Wikipedia:Peer review/Rufus Wilmot Griswold/archive1

Rufus Wilmot Griswold edit

Relatively obscure writers and critics from the 19th century deserve attention too! This one's a not too distant off-shoot of my usual interest in Edgar Allan Poe-related articles... Specifically, I am interested in this article being checked for NPOV, writing/grammar, and if it has the sort of breadth of coverage needed to achieve good article status. Thanks in advance! I love peer reviews! --Midnightdreary (talk) 22:52, 7 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 02:42, 11 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Comments by Ilse@ edit

Ah, infoboxes... going through a hellish FAC as we speak, I'd rather not expand the infobox only to be told later to scale it back or remove it entirely. --Midnightdreary (talk) 14:39, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Don't capitalize all occupations in the infobox. (Wikipedia:Manual of Style (capital letters))
  • Abbreviate United States to "U.S." or "U.S.A." to make it fit on one line in the infobox.
  • Avoid the use of terms such as "famous for" and "best known for", just mentioning the important stuff is sufficient.
  • The lead should give a summary of the article, I think details such as "Born in Vermont, Griswold left his family at age 15." and "It was in Philadelphia that Griswold first met Edgar Allan Poe." should be removed. Instead, maybe try to summarize each of the article's sections in one or two lines. (Wikipedia:Lead section)
I did my best to follow the spirit of WP:LEAD, but I'm having trouble understanding how I can summarize the article without including things like "Born in Vermont..." and "first met Edgar Allan Poe". --Midnightdreary (talk) 14:39, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Only to be accused of over-linking in the next FAC! I'll add a couple (certainly Philadelphia, probably not farmer and shoemaker). --Midnightdreary (talk) 14:39, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Add his birth date to the "Life and career" section.
  • Is it possible to split the section about his life and career into "(Early) life" and "Career"/"Writer"?
  • Rename the section "Edgar Allan Poe" to something related to the subject of the article, such as "Argument with Edgar Allan Poe".
Hard to argue when you're dead... but I'll see what I can come up with. --Midnightdreary (talk) 14:39, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Good luck! – Ilse@ 12:07, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The pieces which I did not respond to in-line are very easy and will be done shortly. Thanks for the review, but I was hoping I could get answers to some of the questions I posed in placing this article on review: Does it have full breadth of coverage? Does it maintain NPOV? Those are, in fact, my biggest concerns and what motivated me to ask for the review. Thanks! --Midnightdreary (talk) 14:39, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see major problems with neutrality, but I find the prose sometimes choppy, ambiguous, and the sentences do not always follow the previous ones logically. I don't think it is efficient to review the article sentence by sentence, do you appreciate help in copyediting? – Ilse@ 15:47, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I appreciate help in anything related to this article! As you can see from the edit history, I haven't had much! =) Copy editing in particular tends to be strenuous for me. My formal writing training has been very different from the Wiki MoS! --Midnightdreary (talk) 16:09, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for making those changes! I'm going to try looking at it again myself with forcedly fresh eyes. But, I'm having problems with the infobox now - the image doesn't appear and all the parameters appear bunched up. Any ideas? --Midnightdreary (talk) 20:37, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Regarding "Memoir" - it was basically an essay that used the title "Memoir" (alternatively "Memoir of the Author"). Definitely not presented as an autobiography. I tried to clarify that section a bit, and was a little more careful of using the "forged" term. I think it makes more sense this way. --Midnightdreary (talk) 23:23, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]