Wikipedia:Peer review/Circus (Britney Spears album)/archive1

Circus (Britney Spears album)

This peer review discussion has been closed.
Circus is one of the few articles related to Britney Spears that does not have a good-article grading. While nominated in the past, the article was not promoted and today stands at a B-grading. Over the past couple days, I've worked to remove/replace dead links within the article, remove unsourced information, remove irrelevant information, and make grammatical edits throughout the article. Before looking into proposing the article for good-article status, I would like another opinion to look through the article and make suggestions/changes as needed to make the article the best it can be.

Thanks, WikiRedactor (talk) 16:00, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

Comments by David Fuchs

{{doing}} Check back with me if I haven't responded in a day or two. Thanks! Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 01:59, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

• My overall thoughts are that the article is pretty good, and has certainly greatly improved from the state in which it was previously nominated, but it needs some work.
• The prose could use a bit of a comb-through, there were a couple spots that stopped me, among them:
  • "...from critics, who drew heavy comparisons to Blackout." What does this mean? Why did critics draw heavy comparisons to Blackout? That in and of itself doesn't really tell me much unless I know more about the previous album.
  • "Spears embarked on four legs of the tour visiting North America twice performing elsewhere in Europe and Australia." This comes out ungainly and is a run-on sentence.
  • Watch for redundancies in your language, such as "released a promotional music video for "Kill the Lights" for additional promotion", "The third single "If U Seek Amy" created controversy for its double entendre, but managed to peaked at number 19 in the US."
  • I feel like I'm missing info here: " despite no official confirmation, he was pleased with the progress made, as well as the range of producers involved with the project." I'm not sure what official confirmation means (I assume it's relating to the previous bit about recording in the summer, but when was he pleased with progress?)
  • "When I went in with Luke" - who's Luke?
  • "It was then confirmed that Jim Beanz would be the vocal producer and co-writer of the album, calling her "a true professional" and calling her "amazing" -- why was it "then" confirmed? The previous content was about producers with no time periods specified. The pull quotes about Spears being 'amazing' seem a bit over the top and unnecessary.
  • "Rodney Jerkins,[21] Sean Garrett,[22] and Taio Cruz,[23] among others all announced they were working with Spears, though their tracks are not included on the official track listing." -- who are the others? Why are they being mentioned if they aren't named?
  • I'm noticing a lot of unspecific subjects at the beginning of sentences, such as "She described" for I assume Spears, when her last mention was in the previous subsection.
• For comments on the musical style and specific reception, reference the critics instead of treating their comments as fact, or providing generalities "The tenth track "Mannequin" is a dance-pop song with a trip hop influence, with some critics noting it for being "risky" and "futuristic"[43] while others said her vocals sounded "lifeless"." Looking at the refs there that's only two critics, which does not make "some" in any case.
  • "The A.V. Club gave the album a positive review" — publications can't really say anything, it's the critics that do; so cite who these people are!
  • The reception section currently reads like a laundry list of critic reviews. I'd suggest grouping critical comments into related chunks, like lyrics, composition or music, overall impressions, etc. rather than just reciting each reviewer one after another.
• Missing something here: "The song also entered the Pop 100 chart, peaking at number fifty-seven, and at "
• The structure of the article seems a bit awkward...
  • Why is there repeated content in the "singles" section? (Especially regarding the If U Seek Amy business.)
  • Why does the singles and promotion sections come after the "reception"? It would logically follow that you should cover the publicity before release before the post-release reception.
• I didn't take a look that hard at references, but what makes the following reliable: Hitquarters.com, Rockonthenet.com, and the various international chart sites? Are these the official ones?
  • You've got a few dead or dead-end links that don't service refs.
• If you have any comments, ping me on my talk as I don't watchlist peer reviews. Thanks, Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 01:49, 17 January 2013 (UTC)