Wikipedia:Peer review/R v Horncastle/archive1

R v Horncastle

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Article about an extraordinarily significant UK legal case, very well covered in specialist publications but little/no mainstream coverage (perhaps because there were no celebrities involved and it concerned the relatively dull/impenetrable subject of hearsay evidence). Comments/improvements/suggestions welcome with a view towards (my first) GAN. Wanting a PR because the fairly obscure subject matter has meant few contributors or discussion.

Thanks, Bob House 884 (talk) 23:53, 14 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Finetooth comments: This is an interesting case, and I find the writing to be clear. Here are some thoughts and suggestions that might be helpful.

The external links (EL)s to the PDF case file embedded in the infobox and the first sentence of the lede should be turned into inline citations. Per WP:MOS#External links, ELs do not normally appear in the text.

What makes the UKSC blog a reliable source? Blogs usually do not meet the WP:RS guidelines, though this one might. I'm not sure.

Citation 1 and some of the other citations are incomplete. Citations to web sources should include the author, title, publisher, date of publications, URL, and date of most recent access if these are known or can be found.

I'm not sure that citing a case number by itself, as you do in many of the citations, is sufficient. This method suggests that some of the claims made in the article may be supported by original research rather than by reliable secondary sources such as articles in law journals or perhaps other specialist publications you mention above. To avoid violating the WP:NOR guidelines, I'd suggest relying on secondary sources as much as possible so that anything that looks like interpretation or analysis is attributed to a particular person or entity rather than to a bare case name and number.

I almost always find it helpful to look at featured articles in my areas of interest to see how other editors have handled things. WP:FA#Law includes a few "X v Y" cases that might be of interest.

Instead of using single quotation marks, the Manual of Style recommends double quotation marks. Single quotation marks normally would be reserved for cases of nested quotes. Thus 'solely or to a decisive extent' in the lede should be "solely or to a decisive extent". Ditto for the several other instances in the article.

"Al-Khawaja is currently being appealed by the United Kingdom and a Grand Chamber decision is expected at some stage." - Would it be helpful to briefly explain what "Grand Chamber" refers to?

"Judgement" appears in the first sentence of the lede, but a later subhead spells it "Judgment". Either spelling is considered correct, but you should choose one or the other and stick with it throughout.

"The court also noted that the rule would create practical difficulties in the criminal system [33],... " - The punctuation should precede the reference number here and elsewhere in the article.

Please make sure that the existing text includes no copyright violations, plagiarism, or close paraphrasing. For more information on this please see Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2009-04-13/Dispatches. (This is a general warning given in view of previous problems that have risen over copyvios.)

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) 18:25, 21 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]