Jump to content

Wikipedia:Peer review/IPhone 4S/archive1

Add links
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

IPhone 4S

[edit]
Toolbox
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 I'm trying to get it to Good Article status and want to know what would help.

Thanks, Zach Vega (talk) 16:31, 20 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Just a few inital comments from Glimmer721 talk 19:40, 20 November 2011 (UTC):[reply]

  • One dablink: [1]
  • Make sure all references are formatted with {{cite web}} or other similar template and ahve as many perameters filled out as possible.
  • Ref #12 is dead.
Comments from Jappalang
  • I envision such an article about a device to tell me:
    • What is the product?
    • Features
      • What are its features/capabilities?
      • Any unique ones?
    • Development/production
      • How was it conceived?
      • Where was it manufactured and for how much?
      • What was its performance/reliability?
    • Release
      • How many did it sell?
      • What awards did it receive?
    • Impact
      • How did society/consumers receive it?
      • What was its impact on the company?
      • What was its impact on the industry?
    This article failed to do so for me. Information is scattered here and there and interrupted by spiels of irrelevant information. The Impact section has nothing about the impact of the device at all. I do not need a price/contract/service provider guide. This sort of things are ephemeral and trivial unless the phone only works with one service provider out of several (as per the first iPhone in the US for a time). Thus the Availability section is entirely unencyclopaedic in my opinion.
  • The piecemeal sentences (several paragraphs simply comprise a single sentence) in this article does not reach the standard of prose requested for Featured Articles. Furthermore, sentences like "Its not clear what the impact of Siri speaking in public will be, but it does not have to speak out loud and can be used with headphones" have grammatical errors ("Its" is the possessive form of "it"; I doubt it is Siri that "[has] to speak out loud") and an unencyclopaedic tone (the intent is to use the contraction "it's", which is not encyclopaedic; neither is the proposition of stating "We do not know what the item is like, but ..."). In short, heavy copy-editing is required to phrase the sentences properly and to cast them in an encyclopaedic light (just reporting the facts).
  • There are uncited items like "One unique aspect was that the whole management team of several people took turns discussing the new products" (frankly, that is not unique at all), the Design section, and various other sentences in the following sections.
  • This ultimately is supposed to be an article about a common handheld electronic device, almost integral to everyone's life. Hence, its contents are supposed to be accessible to everyone who wants to learn more about it. It is not a DNA centrifuge nor a neutrino generator. It does not need to be phrased thoroughly in "tech speak" or full of little stuff that makes the technically-inclined happy but confuses the majority of the readers.
  • In my opinion, the lede is already an overwhelming mass of "tech speak", as illustrated by the first sentence itself—"The iPhone 4S is a touchscreen slate smartphone developed by Apple Inc." While most likely know of touchscreen, what the heck is a "slate smartphone"? The "smartphone" is a marketing jargon and serves nothing except to obfuscate ("so the phone can think?"). Much more can be done with the simpler "The iPhone 4S is a mobile phone with a touchscreen interface. It was developed by Apple Inc and released to the public in October 2011." Readers readily comprehend what this sentence is saying without having to deal with technical jargon. Wiki-linking is no justification. Forcing readers to go to some other article to learn what a term means and losing them there (either because the article is more interesting or they gave up because it is the same mess of technical confusion) is a disservice to both the readers and the project. Wiki-links are supposed to provide extra information for the readers, not as links of convenience for article builders. Either cast the technical terms into context (such that the meaning can be easily guessed at) or provide a brief explanation of the term. Above all, write in a clear and concise manner.

All in all, it is time to clean out the house in this article if one aspires it to be of better quality. Take what is presented in reliable sources and present data that informs the reader clearly on what the phone is and its impact. After that, ask someone who is experienced in the English language (and, preferably, not a "tech nut", so he or she can spot any stumbling point in the sentences) to go through and brush up the prose. Jappalang (talk) 07:17, 6 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Peer_review/IPhone_4S/archive1&oldid=1086097719"