Wikipedia:Peer review/United States v. Approximately 64,695 Pounds of Shark Fins/archive1

United States v. Approximately 64,695 Pounds of Shark Fins

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because, while I originally developed it for April Fool's Day DYK because it often turns up on lists of humorous court-case titles, I was surprised by how well it turned out, and I think I could take this further.

Thanks, Daniel Case (talk) 15:23, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

I'll do this. --Noleander (talk) 19:05, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Comments from Noleander

My responses.

• Background section: - the article Shark finning is a key article, and needs to be presented more prominently to the reader. I suggest use a "main" template at the top of the Background section, referring to Shark finning.
•  Done I used {{further}} for now. That did, however, solve the problem of how to make sure there was a link to the shark-finning article in the section while it was nevertheless becoming hard to word it that way
• Wording: " they found the titular amount .." - "titular" is not very encyclopedic: many readers won't be familiar with that word. Just say "they found approximately 46,... "

 Done I cut it entirely.

• When? - "Shark populations began declining. " - Need to specify a time period.

Will get some specifics.

• Wording: " .. owned by Tran and Yu, Inc, a shipping company in Hong Kong, its home port." - Is a word missing? maybe "company based in HK .."?

The issue here is that the ship was owned by one company but operated by another, and I was trying to distinguish them since the operator, Tai Loong, was ultimately the claimant (i.e., the other party) in the case.

• Wording: "On the support aspect, there was more to consider. " - Needs to be totally rewritten. Maybe: "The court evaluated the claim that support was provided ..." etc

 Done

• Start of paragraph: "He reviewed the legislative history and found...." - "He" probably should not be used at the start of a paragraph ... within is okay, but not across pagagraphs.

 Done

• Outline: It may be helpful to have a section named "Outcome" or "Decision" that follows the appeal section. For conclusion/wrap-up material: the judgement; what happened to the fins.

I'd like to have that too, but I couldn't find any sources on it. The stipulations called for the government to get the bond if it won, and for Tai Loong to reimburse the government for the expense of storing the fins if it did. I presume that's what happened, but we can't put that in the article on that basis.

• Follow on cases: What other cases related to shark fins followed? Did any cite this as precedent?

I looked again for cites that were more than just rote reiterations of one sentence of something blindingly obvious, and PageMasters Inc. v. Autodesk does rely on the case to hold that contractual language requiring "reasonable assistance" in performing an audit of a third party does not require asking for the audit in the first place. But that's the only one of note to me, although if necessary we could note the in-passing cite in El Badrawi v. United States. Since Congress has changed the law, no similar cases have come up, although I admit there are a lot of potential tests that could be made of that "buying X isn't aiding and assisting the seller in procuring X" holding.

• Grammar: "Soup made from them is considered ... " - word "them" could refer to " economic reforms" of previous sentence. re-word to fix ambiguity.

 Done

• Wording: "As its last argument, Tai Loong claimed .." - the word "last" is not very specific here. Chronologically? As a fall-back? The least important? Re-word to eliminate ambiguity.

 Done

• Context: "A group of shark attack survivors visited senators' offices to lobby for the bill in July." - You should add a sentence or words here explaining why attack victims are lobbying to support their attackers. Seems backwards.

I may just get rid of this; it's extraneous

• Aftermath - I recommend that you generalize the "Shark Conservation Act" section and make it "Aftermath" ... in it, summarize all shark-fin related developments after the case. The SC Act is key, of course, but there are be a few other important events: e.g. the California law, etc.

The SCA was a direct response to the decision, therefore it's the only thing relevant. The California law couldn't be, as states don't have the constitutional authority to regulate conduct beyond 3 nm at sea.

• Citations - The article has some good footnotes & sources. It is a bit suspicious that each paragraph has a single footnote: Does each paragraph truly come from a single source? If you think you will take this to FAC, you need to re-examine the individual sentences and add more footnotes as needed. Normally, I would expect to see a footnote every 1 to 3 sentences.

Where grafs use the same source (the court opinions they're summarizing) they use one footnote for that source. This would not surprise anyone familiar with articles about court cases.

• Add detail: " the total was more than twice the original expected amount, ..." - Expected by whom? Was some expectation mentioned earlier?

I changed that to "anticipated", as it's only mentioned in the source story at that point (apparently the Coast Guard thought there would be fewer fins since (I guess) they thought that only the shipping container held fins. Instead they were the hold and any spare space in the ship.

• Citation confusion - There are several cites like "Shark Fins, at 1104". To use a brief citation like that is acceptable (see WP:CITESHORT) but if you do that, you must have a section named "References" (or similar) independent from the footnotes section that contains an index of the short hand (e.g. "Shark Fins - 353 F.Supp.2d 1095" ). So, rename "References" to Footnotes; then create References section. Also, there are two court cases here: the original district court case, & the appeals case. Both have nearly identical names, so be sure to make it clear which "Shark Fins" refers to, since it could be either one.

Will do that that later. Per standard legal practice the district court case will be "I" and the appeals case "II". Daniel Case (talk) 00:26, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

End Noleander comments. --Noleander (talk) 19:08, 21 April 2012 (UTC)