Talk:National Football League/GA2

GA Review
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Reviewer: Khazar2 (talk · contribs) 17:43, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

I'll be glad to take this review. Initial comments to follow in the next 1-3 days. Thanks in advance for your work on this one! -- Khazar2 (talk) 17:43, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

Initial comments
Let me start off by saying how much I appreciate your taking on this core article--too many WikiProjects, and Wikipedians, neglect them IMHO. Here are some comments on the opening paragraphs only--I have to run now, but hope to continue this evening. Let me know your thoughts on these if you get a chance. Looking forward to working with you -- Khazar2 (talk) 19:54, 20 June 2013 (UTC)


 * The lead needs slight expansion; ideally, it should touch on every section of the article, including the draft and corporate governance, even if these each only get a sentence. The various numbers of championships may be a little overdetailed for the lead (at least naming the 2nd and 3rd place teams in different categories), but I don't see that as a GA-level issue; I'm just saying that if you want to cut, cut there.
 * "The current champions are the Baltimore Ravens," -- normally WP:REALTIME would discourage a phrasing like "current", but it's hard to believe anyone will forget to update this after the Super Bowl. So I don't see it as a make-or-break issue for GA, but is there any way this can have a year instead -- "the 2012 champions"?
 * ""raise the standard of professional football in every way possible, to eliminate bidding for players between rival clubs and to secure cooperation in the formation of schedules" -- quotation should be followed by an inline citation at the end of the sentence (even if it means repeating a cite)
 * "On August 20, 1920, a meeting was held " -- can this very long paragraph be broken up into two or even three? Long paragraphs are an issue per WP:LAYOUT (criterion 1b)
 * " winning-loss record" seems odd to me. Would "win-loss record" be better here? -- Khazar2 (talk) 19:54, 20 June 2013 (UTC)
 * First off, I want to thank you for a speedy beginning to the review. I've taken all of these suggestions and applied them; I've modified the lede slightly to fit the first suggestion, so it may be a good idea to look over it again. Aside from that, I appreciate any and all notes of potential issues beyond the GA level; I do intend to bring this up to featured article status at some point (although I have at least one other article I want to get through first), so that sort of advice is certainly welcome. Anyway, I look forward to the rest of this review.  Toa   Nidhiki05  00:04, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Great! Your fixes look good so far. -- Khazar2 (talk) 01:54, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

More I made it to the end of "draft"; this continues to look strong. Suggestions, some of them very optional, below. -- Khazar2 (talk) 01:54, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
 * "Corporate structure" should probably be divided into 2-3 paragraphs.
 * Divided into three at the moment.  Toa   Nidhiki05  14:43, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
 * "principal executive officer" ... "conduct detrimental to the welfare of the League or professional football" -- quotations should have a citation at the end of the sentence
 * Citations have been added.  Toa   Nidhiki05  14:43, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Not a GA issue, but WP:ANDOR discourages use of "and/or"
 * I've removed the 'or' from 'and/or'. That is the only use of 'and/or' in the article, so there should not be any more of those now.  Toa   Nidhiki05  14:43, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
 * "cancellation or forfeiture" -- quotation should have citation at the end of the sentence
 * Done.  Toa   Nidhiki05  14:43, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
 * I think generally titles like "Commissioner" are only capitalized when they precede a name. (e.g. ) In sentences like "the Commissioner can offer recommendations", it should probably be written lower-case
 * Alright, that makes sense; I've done it. If other people dislike this change, it could easily be reversed.  Toa   Nidhiki05  14:43, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
 * "games are run on Sundays" -- would "played" be a better word here than "run"? Football's not really my sport, btw, so I may just not be familiar with this one. Also, please feel free to revert any edits I make directly with which you disagree.
 * I've changed it to 'played; I must have confused this with 'running' the season as a whole.  Toa   Nidhiki05  14:43, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Both paragraphs in "Regular season" could potentially be split. I'm a fan of paragraphs of 3-6 sentences, but this one's up to you.
 * I've divided it into four paragraps.  Toa   Nidhiki05  14:43, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
 * "per a rotating four-year cycle" may be redundant. How about "on a four-year rotation?"
 * I'm not sure if that was directly copied from the NFL scheduling rules or not, so I had fixed it.  Toa   Nidhiki05  14:43, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
 * "with the 3 seed" -- feel free to correct me on this, but I feel like this is normally either "the third seed" or "the No. 3 seed".
 * You are correct there; I have fixed the issue.  Toa   Nidhiki05  14:43, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
 * It's not an issue for GA, but you'll want to add more citations to the discussion of playoff seeding before an FA nomination.
 * Yeah, I'll see if I can find something on that; to my knowledge FANs are pretty strict on having citations for pretty much everything.  Toa   Nidhiki05  14:43, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
 * "In the United States, the National Football League has television contracts" -- could be broken into 2-3 paragraphs
 * The section has been split into three paragraphs now.  Toa   Nidhiki05  14:43, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
 * "the most recent Super Bowl" -- I feel like this is another borderline call for for WP:REALTIME. Again, this seems like it will be quickly revised after next year's Super Bowl, but technically that MOS guideline discourages this language. Your call.
 * I've reworded it slightly to mitigate that. It is worth noting it is the most recent, but I have done so in a way where it should be pretty obvious, without violating WP:REALTIME.  Toa   Nidhiki05  14:43, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
 * " while playoff teams are ranked the same way but are done so by the round of the playoffs they got to" -- this seems very awkward. How about "while playoff teams are ranked by the round of the playoffs they reached"? Or is there a rule nuance I'm missing?
 * Well, the rule is basically that teams are ranked by overall record, but tere are several groups teams are split into - teams that didn't make the playoffs, and teams that made the playoffs. All non-playoff teams are ranked higher than any playoff team, regardless of record. Similarly, playoff teams are grouped by the round they made it to - so all teams that failed to advance past the first round will be ranked higher than those that advanced to further rounds, and so on. I've tried to word it a bit better, so you should check that and see what you think. There is certainly room for improvement here.  Toa   Nidhiki05  14:43, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
 * I feel like the "Draft" and "Free agency" sections should be next to each other in this article's outline, since both deal with player contract status--what do you think? -- Khazar2 (talk) 01:54, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
 * That's an excellent suggestion; I have applied it.  Toa   Nidhiki05  14:43, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
 * "has the exclusive right to operate to host" -- "to operate" could probably be cut here, seems like excess verbiage
 * I must have forgotten to remove that; it has been removed now.  Toa   Nidhiki05  14:43, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
 * "The Cowboys are also the most valuable sports franchise in the United States and are tied with the New York Yankees for the third-most valuable sports team in the world" -- If the Cowboys and Yankees are equally valuable, shouldn't they be tied in both categories?
 * Fixed to note that.  Toa   Nidhiki05  14:43, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
 * " All 32 NFL teams rank among the top 50 most valuable sports teams in the world" -- this isn't a GA action point--I just wanted to say as an aside that I was astonished by this statistic.
 * Yeah, that is a very big accomplishment, especially for a league that only operates a small number of games, has no international teams, and relatively little international visibility. I think it boils down to the NFL having a fairly decent amount of parity among teams and fan interest in the game of football as a whole.  Toa   Nidhiki05  14:43, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
 * "Jacksonville Jaguars - Best Team in the NFL" -- is this just POV vandalism? Or is that their nickname? Removing for now.
 * That's vandalism; not sure how I failed to catch that. The Jaguars have actually been fairly terrible for the last few years, so it isn't their nickname. :)  Toa   Nidhiki05  14:43, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
 * "Free agents in the National Football League ..." -- divided this into 2 paragraphs if that's okay with you.
 * That's fine, don't see an issue there.  Toa   Nidhiki05  14:43, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
 * USD is used inconsistently in the article--sometimes followed by the dollar symbol, sometimes not. I'm actually not 100% sure which is correct, but this should be fixed one way or the other.
 * I'm not sure what the format is either; I don't edit too much on articles relating to money, but I stuck the USD in there to distinguish from international dollars (like the Canadian and Australian dollar). I am not sure if USD is supposed to be used every time, or just once, but I have added the dollar sign to each usage.  Toa   Nidhiki05  14:43, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Found the guideline on this at WP:$, tweaked accordingly. -- Khazar2 (talk) 14:50, 21 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Image captions and tags both look fine. -- Khazar2 (talk) 13:16, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
 * I believe I had responded to all of these concerns now.  Toa   Nidhiki05  14:43, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Checklist
Ok, this looks solid and ripe for promotion to me, despite the quibbly points above. Since this is an unusually high-profile article with a diffuse scope, however, I want to briefly check in with WikiProject NFL to see if we can get further comment. I'll also see if I can find how a few other reference works summarize the NFL for comparison just to make sure we're not overlooking a "main aspect". Thanks again for your work here! -- Khazar2 (talk) 13:16, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Seems fine to me - this is a very important article, so it should be important all aspects are covered. I primarily utilized internet and magazine/newspaper articles in researching this, so any information from reference works would be much appreciated.  Toa   Nidhiki05  14:43, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
 * I'm going to leave this open for 5-7 days, then, to see if we can attract any further comment. But I feel this is essentially ready to pass.
 * Two minor points in the Encyclopedia Britannica article that seem worth including in ours: the first NFL president was Jim Thorpe, and only two of the original NFL teams remain franchises today. (There's also a list of the original NFL teams that might worth a mention.)
 * Good points there. I would mention all the original teams, but that seems a bit excessive given only 2 still exists and there are still minor disputes among sources as to just how many teams played in the NFL in 1920.  Toa   Nidhiki05  18:40, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
 * This source has some interesting discussion of Pete Rozelle's role in NFL's media dominance . This, too, seems worth a sentence or two. The final paragraph about NFL criminal activity is interesting, but probably doesn't need a mention in the article yet.
 * Great source. I've added it, since that gives a good overview of post-1960s NFL expansion. If I can find some information of Paul Tagliabue's tenure as Commissioner, that would serve as a good end to the history section for now.  Toa   Nidhiki05  18:40, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
 * This could act as a source for the end of NFL's segregation, which seems worth 1-3 sentences. -- Khazar2 (talk) 15:06, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Good idea on that front as well; I have added it to the article.  Toa   Nidhiki05  18:40, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the fast responses. Your additions look good, and I believe this covers the main aspects based on those comparisons. Given the scope of this topic, I'll leave this open until 6/27 to see if we can attract further comment. Ping me the day after if I forget to return and close this. -- Khazar2 (talk) 16:00, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

Outside comment
I'm creating a space here for any outside comments (i.e., not me or the nominator). -- Khazar2 (talk) 13:21, 21 June 2013 (UTC)