Wikipedia:Peer review/2008 Philadelphia Phillies season/archive3

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2008 Philadelphia Phillies season[edit]

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I've listed this article for peer review because it's already a GA and I would like to try for an FA nom. Comments are welcome; I will address them to the best of my ability. KV5 (Talk • Phils) 16:19, 24 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

In the "Regular season player statistics" section, you use color in the tables without corresponding symbols. Dabomb87 (talk) 00:10, 2 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I thought it looked pretty junky when I did it before, but I put them back in. KV5 (Talk • Phils) 00:24, 2 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from Ealdgyth (talk · contribs)

  • You said you wanted to know what to work on before taking to FAC, so I looked at the sourcing and referencing with that in mind. I reviewed the article's sources as I would at FAC.
    • What makes the following reliable sources?
    • Current ref 10 (Zolecki) has no publisher information, is it a book? Article?
    • Newspapers titles in the references should be in italics. If you're using {{cite news}}, use the work field for the title of the paper, and the publisher field for the name of the actual company that publishes the paper
    • current refs 88 and 89 (Ken Mandel) lack publisher information
Hope this helps. Please note that I don't watchlist Peer Reviews I've done. If you have a question about something, you'll have to drop a note on my talk page to get my attention. (My watchlist is already WAY too long, adding peer reviews would make things much worse.) 14:44, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Ruhrfisch comments: Seems like all the facts are here and the writing is decent, so here are some suggestions for improvement, mostly nitpicks and small stuff. See if you can find someone to copyedit this or try not looking at it for a week then printing it out and reading it aloud slowly.

  • Since they won the World Series (and for only the second time in their franchise history) I would put this in the first paragraph of the lead. I know this is in the third paragraph as well, but I think it should be earlier in the lead too. The first paragraph seems a bit short as it is anyway.
  • Would it make sense to say it was their regular season record in The team finished with a [regular season] record of 92–70, first in the National League East.? Perhaps the next sentence could be something like Under Manager Charlie Manuel they won their first World Series since 1980 and only their second major league championship ever.
  • There are several places where the article needs to provide more context to the reader - for example just in the lead I am not sure a non-AMerican reader would know that the 76ers are a basketball team (I know it is linked). Similarly I am not sure "Fall Classic" would be understood by most as the World Series (although it is linked too). One more example, in Retentions I would identify J.C. Romero by his position (relief pitcher). See WP:PCR
  • The level of detail in the lead also seems a bit excessive in places - do we need to know who sponsors the Silver Slugger or Josh Gibson Awards in the lead? Sicne the lead is a summary of the article, these should be there too.
  • I prefer leads without references except for direct quotations and extraordinary claims (again because the lead is a summary, the refs should be in the body of the article for all the lead). If the lead does have refs, I prefer it be cited like everything else - this lead is sort of in between - most of the refs seem to be for things that could be seen as superlatives, but Hamels getting the MVP twice is not cited.
  • Could the first two subsections of Offseason just be combined under Players and coaches?
  • Why did they pick versions based on their 1948 uniforms for the 125th anniverary season? What is significant about 1948?
  • Unclear sentence - who is he (Rollins I assume) in Inasmuch as Beltran had imitated Rollins' 2007 preseason prediction, he arrived in camp for Spring Training and responded: I am also not sure what the whole long blockquote adds to the article - could it be trimmed?
  • I like the regualr season and NLDS and NLCS summaries - they are nice and concise. There are a few places where the language could be polished (how about recognized instead of rewarded in Having gone an entire season without losing a save opportunity, Lidge was rewarded as 2008's National League Comeback Player of the Year.[54] sounds less POV.
  • I like how the gmae log and NLDS and NLCS game results are collapsed but can be opened for viewing.
  • I think the World Series section is too detailed - why not have the box scores in a collapsed table like the previous playoff series? Looking briefly at the main article, this seems to go into too much detail on each game - see WP:Summary style
  • It was not until I got to the Breaking the curse section that I realized that the World Series win broke the curse, not the 76ers win - please change this was the first major sports championship for Philadelphia since the 76ers won the 1983 NBA Finals[3] and ended the Curse of Billy Penn. in the lead.
  • SOme of the language seems a bit POV - Light-hitting Shane Victorino exhibited home run heroics ... is one example

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). Yours, Ruhrfisch ><>°° 05:23, 9 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Responses from KV5
OK, I think I've completed most of these. I shifted some information around in the lead to move the World Series victory higher, and did the second comment about regular season record. I also added context for the items listed in comment 3. I did remove some extraneous information and some duplicated references from the lead. The only references remaining are for statistics (which should always be cited, IMHO) or for notes that don't appear in the article. I did combine information in the offseason section and make a minor change to the lead-in for the Rollins quote. I did feel that the entire quote was necessary to fully show the controversy, but would be willing to listen to suggestions for a trim. I have no idea why they picked the 1948 uniforms; I don't believe there was any specific signficance to that year, though it was the last year of the Phillies' MLB-record 16 consecutive losing seasons. As to the World Series, I would argue that the WS is a much more significant event than the NLDS or NLCS, much like the finals of a World Cup are much more significant than the qualifying rounds; that is the reason for the longer summaries, fully displayed boxscores, etc. I did deal with the curse issue. I'd like to leave the Victorino photo caption as is; it really is true. He only had 14 home runs during the season but came through in clutch situations in both rounds and at crucial times. Do you have a suggestion for a reword here? Additionally, thanks so much for the review; your work can always be counted on as thorough and high-quality. KV5 (Talk • Phils) 13:18, 9 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Looks better - here some more ideas (and by the way, if there are sports style conventions or model articles you are following here and I tell you something else, feel free to ignore me - actually ignore me for any reason you want ;-) ). I still think the World Series could be in the lead twice - say they won it in the first paragraph, then say who their opponent was, 5 games, maybe the delay in the third paragraph. As for the Shane Victorino caption, is there a ref that could be cited about the home run heroics? Or could the caption be more detailed / specific, something like "Despite hitting only 14 home runs in the regular season, Shane Victorino hit crucial home runs in both the first and second rounds of the playoffs."
Here's a suggested tweaking of the curse section:
The alleged curse of Billy Penn was sometimes used to explain the failure of professional sports teams based in Philadelphia to win championships since 1987. In March of that year One Liberty Place, a XXX foot steel-and-glass skyscraper, opened three blocks from the YYY foot statue of William Penn atop Philadelphia City Hall.[79] For many decades, a "gentlemen's agreement" stated that the Philadelphia Art Commission would approve no building in the city which would rise higher than this statue. The supposed curse had gained such prominence in Philadelphia that a documentary film entitled The Curse of William Penn was produced about it in YEAR.[80]
The curse ended on October 29, 2008 when the Phillies won the World Series. This was also a year and four months after a duplicate statuette of the William Penn figure atop City Hall was affixed to the final beam put in place during the June 2007 topping-off of the ZZZ foot Comcast Center, then the tallest building in the city.[81]
Hope this helps, Ruhrfisch ><>°° 04:39, 10 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
OK, I've implemented all of your suggestions. Love that caption, BTW. KV5 (Talk • Phils) 12:23, 11 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
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