Wikipedia:Peer review/Iron Mike/archive1

Iron Mike[edit]

I am requesting a peer review for this article because I'm hoping to find out what other information readers might be interested in. The article is not very long, but given the narrow scope of the topic and the scarcity of information, it seems comprehensive to me. It is referenced with footnotes and has sourced photos for each statue. I'd just like some feedback on what needs to be improved. Thanks! Kafziel 19:41, 14 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Official titles should be in prose, I'd personally bold them too (they're kinda subarticles),but that's no requirement. The article's name is weird. I'd rather go for something like "Iron Mike monuments" or something, to stress that you are discussing a group of monuments. Otherwise, you seem to nail your subject pretty well. Circeus 01:57, 17 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your suggestions. I've worked the official titles into the prose and bolded them. Hopefully that's what you had in mind. As for the title, I think it's the most appropriate per MoS, going by the principle of least astonishment. It's pretty rare for these to be called Iron Mike statues or Iron Mike monuments, so when they're referred to in another article it would almost always require piped links, like [[Iron Mike monuments|Iron Mike]]. Anyone searching for one of these would put in "Iron Mike", so it would get most of its hits from redirects. Hope that clears up the reasoning, and thanks again for your input. Kafziel 03:24, 17 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It's not close to ready for FAC if that was your goal. That's no offense, it's just not there yet. 1) Try to see if any additional sources exist that could lead to more information that would need to be added. Are there any serious military libraries or are there any museums that cover them? Don't fluff the article out, but it's so short there's definitely going to be concerns of comprehensiveness. 2) The lead is too short. See WP:LEAD 3) There are too many short paragraphs that make for choppy prose. Either merge them with related material or expand them into a full idea of their own. - Taxman ^Talk 20:41, 17 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure what you mean about the lead - it's one paragraph long, which is enough for any article under 15,000 words, and obviously this is well under that.

I don't have any goals of making this an FAC, simply because it's short. Technically that's not a problem, because it is comprehensive, but the FAC process is enough of a hassle without having to explain that fifty times. There really isn't any more information on most of these, though. First of all, all of them date to an era when people didn't really keep track of every bit of trivia about things like that. Secondly, military records on that sort of thing are nonexistent (the US military didn't even keep comprehensive records of who attended boot camp until the 1990s). So the facts tend to be mixed in with myths and misconceptions. Original research would be the only way to make it longer. Is there anything in particular you would want to see?

Thanks for the feedback, and if you know of any other quality sources that have more information on these, I'd be happy to use them. Kafziel 19:36, 18 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I don't really know anything else about it, so if there aren't more sources, just try to eliminate the short paragraphs and the article may be the best it can be. Try for Good articles if you don't want to go for FAC. - Taxman ^Talk 19:08, 20 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hm, hadn't even thought of that. I'll keep tweaking it and maybe I'll do that. Thanks again for your help! Kafziel 19:14, 20 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

"Iron Mike" is also a common term for a nautical autopilot. --Nagle 04:35, 27 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Added to disambiguation page. Kafziel 14:21, 27 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]