Wikipedia:Peer review/Twitter/archive2

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Twitter[edit]

Previous peer review
  • A script has been used to generate a semi-automated review of the article for issues relating to grammar and house style; it can be found on the automated peer review page for July 2009.
    • I've gone through the automated suggestions, and found that most issues brought up are false positives. Greg Tyler (tc) 21:53, 13 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because it's undergone an exhaustive re-edit and it would be great to get it closer to FA status.

Thanks, The lorax (talk) 21:38, 10 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

What needs to be done to lift it up to FA status?--The lorax (talk) 00:05, 14 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Well, the things in the featured article candidacy are worth noting. Our main problems there were copyediting and sources. They've both been attended to, but I'm not sure I'm qualified to register either as "solved". Greg Tyler (tc) 12:58, 16 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Finetooth comments: This is looking very good. I carefully proofread the entire article again today and made many tiny changes, as you can see by looking at the article history. I got stuck in just a couple of places, but the article generally seems quite clear this time around. Nice job. Here are a few more suggestions or questions.

History

  • "Twitter began in a "daylong brainstorming session" that was held by board members of the podcasting company Odeo... " - Wikilink podcasting?
  • "The developers prototyped with “10958″ as short code, later changing it to “40404″ for "ease of use and memorability." - "Prototyped" is not such a good verb. Suggestion: "The developers first used "10958" as the short code, later changing... ".
  • "when Dorsey published the first Twitter message at 12:50 PM PST... " - WP:MOS#Acronyms_and_abbreviations says in part, "Write out both the full version and the abbreviation at first occurrence." A few things are excepted from this guideline, but I think PST should be Pacific Standard Time (PST), especially for readers outside of the Western Hemisphere.

Finances

  • "Hacked documents revealed by TechCrunch show Twitter projects its Q3 (2009) revenue to be $400,000 and its Q4 revenue to be $4 million." - It might be helpful to spell out Q3 and Q4, thus: "... projects its third quarter (Q3) revenue in 2009 to be $400,000 and its fourth quarter (Q4) revenue to be $4 million".
  • "By the end of 2010 Twitter expects to be at a $140 million revenue run rate." - I'm not sure what this means. Does it mean that Twitter projects annual revenues of $140 million based on the revenue rate on Dec. 31, 2010? I assume the term "run rate" is used because acceleration keeps changing the base rate, but I don't know for sure. A brief in-text explanation or a footnote might be helpful here.
  • "Twitter board member Todd Chaffee forecast that the company could make money from e-commerce noting that many users may want to buy items directing from Twitter... " - "directly" rather than "directing"?

Technology

  • "Twitter has been described as akin to a Web-based IRC client." - Internet Relay Chat (IRC) on first use?
  • Ditto for API slightly further down. Application programming interface (API)?
    • Both done. They used to be mentioned earlier in the article, so had already been expanded, but I'd forgotten the removal would affect. Greg Tyler (tc)

Outages

  • "On June 12, 2009, in what was called a potential "Twitpocalypse", the unique identifier... " - Wikilink unique identifier?
  • "While Twitter itself was not affected, some third-party clients were." - How were they affected? Unable to use Twitter? For how long? Can the Twitpocalypse be quantified?
    • Written a bit more, with an extra source Greg Tyler (tc)

2008

  • "In October 2008 a draft U.S. Army intelligence report identified the Twitter as a potential terrorist tool." - Delete "the"?

2009

  • "In May 2009 astronaut Michael J. Massimino used Twitter to keep updates... " - Should that be "send updates" rather than "keep updates"?

I hope these comments and the nit-picky changes I made prove helpful. If so, please consider reviewing another article, especially one from the PR backlog. This is where I found this one (once again). Finetooth (talk) 00:56, 18 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for finding them. There are several we should have noticed, but your eyes just flow across the errors without noticing sometimes. I'll certainly try todo a peer review when I get the chance. Not sure about the "run rate" thing though. I'll leave to someone who understands finance to decrypt. Greg Tyler (tc) 10:11, 18 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The phrase "run rate" is a formal term in finance. See http://www.fool.com/foolu/askfoolu/2003/askfoolu030619.htm for a definition. Wikipedia only has a "run rate" definition for cricket so we can't really link to that for clarification. :-) So we've got two options: (a) make a wikipedia page that explains financial run rate and link to it or (b) pare down the details in that section so that we don't use non-vernacular terms. I'm not qualified to do (a) and I actually think (b) is a better choice since we may be covering this in too much detail anyway. Since Twitter is basically saying "and through some unspecified process we shall go from zero to millions in profit" I think the focus should be on their claim of sudden revenue and not the exact system of counting revenue. I'd be more concerned about including the accounting methodology if there was a significant discrepancy between results from different methods. Thoughts?Jopo sf (talk) 23:43, 18 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that (b) is the better choice. I looked for something to link to and found the cricket definition too. "Oh, I don't think so", I said to myself. Finetooth (talk) 01:30, 19 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Done.Jopo sf (talk) 09:57, 19 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]