Wikipedia:Peer review/Tonight (David Bowie album)/archive1

Tonight (David Bowie album)[edit]

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This peer review discussion is closed.

I've listed this article for peer review because... I'm thinking about taking it to FAC and would appreciate some outside assistance before I do that.

Thanks, – zmbro _{(talk) (cont)} 19:37, 1 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

STANDARD NOTE: I have added this PR to the Template:FAC peer review sidebar to get quicker and more responses. When this PR is closed, please remove it from the list. Also, consider adding the sidebar to your userpage to help others discover pre-FAC PRs, and please review other articles in that template. Thanks! Z1720 (talk) 03:17, 2 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from TechnoSquirrel69[edit]

Hey Zmbro! Here are a few things I feel could be improved on:

A few references have page ranges that are far too wide to be reasonably verified. The worst offender is citation 1, which references a whole chapter, but citations 5 and 6 aren't great either. These three are also all cited over fifteen times, which makes this much more prominent.

Based on my prior FAs all of these are perfectly acceptable. I have to cite entire chapters for O'Leary as I own the Apple Books edition; besides, that helps with only having to cite one thing versus many. – zmbro _{(talk) (cont)} 23:17, 26 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry for my relatively strong tone with this comment. I was under the impression that a wide page range could be a violation of WP:V, but I just read it over again, and it turns out I was mistaken. That being said, I do sincerely think it would be a significant improvement to the article to have more precise citations, so the reader doesn't need to go digging through a bunch of other information to find the sentence(s) that the article is referencing. My comment still stands, where possible — I understand that it would be impractical to give page numbers for the O'Leary e-book. —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 07:41, 27 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

"...it propelled him to worldwide megastardom" seems a bit flamboyant. I wouldn't phrase it like that unless it was used in the source, and even then a direct quote might be preferable.
A lot of the first paragraph from "Writing and recording" duplicates information from "Personnel", which I would consider removing unless the person being mentioned is particularly relevant to the discussion. For the same reason, I don't think we need to mention which instrument each person is playing.

I actually added that stuff recently; I did that for the main personnel on The Next Day; I guess in this instance Arif Mardin and Mark King aren't that important to mention in prose (bios hardly make any mention of them except in credits anyways) – zmbro _{(talk) (cont)} 18:18, 29 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The article switches back and forth between using years in running prose ("The Idiot and Lust for Life, Pop's 1977 albums...") and in parentheses ("...the Beach Boys' song "God Only Knows" (1966)"). I think one style should be chosen and kept consistent throughout the article.

Fixed – zmbro _{(talk) (cont)} 18:25, 29 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

At the beginning of the "Songs" section, if pop and rock deserve links, I think we can link to reggae and R&B too. MOS:REPEATLINK endorses linking terms at the beginning of sections, even if they've been linked earlier. This point applies to unlinked terms in other sections as well.

Added – zmbro _{(talk) (cont)} 18:25, 29 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Speaking of sections, I think the content could do with a bit of restructuring, starting with the section titles. Let's go to a second-level list for this.
- The "Background and development" section has a significant thematic overlap with "Writing and recording". I propose that the content that focuses on the album's development is merged with "Writing and recording", and the first section called just "Background".
- I also feel like there isn't quite enough background provided. At a later point in the article, we have "Bowie later distanced himself from his 1984–1987 period...", so it would be nice to know what he was working on before Let's Dance so that we can contrast it with his 1984–1987 period.
- The "Subsequent events and legacy" section reads like an awkward combination of multiple unrelated topics. I feel "Reissues" should be moved up to the "Release" section, and "Critical reception" and "Retrospective reviews" should be moved into their own "Reception" section.

This is how I've modeled most of my articles; for chronological purposes. It passed through Low (David Bowie album) – zmbro _{(talk) (cont)} 18:18, 29 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

- As for the name of the section itself, I'm not sure "subsequent events" need to be included, especially as the album had no associated tour nor evidently any promotion after its release whatsoever.

Trimmed to simply 'legacy' – zmbro _{(talk) (cont)} 18:18, 29 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I hope that helps a little bit. Feel free to ping me with any questions or points you disagree with, and good luck at FAC! —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 10:19, 26 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

One thing I'd like to know is do you think the article is too quote-heavy? That's the main problem I've had with prior FACs. – zmbro _{(talk) (cont)} 18:14, 29 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Zmbro: The number of quotes is definitely on the higher side, but I personally didn't find that was a problem when reading. —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 01:45, 30 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Zmbro: It has been over a month since the last comment. Are you still interested in receiving feedback, or can this be closed? Z1720 (talk) 15:41, 16 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]