Wikipedia:Peer review/West Bromwich Albion F.C. seasons/archive1

West Bromwich Albion F.C. seasons

• 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 June 2008.

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because I believe it could become a Featured List. I think it is close to FL status but would like more pairs of eyes to check through it before I put it forward to FLC. Format-wise, I have borrowed heavily from existing football season lists such as Aston Villa F.C. seasons.

Thanks, Jameboy (talk) 19:13, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Comments

• Perhaps bold the title
• You could add a wl to West Bromwich Albion F.C. in the image captain. I don't think it needs a full stop either because it's a sentence fragment.
• Not an essential one. I prefer RU and W (or WN) for Runners-up or Winners. It makes the column look neater, I feel.
• You could possibly add wikilinks to individual season entries for The Football League, Premier League, FA Cup, League Cup, etc.
• Try splitting the others column as per Bradford City A.F.C. seasons and Leeds United A.F.C. seasons to align the rounds.

Everything else looks pretty good. Should be a shoe-in for FLC, in the near future. Peanut4 (talk) 19:30, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments, I've incorporated some of them already and will look into the rest and report back again soon. Cheers. --Jameboy (talk) 22:12, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

OK, I've dealt with most of the above. WP:BOLDTITLE suggests that the title need not be in bold, but I'm open to ideas. That just leaves the wikilinks. This is how I think it should look - I haven't implemented all of the below yet, as I'm keen to get your thoughts first:

• Season links to Season in English football, e.g. (e.g. 2006–2007 links to 2006-07 in English football)
• Link first instance of each division to division article (e.g. Div1 links to Football League First Division). Similarly, FA Cup links to FA Cup and Charity Shield links to Charity Shield.
• Regarding the cup 'rounds', my thinking is to link to the final article (where Albion reached the final and if that article exists), else link to the season article (if it exists). So W links to 1888 FA Cup Final and SF links to FA Cup 2007-08. I'd prefer to leave League Cup seasons alone for now though, due to the proliferation of redlinks.
• Given this, what should link to the Premier League or Football League season article? For consistency with the cups, I guess "League Position" would be closest. e.g. 4th could link to The Football League 2006-07. Do you think that would be OK?
• I'm considering how and when to repeat wikilinks. If someone was top scorer for several seasons in a row, it would seem sensible to link them just once, as the links are close together. Similarly with 'Other' competitions that are played within a few years of each other. However I think wikilinks should be repeated where they are quite far apart, e.g. Charity Shield.

Let me know what you think. --Jameboy (talk) 11:47, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

• All looks pretty good. But I'll reply to two of your points.

• I've added links to individual seasons in the positions, as you suggest above, at Bradford City A.F.C. seasons.
• I'm unsure what to do about repeated linking. Many seasons entries don't repeat linking competitions, but do with top scorers (and I'm guilty of that too), but it doesn't seem to be consistent. I'm not sure it's a huge problem either way, but it might be worth getting a wider range of thoughts on this one. Peanut4 (talk) 13:19, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

Comments

• In general, you might consider having a look at more recently promoted season lists. Bradford City is good, and Leeds was very much a community effort with an in-depth peer review.
• Lead. The opening sentence of list articles has been the subject of much debate (see here, for starters).
• The players in bold bit belongs in the key, not the lead.
• "local cup competitions are not included due to them being considered of less importance than the FA Cup and the League Cup" reads awkwardly; perhaps rephrase as something plain, like "locally-organised cup competitions are not included."
• The last sentence only repeats content from the first two.
• Lead as a whole could perhaps do with a bit more content.
• Image. WP:MOS#Image size recommends that the lead image should be no smaller than 300px, and as Peanut said the caption shouldn't have a full stop.
• Table. Strongly suggest you go to RU/W instead of Runners up/Winners, and split the Europe/other column into 2, one for competition name and one for round reached, as per Bradford seasons. Makes the table look neater, and means fewer cells wrap to two or more rows.
• Where there are joint leading scorers, suggest separating them by a line break rather than a slash.
• Was the United Counties League in 1893-94 a first-team competition? and the note about "final replay being held over" needs explaining.
• Perhaps change the wartime wording to something like "The Football League and FA Cup were suspended until after the xxxx World War". Apart from any arguments about the definition of "competitive", the early rounds of the 1946 FA Cup were played in 1945.
• Key. Have you gone to darker shades of green and pink than used by other lists for any particular reason? Normal-weight wikilink-blue is very hard to read against that shade of pink.
• Notes. Suggest combining notes 3, 9, and 24 into one, reading something like "The Charity Shield was first played for in 1908, and was renamed the FA Community Shield in 2002", and just putting it at the top of the column.
• In note 4, wikilink playoffs and test matches.
• In note 23, wl "on aggregate".
• In general, put full stops at the end of footnotes.
• References. I'm impressed that the RSSSF source dated 06/2007 was retrieved some four months previously ;)
• You need a source for Mr Phillips as 2008 top scorer. Perhaps in the top-of-column note, include "Sourced from Matthews (2007) until 2007 and from xxxx thereafter." Incidentally, I'm very envious of your Matthews (2007); don't suppose you know if he plans any advance on Blues (1995)?

hope some of this helps. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 09:56, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for all the suggestions - I have started working through them. I will work through the rest and report back again soon. Cheers. --Jameboy (talk) 22:12, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks again for these. I felt that the list was in reasonable shape generally, and these sorts of specific points were exactly what I was looking for in order to improve it further. I have dealt with the majority of the comments, so here's what I see as being outstanding:

• The opening sentence of the lead I'm still a little unsure of. As I said to Peanut4, I have decided not to bold the title after reading WP:BOLDTITLE, but could be persuaded otherwise if there was a good reason. I want the opening to introduce the list without sounding too "false", but I'm still not convinced I've managed to do that.
• Albion did play their first team in the United Counties League (I have all the line-ups), but more than that I haven't been able to find out. They beat Small Heath, Stoke and Wolves in the group stage, and lost to Derby in the final. This suggests that it may have been a regional competition, and as such I should remove it based on my own criteria. It's a tricky one, but in the absence of further information I'm thinking it may have to go. Matthews gives no reason as to why the replay was held over until the following season.
• I wanted to use "standard" colour names for the shading; I found the the green #DDFFDD in particular very faint and hard to pick out. If it's just the pink that is a problem I could change that back to #FFCCCC?
• No idea when his next Blues book is due... I guess you'd have to ask the man himself!

Cheers. --Jameboy (talk) 17:15, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

• As to the lead, I don't know; I'm glad my lists got in before they started trying to insist on decent prose. Do you think it might work better if you start with what is currently the first sentence of the second paragraph, about the club's foundation, and then talk about what the list covers and when it starts from and why, and then mention first winning the FA cup in 1888? That's only an idea, I don't know if it would run better that way round.
• Didn't realise my lot were in this United Counties thing till you said, Matthews doesn't refer to it. According to Tony Jordan, it was a first team comp for us also, but he calls it the Midland (United) Counties League, which does rather imply regional.
• As to green and pink, I'm not sure that my particular variant of colour-blindness ought to take precedence over any other. You should be aware that FLC reviewers do these days tend to point out that according to WP:COLOR, editors should "ensure that colour is not the only way used to convey important information". People who understand English football will see that bolding the change of divisions serves to indicate promotion/relegation, but those who don't, might not, so be prepared to point that out.
• Leading goalscorers (with a view to the future). I'm not keen on Soccerbase for historical stuff, but they're pretty good on "big clubs" these days, so I might be tempted to reference Phillips to their squad stats page, which has a dropdown box for other seasons.
• As to multiple linking, I would. The reader shouldn't have to chase up and down the page trying to find the first instance of any particular item.

In general, looks better now than it did, and I'm glad some of my suggestions were helpful. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 22:02, 29 June 2008 (UTC)