Talk:United States Youth Cricket Association

Initial feedback

Hello, just have a few moments, but ping me later if you need more advice. The article is decent overall, but you way too heavily footnote to the WP:Primary sources (USYCA page). It's okay to occasionally quote the primary, when citing what they state as their mission statements, claimed start date, membership, etc. But generally if you're quoting large amounts of data from only the primary, that tends to mean (to be blunt) "info that no other media took interest in covering". Try to use USYCA cites sparingly to emphasise points that are clearly from a USYCA perspective, rather than quote them as a neutral/objective descriptor of reality. Your other cites from cricket media look great, however.

Next, do not use external links in-line in the text. That is, where you mention "American Cricket Champ" and it links to an outside website, take out all those links. External links (generally) belong only in the EL section. If you're mentioning a person/org in the text of the article, either link to their Wikipedia page by using double-brackets, or don't link at all. Again, not to be heartless, but by WP standards, if there isn't an article on "American Cricket Champ" already, it's not worth linking to (in a way that implies WP endorsement). For your EL section in general, you don't want to have the local clubs and whatnot, you really want to keep the list tight (per Wikipedia:NOT DIRECTORY); honestly just the USYCA official site and not much else. If there are other articles (not just websites) that are tangentially related, like "Teaching Cricket to Kids in a Baseball World" in Cricketing Weekly, those go under "Further reading."

Lastly (for now), avoid WP:Cruft. "Cruft" meaning "things people not directly involved honestly probably wouldn't be interested in." For example, the Leadership section: none of those people have their own WP bio, so it is highly unlikely the average reader will say "I'll be! James Smith is secretary treasurer?" If, I dunno, Al Gore were your Marketing Director, I'd mention that in-line somewhere, but otherwise it's not something fundamental to understanding your org, and folks can easily find it on your official site (handily linked at the top of the EL section).

Overall, really cool article, and the pics are great. You just need to scale back a bit of the insider's-perspective you bring as an enthusiast, and take a cold, hard look from the perspective of "everything I have here has to really matter even to people it doesn't matter to personally."

Forgive if I'm a bit brusque, but I'm a bit low on sleep and dealing with some other people being silly, so I'm a little blunt, but hopefully it gives you something to go with. After you feel you've made these changes, feel free to ping me again, though preferably on my Talk page. MatthewVanitas (talk) 20:15, 26 April 2011 (UTC)