Wikipedia:Peer review/2013 NFL season/archive1

2013 NFL season

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because I would like to get some feedback on changes I have recently made to the article and with an eye toward eventual nomination of this article as a good or featured article. I have made substantial changes to the article's structure which diverges from the pattern established by other NFL season articles (e.g. 2012 NFL season and 2010 NFL season). I feel that these changes enhance the article's coverage of its topic, but I would love to hear opinions from others. I have asked for comments from the NFL WikiProject, but have so far gotten no responses.

Thanks, — DeeJayK (talk) 22:03, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

Comments from Shudde I have a few comments, these are only very brief, but if you want to nominate the article for GA I think they'll be useful.

• I'm not sure about having the article start with a list of tables. If it were to remain as is, I think I'd have an introductory paragraph for both Standings and Postseason giving context to the information. As it stands it will not be widely accessible.
• The lead could be expanded as per WP:LEAD
• In general, the article seems to be a collection of lists or bullet points. If this were in a print encyclopaedia would it be presented this way?
• I'd do your best to reduce things like jargon and geographically-biased terms. Even something like "4pm ET on March 12" makes little sense to a non-American. ET? What is that?
• How were things like "Notable events", "Scheduling highlights", "Major trades" decided? If there is a reason for the list of Major trades for example, then maybe say what the criteria are in a sentence or two at the beginning of the section.
• I think the article could do with a large multi-paragraphed prose section that would incorporate the major points from Notable events and Records and milestones. This would be a lot of work, but would make the article more encyclopaedic.
• I think some fancruft could be culled, and some of the more crufty material split off into separate articles. At the moment the article is > 200kb so this may be warranted as per WP:SPLIT.

I've got no doubts the article is well sourced and covers all the material it should. But like I said above I think it could do with a substantial prose section and some culling of the lists and bullet points (or the conversion of the bulleted stuff into paragraphs). Looks like a lot of work has gone into this, and is quite impressive, but just think a large prose summary of the season will make it bit better. Hope this helps. -- Shudde ^talk 03:44, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

Response from DeeJayK

Thanks for reviewing the page and providing your feedback. These are all excellent points and I will work on implementing your suggestions into the article. I've got to admit that I find this article a bit tricky simply because so much of what is included is (or should be) covered in much greater detail in another article. For example, the individual team season articles, like 2013 Denver Broncos season, would be expected to have much more detail on the seasons and games of each team, the 2013 NFL Draft article covers the draft in more detail, the 2013-14 NFL playoffs article covers the playoffs and the Super Bowl XLVIII article covers the championship game. Because of this, I've had a hard time determining what really belongs in this article and in how much depth things should be covered. In some ways, this article really functions more as a hub from which readers can drill down into the more detailed coverage in these other article. Hence the over-reliance on things like lists. I guess a more thorough re-thinking of the structure is in order.

I've got some questions with regard to some of your more specific points:

• Re: jargon and geographical terms like time zones - when time zones are used I've made a point to link the time zone at least the first time it's presented in each paragraph. I'm not sure how one presents times without including this info. If you have any specific suggestions on what changes you would make, I'd love to hear it. Was there any other jargon that gave you pause?
• Re: fancruft - Can you be more specific on what you would consider "fancruft"? I assume you are referring to the rather long list of records and milestones. I agree this list is rather comprehensive — perhaps this is something that could/should be broken out into it's own article? Do you feel like that section could stand on it's own? Perhaps the list of awards should also be broken out? Are there any other sections that you feel contain trivia not worthy of coverage in this article (or at all)?

Again, I want to thank you for sharing your opinions. Once I have a chance to implement your suggestions would you mind if I reached out to you again to have you take another look? Thanks! — DeeJayK (talk) 15:15, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

You're right that those other articles cover a lot of material in more detail, but that actually gives you the freedom to be selective in what you include in the article. It's going to be a summary of the season, and the quality is going to depend more on what you exclude than what you include. With 32 teams and 256 matches, you've obviously not going to be able to mention every match, and maybe not every team! My advice would be work backwards from those sides that progressed further in the season. A summary of the season would obviously include more information on the Broncos or Seahawks than say Washington. I would decide on what kind of length you want in the prose section, and then work from that. You may want to go into a little more detail than you'd like and then cull back, but that all depends on your writing/drafting style.

• Regarding more specific concerns, something like say "Awards and Statistics" (this should be "Awards and statistics" btw) could be split off, and a paragraph summarising it added. Some of the tables could remain, but only those you'd deem most notable.
• Just be careful of jargon, have a look at things like MOS:TIME for how best to present this information -- it just adds significantly to accessibility.
• Fancruft is just the material that only the die-hards would really care about. Things like "Schedule changes" -- is that 'The Texans–Chiefs game was moved from noon CDT to 3:25 pm CDT to accommodate "regional broadcast patterns" ' really very notable? Many of the things in "Records and milestone" would be pushing it as well. It's just about distilling down the things you think would be most broadly notable, and then splitting off the rest into a more specific article or list.

My main point is that you want to delist this article as much as possible and replace the lists with prose. It's a lot of work I admit! But it's my honest opinion that this would be the best way to improve the article. I'd be happy to have a look at the article in the future and offer further advice. -- Shudde ^talk 03:47, 19 April 2014 (UTC)

@Shudde:I've expanded the lead per your suggestion and I've also added a dozen-or-so paragraph prose section covering the highlights of the regular season. Some of the info previously included in lists has been worked into this section. The article remains a work in progress, but I'd like to get your opinion of the direction I am heading. Does the length of the lead strike you as appropriate? Do you approve of the tone and scope of the regular season section? etc. Thanks. — DeeJayK (talk) 21:59, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

Sorry I've been inactive this week. I'm having a quick read at the moment. Regarding the lead:

• The prose could use a bit of a polish, but the material itself is not too bad.
• You may still want to try and reduce the jargon in the lead a little bit, although it's not too bad.

Having a read through the Regular season section:

• Be a little careful regarding the tense that you use. For example you say "Under the NFL's scheduling formula, each team plays each of the other three teams in their own division twice." But would it not be better to say "As per the season's NFL scheduling formula, each team played each of the other three teams in their own division twice." -- there are other instances of sentences like this.
• Also take a little care regarding regionalism. There is little point mentioned broadcasters outside the US (just as a WP:WEIGHT consideration). But rather than "The game was broadcast on NBC" would it better better to say, "In the US the game was broadcast on NBC" ?
• " put on an amazing show" -- this is a little WP:PEACOCK, and not very encyclopaedic -- "show"?)
• Check WP:UNITS regarding whether metres should be added after the use of yards (and other imperial to metric conversions)
• Ah, as you mention games outside the US you should definintely take a little care with regionalism, and probably should add conversions for units.
• Convensions such as " on the season at 0–3 " will not be familiar to all readers (that 0-3 means zero wins, three loses). I'm pretty sure there is a template ({{abbr}} maybe?) that can be used for this.
• Some of the information in this section may not be particularly notable. The Chargers and Raiders played an unusual late night game in the season's fifth week on October 6. The game, originally scheduled to start at 1:25 pm PDT, had to be moved to the evening to accommodate stadium schedules — Major League Baseball's Oakland Athletics, the Raiders' co-tenants of O.co Coliseum, had hosted the second game of the 2013 American League Division Series the previous night and stadium crews needed nearly 24 hours to convert the stadium from a baseball to a football configuration.[17] O.co Coliseum was only multi-purpose stadium which hosted both an NFL and an MLB team in 2013.[18] Although the stadium conversion was complete by 3:30 pm local time, an 8:36 pm kickoff was necessary to avoid conflict with NBC's Sunday Night Football, where the 49ers hosted the Texans at Candlestick Park across the San Francisco Bay. The Chargers-Raiders game was the latest game played on the west coast in league history and was broadcast nationwide on the NFL Network.[19] probably does not warrant an entire paragraph.
• " was the emotional return of Broncos quarterback" -- a bit editorial, not very encyclopaedic. Need to be careful of this, it's common in sports articles, but needs to be culled.
• Going into the final day of the season on December 29, eighteen teams remained in contention for the twelve available playoff spots. All sixteen of the week seventeen games (all of which were intra-division matchups) were played on Sunday and thirteen had playoff implications. All four division winners in the AFC had been determined, but all four NFC divisions were still up for grabs. -- this is the kind of thing that is very important and notable. It's a good summary of a single weekend of matches, as you can't discuss them all individually. I like it.

Finished reading the section. Like the lead it's got pretty good material but the prose could use a polish. But I'd worry about polishing after you've decided exactly what content you want. It's a great start, and I definitely think the article is heading in the right direction. Good work! -- Shudde ^talk 08:14, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

@Shudde: Thanks again for the thoughtful critique. No need to apologize for the delay, I understand how it goes. These are good points to consider. I was aware as I was writing that some of the prose was a bit flowery, but I wanted to get the gist down and figured I would come back and polish it up once the scope of the article was established. Thanks for keeping me honest on that. Also, the use of jargon is a difficult one, for a couple of reasons: 1) I'm so familiar with the game that I sometimes don't notice some of the terms may be unfamiliar, and 2) I'm hesitant to make the article a constant series of digressions into the terminology. Do you think it is sufficient to link to articles on some of the more obscure or obtuse terms the first time they are mentioned? I feel that an overwhelming majority of readers who reach this article will have at least a cursory understanding of American football terminology, and I want to be mindful of making the article too pedantic for them. How does one find the correct balance?

The only thing I might dispute is your suggestion to convert units to metric. Although I understand yards are not widely used outside the US, the measurement is integral to the sport (the field is 100-yards long, it is delineated every 10 yards, a team must gain 10 yards for a first down, etc.) Because measurement is so integral to the game, I believe that even outside the US Imperial units (primarily yards) are used exclusively and the measurement is widely understood by those who follow the game. The game's reticence to switch to the metric system may be one factor that limits its international appeal. All that said, I'll do some research into whether metric conversion is used by those who play or follow the sport outside the US. I presume you're a Kiwi, are you aware of any American football being played in your area? — DeeJayK (talk) 14:10, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

I am not suggesting that you replace imperial units with anything, rather that in some cases it may be worth having the metric in brackets afterwards. I'm sorry I wasn't clear about this. For example you may use {{convert}} to say 25 yards (23 m) rather than 25 yards. I think the main benefit of this is just to give people unfamiliar with imperial units some idea of what distances are being discussed, so I don't imagine it would ever have to be a very precise conversion. But have a careful read of WP:UNITS and follow whatever it says there -- I could be wrong about all of this. I'm a Kiwi yes. There is a little American football played in NZ but it's pretty rare -- people are a little familiar with it though, mainly because of American television etc. -- Shudde ^talk 23:05, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

I think I understood your suggestion and I'm generally a big advocate of using the "convert" template to convert units to metric where appropriate, but I question whether such conversion is appropriate in the scope of an article concerning American football. I haven't seen any examples on WP of such conversion. I did look into British press coverage of the game and could find no examples therein where distance in yards were converted. I just think that in this particular situation, adding conversion would do more harm than good. I'm willing to be convinced, but I just don't think there's any precedent for that sort of conversion. Thanks. — DeeJayK (talk) 23:32, 25 April 2014 (UTC)