Wikipedia:Peer review/Carlisle United F.C./archive1

Carlisle United F.C.

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because I have recently undertaken a major overhaul of the page. This included adding extra information such as club emblem and kit history, ownership history and fixing recentism in the main article. I have also included new photography and graphs I made myself as well as improved the general layout of the page. Sub pages such as the Brunton Park page have been improved also and other details which deserved their own page have received one.

Thanks, If5tatement (talk) 16:08, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Brianboulton comments: It would help if the reason for requesting the review was stated. Do you have, for an example, a future GA nomination in mind? Without this information I am not sure how to focus my comments, but here are some general observations on the article, which might help improve it.

• The tool to the left of this PR page indicates four links to disambiguation pages. Check the tool, then use pipes to link to the pages you want.
• The article is seriously under-cited. Whole paragraphs have no citations. The general rules of thumb you should observe, particularly if you are considering, say, a GA nomination are:-

1. Every significant statement should be cited to a reliable source
2. Every paragraph should have at least one citation
3. Every paragraph should end with a citation
4. Every direct quotation should be cited.

• Sources should be "reliable" within the WP definition of reliability. See Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources. I haven't checked out all yours, but I would query 12 ("The Beautiful History"), 19 ("UFOs over America") and 22 ("Football Fans Census")
• There are several formatting issues in the citations, in particular:

1. Inconsistency, e.g. "Carlisle United" and "Carlisle united"
2. The names of all print sources (newspapers, magazines etc) should be italicized.
3. If ref 8 is to a book, page numbers need to be indicated
4. The information under ref 1 needs attention. Is this part of a citation? Incidentally, it spells Accrington wrongly.

• General style and presentation:
  • The lead is far too short to meet the requirements of WP:LEAD. It should be expanded into a summary of the whole article
  • Do not use contractions, e.g. "04–28" for date ranges. These ranges require dashes, not hyphens
  • Do not use "The" in section headings
  • Do not use bolding in the text (vote results at end of Early years section)
  • Paragraphs should not begin with pronouns (they, he etc)
• Prose issues: The prose needs a lot of attention. Here are just a few examples:-
  • "Carlisle is the smallest location, by population, to have had a resident top flight English football club since 1906". Reorganise and repunctuate: "Carlisle is the smallest location by population since 1906 to have had a resident top flight English football club".
  • "The badge takes elements from the cities coat of arms including two Wyverns which are the regent of Cumbria." You need "city's" not "cities"; "including" should read "and includes"; why is "wyverns" capitalised? What does "regent" mean in this context?
  • Break up convoluted sentences such as "After the league reorganised four years later the board at United decided it did not suit the club's best interests to be there any longer and the club entered the North Eastern League in place of their reserve team who had previously played in the league and been a founding member".
  • I see at least one "it's" that should be "its"
  • Avoid verbosities; "a full 10 points" should be "10 points"; "and still stands to this day" → "and still stands". There are lots of similar instances
  • "Bill Shankly, an FA Cup and League Championship winning manager by that time, branded Carlisle's climb to the top as "the greatest feat in the history of the game." What do you mean "by that time"? The only date in the paragraph is 1906. And - are we really to suppose that Bill said and meant such a ridiculous thing? I know the source says he did, but it provides no details or context for what was said, or when. If he said it, it would I am sure have been tongue in cheek, along the lines of his famous claim about football being much more than a life-or-death matter. If I were you, I would qualify by rewording: "Bill Shankly reportedly called Carlisle's climb to the top division as "the greatest feat in the history of the game."
  • By "the likes of Chris Balderstone" do you mean "Chris Balderstone"?
  • That's just a few instances from near the top of the article. The whole thing needs a thorough copyedit; perhaps another football-minded editor will oblige.
• General: The article is packed with detail, and is a great tribute to your obvious enthusiasm for this club. I think it would be a worthwhile exercise to do the necessary work to make this into one of the few really good football articles on Wikipedia. But it will mean a lot of effort.

As I am not able to watch individual PR pages, please ping my talkpage if you want to discuss issues relating to this review, or if you would like me to look at it again. Brianboulton (talk) 18:37, 15 May 2011 (UTC)