Wikipedia:Peer review/John Rawls/archive1

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John Rawls[edit]

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I've listed this article for peer review because the overall importance of Rawls's contributions, his place in the history of philosophy, and various viewpoints on his work are not included or well-emphasized.

Thanks, Levalley (talk) 18:36, 22 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The article has lost its focus and is something of a mess. It needs an expert editor.CDart (talk) 22:38, 23 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • A big problem with the philosophy related articles on Wikipedia is that the descriptions of the philosophers' arguments are almost exclusively original research. We cannot use primary sources to explain a philosopher's position, but should seek out secondary sources and cite those. This is also a problem with this article. --Ryan Delaney talk 18:31, 25 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Ruhrfisch comments: I do not know anything about the man or his philosophy, here are some suggestions for improvement based on the article itself.

  • The current lead is two sentences and needs to be expanded. My rule of thumb is to include every header in the lead in some way. Please see WP:LEAD
  • The lead should be an accessible and inviting overview of the whole article. Nothing important should be in the lead only - since it is a summary, it should all be repeated in the body of the article itself but Pres. Clinton's award of the medal to him is only in the lead.
  • Article needs more references, for example the sections on Career, Later life, and Contribution to political and moral philosophy have no refs at all. My rule of thumb is that every quote, every statistic, every extraordinary claim and every paragraph needs a ref.
  • Internet refs need URL, title, author if known, publisher and date accessed. {{cite web}} and other cite templates may be helpful. See WP:CITE and WP:V
  • Provide context to the reader - as one example, the books do not even have the year they were published to give some idea of when he wrote them. Or the Presidential medal could be put somewhere in addition to the lead to explain how people viewed him and his contributions.
  • Since he's dead, a photo of him could be added under WP:FAIR USE
  • See also is for links not already in the article - A Theory of Justice is already linked prominently and should not be a see also.
  • Usually there is some sort of critical reception section in articles on people who produce written works - what did others say about his books / articles/ ideas / theoeries?
  • A model article is useful for ideas and examples to follow - there are a few FAs on Philosophers and Bernard Williams might be a good model article here.

Hope this helps. If my comments are useful, please consider peer reviewing an article, especially one at Wikipedia:Peer review/backlog (which is how I found this article). Yours, Ruhrfisch ><>°° 18:56, 28 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

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