Wikipedia:Peer review/Baby Jesus theft/archive1

Baby Jesus theft

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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 May 2009.

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because I GA reviewed it a while ago and passed it after some improvements. There have been almost no edits to it since then. I'm wondering now about its Featured Article prospects, if an article on this topic could realistically be FA.

Thanks, PSWG1920 (talk) 04:38, 22 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

There is a disambiguous link to Menorah. Mm40 (talk) 11:32, 24 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Ruhrfisch comments: Enjoyable read, here are some suggestions for improvement with an eye to a possible run at FAC - I think this needs a lot of work before it would anywhere near ready for FAC.

The lead should be an accessible and inviting overview of the whole article and per WP:LEAD should be at least two paragraphs. Nothing important should be in the lead only - since it is a summary, it should all be repeated in the body of the article itself. My rule of thumb is to include every header in the lead in some way
Look carefully at the Featured Article criteria - in my opinion the two hardest for this article to achieve will be professional English (difficult for most articles) and Comprehensiveness.
As for language, it is decent, but sentences like Washington DC journalist Daniel Nasaw of the online presence of Britain's The Guardian notes that dozens of communities across America have suffered thefts of Baby Jesus figurines, and, in some instances, entire nativity scenes. need to be pruned, so perhaps something like Journalist Daniel Nasaw of the Britain's The Guardian notes that dozens of communities across America have had thefts of Baby Jesus figurines, and, in some instances, entire nativity scenes. What does it add to the reader's understanding that he is based in Washington DC? Suffered seems pretty POV too.
Comprehensiveness is also a concern - the article cites only examples from the USA that I recall, but Christmas Natitivy scenes appear in other ocuntries as well - is this a problem in other lands? Plus the article is limited in time too - except for the TV show, all the incidents seem to be from the past year, what sort of history is there? Even the lead says plastic or ceramic figures, but what about wood or fiberglass or plaster? Also what about other religious statue vandalism - I saw a thing on TV recently that statues are beheaded with some frequency, often religious.
There are several places where the article could do more to provide context to the reader. A few sentences or paragraphs even on the history of Christmas Nativity scenes would probably help. Or what sort of legal penalties are possible for such thefts?
There is a scene in the movie Diner (film) involving such a theft
Just googling the title of this article Google News there are 729 hits between 2001 and 2008 here, so I think there are lots more such stories out there. To become featured I think it would really help to find scholarly work on the phenomenon, there are about 600 hits on Google Books (many do not seem to be directly related though).

Hope this helps. If my comments are useful, please consider peer reviewing an article, especially one at Wikipedia:Peer review/backlog (which is how I found this article). Yours, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 04:34, 27 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]