Wikipedia:Peer review/List of Mir spacewalks/archive1

List of Mir spacewalks

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I've been doing some work on this list recently in an attempt to bring it up to the same standard as the List of ISS spacewalks, with an aim to eventually put it forward at WP:FLC. I'd like people's general comments about it, particularly with any suggestions for improving the citation list. Also, if anyone is good at table code, I'd love to know how to ensure all the tables span the entire page instead of being different widths. Looking forward to any comments! Many thanks in advance, Colds7ream (talk) 13:41, 12 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Finetooth comments: The general layout looks good to me. I like the illustrations, and the data (dates, times, descriptions, personnel), as far as I can tell, looks fine. The lead would be better with a bit more detail about Mir and its history; something should be done about the large number of red links, and quite a few technical terms should be linked or briefly explained. Here are further comments:

The table widths look fine on my computer screen.

Featured lists generally do not include a lot of red links. See List of ISS spacewalks, for example. The solution to the problem is to create articles for the red-linked items. Although this can be quite time-consuming, it expands the encyclopedia and makes it more useful.

Links

I don't see any need to link key terms more than once in the lead and perhaps once in the tables. For example, I would not link "core module" or "Kvant-1" or the names of the cosmonauts multiple times.

On the other hand, I would link technical terms such as solar array, airlock, S band, X-ray telescope, and other technical terms that not all readers are familiar with. Words like "dorsal" should either be linked, briefly explained, or replaced with more common words like "back". I might use "dorsal (back) surface of the module" to preserve the technical term while also explaining it in plain English.

Lead

Featured lists have been moving away from starting with the stock phrase, "This is a list of", and trying something a bit more imaginative. See the beginning of List of ISS spacewalks, for example. You might start by explaining what Mir was.

Instead of using the ambiguous front slash in Soviet/Russian, I'd recommend separating them and giving some of the historical details; i.e., saying when it was Soviet and when it was Russian and saying something brief about the breakup of the Soviet Union. I don't know if the breakup affected Mir directly, but you might add something about whether it did or not and, if it did, how.

"With a greater mass than that of any previous space station, Mir was the first of the third generation type of space station, constructed from 1986 to 1996 with a modular design, and was the largest artificial satellite orbiting the Earth until its deorbit on 21 March 2001, a record now surpassed by the International Space Station (ISS)." - Too complex. This would work better as two separate sentences.

Would it be helpful to include a more complete description of Mir? Size? Interior? Exterior? Orbit? Could the most important modules be briefly described? What exactly is meant by "largest" artificial satellite? Does "third-generation" mean third within the Soviet Union or third worldwide?

EVA needs to be spelled out as well as abbreviated on first use. Ditto for IVA.

"EVAs conducted during different principal expeditions are indicated by a separator." - I'm not sure what this means since every item in every table includes multiple separators. If this refers to the wide blue separators, it's not clear to me which items the blue separators are linked to (the ones above, the one immediately above, the ones below, the one immediately below). Would it be more clear to mark each instance with a symbol like ♦ or ×?

References

Generally, authors are listed by last name first; e.g., Harland, David.

Other

Strings of reference numbers such as [4][1][2] should be rearranged to appear in ascending order; i.e., [1][2][4].

I hope these suggestions prove helpful. If so, please consider commenting on any other article at WP:PR. I don't usually watch the PR archives or make follow-up comments. If my suggestions are unclear, please ping me on my talk page. Finetooth (talk) 19:57, 17 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Many thanks for the review; I've made a start on some of the comments you made, but would tend to disagree with your point about linking - WP:REPEATLINK states that terms should be linked in every row of a table, as it should be able to stand on its own, whilst the redlinks we have are mostly expedition pages, which are undergoing a bit of a creation drive at the moment, so I'm just building the web in preparation. Colds7ream (talk) 15:43, 26 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]