Wikipedia:Peer review/Stop Online Piracy Act/archive1

Stop Online Piracy Act
This peer review discussion has been closed. I've listed this article for peer review because I would like the community to get it to FA status.

An important aspect of the review is neutrality, including balance, avoiding WP:UNDUE and using neutral references wherever possible.

Thanks, Rich Farmbrough, 21:02, 15 December 2011 (UTC).


 * Ebe 123 → report on my contribs. 17:41, 19 December 2011 (UTC)
 * But there's some quick things:
 * In one word, references.


 * Ebe 123 → report on my contribs. 17:41, 19 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Also, it's not SNOWBALL-y enough. That needs work before it can get to FAC. Res Mar 02:26, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Ruhrfisch comments: I agree that this is an important article, but do not think it owuld stand a chance at FAC until the bill is either passed into law or dies in Congress (because FAs have to be comprehensive). Here are some suggestions for improvement. 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; 05:20, 5 January 2012 (UTC)
 * A model article is useful for ideas and examples to follow. There are some FAs about laws which may be useful models - for example Alaska Mental Health Enabling Act was a federal law, or the Accurate News and Information Act was a Canadian law.
 * As I noted above, one the FA Criteria is comprehensiveness and until the fate of the bill is decided (it becomes a law in some form or fails) then I do not see how this would be comprehensive.
 * Per WP:LEAD, the lead should be an accessible and inviting overview of the whole article. As such, nNothing important should be in the lead only - since it is a summary, it should all be repeated in the body of the article itself. However whistle-blowing seems to only be in the lead.
 * My rule of thumb is to include every header in the lead in some way
 * I think that another aspect of comprehensiveness is providing context to the reader - however, there is no real background or history of how the bill came to be proposed, or previous legislation it builds on / modifies, or even much on the perceived problems / issues this is supposed to fix.
 * Writing is a bit obtuse and difficult to follow in places The rights holder must first notify, in writing, related payment facilitators and ad networks of the identity of the website, who, in turn, must then forward that notification and suspend services to that identified website, unless that site provides a counter notification explaining how it is not in violation. Also I do not understand how the last phrase works - how does the website know to provide counter notification before the payment facilitators and ad networks contact it?
 * COntents section has a clarification needed tag
 * If this does become law, it may be necessary to merge it with the PROTECT IP article.
 * I was surprised there was no mention of Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act beyond a See also link (again seems like it would be useful background / history)
 * The COntents section seems to focus on foreign / overseas sites, but then it mentions websites that I thought werte domestic (Flickr? Vimeo?)
 * Abbreviations need to be spelled out on first use - I am not sure most readers outside the US would know what D-VA (or whatever) would mean for a senator (again the model articles would be useful to look at here). Similarly spell out things like EFF and MPAA
 * Links need to be at first use (see MPAA, which linked on second use)
 * There are a lot of short (one or two sentence) paragraphs and sections in the article - this breaks up the narrative flow. WHere possible these should be combined with others or perhaps expanded.
 * Could some free images be added - the sponsors? Key proponents or opponents? Even text / quote boxes - anything to break up the wall of text a little
 * Internet refs need URL, title, author if known, publisher and date accessed. cite web and other cite templates may be helpful. See WP:CITE and WP:V
 * 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 all peer reviews, in view of previous problems that have risen over copyvios.)