Talk:William Stanley (inventor)/GA1

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Reviewer: Ealdgyth - Talk 16:11, 5 January 2010 (UTC)Reply

I'll be reviewing this article shortly. Ealdgyth - Talk 16:11, 5 January 2010 (UTC)Reply

GA review (see here for criteria)

1. It is reasonably well written.

   a (prose): b (MoS):

2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.

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

3. It is broad in its coverage.

   a (major aspects): b (focused):

4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.

   Fair representation without bias:

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):

7. Overall:

   Pass/Fail:

Specific concerns

• General:
  • The referencing system is never explained. It would be better to not use some separated out refs such as the akpan refs. Instead, just use one ref group, instead of two sets like you have currently.
  • You have WAY overrefernced stuff. There is no need to have FOUR footnotes for the fact that he was born in Islington. Most of the information presented in this article isn't contentious enough to nee more than one footnote.
  • You have a number of one and two sentence paragraphs, which make the prose extremely choppy and difficult to read. It is better to have three or four paragraphs than the 13!!! you have in Personal life.
  • Biography article convention is to not use "He" at the start of each paragraph, but instead use the last name of the subject... thus instead of "He stopped using the name Robinson..." it would be "Stanley stopped using the name..."
  • The article is way overlinked, also. There is no need to link: mathematics, music, astronomy, chemistry, cheque book, Egypt, heart attack, estate, ivory,slides, stock market, etc.
• Lead:
  • The lead is entirely too short for the length of the article. For an article of this size, I would expect two or three good size hefty paragraphs. A good rule of thumb is to have a sentence or two from every

At this point, I'm going to put the article on hold. It's going to take a LOT of work to get this up to GA standards, but you've waited almost two months for a review, so although I'm tempted to just fail it on prose grounds, I'll try to work with you to get the prose issues sorted out. I haven't even really read the prose, since the choppy nature of the short paragraphs and the overreferencing need to be fixed before I'll undertake a prose review. Let's get the prose worked out first, and it flowing better before tackling the actual content and other concerns. Ealdgyth - Talk 16:27, 5 January 2010 (UTC)Reply

Thank you for your comments. I'll work on a bit of this today and tomorrow, and let you know! -- PhantomSteve/talk|contribs\ 16:38, 5 January 2010 (UTC)Reply

Two inventor GAs that you might look to for examples are Robert C. Michelson and Thomas Brassey, which should help you a bit also! Ealdgyth - Talk 16:40, 5 January 2010 (UTC)Reply

Thanks! I have removed the extra refs... I guess I got carried away. This is the first time I have researched and created a long article from scratch. With regards to the Akpan references, I'm going to see if I can get a copy of the book from the library tomorrow. It's only a short book, so I'm thinking of changing the refs from "page x" to "chapter x" - there's only about 5 chapters I think, all of which are only 10-15 pages long. Then I'll have them as part of the "normal" ref list. Should I keep the patents references listed seperately as I currently have them?

I really appreciate your willingness to help - I'm not really an article writer (I'm better at tidy up, and some research of existing articles!), but I want to get this to GA status if at possible, as I want it to be the best it can be for Wikipedia. -- PhantomSteve/talk|contribs\ 17:33, 5 January 2010 (UTC)Reply

I"m very much in favor of the "all citations together" school of referencing. The only time I use the 'ref group' parameter is when I'm putting in explanatory footnotes (you might look at Nigel of Ely for what I'm talking about with explanatory footnotes verus citation footnotes). Do check out those other inventor articles too... they can be a big help with you in giving you examples of what works well and is already a GA. Ealdgyth - Talk 17:46, 5 January 2010 (UTC)Reply

* I have worked on the references, putting them into one list. I have also expanded the lede, removed some wikilinks, and reorganised the sections. I'd appreciate it if you would have a look and let me know anything in the overall layout (rather than the specific contents) which I can improve. Also, the B-grade assessment was mine - would you confirm if this assessment is accurate, of if this is more of a C-grade article? I want to make sure that the current quality assessment is correct! Regards, -- PhantomSteve/talk|contribs\ 22:34, 5 January 2010 (UTC)Reply

Looking much better, I'll start reviewing against the rest of the GA criteria in the morning. I usually do reviewing in my morning when I'm "fresh" ... Ealdgyth - Talk 00:12, 6 January 2010 (UTC)Reply

Good timing - I'm off to bed now! I look forward to seeing what you think -- PhantomSteve/talk|contribs\ 00:15, 6 January 2010 (UTC)Reply

I did my twice-weekly run through FAC this morning and my eyes are not up to reading anything more. Just to make it clear, I'm not going to hold this article to 7 days only if work is still progressing nicely, so we have time. I'll do the review tomorrow morning (Won't be going anywhere, we're about to get a blizzard!) Ealdgyth - Talk 18:29, 6 January 2010 (UTC)Reply

No worries! There's no time limit on Wikipedia! I'll be here tomorrow - the snow will stop me wanting to go out! -- PhantomSteve/talk|contribs\ 19:02, 6 January 2010 (UTC)Reply

• General:
  • As a general rule, integrating the personal and professional live sections would flow better. Right now, you skip around in years. At the least, I'd consider moving the sections around something like:
  • Early Life with the current Early life subsection, working with father and family life subsections, then a new section, "Entrepenuer" with subsections on the various companies started, memberships in societies, then a new section "Death" with subsections on funeral, will, legacy. Integrate the "interests" into the article in the appropriate chronological spots. After the "death" section, I would list the patents (in two columns, probably) and the "selected works" also. I would remove the "legacy" section. This properly belongs either in the articles about the various things or integrated into the article - things he did during his life, during the chronological part of the article, anything honoring him, in a short legacy subsection after his death. The reason I suggest this is that right now, the article jumps around in time a lot. There is a reason that chronological ordering of biographies is so popular, it just is logical.  Done
• Early Life:
  • Parents, who are they? Any siblings? The ODNB article mentions his parents.  Done
  • You link to "Literary Society", but unless you are linking to a specific one, you shouldn't capitalize this.  Done
• Family life:
  • "At this time" is frowned upon, give the dates instead.  Done
  • "Local girl" is colloquial, instead say "fell in love with a girl from (place), but her family .."  Done
  • Give the actual date that he married, not a "on his28th birthday" . You can do something like "On (date), his 28th birthday, Stanley married..." but otherwise you're requiring the reader to do math to figure out what year he married.  Done
  • We don't need the details on who Bessie married instead, honestly.  Done
• Interests:
  • You need to either explain the significance of the quote about "no more ten pound notes" or delete it. As it is, it makes no sense.  Done
  • I know you've linked "Freedom of the City" but you should briefly explain it also  Done

Okay, this should give you a bit more to work on ... Ealdgyth - Talk 13:30, 7 January 2010 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for that, Ealdgyth! I hope to get some (if not all) of this done later today, but otherwise it'll probably have to wait until Monday, as my weekends tend to be busy with the kids! -- PhantomSteve/talk|contribs\ 13:43, 7 January 2010 (UTC)Reply

As you might have noticed, I didn't get any done yesterday! I'll work on it on Monday or Tuesday. Have a good weekend -- PhantomSteve/talk|contribs\ 09:08, 8 January 2010 (UTC)Reply

• I have re-organised, etc, as per the above suggestions, and I would be grateful if you would look at it and let me know what you think! -- PhantomSteve/talk|contribs\ 15:28, 12 January 2010 (UTC)Reply

I've done a final copyedit, and am now ready to pass this article. Ealdgyth - Talk 16:16, 21 January 2010 (UTC)Reply

Thank you for your help, and for passing it -- PhantomSteve/talk|contribs\ 16:30, 21 January 2010 (UTC)Reply