Wikipedia:Peer review/Jack Murphy (Irish politician)/archive1

Jack Murphy (Irish politician)

• 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 May 2009.

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because… 1.I'd like the article to conform to the wikipedia standards 2.I want the article to be as accurate as possible on detail 3.I value other points of view 4.I want to correct any grammer,spelling mistakes 5.I'd like to get some suggestions on improving the readability Thanks, Mibbles (talk) 08:08, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Finetooth comments: Murphy is an interesting fellow, certainly worth writing about. This is a good start, but the article needs quite a bit of work to conform to the Manual of Style and other Wikipedia standards. I read closely through the early sections and less closely further down. Here are a few suggestions for improvement:

Lead

• The claim that Murphy was the first unemployed man ever elected to a national legislature sounds doubtful even though sourced. Should this be "Irish national legislature" instead of "a national legislature"?
• "He resigned his seat on 13 May 1958 in protest at the indifference of the main political parties to the plight of the unemployed." - Suggestion: "to protest the indifference" rather than "in protest at the indifference".
• "After his resignation he subsequently emigrated with his family... " - Delete "subsequently"?

Early years

• "His father was the famous athlete... " - "a" rather than "the"?
• Wikilink republican movement? Should it be uppercase, Republican Movement?
• "The strike lasted several months until only three of the original committee remained, with Murphy being one of them." - Suggestion: "The strike lasted several months until only three of the original committee members, including Murphy, remained."
• "Arrested in 1941 by the Fianna Fáil Government, he was interned with a number of other republicans... " - Delete "a number of"?
• Wikilink sacking?
• "However in 1956, during which record unemployed figures were reached in Ireland," - Suggestion: "However in 1956, when unemployment rose to record heights in Ireland,"
• MOS:ITALICS#Quotations says to avoid using italics for quotations unless the italics are part of the quoted material. I removed the italics from the blockquote in this section, but they should be removed from all of the direct quotes in the other sections as well.

Protest committee

• MOS:BOLD advises against most uses of bolding. Exceptions that apply to this article include the John (Jack) Murphy in the first line and heads and subheads that are automatically bolded but not things like Unemployment Protest Committee in the main text.
• "with 11 other Dublin men he formed the Unemployment Protest Committee" - Since you use UPC on subsequent references, this first instance should include the abbreviation too. The standard pattern suggested by the Manual of Style looks like this: Unemployment Protest Committee (UPC). Subsequent references can then be UPC, which the first instance has explained to the reader.
• "imply that the UPC had been a political organisation[5], - In Wikipedia articles, the reference number always comes after the end punctuation of the cited phrase or sentence, like so: "imply that the UPC had been a political organisation,[5]" Any of these that you see in the article should be flipped.
• "The marches were usually preceded by a home made-coffin "We organised marches through the city. We hoped to arouse the conscience of the Nation. We carried a black coffin, symbolising our only hope if we did not fight." - The first sentence needs a terminal period after "-coffin". Then the quote needs a tag, such as "Murphy said" to identify the speaker of the words inside the quotation marks. The tag doesn't have to come at the beginning. You might use "We organised marches through the city," Murphy said. "We hoped... ". I'm assuming that Murphy was the speaker.
• "However despite their pagentry the UPC marches seem to have had limited impact either on the employment situation or on the policy makers and ministers who were in control of the same." - Spelling, diction. Suggestion: "However despite their pageantry the UPC marches seemed to have limited impact on employment or on policy makers and ministers."

1957 general election

• "The fall of the Government on 4th February 1957" - Lowercase "government"?
• "employment on to the political agenda the U.P.C decided to run a candidate" - Remove the points from U.P.C. for consistency? I see other instances of this later in the article, and they all should be fixed.
• "Jack Murphy said at the time" - Delete "Jack"?
• "Two names were put forward as possible Candidates at a meeting in Parnell Square." - Lowercase "candidates". Wikilink Parnell Square? I see other instances of "Candidate" that should be lowercase.
• "After much consideration it was decided that Jack Murphy would be more suitable as a Candidate." - Delete "Jack"? Lowercase "candidate"? The Manual of Style recommends using the last name only after the first use of a full name unless to do so would be confusing; e.g. if the article mentioned more than one person named Murphy.
• Most of this section lacks sources. A good rule of thumb is to provide a source for every claim that might reasonably be questioned, every direct quote, every set of statistics, and every paragraph. Where does the material in this section come from. WP:V explains the importance of verifiability.
• In general, this section needs more proofreading and attention to detail. Also, look for terms that might not be familiar to readers outside Ireland and see if they can be linked to other Wikipedia articles. I mentioned Parnell Square above, but River Liffey is another.

General comments

• Rather than continuing line by line, it makes more sense to me to suggest that more of the balance of the article be condensed by paraphrasing rather than using so many long direct quotations and that the claims and quotes be sourced.

I hope these few suggestions prove helpful. Finetooth (talk) 23:56, 8 June 2009 (UTC)