Wikipedia:Peer review/The World Without Us/archive1

The World Without Us

Recent non-fiction book. Looking for comments on the article's structure, topics covered, and language used. Thanks, maclean 04:01, 4 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

A script has been used to generate a semi-automated review of the article for issues relating to grammar and house style. If you would find such a review helpful, please click here. Thanks, APR _t 19:44, 5 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I read the Salon review and am hoping to pick up a copy when back in Canada. This is a good page, maclean. Some notes:

Audit for tense, particularly in the Synopsis. Sometimes the future auxillary is used ("Bodies would be quickly eaten...") but sometimes it's present simple ("Houses deteriorate..."). The former makes the most sense.
"Addressing the book's concept..." occurs in the middle of the article. I think it might make more sense to have a Concept section right off the top. I'd retitle Writing; perhaps Production and writing, or Research and writing.
There's a couple of sentences that are just a mess of bluelinks. You need to do something about the second sentence of Reception, for instance.
Synopsis has too few quotes. Reception may have too many.

Those are my thoughts on a first read through. Marskell (talk) 09:25, 7 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

- Thank you for reviewing. (1) I know eventually I have to face the tense issue. I wasn't sure which was corrent. Future auxillary is correct for the Synopsis? Reception should be present tense though, correct? As in "Kamiya writes that...". (2) Agreed. The 3 headers Synopsis-Writing-Reception was my attempt to keep certain aspects centralized and separated but as I read it more I'm thinking of going to 5 headers Background-Synopsis-Genre-Reception-Publication and re-working the Synopsis to say not only what the book says but also how he says it. (3) That is to say, work in the interviewees from the first mess of blue links. Originally they weren't all blue. But now they are. On the second blue list, I'll try dropping the station names. (4) I'll look to add poignant quotes to the Synopsis. I avoided summarizing reviewer opinions because when I tried I found myself twisting or compromising the original intent - and I figured if I'm simply re-stating what they said I may as well use their words. But I'll look to rationalize them and remove anything unnecessary. --maclean 20:09, 7 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Re 1): Yes—where you're talking about what would happen in the synopsis, use "would" :). For reviewers comments, the present perfect and the present simple are both acceptable: "Jones has written..." or "Jones writes...". With certain phrasing, the past simple might be appropriate: "In 2004, Jones wrote..." Marskell (talk) 10:16, 9 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from Awadewit

I heard an interview with Weisman on NPR and was intrigued by his book, so it was nice to read this article and learn more about it.

Small things:

What do you think about using one of the book covers at the top of the article? Colorful pictures draw readers in. We must pander sometimes.
I am not really a fan of infoboxes. They do not have information to offer that is not in the article and I worry about trying to classify books. Since infoboxes are not required, I tend not to use them on articles about books and people.

Prose:

Overall, I would suggest a copy edit by someone who hasn't been poring over the article day and night. It is helpful to have that fresh pair of eyes. I made a few changes while I was reading, but more could be done. Ex:

The author of four other books and numerous articles for magazines - Can these be generalized in any way, such as "the author of four other popular science books"?
He uses quotes from these interviews to explain the effects of the natural environment without human maintenance. - a little awkward
It has received largely positive reviews, specifically for the writing style - What kind of style?
Among the 23 page bibliography, are 2 articles he wrote for the Los Angeles Times Magazine ("Naked Planet" on persistent organic pollutants, and "The Real Indiana Jones" on the Mayan Civilization) and one published in the Conde Nast Traveler ("Diamond in the Wild" on diamond mining), as well as Discover's "Earth Without People". - I'm not sure this is relevant.

Sections:

The "Synopsis" is too long and detailed - it doesn't feel like a summary to me. You quote one critic later who says there is no overarching narrative - does that mean each chapter kind of stands alone? That would make writing a summary difficult, but perhaps you could write "there are n chapters, and x deal with these kinds of topics and y deal with these other kinds of topics..." and then work from there.

I saw many items that could be linked and then I thought if I started linking them all it would be a sea of blue. I'm not really sure what to do about this problem. You will probably have to sit around and think very carefully about what to link. WP:MOS-L has some good guidelines.

I liked the "Genre" and "Publication" sections in the other draft, although I might move some of the information around a bit (if you decide to create those sections, we can figure out what should go there). Right now the "Writing" section is a bit disparate - it needs subsections to add a sense of organization, I think.

I agree with the previous reviewer that the "Reception" section has too many quotes. It is hard to see the forest for the trees there - what was the overall reception?

I hope this was helpful. Awadewit | talk 20:19, 8 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Addressing your specific points, I will put in an image (though it will be fair use), I like infoboxes (I view them index cards), will do my best on prose and will request copyedits (thanks for doing the lead), switched the Synopsis format to one that explains more of how it was said and with less detail of what was said, moved the "Genre" and "Publication" sections over to mainspace, added introductory sentences to explain the overall points made by critics. Thank you for your help. --maclean 09:54, 15 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]