Wikipedia:Peer review/2011–12 Real Madrid C.F. season/archive1

2011–12 Real Madrid C.F. season

Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch • Watch peer review

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because it listed as a B-Class article and it would be good to get a critique. It would also be good to have some good example of how to write a club season article.

Is the article well-written (ie grammer, punctuation etc)?
How comprehensive is the article and is there anything missing?
Is the article well-researched and well-sourced?
Is the lead section good?
Is the structure appopriate?
What else do you think the article needs?

Thanks, Kingjeff (talk) 00:01, 10 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

Part 1

Lede

Since the season is now technically over, should the first sentence now say "was" instead of "is"?
Since you already wikilinked to La Liga, the second link seems redundant until you find out that it goes to the specific season. I would find a way to put the season year in the context so it's apparent to readers that it's two different links.
Since the first part of the sentence states that the team set a number of records, the separate clauses don't need to include "record" as well.
"last season" should read "the previous season" since this will probably be around for a while.
Regarding the clause "the most prominent being maximum goals in a season, previously held by the Real Madrid team which scored 107 goals during the 1989–90 season":
- "maximum" implies that they hit a limit of some kind.
- "previously held by the Real Madrid team which scored 107 goals during the 1989–90 season" is a little awkward.
- The next sentence, which mentions the season in present tense, can be merged with this one.
- Thus, it might be clearer as "the most notable of which was the record for goals in a season with 121, breaking the record of 107 held by the 1989–1990 Real Madrid team."

Season overview

Preseason

"commenced" to "began" Simple English whenever possible.
Unless the fact is in doubt, you don't have to say "reported to be worth". Just "worth" will do fine, so long as it's from a reliable source.
Might want to add "Club" before "President Florentino Pérez" (which would then mean "president" wouldn't be capitalized) to clarify.
Maybe wikilink "friendlies" to Exhibition game to clarify?
"atop the table" is linked to the 2011 World Football Challenge, which you already linked to earlier.
The sentence beginning with "José Mourinho's five-game touchline ban" is a little awkward. I'd switch the second sentence in that paragraph with the first.

August

"at home" meaning their home stadium? Since it hasn't been mentioned before then, might want to wikilink it here.
My knowledge of football isn't very good, admittedly, but I had to look up what "against the run of play" meant.
"Corner sequence" might best be termed a corner kick.
May want to change the wikilink for "Offside trap" to use the anchor for that term.
Maybe wikilink "assist"
"from a year ago" to "a year earlier".

September

"with a man down" implies someone was injured. Might want to clarify.
Wikilink "backpass" to Back-pass rule?

October

The syntax of the second sentence is a little unclear because the game comes at the end. Perhaps "In a 4–1 victory over Real Betis," should start it.
"recent goalscoring form" seems odd.
wikilink "clean sheet"

I'll get to the rest of the article later today. Runfellow (talk) 16:34, 19 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Part 2 (General Notes)

Since I'm running a little short on time, I'm just going to stick to general notes here.

It would appear as though you're not one of the major editors of the article (at least under that username,) so read anything that says "you" as "an editor".
As of this writing, this is the 45th largest article on the English Wikipedia. Technically, the amount of readable prose does not mean that it should be divided according to WP:SIZERULE, but there's a reason it's massive, and I'll get to that in a bit.
There is a lot of specific information about games, and almost every goal (or so it seems) is described in detail. This creates large, hard-to-read chunks of text. Use summary style, rather than a goal-by-goal description of everything that happens in the game. The overall significance of the games are more important than the exact situation in which each goal was scored.
As a result of above, the references section has some major issues, and it looks like it has been cut off. The page is simply too large, and that's what happens when there's a reference for almost every few words on a large article. This means probably cutting the sources by at least a third, probably a half. If something is controversial, use multiple sources if needed, but this:

Benzema scored twenty-one seconds after kickoff,[203] the fastest goal in El Clásico history,[204] following a Víctor Valdés giveaway,[205] but an Alexis Sánchez strike, a deflected goal by Xavi,[206] and a Fàbregas header condemned Real Madrid to a 3–1 defeat.[207]

has got to go, especially considering the final source here, the BBC article here, has all of that information in the first four paragraphs. If this were something that could be debated, I could see having multiple verifiable sources, but millions watched the game, so it's not as if these details are in doubt. To fix this, it's going to take a lot of work:

- Eliminate play-by-play information, summarize the importance rather than explain the goals.
- Where only one reference will do for a sentence, eliminate the others. Just because a source exists for it doesn't mean it needs to be included. Many sentences are referenced so heavily that the prose is very difficult to read.
- Many of the references themselves could use some added information other than the URL, the title, and the publisher.
The WikiProject Football Club seasons Manual of Style suggests an award section, which would probably be appropriate here, but I would work on cutting stuff down first.
Since the first statistics table is sortable and includes goals, the Goals subsection seems redundant.
A "see also" section generally only has links that haven't been used in the article already. The four league links here have already been used multiple times in the article, so you can probably delete this section.
In the "External links" section, the first line reads "Template:Official website Template:Ar icon Template:En icon Template:Ja icon Template:Es icon" and the last reads "Template:Real Madrid C.F. Template:Real Madrid C.F. seasons Template:2011–12 in Spanish football Template:Use dmy dates" so there's some kind of template issue there.

Your questions answered

Is the article well-written? There are a number of minor issues that could be solved by getting a copyedit (I'm sure they're looking forward to that one), but generally speaking, the article does not suffer from many of the faults that sports articles tend to include.
How comprehensive is the article and is there anything missing? Since the lede is about records, awards, etc., there could be a summary (not simply a list) of that information somewhere in the article. Otherwise it is too large overall (see above).
Is the article well-researched and well-sourced? There are a number of reference issues I mentioned above, but I suppose its better to start off with too many and cut down rather than the other way around. There are a number of sources that are in Spanish. While that's fine from time to time, given that the team is in Spain, there should be enough English sources for such a famous group that using foreign language sources should be held to a minimum.
Is the lead section good? It's fair, but see my notes above.
Is the structure appopriate? Generally, yes. It follows a clear path that makes sense to the reader.
What else do you think the article needs? In short, massive cuts and summary. It may be that almost every goal scored by every player is mentioned explicitly. For an article about a team that set a record for goals, that's a lot.

If you're planning on editing this and making any of the major changes I've suggested, I'd recommend sending it in for another peer review. Put a notice of that on my talk page and I'll throw in a few more comments. Runfellow (talk) 22:39, 19 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Quick comment why are the scorelines spaced in the table but nowhere else? I'd prefer to see internal consistency on the presentation of similar information. The Rambling Man (talk) 09:17, 20 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]