Talk:Rene di Rosa

Discussion during review at Articles for Creation

@Karadirosa: In addition to the concern about paraphrasing mentioned on the draft itself, I see several other items that should be addressed. They are:

1. There is some uncertainty as to the size of the land purchased by Mr. di Rosa. The draft says that it was 460 acres, the Google books reference says it was 400 acres and another (I forget which) says 450 acres. I see two ways to approach this. First, you can decide that this figure isn't important and simply remove the statement from the draft. Or, choose which of the figures comes from the source that you believe to be the most reliable, but then note the discrepancies as an annotation to the footnote reference. That annotation would come after the {{cite web}} template, but still inside the reference bracket. It might say something like "Other sources give different figures for the acreage. NAME OF SOURCE gives the figure as __ acres and NAME OF SOURCE gives it as ____ acres."
2. You are inconsistent in your use of the {{cite web}} template with respect to identifying the authors of the sources. Sometimes you give the author's name; sometimes you don't. Good practice, of course, calls for attributing the author in all cases. Also note that one of your references is a bare URL, which needs to be formatted.
3. As of now, this draft is what is sometimes called a "dead end", because there are no wiki-links inside the body of the article. Shortly after I post these comments, I'll go back to the draft and replace your reference to Wikipedia with a wiki-linked (also called "blue-linked") name. But the article needs more of this kind of thing. For example, the names of the newspapers at which di Rosa worked should be linked (assuming that Wikipedia articles on them exist). And so too for every term that has a Wikipedia article that provides additional information that would be relevant to a reader who wanted to learn more. Offhand, I'd say that this applies to the lesser-known geographic terms such as Napa Valley. Take a look through what you've written and ask yourself, "Would a reasonably-literate reader want or need to learn more about this term in order to better understand the article?" If the answer is "yes", then link it. (But no need to go overboard with it. Items that are readily understood by a literate reader do not need to be blue-linked. For example, there is no need to blue-link the names of Boston and Paris. More detail can be found at WP:OVERLINKING.) And going back to those newspaper names, whether or not they have Wikipedia articles, the names should be italicized.
4. On a more subjective note, the statement about UC Davis having a "vibrant art department" seems superfluous. Unless you are able to demonstrate that the department is indeed "vibrant" and that there is some linkage between that "vibrancy" and di Rosa's decision to start collecting art, the statement doesn't belong in the draft.
5. Maybe I'm not understanding something basic, but I got a bit confused in the "Lake Vineyard" section. You state that Winery Lake was selling to other vineyards, but your sole example is one that was co-owned by di Rosa. So, that very much weakens the point of saying that his product was in demand by other vineyards. Unless I'm missing something ... .

I think that's all I have. If I see anything else, I'll come back here. NewYorkActuary (talk) 20:25, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

@NewYorkActuary: - I really appreciate this, thank you. --Karadirosa (talk) 20:30, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

@Karadirosa: I just did some copy-editing and similar work on the draft. There were only two substantive changes. First, I see that I neglected to specify the section in which I had concerns about close paraphrasing, so I just went ahead and did the rewrite myself. Also, I removed the reference to the ZD winery. The source didn't mention anything about di Rosa or Winery Lake. That left Belvedere as the only winery mentioned in the sentence, and that just didn't seem right. So I took that name out as well, but left the source as a reference.

The reference to the video (now footnote 12) remains a bare URL. Also, the references to two of the news articles (Napa Register and MetroActive) still do not identify the authors. Were these oversights, or do you have some reason for not providing that information? NewYorkActuary (talk) 02:59, 4 November 2016 (UTC)

@NewYorkActuary: Thank you so much. The lack of authors on those articles was an oversight and has been corrected, as well as the video URL. I also found another article about Acacia winery's 1983 gold medal for their Winery Lake Chardonnay. So I added the Belvedere/Acacia references back in, as I do think people would read that sentence and wonder "what wines?" Does that seem to work? After re-reading it many more times, I am also hoping it is clear that the sale to Seagrams was only part of the property (half, roughly) and that Rene remained on the other half, which is where di Rosa is now. I really appreciate this. It's a lot of work, but a great process.

I enjoyed working with you. I hope you'll stick around to write more articles. If you do, you'll find that the "work" part of it gets easier when you know in advance what details need to be assembled. Happy editing! NewYorkActuary (talk) 19:01, 4 November 2016 (UTC)