Wikipedia:Peer review/Aldermaston/archive1

Aldermaston

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because following re-writing it about a year ago, I would like to know what the best direction would be to keep improving this article. It is currently unrated in its most applicable project, but assessed at B-class in WP:ENGLAND, WP:UKGEO and WP:CITY.

Cheers, Fribbulus Xax (talk) 12:44, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Uncia preliminary comments: This article contains much interesting information. It is kept from being a good encyclopedia article by its lack of references and by a lack of balance in the coverage.

• The History section is extremely detailed but almost completely unsourced. The other sections are generally OK, although they could be improved by giving references for some of the unsourced statements.
• Roughly half the article is devoted to History (and Ancient History, at that), with a relatively small amount of information about what is interesting about the present-day village. The guideline WP:UKCITIES provides an outline (which this article generally follows) and lists topics that might be covered; you might find some ideas there for expanding the article. Some areas I would like to see more detail on are: Governance (called Administration in the present article), Demography, Economy (how do people make a living here - does everybody work at AWE, or do they sell goods to the AWE protesters and other tourists, or ...?), Media (where do people get their news?), Community Facilities (does the government provide any services? Is there a public library?).

I will post more detailed comments in a day or two. --Uncia (talk) 23:57, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. Fribbulus Xax (talk) 00:07, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Uncia general comments The overall structure and level of detail of the article is good, except for the two areas I mentioned above. Most of my remaining comments deal with very specific flaws, which should be easily fixable.

• There are many problems with the wikilinks. It would be worthwhile to make a special review of the document just to check all the wikilinks. There are several types of problems with their use in the current article:

• wikilink to wrong page or disambiguation page. The ones I noticed were: (1st paragraph) Reading links to Reading (process); Englefield link to dab page; Sparsholt links to dab page; Henry I links to Henry II of England; trinity of parishes links to the Christian trinity

• the article is overlinked; see WP:OVERLINK and WP:MOS#Wikilinks. Common English words such as thunderstorm and agriculture and monkey should not be wikilinked. There are several instances where both words of a phrase are wikilinked but the phrase is not, for example tin glaze and Lafarge Aggregates; this gives a false impression that we are going to learn more about the phrase.

• the article makes excessive use of wikilink piping, leading in some cases to Easter eggs (WP:EGG)). See WP:PIPELINK. Piping is intended to be used narrowly: to make the grammar come out right, or to suppress part of the title that is used for disambiguation but would not be used in prose. Some bad examples from the present article: Associated Electrical Industries Ltd links to British Thomson-Houston even though there is an article for Associated Electrical Industries; disarmament links to CND even though there is an article on nuclear disarmament. All of the piping should be examined critically.

• In several cases there's not enough context for a reader unfamiliar with the area to figure out what is being described, but many of these can be fixed by adding a word or two. For example, under Geography we read that "The village is located 1 mile (1.6 km) south of the A4". This would be clearer if it said "the A4 road". (I fixed this one.) I list further examples in the detailed comments. In some cases it would be enough to remove the piping and let the wikilinked article name show.

• How and when did Aldermaston change from an estate to a village? Reading between the lines it started out in the 11th century as an estate owned by one family and then was split up in 1939. It seems there must already have been a village there in 1939, but it had a single owner. I bring this up because (1) it is buried in the present narrative and should be made more prominent, probably by stating it in the beginning of the history section; (2) there's probably a more interesting story in the break-up than is told here: did the nature of the village change? did entrepreneurship take off? (The Calor award says there are 150 small businesses there, which seems like a lot for a village of 927 people.)

• Most of the things that are italicized here should not be; see WP:ITALICS.

• Most of the things that are boldfaced here should not be; see MOS:BOLD.

• WP:EL says in part: "Wikipedia articles may include links to web pages outside Wikipedia, but they should not normally be used in the body of an article." The Culture and Sport sections contain a number of external links.

• Two of the photos, File:1959089-Aldermaston.jpg and File:Aldermaston2006.jpg, seem to be the same scene taken 50 years apart. If true, it would be interesting to group these together and put them in the recent history area. WP:Picture_tutorial#Co-aligning shows how to do this. You would have to put something else in the infobox; maybe one of the notable structures such as the Hind's Head Inn.

• The photos stack up on the right-hand side; consider alternating them, see WP:Picture_tutorial#Alternating_left_and_right_floats. But be wary of sandwiching the text between photos, see MOS:IMAGES. There's already one problem with this at the top of Economy.

Uncia detailed comments I made a few corrections, please check these.

• "Lord of the Manor" needs to have a sentence or two of introduction: this term is not familiar to US readers, and it's not clear why we suddenly break off from Aldermaston and start talking about manors.

• needing context:

• History: "The property passed into Chancery": probably show the full wikilink here to Court of Chancery, also explain why the property went there (did Congreve have no heirs? did he die without a will?).

• Economy: Calor award: This is explained at Calor Village of the Year as a quality of life award, which the verdict referenced in the pull quote supports, but the pull quote itself does not support. I would keep the information in the pull quote, which is very interesting, but put it inline. Then please explain the quality of life bit. Also explain how many competitors Aldermaston came in ahead of; there are 1650 competitors overall, but Aldermaston won a regional award (what region?) and so did not best that many villages. There's probably information about this in the three sources that are given.

• needing clarification:

• History: "Last used in the 1860s, its unfortunate inhabitant burnt to death": unclear antecedent: is "it" the gaol or the pub? Also, did "it" burn too, or just its inhabitant?

• History: "Towards the end of the 1960s (exact dates vary)": "exact dates" probably should be "reported dates": if the dates were exact, they wouldn't vary.

• Geography: "(atop the water table)": this doesn't make any sense; the water table is where the ground water resides, deep in the earth, and anything on the surface of the earth is "atop" the water table.

• Geography: "As a result of the capabilities of the AWE surface water system, the destroyed wall was rebuilt": This doesn't make any sense; it says that the water system (a collection of pipes and pumps) somehow built a wall.

• Economy: AWE marches: This part is not clear. Was there just one march, or it done every year? Is there a celebration of the original march every year? What's the significance of the 50th anniversary?

• Economy: "Aldermaston parish is home to various sites owned by Lafarge Aggregates, prompting a number of protests." The way this is written, it is the mere presence of Lafarge that causes the protests. Is this correct? It seems more likely that particular actions by Lafarge cause the protests. The footnote does not support any of the claims in this paragraph.

• Economy: "Traditionally, Aldermaston has been associated with agriculture": what does "associated with" mean? If it means people used to farm there, it's not very exciting. Is there a special connection to agriculture? Was/is Aldermaston a leader in agriculture?

• Culture: "Aldermaston periodically holds a candle auction. It takes place in the Parish Hall, and the lot is a three-year lease of Church Acre field." It took me a while to decipher this paragraph. Would it be accurate to rewrite it as: "Every three years, a traditional candle auction is held in the Parish Hall to sell a lease on Church Acre field."?

• History: Is Philip Hardwick really a neoclassical architect? More to the point, is the new Court a neoclassical structure? Philip Hardwick and Aldermaston Court don't mention neoclassical, but I don't know enough about architecture to judge this. Adding references here would be good.

• History: Collier MacMillan Schools - the wikilinked article describes Collier MacMillan only as a publisher; is Schools correct here? Did they use the building as a school?

• Mention under Geography and in the lede that Aldermaston is close to London (the only English city that most people will know).

• History: July 2007 floods: {{Main}} is misused here; it should be used when a section summarizes a separate article. The best thing would be to integrate this into the narrative. If you really to call it out separately, use {{See also}}.

Hope this helps! The most important thing is to improve the sourcing. --Uncia (talk) 20:36, 18 August 2009 (UTC)