Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography/Peer review/Christopher C. Kraft, Jr.

Christopher C. Kraft, Jr.

This article achieved GA status at the beginning of December and I am hoping to nominate it as a FAC shortly. As such, I would welcome any comments and suggestions for improvement. There are two particular areas on which I would welcome outside opinions. One, how does the lead look to readers who are unfamiliar with the subject, and does it need more context? It would be difficult to overemphasise Kraft's importance to the history of manned space exploration, but I didn't want to belabor the point too much. Two, does the article seem to be drawn too much from Kraft's autobiography? The reviewer at GA stage thought that it did. Since then, I have made some changes, and the article references thirty sources in total, but I would like to know how it looks. MLilburne 16:24, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Yannismarou

One of the main reasons I really enjoy reviewing articles is because I have the chance to read amazing, almost flawless, articles like this one (and your previous FA). My only problem in these cases is that I do not have mush to suggest! These are my remarks:

• The lead: It looks nice to me. I would suggest not to add more context. The reader gets the point and the last paragraph is very well-written. But there are some repetitions in the lead. For instance you say twice that "Kraft became NASA's first flight director" (in the first and the second paragraph) and that he spent 10 years in the Johnson Space Center (1st and 3d paragraph). I think you could fix these repetitions and merge the 1st (stubby paragraph, which will be more stubby if the repetitions go) with the 2nd one. Something else in the lead: flight director leads me to a disambiguation page. It shouldn't. Pick straight away the link you want me to go. And something last: who described as "a driving force in the U.S. human space flight program from its beginnings to the Space Shuttle era, a man whose accomplishments have become legendary". You mention Lunney in the first quote but nobody here. Is it Nystrom you cite? And why you mentio Lunney and not Nystrom? Isn't he notable ecough? I don.t say what you did is definitely wrong. I just try to understand your thinking.
  • I'll consolidate the first two paragraphs. My original intention had been to say right up front what Kraft was most notable for, but I suppose that if the reader can't persevere through the lead in order to figure that out, then I shouldn't worry about it. As for the Lunney/Nystrom question, I took another look at the Nystrom article and remembered that it was quoting the announcement from the Rotary Club. So I have made that clear in the lead.
• I see you're using {{cquote}} for your inline quotations. I also did and I like it, but in my El Greco User:Plange had a different opinion, which may be right. I repeat word by word what she told me - it may be helpful for you as well: "I see you're using {{cquote}} for your inline quotations and while they look pretty, they're really not in keeping with WP:MOS. Inline quotations (where you have "someone said:" and then the quote) should just use <blockquote>s. cquote template is for "pull quotes" that are outside of the flow of the prose, like you do with your nice blue ones (which I use as an example, BTW, when I try to show people what a pull quote is)".
  • Hmm. I dislike the idea of having two different styles of quotes in the same article (which is what that explanation would lead to). Think I'll wait for the FA stage and see if anyone minds it...
• You overwikilink sometimes. Flight director for instance (where you send us to a dismb. link repeatedly!).
  • Yeah, I'll fix that, and go over the wikilinks to make sure that I don't repeat any.
• Do you follow the British or the North-American spelling? You say "In his autobiography, Kraft recognises", but also ""The report," it said, "characterized"", "again criticized", "awards and honors". Check the whole article for consistency.
  • I intend to use the North American spelling, but I'm not surprised that I got some wrong. I'll see if I can find someone to proofread it for me, because clearly I've missed some!
• "In films" is stubby, but I do not know if you could expand it a bit.
• The article reads very well. The prose seems fine to me.
• It is true that the article depends a lot on the autobiography (37 of the 80 notes are from this book), but I do not think this is an important problem in this particular case. You offer a great variety of sources (30!), and, thus, the article cannot be considered single-sourced. After all this is something inevitable sometimes: in Pericles I used repeatedly Thucidydes and Plutarch; I had to do it! Of course, further variety is welcome. What you could maybe do is to offer in the same citation another source in parallel with the autobiography. And you don't have to make notes in a row like this [1][2] to achieve that. You can combine them: check different ways of combinations of more sources in one citation in Tourette Syndrome and Battle of Edson's Ridge.--Yannismarou 11:42, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Thank you very much for your comments, which I'll certainly take to heart. I'm very glad that you enjoyed reading the article. MLilburne 00:01, 29 December 2006 (UTC)