Wikipedia:Peer review/Blackburn/archive1

Blackburn

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because a year ago this article failed GA and now a year later I would like to see what has been improved on this article and to see if it could go for GA again soon. As a member of WP: Lancashire and Cumbria this article is a top priorty article under our scope, and it would be great to see it go to GA.

Thanks, 93gregsonl2 (talk) 11:14, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Finetooth comments: This is certainly broad in coverage, neutral, stable, and well-illustrated. It lacks sourcing in a few places, and it has a few problems with prose (mostly minor) and layout. It seems close to GA to me, but if I were the GA reviewer I'd insist on a few more fixes. I did not do a sentence-by-sentence critique: even so, I have quite a few suggestions for further improvement.

• The link checker tool in the upper right corner of this review page finds two dead links in urls and is having trouble connecting to several of the others, mainly the cotton town links.

• The images lack alt text, meant to explain the image content to readers who can't see the images. WP:ALT has details.

• The dabfinder tool finds two links that go to disambiguation pages rather than their intended targets.

• "MOS:INTRO says in part, "The lead section should briefly summarize the most important points covered in an article in such a way that it can stand on its own as a concise version of the article." A good rule of thumb is to include at least a mention of each of the main text sections. The existing lead doesn't mention many of the lower sections such as landmarks, sports, community facilities, and education.

• "Whilst" and "amongst" are a bit archaic. The preferred words are "while" and "among".

• The Manual of Style advises against wikilinks in direct quotations. WP:MOSQUOTE says, "Unless there is an overriding reason to do so, Wikipedia avoids linking from within quotes, which may clutter the quotation, violate the principle of leaving quotations unchanged, and mislead or confuse the reader." The George C. Miller quote has links in it as does the quote from John Bartholomew's Gazetteer.

• "Blackburn. parl. and mun. bor., par. and township, NE. Lancashire, 9 miles (14 km) [14 km]" - The conversions in this quote look odd. I'm guessing that the bracketed conversion is what you want since it's probably not in the original and that the conversion in parentheses is a mistake. A similar pattern recurs in the next sentence.

• "This decline occurred more rapidly in areas closer to the centre of Blackburn, with handloom weavers continuing to make up a sizeable portion of the workforce in outlying rural areas." - I'd be wary of sentences that use "with" as a conjunction. They often sound better when re-cast slightly. Suggestion: "This decline occurred more rapidly in areas closer to the centre of Blackburn, while handloom weavers continued to make up a sizeable portion of the workforce in outlying rural areas.

• Date ranges and pages ranges take en dashes rather than hyphens; e.g., 1850–1870. When preceded by "between", it's better to say to say "between 1850 and 1870".

• In the "Coat of Arms" section, I have no idea what this means: "The arms displays Argent a Fesse wavy Sable between three Bees volant proper on a Chief Vert a Bugle stringed Argent between two Fusils Or. On the crest, a Wreath of the Colours a Shuttle Or thereon a Dove wings elevated Argent and holding in the beak the Thread of the Shuttle reflexed over the back and an Olive Branch proper." Could this be rendered in plain English?

• I notice that the "Coat of Arms" section lacks a source. It certainly needs one. A good rule of thumb is to provide at least one source for every paragraph in an article as well as every direct quotation, every set of statistics, and every claim that is unusual, challenged, or apt to be challenged. Other large blocks of text lacking sources can be found in "Geography", "Geology and terrain", and "Transport".

• "became a focus for far-right politics. BNP town councillors were briefly elected" -- BNP should be spelled out as well as abbreviated on first reference.

• The layout becomes cluttered in the Landmarks section. Generally, the Manual of Style recommends placing an image entirely within the section it illustrates. Images normally should not displace subheads or overlap sections. One solution is to use fewer images; another is to combine two or more short subsections. Since these subsections are so short, that's what I'd try first.

• The Manual of Style generally frowns on extremely short paragraphs as well as extremely short sections and subsections. Two solutions come to mind: expand or merge the orphans.

• The formatting in the citations should be consistent. For example, the dates should either be all yyyy-mm-dd or d-m-y but not a mixture.

I hope these suggestions prove helpful. If so, please consider reviewing another article, especially one from the PR backlog. That is where I found this one. Finetooth (talk) 23:07, 8 November 2009 (UTC)