Wikipedia:Peer review/Passengers of the RMS Titanic/archive1

Passengers of the RMS Titanic

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This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because I'd like to re-submit it for a featured article, and because I've worked on it for several years. I've finally completed all three lists, fixed errors in the text, adding the proper locations and linked/unlinked where necessary. After noticing that it failed two previous featured article attempts, I've spent the last couple days expanding the article, adding more sources and giving more information about the passengers, rather than this just being an article with passenger lists. I'd really like some critiquing and constructive criticism on what can be fixed and where wording may be choppy or difficult to understand, or really anything else that would help the article be up to standard. I'm particularly concerned about the opening heading of the article, I think it needs to be reworded but I'm not sure where to start with that.

Thanks, Morhange (talk) 09:03, 30 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

By North8000 One small suggestion.. I think that you indicated the ticket price only for the middle class passengers. That was a nice piece of info, would be nice to see it on all three classes. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 11:14, 5 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comments by H1nkles

I see that you want to take this article to FAC, which is a noble endeavor. I would suggest running it through GAC as an intermediary step. A lot of good can come from the GA review. I'll make suggestions to move the article forward. I'm not sure if it is ready for the very nitpicky review necessary to pass FAC yet. If so I'll get my fine tooth comb out, if not then I'll give broad strokes and areas for improvement.

One thing I'm a little confused about: in your intro you talk about it failing at FAC twice yet when I look at the archives it says it failed at FLC. Are you wanting this to be reviewed as a list or an article? The prose is quite long to be a list. FLC and FAC are very different though the delegates will review the writing in a similar light. H1nkles (talk) _{citius altius fortius} 04:34, 7 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Lead

You indicate that there were over 1,300 men, women and children on the Titanic, and in the next sentence over 1,500 people died when it sunk. Usually the first number would be higher than the second number. I think in an article about the passengers of the Titanic you should give the exact number (if it exists) in the lead.
Military personnel were considered the wealthiest passengers? I'm surprised by that. Perhaps high-ranking military officers but military personnel in general don't strike me as being particularly wealthy.
See WP:LINK, usually country names do not need to be linked.
See WP:LEAD. The lead is a summary of the entire article. This lead should be beefed up to include every subject covered in the body of the article. When I finish the lead I should have a skeletal outline of the article in my head.

Passengers

I made a few copy edits to the first paragraph in the First class section. I thorough copy edit is needed. Some things to keep in mind:

Remove superfluous words. Don't say in 5 words what you can say in 3. This is a big sticking point for FAC delegates.

Example: "...who were returning to the United States so their child could be born there." Change to "...who were returning to the United States for the birth of their child." One less word but it also eliminates the "there" at the end of the sentence, which is important given that the next sentence starts with another "There". It's awkward to have two "theres" in a row.

Another example: "...was the last remaining survivor of the Titanic disaster." I removed "remaining". Isn't necessary. This is nitpicky but the article will fail at FAC for these "little" things.

Watch tense and number agreement - if the subject of the sentence in singular then this should be reflected throughout the sentence.
Mind peacock words. These are words like "extraordinary". Not really necessary in an encyclopedia article.
Remove adverbs like "generally" and "usually" as these are unnecessary.

Look at WP:ACCESS for thoughts on image placement. It's usually bad form to have images side by side (Astor and Brown pics are example). This messes with the formatting of the article and creates a large blank space between paragraphs. Consider moving one of the pictures down into another section.
I'm not sure you need to list all of the various luminaries that traveled on this ship in this section. It gets a little tedious especially since they are all listed in the embedded lists later on. Some of the more notable people like Astor and Brown and Guggenheim are fine but perhaps some of the others could be removed and the section streamlined a bit.
You may want to include the detail that the ship was owned/operated by the White Star Line. This is sort of assumed in the writing and for the novice it may be a good piece of information to add in the lead.
Again good pictures in both second and third class sections, their placement may violate WP:ACCESS so I would check that before nominating at FAC.
The first and second class passengers were homogeneous? How so?
I like the personal stories of some of the passengers (I'm into the second class section) but again at some point I question what the purpose is?
You'll want to find a source for Milvina Dean being the last survivor of the Titanic to die.
Terms like "a far cry" are not very formal and usually frowned upon at FAC.
"The single men and women were separated, women in the stern, the men in the bow, usually in four berth rooms that were often shared with strangers, while families were placed in central cabins that had room for up to eight people." End the sentence after "strangers" and start a new one with Families. This is a separate subject and will eliminate the run-on sentence that is its current state.
"There were ~~even~~ two public bathtubs provided (one for the women, one for the men) ~~so the passengers could wash themselves~~." "Even" = unnecessary word. Readers should know what the bathtubs were used for.
"~~Despite the separations, the~~ passengers often gathered in the third class common room (complete with a piano) where they could play chess or cards, or the poop deck, where they could enjoy the fresh sea air." Unnecessary info. Watch parenthetic references, these are frowned upon at FAC. Try to include them in the writing without the parentheses. Change the first "or" to an "and", it reads better given the following "or the poop deck".
"Ship's regulations were designed to separate third class passengers from the first and second class cabins." Very wordy sentence, consider rewriting, "Third class passengers were separated from the rest of the ship by grilles. More to come. H1nkles (talk) _{citius altius fortius} 23:54, 6 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, this helps a lot! Will definitely be going through the article a little later tonight and fixing some of the things you suggested! Morhange (talk) 18:03, 7 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, and the previous version of the article was just the passenger list, but if I remember correctly, someone mentioned that lists aren't generally featured articles, so I figured I would expand the page to a full article. Morhange (talk) 04:39, 8 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I don't have time with computer access at the moment to finish up the review properly, but I will wrap it up on the 11th. Sorry for the delay. H1nkles (talk) _{citius altius fortius} 15:46, 9 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Survivors and victims

The first paragraph is unsourced this should be remedied.
"At 2:20 am, it also sank." This little sentence is unclear. What also sank? The Titanic? If so that is not easily understood from the context.
"By 8:30 am, she picked up the last lifeboat with survivors and left the area at 08:50..." "She" being the Carpathia? I would change it to "The crew", it's a little more clear that way. Also I would move ref 20 to the end of the sentence. No need to have it in the middle of a sentence see WP:INCITE for more info on this.
I'm reading the paragraph about the decision to preserve first-class passengers and bury the rest. At the beginning of the para the captain (Larnder) and the undertakers decide to preserve the first-class passengers. Later in the para it says that there were complaints about this decision made by the families and the undertakers. Weren't the undertakers part of the decision in the first place? This is confusing.
"Relatives from across North America came to identify and claim the bodies ~~of their relatives~~." We know who they were claiming.
Refs in the sentence about the number of unclaimed bodies buried in cemetaries should be at the end of the sentence not in the middle.

Passenger list

Why are the names of survivors italicized when the color of their entry denotes whether they survived or not? Seems duplicative and unnecessary unless you are specifying survivors who died enroute on the Carpathia, in which case this should be specified in the introductory paragraph in this section.

References

The key to references is consistency. Make sure all refs are the same with at least the title, publisher and accessdates.
Your refs aren't consistent and formatting issues abound. See the following examples (not exhaustive list though)

Ref 5, appears to be a magazine article, no work, publisher, date, volume, accessdate etc.
Ref 10, first appearance of Encyclopedia Titanica, Refs 25-27 also references Encyclopedia Titanica but in a different format.
Ref 11, book refs should have publisher location
Ref 14 has a "{" at the beginning and a "[" at the end.

Try to use templates like {{cite web}} and {{cite book}} to help with consistency.
Usually notes like refs 40-42 should be listed under a notes section using foot notes. Listing them in references gives the impression in the article that the ref anchor is an actual reference when it is not. This can be misleading.
Is there a single reference for the passenger lists? I'm not seeing one and this would be a vital thing to add to the article. Perhaps I just missed it.

Overall

The article is making progress from its original state. I've listed some concerns both nit picky and big picture. Before moving this article to FAC I would have it reviewed at GAC. You should also make sure and decide if this is going to be a list or an article. If you want to keep it as a list then remove some of the prose.
The article should be better referenced in some locations. This is one area of concern.
The lead needs to be improved.
Remove the superfluous language and make sure the pictures are MOS-compliant.
You're off to a good start and I hope this review helps you move in the right direction. If you have specific questions please contact me on my talk page as I do not watch review pages. Best of luck to you. H1nkles (talk) _{citius altius fortius} 16:51, 11 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks much. I've just finished my summer classes & exams so now I can go through your review and make the necessary corrections. I was planning to go for the Good article status before Featured, so hopefully this will help out with getting it promoted there first, then I'll work on improving it further for featured. My only conflicting thought is with having to removing some of pictures, since I think they're good images of passengers and I can't necessarily fit them into the lists but I'm not sure where else to put them--perhaps a link to the commons where one can find other related images instead. At any rate, thank you for all your help! Morhange (talk) 16:24, 12 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]