Wikipedia:Peer review/Canadian comics/archive1

Canadian comics

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've completely rewritten this page from scratch over the last month, and would like to get feedback. I think the subject of the article could definitely be made GA-class. Please pick nits and split hairs!

Thanks, CüRlyTüRkey^Talk_Contribs 01:07, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

Brianboulton comments: This looks like a very comprehensive article. Because I am very strapped for time at present I have concentrated on identifying a few issues which may help to improve the article.

• Lead: The lead looks rather a long and daunting slab of prose, which may deter readers. There appears to be rather too much detail; remember, the lead is supposed to be a broad overview of the article's content. In the second paragraph we have arther more than that, with John Bengough, Hal Foster, Joe Shuster, and many other names and trends, all mentioned individually. This is the stuff of the text rather than of the lead, which I suggest couuld be reduced to around half of its present 700-word length.
• Redlinks: There are rather a lot of these, particularly in the earlier sections of the article. They should be used only when the subject is suffiently notable to provide a reasonable chance that an article will be written. It may be that you have been overgenerous in this respect.
• Citations:There are numerous instances of uncited statements, often at the ends of paragraphs, and there are some short paragraphs with no citations at all. As a rule of thumb I would say that every paragraph should have at least one citation, and ever paragaph should end with a citation.
• Images: Of 14 images, 11 are non-free. This is an exceptionally high proportion, unlikely to be acceptable. Wikipedia's general policy, defined in Wikipedia:Non-free content, is "to be a free content encyclopedia, with free content defined as content that does not bear copyright restrictions". A key element in a fair use rationale is the extent its presence would "significantly increase readers' understanding of the topic, and its omission would be detrimental to that understanding". Note the word "significantly".
• Works cited: These include a book by Duncan and Swift to which there are no citation.
• Prose: I have not given the article a full prose check, but I have noticed a couple of things:-
  • A tendency to repetition, for instance in "While Canadian comics have show varying degrees of British, Japanese and European influences over time, American comics have had the most notable influence on English-language comics, while French-language comics have tended to show a strong Franco-Belgian influence"
  • Overlong sentence such as: "The Golden Age of Comic Books and subsequent superhero boom kicked off with the June 1938 release of Action Comics #1, which had the first appearance of Superman by Jerry Siegel and Toronto-born Joe Shuster,[11] who modeled Superman's Metropolis after his memories of Toronto, and the newspaper Clark Kent worked for after the Toronto Daily Star, which he had delivered as a child."

One other thing. I notice from the article history that this is your virtually unaided work. It might be worth your while talking to and getting input from other editors who are active in this subject area. Brianboulton (talk) 23:06, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback. I've started working on your suggestions already. I just wanted to point out, though, that the Duncan and Smith references actually were there, but they pointed at the name of the book they wrote rather than the authors, so it wasn't clear. I've fixed that.

It would be great if more people helped me out with the article, but it doesn't seem many people are interested or motivated. It had actually been there since 2006 when I decided I would tackle it during the winter break. CüRlyTüRkey^Talk_Contribs 00:22, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Okay, I do believe I have managed to track down citaitons for every statement in the article (I've deleted the odd statement I couldn't get a good enough source for). I've rewritten the lead to be shorter and more general, rather than a historical synopsis. I've removed a large number of the redlinks (sometimes by starting the articles, sometimes by finding out there was already an article, and I just had the wrong name for it). I've tired to clean up the prose and cut down on overlong sentences. I removed most of the fair-use images (is it still too man?).

I've also managed to track down a couple of sources for Canadian editorial cartooning, which I had trouble finding before. I think that was the biggest hole content-wise in the article (I don't think there are any significant holes any more).

Where else could this article be improved? CüRlyTüRkey^Talk_Contribs 08:01, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Yomangani's comments (or comment):

I know it is the Wikipedia done thing to set out the article's ambitions as to scope right away, but the opening couple of sentences here rather suck out any desire to read further. Not any easy problem to solve, but perhaps you could try working in the considered authors and media later on in the lead after the more interesting stuff about the dual comic cultures. Yomangani^talk 14:50, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

I haven't reworded anything, but I rearranged the order. Is that more what you had in mind? CüRlyTüRkey^Talk_Contribs 21:34, 13 February 2012 (UTC)