Talk:Terry Pendleton

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Good article Terry Pendleton was a nominee for good article, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There are suggestions below for improving the article. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.
An entry from this article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know? column on October 26, 2007.
November 9, 2007 Good article nominee Not listed
Terry Pendleton was a good article nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There are suggestions below for improving the article. Once these are addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.

Reviewed version: April 3, 2008
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[edit] GA Review #1

GA review (see here for criteria)
  1. It is reasonably well written.
    a (prose): b (MoS):
  2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.
    a (references): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR):
  3. It is broad in its coverage.
    a (major aspects): b (focused):
  4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.
    Fair representation without bias:
  5. It is stable.
    No edit wars etc.:
  6. It is illustrated by images, where possible and appropriate.
    a (images are tagged and non-free images have fair use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):
  7. Overall:
    Pass/Fail: }}

Good job on the article so far; I especially liked to see so many varied and useful references. The main reasons that I did not outright pass this article are that I was uncomfortable approving the prose in its current condition, and I also thought the references used didn't have enough information listed about them. I thought I could fix the clarity and flow of the text with some simple adjustments (along with going back and adding more info to the references), but I just kept getting deeper and deeper into potential changes. Here are some suggestions that will hopefully help the article pass;

1.) Clarifying and rechecking the prose - Even after my changes there are problems, such as the incomplete sentence that begins the Atlanta Braves section, and how the second paragraph of the intro needlessly repeats the first by methodically recounting the teams he's played for. The flow of the text is in rough shape too; the transitions between different seasons are "ok," but it seems like the article does little beside listing his stats (or injuries) in a particular season, before jumping right into the next season in the same paragraph (like in the Cardinals section). To spice things up, one possible idea would be to find quotes from his former teammates or managers about Terry, or even quotes from Terry himself you could integrate into the article to break up the monotony. Longer sentences that integrate more information might help too. 2.) The reference aren't detailed enough - If possible, please go back & try to add any additional information to the references. For example, instead of listing just the article title & retrieval date, I was able to add authors and original publication dates to multiple references (like for reference #22). Since the "cite web" template is used so often, check Template:Cite web to see what information can be added withing that template's framework.

Beyond that, there are several areas that need attention in the future too. First, at least one picture that can be used for identification purposes would immensely help the article; if a free alternative isn't readily available, try to see if you can come up with a fair-use rationale (like "I.D. purposes")that would conform to Wikipedia's standards. Additionally, I was disappointed not to see more info about his early life before high school & baseball, and about his life outside of the game. Questions to think about are: what were his parents’ names; does he have any siblings, is he involved in any notable charitable work, does he have any hobbies…anything like that to give more insight into him as a person.

I'm going to keep this article on hold for seven days so changes can be made, after which I will remove my tag on this article on the GA nominations page. After that, it should either be re-listed as a nominee, or dropped from consideration for the time being if it's decided that continued work beyond the seven day period is warranted. In light of the contributions I made to edit the prose and improve the information listed about the references, I'm going to refrain from reviewing the article again after it comes off hold status.

Thanks for you work so far, and good luck with it in the future.Monowi 09:39, 8 November 2007 (UTC)


After thinking about it some more, I'm going to remove the hold status and fail the article. This way there's plenty of time to improve the article, and since I won't be able to review it again, it can be decided at some later time when it's appropriate to nominate the article again.Monowi 08:15, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
To answer the picture question, that can't be done. As a living person, a fair use picture added in for identification purposes will be deleted as replaceable (though it'd be awfully hard to get a pic of him until March/April). As for early life information, I couldn't originally find anything (for most non-hof retired players, this is nearly impossible to find), though I'll certainly go through some refs again and hope I stumble on something. The prose and refs I can fix; I've used site web for nytimes archives for so long that I'm still making the transition to cite news, even though I should just be using that for the majority of these. I'll go and change those, and I'll fix up the prose a bit. Wizardman 16:39, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] GA Review 2

Again I'm going to have fail the article.


GA review (see here for criteria)
  1. It is reasonably well written.
    a (prose): b (MoS):
  2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.
    a (references): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR):
  3. It is broad in its coverage.
    a (major aspects): b (focused):
    Could do with more about non-baseball life
  4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.
    Fair representation without bias:
    Too many uses of impressive, unfortunately
  5. It is stable.
    No edit wars etc.:
  6. It is illustrated by images, where possible and appropriate.
    a (images are tagged and non-free images have fair use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):
  7. Overall:
    Pass/Fail:

A few points which struck me during the review.

  • Place of birth shouldn't be with date. See WP:DATE
  • "During this fifteen year career" Should this be his?
  • "Making steady progress". Seems either OR or POV.
  • "Pendleton was promoted moved to class AAA in 1984". Extra verb in there.
  • "Pendleton was moved to third and became a third baseman," similar as above. Should this be "Pendleton became a third baseman,"?
  • "the Cardinals promoted Pendleton to the majors and began his major league career as the starting third baseman." Two main verbs with different subjects here.
  • St Louis Cardinals: "getting three hits". I don't like getting, it's too vague a verb.
  • All single digit numerals in this section should be changed to words. Scorelines should also used endashes.
  • What's "front office criticism"?
  • "raising batting average to a respectable .286." Who says .286 is respectable?
  • "Unfortunately, as the Cardinals reached the 1987 World Series to play the Minnesota Twins, Pendleton ended up sidelined for most of the series with a ribcage injury." It probably is unfortunate for him, but I don't think an encyclopedia needs to say unfortunately.
  • "Cardinals fell in 7 games" I presume this means the Cardinals lost the World Series? If so, I'd say that. It makes it easier for the non-baseball fan to read.
  • "Despite this, Pendleton hoped to rebound for the 1989 St. Louis Cardinals season. Rebounding was exactly what he did," This doesn't sound very encyclopedic either, seems very cliched. What does rebound mean?
  • Two uses of impressive. Again POV.
  • "His overall production decline that season, as evident by his .230 batting average and .277 on base percentage,[3] as well as splitting time with rookie Todd Zeile by the end of the season." This sentence doesn't make any sense to me.
  • "After the season ended, Zeile appeared to be the third baseman of the future for the Cardinals, and Pendleton became a free agent." Needs a reference.
  • "Pendleton went to work by having a career year during the 1991 Atlanta Braves season," This makes no sense to me either.
  • Did he also really lead the Braves?
  • "and his luck did not fare any better as the 1994 Atlanta Braves season rolled around." How do you define luck?

I'm going to have to fail it at this stage. Too much of the prose doesn't make sense to me, there's lots of point of view. I read several "impressives" in there. The work could also do with an image and it doesn't say anything of his career or life outside baseball. A few MOS issues need fixing. At this stage, there's too much to do to leave it on hold. Peanut4 (talk) 21:54, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Well, images and life outside baseball are impossible to find, so even if i fix the prose and pov look slike it'll be impossible to make it a GA, oh well. Wizardman 03:11, 5 April 2008 (UTC)