Wikipedia:Peer review/Dayton, Ohio/archive2

Dayton, Ohio
This peer review discussion has been closed. I've listed this article for peer review because I am interested on what (if any) improvements are needed so that I can suggest it as a featured article. The article was reviewed in 2006, but many improvements have been made since.
 * Previous peer review

Thanks, Texas141 (talk) 20:09, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Finetooth comments: This is a good start but needs a lot more work to reach GA. It's a good idea to have FA in mind as a goal, but I'd suggest working first toward GA. Here are a few suggestions for improvement.

Lead
 * MOS:INTRO says in part, "The lead section should briefly summarize the most important points covered in an article in such a way that it can stand on its own as a concise version of the article." A good rule of thumb is to include at least a mention of each of the main text sections in the lead. The existing lead says nothing about climate, suburbs, political structure, urban design, culture, sports, media, and so on.

Lists
 * The Manual of Style generally favors plain prose to lists. WP:MOS has details. Some of the lists like the list of highways could be converted to straight prose. Others like the long list of radio stations could be shortened to prose by discussing only the most notable. See, for example, how Seattle, a featured article, handles the radio stations. The same is true of the school lists. WP:USCITY says in part, "It's very easy to make ... a list of radio/TV stations, movies, TV shows, etc. This should be avoided, instead constructing the information as prose."

General
 * WP:USCITY has many other suggestions about how to write excellent articles about U.S. cities. For example, it suggests putting the notable residents near the bottom rather than high up in the article.


 * It's often useful to look at FA articles to see how other editors have handled similar material. You can find a link to the FA city articles via WP:CITIES.


 * Generally, it's better to write in full paragraphs rather than to create one- or two-sentence paragraphs. Developed sections are also preferred to many extremely short sections. The existing article has many orphan paragraphs and tiny subsections. Two solutions are possible: expand or merge.


 * A good rule of thumb for verifiability is to source every paragraph, every set of statistics, every claim that might reasonably be questioned, and every direct quote. Quite a few paragraphs in the article are unsourced even though they include information that is not common knowledge.


 * Most of the citations are incomplete. A good rule of thumb for Internet citations is to include the author, title, publisher, date of publication, url, and access date, if all of these can be found. These can entered by hand or by using templates such as those found at WP:CIT.

Images
 * The lead image has a license problem. The image description claims that the image is in the public domain. The link provided in that description goes to a convention and visitor bureau's web site but not to the original image. However, the legal information posted at that web site says, "The Dayton CVB Web site, its design, all text, graphics, and content are the property of Dayton/Montgomery Conventions & Visitors Bureau and its affiliates. None of the content found on this site may be reproduced, republished, distributed, displayed, sold or modified without the express written permission of Dayton CVB." That would not seem to support the public-domain claim.


 * Images now require alt text to survive FAC. Alt text describes the content of images for readers who can't see the images. WP:ALT explains how to write alt text and where to put it. You might not need it for GA, but I'd suggest adding anyway with these readers in mind.

I hope these suggestions prove helpful. Finetooth (talk) 19:05, 23 September 2009 (UTC)