Wikipedia:Peer review/List of United States airmail stamps/archive1

List of United States airmail stamps

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I've listed this article for peer review because I have finished adding an image for each stamp that I can legally add (only ones previous to 1978 - see this {{PD-USGov}} and I think its ready to nominate as a featured list. I also have dist numbers for all but a couple stamps from 1918-1949, other than that they were nearly impossible to find. I have date issued, Type (denom and color), subject, and Scott # for each and every stamp.

Thanks, Nasa-verve (talk) 01:00, 1 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Finetooth comments: This is an interesting and useful list but not yet ready for FLC. I have quite a few suggestions for further improvement.

Lead

I would suggest expanding the lead to say something about the total number of air mail stamps issued, the range in sizes and prices, and perhaps something about the kinds of images. Perhaps it could be said when it became possible to buy domestic air-mail stamps at any post office in the U.S. and not just for the early Washington–Philadelphia–New York route. Add a bit more of the history, in other words.

"Domestic air mail became obsolete in 1975... ". - I think I'd clarify this by saying "Domestic air mail became obsolete as a special category in 1975... ".

Images

It might be OK to add non-free images of the non-PD stamps if you use a non-free rationale for each one. See, for example, File:Lincoln 1995 Issue-32c.jpg, which appears in US Presidents on US postage stamps with a license with a non-free rationale. Each low-res image would have to have its own rationale specific to its use in this airmail-stamp list. I may be wrong, but I think using the images in this way in this particular context would meet the WP:NFCC guidelines, although you might get questions about criterion 8. Since it would be a shame to do the significant amount of work involved in adding the missing images and the many non-free rationales, I'd suggest getting a second and third opinion from trusted editors before trying this.

Would it be useful to show a canceled stamp as an example of what one looked like?

Dashes

Date ranges and page ranges take en dashes rather than hyphens. I ran a script to fix these. The script also changed some other hyphens to en dashes in the tables, and that seemed to be an improvement as well.

Underlinking

Why link Niagara Falls but not Zion National Park or William T. Piper, or Junipero Serra for example,

Notes on types

The "plate type" definitions need a source or sources.

Could perforation be explained in the article's notes instead of sending the reader to an external site for an explanation? Something like "Perf 11" will not mean anything to many readers.

Could "printing dryness" be more completely explained?

Other

The tools at the top of this review page find five dead links in citation urls and one link that goes to a disambiguation page instead of the intended target.

The word "and" should usually be used instead of the ampersand (&).

"Date Issed" is a misspelling that occurs in the first column of each table. Please replace with "Date Issued".

Rather than adding a separate line, "Reference" under each table, I'd be inclined to move the inline citation to a position immediately after the table heading; e.g., "1918–1919" would have a ref number immediately after it, and readers would see that it applied to the whole table.

Would it be helpful to add metric sizes for the stamps? If this seems too messy, would it be useful to add a sample conversion, maybe in the lead. Why are stamp sizes included in some tables but not others?

Citation 5 is marked with a "deadlink" tag but seems to work just fine.

Direct links (such as those in the last column of the "1930–1939" table) to external sites should not be included in the main text or the notes. Use inline citations instead.

Some of the citations are incomplete. A good rule of thumb for web citations is to include author, title, publisher, date of publication, url, and date of most recent access if all are known or can be found.

Make sure that the date formatting in the reference section is internally consistent. Citation 1 includes a nonconforming date, and others are apt to creep in as citations are added or altered.

Do all of the sources meet the WP:RS guidelines? Sometimes dot-coms don't meet the guidelines; about these I'm not sure. I'm wondering if a dot.gov site might have the same information.

I hope these suggestions prove helpful. If so, please consider reviewing another article, especially one from the PR backlog at WP:PR; that is where I found this one. I don't usually watch the PR archives or check corrections or changes. If my comments are unclear, please ping me on my talk page. Finetooth (talk) 19:50, 5 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your comments Finetooth. I will be working on these in the next couple weeks as I have time. Nasa-verve (talk) 23:39, 8 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]