Talk:Bertrand Russell/GA Review

Preliminary

1. Please proofread: several dates were not fully linked (I have fixed a few), and please use the serial comma  Done (date links, haven't checked for commas yet)
2. For the lengthy quote in the "final years and death" subsection, either blockquote or condense it.  Done
3. External linking is a big problem: the list at the end is much too long, and in one instance, a large section of links come from the same site. This external link section needs to be shortened to only the most important links. Also, for the section of links that come from archive.org, see if it is possible to link to one umbrella page that links to the individual works. Consider linking to only the most important of Russell's works.
4. On a related note, external links within the body of the article do not follow the MOS. If there is a wikipedia page for the externally linked work, then link to wikipedia instead. If a wiki page does not exist, consider de-linking the item within the body, and providing an external link at the end.
5. Sources are better, but still a little unbalanced: at least one subsection (Ethics) has no sources, and several more supported by only one distinct source. It would be good to have a wider variety spread more evenly throughout the article (the second half of the article seems more weakly sourced).

Because of the external link issue, I am putting this article on hold for a week. --Malachirality (talk) 19:05, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Ok, I'll work on the issues you suggested. I am going away for a few days this week, but hopefully I'll have this done. Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 22:38, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Just a thought, but couldn't (some of) the Further reading section and the External links section be combined into a "Works" section, like authors have? Also, there is no requirement in the manual of style mandating serial commas. -Malkinann (talk) 04:36, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

I actually despise serial commas, if they're not mentioned in the MoS surely it's a matter of choice? George D. Watson (Dendodge).Talk^Help 20:22, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

They have their own subsection in the MOS - Wikipedia:MOS#Serial_commas - says they're a matter of choice, except where the lack or addition of the comma changes the meaning of the sentence. -Malkinann (talk) 21:09, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm quite partial to serial commas, but they're hardly important to the quality of the article. --Malachirality (talk) 02:24, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

(remove indent) actually as a start rule I follow the British English (no serial comma) / American English (serial comma) courtsey, makes my decision easier. In Wikipedia:MOS#Serial_commas it does say that it is not as common in "british" as in others. Edmund Patrick ( ^confer _work) 18:20, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Second reviewer

This article does not meet the Good Article criteria at this time, and cannot be listed. First, it is way too long, and the writing and prose is very verbose and could be pruned and paraphrased in a lot of ways to shorten the article. The lead section itself is also getting a little long as well; this section should provide an adequate summary of the article, and should capture the reader's attention and entice them to read further. It doesn't really do that with me right now; it seems kind of boring. Please see WP:LEAD for tips on improving this section.

There are entirely too many quotes in the article as a whole, and some sections are too dependent on quotes. Use of the {{cquote}} template seems overused. Remember, we have the sister project, WikiQuote, where people can put all the quotes they want about somebody. It might be a good idea to do that here.

The article is insufficiently cited. For an article of this size, there are many sections and a lot of material that is uncited.

The external links section is too long. Is it really necessary to have links to all of his works that are available online here? Isn't there another site that might have an index of various works that we could link to here? Maybe it would be good to combine these links in with the further reading section, which lists his works -- those that are available online can be linked to from there, freeing up the external links section for some other relevant links. Though some other external links need a bit of additional pruning, too. Why are we linking to Britannica's Nobel Prize page?

What's the purpose of the 'styles' section. I'm not getting this? Is this just to list various styles regarding how to address him? This is notable how?

The overall organization of the article could use a major overhaul as well. It seems very dependent on second-level headings, which actually should be minimize in favor of first-level headings. Try to keep section headers fairly short and descriptive, so that it's easier to read in the table of contents. It might help to review some of the guidelines at Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography for help on the overall organization.

Anyway, I hate to sound like Simon Cowell here, but there's clearly a lot of work to do on this article. It isn't written very well, it's not organized very well, it's not cited very well, and the ending degrades into a rather trivial collection of quotes and lists of his books. If I was grading this, I'd probably give it a C+ or B-. In Wikipedia terms, that's maybe the late stages of Start-class, or early B-class, but not Good Article quality. Dr. Cash (talk) 18:41, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Splitting article into 3 or 4

08-Nov-2008: The article was already 101kb (where 32kb is considered large), so splitting into 3 or 4 parts has reduced each sub-article to 50kb (or less). Bertrand Russell is a subject that is too large for one article: a very famous man who lived/worked 80 years after college, writing 30,000 letters & many books. Also, as a philosopher, his viewpoints will be compared with many other philosophers, causing the article text to explode over 5x times beyond merely stating his viewpoints alone. I began the following split:

• Bertrand Russell - needs trimming at sub-article areas;
• Bertrand Russell views on society - new, extracting from the section "Activism";
• Bertrand Russell views on philosophy - new, extracted from large sections "Philosophical work" and "Influence on philosophy".

The new sub-articles were copied verbatim from the existing (approved) text, and now those sections can be greatly trimmed, as short summaries, removing the long quotations which are moved into the subarticles. Although it can be tempting to condense all information into a single, solid Wikipedia article, the reality is that the man worked 80 years (after college) and changed his viewpoints on many subjects, several times each. When saying "Russell believed...", it is necessary to state the date, before his beliefs changed again. A single Wiki article should not be forced to handle that broad scope of details. It is too stifling when someone wants to add another paragraph to a huge article: there's no room left for improvement.

I have split the huge article, but reduced only 10k of text about philosophy, so far, as page-size 91kb, on 08Nov08 (However, that large reduction was reverted to begin a slower reduction.) If the 3 sections about "Philosophical work" & "Activism" & Selected bibliography were removed entirely, the 101kb page size would become 42kb. I wanted to reduce the list of Selected works (linking to the full list in "Bertrand Russell views on philosophy"), shortening the text by 7kb to page-size 84kb. The article is simply huge, huge, huge. -Wikid77 (talk) 23:36, 29 Nov 2008

Trimming text: 5,000 words is 35kb

29-Nov-2008: The Good-Article (GA) review described the article as "way too long" to pass the GA standard. How big was it? In October 2008, is was 101kb, equivalent to nearly 14,700 words about Russell (averaging 6-letter words). After moving text to "Bertrand Russell views on philosophy", the text was reduced to 91kb or 12900 words (but that was reverted back near 98kb or 14,300 words). For years, Wikipedia has warned that smaller browsers limit webpage size to 32kb or 4680 words:

• 32kb is nearly 4,680 words: 32*1024 / 7 = ~4681 words (6-letter + space).

To reduce the main article from 14,300 to 4,700 words, then 9,600 words must go, and I don't know if that is where the future is headed. Reducing the main article (by 2/3) would mean cuts:

• similar to each 100-word paragraph reduced below 33 words;
• like 50-word quotes trimmed to 16 words (with "..." between);
• like a 30-word sentence shortened to 10 words.

That's why I'm thinking the easier solution is to also move major sections into sub-articles: perhaps a "Bertrand Russell list of works" could contain most of the 15kb of bibliography and external-link text. Plus, a separate list-of-works could also allow more details, such as connections with:

• Google Books or other sources that might contain pages from selected books.

In late November 2008, 2kb more text was added to increase beyond 98kb. The level of detail appears to have reached the "point of no return" (where current details attract more details, showballing larger, not smaller). The article is like a small book, and whole sections need to be drastically reduced, knowing the full text of those sections is in the spin-off text of sub-articles.

Anyway, if 32kb were the goal, then 9,600 words must go. -Wikid77 (talk) 23:52, 29 Nov 2008