Wikipedia:Peer review/2008 US Open (tennis)/archive1

2008 US Open (tennis)

• 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 November 2008.

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because I think that I have done all I can for it, and need some independent advice. It's length, in my opinion, makes it unsuitable for one person to review (so I don't want to put it through the GA process). Although it's long, it's of a non-technical nature, and shouldn't present too many problems in comprehension.

Thanks, Yohan euan o4 (talk) 00:26, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Comments from Apterygial

In the lead:

• "It was the 127th edition of the US Open, and the fourth and last Grand Slam event of the year." Consider changing to "fourth and final Grand Slam event of the year."
• "The men's defending champion, Roger Federer, won the US Open for a fifth consecutive time, while Justine Henin, the women's defending champion, did not return to defend her title due to her retirement from tennis, for personal reasons, earlier in the year." This is long and clumsy. Consider breaking into two sentences, or at the very least remove the word "while" and insert a semi-colon.
• "Federer and Williams's opponents, Andy Murray and Jelena Jankovic, were making their débuts in Grand Slam finals." Repetetive and clumsy. Consider changing to "Both runners-up, Andy Murray and Jelena Jankovic, were making their débuts in Grand Slam finals."
• "World No. 1s Rafael Nadal and Ana Ivanovic went out in the semifinal and second round respectively." Three things: no real reason why 'number' should be abbreviated, numbers less than 10 are spelt out in words per WP:MOSNUM, respectively should be broken from the sentence using a comma.

Writing it as 'World No. 1' is a convention in tennis articles, but I've changed it. Yohan euan o4 (talk) 19:32, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

• "This was Nadal's best ever result at the US Open; for Ivanovic, it was her second early exit at a Grand Slam since her win at the 2008 French Open." Stings of OR. Notability issue here, why should I care about either player? What makes the SF important for Nadal, and who says second round is early? For Ivanovic it may be, but the issue is whether you want to list every player who went out in the second round.

I don't really understand what you mean here. If the tournament goes to seeding, these players are supposed to win, and there's some detail about what happened to them in the lead, in the same way there is about the finals. The Ivanovic loss being 'early' is confirmed by the sources later on and the fact that she did not perform to her seeding. Yohan euan o4 (talk) 19:32, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Actually, you're right. I forgot that they are the World number ones. I'm still used to Federer. That's fine.

• "The home nation had a number of successes, with Williams returning the first singles title since Andy Roddick in 2003." "Returning" here is a little clumsy. Same with "a number". In this circumstance it is fairly redundant, either they had success or they didn't. I would suggest rewriting the sentence as "The home nation had success; Serena Williams was the first American to win a singles title at the US Open since Andy Roddick in 2003."
• As you can probably tell, I have a lot of problems with the lead, and I have not listed them all. I would highly recommend you look through WP:LEAD very carefully, as I would say this one needs a full rewrite. The lead really shouldn't mention anything you are not going the mention in the main body or the infobox. If Henin's retirement is notable then it should be mentioned in the text; clarifications about Liezel Huber's citizenship, if important, should be in the text. Don't try and please the detail-philic mind in the lead, while it should concise it should not be exhaustive. Finally, there is a little confusion with the men's and women's draws; as they are not the same event you cannot as readily equate men's and women's singles. I'll add some more comments on the rest of the article shortly. Apterygial ^talk_stalk^{insane idea} 13:43, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Preparations

• Again, a "number of ways." How many ways? Sounds vague and non-encyclopedic.
• "In celebration of the 40th anniversary since the US National Championships went "open", a special opening ceremony was held, showcasing all the singles champions of the previous 40 years, with around a dozen of them in attendance. " Two things: it would be best to explain here what "open" means here. Few people will follow the link and even most committed fans are a little hazy on it. "around a dozen". How many? If you don't know then don't say it.
• This whole bit is fairly clumsy. "Fans" is a terrible word and should be avoided. Try "spectators" or "audiences" if you have to. Ideally, you need to re-write the sentences so that you don't have to mention who at all. "...... could be accessed by doing such and such" seems a much better structure to me. It also reads like an advert for the US Open, whether the additions were successful is never mentioned.
• "The annual Arthur Ashe Kids Day was also held, on August 23, with Roger Federer, Andy Roddick, James Blake, Novak Djokovic, Ana Ivanovic, Serena Williams, and Anna Kournikova (retired) leading the player participation." With will get you shot down at FA if you decide to take it there. Change to a semi-colon and adjust the tense. Don't take article names on face-value, the Arthur Ashe Kids Day article has terrible grammar in the title, though is correct in the lead. "Also" is redundant, the date should be at the start, so "On August 23 the annual Arthur Ashe Kids' Day was held; Roger Federer, Andy Roddick, James Blake, Novak Djokovic, Ana Ivanovic and Serena Williams led the player participation."
• If Anna Kournikova is retired (and she is) she cannot be leading player involvement. She is no longer a player. At any rate, the "(retired)" bit looks like it was added as an afterthought.
• Again, "Several musical acts" How many? If you don't know don't say.

I'm going to stop reviewing at this point, but here are some other impressions I have:

• It is clear that the page needs a thorough copyedit. From what I have read so far the prose is clunky and inconsistent. Go to somewhere like the Guild of Copy Editors, look down their membership list and see who is still active and contact them on their talk pages. In addition, my recommendation is that you read User:Tony1/How to satisfy Criterion 1a. Even if you are not going for an FA, it is invaluable advice and is arguably the most underrated page outside of the mainspace.
• Looking down the day by day coverage, is it really necessary to list so many scores? It breaks up the text, makes it hard to read and even a player will tell you it's not all that important. Set scores are what matters. It's occasionally good to have full scores, but decide whether it is really necessary, not for variation.
• I would love to see a Post-Event section. As I said before, you talk about the preparations but don't mention how successful they were. Reactions: Who else praised Federer? Who praised Murray? It's a big deal, first GS final, were the UK public happy?
• I would seriously consider splitting this article up into different articles for different events. Keep this as the parent article, but allow yourself to be more concise by establishing a context; this is easily done with different articles. Besides which, the short Summaries of other events just reinforces the longwindedness of the day by day bit. Why are singles so much more important than doubles that they get more than 8000 words while doubles only gets 500? To be honest, 8000 is too much; 500 too little.
• Have a look at the suggestions the bot came up with (the link is at the top of the page). With regards to the infobox bit, while this is something that the Tennis Wikiproject should deal with, an event like this (and all the other Grand Slams) needs a more comprehensive infobox. I can get little out of that one. Where was it? What was the weather like? Crowd numbers?

I understand that there are no FA Grand Slam articles (or GA for that matter) that you may make a template of. But at this stage, the article is too messy, too broad, too inconcise to be anything better than C-Classed. I don't want to sound like a bastard (I seem to be in danger of that ;)) but this article would not even be read at GAN. I would be very surprised if the reviewer would not ask you to withdraw the article, or simply give it a quick fail. But you said you didn't want to go to GAN, and fair enough. There has clearly been a lot of work going into this, but you need to consider format more. Is the day the match took place on the most important thing? Or is the round it was in, who was playing, who won, who lost, more important?

I really hope what I have said helps, but there really is a HUGE amount of work that needs to still go into the article. Cheers, Apterygial ^talk_stalk^{insane idea} 14:54, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, I've addressed some of these issues. I wasn't against it going to GAN, I just questioned its appropriateness; I see that it isn't appropriate, just not for the reasons that I thought. I don't like the idea of splitting the article up, because the Men's Singles, Women's Singles pages etc. are de facto draw pages and I think it's a good idea to separate the qualitative from the quantitative. I'll just take this to the Guild of Copyeditors instead. Yohan euan o4 (talk) 19:32, 19 November 2008 (UTC)