Wikipedia:Peer review/Joseph Smith, Jr./archive2

Joseph Smith, Jr.
This peer review discussion has been closed. I've listed this article for peer review in preparation of anticipated good article status in the near future. Editors can be particularly touchy regarding this article; followers of Smith often see the article as too critical and negative, while critics complain of the opposite. I'm hoping for some valuable outside opinion on the neutrality of the article and the weight given to each subtopic in the prose.
 * Previous peer review

Thanks. ...comments? ~B F izz 18:28, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

"Note: Peer review is backlogged at the moment, which could mean delays of up to two weeks before articles can be reviewed. You can help, by choosing one of the articles in the backlog, and reviewing it. Please consider doing this."

Finetooth comment: It'll take stamina to review this one since it's 162kb long and has more than 400 citations. To begin, I'd like to mention that the tools in the toolbox at the top of this review page find problems in three areas: (1) four dead links in the citations; (2) seven links that go to disambiguation pages instead of their intended targets, and (3) many images lacking alt text, meant for readers who can't see the images. WP:ALT has details about alt text. Finetooth (talk) 19:06, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Finetooth comments: This was a highly enjoyable read for me despite my earlier concern about the length. It's professionally written and appears to be comprehensive, neutral, stable, verifiable, and well-illustrated. Its unusual length turns out to be related to its unusual number of notes, some of which are fairly extensive. I think this article is not far from being ready for FAC. Here are some suggestions:


 * The notes are interesting, but they are apt to be ignored by readers who won't see any difference in the main text between an ordinary ref number and one that leads to an interesting note. Making the distinction is especially important, it seems to me, in an article with so many interesting notes. You might try using the notes system found in Voyage of the Karluk. This system creates a clear visual distinction in the main text itself between a note and a reference without a note. If you adopt this system, you can rename your current "Reference" section something else, such as "Sources", "Bibliography", or "Works cited".

Early years (1805–1827)
 * "By July 1820, the family obtained a mortgage for a 100-acre farm in the nearby town of Manchester... " - Sizes given in imperial units should also be converted to metric units. I like to use the convert template for these; e.g., 100 acre. The "adj = on" adds the hyphen.
 * "in 1826, he was tried in Chenango County, New York for the crime of pretending to find lost treasure" - Comma after "New York". Ditto for other similar constructions.
 * "Although by then, Smith had left his treasure hunting company... ". - Remove comma after "then" and had a hyphen to "treasure-hunting"?

Founding a church (1827–30)
 * "The translation, known as the Book of Mormon, was published in Palmyra on March 26, 1830 by printer E. B. Grandin" - Comma needed after 1830. Ditto for similar constructions.

Life in Missouri
 * "Rigdon's July 4 oration produced a flood of anti-Mormon rhetoric in Missouri newspapers and stump speeches  during the political campaign leading up to the 6 August 1838 Missouri elections." - Should be August 6, 1838, for consistency.
 * "which quickly escalated as non-Mormon vigilantes raided and burned Mormon farms[181].: - Punctuation should come before the reference, not after.
 * "Smith and his companions tried to escape at least twice during their four-month imprisonment,[204] but on April 6, 1839, on their way to a different jail after their grand jury hearing, they succeeded by bribing the sheriff.[205]" - I would merge this orphan paragraph with the one above it.

Cosmology and theology
 * File:Joseph Smith first vision stained glass.jpg displaces a subhead; it should be moved either to the right or down so that it no longer bumps the head or the "See also" line of text.

Race, government, and public policy
 * The paragraph beginning "Smith strongly favored U.S. constitutional rights" needs a source.

Religious denominations
 * "who led his faction to the Utah Territory and incorporated The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, now with over 13 million members" - "Now" is ambiguous. It's generally better to use a specific phrase such as "as of 2010" or "with more than 13 million members at the start of the 21st century".
 * "and formed what is now known as the Community of Christ, which now has about 250,000 members. As of 2010[update], adherents of the denominations originating from Joseph Smith's teachings number approximately 14 million" - Sources for these stats?

Family and descendants
 * "When the twins died, the Smiths adopted another set of twins[398] whose mother had just died in childbirth (Joseph, who died of measles in 1832, and Julia)." - Slightly misplaced modifier. Suggestion: "When the twins died, the Smiths adopted another set of twins (Joseph, who died of measles in 1832, and Julia) whose mother had just died in childbirth".

References
 * Newspaper names like Deseret News should appear in italics.

Other
 * Overlinking: The article has a great many links, some of which seem unnecessary. For example, I would only link New York once in the article; I would not link Oliver Cowdery, Book of Mormon, or Kirtland, Ohio, multiple times. I think you can find quite a few to cull.
 * Image licenses: Some of the license pages are incomplete; for example File:Ccalibertyjailmo.jpg has been flagged because it lacks source information. For FAC, you'll need to make sure that the licenses are as complete and accurate as possible.

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) 02:13, 3 May 2010 (UTC)