Wikipedia:Peer review/Timothy L. Pflueger/archive1

Timothy L. Pflueger

This peer review discussion has been closed.
Tim Pflueger, a self-made man, was one of the most interesting architects in 1920s and 1930s San Francisco. His work spans many types of buildings and touches a lot of colorful SF Bay Area history.

It is definitely time to move this article forward, as it earned GA status a few months ago and has been very stable for more than a year, with myself as (by far) the main contributor. I have recently added alt text to the images, with the intent to go to WP:FAC and try for featured status. There are no stray dablinks, and the external URLs all work okay. What am I missing? What can be improved? Binksternet (talk) 18:37, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

Note to nominator: Due to a shortage of reviewers, peer reviews are being delayed for up to two weeks. It will help to speed things up if you can find time to review one article from the backlog list, which appears on the WP:PR page. Thanks. Brianboulton (talk) 23:32, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

Brianboulton comments: I will try and give the article a proper review in the next couple of days. Meanwhile, in answer to your question "What can be improved?", the first thing that struck me was that images tend to dominate the text. I realise that with a subject like this, you want to use images to best effect, but in this instance they are somewhat overpowering. I would say the infobox image is too big; there are a couple of instances where text is squeezed between images, contrary to MOS; I wonder if all the gallery images are necessary to give an adequate illustration of Pflueger's style. Perhaps you would consider these points, and hopefully I will have some more detailed points for you in a day or two. Brianboulton (talk) 18:30, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Good points. I created the infobox image at 282 pixels wide because I was under the impression infoboxes were allowed 300-pixel-wide images, as is the case for Template:Infobox military person. (My first good Wikipedia style lessons were given at military history articles, and those lessons stuck.) I set the infobox image size parameter at 282 pixel because I wanted the image to be rendered for the reader pixel-for-pixel for maximum clarity of a non-free image rather than shrunk and made blurry. At Template:Infobox person, I am confused as to whether the maximum width is 200, 220 or 280 pixels. The guideline contradicts itself by saying "200x300px (max width & max height ... defaults to 280x220px if empty or omitted." The specific infobox that we have here, Template:Infobox architect, does not give a maximum size, and points at 250 pixels wide as a significant "line in the sand"; for smaller images, size is to be set in the parameter. Whichever is the largest allowed, I will want to resample the original non-free portrait and re-upload it so that it is exactly the right width for the infobox.

Other than that, I have struck two images from the article, but the effect is somewhat reduced from my moving one up from the gallery. Another image or two has been slimmed by the |upright|thumb| parameter, and a tall, slender one has been rotated 90 degrees so that its thumb width makes it much smaller. The biggest change is that I went to Wikimedia Commons and created a gallery so that this article can simply link to it rather than host its own gallery. Binksternet (talk) 19:57, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

The changes you have made are definite improvements. May I suggest a few more things to try:-

• Infobox image. Infobox images are indeed allowed expansion to 300px, but that is to increase the size of small images. 282px, in this case, makes the infobox image rather overbearing—compare it with other biographical articles. I tried out 220px on this one, and in my view that gives a good image size.
• Zigzag: I would improve the left-right sequence, as follows:-
  • Shift "Wayside Church" to the left, after the first paragraph in the "Early career" section
  • Shift Stackpole figure to the left
  • Shift Paramount Theatre to the left and Alameda Theatre to the right
  • Shift Macy's to the right
• Use "upright" for the two abnormally sized images (Castro Theatre and Bay Bridge) to bring to a size more uniform with the rest.

I have tried out all of these, and they look good. Why don't you try it, and see what you think? Brianboulton (talk) 21:05, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Done. I don't like to put an image anywhere except next to the prose which talks about it, but with the Wayside Church image following the relevant paragraph instead of preceding it, I don't think our blind readers get too great of a jolt. Binksternet (talk) 22:32, 30 July 2010 (UTC)