Wikipedia:Peer review/Twitter/archive1

Twitter

• 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 March 2009.

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review for feedback of any kind.

Thanks, WhatisFeelings? (talk) 02:30, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Finetooth comments: This is an interesting article about a popular subject. At least two parts, the lead and the technical material, need work to make this into a good article, which is certainly possible and desirable. Most of the parts of the lead and the Technology section that deal with the technical aspects of Twitter need to be re-written with the non-tech-savvy reader in mind. The lead also needs to be re-written to summarize the entire article, and elements such as the technical explanations need to be moved to the appropriate sections. I have concerns also about the prose in places, some of the references, and a few violations of the Manual of Style guidelines. I did some light copyediting as I went, but the whole article could use another copyedit after revisions and re-writes are done. Here are suggestions for improvement.

Lead

• The ideal lead is a summary or abstract of the rest of the article. A good rule of thumb is to include at least a mention of the main points in each of the text sections and not to include anything that is undeveloped in the main text. The existing lead explains some of the technology that is not explained later, and it has nothing that summarizes History, Finances, Reception, Prominent users, and so on. WP:LEAD explains all.
• "SMS" - It's a good idea to spell abbreviations out on first use, thus: "Short Message Service (SMS)". Ditto for RSS, CEO, XMPP, and all the many others in the article. Otherwise, readers who aren't familiar with the abbreviations quickly get lost.
• "Updates are displayed on the user's profile page and delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them." - It would probably be good to add that the profile pages are on Internet web sites (if that's the case) and that the updates are entered by the user (if that's the case). Someone unfamiliar with Twitter might imagine that it operates only or primarily via a hand-held device like a cell phone. It would probably be helpful to imagine an audience of readers who have just signed up for a basic computer class at a public library and do not necessarily know the difference between "e-mail" and "web site". If the article makes Twitter clear to someone like that, it will be useful to a very large audience.
• "The service is free to use over the web... " - Perhaps World Wide Web (web) of the Internet would make this clear to everyone.
• "As of March 2009, Twitter has received more visibility and popularity worldwide." - More than what? Perhaps what is meant is something like "Since its inception in 2006, Twitter use has grown steadily worldwide".
• "Twitter is often described as the 'SMS of Internet' in that the site provides the back-end functionality (via its APIs) to other desktop and web-based applications to send and receive short text messages often obscuring the actual website itself." - I don't know what this means. "Back-end functionality" is jargon with no obvious meaning. "APIs" means nothing by itself. How does Twitter obscure a website?

History

• "Twitter was founded by Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams. It began in March 2006 as a research and development project inside San Francisco podcasting company Odeo. - Thinking again of the reader in the library class, I'd be inclined to link podcasting rather than "research and development" or "San Francisco". Almost no one will have to click to see what "San Francisco" means, but lots of people might find "podcast" mysterious because it is a term of much more recent origin.
• "SXSW" - This should appear right after the first use of South by Southwest, thus: South by Southwest (SXSW).
• "Twitter acquired Summize and rolled it into their own site at the subdomain " - Wikilink subdomain? Twitter is an "it", not a "they".

Privacy and security

• "Nitesh used fakemytext.com[1] to spoof a text message, whereupon Twitter... " - The direct link to a site outside of Wikipedia needs to be turned into an in-line citation. Ditto for the Shakespeare link in the next section. Ditto for the direct link to twitter.com in the Outages section. Ditto for the Red Cross later in the article.

Outages

• Wikilink uptime?
• "For approximately five months, instant messaging support via a Jabber "bot"... " - "Jabber" and "bot" need brief explanations or linking.

Reception

• "But some users are starting to feel 'too' connected... " - Remove apostrophes?

Similar services

• "is touted as an enterprise version of Twitter" - What does "enterprise version" mean?

• Quite a few paragraphs in the article consist of only one or two sentences. Generally its best to either expand these or merge them with other paragraphs.

References

• Some of the references such as #83 and #84 are incomplete. Some have dates in ISO format, while others are in m-d-y format. WP:MOSNUM allows you to pick a preferred format for the dates in the notes but insists on consistency. It appears that changing the non-conformers to ISO would be the easiest fix. The date format for the notes can differ from the date format, m-d-y in this case, in the main text.

If you find these suggestions helpful, please consider reviewing another article, especially one from the PR backlog. That is where I found this one. Finetooth (talk) 19:18, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Comments from TechOutsider (talk · contribs)

Echoing Finetooth's comments, the article is a little technical.

• Wikilink, or provide a concise definition of words such as "APIs", "podcasting", "XMPP", 'hashtags"
• Spell out "Corp." the first time
• May need to remove quotations around "Summize" for consistency
• "Dorsey, the man behind the concept of Twitter" is a little vague
• Weasel words; "light-weight"
• "start from scratch" doesn't sound encyclopedic
• early adopters needs to be wikilinked properly; avoid all redirects. So does NPR
• Some external links being used as references under the "Reception" section
• "The fail whale has been featured on NPR." Quite a random sentence sticking out of the "Outages" section ...
• Garry Trudeau's is not formatted correctly; the correct way is Garry Trudeau's.
• "Jon Stewart described the service as a gimmick." More information please.
• Some one sentence paragraphs; merge with other paragraphs, remove, or further develop.

Best of luck and success. TechOutsider (talk) 04:29, 28 March 2009 (UTC)TechOutsider