Wikipedia:Peer review/Ringo Starr/archive1

Ringo Starr

• 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 January 2009.

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because I'm trying to improve all articles on The Beatles' personnel to GA status. Therefore, I would like input on how I can get this to GA status.

Thanks, Dendodge Talk^Contribs 15:24, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

Finetooth comments: This article is broad in its coverage, and it seems stable and neutral. However, in some other areas it falls short of GA. I have a few suggestions for improvement.

• The lead of a Wikipedia article should summarize the whole article. The existing lead does not begin to do that and should be expanded. A good rule of thumb is to include at least a mention of the central ideas in each of the main text sections. Please see WP:LEAD for more ideas.

• Large parts of the article are unsourced. A good rule of thumb is to source every paragraph, every set of statistics, every direct quote, and every claim that is unusual or might reasonably be questioned. I'll just give one example: "Starr generally sang at least one song on each studio album as part of establishing the vocal personality of all four members, a quality that is rarely seen in other bands." The "at least one" claim and the "rarely seen in other bands" claim need sources.

• Fond of The Beatles as I am, the writing seems less clear in the lower sections than in the top sections. I find the level of detail in the lower sections a bit much in places, and some of it is confusing. An example would be "In fact, Rotogravure turned out to be Starr's last top 40 album in the US to date peaking at #28 on Billboard and the Single turned out to be the last top 40 single in the US in the 70s 'A Dose of Rock And Roll'." This has so many qualifiers that it's hard to understand what it means. "To date" is ambiguous, and it's not clear whether "last top 40 single in the US in the 70s... " refers to all records or just Starr's records.

• The Manual of Style (MoS) generally deprecates orphan paragraphs consisting of only one sentence. The existing article has a lot of them, and I think most could easily be combined with other orphans or bigger paragraphs.

• The MoS deprecates fancy quotation marks such as those used in "Drumming ability and appreciation". I see other minor errors or breaks with the MoS throughout the article. A copyeditor familiar with the MoS could probably catch and fix these.

• Some of the citations are incomplete. If possible, they should include author, title, publisher, date of publication, url, and access date. It's not always possible to find all of these, but citation 2, for example, has nothing but a title and an url.

• Not everyone will understand all the special terms and jargon. Examples just from "Drumming ability and appreciation" include "tonal rings", "drum kit pattern", "the bridge", "hi-hat rolls", "snare drum", "B-side", and "maracas". These could be linked or explained.

I hope you find these brief comments helpful in your pursuit of GA. If so, please consider reviewing another article, especially one from the PR backlog. That is where I found this one. Finetooth (talk) 01:59, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

• Your sources are: one book and eight million websites? That raises many concerns about depth of coverage. plus as noted above, the citation style is puzzling... is that a standard format of any kind? Ling.Nut ^{(talk—WP:3IAR)} 08:06, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

• Sorry for the delay - that citation style is used in many Beatles articles, as a number of references (particularly books) are used multiple times. We've gotten past GAN with it with The Beatles, Paul McCartney, John Lennon and (hopefully soon, when someone gets round to reviewing it) George Harrison. I'll take the other comments on board, thank you. Dendodge Talk^Contribs 19:27, 27 January 2009 (UTC)