El Salvador national football team

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This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because I have recently improved the history section of the article with many important imformation of the topic; in this case a national football team. Before I put the new information I had created User:Jaime070996/ES MNT history as a rough draft. It was copyedited by two users of the WP:GOCE: User:Diannaa and User:Philg88. I'd like to take this article to GA or FAC at some point, and am looking for comments pertaining to prose, polish, comprehensiveness, and the ability of it to be understood by non-specialists. The article needs a general check to see what's wrong or what to improve.

Thanks, Jaime070996 00:32, 14 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Peer review by LauraHale

This is the first peer review I have done. The following is all advice. No obligation to follow any of this. —Preceding unsigned comment added by LauraHale (talk • contribs) 01:55, 16 May 2011

• If the country has a women's team, add a disambiguation statement at the top that links to the women's team. Make clear in the opening section the gender of the team.
• Football needs to be fixed as a disambiguation link.
• Looking at articles for other teams, they don't have the current season linked above the userbox like that. The location may be better elsewhere in the article or as a see also.
• The lead should be broken into several paragraphs. I'd do one for every major section heading. The purpose of the lead is to summarise each section so trying to possibly go about it that way as a guide to how to write it may be useful.
• Leads don't technically need to be cited because everything in the lead should be cited in the body of the text. I'd suggest either citing everything in there or citing nothing in there for the sake of consistency. (The last sentence of the lead has no citation. Hence the comment.)
• Many of the tables lack citations. There needs to be a way to cite them so that the information is verifiable. This can be done by adding a reference column, tacking a reference to the end of each row, at the top row of the table, or by making a comment right before the table saying that X Y Z reference covers the table.
• Double check references. There are a few paragraphs with zero references.
• If possible, it would be nice to see some pictures added to the article in relevant sections.
• (18') <-- Those types of references are unclear. If that refers to what minute the goal was scored in, it might be worth making a comment or footnote that says what that refers to and that it will be used to demark that for the rest of the article.
• If it isn't referenced (didn't see it on the skim), explain why they are playing two matches in some of these tournaments: Home and away and the scoring involved for that.
• "The players who participated in that first historic game were:" The text following that isn't cited and doesn't fit with the formatting. Not sure how to fix that. Maybe incorporate it into prose better, as a table or two side by side lists? If a table, maybe add their positions.
• I'd consider removing one level of the table of contents because it is too deep. I don't mean in the text, but just hiding it from view. See WP:WIAFA.
• There aren't any problems link rot. :)
• I might suggest doing a bit of expansion on the kit section, making a bit more of an introduction in summary style instead of relying on the see main link.

Comments from Woody

I was asked to review this so here are a few comments from a quick look (though I can't really offer a non-specialist opinion).

• The lead could be a bit bigger per WP:LEAD. It should adequately summarise the article as a standalone piece. See some of the recent WP:FOOTY FAs for examples you can base it on. You also don't need citations in the lead if it is cited in the article.

History

• There are too many section links in the history section. It overhwhelms the lead and sub-sections should be slightly bigger than two sections. I would suggest splitting it down to "Formation-1930s", "1940s-1950s", "1960s-1970s" etc and perhaps make them more descriptive such as 1920s: First World Cup" etc.
  • I've done some merging but could do more or tweak how it stands currently. That will come with the changes I suggest at the bottom regarding the history section. Woody (talk) 19:12, 23 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• The 1960s and 1970s sections have too many short paragraphs and single sentence paragraphs. It doesn't flow and needs some of those paragraphs to be merged.
• The same can be said for the 1980s and 1990s. They essentially consist of bullet points that all start off as "the 1982 season saw..." Try and vary the prose and merge sentences where little is being expanded on.

Results

• I think that this section would benefit from a summary paragraph at the top. So, something along the lines of "The team has played in major tournaments, participating in the World Cup on XX occasions..." etc
• Remove the future World Cups in the World Cup results table, you never know what might happen until those World Cups.
  • Removed. Woody (talk) 19:12, 23 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• What is the CCCF championship? You could expand on this in the summary paragraph I suggested.
• What is the red outline?
  • It has already been covered. Jaime070996 22:18, 23 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• I don't think we need the recent results section. It smacks of recentism. Any big matches should be covered in the history section.
  • Removed by me due to RECENTISM, it is all covered in the current season article. No need for it here. Woody (talk) 19:12, 23 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• I'm also not a particular fan of recent call-ups sections per WP:RECENT
  • Seems they are standard so can't argue with that here. Woody (talk) 19:12, 23 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• You could merge the coaching staff and manager history section into a new "Managers" section. It could also do with some more prose. You might think about splitting it out per WP:SUMMARY to a separate managers article as the table is quite big.

This was just a first run-through, it still needs quite a bit of work before it meets the GA or FA criteria. If you need any help with this or have any questions then don't hesitate to ask. Woody (talk) 19:15, 16 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The added prose looks good but it brings up the new issue as to why the page is split in two? I have never seen this formatting in any FA/GA as I don't think it is accessible to all readers, particularly those with smaller resolutions. You don't need a separate section for the olympic record as one sentence would do: The El Salvador national football team have competed in the Olympics on one occasion; the 1968 games. They reached the first round of the competition." Or words to that effect. The article looks a bit messy at the moment and doesn't flow. It is very choppy. Woody (talk) 11:08, 19 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Woody: I have worked on how it is split up meaning that some sections go off from what the article is about. For users with smaller resolutions, changes could be made. The article looks choppy at this point but that is why I am here. Also, in the article is there any wording that does not correspond to the Manual of Style?

Jaime070996 23:29, 19 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Righto, I've had a go at the article, trying to smoothen out some of the kinks. One of the main issues I have with the article as it stands is the history section. This is essentially a prose form of the match record, it doesn't actually offer the history of the team and how it developed. We need the back-story behind the games and events that shaped the team. Take the Football War for example, it was barely touched on until I added in a paragraph. These are events that shaped the team. I removed a lot of the winners of the various tournaments they competed in as they simply aren't relevant to the exploits of the El Salvador national team. I still have reservations with the other tournaments section, there are too many tables in this article and not enough prose. You could perhaps create an "El Salvador national football team records" article where you could put all of these tables including the top ten goalscorers tables as well. Then you can put a paragraph about those goalscorers/appearance record holders in the Record and honours section. So, still a chunk of work to go. Woody (talk) 19:12, 23 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

First of all, thank you so much! I get what you are saying. I will work on events that have been crucial to the team at the history section. Creating an "El Salvador national football team records" article would also be very helpful. I will also have to work on getting together images under usable rights for the history section. Also the prose would be on my to do list. The lead could be cleaned-up after the whole article is cleaned-up, so it could summarize the article as a standalone piece. Jaime070996 22:18, 23 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]