Talk:Steroid use in American football

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Steroid use in American football was a good article nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There are suggestions below for improving the article. Once these are addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.

Reviewed version: May 6, 2008

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Steroid use in American football is part of WikiProject College football, an attempt to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to college football on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion.

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[edit] Good article review, not pass

I usually try to review in list order out of fairness to those who have waited longer, but it's a fairly interesting topic and I noticed you've done all the work on this article so I took a look at it. For how articles are judged, see Wikipedia:Good article criteria.

1. Well Written

A. Prose- Spelling and grammar check.

B. Manual of Style- See WP:Manual of Style. I feel there is some wordiness in the article. There are frequent WP:Words to Avoid that need to be removed. Examples: Many, however, a few.

2. Verifiable

A. Reference layout- A few references are missing date, title, and other information.

B. Source quality and sources used when needed, check.

C. No original research check.

3. Coverage

A. Addresses major aspects of the topic.- The section "Use in the NFL" seems to be a collection of notable incidents. The section doesn't include any real numerical estimates (outside of the words many or a few) of how many people were using steroids, though I'd imagine such numbers are hard to come by. The "Use in the NFL" section also doesn't include any examples from the 1990's. The section could use other information to make it more comprehensive such as fan perception of steroid use, public and NFL reaction to discoveries of steroid use. I imagine that section Use in the NFL resulted in NFL policy, but I'm not sure.

Why did the NFL's steroid policy come into existence? The section "NFL steroid policy" needs to explain what constituted "heavy pressure" from the government in the 1990's. The article should go into more detail in describing the criticism and acclaim of the policy by some (who, what, and why). When the quotes are subtracted from the "Use in college football" section, the section is quite short. The section is missing why, when, and how steroid testing began in college football.

The final section "Health issues" appears to be copied from the main article on anabolic steroids. This section might be retitled "Health effects," have a see also link under the title to the main article about steroids, and instead include notable examples of football players who suffered negative health effects and some league estimates of the effects. On the flip side, the article might include some coverage on how steroids effected the playing careers of users under a section "Performance effects." One danger in the last suggestions is that the content might overlap with that in "Use in the NFL." I'll leave it to you to decide how to deal with this. You can either remove or combine one of my suggested sections.

Overall, a felt the article needed more detail and history into what was discussed.

B. Stays focused, check with above suggestions.

4. Neutral- The number of words to avoid causes the article to not pass this criteria. Are there counter views that say steroids are good in football? Probably not but if there is, one could be included.

5. Stable- Check 6. Images- Check

When you are done going through these suggestions, I suggest sending the article through a Wikipedia:Peer review before renominating. There sure to find a few things that I didn't and they check the article in days when GA review typically takes weeks. An example of a GA that is similar to how this article might look when it's ready for GA is National Football League playoffs. It's not a perfect example but it's the closest I could find. If you have any questions, please feel free to message me. Thanks.User:calbear22 (talk) 17:23, 6 May 2008 (UTC)