Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Neil Peart/archive1

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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was not promoted 02:05, 9 March 2008.

Neil Peart[edit]

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Self-nominator After being elevated to Good Article status, I am fairly confident that Neil Peart is a prime candidate for featured article status. At the very least, consensus should be achieved after any outstanding issues that I am missing are addressed. Thank you for your time and consideration. Wisdom89 (T / C) 07:02, 4 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

  • Strong oppose - Article gets excessively listy towards the end. Why are there both Equipment and Gear sections? The Gear section and the Awards sections can go IMO. The lead is too long; what happened to him at age 13 isn't suitable for the lead. Lots of uncited stuff in the Equipment section. The Books section needs to be reformatted to make it less listy. What is that Video section supposed to be? External links should only be in the references and external links sections. "After eighteen months of dead-end musical gigs, disillusioned by his lack of progress in the music business..." - cite? "Peart's drumming is distinguished by an ability to shift effortlessly between standard and irregular time signatures..." - ditto. Its POV calling him the most important drummer ever (attribute the statement to somebody if you have to). Also, you have Geocities and IMDB as a reference multiple times; both are unreliable. References need to be properly formatted. indopug (talk) 12:35, 4 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with the gear, it's essentially a superfluous reiteration of what is already in the equipment section. However, I maintain the significance of the award section. As a stand alone, it doesn't disjoint the flow/prose in the rest of the article. Although this is just my opinion. Besides it's sourced. About the lead, this is more of a stylistic preference. I feel it's on the border regarding size. Besides, in its current state it is, per WP:LEAD and WP:SUMMARY, doing what it is supposed to: Adequately summarizing what is to follow in the main part of the article. Regarding the video, yeah, perhaps they would be more suitable/appropriately placed under external links. However, they are not WP:COPYRIGHT violations - so, just in case, that isn't an issue. They will be moved. The first quote is cited elsewhere in the section, however I'll do a refname for clarity. I'll also work on the references and dig up some which are more concrete. Thanks for the comments. I shall return. Wisdom89 (T / C) 14:49, 4 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Ok, I trimmed the lead down and removed the irrelevant info.
  • I expunged the gear section as it was an obvious rehashing of the other section, peppered with a listy eyesore of unnecessary equipment detail.
  • I've moved the videos to the external link section, as that is exactly what they are.
  • I reformatted the book section so that it is less listy and disjointed, more cohesive in prose format.
  • I removed the POV statements that you alluded to.
  • I will work on obtaining reliable sources for the equipment section and the quotes you provided. Wisdom89 (T / C) 21:26, 4 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment - Delete the bolds in the end of the page and write the articles about the books. The graphic isn't sadisfactory... MOJSKA 666 (msg) 06:35, 5 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Yup, done (for now). I'll create the stubs when I get some time. Wisdom89 (T / C) 19:22, 5 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment - Nice work, the article is looking pretty good. I fixed a few small MOS issues, and added some commas here and there. I do think the lead has a bit of extra info - the second paragraph could read somthing like:

Peart grew up in Port Dalhousie, Ontario, Canada (now part of St. Catharines), floating from regional band to regional band and eventually dropping out of high school in order to pursue his career as a full-time drummer. After a discouraging stint in England to concentrate on his music, Peart returned home, where he eventually joined local Toronto band Rush in the summer of 1974.

I'm not sure the childhood info is needed there. Also, I know Rush has a huge history, but the article skips from Hemispheres to 1997, and the death of his daughter/wife. More substance could be added - without detailing every album. Maybe even info from the equipment section, like info on his electric drums could be added to the Rush section. Also there seems to be a lot of links in the External links section that aren't really needed. Other than that, great work! Skeletor2112 (talk) 12:52, 5 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Your version does justice to the summary style one would expect from the lead. I like it. I was initially loathe to remove his childhood, as it's featured pretty prominently later on, but it doesn't appear as necessary. I'll make some changes. Regarding the gap that you encounter after 1978, the problem is that most of the biographical information available for Neil Peart is with Rush, and would just overlap with the history of Rush (band). Would just be redundant. Perhaps I could fork using a "for more information" link at that point in the article? I'll see what I can do though with some sort of reorganization once I get home from work later. Thanks for the comments! Wisdom89 (T / C) 18:02, 5 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • I still see Geocities, Song Facts, IMDB, Rob Pagano's fanpage, Amazon.com (even professional reviews from this site aren't acceptable as it could be argued they would be positive to sell more copies)... I assume a number of books have been written about Rush, why haven't they been referred? indopug (talk) 04:55, 7 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Saying that professional reviews for this article aren't acceptable is a tad extreme. I can make an exorbitant list of FA that have them. Maybe I'm just not understanding your reasoning here. Could you elaborate? Wisdom89 (T / C) 04:58, 7 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I mean that editorial/professional reviews (of albums etc) from Amazon.com cannot be used as it is arguable that the site would intentionally write positive reviews to help with sales of that product. Could you please list the "exorbitant list of FA"s that use Amazon.com as a reference for reviews? Thank you, indopug (talk) 06:02, 7 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
No, I misunderstood, I thought you meant professional reviews in general, not from amazon.com. Sorry about that. I can't work on the references at the moment, but I plan on doing it tomorrow evening. There are transcripts of books on Rush, yes, but they're either online excerpts or incomplete transcripts. Also, about some of the refs themselves, the geocities site is being used because it actually provides quotes from Neil Peart from magazine interviews and such that are difficult to/cannot be found. Amazon.com is being used to illustrate things that Peart had said in the instructional DVDs from those customers who purchased, viewed and commented on them. Know what I mean? Wisdom89 (T / C) 06:09, 7 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Surely you understand that whatever customers say cannot be taken as verifiable information for a serious encyclopedia article! As for those Geocities sources, I think its cool if you just cite the actual magazine (author, issue# etc) making no mention/linking to Geocities, for threat of linking to a copy-vio site. As for books, why don't you just check them out of a library or maybe even buy them? A biographical article needs very solid referencing, way better than SongFacts or customer reviews from Amazon. indopug (talk) 06:22, 7 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Neutral - the graphic is sudisfactory and there aren't the bolds, but there books has got three redlinks. I'd like that you create that articles, not stubs. MOJSKA 666 (msg) 19:08, 8 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: Criterion three concern:
    • Image:Ghost_Rider_book.jpg‎ has no Fair Use rationale. This seems, however, a moot point, as the license explicitly requires use “to illustrate an article discussing the book in question”. This is an article about Neil Peart, not Ghost Rider (which has it’s own article). Further, WP:NFCC#8 states that Fair Use is allowed “only if its presence would significantly increase readers' understanding of the topic”. As Peart is the author, it seems any significant understanding to be gained would derive solely from the book’s contents. ЭLСОВВОLД talk 20:44, 8 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose—Poorly written. Let's look at the opening.

  • "best known" requires a hyphen in all varieties of English.
  • "floating from regional band to regional band and eventually dropping out of high school in order to pursue his career as a full-time drummer"—Remove the fuzzy "eventually". Remove the totally pointless "in order". Change "his" to "a". Remove the another "eventually" in the following sentence, which is tagged with a year anyway.
  • "style of playing"—not wrong, but nicer would be "performance style".
  • Comma required before "where", but make it ", from which".
  • "As time progressed however, he began to absorb the influence of ..."—Clumsy temporal units: "began to absorb" --> "absorbed". "However" needs a comma before and after, but better to start the sentence with it.
  • "In terms of music, Peart has received many awards for his recorded performances and is regarded for his technical proficiency and stamina." Oh no, remove the opening phrase and add "musical" before "performances". "Highly regarded"?

The whole text needs careful attention, preferably by someone new. Tony (talk) 01:06, 9 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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