Wikipedia:Peer review/Carlos Zambrano (baseball)/archive1

Carlos Zambrano

I've created this peer review in order to find suggestions on how to properly deal with this article's lengthy size, numerous subheaders, and seemingly over-abundance of quotes. Thanks in advance. --  ShadowJester07  ►Talk  21:04, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Comments This article has several major problems, and I'll point 'em out for you:

• First off, the lead is way too long. Take a look at some articles that are already FA-status, and you will see what a good lead looks like. The lead is basically supposed to sum up the article, so when you go to fix it, think to yourself "what material sums up the entire article best?" Keep it short, sweet and coherent. Something like "is a Real Madrid supporter" certainly does not belong there, if you know what I mean. (And you don't need to say where he was raised in the first sentence, just where he was born).
• The article needs more pictures, especially one main one at the top. Even a bad one looks better than not having one at all.
• The stats section belongs below all the prose, not above it. Where exactly, is up to you. Also, the stats look very weird on the MiLB one, and are incomplete on the other. They should have the format of the MLB table, but with cities filled in.
• There are too many section titles throughout the article. Since he has only played professionally since 2001, it's not a terrible idea to have one section per season, but all of the subsections are unnecessary. If you ever must use a subsection, and it only has a short amount of prose after it, consider using the h3 section title format (bracket-bracket-h3|section title-bracket-bracket) instead of ===section title===. Your table of contents will appreciate it.
• The quotes, as you said, are a little out of control. Pick the best three or four that you can find and stick to that limit. Cquotes are supposed to be very powerful and prolific, which is why they get to stand out. It detracts from the article when you have so many though.
• The references need to be formatted properly, with authors (when necessary), access dates and publisher information. Any featured article will be a good example to look at for proper formatting.
• The neutrality dispute is a big problem, as a good encyclopedia article should be unbiased in all facets. Make sure you take a good look at the entire article and remove any opinions.
• The prose of the article, as a whole, needs a copyedit. For example, sometimes it says "Carlos", and other times it says "Zambrano". Stick to his last name only, and the use of "he". Also be on the lookout for poor grammar, which I noticed in several places.

That's what I see after taking a good look at this article. Although it needs a lot of improvement, it has the potential to be a good article, so don't get discouraged. At 39 kilobytes, it is not too long to handle. You just need to combine paragraphs (don't leave any with 1-2 sentences only) and make the article flow well. Just take down one problem at a time, and you'll have a better article in no time. Sportskido8 06:44, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

• I know this was said above, but to reiterate, way too many quotes. Knock out at least half of them, then trim some of the others. They don't all need to be in the large quotespaces. This is just from a skim through, I can't give a full evaluation yet.--Wizardman 03:06, 11 June 2007 (UTC)