Wikipedia:Peer review/Frédéric Chopin/archive1

Frédéric Chopin
This peer review discussion has been closed. This is a level 3 vital article which deserves to be developed to at least GA status. However as can be seen from the talk page there is a lot of debate as to how much detail should be gone into over various aspects, and also concern that there is need for much better coverage of the music. Also there are problems about quality of some of the citations (Polish, out of date, etc.). I'm proposing a peer review at this stage to try to get some consensus from experienced editors as to what should be concentrated on, what could (or should) be ditched, and so on, so that we can prioritise what aspects of the article should be developed, and in what ways they should be developed. Thanks, Smerus (talk) 15:30, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

Random thoughts
I have no Chopin expertise at all, but for what it's worth:


 * I think the lead is too long; it mistakenly tries to be a whole article on its own. Better just to give the basics and tantalize the reader into reading onward.
 * For the up-front image, I'd rather put a detail of one of the two oil portraits -- they aptly capture Chopin as an artist. The photo from 1849 (the year he died) doesn't do him justice -- it renders him as a suffering patient, not a genius.
 * Three nice chapters about Chopin in Charles Rosen's The Romantic Generation, useful for (further) mining about the music.

Opus33 (talk) 21:47, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

Comments from Brianboulton
As with the above, these comments are necessarily brief. I have worked on a number of composer articles to get them to featured standard, so I tend to have a somewhat FA-oriented approach. However, you say you want to get the article at least to GA standard, so perhaps my thoughts will be of some use:
 * Not being a Chopin expert I can't really comment on the choice of sources except in a general way. I think that in a general encyclopedia article (rather than an analysis for a music magazine) it is preferable to draw, in the main, from the numerous high-quality sources on the composer. Polish and other foreign languages shoud be used where it is particularly appropriate, but they should be the exception rather than the rule.
 * Another issue affecting sources is that there are about half a dozen "citation needed" tags dotted through the articles which need to be attended to. That's the tip of the iceberg; there are  many other uncited statements, often at the ends of paragraphs.
 * On the lead, I don't think it is necessarily too long, nor that it should be cut as a means of tantalizing  readers into reading more. In fact we are specifically told in WP:LEAD not to do this: "the lead should not "tease" the reader by hinting at content that follows". The lead should be a brief broad-brush overview of the   article in its entirety. Whether it fulfils this requirement at present I don't know;  it is often advisable to finalise the lead  when the main text is complete.
 * I would also say, with due respect to Opus, above, that I very much favour retention of the 1849 photograph. When I first saw this a good few years ago, I found it very affecting; here was a real man, a suffering person rather than an idealised portrait. Please keep it; if it is not thought suitable for the lead (I personally think it is), then use it lower down.
 * On the specific matter that you raise concerning the "Music" section, a key point to remember is that this article is aimed at the general rather than the specialist reader. The approach in the music section needs to be broad, explaining the kinds of music Chopin wrote, how his style developed, who influenced him, how he is generally categorised and how he influenced his successors. These sections can be very hard to write; it's best, I find, to keep the language descriptive rather than analytical, we don't require the sort of  treatment one would find in a specialist music magazine.
 * There are a number of prose issues to be sorted out, (e.g. the overuse of very short, single-sentence paragraphs) but these and similar minor matters can await a final copyedit some way down the line. I've only read small excerpts of the article, but I don't think that the general standard of prose is a problem.

I'm interested enough to keep an eye on this article and see how it develops. Brianboulton (talk) 23:17, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

So far
I am very grateful for these two sets of comments. Where Brian disagrees with Opus, I incline to Brian. But I await further editors' comments (hopefully) before reverting to the article itself. In particular I would be glad to have views on the 'bits and pieces' which maybe regarded (e.g. by me) as clutter - lists of things named after Chopin, or the biblical inscription on a plaque erected over his urn thirty years after his death, etc. (see article talk page).--Smerus (talk) 08:10, 16 December 2013 (UTC)


 * A few housekeeping comments:


 *  Please  do not use level 2 or level 3 subheadings to subdivide comments on this review page – they mess up the WP:PR page. Level 4 headings are fine.
 * Oddly, there is no link to this review on the Chopin talk page, so the review must have been opened by some short-cut process, I know not how. This is somewhat inconvenient; people will be unaware of the peer review. Unfortunately I don't know how to create the talkpage link.
 * Discussion of the article is being fragmented between this review and ongoing threads on the talkpage. It would be better if all the discussion was in one place, and I would have thought the peer review was the most appropriate forum. Brianboulton (talk) 15:15, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

Peer review header link on talk page
I have seen to this and added a section to invite editors to contribute here.--Smerus (talk) 20:44, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

Hearts and epitaphs
If Wikipedia's "Percy Bysshe Shelley" article very appropriately mentions the Latin epitaph on Shelley's Rome grave — "Cor Cordium" ("Heart of Hearts") — then why not, in the "Chopin" article, mention the equally apposite, originally likewise Latin, epitaph (borrowed from Matthew VI:21 ) on the Warsaw last resting place of Chopin's heart: "For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also"? Nihil novi (talk) 04:40, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

to GA
I've taken into account (I hope responsibly) all the comments here. I beleive the article is now at or close to GA standard so have nominated it for GA. Thanks to all.--Smerus (talk) 13:04, 5 January 2014 (UTC)