Wikipedia:Peer review/Pigeon photographer/archive1

Pigeon photographer

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I've listed this article for peer review because I want to nominate it for FA. It has recently passed GA, and it has been proposed among others as featured article for the April Fools Day main page.

I am particularly keen on good comments on the following aspects:

Things that are likely to come up at FAC.
Handling and copyright status of images. (I think there are no problems there.)
Verifiability matters. I can provide the most important offline sources as scans, if that helps, but they are all in German.
Any additional information or good images that I missed.

Hans Adler 22:25, 16 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Finetooth comments: This is an interesting article, well-written, and well-illustrated. I have a few suggestions, mostly related to layout and the Manual of Style, that should help get this ready for FAC. I don't know anything about the content except what I've learned from reading the article, which I enjoyed.

I think the image description pages have the information needed to verify the licenses; if any quibbles about the form of the descriptions arise, they should be relatively easy to address. I try to make my description pages as easy for fact-checkers to understand as I possibly can. Clickable links to the original source are always a good idea, for example. Thus on the description page for the lead image, File:Bundesarchiv Bild 183-R01996, Brieftaube mit Fotokamera cropped.jpg, I would add "Deutsches Bundesarchiv (German Federal Archive), {{BArch-link|Bild 183-R01996}}" to the "Source" line of the description. Otherwise, fact-checkers have to click twice to find the original. I'm in a little over my head here, because the template in the preceding sentence does not appear to work in the English Wikipedia but (I'm guessing) only on the Commons.

MOS:IMAGES suggests avoiding text sandwiches created by images on opposite sides of the page. A text sandwich occurs in the "World War II" section. One possible solution would be to merge the lower two sections under a single head, "World War II and after" and to move the toy soldier image down (but still on the left side so that the directional image of the toy soldier continues to face into the page).

Lead

I'd spell out as well as link Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) on first use. It might be useful to add "of the U.S." too since the Germans and French are mentioned by country.

"Pigeon with German miniature camera, c. World War I" - Rather than "c.", which not all readers may recognize, I'd suggest something like "Pigeon with German miniature camera, from the World War I era" or something like that.

Origins

"As photographic techniques made further progress, at the end of the 19th century some pioneers began to employ it in unmanned aircraft." - "It" (singular) seems to refer to "techniques" (plural). Suggestion: "to employ them".

Julius Neubronner

"restaurant chef in Wiesbaden" - Link Wiesbaden?

"the dovecote had a spacious, elastic landing board" - Link dovecote here on first use rather than in the "World War I" section.

"Aerial photographs of Schlosshotel Kronberg" - Link Schlosshotel Kronberg in the caption since it's the first use of the term in the article?

World War I

"Already at the 1909 exhibitions in Dresden and Frankfurt... " - Delete "already" and start with "At the 1909 exhibitions"?

Since File:Neubronner mobile dovecote and darkroom.jpg is directional, rolling toward the right, I'd move it to the left side of the page. Directional images look better when aimed into the page rather than out.

World War II

"while improving it with a mechanic that controlled the delay" - "Mechanism" rather than "mechanic"?

Notes

The citations to Internet sources should include author, title, publisher, date of publication, URL, and date of most recent access if all of these are known or can be found. Citation 42, for example, doesn't include most of this information. The original publisher is not WebCite or camera-net.com, which appears to be an URL used by the publisher, Centennial Photo.

Newspaper and magazine titles such as those in citation 25 should appear in italics.

Bibliography

The Commons link should be moved to an "External links" section.

Citations to Internet sources should include the date of most recent access as well as the publisher and other data mentioned above in my note about "Notes".
Citations to books should include the publisher. For example, the publisher of Hildebrandt's Die Luftschiffahrt is R. Oldenbourg, I think. If you don't have all of the bibliographic data in your notes, you can usually find it via WorldCat.

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) 18:37, 22 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the excellent advice! It does look very helpful indeed. Hans Adler 22:02, 27 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I have implemented everything with the following exceptions:

I have not done anything additional about the image licences, as it should be clear enough and I didn't fully understand the advice.
I am not sure what to do about the text sandwiches. If I move everything to one side there are other problems, depending on screen resolution. I hope to get good advice at FAC from an image expert.
I have created an "external links" section just for the Commons template, but it looks odd. Again, I hope to get good advice from the FA experts.

Again, thanks for your help! Hans Adler 12:02, 24 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]