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The Google article recently reached GA status, and I'm looking to take it further (possible FA). Any comments?
Thanks, — Parent5446 ☯ (msg email) 04:18, 3 September 2010 (UTC)
Finetooth comments: This is an interesting and broad article about Google, though not yet ready for FAC. I've made quite a few suggestions below for further improvement, although this is by no means a line-by-line review.
Overlinking. Words familiar to most readers of English should not be linked. In the first sentence of the article, for example, multinational, advertising, and corporation should not be linked. Later in the lead, privacy, copyright, and censorship should not be linked, and a few others in the lead should be eliminated. Use links sparingly to make them more effective.
Overlinking. Ordinarily, words should only be linked a maximum of once in the lead and once in the main text. In the first paragraph of the "History" section, for example, Stanford University should not be linked twice, and there's little point in linking California more than once in the whole article.
Direct links. WP:MOS#Links says in part, "External links should not normally be used in the body of an article." The GOOG and GGQI links to websites outside of Wikipedia violate this guideline, as does the Google Patents link in the "Other products" subsection. Generally, it's best to turn these direct links into in-line citations to external reliable sources.
- No-break spaces. In constructions like "for $3.1 billion", add a no-break space to hold the digits and words together on line-break on various computer screens. WP:NBSP has details. I added these codes in about a half-dozen places in the early sections, but there are lots more further down.
Italics. Use italics sparingly, except as required, for emphasis. For example, the long quotations in the "Privacy" section should be in plain type rather than italics.
- Proofreading. "The company began scanning books and uploading limited previews, and full books where allowed, into their new book search engine." - A company is an "it" rather than a "they". "Google" is an "it". Someone should carefully proofread the whole article for small things like this and fix them.
Lead
"Google Inc. (Nasdaq: GOOG, FWB: GGQ1) is a multinational public cloud computing, Internet search, and advertising technologies corporation." - Suggestion: "Google Inc. (GOOG on the NASDAQ and GGQ1 on the Frankfurt stock exchanges) is a multinational, public corporation invested in cloud computing, Internet searching, and advertising technologies." This would solve the direct link, overlink, and link bump problems. You could add inline citations for GOOG and GGQ1 or, probably better, add them to the main text.
"Because of its popularity and numerous products, Alexa lists Google as the Internet's most visited website." - Suggestion: "Because of Google's popularity... ". Otherwise "its" seems to mean "Alexa".
"Google is also Fortune Magazine's fourth best place to work" - Italicize Fortune; lowercase "magazine's". Ditto for other magazine and newspaper names further down in the article.
Acquisitions and partnerships
"Google signed an agreement with an Iowa wind farm to buy 114 megawatts of energy for 20 years." - When?
References
Some of the citations, 123 through 125, for example lack access dates. Others like citation 107, have the author's first name first when the correct order is last name first. Others, like citation 157, list a newspaper name but omit the necessary italics. The reference section should be made as mistake-free as possible before taking this to FAC. A good rule of thumb for citations to Internet sources is to include author, title, publisher, date of publication, url, and accessdate, if all of those are known or can be found.
Reliable sources. Most of your sources look reliable at a glance. However, make sure all of the others meet the WP:RS guidelines. For example, what makes webpronews.com (citation 97) reliable?
Further reading
If the books in "Further reading" are important enough to list, why not cite them directly in the article? You may well be asked at FAC if you have read them; if the answer is "no", you will not be able to say whether the article is comprehensive or not.A list like this should be arranged alphabetically by author's last name. Each entry should include a place of publication.
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. I don't usually watch the PR archives or check corrections or changes. If my comments are unclear, please ping me on my talk page. Finetooth (talk) 19:31, 14 August 2010 (UTC)