Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography/Peer review/Gordon Park

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[edit] Gordon Park

Gordon Park is as undeniably notable person, but, sadly, not a subject that many people feel willing to write about. I recently rewrote this, and I am looking for advice on what I need to improve before nominating for good article. My primary concerns are-

• Not covering important areas. I worry that I may have missed information that is important to the article.
• Bias. Some people hate him, some people are massive supporters of him. Although I do not feel one way or the other, I feel the article may have a slight bias one way or the other.
• Fair use images. I am loath to use fair use images after a huge batch I used got deleted. I have done my best to provide justification, but please let me know if I need more reasoning for why they are fair use.
• Any other issues. Another editor had a read through it, and made some reccomendations as to grammatical changes I could make. I am not going to pretend to be the best writer in the world, any other reccomendations, relating to grammar or otherwise, are very welcome. J Milburn 11:36, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Yannismarou

The article obviously needs work. I must point out that the whole case reminded me another famous crime case in US known as "Death in the Staircase" (again a man (famous writer) was sentenced of brutally killing his wife, although his children supported him, and the evidence was not watertight), which was the subject of the best documentary I ever saw. I actually wanted during this period to write a book about this case! Let's now return to the article. Some remarks (although I'm not sure I can cover all your concerncs with these remarks!):

• Inconsistent linking of years. You link sometimes single years, though this is not recommended by MoS. And, sometimes, you do not linke full dates.
• Don't we know his exact date and place of birth?
• The prose in the last paragraph of the lead looks to me a bit choppy.
• You go straight to the case. Shouldn't we have some biographical info about his life before the case? After all this is a biography, an article about a person, and not just an article about a case.
• "with Carol having left their home in Leece[5] twice before.[6]". Over-cited sentence IMO. Couldn't both citations been at the end of the sentence.
• "Also, Carol was said to time her periods away from home with the school term, and so it wasn't until she didn't return in time to take up her job as a primary school teacher in September that Gordon reported her missing." This sentence confused me!
• "It was later reported that the body had landed on an underwater ledge, and had it been thrown into the water a metre farther from the land, it would probably never have been found." Hmmm ... This is almost the same wording with a sentence in the lead ("It was said that the body had landed on an underwater ledge, and if it had been dumped a few metres further away from the shore, it would probably have never been found."). This is not nice. It looks like the prose has not been worked in detail and repetitions have been allowed.
• "However, the fact that the charges were dropped angered Carol's brother, Ivor Price, who said that he was disgusted by the way that Carol was portrayed in the trial, and talked of how Carol was not 'someone who is cheap or had a string of lovers.'[11]" Again, clumsy prose: Carol was not someone who is ?! And for the quote a few lines above not italics but blockquote or Cquote.
• "The police then revisited site where the body was found, and found a piece of Westmorland green slate". Again the prose! A careful copy-editing is needed.
• "The case was brought to trial at Manchester Crown Court, and lasted ten weeks. There was no single piece of evidence that pointed to Gordon indisputedly, but the prosecution argued that when the evidence was placed together, it could only point at Park, and not a 'mysterious stranger or secret lover'. Primarily, the case for the prosecution rested on circumstantial evidence ... " Maybe it is just the perversion of a jurist, but I would like some more details about this second trial. What were these circumstantial evidence? Some more things about the testimonies. You could even create a sub-article. You know: In US you probably have the most vivid and exciting procedural crime law system in the world. Take advantage of that, and reflect the atmosphere of the trial in the article! That would be great!
• The only POV problem I can fing is that you have a section "Support", but no section "Opposition" or something like that.
• No! I see more POV: In "Claims of false evidence" I see what claimed those regarding evidence as POV. But there must be some answers to all these claims (which are by the way listy - is it possible to have proper prose there?). What argued the altera pars? I'm afraid the "Controversy" section is getting pro-Park.
• I think the reasoning for these three fair-use images is fine.--Yannismarou 13:06, 3 February 2007 (UTC)