Talk:Eric Burhop/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Gaff (talk · contribs) 15:47, 12 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I'm looking forward to this review. It is only my third GA review, and first biography, so may take a while. Comments are meant to be discussion points, not directives. --Gaff (talk) 23:44, 13 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Comments:

Image review Only one image to review File:Eric Burhop 006204.JPG and it is sourced PD. I'll try to think of other ideas and do some searching for other images and illustrations.

There is the image in the Royal Society memoir, but it was taken by somebody at the University who may not be around to grant a license. It might be worth submitting a request, however to get it released.
Burhop's signature is on the portrait. I think signatures are Public Domain. If you like, I could make an SVG file of this, which we could put into the infobox.
- The idea occurred to me, but problem is that signatures are below the threshold of originality in the United States, but not in the United Kingdom. [1] Hawkeye7 (talk) 01:25, 14 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  - As somebody with a thoroughly illegible signature, I am please to read this... --Gaff (talk) 04:42, 14 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The Mark Oliphant article uses this image of Rutherford's lab, which would work File:Sir_Ernest_Rutherfords_laboratory,_early_20th_century._(9660575343).jpg
- Added that, and a photograph of the Fermilab. Hawkeye7 (talk) 01:35, 14 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The Lenin Peace Prize image or an image of a similar prize could be used as well. There are several on Commons [2]

There are a lot of blue links in the first paragraph of the lead, which is kind of distracting and might lose some readers, who follow the links rather than read the article. All information in the lead needs to be in the article as well, so they can be linked there.
The lead is just a summary of the article, but the article and the have to be able to stand alone, because in some applications they are used separately. Hawkeye7 (talk) 01:25, 14 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I did a spot check on this, "By contrast, his master's thesis on "The spectra of diatomic molecules" aroused little subsequent interest." The source says that the thesis had little influence on his later work, but did not really comment on whether or not it was of any interest to anyone. So that is a bit of editorializing, that might get into WP:OR. Maybe I missed something in the source.
You're right. I have switched to your phrasing. Hawkeye7 (talk) 01:25, 14 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The next sections starts with "The thesis was good enough, though, for Burhop...", which just feels odd in terms of the tone, for an encyclopedia article. It my be just a little too chit-chatty. There are a couple of other places in the article where the tone is similarly conversational and less encyclopedic.

If you're going to take this for FA, you may need to spread out the references. Currently, reference 1 (Home) and 4 (Massey & Davis) provide the meat of the biographical info. Home relies heavily on Massey and Davis, so that makes it even more troubling. I can't easily sort out where Massey & Davis got their material, since their bibliography seems more a list of the publications by Burhop himself. But if you can sort it out and bring in some of those refs to spread things around, it would get rid of at least the appearance of possible bias from limited sourcing.

I don't have much more to add. You're way more experienced at this sort of thing. If you think it is ready, I'm fine closing the review. It looks good to me, though... --Gaff (talk) 06:11, 14 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]