Wikipedia:Peer review/Reagan assassination attempt/archive1

Reagan assassination attempt
Requesting feedback about the coding of the footnotes, the newspaper articles used as citations, overall flow of the article (should be primarily chronological, with some exceptions). --Wasted Sapience 06:45, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Will.i.am
The lead into the "Background" is great. I meant to skim it briefly, but as soon as I read that Hinckley tried to assassinate a president because of Jodie Foster I was totally hooked. Here's a few comments:
 * 1) You might rename "Background" to "Motivation", which is more informative.


 * 1) I don't think you need the extra bold headings under "Ambush outside hotel", they broke up some flow for me and are unnecessary.
 * 2) How did Hinckley get in this crowd outside the hotel? Did he require special access or was it open?  (Just curiosity.)
 * I believe it was an open area. --Wasted Sapience 21:36, 5 March 2007 (UTC)


 * 1) It was loaded with six Devastator bullets, designed to explode on impact, though all failed to do so: - you don't need the first comma, and the colon at the end should be a period (nothing in the sentence leads us into the list that follows).
 * 2) The "Bullet"[ed?] list. - lists (I feel), almost always detract from the flow. All these sentences could be arranged in a paragraph to the same effect.


 * 1) Some sentences are rather short and choppy, for example: Hinckley was quickly subdued by the Secret Service. The entire incident was captured on video by several television reporters. Upon capture, Hinckley famously asked his arresting officers whether that night's Academy Awards ceremony would be postponed due to the shooting. It was indeed postponed to the next evening. - How about "The entire incident was captured on video by several television reporters, including the apprehension of Hinckley by the Secret Service. Upon capture, Hinckley famously asked his arresting officers whether that night's Academy Awards ceremony would be postponed due to the shooting, and indeed it was — it aired the next evening."  Or similar.


 * 1) He subsequently recovered quickly - no "subsequently" necessary.


 * 1) The second two paragraphs of "I'm in control here" were difficult for me to interpret. The second paragraph seems to imply that power would go to the vice president.  The third seems to imply that the transfer is not automatic.  (1) I'm not sure the rules of presidential succession are relevant to this article (you already have a link to it), and (2) it confused me more than informed me.  I guess I would remove the third paragraph and let people explore the details on their own.
 * 2) as of January 2007. can be wikilinked just to the word 2007 (which is what it redirects to).
 * 3) Footnotes 27,28, and 33 should be moved to follow their sentences' punctuation.
 * ✅ All footnotes should now follow punctuation. --Wasted Sapience 02:01, 8 March 2007 (UTC)


 * 1) as a result, the U.S. Congress, and a number of states, rewrote the law regarding the insanity defense. - the last two commas are unnecessary.
 * 2) As a personal preference, I might take the sentences about the police officers recovering, as well as Brady's injury and move them into aftermath. They really don't have too much to do with "the shooting" (after they were shot that is).


 * 1) See also section: Why is Tip O'Neill listed?  I looked through that page and reread the article trying to figure out why and still don't have an answer.  Also, how about adding some other notable assassination attempts to this list?
 * ✅ I don't think other notable assassination attempts apply as each attempt is an isolated case. --Wasted Sapience 21:46, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Your preference. But I normally don't think of the See also section for things that apply to the article (those will be linked at some point in the article itself).  I think of it more as a "other customers who bought this might also be interested in..." section.  For example, List of United States Presidential assassination attempts would cover a lot of bases.--Will.i.am 09:17, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Great article so far. Good luck!--Will.i.am 05:23, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

User:A mcmurray
At a glance I noticed the following:
 * Thoroughness: I believe Reagan was much more gravely injured than was implied at the time of the attempt. More research may be required to give an accurate description of the events as they happened not as they were described at the time.
 * Lead: should be expanded to conform to WP:LEAD
 * Lists: convert the lists of bullets and conspiracy theories to prose. See WP:EMBED.
 * ✅ The bulleted list about the bullets is now prose. --Wasted Sapience 00:09, 8 March 2007 (UTC)


 * References: the footnotes section is probably unnecessary unless you plan to add a separate list of references. Some statement will also require citation. I will mark them with fact as notice them. Also need to be cleaned up. See citeweb for starters, the template may help, but you must include the date of retrieval for certain, at the very least
 * External links: should most probably not be included in the body of the text, even as references. If they are citations, format them as such, if not lose them or move them to the external links section.
 * I can't believe you actually asked for that. If information came from those sites, why shouldn't they be references? --Wasted Sapience 00:05, 8 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Section headlines: Remove article such as, 'the,' 'a,' or 'an' from the section headlines.

More in depth:


 * 'Background': I added a couple of fact tags to this section. This second half of the following statement really looks like OR unless it is documented, verified and cited: 'He wrote numerous letters and notes to her in the fall of 1980.[citation needed] Convinced that a grand, sweeping gesture would be needed to gain her attention, Hinckley began to stalk then-President Jimmy Carter — his decision to target Presidents also likely inspired by Taxi Driver.'
 * 'Ambush outside hotel': I didn't like the headline title, but brushing that aside. Lose the exact address of the Hilton Hotel, it's unencyclopedic.
 * 'The shooting': As noted before, lose the list and the article 'the' in the headline. Stub the red link. First reference to the ATF should probably read: United States (or U.S.) Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and thereafter be abbreviated BATF.
 * 'Reagan taken to George Washington Hospital': Perhaps this section heading is a bit wordy. Then: 'He subsequently recovered quickly, despite being 70 years old, and was able to continue his presidential duties.' This statement is what I was referring to above in the thoroughness bit. Otherwise this is just POV cruft. Othewise that section looked pretty good, certainly pretty well written and well-referenced.
 * '"I'm in control here"': These two paragraphs lacked references. They need to be attributed because they are making conclusions, otherwise it looks like original research.


 * Haig was accused of mishandling the situation and of misinterpreting the presidential line of succession (according to the Presidential Succession Act of 1947), since the Secretary of State is not in control when a President is incapacitated; this duty devolves to the Vice President of the United States (at that time, this was George H.W. Bush). However, Haig and his supporters maintain that the comment he made during the press conference, which in reality was "I'm in control here, now." merely ascertained his control over the situation until the Vice President could be contacted aboard Air Force 2.


 * ''As demonstrated by this assassination attempt, there was a popular misconception that the powers of the President automatically devolve to the Vice President in cases of a Presidential disability. However, according to the 25th amendment to the Constitution of the United States, this can only occur by written declaration by the President or by a majority of the principal officers of the Executive department (the Cabinet) with the Vice President in consent and said declaration delivered to the Senate President pro tempore and the Speaker of the House.'


 * 'Aftermath': could probably use some expansion but overall pretty good. I did add several fact tags.
 * 'Conspriacy theory': as said convert to prose and cite where needed. Good work not giving the conspiracy nuts much discussion.

Hopefully this wasn't too harsh. Anything I noted is meant to help and not harm nor insult. Good luck with the article. A mcmurray (talk • contribs) 08:07, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

References feedback

 * See this comprehensive list of citation templates, it will help immensely with the citations.
 * Also, try giving your references a name, especially those used more than once.


 * Like so:.

This way when you use a reference for a second time you simply have to type to get the footnote for the full citation. It will be listed as individual letters next to the reference number, serving to combine your references and shorten your list.
 * Additionally if ref lists get too long there is always reflist or , which are handy for creating columned reference lists.

Hope those tips help, I wish someone would have told them to me when I got here. ; ) A mcmurray (talk • contribs) 08:24, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I've tried your referencing style with disastorous results. I'm not sure if anything you showed me could work because I have several newspaper articles by the same authors, and several sub-pages for Denise Noe. --Wasted Sapience 21:35, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Not sure what point you are trying to make, there are newspaper templates at the link above, any of the fields can be left blank.A mcmurray (talk • contribs) 22:44, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I combined the refs in the hospital section as an example, I don't think it will be disastrous, it's much better.A mcmurray (talk • contribs) 22:50, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Did the same for one of the newspaper refs. I didn't use any of the templates though, I like to freehand it myself. The format for the newspaper one is pretty much correct, you want to link any full dates so user prefs work.A mcmurray (talk • contribs) 22:56, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Of course, if you only use a ref once it will have no affect on the list but they all need cleaned up, there isn't really enough info in the citations, especially for the websites, such as publications, dates, retrieval dates, all of that would be needed if this article were to ever have a chance at GA or FA.A mcmurray (talk • contribs) 23:05, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Hey, thanks man, the references area looks better now. --Wasted Sapience 00:12, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Tis no problem at all. Glad to help.A mcmurray (talk • contribs) 10:39, 6 March 2007 (UTC)