Wikipedia:Peer review/Major League Baseball/archive1

Major League Baseball

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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 October 2008.

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because it has just passed as a GA, and I would like to get it to FA now.

Thanks, LAA Fan^sign _review 18:17, 4 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Review by Jayron32

OK, so I'm just going to run through issues as I see them in the text...

First sentance is a run-on sentance with a nonsequitur in it. It should be split into two sentances, "MLB is the highest level..." and "It is composed of 30 teams". These two ideas should not be one sentance.
The lead organization should be cleaned up a bit. Especially in the first paragraph, if we are running the history of organization, we should probably start with 1903 and the first world series, THEN we should at least mention Kennesaw Mountain Landis as the first commisioner, since the office of commissioner was the first attempt to bring the two leagues under a single jurisdiction. You should also consider reorganizing the whole thing. The first paragraph, for example deals with MLB organizational structure, and rules, and perhaps this can be split into two.
In the history section, we need to explain a little more about the origins of baseball and the rise of professionalism in the sport. It need not be more than a paragraph, but we need something. We just dive right into the founding of the National Association. We even have an acronym (NABBP) that goes undefined. This really needs some work.
As a whole, the history section suffers a bit from imbalance. We have lots of unneccessary detail in the early sections, and almost nothing in the later sections. We even skip from the dead ball era straight to 1957!!!! Remember, we have subarticles for a reason. Pehaps I can suggest the following general organization:
- Paragraph 1) Origins of baseball and of professionalism in Baseball
- Paragraph 2) Early major leagues (National Association, National League, American Association, Federal League, etc.)
- Paragraph 3) First world series
- Paragraph 4) Dead ball era, corruption, Black Sox Scandal.
- Paragraph 5) Commisioner Landis, Babe Ruth, segregation
- Paragraph 6) Integration, Jackie Robinson, and the move west
- Paragraph 8) Labor issues: Curt Flood, Andy Meserschmidt, Free Agency, the strikes of the 80's and 90's, Expansion from 16 to 30 teams.
- Paragraph 9) The steroids era
The above organization would allow us to give equal due to all of the important history in the majors, and allows us to not get so detailed that we swamp this article.
The rest of the article is an organizational mess. I would prefer to move the teams section to the end, and keep the graphical parts from the text parts. Also, we should probably have the following sections:
- League structure (office of commisioner, club ownership, MLBPA, "franchise model" (which is distinct from the European league model), relation between majors and minors (farm system).
- Season structure (spring training/regular season/playoffs/"hot stove" season)
- Labor relations and player compensation (we need something in here about this, and the drug policy could go under this section)
- Media (put TV, radio, blackout policy, print media, all under this heading)

The quality of the writing is pretty good, but the article is so scattered and disorganized it really detracts from it. As I said a few times above, theres some stuff that is too detailed for, and other stuff that is entirely missing. If you need any more specific help, I have worked on articles like this before. I'd be glad to help see this through to being featured. It would be nice to have this featured by, say, opening day next season, cuz it would make a GREAT front page article. --Jayron32.talk.contribs 21:17, 4 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from Ealdgyth (talk · contribs)

You said you wanted to know what to work on before taking to FAC, so I looked at the sourcing and referencing with that in mind. I reviewed the article's sources as I would at FAC.
- What makes the following reliable sources?
- Per the MOS, link titles shouldn't be in all capitals.
- Note that the publisher of current ref 11 (The Doc Heritage site) is The Pennsylvania State Archives. Doc Heritage is the work.
- Current ref 1 says the publisher is rpl.edu, but the link is to a SFGate site for the San Francisco Chronicle.
- Current ref 15 needs a page number.
- I did notice something looking at the sources of this article, that every single one was available online. It is perfectly acceptable to use printed sources, and often times it's better to use them, as they will be more reliable than online sources.
- Current ref 12 says the publisher is roadsidephotos.sabr.org, but the site is from minor league baseball.
- I think you've switched the publisher on current refs 12 and 13, since 13 is from roadsidephotos, but says it's from minor league baseball.
- Note that the publisher of current ref 31 isn't findarticles, it's whoever originally published the article (given at the top of the page)
- Just a word here, the publisher isn't the url address of the website, it's the organization behind the website, you're listing the url as the publisher when it should be the name of the site (so current ref 28 the publisher isn't espn.com, its ESPN)
- The Mitchell report is published by the Congress, not SR2

Hope this helps. Please note that I don't watchlist Peer Reviews I've done. If you have a question about something, you'll have to drop a note on my talk page to get my attention. (My watchlist is already WAY too long, adding peer reviews would make things much worse.) 14:11, 6 October 2008 (UTC)