Wikipedia:Peer review/New England/archive3

New England

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This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because it only has a couple of active editors, despite being very important. As it stands, the article is probably too long. Some of the sections can be reduced, and their content transferred to related articles (e.g., Culture of New England, Politics of New England, &c.). It's too great a task for me to do alone.

This article has been listed for peer review a number of times over the course of several years, as well as having been nominated a few times for GA status. In each case, nothing came of it. I would really like to finally get New England the recognition it deserves as a thorough, well-cited and decently written article. It just needs some work and a bit of help.

Thanks, TimothyDexter (talk) 19:19, 29 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from LT910001

A lot of work has clearly gone into this article. A few comments:

I found the lead and writing style very clear
Large portions of the article will require inline citations for GA.
I agree with your view that the article is quite long. A lot of this length comes in sections that already have a child article ("History", "Politics"). I'd suggest moving some of the content in these sections to the child articles. It is always tempting to want to put everything in the parent article, but I think that the consequence is that it is quite overwhelming for the reader and that the prescient and relevant details get lost. This will also help with endeavors to source and copyedit the article.
In addition, there are a lot of subsections which makes reading this very disjointed. I'd consider integrating smaller subsections together.
The table of contents is very long. Consider using {{TOC limit|2}} or {{TOC limit|3}} so that not all items in the TOC are displayed.
The 'politics' section is very short (one sentence)
There are an awfully large amount of hatnotes in some places. I'm not sure how, but do you think they'd be able to be trimmed back somehow? They're quite distracting. In addition, hatnotes are placed somewhat haphazardly, at the top, middle, and bottom of subsections. I'd localise them all to the top parts of the subsections and cut down on the number of hatnotes if possible, integrating some into the paragraphs, particularly when the paragraphs are quite short (such as the history section). Again, if content is moved to a subarticle then that may help.
I don't know what the last section, 'transport#Routes' means. Sorry!
The 'see also' section is quite large. Per WP:SEEALSO, I'd suggest removing any links that are already mentioned in the article.
I am not sure all the external links are relevant. Having a link about one area or a forum will probably encourage future users to drop more helpful links to other areas or forums, so I'd prophylactically remove them.
There are a couple of raw URLs that are dead links in the sources
You may be interested in the layout of similar good articles, and how other editors have dealt with issues of coverage and depth. A list can be found here: Wikipedia:Good_articles/Geography_and_places

Overall this is a very thorough article that clearly has been the subject of a lot of effort. It may need some work before it is ready for GA, but with a steady work ethic I'm sure it will be ready in a month or two. I hope this is helpful and that you can extract something useful from my thoughts. Kind regards, --LT910001 (talk) 00:33, 7 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Afterthought: Try not to feel too disheartened. The significant issue here is, I feel, the one you identify - a lot of content could be covered in the subarticles. If you focus on moving the content to the subarticles, which is not too difficult to do, this article will become a lot shorter and a lot easier to deal with. Have a look at some of the other GAs for ideas and inspiration. I reviewed China and I suggest you have a look at China#Culture, which uses child articles and summary style to efficiently cover a great deal of content. --LT910001 (talk) 00:41, 7 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Excellent suggestions; thank you! --TimothyDexter (talk) 06:55, 7 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Comments by ServiceableVillain

I came here by coincidence, as I was searching for a particular piece of info about NE and saw the little blurb that mentioned Peer Review. The info I wanted was either not present or difficult to find. Frankly, I (crankiness alert) am not enthralled with the way the infobox is set up or populated. There is an NE flag atop the box, the a St. John someone-or-other. While the local NE'ers may be eager to show their local symbols, I clicked to the article to find a very clear map with very clear borders and very clear labels (no geographic features) that makes it abundantly obvious which states are which within NE. I think such a map should go atop the infobox. Move the flag and the mascot/symbol to the article body; I am 50+ years old and have never seen or heard of them before, which makes their relative importance rather suspect. Certainly if Wikipedia is a global encyclopedia, people from other countries will want a map of NE very pronto immediately, to give them a visual/spatial orientation and to help them see which states are in the NE fold.yes, the states are listed early in the text, but many people are visual learners and grasp info better from images... Good luck with your future GA bid, I assume, and probable march to FAC after that. But please do consider my cranky complaints. • Serviceable†Villain 03:11, 24 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed--there used to be a good political/geographical map there, but it somehow disappeared some time ago. If anybody has any suggestions for a decent replacement, I'm all ears. --TimothyDexter (talk) 05:36, 24 June 2014 (UTC) I should add, though, that the article is about New England as New England and not just a list of the different states in New England. For example, Southern United States has the South as a topic without going into great detail about the differences between Virginia and Louisiana. --TimothyDexter (talk) 05:39, 24 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]