Wikipedia:Peer review/Thomas Jefferson/archive1

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Thomas Jefferson[edit]

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because… I think as many U.S. Presidents should be Featured Articles as possible, again i don't know the width, depth, and breadth of the issuses keeping it from being an FA. That's why implore anyone whocan to work on this article, it would nice to see all U.S. presidents articles get PR'd.--Briaboru (talk) 21:12, 28 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Briaboru (talk) 21:12, 28 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

  • According to MOS:IMAGES, it is suggested that left-aligned images should not be place directly below second-level (===) headings. This is done for the Second Continental Congress subsection. --13 of Diamonds (talk) 21:54, 31 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Briaboru, are you willing to do the work to make this article into an FA? I can do an extensive peer review of it and offer research suggestions, but it is only worth the hours I would take to do this if there are editors willing to improve the article. It kind of sounds like you are searching for editors at this point. Awadewit (talk) 22:33, 31 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Ruhrfisch comments: I just reviewed Woodrow Wilson so this may seem familiar. This seems to be in better shape, here are some suggestions for improvement:

  • A model article is useful for ideas and examples to follow. I note that Wikipedia:WikiProject_U.S._Presidents#Assessment has several FA articles listed, including Abraham Lincoln. George Washington and John Adams are A class.
  • The lead should be an accessible and inviting overview of the whole article - while the current lead is fairly well written it is not complete. My rule of thumb is to include every header in the lead in some way - for example, Slavery and Monuments and memorials are not in the lead.
  • The lead should be a summary of the whole article so nothing major should be only in the lead - for example the JFK quote. Please see WP:LEAD
  • The article needs fewer sections / headers too - the views on . This breaks up the flow of the article. For example View on corporations, Views on political violence, and on self-esteem are all very short sections.
  • Per WP:HEAD section headers shoul not repeat the article title or include the word "The" or repeat the section title if they are a subsection, so Jefferson and slavery and The Sally Hemings controversy need to be changed, and the repetition of "View(s) on ..." seems a bit much.
  • The article needs more references, for example Minister to France (very short section), The 1796 election and Vice Presidency, and The election of 1800 (remove "The" from both) have ZERO cites. My rule of thumb is that every quote, every statistic, every extraordinary claim and every paragraph needs a ref.
  • Some refs need more information. Internet refs need URL, title, author if known, publisher and date accessed. Books are not consistently referenced and need publisher, location, date, ISBN, etc. {{cite web}}, {{cite book}} and other cite templates may be helpful. See WP:CITE and WP:V
  • I also worry that some of the references are not relaible sources. There is a lot of reputable published work on Jefferson, so what makes this or this a RS?
  • Please use my examples as just that - these are not an exhaustive list and if one example is given, please check to make sure there are not other occurrences of the same problem.

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). Yours, Ruhrfisch ><>°° 04:27, 4 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from Ealdgyth (talk · contribs)

  • You said you wanted to know what to work on before taking to FAC, and my first suggestion would be to get your references into order. A number of your website references lack publisher and/or last access dates, which are the bare minimum needed for WP:V. Books need publisher, author, and page number on top of title. When you've got those mostly straightened out, drop me a note on my talk page and I'll be glad to come back and look at the actual sources themselves, and see how they look in terms of reliability, like I would at FAC.
  • Another concern is the use of curly quotes, per the MOS, they are frowned on.
  • A third concern is the very very lengthy external links section. Probably should prune that back. 16:35, 15 June 2008 (UTC)