Wikipedia:Peer review/William Sudell/archive1

William Sudell

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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 February 2009.

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After doing some work on William McGregor I decided to make use of momentum and sources and work on another article. Sudell was the first chairman of Preston North End, where he had such influence over affairs that it was akin to a dictatorship. He was an influential and outspoken figure in the early days of football, and was largely responsible for the introduction of professionalism. He later got sent to prison for fraud, and depending on which account you believe possibly shot himself while in disgraced exile.

I've now exhausted all my sources, and was thinking that GA could be a reasonable bet. So I'd like comments with that in mind, and for people to point out the flaws in my sometimes idiosyncratic prose :)

Thanks, Oldelpaso (talk) 19:38, 10 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from ChrisTheDude (talk · contribs)

Some excellent work there, OEP. Just a few minor points I picked up on

"and led Preston to become the leading team of the early professional era" - I'd say "and led to Preston becoming the leading team of the early professional era"
Do we know what sort of mill it was, and if so could we link it to something? I'm guessing a cotton mill based on its location, but I could be wrong.....
First sentence under "football career" has a lot of run-on clauses, could it be broken up at all?
Comma after rugby should be a full stop
Preston North End only seems to be linked in the lede, not in the body of the article
refs after "mid-twenties" are in the wrong numerical order
The bit about the club arranging jobs for Scottish ringers is unreferenced. I think I've got a book that makes mention of this, I will look tonight.
The FA needs to be linked somewhere in the article
...and The Double too
"to propose the "The" - change first "the" to "that"
"Stoke's Harry Lockett" - wikilink Stoke (I presume it refers to the club, at that time known simply as Stoke, rather than the city
"a predecessor of the Territorial Army" - as an army regiment can't technically die, "predecessor" is wrong. I'd use "precursor" instead
refs after 9 May 1911 are the wrong way round
Finally, you state above that "he had such influence over affairs that it was akin to a dictatorship" yet this doesn't come across in the article, is there anything that could be added concerning this?

Other than these minor points, an excellent read on an important, albeit little-known, figure in early football. Nice one! -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 11:41, 11 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I've added a ref for the book which I know talks about Scottish players being given nominal jobs at t'mill, but I appear to have left the book itself in my son's room for some reason and if I go in now I'll wake him up! :-P Prod me if I haven't remembered to look up the precise page by the weekend :-) -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 21:20, 11 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Picky comments from Struway2 (talk · contribs)

Infobox. Maybe just have year of death in infobox, as date appears to be disputed

Looks like someone put that in while it was on the main page for DYK, removed

Lead section. In opening sentence, should we specify association football first time of mentioning? and perhaps put F.C. after PNE
Don't need exact date he joined sports club
Do we really have to adopt the branding-led artificial capitalisation of "the", as in The Football Association and The Football League?
Football career section. What's a Preston Guild Mayor?

Ideally it'd be a link, but I don't have enough information to create an article. [1] says "to be chosen as Guild Mayor was the highest honour that Preston could bestow", but quite how to work that in I'm not sure.

Where does Preston Nelson sports club come from? ref#2 doesn't give that name

It was "League Football and the Men Who Made It", which I've put in the relevant place.

Keen to make use of tactics, Sudell was the first person to use a blackboard to dictate positions and tactics to his players. perhaps rephrase to avoid two much tactics
Same para, last sentence reads awkwardly, and is When Saturday Comes a reliable source?
- Though it had fanzine origins in the 1980s, these days it probably has the highest quality of writing of any specialist football publication in the country, with a number of noted football authors among its contributors. I'd trust it far more than say FourFourTwo on historical matters. That piece was originally in the print edition as part of a regular feature which focuses on a different season each month.
...McGregor was keen to interest them. Once involved, Sudell was keen for the embryonic League ... bit too keen, perhaps
Outside football section. I'm sure it can't have been just thanks to his numeracy he became manager of the mill.
Are all the exact dates of his various military promotions needed?
Last para, change some of the Sudells to he's, and some of the accounts to versions
References (some GA reviewers are dead keen on properly formatted citations :-) Names of newspapers are works not publishers.
Book titles should still be italicised each time they're mentioned.
Be consistent about page number format, you have both p dot space nn and pnn without dot or space, and refs#3 and 5 have pp where there's only one page cited.

cheers, Struway2 (talk) 15:16, 25 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]