Wikipedia:Peer review/Shakespeare authorship question/sandbox/archive1

Shakespeare authorship question/sandbox
This peer review discussion has been closed. I have completed a new draft of Shakespeare authorship question, a problematic article about a minority view, and would sincerely appreciate input from some uninvolved editors who would be willing to review the article for its overall structure and format. Does the article progression make sense? How about the section heads? Are the in-text attributions handled properly? Are there any major issues that jump out at you?

Here is the latest draft that I am requesting comments on: []. Please leave comments here or on my talk page. Thanks. Smatprt (talk) 22:03, 28 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Comment: From what I understand of the Peer Review procedure, this article is not eligible for PR because it's, er, not the official article. Can't you move the sandbox version to article-space and then initiate a PR? María ( habla  con migo ) 02:13, 29 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't know. It's a contentious article and the regular editors (myself included) are frequently at odds. This is why I am seeking outside comment. I have posted at various Notice Boards, but they deal with specifics. I was hoping to get comments on the overall format and structure and this seemed the only place that offered that. Do you have any other suggestions on where I can go for this kind of assistance? Or might someone from this board agree to review the article outside of the official Peer process? Smatprt (talk) 14:45, 29 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Peer review is chronically short on reviewers, so we try to only review actual articles - the idea is that the time and effort for a thorough review should be reserved for things in article space (this is why an article nominated for deletion will not get a PR until the AfD has closed as a keep either). Ruhrfisch &gt;&lt;&gt; &deg; &deg; 02:14, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Ruhrfisch comments: I do not have any expertise on the topic, but here are some suggestions for improvement of the article as an article. Hope this helps. If my comments are useful, please consider peer reviewing an article, especially one at Peer review/backlog (which is how I found this article). I do not watch peer reviews, so if you have questions or comments, please contact me on my talk page. Yours, Ruhrfisch &gt;&lt;&gt; &deg; &deg; 02:25, 6 May 2010 (UTC)
 * The article needs to be scrupulosly referenced, but there are whole paragraphs without refs and sections that are quite sparse - for example the whole section "Pseudonymous or secret authorship in Renaissance England" has only four refs and has two plusp aragraphs with no refs at all.
 * Several of the sources used do not appear to be reliable sources - for example, what makes doubtaboutwill.org a RS? Or webpages.charter.net?
 * I found at least one dead external link - http://www.anglicanlibrary.org/marprelate/tract6m.htm - if this were in article space, the link checker for PR would work.
 * External links in the article need to be converted to inline refs
 * The refs also need more information in many cases - for example, internet refs need URL, title, author if known, publisher and date accessed. Books need publisher, location, year, ISBN, etc. cite web, cite book and other cite templates may be helpful. See WP:CITE and WP:V
 * The article seemed repetitious in places
 * The headers do not all follow WP:HEAD
 * I would try for consistency in how each topic is addressed. For example, give the minority viewpoint, then give the objections to it / majority viewpoint.