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Revision as of 13:47, 12 January 2010

Murder of Teresa de Simone

Nominator(s): Sanguis Sanies (talk) 06:54, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

• Featured article candidates/Murder of Teresa de Simone/archive1

I am nominating this for featured article because... this was one of my first extensive works on wikipedia as an anon. and it became my first Good Article. Going over the article, and with the help of the peer review, I believe the article meets the criteria as one of the best articles. Sanguis Sanies (talk) 06:54, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

• All three images have fair-use rationales and alt texts. The fair-use rationale for and would IMO benefit from a more explicit explanation of "purpose of use", similar to that given for the image of the victim. --JN466 15:21, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

• They should both be updated now. Sanguis Sanies (talk) 05:49, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

Comments

• No dab links or dead external links—good.
• Alt text looks good to me after some edits.
• Ref dates are consistent ISO style (not sure about the en dashes in place of the usual hyphens, but at least they're consistent). I see e.g. "December 12 and December 27", but they should probably be "12 December" etc. to match the rest of the Day Month Year prose dates. and prose dates are Day Month Year. 07:04, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

--an odd name 23:15, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

• Changed it back to hyphens for the ref dates. Sanguis Sanies (talk) 05:49, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

Lead review:

• The murder of Teresa de Simone was an English homicide committed in 1979 which led to one of the longest proven cases of a miscarriage of justice in British legal history. The way English is ussed in this sentance, it seems like English homicide is a special type of homicide.
• Looking at the lead, it's too short. It doesn't say how the murder was commited, where, the criminal trial, etc. It skips from him being released to the consequences.
• The last para of the lead doesn't give a clear idea where it is going. Reading the first 2/3 lines of it, I think, so what? How is this related? It is, but the connection of the case, ae. its signifigance, should be placed at the beginning not the end.
• As a result of Hodgson's appeal and the use of archived forensic evidence to solve the crime, announced that 240 other convictions were to be reviewed. Who announced this?
• The CCRC also wrote to the Director of Public Prosecutions requesting that the Crown Prosecution Service identify and review similar murder cases from the time before DNA testing was available. to identify.

I'll be massaging the prose as I go along. As a favor for this review, can you please please please review mine? Thank you, ResMar 14:03, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

I've had a go at making the lead a bit larger, point 5 is incorrect; to add a "to" is incorrect. Sanguis Sanies (talk) 14:52, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

Prose

• The pub was located centrally in the city What city?

What city? Southhampton, as mentioned once in the lead, once in the infobox and once in the same paragraph two sentences before. Sanguis Sanies (talk) 15:22, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

• Part of a pair of tights... Don't link in quotes. ResMar 14:15, 27 December 2009 (UTC)
• Not clearly stated what the stuff with the blood types means. ResMar 17:29, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

More specifically? Sanguis Sanies (talk) 03:37, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

You talk about blood type A vs. blood type O, how he had the right blood type for the crime scene, but never say what this means, exactly. ResMar 17:11, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

• Comments - sources look okay, links checked out with the link checker tool. Ealdgyth - Talk 15:14, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

• Comments It's seemingly well-written, but there are several detail items needing attention.
  • "The murder ... was a homicide" You don't say.
  • You've used en dashes all over the place where hyphens should be used. I fixed one but you need to go through and fix all of them. Ex. "pre-1990", "22-year-old", "full-time" and so on. Please review WP:HYPHEN and WP:DASH.
  • Why is the name of the pub in italics all over the place? This and other items indicates this has not been carefully prepared with regard to WP:MOS.
  • It's somewhat overlinked. Please avoid linking simple definition items and common nouns. This needs some attention.

Great job, just needs some fit and finish. --Andy Walsh (talk) 18:17, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Better? Thanks for the comments. Sanguis Sanies (talk) 03:00, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

• Support, all my issues have been addressed and I've combed through it again to do some fine-tuning. Thanks for all your hard work and for giving us the opportunity to read about this fascinating case. --Andy Walsh (talk) 15:51, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

Oppose until the following are resolved:

• Overlinking British, part-time, barmaid, postmarked: any term that is obvious to an English reader (British), or does not add to the understanding of the article, should not be linked.
• The beginning of a sentence cannot start with a number (240, £250,000)
• Why is Southern Daily Echo in bold?
• Is there a reason for this odd capitalization mid-sentence: located As of December 2009?
• Again, this seems like a disruption in sentence punctuation: appeal being refused. "in 1998 an inquiry...
• Hodgsons is Britain’s longest Isn't his name Sean Hodgson?
• While I appreciate the background of someone who apparently was a murderer, I am just as mystified why someone would inappropriately confess to a murder or 200 crimes he did not commit. What information is there on Hodgson's obviously very bad judgment to confess?
• External link to Googlemaps for Copnor Bridge in the prose should be removed
• Please make sure to follow logical quotations, per the MOS. I found at least three instances of punctuation in the quotations.

I found the amount of detail impressive, and the article led me to understanding an interesting case. But in places the writing seemed choppy and per the above examples, seemed as if the article had been ravaged by edits or vandalism, leaving sentences incomplete.

Let me know if you have questions. --Moni3 (talk) 00:11, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

1) "wikipedia is for everyone", just because the article is written in British English about a British murder using British sources does not mean that the article is "British", an American, Peruvian, Singaporian, or anyone else might not know what these terms mean; particularly "barmaid" and "postmarked" as they may not be a directly translatable word in their culture. Additionally each work is only linked once. 2) Since when? I can certainly change it, but I would like to know your reasoning. 3) fixed. 4) fixed. 5) changed the full stop to a colon. 6) fixed. 7) It's mentioned in the pull quote (and in the article) that Hodgson is a pathological liar (wikilinked in the pull quote); this is the reason that he confessed to all of the crimes. In prison it became apparent he was also schizophrenic and this may have had a bearing on his "obviously very bad judgement." 8) Fixed. 9) Fixed all that I could find (which I think was three), did I miss any? Sanguis Sanies (talk) 09:04, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

• See WP:Overlinking. I agree with it. Actually, Misplaced Pages is not for everyone. Arbitration Committee exists to prove that. But the point here is that links should direct the reader to things that are strongly associated with the topic or that need further explanation. I would be dumbfounded to meet a reader of English proficient enough to comprehend the level of writing in this article who did not know what Britain was and thus required a link to figure it out. Consider this a whisper to keep you from winning this award.
• See Misplaced Pages:MOSNUM#Numbers_as_figures_or_words: Numbers that begin a sentence are spelled out, since using figures risks the period being read as a decimal point or abbreviation mark; it is often better to recast the sentence than to simply change format, which may produce other problems. Both sentences appear to be able to be reconstructed. I did not do it myself because I did not want to compromise accuracy in the article.
• In my experience and observation, half the people on Misplaced Pages (let's broaden that to the Internet) are pathological liars, but they don't all confess to horrific murders much less 200 crimes they did not commit. Is there nothing really about Hodgon's background that would explain why he would make these confessions? Did he not realize he may be put in prison for life? What made him finally realize that prison was not an ideal place to spend his waning years? What was the impetus for him to consult an attorney to prove his innocence (i.e., what woke him up)? Schizophrenia does not explain these actions.

It may seem like these details are overly picky and if I came off as being a complete bitch I apologize, but FAs appear on the main page, and are examples of Misplaced Pages's finest work. The FA project has its detractors on Misplaced Pages and off, and the merest detail of atypical sentence structure, grammar or syntax blip causes a fresh round of criticism. Should your article appear on the main page you may get much harsher criticism on that day on the talk page than you ever get here. Better to catch it now than be caught in a vortex of bad-mannered anonymous commentary amid the regular storm of vandalism. Not that I'm cynical or anything... --Moni3 (talk) 13:47, 12 January 2010 (UTC)