Wikipedia:Peer review/2012 Formula One World Championship/archive1

2012 Formula One season

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because I'd like to see it nominated for FA status one day. However, it's already quite a big article, so if there are any critical issues with the page, I'd like to know about them sooner and incorporate a solution into future editing, rather than discover them later and have to do substantial re-writes. Barring anything truly dramatic, I think the page is fairly representative of the direction it will ultimately take.

Thanks, Prisonermonkeys (talk) 05:57, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Comments Brave effort to try and get a season article in shape for FA! Always been a difficult type of article, due to the difficulties of trying to get such a wealth of goings-on into a concise form. Given that we're at an early stage of the season, the lead won't really be able to take it's form until the season is complete and the story is known. However at present the record breaking stuff in the lead isn't featured anywhere in the main article.

We jump straight in with the race-by-race report, and it's going to be tough to keep each of these summaries to an acceptable length. Extreme ruthlessness is needed to take every point and say "does this really matter in the context of the season as a whole?". With the exception of one or two races (e.g. Bahrain), I'd suggest that the length per round needs to be no longer than Australia (around 250-300 words). Take Monaco, which at just under 500 words is far too long. Here for example, nearly 50 words are spent covering Schumacher being on pole but not being on pole (significant in terms of the event, but not really significant in terms of the season as a whole) Elsewhere, consider things like was the Pit Fire in Spain significant at all in terms of the season as a whole? Even if it was, would a mention of it rather than a detailed account be more suitable for a season overview?

Only after the race reports do we get introduced to the teams and drivers taking part, first in tabular format and then with the changes explained in prose compared to last year. There's some questions here as to how significant changes in say the Williams technical department are to the season as a whole, but I guess there's nowhere else at present for this information to go, unlike with the race reports. Would spinning out an article along the lines of "Competitors in the 2012 Formula One season" work? Here, team and driver line-ups could be discussed in more detail, not just the changes compared to last season. A brief overview and the major changes could then be summarised in this article, leaving the details and more minor points (third drivers, team structures) to the dedicated article. Just a thought - comments welcome!

The calendar is then introduced with a paragraph, then a table before being followed by bullet points. I'd like to see the prose and the bullet points worked into a couple of paragraphs. The list of rule changes is fairly long - as an example would someone who wants a summary of the 2012 F1 season as a whole, care that helium was banned from airguns? Again I wonder if there's scope to spin these off into a separate "Regulations in 2012 Formula One season" season along with things like in-season technical directives and just summarise major changes in this article? Sections for random stuff that doesn't seem to fit elsewhere tend to be cruft magnets, and are best avoided if at all possible. For example, the FOTA exits could move to the teams section (again, if it is significant enough to be included at all).

Structure-wise, getting the pre-season driver and team changes after the final race of the season has been described is a bit awkward chronologically, and this structure also doesn't help the reader by talking about all these drivers and teams in the races before introducing them. Looking at the most similar FA I could find, the structure was pre-season changes, schedule, roster, game notes, after the season which read much better.

I've focused on more general points rather than specifics, as clearly it's far too early in the season to be making minor tweaks to perfect the article. Happy to discuss/clarify anything I've suggested. AlexJ (talk) 18:35, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

Reply: I'm aware of a couple of the issues you point out, particularly with the season report. I figure it's better to have more content now and trim it down later than it is to be brief now and try to remember everything that happened (and find sources for it) six months from now. I have often found that earlier season articles tend to only concentrate on one or two drivers - usually the championship contenders - and ignore the rest of the grid, and while I certainly don't want to recount everything the teams do blow-for-blow, I do try to illustrate that there are a few subplots running through the season that should at least get some coverage; for example, Pastor Maldonado winning in Spain and then crashing out in Monaco is one that should be (and is) included. I want the narrative of the season to feel like it is one season, and not twenty races in isolation.

As for the use of tables, it's a hotly-contested issue with the motorsport editors. There are some who feel that there are too many tables in the article, but the driver changes one is essential. Once mid-season changes begin, things can start getting very complex very quickly, and a table is the best way to represent that. For example, if you look at the driver chart on the 2011 season page, you'll notice that the HRT driver changes are particularly intricate, like when they swapped one of their drivers between cars for one race, then moved him back to the other car for the next.

I think the driver changes section is probably as good as it is going to get. Traditionally, it has been written in bullet point format, with the changes grouped under heading like "Entered/Re-entered Formula 1" (ie Raikkonen), "Changed teams" (Petrov) and "Left Formula 1" (Alguersuari). This year, we tried something new, and put it in prose. When I wrote that section, I tried to follow cause-and-effect relationships instead of going chronologically, because I thought it would make it clearer. So now, we have Renault taking Grosjean; which meant Senna lost his seat; Senna went to Williams and replaced Barrichello; Barrichello went to Indycar. If that section was written chronologically, those four parts would be scattered throughout the section rather than grouped together. Prisonermonkeys (talk) 04:36, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

I was talking about chronology of the article as a whole, rather than within specific sections. It's currently setup as Race Reports/Entrants/Calendar meaning that the events are described before the reader is introduced to what the events are, or who's taking part in them. AlexJ (talk) 15:37, 17 June 2012 (UTC)

Right, I see what you mean. I've moved it now. Prisonermonkeys (talk) 06:45, 20 June 2012 (UTC)