Wikipedia:Peer review/Archive 3

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This page contains the Peer review requests that are older than one month, are not signed, or did not follow the "How to use this page" principles in some way. If one of your requests has been moved here by mistake, please accept our apologies and copy it back to the main Peer review page with your signature (~~~~).

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Authorship of the Pauline epistles

This entire article is has been written from the POV that the authorship that the Pauline epistles wasn't Paul. This is POV. As we encourage NPOV writing could an editor who knows something of this subject please look at this article? - Ta bu shi da yu 02:31, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Corporation tax

I've been expanding this with knowledge off the top of my head. I'd welcome a non-expert looking over it to say what bits need explaining too non-experts, what bits should be developed further and what else should be written about the subject. I'd also welcome an expert both commenting on the above, and on what I've gotten wrong. All thoughts/comments gratefully received. jguk 23:29, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC) Á===Operation Battleaxe=== The article was pitiful at first, so I revamped it. What do you think? -- Snipre 21:16, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Needs a battlebox. [[User:Neutrality|Neutrality/talk]] 07:11, Dec 20, 2004 (UTC)
This article is taken almost verbatum from This article by Phil Edwards on The BBC's WW2 People's war site. Click and compare...except for some minor wording changes, the addition of the battlebox and wiki-links, the two are practically clones. I wonder why the "author" didn't just go ahead and provide the same treatments for Operations Brevity and Crusader. But I'm glad (s)he did not, for it gave me the opportunity to expand both stubs into articles. In doing so, I also used Mr. Edwards' work as a source but not as my only source. Then I synthesised the information from my sources and presented it in my own narratives. I'm tempted to give similar attention to this article as well. But unlike the other two, which were hardly more than single sentence stubs, this would entail a complete rewrite. And since Battleaxe was, basically a less successful and costlier replay of Brevity, there is hadly any need. So my main motive in a rewrite would be so it did not reflect so poorly on the Wikipedia. I'm not claiming my own articles are feature-worthy, but they are certainly better than this, no offense to Mr Edwards. C'mon, Wikipedians! You can do better. Needs improvement, final grade a generous C-.

--R.D.H. (Ghost In The Machine) 00:15, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

The 4th Armoured Brigade which included the 4th and 7th Royal Tank Regiment are practically ignored.In addition to their being more or less destroyed the militarily historical importance lies in the realignment of thinking required by tank users and designers.Both regiments were equipped with Matilda II tanks which had earned the nickname'Queen of the desert' fighting the Italians from late 1940.The thick armour and solid shot 2 pounder guns were unbeatable against Italian tanks.Their range,gun velocity and armour was much poorer than the Panzer MkIII and MarkIV .Battleaxe was also where the British tanks met the 88mm German gun used against armour and which became unbeatable for a very long period.Both 4th Brigade battalions were practically wiped out(see 7th battalion War Diary for 15/17th June 1941.

Persian Gulf

I believe the article makes lots of unverified claims, which need to be verified. It also incomplete since it does not provide the Arab side of the issue. roozbeh 15:28, Dec 19, 2004 (UTC)

Life As We Know It

My article on this current U.S. television series has links, bibliography, and a short synopsis. Any thoughts? PedanticallySpeaking 16:51, Dec 18, 2004 (UTC)

Ibn Khaldun

I translated this from a German article (de:Ibn Khaldun) which was featured quality. But looking at some of the external links I'm concerned about some contradictions over the middle part of his life (lots of intrigues), and possibly variation in name spellings. Anyone with an interest in the subject? Rd232 12:15, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Fan (implement)

I recently found this article, and it looks pretty complete. I added some pictures in the proper areas, and was wondering if anyone else thought this had Featured Article potential. If not, please edit/comment away. --[[User:Brian0918|brian0918 talk]] 05:59, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Historicity of Jesus

Can we have people comment on this article? It's just been through a major battle amongst several parties (including myself) and this is what we now have. It basically needs NPOVing and general cleanup. - Ta bu shi da yu 05:43, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I'm new to discussions on wikipedia. Is this the way to do it? Where do you find the earlier discussions of the Historicity article? The argument that Acts cannot be dated later than 62AD is extraoridinarily weak and relies on a tautology. Why does it remain? Wikipedia:Peer review/Turmeric/archive1

German cruiser Blücher

Came over this page as I was reading about the german invation of Norway in 1940. Rather disapointed at lack of content and a couple of factuall errors, I spendt some time expanding and - in my eyes - making it better. Now, if someone could look over it with some fresh eyes and fix all the things I'm sure I forgotten, I'll be very gratefull. I'll see if I can get time to work more on it myself as well. WegianWarrior 12:13, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

  • I've done a copyedit and wikification. Someone else will have to check the facts. -- ALoan (Talk) 12:56, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)
  • I'll try to help out as well. Being a Norwegian, the subject matter is quite relevant to me in the first place* (+ I'm a WWII history 'nut'...). (* but note, of course, that I'm always striving to keep articles NPOV regardless of any personal relevance) --Wernher 15:05, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)
  • OK, I've put in some initial effort. More to follow; the book by Binder & Schlünz is a superb reference. (A pity it's not translated into English. Hmm, an opportunity to earn a little money from my writing, perhaps, contrary to my present wikipediholism...) --Wernher 18:01, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Fischer-Tropsch process

I put this together from scraps of other stuff. I can't get it to cohere properly. If anyone (particularly chemists) could take a look at it, I'd be grateful. -- The Anome 10:14, Dec 16, 2004 (UTC)

Dog

Was FILLED with POV and unwarranted editorializing. I've tried to clean it up. I'd love a second opinion. --Dante Alighieri | Talk 01:48, Dec 16, 2004 (UTC)

You did a good job. Elf | Talk 02:31, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Looks good now.

The page is too large. Current size is 48kb. Wikipedia reccomends <30 kb and 32 max. Why don't you précis the article, and add large chunks of material to related articles? Also consider cutting down on the ToC. Its simply too long. Nichalp 20:30, Jan 15, 2005 (UTC)

Methylsulfonylmethane

Please, someone review the Wiki article on the dietary supplement Methylsulfonylmethane (MSM). The current page content reads almost like stock sales material for a supplement vendor. Here is a key segment from the conclusion:

"This remarkable nutrient has many valuable applications to human health. The basic science to back up these applications is well established and the clinical science is emerging."

In fact, the current Wikipedia page on MSM has no independent reference links at the bottom of the page. I did basic Google and Medline searches on Methylsulfonylmethane and found the following info:

(1) The #1 Google result is from quackwatch.com. Their lengthy discussion of MSM casts great suspicion on any health claims, and thus by comparison one has to wonder why the Wikipedia page contains mainly pro-MSM statements and few if any real caveats. For example, why doesn't the Wiki page mention the 10/2000 FDA action against Karl Loren to stop his extravagant therapeutic claims for MSM.

(2) Medline has few articles on Methylsulfonylmethane. However, one particularly disturbing 2002 study that came up was this one: "Accumulation of methylsulfonylmethane in the human brain: identification by multinuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy." The abstract ends on this sombre note: "Appearance of MSM in significant concentrations in the human brain indicates ready transfer across the intact blood-brain barrier, of a compound with no known medical benefits."

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=11641045

In short, I strongly believe that Wikipedia users are being presented unreviewed, highly biased information about MSM. -- 205.179.101.138

Added TotallyDisputed message at the top. --[[User:Brian0918|brian0918 talk]] 21:47, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I have added dubious tags to several sections and have requested feedback on the talk page. I have also removed a whole section called "MSM myths" because that shouldn't be there at all (we do not do original research). I am going to wait for a fortnight for feedback and fixups on those sections. If nothing is said, then all of those sections are getting removed. - Ta bu shi da yu 05:19, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Korean Buddhism

Seems like it is is becoming an awesome article and well on its way to becoming featured. Do people agree? If so, I'll put it in the featured article candidates.--Alsocal 20:13, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Um, it has significant errors of punctuation and usage in the first two sentences. I'll read the rest, too.

--Defenestrate 23:30, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)

It's also kind of dense. For it to be a feature, it should have an introductory section that provides enough context for the average reader to understand why what follows is important. I spruced up some language to make it more readable. I'm not sure it's ready for prime-time.

--Defenestrate 01:32, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Issues:
  1. image is missing.
  2. There was no lead section, just a section called "Introduction". I've removed introduction and made it the lead section, but its still not right. With the lead section, its important to summarise the main body of the article, and also to highlight interesting information.
  3. The entire article seems to be of the history of Korean Buddhism. Probably there should be an article History of Buddhism and a section called History that is in summary form. Other aspects like what they beleive should be in its own section. It's possible that's the introduction, but lots more should be expanded.
I'm rather afraid it needs lots of work. - Ta bu shi da yu 04:59, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Autism

previous peer review

Bombing of Dresden in World War II

There is a straw poll in progress at Talk:Bombing of Dresden in World War II#Avoid weasel terms. Please read what has been written and vote in it if you think it is of interest. It is a clear cut dispute about what should go into the top section of the article Bombing of Dresden in World War II. The issue is covered in detail in a sub-section Bombing of Dresden in World War II#Was the Dresden bombing justified? and that section although it influences the introduction is not involved in this straw poll. Philip Baird Shearer 21:50, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Well, the article is not exactly starting out very well with the sentence "Some have suggested that the bombing of Dresden may have been a war crime and that those allied commanders who ordered the action and the airmen who carried it out should be tried as war criminals." That's a weasel word. - Ta bu shi da yu 03:26, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)

The poll was closed at 12:00 December 20, 2004, with a 10 votes to the next lagest vote of 3 to change the text in the opening paragraph to "The controversy is centred around the legal and moral justifications for the raids.".

The "Some have..." was addressed "22:53, 11 Jan 2005 Mozzerati (Was the Dresden bombing justified? - attribute war crime accusation to Joerg Friedrich)". It Now reads: The German Historian Joerg Friedrich has controversially suggested that the bombing of Dresden may have been a war crime... and it is sourced from the BBC web site. Unfortunatly to date, there is no information on who Joerg Friedrich is (other than he has published a book on the bombing of Dresden) and so there is no information to his prominance as a historian. Philip Baird Shearer 14:06, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Fairport Convention

I've been working on this intermittently for the last couple of weeks. Tonight, I rewrote the (previous rather POV) introduction and tidied up the headings/sections.

I hope this article can reach Featured Article status. Perhaps it is there already? I am as sure of the facts as one can be but I would be grateful if anyone who knows the subject would check for errors. I also think it needs experienced Wikipedians to check the Wiki links and the format.

I would welcome collaboration. If anyone has any comments, please leave them on my talk page. Thanks! Andy F 02:46, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I'd suggest putting the Discography below the list of band members, and putting the current members above the past members. Also, once the page gets too big, move the discography and list of past members to their own pages. --[[User:Brian0918|brian0918 talk]] 06:19, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)
OK, agree - done that. Thanks. Andy F 14:27, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)
It needs references. Otherwise it could be considered as entirely made up out of thin air. Use the best ones available, and hopefully find if there are any print ones available. It also needs some help for NPOV. For example the first sentence "...is arguably the quintessential British folk-rock band" is POV. Who claims that? Having a source available is very handy to fix that kind of POV. If a fan page claims that then that is POV. If a prominent music critic claims it, then it can be left and cited. - Taxman 15:40, Dec 13, 2004 (UTC)
I see what you mean, Taxman. I used the word "arguably" to indicate this was a very widely-held, but essentially unprovable, POV. I think Ritchie Unterberger (the rock biographer) could be a source for this view. I'll check. As to printed sources, there have beeen four books published. Two are good, one is a pamphlet, one is pretty dire. I've not read any of them them for years and they're all out of print now but I will see if I can get details. Thanks. Andy F 02:30, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I've added the Ritchie Unterberger source and un-POV-ed the opening paragraph. Andy F 10:05, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Good work, it's certainly an interesting read. But there are further issues before this can make FA status:
  1. Too many one sentence paragraphs.
  2. Unencyclopedic (sp?) writing: "Things were looking rosy when disaster struck.", "The young musicians nearly decided to call it a day."
  3. NPOV issues: "This was arguably Fairport Convention's finest album and it established British folk-rock as a distinct and influential genre." who argues this? we can't put our own POV... we need that POV sourced from somewhere.
  4. 1979 - "Aww, mama, can this really be the end?" - is this a reference to something? that's not clear.
    1. Bob Dylan, "Stuck Inside of Mobile".
  5. The references section needs a direct reference, even if it duplicates what's in external links. It'll never get through FAC unless this done.
Overall, this article has definite potential but I think it needs a bit of work. - Ta bu shi da yu 03:15, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Fairport released over 20 singles http://www.fcfansite.fsnet.co.uk/ One of them has the longest title ever to appear on a single. Is this worth a mention?

Draft

An unusual request, I'll admit. This is a disambiguation page that I just finished rewriting. I'd like to see if anyone can arrange the twelve separate listings here in a clearer and more logical fashion. --Smack 22:38, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Seems to me that they could be sorted into one of only three root meanings - selection (conscription, sports draft, politician draft), fluid displacement (draft of a hull or sail, beer, wind, reservoir, racing, and more abstractly finance), and preliminary specifications (draft report, engineering drafting). Checking the OED for origins of these words might be useful... it's probably wishful thinking to expect they fall neatly to three different root words, but it's worth a shot I guess. Would categorizing the redirects in such a manner assist in achieving easier and more informative disambiguation? I don't know... interesting question. Bantman 01:54, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Extra-sensory_perception

This article (which Jimbo called attention to on the mailing list as particularly poor) seems imbalanced to me. I am not trained in the sciences at all, and sadly my only experience with ESP is in readnig the books of noted skeptics like Randi and Gardner -- this means I don't have neutral sources to bring to bear. I have done what I can (and it's probably insufficent) but I don't feel as though the article is really in good shape yet -- it needs more attribution and references, and I don't think I'll be able to supply them. Any attention will be very appreciated. Jwrosenzweig 22:22, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

  • As per the second paragraph, see: Targ, Russell and Puthoff Harold (introd. by Margaret Mead; fwd. by Richard Bach) Mind-Reach: Scientists Look at Psychic Ability (Delacorte Press, 1977) ISBN 0440056888. El_C
  • Needs a lot of work. Seems biased. I think that ESP is bunk myself, but that doesn't give us the right to make it biased. Issues I see:
    1. "cited in ESP's defense. ESP's critics" ESP is not an object, so it cannot have ownership. I think that should be rephrased.
    2. Most of the sections are devoted to showing how ESP is flawed and difficult to prove.
    3. There is no history of ESP.
    4. There is little commentary of those who believe in it. There is no information on the research they have gathered, regardless of whether it's flawed or not.
    5. The lead section seems to be pushing a POV. Most of it is taken up by telling the reader how dodgy it is. - Ta bu shi da yu 03:01, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Stanislaw Koniecpolski

Note: I have resubmitted this for a very short period of time. The article is nearly ready (or is in fact ready) for FAC. - Ta bu shi da yu 06:34, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

This historical bio has lots of contents. What it needs is a read through a native English person and some minor - I hope - language fixes. Of course, all other comments appreciated. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 21:24, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

  • Have added this to my User:Ta bu shi da yu/copyedit page. Just started! When I get a chance I'll sneak a peak. - Ta bu shi da yu 15:52, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)
    • Sorry this took such a long time to copyedit... I have finally done this! - Ta bu shi da yu 06:26, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • One last question: the table at the start. Is this a template somewhere? If not, can you convert it to a template so we can standardise the way we present info on people? If you need help with this I'm happy to assist. - Ta bu shi da yu 06:30, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)
    • Much tnx for the ce. Good idea about a template, but I have never done one before. FYI, we have been unsing this type of biobox on almost everybody from the list of szlachta, and there is similar one for the people in the list of Polish rulers. I wonder if we could use some kind of a bot to easily convert them all into a template? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 15:46, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Linked list

Help with reorganisation of this article and other suggestions would be most appreciated. - Ta bu shi da yu 10:07, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

  • I've added info on history, also on something on the Josephus problem. I've also expanded the lead section... I think that helps a bit. The original author has added his references, and I've checked at least one of them when I did some research to see if I could add anything. Any further suggestions? - Ta bu shi da yu 15:31, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Weight training

This article was in a very poor state, so I have spent the last few days rewriting it, hopefully to a high standard. However, I'm still quite new to Wikepedia, and I'd like to ask for help achieving the preferred style.

My main concerns are regarding levels of generality and detail, and also regarding attribution for issues where there is a difference of opinion. Do I still have to say "Alice says X whereas Bob says Y" if both Alice and Bob are non-notable, or can I just say "some people believe X whereas others believe Y"?

Also, given that this is intended to be an entry-level article, is the writing at a low enough level, or should it be simplified further?

I realise that the article is short on images, and I will be adding photos of most—if not all—of the exercises just as soon as I can get a model, photographer and gym together at a mutually convenient time. Are there any other images that would be useful?

Please let me know what you think. Thanks! GeorgeStepanek\talk 02:06, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

An excellent article, written by someone who obviously has spent a lot of time and effort on it! I'm a bit of an unfit geek (read: slob) but this article is just jam full of useful info. A bit of tightening could be done though... the paragraphs need to be longer and not be one sentence long. If you put it on WP:VP I'd ask around to have the tables converted to wikimarkup. Apart from that, seems pretty good to me! Well done. - Ta bu shi da yu 15:30, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Thank you to everyone who suggested ideas and improvements, and thank you particularly for your postive comments and encouragement. Sorry, I have been so tardy at implementing these improvements. I will get round to it! (My computer access is very limited over Xmas, so I have been taking a bit of a wikivacation.) I'll get back in a week's time or so. Thanks! GeorgeStepanek\talk 11:22, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Ismail Al-Faruqi

Any comments or suggestions towards improving this article is welcome, as I would really like to nominate it for WP:FAC soon. I have been working on this article alone for the past three weeks or so -- check the history panel of the article ;) Menj 02:10, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

  • Excellent :) I'd never heard of the man before. The lead section is very good, summarises well. Could we have a quick run-down of what "Justifying the Good: Metaphysics and Epistemology of Value" is about? Even a short sentence would suffice. What about a brief rundown of each of his books? Is that possible? - Ta bu shi da yu 15:19, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Music of Nigeria

Aside from the lack of pictures and sounds, which I am attempting to fix, does anyone have any suggestions? I recently added a bunch of inline citations and changed some things around in accordance with past comments. Here's the old discussions. Tuf-Kat 07:29, August 23, 2005 (UTC)

Overall an excellent article, at least in my oponion, that covers the topic in depth. However I did trip over the assertion that "Nigeria has also produced some of the most popular music in the world". I think that an assertion this broad needs to be backed up with specific examples in a section on Nigerian music that has achieved world-wide popularity. Similarly with the statement that "the country's musical output has achieved great international acclaim". Thanks. :) — RJH 14:42, 25 August 2005 (UTC)
The first claimed weakened, and the second sourced. Obvious exceptions, like Fela Kuti, notwithstanding, Nigerian music is primarily a domestic affair. Tuf-Kat 07:15, August 26, 2005 (UTC)
It looks good, thanks. About the only other element the page could use is a few more illustrations, either of notable artists or local instruments. — RJH
Great article. One thing that could imporve the flow would be taking out some of the section headings and getting rid of the {{main}} links. --nixie 09:19, 30 August 2005 (UTC)
I removed a couple of the main article links, and got rid of two section headings. Is this better? Tuf-Kat 16:22, August 30, 2005 (UTC)

Okay, I gave it a read. Here's what struck me:

  1. First, the article is overlong (42 KB). I wonder if it might be a good idea to summarize the "Folk music" section based on region rather than ethnic group. In a country with over 400, as the article claims, it seems odd to only focus on three here.
42 kb isn't all that long, and three groups focused on are by far the three largest in the country (I've amended the article to explicitly say that).
  1. The intro says Nigeria has "dozens or hundreds of tribes". Which is it?
Fixed.
  1. Lots of passive voice.
  2. What about modern Christian praise music? I've never been to Nigeria, but I lived in Cameroon, and the Anglophone portion of that country takes its cultural cue from its western neighbor. Nigerian singer Agatha Moses is like Elvis in Anglophone Cameroon. The mainstream radio is saturated with Nigerian praise music, so you're as likely to hear a Nigerian cover of an American Christian contemporary tune as you are to hear Danfo Drivers (an extremely popular Nigerian reggae group). Again, I haven't been to Nigeria, but I suspect things are similar in the south of the country.
Some googling gave me enough info for a paragraph, though some web pages (like this) seem to imply that gospel is extremely popular in Cameroon, and that much of it is Nigerian. I'm not sure it's quite as important in Nigeria itself.
  1. Piracy. How do these artists make any money? What's the business model like? I know that in Cameroon, I only found one store that sold actual, non-pirated CDs, and these were priced ten times as high as the pirated ones sold at thousands of street kiosques and off of teenage boys' heads. This is probably a topic for Music of Africa, but a mention of how piracy affects the Nigerian music industry would be good.
I added a mention in the bit about the music industry in the lead, but I agree a more detailed examination belongs at music of Africa.
  1. A couple of places mention what I think are states in Nigeria, but the wikilinks go to disambig pages. The two I caught were Adamawa and Borno.
Fixed, I think
  1. "The most extreme northern region uses essentially monodic music . . . ." What's "monodic" mean? If it's not a typo, a quick definition would be good.
It means having only one melodic line (see monody). Fixed.
  1. The article currently mixes American and British English. I'd say go with British, considering Nigeria's colonial history. (This would affect "marginalized" and "theater", but probably a few other words, too.)
Fixed, may have missed some.
  1. The Hausa boorii cult is described as featuring "trance music". You might want to specify what you mean -- Trance music is a genre of techno music, and I don't think that is the intended meaning here.
Fixed.
  1. The section on "Classical music" is awfully short. Could this be merged somewhere else so it doesn't stick out so much? Similarly, the phrase "African Western classical composers" is awkward. Perhaps "African composers in the Western classical style"? I keep getting tripped up thinking "West Africa".
Changed to one of the most famous African composers of the Western classical tradition, paragraph moved to lead
  1. The quote under "Palmwine and the invention of juju" seems out of place, as no sources are quoted directly in the rest of the article.
Fixed.
  1. What's an "MBE"? Perhaps spell out the acronym or define it.
Fixed
  1. Watch where were is linking. It's not an article about Muslim songs.
Fixed.
  1. Likewise, check all the links to be sure that they're going where they're supposed to. Juju is linked a lot, and it should go to jùjú music.
Fixed.

Good article. Hope you do Music of Cameroon next. BrianSmithson 14:19, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

My next African one was going to be music of Kenya or music of South Africa, because they should be relatively easy to research. I hope to spend some time on Cameroon soon though. Thanks for your comments! Tuf-Kat 17:11, August 31, 2005 (UTC)

I've spent considerable time going through it and editing on the clause level. Based on the inconsistencies in the first part, I regularised the spelling to BrEng; I realise now that I should have asked the author whether he prefers Br or US spelling. It's a fabulously rich topic, and the article, although too long, is mostly well written. It could do with some trimming down to the daughter articles. It's rather densely linked, which makes it harder to read, so I delinked the simple years, decades and centuries, since these are of little use to the reader. I've reduced spacing between the sentences to one space, to avoid the 'rivers of white' problem. I hope that this becomes a featured article. Tony 04:32, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

British English is right (or more precisely, Nigerian English, which is the same as I understand it). Your edits look great. Thanks. I hope I can get it featured soon too, but I don't think it will unless I can find some freely-licensed pictures. I've been sending e-mails out to a bunch of webpages, but so far haven't gotten permission from anyone. Tuf-Kat 08:03, September 3, 2005 (UTC)

Pictures are essential; I wonder whether you might trawl through releated articles and ask some of the contributors for help; and there must be some ethnomusicologists who either possess photos or can point you towards those who do. Tony 08:21, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

Charles Keeping

I'd like some input to put Keeping's work into context. I don't know enough about artists and illustrators to be able to identify the major influences on his work, or what else was going on in illustration and Keeping's place in it. I also think more opinions would enrich the article. --User:Nicknack009

  • Personally, I think your article is brilliant. In fact, I read almost to the bottom and I though to myself "wow. This is the first PR I've read that doesn't actually need any work!". However, then I noticed this: "Through the Window in particular is an astonishingly beautiful piece of work." That seems to be a POV... unless you can clarify who said this I think you need to fix it. I realise you are a fan, but be careful with too much praise, cause you can't do that here :) Also, this article needs references. See Wikipedia:Cite sources for more info on formatting, etc. However, all that said: this is such a brilliant job I reckon it should go onto WP:FAC! In fact, I think there's a good chance Raul might pick it for the front page... - Ta bu shi da yu 14:51, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Monty Python

I stumbled across this page recently and have been adding content to it. I think it has enough content to become a Featured Article at some point, although I also think there is still some work to be done. If you notice any simple problems, such as grammatical errors, easily fixable POV problems, or factual errors, please fix them and post here about it (don't post if it's completely trivial). If you have any other problems with it, such as sections having too little content, too much, not the right content, or there's POV, please post here and give possible solutions if you have any. I believe the content should focus on the cast more than the films or television series, because, unlike Star Trek, Monty Python has come to mean just that: the six people behind the films and TV series. There must be some content-blending with the TV series, however, since that is where "Monty Python" comes from. --[[User:Brian0918|brian0918 talk]] 02:26, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Added more ilinks to the lead. They are important and useful tool - I am sure more could be added to main text. I like the 'And now for something completely different' section title but in needs to have a descriptive title in parenthesis as well. I'd move members at the bottom, so we could merge history (pre, normal and post) into one section. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 21:22, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Sounds good. There are a lot of wording problems (POV, general disarray) throughout the article as well. Anyone care to work on that also? --[[User:Brian0918|brian0918 talk]] 02:29, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Rearranged the biography of Graham Chapman so that it did not start with his death. JerDW

I don't know how to do deal with several things:

  1. One sentence paragraphs. They really badly need fixing.
  2. Bullet points in the middle of the first section? Are you sure we need these? Makes it look... odd. This might not be fixable.
  3. Why don't we have a picture of the giant foot that squashes things? That should go into the first section "And now for something completely different: Flying Circus and the Python style". Also, I distinctly remember that it has its own name.
  4. "After Python" : "Going solo" mentions Cleese's career, but doesn't mention Fawlty Towers!!!
  5. Wikilinks in headings... big no no.
  6. I see pythonesque comments leaking through... "That left Terry Gilliam in his own corner, a sensible position in view of the arcane nature of his work, and Eric Idle." Now they're amusing, but they also aren't NPOV.
  7. "References" should be "Notes", and then a new references section created. See Wikipedia:Cite sources. Consistency is all I ask!

Sorry, I'm busy working on other articles and am taking a break to deal with the PR section. Hope that someone finds this useful. - Ta bu shi da yu 14:07, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Fuel Cell Bus Club

I think I am the only person to have contributed to this article so far. I know it needs to have a reference to the United Nations and perhaps when the buses started operating in Europe if we can find that out. Brianjd 05:55, 2004 Nov 30 (UTC)

  • Another user has also contributed. Brianjd 07:36, 2004 Dec 4 (UTC)
I think the article looks fine and I can't think of anything to add or remove. Good job. Very interesting topic too. MikeCapone 19:34, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)
  • This article covers trials other than the one being conducted by this club, which is inappropriate, but I can't think what should be done about it. See Talk:Fuel Cell Bus Club#Other trials. Brianjd 10:06, 2004 Dec 24 (UTC)
  • Nice work :-) However, I have suggestions:
    • The lead section needs to explain what CUTE, ECTOS and STEP are. I realise that this is explained later in the article, but the point is that the lead section introduces the article to the reader. It makes the reader aware of what the story is about and doesn't assume any knowledge, and doesn't assume they will read further to find out what acroyms are, or what the organisations do.
    • Further, the lead section needs to explain why the reader should care about the story. Maybe a brief one-two sentence explanation of the importance of the project? I still don't know why it is important from the project, though I know I can click on fuel cell... however most readers won't do that, especially if Wikipedia is sluggish. Never assume the reader knows anything... or if you have to spell out the facts at the start and get progressively more detailed and obscure as you go.
    • There are too many levels. I would suggest removing the "Project" level and the "Fuel Cell Bus Club" level and just have the CUTE, ECTOS and STEP levels. I'd then incorporate the info that all the information is shared by the projects into the lead section.
    • Expansion: is there more information available we can add to this article?
    • References: we need to get this section fixed up. See Wikipedia:Cite sources for the correct format for references.

Template:Mapit-US-streetscale

This is a prototype for some external mapping link templates that I think could be pretty useful. You can see an example of this template in action at: Buena Vista Park. Please give me some feedback as to whether you think this could be useful and how to make it more useful. You will find my idea for the template discussed on the talk page. Thanks! --Chinasaur 04:09, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)

    • Wow! I like it! Good idea. [[User:Neutrality|Neutrality/talk]] 04:13, Nov 30, 2004 (UTC)
    • That's a good idea. I think we're using something like it on our Australian articles. See the bottom of Strathfield. Actually, you might want to see if you can use that. You might find it useful. If you do, send a message to Nickj and tell him he's a legend :-) - Ta bu shi da yu 13:10, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)

San Jose, California

This article has been greatly expanded in the last 18 months or so. While we know it's not perfect yet (if any article can truly be perfect), we'd like to nominate it for featured article status. A few more eyes looking at the article before that happens would help ensure its accecptance. Gentgeen 02:30, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)

  • Looks good. I made a few minor changes, but nothing drastic. Regarding the history, I'm wondering how San Jose came to be such a great place for high-tech companies - were there tax incentives or people just came for the view or what? It's one of the most important technological hubs in the U.S. - how did it get that way? Other than that, I'm not sure the article flows very well (but organizing a city page like this is tough), and in a few places the text doesn't read particularly well. But overall, looks like a winner that needs a bit more preparation. Spangineer 15:27, Dec 2, 2004 (UTC)
    • One more thing - do you have any print references? It seems to me that "references" generally refer to printed material, while "external links" refer to website references. If my understanding is correct, that means that you have 4 external links and no references, which the featured article critics aren't going to like. It might help to find a couple books on San Jose history that confirm the information you have and include those. One of them could be the book that is excerpted from in the Flashback link. Spangineer 15:40, Dec 2, 2004 (UTC)
      • Online references are acceptable, but should be formatted as shown at Wikipedia:Cite sources. Many people feel that online references are not as reliable, but that varies just like in print references. The goal is to get some of the most reliable references available, and enough to cover and verify all of the material in the article. Usually that would involve some print references, so I second that request. I quick trip to the local library should yield some good ones. - Taxman 22:24, Dec 6, 2004 (UTC)
      • Separate comments I noticed are the map, the larger inset map is very confusing at first as to what it is. Can you get some arrows showing the zoom in or something? Also, many one and two sentence paragraphs throughout the article. Those show bad form, and highlight concepts that either need expanding or merging in with other paragraphs. - Taxman
  • Minor point for the Sport Teams section - I believe that the XFL is defunct. You might want to clarify that or remove the Demons all together - Trick 23:20, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)
  • Comments:
    • Great lead section.
    • History section has one sentence paragraphs. These need to become proper paragraphs.
    • Suggestion: turn those bullet points in the "Law and government" section into a table. Do what you will with that suggestion.
    • I like your geography section. I think I'll use it as a model for my Municipality of Strathfield article.
    • Those references need to be fixed. I count 9 wikilinks in [n] format, and only three references! I see vast amounts of material in there, but none of it referenced. Where are you getting your sources from? Do you have print resources? Council documents? Those links you do have need to be formatted correctly. I'd advise looking at cite your sources for more info.
  • Overall, I can only say: darnit people! you keep raising the bar and I'll NEVER get my article to featured status :) Excellent work! You guys are almost there. Ta bu shi da yu 13:08, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Ok, thanks for your help everyone. I've expanded the 1 and 2 sentence paragraphs in the history section, and will work on the city council members list in a bit. TBSDY, the [n] references you speak of are inline references, usually supporting the one or two facts immediatly before them. The three references at the bottom of the page are more general references, that support several areas of the article. I'd also like to expand the colleges list into a prose education section, as I think the bottom half of the article is a bit too list heavy. I might even go to my local library branch for a print reference or two, or maybe visit the monstrosity they call the Martin Luther King Library (who in their right mind combines a university and city library?) Any more suggestions will really be appriciated. Gentgeen 16:21, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)

In the infobox, I'd replace the Logo with the city flag and seal - similar to what is in the New York, New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. Ex: San Jose flag and San Jose seal -- DAVODD 22:18, Jan 6, 2005 (UTC)
I've added the flag, but as the seal is on the flag, I think the logo provides more information than the seal would. Gentgeen 05:50, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)
The transportation section should mention transit buses, paratransit service, and the heritage streetcars used seasonally along the light rail line. Vaoverland 08:15, Jan 7, 2005 (UTC)

Jarmann M1884

I believe this article is close to being ready for FAC, but need input from other editors to make it even better. Anything thats needs to be added, rewritten or taken out? Would also appriciate copyediting by someone with a better grasp of written english than myself =) Old request for peer review at Wikipedia:Peer review/Jarmann M1884/archive1. WegianWarrior 07:33, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

  • It's good quality article—I didn't see any glaring deficiencies. It would probably be a good idea to fill in the "??" entries in the table. Did this weapon ever see use during a conflict? It didn't sound like it did. — RJH 16:31, 8 August 2005 (UTC)
Thank you. I've filled out as best I could, and also added info on the closest the Jarmann came to be used in anger. Anything else I could improve upon? WegianWarrior 04:58, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
I've also expanded a few sections considerable after getting hold of my reference again (never let friends borrow books), and would appriciate it if you had a second look. Thanks =) WegianWarrior 08:31, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

Krag-Petersson

I'm resubmitting this article for peer review with an eye to get it up to FA-quailty (and perhaps even FA-status *smiles*). It has previously gone thru a peer review in December 2004 and it was a (failed) FAC in June 2005. I have extensivly rewritten, expanded and referenced the article over the last few days - so in essence it's a completly updated article compared to the one I submited for FAC earlier. I would like to hear any comments y'all might have on this article about one odf the first repeating rifles adopted by an armed force anywhere in the world. I do believe it's close to FA-standards, but inputs are needed for the last polish. Also, if someone with a better grasp of written English could look over it, it is appriciated. WegianWarrior 08:41, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

  • It looks good to me. About the only thing that would be interesting to add would be a small comparison table with comparable rifles of the period. (The ones you have listed in the "see also" section, for example.) The table could show the rifle weight, typical rates of fire, muzzle velocities, and effective ranges. Hmm, what else? I saw mention of a bayonet for this rifle on one of the web pages. Is there any information on that? — RJH 17:56, 20 August 2005 (UTC)
  • I'd prefer it if the lead size is doubled. Its too short. =Nichalp «Talk»= 07:50, August 23, 2005 (UTC)
    • Lead expanded, anythign else you see that could be improved? WegianWarrior 08:32, 23 August 2005 (UTC)
      • ya, have a few minor suggestions. 1) Split the lead into two to make it easier to read. 2) Your notes after #11 don't work. Since all the footnotes come from the same source, I strongly suggest you use the {{inote}} instead. eg {{inote|Ibid., page 26, left|Ibid-1}}. There are four unique references mentioned in the =Notes= which should be included under the =reference= . Only the enfilading topic qualifies as a true footnote. =Notes= should come before references. =Nichalp «Talk»= 09:56, August 23, 2005 (UTC)
        • Lead split into two paragraphs, fixed broken notes, shifted references to be after notes. Sticking to the {{ref|<note>}} and {{note|<note>}}, at least for the time being, since I prefer that style personally. Besides, it's been recommended to me on earlier artilces I've nominated for FA. WegianWarrior 18:38, 23 August 2005 (UTC)
          • Can't think of anything else to comment on, though I would still recommend inotes. :) =Nichalp «Talk»= 05:14, August 24, 2005 (UTC)

Katie Holmes

I completely overhauled this article. It is a thorough account of her life, films, and her relationship with Tom Cruise. I inserted footnotes galore and it has illustrations. This was formerly on peer review at Wikipedia:Peer review/Katie Holmes (old)/archive1. PedanticallySpeaking 18:12, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

  • I think it looks really good, though I don't care for the use of Image:Dawson-katie.jpg in the Dawson's Creek section. You can only see about 1/5 of subject in the picture. How about this? Image:CreekPromoHolmesJackson.JPG AriGold 19:13, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
  • I always enjoy reading articles that you have worked on and this is no exception. I am extremely impressed by recent edits, especially as the article was very good to begin with. Well done! I think the only problem here is that it is a little too detailed in places, for example "Holmes told The Toledo Blade her favorite film was Pretty in Pink with Molly Ringwald and the three people she most wanted to meet were Pope John Paul II, Senator John H. Glenn, and actress Meryl Streep. She confessed her "secret vices" were Starbucks coffee and jelly beans and the three words best describing herself as "honest, determined, and imaginative."" - I don't think that we need to know things like this (well, maybe the quote from Holmes in this instance could stay). Also, the images need identification of their respective copyright holders and fair use rationale on their description pages. I'd like to reiterate that I think this article is excellent and extremely close to featured article quality, and it's always nice to see comprehensive and well-developed pages on popular culture-related topics. Extraordinary Machine 19:19, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
    • What about moving that bit, which I found interesting as background, to a trivia section at the end? PedanticallySpeaking 15:39, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
      • I myself am opposed to trivia sections, but I wouldn't mind all that much if material such as the sentence I quoted above was moved down into a trivia section. It's just that it seemed to "jump out" and upset the flow of the article when I was reading it. However, I do think that the quote from Holmes could still be worked into the main body of the article. Extraordinary Machine 19:18, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
  • It looks good to go, plenty of footnotes and illustrations and has come a long way from my little bit of work. I too think the image change from Image:Dawson-katie.jpg which is somewhat grainy to Image:CreekPromoHolmesJackson.JPG is a good idea. In the Hometown reaction section the quote from her Toledo friend has an improperly spelled word. I know it's a quote but it grabs the eye.--Dakota ~ ε ° 20:05, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
  • I am commenting here in response to a spam request on my talk page. I have no interest in this article other than the "Personal life" section. That said, I think the section is missing a couple of things. I have read that Katie's parents disapprove of the relationship with Tom Cruise, yet the article describes her family's reaction to their engagment as 100% positive. Also, I read that she lived with, not just was engaged to, Chris Klein; yet she claimed to be a virgin when she got engaged to Tom Cruise, and she said that she would not have sex until she got married. She apparently later changed her mind.
    I freely acknowledge the possibility that I am misremembering what I read, or that what I read was incorrect. If you want me to find sources for these claims, I will have time a little later tonight. TacoDeposit 20:21, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
    • Well, believe me, I've read through enormous amounts of material for this article. I know there are rumors floating around on-line and in the tabloids, but I tried to stick to citing print sources that have a reputation. I've heard the talk of "auditioning" actresses and the speculation that there's a "contract" but I've not seen that with any credible sourcing. So I'm holding back for now on several of these points. PedanticallySpeaking 15:42, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Good overall. Need to eliminate the last few orphan paragraphs as per User:Taxman/Featured article advice. The second lead paragraph could stand to be a bit longer too. I also had heard her parents weren't happy, and I don't know how widespread it was, but there was certainly talk of a leaked contract Katie had signed to stay with Tom for 5 yrs and have a child. $5m or something. Now that could be just urban legend stuff, and shouldn't be mentioned if it is of course, but it's worth checking in to. - Taxman Talk 20:27, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Do you mean I should eliminate the section heads in the "Personal Life" section such as "Hometown reaction"? As for some of the rumors, see my comment to Taco Deposit above. I've seen in the tabloids some of these things, but these articles often are "a source", "a friend", etc., and no names worries me. So I've tried to avoid citing from anything but the more reputable publications. Yes, yes, I rely on People several times, but that's the gold standard next to some of these ;) I'll look at that lead as well. PedanticallySpeaking 15:49, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
    • Ok, if you've searched, and can't find anything valuable in print then you've done the right thing. I just thought that one might have risen to the level of a widespread unsubstantiated rumor enough to be mentioned as such. But again, without evidence supporting that, adding it is not good. And no, I don't mean remove those headings, I mean paragraphs that are 1,2 or even 3 sentences are too short and should either be expanded or merged smoothly with related material. Now that I count them, here's all three, the paragraphs beginning with "In 2005, Holmes played ...", "Holmes purchased a townhouse ...", and "Cruise proposed ...". - Taxman Talk 16:03, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Years are overlinked (they should generally only be linked when part of a full date; see date formatting). Also, I'd remove Dawson's Creek from the See also section, as only things not mentioned in the article should be listed there, and Dawson's has its own subsection. --Fritz Saalfeld (Talk) 00:04, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Looks excellent. I have one minor quibble. THe second sentence - "Only her second role, Dawson's Creek made Holmes a star, praised by critics and adored by fans." - looks a bit odd to me. How about something like "In only her second role, Dawson's Creek, Holmes became a star, praised by critics and adored by fans."? CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 00:32, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
  • It looks good. Excellent work! Figaro 13:05, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Hi PS, Great article, very well written, referenced etc. Great quotes, and appropriate level of detail. The only minor change I would make to the text is simply changing the header "Tom Cruise" to "Relationship with Tom Cruise" as it's the relationship being discussed rather than Cruise himself. Otherwise I would completely support the text as FA worthy. There is still some work to be done with the images however. Image:HolmesBat.jpg needs a source and fair use rationale, however if this can't be provided I could make a screenshot from Batman Begins - let me know if you would like me to do this. I don't have anything for Dawson's Creek and the same problem applies to Image:CreekPromoHolmesJackson.JPG. The image Image:PiecesOfApril.jpg is fine but needs a fair use rationale. Source and fair use needed for Image:Katiegap.jpg plus I think the tag is wrong. It's not a promo photo - no way could it be. It is more likely a magazine cover, so needs to be retagged. As it's an advertisement for "Gap" I think the fair use rationale must be very strong to justify why we would be promoting a product within a Wikipedia article. (I'd prefer to just see the image deleted but that's my own opinion). Tom Cruise (what an idiot!) jumping on the couch - Image:Cruiseonoprah.jpg - needs a source, even just saying it was taken from a television broadcast would be fine, but it still needs a fair use rationale. User:AriGold was the uploader for some of these images, so I will drop a message onto Ari's talk page and see if Ari can recall where the images came from etc. The article has developed into something very strong, since it's last nomination. Kudos to you! Rossrs 01:33, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
  • PS, I've reread the article and there are just a couple of other things I think need to be looked at. The comment in discussing The Gift - "and winds up dead for her trouble" reminds me a of a film-noir voiceover. I think it should be made a little more encyclopedic. Also, in the "Guest appearances" and "Personal life" sections, the name "Holmes" appears 12 times in three short paragraphs. Many of these could be substituted with "she". Also some of these sentences are quite short and some could perhaps be joined together. The article flows really well until that point, then it kind of gets awkward for just that section, and then it flows along well again. Sorry I didn't spot these things earlier - I guess I have to read something a few times to see everything that's there. Rossrs 13:15, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
    • Thanks very much for your help, Rossrs. You're right. Many of these passages were written at different times and stiching them together later was not seamless. I've replaced a number of "Holmes" with "she", "her", "the actress". The sentence about The Gift did sound off. I've changed it. I don't know much about these images. I did not upload any of them. I will say about the Gap ad, I'd say that's most definitely fair use; it's a print ad and I should think the Gap people wouldn't object to some additional circulation of it. I'll take a look at the images, though, and see what I can do. I've also gone through and tried to polish things, correcting punctuation, rephrasing things, and correcting some problems in the notes. PedanticallySpeaking 15:12, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Huge, well-sourced. Very good. The intro contains two sentences that are awkwardly constructed, the first of which is, "The part on the teen soap, only her second professional role, made Holmes a star, the actress receiving tremendous praise from critics and adoration from fans." That same problem with the last subordinate clause is in the following sentence. Also, spell-check it. "Magnificent" is misspelled at least twice, unless the original quotation has it wrong, in which case add "sic". Kaisershatner 19:48, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Too fruity, too many (similar) references. Do you really need a references AND that gargantuan bibliography, which repeats the same links? Too many quotes ("Holmes said ..."). Too much bloat. It kinda sorta reads like a gushing magazine article, rather than an encyclopaedia article. A lot of the speech marks and apostrophes are messed up (are you putting this together in Word, by any chance?). It needs trimming, writing from a neutral point of view. There's way too much info on 'Joey' that should be in the Joey Potter article. Drop the filmography to a sub article. Proto||type 15:04, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
    • I tried to cite all my sources. The reason for the list after the notes is because on second reference, I've abbreviated sources, e.g. "Dunn". So rather than have to wade through all the notes to find the first reference to that article, one can simply look at the alphabetically list. I was taught in school that if one used footnotes, one still needed an alphabetical list of sources. Could you supply specific instances of the "fruity" and "gushing" prose you object to? Where is it not "neutral" other than cited quotes? As for "Joey", I have one paragraph about the character. Hardly excessive and particularly relevant because I quote Holmes talking about how much she was like the character. PedanticallySpeaking 19:49, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
      • "The tall (5'9") brunette enchanted the press, writers of both sexes commenting how Holmes was the sort of girl one wants to bring home to meet the parents and to marry." That entire paragraph is glowing press quotes, not an encyclopaedic section, and could go. I count four paragraphs about Joey and how Katie Holmes plays her (first two and last two of the Dawson's Creek section), which is three too many. The 'Hometown Reaction' section is entirely fluff, contributing nothing whatsoever. There are far, far too many press quotes throughout the whole article, and every single one of them is glowing praise. I don't see any 'cited sources' criticising her purportedly lumpen, wooden performance in Batman Begins, (and they really would not be hard to find - I recall AICN described her as the only bad thing in the movie), or on any of her other work - a little balance in the quotes would be nice. Lose half the quotes, which would enable the gigantic and repetitive refs section to be culled, and try and find some that aren't one-eyed praise. Proto||type 15:07, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
        To clarify - yes, there is a small section, with one referenced quote about her poor performance in The Gift, one about her poor performance in First Daughter, and one about Batman Begins. I count at least 10 fawning over her performance in the Creek. Proto||type 15:21, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
        Well, I tried to edit it to assuage my concerns, but the whole thing got mass-reverted by PS with no explanation. That's not really going to endear me to supporting this article in an FA. Proto||type 11:18, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
I restored this material because it illustrates how taken the producers were with the actress, who had only a single professional credit to her name, and about Holmes's personal connection to the material. PedanticallySpeaking 16:00, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
  • it is a little short, but then again there may not be much more info to add depending on who she is. the references section looks awesome. nice intro photo. overall, it looks great to me. --Lan56 06:12, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
Thanks very much. PedanticallySpeaking 16:00, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Webster's Dictionary

I revised this article and consolidated it with several related articles. Few edits re the substance since my work and I'd appreciate Wikipedians comments. Everyone has used Webster's Dictionary and ought to have some thoughts, no? PedanticallySpeaking 17:58, Dec 21, 2004 (UTC)

Cerritos, California

Former Peer review located here: Wikipedia:Peer review/Cerritos, California/archive1 --AllyUnion (talk) 19:07, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

It has been almost a full year since the last peer review on this article, and I think some of the raised objections still exist from before. I have created a to-do list on talk page citing its problems before, but I am uncertain whether any of it still applies. --AllyUnion (talk) 19:10, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

Eastern Guinean forests

Decent-sized stub. Comments and suggestions? [[User:Neutrality|Neutrality/talk]] 00:20, Nov 27, 2004 (UTC)

Geography of Côte d'Ivoire

Most of these Geography of... articles are pure CIA data dumps, so I tried to make one a decent article. Questions, suggestions, and comments welcome! Neutralitytalk 23:47, Nov 26, 2004 (UTC)

Really good job, Neutrality! I found a couple nits, but they seem really minor -
  • "500m altitude" - should this be elevation?
  • This sentence should probably be recast slightly:
    The southeastern region of Côte d'Ivoire is marked by coastal inland lagoons that starts at the Ghanaian border and stretch 300km (190 miles) along the eastern half of the coast.
  • Lateritic and montane are excellent terms, but I had to look up the former... just wondering if this level of precision is relevant?
  • "party to:" It would really be great if these were linked to the relevant treaties (but how the heck you could find them I have no clue.)
I have never seen a better upgrade of these CIA data dumps. Thanks! - Amgine 03:06, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Good start, Neutrality. It'd be nice to see the last of the CIA dumped material put into prose form, which shouldn't be too hard. However, the best suggestion I can make is to take a look at Geography of Ireland, and copy its format. The Irish article is amazing, and sets up a layout that could be used for practically any country. Ambi 03:31, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Miami Circle

After re-reading what I wrote, I have changed this summary. I am new to Wikipedia, and this is the first article that I have written that I consider close to 'complete'. I am pleased with the content, but I would appreciate feedback on all levels, from style and POV to content. I know that it needs wikification and no doubt some grammatical cleanup, which I will carry out myself following a sufficient break from the text. I know that the "Sceptic cranks and septic tanks" title is inappropriate, but it amused me to write though it's a bit POV ;-) I wrote this as I was rather surprised to find it wasn't mentioned at all in the Wikipedia, it is certainly a candidate for the most significant US archaeological find in recent times, though seems overlooked. Particular aspects I would like reviewed are content (anyone who is more familiar with archaeology would certainly be able to help with some of the technical aspects), and I have also had problems finding public domain images (I will be approaching the Miami Historic Preservation council if none can be found). The final comments I would appreciate are anything pertaining to a better approach I could have made to this article as a new Wikipedian. Thanks for any help, in any capacity. Pseudosocrates 19:23, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

  • The section title was amusing, but yes, does need to be changed for NPOV. 1) I would certainly contact that association anyway and see if you can't get some GFDL or acceptable Creative Commons licensed pictures from them. They may have other material you can add. 2) The lead section contains a sentence that I don't think it means what you think it means: "It is the only known evidence of a permanent structure cut into the bedrock in the United States..". You must mean before European settlement right? I'm sure there are lots of things permanently cut into the bedrock now. 3) As to general approach, you've done a great job, there are only two things I would suggest: one is a greater reliance on primary sources, and citing them. Did you really get all of that info from 2 online resources? Try to get a hold of primary sources and properly format the ones you do use in a references section. The BBC documentary seems like a good start. Second would be to be careful for the structural POV. Your statements are generally all pretty good, but the article seems to offer criticisms and other viewpoints, only to refute every one of them. If they are really minority viewpoints, simply state that and find a good source and cite it. So basically, great work. Just do more of what you've done and Wikipedia will be a better place. - Taxman 13:31, Dec 2, 2004 (UTC)

Menachem Begin vs. Deir Yassin massacre

I swore not to get involved with Israel / Palestine issues, but these two articles completely disagree over (what should be, with 50 years hindsight) fairly incontrovertible fact (if not uncontroversial). Were Irgun and Stern responsible for the Deir Yassin massacre? -- GWO 13:10, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Try this source. Revisionist Zionists claim that it was not a massacre, not that Begin didn't do it.

Clearly, the Red Cross observer reported a massacre, and lots of eyewitnesses, quoted in the Deir Yassin article, say that they saw a massacre, but some of the Israelis say they legitimately slaughtered the entire village because it was armed to the teeth (but apparently not particularly good at using its immense firepower, since it only killed four Israelis). The Deir Yassin article, in a slightly muddled way, explains what some of the controversies are. The Begin one simply gives one side.Dr Zen 03:52, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)


i would like to respond to this: "but some of the Israelis say they legitimately slaughtered the entire village", by asserting that it is factually incorrect. we have various sources reporting anything from 254 to something over 100 with another source indicating less than 100. since "Deir Yassin Remembered" has itself reduced its "count" from 254 to "over 100" and the village deir yassin had "about 750 Palestinian residents" at the time of the alleged massacre, the claim that the entire village was slaughtered is at best an exaggeration at worst dissembling. In either case not worthy of serious discussion Judadem (talk) 03:41, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Autobiography (Ashlee Simpson album)

previous PR Wikipedia:Peer review/Why Peer Review Is A Good Idea Here

College rowing (United States)

I wrote the whole article myself and I think it is pretty decent. However I know Rowing isn't a very popular sport in the US, so I am wondering what makes sense and what doesn't. Any way you can help to improve the article would be appreciated. --Alex Krupp 04:31, Nov 26, 2004 (UTC)

  • It's a good start, but there's quite a few things that could do with some work. a) the lead section could be longer, and could summarise the article more - at the moment it just states a few statistics. b) the history section should be in prose, as opposed to a timeline. c) Could the "A Year in Rowing" sections be expanded somewhat? d) the Rowing Conference tables are very large - it might be an idea to give them their own seperate articles, and place a summary of them in this article, per Wikipedia:Summary style. d) the National Championships section could also do with a bit of expansion. e) the sources section should be titled "references", and cited properly (which isn't my forte, so I'm probably not the best person to ask). I hope I'm not too harsh - it's better to get these things early, and with a bit of work, it would make a good featured article. Ambi 03:38, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)
These are all good suggestions, and I will start work on them as soon as classes end this friday.

Our Gang/The Little Rascals

...I did a lot of cleanup and fix ups on this one. The only things I think I need to do are to create stubs for June Marlowe, Scotty Beckett, and Eugene "Porky" Lee. I've also created a Category for articles about Our Gang kids. How does it all look? --b. Touch 23:31, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

  • Anyone? --b. Touch 03:33, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Sonoluminescence

I see a lot of nonsense in this article. For instance the mechanism of SBSL is largely solved I think, and does not involve the rediculous hypothesis of hawking radiation in any way. Physicists versed in sonoluminescence should review this article.--Deglr6328 22:22, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Salt Lake City, Utah

This article has been significantly worked on over the years, and has seen several peer reviews and a few FACs in the past. I think it's closer than it's ever been, now that there's far more references and all of the image problems have been cleared up. I just generally want an overall analysis of the article to see just how close to FA status it is. There's still some sections that need referencing, and I plan to look for references soon. Unfortunately, two major contributors in the past (User:JonMoore and User:Cool Hand Luke) haven't been around for a while as far as I know, so some of the content they contributed will be hard to find references for. Anyway, I just want to see how close to FA status this is, since I feel it's just so close!

Most recent peer review: Wikipedia:Peer review/Salt Lake City, Utah/archive4 bob rulz 11:22, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

From the brief look I took:

  • We could improve the flow of the geography section. As it stands, there are a few short and/or irrelevant sentences which need to be expanded, clarified, and/or merged.
    • We should really state how often the lake stink phenomenon occurs, if possible. Cities closer to the lake probably enjoy the smell constantly, but in my experience Salt Lake City (more accurately, the suburb I live in) experiences this problem relatively infrequently, perhaps a few times a year. Currently, as well as before my edits, it sounds as if the city has an unpleasant odor all the time. I found a source.
  • The lake effect has a major impact on the climate,[2] and should be mentioned in the climate section. Right now it is only briefly touched upon in the sports and recreation section. Of course we have discussed this before, but I just wanted to mention that this info would be useful in this article as well as Great Salt Lake, I am not trying to nag by any means. :) Oops, I was using Firefox's Find feature, but I was not searching for the hyphenated lake-effect, so I missed that in the climate section.
  • I'll add a few citation-needed tags as necessary, and try to dig up some sources, but for now I'll just ask that sources be added for the population numbers in the lead. --Lethargy 12:28, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

Cissy Patterson

Would appreciate another set of eyes running over this, particularly those familiar with Washington, D.C., journalism, the Washington Post, and the like. Ave atque vale! PedanticallySpeaking 19:42, Nov 22, 2004 (UTC)

Racialism

This article has had alot of disagreement, but I'd like to think it has resulted in a rather fine article. I'd be interested in any assistance or advice on making this a featured article. There was an old peer review back in 2004, which is archived below. Cheers, ¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸ 00:08, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

IMO, the long quote from Reggie White is out of place, and lends a POV character to the article. I think his statements like "White people were blessed with the gift of structure and organization" and "Hispanics are gifted in family structure" are completely contradicted by the scientific evidence, which these days is starting to paint a pretty clear picture of what things (not very many of them) are actually correlated with "race" and what things aren't. Although the article starts by saying NPOVishly that "Racialism is a term used to describe the belief in the existence and importance of racial categories, in themselves often disputed," the Reggie White quote clearly expresses a POV that such categories exist and are important. I was also disappointed that the scientific discussion in the lead was never followed up on. You might want to read Gould's The Mismeasure of Man, and then think about it in comparison with the opposing points of view expressed in Steven Pinker's books and Matt Ridley's Nature Via Nurture. The article could also use a discussion of the history of anthropological thought on this issue.--Bcrowell 01:08, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

Good points. While I'd very much like to keep the reggie white quote for alot of reasons (I'm from wisconsin and I think he's great, so maybe I'm just biased ;), I completely agree w what you've said. Very sharp observations, esp. on the lack of follow-up on the anthropology. Thank you very much. ¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸ 01:21, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

Another thing that concerns me about this article is that although almost all the examples it uses are black people (Marcus Garvey, Bob Marley, Anthony Appiah, W. E. B. DuBois, Reggie White, Nelson Mandela), almost none of those people would intentionally describe themselves as "racialist." In 100% of the cases where I've seen a person or a movement that wanted to be called "racialist," it was right-wing white racists in the U.S. (White Aryan Resistance, Stormfront, nationalist.org, etc.). Although I'm sure it wasn't your intention to come across this way, the article really does come across as though it's trying to legitimize those organizations' racist POV. This is a longstanding strategy of organizations like David Duke's National Association for the Advancement of White People: to promote a violent white-supremacist agenda under the guise of simply doing for white people the same thing that black organizations have been doing for black people.--Bcrowell 03:34, 19 August 2005 (UTC)
Thats a POV that I am familiar with, and agree with the inclusion of, but recent edits (and a long history of reversion) have attempted to enforce the conception that the term is nothing else. It has a historical usage distinct from "racism", which is where the article should focus. ¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸ 17:21, 19 August 2005 (UTC)
  • I haven't heard this term being used in the American press or seen it in the literature. The article itself is fairly short, and it's very odd to find a list of sources that are nearly as long as the article. That leaves me wondering how useful are those sources? Or can this article be greatly expanded based on said sources? — RJH 14:53, 19 August 2005 (UTC)
  • "Organisations such as NAAWP insist on these distinctions, and vehemently oppose state sponsored racism." - come on.. at least "claim to vehemently oppose". Serious NPOV issues, even without the notice. Mozzerati 21:59, August 22, 2005 (UTC)

John Holmes, Albion K. Parris, John Chandler, Peleg Sprague

Suggestions? These articles are all on late 18th century/early 19th century American politicians of Maine and have been edited only by me (they're somewhat obscure, I guess). I'd like some outside thoughts. [[User:Neutrality|Neutrality (hopefully!)]] 05:13, Nov 22, 2004 (UTC)

Punk rock

At the moment this article reads like a Clash tribute. It needs to stick to the subject and be more balanced. Some of the overt Clash references need removing and other groups should be better represented. There is more opinion than information here. For example:"Even their early "White Riot" had more political focus than any of the Pistols' songs, and "London's Burning" was angry but at the same time downright analytical". This is clearly straying from the theme of the topic which is an overview of Punk rock and at the same time is not even unbiased enough for an accurate article on The Clash themselves. Where is the NPOV? Please take a serious look at this article.

I've moved most of the Clash material to the Clash entry... you may still find some POV issues there. I also cut out quite a bit of tangential, POV and repetitive material. Take a look. --BTfromLA 03:28, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Certainly an improvement. Well done. Possibly still needs some work ,but nothing too major.

No soap radio

Article written essentially by just me and DG, needs someone else's additions and expansion. Andre (talk) 06:19, Nov 21, 2004 (UTC)

Cremaster muscle

This is currently a brute-force merge of two different stubs. Someone with knowledge of the subject needs to review and finish merging the two. -- Karada 20:33, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Force Dynamics

Did you ever see the relation between trying to open a jammed door and arguing with a stubborn person? Well, the cognitive linguistic theory of Force Dynamics has something to say about it. Read this article and post your thoughts here. Non-experts are especially invited to comment. Is it clear enough? What can be improved? What is missing? Thank you for reviewing this article! — mark ✎ 15:19, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Earlier request at Wikipedia:Peer review/Force Dynamics/archive1. Resubmitting because last time it was here for a month and no-one looked at it, except for User:MIT Trekkie, who did an awesome EAL copyedit.

  • I like this; a clear and, as far as I can tell, comprehensive enough overview of a complex area, though my expertise is limited. I've made a couple of small edits, mostly layout. I would ask why the list is both bulleted and lettered. Filiocht 15:58, Mar 1, 2005 (UTC)
  • Good point. The letters refer to the elements in Figure 2. I've removed the bullets and indented the list items. — mark ✎ 16:24, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • It seems faily clear overall. A few terms could benefit from wikilinks to articles that explain them: for instance, "semantic category", "closed-class", "open-class". Also, you might add some external links if you can find anything sufficiently relevant and helpful. You'd be a better judge than I of whether this, this, this, this, or any of the links returned by these searches would be relevant or useful. --Jim Henry 19:28, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • Clever searches :). It's a good idea to add external links. I'll review your suggestions and add the ones that suit best (and I have some in stock myself). As for the wikilinks: another good idea — I have added some wikilinkage as per your suggestion (incidentally, 'closed-class' and 'open-class' are slightly problematic because those notions are used in another sense than the traditional linguistic notions of Open class word and Closed-class word). Thanks for reviewing! — mark ✎ 21:23, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • In the context of the section Context does nominals mean nouns/noun phrases? --Theo (Talk) 17:44, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • Yep. I changed it; nouns is more common indeed. — mark ✎ 18:34, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • Interesting and unusual subject! The article is written in a simple, clear, helpful style, but I'm still barely able to get my mind round it, as the ideas are so unfamiliar compared with the few outdated linguistic concepts I've met before. It may actually be easier to grasp for somebody coming at it with even less linguistics than I have, and therefore fewer hindering preconceptions. I take this stupidity to be a valuable resource for peer review, since it'll make me mulishly demand grade-school level explication of every detail. Here goes:
1. I think the sentence "The diagram at the top of this page represents the sentence 'The door cannot open' Force-Dynamically" points the reader (well, me) wrong: scarily, it sounds like it claims the diagram represents only the sentence about the door. I'd at least turn it round to: "The sentence 'The door cannot open' can be Force-Dynamically represented by the diagram at the top of this page." Maybe I'd also immediately say something about what else--what classes of sentences and situations--the diagram can represent, though I'm unsure about that, it may not be a practical option. Still, I'd like the issue addressed somewhat, because my stupid-reader gut feeling is that the diagram could easily represent nearly 50% of force-dynamic sentences and situations, while another nearly 50% of them might be represented by its sibling (=the same except that the agonist is the stronger and movement results). And the feeling of a couple of simple diagrams doing for all, in turn, tends to cast doubt on how much help the theory can be for understanding "the cognitive basis of language". Help with this feeling is at hand, in the section "More complexity", but that still leaves me suspecting that the two simplest diagrams might represent most FD sentences. (Especially since sentence d in "More complexity" is so unnatural that it hints there might only be three convincing complex FD sentences altogether, a, b, and c. ;-))
2. When the account gets to "More complexity", an unspoken assumption also seems to be in place that we know how to decide which force is agonist and which antagonist. I for one was surprised to find the wind, the headmaster, the breaking of the dam and the abating of the wind to be antagonists; why wouldn't they be agonists? The wind is mentioned first, it's the grammatical subject, and it's the more active force, so I expected it to have "primacy", if anything did, and to be designated the agonist. What do the leaves of the book have going for them? That they're part of "my" book, and my point of view determines the matter? That the book existed before the gust did? Or, another idea, are we supposed to pick one alternative at random for each sentence, and produce one of two equally valid diagrams? I just think too much is assumed here.
3. The paragraph about how different representational devices are supposed to interact with one another is very abstract. It's not that it's hard to follow, but it just hardly conveys anything at all to the layman. I suppose the theoretical level of the problem makes it impossible to bring in an example and expound on how some particular other device doesn't play well with Force Dynamics? (Hey, draw an FD diagram of what happens when they meet! :-)) If it is at all possible, please try.
But these are all nits, it's an excellent article! The "Psychological basis" section is great--so short, yet does so much work, and really does expand my linguistic horizons. I like the conciseness myself, but it would also be interesting to hear if others think this section might benefit from being a little fuller. Bishonen | Talk 09:28, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Bishonen, these are not nits, these are very valuable, thorough and astute comments. Thank you very much. It will take some time to adress your 'multi-layered' points (I mean, they look like three points but they are full of other important questions and comments). Let me start with a general all-important point which I think is not made clear in the article at all yet, and which might be the basis for much of your questions:
There is a difference between the actual world and our conceptualization of it (philosophical chatter about reality aside) — and Cognitive Linguistics (and Force Dynamics with it) is about the latter. This is an extremely important point which merits a quick illustration. Imagine a row of twenty little lamps, close to each other. Put a translucent screen before them. Imagine the lamps being switched on and then directly off in succession, first number one, then number two, and so on up to number twenty. Imagine it all going very rapid. What would you see? Most people will say: 'I saw a light moving.' But, of course, there wasn't one light at all; there were twenty little lamps. And surely there wasn't any movement involved; only a succession of separate events. Yet this is how people conceptualize the situation. And the very cool thing about language is that this conceptualization shines through all the time. Language shows us the world the way we humans conceptualize it.
Now your point (1).
1a — I agree with you regarding the jammed door and the top right diagram; your suggestion is better so I've changed it.
1b — about the few simplest diagrams representing nearly all FD situations. Let me first say that I agree that the article absolutely should be more clear about this. Having said that, there are a few points to make here:
  1. There are not two, but four basic diagrams. This of course relates to your point 2, so now you should know that part of my answer to that point will be that it actually does matter which force you dub the Agonist and which one is the Antagonist (I'll come back to that).
  2. This four 'basic' diagrams reflect steady-state oppositions as opposed to the ones under 'More complexity' where change over time is a factor. To be sure, there are a lot of steady-state oppositions; but in any event, these do not make up 'nearly all' FD situations, if only because we don't conceptualize all FD situations to be of a 'steady-state' nature.
  3. The idea that the basic diagrams cover almost all situations means (I think) that you only consider part of the information in the diagrams. For example, looking only at the resultant (action or inaction), it is indeed clear (and obvious) that half of the basic diagrams will cover half of the possible situations and that the other half will take care of the rest. But there's more to it, since it's all about our conceptualization of the situation. That is why the Antagonist/Agonist distinction is imporant; and the balance; and the intrinsic force tendency. Needless to say, this is not your fault; the article clearly puts the reader on the wrong track and this should be sorted out.
1c — about sentence d in 'More complexity'. Talmy himself gives the sentence 'The stirring rod's breaking let the particles settle'. I don't know if that is better than my 'abating wind' attempt; in any case, read my partial reply to your point 2 for a possible explanation of the awkwardness of sentences a-d.
Your point (2) — the unspoken assumption should be outspoken. There is actually a way to decide which force is going to be the Agonist and which one is to be the Antagonist. This is where Talmy's view on the matter really becomes clear so thank you for pointing this out. I can't answer your question yet, however; I've already seen that answering it will involve expanding the article by some thirty percent. This means that the article is not yet comprehensive at all, so thanks again for putting the finger right on the spot. I will be sorting this issue out (hate it to write incomplete articles), but I don't have the time for it at present. A fix of the article (and a partial answer to your question) will include the following bit of theory:
In Talmy's view, sentences without an agent like the ones in a-d are more basic than forms containing an agent. To quote him (2000a:421):
[T]he inclusion of an agent in a sentence, though often yielding a syntactically simpler construction, actually involves an additional semantic complex. An agent that intends the occurrence of a particular physical event, say, a vase's breaking, is necessarily involved in initiating a causal sequence leading to that event. This sequence must begin with a volitional act by the agent to move certain parts or all of his body. This in turn either leads directly to the intended event or sets off a further event chanin, of whatever length, that leads to the intended event.
To represent a whole sequence of this sort, many languages permit expression merely of the agent and of the final event, like English in I broke the vase. Here, the sequence's remaining elements are left implicit with their most generic values (...). The next element that can be added by itself to the overt expression is the one leading directly to the final event — that is, the penultimate event, or else just its (so-called) instrument, as in I broke the vase (by hitting it) with a ball. This privileged pair of events, the penultimate and the final, forms the identifying core of the whole agentive sequence. It can in fact be excerpted from there for exmpression as a basic precurso-result sequence, as in The ball's hitting it broke the vase.
Your point (3) — the article should indeed be more clear on this as well. An example of another representational device is a proposition. Propositional logic determines how propositions are supposed to interact with each other (e.g., when assessing the validity of an argument, we take information from the premises, compare this information with information found in the conclusion, and apply some logic, and determine whether the argument is valid or not). Now Goddard is saying something like: 'OK, we have propositional logic to take care of way propositions interact with one another; but where to fit those diagrams in? How do we 'extract' information from them and how do we know how to apply it, and where do we apply it?'. Let me throw in another quick and dirty example. Imagine that you have two files: one .ogg sound file (an audio recording of some play) and one .png picture file (a portrait of some guy). You are saying that both have much to do with each other. Now Goddard is asking: 'But how in the world are the different representational devices supposed to interact with one another? I.e., what kind of cognitive operation would be required to relate the 0's and 1's in the png-file to the 0's and 1's in the ogg-file?'
Now this of course is a very difficult question, opening sort of a Pandora's box of other interesting questions. If you hit edit in the 'Limitations and criticism' section you'll see the statement of Newman 1996:xii (I've commented it out because it's a little long and because I thought it was reasonably summarized). Basically, he says: 'I don't care about that so much. We just intend to draw some parallels, we don't want another form of formal logic; language is simply more complex than that'. Not all cognitive linguists do think this is an unimportant issue; but the inherent distrust of formal logic as a model of natural language that many of them have certainly plays a role here. So in the background, there's another question lurking: can natural language be formalized just like the artificial language we call formal logic? Most cognitive linguists don't think so. Goddard, by the way, doesn't think so either. But I'm straying from the subject. Is my point clear? Again, I couldn't agree more with you that these things need to be clarified in the article. They will be, eventually.
Hope you don't mind the largish reply. Thanks for the food for thought! — mark ✎ 23:46, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Mark, I think much of the trouble may indeed have been that I looked at the diagrams through Formal Logic glasses, which made them seem so simple—too simple—and just as you say, I failed to take in the significance of change over time. The article does stress that that's significant, but, well, I just kept the same glasses on. :-( If readers are going to be that obstreperous, I'm not sure what you can do about it, other than just put still more emphasis on the importance of process and change, rather than of end result.
A nit, and this may be asking for "essay" or original research rather than a tertiary or whatever summary, so it might not be the kind of thing that even ought to be addressed in the article, but I was just wondering: if language "shows us the world the way we humans conceptualize it", and sentences without an agent are more conceptually "basic" (according to Talmy) than those with, then why are sentences of type d so gosh-darn awkward? Wouldn't you expect the language to accommodate them much more comfortably?
Thanks for the full answer! I can't say I've fully grasped what the 30% expansion would entail, but I'm looking forward to it. (Wanna checkout a more evolved play?) Best,--Bishonen | Talk 13:01, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)
As for the second nit — this one again is a question mainly motivated by the incomplete account of Force Dynamics here (I'm starting to feel ashamed really). In starting with a neat overview of the more simple diagrams, I tried to make the article a little pedagogic. But apparently I stopped too early (the 30% expansion has to do with that, too; Talmy's account is much more complicated than the article makes it look). Talmy is by no means saying that awkward sentences are more conceptually basic and the article should clarify that. However, I don't actually remember Talmy being very clear about the difference between semantic simplicity and conceptual basality (I agree with you that the part I quoted above seems to imply some kind of conceptual basality — I just don't think he wants to say that, because he really has thought a lot about it). I have to think about this more. Thanks again for your thoughts! — mark ✎ 10:49, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • (via stressfull computer crash) I'm not going to rewrite everything I said before, that'd be too upsetting. The gist is that, although I know nothing of this subject, it seems to me that the title should be lower case, not upper case. This applies to other links in the article, such as Cognitive Semantics. I checked the external links and couldn't come up with a firm answer. If the capitalization issue is unclear then I prefer lower case. BrokenSegue 01:44, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)
    • As you say, this is not an easy to answer question. But it is a very good point, and I tend to agree with you in most cases, so I'm going to change it. There are some borderline cases however — sometimes, the notion is really used as the proper name of a particular theory; in cases like that, it might seem best to keep it capitalized (but then, there is also the question of Force Dynamics vs. Force dynamics). I have to think about that. The literature is far from clear about this, but upon reviewing some sources, I think the uncapitalized version is the most common. Thanks for your thoughts! — mark ✎ 10:49, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

WikiReader Cryptography × 73

We need review of around 70-odd articles (this box cycles through one a day). The WikiReader is aimed at a layperson, so review by non-experts is very valuable. It would be nice to increase the number of Featured Articles in the set (I think there's only 4 at present) — any good candidates? — Matt Crypto 21:25, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)
WikiReader Cryptography — article of the day edit
 MRR
Sunday, 24 July Playfair cipher (Talk) (History)
                   
Monday, 25 July Message authentication code (Talk) (History)
                   
Tuesday, 26 July Digital signature (Talk) (History)
                   
Wednesday, 27 July Block cipher modes of operation (Talk) (History)
                   
Thursday, 28 July Export of cryptography (Talk) (History)
                   
Notes: If you find problems that you can't fix (or it's too much effort), it would be very helpful if you could place a note on the Talk: page. Articles need to be checked for 1) Accuracy (Factchecking: Are there any mistakes? Is the writing precise? Are sources cited?), 2) Completeness (Any obvious omissions? Does it need illustration?) 3) Quality of writing (Copyedits: Grammar and spelling, phrasing, structure) 4) Neutrality (Is it written from the NPOV? Do we document all relevant points of view?) — Thanks!
— To-do list for Digital signature edit
  • Describe cryptanalysis of digital signatures -- what are the various notions
(See all to-do lists for this WikiReader)


3D Monster Maze

There was a pretty low-traffic peer review of this article before, Wikipedia:Peer review/3D Monster Maze/archive1. Thereafter, it had went through a FAC which failed, and a lot of modifications have been done to address the concerns raised. In the current state, one of the original FAC objectors is happy about the article enough to say it has "much potential" on the FAC if resubmitted again. Since there are still some issues I am unsure of (note also that I am not a native English speaker), I would be happy to have your help. Please be sure to read the article talk page, not just the article itself, before commenting/helping. --BACbKA 10:40, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

I made some minor copyediting in the article. Here are some comments:
  1. Statements about the game being "one of the most fondly remembered games on the retrogaming scene" and such cannot be stated as fact. There is no way to verify that a game is "fondly remembered". It is best to atribute this opinion to someone else in the article ("John Doe says that this is one of the most..."), providing this someone is notable enough, or provide other means of asserting the game's popularity (maybe availabilty of websites or of ROMs downloads?).
  2. Those lines IN CAPITAL LETTERS in the Gaming section JUST LOOK INELEGANT. ;-) Even if the text was in all-caps in the game, I think it's OK to change it here.
  3. The paragraph about first-person shooter vs. first-person adventure is a bit tricky. I don't think the article should label one source as incorrect in the way it does. It's better to find some notable source that says that this is a FPA and ascribe the opinion to this source, otherwise it may be labeled as original research.
  4. The "Impact" section is a bit out of place. It's mainly about other games, and when it does talk about 3D Monster Maze it's in the form of peacock statements, other than the FPA vs. FPS issue addressed above.
  5. The "Critical acclaim" section has too many quotes. It's better to choose a significant one to appear fully, and summarize the others.
  6. All those references to BASIC need to be adjusted to the layman (like me). JoaoRicardotalk 15:42, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for your comments.

  1. The "fondly remembered" refers specifically to the referred material (reviews and the references). I'll try to reword it in the way you suggest.
  2. The capital letters probably will be fine indeed to re-format in another font, maybe just emphasis. I still think they should be caps in the image annotation (accessibility etc.), what do you think?
    Following Maclean's comments and changes below, I would like to stick to the caps still, until more people feel the same as you do on this issue. The ugliness is precisely the part of the experience of the old game, along with the very low resolution of the graphics. --BACbKA 12:27, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
  3. As for the FPA/FPS business, I am a bit uneasy about what is going on here myself. Basically, the whole categorization business on Wikipedia is sometimes original research, because for various issues (like this one), the inclusion criteria is blurred (to say nothing of the "who's considered Jewish" question)... I have seen personally no source classifying 3DMAZE as an FPA, but the editor who had added the FPA thing clearly was referring to the FPA definition used on Wikipedia (whether that one is original research or not is another story).
  4. Thank you for that peacock link, I didn't remember javing read it. Do you think the "landmark" is such a term? I thought it is a pretty neutral one, but one that does giving the credit to 3DMAZE for being an epochal event in the history of the computer games. The mission of the section is to do that mention, and do it with enough historical context. Do you think it's redundant altogether? If not, do you have a good idea how to re-word it? (Please note that I'm not a native speaker, and as such may not perceive enough "peacockishness" in the terms used etc.)
  5. Regarding the critical acclaim I don't have in mind something distinctly better yet, but I'll try to move along the lines you've suggested.
  6. I'll try to put more BASIC context in as well.

Thanks again! --BACbKA 20:46, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

  • This is on its way to becoming a featured article. It just needs some cleaning up of the writing (which I will help with) and some refining of the discussion, specifically with the "Impact" and "Gameplay" sections. Perhaps this paper can help. I disagree with JoaoRicardo's recommendation against CAPS - I would side with keeping them as printed as they are quotes - but if they tell you otherwise at WP:FAC do what they say. Also, the "critical acclaim" section may need to be re-formatted to something be more neutral. I realize this is more of a historical curiousity than a commercial product, but the article needs to distinguish between its commercial hype and its neutral critiques. --maclean25 19:19, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
    • I have edited the 3D Monster Maze article. Please review the change and revert whatever you do not agree with. Several comments/questions:
      • I did not believe the spoiler template was necessary as there was no surprise plot twists. It is a pretty simple plot.
      • I'm confused on how the game can end. When you are eaten, game over right? Does it go on forever if you are not eaten? what is that bit about the appeals? Are there different levels?
      • In the "Impact" section please provide a reference for the first paragraph for the "had a significant impact..." or "made it a landmark game in the history..."
      • For the second paragraph in that section, specifically relate these other games to Monster Maze. --maclean25 06:47, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

Dear Maclean,

thank you very much for your edits. The language sounds much more encyclopedic following your edits. While you suggest to revert whatever I disagree with, I would like to hear your opinion on the points I had slight reservations about. Sorry for not answering right away, I have been a bit busy outside wikipedia last week.

  • The spoiler is there as per the Wikipedia:WikiProject_Computer_and_video_games#Style recommendation. I do agree with you that there excitement from anticipation of the game doesn't diminish when reading it; the only place with "surprise" factor might be the sudden self-reset in the "appeal accepted" case. I'm not putting it back, unless they ask me to.
  • The only reason I had the scrolling game legend (ROLL UP, ROLL UP, SEE THE AMAZING TYRANNOSAURUS REX KING OF THE DINOSAURS IN HIS LAIR. PERFECTLY PRESERVED IN SILICON SINCE PREHISTORIC TIMES,HE IS BROUGHT TO YOU...) repeated in the image annotation was accessibility reasons. I think that accessibility is an important thing in an encyclopaedia, although I agree with you that the text gets perhaps a bit too much weight. Maybe here is a good place to downgrade the caps and leave it as is? On the other hand, I have just added the text to the image page; so whoever really is in desperate need of the text might find it there. Thus, it would be possible to leave it your way, or, maybe, you have a good idea how to leave a small hint (tagged with some accessibility-related markup, which would diminish the text under the regular stylesheets??) that the image page has the full text?
  • With respect to your game end confusion, I am sorry to not having expressed myself correctly. You would have to start again if eaten (with 0 score), unless you appeal and have the appeal accepted. If you exit, you have to continue in the next maze with accumulating score. You're welcome to exact the text accordingly; I thought it's clear already.
  • Regarding the impact/landmark first sentence, I was basing it on the 2nd and 3rd references from the Refs section (SU25 and SU18). Do you feel that it should be reworded as in "the 1st 3D game... according, for example, to (ref1) (ref2)"? I've got the references annotated accordingly in the references section and referenced elsewhere in the article (the same claim has already been referenced in the lead section); I was afraid to overreference to the same thing. Maybe, I should move the references from the lead section over to the other sections?
  • {{Main|History of computer and video games}} was my attempt to relate 3DMAZE to these other games. I had a feeling that this section does a good job of putting it into the historical context. I noticed that some of the game description articles are more about gameplay and technology, but I find the history perspective quite encyclopaedic as well, and hence had it in. Would you mind me just putting it back as an answer to your request to relate the games?

Also, could you please look at the talk page? I would especially like a native speaker's opinion on the 2nd-person language issue raised there.

Thank you very much again for your help, BACbKA 12:25, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

P.S. I've put back the Main... into the Impact section, and also reworded the 1st sentence a bit, so as not to imply any additional significance of the impact beyond precisely what's written and referenced. --BACbKA 12:22, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Cocteau Twins

The websites listed in the article have tons of band/members photos and album covers, but I'm afraid to use any since they're never credited, and I don't know anything about copyrights. It really pains me since other than that the article looks very nice. I'd really appreciate if someone with more experience in the field could help with the images :) -- Jashiin 18:06, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Noel Gallagher

It has been criticisded (a criticism which I full accept) that it is too POV. If someone could take the time to tone it down a bit (without changing the context too much or making the man look like a tosser), I would be very grateful.--Crestville 16:30, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Baculum

Needs expert input. Very little info on the web. -- The Anome 19:21, Nov 16, 2004 (UTC)

Frequency analysis

A simple method of codebreaking. The plan is to include the article in a WikiReader on Cryptography. I'd appreciate any adding comments / fixes etc. Thanks! — Matt 19:00, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

HTLV

This is the result of merging by a non-expert. This, and its related articles, need a thorough review by someone who knows the field: also, something needs to be written about HTLV-2: there seems to be an assumption in various articles that HTLV == HTLV-1.

Body piercing materials

Some edits might have to be done, mainly language issues. I am not a native english speaker so there may be an abundance of errors in the text. The factual bit is pretty well covered I think. --Bong 00:00, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Most of this section has faults - Blackline, Zircon Gold and Implantium are trade marks of the Wildcat Collection (UK) they are not materials used in piercing jewellery but rather brands. References to 316L being the same as 316LVM are incorrect (it is either 316L or 316LVM) Plastastic is a trade mark of the wildcat collection and not a material. Reference that PTFE is biocompatible is incorrect (this is based on emperical evidence only) Teflon is a trade mark of DUPONT

Ziron Two is a brand no longer used by Wildcat.

Many materials have been left out!

Oscar Wilde

Was last week's Literature collaboration of the week. Filiocht 13:03, 15 Nov, 2004 (UTC)

Alexander Hamilton

This article got a bollocking by Robert McHenry, Former Editor in Chief, the Encyclopædia Britannica in his article The Faith based encyclopedia (how do you like that, atheists! *grin*). Someone knowledgable want to go through it with a fine tooth-comb and show him just how good the article can get? Needs a bit of cleanup apparently. - Ta bu shi da yu 12:28, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I added explicitly that page as a reference for the birthdate. I also added a note on the talk page requesting someone either get further references to fact check the article or use what is listed there already if they have it. It will be some time before I can personally get to the library and get a good book on it, so I'm hoping someone can do it sooner. - Taxman 14:23, Nov 15, 2004 (UTC)
Well that was ripped out, but some better references were added anyway. It could still sue more references and fact checking and editing for overall style improvement, but it seems decent now. Only someone with resources in hand or intimate knowledge of the subject could do much to fact check the content more. - Taxman 17:58, Dec 13, 2004 (UTC)

Childhood amnesia

I expanded this article a bit but it has not been touched since. I definitely think it could use another editor looking it over for copyedits, formulations, facts and perhaps clarifications/expansion. Thanks. ✏ Sverdrup 01:32, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

  • Copyedits for clarity, precis. Katefan0 03:58, Nov 15, 2004 (UTC)

Deck (ship)

This has been a refactor and expansion, and may have become more technical than necessary. There is much use of jargon, some of which is defined. Help is requested on the use of jargon, specifically, and everything else generally. - Amgine 00:34, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)

It looks good to me; I may add a section discussing flight decks since I have some additional expertise in that area but overall I think it is very credible and the use of jargon is no more than necessary to express things completely. --Ray Trygstad 17:46, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Jesusland Map

A tricky article. I hope I've done justice to the somewhat controversial topic. I'd appreciate any helpful opinions or edits. - Scooter 21:53, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I think it's quite good at this stage. Decently NPOV. I enjoyed reading it. olivier 00:30, Dec 13, 2004 (UTC)

The Supremes

I just finished giving this page a major overhaul. What else can be done to make is better? --b. Touch 20:54, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Actually, it looks damn good to me... - Scooter 04:45, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Democratic Peace Theory

I am requesting another peer review in order to get some new perspectives on this article. The majority of the editing is currently being done by myself and two others, and has, unfortunately, somewhat turned into a NPOV battle and a revert war at times. Specifically I would like comments with regard to NPOV, length, and scope. --Scaife 23:28, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

The old peer review can bee seen here /Archive_1 Dec 2005. --Scaife 23:31, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
  • I think you are both doing a pretty good job. I'd suggest adding a few pictures for general viewing pleasure. Transform hyperlinkis into proper inline citations, as well as remove such things as 'See the bibliography linked to under External links, below.' - it should be transformed into a note, again. Lead should be expanded. As for getting some more useful info, have you considered emailing scholars involved in the research asking them for external peer review? Who knows, maybe some will reply? Stranger things have happened.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 17:19, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
I've heard a number of variant and nick names for this. Are those being redirected? The formatting needs to be fixed up= the top of the article especially looks horrible. Those various tags are rather offputting as well. Also, generally See Alsos come first, then References, then Notes, and only then are External Links provided. --maru (talk) contribs 05:35, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
Comment on this, for the record. The external links here are relatively important, and the notes and bibliography are extremely long. There was a compaint, which I thought well-taken, that the external links were invisibie, so they were moved. Septentrionalis 15:19, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Flounder

This article has a lot of potential, but it's not quite encyclopaedic enough and I have no idea how to go about changing it. It needs a table, more direct facts, (e.g. we need to know average widths) more factual prose, and less cooking instructions, but I'm just a newcomer, so I need help. Vhex Hvexscousin 18:05, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Yes it could use a classification table such as is used in the other fish articles. (E.g. Tuna.) I'm not so sure about the descriptive statements; they seem to personalized. (E.g. 'grotesque change', 'exceptionally odd-looking', or 'luckily'. I actually think the Flounder is a rather interesting-looking creature, rather than grotesque.) You could probably use words like asymmetrical or abnormal, for example. But that's just my opinion, of course. -- RJH 18:15, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)
It wouldn't be correct to describe the flounder as "abnormal." In fact such asymmetry appears to be typical for bony flatfish. Examples include flounder, sole, halibut, turbot, plaice, and sanddab. Dozens more such species exist. It is extremely likely that the asymmetry contributes to their survival since it helps to disguise them on the ocean floor.--Johnstone 15:21, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Maybe this page should go to pages needing attention? -- AllyUnion (talk) 08:20, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)

John F. Kennedy assassination

This article is a lengthy mess. It appears that in the past no consensus was formed but instead each side of the debate merely dumped its material into the article. It could use some dedicated editors to assist in forging consensus, eliminating some of the material, and disproving some of the wilder assertions presented as fact. Gamaliel 01:16, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I'll have a go at refactoring it into a main article with a number of subpages. Expect to see something drop in soon. jguk 08:36, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Since the prior peer review there have been an almost complete overhaul of the article. If anyone has some ideas for improving the article in its current condition, please assist. Ramsquire 19:02, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Well, first of all you need to get rid of the neutral tag. Secondly, the "president's motorcade" section contains too many red links. If those people are notable enough for an article, at least make a stub. If not, don't wikilink them. Borisblue 05:07, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Standard of proof

Tried to expand this into a more general discussion of what we mean by the standard of proof. Not really sure if its an acceptable direction to take the post in. Perhaps someone could leave feedback, I'm pretty new to this. (Posted by 129.67.64.248 19:06, November 10, 2004)

  • Hi, sorry, but it's too much of an essay towards the end. It's a good start on a needed topic, but it needs to have an encyclopedic coverage of the topic. Think who what why when where and address the issue from all ways and all subjects it applies to as much as you can. I also put some helpful links on the user page for your IP address, User talk:129.67.64.248. Keep up the contributions, you'll get there. - Taxman 00:36, Nov 11, 2004 (UTC)

Gbe languages

Nukaé nyé Gbe languages? If that's your question, go read this article and find it out. Don't forget to come back here to put in some words of advice. I wrote all of it, so it would be nice if someone else looked into it. I'm aiming for FAC eventually and I wonder how much remains to be done. As I'm not a native speaker of English, you might want to check the article for EAL-related issues. Babíá kaé le asíwó? (Any questions?) Please ask them below! — mark ✎ 17:35, 7 May 2005 (UTC)

Earlier request at Wikipedia:Peer review/Gbe languages/archive1. Either no-one looked at it that time, or it was so good that no-one dared to comment. In any case, it's still a tabula rasa.

  • Well that certainly warrants a comment. I know nothing about the subject, but the article looks great. The only thing I could think of that would make it better would be some form of footnoting. There appear to be a lot of inline citations, but they are hard to find. Something like Wikipedia:Footnote3 or Template_talk:Inote makes them much easier to find. If you do that each time you discuss a text and or put a (Foo 1989) in there it really helps the verifiers. :) I know those systems are not perfect, but they do help. I guess the other thing is the lead notes Reduplication, which makes me think it is a pretty important facet of the language. But it's coverage looks pretty short, and I had a hard time understanding it. A clear explanation before the example would be great. Maybe something else about how common, pervasive, or important it is would be good too. With those fixes, I'd say this is a FAC for sure. - Taxman 04:36, May 8, 2005 (UTC)
    • Thanks for commenting. Re Reduplication: on second thought I've removed the sentence in the lead; the phenomenon is pervasive, but it should be treated in Kwa languages (of which Gbe is a branch) instead since it's found wider than the Gbe languages alone.
      • Actually I disagree with that. It is good to cover topics at their most logical spot, but if this language group displays that as an important characteristic, it should be covered in this article too. Briefly if needed though. That is part of being comprehensive--covering all important facets of a topic. - Taxman 22:55, May 8, 2005 (UTC)
        • I agree with you there (I wasn't clear); that's why I didn't remove it from the article altogether. I only removed it from the lead section to avoid creating the impression that there would be a whole section on it. Regardless, I'll see if I can prepare another paragraph and some examples, because I agree with you that it's coverage is pretty short anyway. — mark ✎ 23:27, 8 May 2005 (UTC)
    • As for the citation system, I have to think about that. I suppose I would have to knock over the References section and convert citations to footnotes or something? I can think of a few inline citations that would better be converted to footnotes, but I don't think it would work to make all of them footnotes. The way I think about footnotes versus inline citations is shown in my use of both at Logba language (in short, notes are for just that, 'notes', while inline citations refer to a work in the References). Would it work to do it the same way for Gbe languages? — mark ✎ 11:43, 8 May 2005 (UTC)
      • There is no consensus for how it is done, its just better as long as it is done to some degree. I think having a bit of both is fine, especially if a source is a general source good for nearly all the information on the page, then it is good to note it as a general reference. The more specific citations the better though, since that makes verification easier. So just leave the references section where it is and convert the inline cites to some form like the two I gave above and it should be great. Someone else may prefer another system, but like I said, something is better than nothing. - Taxman 22:55, May 8, 2005 (UTC)
  • Ok that was all great so I looked for a few more things. As it is I think it will be ready for FAC soon if not now, up to your judgement. 1) Were the external links really all used as references too? If so they should be formatted as such according to the rules for webpages at Wikipedia:Cite sources. If not, the should be their own ==Heading== so they aren't a part of the references section. 2) The lead section is very short for the length and level of detail of the article. Aim for one more paragraph, and make sure the lead summarizes all of the most important facets of the topic. 3) The map has the word "lects" on it. I assume that is dialects, but its not totally clear. Can you spell out the full word or add some explanation of why that is the usual way or whatever. - Taxman 23:17, May 10, 2005 (UTC)
    • 1). Fixed now, by adding retrieval dates (I rechecked them just now). 2) I'm not sure about that one; I think it summarizes the important things nicely. I'll look if something's missing though. 3). I'm going to remove that word from the map, it's redundant — thanks for bringing it to my attention. (Lect is just a politically correct term used by linguists who don't want to choose between 'language' and 'dialect'). — mark ✎ 00:16, 11 May 2005 (UTC)
      • Map updated. I've removed the superfluous 'lects' and I've added Ketu, which was missing. It's the first map I ever made for Wikipedia so I'm not sure if the layout is all that perfect, but it's clear anyway, I guess. — mark ✎ 16:50, 11 May 2005 (UTC)
    • Ok, but I think a lot of people on FAC will say the lead is too short. Most people expect a 2-3 paragraph lead section for a FA of reasonable detail. Think of it as what the article would say if that was the only part printed in a paper format. - Taxman 19:17, May 11, 2005 (UTC)


Comprehensive, Mark! It looks almost daunting due to size, but when actually reading it's very good. Sincere complements. But as this is the place to test the patience of even the most competent and busy Wikipedians, here's my beef:

  • I am firm believer that references should be kept to a minimum. Unless there are some very serious and heated debates among scholars as well as protesting Wikipedians, I don't think we should have a single footnote. I have no problems with footnotes myself, but it makes the article look less like encyclopedic and too academic. A reader of an encyclopedia (even wiki) wants the facts served on a platter, not academic hum-'n'-haws (unless professors are giving each other black eyes over it ^_^). I think you should consider moving most references to the talk page. It might sound drastic, but every in-text reference and footnote that isn't deemed absolutely necessary should in my opinion be moved to the talkpage. Your research seems so thorough that the average reader shouldn't be burdened with notes. Those with special interest can (and will) look for sources if they feel that it's necessary.

Peter Isotalo 18:09, May 10, 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for your review and your tweaks and copyediting! I hope you don't mind I changed the structure back; I found the four-way division into Languages, History, Linguistics features and References more intuitive and more esthetically pleasing. I think the references don't hurt, and function as a nice bibliographical overview. I agree however that some of the footnotes are not absolute necessary, so I have converted some notes that were merely for attribution (e.g. the example sentences from Aboh 2003/4), to invisible ones using Template talk:Inote. I will take another look at the 'References' section; maybe some of the 'other sources' could be pruned. — mark ✎ 22:11, 10 May 2005 (UTC)
Peter, your opinion is very contrary to the Wikipedia:Verifiability policy. Though if your biggest beef is with footnotes breaking up the page, invisible notes solves that problem. The references section needs to stay (check the featured article criteria) and it should list as many sources as possible that were used to add material for the article. Referencing is the only way to combat the critics most substantive claim that Wikipedia cannot be trusted because anyone can edit it. I for one look at a Wikipedia article and think why should I trust any of the facts in this article to be correct? If I see references my confidence is increased that it is not a complete fabrication at least. Anyway, like I said, the inotes keeps them out of the way. - Taxman 23:17, May 10, 2005 (UTC)
Mark
You're welcome, and I promise that there will be more scrutiny and tweaking soon enough. I noticed there was a slight tendency for technical jargon like "phylum". I consider myself quite the lingonerd, but I had to look that one up. Same goes for generally advanced vocabulary like "subsumed". It can usually be replaced with more common words.
I'll let you have the final call on section structure, but I've never liked empty section headers when the actual sub-sections aren't identical to one another. E.i. there's only one "Sounds", "Classification", etc. Consider having text instead of just empty dividers.
If possible, consider reducing the amount of "linguist X says A, and linguist Y claims B". With the exception of SIL (which seem to be consistently rebellious to most scholarly consensus), I think you'll do fine with just saying "A is B" without mentioning names. Your text is good enough to stand on its own.
  • As for structure, I'm fine with empty section headers if they help structure the information. I think I'll ask a non-linguist to look the article over for needless linguistic jargon. I've got a few other ideas that I might be able to carry out this evening. — mark ✎ 16:50, 11 May 2005 (UTC)
Taxman
Footnotes are as far as I know unheard of in encyclopedias, and if some bitter critic complains about us not having them, then I say to Hell with them. I'm quite convinced that the average reader will be put off by the academic aura that surrounds extensive use of footnotes and scholarly namedropping (even when justified). The occasional footnote is okay, but only when absolutely necessary, such as concerning notoriously controversial issues.
I'm not against listing references, but I think the amount of individual works of literature listed as references in one article should never be more than 10. If anything it should stay around the magic number 5 unless absolutely necessary. After all, too many references can make it so much harder to actually know which sources to check...
Peter Isotalo 23:55, May 10, 2005 (UTC)
There are a lot of important reasons why you are wrong, including that Wikipedia is different from other encyclopedias, but you'll eventually see them all and agree with me :). In any case this is not the place to discuss it. The two links I gave you would be better. The simplest pragmatical answer is that the featured article criteria calls for references and inline citations, so to qualify, articles need them. - Taxman 19:17, May 11, 2005 (UTC)
But I'm not questioning the merits of any of the policies; I'm just saying we shouldn't overdo it, and I certainly don't want to propose rigid limits (instruction creep!) to Wikipedia:Verifiability. If you look at most of the linguistic FAs, most of them have about 5-10 referenced works and even fewer, if any, footnotes, and the same seems to be true for most of the other FAs as well.
I'm absolutely not going to object to an eventual FAC just because I feel there are a few too many footnotes, but I'm trying to encourage Mark and others to go easy on the academia, since I can see for myself that the article is very well researched. It's important to balance the need for proper verifiability with availability to the average reader, no matter how obscure the topic may seem.
Peter Isotalo 08:18, May 12, 2005 (UTC)
Ok so we mostly agree. But I'll say the importance of the policies is enough that it would be difficult to overdo. A longer list of references at the bottom is something that doesn't get in the way in the least for someone that doesn't care about them. They are easy to ignore. In fact if anyone was picky it would be easy to have an option in the preferences to not even display that section for that user, just like for tables of contents. The same is possible to be done with footnotes, which I agree can be off-putting to someone that just wants the gist of the material. But luckily that is solved with something like the invisible notes tool. You say you notice the article is well researched, but that is apparent only because it is well researched, and a lot of sources were consulted. All of those should be listed and important facts should be cited. Yes, most articles on Wikipedia completely fail to meet the verifiability policy but that has no bearing on whether it should be pursued going forward or not. Be careful not to discourage something so important as good research and citing just because you think too many superscripted footnotes is distracting. That is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Especially when that only drawback can be easily avoided. - Taxman 15:48, May 12, 2005 (UTC)

Mark, I'm sorry I'm being slow and getting distracted. A little pedantry to start with: I trip over the statement that the Gbe languages are a dialect continuum, defined as a range of dialects spoken across a large geographical area. Qué? So are they languages or dialects?
I'm bemused by the discussion of old Kwa and new Kwa under "Classification", I think you need to say either more or less about it to get me to understand it.
I don't think you can have those italicized placenames in the History section, they strike me as non-standard. If they mean "notice these names a lot", bold is probably more the wiki thing. But I would be sparing of that formatting, too.
References: "Gbe in general" and "Other sources" is not a good pair. Is it important to subdivide the sources into two categories at all? I don't understand what distinction you're making.
If something's both a reference and an external link, it goes in the References section. You've used the Ethnologue, and even refer to it, so it's a reference. The "External links" section is for online further reading.--Bishonen | talk 01:01, 14 May 2005 (UTC)

Welcome to the middle of the film--my remaining nit is that I agree with Taxman about the Lead being short. The prose in it is also slightly The Cat Sat on the Mat--the sentences need more interlinking for more flow.

Btw, on my screen, many (though strangely not all) of the characters in the vowel and consonant tables show up as question marks. Also something scary happens near the end of "The vowels i ĩ u ũ e o ɛ̃ ɔ ɔ̃ a ã are attested". That's in Mozilla 1.6 for Mac OSX 10.2. I'm done copyediting (=dumbing down), great article, it'll be an ornament to the Main Page! --Bishonen | talk 22:55, 14 May 2005 (UTC)

Thank you, Bishonen, for your work! As for smoothing the reading experience by joining sentences, that's a lesson I'll sure try to put in practice in the next article. I have a few other remarks: (1) The Gbe language can be viewed upon as five related dialect clusters, and since they do not make up your garden variety dialect continuum anyway, I've done away with the 'dialect continuum' thing. (2) The same holds for the Kwa/New Kwa thing — that's something that belongs to the Kwa languages article and the reader should not be troubled by that in this article; in fact, I don't know why I added it here. (3) I've de-italicized the place names except for Amedzofe and Mawufe, which are more than just place names. (4) Good point about the References. The idea behind distinguishing between general and other sources was that the 'Gbe in general' would be a sort annotated bibliography of general sources on Gbe; 'Other sources' would list sources that were also consulted in writing the article but which I deemed to be not relevant to someone specifically interested in the Gbe languages. I still would like to distinguish between those general, introductory ones and the more specialized linguistic ones, but I don't know how exactly — any thoughts? (5) I labelled the external 'Online sources'. Is that better, or should I just put them between the other references? (6) Special characters — I wrote the bulk of this article in my first weeks here, when I didn't know of things like Template:IPA yet. I'll add it and see if that helps. (7) In the next few edits I'll try to respond to the commented out questions you left. Thanks again! — mark ✎ 11:19, 15 May 2005 (UTC)
Unfortunately, the IPA-template does not solve the problem with the tonal accent diacritics. I have the same problem with Firefox for OS 10.3.9, and I frankly don't know why. It works fine on my PC running XP and Firefox, though. I think this is something that needs to be adressed in the template talk or perhaps at the talkpage of the phonetics project. It has to be some sort of incompatibility with certain fonts. Mind you, this doesn't seem to work on OS X when adding accent marks to Cyrillic characters either.
Peter Isotalo 11:48, May 15, 2005 (UTC)

Grammar layout In the explanations of syntax, examples such as this one are used:

  • àxwé yé Kòfí tù   (house FOC Kofi build:PERF)   Kofi built A HOUSE   (Gengbe, focus)

Is it possible to make the linguistic notations that use <small></small> a different color to make them stand out a bit? It would make them a lot easier to discern from the plain text.

Peter Isotalo 14:22, May 16, 2005 (UTC)

In general I don't think those linguistic notations should stand out from the plain text. Or do you mean the gloss corresponding to the highlighted morpheme (in the example above, yé and FOC? In other articles I have sometimes highlighted those by underlining instead of bolding the text. Let me try:
  • àxwé yé Kòfí tù   (house FOC Kofi build:PERF)   Kofi built A HOUSE   (Gengbe, focus)
  • àxwé yé Kòfí tù   (house FOC Kofi build:PERF)   Kofi built A HOUSE   (Gengbe, focus)
What's better? I don't know. I have the feeling that changing the color makes them stand out just too much from the other text in the article, but that could be a matter of choosing the right color. — mark ✎ 16:28, 16 May 2005 (UTC)
Hmm, the color looks good — don't like the cluttered code though; do we have wikisyntax for colors? Or don't we have that for a reason? — mark ✎ 19:19, 16 May 2005 (UTC)
No, I just meant the FOC and the other grammar abbreviations. Even if you're looking for them they can be somewhat hard to discern. The colored one looks very good to me. Blue (or perhaps green) doesn't seem as it would steal too much attention.
Peter Isotalo 21:17, May 16, 2005 (UTC)


Oh, no, not more about references

1.OK, the one essential distinction to make is between a) references/sources, that have been used for the article, and b) "further reading", that has not. So please bear with me: you are saying there is no further reading there? All the items listed are references/sources?

2.For anything else, once you've taken care of 1), the organization of references can be varied according to circumstances and preference, there are no rules. I see that the distinction you wanted is gone now, but I say you should just go ahead and have the section divisions bring out any kind of classification of references that you consider of value for the reader.
Mind you, I still don't understand quite what it was, though. How can there be more general sources on Gbe, versus more specialized linguistic sources not relevant to someone specifically interested in the Gbe languages. I'm sorry, I'm just experiencing static, could you please try again? (Is there a "not" too many..?)

3. The reader needs the lists to be complete. Anything footnoted should also be listed under References (it isn't now). OK, the list will take an inch more of scrolling that way, but think how much more convenient it'll be. It's the universal principle in academe, actually not for pedantry but for reader convenience.

4. Dividing refs into printed and online, as you do now, is purely a matter of taste. It's unnecessary, as the reader can see at a glance which refs are links. So just do it if you like it. (For myself, I don't like it.)

On another note, I think the Lead is absolutely great now! --Bishonen | talk 23:15, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

(1) All are sources. I always use the label 'Bibliography' for sources I did not consult; 'References' are sources I actually did consult.
(2) Take Ansre (1961) — that's a source of no special interest to someone looking for general info on the Gbe languages as a whole, since it's only about the tonal system of Ewe. Or take the inverse situation, Stewart (1989), which is an overview of the Kwa languages, the branch in which Gbe is situated. Even broader: the article refers to Greenberg (1966), which is a general classification of African languages. Such sources differ from things like Capo's output, which is often on Gbe and Gbe alone. Currently wondering if it's important enough to re-introduce the distinction.
(3) Good point, I've fixed this.
(4) I think I agree with you here — there are only two 'online sources' anyway.
Thanks for reviewing! — mark ✎ 15:56, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

Thanks again for the detailed reviews! I'm bringing it to FAC. — mark ✎ 21:18, 25 May 2005 (UTC)

Alfa Romeo

A lot of ready-made ideas IMO. And you know what ? I'm of Lombard's origins. Ericd 22:36, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Pet Sematary

Hi everybody, I was wondering if someone would comment on this article — say whether it needs expansion, if it's too long-winded, if the grammar needs to be corrected, and so on. Also, I'm thinking about adding a picture of the cover. Leroi henri christophe 13:21, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Lesch-Nyhan syndrome

hey there i just finished this article and i'd like some comments or ideas for improvement, oh and also i need an image, any image that would be suitable so i can get it to feature status. --Larsie 17:14, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

It does need some overall copyediting, and many terms need simpler in line explantions. Also carefully consider many of the redlinks and see if they either already have their own article named something else, or if they really are notable enough to have their own article. The genetics section needs a clearer explanation of why it only effects males. The fact that women have two X chromosomes would not necessarily entirely preclude the disease from occuring in women, I believe a problem in one of the X chromosomes can cause some genetic diseases. Why does it not in this case? I was trying to think of a way to fix it but the entire paragraph needs to be re-ordered to fix that and make it clearer. Check the featured article criteria, the article needs explicit references. - Taxman 17:22, Nov 8, 2004 (UTC)
  • Just breaking it up into briefer paragraphs would be a start. Very long paragraphs tend to "exhaust" the reader and they quickly lose interest. -- RJH 23:09, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)
  • ok so i got rid of most of the red and will porbably write article to get rid of the rest, iadded more references and also re-formatted the paragraphs and headings/subheadings etc. how does it look now??? --Larsie 23:15, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I think it is a bit too full of jargon. Who is your audience? Osmodiar 15:51, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Grief

Why is it marked as for cleanup, when it is not registered on Wikipedia:Cleanup?

Probably because it got archived off the Wikipedia:Cleanup main page, but still has the {{Cleanup}} tag at the top of the page. I think it needs more wikifying adn general copyediting, so you can remove the tag if you like and just leave it listed here. By the way, how does [[Wikipedia:Cleanup]] link to an external site? - Taxman 18:15, Nov 8, 2004 (UTC)

List of molecules in interstellar space

This list is all but done, but I'd appreciate it if somebody more knowledgeable about chemistry could check the molecular designations for accuracy. Thank you. — RJH 19:49, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I think it would be nice to have some background information in this article. Where does the information come from? What institutions or space agencies do collect this sort of information, and how exactly? Mark Dingemanse (talk) 09:20, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Okay I added an external link to an NRAO reference site, and included a brief description at the top with links to other articles with more information. Thanks. -- RJH 17:01, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)