Talk:David Wallis Reeves/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Khazar2 (talk · contribs) 01:27, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Hi Sarek, I'll be glad to take this one. Sorry you've had a bit of a wait for it. Comments to follow in the next 1-5 days. Cheers, Khazar2 (talk) 01:27, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for your work on this one so far--Reeves was an interesting figure to read about. On first pass, the prose is strong, and the sourcing looks fairly good. I'm not 100% certain if we consider a dissertation a reliable source, but it doesn't appear to source anything that would need citation per 2b anyway. (Did you really buy this dissertation to pursue this article? If so, I admire your dedication!) It's stable and seems neutral.

It does seem to need significant work in a few areas, though, which I'll try to address here.

• The GA criteria presume that an article will be broken into sections to comply with WP:LEAD, which will require re-organization. Significant information (such as the influence on Sousa) shouldn't appear in the lead and then not in the article, and significant aspects in the body (like Reeves' leadership of the American Brass Band) should also appear in the lead.
• Perhaps more significantly, I'm not sure the article covers Reeves' composing sufficiently yet, for which he seems to be best known. "his innovations include adding a countermelody to the American march form in 1876" is a great start, but the Federal Writer's Project Rhode Island book has at least some material that could be used to expand this (contrasting him with Gilmore, for example), and presumably more can be found in the Chesebrough as well. Other unrelated facts that seem worth including are his appearance at the Chicago World's Fair, his role in organizing the Providence Symphony Orchestra, and his composing of an operetta. (I wouldn't say any of these three are strictly necessary for GA, but they would help to flesh out what's still a bit of a skeletal article.) Gould's speculation about a possible personality clash with Gilmore's band may also be worth mentioning for what it says about both bandleaders. ("Author X Gould speculates that... ")
• It's not a hard fix, but the images need captions per criterion 6b.

This one is on the border of where I would normally say, "let's not list this for now, but please revise and resubmit." But I know you've been waiting for a while and I wouldn't mind giving an article this short a second read after you've reorganized and expanded. How difficult do you think it would be to address the above concerns? Would you prefer to do this now, or take your time and resubmit?

I'll put this on hold for now to give you a chance to respond. Don't worry about the "7 days" the bot will mention; that's not a hard and fast deadline. Thanks again for this contribution, and enjoy the day, Khazar2 (talk) 02:46, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Hi Sarek, sorry for the abrupt change, but I've decided to retire from Wikipedia. For simplicity, I've simply closed this review for now, but I hope you'll consider revising along the above lines and renominating. Good luck! -- Khazar2 (talk) 13:38, 4 December 2013 (UTC)