Wikipedia:Peer review/Ansel Adams/archive1

Ansel Adams

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because I'd really love to bring this article up to good article, if not FA, status. I've been working right now on the citations, and getting them all in the same style (I'm converting everything to shortened footnotes. There's a ton of content on this page, so I figured peer review would be better than a request for feedback—please advise if this article would belong there instead. I'd like to hear any of your comments, but especially in the following areas...

• ...over-citation (which ones can be removed?)
• ...content focus (which sections have too much/too little emphasis?)
• ...and images (are the ones present appropriate? Should they be moved or removed?)

Thanks very much in advance. —Mono·nomic 02:52, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Quick question/comment The article mentions up front Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico but it is not in the article or in the commons gallery. And there are various other Ansel Adams pics of Yosemite and elsewhere that many readers would look for. Are these pics not available for display here or in commons? I wonder if providing a hatnote at top: "for photographs by Ansel Adams, see (link)", or otherwise providing upfront direction to readers would improve reader experience. Perhaps some heavy-handed explanation that such photos are copyrighted and cannot be made available in wikipedia, if accurate, should be given early on. I do appreciate the portraits of Ansel Adams himself, but i was distracted, looking for the Yosemite pics. Hope this helps in a small way. --doncram (talk) 05:26, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

I'll be sure to look into it. Thanks for your response and sorry I'm so slow (life is hard!) —Mono·nomic 01:44, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Finetooth comments: This is an interesting and detailed account of a famous and talented guy. I've tried to answer your direct questions, and I have other suggestions for improvement.

• You asked about over-citing. That was not something that bothered me. On the other hand, I'd suggest setting off quotes of four lines or longer in blockquotes and adding a source for any direct quote of any length. Sometimes it's not worthwhile to use a direct quote for a two- or three-word phrase that then requires a citation. It's a judgment call. Do you really need a direct quote, or would a paraphrase be just as effective?

• I agree with User:Doncram that readers may expect to see more of Adams's work. However, copyright law makes that tough for Wikipedia. I think a note explaining the copyright difficulty might be worth trying. I've grown fond of a footnoting system that allows me to write notes that appear in a separate subsection of a "Notes and references" section instead of mixing them with the Harvard citations. This system gives me a freer hand in note-writing and allows me to cite sources for the notes. See Frank Dekum for example. Just a suggestion.

• You may have a tough time justifying two fair-use images of Adams. The lead image is much better than the one of Adams at Big Sur. Since the second one, as far as I can tell, is not necessary for a reader's understanding of the material (assuming that the reader has looked at the first image), it should probably be removed.

• The third photo of Adams, standing with camera, is free but not as interesting (to me) as his work. I'd be inclined to move The Tetons and the Snake up to where Adams at Big Sur is and to move the last two images out of the Works section and up higher in the main text. I'd try making them bigger than thumb size; just fool around until you hit a combination that looks really good to you.

• If any section is too detailed, it is the Career section. Perhaps, though, the problem is not that there's too much detail but that this long section doesn't have any resting places. Readers like an occasional break; the cure might be to split this long section into perhaps three logical subsections.

Lead

• The lead should be an inviting summary of the entire article. A good rule of thumb is to include at least a mention of each of the main text sections. The existing leads does not mention his youth, family, interest in music, his publications, or much about his awards and legacy. When you finish revising the main text sections, it would be good to rewrite the lead to make it more of a true summary. If you imagine a reader who can read nothing but the lead, you'll get an idea of what it should say.

Youth

• "Adams used a variety of lenses to get different effects, but eventually rejected pictorialism for a more realist approach which relied more heavily on sharp focus, heightened contrast, precise exposure, and darkroom craftsmanship." - Should that be "realistic" rather than "realist"?

Career

• This section is awfully long. Would it be helpful to split it into subsections arranged chronologically? Maybe "1920s and 1930s", "1940s and 1950s", "1960s and later"? Or something like that.
• "President Carter commissioned Adams to make...". - Wikilink President Jimmy Carter? It is linked further down but links should occur on first use rather than subsequent use.
• Set off the long Adams quote in blockquotes?

Contributions and influence

• "But it was Adams's black-and-white photographs of the West which became the foremost record of what many of the National Parks were like before tourism, and his persistent advocacy helped expand the National Park system. He skillfully used his works to promote many of the goals of the Sierra Club and of the nascent environmental movement, but always insisted that, as far as his photographs were concerned, “beauty comes first”. His stirring images are still very popular in calendars, posters, and books." - In some places in the article, unsourced claims appear that are apt to be challenged. A good rule of thumb is to include a source for every direct quote (like the unsourced one in this paragraph), every claim that has been challenged or is apt to be challenged, every set of statistics, and every paragraph. The third and fourth paragraphs of this section are completely unsourced yet are not common knowledge.

Death

• It's generally best to avoid orphan paragraphs consisting of only a single sentence. I'd suggest merging some of the "Death" paragraphs.

Awards

• The Manual of Style suggests turning lists into straight prose when feasible. WP:MOS#Bulleted and numbered lists has details. It wouldn't be hard to turn this list into prose. On the other hand, "Works" would be difficult to render as prose and is probably fine as a set of lists.

Notes

• The em dashes in some of the page ranges should be converted to en dashes.

Other

• When you finish adding or removing images, they will all need alt text, which is now an FA requirement. WP:ALT has details, and you can see ongoing discussions of alt text at WP:FAC.

• The dabfinder tool at the top of this review page finds one link that goes to a disambiguation page instead of its intended target.

• A caption consisting solely of a sentence fragment doesn't take a terminal period.

I hope these suggestions prove helpful. If so, please consider reviewing another article, especially one from the PR backlog at WP:PR. That is where I found this one. Finetooth (talk) 04:07, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Wow, Finetooth, thanks a bunch. You're living up to your name all right! I'll get to those comments and post revisions here. I'm still open to any other comments you (or anyone else) may have, so let 'er rip. —Mono·nomic 21:07, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

I don't think that this – “One of his most famous photographs was Moon and Half Dome, Yosemite National Park, California.” – belongs in the first paragraph. It's not so overwhelmingly famous that it outshines all the rest of his work. –jacobolus (t) 06:22, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Re: fair use images. Does Wikipedia have any clear policy about articles covering recent artists? It seems like such articles can't be complete without including many more examples than are at this article currently. Maybe we could argue for including a bunch at 200 pixel size, as “fair use”? Maybe someone could even write to the Adams estate, asking about specific permissions to use low-res thumbnails on this wiki article. –jacobolus (t) 06:30, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

I've started a discussion on the Ansel Adams talk page here. Please feel free to voice your opinions there: it seems like four people have opinions and it would be unwise for me to just make the final call. —Mono·nomic 00:39, 22 March 2010 (UTC)