This peer review discussion has been closed. .
I've listed this article for peer review because I would like to nominate Audie Murphy for Featured Article and would like to know what needs to be changed and/or fixed to meet the criteria for FA nomination.
Does not appear to be "brilliantly and professionally" written yet, for FA standards. Is very blunt in places, lack in-depth information, lacks biographical relevance in parts. Needs to be refocused and strengthened in places.
Done - Lead
Short, to the point, but not very inspiring. Would suggest leaving the lead until last, and rewriting it from scratch to reflect the article better. Lead should not require in-line citations, as it is a summary of the article, which should hold the references, so a lead should not contain anything not in the main article.
I've just cleaned the citations out of the lead. Will hold off re-working the lead until the rest of the article has been tackled.
— Maile (
talk)
15:20, 8 February 2013 (UTC)reply
Photo plus signature plus medal is very crowded. Picture and signature need separating in graphical editor, signature background should be transparent (PNG) and displaying under the signature parameter of {{Infobox military person}}. Not sure where the medal needs to go, but side-by-side looks poor.
Moved medal image down to section "Military honors and rank". Infobox looks much better. I'm no good working with images, so separating the signature from the image needs to be handled by someone who knows what they're doing on that type of thing.
— Maile (
talk)
21:28, 7 February 2013 (UTC)reply
Done - Not sure if I see the need in birth/death dates of every member of his family, is seems rather crowded, given that he had 11 siblings, and as none of these are wiki-linked, I can only assume they were not notable (each name should be checked for an article, however, incase). Removing these dates would be more practical in paragraph format, or convert the 11 names to a list with name – born–died. It should be clearly referenced.
Changed appropriately. Depending on the reference, he was either the sixth, seventh or even ninth child. I changed it to "one of twelve" and left out the names of the siblings.
— Maile (
talk)
22:16, 7 February 2013 (UTC)reply
Done - Regarding his date of birth. I think we will never be sure. Even though the State of Texas certified it as 1925 mentioning Audie himself did the misleading. Maybe to join the military. But here's his
1954 application to join the Freemasons in his own handwriting, where he specifically says his birthdate was 1924.
— Maile (
talk)
01:02, 10 February 2013 (UTC)reply
I've added a paragraph on the inconsistencies on both his birth date and height, with referencing. The reader can make up their own mind .
— Maile (
talk)
19:20, 18 February 2013 (UTC)reply
Done - Enlistment
Double mention of his height, within the space of a few lines, needs work, once should be enough.
Majority of references are the same two sources [1] and [5] throughout these two sections. Extra sourcing might be useful, if available, to give a broader perspective.
As done as it can be, all things considered. I've added extra sourcing where I can find it. But the fact remains the the Audie Murphy memorial site and its Audie Murphy Research Foundation is the best sourcing. They have all the military records on PDF, and not a whole lot of that information is available else where.
— Maile (
talk)
19:12, 19 February 2013 (UTC)reply
Done = Last two paragraphs are completely unreferenced.
His entire Military Career has undergone a re-working. It's in a decent cohesive, chronological order now. I've scattered quotes from Murphy in the text, so the reader can see it through his eyes. Did a lot of sourcing. There's probably some tweaking in order, but as a whole, I'm done with this part.
— Maile (
talk)
19:20, 18 February 2013 (UTC)reply
Military honors and rank
Done - Medal of Honor citation
Done - First paragraph after the citation is mostly unreferenced following the first sentence. There is little, if any, detail regarding his service, just a bland list of campaigns and awards. Perhaps the previous "battles" section could be expanded to fully discuss military action in greater depth, and this section rewritten to discuss the awards more clearly, as he is famous for being one of the most decorated American soldiers of the war, I'd expect to know more about those decorations.
Per a suggestion from the Audie Murphy talk page, the citation was moved up to the MoH action and valors award section, and the inline citation source was changed to the United States Army online page on Audie' citation. The two paragraphs that were below it were moved up in the section above it and will be dealt with in that section.
— Maile (
talk)
00:38, 10 February 2013 (UTC)reply
Done - Rank and date
Seems fine, although it would normally better to have his military career discussed in prose form, and mention his promotions as and when received also, that just a list plonked on the page for reference, which feels a bit disjointed.
Done - Decorations, awards, and badges
There has been much debate over using these type of image-based sections, and I don't want to open a fresh can of worms, but if you're aiming for FA, you can bet someone will have their gripes about it. Given that Murphy is notable for his decorations, and these are not just here for show, they are important. However, my view is that the current setup is poor. The three-part table is not visually appealing, and more-importantly not informative. The tables contain images and their names. Firstly, we can see these in the infobox, so it's repetition. Secondly, they don't relate to Murphy. There needs to be detailed notes regarding how/where/when he was awarded each of these, so they have biographical relevance otherwise it's just a non-relevant picture gallery of awards.
As done as it can be, all things considered. I've added extra sourcing where I can find it. But the fact remains the the Audie Murphy memorial site and its Audie Murphy Research Foundation is the best sourcing. They have all the military records on PDF, and not a whole lot of that information is available else where.
— Maile (
talk)
19:12, 19 February 2013 (UTC)reply
Done - Movie career
ALL sub-sections
Very thin on references, a few scattered citations, but not strong enough.
Please see if this is OK. The article is getting too long and is difficult to edit because of that. I moved the entire movie career section to a child article
Audie Murphy/Films and television work. It's written as though it were a separate article on its own if you care to move it. But making it a child article seemed to be a safe place to put it for the time being. I know the subject matter still needs work. When re-working it for the move, I found some repetition of information and one paragraph that belonged under his family life, and have taken care of those items.
— Maile (
talk)
22:31, 10 February 2013 (UTC)reply
Given that this was originally a book, and only made a film six years later, is seems strange only to focus on its success under "movie career". Perhaps splitting the section, with more discussion about the book earlier in the article, then address the movie version under this section.
I've done the split. And at the bottom of the page I added a printing history of the book. If this should have been done otherwise, please feel free to change.
— Maile (
talk)
17:19, 10 February 2013 (UTC)reply
Done - Filmography
TV credits
Should be converted to a wikitable consisting of headings: Movie, Year, Role, Notes rather than a list. See:
WP:FILMOGRAPHY. At FA quality, people want to know more about his acting career than a few titles.
I feel that this comes too late in the article. First we get his childhood, then his military career, then his movie career, then his post-war trauma. I think there needs to be something between the two, discussing this his trauma, his move to acting, perhaps his book autobiography, and other similar biographical information, and then come to his acting career.
Moved this up to "Military career"
Done - Audie Murphy clubs
Mainly one reference used throughout. More would be better.
Moved this up to below "Military honors and rank" - will work on referencing and try to find more clubs
Marcus, thank you for this. Some of this I can probably take care of - maybe not all. As you've probably noticed, there have been many editors over the years, and it was in even worse shape before I started trying to upgrade it a couple of days ago. I want to do what I can. I believe Audie Murphy as a subject is worthy of FA, but the article needs work. How long can we leave this notice here before it is closed? I'd like to go through your list one by one and see what I can improve on.
— Maile (
talk)
17:17, 7 February 2013 (UTC)reply
I kind of feel the same way you do about Audie Murphy. Thanks for the link to the interview-interesting. I agree with everything you've said. And I think a Wikipedia article on him should be top of the line. We'll see how much I am able to contribute towards that. I see there is a petition out there to get Audie the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and I'm hoping to find a centralized link to that rather than the scatter-shot blog links. I'm going to the library to check out "To Hell and Back", which is only referenced directly once, and that's in the lead. It would be good to get a perspective from the horse's mouth, so to speak. If I bring this to a larger article of the size you envision, the mere size would necessitate breaking it off into sub pages for things like filmography and awards etc. I'd like to find more on his personal PTSD - I remember reading a bio of him years ago that said he'd have nightmares in his sleep about the German children whose fathers he killed. I've done much on WP regarding non-military Texas history, geography and personalities. But I think this article should be one that can be respected by the military veteran readers.
— Maile (
talk)
13:45, 8 February 2013 (UTC)reply
G'day, good work so far. I had a quick look and made a few minor tweaks. Please check you are happy with those. Overall, I'd say this article has considerable potential for a higher rating, but it will need a bit more work. I have the following suggestions:
Done, and thanks for the idea - you might be able to reduce some of the whitespace below the lead by using a table of contents limiter such as {{TOC limit}};
once you are happy with the content, I'd suggest asking someone to copy edit the article before taking it to GA or A-class as I think the prose could be a bit tighter in places;
Done a few more citations are probably needed. I marked a few places with a "citation needed" tag where I felt they were needed with this edit:
[1]
Done - this is an awkward sentence that probably should be rewritten: "The next day, January 26 (the temperature was 14 °F (−10 °C) with 24 inches (61 cm) of snow on the ground), his..."
Done - date format inconsistency. For instance compare: "5 October 2010" with "September 29, 2010" and "2012-03-14".
Done - what is the difference between the References and Sources section?
Done in the References section, the web citations should have publisher, author and accessdate information added if known;
in the Sources section, ISBNs, ISSNs or OCLC numbers should be added (these can be found at www.worldcat.org);
Done - the See also section probably doesn't need so many only loosely related links;
the sources/licences for the images will be checked during a GA or A class review. I suggest making sure that they are good to go before then. I had a look at a couple, and found that there is no date or actual source (i.e. what book was it scanned from, or what website did it come from?) for this
File:Audie Murphy.png, additionally I think that the author is incorrect. The author is the person who took the photograph, which in this case (please correct me if I am wrong) would not be MarcusBritish, who was the uploader. Regards,
AustralianRupert (
talk)
02:02, 9 February 2013 (UTC)reply
AustralianRupert, thank you for this, and for the edits you made to the article. I'll go through the list and hopefully be able to take care of it all. The more I read and re-read the article, the more I see what you and MarcusBritish are seeing in the way of work to be done. And the overall flow of the article could be better. Right now, it looks like what it has been - a piece-meal work by editors who over the years added a part here and a part there. I'll do what I can.
— Maile (
talk)
15:39, 9 February 2013 (UTC)reply
Comments copied over from the article's talk page
Per your request on the WPUS talk page. Feel free to put this wherever is most useful for you.
Done It might be better to create a separate article (similar to
Service summary of Douglas MacArthur) with the awards (military and civilian and maybe even the long list of movies) and then summarize it in paragraph format in the article.
Since he was a Medal of Honor recipient you might want to glance at
Kenneth Walker and see how that article is written.
Done - Some of the references need expanding such as 4, 17 and 41
I'm working on all the references. Some were dead links, some references are not necessarily representative of the text they reference. So, I'm going through the article slowly and checking as I go.
— Maile (
talk)
00:36, 13 February 2013 (UTC)reply
As this gets closer to FA I think that some of the citations will be called into question. For examples, 23 and 50 (IMBD), 63 (Flickr)
Done - I recommend replacing the Medal of Honor citation reference with