Wikipedia:Peer review/Matty Barlow/archive1

Matty Barlow

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because I would like to make it to GA status and would welcome your comments to try and make me achieve this. Thanks, –LiamTaylor– 21:16, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

Brianboulton comments: Rather a low-key career, I would have thought, but as he is only 23, maybe things will lift off for him, though at present he seems to be grounded in the non-league sphere. You have probably assembled most of the facts relevant to his career; here are a few suggestions on improving the presentation.

• The status of his various clubs needs to be disclosed. Readers who are not familiar with the structure of English professional football need to know, for example, that the Conference North, where Hyde play, is two stages below the lowest Football League tier; likewise Stalybridge Celtic. Oldham were in the third Football League tier when Barlow played his few games for them. This information needs to be given, as the essential context of Barlow's career to date.
• The article is strong on statistics, but very thin on description. Is it known where Barlow went to school, or which club he was playing for when spotted by Oldham? Is Barlow a full-time professional, or does he have any other means of livelihood? Do we know why, after deciding to try his luck in Australia, he decided to return within a few months? Is there any personal information that can be added - like, is he married, etc?
• The snippets of information under "Style of play" do not constitute a section. I suugest that you either find more information, perhaps from local newspaper reports, or absorb these details elsewhere in the article.
• The prose has the feel more of a football magazine than an encyclopedia. For example, several times you say "he enjoyed", meaning that he played. You also refer to "his first brace" without explanation.
• Some of your sources would not be accepted by Wikipedia as high quality or reliable, in particular "findmypast.co.uk" and 192.com. There is inconsistent formatting, e.g. StalybridgeCeltic.co.uk and stalybridgeceltic.co.uk. Ref 6 lacks a retrieval date.

I accept that with such an undistinguished career, at least so far, it is hard to create what looks like a substantial article for this non-star footballer. The notability threshold for footballers is clearly quite low (though not as low as it apparently is for cricketers); it might be a case of putting the article on hold, to see if Barlow's career develops more positively in the future. At any rate, you can use these suggestions to make some minor improvements, though I rather think it will struggle to make GA unless you can flesh it out a bit. As I am not able to watch individual peer reviews at the moment, please call my talkopage if you have any particular queries arising from this review, or if you wish for me to lokk at it again. Brianboulton (talk) 14:31, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Liam, sorry it's taken me so long to get around to this! There's not much that I can add to Brian's comments above, his peer reviews have helped me a lot in the past. If you could add some of the information suggested (early life, personal life, a bit more description) that would be good. I think it would have a chance of making GA with a bit of expansion; there isn't a minimum size that a GA needs to be, small articles can be GAs so long as all the available sources are covered. BigDom (talk) 17:16, 10 April 2011 (UTC)