Wikipedia:Peer review/Messerschmitt Bf 109/archive1

Messerschmitt Bf 109

• 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.

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because I would like to have some outside opinion as to what this article may miss to become a featured article. Its probably easier for a fresh set of eyes to find the gaping holes in the content, layout and style. As for the content, I am fairly satisfied with it, it really covers everything as far as the plane goes, and perhaps it would be time to break the main article down into sub-articles. Any and all suggestions are welcome.

Thanks, Kurfürst (talk) 11:03, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

Ruhrfisch comments: While it is clear that a huge amount of work has been done on this article, it needs some more work before it is ready to go to WP:FAC. With WP:WIAFA in mind, here are some suggestions for improvement.

• The lead does not follow WP:LEAD. The lead should be an accessible and inviting overview of the whole article. My rule of thumb is to include every header in the lead in some way.
• Nothing important should be in the lead only - since it is a summary, it should all be repeated in the body of the article itself. However almost all of the material on fighter aces seems to only be in the lead, as one example.
• Biggest problem I see for this passing FAC is a lack of references. There are refs in many places, but many pragraphs and importanct claims lack refs. For example, the third paragraph in the "Emils in the Battle of Britain" section has no refs, or the whole "Development" section has only one ref (and has a citation needed tag), and the Operators section has zero refs. My rule of thumb is that every quote, every statistic, every extraordinary claim and every paragraph needs a ref.
• Internet refs need URL, title, author if known, publisher and date accessed. {{cite web}} and other cite templates may be helpful. See current refs 51 and 57 for examples of internet refs that need more information. See WP:CITE and WP:V
• The hardest criteria for most articles to meet in FAC is 1a, a professional level of English. This is decently written but needs polished before FAC. I would wait to get a copy edit after fixing some of the other issues (below).
• There are numerous places that need to be made consistent - part of getting an article ready for FA is to make sure all the i's are dotted and t's are crossed. For example, German names like Bayerische Flugzeugwerke are italicized in some places and not in others.
• ALso the translations need to be provided directly after the first use of the word, but at least for Bayerische Flugzeugwerke the translation is after the second use.
• Units need to be given in both metric and English - the {{convert}} template is useful for doing this automatically.
• Per WP:MOS#Images, images should be set to thumb width to allow reader preferences to take over. For portrait format images, "upright" can be used to make the image narrower.
• Image captions of various aircraft should be consistent - some say where the aircraft is now (or was when photgraphed), others do not.
• The article is quite long (144 kb) and could be split into several subarticles per WP:Summary style. The E, F and G variants seem like they could be subarticles.
• Also when referring to subarticles like the list of survivors, this article should briefly summarize the most important points of the subarticle.
• There are several places with short (one or two sentence) paragraphs that impede the flow of the article. These should be combined with other paragraphs or perhaps expanded in almost all cases.
• Images need alt text - see WP:ALT

Hope this helps. If my comments are useful, please consider peer reviewing an article, especially one at Wikipedia:Peer review/backlog (which is how I found this article). I do not watch poeer reviews, so if you have questions or comments, please contact me on my talk page. Yours, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 14:41, 3 August 2009 (UTC)