Wikipedia:Peer review/London, Brighton and South Coast Railway/archive1

London, Brighton and South Coast Railway
This peer review discussion has been closed. I've listed this article for peer review because it has been updated many times since the last review was carried out several years ago and all the previous comments addressed

Thanks, Das48 (talk) 13:46, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

Finetooth comments: Thanks for your work on this interesting article. I'm fond of railroads, though I can't pretend to be an expert. Here are a few suggestions for improvement.


 * Many parts of the article lack proper citations to reliable sources and do not meet WP:V. My rule of thumb is to provide a source for every set of statistics, every claim that is unusual, and every direct quotation. Every paragraph needs at least one source; if one source supports all of the claims in a paragraph, put the citation at the end of the paragraph. If a paragraph has a citation to a claim in the middle of the paragraph, you may need to add sources for other parts of the paragraph. It's quite a big job to track down reliable sources for an article as long and complex as this one, but that is the first thing that should be done. Verifiability is a basic requirement.


 * The article has far too many extremely short sections and subsections, which give it a choppy look and feel. I'd recommend finding ways to merge many of them to make larger sections and subsections.


 * Heads and subheads should be telegraphic. Generally, this means they should not start with "The". For example, "The Quarry line" should be truncated to "Quarry line".


 * The Manual of Style suggests writing in straight prose rather than lists where feasible. Something like the short list in the "Electric traction" subsection would be easy to render in ordinary prose.


 * After the article is properly sourced and sections merged in a smooth way, the lead will need to be rewritten as a true summary of the entire article. My rule of thumb is to include at least a mention of the main topics in each of the main text sections. WP:LEAD has more information about leads.


 * The dab finder in the toolbox at the top of this review page finds 11 links in the article that go to disambiguation pages rather than their intended targets.


 * I find it helpful to look at featured articles on whatever topic I'm writing about that I think has the potential for an eventual GA or FA. You will find featured articles about railways listed at WP:FA. Charing Cross, Euston and Hampstead Railway is an example.

I hope these suggestions prove helpful. If so, please consider commenting on any other article at WP:PR. I don't usually watch the PR archives or make follow-up comments. If my suggestions are unclear, please ping me on my talk page. Finetooth (talk) 18:16, 6 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Please make sure that the existing text includes no copyright violations, plagiarism, or close paraphrasing. For more information on this please see Wikipedia_Signpost/2009-04-13/Dispatches. (This is a general warning given in view of previous problems that have risen over copyvios.)