Wikipedia:Peer review/Richard Dawkins/archive1

Richard Dawkins

Now nearly, but perhaps not quite, comprehensive in its content. We'd appreciate comments on layout, readability and whether it's understandable to lay people, as well as whether anything's missing. Joe D (t) 03:57, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

• This is quite good. Referencing in particular is excellent. I made a number of small changes; feel free to keep or discard those as you see fit. I assume you're heading in the direction of FAC, and I'll make my suggestions accordingly.
  • The biggest thing right now is to explain the significance of certain statements that you make. A number of statements are just sort of made, with no further explanation about them or their meaning. Examples:
    • "This gene point of view also provides a basis for understanding kin selection which was formulated by his friend, Bill Hamilton." Explain how.
    • "In his books Dawkins uses the imagery of the Necker Cube to explain that the gene-centric view is not a scientific revolution, but merely a new way of visualising evolution." An average reader (like myself) will not know what a Necker Cube is--explain at greater length.
    • "In The Selfish Gene, however, Dawkins explains that he is using George C. Williams' definition of gene as "that which segregates and recombines with appreciable frequency,"" this should probably be followed by a "which is to say..." or something to make it clear what that means.
    • "Dawkins has expressed a Malthusian concern over the exponential growth of human population and the issue of overpopulation, though his proposed solutions can be described as typically Humanist." There's a lot of terminology in that statement, and I think it would at the very least be worth explaining what his solutions are.
  • For FAC, you're going to want a slightly longer lead section. Two full paragraphs would be good.
  • Right now, the personal life section is a little short and choppy, as is the career section. It wouldn't hurt to flesh both of those out a little bit.
  • The external links section runs a little long for my taste; not a huge thing, but if some of those could be trimmed it probably wouldn't hurt.

All in all, looks very good. Good work, and good luck! Robth^Talk 06:04, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Hi, I think the usage of the neologism "bright" in the intro should be changed, especially since according to the wiki article describing this uncommon usage, Dawkins is one of those promoting the term as described. The intro should rather say who describes Dawkins as "bright" and give more of a context; alternatively this could be discussed in the body of the article rather than in the intro. The reason I think there should be more context is that this definition is not common usage, and the (appropriate) quotation marks don't give enough context to explain what is meant by calling him "bright." Kaisershatner 19:18, 14 February 2006 (UTC)