Talk:Land value tax/GA1

GA Review

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GA review (see here for criteria)

1. It is reasonably well written.

   a (prose): b (MoS):

   Some comments:

   • The lead needs to be considerably longer, at least three times the current length. More at WP:LEAD.
   • The hyphen (-) is for connecting words, while the emdash (—) is used as punctuation.
   • Though the economic effects of land value tax are very important, and definitively require their own section, I am somewhat concerned with it being the first section. I would have preferred to see the first section looking at it from a political/implementational aspect, rather than it as part of a highly abstract framework.
   • As unfortunately is common on many Wikipedia articles on economics, this article uses a too complex language. Economic theory is very abstract, and even myself, with a MSc in the field soon in my pocket, finds it difficult to understand the matters at hand. The use of an unnecessary complex prose makes things even worse. The art of writing an encyclopædia is not to get other economists to undestand the matter at hand, but to explain it to a lay person at high school level. For instance, the phrase "Most taxes distort economic decisions" means abosultely nothing to most people. The next sentence uses a lot of complex words, and introduces many technical terms in the sentance; for instance, i doubt most people know what 'dissuaded', 'correlation', 'levy', 'fallacious' and 'marginal' means. Rememerb, economists can go elsewhere for an academic description of the topic, while our purpose here is to provide information to the masses. I would recommend completely rewriting the section. Do not be concerned if it becomes significantly longer; it is much better that more words are used if they can help explain.
   • In what country is Harrisburg, Pennsylvania? This is not the US Wikipedia, it is the English-language version, and is used by very many people from outside the US, who do not have the slighest idea where neigher Harrisburg nor Pennsylvania is. Always indicate the country, unless evident from context.
   • 'Alegded' should be avoided; if there is disagreement, state the disagreement.
   • Terms like 'deadweight' need to be wikilinked. Even if 'excess burden of taxation' has been linked before, when a synonym is used, it needs wikilinking, since most people associate deadweight with shipping tonnage.
   • 'Surplus' links to a disambiguation page.
   • The history section mixes past and present tense.
   • I find most of the quotes very pereferial to the topic. It would be a lot better just paraphrasing their meaning in the text.
   • Never repeat the name of the article in a section header.
   • I find that there is a blur between the 'implementation' and the 'land value tax systems' sections; they should probably be merged.
   • 'Land value tax' is never to appear all-capitalized (except for the 'l' if at the beginning of a sentence). It is not a proper noun. Of course, the acrony LVT is capitalized.

2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.

   a (references): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR):

   • Entire paragraphs are unreferenced. There are {{fact}} tags.
   • References are references, not quotes. State where the information was found, and if available provide a link. Do not quote the text, even if it is in the public domain.
   • Some of the references are incomplete. All references must have an author (or reliable publisher), and a link to the top of a web site is insufficient.
   • Some sources, such as 'New Jersey Land Value Tax Project', 'Denmark' are not reliable.

3. It is broad in its coverage.

   a (major aspects): b (focused):

   • There are expansion tags on the 'pre-modern' and 'other countries' section.

4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.

   Fair representation without bias:

   • The article is very skewed against the United States. The level of detail used to describe the tax in the US is many-fold that of the rest of the world. This is seen both in the 'implementation' and the 'land value tax systems' sections. Since the amount of information in the article about the US must be scaled down, feel free to create the article Land value tax in the United States to cover that country in detail.
   • I find the article unbalanced. While it is natural that the article presents all information currently included, I fail to see much critisism of the tax. The gold standard for measuring POV is: if after reading the article, can the reader make up an opinion on the POV of the author? In this case, I find that the article is written in favor of LVT, and therefore fails criterion 4. The following are some thoughts to get you understanding the direction of my concerns, though I realize some are partially covered in the article: I get the impression the article is biased against libertarianism, and fails to look at it from a political side, especially from from a socialist view. For instance, why is the tax so little used? I would presume that tax would be evaded by shifing investments into non-land based assets. Is there academic discussion about this? If there is no deadweight loss, why is it not used more? Are there flaws in the theories? Are there arguments that are fundamentally non-economic? As for the political discussion, can a modern view be pulled out and given a separete section? In general, the challenge is that there is often very subtle differences in the prose throughout the text that tend to aggregate the POV, and make the bottom line unbalanced.

5. It is stable.

   No edit wars etc.:

6. It is illustrated by images, where possible and appropriate.

   a (images are tagged and non-free images have fair use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):

   Portraits should use the 'upright' syntax.

7. Overall:

   Pass/Fail:

   Unfortunetly, I have to fail the article. While it has a lot of the workings of a GA, it is under-referenced, is highly US-biased, unbalanced and uses a technical rather than lay language. Once these issues have been resolved, I would recommend sending it to peer review before a new GA nomination, since I have not thoroughly worked through the prose to see if it passes the GA on all unmentioned areas. I wish you good luck with the further work; you have done a good job so far :) Arsenikk ^(talk) 21:38, 7 March 2009 (UTC)