Wikipedia:Peer review/List of NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champions/archive1

List of NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champions

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because the article is very up to date and I would like it to become a featured list.

Thanks, Nascar1996 ^(sign) 23:34, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Finetooth comments: You certainly have a lot of information here, and it's arranged in a logical way. As an outsider to the sport, I wondered about a couple of things that might be addressed in the lead. Have all of the champions come from the U.S.? Are drivers from other countries allowed to compete? Are cars manufactured in other countries allowed to compete? How long are the races? How fast do the cars go? Where are the races held? How many cars compete in a typical race? How much money do these drivers make? Are women allowed to compete? How old do you have to be to compete? Can you be too old? Beyond basic questions like this, I have a few suggestions about prose, style, images, and layout.

Hello, and thanks for reviewing the list. Races are held at several different tracks so what do I do, and the money and length depends on the race; such as the Daytona 500 is a 500 mile race while the Food City 500 is a 250 mile race. I don't know what to do here.--Nascar1996 ^{Contributions / Guestbook} 22:44, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

You could explain that in a general way and add it to the lead. I don't think you need to list every track, every distance, every purse, but you could might give max and mins, some idea of the geographic distribution of the tracks, mention a couple of famous ones. In other words, research, write, and support a brief overview of the sport. Keep in mind that these are just suggestions, not absolute rules. You might check the motor-racing articles at WP:FL#Sports and recreation to see what other editors have done. Finetooth (talk) 00:18, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Okay. --Nascar1996 ^{Contributions / Guestbook} 00:21, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

• The images could use alt text, meant for readers who can't see the images. They may not be required at the moment at FLC, but it's a good idea to add them anyway. WP:ALT has details. The alt-text tool in the toolbox at the top of this review page can be handy too.
• All date ranges need an unspaced en dash rather than a hyphen or a spaced en dash. In the "Consecutive Drivers Championships" section, I see a variety of formats. There might be other non-conforming hyphens lurking here and there.

• The image File:Dale Sr 1994.jpg should not have been uploaded to the Commons because it has a license with a "non-commercial" (NC) clause. That makes it unusable on Wikipedia. This is not your fault, but unless you can convince the Flikr source author to re-license as generic CC-by-SA 2.0 without the NC clause, this one won't survive FLC and should be removed before going there.

• If you can figure out how, it's best to have directional images facing into the page rather than out. Cars should appear to be driving into the page, but flipping the photos with software is a no-no because it distorts reality. The layout options are to move images left or right to get them facing in.

• • The Manual of Style advises against double bolding. WP:MOSBOLD has details. For this reason, I'd suggest explaining "Poles" and "Points" in footnotes and using italics instead of double bolding for highlighting driver names and manufacturer names in the tables.

Lead

• "NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Drivers' Championship" - Rather than a possessive, I would view "Drivers" as an adjective and delete the apostrophe. Ditto for "Youngest Drivers' Champion" and so on. To avoid having editors who disagree change it back again, I'd probably hedge with "Youngest Driver Champion" and so on.

• "Prior to 2004, drivers received points by how much money they had won... " - Maybe "based on" rather than "by"?
• "It is called "Chase to the Sprint Cup", in which after twenty-six races the top twelve point positions will change based on wins. Each race victory adds ten extra points for the driver when the "Chase" starts." - The meaning here is unclear. Why after 26 races? Is that the total number of races each driver takes part in every year? Perhaps something like this would be more clear: "The new system, called "Chase to the Sprint Cup", awards 10 extra points per win to each of the drivers among the top 12 money-earners after 26 races, a complete season."

By season

• I'd avoid linking the individual names in the tables more than once. For example, Richard Petty is wikilinked seven times in the "By season" table. "Chevrolet Monte Carlo" is linked 14 times in that table. The result is a sea of blue in which nothing stands out.

By manufacturer

• If all of the cars are U.S.-made, are the flags needed?
  • I knew someone will ask this; Toyota, which is based in Japan does compete, but they have not won any championships yet.--Nascar1996 ^{Contributions / Guestbook} 22:44, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

References

• Newspaper and magazine names should appear in italics.
• The citations to Internet sources should include author, title, publisher, date of publication, url, and access date, if all of these are known or can be found. For example, citation 4 has an incorrect title; it is "Jimmie Johnson captures record fourth straight NASCAR championship with fifth-place finish in Miami". The author's name, Richard Biebrich, is missing from the citation. The date of publication is easy to find: November 22, 2009.

I hope these suggestions are helpful. If so, please consider reviewing another article, especially one from the backlog at WP:PR. That is where I found this one. Finetooth (talk) 22:07, 3 July 2010 (UTC)