Wikipedia:Peer review/S.L. Benfica in European football/archive1

S.L. Benfica in European football

I've listed this article for peer review because I have recently expanded the article, with written prose and statistics and wanted to know what it needs before it can get promoted to GA.

Thanks, Threeohsix (talk) 09:30, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

Comments by Cas Liber

• Don't start 3 of 4 paras in lead with, "Benfica...."
• Best not to cite one sentence 3 times in lead, and amny would recommend not citing it all....
• i.e. make sure all material in lead is in rest of the article and expanded and cited at latter location.

@Casliber: I think I've address that concerns, only two sentences cited now and rephrased some parts to avoid repetitiveness. What do you think?--Threeohsix (talk) 20:29, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

better. actually it is not in bad shape for a run at GA status really. will take another look later. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 01:26, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

Comments by Kareldorado

At first sight the article seems thorough, well referenced and well illustrated with appropriately licensed images, so that goes in the good direction.

General remarks

• Avoid references in the introduction; everything in the introduction should be mentioned in the article body.
• Make sure to make all (foot)notes appear in the Notes section, and not in the References section.
• Consider collapsing the long table of "By country". No one will look over it, thanks to the heading.
• If possible, an appropriate image for the first or second section would be nice – not necessary, just a recommendation.
• Per WP:MoS#Capital letters, in the tables only use capitals for the first word, e.g. "Opposing Team" -> "Opposing team".
• In the top of the tables and in the "Round" columns, you can explain the abbreviations either by writing them in full, or by make the full form appear when you hover over them.
• Check spelling and grammar everywhere.

Specific comments

• In the infobox, the word "current" is superfluous, so better drop it.
• In the very beginning, I'd perhaps write "Sport Lisboa e Benfica" in full, just that single time; the article title already shows the abbreviation.
• Intro, second paragraph: maybe rather "1963, '65, '68, '88 and '90" than the years in full
• Intro, third paragraph: "record for more appearances" -> "record for appearances" or "record for the number of appearances". No comma needed after "European Cup/Champions League". Rather no slashes ("/") in text in Wikipedia.
• Intro, fourth paragraph: "record for most appearances" -> "record for appearances" or "record of most appearances". No comma needed after "UEFA competitions".
• Section "Background": the following sentence is a snake, so try to chop it up: "Since 2000, it has been contested between the winners of the Champions League (formerly the European Cup) and the Europa League (formerly the UEFA Cup), following the Cup Winners' Cup amalgamation into the latter"
• Section "Background": instead of "(later, the UEFA Champions League)" rather "(the later UEFA Champions League)"
• Section "Background": instead of "six confederations'" rather "six continental confederations'"
• Section "European champions and Guttmann's curse": many commas in the following sentence, so try to get rid of one or two: "Benfica's first European silverware came in 1950 when, led by Ted Smith, they beat French side Bordeaux at the Estádio Nacional in Oeiras, Portugal, to win the Latin Cup.[8]"
• Section "European champions and Guttmann's curse": typo "thei" -> "their".
• Section "European champions and Guttmann's curse": try to chop up the following snake: "In the following season, on the first round, Benfica beat Dudelange by 18–0 on aggregate, which still stands as European record by biggest win over two legs,[21] but as they reached the quarter-finals, a record home defeat to Manchester United ended their campaign.[22]"
• Section "European champions and Guttmann's curse": instead of "Latin teams" rather "Southern European teams"
• Section "European champions and Guttmann's curse": try to chop up the following snake: "Over the course of the late 1970s, as historic players like Eusébio, Simões or Coluna retired, Benfica could not reach the same level of performance of the previous decade, but were still able to secure two European Cup quarter-final presences. In 1975–76, they lost 5–1 to the holders Bayern Munich,[31] and in 1977–78, they were knocked out by the defending champions Liverpool with a 6–2 aggregate score.[32]"

To be continued...

You are also very welcome to peer review my football-related article on the Belgium national football team. Especially suggestions to make the prose richer are appreciated!

Regards, Kareldorado (talk) 18:49, 19 September 2015 (UTC)

@Kareldorado: Thanks for the review, regarding the lead, I've created a small records section like Liverpool or Arsenal have. Regarding images, unfortunately, there are not much choice, and I don't want to add to much attention to individuals. To the rest of comments, I think I've address them but check it please. To the peer review of the Belgium national team, I'm not very experienced in promoting articles so I would not be the best choice to review them. But I can point out that the new golden generation only started to make a impact from 2013 onwards and many players of that generation became internationals four or more years before, so the golden generation didn't appeared suddenly, but matured through many years.--Threeohsix (talk) 22:52, 19 September 2015 (UTC)

Hi, thanks for taking my comments into consideration and applying them immediately. I will not check every single topic that I talked about – that is up to you! – but I will mention a couple of things you should check again. If you abbreviate a year, use the apostrophe ('). Else you are talking about, say, the year 65, which is almost 2000 years ago. When I say "chop up the snake", then I mean it should be made shorter by making it at least two sentences, since after dropping a few words it is still a large sentence. You can find examples on chopping sentences here.

I am impressed with the brand new article you made on 7 May 2015, and I assume that you did all this work by yourself. Your strengths are definitely the rich vocabulary that you show and the, at first sight, detailed focus. The main weaknesses are the length of some sentences and the spelling and grammatical errors you tend to make – I don't want to sound offensive, but you already made four grammatical mistakes in the five sentences you just wrote, can you find them? Reviewers of Good Article Candidates are sensitive to spelling and grammatical mistakes (it is part of the first good article criterion), so keep that in mind. You use mostly British English, so be consistent and don't let American English get in (e.g., "equalized" in the second section should become "equalised"). It is correct what you say about the images: if you don't find any appropriate images, just don't add images.

About the Belgium NFT article: read through the text, and you will see that I emphasise that this generation slowly matured. The article is already a Good Article, so there are barely problems in correctness anymore. The problem lies more in the prose: to become a Featured Article it should become 'richer'; that is, with sharp, smooth sentences and an agradable vocabulary (not using 100 times the same word or expression). I am sure that you can help in that, because I already mentioned the rich vocabulary you use. Any suggestion from your side is very welcome! Kareldorado (talk) 06:57, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

@Kareldorado: Thanks for the recommendation regarding the years, did not know that. I was not aware what chop the snake meant, so I thought it was your expression to reduce the length of the sentence. I gave it another try and rephrase some additions. Regarding my english proficiency, I only write it here, in WP, so it's takes longer to improve, and without peer review, you don't know you're doing it wrong. I too dislike large and monotonous sentences, so I try mix it up by adding different vocabulary. I must point out that User:Parutakupiu helped me by copy-editing the article, so his influence it's definitely there. To the Belgium NFT, comparing to other FA of the same subject, Peru and Scotland, I think it as good as them, so I can't really suggest improvements. Take it to FAC and see what they say.--Threeohsix (talk) 10:41, 20 September 2015 (UTC)