User talk:Marcus Moores/sandbox

Gabriel Montes's Peer Review of Marcus Moores's Draft.

General info

I am reviewing Marcus Moores's draft of his contribution to the article "History of Self-Driving Cars," found here. Moores is adding to the section on the history of self-driving cars in 2020.

Lead

As Moores is not creating an article, the lead of the article he is modifying is not very relevant to this review. There does exist a sentence related to Moores's contribution and the article lead is overall competent.

Content

The content is mostly relevant, focusing on the fact that self-driving cars are still not a reality despite past predictions expecting such technology to be common by 2020. As the section deals with the state of the topic in 2020, it could not be more up-to-date. Some more context for this sentence "Tesla autopilot is steadily increasing each year in duration" is needed, such as clarifying that the autopilot was increasing in duration of use. The following sentence also need similar clarification, as it is not clear what "the miles" refers to. Is it the miles driven with autopilot?

Tone and Balance

The content is quite neutral, and Moores discusses not only the lack of self-driving cars, but also some encouraging achievements of the technology, such as more companies investing in the project and autopilot being used more. The content does, however, seem to attempt to persuade the reader to the position that autonomous cars are not coming anytime soon. Some more time focused on milestones passed or how COVID19 affected research would balance the section out more.

Sources and References

The sources are the weakest part of the draft. There are only five citations in the eighteen-sentence paragraph, and every citation leads to a news site, with not a single book or academic journal used as a source. All four sources used in the draft are up to date, having been published in 2020, and all four are fairly lengthy and thorough on the topic. Every link redirects to the correct page, though the Bloomburg website is not working for me.

Organization

The content is decently well-written, but some grammatical errors are present, as well as missing words, contractions, and an abundance of the pronoun "they." The phrase "pushed back" is used three times in succession, which makes for some repetitive sentences. The information flows well, however, with the exception of the sudden mention of the Corona virus without a lead-in to the topic.

Overall impressions

My overall impression was good, though less reiteration of the development of self-driving cars being "pushed back" would be nice, as well as some more specifics of the general scene of the project in 2020. The draft shows how new technology often seems closer than feasible, but is nonetheless advancing. The mention of the graph for Tesla autopilot's increase in miles, despite being unclear, is one of the strongest additions, and adding a photo of the graph would really transform the draft for the better. Gabriel Mont (talk) 00:21, 10 October 2020 (UTC)