Talk:Jennie Finch/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Larry Hockett (talk · contribs) 02:55, 21 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I'll be glad to review this one. I hope to get going on it this weekend. At first glance, I notice that there is a failed verification tag in the Legacy section that has been there for about four years, and the second sentence in the early life section needs some grammar attention. Thanks! Larry Hockett (Talk) 02:55, 21 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I've done an initial readthrough of the article, and I am going to leave section-by-section comments here. I may make some minor edits along the way or at the end. There is a lot of good work here. A lot of the feedback is going to be related to making the sentences a little more clear for the reader who is not a huge softball fan and not as familiar with Finch. Larry Hockett (Talk) 23:22, 22 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Lead

Per MOS:FIRST, we should not overload the first sentence of the lead. We have American there, so it's probably not necessary to specify the city/state of birth. Along the same line, there are redundant words like former and retired. Try this: "Jennie Finch (born __________) is an American sports commentator and former professional softball pitcher." Then you can go on to say that she played college softball at _______, was a member of Team USA from _____ to _____, played professional softball for the ___________ from ____ to ____ etc. The way it's written now, Arizona Wildcats and Chicago Bandits kind of run together without explanation, like those are two teams at the same level of play.

On the DOB, per WP:BLPPRIMARY, we should not use primary sources like state records (California Birth Index) to support the information in a BLP.

Per MOS:LEADCITE, with statements that are unlikely to be challenged, it's okay to just add the citations in the body of the article. Finch's appearances with her different teams are unlikely to be challenged, and removing those citations will help to declutter the lead.

Add the year to the Time most famous player sentence; it is worth mentioning, but 12 years is a long time in the relatively short history of organized softball.

Give us a year range for how long she was with ESPN as a commentator, or if it's ongoing. (I don't see anything about this in the body of the entry. It should definitely be covered in the body.)

The sentence about being ranked is not very clear. Who was doing the ranking? If I understand correctly, these were NCAA rankings of the best overall players in history, and then there were some other lists categorized by certain skills and by athletic conference. It might be better if you just said "In 2017, the NCAA named Finch the second-best player in Division I softball history." Then, in the body of the article, you can specify the categories where she is highly ranked.

Early life and education

Take out "finch they are all born in California". It's not grammatical and not in the cited source.

Finch's first name is misspelled (Jenny) in the reference to her website.

Arizona

Do we know if she got a communications degree? It seems likely if she went for four years.

A wikilink to explain run-rule games may help the non-fan. Run rule redirects to Mercy rule#Baseball and softball.

"Though they made the World Series" - why not "The Wildcats made the World Series, and they were eliminated on ______"?

I'm noticing a lot of overlinking in this section. Links generally appear once (or maybe once in the lead and again on the first mention in the body). Examples: no-hitter, UCLA Bruins, Oregon Ducks.

First sentence in Sophomore - just use Finch, not Jennie Finch. See WP:LASTNAME.

Just say "21-game winning streak", as the games in a streak are consecutive by definition. Link winning streak.

"only losses in back-to-back games": Are you saying she only lost two games that year (and they were back-to-back) or that there was only one time that year that she lost two in a row?

"she shutout the team..." - as a verb, it's two words. Shut out an opponent, throw a shutout. This error is repeated at least a couple of times.

There is some odd wording at the beginning of Junior. Ex: hoist an award, "were and still do rank top 10"

"Along with a no-hitter...": I think this sentence should be broken into 3-4 sentences - one about a no-hitter, one about career highs, one about the scoreless inning streak, and (if you think it's important) one about it being snapped. A career-high streak is still a career high even after being snapped though.

I'm unclear as to what the NCAA record was. Are you meaning to say that she was the first NCAA pitcher to finish with both a perfect record and a national championship?

"For a final season" is unnecessary.

This section would read better overall if you moved the info from the legacy subsection into the relevant seasons. For example, by the time you get to the 15 strikeouts on March 24, it is difficult to determine which season you're talking about. By the end of her time at Arizona, Finch's legacy, while impressive, was very incomplete. She won two Olympic medals and had a pro career after college, so if there is any legacy heading, it should come after that. For collegiate career records, you could just put them at the end of the Senior section.

"chants of 'Jennie' echoed..." - This part sounds non-neutral, like it's from a PR agency.

"she remains top-10" - it would be good to use an "as of" date here, as these things can become outdated. Same for all uses of "currently".

Clean up the last sentence of the Legacy section to reflect what is in the source. The date of her parents' first date can probably be omitted.

I'll come back soon and comment on the remaining sections. Thanks for the work on this article! Larry Hockett (Talk) 23:22, 22 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Olympics sections

Since 2004 is so short, consider combining 2004 and 2008 into one section, maybe called Olympic Games.

"making 2008 possibly the last time the sport is played in the Olympics, before it will be reinstated in 2020." - I'm not sure exactly what this means. It sounds like they decided to take softball out for 2012 and 2016 but they decided at the same time to bring it back for 2020. That doesn't sound right to me. Can we update this? IIRC, they did not play softball in 2016.

NPF

"whiffing" - an appropriate term for a sports blog but not for an encyclopedia.

On the 15 consecutive wins, are you talking about the streak she had going from 2006 before losing the 2007 opener? Or are you saying she had a winning streak, lost the opener, and then won 15 more in a row?

If I understand correctly, Finch didn't combine with Cat Osterman for 41 strikeouts because they were on opposing teams. Still worth mentioning, just not in a way that makes it sound like they were working together on the same team.

There is more overlinking in second paragraph.

There is another use of "currently" in the last paragraph.

All three paragraphs end with unsourced statements.

Manager

Is there another section where we could include this? Maybe combine it with wherever you are going to talk about her ESPN commentator stuff. It was a neat event, but it's one game, so it's probably not worth a whole level 2 heading.

"The team played and won one game." How about "The Bluefish beat the Southern Maryland Blue Crabs by a score of 3-1." In that first sentence, you could say guest manager for one game instead of guest manager for the day.

Media

This section needs significant cleanup because it reads like a collection of random TV appearances and minor magazine mentions. Try to group some of the very short paragraphs together if there is a common theme, like all the stuff about being beautiful and well-dressed. I'm not sure the quote about People Magazine helps us. Same thing for the quotes about how hard her pitches are to hit. (In general, we are not interested in what subjects think about their own skills or attributes.)

We may not need to mention every show she's made an appearance on. Focus on the stuff that has independent coverage, like her time on Dancing with the Stars. If it's one episode of a show and the only coverage is written by Finch, USA Softball, or the show, it's probably not notable enough to mention. Take the stuff with independent coverage and think about how to organize it together.

The DWTS info reads as outdated ("who will compete" - competed two years ago). DWTS is mentioned in two different sections (avoid doing this), but even still, it doesn't tell us what her results were.

I don't think the marathon is media-related.

Personal life

No need for the direct quote about Daigle's proposal.

"welcomed her daughter" - A ton of WP editors like this phrase, but the tone is not really encyclopedic. Had a daughter, gave birth to a daughter.

The source says she grew up as a Dodgers fan, but I don't think it comments on whether she is still a fan.

Retirement

I'm not sure if we need this section; very little of it has to do with her retirement. We should mention her retirement in the NPF section and move all the NPF stuff from here to the NPF section. The last part with quotes from other players/coaches might be good in a Legacy section (but right now our Legacy section is just college stuff). Right now we read about NPF stuff, then four sections later, more NPF - too disjointed.

The first direct quote from Finch in this section is probably unnecessary and the second quote ("This whole career...") is definitely unnecessary.

References

The reference titles for periodicals are usually written in sentence case (how you would use caps for a normal sentence, not capitalizing the first letter of each word). Since there is a lot of work to do above, I can take care of this so you can focus on the other stuff.

There is a significant amount of work to do to address all of the feedback above. If it is too much work, we could close this nomination and you could work on it at your leisure then re-nominate it. If you want to try to address all of this, I will take another look at the article once you have a chance to go over all of these bullet points. Thanks for your work! Larry Hockett (Talk) 02:37, 23 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

GA review (see here for what the criteria are, and here for what they are not)

It is reasonably well written.
a (prose, spelling, and grammar): b (MoS for lead, layout, word choice, fiction, and lists):
It is factually accurate and verifiable.
a (reference section): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR): d (copyvio and plagiarism):
It is broad in its coverage.
a (major aspects): b (focused):
It follows the neutral point of view policy.
Fair representation without bias:
It is stable.
No edit wars, etc.:
It is illustrated by images and other media, where possible and appropriate.
a (images are tagged and non-free content have fair use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):
Overall:
Pass/Fail:

I am closing this nomination as unsuccessful. Only one edit (which did not address the review feedback) has been made to the entry since the review on 5/23. Though actively editing, the nominator has not returned to acknowledge the GA review feedback and has not responded to a general inquiry on his user talk page regarding his GA nominations. Larry Hockett (Talk) 07:15, 3 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]