Talk:Thomas S. Hinde

Copyedit
Notes:
 * The piece retains a lot of "it is likely that" speculation which should be sourced (i.e., if a RS says "it is likely that") or removed.
 * Switched to Harv refs to condense the notes.
 * I left some unsourced trivia in the Draper section. It should be relocated.
 * Many of my edits were to remove redundant context. There is no reason to repeat a fact many times. E.g., "until his death in 1846."
 * Removed many redundant links. One or two per item is enough.
 * This is certainly not a start-class article...
 * Cheers. Lfstevens (talk) 22:35, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

Second Peer Review Request
This article has had a substantial overhaul in the past few months, and just received an excellent copy-edit. The article is still ranked as start class and low importance, but it seems that those classifications no longer apply. The goal is to reach FA article status, and I would be grateful for any recommendations or nominations for this article. Thank you in advance. Lawman4312 (talk) 02:39, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

Article review
Hello! Per your request for some assistance with this article, yes, I'm happy to help. Your request brought me to a moment of nostalgia, because two years ago I was feverishly working on my first article, and I was very much in the position that you are in now, and some wikipedia angels descended and greatly helped me, to the point that I was able to get that article to GA status.

I will be working on this review piecewise, as I break away to find things I need elsewhere in wikipedia. You have certainly put a lot of research and effort into the article, and all the material needed for a superior article is there. Now its just a matter of juggling things around, and then getting the right words to say what you want to say. I'd like to start with how the article looks, because after reading a lot of good and featured articles, you come to realize that they have a certain look to them. This requires not the easy job of adding material, but the sometimes agonizing job of taking material away. So let's start with pictures and captions. Your article is loaded with images, some quite appropriate to the subject and some a bit of a stretch. My initial estimate is that if you cut the number of images in half, there still may be too many. The idea is that this is an encyclopedia, full of relevant information, where a few images are supposed to enhance what is in the text, but not steal the show. For images that don't fit in the article, but you just can't let go, there is always the option to put them in a section at the end of the article (image gallery), but doing this really needs some good justification.

Also related to the images are the captions. Captions should be short and sweet. A few words is great; anything over three lines really needs to be in the text of the article. Bulky captions make images more difficult to place, and sometimes cause the images to seep into another section of the article.

The next thing is the organization of the article. As I scan this article, the lead and infobox look good. My only comment would be to take five short paragraphs and turn them into three longer paragraphs. From appearances, though, it's a great start. After that, there are a number of very short and choppy sections and subsections. These need to be consolidated into larger sections. A nice section might have three or four paragraphs, each of five to eight lines in length. I just came up with this off the top of my head, but such a section could then easily accommodate an image, and that's what you want to do. Once you have the appropriate sized section, then a single image can be given to it. When images are on the right, then they can go anywhere, but are best kept totally within the section. If they are put on the left, then it's best not to have them at the very beginning, but it's OK to do this to keep the image from slopping over into the next section, which then forces a section header to be to the right of the image, and this is considered gauche. Also, you don't want text sandwiched between two images. Images need to be staggered, left/right/left/right is best, but it's OK to have several all on one side to keep them well placed within their section.

With all this said, let's take a look at a couple of articles. You mentioned the article that I reviewed for GA, Humphrey Marshall (politician), so let's look at it. This article is done by someone who is quite excellent at this game, and it would be good to take a look at a number of his articles. I want to focus on the formatting, but beyond that, this guy is a master at prose, and his writing style is well beyond my capabilities, probably because he's been through the grueling process of pushing articles to FA status so many times.

Example 1, Humphrey Marshall (politician)
The lead of this article has three solid paragraphs. You just can't beat three! In writing, it seems to be the magic number. The infobox is loaded and attractive. First section, Early life: five paragraphs, each four to eight lines in length. No image; an image here would likely force text between the image and infobox. That detracts from the "GA/FA look." Next is Early political career; seven paragraphs. There's a lot of meat here, but only a single photo. The good amount of text allows for the photo to be placed nicely in the middle on the left. The reader gets a lot of information here, but is not overly distracted with visuals. Next paragraph, photo is at upper right--a good place for a photo in a section. Then we get to Later political career, which has subsections. Notice that, even though putting the photo on the left would have given the nice "staggered" appearance, that the author opted not to do that, because it meant a section would begin with a photo. This isn't a show-stopper, but one of those fine points of something to be avoided, if possible. Ditto for the next paragraph, where again the author opted to keep the image on the right to keep a section from beginning with a photo. Overall, an excellent article with five total images!

Before I take a break, let me mention the image captions. Notice that all are two lines long, except for the last one, but it really conveys an important story, and seems appropriate here. OK, enough for now. This is a fairly lengthy epistle, but my point here is that it is nice to have a picture in your mind of what an excellent article looks like. This can have an invaluable effect on how you construct your article as the words hit the page. I'm taking a break for now, and perhaps you can let me know if I'm being of any assistance.Sarnold17 (talk) 16:10, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

Thank you so much! Yes you are a tremendous help and I agree with your suggestions. I think I will begin by cutting some of the images and then try and determine what needs to be done to improve the overall look of the article. Lawman4312 (talk) 16:23, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

I tried to make the changes you suggested. Lawman4312 (talk) 19:02, 5 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Looks much better! I'll try to give you a little more input tomorrow morning; otherwise it'll be a few days because I'll be without internet for a spell.  Keep up the good work.Sarnold17 (talk) 02:04, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

Early years edited
There was a lot of redundant material in the original section, and some things that don't need to be there. I've done a lot of house cleaning, including the removal of unnecessary subsections. I still have these question/comments:


 * How is Kavenaugh related? "close relative" sounds better than "family member" but I don't know how close or far the relationship goes.


 * Why is the word "businessman" used for someone who is working in the legal profession? I already changed business to legal in one case; can we find a more suitable word?


 * Discussion about the children of Hinde should be moved to the "Family" section at the end of the article. This will further reduce some redundancy.  The mention of the second wife can go here or be fit in later where the chronology is better.

If these changes look good to you, I can tackle some more later.Sarnold17 (talk) 20:29, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

Yes, it looks great! The changes were very similar to what Acdixon recommended in the ongoing second peer review. If you have time please feel free to continue. Lawman4312 (talk) 18:46, 13 July 2012 (UTC)