Wikipedia:Peer review/Bohemian Rhapsody/archive4

Bohemian Rhapsody

Previous peer review

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because I believe that the standard of the article is of a very good standard. It is currently listed as a good article and am considering putting it forward as a candidate to become a featured article, however am interested as to what could be done to improve it further before doing so. Any comments and suggestions are greatly appreciated.

Thanks, TheStig 10:04, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

Comments by H1nkles

I don't have time to do a thorough read-through but I will give you some overarching thoughts on what can be worked on to help bridge the considerable gap between GA and FA.

• The lead should include mention of the songs prominence in "Wayne's World" as well as discussion of live performances of the song. These are subjects in the article not explored in the lead. An article of this length could easily have a three paragraph lead.
• The lead also has a lot of phrases like, "it is considered..." Take care when using terms like this, they can be construed as weasel wording. I know it's in the lead and there are licenses you can take in the lead, but I still would watch the use of terms like that.
• You should probably look for a couple more images, it may be difficult to find free use images for a song but if it's possible it would be good to add a couple more. Also be sure to add ALT text to the images that you have and that you add.
• You have several short paragraphs. Consider combining or expanding these to make the reading easier.
• You need consistency in your referencing format. See WP:CITE for various formats. All website refs should have title of the article, url, publisher and accessdate as a minimum. You can use the {{cite web}} template as a guide.
• Make sure your references are credible and that you are ready to defend refs that the FAC reviewers question. Some of the refs I would question are: ChC media, Sound on Sound, Record Collector, expressandstar.com. These are sources I'm not familiar with (that's not to say they aren't credible I just don't recognize them).
• You're going to need to get more references, especially book references (6 books in the "General" section) Are all those books actually referenced in the article with in-line cites? If not you should otherwise the books should go under a "Further Reading" section. A song of this magnitude with the level of exposure and impact it has had on the music industry should have been written about in several books. Check google books for a start. Book references are more credible and looked on more favorably at FAC than website refs. I see you have a section entitled "General" in the references section, I'm assuming that is for the books, and then "Specific is for websites and page numbers of the books used. I've never seen this format before. Be sure it follows one of the MOS-accepted referencing formats.
• When working on an article for FA I like to look at current FAs on the same subject to compare my article to. For this article I've chosen 4 Minutes (Madonna song) as an example for no particular reason other than that it is a popular song FA. Try to include all the subjects found in this article if possible. Note the Track listings and formats section as well as chart, sales and procession section. This would be good content to add to your article. The article also has 63 references, double what Bohemian Rhapsody has. Note there are no book references so you can have an FA with no book references but keep in mind that this article is about a fairly recent song (2 years old), with no where near the fame of Bohemian Rhapsody. Bohemian Rhapsody has been around for over 30 years. To see an FA for an older song look at Hey Jude. It's shorter than the Madonna song without some of the chart and track sections. It also has about 15 books referenced. I don't necessarily like the way the auther splits the Notes and References section like that but you'll find there are a plethora of ways to cite references in wikipedia. The important thing is to pick a format and be consistent.
• I think the song would make a fantastic FA, very notable and a great addition to the stable of featured articles. It is going to take some work though because the reviewers at FAC are notoriously nitpicky. I haven't commented on the content, prose, grammar etc because I unfortunately don't have time to read through the entire article. I do hope these comments are helpful though and feel free to contact me on my talk page should you have questions or comments. Cheers. H1nkles _{citius altius fortius} 19:05, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Thanks H1nkles for taking the time out to look over this article and I found your comments brilliantly constructive and helpful, all of which I will be using to significantly improve this article. Once again, thank you! TheStig 22:06, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Comments by indopug

I think a fair deal of work needs to be done before we start thinking of FA status for this article. For a model song FA, you might want to look at "Smells Like Teen Spirit" to see the quality of writing and sourcing excepting. A few quick issues I see:

• The Live performances and Chart performance section is largely unreferenced.
• That personnel section seems completely unnecessary; it mentions only the four members of Queen, and that information could easily be covered by the prose itself.
• This [1] would be a useful source to check out.
• The Composition is way too long. I also suspect that a lot of the info in it is based on original research, as opposed to being taken from reliable sources.
• The reference style is weird, especially for websites. For eg: I'm still not sure what "Rolling Stone 2004b" is supposed to point to. Why not just do it the normal way; ie, for online references, list out the entire reference within the <ref> and </ref> itself?—indopug (talk) 14:40, 16 April 2010 (UTC)