Wikipedia:Peer review/Woodrow Wilson/archive1

Woodrow Wilson

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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 May 2008.

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because… This article seem as if it could make a great FA but i'm sure there are things needed to be done to it, many of which i would not have the foggiest notion of rectifying --Briaboru (talk) 15:17, 28 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Briaboru (talk) 15:17, 28 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Ruhrfisch comments: While it is clear that a lot of work has been put into it, some more is needed to improve it further. Here are some suggestions for improvement:

A model article is useful for ideas and examples to follow. I note that Wikipedia:WikiProject_U.S._Presidents#Assessment has several FA articles listed, including Theodore Roosevelt and Calvin Coolidge
I would also use the failed FAC and two failed GANs as detailed peer reviews and address all of the comments in them
The lead should be an accessible and inviting overview of the whole article - while the current lead is well written it is not complete. My rule of thumb is to include every header in the lead in some way - for example, Personal life and hobbies are not really in the lead. Please see WP:LEAD
The article needs fewer sections / headers too - Health and Family are only a few sentences, or American Protective League. This breaks up the flow of the article.
Per WP:CITE references come AFTER punctuation, and are usually at the end of a sentence or phrase. See Woodrow Wilson was born in Staunton, Virginia in 1856 as the third of four children and to Reverend Dr. Joseph Wilson (1822–1903) and Janet Woodrow[4] (1826–1888).
The article needs more references, for example four of the paragraphs in the Academic career section have no references and there are several {{fact}} templates in the article. Or Death is completely lacking refs. My rule of thumb is that every quote, every statistic, every extraordinary claim and every paragraph needs a ref.
Some refs need more information. Internet refs need URL, title, author if known, publisher and date accessed. Books are not consistently referenced and need publisher, location, date, ISBN, etc. {{cite web}}, {{cite book}} and other cite templates may be helpful. See WP:CITE and WP:V
I also worry that some of the references are not relaible sources. There is a lot of reputable published work on Wilson, so what makes this a RS?
The article is lacking information - for example, in Personal life in the Family section the name of his second wife or the date of their marriage or any details are omitted (as is a ref). Or why did he leave the governorship of New Jersey?
Article depends way too much on what Wilson wrote (primary sources) when it should be based on what others have written about him (secondary sources). Why should the entire text of the Fourteen Points be given, or the huge quote on Armenian genocide, when there is very little analysis following, most of which is unsourced.
Avoid needless repetition - his first wife's death and his marriage to his second wife is described in both Family and Incapacity.
Please use my examples as just that - these are not an exhaustive list and if one example is given, please check to make sure there are not other occurrences of the same problem.

Hope this helps. If my comments are useful, please consider peer reviewing an article, especially one at Wikipedia:Peer review/backlog (which is how I found this article). Yours, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 03:04, 4 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from Ealdgyth (talk · contribs)

You said you wanted to know what to work on before taking to FAC, and my first suggestion would be to get your references into order. A number of your website references lack publisher and/or last access dates, which are the bare minimum needed for WP:V. Books need publisher, author, and page number on top of title. The bibliography should be in alphabetical order by author's last name. There are weird formatting glitches in the article, like you've cut and pasted into the article. Paragraphs are unsourced. Large blocks of quotations of addresses don't belong in encyclopedia articles. When you've got those mostly straightened out, drop me a note on my talk page and I'll be glad to come back and look at the actual sources themselves, and see how they look in terms of reliability, like I would at FAC. 23:27, 15 June 2008 (UTC)