Wikipedia:Peer review/Apolo Anton Ohno/archive1

Apolo Anton Ohno

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I've worked this page to a GA and now looking for possible improvements in hopes of getting the article to FA. The biggest concern, something brought up during the GA nom, is the referencing of the table of scores in the Dancing with the Stars section. I have tried to find references for each score, but have been unsuccessful in that. I'm not sure what to do with that table! Anyway... any feedback or comments are appreciated. Thanks, on camera^(t) 02:28, 14 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Finetooth comments: This is interesting and generally well-done. The problems I noticed have to do with prose and style issues. Sorry, I can't help with the refs for the table, but the claims do not seem especially controversial (though the information isn't common knowledge and must have come from somewhere). Here are a few suggestions.

Heads and subheads

To avoid repetition, something like "Beginnings" would make a better subhead under the head, "Career" than "Early career". Under "2002 Winter Olympics", deleting "Olympic" from "Olympic qualification race controversy" would avoid repeating "Olympic". The next subhead in that section could be shortened to "Games". The subhead for section 2.6.1 could be shortened to "Trials".

Lead

"competitor and a five-time medalist (2 gold, 1 silver, 2 bronze)... " - Numbers from one to nine are generally written as words, and bigger numbers are written as digits except at the beginning of a sentence. In this sentence, you use "five" but also 2, 1, and 2. Better would be "competitor and a five-time medalist (two gold, one silver, two bronze). Ditto for other instances in the article.

Early life

"Ohno's parents divorced when he was an infant, so he was raised by his father." - "And" would be a better choice since "so" suggests that being raised by his father was the inevitable result of a divorce.
"Ohno has stated by the time he turned 13 years old, he would attend parties with older teenagers if he did not have competitions on the weekends". - Insert "that"? Change to straight past tense? Suggestion: "Ohno has stated that by the time he turned 13 years old, he attended parties with older teenagers if he did not have competitions on the weekends".

Early career

"When he was 14 years old, Ohno became interested in short-track... " - Wikilink short track?
"His father wanted to encourage Ohno's developing skills... " - Perhaps "His father wanted to encourage Ohno to develop his skills... "?
"...so he successfully advocated for Ohno's acceptance into the Lake Placid Olympic Training Center in 1996 to train full-time for short track, despite being underage." - Since Ohno's father wasn't underage, perhaps this would be better: "and, although Ohno was underage, he got him admitted to the Placid Olympic Training Center in 1996 to train full-time for short track."
"he won a gold medal in the 1500 m, a silver in the 300 m, and came in fourth in the 500 m." - Should "meter" be spelled out in the main text? How do other speed-racing articles handle this?
" He participated in no training from April to August 1997... " - Tighten to "He did not train from April to August 1997... "?

Olympic qualification race controversy

"By removing Biondo from the competition, Smith finished in second place and allowed Davis to win." - Since Smith didn't remove Biondo, this sentence should be re-cast.
"The final verdict was that O'Hare's claims went unproven in the arbitration case, all three were absolved of guilt, and the claim was dismissed." - Tighten by deleting "in the arbitration case"?

The Games

"Ohno was in second place with three laps remaining, and on his third attempt to pass on the final lap, Kim drifted slightly to the inside where Ohno raised his arms to signal he was blocked." - Since Kim wasn't making an attempt to pass, this sentence should be re-cast.
"thousands of accusatory letters, many of which were death threats" - "contained death threats" rather than "were death threats"?

After Salt Lake

The Manual of Style advises against sandwiching text between two images on opposite sides of the page. In addition, the Olympic skates photo overlaps two sections. An easy fix for both problems would be to move the skate image up into "The Games" section.
"At the second event in South Korea, an estimated 100 riot police stood guard at Incheon International Airport to prevent harm from happening to Ohno stemming from fears of a lingering negative reaction from the 2002 Olympic Games disqualification controversy." - Since Ohno didn't stem from fears, perhaps re-cast as two sentences, thus: "At the second event in South Korea, an estimated 100 riot police stood guard at Incheon International Airport to prevent harm from happening to Ohno. Their concern stemmed from a lingering negative reaction from the 2002 Olympic Games disqualification controversy."
"Ohno was unable to defend his World Cup title reign from the previous three seasons" - Delete "reign"? Or change to "Ohno was unable to extend his World Cup title reign to a fourth season"?
"winning the 1000 m and 3000 m races." - When the race names are used as adjectives, they should be hyphenated; i.e. "winning the 1000-m and 3000-m races."

Post-Olympic hiatus and return

I'd recommend combining the two first paragraphs because they are so short.
"In 2009, Ohno won his 10th national title,[4] and qualified for the world team; however, unable to defend his championship, Ohno finished fifth in the overall rankings at the 2009 World Championships in Vienna, Austria: he placed second at the 1000 m, and won gold with the 5000 m relay team." - Too many things tacked together. Two sentences would be better.

Olympic trials

"were the one through top five finishers at the trial" - Tighten by deleting "one through"?

Performance

In the table, what does "Safe" mean in the Results column? Should this be explained in a footnote?

General

The images will need alt text, meant to explain the image content to readers who can't see the images. WP:ALT has details.
The dabfinder tool at the top of this review page finds two links that go to disambiguation pages rather than their intended targets.
The link checker finds six dead urls in the citations.

I hope these suggestions prove helpful. If so, please consider reviewing another article, especially one from the PR backlog. That is where I found this one. Finetooth (talk) 03:48, 23 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comments: Thank you for the thorough review of this article. I went through and made changes to the article per all of your suggestions. However, as for this one:

"he won a gold medal in the 1500 m, a silver in the 300 m, and came in fourth in the 500 m." - Should "meter" be spelled out in the main text? How do other speed-racing articles handle this?

There are hardly any well-written speed-racing articles, so after reading WP:STYLE Unit Names and Symbols to use m instead of meter as along as I included the nonbreak in it i.e. 100 m. Since there are multiple uses of meter throughout the article, I didn't know if it would be redundant/distracting to the reader to constantly see the word. I think it makes sense to write meter out as m instead. Also, in response adding alt to the images, I wasn't sure how to add it to the image in the infobox template, so I might have to ask someone if they know how to add it to the template itself or something. on camera^(t) 03:29, 24 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Your explanation about "m" vs. "meter" makes sense in the context of this article. I added a |image_alt = parameter to the article's infobox just now so that you'll be able to add the alt text. You are right in thinking this is a bit tricky; the parameters in the infobox differ from the parameter for most of the other images. If you ever have to do alt text for a map in the infobox, it's |map_alt = . Best of luck with the FA pursuit. Finetooth (talk) 05:06, 24 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Another thought. Do you want to add the "persondata" info to the bottom of the article? WP:Persondata has an explanation. I have a script that can do most of the work (not much, really) automatically by cloning data from the infobox. Just let me know if you'd like me to run it on this article. Finetooth (talk) 15:38, 24 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for adding the alt_image to the infobox, but I don't see the alt text when I turn the images off. Do you have to make the change to the Template:Infobox Speed Skater itself? I don't know how to edit that! If you would like to run your bot for the Persondata, that would be helpful. on camera^(t) 16:29, 24 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Puzzling. I'm not seeing why the alt text doesn't show up. I'll keep thinking about this and perhaps ask for help. I added the persondata by copy-paste of the template from WP:Persondata. (For some reason, the script did not work.) You can see the persondata in edit mode. Only four bits of data were relevant. Finetooth (talk) 17:15, 24 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, flummoxed. I don't see how to fix the alt text. Finetooth (talk) 17:53, 24 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for adding the Persondata template. I will look for other help with the alt tag in the infobox! Thanks for trying, on camera^(t) 18:10, 24 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I see that someone has fixed it and that the solution is a variant that I didn't try. :-) Glad you found help. Now that the technical problem is fixed, I have another observation. The alt text is not the same as the caption; if you can imagine a blind person listening to the alt text being read out loud by a machine, you will have a good idea of what the alt text should say. For example, "The skates Ohno wore at the 2002 Olympics" won't be of much help to a blind reader. Something like "A pair of silver skates with gold-colored blades are mounted in a display case" would be better. You can improve on the other two alt texts as well. Finetooth (talk) 19:45, 24 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I went and edited the alt texts again according to that logic; it's better now. Thanks for the advice, on camera^(t) 03:49, 26 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]