Wikipedia:Peer review/New York City/archive2

New York City

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I've listed this article for peer review because, there's been a lot of work on improving the article ever since it got demoted. Now that it's been improved. I think it's time to go ahead and do a review of this, and find any problems and tie up any loose ends before we go ahead to nominate it for a repromotion. I haven't really done much editing to this article, but I want to know what needs to be fixed as the FAC that demoted the article, wasn't really clear over what's wrong with the article. Thanks, OpenInfoForAll (talk) 02:00, 1 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I know you didn't necessarily come up with the infobox code, but it's pretty weird for it to start with

New York City
— City —
City of New York

There's probably a better way to format that. —Designate (talk) 02:09, 2 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Quick note from Finetooth: The link checker in the toolbox at the top of this review page finds about a dozen dead URLs in the citations. These will need to be repaired or replaced to have any chance at FAC. Finetooth (talk) 18:52, 10 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Further Finetooth comments: Thanks for your work on this important article. Although the article includes a great deal of useful information, seems comprehensive, and is easy to read, it will need quite a bit of work to regain its FA status. If what I say below seems negative, it's because I'm focusing on things that I think won't survive scrutiny at FAC. This is not a complete review but rather a short list of significant things to think about.

Claims in the lead usually need no supporting citations because the lead merely summarizes what's in the main text, and the claims should be supported there. Nothing important should appear in the lead that does not appear in the main text. WP:LEAD has details.

Even though the article has 276 citations, many claims still lack a source. In the History section, for example, a paragraph ends with "The Stamp Act Congress met in New York in October of 1765 as the Sons of Liberty organized in the city, skirmishing over the next ten years with British troops stationed there." What supports this? Or this: "By 1790, New York had surpassed Philadelphia as the largest city in the United States." I see unsupported claims scattered throughout the article. Most of the Sports section lacks sources, for example. My rule of thumb is to include an inline citation for every set of statistics, every unusual claim, every direct quotation, and every paragraph. If one citation covers a whole paragraph, the citation should go at the end of the paragraph.

I would delete the "Cityscape" section, which is really a gallery. Readers who want to see more images of New York can always click on the Commons link in the External links section.

The article is over-illustrated in other ways. This results in text sandwiches and head or edit-button displacement. For example, text is sandwiched between two images at the bottom of the History section, and one of them, File:UA Flight 175 hits WTC south tower 9-11 edit.jpeg, overlaps a section boundary and displaces the Geography head. File:Manhattan from helicopter edit1.jpg displaces an edit button and overlaps a section boundary. The pizza image is too big to fit inside the section it illustrates. The Sports section has a text sandwich, and so on. My rule of thumb is to try to illustrate each large section with at least one image, map, or drawing but to avoid overdoing it. MOS:IMAGES has the relevant guidelines.

Reduce the overlinking. Generally, it's sufficient to link terms no more than once in the lead and no more than once in the main text. In the Transportation section, New York City Subway is linked twice; Grand Central Terminal is linked twice; Montreal is linked twice. These are just examples. Another kind of overlinking involves linking words already familiar to most readers of English. For example, in the Crime section, is it necessary to link gang and organized crime? Is it helpful to link both "homicide rate" and "homicide"?

Extremely short paragraphs and extremely short sentences make for a choppy article. There are a lot of these in the Media section. I'd be inclined to merge some of the shorties to make fewer but longer paragraphs where that is feasible.

The lists in the middle of the article should be turned into straight prose paragraphs per WP:MOS#Bulleted and numbered lists.

Fancy quotation marks like the ones around the Tom Wolfe quotation are deprecated. Short quotations like this usually appear in the text inside regular quotation marks. In this case, I think you should delete the Wolfe quotation, which is essentially meaningless.

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) 02:50, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by Gregory Heffley

You should mention in the article that Staten Island was home to the world's largest landfill. I'm still reading this article for anymore flaws.Gregory Heffley (talk) 19:49, 14 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Ruhrfisch comments: As requested, here are some suggestions for improvement. I agree with the comments above.

The lead needs to be a summary of the whole article. This means that there should be nothing that is just in the lead - it should all be in the article itself.
- For example, the Located on one of the world's largest natural harbors ... claim is only in the lead, as is the making it the most linguistically diverse city in the world claim. I ma not saying I doubt these, but they should be in the body of the article too.
Some of the references do not provide all the information they should - for example current refs 104 and 105 are especially mal-formed (one is just "NOAA" linked, followed by "NOAA")
Internet refs need URL, title, author if known, publisher and date accessed. {{cite web}} and other cite templates may be helpful. See WP:CITE and WP:V
Some of the refs used do not seem to me to meet WP:RS. For example, what makes http://www.scaruffi.com/politics/american.html a reliable source?
The lack of refs alone would make this a quick fail at FAC in its current condition.
The other difficult criterion for many articles to meet at FAC is 1a, a professional level of English. This can be as simple as avoiding POV words like "just" in With a 2010 United States Census population of 8,175,133[7] distributed over a land area of just 305 square miles (790 km2),[23][24][25]...
Avoid needless repetition - the article is going to be long no matter what, no need to make it longer by repeating things like Conference House, site of the only attempt of a peaceful resolution to the American Revolution twice.
There is one dab link and there are some circular redirects - see here
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 all peer reviews, in view of previous problems that have risen over copyvios.)

Hope this helps. If my comments are useful, please consider peer reviewing an article, especially one at Wikipedia:Peer review/backlog (which is how I found this article). I do not watch peer reviews, so if you have questions or comments, please contact me on my talk page. Yours, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 04:50, 22 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from Niagara

I agree with Finetooth about the Cityscape section, though I'd say keep one or two of the images and find some information about the layout of the city (e.g. Commissioners' Plan of 1811, street being east–west and avenues north–south, Manhattanhenge)
Ditto on the overlinking.
There is a plethora of one-sentence paragraphs throughout the article.
Nowhere in the article is FDNY mentioned.
The photo of the Manhattan Muncipal Building is somewhat confusing in that which city agencies are located in it are not mentioned. Perhaps replacing it with something else government-related (like NYPD or FDNY).
Why are some of the sister cities linked, while others are not. Also, nix the "historic" in "historic sister cities" (unless there is a specific source that says that).
What is the benefit of having the sister cities listed in a table, rather than just a bulleted list?
"Hurricanes and tropical storms are rare in the New York area, but are not unheard of and always have the potential to strike the area." — Perhaps you should mention Hurricane Irene. Could also mention nor'easters.

Nice work so far...just need to address comprehensiveness and style issues (like overlinking) before this would be ready for FAC. Niagara ^{Don't give up the ship} 16:26, 30 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]