Wikipedia:Peer review/Jack Dormand/archive1

Jack Dormand

I've listed this article for peer review because the good article review was passed without criticism due to its "compliance with all criteria, and more", and because I don't see any major deficiencies with respect to the featured article criteria other than the lack of a picture. A picture may be hard to obtain, but I'd be grateful for feedback on any other areas in which it might need to be improved to meet FA standard.

Thanks, --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:30, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Just a few comments on this one:

• "Easington" is mislinked to a disambig page in the lead
• The referenced material in the lead should be incorporated in the text (which much of it seems to be) and the lead then re-written as a multi-paragraph summary.
• There is a lack of balance in the article. It's about a man called "Jack Dormand" but, rather than being written about him, the article is largely about his political career from when he turned 50. There is very little about the first 1/2 century of his life. The article seems to note that he trained as a teacher, stopped teaching but no note on the teaching work he did in the middle(just an example of missing material)
• The "Family" section is far too short in proportion to the rest of the article - perhaps incorporate into the "Early Life" and rename this section.
• Over-wikilinking. 1970, 1981 and 1987 in the infobox need not be linked. House of commons, Easington, Maggie thatcher are linked twice Chair of the parlimentary labour party and his constituancy thrice and there are quite a few more.
• "Despite his age, he remained physically active." - ouch ! at the time he setup the Gym he was in his 50's - hardly old, decrepit or of a notable age. Perhaps just note that he remained physically active until (age) at least ?

Quite few text issues (I'm a poor one to find these - need a better copyeditor)- picked a few that stood out for me. Needs some strong copyediting

• "In the 1970s, he had opposed left-wing infiltration into the Labour Party,[2] and in foreign affairs, he was pro-American and pro-NATO[11] at a time when the party's left-wing was becoming increasingly hostile to both." - reads much better as "In the 1970s, he opposed left-wing infiltration of the Labour Party.[2] He was pro-American and pro-NATO, at a time when the party's left-wing was increasingly hostile to both.[11]" then there are not references in the middle of the sentence, the two ideas are split in two and some redundancy removed.
• "Despite the left's strength at the time, when stood for election in October 1981 as Chair of the Parliamentary Labour Party, supported by the centre-Right Manifesto Group of Labour MPs, he defeated the left-winger Ian Mikardo by 102 votes to 65, and Mikardo then withdrew" is convoluted and clunky. - try

• "He stood for election in October 1981 as Chair of the Parliamentary Labour Party, supported by the centre-Right Manifesto Group of Labour MPs. Despite the left's strength at the time he defeated their candidate Ian Mikardo by 102 votes to 65, causing Mikardo to withdraw."

• "Dormand was born near Easington at the workingmen's club in the village of Haswell, when his father Bernard, a former miner, was steward" - he was born at the club ?
• "Although he later took up rugby" - gives one the impression that rugby and football are in some way mutually exclusive. Just present the rugby as a separate sentence unless there is some need to connect it to football here.
• "However, once in the Lords he thrived, serving on numerous select committees, including education, trade and industry, and the liaison and procedure committees." ->

• "He thrived in the Lords, serving on select committees including education, trade and industry, and liaison and procedures." Shorter, removes the needless "However" as this is clear to a reader and "numerous" is pointless as then a number of committees are listed.

• "When Labour lost the 1979 general election, Dormand served for two years as an opposition whip." -> "Dormand was opposition whip for two years after Labour's loss in the 1979 general election." Puts the main idea at the beginning.

The prose needs work beyond copyediting:

• There are a few excessively long sentences that often try to connect two completely different things that should be separated eg: "He recovered from a double heart bypass in 2001, and received an honorary doctorate of letters in July 2003 from Loughborough University" - The operation and the hon-doc do not need to be connected.
• Short paragraphs (particularly the one and two sentence ones) should be connected into longer ones that have a common theme

- Peripitus (Talk) 12:51, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

• A script has been used to generate a semi-automated review of the article for issues relating to grammar and house style. If you would find such a review helpful, please click here. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 02:47, 5 January 2008 (UTC)