Wikipedia:Peer review/Death and state funeral of Ronald Reagan/archive2

Death and state funeral of Ronald Reagan
A detailed article written almost single-handedly by SNIyer12 and backed up by detailed references. There are several smaller issues that still need to be fixed. Input from the community would be helpful in order to resolve the bigger questions of scope and style that have been raised on the article's talk page. --MarkSweep 02:38, 16 May 2005 (UTC)


 * Detailed is an understatement. :) As is the article is longer than most people have the time or interest level to read. Splitting off the detail between two or more daughter articles and leaving a more compact treatment here will improve readability and give readers the option of zooming to a more detailed treatment of the subject if they are so moved. Also, some sections are very image heavy and the text is squeezed together, esp at the lower resolutions most Internet users surf at (us geeks have much higher resolutions than the average net user). A lead section is also needed as well as a reduction in the size of the TOC (but that will happen anyway once daughter articles are created). ---mav 00:28, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, good points. I agree about the lead section and the number of images. We don't want to make this difficult for dial-up users. Regarding splitting, what would you recommend? Separate articles for each day? Wouldn't those be prime candidates to be put up on VfD, with the likely outcome being to merge them back into the main article? --MarkSweep 03:25, 18 May 2005 (UTC)


 * I concur that daughter articles would not be the right course of action. Indeed the best route, in my honest opinion, would be to go through the article with a fine tooth comb and eliminate anything that doesn't really contribute to the main narrative. On the topic of images, there are quite a few unnecessary images, plus (and I only checked a sample), they all appear to be fair use. This issue was raised in the recent nomination to FAC of the article on Pope John Paul II's funeral, so you should be aware that there a quite a few objections to the use of fair use images. Of course, I couldn't tell you where else to find good images of the funeral unless you know someone who took photos and would be willing to place them on Creative Commons. Ganymead 05:20, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

About the images, there is still a sizable subset of PD images, from the White House or the US Army. Perhaps a good way to start would be to remove the bulk of the fair use images. --MarkSweep 07:53, 18 May 2005 (UTC)


 * So far this article is an exhaustively detailed timeline. Some method other than a strict timeline should be used to organize this article (example: events leading to death, death, domestic reaction, sections for each ceremony, including preparation, etc). A separate 'timeline of ...' article can keep the events in order and the new organization will give ideas as to which sections could be spun into their own articles so this article can have a more on-topic summary of events (70 KB is just way too much text to go through). --mav 12:05, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

That might work; it would require some pretty radical refactoring. I think it's best to keep the number of spin-offs small. Ideally, this should be split into two, at most three, pages. I don't yet see how a thematic, as opposed to chronological, organization will accomplish that, but I guess this will have to be done by trial and error anyway. --MarkSweep 06:50, 19 May 2005 (UTC)


 * MarkSweep, I do agree with you. I tried to keep it chronological as possible. You might also want to see the article, Death and state funeral of Pierre Trudeau. That too, I tried to keep chronological as much as possible. I used that article as the model for this. As for the photos, it should be consistent with the timeline. User:SNIyer12

The Trudeau article appears much more concise. Do you think it's possible to condense the Reagan article down to a more manageable length, or should it be split? And if the latter, do you see a natural way of doing it? --MarkSweep 00:22, 20 May 2005 (UTC)


 * I think it is possible to condense it to a more manageable length. I just started to delete some of the images. I used the Trudeau article as a guide User:SNIyer12 00:26, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
 * I also just started to condense the article down to a more manageable length, using the Trudeau article as a guide. There's nothing about the criticism there, so I think there shouldn't be here. MarkSweep, I'm very sorry that I have to remove it, it is part of condensing it.--User:SNIyer12

Fair enough, but I wish the Dan Rather quote could be kept, since it's high on the notability scale. It's rare enough that a TV news personality publicly criticizes TV news coverage. --MarkSweep 01:20, 20 May 2005 (UTC)


 * I'm very sorry that I deleted the Dan Rather quote. However, I had to condense the article. I removed the footnotes and put the links to where it belongs. It at leasts condenses the article.--User:SNIyer12 01:58, 20 May 2005 (UTC)

A chronological organization is still not going to fly for FAC. Who goes to an article on this type of topic wondering what happened on June 6th? No, they go to an article about this type of topic looking for thematic info; what happened at the state funeral, for example. The organization I suggested is still semi-chronological, so the amount of refactoring should not be too great. And again, once that is done we can better get an idea of where to spin off detail and summarize. Simply removing detail from the current article is not the best course of action; others will just read the detail later if we do not move it to daughter articles. --mav 13:14, 20 May 2005 (UTC)


 * Agree with everyone about chronological order issue. Refactor this, if at all possible. I'd like to request a references section and if you could use Template:Ref and Template:Note, that would be really good :-) Ta bu shi da yu 19:10, 21 May 2005 (UTC)
 * A references section using Template:Ref/Template:Note used to be there but got taken out again recently. This will have to be reverted. --MarkSweep 20:41, 21 May 2005 (UTC)
 * OK, MarkSweep, you can revert it. Sorry that I took it out.--SNIyer12

Update
Woohookitty just finished a major reorganization of the article, which addresses many of the concerns raised by commentators above: the number of fair-use images is down, the article has been structured around topics (as opposed to day-by-day events), and it has been made much more concise. I like the changes and think the end result is much more useful as an encyclopedia article. Any feedback or further suggestions? --MarkSweep 04:32, 30 May 2005 (UTC)


 * I think this looks much better than previous renditions, however it is still a little on the long side though that may be unavoidable Jtkiefer 04:39, May 30, 2005 (UTC)


 * Wow - much, much better. But if you want to put this through FAC, then a much longer lead section is needed (3 good-sized paras given this article's size) to properly summarize the whole article. Another thing is that the TOC is overwhelming. Finding larger themes to organize under and trimming the number of sub-sections would help that. An image or two placed in the white space next to the TOC would also be nice. --mav 17:36, 30 May 2005 (UTC)

Good point. I merged a few sections, removed some smaller subsections, and placed an image next to the TOC. The lead section needs futher expansion. --MarkSweep 03:07, 31 May 2005 (UTC)


 * I'll have to postpone working on the lead section for a few more days. Aside from the intro, are there any other things on the to-do list? --MarkSweep 03:44, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I've had a go at copyediting several sections, it still needs more to improve the flow. --nixie 05:25, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I've expanded the lead section a wee bit and the article is still undergoing periodic changes. Shall we close the peer review for now and wait for the editing to settle down before moving on to the FAC stage? --MarkSweep 13:04, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)