Wikipedia:Peer review/Optics/archive1

This peer review discussion has been closed.
Previously a start-class article recently expanded ninefold. Interested in GA/FA. Suggestions welcomed. Thanks, DurovaCharge! 04:12, 16 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]


Ruhrfisch comments: Nice job of exapnsion and generally well done. With an eye to FAC, here are some suggestions for improvement.

  • The lead seems sparse to me for an article of this length. While it is the maximum number of paragraphs allowed (four), the paragraphs are fairly short and there seem to be at least some topics that are not in the lead but are section headers (like the sections on the human eye) My rule of thumb is to include every header in the lead in some way.
  • I also think the third paragraph of the lead goes about the things the wrong way. Current physics understands all electromagnetic radiation in terms of quantum mechanics, it just happens that much of optics can also be expalined in terms of classical physics (Newton's Opticks and all that).
  • While this is well-cited in amny polaces, there are still some parts that need more references, for example the Reflections section has several places. My rule of thumb is that every quote, every statistic, every extraordinary claim and every paragraph needs a ref.
  • Agree that the references need to be more complete before any sort of serious effort at FAC can be undertaken. Internet refs need URL, title, author if known, publisher and date accessed. {{cite web}} and other cite templates may be helpful. See WP:CITE and WP:V
  • Also not sure that all of the refs cited are Reliable sources - for example Ref 18 is to this http://cnx.org/content/m11932/latest/ which seems to be an "anyone can edit" site - not sure this is a RS (there have to be lots of good books on Galileo and his telescope)
  • Very nice images, but per WP:MOS#Images, images should be set to thumb width to allow reader preferences to take over. For portrait format images, "upright" can be used to make the image narrower. Things like File:Wave group.gif are OK set wider, but I fail to see the usefulness of the huge triple figure with all the white space beside it in the Polarization section.
  • Per WP:HEAD, section headers should try to avoid repeating the name of the article, but at least five headers contain the word optics. This may be a case for WP:IAR, but I would see if the number of such header could be reduced if at all possible.
  • There are several places that have short (one or two sentence) paragraphs, which impede the flow of the article. These should be combined with other paragraphs where possible, or perhaps expanded.
  • In Geometrical optics the second paragraph on Fermat's principle appears to use italics to indicate a direct quotation which violates WP:ITALIC and MOS:QUOTE. There are a lot of places that use italics that may be against WP:ITALIC
  • Writing is generally decent. There needs to be a bit more flow within sections, if possible (seems like a collection of cool facts at times)

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). Yours, Ruhrfisch ><>°° 04:33, 30 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]