Wikipedia:Peer review/William S. Clark/archive1

William S. Clark

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because… Given that William S. Clark was a significant figure in the history of US/Japan relations, I'm hoping his page might be a good candidate at some point for "featured article" status. Looking for any suggestions to make this a better article. Thanks, Historical Perspective (talk) 13:14, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

I removed the semi-automated peer review (SAPR) because it should not be included here for the following reasons: 1) when the SAPR is included here, this peer review request does not show up at WP:PR for others to see it and make comments; 2) this saves space at WP:PR; and 3) this follows the directions above, i.e. "Please do not ... paste in semi-automated peer reviews below: link to them instead." Thanks, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 04:23, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

Some comments:

• Please add ALT texts to your images.--Diaa abdelmoneim (talk) 11:41, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

Done, Historical Perspective (talk) 14:03, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

• Please add references where there are citation needed tags.--Diaa abdelmoneim (talk) 11:41, 25 December 2009 (UTC)
• The civil war section is too short to be on its own, have it as third level header under Early life...--Diaa abdelmoneim (talk) 11:41, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

I had been intending to expand the Civil War section to include a better narrative of his experiences. I've just done this. Historical Perspective (talk) 16:20, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Finetooth comments: This is an interesting and informative article but needs significant work to reach GA. I did some minor copyediting as I went, and I have further suggestions below. I see significant problems with the lead, the lack of sourcing in places, some of the citations, and two of the image licenses.

Lead

• The lead should be a summary of the entire main text. My rule of thumb is to include at least a mention of each of the main text sections and not to include anything important in the lead that does not appear in the main text. WP:LEAD has details.
• "a Member of the... " - Lowercase "member".
• "Though he worked most of his life to further agricultural education in Massachusetts, ironically, he is best remembered... ". - Delete "ironically" since it is an editorial comment that would be hard to verify.
• Link Sapporo and Sapporo Agricultural College?

Done. Thoroughly re-wrote and expanded the lead section. I'm hoping it now conforms to WP:LEAD. Historical Perspective (talk) 19:02, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Family

• The last two paragraphs of this section lack sources. My rule of thumb is to include a source for every paragraph as well as every claim that is challenged or likely to be challenged, every set of statistics, and every direct quote.
• "Among these, his eldest child and daughter, Emily Williston Clark... " - "Their" rather than "his" since in the preceding sentence you name both parents. Ditto for "their" rather than "his" in this sentence: "One of his sons, Hubert Lyman Clark, became a prominent zoologist."

Done. Historical Perspective (talk) 19:02, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

"Early career

• The entire section lacks sources.

Done. Section consolidated with "Early Life" and citations added.

Civil War

• Words like "colonel" don't start with a capital letter unless part of someone's title; e.g. Colonel Joseph Smith. Ditto for "major" and "lieutenant colonel" in this section and "professor of chemistry", "agricultural college", "president" and others later in the article.

Done. Historical Perspective (talk) 03:12, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

Massachusetts Agricultural College

• I'd consider rendering the long quote that begins "In the good time coming, the refining, elevating, and strengthening influences... " as a blockquote. WP:MOSQUOTE has details.

Done, Historical Perspective (talk) 14:03, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Japan

• The first paragraph needs a source.

Done, Historical Perspective (talk) 14:03, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

References

• Some of the citations are incomplete. Citations to Internet sources should include author, title, publisher, date of publication, url, and date of most recent access, if all of these are known. I like to use the "cite family" of templates, which can be copy-pasted into articles at the proper location and filled in. You can find these templates at WP:CIT. If you choose to use the templates, don't mix the "cite" family with the "citation" family, which are also at WP:CIT. Alternatively, you can enter the missing data by hand. You don't have to use templates.

Done. Thanks, that's a very handy template. Historical Perspective (talk) 16:12, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Image licenses

• Copyright questions can get very complicated. When I see photos of statues, I generally check to see if the country of origin has a copyright law affecting what's called "freedom of panorama". In the U.S., it's not legal to photograph copyrighted statues and to publish the photos. I looked up Japan just now, and, alas, it restricts such photos to non-commericial use, which I think makes them unusable on Wikipedia or the Commons because they can't be legally duplicated by Wikipedia readers for commercial purposes. Commons:Freedom_of_panorama#Japan has details. This probably means you won't be able to use either of the statue photos in the article.

Done. It was somewhat sad to remove the photos of Clark's various statues, but I appreciate your pointing out this licensing issue. Historical Perspective (talk) 03:12, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

General

• The images need alt text, which is meant for readers who can't see the images and is not the same as captions. WP:ALT has details and you can see examples of acceptable alt text in the articles at WP:FAC. Acceptable alt text is a requirement for FA.

Done, Historical Perspective (talk) 14:03, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

I hope these suggestions prove helpful. If so, please consider reviewing another article, especially one from the PR backlog. That is where I found this one. Finetooth (talk) 20:43, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks very much. I appreciate the feedback and will get to work on the edits. Historical Perspective (talk) 12:49, 27 December 2009 (UTC)