Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography/Peer review/Jada Pinkett Smith

Jada Pinkett Smith
This article underwent a peer review in late December 2008. It was recently an FAC but was not promoted. A copyeditor (JamieS93) was kind enough to fix some minor prose and MoS issues during the past week. I have no idea what else to do with this article and how to get it to FA status. Any suggestions would be extremely helpful. Thank you so much. – Ms. Sarita  Confer  23:52, 20 January 2009 (UTC)
 * [go to JPS talkpage]--Anne Teedham (talk) 17:38, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Comments from 

I'm really sorry it's taken me so long to get to this review and copyedit. Let me start by saying Nice Work. The level of research and depth here is impressive. I've polished the prose as much as I can, so hopefully you'll have more success at the next FAC. I recommend getting the other folks who voted against it last time to have a look before you re-nominate it.

Here are some thoughts and comments I had while reading. You may incorporate or ignore them as you please.

Early life


 * I've retitled this section to indicate that it includes discussion of family in general. I disagree with the comment on the article talk page that the focus is confusing; most biography articles start with a discussion of the parents.


 * Pinkett Smith majored in dance and theatre at the Baltimore School for the Arts, graduating in 1989. Can we specify which degree she earned?


 * I'm not a fan of quote boxes. How about a locator map of Baltimore instead?

Acting career


 * I switched "rave reviews" to "positive reviews". I worry that "rave" is not neutral.


 * With regard to images: The subject of your article isn't the only possibility for images. For example, I added a pic of Queen Latifah to the section about Set It Off. You can find images of people and events and places related to the article (scanning the hyperlinks is a good way to get ideas), and then add those. Be sure to make clear in the caption what the image subject's relationship is/was to the subject of the article. (I've added some others, too. Feel free to change or remove any of these.)


 * She subsequently landed a role in the film If These Walls Could Talk (1996), as Patti. Give one less-than-a-sentence description of who Patti is in the movie.


 * The sudden appearance of Will Smith as her husband in the final subsection of this part is confusing. I recommend adding a sentence to the first subsection (in the part about her earliest auditions) which mentions that she met Will Smith and married him in 1997.


 * I notice that most acting descriptions are in the past tense ("...played the supporting role of Sonji Roi..."), but then suddenly we had one in the present tense ("Pinkett Smith plays Janeane Johnson..."). I fixed this, but you should go through the article and see if there are other tense-switches.


 * Because this is a biography of a living person who is constantly acting and developing new material, you will have to be vigilant about updates to the article. When it becomes an FA, you (and other editors) will need to be careful that updates don't interfere with the quality of the writing.

Musical career


 * I agree with the earlier review (I can't remember where it was) that we need to pick one classification of Wicked Wisdom, and stick with it. If "metal rock" is the chosen category, fine. Go through and make sure it isn't described in some other way at any point. (I've tried to do this, but I wanted to see if you had a different phrase to use, and you should check it yourself as well.)


 * "Stated" is usually not a very effective a word for attributing quotations. I much prefer keeping it simple with "said".

Marriage and children


 * I retitled this section partly to avoid confusion with the earlier Family section, and partly because "Relationships" seemed like an odd way to describe her marriage. (It made me think there would be info about other people she'd dated.)

Charity work and politics


 * The connection between Pinkett Smith and Meg Ryan isn't clear with regard to Sarah Palin. Either explain why Ryan's being mentioned here, or just leave her out of it.


 * I vote for removing the info about Obama being elected; it doesn't really belong in this article. (If you really feel like the last part of that sentence needs a mention, work it into the first part of that paragraph.)

Other


 * That's a pretty extensive "selected" filmography! I recommend limiting it to 12 or so movies.


 * I don't know that the "Other notes" column is important. Most of that info is in the article text, so I recommend removing it.


 * My understanding (from working on Barton Fink) is that the IMDB isn't a reliable source for info about movies. (It's used here for the awards table.) I can't recommend a better source, but you could go to each of the awards' websites and citing those.


 * Do we really need a link to the website of the New Village Leadership Academy? I'd vote to remove that one, since it's only tangentially related to her.

Again: Well done on the work so far, and I believe that this article will soon be graced with a well-deserved bronze star. If you have any questions, please let me know. Good luck! Scartol •  Tok  18:26, 31 January 2009 (UTC)