Wikipedia:Peer review/Madonna/archive3

Madonna (entertainer)

Previous peer review

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because I believe this is an extremely complete article as a biography. The structure, content and feel of the article can definitely make it a Featured Article here on Wikipedia. Hence I want my fellow editors to comment on what can be improved in the article before we proceed towards FAC.

Thanks, --Legolas ^(talk2me) 12:17, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Brief review by Charles Edward

• Overall a very good article and worthy of its current rating. It is a bit shy of FA quality though. Here are a few pointers:
• References needed
  • "Madonna performed cartwheels and handstands in the hallways between classes, dangled by her knees from the monkey bars during recess, and thought nothing of tugging her skirt up over her desk during class so that all the boys could see her briefs."
  • "However, she remained defiant and unapologetic upon publication of the photos for which she was paid as little as $25 a session."
  • "She later won her first Grammy Award in 1992 in the Best Long Form Music Video category for the lasrdisc relase of the tour."
  • ""Justify My Love" became a Madonna's ninth US number-one single"
  • "The deal was a joint venture with Time Warner as part of $60 million worth of recordings and businesses."
  • "After Lourdes' birth Madonna became involved in Eastern mysticism and Kabbalah."
  • "Records and a new $120 million, ten year contract with Live Nation in October."
  • "At the time there was even speculation about her relationships with other women, including Naomi Campbell and Sandra Bernhard."
  • ""[Madonna] has knocked the importance of talent out of the arena. She's made a lot of money and become the biggest star in the world by hiring the right people.""
• MOS issues
  • Ref #75 should follow the punctuation, not precede it
  • Ref #227 is not following puncutation
  • Double periods at Ref # 229
  • No ISBN for "Tetzlaff, David (1993). Metatextual Girl. Westview Press."
  • Several of your sources in the references section include page numbers. This is redundant with what is in your footnotes. You should remove the page numbers from the reference sections and ensure all the page numbers are in the footnotes only.
• "Clark, Carol (2002). Madonnastyle. Omnibus Press. ISBN 0-7119-8874-9." is not used in the footnotes, should be moved to further reading or a footnote added.
• Images
  • File:Madonna&JohnBenitez.jpg has no fair use rationale for using it on this article. (I don't think there is one)
  • File:Remedios Varo (388484001).jpg. I don't see any evidence that this image is truely licensed by its creater - only by the author who posted it to Flickr. This is worth looking into.
  • Images where the subject is facing left should be placed on the right side of the text. (lead excluded)
  • Image size is forced on some images, this is not recommended by the MOS as it overrides user settings.
• Questions
  • "She is also "the world's highest earning female singer on earth" - according to who?
• Suggestions
  • I think the article hierchy might work better if you "Musical style and influences" Under a heading of "Music. Then use "Style and influence", "Videos and live performance", and "Discography" as sub headings.
  • You have references in the lead of the article, but you reference the same sentences later in the article. I would remove the references from the lead since it is redundant.
• The length of the article is verging on being too long as well. It might be worth considering splitting off the Musical sections into a sub article if you are going to add much more to the article.

The article is a good read, and needs very little additional copy editing in my opinion. Referencing is solid, although I personally prefer to see more of the details of her life referenced back to biographical works rather than news articles. Biographical works tend to give a fuller picture than just occasional news snapshots. I don't think this referencing will cause you a problem though at FAC, provided you are able address the above referencing concerns. I have not reviewed each of the links to check the validity of the facts they are supporting, but someone at FAC will, so make sure they accurate. If you haven't already done so, I would recommend fully reading at least one biographical book on Madonna before you take the article to FAC just to ensure you are not leaving out anything noteworthy.

Hope this helps a bit. Sorry I didn't have time to conduct a very throughout a review, but these are the things that jumped out at me. Good job so far and keep up the good work! —Charles Edward ^{(Talk | Contribs)} 03:00, 27 October 2009 (UTC)