it reasonably well written?

   A. Prose is "clear and concise", without copyvios, or spelling and grammar errors:

   B. MoS compliance for lead, layout, words to watch, fiction, and lists:

2. Is it factually accurate and verifiable?

   A. Has an appropriate reference section:

   B. Cites reliable sources, where necessary:

   direct quotes always need a citation.

   C. No original research:

3. Is it broad in its coverage?

   A. Major aspects:

   B. Focused (see summary style):

4. Is it neutral?

   Fair representation without bias:

5. Is it stable?

   No edit wars, etc:

6. Does it contain images to illustrate the topic?

   A. Images are tagged with their copyright status, and valid fair use rationales are provided for non-free content:

   B. Images are provided if possible and are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions:

7. Overall:

   Pass or Fail:

Comments

If the comment is numbered, it must be addressed for the article to pass, if it is bulleted, it's an optional suggestion or comment that you don't need to act on right now.
When I quote things, you can use ctrl+f to search the page for the specific line I quoted. Minor comments:

1. "Politicians in the three island groups have referred to the Scottish referendum as the most important event in their political history "since the inception of the island councils in 1975"." This needs a citation as it's a direct quote.

2. "Analysis of the campaigns' Twitter accounts showed the gap between the campaigns increased from approximately 8,000 in August 2013 to 13,804 in February 2014, in favour of Yes Scotland." What are the units here?

3. "the video features 32 "well known faces from across the independence movement", including David Hayman, Martin Compston and Stuart Braithwaite." this direct quote needs a citation.

4. The debates section does not adequately summarize the main articles. There is almost no discussion of the actual debates that took place, and no discussion as to the content of them. (See WP:Summary style)

5. "The Independent reported that the protesters accused Robinson of "conniving with the Treasury to spread lies about the dangers to business and financial services of an independent Scotland."" This quote needs a citation.

6. The international reaction section should be organized as prose, not as a list. Further, though not a part of the GA criteria, WP:NOICONS says not to use flag icons in general prose.

Major Comments: I have two major comments that need to be addressed and will likely entail significant work.

1. The article seems to lack focus. The biggest problem is the Issues section which takes up a large portion of this article. These topics would be better covered in another article, perhaps Issues of the Scottish independence referendum, 2014 or something similar that could cover these topics in detail, and be summarized here. While detail is good (indeed, this article is very detailed and comprehensive!), what every bank thought about the economic issues of independence is unimportant for a general overview of the referendum. I feel WP:GANOT gives a good explanation: "The inclusion of details and minor aspects can contribute to good writing, but such details should not overwhelm the article. ...he level of detail of each aspect of the topic should be appropriate to the article and kept in balance: where an aspect of the topic involves information which is or could be covered in more detail by another article, the article itself should summarize this information...". Additionally, the article is about 90kb of readble prose which is remarkably close to the "Should almost certainly be divided" category recomended at WP:LENGTH.

2. The article at times feels like it give undue weight to one side at times in terms of coverage. While I know due coverage does not mean the same length of coverage, there are places like the Economy subsection where 5 paragraphs are devoted to opposition opinions and one to supporters. I would recommend looking through and making sure you have given due coverage to both sides in accordance with sources. It is very possible you have, but I want to make sure of that.

Results

On Hold for 14 days pending revisions. This is a very well written article and I really enjoyed reading it. Though a relatively short list of issues, they are much larger in scope than other reviews and so this is reflected in the hold period. I would be happy to extend the hold period at the end of that time if there seems to be significant work being done. Feel free to post comments and questions on anything here as I'm watching the page. Wugapodes (talk) 21:34, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

@1990'sguy: It's been a week with no response. If you aren't willing to help with the review, let me know. Wugapodes (talk) 18:21, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

Sorry, I have been focusing on other things lately. I will try to help where I can, but I do not have much time. I apologize for the lack of response! --1990'sguy (talk) 20:25, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

I fixed all of the "minor comments" on this article. I do not think I will be able to fix the "major comments" on my own though.--1990'sguy (talk) 21:57, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

That's fine, you don't have to participate if you don't want to so don't feel obliged. I posted to some relevant wikiprojects to see if some of the editors would be willing to help. Thank you for your work! Wugapodes (talk) 22:01, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

Use of opinion polls

User:EddieHugh - unfortunately, you are misrepresenting the poll. An opinion poll is only representative of the whole sample (in this case, voters in Scotland). It is not necessarily representative of the sub-groups, as you are asserting ("X% of Yes voters" and "Y% of No voters"). WP:NPOV and WP:NOR apply. WP:UNDUE applies because you are not giving opposing views, other than the limited confirmation by the SPF that little criminality took place. Jmorrison230582 (talk) 15:27, 27 October 2016 (UTC)

Do you have anything to back that up? YouGov know what they're doing and all polling companies routinely split their samples into multiple groups, based on age, sex, voting intentions, etc. All I see from the British Polling Council is "The sampling error for each sub-group could be significantly higher than for the sample as a whole." What I did appears to be standard, and "X% of Yes voters" and "Y% of No voters" is exactly how the results are presented in the sources I used.

You again list lots of policies... UNDUE states "Neutrality requires that each article or other page in the mainspace fairly represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources, in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in the published, reliable sources." An opinion poll is not a viewpoint; if you know of other polls on the same thing, then please include them. By NOR I assume you refer to the presentation of opinion poll data, which is addressed in my first paragraph, above.

(I'm not sure about the "Mc" you gave me, but I'll think of it as an honorific. Now gone... never mind) EddieHugh (talk) 17:48, 31 October 2016 (UTC)

Regarding the BPC link, there is a caveat given ("disregarding any systematic errors"). If the self-identified No voters in that sample are not representative of the No-voting population, then the sub-group result is meaningless. We have no way of knowing if that is the case from the very basic data given by YouGov. To get a representative poll of each sub-group, you would need to obtain demographic details of each group and then weight the poll accordingly. The newspaper article that you gave has assumed that it is representative. In addition to these technical points, there is no exploration of what people mean by those answers, and there is no comparison given with other electoral events (context). What I meant by WP:UNDUE is that you have not given any alternative viewpoints, other than the basic statement by the police body that there was little criminality. Presumably the Yes campaign commented on what they thought about these reports of intimidation? Jmorrison230582 (talk) 19:04, 31 October 2016 (UTC)

1) I see the point, but your pessimism about YouGov's standards are an assumption. If the assumption were applied consistently, then your argument would hold. However, the consequence of your argument is that, for any poll to be included here (or in any serious article), the source must state explicitly that appropriate measures to ensure representativeness, including weighting, had been applied. I've looked through most of the ones in this article and haven't found even one that makes such an assertion. Should they all be removed? Of course not. 2) There's almost never an explanation of what people mean in any poll answer. What did people mean when they answered "Should Scotland be an independent country?"? Did they treat it as a hypothetical? What did they understand by "country", or "independent" (of what)? This can be a valid criticism if the question is poorly worded, but "Would you say you have or have not felt personally threatened by the NO campaign during this referendum?" is no worse than the referendum question itself. 3) Your UNDUE concern can be dismissed, as there is no comment from either the Yes or No campaign. I'm moving towards putting the poll information back in. EddieHugh (talk) 19:39, 1 November 2016 (UTC)

Suggestion: if you just posted that "According to a poll by YouGov just before the referendum, x % of Scottish voters felt...", that would be fine, because the poll was representative of Scots. If polls are misrepresented elsewhere in Wiki, they need to be corrected there; two wrongs don't make a right. Regarding WP:UNDUE, have you made any effort to find what various campaigners were saying about this issue? The BBC report about the NUJ statement quotes both Blair Jenkins (Yes) and Blair McDougall (No). Jmorrison230582 (talk) 09:55, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

Your argument is that a clear assertion must be in the source, stating that (a part of) a poll is representative. Based on this, all polls in this article that I checked would have to be removed (or a source with that assertion added). It doesn't matter if we're discussing the overall poll data or part of it: the principle remains. YouGov chose to present their data by splitting into Yes and No; they're well respected, so it's reasonable to assume that (as with other polls) they followed good practice. I think there's enough of Yes said X and No said Y in the article, so haven't added more. The section isn't about part of the debate, but the police comment adds another facet (criminality). EddieHugh (talk) 15:25, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

I don't accept your logic. The only other references to opinion polling in this article are: 1) a brief reference to a fall in sterling after the YouGov poll that gave Yes a lead (which is referenced to a Reuters article), 2) statements of who was perceived to have "won" each debate, which are referenced to whole-Scotland polls; and 3) the "opinion polls" section itself, which references to poll analysis by the likes of John Curtice and Nate Silver. That is clearly different to basing an assertion on sub-groups of an opinion poll. Jmorrison230582 (talk) 16:09, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

The sources for 1 & 2 don't state that the polls were representative (I haven't checked 3). Whole of Scotland, part of Scotland... we're assuming that the polls are representative, because that's a reasonable assumption. Apply the same logic to the YouGov poll (which chose to present data split Yes and No) and we also arrive at the same reasonable assumption. If someone were reanalysing the published data to present something that the polling company hadn't, then that would be questionable, but presenting exactly what YouGov reported is the same as for the presentation of any other poll. EddieHugh (talk) 12:08, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

Any further objections? EddieHugh (talk) 10:42, 23 November 2016 (UTC)

Result detail by parliamentary constituency

I think this is excessive, and not necessarily that informative. WP:SYNTH comes to mind. There is something similar in respect of the Brexit referendum, but it is contained in a child article (Results of the United Kingdom European Union membership referendum, 2016). As this article is already very long, I think a child article for this would be appropriate (Results of the Scottish independence referendum, 2014 is presently a redirect). Jmorrison230582 (talk) 06:16, 11 March 2017 (UTC)

• I support the idea of creating a sub-article. 92.1.212.198 (talk) 22:50, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

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• Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20140826170803/http://www.newsandstar.co.uk/news/sir-ranulph-fiennes-to-visit-cairn-celebrating-union-ahead-of-independence-vote-1.1150300 to http://www.newsandstar.co.uk/news/sir-ranulph-fiennes-to-visit-cairn-celebrating-union-ahead-of-independence-vote-1.1150300
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