Wikipedia:Peer review/Billy Butlin/archive1

Billy Butlin

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because I think it's a potentially interesting article and worth putting forward as a featured article. Any and all advice for taking it forward toward that goal would be appreciated.

Thanks, Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 14:57, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

Tim riley comments There is a lot of good stuff in this article. The prose needs a fair bit of polishing, however, if the article is to succeed at FAC. I may have to comment in instalments. Here is the first.

• General: see WP:OVERLINK and lose otiose links to British, South Africa, England, World War I
• Lead
  • "Industry" – why a capital letter?
  • "to parents William and Bertha Butlin" – tautology – suggest you delete "parents"
  • 7th – single figure numbers should be in words, not numerals (See Manual of Style)
  • "became a success when compared to the other stall holders" – perhaps "became more successful than the other stall holders"?
  • "One stall became several including…" – I had to read that twice to work out what it meant. A comma after several might do the trick.
  • Two "afford"s in successive sentences
  • "convincing the Ministry of Defence to" – jarring Americanism here: in English English either "persuading the MoD to" or "convincing the MoD that…."
  • "4 more camps" – word not numeral, as above.
• Early life
  • "son of a clergyman but his mother" – I see why you have put "but", but it is editorialising rather, and I recommend using a neutral semicolon instead.
  • "two children Butlin" – either a comma or a colon needed after "children"
  • "Unfortunately, within a short…" – lose the editorialising adverb
  • "Swindon,[web 8] his mother" – stronger stop than a comma needed here
  • "whilst studying" – what has "whilst" got that "while" hasn't? (And again later in the article)
• Early adulthood
  • "volunteered somewhat reluctantly to the…" does one volunteer to? I'd say "for".
  • "quota – this" – n-dash not hyphen needed here
  • "resulted him earning" – word missing here? Grammatically, "in his earning" (gerund) would be best
  • "Instead Butlin forgot to tell the recruiter of this intention and he was instead" – too many insteads
  • Canadian expeditionary force" – At other peer reviews I have often objected to excessive use of capital letters, but here I think the title of the military unit really ought to be fully capitalised as "Canadian Expeditionary Force."
  • "After the war he returned…." Better to swap the "he" in the first sentence and the "Butlin" in the second.

That's all for this batch. More to come. Tim riley (talk) 12:40, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

As discussed at your talk page. I have copy-edited the rest of the article. Nothing very serious – mostly punctuation. Please revert anything you're not happy with.

One query as to fact: The Bishop's Avenue is in North London, miles away from Kensington. At present the article seems to say that they are in the same place. Did he in fact move from the one to the other before moving to Grosvenor Square?

I don't know if this link will work, but I found some interesting information in the ODNB article that you might wish to see. Let me know if it doesn't work: I can email you an official ODNB link to it that will definitely work.

I enjoyed this article. Good luck with its future progress! Tim riley (talk) 07:42, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

1. That's all good, I'm happy with those changes.
2. My mistake, I had misread a source [1] which was discussing two separate properties (only one belonged to Butlin) and accidentally copied the "Kensington" which referenced to the other property into the text. I've corrected as Hampstead as the house is one of the last before the heath.
3. That's a good link , mostly based on Dacre which has a few errors (mainly because it's based on Butlin's recollection of events which wasn't perfect) but as I don't have access to a full copy of Dacre I can use it to expand a few points in detail.

Thanks for all your help, it's appreciated. Is there anything else I should look at before nominating for featured article? Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 09:00, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

I'd hang on for a week and see if anyone else has comments. (If anyone takes exception to the prose you can blame me now!) If nobody else has any suggestions, I reckon it's worth a shot at nominating for FA. Please let me know when you do so, and I'll support the nomination at FAC. Meanwhile if you want to get your own back for my interference I have an article at peer review myself: English National Opera, but don't feel obliged to comment unless it interests you. Tim riley (talk) 11:34, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

General question: What is the rationale for dividing citations between "bibliographic" and "web"? This creates a very unwieldly form of inline citation - especially when information is multi-cited I have never seen this done before in thousands of articles that I've looked at, and I see no advantage arising from this format. Personally, I think you'd have difficulty selling this at FAC. Brianboulton (talk) 00:00, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

I had 2 articles at GAN at the same time, this and Butlins Skegness, the reviewer on the latter article advised that in order to comply with WP:Citing Sources#Style variation, which suggests "Citations within each Wikipedia article should follow a consistent style"; Short form and long form refs should not be mixed in the same references section. I argued against this interpretation of the guideline but conceeded to implement it on the basis that removing all long form book refs to a bibliography section made the article text somewhat easier to edit - at the same time I separated news and web as a quick means to seperate those references at risk of link rot and those where links were purely for convenience. After both articles passed I implemented the grouped footnotes in a number of articles including here.

The MOS gives no advice against grouping of references in this manner, and indeed advises how to achieve it in WP:FN, and also places a lot of choice on how footnotes/references are presented to the first or major contributor. If at FAC; it is considered incorrect, then it is relatively easy to use an Automated edit to remove all the footnote groupings. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 08:31, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

It's not that it's "incorrect", merely unsightly with no compensating advantages. I think your GAN reviewer is out on a limb; as far as I can see, none of the 3,000-odd featured articles follow his interpretation, and the great majority of them happily mix short and long form citations in one references section. Frankly, I'd go with the established practice rather than follow this idiosyncratic one, but it's down to you. Brianboulton (talk) 15:00, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

"Unsightly" is a matter of personal taste, I think leaving the type of reference unsorted leads to unsightly reference tables at the bottom - but I accept the concern that the in-line footnote reference may appear unwieldy; so as an intermediary step I've reduced them all to single letters which is more common in existing articles and will continue to consider the overall option of reverting to a single references table. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 16:15, 13 June 2011 (UTC)