Wikipedia:Peer review/Merseyrail/archive1

Merseyrail

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because I am unclear what needs to be done to raise it to B standard or beyond.

Thanks, Kitchen Knife (talk) 14:22, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

I hope to return and say more. But do take a look at Wikipedia:WikiProject Trains#Featured articles to see some examples of good work. For example, City and South London Railway. My initial impression was that the Merseyrail article is vast and rambling. I would like to get a quick mental picture of the overall system, and did not manage to reach that. This type of article tends to become packed with detail and starts to resemble a directory. Even the City and South London Railway, while it starts well and draws the reader in, tends to get lost in excessive detail at some points. EdJohnston (talk) 03:16, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Brianboulton comments: I am inclined to agree with the above remarks; the article does need some attention. I have done a bit of copyediting in the early parts, and have left detailed comments on all the early sections. Many of the identified faults are repeated in the later stages, and I hope my comments will be applied to improving these sections.

• Lead: I have copyedited this. I am not sure that it meets the MOS requirement (see WP:LEAD]] that the lead should be a concise summary of the whole article; this is something that will need to be looked at when this review is complete. Another problem relates to use of citations in the lead. Why are some facts cited, but not others? As everything in the lead should be mentioned later in the article, it is quite usual to have the citations there,in the main text, rather than in the lead. I am not sure why you have chosen to have three citations in the lead.
• The Merseyrail system
  • Section titles should not begin with "The" or "A", so this title should be "Merseyrail system". However, that is too much like the article's title. As this section is a brief overview of the system, I suggest that "Overview" would be a better section title.
  • The section should be written in proper prose (sentences and paragraphs) throughout. Bullet points must be avoided, as should single sentence paragraphs. I have copyedited and combined the first two short paragraphs; you should attempt a better prose flow in the rest of the section.
  • If the City Line is not part of the Merseyrail system, nor part of the Merseyrail franchise, why is it necessary to include information about it?
  • "Unlike local train networks in other British cities..." Do you have a source which supports this statement.
• History
  • Comments above, about avoiding single-sentence and very short paragraphs, apply to this section also.
  • The section is too short to be divided into four parts. I suggest you drop the fourth part as irrelevant to this article, snd combine the other three into a single prose section, unless you wish to expand the section into a detailed history.
  • "Core" and "nucleus" mean the same thing. The first and second sentences define the core/nucleus in different ways. Some rewording is advised.
• Lines: again, I query why you have a subsection devoted to a line that does not for part of Merseyrail
• Enforcement of standards: this is trivial stuff, not worth mentioning, let alone in a main section. I suggest you get rid of it.
• The franchise
  • I think this information belongs in the History section. If it is to be retained as a separate section, it should be moved to immediately after History, and named Franchise.
  • Dates (years, anyway) required for privatisation of British Rail, and for Aviva assuming the franchise
  • "...an initial 25-year period" Surely, just "a 25-year period"?
  • "vertical integration" - never heard this term. If what follows the dash is an explanation of the term I suggest you consolidate the sentence: "As a result of this isolation, the franchise-holder wishes to take responsibility for maintenance of the track from Network Rail.

I hope you find these comments helpful. Brianboulton (talk) 20:06, 24 August 2009 (UTC)