Wikipedia:Peer review/Paul Robeson/archive1

Paul Robeson

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because of the detailed and dense information provided thus far and would like to see this article featured one day.

Thanks, Dorothyzbornak (talk) 21:05, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

Ruhrfisch comments: While I agree this is an important article and that it should be improved, I notice you have not made any edits to it at all (so I am not sure who is going to improve it). That said, here are some suggestions for improvement with an eye to FAC.

• The first major issue I noticed was the extreme length of the article. After a certain point, many people will just not read an article this long. I used the page size tool and this is 85 kB (14,227 words) of readable text. For comparison, I picked two of the longer biography WP:FAs I know: Barack Obama is 42 kb (6909 words) or just under half the length of this, and Joseph Priestley is 53 kB (8259 words). One reason I picked Priestley was because it was once a much longer article, but was pared down considerably for WP:FAC.
• Since there are a number of sub-articles on veraious aspects of Robeson's life, I would make greater use of WP:Summary style and move more material out of this article and into those. It seems to me that the article could be tightened in many places too, there are many places where extraneous details are included that do not really tell the story of Mr. Robeson. Is knowing that a tomato is named for him (without a reference) really worth including? Or is it just cruft?
• The biggest issue that would prevent this from becoming a FA or even a WP:GA is a lack of references. For example, the first paragraph of Marriage and family has no refs and needs them, as do the last three sentences of the second paragraph Eslanda wrote the first biography of Paul Robeson, Paul Robeson: Negro. Told in the third person, she wrote part fiction, part memoir about the problems in their marriage and Robeson's early life and career. She incorrectly added "Bustill" as Robeson's middle name in this book. If the article is going to claim that his own wife did not know his middle name, it needs a ref or two to back that claim up.
• The further down in the article I got, the fewer references I found (it seems). There are whole sections like The Broadway Othello and Civil RIghts activisim that have no refs at all. My rule of thumb is that every quote, every statistic, every extraordinary claim and every paragraph needs a ref.
• Many of the refs that are there are incomplete and do not provide all the information required. Internet refs need URL, title, author if known, publisher and date accessed. {{cite web}} and other cite templates may be helpful. Some refs like current #240 are just links - not even the URL is shown. See WP:CITE and WP:V
• There is a toolbox for checking disambiguation links and dead extrenal links on the PR page - it shows one circular redirect that needs to be fixed and several dead or problematice exteranl links.
• There are a few direct external links in the article that need to be converted to references - one is in this "Rev. Benjamin C. Robeson, Pastor of Mother AME Zion Church in NY City, the oldest Black Church in NY State;"
• Make sure that the references used meet WP:RS
• There are a lot of short (one or two sentence) paragraphs and short sections (one paragraph) which interrupt the flow of the text - these should be combined with others or perhaps expanded in almost all cases.
• Organization is odd in places - why is the Paul Robeson House mentioned in the Language scholarship section and not in the Posthumous honors section, for example?
• The images of his parents need better sources - how do we know they were published (not taken) before 1923?
• Despite the length, there are places where more information is need to provide context to the reader. When, for example, did he work in the law firm in New York city? See WP:PCR
• Read this and keep the focus relentlessly on Robeson. For example in this paragraph, why is anything needed after the last sentence? In 2006 a Tribute to Paul Robeson was held at the School of Oriental and African Studies. Organised by Phil Jaggar, it was attended by Tony Benn and Willard White. A commemorative plaque was unveiled. In 2007 Phil Jaggar visited Paul Robeson, Jr. in New York, presenting him with a framed copy of his father's course registration documents; further copies were presented to Rutgers University.[78] I am sure Mr. Jaggar enjoyes reading this, but am not sure what it adds to the readers's understanding of Paul Robeson.
• Quotations need to follow logical quotation style - see WP:LQ\
• Please make sure that the existing text includes no copyright violations, plagiarism, or close paraphrasing. For more information on this please see Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2009-04-13/Dispatches. (This is a general warning given in all peer reviews, in view of previous problems that have risen over copyvios.)

Hope this helps. If my comments are useful, please consider peer reviewing an article, especially one at Wikipedia:Peer review/backlog (which is how I found this article). I do not watch peer reviews, so if you have questions or comments, please contact me on my talk page. Yours, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 21:26, 4 April 2011 (UTC)