Talk:Administrative law in Singapore

Administrative law in Singapore was nominated as a Social sciences and society good article, but it did not meet the good article criteria at the time (March 23, 2014). There are suggestions on the review page for improving the article. If you can improve it, please do; it may then be renominated.

Law Mid‑importance

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Singapore High‑importance

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This article was the subject of an educational assignment in March 2011. Further details are available here.

A fact from Administrative law in Singapore appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 7 January 2012 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that Singapore is said to espouse a "green-light" approach towards administrative law – that good government should be sought through the political process – given the government's focus on efficiency?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2012/January. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Administrative law in Singapore.

Wikipedia

GA Review[edit]

This review is transcluded from Talk:Administrative law in Singapore/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: ChrisGualtieri (talk · contribs) 18:47, 20 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I will review this and I will throttle the pace by doing them all, as they are of similar structure and relevance to Singapore. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 18:47, 20 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Checklinks and Dablinks check out with no issues. The lead of the article does not appropriately summarize the contents of the page. The article has numerous issues with tone and prose that results this page reading like a lecture and less like and encyclopedia. Included are some examples:

"Judicial review is available as a means of challenging the legality of decisions of all governmental authorities, though it is regarded as a procedure of last resort that should be used only where the individual has no alternative remedy such as a right of appeal. If a right of appeal exists, it is more favourable for a person to take advantage of it as the appellate court may substitute its decision for that of the original authority and grant a remedy. An appeal may also involve a reconsideration of the merits of the case and not merely its legality, although this depends on the wording of the statute in question.[7] On the other hand, when exercising judicial review, the High Court is almost always limited to examining whether public authorities have acted lawfully, and do not evaluate the substantive merits of decisions taken.[6][8]"
"Administrative law poses a problem to the breadth of judicial power insofar as it enquires: on what basis can judges control administrative action, and to what extent should they do so?" - Why is that even a question mark?
"Given the Government's focus on efficiency, Singapore has been said to emphasize a largely green-light approach towards administrative law." - Why is "Government" capitalized and please no surprise links.
"Hence, the courts consider it best to leave any interpretation of facts up to those assigned by Parliament to do so."
"In Singapore, a broad approach has been taken towards the determination of whether a decision-maker has exercised its power for an improper purpose." - This article is exclusive on Singapore, why the need to constantly reinforce that point?
"However, authorities must remain free to depart from their policies depending on the case at hand. It is a general rule that "anyone who has to exercise a statutory discretion must not shut his ears to an application", and that an authority must always be willing to listen to anyone with something new to say.[85]" Tone.
"Thus, in..." - More of those words to watch and tone.

This entire article is well-written and seems to be wonderful as a lecture or an essay, but that's the key problem. This article uses educational prose and resorts to constantly instructing in an active manner. By itself this isn't a single issue, but the tone of the prose and many other issues fall under WP:BETTER. I think the article is of excessive length, and that some of the key points need to be addressed without constantly resorting to case law. I'll place it on hold, and because writing is the first barrier I see, I think this is going to be a bit more contentious between us. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 16:05, 25 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

In other words, what this article needs is a thorough copyedit, with focus on tone? Would someone without relevant legal knowledge be able to perform such a copyedit? --J.L.W.S. The Special One (talk) 12:13, 1 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The only issue I have with a copyedit is that it will take too long and I am far from the best person to do it. The article is by all means "good", but it seems unapproachable from the matter of active instruction and its length. Do you think the article is too long? I know it could be summarized better, but I could actually pass this off as a lecture in a two hour class with a few photo slides and call it day. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and the deft tone that is supposed to run throughout the article instead drags the reader along as if they were all in law school. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 16:00, 3 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Of course, I am not asking you to perform the copyedit! The editor without legal background who would conduct the copyedit would be myself. Hence I am checking whether the abovemetioned issues would be resolved with a thorough copyedit. If there are deeper content issues, then I am not equipped to deal with them. To clarify, I am not the professor (who would be Smuconlaw) or one of the students who worked on this group of articles. I am leading a drive to polish Singapore-related articles that deserve GA status. --Hildanknight (talk) 17:11, 3 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Anyone can copyedit it. It does not have to be the nominator, the reviewer or the person who put a lot of work into the article. I actually had one of my GA's get passed via the good doctor's copyedit while I was swamped with work. By all means, copyedit it to your heart's content. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 16:02, 14 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I am going to fail this because it needs a substantial copyedit and its been on hold for over a week since then. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 13:20, 23 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]