Wikipedia:Peer review/Bow Street Runners/archive1

Bow Street Runners

I've listed this article for peer review because it has been recently improved and expanded.

Thanks, Elisa.danesin (talk) 19:48, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

• "The force, originally numbering only six individuals, was founded in 1749 by the British magistrate Henry Fielding, who was also well known as an author." This sentence is a bit long.
• The old system is similar to citizen arrest, you could say that instead of saying "The enforcement of the law then was mostly up to the private citizens"

I have a peer review on Pele and I want a comment. JerrySa1(talk) 16:10, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

Comments from Rodw There is lots of useful material in this article and you have done well to expand it this far, however I have few comments and questions:

Lead and infobox

• The lead does not fully summarise the article per Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Lead section. It does not include most of the key figures included in the history and nothing on the representations in fiction.
• The term "Bow Street group" is used in the final sentence but not ex[lained whether this is the formal name if runners isn't.
• I note the infobox uses Template:Infobox Criminal organization is this appropriate? Template:Infobox law enforcement agency seems more appropriate to me.
• Henry Fielding could be wikilinked in the infobox

History

• The first three paragraphs (and several further down the article) are unreferenced
• "legalize", "professionalization" and "organized" are used. I would assume this article about an English organisation would use British English spellings ie "legalise", "professionalisation" and "organised". The rest of the article should be checked for these types of issues.
• In the section on Henry Fielding (1750–1754), I would think "duke of Newcastle" should have a capital D and possibly be linked to the relevant person at Duke of Newcastle
• I find the statement "It is also true that many of the original Runners were also serving constables" confusing. If they were Constables weren't they already police officers?
• There seems to be some overlap and differences between this article and History of the Metropolitan Police Service. Would it be worth mentioning here about Tipstaff and similar items included in the wider history article?
• Should Public Advertiser be wikilinked?
• There is some duplication between the sections.
• There are a few examples of POV statements such as "generously funded" which need attribution - who said it was generous?
• When discussing the development of the courts it may be worth linjking and referring to Magistrate (England and Wales)

Fiction

• This section is almost completely unreferenced (but does include some external links within the text which should be turned into properly formatted references).
• Per WP:TRIVIA some of the entries are not significant enough for inclusion.

See also

• Several of these links are already included in the text and therefore not needed (See WP:ALSO

References

• This looks impressive initially however many of the citations are to different pages in Beatie's book. You may wish to consider using Shortened footnotes so that the details of the book are given once but the references make it clear which page is used to validate the claim.

I hope some of these comments are useful.— Rod ^talk 11:23, 30 January 2016 (UTC)