Wikipedia:Peer review/History of hip-hop dance/archive1

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because I split it from hip-hop dance since that article was becoming too big and edited it a little so that it could stand on it's own. I would like feedback on the grammar in particular.

Thanks, Gbern3 (talk) 16:44, 3 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Quick comments from Adabow

  • You should probably leave a short paragraph in hip-hop dance to summarise the history
  • I also think that you should renom this for GA, rather than simply rating it GA-class.

Adabow (talk · contribs) 06:24, 4 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Ruhrfisch comments: Thanks for your work on this article, here are some suggestions for improvement.

  • 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
    • ??????... Definitely didn't copy and paste anything (except quotes). Example, please?
      • In response to your query on my talk page, please accept my apologies - I was not accusing you (or any editor who has contributed to this article) of plagiarism. I was trying to stress the importance of making sure that the article does not plagiarize or closely paraphrase any of the sources. The reason for the increased scrutiny in terms of possible copyvios is that there have been several high profile copyvio cases recently. The Halloween WP:TFA was pulled from the Main Page as it had plagiarism issues - see Talk:Grace Sherwood. Then a recent FA I was involved in was found to have a lot of close paraphrases and some statements not backed up by the references used - see Talk:The Story of Miss Moppet. After these incidents and others at DYK, I started adding a standard statement to all peer reviews I do - please see User:Ruhrfisch/PR. On this article, I checked one statement which had 4 refs. Two refs were print sources (which is fine, no problem with that) but the other two that were online were problematic. The ref either did not back up the statement (ref says many roots of breaking including James Brown's dance, but the article says it all started with James Brown's dance) or was broken. As noted, I also saw a ref to an NPR review of a documentary and wondered why the doc was not used a ref, and saw some refs that seemed like they might not be Reliable sources. All of this led me to put the sources review first in this review, and the statement you objected to first. Ruhrfisch ><>°° 00:56, 29 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • I tried checking some refs - for example I tried to check this sentence The purest hip-hop dance style, breaking, began in the early 1970s as elaborations on how James Brown danced on TV to his song "Get on the Good Foot". which has four refs. Two are not online so I could not check them. One reason I wanted to check this is that it seemed odd that a whole style of dance could be traced to one event (James Brown's dance), so I looked at the online refs. Current ref 3 Physical Graffiti... The History of Hip Hop Dance mentions the James Brown song and dance, but also mentions several other sources (not just this one). Current ref 5 is supposed to be an NPR story, but instead links to ref 3 again. So of the two refs I could check, one does not really back up the sentence (it mentions lots of sources, not just this one) and one is broken / points to the wrong web page.
    • Fixed broken link. That ref (the formerly broken one) quotes Afrika Bambaataa directly "When you're dealing with the b-boys and b-girls, you can take it... straight back to the Godfather of Soul," says DJ Afrika Bambaataa... He says that the song "Get on the Good Foot" inspired crowds to imitate the singer's dance moves... "It was a big dance, everybody was doing the Good Foot, and you was playing all the James Brown records... and then you expand on it." There is also ref 8, the quote from Crazy Legs who cites James Brown, "Our immediate influence in b-boying was James Brown, point blank". This one came from a book I read so it's also not online, sorry. I know online sources are easier for you to check but I don't feel like the print sources should be disregarded for that statement because you can't see them on the Internet.
      • Thanks - I am fine with books and am glad this article uses them. I was not disregarding them, only saying what I could check in terms of refs. Based on what you said, I think that I would say something like "Afrika Bambaataa traces breaking back to imitations of James Brown's dance moves to his song "Get on the Good Foot" ..." and cite it to the fixed ref, then quote or prarphrase the other refs that differ on the sources (the one I could check, the books if different). Current ref 8 is only about toprock and uprock that I can see. Ruhrfisch ><>°° 00:56, 29 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
        • It's the reference located in the quote box for Crazy Legs. It's now ref 6; the number probably changed after I edited the article.
  • The only other NPR ref is also potentially problematic - Edwards, Bob (April 25, 2003). "Profile: Rerelease of the classic hip-hop documentary "Style Wars"". Morning Edition (NPR). Presumably it discusses what is in the documentary, but I would think that the doc itself should be used as a source here.
    • Agreed, the documentary would be a better source but I have not seen the documentary. I only read the NPR article at the library which discusses both it (the doc) and breaking.
  • Please make sure that all refs are formatted consistently - for example why are author names sometimes last name first, and other times first name followed by last name? Or why isn't The New York Times italicized? Or why do two refs to IMDb.com also list Amazon.com as sources?
    • Fixed author names. Note: in the {{cite web}} template there's a parameter for work (the website which is in italics) and for publisher (who published the website, not italicized). IMDb.com is the website I got the information from; however, Amazon.com owns IMDb.com. I took out Amazon.com anyway to avoid confusion. This is probably better because I don't know if IMDb.com's information is hosted on Amazon's servers.
  • I would also make sure that the sources used meet WP:RS - for example, what makes RapBasement.com a reliable source?
    • RapBasement.com is an online hip-hop magazine. It 2007, it won a VH1 Hip Hop Honors Award for "Best Hip Hop Lifestyle Site". Click here for a screenshot of the webpage.
  • Since this was split off from the Hip-hop dance article, I agree that a short summary should be left in that article, with a link to this article. Please see WP:Summary Style
    • Already integrated in the Main Styles sections of the hip-hop dance article.
  • The first sentence of the lead makes it sound like the history only took place in the 1970s, The history of hip-hop dance encompasses the people and events in the 1970s that contributed to the development of the early hip-hop dance styles of uprock, breaking, locking, popping, and electric boogaloo. changing "in the 1970s" to "since the 1970s" would make it clearer that the history is ongoing
    • Changed. Great observation.
  • The caption of the lead image should say where Union Square is located
    • Changed.
  • I would watch WP:OVERLINKing - United States really does not need to be linked in the lead. Also watch underlinking - Soul Train should be linked in the lead.
    • ? Not sure how to determine which terms are over/underlinked but I did change the examples you gave.
  • I know this is showing my age, but I would at least mention that breaking was sometimes known as "break dancing"
    • Done.
  • Needs a ref These new dance moves came about with the formation of crews—groups of street dancers who get together and create dance routines. Crews are comparable to a dance company but informal. As crews are formed by a group of friends, relationships within a crew are familial. Members are not apart of a union, nor are there a series of auditions. Unless the crew is well-established there usually is not a studio to practice in either: rehearsal generally happens in homes and on the street.
    • Don't know how I missed that one. Fixed.
  • Bob Edwards reviewing a documentary is the only basis for this extraordinary claim?? Rock Steady Crew (RSC) is the most famous breaking crew in the world.[11] Also the RSC article here on Wikipedia gives a different year for its founding.
  • The naming debates sections are both pretty short and seem as if they could be merged into the history.
    • Merged sections together, see next comment.
  • I owuld also make sure that the events and people listed in the timeline are also mentioned in History. So the Jackson 5 are only in the timeline, not in the rest of the article
    • That's a lot to pack into the history section. History is already pretty long. Adding the naming debates section + geographically separated isolated dance events with the Jackson 5, Thomas Hergenröther, Ruza Blue, Michael Jackson, Flashdance, breaking for the Queen of England, breaking in Harajuku, Beat Street, Tony Go Go, Battle of the Year, etc. would create disarray. I don't know how I could integrate the information from the timeline into the history section and still have the article flow seamlessly. That's actually why I created the timeline. For example, Rize and UEL's degree program are the only events in the timeline for hip-hop dance history in the 2000s. Aside from the overall hip-hop dance theme, these events aren't related to each other at all. One is a movie, the other is a degree program. The movie was made in the projects in L.A., the degree is only offered in London. I don't know how I could make information like this be cohesive in paragraph form with the rest of what's already in the history section.
      • My point is just that it seems inconsistent to have the Jackson 5 in the Timeline (which is presumbly a list of the most important events, or else why are they included there?), but then not to mention them in the applicable subsection of History. Ruhrfisch ><>°° 00:56, 29 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
        • Moved Jackson 5 event from the timeline to the history section.
  • Grammar and language seem OK to me
    • Great! Thank you for your review.

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 ><>°° 20:40, 27 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]