Wikipedia:Peer review/Richard Francis Burton/archive1

Richard Francis Burton edit

This is the first article I've put a lot of work into for wikipedia. Therefore I'd like the opinions of others as to what needs improvements and what is good/bad about it. --Richard Clegg 12:13, 3 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Firstly, congratulations on a very good article on a potentially tricky subject! I enjoyed reading it immensely.

Odd bits and pieces that I noticed:-

"It may have been this early travelling that made Burton consider himself an outsider for much of his life." - is this original research? If not, it's just the sort of statement that will have a reader wanting to reach for a reference. Overall, the article still needs more references. If you feel that you would just be citing reference [1] all the time :-), that probably means that you need to draw from a wider pool of reference. Really, and article of such depth should be littered with references. Seven source documents and thirteen inline references feels light.
To extend that subject, I can't find any official guidance on this, but the page references in parentheses e.g. ([1] page 3) jar my reading experience. I feel that generally inline citations should smoothly run past the eye and not intrude on reading. If you wish to include page numbers (and that's a reasonable idea in most cases), you could do so by breaking the multiply-quoted references into several separate <refs> - e.g. the Lovell reference. I'm not sure you really need to cite a page reference every time though - if someone is going to go to the trouble of delving deeper to find a cited document, they will probably read all of it.
I seem to recall that Burton was thought of as being amongst the best swordsmen of his era. I think the article could probably do with a reference or discussion of this, perhaps a small section of "public belief vs actual skill and experience" if that's relevant, and the effects this may have had on his life. At the moment, other than mentioning that he studied fencing and wrote a book on swordsmanship, the article doesn't cover this subject. For an alleged virtuoso of the sword, I find that unusual.
I like the level you've permeated the article with an impression of how he was widely believed to be a rogue, a controversial figure in Victorian England. Excellent work on that. Overall, I like the prose a great deal.

I hope that helps a little. I'll see if I can get time to look again later. --Estarriol 14:38, 3 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the help -- maybe I should do the references in a slightly different way. My main sources of reference are the Lovell and Brodie biographies which are excellent. I have relied on the Lovell one more mainly because it has a better index (also it is newer) -- perhaps I will leave out the page references as they will presumably change according to edition in any case (on the other hand, it's a huge book and it can sometimes be hard to find a particular quote). Burton was widely regarded as a good swordsman but I don't know if he formally competed (though he wrote on the subject) -- I will read up on that to see what I can find. Your input is greatly appreciated. --Richard Clegg 15:02, 3 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I have now improved the referencing and found a nice quote about his abilities as a fighter. I like the new style of referencing I have put in -- I use ref tags with page numbers but do not include author and publisher info if the reference has appeared before. It means the inline references are less jarring but the reference list at the bottom of the page does not contain too many repetitions. --Richard Clegg 13:18, 4 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Looks quite good. Can we have a map of his life travels? 'Chronology' section is rather strange - something I have not seen in any other bio article. I'd recommend moving it to the very bottom. You may also want to separate biography from his works - i.e. have a separate section on his voyages and discoveries, and another on his translations, as currently the info on those is spread throughout his biography. A few more pictures wouldn't hurt. With those improvements I'd expect to see it on FAC soon. Good job!--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus ^Talk 21:53, 4 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the comments. I'm not sure quite what you mean by "separate biography from his works" -- I've mentioned the most notable books he wrote throughout the article but also included a limited biography at the end. (Apparently Burton wrote so much that no complete biography of his works has ever been published although some partial biographies exist). I will create a map of his Hajj and add that (I suspect a map of all his journeying would not be practical as he was a global traveller and it would be incredibly hard to compile. I'm hoping to get permission to use some pictures of his tomb from the people who run the support fund and I'm also looking for other pictures which are out of copyright and can be used here. I've moved the copyright as you suggest. Thanks lots for your help and advice. --Richard Clegg 09:00, 5 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]