Wikipedia:Peer review/Charles L. McNary/archive1

Charles L. McNary

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This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because User:Aboutmovies and I would like to take it to FAC, and we would appreciate advice from as many editors as possible before doing that.

Thanks, Finetooth (talk) 22:40, 7 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Doing...—S Marshall ^Talk/_Cont 11:56, 9 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Remarks on first reading—The prose is a bit flat and stilted for my taste. Personally, I'd go through it looking for repeated words (e.g. "served" in the lede), passive voice sentences that could be simplified to the active (e.g. "When the two married in 1860, McNary was given a 112-acre (0.45 km2) farm in what is now the city of Keizer by his new father-in-law." → "On their marriage in 1860, McNary's new father-in-law gave him a 112-acre (0.45 km2) farm in what is now the city of Keizer."), French-origin terms that could be simplified to Anglo-Saxon ("purchased" → "bought", "agricultural" → "farming", "requested he return home" → "asked him to come home"), circumlocutions (e.g. "the daughter of a successful Salem businessman" → "A successful Salem businessman's daughter.")
Going back over it a bit later for more in-depth remarks.—S Marshall ^Talk/_Cont 12:11, 9 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Remarks on second reading—There's at least one other image on Wikimedia Commons that might help make the article more attractive.
Aside from that, I haven't found anything else to criticise about it; so I don't have much else to add on second reading. It's a decent, thorough article and on simplifying and freshening up the English a bit, I think it'll be fit to stand alongside Wikipedia's best work.—S Marshall ^Talk/_Cont 15:58, 9 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you very much for these helpful suggestions. This was just the sort of critique I was looking for, and I'll do some revising this week along the lines you suggest. Might I ask which additional image you found most fetching? Finetooth (talk) 17:08, 9 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

A pleasure! Personally I'd use this one:
thumb|left|McNary in more modern dress
—S Marshall ^Talk/_Cont 18:39, 9 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Much obliged. Side note: I added a front colon to the image template above to reduce the load time on this PR page. (That turns it into a clickable link but doesn't display the image directly.) Finetooth (talk) 18:57, 9 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]