Talk:Battles of Lexington and Concord/GA1

GA Review[edit]

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Hi! I will be reviewing this article for GAN, and should have the full review up soon. Dana boomer (talk) 15:13, 31 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

GA review (see here for criteria)

It is reasonably well written.
a (prose): b (MoS):
The SAR external link is dead. Y Removed.

The Twentieth Century and later section is choppy, with four very short paragraphs. Please either expand or (preferably) combine these. Y Rewritten.

In the Infobox, under strength, you say "End of day" once and "End of the day" once. Please standardize this. Y Fixed.
It is factually accurate and verifiable.
a (references): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR):
If you are going to use a split reference format for the books (which I think is reasonable in this article), you need to do it for all of the books. Y Done.

There are several areas that need references. Check the tag ends of sections and paragraphs for unreferenced bits. Quite a few of these really need to be referenced, because they describe what people think. For example, see the end sentence of the Dartmouth's instructions and Gage's orders section, where you're describing what Gage thinks, or the last sentence of the first paragraph of the Successful Colonial intelligence section, where you describe what Adams and Hancock think. In the The search for militia supplies section, two out of three paragraphs are completely unreferenced. The Commemorations section is especially under-referenced. Y Fixed. I think.
It is broad in its coverage.
a (major aspects): b (focused):
It follows the neutral point of view policy.
Fair representation without bias:
Please keep an eye out for words that could be perceived as biased. For example, in the Dartmouth's instructions and Gage's orders section, you call an incident "outrageous". If this is a direct quote, then put it in quotes and put a citation directly after it. If it's not a direct quote, please find some other way to describe the incident. Due to the fact that I have not done a complete check of the prose, I'm not going to make a list here right at the moment, but please be on the lookout for them as you work your way through the article.

Fixed.

I think I've addressed all of your specific POV issues.

It is stable.
No edit wars etc.:
It is illustrated by images, where possible and appropriate.
a (images are tagged and non-free images have fair use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):
Overall:
Pass/Fail:

There are quite a few referencing issues that need to be taken care of with this article, as well as some POV wording and MOS stuff. Due mainly to the referencing issues, I haven't done a full review of the prose, and I am waiting until after the referencing has been at least partially improved to do this. I am putting this article on hold to allow time to address the concerns I have outlined above. If you have any questions, drop me a note here on the review page or on my talk page. Dana boomer (talk) 15:51, 31 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I should be able to work on those things. Magic♪piano 17:21, 31 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I've done most of what I can without going back to the library for some of the sources. Much of the citation work is either (1) moving the footnote, since what follows may be covered by it, or (2) adding something. Most of what needs citation is relatively uncontroversial (in terms of its verifiability from the sources used here, anyway). (I'm also not sure how two paragraphs escaped citation, but then, nobody's perfect...) Magic♪piano 19:58, 31 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the quick response so far. It's no problem if you take a few days (or even need more than a week) to find the rest of the citations. As long as I see that there's an editor working on the article, I'm willing to extend the deadline as far as necessary. I'll probably end up doing the full prose review sometime this weekend. I was basically waiting to make sure that someone was still interested in the article before I spent a couple of hours copyediting and combing through the prose :) Dana boomer (talk) 20:11, 31 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Prose Review[edit]

I've started a run through of the prose, and I'm going to list the issues I find below. If you are on WP before I finish this review, please do not start working on the issues I have listed until I post here that I am finished. This is simply because there's a good chance that I will be making some minor tweaks to the article as I go through it, and I hate dealing with edit conflicts, especially when I've just spent half an hour tweaking an individual section :) Thanks so much! Here are the things I've found so far:

According to the latest decision by MOS gurus, dates should not be linked. Y Fixed.
There are a lot of parenthetical inserts, which tend to make the text choppy. Try to integrate as many of these as possible into the text. Y Fixed. I think I've removed all that I can. The ones that are left tend to be short, providing alternate names for things.
It seems from his WP article that Hugh Percy's full name would be Earl Percy Hugh. However, through the article you have his name given as "Hugh, Earl Percy". Is there a reason that you have him listed by last name first, when the rest of the officers are given by first name first? Y Fixed. I've changed the two complete occurrences of his name to be consistently Earl Hugh Percy, and other occurrences to either Percy or Earl Percy.
Either always use convert templates or never use them...your choice, just keep it consistent. Y Fixed.
Background section:
- Background section, you say "This battle is generally described as the opening battle(s) of the American Revolutionary War." which is quite awkward. Perhaps change it to something like "The battles of Lexington and Concord are generally described as the opening battles of the ARW." Y Fixed.
- British Army and Marines move out section, you say "350 of these troops were from grenadier companies..." You generally don't start sentences with numbers... Y Fixed.
- Same section, you say "was a terribly disorganized experience" Terribly is possibly POV, quote and cite please. Y Clarified.
Battles section:
- The search for militia supplies section, you say "the source of these formidable weapons remains a tantalising mystery" Tantalising is possibly POV, quote and cite please. Y Removed. It's unsupported and irrelevant.
- Concord to Lexington section, you say "that had not been cleared since the mid-1600s of trees and made into an open field" Does "since the mid-1600s" really need to be included? IMO, it just makes the sentence harder to read, and doesn't really add anything. Y Rewritten.
- Lexington to Menotomy section. Is it really necessary to say that Menotomy is the modern day Arlington every time you mention the town's name? This gets a little repetitive. So far I think I have seen it twice in this section and at least once earlier in the article. Y Fixed.
Legacy section. The last five paragraphs are quite short, and rather unconnected from each other. Perhaps, rather than having two separate paragraphs on Paul Revere's Ride and April Morning, combine these two and talk a little bit more about any other books/movies that have had these battles as a main focus point. Similarly, anything to do with the war itself (the anglophilia section and the Vietnam war section) could be combined. The section on the park could be expanded a bit and left as its own paragraph. Y Rewritten.

OK, I am finished with the prose review. The above issues, along with the referencing, are the only things that I can see that need to be finished. I look forward to seeing your work on the article! Let me know if you have any questions. Dana boomer (talk) 16:10, 3 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

OK, thanks for all that. A bunch of these things are from somewhat more florid prose that preceded my involvement with the article, that I've been working to stamp out and replace with more encyclopedic (and less "school project") language. (For example, there were even more Menotomy/Arlington references than there are now...) In any event, I've been to the library, and I know Fischer will help me with the cites (and some of the Legacy material) that I need to deal with this stuff. Magic♪piano 17:06, 3 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Things are looking very good so far. I look forward to the rest of your edits tomorrow. Just as one nitpick, looking through your edits, I saw that in the First shot section you ended up with an incomplete sentence. The first part is "Speculation arose later in Lexington that a man named Solomon Brown fired the first shot from inside the tavern or from behind a wall, but this ." Other than this, the edits so far look good. I especially like the rewrite of the legacy section. Nice work. Dana boomer (talk) 23:16, 3 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think I've addressed all of your concerns. If not, I'm sure you'll let me know. :) Magic♪piano 17:08, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You're doing a really nice job on this article! I've added a few more fact tags where I would like to see citations, as well as a hidden comment about some possible POV wording in the Legacy section. Let me know when you've finished with these things, and the article should be good to go for GA status. Dana boomer (talk) 18:24, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

That should take care of those citations. I reworked the Emerson commentary into something less pungent. Magic♪piano 23:43, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Everything looks good...great work!!! I'm passing the article to GA status, congrats! Dana boomer (talk) 23:56, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Oh great. My first one, thanks! Magic♪piano 17:23, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]