Wikipedia:Peer review/Aramoana massacre/archive1

Aramoana massacre
This peer review discussion has been closed. I've listed this article for peer review because I think it may meet WP:GA?, and could be promoted as a result.

Thanks, Adabow  ( talk )  10:03, 30 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Quick comment: You should expand the lead (see WP:LEAD) to meet the GA criteria. A good rule of thumb is to touch on every section of the article. I'd say the lead should be at least two meaty paragraphs. Mm40 (talk) 12:58, 4 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Some more quick comments: You should identify people by both first and last names.  On a quick reading, I got lost figuring out who "Helen" is.  "Crib" in the caption and the text should be explained to non-Kiwis.  "Alight" meaning "caught fire" might also be a Kiwi-ism. I don't think Kiwi is banned on Wikipedia, but the article should be clear on first reading to both standard US English speakers, and standard Pom speakers. The "Significance" section should probably be merged with the following section "Aftermath" making for 1 long section, rather than 2 very short sections.  The music section is very close to trivia (this is a personal call, of course).  The footnoting is eratic - some sections are perhaps too heavily footnoted, others hardly at all.  I found the sentence "His father died in 1978,[19][23] and his mother died in 1985.[24] His sister said her death deeply affected him, and this prompted him to move from Port Chalmers to the Gray family holiday home in Aramoana.[20][25]" a bit hard to work through - whose sister, whose death?  I hope this doesn't seem too picky - if I had a longer time some of these would probably disappear.  Smallbones (talk) 01:39, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Brianboulton comments: I believe the article needs a lot of work to bring it towards GA standard. I have not carried out a line-by-line study of the text, but here are some issues requiring attention.
 * Lead: per comments above, the lead should be expanded into a summary of the whole article. Everything of significance in the main text should be touched on in the lead. Conversely, everything in the lead should be expanded in the text. The material presently cited in the lead would be better cited where it occurs in the text.
 * Prose
 * In general the prose is clear and graphic, though there is some clumsy phrasing, as pointed out above. Also there is too much use of short, single-sentence paragraphs. These should be merged to give a better prose flow and to reduce the staccato effect
 * Style is a little journalistic at times, for example referring to the massacre as "Gray's spree", the already noted references to "Helen", etc
 * There are inconsistencies in the narrative; for example in the lead we are told that Gray was "shot dead" by the police, whereas the text records that he was severely wounded and died later in hospital. Also, there are problems with "Gray shouted, "Don't shoot!", leading Guthrie to believe he was surrendering." Since you report that Guthrie was then killed instantaneously, we cannot say with certainty what he believed.
 * Structure: Too many short sections. The "Causes" section (if you can find sources to support this conent) could be merged into the section on Gray. The information on books and films might be included in the "Aftermath" section. The music information is pure trivia and should be deleted altogether.
 * Referencing: Very uneven, with some paragraphs (including the entire "Causes" section) without any citations, while some sentences are cluttered with multiple citations of simple facts. I have removed the "unreferenced" banner from January 2009, as this seems unwarranted, but more attention needs to be paid to referencing throughout the article.
 * Images:
 * Infobox image is so dark as to be uninformative, and is not helped by the vagueness of the image caption
 * Gray image: The licensing information appears to relate to the image's use in a differently named article. Curioualy, the rationale refers to Gray as "one of the perperators".
 * Both images are lacking alt text. See WP:ALT for information.
 * Link to Dunedin Cemeteries (refs 23 & 24) is dead.
 * MOS violations: I saw at least one use of a hyphen rather than a spaced en-dash; there could easily be more such things lurking. Needs an MOS audit.

Please note that I am not watching peer reviews at the moment, so if you need to contact me about this review please use my talkpage. Brianboulton (talk) 12:41, 6 February 2010 (UTC)