Wikipedia:Peer review/Tim Minchin/archive2

Tim Minchin[edit]

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This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because I believe that it has improved greatly over the last few months based on the good work of myself and a few others, yet it is still ranked at a fairly low level in most of the WikiProjects it fall under. I would like to see some comments from other users to see what we can do to make the article better.

Thanks, TomBeasley (talk) 16:13, 5 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from Belovedfreak

An interesting article on a funny guy. I'll just go through by section, mentioning what I notice.

Some general comments that apply to the whole article

I would recommend a good copyedit before nominating for GA, and certainly before a FA nomination. I will point out a few things, but I'm not an expert in copyediting and it would be worth either putting in a request at the Guild of Copy Editors, or asking someone you know that has worked on this kind of article, but hasn't worked on this one. The prose needs a bit of polishing. To try and work on it a bit yourself, Tony1 has some good tips, but it always helps getting fresh eyes on it.
Is there a reason for the dates being in Month Day, Year format? As far as I know (please correct me if I'm wrong) Australia tends to use Day Month Year format, so this would be more appropriate for this article (WP:STRONGNAT). Either way, they need to be consistent which they're not at the moment.
Check MOS:TITLE for the use of italics and quotation marks for titles. This is not consistent in the article; songs and poems must be in quotes, films and television shows must be in italics, and so on. I'm not sure what the convention is for a comedy show. If you don't know, that's worth finding out.
Make sure that citations come after punctuation (not before) and without a space in between. Try to avoid them in the middle of sentences, where possible.
Check WP:MOSHEAD; headings should be in sentence case. Also, spell out "and" rather than "&"

Lead

According to WP:LEAD, the lead section is not merely an introduction, but should adequately summarise the whole article. At the moment, this is not the case. There's a fair amount about his life & career mentioned in the article that's not touched on in the lead. One way I've heard of achieving this is to make sure there's at least one sentence in the lead for each paragraph of the rest. Also, the lead should have no information that's not developed later on. At the moment, for example, the lead mentions Minchin's birth place, but this isn't mentioned elsewhere. The pilot also doesn't appear to mentioned anywhere else.
I'm sure somewhere in the style guidelines (I'll try and look for it) it says that you shouldn't put the birthplace in those brackets with the date of birth. I will give you an example of how I would write the first part of the lead: Timothy David Minchin (born 7 October 1975) is an Australian comedian, actor, musician, and skeptic. He is best known for his musical comedy, which has featured in three CDs, three DVDs and a number of live comedy shows which he has performed internationally. He has also appeared on television and radio in both Australia and the United Kingdom. He was born in Northampton, England, and grew up in Perth, Western Australia... - note that I've removed the links from some of the more common words (see WP:OVERLINK). I would also consider removing the link from Australia, although since it's his nationality, I'm not sure. It's all about how useful the link is to the reader. The link to Perth may be sufficient since that article will link to Australia itself.
You only need references in the lead for material that is likely to be challenged. Remember that all information in the lead will be mentioned later on, and referenced, so it's not necessary to have citations in the lead. I don't think you need one in the lead for his name. I can see that his birthplace may be unexpected and potentially challenged, but if you word it like I have above, you're explaining that he was born in the UK and moved to Perth, so it's probably not going to be challenged. The further citations in the lead at present aren't necessary.
WAAPA should be spelled out here as it's the first occurrence and won't be familiar to most readers.
"Australian TV"→ Australian television - TV is informal, so better to spell it out as television throughout

Personal life

Try and forget that the lead has already come before & given away some of the details. Put his date and place of birth here.
"Minchin was raised in Perth, Western Australia.[6] and educated..." - something's gone wrong with the sentence structure here.
Is there a reference for his attendance at that school?
Are there any more details about his early life, family for example? It would be nice to know some of that if it's available. You mention his brother a bit later, but is he older or younger? Are there any more siblings? Anything about his parents? Any reason he was born in the UK?
Likewise, a bit more info on his wife & how they met etc. would be good. Obviously we're not looking for salacious gossip, but since you mention that he often references their relationship in his work, perhaps some more background would be nice (if available).
When did he start writing with his brother?

Musical Comedy

This section seems to come a bit suddenly. Perhaps it would be better later on, say after the section on Ready For This? (2008-2010)? Otherwise, the biography bit is broken up by this chunk on his performance style.
"His reasoning for combining the disciplines of music and comedy was revealed..." - perhaps this could be slightly reworded to avoid using the word "revealed"? I always think that word sounds a bit tabloidy. Something like He explained his reasoning for combining the disciplines of music and comedy...
"The eccentric appearance removes Minchin from reality somewhat, allowing him to make outrageous statements..." - it's not clear who says this. I think it's a bit too opinionated to come directly from Wikipedia. Eg. either he thinks it removes him from reality, or a critic thinks that.
"a fan of Richard Dawkins" - say who Dawkins is, eg. a fan of evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins
"A prime example of this is the song..." - this is unsourced and seems like original research

Early Career (1998-2007)

"Minchin struggled initially; he could not get an agent for a year and had been unable to find any acting work" - strange mix of tense in this sentence
Melbourne International Comedy Festival can be linked
"Karen Koren, the manager of the well-known Gilded Balloon" - "well-known" is not necessary here
Edinburgh Festival Fringe can be linked
"His 2006 show, "So Rock", was nominated" - So Rock should be linked here rather than in the following paragraph
""Darkside" and "So Rock", have been released as CDs." - they are not actually CDs themselves, so perhaps "Darkside" and "So Rock", have been released on CD.

Ready For This? (2008-2010)

There are several short, choppy paragraphs here. Try expanding them, or combining them into larger paragraphs.
"purchasing it from various online download retailers" - "various" is redundant here. Try to watch out for redundancies in the prose, words that don't really add anything.
This issue of the Christmas hit, is this just in the UK, or internationally?
"He did however perform a set at The Big Libel Gig..." - is this completely separate from the Ready For This? show? If so, you don't really need "however", unless the implication is that that was going to be his last live performance ever.

TV & Radio

I'm not sure you need to state how many times he's appeared on certain shows. Apart from anything else, that kind of detail will be out of date as soon as he appears there again.
"a parody of the house band for the show who are known as 4 Poofs and a Piano." - this is another example redundancy, or wordiness. I would suggest eg. a parody of the show's house band, 4 Poofs and a Piano.
Not sure that you need to mention Google Street View since out of context, it doesn't mean much
E4 can be linked
"It was broadcast for the third time on January 9, 2010.[48], and again on March 27, 2010.[49]" - something's gone wrong here with punctuation
"He is currently writing a musical sitcom for BBC Radio 2..." - could we have some timescale, that kind of statement is quickly out of date. Which brings us to...
"...scheduled to be aired on Saturday 8 May 2010" - out of date
"Tim plays the part..." - first name?

Acting & Theatre Work

"he has appeared in various stage productions" - try to avoid vague statements like this
What are TVC's? Is there a relevant link, should it be spelled out? Should it have an apostrophe?
understudy probably doesn't need a link
Was he literally understudying Judas? Or the part of Judas?
"He is currently co-writing a musical version of Roald Dahl's novel Matilda..." - again, with no date, it can quickly go out of date

References

I haven't looked in detail at these but would be happy to once some work on the rest of it has been done. At a glance, I notice that some links are dead. Also, there seems to be an over reliance on primary sources, his own website, twitter, facebook, forum posts etc. Try and rely more on reliable, secondary sources. Some work needs to be done on citation formats too, dates shouldn't be in italics, websites generally shouldn't; only titles of eg. newspapers, books, magazines...
At the Movies links to a disambiguation page

External links

There seem to be a lot of links here. Are they all necessary? Do we need an official website, youtube, twitter, myspace, fan site etc? Too many, in my opinion. Presumably most of these are accessible from his website anyway? And remember, most readers will be here to read about him, not to find his links. They have google for that.
Consider adding a persondata template.
Is he actually British by nationality? If not, I'd remove the category for British comedians.

There's quite a lot there, I know, but many of these issues are fairly minor. I can see this article being GA standard in the not-too-distant future. Let me know if you want me to have another look over it later. Hope this helps! --Beloved Freak 18:09, 7 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]