Wikipedia:Peer review/Death of Selena/archive3

Murder of Selena

Previous peer review

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because I am aiming for the article to be a featured article. I have had the article peer reviewed two times and it was copyedited from WP:GOCE.

Thanks, AJona1992 (talk) 23:01, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Ruhrfisch comments: Sorry to have taken so long, have been swamped in real life. This looks better in terms of language, but still has several issues that would be problems at FAC; here are some suggestions for improvement.

• There is a toolbox on this PR page that has a dab link checker - it finds two dab links that need to be fixed here.
• There is also an external link checker that finds at least two dead links and several others that may be dead or broken. At FAC all the little details like this will need to be taken care of.
• The lead image is of a work of art - as such the art is copyrighted and so needs a WP:FAIR USE rationale (even if the photographer released his or her copyright, the artist's copyright is still valid).
• The other images of this memorial probably also need fair use rationales - per WP:NFCC it is difficult to see why the article needs two images of the memorial - how does the second image meet minimal use? The plaque is probably OK.
• To qualify for fair use, the article needs to really discuss the art pictured. As it is the caption says "On March 31, 2011 (the sixteenth anniversary of her death) Selena was given a statue in Apodaca, Nuevo Leon." and the article just says later "During the sixteenth anniversary of her death, Selena was given a statue in Apodaca, Nuevo Leon.[94]" The question is, what does the photo add to the reader's understanding that the words do not? Fair use needs much more discussion of the art in question...
• The first sentence does not follow WP:LEAD, which says in part The article should begin with a declarative sentence telling the nonspecialist reader what (or who) is the subject. Although the first sentence tells about Selena, it does not mention her death at all.
• I also note that the article title is now "Murder of Selena", but the entire lead does not include the word "murder" at all.
• I do not think the lead really follows WP:LEAD. The lead should be an accessible and inviting overview of the whole article. As such, nothing important should be in the lead only - since it is a summary, it should all be repeated in the body of the article itself
• My rule of thumb is to include every header in the lead in some way, but many of the headers are not in the current lead. For example the words "Black Friday" are not in the lead, and there is nothing in the lead about the funeral or trial or memorials...
• The words "Black Friday" are also not mentioned in the Black Friday section.
• I think the article should start (after the lead) with a few sentences on who Selena was for the uninformed reader. How old was she, how many records had she produced and sold, that sort of thing.
• Language is better but still not great - for example The reporter and a defensive of Saldivar went to Mexico and reportedly went to every storage department that Saldivar and her parents told them to look. I think that defensive is meant to be "defense attorney", storage department is an odd construction (why not something like "storage facility"?), and "that Saldivar and her parents told them to look" is just not grammatical
• The references are a mess - the MOS here says not to use all capital letters even if the original had them, so "THOUSANDS MOURN SELENA'S DEATH" should be "Thousands Mourn Selena's Death"
• Be consistent on ref styles. Why do some refs spell the book etc out like Patoski, Joe Nick (1997). Selena: Como La Flor. Berkley Pub Group. p. 147. ISBN 978-1-57297-246-9. Retrieved 23 May 2011. but others just give the short form like Patoski page 183 and still others add quote marks "Patoski page 184"
• MOS says to use p. for page anyway (and pp. for pages)
• Just a general comment, but the article is very long and full of details that really don't seem to add much. Why are we told that While on tour in Japan, David Byrne read of the murder in the International Herald Tribune.[21] - this is the only place Byrne is mentioned in the article.
• Or why include this The next day, Our Lady of Pillar Church held a mass which drew 450 people to their 225-seat church.[77]? It is "Our Lady of the Pillar" by the way - if this is to show the worldwide effect of her death, then say that this is a church in Spain in the article and WP:PCR
• Please make sure that the existing text includes no copyright violations, plagiarism, or close paraphrasing. For more information on this please see Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2009-04-13/Dispatches. (This is a general warning given in all peer reviews, in view of previous problems that have risen over copyvios.)

Hope this helps. If my comments are useful, please consider peer reviewing an article, especially one at Wikipedia:Peer review/backlog (which is how I found this article). I do not watch peer reviews, so if you have questions or comments, please contact me on my talk page. Yours, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 03:49, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

I had  Done everything you had pointed out except the image captions. I'm not sure how to add a suitable caption as the image is only illustrating visual evidence and how the statue(s) look. Can you tell me if the article is better now or should I request another WP:GOCE? Best, Jonayo! ^{Selena 4 ever} 02:26, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

Another look by Ruhrfisch

• I am looking at the article again and seeing what I would say if it were at FAC. I think it would not pass in its current state. Here are some of the reasons why.
• First thing I notice is the images, all but one of which are WP:FAIR USE. All fair use images have to meet WP:NFCC, which I have a hard time seeing for three of these.
  • First off, the lead image is of the memorial in Texas File:Selena memorial.jpg. I think it is OK, though more could be said about it - who is the sculptor of the statue? WHo designed the memorial? What have critics said about it (if anything)?
  • Second, there is no need for a second image of the same memorial (NFCC - minimal use). e:Selena Memorial at 1AM.jpg is a better picture, but does not show the statue of her as well. I fail to see the need for two fair use images of something that is only mentioned four times in the article.

So you want me to remove both of those?

• • Similarly, the image of the plaque at the memorial File:Statue plaque.jpg is almost certainly of a copyrighted work, so it should not be on Commons and needs to be fair use. Here I fail to see the usefulness of a plaque - why not just quote the words on the plaque?
  • Finally the image of the statue in Mexico File:Selena statue in Mexico.jpg is problematic. The good news is that Mexico has freedom of panorama, so if you could get a freely licensed photo of this staue, it would be free in all senses, which would be great. The bad news is that this not a free photo - in general fair use is only for things that are not reproducible in theory. A photo of Selena herself is unobtainable (alas), but anyone with a camera near Monterrey could in theory get a free picture of this statue. At FAC I would be willing to bet this photo would be disallowed and probably deleted as a copyvio not justified under NFCC.

Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 21:15, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

I  Fixed the image issues you addressed.

• Second thing I notice is that the prose is still not great. Just looking at the headers, "On law" makes no sense, and "Films and plays" makes it sound as if more than one film has been made (when there is only one mentioned in this article).

I fixed it to "Biographical film and play" and removed "on" from "Law". I'll ask for another c/e at WP:GOCE.

You really don't get it, do you? Someone needs to make sure the article is much better organized and pruned way back so that it is not a mountain of non-encyclopedic trivia. Almost no GOCE editor I know of is willing or perhaps able to do that - it needs someone who is familiar with the sources, and willing to do a lot of work. Until this is better organized and loses the non-encylcopedic cruft, it has almost no chance at FAC. I am done, good luck, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 23:09, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

I'm sorry that you feel that way about this article (and possibly most of every article I nominated for PR). I'll give it another read and remove fancrut but to my understanding I can't find anything else that is of non-encyclopedic trivia. Maybe to you its easy, but its not to me.

• There are also many places where the words just do not make sense: Before Selena was murdered, she had sold approximately 1.8 million copies. copies of what? Singles? Albums? Photocopies?
• The problem is that while someone can polish the prose, much of the article is poorly organized and even contradicts itself in places. Almost no copyeditor can fix that, generally you have to have access to all the sources). As one example I will look at the "Funeral and tributes" section, but these kinds of problems are found throughout the article. All the following are from it.
  • First sentence is Her funeral drew approximately 60,000 mourners, many from outside the United States.[2] The first problem is that this same section later seems to say that these were people who came to her viewing (not the actual funeral), and even there the article contradicts itself, with adjacent sentences reading Sixty thousand fans viewed the casket.[32] About 30,000 to 40,000 passed by Selena's coffin.[71][72][73] Later we read that Six hundred guests, mostly family members, attended the morning services, which were broadcast live by a Corpus Christi and San Antonio radio station. So did 60,000 or 30,000 or 40,000 or 600 attend her funeral?

Selena only had one funeral with was her family and friends (600), however, there was an open casket viewing where 30,000 to 40,000 fans passed by.

• • Another problem is that the date of the funeral is not given in this first sentence, and it is not super clear to me even now (I think it was April 3 from On Monday, April 3, 1995, Selena was laid to rest. but laid to rest can refer just to burial, and often burial is on a later date than the actual funeral.

Selena's funeral was on 2 April the third marriage anniversary to her husband. Will fix

• • Yet another problem is that there is no real chronological order to this section - the first sentence is on her funeral, then we are told of vigils and memorials, which seem to have mostly taken place before the funeral. So for example we read A special mass in the Los Angeles Sports Arena on April 3, drew a crowd of four thousand. but this is before we have been told the date of the funeral itself, so it does not make as much sense (they had a mass the same day as her funeral, and it was in a place where she was scheduled to perform had she not been murdered).

 Fixed

• • Always be aware that an article is telling a (true) story, and you need to make sure that the story is easy to follow and well told, not confused and confusing.
  • Yet another problem is that there were already sections on Fan respone and Other reactions (including Selena Day). What are the criteria for including something in those sections versus here in Funeral and tributes? How was Selena Day an "Other reaction" but what some people did on it is a tribute?

Before the c/e was performed it was "Impact on Hispanics" and "Impacts on White Americans" and now I'm not sure what are the criteria since I was not the one who performed the c/e.

• • As an aside, to pass at FAC, all of the details have to be taken care of and things need to be consistent - is it "Selena Day" or just Selena Day, for one example? The article uses both (pick one and follow it)
  • FInally, related to the tributes and fan response and other reactions sections, the whole thing feels bloated - it seems like a Google search on this topic was dumped into an article. One example paragraph in italics follows, with my comments in [bold and brackets]

Radio station Tejano 107 in San Antonio announced that a candlelight vigil was to be held at 7 pm the day of the murder at Sunken Gardens[30] In competition, [Does the source really say this was in competition??? Seems very odd to me]

Yes, (the book) had stated that.

KRIO-FM staged its own candlelight vigil at the South Park Mall. [The next two sentences are fluff - why are they included? A child cried at a stampede - so what? And who is Jon Ramirez - what makes him notable enough to be described here?]

Removed about the child and Ramirez is a club promoter (added)

At the KRIO-FM vigil, a small stampede broke out in the rush to the stage, and one young girl was pulled crying from the crowd.[66] Jon Ramirez formally opened the proceedings and briefly talked about his first encounter with Selena, which was followed by the crowd lifting their candles.[66] Five thousand fans attended the vigil at the South Park Mall.[67] [Combine this last sentenc with the first on the vigial at the mall - only new info is the number in attendance]

I'm sorry but I'm not following what you mean. You want me to combine the number of attendance with the first sentence

OK, here's what I mean - I would rewrite the paragraph as something like this

The day of the murder, competing San Antonio radio stations announced two candlelight vigils. Tejano 107 sponsored one at Sunken Gardens, while KRIO-FM sponsored its own at South Park Mall, which was attended by 5,000.[refs]

I fail to see what is encylcopedic about a club promoter speaking at the KRIO vigil, when he is not mentioned anywhere else in this article, and he does not meet Wikipedia's notability standards. Part of the problem with the article is that there is so much non-enyclopedic cruft in there that the interesting and important things get lost in the excessive detail. Keep the focus on Selena and her death - what does a small stampede or club promotoer's speech at a vigil tell the reader about Selena's death that makes it so important to include? If there is a source that says something, then you can follow the source (so if a major newspaper said Ramirez's speech was especially meaningful or whatever, maybe include it. Seriously though, at a vigil for someone murdered that day, what do you expect people to talk about? Recipes? The average reader can imagine that fans had candles at a candlelight vigil, and assume that people who knew her likely spoke.

Will remove.

I am OK with one image of the Corpus Christi memorial, but not two. The current lead image is probably best as it shows the statue most clearly. If you know anyone in Monterrey who could get a picture of the Selena statue there and would agree to release it under a free license, that would be great - a free image of Selena could be used in several articles besides this and could be used on the Main Page. Unless there is something unique about the other image of the Mexican statue (which the caption and article did not mention) then, I do not see any reason why it meets WP:NFCC. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 23:09, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

Well I can place a free image request on the talk page that's all that I can do. Best, Jonayo! ^{Selena 4 ever} 23:21, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

• Last of all (and I could go on a long time) I have some serious doubts about the use of sources in Selena articles in general. I was alerted to this by the exchange on your talk page which I copy below about the article Selena singles discography. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 21:50, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

Well everyone thinks like that, you're not the only one. However, I always provide sources with claims, weather online or offline. BTW thanks for that copy-paste I didn't know he had replied to my last response. Best, Jonayo! ^{Selena 4 ever} 22:31, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

Selena singles discography

Hi AJona1992. I came to the article to improve some citations of the certifications due to a recent change, and I was surprised to see that none of the certifications were actually valid. Not a single one! I believe you weren't the one who added the certifications, just the one adding the citations, but still, I think when one adds a citation, one should check that the citation is valid. I hope you will be more careful in the future. Best regards. --Muhandes (talk) 11:29, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for cleaning that up. I actually was the one who added those certifications in WP:AGF because there were only two Mexican magazines (TVyNovelas and TVNotas) that claimed those certifications. Since none exist online I believed it was accurate, although they do exaggerate the sales. See here Allmusic archived the peak positions for the album, however, look at "Missing My Baby" it peaked at 22 on the Rhythmic Top 40. However, that's a primary source, so I would need to get the source from Billboard here however Billboard has removed some, if not, most of Selena's peak positions. That is when I had to use gossip news magazines to replace what Billboard and Allmusic couldn't do. Best, Jonayo! ^{Selena 4 ever} 14:21, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

All I'm saying is, be careful with adding citations. A citation should not be added if it does not verify the fact. Adding such a citation is betraying the basic assumption of good faith every reader makes, that the sources actually verify the facts. Best regards. --Muhandes (talk) 09:46, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

General advice

I am sorry I was a bit cranky up there. Here is some general advice for improving this (or almost any article). After this though I really have to move on and do some other work.

• Try to get some critical distance from the article. one good way to do this: Do not work on, read, or even look at the article for several days (a week if you can). Then print it out and read it out loud slowly, ready to take notes as you read. If you come to the article somewhat fresh, it might be that you can see what needs to be fixed more easily. As it is, you are so familiar with the article and what you know, that you don't see the things that can be fixed as easily as someone else can.
• Think about how to organize the article so that it tells the story well. There is some background, then the actual murder, then immediate responses to Selena's death, her funeral, the trial and subsequent history of the murderer, and the various art works inspired by the murder. One thing that might work is to have each section focus on one aspect only - I think it might help to have the section on just the funeral, for example (viewing and funeral and burial).
• Note this is already chronological. Within each section I would try to keep the narrative chronological if at all possible.
• It also helps to think about what you want to say in the article - list the 5 or 10 most important things to list in each section, and make sure they are there. For example, the funeral section did not have the actual date of the funeral until late in this PR
• Make sure that important things in the article follow multiple major reliable sources. For example, "Black Friday" is sourced to only one book - is it a common name for the day of her murder? If so, I would source it to several sources; if not, I would change the section header.
• Avoid needless repetition - one example here is the current autopsy photos section

Globe, a tabloid magazine, published a cover article about Selena's death, displaying her autopsy pictures for public viewing.[93] When the magazine hit news stands, Abraham Quintanilla Jr immediately filed a lawsuit against the magazine.[93] South Texas retailers quickly removed copies of Globe from store shelves after discovering the tabloid had printed the photos.[93] Six color pictures snapped by a police photographer from the autopsy were in the 14 November 1995 issue delivered to local stores.[93] The article was headlined "Shot in the Back!" and "Exclusive! Dramatic autopsy photos reveal innocent beauty was gunned down by lying coward."[93] The lawsuit was later dropped. The issue was then pulled off shelves all over the United States.[93]

• This could be pared down to something like

On November 14, 1995, the tabloid Globe's cover story on Selena's death showed six of her autopsy pictures, taken by a police photographer. The headlines were "Shot in the Back!" and "Exclusive! Dramatic autopsy photos reveal innocent beauty was gunned down by lying coward."[93]. Retailers across South Texas and the United States removed copies from their shelves. Abraham Quintanilla Jr. filed a lawsuit against Globe, which was later dropped.[93]

Hope this helps, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 01:45, 3 November 2011 (U

It's ok, I understand you are busy in RL and the PR process is getting a bit busier then usual. You're a great reviewier so its all good :) I'll fix these issues tomorrow and then take a break as you requested. I also asked User:SandyGeorgia to help me understand the fancrut in this article. Thanks, Jonayo! ^{Selena 4 ever} 02:18, 3 November 2011 (UTC)