User talk:Shortsword/sandbox/PeterSagal

Ted, the info box says Sagal is divorced but the sentence copied from After Harvard section "In 1998 they moved to the Chicago area when Peter became the host of NPR's Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! news quiz program.[3] They settled into the Oak Park suburb of Chicago[3] and have lived there ever since." Does that mean that they still both live in the same suburb post divorce HaraldW1954 (talk) 00:05, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

Ted, I am far from an expert but the amount of citations feels messy to me see an example below: Sagal has worked at several different kinds of jobs relating to theater and movies. He has worked as the literary manager for the now-defunct Los Angeles Theater Center,[2][3][8][9] a movie publicist,[8][10][9] a stage director,[8][11][9] an actor,[2][8][10][11][9] a playwright for stage and screenwriter,[2][10][12][11] an extra in a Michael Jackson video,[8][12][9] an essayist,[10][11][9] a newspaper and magazine writer,[12] a humorist,[11] and a travel writer.[13][9] Would it be better to just give all the citations that are common at the end of the paragraph and any that are quite specific within the paragraph? Also do all the citations add to the quality of the article? HaraldW1954 (talk) 01:09, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

Last one looking at the Grants list: Grants from The Jerome Foundation[8][13][14][9] The McKnight Foundation[8][13][14][9] A residency grant from the Camargo Foundation in Cassis, France[8][13][14][9] Each one has exactly the same list of citations, would it be best just to use the strongest source in this instance? Ot again just cite at the heading? HaraldW1954 (talk) 01:12, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

Harald,

Your question about do they both still live in Oak Park after the divorce. I know that Beth runs (or at least ran) a book store in Oak Park that she took over when the previous owners wanted to retire and were going to close when buyers could not be found. This news of the only bookstore in Oak Park closing spurred Beth to find the funding to make the purchase. Nothing I have found indicates that either Beth or Peter have left Oak Park after the divorce.

There are basically two kinds of lists in the article. Bullet point lists, and comma separated items in sentence form a larger paragraph. In the case of bullet points, I moved references that appeared in the list multiple times to the end of the phrase that introduces the bullet points. In the case of item separated lists, the last item usually being words saying "others" or "more", I moved the references for multiple items in the list to the end of that "others" phrase. In at least one case I added such a phrase. In another case, I did not feel justified in adding the "others clause, so I turned the list into bullet points and handled the multiple references as stated above.

In the case of the Stage, screen and more intro paragraph that you cited as being especially egregious (and I agree with that) I implemented a hybrid of these approaches. There were actually three different lists in that short paragraph, 1) stage and screen jobs, 2) journalism jobs, and book author. So, I rewrote the paragraph to reflect those three lists. In the second two I did not mess with the references which leaves a couple of dups in the journalism list. The most egregious set of references was in the stage and screen list. Previously, the intro sentence to that list was a bit inaccurate because it did not reference the journalism and author items in the following list. Now, the list that follows only has stage and screen jobs listed, and the second two lists are their own introductions. So, in the stage and screen list, the duplicate references have all been moved to the end of that now more accurate introductory sentence.

In all cases, I left any references that were unique to a single list item on that item.

All of this has resulted in the the same number of overall references in the article. However, it has drastically cut down on the number of lettered multi-references on the most used references in the references section.

And best of all, it has not only improved the readability of the article, but has also drastically improved the readability of the source.

Please have a look and see if you don't agree.

Or, if you have other issues, let me know about those too.

And, thank you much for your help. You have really contributed to the improvement of this rewritten article.

Shortsword (talk) 00:08, 6 February 2017 (UTC)