Wikipedia:Peer review/Facebook/archive2

Facebook

Previous peer review

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because I would like to have it become a Featured Article one day.

Thanks, Gary King (talk) 18:08, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Comments by PeterSymonds (talk · contribs)

Sorry; I haven't had time to review the prose thoroughly, but I've read through and picked up on these:

Addressed

Concerns here are addressed as requested unless a response has been added, indicating the reason why the concern should not be addressed. Gary King (talk) 22:51, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Resolved comments by PeterSymonds (talk · contribs)

• Make sure all quotes are referenced, e.g. "Due to the website's popularity, it has had a fair share of controversy regarding it since it was founded".
• "Due to the website's popularity, it has had a fair share of controversy regarding it since it was founded"; needs changing (and refd). Avoid phrases like "a fair share of". Also, wouldn't it be better to say "Despite the website's popularity..."?
  • Changed it. And it should be 'due' because the more popular something gets, typically the more attention it attracts, so the popularity caused most of the controversy. I don't think it needs to be referenced because the following paragraph discusses the controversies; the lead sentence just says that there is some controversy about the website. Gary King (talk) 22:37, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
• As this is undoubtedly an international network, maybe convert the currency to pound sterling as well as dollars.
  • I think the dollar amounts should stay in the currency that they were actually dealt in. For instance, the revenue is USD because the company is US-based, and the investment dollars are also USD because the investors are US based. Gary King (talk) 22:38, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
• "Later that month Facebook added the more professional "Networking" Looking For option". Needs rephrasing I think; and at least an explanation.
• I wouldn't embed external links to the website in the text, e.g. Facebook Flyers.
• "Beacon can now be disabled through a new External websites section in Privacy." Readers who don't use Facebook might not understand what you mean.
• "might have stopped increasing..." Might is a weasel word so could you change that to a quote from your source? Also, it needs a reference.
• "Some analysts..." Who? From where?
• Just to be absolutely sure, I have no problem with the use of American spelling, but could you check to make sure everything's consistent. It probably is, but if it's not, it'll be picked up at GAN/FAC.
• Though most will know HTML, CSS may be less obvious. Perhaps you could refer to it as "Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)" in the first instance and then just CSS after that.
• References 60, 37, 34, 21 have no publisher.
• Make sure references come after punctuation (not a rule, but for consistency's sake).
• Be consistent when WikiLinking. E.g. Tech Crunch is linked in reference 59, but nowhere else.
• Don't link to the website unless absolutely necessary. Make sure that the info from Facebook's website won't lead to any bias in your writing.
• The former banner of Facebook image is pushing the text down it's level in my browser.
• Image:Logo-left.jpg has no fair use rationale, and I'm not sure whether it would qualify to be in this article.
• Problems with references. The author should come first, then the link and/or title, and then the publisher. Sometimes you put the publisher (e.g. All Things Digital) first, so it appears as if it has no publisher.
• All your external links are to Facebook itself. Surely there are some other reliable secondary sources to link to as well?
• The WikiNews link should go down to the external links section.
• "An outright sale of Facebook is said to be unlikely..." By whom?
• "it was reported that Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing had invested $60 million in Facebook.[48]" By whom?
• Alphabeticise further reading section.
• Images shouldn't appear under level 3 headings. See WP:MOS#Images.
• "Facebook is often compared to MySpace, but one significant difference between the two websites is the level of customization." Compared by whom?
• One more thing I've just spotted. TechCrunch is a web blog, and therefore can't be used to verify. See WP:Reliable sources.
• "the capability of businesses to host pages on Facebook for various brands, products and services (Facebook Pages); a targeted ad serving program based on user and friend profile and activity data (Facebook Social Ads); and a service for providing businesses with advertisement analytic data including performance metrics (Facebook Insights)." Needs a citation. Also, it's a bit unwieldy, so you may want to consider breaking it down a bit.
• "..."in" thing among undergraduates, tied with beer and sex and losing only to the iPod." Being 18, I know what you mean, but could "in" be changed to something less colloquial? Also, is it appropriate to say "losing only to..."? Did it really lose? Minor point, but it might be questioned.
• "On July 25, new services were offered in the website that would potentially produce additional revenue." Needs a citation.
• Further to the above comment, more citations are needed:
  • "In the early half of August, Facebook added universities in Germany and high schools in Israel, (Haifa, Jerusalem, and Qiryat Gat) to its network. On the 22nd of that month, Facebook introduced Facebook Notes, a blogging feature with tagging, embedded images, and other features, also allowing the importation of blogs from Xanga, LiveJournal, Blogger, and other blogging services. This newly added feature also included the common blog feature of allowing readers to comment on users' entries."
  • "A markup language was also introduced, called Facebook markup language, which was used primarily for customizing the "look and feel" of applications that developers created. This enabled Facebook itself to launch several new applications that tightly integrated with the Facebook system."
  • "In September 2007, Microsoft approached Facebook, proposing an investment in return for a 5% stake in the company. Microsoft would pay an estimated 300 to 500 million dollars for the share."
  • "the capability of businesses to host pages on Facebook for various brands, products and services (Facebook Pages); a targeted ad serving program based on user and friend profile and activity data (Facebook Social Ads); and a service for providing businesses with advertisement analytic data including performance metrics (Facebook Insights)."
• "Peter Thiel, a board member of Facebook, indicated that Facebook's internal valuation is around $8 billion based on their projected revenues of $1 billion by 2015, comparable to that of Viacom's MTV brand[29] and based on shared target demographic audience." Odd place to put the reference; they should go at the end of sentences generally.

• Great History section, but little in the Website and Controversy sections by comparison. Can more info be added to these sections? It's weak compared to the history.
  • I added a bit to Controversy. Both sections used to be a lot longer but I split them into separate articles because they provided too MUCH information; what I've left is the summary. The whole point of the article is to talk about the company and how it came to be, not to give a manual of how to use the site. I've tried to steer it more in that direction. Gary King (talk) 07:20, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

• "By October, Facebook's expansion had trickled down to most small universities and junior colleges in the United States, Canada, and the UK, in addition to having expanded to twenty-one universities in the United Kingdom, the entire Instituto Tecnologico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey (ITESM) system in Mexico, the entire University of Puerto Rico network in Puerto Rico, and the whole University of the Virgin Islands network in the U.S. Virgin Islands." I don't like the phrase "trickled down"; plus, the sentence is long and quite unwieldy. It's also unreferenced.
• There are a lot of short one/two sentence paragraphs that I'd like to see combined, with the exception maybe of the 2008 section, as it's only March.

• Copyedit might be in order from WP:LOCE. However, it's backlogged, so it might be best to approach someone who has copyedited before via their talk page.

• "On December 5, 2007, Mark Zuckerberg publicly apologized for the way that Facebook launched the Beacon system, saying "The problem with our initial approach of making it an opt-out system instead of opt-in was that if someone forgot to decline to share something, Beacon still went ahead and shared it with their friends."[49] Beacon can now be disabled through a new External websites section in Privacy.[50]" I may've missed it, but what is the Beacon system, why did he have to apologise for it, and who kicked up the controversy?
  • Cleared up. Also, Beacon is explained in the same paragraph at the beginning. Gary King (talk) 07:43, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

• Banning of Facebook in whole countries is a major issue, so I think a lot more should be written about what, when, why etc. Also, reactions in those countries, enforcement, punishment if found to be using it. Computer hacking to change Facebook's style is fine, but I don't think it's that important in comparison, yet it's given more weight.

PeterSymonds | talk 18:38, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

• I think more needs to be said for the features, and some examples of the applications could be given. Also, more on establishment of groups, top friends, circle of friends; similarities and differences to MySpace and Bebo etc. Are there any controversies about its similarities to other social networking sites?

Unaddressed

That's about it for now. General points: if claiming, e.g. "compared with", "according to" etc., always say who/what is doing this action. Avoid weasel words, reference all claims and read through the Manual of Style. Check images to see if they're allowed, and make sure the proper fair use rationales are in place. Great work, and I hope these points are useful to you. PeterSymonds | talk 21:59, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Nice list, I appreciate that you spent the time to review it. I'm going through the list now! Gary King (talk) 22:31, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Comments from MusicalConnoisseur (talk · contribs)

• Some of the sentence wording (e.g., "In May 2005, Facebook raised $12.8 million to in venture capital from Accel Partners.") may be a little confusing; should "to in venture capital" be "to in-venture capital" or "to venture capital"?
  • Okay fixed. Gary King (talk) 06:26, 15 March 2008 (UTC)
• Some minor wordiness is visible (e.g., "in order to" instead of "to")
  • fixed Gary King (talk) 07:32, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

I hate to be blunt and uncreative, but I like to work in-field. I've decided to manually fix some of the miniscule blemishes here and there, if you don't mind. (Too bad I couldn't make a nice long list like Peter, eh?) ;)

Thanks for the edits Gary King (talk) 06:26, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Comments by Titoxd (talk · contribs)

After a cursory review of the article, I had the impression that the article is very heavy on history, but lacks some rather important details. The conclusion (or the current state, to be more precise) of the uConnect lawsuit is not mentioned; the lawsuit is just mentioned once in the 2005 section, but the reader is left with a cliffhanger.

Expanded on ConnectU Gary King (talk) 01:27, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Other things to take into account:

• There is no mention that Facebook is still a privately held company until very deep into the article. That's a relevant point that should be discussed in the article's lede.
  • Added Gary King (talk) 01:27, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
• There is no mention about the current controversy about the difficulty to delete users' profiles (e.g. [1]) which has been in the news lately.
  • Mentioned Gary King (talk) 01:39, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Overall, most of my qualms are content-based; I didn't review the stylistic details in great depth, but they look all right. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 19:04, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Comments by Alastair Haines (talk · contribs)

My first impression of this entry is very high. It is full of content, clearly written, well cited, NPOV. As a Facebook user, I was fascinated to learn so much about the "human machinery" behind site.

A very small criticism is that it feels slightly "American" to me. What I mean is that media commentary on company politics flavours the entry more than I would expect in an Australian or UK entry. This is a very subtle, minor and subjective issue, probably more related to the currency of the material rather than any cultural bias or unencyclopedic tone. However, it does read somewhat closer to what a consultant might present at a seminar for a board meeting considering mergers and acquisitions, than how I imagine Britannica 2050 would treat social networking websites.

Please note, this is a personal scruple more than anything else, and I'd rather have the text we have, than lose notable, verifiable content for the sake of some vague abstraction about encyclopedic content or style. Perhaps I just need to think out all the boring, basic facts I'd like documented under the entry, and be satisfied if they are all covered.

To be even more philosophical, however, "privacy" issues are obviously very important, and especially so on the internet. Such issues, however, are very new. I doubt internet privacy troubles Afgan tribesmen too much, and wasn't an issue for Richard Nixon either. In fact, in 25 years or so, protocols for such things may be so commonplace that the issue will fall from public consciousness. In other words, when documenting current issues, NPOV probably includes "stepping back" a little from contemporary social assumptions, however valid or reflective of a wide consensus.

We will never succeed in draining all assumptions from our text so that it would stand as a timeless "gem". In fact, perhaps we should even embrace providing text that represents the perspective of our internet-literate, twenty-first century culture. Wiki 2050 will have re-written whatever has become anachronistic by that time.

I hope my very abstract comment is of some value to this discussion. Please feel free to ignore it. I'm heavily biased by being a researcher of ancient history, where "listening" for cultural clues in texts is my obsession. Alastair Haines (talk) 06:00, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Comments by Scartol (talk · contribs)

This article is very thorough – I'm inclined to say too thorough. The history section is, as others have pointed out, very heavy on tiny specifics. Much of it is proseline. I recommend including only two sections: "Early history" or some such, and something like "Global Popularity", for the period after September 2006. These should be less blow-by-blow lists of happenings, and more prose-style descriptions of the site's evolution.

I'd also suggest including brief descriptions for the people mentioned in the article, for those who are unfamiliar with them. (What did Zuckerberg do before starting "The Facebook"? The first body sentence might read: "Computer science student Mark Zuckerberg...")

I'd offer to help with these issues, but I'm afraid I just don't feel very strongly about articles about social networking sites. I would note that tautologies like "Pokes, which allows users to send a virtual "poke" to each other" feel shallow to say the least. I wish I could be constructive here, but knowing absolutely nothing about how Facebook works (and caring even less), I don't have the ability to suggest alternative wording.

I'd also ask in the future that you please not include me on "review spam", with requests sent to large numbers of the folks on the review volunteers list. I'd really rather spend my time examining articles which haven't already gotten – and probably won't get – four other reviews.

Good luck with the article! – Scartol • Tok 17:50, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

All of the above is done! Gary King (talk) 06:31, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Comments from JMiall (talk · contribs)

Can I echo what other reviewers have said and say that I think that the history section is too long and detailed and that much of the info in here could be put into other sections, for example the features section. Also the split into years seems rather arbitrary and it may be better splitting more on theme rather than timeframe.

Other points:

• almost the same screenshot of the homepage is used twice, once hidden in the infobox, once not. Is there any reason for this?
  • Was not aware of the infobox one. Removing that one. Gary King (talk) 07:43, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
• I don't think that the intro provides a particularly good description of what it is people do on the site after they have 'connected'.

• If enough info is available a graph of number of users against time would be beneficial
• Image:Facebook gifts.png has a fair use rationale on for the features page not this one.
  • removed Gary King (talk) 07:55, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
• 'By October, Facebook's expansion had continued to include most small universities and junior colleges in the United States, Canada, and the UK, also having expanded to twenty-one universities in the United Kingdom' - why is the UK mentioned twice?
  • fixed Gary King (talk) 07:56, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
• Is there any info about how the number of employees grew? And what they do i.e. numbers of developers, moderators etc.
  • All of the above is done! Gary King (talk) 06:31, 5 April 2008 (UTC)