Wikipedia:Peer review/Isaac Newton/archive2

Isaac Newton

Previous peer review

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because its one of the most important articles in the Wiki and I have been unable to nominate it for FA only because I cannot find the original writers for this article who could iron out the problems that may arise then. A peer review will help in figuring out where the problems lie and to solve them before going for FA; as well as finding other more experienced editors willing to help the article

Thanks, TheOriginalSoni (talk) 07:57, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

I think the article is not too bad, but there's room for improvement. My main issue is the continuity of the story line. There are some unexpected jumps and out-of-context statements, on different scales:

• Overall structure: I would expect a Life section to be roughly in chronological order. Instead, Middle years is subdivided by fields of science, jumping back and forth in time. I'd suggest to move all scientific details into a new Work section, with the subsections that are now in Middle years, and only mention important milestones like employments, publications or disputes chronologically in the Middle years section.
• Some episodes are described multiple times, with some overlap. I think they should be joined in one place, probably in the new streamlined biography section, in any case some redundancy should be removed.
  • How Newton avoided becoming a priest: Now at the end of both Early life and Middle years.
  • His connection with de Duillier is introduced in the middle of Mathematics, at the end of Mechanics and gravitation and again in Personal life.
  • His connection with Hooke is mentioned in Optics, Mechanics and gravitation, and Fame.
• Smaller points: I've got a long list of them, I'll fix some myself and convert the rest to readable form when I have time. But maybe we should first agree on the overall structure anyway. — HHHIPPO 21:32, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

Hi. I guess I'm not yet able to edit the article myself, but I wanted to stop by and mention that I agree there are some organisational issues. Thematic order can work if done right.

My advice to whoever works on the article is to put yourself in the mindset of someone who knows nothing about the subject other than that story about an apple falling on his head or something and go through the article with a fine-toothed comb, stem to stern. The paragraph on Leibniz, for example, becomes a bit confusing when read in this way and probably needs to be rewritten in any case. Its tone ("Such a suggestion, however, fails to notice...") and lack of secondary references are more appropriate for an essay than what I understand a Wikipedia article should be.

My advice to you would be to choose something less daunting if you feel unqualified to do the work yourself. You've only made one edit to the article, and that was to change a date. John Anderton (talk) 06:21, 21 November 2012 (UTC)