Wikipedia:Peer review/I Joined a Teen-Age Sex Club/archive1

I Joined a Teen-Age Sex Club

This peer review discussion has been closed.
Comments on organization, content, and acceptability of images will be appreciated. Thanks, SingToMePlease (talk) 21:46, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Ruhrfisch comments: Thanks for your work on this interesting article. Here are some suggestions for improvement, with FAC in mind (since this had an unsuccessful run there recently).

• Since you asked about images I will start there. The article has three fair use images, which seems on the high side. I am not sure that all of them meet WP:NFCC. It may be that the copyright for this was never renewed - if that is the case (and the Library of Congress has a web page to search for these) then the images would be free to use here.
• I also note that the image supposedly of California teens circa 1950 is one of a famous series by Ansel Adams of the Manzanar camp for interned Japanese Americans during WWII and is dated to 1943. As such I do not think this image really adds to the article (though it is a striking photo)
• The first paragraph of the Critical response section has no references and needs at least one (esp. with a direct quote in it). My rule of thumb is that every quote, every statistic, every extraordinary claim and every paragraph needs a ref.
• Some of the refs need more information - Internet refs need URL, title, author if known, publisher and date accessed. {{cite web}} and other cite templates may be helpful. See WP:CITE and WP:V
• I realize this is a short article, but the lead seems a like it could have a bit more information. For example, I would include the fact that this story is only five pages long in the lead. The lead also has almost nothing about the plot, but that is one of the longest sections in the article.
• The plot summary seems overly long and detailed to me. Using the page size tool, I looked at the plot section of Watchmen, a FA about a 12 issue graphic novel. Its plot section is 4858 B (774 words) "readable prose size". This was 5 pages and not even all of one issue of its comic and its plot section is 3448 B (618 words) "readable prose size".
• A FA should avoid needless repetition (it is expected that the lead, as a summary, will repeat some of the body of the article - that is fine). Here are some examples from the body of the article of the same information being given in very similar form two or three times. Two examples follow:
  • Americans relaxed their attitudes toward sex in the post-war years as scientific inquiry into matters sexual became a regular feature of life and GIs returning to the nation's shores displayed uninhibited mores. Context, paragraph 1
  • Robert S. Ellwood writes in 1950: Crossroads of American Religious Life that American morals had shifted by the middle 20th century and posits that GIs with uninhibited mores acquired abroad and sex research had contributed to the change: "People did not consider themselves especially virtuous [mid-century]; indeed, there was considerable talk about returning veterans ... who had come back with newly uninhibited views on smoking, drinking, and sex". Context paragraph 3
• and here the same quote about indulging in sex orgies is used in two consecutive sentences:
  • Jet magazine, for instance, reported in its December 18, 1952 issue that a teen theft ring and sex club "celebrated" successful heists by "indulging in sex orgies".
  • The magazine informed its readers, "Stiff sentences were meted out to four ringleaders of a teen-age shoplifting ring and sex club in Bridgeport, Conn." and revealed that following "successful hauls, members celebrated by indulging in sex orgies."[2]
• This leads to another issue - as written, the article relies very heavily on direct quotations. Another part of WP:NFCC is that copyrighted material like quotations is used sparingly. In the previous example, the first sentence does a better job of paraphrasing the material and using limited quotation from it.
• Much of the Critical response section is a "quote farm" and needs to be paraphrased more - save the direct quotations for the really good stuff.
• While I am pleasantly surprised that so much information could be found about a 5-page comic book story, it seems to me that some material is missing from the article. There is nothing on the artists who created the work beyond their names, two of which are linked. Any thing about them that could be added would help, even if it was background (not specific to this comic, but a few sentences on the linked artists)
• There is also not much on Harvey Comics. For example, the article on Harvey romance comics includes more information about the history of the title this appeared in - probably should mention it had turned racier in only the previous issue.
• At the same time, some of the article seems padded. Part of this may be the repetition already noted, but does the article really need a characters section (aren't the characters clear from the plot, which is about the only place they are discussed anyway?). Even if the CHaracter section is needed, does it really need to mention such trival characters as "Two high school students describing themselves as intellectuals" and "Three male members of the sex club"?
• I also wonder if, in an article about a 1951 comic, a 1959 report on a teen sex clubs is relevant?
• Have books that are not available on Google books been consulted?
• Please make sure that the existing text includes no copyright violations, plagiarism, or close paraphrasing. For more information on this please see Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2009-04-13/Dispatches. (This is a general warning given in all peer reviews, in view of previous problems that have risen over copyvios.)

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). I do not watch peer reviews, so if you have questions or comments, please contact me on my talk page. Yours, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 12:20, 26 January 2011 (UTC)