Wikipedia:Peer review/Hail to the Thief/archive1

Hail to the Thief edit

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because…

I think the page is well-written, well-researched and well-cited, and I am wondering if, after some peer reviewing, it might eventually be worth nominating for a featured article.

Thanks, Popcornduff (talk) 13:25, 27 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]


Ruhrfisch comments: I know this album and think the article is in pretty good shape, here are some suggestions for improvement.

  • A model article is useful for ideas and examples to follow - Kid A and In Rainbows are Radiohead album FAs, although both are older and may not be up to date in terms of current FAC requirements. Please see Wikipedia:Featured_articles#Music for many FAs on albums
  • There are quite a few free images of Radiohead and its members on Commons - see here. I would include some free images to make the article less text heavy. Also when this makes FA and appears on the Main Page it is good to have a free image to use then
  • The lead seems a bit short to me and does not really summarize the whole article. My rule of thumb is to include every header in the lead in some way, but the lead does not seem to mention alternative titles, or artwork or reissues.
  • The lead is a summary, so nothing should be in the lead only, but the longest Radiohead album statement seems to only be in the lead.
  • Similarly, as a summary the refs are normally in the body of the article, except for direct quotations and extraordinary claims (which need refs no matter where they are in an article)
  • In the lead, the official title on the album is "Hail to the Thief (or The Gloaming)" so I would bold the whole thing, i.e. Hail to the Thief (or The Gloaming) (not, as is currently the case Hail to the Thief (or The Gloaming) with only partial bolding).
  • I would make this more specific "In later years members of Radiohead have expressed regrets about the album." - they seem to regret the inclusion or order of some songs on the album
Recording
  • It helps to provide context to readers who are not as familiar with the subject. So here it would probably help to give year(s) for the recording sessions for Kid A and Amnesiac, or I would identify The Bends as either their second album or by year. See WP:PCR
  • Language is WP:WIAFA criterion 1a and, although this reads well, there are some places where it could use a copyedit. Does a band really "tour" songs? The band spent May and June arranging and rehearsing the songs before touring them that summer.[8] (how about ...before performing them on tour that summer.)
  • O'Brien did not tell this to Yahoo - reading the article, Yahoo quotes Rolling Stone (and if you search for the album title on RS online, the article with the quote comes up)
Title...
  • Make sure this follows WP:LQ - here I think the period (full stop) should be outside the quotation mark as the quote is not a full sentence The decision to give the album and each of its songs an alternative title came from "old Victorian playbills which chronicled the kind of moralistic songs which were played in music halls."[20]
Music and lyrics
  • The WP:MOS says to use a person's full name the first time they are mentioned, then in most cases to just use their last name. I think most editors are fine with first mention in the lead and in the body of the article being full name, and of course when two or more people share a last name (i.e. Greenwood) their full names are used to avoid confusion in most cases. But Thom Yorke is used in full four times in the body plus a fifth time in a caption (which most editors would be OK with). Look for similar overusage with Ed O'Brien etc.
  • I would be consistent on the Kid A and Amnesiac sessions (which are also described as the Kid A/Amnesiac sessions - most FAC reviewers are not fond of slashes as punctuation
  • Part of getting an article ready for FAC is making sure all the little things are consistent - so the capitalization of all the no no nos is different here than in the track listing (I would follow the album itself for the capitalization etc. of titles)
  • Missing word(s)? The band attempted to record [the ninth track and lead] single "There There (The Boney King of Nowhere)" in the Los Angeles sessions, ...
  • Watch WP:OVERLINKing -- Bagpuss is linked twice, for example
  • Part of the FA criteria is comprehensiveness - I was surprised that there was not more on the individual songs by critics (there is usually somehting by Radiohead members on each track, but only the last quotes a magazine, NME). The Rolling Stone review here mentions six of the tracks with material that could be used here, and I assume other reviews are similar. Not that every song needs something, but only one of 14 seems a s bit sparse
Artwork
  • I own an (American) "Special edition" (from 2003) of this record. It is a regular CD, but the case is paper and tall (almost like a pamphlet) and has a 7 page booklet with the lyrics and a foldout large artwork similar to the cover. I did not see this mentioned in the article at all
Reception
  • This seems a little sparse to me. Again I was surprised the ROlling STone review was not quoted here (though the star rating is given). See Wikipedia:WikiProject Albums/Album article style guide
  • I do not think the part in square brackets is needed - it is clear which album is meant However, the NME's James Oldham saw it as "a good rather than great record" and wrote that "the impact of the best moments [on Hail to the Thief] is dulled by the inclusion of some indifferent electronic compositions."[49]
  • The Kid A reissue has its own critical reception section - one of the reviews here is on the reissue. Not sure if it belongs here, or in the reissue section. Are there any reviews of the reissue that mention the extras?
General
  • 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.)

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 ><>°° 19:48, 11 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]