Wikipedia:Peer review/Gottlieb Burckhardt/archive1

Gottlieb Burckhardt

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because… I'm not sure how to develop it at this stage. There's no more available information on the subject's biography but considerable detail could be added about the topectomies (surgical removal of parts of the cerebral cortex) which he performed in the late 1880s.

For the early section and career is there too much or too little detail? Should there be further sub-headings? Does it read ok?

For the surgery section - is there enough detail about the actual operations and the patients? Should the part here dealing with theory be more detailed?

Is the writing style generally ok?

Thanks, FiachraByrne (talk) 23:26, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

Ruhrfisch comments: Thanks for your work on this interesting article, here are some suggestions for improvement.

• The lead is too short and does not really follow WP:LEAD. The lead should be an accessible and inviting overview of the whole article.
• Nothing important should be in the lead only - since it is a summary, it should all be repeated in the body of the article itself. However the material on Moniz is only in the lead and notes - if it is this important, it should be included in the body of the article (perhaps in a legacy section?)
  • Done(ish) - still need to expand the lead
• To expand the lead, my rule of thumb is to include every header in the lead in some way. Another way to think of the lead is to imagine someone could read only the lead - what is vital for that person to know?
• Per WP:LEAD and WP:ITALIC I think his full name whould be in the lead, and the full name at the start of the Early life section should not be bolded.
• There is a lot of detail on his family in the Early life section, but not much on the subject - is it known where he was in birth order of the 7 children? Given his parents wedding date and biology, I am guessing he was one of the first three children...
  • A lot of this information is taken from a simple genealogy of his family tree. I've added in his birth order but there's not much more to elaborate on, unfortunately.
• Is it known what languages he spoke? From his publications in German and French, I assume he spoke both (and assume he learned French from his mother)
  • Well he published in both but there's no source which outlines his language proficiency.
• I would probably combine the Early life and Education sections into one "Early life and education" section - each is only one paragraph now and could be combined.
  • Done
• The average reader will not understand the Habilitation system - perhaps explain that this allowed him to teach at universities (especially since he becomes a Privatdozent a few sentences later).
  • Done
• The links in the article need to be cleaned up. Some need to follow WP:OVERLINK better - the rule of thumb is to link once in the lead and once in the body, each at first mention. Redirects count. So in the lead, there do not need to be links for both lecotomy and lobotomy (as the first link is a redirect to the latter).
  • Done
• Similarly alienist and psychiatirst are the same link
  • Done
• Also avoid links that the average reader already knows / understands - for example in In December 1888 Burckhardt, who had little experience of surgery, made one of the first forays into the field of psychosurgery when he operated on six patients, two women and four men aged between 26 and 51, in a private psychiatric hospital in Switzerland. are links to surgery and Switzerland really necessary?
  • Done
• At the same time, there are terms that should be linked or need to be linked on first occurrence. So in the lead, Neuchâtel should be linked, and Pyrennees should probably also be linked (was he in France or Spain then?)
  • Done. It's not clear from the source what country he was in.
• Or link trephination in the caption
  • Done
• Electrotherapy is linked twice in one paragraph in the Career section (only one link is needed) and it is not clear here what the the new therapy / therapies were. Provide context to the reader - see WP:PCR
  • Overlinking has been corrected. The context is not clear from the source. Hard to contextualise without synthesis of sources.
• The last two sections of Career duplicate the last two sections - perhaps if the Career section were "Career (1860-1887)" on his career up to the surgeries, then the next section could be on the surgeries and career after (1888-1891), and the last section could be on last years, death and legacy?
• As it is the current Death section is very short (two sentences) - try to avoid short (one or two sentence) paragraphs and sections as they impede the narrative flow. The end of Career also mentions his death, which is needless duplication.
• I do not understand the 50% "success rate" figure - two patients died, two improved, two became "quieter" but none were cured.
• The language is generally OK, but stilted in places. A copy edit might help or reading the article out loud after not looking at it for a few days. A few examples follow (not a complete list)
  • What are cerebral movements - how does the brain move?? In 1881 he published on the relationship between cerebral movements and oxygen consumption and posited a connection between cerebral oxygen deprivation, pathological brain circulation and mental illness.[20]
    • <de>Voluntary action (as in purposeful movement of the hand; as opposed to involuntary action). Truth is I don't know without looking at the source but, given he'd already published on cerebral vascular movements it probably relates to blood flow in the brain.
  • "town of Basel" is used three times in the article, probably only needs to be used once (after that the reader should know it is a town
    • Done
  • Was he no longer musically talented when his studies ended? ;-) He was a popular, outgoing and musically talented student.[9]
• Make sure all sources meet WP:RS
  • Done
• The lead image may be a problem - who owns the copyright?
  • I don't know. The uploader took the image from an open access article in the Journal of Neurosurgery [1] but that journal is obviously under copyright. That article attributes the image ("courtesy of") an article in the journal Neurosurgery [2]. That article attribute the image ownership to Academic Press, Inc. but gives no indication of the actual publication from which the image is derived. It's possible, of course, given the likely age of the image, that it is in the public domain but no evidence has been provided of this.
  • I've nominated the file for deletion
• Please make sure that the existing text includes no copyright violations, plagiarism, or close paraphrasing. For more information on this please see Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2009-04-13/Dispatches. (This is a general warning given in all peer reviews, in view of previous problems that have risen over copyvios.)
  • There are no copyright violations.

Hope this helps. If my comments are useful, please consider peer reviewing an article, especially one at Wikipedia:Peer review/backlog (which is how I found this article). I do not watch peer reviews, so if you have questions or comments, please contact me on my talk page. Yours, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 18:39, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. Excellent and detailed review.FiachraByrne (talk) 23:34, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

I'll review an article before correcting. FiachraByrne (talk) 09:35, 5 September 2011 (UTC)