Wikipedia:Peer review/A Gate at the Stairs/archive1

A Gate at the Stairs

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because Lorrie Moore is an important American fiction writer though not as prolific as some of her more famous contemporaries, like Alison Lurie and Ann Tyler.

But I'd like some feedback on the following specific points:

1. I have a copy of the book and can scan and upload an image of the cover (I think I can figure that out). In my experience as a newspaper editor, book covers have always fallen into the category of fair use if one is running an article that is about nothing other than that book. However, will Wikipedia regard it as fair use?

2. The novel has been extensively talked up as a "coming of age" story (Bildingsroman) and as a post-9/11 anxiety story. Would it be worthwhile to develop subsections on these points within the critical review section?

3. Beyond that, does anyone have any other ideas on how I (or others) can improve the article? Please be kind. I'm relatively new to the encyclopedia and not as knowledgeable about templates as many other users.

Thanks, Georgiasouthernlynn (talk) 17:12, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Ruhrfisch comments: Thanks for your work on this article - sounds like a ver interesting book. This is quite good for a first article, and here are some suggestions for improvement with an eye to eventually getting it to WP:GA or even WP:FA.

• A model article is useful for ideas and examples to follow. There are multiple articles on novels which are FAs - two fairly recent FA novel articles that might be useful models for this are Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell and The Time Traveler's Wife
• An image of the cover would be OK under fair use - again see the model articles for how to do this properly (or please ask me)
• I think this could be expanded by a fair amount. Themes in the novel (such as it being a Bildunngsroman) are certainly good to include. I also note that there is currently nothing on the composition and publication history of the novel, for example. Again, looking at model articles should give some ideas on ways to possibly expand this, though it will also depend on the sources available.
• Are there any interviews with the author in which she talks about writing the novel or its themes or influences on her that show up in her writing? Anything like that would be good to include here, if it exists.
• The current lead is too short and needs to be expanded. The lead should be an accessible and inviting overview of the whole article, so it is often useful to do all the expansion, then (re)write the lead last.
• Nothing important should be in the lead only - since it is a summary, it should all be repeated in the body of the article itself. My rule of thumb is to include every header in the lead in some way, but there is not really anything on the plot or characters in the lead now. Please see WP:LEAD
• It is useful when wikilinking to only add links which really add to the average reader's understanding. My guess is that most readers do not need a link to know what a husband or biology or vehicle are, but links to articles on the newspapers mentioned would help. See WP:OVERLINK
• Newspaper titles are italicized, so The New York Times - also if an abbreviation is used (like NYT), then it should be defined the first time it is used. So The New York Times (NYT)
• Wikipedia uses logical quotation - generally if a quotation is not a full sentence, the terminal punctuation is placed outside the quotation marks.
• Neither of the model FAs have sections on characters and it seems to me that the information there could be (or already is) in the Plot section. I would probably combine the characters information with the plot (and make the plot more than one paragraph).
• Make sure to provide context to the reader - for example, I would say that her brother is sent to Afghanistan (many readers will not know where Helmand province is)(it might be worh linking too)
• I would make sure that the sources used meet WP:RS and try to avoid sources directly connected to the author or publisher (so the publisher's study guide is used for the prizes, but in the article on the author, this is sourced to a Christian Science Monitor article, which is a better source.
• Please make sure that the existing text includes no copyright violations, plagiarism, or close paraphrasing. For more information on this please see Wikipedia: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.)

Hope this helps. If my comments are useful, please consider peer reviewing an article, especially one at Wikipedia: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 _><>°^° 23:34, 26 February 2011 (UTC)