Wikipedia:Peer review/Fittipaldi (constructor)/archive1

Fittipaldi (constructor)

This is an article about the only Brazilian motor racing team ever to enter the Formula One world championship - sometimes known as Copersucar. In fact I think it's the only one ever to have been based - albeit quite briefly - outside Europe. It also prematurely ended the F1 career of double world champion Emerson Fittipaldi, who had set up the team with his brother. The article is current GA and I am interested in improving it further.

I can (and will) check through all the guidelines on style etc - so I'm not especially fussed about comments on those (although feel free, of course!). I also have a semi-serious rewrite planned now I have some decent written sources, the current version was written mainly from web sources and although it is perfectly accurate I can now improve it and tie it to hardcopy references. My plans for that are listed on the talk page. Before I start that, though, my questions for peer reviewers are these:

Is the article interesting and engaging for a non-expert reader (Don't be afraid to say no!)? If not, what could be added or changed to achieve this?
Is the article comprehensible for a non-expert reader (Ditto above)? If not, what needs explaining or enlarging upon?
What other shortcomings in style or content would ulitimately hold it back from FA status?

Cheers 4u1e 18:21, 29 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It would be improved by removing links to solitary years. In this article, there is only one: '1980'. But there are also too many links to 'XXX Formula One Season' that look just as odd to the reader.

Many thanks for the input, Bobblewik, and for the catch on '1980': I don't know why there always seems to be one that I miss :-D Not sure I agree about the season links, though, which are all done through pipelined years([[1975 Formula One season|1975]]), so don't appear as 'XXX Formula One season'. The logic behind them is that, this being essentially a sporting article - and therefore inevitably following a seasonal pattern, it is useful to link to the summary of the relevant racing season at approximately the right point in the text. I think I've only linked to each season once in the main text. On reflection, I'll remove the 1974 link, as neither Wilson or the Fittipaldi team were racing that year so it's not relevant. I am interested that you say they look odd to the reader - I know people tend to overlink to single years, but readers are surely used to seeing links from years - it's just that in this case they go somewhere useful! Can you elaborate more on why they will look odd? Thanks.4u1e 21:34, 29 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I will try to elaborate. As far as being 'used to seeing links' is concerned, that does not make them right. I am used to getting rained on but I still don't want it to happen. All linked solitary years look the same. They don't know until they interact with them (hover or click) where they go. I would be surprised if anyone spent much time in Wikipedia articles hovering over the thousands of date links. That is just my opinion. bobblewik 19:38, 30 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

OK, understood. In other words, I might be better off being more explicit by saying '1978 season', not just the year. OK - I'll think about it and see how it goes with the wording. 4u1e 20:02, 30 June 2006 (UTC) (P.S. Being rained on isn't wrong either!)[reply]

I've tried something different - a bit like 'see also' at the start of each subsection of the racing histoy4u1e 21:15, 30 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

On yet further reflection, I don't think I'll stick with this, since it doesn't necessarily work for print or re-uses of this material, where the wikilinks may not be reproduced. I'll probably revert to my previous model but spell it out as '1978 season' etc, which hopefully looks different enough that the reader will pick up that the link is useful. 4u1e 4 July 2006

You could also put metric units first, particularly since it is Brazilian. Hope that helps. bobblewik 20:08, 29 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

'Miles' is the only unit I can see. Did you spot others? I'll think about the units, although my first reaction is that in this case (giving the distance between the Fittipaldi team in Sao Paolo and their suppliers in the UK) the most important thing is the reader's expectation - and this is an English language wiki, so miles is probably appropriate. Interested to hear other views, though. 4u1e 21:34, 29 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Actually I didn't see others. It was just that one that caught my eye. I thought it needed the km equivalent, and then I thought about the sequence. Whatever you want to do is fine by me. bobblewik 19:38, 30 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think I'm going to stick with miles, but thanks for the suggestion. I'll check out the guidance on units and maybe put the km equivalent as well, though. 4u1e 20:02, 30 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

But I see you've just done it! Thanks. 4u1e 20:04, 30 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

On that topic though, apparantly the team had all sorts of issues for precisely that reason - the engine (and a few other imported components) came from the UK and were in imperial units. The engine is a structural part of an F1 car, so the rest of the car also had to be built in imperial units and they had real trouble sourcing things like bolts locally - to the extent that they had to machine their own. Nightmare! 4u1e 21:34, 29 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I am very surprised. I would have thought UK engines would be 100% metric by now, particularly bolts. There may be one or two oddities that are worthy of story telling. I have the impression that Brazilian torque wrenches use kgf rather than Nm (sometimes late adopters of metric like the UK can be ahead of early adopters like Brazil). Keep up the good work. bobblewik 19:38, 30 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well, don't forget that this was in 1974! And we're still not fully metric, as the continued use of miles demonstrates. At that time we were far less so - don't even get me started on the different types of the same Imperial units! (A 1/2" bolt could be Whitworth, AF or various other types - all actually different sizes!). I may end up mentioning this in the article as it seems to be one reason that continuing to build the cars in Brazil became too difficult. 4u1e 20:02, 30 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ah. It makes a difference if it was 1974. I was basing my awareness on today. I am aware of the previous confusion of AF/Whitworth etc. bobblewik 12:43, 1 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Please see automated peer review suggestions here. Thanks, Andy _t 16:30, 30 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting, thanks. Not all relevant, but led to a serious rethink of captions, some minor corrections and changed choices of words. Cheers! 4u1e 19:53, 30 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Comments to date have been very useful, but I'm still looking for views on my original questions above - which I suppose boil down to: Does this article work for a casual non-expert reader? 4u1e 09:27, 2 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]