Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography/Peer review/Bill King (Royal Navy officer)

William King (Royal Navy)

I would like to submit this article in the hope that I could gradually upgrade its rating to that of a Featured Article. Bill King is the oldest surviving submarine commander of the Second World War, an author, and a solo cirumnavigator.

DocDee (talk) 07:01, 19 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

from Roger Davies

A very promising piece that would benefit from extensive revision to its structure. Here are some initial thoughts.

Family

Very informative but the large amount of wikilinking and large number of citations is distracting.
Although it's informative and well-researched, is the all the detail about his father necessary? Perhaps break some of it out into a separate article?
I know it's implicit but it might be worth characterising the family into which King was born: upper middle class, prosperous etc
Funnily enough, preparatory school does need a wikilink, I think.
Again, all the detail on King's wife strictly necessary in this article? It places her socially and establishes what an interesting person etc but that could easily be done in fewer words. She is clearly notable in her own right so perhaps a separate article on her with a hatnote link to her.

World War II

There's some backfill here which would be better in a separate section - "Early naval career" (or similar) - covering the period roughly 1927 to 1939.
During World War II, King served in three submarines of the Royal Navy should really be the opening sentence of this section.
The gallantry awards might be better in an awards and honours sub-section.

Sailing feats

Again the chronology darts about.
No mention of his writing activities. I'd be tempted to turn the bibliography section into narrative and make a section of it.

Structure

I think it needs to deal with events more chronologically. I found the jumping around between school and marriage then back to early naval career difficult to follow.
Greater use of separate sections will help this considerably. Perhaps: Family background and childhood / Early naval career / World War II / Post-war and marriage / Sailing / Solo circumnavigation / Writing career / Later life.

If you decide to restructure it, it will need a close look afterwards. I'm happy to do this if you like. If you have any questions, just ask. Keep up the good work, --ROGER DAVIES ^talk 05:48, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Minor style points

~~Please add {{persondata|PLEASE SEE [[WP:PDATA]]!}} along with the required parameters to the article—see Wikipedia:Persondata for more information.^[?]~~

Surely unnecessary - this would duplicate information already provided in the Infobox Military Person ? DocDee (talk) 21:43, 5 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Per Wikipedia:Context and Wikipedia:Build the web, years with full dates should be linked; for example, if January 15, 2006 appeared in the article, link it as January 15, 2006. This also allows permits auto-formatting of dates according to viewer's preferences.^[?] Note this only applies to full dates, not when you're just mentioning the year or month (they should be left unlinked).
Most of your dates are in the form month-first. Day-first is more usual for British-related articles, and it should be standardised throughout the article.
Hyphens in date ranges should be dashes (e.g. (1939–40) not (1939-40))—see WP:DASH for more information.
Please stick to either Harvard references (e.g. "King lost radio contact during the race (Holm 1974:270).") or footnotes. Try not to mix styles. I recommend footnotes, given that most references are in that format. DrKiernan (talk) 13:33, 25 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]