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This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because I recently brought it up to GA and am strongly considering trying to bring it to FA status, but want to know how much is left to do first. Thanks in advance.
Thanks, Go Phightins ! 02:01, 23 January 2013 (UTC)
Doing.... Alright ... I lived in the Cleveland area during some of his best days there; I'll give it a shot.
Daniel Case (
talk)
22:11, 10 February 2013 (UTC)
Alright ... sorry it took me a week to print it out and go through it with a red pen, then get back here.
This article has strengths, strengths that clearly got it to GA status. It's generally well-organized, and most importantly for a reviewer it has little if any spelling, grammar or punctuation errors. Most of my pen marks were for greater issues.
However, there were some significant ones. If the goal is to get to FA, these, I think, will have to be addressed by some very intensive work on the article.
The main one is that it doesn't heed summary style. There is too much, way too much, emphasis on one kind of statistics and the corresponding detail. Most directly, we have a good picture of Thome as a hitter over the course of his career but not much else.
There are three skills that everyone who makes it to the show has to have: batting, baserunning and fielding. This article's account of Thome's career focuses almost exclusively on the first. You wouldn't even know what position he plays for most of it—you'd think he'd been a DH from his rookie year on. There's just one mention of him as a fielder, when he goes back to playing a position during his second stint in Philadelphia. And no discussion of him as a baserunner.
And this focus on one aspect of his play leads to an article that's overly specific. We get dates for everything, the pitchers he hit certain home runs off of, etc. I know baseball fans love to rattle this stuff off, but we're not writing for just them here. It's been years since quite a few of these events ... most readers aren't going to care, and the ones that do probably know they can go to baseball-reference.com for this.
Another result of this hitting-stat focus is that facts, even ones that should be in the article by any measure, are often just strewn around paragraphs and sections without much thought as to how they form a narrative.
I will start going through the article with some specifics next ... Daniel Case ( talk) 03:45, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
And you might want to introduce the "HR" abbreviation parenthetically here as well, since you do use it later.
more. Daniel Case ( talk) 04:05, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
taking a break again. Daniel Case ( talk) 05:57, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
In fact, this whole paragraph needs to be reordered. It should discuss how Howard emerged, which combined with Thome's injury made him less important to the Phillies, then how his parents' situation made him even more amenable to being traded to the White Sox. There's a story here and it needs to be told chronological. I get the feeling something was taken out without looking at how it might affect the surrounding text, because there's really no need for two separate grafs for this.
breaking again. Daniel Case ( talk) 17:28, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
Second, why this single mention of statistics other than the traditional HR/hit/RBI numbers? More on this below.
break. Daniel Case ( talk) 20:46, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
Alright. I'm done with the specifics. Two other large issues need to be attended to
I looked at the only other FA on an active player I could find, Derek Jeter, and I saw it had a similar structure. After the history, however, there was this nice "Player Profile" section, discussing Jeter as a player in mostly qualitative terms. This would be an excellent section to have if the research could be done ... and I can't believe that for a guy who's hung on through 20+ seasons in the big leagues there isn't at least one more in-depth profile of him. An article that talks about, either directly or indirectly, his strengths and weaknesses as a batter. What pitches/pitchers is he particularly successful against, or not? How does he approach an at-bat? Did he have any issues developing in this are? Almost every player talks to the media about this at some point.
And this would be the place to discuss his fielding, mentioned all of twice in the history. How is he in that department? Was he, did he like, playing third more than first? This guy's spent most of his later career as a hitter ... is his fielding a reason for this? And what kind of baserunner is he? Obviously it's not his primary skill, but if he gets on base he's got to run (or if he's pinched for, is there a good reason?)
This would be a good place, perhaps, to discuss Thome's career in post- Bill James statistics. To paraphrase him, what has all his hits/home runs/RBIs brought to the teams he's played for? What do they mean? How does he look in metrics like OPS? Wins above replacement? If he were to sign with yet another team in the next few weeks, if I were a fan of those teams I might want to know what we're getting.
All your images are, aesthetically, great. And editorially. But ... I see they're scraped off Flickr, from streams taken by people at the parks/games.
There is a dispute as to whether images taken at sporting events can truly be considered "free." The terms and conditions of your admission, either on the stadium's website or the back of the ticket in barely readable fine print, almost always say that any photos or video you take at the ball game are for personal, noncommercial use only.
Now, whether that can affect a third party's reuse of your photo, even one where, in accordance with the terms of a CC-BY or CC-BY-SA license, they didn't even ask permission (much less pay) to the effect that the team could sue a business that reused it without the Express Written Consent of Major League Baseball, is an open question. It's never come before a court because that lawsuit hasn't been filed.
Since you aren't required to attend a game, some of us have argued that means the photographer has implicitly accepted the licensing terms by entering the stadium, and therefore the CC licensing is superseded and cannot be used. Thus, they conclude, images taken at a sporting venue cannot be free without specific authorization (which has sometimes been given) to take photos using that licensing.
There are sometimes people at FA who bring this up and make it a big sticking point. It might be a help to you at FAC if you could find one free image of Thome outside a sporting event, even if he's wearing a blazer and polo shirt (Cf. Jerome Bettis).
That's all I have. Happy editing! Hope all this helps! Daniel Case ( talk) 05:24, 19 February 2013 (UTC)
Toolbox |
---|
This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because I recently brought it up to GA and am strongly considering trying to bring it to FA status, but want to know how much is left to do first. Thanks in advance.
Thanks, Go Phightins ! 02:01, 23 January 2013 (UTC)
Doing.... Alright ... I lived in the Cleveland area during some of his best days there; I'll give it a shot.
Daniel Case (
talk)
22:11, 10 February 2013 (UTC)
Alright ... sorry it took me a week to print it out and go through it with a red pen, then get back here.
This article has strengths, strengths that clearly got it to GA status. It's generally well-organized, and most importantly for a reviewer it has little if any spelling, grammar or punctuation errors. Most of my pen marks were for greater issues.
However, there were some significant ones. If the goal is to get to FA, these, I think, will have to be addressed by some very intensive work on the article.
The main one is that it doesn't heed summary style. There is too much, way too much, emphasis on one kind of statistics and the corresponding detail. Most directly, we have a good picture of Thome as a hitter over the course of his career but not much else.
There are three skills that everyone who makes it to the show has to have: batting, baserunning and fielding. This article's account of Thome's career focuses almost exclusively on the first. You wouldn't even know what position he plays for most of it—you'd think he'd been a DH from his rookie year on. There's just one mention of him as a fielder, when he goes back to playing a position during his second stint in Philadelphia. And no discussion of him as a baserunner.
And this focus on one aspect of his play leads to an article that's overly specific. We get dates for everything, the pitchers he hit certain home runs off of, etc. I know baseball fans love to rattle this stuff off, but we're not writing for just them here. It's been years since quite a few of these events ... most readers aren't going to care, and the ones that do probably know they can go to baseball-reference.com for this.
Another result of this hitting-stat focus is that facts, even ones that should be in the article by any measure, are often just strewn around paragraphs and sections without much thought as to how they form a narrative.
I will start going through the article with some specifics next ... Daniel Case ( talk) 03:45, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
And you might want to introduce the "HR" abbreviation parenthetically here as well, since you do use it later.
more. Daniel Case ( talk) 04:05, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
taking a break again. Daniel Case ( talk) 05:57, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
In fact, this whole paragraph needs to be reordered. It should discuss how Howard emerged, which combined with Thome's injury made him less important to the Phillies, then how his parents' situation made him even more amenable to being traded to the White Sox. There's a story here and it needs to be told chronological. I get the feeling something was taken out without looking at how it might affect the surrounding text, because there's really no need for two separate grafs for this.
breaking again. Daniel Case ( talk) 17:28, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
Second, why this single mention of statistics other than the traditional HR/hit/RBI numbers? More on this below.
break. Daniel Case ( talk) 20:46, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
Alright. I'm done with the specifics. Two other large issues need to be attended to
I looked at the only other FA on an active player I could find, Derek Jeter, and I saw it had a similar structure. After the history, however, there was this nice "Player Profile" section, discussing Jeter as a player in mostly qualitative terms. This would be an excellent section to have if the research could be done ... and I can't believe that for a guy who's hung on through 20+ seasons in the big leagues there isn't at least one more in-depth profile of him. An article that talks about, either directly or indirectly, his strengths and weaknesses as a batter. What pitches/pitchers is he particularly successful against, or not? How does he approach an at-bat? Did he have any issues developing in this are? Almost every player talks to the media about this at some point.
And this would be the place to discuss his fielding, mentioned all of twice in the history. How is he in that department? Was he, did he like, playing third more than first? This guy's spent most of his later career as a hitter ... is his fielding a reason for this? And what kind of baserunner is he? Obviously it's not his primary skill, but if he gets on base he's got to run (or if he's pinched for, is there a good reason?)
This would be a good place, perhaps, to discuss Thome's career in post- Bill James statistics. To paraphrase him, what has all his hits/home runs/RBIs brought to the teams he's played for? What do they mean? How does he look in metrics like OPS? Wins above replacement? If he were to sign with yet another team in the next few weeks, if I were a fan of those teams I might want to know what we're getting.
All your images are, aesthetically, great. And editorially. But ... I see they're scraped off Flickr, from streams taken by people at the parks/games.
There is a dispute as to whether images taken at sporting events can truly be considered "free." The terms and conditions of your admission, either on the stadium's website or the back of the ticket in barely readable fine print, almost always say that any photos or video you take at the ball game are for personal, noncommercial use only.
Now, whether that can affect a third party's reuse of your photo, even one where, in accordance with the terms of a CC-BY or CC-BY-SA license, they didn't even ask permission (much less pay) to the effect that the team could sue a business that reused it without the Express Written Consent of Major League Baseball, is an open question. It's never come before a court because that lawsuit hasn't been filed.
Since you aren't required to attend a game, some of us have argued that means the photographer has implicitly accepted the licensing terms by entering the stadium, and therefore the CC licensing is superseded and cannot be used. Thus, they conclude, images taken at a sporting venue cannot be free without specific authorization (which has sometimes been given) to take photos using that licensing.
There are sometimes people at FA who bring this up and make it a big sticking point. It might be a help to you at FAC if you could find one free image of Thome outside a sporting event, even if he's wearing a blazer and polo shirt (Cf. Jerome Bettis).
That's all I have. Happy editing! Hope all this helps! Daniel Case ( talk) 05:24, 19 February 2013 (UTC)