- A script has been used to generate a semi-automated review of the article for issues relating to grammar and house style; it can be found on the automated peer review page for December 2008.
This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because it had one a while back, but it has expanded a bit since. I'd just like to see what wikipedians in general think needs improvement, because it's not too far off FA, really. Sometimes enthusiasts are a bit too close to articles to spot things that are obvious to a more general audience.
Thanks, Kaini (talk) 22:49, 13 December 2008 (UTC)
Finetooth comments: I qualify as an outsider and general reader who knows almost nothing of the subject. I have a few suggestions for improvement.
- The most difficult thing for a total outsider to comprehend might be the unfamiliar jargon. A lot of terms in the article are wikilinked, which is good. I think it would be possible for a newcomer to get a kind of quick musical education by carefully reading this article. Even so, it would be helpful to a newbie to see even more of the terms explained or spelled out on first use. "Scene" is an example of this kind of jargon. Scene (community) do it, but another option would be to include a brief explanation of the term in the main text. Other terms that not every reader will understand are "B-side", "jungle nights", "pirate station", 12"s, "underground hard graft", and "mix CD". As you look through this with the general reader in mind, you might think of an audience of grandmothers and grandfathers familiar with "bass" and "octave" but not "grime" or "jungle".
- A copyedit by an outside editor would probably catch and fix small things such as the use of "drum 'n' bass" in one place and "drum and bass" in another, the use of the archaic "whilst" instead of the modern "while", and the incorrect placement of reference numbers before punctuation instead of after.
- I'd think about expanding the lead to include at least a mention of some of the musicians and main venues. The existing lead is a bit thin.
- This sentence in the lead is too complex: "Dubstep started to spread beyond small local scenes in late 2005 and early 2006, with many websites devoted to the genre appearing on the Internet and thus aiding the growth of the scene, such as dubstepforum, the download site Barefiles and blogs such as gutterbreakz." You might re-organize it something like this: "Dubstep started to spread beyond small local scenes in late 2005 and early 2006. Devoted to the genre, websites such as dubstepforum, the download site Barefiles, and blogs such as gutterbreakz aided the growth of the scene."
- Abbreviations such as "bpm" should be spelled out on first use, like this: beats per minute (bpm). It can then be abbreviated on subsequent use without spelling it out. Another example: disk jockey (DJ). Another: Master of Ceremonies (MC). Another: microphone (mic).
- Many of the citations are incomplete and should be fixed. A general rule of thumb is to include author, title, publisher, date of publication, url, and access date. It's not always possible to find an author name or a date of publication, but you should include as much of this data as you can.
I hope you find these brief comments to be helpful. If so, please consider reviewing another article, especially one from the PR backlog. That is where I found this one. Finetooth (talk) 20:08, 25 December 2008 (UTC)