Wikipedia:Peer review/Let Us Continue/archive1

Let Us Continue

I've listed this article for peer review because, even though it was only created two weeks ago, I think that it truly has potential to become a good article, and would like to help it become one.

Thanks, JJP...MASTER!_{[talk to] JJP... master?} 18:46, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

{{doing}} Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 19:44, 18 March 2021 (UTC)

Hey there! Sorry for the delay. I took a look at the article, benchmarked against the GA criteria, and have some feedback:

• The lead doesn't adequately summarize the contents of the article (WP:LEAD). It doesn't cover the background, writing of the speech, or give any real details on the aftermath, all of which are covered in the article body.
• Along that line, I'm not sure the Background section needs to be as detailed here as it is. It's setting up the context for the speech, so content that doesn't directly relate to that should go, for example:
  • On November 22, 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated John F. Kennedy in Dallas at about 12:30 p.m. The doctors of the local Parkland Memorial Hospital, who tried to save the life of the 35th President of the United States in an emergency operation were not successful. With the death of Kennedy, his vice president automatically became his successor in office. On the same day, Lyndon Johnson took the oath of office aboard Air Force One and became the 36th President of the United States. (The second sentence doesn't relate to Johnson assuming office, and is redundant with the detail that we need, JFK was killed.)
  • The Who's who of details of who he persuaded to stay should likewise be cut if they have no specific relevance to the speech.
• The prose needs work; it's at times meandering and muddled, other times just redundant, and in general seems to often stray from the main topic (the speech) into only tangentially-related topics (the assassination, Johnson's political career afterwards, etc.)
  • To give an example, you've got this really wordy couple of sentences that have a lot of extra words that can be trimmed to streamline it: The Capitol seemed suitable because it was here that Johnson had risen to become a leader, the Master of the Senate,[18] because he thought there were many friends and only a few opponents, because the walk up Capitol Hill was a gesture of appreciation for the legislature and its independence, and because political demands on the law makers could be addressed at the same time. (The repeated use of "because" don't add anything.) Following In the afternoon of November 23, 1963, the date of this speech was also set: it was to be delivered four days later, on November 27. You either tell us four days later or you tell us on November 27; giving us both is repeating the same thing different ways. It was clear that this speech would be the most important that Johnson had ever made in his career. It was clear to whom? And if it's the most important Johnson had ever made, the "in his career" bit is superfluous.
  • Why not just say No southern politicians applauded Johnson's call for a civil rights bill. instead of n particular, however, no hand of Southern politicians moved as soon as Johnson called for the passage of a law that would strengthen the rights of African Americans.
  • There's some weird shifts in tense, for example Galbraith provided a draft that Johnson initially agreed to. However, on November 25 Sorensen vehemently opposes this draft by Galbraith.
  • Johnson should have said, for example, "I who cannot fill his shoes". do we mean Johnson would have said in the speech draft he didn't ultimately give?
  • In the meantime, Johnson's speech has also been artistically processed.—this is a really weird way of saying that the speech has appeared in media portrayals, and what does 'in the meantime' mean here given these portrayals are decades after the speech was given?
  • I find the past tense used for "structure of the speech" a bit odd; it's an existing written record, so why is it referred to like it doesn't exist now? We use present tense for novels and media, etc., this doesn't seem any different.
• It's unclear where certain passages should be cited to (for example, the Key messages and style section has uncited paragraphs.)
• I'm concerned about some of the sources used; for example Ashley Barrett is a masters essay, apparently not a peer-reviewed journal piece or edited magazine article. IMDB is not a reliable source for the trivia mention presented.
• The citation format for this article is kind of a mess. If sources are cited directly in the article, they shouldn't be stuck in "Special studies" and "Further reading" sections (Further reading is for material not covered by the article.) The references section has citations that aren't all that useful in figuring out what the source is, in part because the full citations are improperly placed above in misleading sections. Either having the full bibliographic information in the in-line <ref> tags, or using a shortened citation scheme like {{harvnb}} aggregated as "Notes" or similar pointing to the full information in a "Sources"/"References" section would be best.

--Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 18:37, 6 April 2021 (UTC)