Wikipedia:Peer review/Jimi Hendrix/archive2

Jimi Hendrix

Previous peer review

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because I want this article to get up to GA status, and then perhaps to FA status. I would like the general gist of where to improve, where things should be ommitted, where the article needs extra things. I think at the moment the article may be too lng, but someone as prolific as Hendrix deserves that sort of treatment, don't you think?

Thanks, Doctor Will Thompson (talk) 06:58, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Comments from Bardin (talk · contribs)

Hi there. I've taken a look at the article and I agree that it is too long so the first thing you might want to do before anything else is to get rid of the excess and sort out the structure. I noticed that there's eight long paragraphs before the article begins discussion on Jimi Hendrix's early career. His notability is as a musician and so the article should focus on his music career. A lot of the information in these eight paragraphs can be removed since they have little relevance or bearing on the music career of Jimi Hendrix. For instance:

• Hendrix had two brothers, Leon and Joseph, and two sisters, Kathy and Pamela. Joseph was born with physical difficulties and at the age of three was given up to state care. His two sisters were both given up at a relatively early age, for care and later adoption, Kathy was born blind and Pamela had some lesser physical difficulties. Al found it hard to gain steady employment after the Second World War, and the family experienced financial hardship. Hendrix's parents divorced when he was nine years old, and his mother died in 1958.

That's the kind of information that belongs in a detailed (and printed) autobiography of Jimi Hendrix but it's not the kind of information that I would expect in an encyclopedia entry. You can sum it up in one or two sentences: eg. he had a difficult childhood marked by poverty and etc. A good article should be comprehensive and yet concise. Take a look at the list of featured articles for well-written examples on other solo musicians or singers. The Mariah Carey article discuss her early life in the first two paragraphs but does this by relating it to her singing career, eg. "She graduated from Harborfields High School in Greenlawn, New York. She was frequently absent due to her work as a demo singer for local recording studios." The biography on Phil Collins begins with "Collins was given a toy drum kit for Christmas when he was five." No irrelevant information. Just straight to the point. With someone like Jimi Hendrix, you should probably take a look at the Bob Dylan article for an example of a well-written and yet lengthy article. The first paragraph is a concise summary of his ethnic, geographic and family origins. The second paragraph is a concise summary (just three sentences) on his early life. The third paragraph begins discussing Bob Dylan in relation to his music career. Like the Mariah Carey article, it discusses non-musical aspects of Dylan's life in the context of his musical career, eg. "Zimmerman spent much of his youth listening to the radio." So that's the sort of structure and approach that you can adopt for the Jimi Hendrix article.
Another structural problem with the Jimi Hendrix article is the jarring personality section that comes in between a discussion on his early career and the Jimi Hendrix experience. That seven paragraphs on his personality are not only too long but they also disrupt the narrative flow of the article. In other words, the placement is just awkward. You can either move that entire personality section so that it comes completely after the historical narrative on his life or better yet, integrate all that info into the biography. I have not personally come across any featured articles on an individual musician that similarly provides an entire section devoted to the musician's personality so it's probably best if you can integrate those information where relevant to the biographical narrative on his life. What he wore at Woodstock should be mentioned at the discussion of his performance on Woodstock and not treated separately in a different section, for example.
I also note that there's a lot of unreferenced statements in the article, particularly in that personality section. Some of these unreferenced statements strongly comes across as original research, for instance the speculation on his drug use. My advice is that you remove every single bit of information that's unreferenced. The article will shrink down considerably as a consequence and you'll have an easier time to improve the article. Also try to use the same format for each reference cited. Some of them are just bare links. Take a look at the Bob Dylan article for a good example of how to do citations and references. Note that there are two different sections: one for references and one for notes. Books listed in full in references can be referred to in short-hand in the notes section (eg. "Gray, The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia, 136–8"). --Bardin (talk) 12:02, 3 April 2008 (UTC)