Wikipedia:Peer review/DeLancey W. Gill/archive1

DeLancey W. Gill

I would like to bring this article up to a Featured Article, but as this is my first time writing an article in the intent of FAC, I was recommended to submit it to peer review process beforehand. Please let me know if there is anything I can change or improve on from the current state! I want it to be in the state plausible with the sources available, so things such as MoS nitpicks are greatly appreciated.

Thank you very much to anyone interested in reviewing! Generalissima (talk) 02:04, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

UC

First impressions: it's a nice article and seems securely at GA standard, having passed a recent and fairly thorough review. I'll focus here on grammar, MoS and technical considerations that will need to be addressed for FAC. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 13:55, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

• Footnotes and captions, like any other part of the article, need to be cited when they contain statements of fact.
• Washington, D.C. has a comma.
• Compound modifiers take a hyphen: working-class and rural areas, 14-cent postage stamp (but consider fourteen-cent).
• Images should generally be aligned to the right unless there is a compelling reason otherwise (usually, that they are a portrait where the subject faces right). Try not to create situations where a block of text has an image on both sides: on the Vector 22 display, this is happening at the bottom of the infobox.
• If you start a parenthetical statement with a comma, you need to end it with one or a full stop:: was born in Camden, South Carolina, on July 1, 1859.
• Statements which contain opinions or value judgements (that is, ideas which can't be objectively proven true or false) need to be phrased as opinions, and ideally attributed to the people whose opinions they are: creating an intense focus on clarity and precision in his watercolors sticks out.
• In most cases, avoid false titles: use e.g. The art historians Andrew Cosentino and Henry Glassie ...
• Quotes, in general, should be as short as they can be to get the point across. If the particular wording isn't especially important or interesting, look to paraphrase them.
• Amounts of money are fairly meaningless unless they can be contextualised, either by giving some sort of comparison (e.g. vs. an average wage or some sort of easily-reckoned price) or, as a last resort, via the inflation template.
• Think about whether a proper noun usually has a the in it, and make sure you use it if so: e.g. the USGS, The Capitol.
• FACs need to be comprehensive: can anything be done to contextualise Gill's work within the broader environment of ethnography, anthropology, skull-measuring and racism of the time?
• Make sure that what you write is grammatically unambiguous. There are a few sentences which, while no real doubt is created, leave multiple options open in a strict reading: for instance: Due to worsening eyesight, many of Gill's photography duties with the Smithsonian were transferred to A. J. Olmsted in 1926 (whose eyesight: Gill's or Olmstead's?)
• Make sure that specialist terminology, such as totem mark, is explained for a non-specialist reader.
• It never hurts to look over basics like apostrophes: for instance, early American cyclist's organization should have the apostrophe after the S, unless it was one very lonely cyclist. Art Students League of Washington may need one after Students.
• Images: what matters for licensing is when an image was published (that is, made widely available to the public), not when it was created. I can't see any sign of that for File:Chief Joseph 1900 3.jpg, and the website linked as the source implies that it may not have been published until recently. If so, we may need a different PD tag, such as PD-us-unpublished.

A few sentences which I can imagine will be picked up:

• Gill assumed a role as the BAE's head photographer following the resignation of the Smithsonian's prior photographers: They all resigned? Sounds like there's a story here.
• Gill's photographic was showcased: missing a word like photographic work.
• At 14, his mother and stepfather moved to Fort Laramie in the Wyoming Territory: sounds as though his mother was fourteen at the time. Why is 14 given in figures here where five is given in words in the previous sentence? MOS:FIGURES advises consistency.
• Protests from Gill regarding the incorrect date were ignored, with Joseph claiming... the passive voice here makes for a very awkward construction.
• Gill's early photography, especially those depicting groups and full-body portraits: photography is singular, so can't be the antecedent of those, which is plural. The second clause includes the implied statement "those depicting full-body portraits", which is not what is intended.
• Gill has been criticized for anachronistic and outdated clothing he posed subjects as wearing. : I imagine the problem is not the clothing but the fact that he (encouraged? instructed? forced?) his subjects to wear it.

I don't know enough about the available sources to be much help on content: purely from a subjective read, it seems like the article goes into a GA level of detail but might perhaps be a little short of the comprehensiveness needed for an FA. In theory, an FA is a one-stop shop: most readers who want to know anything about Gill should have no real gaps that other sources can fill after finishing our article.

Hope this is helpful, and good luck with the process. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 13:55, 22 October 2023 (UTC)