Talk:Phil Taylor (darts player)/GA2

GA Review

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Reviewer: Brad78 (talk) 00:21, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Looking at the first GA review, this is a vast improvement on the previous version of the page, but I'm afraid I'm going to have to fail the page again. I feel there is still a lot of work to bring this up to scratch. A few pointers though to help you on your way, but I'd suggest a peer review, asking for assistance from other editors, getting a copy edit, and simply just reading through the work.

Lead

• There appears to be facts in the lead which don't appear elsewhere.

Referencing

• This is certainly not as major an issue as last time, but there are still some facts needing references.

Prose quality

• Some of the sections are very bitty, and the prose does not flow very well. The worst offender is the nine-dart finish section which is merely an annotated list of his nine-darters rather than prose.
• The article flicks between various tenses, including perfect, e.g. failed, pluperfect, e.g. had qualified, imperfect e.g. was clocking up
• Take out the jargon, e.g. "Part did not lie down". This is sports journalism jargon, not encyclopedic prose.

Grammar

• "over", e.g. over 150, is incorrect and should be "more than" 150
• There's even missing full stops at the end of sentences.
• "An autobiography" not "a biography"; these are simple mistakes which should be picked up with a read through of the article before it is nominated.
• Possessives should take apostrophes, e.g. Mason's.
• "Taylor defeated Mason 4-0 in sets but in an interview Taylor claimed that Mason swore at him and the fans,[139] he also said he is "seriously considering his future in the game"" This happened four years ago. The verb tense is therefore incorrect. And what happened to him giving up the game?
• "and became the first person ever to hit two nine darters" This sentence does not need ever, it's superfluous. Similarly with "His 110.94 three-dart average was the highest ever recorded in a PDC final."

Style

• Should use endashes for sport scores, not hyphens, e.g. 2–1.
• All references should follow immediately after punctuation without a space.
• Numbers less than ten should be spelled out in full.

Controversy section

• There are two unrelated incidents tagged alongside each other. I'd try reword them into the rest of the article.

Trivia

• There are several parts of the piece which are irrelevant pieces of trivia. They don't seem on first glance to have any place in an encyclopedic entry but because of the lack of flowing prose, it's unclear whether they could be useful. e.g.
  • "Presumably a reference to being cautious with money, Sid Waddell once joked that "Taylor wouldn't give you the dripping off his bacon sandwich.""
  • "Taylor appeared in British Whale's video for This Town Ain't Big Enough for Both of Us which featured a mock darts game against Justin Hawkins of The Darkness in 2005."

Recentism

• I feel the article suffers majorly from recentism. His early career gets two lines, his career in the 1990s gets another small section, and then the next six years four more paragraphs, before the last three years totally dominate the article.

Individual questions

• Early career
  • What happened between Taylor's birth and his first job? That's a biggish gap. Where did he go to school? How did he do? Does he have any brothers/sisters? Did he play darts as a child? How/why did he start playing darts?

• PDC career
  • "Taylor holds records for high scoring in darts, his three-dart average per match records are higher than anyone else in the history of the game.[29] He has been also playing for over 20 years but no player has a winning head to head record over him. The player with the most wins against Taylor is Raymond van Barneveld, but Taylor still has a 79% win rate.[30] Taylor is the first darts player to win more than £1 million in prize money." Why is this paragraph stuck here in the middle of Taylor's career?
• Some of the facts are repeated, e.g. his defeat to Mardle in the quarter-finals.

GA review (see here for criteria)

1. It is reasonably well written.

   a (prose): b (MoS for lead, layout, word choice, fiction, and lists):

   There are some basic errors, including spelling, missing punctuation, changes of tense and other grammar. The lead contains facts which I can't see in the rest of the piece and generally the prose quality and structure is not of GA quality.

2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.

   a (references): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR):

   While largely referenced, there are still some parts which require references.

3. It is broad in its coverage.

   a (major aspects): b (focused):

4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.

   Fair representation without bias:

5. It is stable.

   No edit wars, etc.:

6. It is illustrated by images, where possible and appropriate.

   a (images are tagged and non-free images have fair use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):

   Are there any more images available, e.g. on flickr?

7. Overall:

   Pass/Fail:

I hope this helps. On the whole, I think the structure and prose still needs lots of work to bring this article anywhere near GA level. Brad78 (talk) 00:48, 2 October 2010 (UTC)