Wikipedia:Peer review/Debtors Anonymous/archive1

Debtors Anonymous
This peer review discussion has been closed. I would like to get this article to GA or FA status.

Thanks, Scarpy (talk) 09:33, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

Finetooth comments: This is a good start but not yet ready for GAN. It suffers from heavy use of the pronoun "one", which is a third-person substitute for the first-person pronoun, "I". Each of the many sentences using "one" in this way will need to be rewritten to meet Manual of Style guidelines. WP:MOS has details. In addition, you'll need to combine or expand the many extremely short sections in the article and to add at least a few more specific examples and more statistics if you can find reliable sources. Another problem is that the article is a bit too U.S.-centric as it stands and therefore not broad enough in coverage for GA. Here are a few other suggestions:

General
 * If I were working on the article, I think about including specific examples to illustrate the abstractions. Even though the members are anonymous, it would probably be possible to find illustrative stories or examples of some of the categories of behavior. I would not go overboard with this, but I'd try to use examples that were illustrative and engaging.
 * I'd try to work in more examples of DA activities in other countries. The current article is heavily U.S.-centric. You mention seven countries. Why only seven? How many countries have AA programs? Is AA more widespread than DA? If so, why?
 * Has anyone published success rates for DA? If so, how are they measured?
 * Any chance of more images? How about a photo of a DA meeting place?

Lead
 * "Debtors Anonymous (DA) is a twelve-step program active in seven countries worldwide, facilitating over 500 weekly meetings, for people with a desire to stop incurring unsecured debt." - Not quite grammatical and a bit wordy. A more punchy opening might be "Debtors Anonymous (DA) is a twelve-step program for people who want to stop incurring unsecured debt. Collectively they attend more than 500 weekly meetings in seven countries."
 * "DA encourages careful record keeping and monitoring of one's finances–including recording all purchases, income, and debt payments–to get a clear picture of one's spending habits. " - Wikipedia articles avoid using the pronoun "one" except in direct quotations. Instead, it's best to recast the sentences in which this kind of "one" appears. This sentence is easy to fix as follows: "DA encourages careful record keeping and monitoring of finances&mdash;including purchases, income, and debt payments&mdash;to get a clear picture of spending habits." Ditto for any similar uses of "one" in the article. A large number of sentences in this article use "one" in this way and will need to be re-written.
 * "Although many DA members only partially accept the ideology of the organization." - This is not a complete sentence.

Membership
 * "If one spends money to one's detriment, one... " - Another batch of "one" pronouns. I will stop pointing these out, but I see lots more elsewhere in the article.

Concepts
 * The Manual of Style advises against extremely short sections and subsections. I would suggest combining some of these to reduce the number of tiny sections. This guideline also applies to the rest of the article.

Help-seeking Other
 * "The third kind, tailored acceptance reflects more of an investment in a personal identity rather than a social identity, replacing a group-derived label with a more personalized one." - It's not clear from this explanation whether "tailored acceptance" involves self-awareness or profound self-awareness.
 * The dab-checker in the toolbox at the top of this review page finds two dabs.
 * Pairs of unspaced en dashes used in place of parentheses should be replaced by pairs of unspaced em dashes.
 * Generally, numbers larger than nine are written as digits in Wikipedia articles, although there are a fair number of exceptions. You might might make a case for using "twelve-step program" if that is how it is usually written, but something like "thirty eight stories written by DA members explaining how DA has affected their lives. This should be "38". Ditto for other large numbers in the article. WP:ORDINAL has details.

I hope these suggestions prove helpful. If so, please consider reviewing another article, especially one from the PR backlog at WP:PR. That is where I found this one. Finetooth (talk) 20:18, 11 June 2010 (UTC)


 * I have been able to implement many of these suggestions. But I am having problems re-phrasing to not use "one" in many cases. Should I never use "one" or it is just overused in this article?
 * Never use it as a pronoun. Something like "one fish" is fine but not something like "One must try to get it right". Finetooth (talk) 17:38, 16 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Often I'll use singular they in that context, sometimes I'll use "he or she." Are those bad as well? Should I try to avoid pronouns altogether? -- Scarpy (talk) 20:06, 20 June 2010 (UTC)


 * I understand the need for examples. I also recognize the article is already over the 40k limit. Do you have suggestions to reconcile the two? -- Scarpy (talk)


 * I'm unaware of any 40k limit. FAs sometimes run to 100k. I don't believe there is any strict quantitative limit, but reader fatigue sets in as articles approach 100k, and extremely long articles sometimes cause software problems. You can expand without concern unless you more than double the size of the existing article. Finetooth (talk) 17:38, 16 June 2010 (UTC)


 * It's mentioned in SIZERULE. Looking at the guidelines again now, "limit" may be the wrong word to use. The guidelines mention that the likelihood an article should be split goes up with it's size. -- Scarpy (talk) 20:06, 20 June 2010 (UTC)