Talk:West Indian cricket team in England in 1988

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West Indian cricket team in England in 1988 is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community. If you can update or improve it, please do.

An entry from this article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know? column on October 17, 2006.

Article Milestones
Date	Process	Result
February 5, 2007	Good article nominee	Not listed
February 15, 2007	Peer review	Reviewed
February 22, 2007	Featured article candidate	Promoted
Current Status: Featured article

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1 Good Article Candidate
2 Context Question?
3 Consistency
4 Automated peer review

[edit] Good Article Candidate

I think that this is on the road to good article status. The formatting is a bit wonky, and it would be nice to have a picture from the series. The picture of Walsh seems misplaced to me. If more text were added to the sections on each captain and test, it would help the formatting. Other than those things, I think that the article is good, and it certainly has the interest of being the summer of the four captains.--Eva ^bd 14:01, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Hi Evadb, thanks for your comments and interest. I've searched high and low for useable images of the series, the characters etc but to no avail. Can you be more specific on the 'wonky' formatting please? The Rambling Man 14:04, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

<edit conflict>Thanks very much for the feedback. More specifics on the formatting would be very helpful. We've tried (and failed) even to find simple portrait photos, let alone action from the series - help would be most welcome (though I note that the GA criteria don't demand images). I'll take another look at the placement of Walsh's pic and beef up the details of the tests. Thanks. --Dweller 14:05, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

The "wonkyness" of the formatting seems to stem from having so many subheadings (with one for each captain and subheadings for the Tests. Each of those headings is mostly filled by the box with the Test scores. On my computer (with Netscape), it comes out looking choppy. Keep up the great work.--Eva ^bd 14:09, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

I am failing this article fo GA for now. The choppiness of the article is certainly a distraction, but the two primary reasons are:

The article seems to be written for an expert in the field and is not very accessible to a general audiance. As an example, the article does not seem to have a wikilink to cricket. It is is there it is certainly not linked on first usage, which is the standard. Other terms like bowler and batsmen and Test need to be (prefereably) briefly explained in the article or (at least) wikilinked.
There are major tone problems. It is not up to us to determine if something was humiliating or embarrasing. That is injecting our POV into the article. Instead, you could find a notable person in the field and quote them, or you can just simply present the facts and let the reader decide if it was humiliating or not. Some examples:
1. "...enjoyed tremendous success, somewhat overshadowed by the increasingly chaotic state of their hosts." - who said the hosts were in a chaotic state? Who said this overshadowed the game results?
2. Who determines who is the "Old Guard"?
3. "...England were dominated by the West Indians in an increasingly humiliating manner (match details below)." - who said it was humilating? If the West Indes team was the best in the world and England had been playing poorly, then perhaps this was just an expected result and not a humiliation.

These problems need to be fixed before a more detailed examination of the article can take place. Please re-submit when you feel you have made good progress here. Good luck and best wishes, Johntex\^talk 16:59, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Some excellent feedback, thank you. Will take a detailed look at all of these issues. --Dweller 17:21, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks from me too, this is exactly the kind of feedback we're after to get this article to where it should be. Cheers! The Rambling Man 18:04, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Since you say in the very first sentence "...played a number of first-class cricket matches...", the reader is going to expect to find some reference further on in the article to the f-c matches other than the Tests. The minimum would be a summary of the number of wins, losses and draws in all f-c matches. Alternatively you could reword the first sentence to say something like:

The West Indian cricket team in England in 1988 were captained by Viv Richards.

JH 19:23, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

This may be a British/American usage question, but wouldn't it be The West Indian cricket team in England in 1988 was captained by Viv Richards?--Eva ^bd 19:35, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

I think that for a team, which can be considered as either an entity or a collection of people, either is acceptable. On reflection, possibly "was" does sound a little better. JH 19:55, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Problem solved by rewording intro anyway! The Rambling Man 12:49, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Context Question?

In section two the article notes that "the captain has a crucial role in on-field tactics and may also have an important say in team selection and other off-the-field issues, such as Mike Gatting's ill-fated support of the 1990 tour of South Africa." I'm relatively new to cricket and don't know what this is talking about. Some context might be helpful for folks like me.--Eva ^bd 14:37, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks - nice spot. --Dweller 15:39, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

I think this was a relic of previous versions. This should be clear now. --Dweller 16:42, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Consistency

I've made the usage of "First" (etc) Test consistent (ie not "1st"). Ditto for One-Day International. Waiting to edit for man of the match, per this diff ([1]) --Dweller 16:42, 12 February 2007 (UTC)