Wikipedia:Peer review/Hugh Hickling/archive1

Hugh Hickling

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I'm looking to take this article from GA to A-class or FA status, and would like some feedback as to what further improvements are necessary. Some of the citations need tidied up to conform to FA standards, but there are no actual referencing problems and the prose seems solid to me. Thanks, AGK [•] 14:28, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Review by Finetooth

(Clerical note) I've tweaked the formatting of this review, for my benefit when working on the improvements. No actual content of the review has been changed. AGK [•] 19:46, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

This reads well for the most part and is interesting, but I don't think it would pass FAC in its present state. It has FA potential, though. Here are a few suggestions for improvement.

• The article is not yet comprehensive and would not yet meet WP:WIAFA parts 1b and 1c. At least two areas need further work, I think. First, I would try to include more information about the controversy that I assume must have occurred and must still be occurring around the Internal Security Act. What do opponents of the act have to say? Second, how was Hickling's written work received by critics and by the reading public?

Lead

• The Internal Security Act link in the first sentence goes to a disambiguation page rather than the intended target. Also, it would be good to add ISA in parentheses, Internal Security Act (ISA), so that the abbreviation later makes sense by itself.

• I'd be careful about overlinking. Most readers of English already know what "novel", "short story", "lawyer", "professor", and "ammunition" mean, for example, and I'm not sure it's necessary to link "civil service", "law academic", and some other things.

Early life

• "The ship was part of Convoy PQ-17, carrying matériel from Britain and the USA to the USSR." - Abbreviated terms are generally spelled out on first use. United States should be spelled out when used as a noun and abbreviated U.S. when used as an adjective. I'd spell out Soviet Union and link it on first use.

• "they emigrated at his wife's suggestion that they move as far from England as possible" - Needs a terminal period, but more importantly, it would be good to add where they emigrated to. Also, in what year did the son die?

Crown colony

• "It is authorized by Article 149 of the Malaysian Constitution, which stipulates that if an Act recites that action has been taken or threatened by any substantial body of persons, whether inside or outside the Federation in respect of certain situations – including organized violence against persons or property, the excitement of disaffection against the Yang di-Pertuan Agong or the government, or the promotion of feelings of ill-will and hostility between different races or classes of the population likely to cause violence – then any provision of that law designed to stop or prevent that action is valid notwithstanding that it is inconsistent with certain articles of the Constitution guaranteeing fundamental liberties." - Could this be re-stated in more ordinary English? It's not clear to me how an Act "recites", for example.

• "I could not imagine then that the time would come when the power of detention, carefully and deliberately interlocked with Article 149 of the Constitution, would be used against political opponents, welfare workers and others dedicated to nonviolent, peaceful activities." - This direct quote needs an inline citation right after the end punctuation.

Academia and later life

• "(which awarded him a Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in Law)" - To avoid the double nesting of parentheses, this might be better: "—which awarded him a Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in Law—"

References and Bibliography

• The date formatting in the citations needs to be consistent. You can use 17 April 2007 as the model, or you can use 2007-05-05 as the model but not both.

• Citation 8 and some of the other entries with URLs should include the date of most recent access.

• What makes BRUNEIresources.com a reliable source per WP:RS? The paper is presented by a scholar in a scholarly manner, but was it vetted by anyone?

Further reading

• It might be better to eliminate this section. The obit from The Star does not seem to add anything not already covered in the main text. The link to the International Herald Tribune no longer links directly to the cited article but to a kind of redirect page. If the Tribune story contains fresh material, it would be better to use it in the main text and cite it there if you can track down the article's new URL.

See also

• The "See also" section usually appears above the "Reference" section in Wikipedia articles. However, in this case, I would just eliminate the "See also" section since it only repeats links that already appear in the main text.

• 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 view of previous problems that have risen over copyvios.)

I hope these suggestions prove helpful. If so, please consider commenting on any other article at WP:PR. I don't usually watch the PR archives or make follow-up comments. If my suggestions are unclear, please ping me on my talk page. Finetooth (talk) 20:25, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

Initial response

Thank you for your comments. I will work through your specific recommendations. I agree with you that the article wouldn't pass FAC in its present state, but that it certainly has FA potential; I requested a peer review precisely to gain some more specific feedback like this :). Thank you again. Regards, AGK [•] 21:47, 15 June 2011 (UTC)