Wikipedia:Peer review/Dress shirt/archive1

Dress shirt

• 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 December 2008.

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because I am stuck on ways to improve it further, and a fresh pair of eyes for little style and layout fixes would help anyway. I reckon it is not insurmountably far from 'good article', so any comments on how close we are would be helpful.

Thanks, Kan8eDie (talk) 21:08, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Comments by Uncia (talk · contribs)

The article is interesting and well-written. The biggest weakness is the referencing. As it stands there is a block of reference works at the end, but few specific statements are referenced. WP:CITE gives guidelines for citations; specifically "To ensure that the content of articles can be checked by any reader or editor." I am skeptical of some of the statements here (more on that below) but there's no easy way for me to verify them.

Some specific points and areas of improvement:

• Lede says "The term button-down is often used now in American English to refer to shirts in general" - I don't believe this is true, I think it still refers to the button-down collar. Please give a reference for this.
• Collars: Duke of Windsor is linked to Edward VIII of the United Kingdom rather than Duke of Windsor, which is a little sneaky, since it probably is named after this particular Duke of Windsor. Probably it would be better to name both, that is, say it is named "after Edward VIII of the United Kingdom, the Duke of Windsor".
  • Kan8eDie: Technically it was not named after "Edward VIII, Duke of Windsor" (he never carried both titles at once, and was not King at the time of the shirt collars). He was Edward VIII for under a year, and spent the vast majority of his adult life with the name "Duke of Windsor". There has only ever been one Duke of Windsor, so the term refers unambiguously to him. I think users are more likely to be interested in the man than the title (since we are using the term to refer to the man), so that is where the link goes.
• Fit: Most of the Fit section applies to ready-to-wear shirts, and this should be noted (there are no 15-1/2 34 made to measure or bespoke shirts).
  • Kan8eDie: fixed.
• Notable makers: (1) "best": it's always good to explain the criteria for "best" of anything; you can get this from the referenced article; (2) it's not clear from the article that this was an "independent survey", in fact it's not clear what the source of the rating was: no one is named as the source, and it's unbelievable that the author personally tried all these shirtmakers (plus obviously many more who didn't make the rankings) to come up with this list. Although these probably are fine shirtmakers and deserve to be mentioned, the claim of their excellence is probably too strong.
  • Kan8eDie: Good point. For Forbes, with the wealth of its target market, it is however highly likely that they have had some contact with shirts from all these makers. The person who added the list I guess wanted to name some shirtmakers, and had the admirable idea of using a published source rather than his own assessment. For that purpose this list is good.
• (general) "bespoke" is primarily a British term, although becoming more common in the US; the American term is "custom-made". It's OK to use bespoke, but you should include the American term too. See WP:ENGVAR
  • Kan8eDie: easily fixed.

Some things that might be added to the article:

• Oxford (cloth) is not mentioned but probably should be (under Materials) - in the US dress shirts are nearly always either broadcloth or oxford cloth.
• Polyester-cotton blends are very popular, not only because of cost but because they are more durable
• Made to measure shirts are an important part of the market but are not mentioned here (should go under Fit).
  • Kan8eDie: sentence added.
• You might mention power dressing under Materials. In Dress for Success (book) John T. Molloy developed an elaborate theory (that he backed up with research) of shirt colors and patterns that supposedly provide an authoritative or a soft look.
  • ditto
• Brooks Brothers claims to have invented the button-down shirt, which you might mention. They are known for their very traditional style, which you might also mention.
  • Kan8eDie: first point was already there actually.

Response by Kan8eDie (talk · contribs)

Right, thanks for the helpful review. I responded to some of these points, and fixed the article for a few more. I will look some stuff up and edit accordingly for the rest soon (for example I need to use sources to find out about point 1 first). The guideline for when to add cites is hard to balance ("challenged or likely to be challenged" material). Certainly "challenged" is easy: if you don't like what you see or dispute it, add {{fact}} and the cite should be added. "Likely to be challenged" is harder: there are hardly any articles citing every statement, and there are FAs with whole paragraphs (proper ones, not section summaries of a main article) unreferenced. In general, I agree that the article needs more inline cites, but I don't really have enough time or sources to do this for everything, so I page-refed the statements I felt more challengable, and to avoid an endless column of page numbers for the same book, put them as general reading at the end. I appreciate this is not ideal, so thanks for bringing that up. To get to FA certainly tons more books would be needed, and some more for GA too I suspect (lower criterion for inlines: "likely to be challenged" only refers to "controversial or counter-intuitive" material, so I am just about border-line here).— Kan8eDie (talk) 00:59, 23 December 2008 (UTC)