Wikipedia:Peer review/Ninette de Valois/archive1

Ninette de Valois

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because…

• I am seeking a comprehensive review of every aspect of the article, as am aiming for Good Article, then Featured Article status.
• Ideally, need someone to help me put together a 'job-list' for the article.

Thanks, Crazy-dancing (talk) 14:23, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

• The references, particularly the many related refs to the ROH collection, need further tidying up. Tpbradbury (talk · contribs) has improved the refs recently. I am also thinking about how they can be better structured and will probably make (and/or suggest) further changes. Mirokado (talk) 15:51, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Thank you. I realise the references need a lot of work. I have added most of them myself since working on the article, but I don't know how to format them correctly, so any help or advice would be much appreciated.Crazy-dancing (talk) 16:12, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Finetooth comments This is a good start on an article about an interesting and highly successful person. To make it broad enough in coverage for GA, I think you must include discussion in the text of the three books by de Valois that are listed in the section called Bibliography. I know nothing about de Valois except what I just read in this article, and I know almost nothing about ballet. However, I would guess that those three books are probably filled with information that would be useful here. What is in them? What does de Valois have to say about herself and her art? I note also that the Telegraph obit used for citation 14 mentions that her selected poems were published in 1988. This deserves at least a mention in the text and perhaps more than a mention. What were the poems about? How were they received by the critics?

Lead

• "one of the leading ballet companies in the world today" - Tighten by deleting "today", which is non-specific?

• "as one of the most influential figures in the history of ballet and as the 'godmother' of English ballet" - When using quotation marks in this way, use double rather than single quotes; i.e., "godmother" per WP:PUNCT.

Biography

• "She remained with the company for three years, being promoted to the rank of Soloist" - Lower-case "soloist"?

• "Students of the school were given professional stage experience performing in opera and plays staged at the Old Vic Theatre, with de Valois choreographing several short ballets for the theatre." - It's not clear what the source is for this claim and the rest of the claims later in the paragraph and in the entire next paragraph and, indeed, other parts of the article. A good rule of thumb is to provide a source for every claim that has been questioned or is apt to be questioned, every set of statistics, every direct quote, and every paragraph. If a whole paragraph is supported by a single source, the citation can go at the end of the paragraph.

• "with the intention of it's becoming a sister theatre to the Old Vic" - "It's" means "it is", and the "of its becoming" is a bit awkward. Suggestion: "with the intention of creating a sister theatre to the Old Vic."

Done. Mirokado (talk) 20:48, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

• "and was appointed Prima Ballerina" - Lower-case "prima ballerina".

• "engaging Frederick Ashton as Principal Choreographer and Constant Lambert as Musical Director in 1935" - Lower-case "principal choreographer" and "musical director".

• "Eventually, the company became one of the starriest in the world" - "Starriest" looks like a made-up word. Suggestion: "Eventually the company included many of the most famous ballet dancers in the world... ".

Done. Mirokado (talk) 20:48, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

• "In 1949 the Sadler Wells Ballet was a sensation when they toured the United States. Margot Fonteyn instantly became an international celebrity." - Claims like these need in-line citations to reliable sources.

• "De Valois was not one to rest on laurels, though." - The paragraph starting with this sentence needs a source or sources. Ditto for other paragraphs with no sources.

• The last four paragraphs here are extremely short. The Manual of Style generally advises against extremely short paragraphs or sections. Two options for making the material less fragmented are to expand or merge.

Choreography

• The opening paragraph seems to repeat material already covered in the Biography section.

Job (1931)

• The list seems unconnected to the subhead or the head, "Choreography". Perhaps instead of a bulleted list, you could create a regular prose paragraph saying, "Her other works include... " and then list all the ballets except Job and any others already mentioned earlier in this section.

The section on Job is the first of what I would hope can be sections for several of the dances: we would then have do decide how to mention any remaining dances. Mirokado (talk) 16:26, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

I've added an Other works section so the article is a bit more coherent during this work-in-progress. Mirokado (talk) 18:17, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

Honours and awards

• I'm not sure it's necessary to list all of these. Could the lists be compressed to essences and rendered as straight prose paragraphs? WP:MOS#Bulleted and numbered lists suggests using prose where feasible.

Replaced by paras. Listing is chronological by general category where that seemed helpful. Foreign distinctions are in a separate para (because they are interesting for a extra reason, not an issue of status.) In this case I did not count Irish as foreign. I also added some background for one of the awards, corrected the Turkish description and included the original Turkish title (the ROH page has typos in both its Turkish, as you can see from the photo of the certificate, and English text.) Although "Honour of Merit" would not be chosen by an English-speaking organisation it is a reasonable translation for the Turkish "signs of merit" and what is used on the ROH site. Mirokado (talk) 18:05, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

See also

• Categories are normally not included in a "See also" section. Probably all of the items in the category are already included as direct links in the main text.

References

• Citation 1 should include the author's name, Lewis Segal, and the publisher should be listed as Los Angeles Times rather than the url. Ditto for citation 3 and perhaps others.

Done. Converting clear newspaper articles to use cite news, which says use work= for the newspaper name (thus producing italics.) Some others are from web articles related to newspapers, I'm not sure how best to handle those yet, currently using cite web with the domain as publisher. Mirokado (talk) 16:26, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

• What makes streetfighters.blog.net a reliable source per WP:RS?

I don't think it is (in fact the page seems to have disappeared from the current incarnation of that site) but I have not yet found a suitable alternative source for that information. Mirokado (talk) 16:26, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

Other

• It's often helpful to look at featured articles to see how other editors have handled similar material. I'm not sure any ballet biographies are FA, but you can find biographies of other kinds of artists in some of the subcategories at WP:FA.

I hope these suggestions prove helpful. If so, please consider reviewing another article, especially one from the PR backlog at WP:PR. That is where I found this one. I don't generally check corrections after my reviews because it's too time-consuming. Please ping me on my talk page if my comments are unclear or if questions arise. Finetooth (talk) 18:12, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments. I will add some responses and make some of the minor changes, leaving substantial content changes mostly to Crazy-dancing. Mirokado (talk) 16:26, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

Comments from Tim riley I enjoyed reading this article. It certainly has the makings of a good article, but requires more flesh on the bones, and more scrupulous citations. I agree with most of the remarks above, some of which are duplicated here – I add my duplications to reinforce the point.

• General: At first mention in each paragraph you should refer to de Valois by name and not by a pronoun.
• Lead: you need three more paras or so, giving a brief overview of the article. See WP:lead and have a look at a few recent front page featured articles.
• Biography
  • Lt Col Stannus – you should add his given name
  • promoted to the rank of Soloist – upper case needed?
  • ballet company and school would be the predecessors – just "were the predecessors"?
  • Principal Choreographer … Musical Director – upper case needed?
  • the company became one of the starriest in the world – citation needed
  • School of Music & Ballet – is the ampersand part of the official name? If not, I'd replace with "and"
  • De Valois was not one to rest on laurels, though – this is rather too much a personal interpretation: if you can find a quote to the same effect that would be suitable. Also, there is not a single citation for the large number of statements in this paragraph, each of which should be backed with a reference. The same applies to the next four paragraphs. Those paras are rather stubby: some merging would help.
• Turkish State Ballet
  • Despite Turkey having no prior history – earlier you most admirably use a gerund for "with the intention of its becoming a sister" (albeit with an otiose apostrophe in it), and I'd do the same here – "Despite Turkey's…." (A really picky person might quibble about "prior history" on the grounds that that's the only sort of history there is.)
  • Does the citation at the end of the second para cover all the statements made in it?
• Choreography
  • Job (1931), was the first ballet to define the future of the British ballet repertoire – citation needed
  • recognised as cornerstones of British ballet – by whom? Citation needed
  • The section reads very awkwardly, with a decent size para on Job, and then an unadorned list of the other ballets. I think you should add a few words about the more important of them. Generally, bald lists of this kind are not the stuff of featured articles.

The section on Job is the first of what I would hope can be sections for several of the dances: we would then have do decide how to mention any remaining dances. Mirokado (talk) 16:26, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

• Honours and awards: it is unusual (and, I'd say, superfluous) in such sections to see the names of the heads of the awarding state.

Removed. Mirokado (talk) 16:26, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

I hope these few comments are helpful. - Tim riley (talk) 07:37, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments. I will add some responses and make some of the minor changes, leaving substantial content changes mostly to Crazy-dancing. Mirokado (talk) 16:26, 21 August 2010 (UTC)