Talk:Patrick Bissell/GA1

GA Review
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Hello, I will be reviewing this article for GAC. I can't say I'm an expert in the field of ballet, but I found this article to be highly interesting. I have some suggestions for improvement that either need to be addressed or otherwise explained away before I am ready to promote this article to GA-status:


 * Per WP:LEAD, the lead section needs to be expanded in order to serve as a summary of the entire article. Give a brief summary of his early life and career as well as his notability.
 * Also in the lead, make sure to reduce the redundancy of "At the time of his death..." and "On his death at the age of 30". Similarly, I suggest merging "He died from a drug overdose" into one of these two sentences; otherwise the lead just seems morbid. :)
 * He was born... who? Remember, the lead section stands alone.  "Bissell" works fine.
 * which included two daughters Susan and Barbara, a brother Donald, and a twin brother William: Whose twin was William? Patrick's or Donald's?
 * Bissell was a gifted athlete who enjoyed performing feats of daring exemplified at the age of 8 when he jumped off a 30-foot (9.1 m)-high diving board... There needs to be some sort of transition between "daring" and "exemplified". "; this was"?
 * He began dancing at the of 10 when his sister Susan decided to develop him as her ballet partner; thus he was first paid to dance. This is awkward and somewhat confusing. Was Patrick paid to be trained as his sister's ballet partner, or am I completely misunderstanding this?  If so, who paid him?  Can more be said about this?
 * Just a suggestion, but consider splitting "Early years" into two paragraphs. There's a lot of information in here and a split might facilitate easier reading.
 * "He began training in ballet and jazz dance..." where?
 * While he showed early promise as a dancer, he also showed signs of being a troubled young man and was expelled from one school and attended several others. How exactly was he troubled? Examples?
 * He was noticed by Edward Villella... I know his name is wikilinked, but could Villella be defined a little? "celebrated dancer and choreographer" or something similar?  That would make his connection to Bissell seem much more noteworthy.
 * ...from which he was dismissed for behavior problems. Again, any examples?
 * Kirkland's autobiography Dancing on My Grave mentioned Bissell's use of cocaine. What about it? Occasional, addiction?


 * The New York Times in the citations needs to be italicized. Also, ref 8 ("David Earl as composer") is missing its publisher.
 * Most paragraphs begin "he" or "his"; I recommend a little variation here and there to dress up the prose a little.

Although the subject matter is interesting, I don't quite feel like Bissell is explained well enough as a person. Most of the article is fact 1, fact 2; he did this, he did that. But what was Bissell like, other than obviously self destructive? What kind of a person was he? Was anything about his dancing style particular or notable? Did he enjoy other styles outside of ballet? Is it known what roles he enjoyed portraying the most? Who he liked working with? I think, mainly, this is what the biography is missing. I know what happened in Bissell's short life, but I don't have a sense of him at all. Any sort of expansion in this area would improve the article immensely, but I understand completely if it's not possible to do so without reliable sources.

I'm going to put the article on hold until my concerns have been addressed. If you have any questions, or are ready for me to give another review, please contact me via my talk page. Best of luck, María ( habla con migo ) 20:32, 13 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Unfortunately, I have to fail this article's nomination at this time as it has been more than a week and I have not heard from the primary contributor. I hope that my above comments will help improve the state of the article and it will be nominated at GAC once it's ready. María ( habla  con migo ) 13:47, 24 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Will be working on corrections. Thanks for the input. --Cazo3788 (talk) 14:53, 27 August 2008 (UTC)