Talk:Plan 9 from Bell Labs/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Binksternet (talk · contribs) 23:02, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

• I see that the nominator is away from Wikipedia until February, so I will keep this review open for longer than usual if merited.
• No problems with disambiguation.
• No problems with dead links.
• The image File:Plan9-screenshot.gif is properly licensed but it displays personal information about living people, especially email addresses. I think it should be deleted, or the information redacted.  Done
• The quality of English is not very good throughout. I strong grammar hand is needed for copyediting.
• I think the quote boxes should be tucked further to one side or the other such that no quote box is wider than 50% of the page, and less than that for smaller quotes.  Done (sort of)
• Wikipedia does not allow spaces around the em dash when used as a sentence interruption. Done
• The Howard Trickey cite contains two spaced em dashes but they ought to be spaced en dashes.
• The Hans-Peter Bischof cite has ISBN twice in a row.  Done
• In the "History" section, notable developers should all be named, not ended weakly with "and others".  Done
• The "Design concepts" section looks terrible, graphically. The quote box should be made narrower and go to the right, and the installation image might be moved elsewhere.  Done (sort of)
• I will continue the review later. Binksternet (talk) 01:02, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for your review. Some replies:

1. Would love to improve grammar. Recently there were only two contributors: nominator and me. I'm Russian native speaker, so I can randomly fail on grammar without being aware of it.
2. WP:MOS recommended template:quote; I ported quotations to this template. Still the width issue remains, as the layout of quote isn't configurable.
3. The Howard Trickey reference (as all the others) maintain the original spelling and grammar. Isn't that the behaviour prescribed by WP:MOS § Minimal change?

Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 08:41, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

I see some improvements made. Let me try my hand at the quote boxes. Binksternet (talk) 16:00, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

• Expanding? I see no proof that the community of developers is expanding. Binksternet (talk) 16:53, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
• Why is Glenda not explained in the article? Binksternet (talk) 16:53, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
• I reduced some overlinking. Wikilinks do not need to be repeated in the article body or the references. I think a wikilink to a particular article should be placed where appropriate in infoboxes, in all images, one in article the lead section, one in the article body, and one in the reference section. Binksternet (talk) 16:53, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
• I expanded some contractions such as can't to cannot. I worked on the prose some more. Binksternet (talk) 17:26, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
• I am having trouble figuring out the following sentence:
  • This allows to write data to control files to write and read connections (even with scripts or shell tools).
    • I see that the sentence has been changed to This allows to establish, manage, use and close network connections by reading or writing data to control files (even with scripts or shell tools).
    • Allows who? Binksternet (talk) 20:56, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

• Okay, that's my review. I worked on the English but I may have compromised the computer-speak, so I ask you to look over the changes I made—all of them—and discuss with me any that you find unhelpful. The questions about expanding, Glenda, and the one difficult sentence remain. I'm putting the review on hold while we work on it. Binksternet (talk) 18:12, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

I'm not entirely sure about the references wikilinking. I always thought that all entities with articles should be wikilinked in every ref, as readers come to the exact ref and won't scan back and forth to find the same word wikilinked elsewhere. That is, unlike articles the references are not read from top to bottom, so each of them should be considered for wikilinking separately. Probably I should write an essay on this. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 21:40, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

You can restore the reference linking and it will not affect this GA review. Binksternet (talk) 22:21, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

I'll think about that tomorrow. As of now, I think that I won't actually link the articles that are already linked in the body, as we can assume these links to be already available. Eg., Bell Labs and Ken Thompson are wikilinked in the beginning of the article, so the reader could already exercise the ability to read the articles. Still this idea probably deserves more thinking over. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 22:39, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

The question is larger than you and me, so I asked it here: Wikipedia talk:Citing sources#Wikilinking in cites. What is too much? You are welcome to go there and voice your thoughts. Binksternet (talk) 23:34, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

GA listed. Nice work! Binksternet (talk) 23:34, 25 January 2012 (UTC)