Wikipedia:Peer review/Confirmations of Barack Obama's Cabinet/archive2

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A script has been used to generate a semi-automated review of the article for issues relating to grammar and house style; it can be found on the automated peer review page for March 2009.

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because…

It's just hit B-Class and i'm curious on how to put it up to A/GA class and then getting it featured.

There are more than 100 references, every position is in there. Some of the sections need a bit more meat though

Finetooth comments: This article is much improved since my last review. I have suggestions for further improvement.

Layout

I think the collection of mug shots looks good and works well, but I would change its placement on the page. My thought is to add an infobox in the upper right with a mug shot of Barack Obama, to expand the lead, and to move the box with the cabinet mug shots down below the lead and the infobox. This would result in a layout more in keeping with the standard Wikipedia page appearance.

Lead

The ideal lead is a summary of the main ideas in the text sections. Instead of using the lead to explain the arrangement of the article, I would try to briefly summarize the content of the article. In this case, perhaps the best approach would be to create three or four sentences that simply list the names and the offices. The first sentence of the existing lead is probably OK, but the second sentence might read "President Obama nominated and the Senate confirmed Hillary Rodham Clinton as Secretary of State, Timothy F. Geithner as Secretary of the Treasury...". To keep this second sentence from running on too long, it might be good to break up the list with a third and fourth sentence that simply continue the list to the end. They might start with phrases such as "Other nominees confirmed by the Senate were... ". An additional sentence or sentences might list exceptions, withdrawals, rejections. Doing the lead this way would bring it into compliance with WP:LEAD and would help solve the layout problem. This basic structure for the lead would be easy to adjust as time passes and new information becomes available about nominations, appointments, withdrawals, or any other significant changes. The third sentence of the existing lead might work better as part of the caption for the cabinet mug shots.

Orphan paragraphs

The Manual of Style (MoS) generally frowns on one-sentence paragraphs. Two solutions are possible: expand or merge. For example, the sentence "The Secretary of State designate is reviewed by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee" stands alone as a paragraph. I would simply merge it with the second paragraph. I see quite a few of these orphans here and there throughout the article.

Overlinking

I see a lot of overlinking in the article. For example, I don't think United States Senate needs to be linked more than once in the entire article. Most readers will not need to click the link to see what the term means, and those who do want to click can do so from the link in the lead. After that, the blue is merely distracting in the same way that exclamation points or italics would be distracting. Ditto for Barack Obama. For another example, Treasury Secretary is linked four times in the Secretary of the Treasury section. One is plenty, and the others should be unlinked. I recommend reviewing all of the links and unlinking the redundant ones.

Images

Generally these look good, but some need to be re-positioned. Gary Locke needs to be moved down a paragraph or so to avoid bumping against a second-level subhead. Tom Vilsack would be better on the left (but not against the second-level head) so that he looks into the page. Image:Barack Obama in oval office with staff.jpg should be moved down to avoid creating a text sandwich between it and the images on the right.

References

Quite a few of the references are missing an access date.
Some notes like #61 and #134 are incomplete in other ways.
WP:MOSNUM says to use consistent date formatting in the notes. Some in the existing article are yyyy-mm-dd, while others are m-d-y, and others are d-m-y. Either yyyy-mm-dd or m-d-y is OK for a U.S.-centric article, but all should be done in the same format.

If you find these suggestions helpful, please consider reviewing another article, especially one from the PR backlog. Finetooth (talk) 16:33, 21 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]