Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography/Peer review/Mary Higgins Clark

Mary Higgins Clark
I've rewritten the Mary Higgins Clark article to include substantial biographical information. I don't feel knowledgeable enough yet to set a quality scale for this (or any other) article. I would like to know where others feel this ranks on quality scale, and what might need to be improved to move it up the ladder.

Thanks! Karanacs 22:34, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

MLilburne
In my opinion the article is B-class at the moment. With some hard work on the prose style and with the improvements listed below, I think it would have a good chance of achieving GA status.


 * Including a fair use picture of Clark to illustrate the article would make it look a lot better.


 * At the moment the article doesn't have anything on critical reactions to her books. I'm sure that there must be reviews out there that you could quote from. The lead discusses the themes in her writing, but the body of the article doesn't really back that up. In order to achieve breadth of coverage, therefore, I think you really need a new section.


 * It's understandable that you're having difficulty finding sources, but at the moment the article really relies too much on her memoir as a source. This may well be a problem at the GA level; it will certainly be a problem if you try to improve it any more.


 * It's difficult to specify exactly, but the major problem with the article is the prose style. The sentence structure is a bit simplistic, and the prose fails to flow from one sentence to another. There are places in the article, such as the last paragraph in "Writing career," where I wonder what relationship the sentences have to one another and why they've been put in the order that they have. The "Widowhood" section has three paragraphs in a row starting with "In [year]", and this should really be fixed.


 * There are quite a few facts in the article that seemed like trivia to me, and I question whether they really belong in an encyclopedia article. For example, the fact that Clark's mother-in-law encouraged her to buy high-quality furniture. What does this really tell us about the woman?

Good luck with the article. Let me know if you have any questions about my comments. MLilburne 11:20, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Yannismarou
The article needs work. Some general remarks:
 * The lead is short, and does not constitute a proper summary of the article. Check WP:LEAD.
 * "The story of Mary Higgins Clark begins at Ellis Island in 1905, when a twenty-one year old Irishman". This is no encyclopedic prose. This is the literary prose a biographer of hers would use in a book about her.
 * "Widowhood" is a sub-section of "Early years"? Something is wrong with the structure there. In general, there are too much details about her early life in comparaison with the rest of the article. Keep a better balance, and if you want to keep all this material follow WP:SS, and create a sub-article (Early life of Mary Higgins Clark).
 * "Personal Life" is a stubby section. It is also problematic: Why is her first marriage, and the life with her children described in "Early years" and "Widowhood", and her second marriage here? Again, something is going wrong with the structure.
 * Some reviewers prefer "Awards" or "Titles" to be prose and not lists. And I am also afraid that "Recognition" and "Awards" are overlapping.
 * I agree with MLiburne that the dominance of one source in "References" could be problematic. And, by the way where is the ISBN of "Clark, Mary Higgins (2002). Kitchen Privileges: A Memoir. Simon and Schuster".--Yannismarou 19:48, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Minor: Alphabetize the categories at the end of the article.