Wikipedia:Peer review/United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri/archive1

United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri

• A script has been used to generate a semi-automated review of the article for issues relating to grammar and house style; it can be found on the automated peer review page for March 2009.

This peer review discussion has been closed.
The new Wikipedia:WikiProject United States courts and judges is trying to get court-related articles in good shape, and we're hoping to learn what it takes to get an article on a district court "good" or even "featured". The one we picked (arbitrarily) was United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri. After a week of improvements, we think it's ready for peer review. So what does it still need? Thanks, – Quadell ^(talk) 13:53, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

Brianboulton comments: You asked what the article needs; here are a few suggestions:-

• Get a better focus: is it an article or a list? At present it is heavily weighted by the list of judges. If the article is intended to be primarily about the court, rather than a list, then the prose content of a modest 1100 words or so needs to be expanded.

  It's definitely intended to be an article. Do you think the detailed list should be removed to a separate page? I lean toward including it in the article itself, but I could see removing it if you think we should. – Quadell ^(talk) 18:30, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

• A few suggestions for extending the content:-
  • Add a short section explaining the court's place within the structure of the US federal judiciary system, like where it stands in the hierarchy, what are its superior courts, what are its lower courts etc. Stuff like that would be most helpful to non-US readers.
  • The History section could be expanded by giving more details about the early court, where it met etc. The section is at present mainly an account of the district's various divisions and subdivisions; it would be interesting to have something about the general workload of the district courts - how many cases were being heard in the 1850s, how many now, etc., or any other enlivening facts about the district's growth and development. Some of this may be covered by the Notable cases subsection, but as noted below, I think this should be a separate section.
  • Facts are mentioned in the lead which are not mentioned in the article. Everything in the lead needs to be followed up in some way, in the main body of the article.
• The lead itself needs to be reorganized. At the moment it is rather a jumble of facts in no particular logical order. The lead should act as a summary of the article as a whole.
• The Notable cases section could be a section in its own right rather than a subsection of history. However, I wonder how "notable" the redlinked cases are, if they have not yet attracted wikipedia articles?

  Oh, they're notable. It's a shame they don't have articles yet, but they definitely should. I've separated the section. – Quadell ^(talk) 18:30, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

• There is overlinking, especially of terms which might be considered everyday. Among there are abortion, newspaper, campaign contributions, defendent. There may be others.
  • I agree on newspaper and defendant, but are you sure about abortion and campaign contributions? They are the most import "topic" of each court case. – Quadell ^(talk) 18:30, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
• Minor points:
  • "...a students rights" Apostrophe missing
  • References to "Supreme Court" should be clarified. Is this US Supreme Court?
  • "Saint Louis" in the lead becomes St Louis later on
  • "at this time" needs to be replaced by a fixed time, e.g. "as of March 2009"

    All done. – Quadell ^(talk) 18:30, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

• A couple of points on the table
  • I think chronology would be a better default order than alphabetical by judge
  • The hyphens (indicating no information) would look much better replaced with dashes, and centered in their cells. I have done the first one to show you what I mean.

    Fixed (the hyphens). – Quadell ^(talk) 18:30, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

    • Chronology done. bd2412 T 03:45, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

I hope these comments are of help to you. Brianboulton (talk) 17:20, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

They certainly are. I'll look at the suggestions (that I haven't yet addressed) over the coming days. All the best, – Quadell ^(talk) 18:30, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

I found a source from which I was able to substantially increase the information about the early case load of the court. bd2412 T 03:04, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Major updates

Okay, we have attempted to address all these concerns. The lead has been completely redone, and now summarizes the article (though it may still need work). There was some reorganization, and the history was greatly expanded. The court's place within the U.S. judicial system was expanded upon. Various formatting changes were also done. Still unsure whether a complete list of present and former judges belongs in the article itself. Further comments and criticisms would of course be eagerly welcomed. – Quadell ^(talk) 15:13, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Further comments

• I have looked at the article again, following these major revisions. I think the balance is much better with the truncated list of judges, and the focus is now quite definitely on the court. During a fairly speedy run-through I did a few copyedits (which you are welcome to revert), and made a few notes which I give below:-
  • I altered "divided into divisions" to "organized into divisions", to avoid what to me is an ugly repetition. However, I have left "...divided the Eastern District into the Northern and Esatern divisions..." because the repetitions are at some distance.
  • The "largest courthouse" sentence in the lead looks misplaced. This is really a bit of trivia, totally unimportant to the article, and certainly not something to be mentioned in the lead. Either cut it altogether, or mention it in passing in the depths of the article, but don't showcase it.
  • I personally dislike the "such as" format that you use in the lead, when abortion and campaign finance were actual issues covered in the cases In my view a better wording would be "covering issues relating to abortion and campaign finance"
  • The opening of the new Mandate and Jurisdiction section reads like pure legalese: "empowered to conduct civil trials on and issue orders with respect to..." etc etc. This sounds like some formal statutory language, and you should cite the source. You should also convert it into something a little less artificial.
  • The long quotes in the Civil War section are not justified. They should be paraphrased in your own words.

That's really all I can say, I think. I hope these comments help. Brianboulton (talk) 21:04, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

I abbreviated the second Civil War era quote. I'd really like to keep the first, as it would be hard to reword it and yet keep the flavor of the many different subjects taxed, each under its own law. bd2412 T 21:45, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks again! I think all your concerns have been addressed now. – Quadell ^(talk) 16:53, 30 March 2009 (UTC)