Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography/Peer review/Harold Innis

Harold Innis
I have added considerable information to this article, along with photos, captions, many citations, and an extensive bibliography. I am wondering what rating this article should receive now that it has been extensively expanded.

Bwark 21:04, 24 October 2007 (UTC)


 * Please see automated peer review suggestions here. Thanks, APR t 00:53, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Comments from Awadewit
Hellow Bwark! Thank you for this wonderful article on a very important academic! Many of the comments I have may seem picky, but that is because there are no large-scale comments that need to be made. Well-done! Also, many of the changes that need to be made to the article are only to make it conform to the manual of style. You asked what the article should be rated now. It is currently a "B" - it clearly merits a higher rating than that, but without submission to Good Article Candidacy, WikiProject Biography A-class review, or Featured Article Candidacy, it cannot be ranked any higher. It must go through a vetting process at this point. You might spend some time looking at these processes in order to decide if you want to submit the article to them. I can offer advice on that front, as I am fairly familiar with them.


 * Innis is considered by many to have been one of the finest and most original scholars Canada has ever produced. - Wikipedia tries to be as specific as possible in statements of this kind - "considered by many scholars" perhaps?
 * This article has a lot of quotations, especially a lot of long quotations. I would try and summarize as many of those as possible. Retain only the ones necessary for the flavor of Innis's writing or for some particularly relevant anecdote or astonishing fact, etc. (see summary style). It is also not always clear in the article itself who is speaking/writing the quoted words. So, for example, in the large block quote about his railroad thesis, we get what seems to be an independent assessment of it - but who is writing this? The reader needs to know.
 * A wider world beckoned. - While poetic, this kind of sentence is not necessarily encyclopedic. I would suggest deleting these kinds of sentences and phrases. The kind of writing style we are trying to achieve on wikipedia is very neutral, which often results in boring prose, I'm afraid.
 * In spite of its religious affiliation, McMaster was far from a dogmatic or doctrinaire institution. - This kind of sentence might be viewed as point of view - could it be more neutrally worded?
 * I would delete the "Notable quote" unless you can find a place to integrate it into the article. It might be viewed as trivia.
 * Some of your images look like they need fair use rationales (see WP:FAIR). Also, some editors might question the images you have chosen to use. For example, why a postage stamp of a cod rather than the book cover of Innis's book?
 * If you decide to go for good article (GA) and most especially if you decide to go for featured article (FA), you will need to spend a few days perusing the manual of style (MOS) and making sure that the article adheres to it (ex: links could be added in places (Baptist); links should be taken out of quotations per WP:MOSQUOTE). I've altered some things (such as image sizes - only maps and images with details that must be seen should have sizes - something about browser differences and user preferences) along MOS guidelines already.
 * This page is quite long (it is around 10,000 words and that is the max - you might hear complaints about that). Here are some sections that might be summarized more succinctly:
 * Early education in general
 * PhD thesis section
 * U of C section - list of professors would be difficult for someone unfamiliar with them
 * Fur trade - remember, Innis's theories don't all have to be described here - they can have their own pages! that is the glory of wikipedia
 * Communications theories in general - create subpages for the books and link there
 * McLuhan section

Please feel free to ask questions about this review either here or on my talk page. Again, thank you for this carefully constructed and well-written article! Awadewit | talk  10:58, 28 October 2007 (UTC)