Wikipedia:Peer review/The Fox and the Hound (novel)/archive1

The Fox and the Hound (novel)

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because I'd like to get feedback one the article's readiness for a featured article candidacy and suggestions on areas it may need improvement. It is currently a GA and underwent one Peer Review prior to that.

Thanks, -- AnmaFinotera (talk · contribs) 21:14, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Finetooth comments: This is good, but I think the prose falls a bit short of the 1a requirement at WP:FAC, and I think it also falls a bit short on 1b and 1c. I think you are approaching FA quality and should keep revising. Here are my suggestions.

• The article mentions Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Virginia but never makes clear where the action of the novel takes place. Would it be helpful to add a subsection called "Setting and characters" to the "Plot" section? This could include basic information about the setting (types of terrain as well as geographic locations), and it could briefly describe the main characters. I'm thinking of something short along the lines of the "Setting and characters" section of Raptor Red, a featured article similar to this article.

• Could the Reception section be expanded? Did all the critics like the novel? The two newspaper critiques, one from a small town in Pennsylvania and another from a small town in California, seem like unusual choices. Wasn't the book reviewed in any big-city papers? How about Library Journal? A broader mix of reviews would make this section more interesting and comprehensive.

• The convention for citation numbers is to arrange them in ascending order. The first paragraph of the "Development" seciton ends with "Trenton Cutoff using this method.[2][1][1]", and this should be [1][2]. (The extra [1] is probably a typo. Ditto for ascending order elsewhere in the article.

Plot

• "One of the hunters finds a single kit alive in the dead fox's den... ". - Would it be helpful to render this as "kit (young animal)" since "kit" may be unfamiliar to some readers, and there seems to be nothing good to link to?
• "As Tod grows older, he grows increasingly restless and comes to dislike his life as a house pet." - Replace the first "grows" with "matures" to avoid repetition? Or "ages" if "matures" seems stuffy?
• Should "vixen" be explained as "vixen (female fox)"? Like "kit", it may be unfamiliar to some readers.
• "During this time, he encounters farm dogs and begins learning various tricks for throwing a pursuing dog off his trail." - Tighten by deleting "various"?
• "One night, Tod comes upon the cabin where Copper's master lives." - Master before this begins with an uppercase M. If that is his name and he has no other, perhaps this should say, "where Master lives" or "where Copper and Master live".
• "including an English style mounted fox hunt" - Maybe "English-style mounted fox hunt"? Perhaps "English-style fox hunt using horses"?
• "The man turns to drinking alcohol excessively and must deal with disputes with others who want him to leave his home, stressing Copper." - It's not clear from this who is stressing Copper. Or does this mean that Copper is stressed because of the drinking or the disputes or the thought of moving?
• "Tod not only must avoid death at the man's hands, he must evade other hunters as well as natural predators including a rabies scare that causes him to temporarily flee his territory." - A rabies scare isn't a predator. Suggestion: ""Tod not only must avoid death at the man's hands, he must evade other hunters as well as natural predators; in addition, a rabies scare causes him to temporarily flee his territory."

Development

• "At the end of the novel, Mannix includes an after note discussing this research." - Would postscript be better than "after note"?
• "He also defends his novel against expected charges of improbability regarding the actions Tod takes in eluding the hunters, detailing both his own experiences witnessing wild foxes performing such acts and stories others shared with him that he used as a basis for various events." - A bit awkward. Suggestion: "In defending his novel against charges of improbability, he recounts his observations of wild foxes and discusses other people's stories about fox behavior."
• "Mannix felt it near impossible for any writer... " - "Nearly" rather than "near"?
• "at the way an animal's mind may work and what motivations they may have." - "Animal" is singular, but "they" is plural. Change "they" to "it"?
• "When discussing how he described the hunting, he explained he found it difficult to understand what scent might mean to an animal whose scenting ability is "greatly superior" to a human's, leaving one trying to interpret why a hound acts certain ways while tracking another animal." - "One", which is self-referential, is generally avoided in Wikipedia articles. Suggestion: "In explaining his descriptions of hunting, he said it was hard to decide why a hound, with non-human scenting ability, acted in certain ways while tracking another animal."

References

• The date formatting in the citations should be consistent. Most are yyyy-mm-dd, but citation 5, for example, uses m-d-y.

Alt text

• "Photograph of the front cover of a book depicting a red fox running through a snowy at the bottom with brown dog chasing it; the novel's title is written in blue between the two animals." - Missing word, "field"? Also, an outsider who knew nothing else about the novel would not be able to verify the alt text by simply looking at the image. Suggestion: A book cover shows a brown dog chasing a red fox through a snowy field. Words on the cover say, "The Fox and the Hound by Daniel P. Mannix".

I hope these suggestions prove helpful. If so, please consider reviewing another article, especially one from the PR backlog. That is where I found this one. Finetooth (talk) 21:08, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for taking so much time and giving the article such a through review! I will be making my way through the list to make the needed corrections. :-) To answer the question on the receiption, as of now, it would be nearly impossible to expand further as I have found no other reviews for it at all from when it was released, and it has been out of print a long time, despite the Disney adaptation (which usually would have spurred a reprinting). I continue hunting but with no further results. -- AnmaFinotera (talk · contribs) 21:43, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

You are most welcome. I did a quick Google search for reviews of the book and found nothing. How did you find the two newspaper reviews? Finetooth (talk) 23:37, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

I used the journal search at A&M :) -- AnmaFinotera (talk · contribs) 02:54, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Ah, thank you. I'm filing that thought away for future use. Finetooth (talk) 04:32, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

After checking the novel, I found it never says where it is set, so I opted to just expand the plot better to introduce the characters and hopefully give a better setting context. I think I've addressed everything else?-- AnmaFinotera (talk · contribs) 07:27, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Comments from Ealdgyth (talk · contribs)

• You said you wanted to know what to work on before taking to FAC, so I looked at the sourcing and referencing with that in mind. I reviewed the article's sources as I would at FAC. The sourcing looks good.

Hope this helps. Please note that I don't watchlist Peer Reviews I've done. If you have a question about something, you'll have to drop a note on my talk page to get my attention. (My watchlist is already WAY too long, adding peer reviews would make things much worse.) 16:00, 11 January 2010 (UTC)