Talk:Alan Kotok/GA1

GA Review

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This is a very interesting article and has lots of potential. There are some issues to be addressed before it is a GA however.

• Organization Most pressing is the organization. There needs to be some sense of chronology. One suggestion:

• Personal life (birth, early years + family as an adult - marriage)
• Career - one way to organize this is according to dates eg

• MIT: 1958 to 1961;

• Chess
• Spacewar!
• Softwar

• DEC: 1961 to 2006?

• WC3

It is hard for me to figure out from the article what the chronlogogy of his life is. Perhaps you can figure out a better organization.

• Prose - There are too many short paragraphs that do not flow into one another. The writing is choppy, almost as if it were a list. The writing should flow and follow a structure and organization.
• Details Information is given with out the context, eg "Kotok earned a master's degree in business administration from Clark University in 1978." There needs to be an explanation. Why did he get that degree and what impact did that have for his career?
• References - There cannot be external links within the body of the article. The references must be cited in a consistent format. They all must conform to reliable sources. Some of your references go to myspace and other unreliable sites. Occasionally such a reference is ok. If you are sourcing something about his family, then his family's web site may be an acceptable source.
• Lead - The lead should follow WP:LEAD. It should cogently summarize the article. Everything in the lead should be mentioned in more detail in the article.

I may add more comments later. —Mattisse (Talk) 22:23, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Hi, Mattisse. Yes, I agree that the organization needed work and thank you for the year suggestion. For now his life is under "Personal life" and the years added to each section. Do you think the lead is too tight now? External links are removed to notes. Being an editor rather than a writer, I'm afraid of the prose suggestion but will try. -SusanLesch (talk) 01:02, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

• No, I don't think it is too tight. But there are issues with the prose. If you like, I can copy edit it for prose (issues of chopiness and flow), then you can check my copy edits for accuracy. If you get the facts, I can help with the editing. Also, this link is dead

• Abramson, Bruce (June 1989). "Control Strategies for Two-Player Games" ([dead link]). ACM Computing Surveys, Vol. 21, No. 2. http://www.engr.uconn.edu/~acr/Courses/cse269-fa03/abra.pdf. Retrieved on 2 July 2006.

—Mattisse (Talk) 02:49, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

That's an offer I can't refuse—I added a section "Web" and a couple of transitions but maybe you can add some for the choppiness? I will check back tomorrow or so. The dead link is fixed. -SusanLesch (talk) 04:10, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

• I don't think I know enough about the subject matter to do the article justice. Also, there are many gaps and details left out. For example:
• "DEC donated a PDP-1" - not entirely clear where the PDP-1 came from nor very clear what it is - the first or one of the first single user computers?

—Mattisse (Talk) 01:01, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Not sure but I believe from the students' point of view the big deal about the PDP-1 was the CRT. Thank you for the changes you made. -SusanLesch (talk) 04:13, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Final GA review (see here for criteria)

1. It is reasonably well written.

   a (prose): Somewhat choppy with short paragraphs b (MoS): Follows MoS

2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.

   a (references): Well referenced b (citations to reliable sources): Sources are reliable c (OR): No OR

3. It is broad in its coverage.

   a (major aspects): Needs more context and enhancement of the details b (focused): Remains focused on subject

4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.

   Fair representation without bias: NPOV

5. It is stable.

   No edit wars etc.:

6. It is illustrated by images, where possible and appropriate.

   a (images are tagged and non-free images have fair use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):

7. Overall:

   Pass/Fail:

Regretfully must fail this article as I cannot fill in the missing details nor remedy the choppy prose. —Mattisse (Talk) 02:03, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Mattisse, thank you for your review. I don't know what details are missing. Because the League of Copyeditors Wikiproject has closed, I'd like to ask you to be specific about what you think is not here. -SusanLesch (talk) 05:20, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

• Although I am not familiar with the subject matter of this article, I suspect that you have included mention of the relevant information. The problem is that the material is not rounded out. I have looked for some similar articles so that you could see by example what I mean. The best I could find was the following: Stuart Milner-Barry, Ronald Fedkiw, Otto Julius Zobel. These articles are not quite on the same subject, but they can give you an idea of what a full fledged GA article should look like. —Mattisse (Talk) 20:27, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Greetings. I would like you to please list what you find to be "missing details" and "not rounded out". Otherwise maybe I should ask for a GAR. -SusanLesch (talk) 23:42, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

• As I am not familiar enough with the subject matter to be more specific, go ahead and ask for GAR, as I am unable help you any more. —Mattisse (Talk) 23:48, 30 January 2009 (UTC)