Wikipedia:Peer review/José Sarria/archive1

José Sarria

This peer review discussion has been closed.

• 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 July 2008.

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because I want to get it to FA and it needs a good going-over by some fresh eyes. One specific concern is that it is fairly heavily dependent on the Gorman book. Otto4711 (talk) 19:48, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

Finetooth comments: This is a generally well-written article about an interesting person. I have a few suggestions for improvement.

• You mentioned a concern about relying on Gorman. You might achieve better balance by compressing the two sections about family history and early life. They have more detail than necessary, and they rely heavily on Gorman. You could compress the paragraph and a half about Kolish, for example, to perhaps three pithy sentences. Cut to the chase in these sections and throughout. In my opinion, this would improve the article more than any other single thing.

• It would be good to add other images if you can find ones that are properly licensed. Possibilities might include the Black Cat Bar, the Palace Hotel, the St. Francis Hotel or other buildings or districts mentioned in the article or photos or mug shots of the people mentioned. It might work to add something like the Signal Corps insignia.

• The lead should include at least a mention of each of the main topics of the article. A good rule of thumb is to include something about each section. Missing from the existing lead are any mention of family history, early life, and later life. I would suggest re-writing the lead, aiming for perhaps four paragraphs that summarize the main points.

• You might consider improving the encyclopedia by creating articles for one or more of the red links. The League for Civil Education and the GLBT Historical Society might be good candidates.

• Orphan paragraphs such as the last paragraph of the lead should either be expanded or merged with other paragraphs. I see several of these orphans in the article.

• It would be good to enlist the aid of a copyeditor to catch small things such as those listed below:

• Each ampersand, unless part of a formal company name, should be converted to "and". For example, "Aldrich, Robert & Garry Wotherspoon" in the "References" section should be "Robert and Garry Wotherspoon".

• Instead of "References", I might suggest "Sources" as a section head since the "Notes" are also references.

• The Manual of Style generally advises against using the word "the" in section heads. "The Nightingale of Montgomery Street" should be "Nightingale of Montgomery Street".

• Punctuation marks are placed inside quotation marks only if the sense of the punctuation is part of the quotation. (See WP:PUNCT). "In 1964 Sarria declared himself "Empress José I, The Widow Norton." The sentence should end "...The Widow Norton".

• Constructions such as "43 years" need to have a no-break space code between the digits and the units to keep them from being separated on computer monitors by line-breaks. See WP:NBSP.

• Instead of "December 12, 1922 or 1923", I'd suggest using "December 12, 1922 or December 12, 1923" to avoid confusion.

If you found these comments helpful, please consider reviewing another article from the Wikipedia:Peer review/backlog/items, which is where I found this one. If you have questions, please ask. Finetooth (talk) 04:26, 1 August 2008 (UTC)