Wikipedia:Peer review/Liverpool F.C./archive1

Liverpool F.C.

Hi all. I, and a few other regular contributors would like to see this article make Featured Article standard. It has been listed and recently delisted as a Good Article in the past, but rather than simply get that reinstated I think we should push on for FA.

I believe that there is enough good information here (perhaps too much?), so it's hopefully just a matter of tidying everything up. aLii 17:13, 4 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

More references. Buc 22:15, 4 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Any chance of quantifying that somewhat? 2 more? 200 more? In any particular areas of the article? Cheers, aLii 11:31, 5 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Not a question of how many or where. You will not find "must have so many references" in the FA criteria. Anything that can not be easily verified, needs a reference. Buc 16:19, 5 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

OK, well I'll look into adding some more references. From the point of view of a Liverpool fan it's much harder to tell what cannot be easily verified though. I'm sure that some things that I find obvious you'd want a reference for, cheers for looking though :) aLii 12:33, 6 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Right I've gone through the article adding ^{[citation needed]} tags to where I think they should be, and I'll start finding some sources. I was wondering whether you could have a look over the article to see whether you agree with said tags. cheers, aLii 13:52, 6 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

At a quick glance...

“Liverpool Football Club are an English football club based in Liverpool, Merseyside, and one of the most famous football clubs in the world. They play at historic Anfield but will soon start work on a new 61,000-seater stadium approximately 200 metres away in Stanley Park, following the takeover of the club by American businessmen Tom Hicks and George Gillett.” Well, keep “Liverpool Football Club are an English football club based in Liverpool, Merseyside” at the top, drop the Anfield bit further down the lead but lose the “historic” and takeover bit. If the next paragraph came after the first sentence the reader would understand that it’s a big club. Also stick some stuff in the lead about when the club was founded, and possibly about rivalries and the fact the club are nicknamed the reds/wear read – the lead is meant to summarise the article.
“Contrary to some popular opinion, Liverpool F.C. has strong roots in Protestantism rather than Catholicism. Several of the clubs early directors were connected to the Orange Order, including founder John Houlding and John McKenna. Liverpool F.C. also had strong connections to the Working Men's Conservative Association (WMCA), the political expression of the Liverpool Protestant Association.” That comes completely out if the blue. Why is it placed there, what popular opinion?
I’m not sure you need any of the prose in notable players, just move it down underneath the squad and stick the links in there.

More later when I have more time... HornetMike 22:54, 5 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Mike.. Ick... I hadn't noticed that religious bit had wormed its way into the article. I haven't been paying it anything like enough attention recently. I'll have a go at rewriting the lead too. aLii 12:33, 6 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the feedback on the article. I'll put my hand up to having made the prose notable former players section back last summer. If in the end the consensus is for it to go, then such is life, although I would defend it on the grounds that a) I prefer reading prose to lists, and think list after list makes an article clunky (highly subjective, I know) and b) it replaced a lengthy list of names which kept growing and growing with some bizzarre choices added (Antonio Nunez, anyone?), and which was very difficult to manage, to the point that the notable players section was just removed outright. I felt that it was really valuable to have a section on notable players, but that we needed something more structured that people couldn't just add to on a whim. This prose section has been stable since it was created in a way I think a list would not be. Robotforaday 19:43, 7 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The main issues look to be ones of referencing (as mentioned above) and copyediting. Considering the abundance of books about the club, it is suprising to see no books used as references. When I get time I'll give the article a light copyedit, and flag up any issues that arise as a result. Oldelpaso 22:28, 6 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It is a valid point, but football books aren't really my thing unfortunately. I've been kinda hoping that someone else could add that detail, but it's never happened. As it stands I'm going to try to find some time to add in some internet references. aLii 00:50, 7 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Annoyingly my two main LFC history books are at my parents' house. I can go and get them in a couple of weeks, but in the meantime, there are some decent sources on the web, notably the brilliant LFCHistory.net. ArtVandelay13 19:19, 7 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Book sources are always better than web. Buc 19:52, 8 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

There seems to be a lot of POV stuff such as "he transformed Liverpool into one of the top club sides in Europe" "the partnership did not work out" and "thanks to goalkeeper Jerzy Dudek". Also I'm not sure about "Fagan's reign ended with tragedy the following season". I know it's obviously referring to the Heysel Stadium disaster and this is explained in the next paragraph. But it does seem very encyclopidic to refer to something before explaining what it is. Buc 19:49, 8 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Having briefly run through it, copyediting the article so that the prose is FA standard will take quite a bit of work - overuse of certain words such as "however", a few run on sentences, the POV phrases Buc mentions above. It'll have to be taken sentence by sentence, and would be best done once the citations are out of the way as they could change the nature of quite a few sentences. A few other things I noticed:

Why was the ecru infamous?
Songs should only be mentioned if they have been established for a prolonged period (i.e. no We've won it five times)
The notable players section has quite a few weasel words, particularly in the opening sentence.
Given that the new stadium doesn't exist yet, it should only have a sentence or two rather than a section almost as long as Anfield's. Oldelpaso 21:53, 8 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Have now cut the new stadium section down to just a couple of sentences rather than giving it its own section, as suggestion. Will work on the weasel words. As for the ecru... Robotforaday 22:45, 8 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]