Wikipedia:Peer review/March 2005

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Wikipedia

• Previous peer reviews: 8 January 2005, 10 March 2005
• Previous featured article candidacies: 1st, 2nd, 3rd (was promoted 3rd time)
• Featured article review: here (was un-featured)

I've made quite a few changes to this article recently; in summary, the size has gone down by 7Kb, the number of references has increased by 16, and it's hopefully better than it was before. However, considering it's, well, Wikipedia... the first link on Main Page, and one of the most-viewed articles, it's far from perfect. The talk page has a "to-do" list some of which I think has been addressed, though I've added some more things too. Some related articles still need a lot of work... Criticism of Wikipedia, Reliability of Wikipedia, History of Wikipedia and Wikipedia in popular culture, so a look at those would be appreciated too. I've made a couple of edits to them as well, but there's still a long way to go. Looking at Wikipedia:Article Creation and Improvement Drive, it seems very likely that Wikipedia will be the next collaboration in three days' time, so ideas for improvement here would give them things to work on too, which would be nice – Qxz 07:51, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Just an update to say that User:WillowW has made some very helpful changes; the article now has a whole new section that tries to compare Wikipedia with other encyclopedias, and the size has gone up by 12Kb (perhaps a bit of a trim may be needed again, but I think the new material is useful). More references, too – Qxz 19:29, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

• Please see automated peer review suggestions here. Thanks, APR _t 15:49, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
• There are some technical terms in this article, such as "mirroring" or "forking". They may need to be put in quotation marks to make it clear that they're somewhat uncommon terms. A more common word such as "vandalism" might also need this the first time it's used if they have a different meaning in Wikipedia's context. —msikma (user, talk) 17:07, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

  Thanks! I'll see what I can do about it – Qxz 21:20, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

  You've been doing excellent work to fix this article up, by the way. It was just inching along before, and one dedicated editor working on it for a short time is so much more useful than 10 minor edits per day. —msikma (user, talk) 21:37, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

  Yes; I did a complete rewrite over four days, then copied the changes over. (You can look at the history of User:Qxz/Sandbox to see the whole process). I like to think I made an improvement; at the very least, I cleared the way for new content to be added, which has indeed happened. Not just me now, though, it looks like at least two others have joined in. Hopefully we can settle our differences and perfect the changes. More comments welcome, of course – Qxz 21:52, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

• There are still some of weasel words in the article, unfortunately. Such as here. I changed the wording slightly, but "Wikipedia users generally do not consider Wales to be a dictator or to be one who gives non-negotiable orders." is still subjective. —msikma (user, talk) 21:56, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
• Also, someone should go through the article and place a on every single dubious claim. I'll help with this as well, although I'll be pretty busy the upcoming days (maybe weeks). Claims such as "The editors of any encyclopedia have a responsibility to keep its articles as free of bias as possible. Historically, even the best encyclopedias have suffered from bias; for example, the "Lynch Law" article of the 11th edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica describes the Ku Klux Klan as a "protective society" and unabashedly defends its actions." should be sourced. —msikma (user, talk) 21:56, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

  Yes, that's WillowW's new section, which is barely a day old and I guess is still somewhat in draft form, at least insomuch as it's likely to change substantially in the next few days. I've removed or reworded some of the more biased stuff, and Bramlet Abercrombie's contributions reflect a similar concern, but the section fills what was previously something of a gap in the article. It just needs to be trimmed down (right now I think it's a bit more extensive than it needs to be), neutrally worded and cited where possible. Peppering the page with {{fact}}s won't necessarily help much, because we know it has problems. But I understand your point — it needs doing – Qxz 22:11, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

• This may be the most tedious work, but I also believe that we should use the proper citation templates in this article. As it is right now, lots of references are written in text, while they should be converted to proper Template:Cite web instances. This makes it easier not only to keep the references consistent, but it's also generally a good idea to use correct markup for an article (for screen scraping purposes et al.) —msikma (user, talk) 22:02, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

  All the web citations are in text form; partly because there's so many of them. As far as I'm aware there's no policy or guideline to say that we have to or should use those templates. Indeed it seems many editors prefer them in this form. But consistency is good – Qxz 22:11, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

  It generally is useful. If someone were to make a bot that could scrape all references from an article and then check whether they're still operational (and if not, grab an Archive.org link that's closest to the date the reference was accessed instead), it would be much more complicated to check every reference to see if it's a web reference. And even then, to find out which part of the reference contains the access date. Abstracting adds meta-data to the text. But it's probably of small concern at this point. —msikma (user, talk) 22:27, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

  From Wikipedia:Template messages/Sources of articles#Citations of generic sources:

  "The use of Citation templates is not required by WP:CITE and is neither encouraged nor discouraged by any other Wikipedia citation guidelines. They may be used at the discretion of individual editors, subject to agreement with the other editors on the article. Some editors find them helpful, while other editors find them annoying, particularly when used inline in the text. Because they are optional, editors should not change articles from one style to the other without consensus."

  In other words, it's very definitely saying don't change them without consensus. I'm not sure I really want to have to start trying to get consensus to make a change like this – Qxz 23:07, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

  Look here, what's the reason for you posting that on my talk page? All I said was that I believe we should do this. I'm fully aware of the fact that these things need consensus, which is why I'm bringing it up here. If you don't want to do it, then don't. I believe we should, as the citation templates were made to make life easier. I'm not sure if you actually have an argument against using them (since all you did was mention that "there's no guideline that says we should"). —msikma (user, talk) 07:02, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

• Due to the change in layout as a result of the thorough editing, the layout of the images in the article has gotten quite cluttered. It should be checked to see whether some pictures should be repositioned. —msikma (user, talk) 19:12, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

  I think over the past week two images have been removed, and one has been added. The second half of the article seems to be lacking in images; unfortunately, I don't think there's really much that would be appropriate there `– Qxz 22:21, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

• It seems awkward, to me, that there are now only level 2 headings in the article. There isn't a single level 3 heading in here. Let's see if I can change that around a little... —msikma (user, talk) 20:01, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

  You're right, it's better with some level 3 headings. Many of the ones that got removed came as a result of "Criticism" being shrunk to a single paragraph and "Encyclopedic characteristics" being removed – Qxz 10:59, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

• In the rewriting of this article, a lot of information was trimmed. The article became significantly smaller. However, there are some sections which genuinely seem skinny. Especially the "Academic evaluation", "Criticism and controversy" and "Related projects" sections are very short even though there is much information on these things as well. Some parts of these paragraphs have a gigantic amount of references for a very short amount of text; it should be noted that good encyclopedic prose isn't just about writing the neutral truth and then providing a reference for the claims, but it should also attempt to explain the subject matter thoroughly. I think that some information can be slightly rewritten to be more carefully worded. For example, "Scholarly studies have concluded that vandalism is generally short-lived,[11] and that Wikipedia is roughly as accurate as other online encyclopedias.[12]" really doesn't have to be one sentence. Why not explain a bit more about what a "scholarly study" really means, and why Wikipedia is found to be accurate? The current version forces people to check out the footnotes, while they're really just references (and not simply external links). —msikma (user, talk) 21:54, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

  "Criticism and controversy" has a whole article to itself, which is longer and goes into more detail, so that section only really needs to be a summary. I agree "Related projects" could be expanded (though again the individual projects have their own articles; the reader can refer to those if they want more detail) – Qxz 22:12, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

  I'm actually not just talking about the information, I'm also talking about the flow of the article. It's pretty bad prose as it is right now, for most of the article. Reading the talk page, I see that Willow has written a much better explanation of this. —msikma (user, talk) 07:15, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

---

Anyway, in my opinion, this peer review is done. I can't think of any other particular things that need to be improved, although I do believe that especially the last point I made does require a lot of work. I hope that future editors will address at least that one. —msikma (user, talk) 12:55, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Polish-Soviet War

I believe this article is FAC ready with one small exception: it needs a map. Would you recommend any other improvements and changes? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 15:50, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I'm impressed. Maps over the major battles and troop movements would be a definite pluss, but I would say it's mighty good as it stands. WegianWarrior 08:33, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Another wonderful article! I wonder if the sentence at the end of the first paragraph (The war ended with the defeat of the Red Army) is too general: it might not be, I just wonder whether it seems too simple. The sections documenting military action are very good, but can anything more be said about wider international attention (I was interested what the French advisors under Weygand were doing there, and those German Communists awaiting their day). The references are usually given surname first in alphabetical order. Otherwise, it is good enough to reach featured status already. Gareth Hughes 10:52, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Lead is quite long already and have been subject to a 2-week protetion already, so I prefer no to touch it too much, but if you would like to change anything, be bold :> For international attention, there is the entire section, which mentions that French advisers were working on improving logistics etc. As for German Communists, were, they were waiting - more can be found at relevant linked articles, like Communist Party of Germany. I will reformat the references shortly. Tnx for the comments. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 12:21, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Criticisms of War on terrorism

This just got off the first run of Wikipedia:Article improvement drive. With a good deal more work and review, perhaps a try at FAC. 119 00:31, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I wonder about the title of the article: should War be capitalised, shouldn't it be Criticisms of the war on terrorism? I've only scanned the article, but there seems to be no mention of the Cold War and suggestion that this is the post-Cold-War manifestation of American fears, or the economic motives for US action. The article could do with more non-US sources to broaden its geographical scope. Civil liberties in the UK have been subjected to anti-terrorism legislation. Russia's struggle with Chechen separatists has been borrowing language from the war on terror too. The sections on pre-emptive war and unilateralism could be expanded to include more about the UN. I'm sure many countries around the world have been encouraged to take a stance on the war on terror. The article style leans towards newsprint: I wonder if the article could benefit from a more scolarly style, or is it simply too current? Gareth Hughes 01:08, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

"War on Terrorism" would be a proper noun, ie. the name of a specific event (the current War on Terrorism as led by the US). Thus the article should be named Criticisms of the War on Terrorism. I agree that non-US sources are necessary though it must be kept in mind that the US only has true support from the UK (both of which are repealing civil freedom in its name). --Oldak Quill 15:58, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Cocaine

This was submitted by someone else as FAC a long time ago. Since the article has been extensively rewritten but it's still not up to full standard. I'm looking for some suggestions or pointers on where the article could be improved - and if someone would like to revamp the "Usage" section that would be great as well :) porge 23:46, Feb 27, 2005 (UTC)

• This article should be more extensively sourced. Phils 16:46, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)
• An interesting read. A few thoughts occur to me:
  • US-centric overall, the whole section called usage in the United States should either be broadened to a more global discussion, or sections about other places added
  • Regarding addiction: I understood that cocaine tolerance develops very rapidly, and users need to take more and more to achieve the same effect. Is this the case?
  • Could say what the cost to user is. In the UK, it's become amazingly cheap in recent years (I'm not too sure why), and its use has increased. It's a commonly quoted statistic that in London, 99% of £20 notes have traces of cocaine on them.
  • Does the US not work to destroy cocaine farms in Peru, Colombia and Bolivia? I believe I've heard they spray them with crop-destroying substances.
  • Legal status section needs filling in. Worldtraveller 17:41, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments :) Just going to refer to them by number here: I'm currently looking for information on 1 and 5... it's proving rather elusive though. 4 Coca eradication is dealt with in a seperate article I'll add a subsection, short summary, and link to it. I imagine that cost to user (3) would vary wildly from country to country and within a country depending upon who is importing it, what the season is, etc - I'll try to find some less USentric info. Thanks! porges 08:13, Mar 6, 2005 (UTC)

• There have been efforts to grow coca across the South Pacific, most notably Papua New Guinea and Fiji, however these crops did not produce the erythoxyline compounds.
• Also, due to the supply and demand factor, not caring about the quality of product ie lack of purity controls the producers mix various solvents together to produce more base product which in final processing without the forementioned filtering produces a much lower grade but higher yield.
• In fact, Germany and France both used cocaine mixed with dextrose for icing sugar and other confectionaries turn of the century. Dextrose gives that cooling sensation thats used in mints, etc. See a pre-1970's edition of "Larousse Gastronomique" {Crown Publ./English} for reference to coca & recipes (I wonder what the 1938ed. says?).
• Ever wonder why "grandmas" art deco lapel pins looked like they could be used for a spoon or a roach clip? Thats because there was more going on in the mafia speakeasy's than just bootleg rye & floozeys. Refer to interviews with the Beatnicks.
• with your literary references, you might as well mention that cocaine was a reason Samuel Clemens & Jason Green sailed down the Mississippi on a riverboat, but then he found a job with a printing press in St. Louis. Schlüggell

Esperanto

This was nominated by Raul654 as a featured article candidate on 13 February. It failed nomination. I've addressed many of the objectors' comments (deleting irrevant stuff, NPOV edits, rearranging sections in a more logical order). One of the objectors suggested submitting it for peer review.

I have a couple of specific questions for reviewers:

1. Is it neutral now? I extensively rewrote the sections that Plek objected to as non-NPOV, but I think I'm too close to them to read them objectively.
2. How would you suggest expanding the opening section? Both objectors commented that it was too brief and did not summarize the article. I've rewritten it somewhat, but I'm not sure what else to add that would really be relevant in a brief summary. It used to be much longer and was condensed after some discussion back in August and September 2004. (See the thread in Archive 4 of the talk page.)

Thanks. --Jim Henry 18:28, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Incompleteness

Answers to your questions:

1. Yes, it is neutral.
2. The opening section looks good. I don't see the need for expansion there.

Some points that strike me:

• What there is already, is great. But there are some glaring omissions. I can't believe that the article has nothing on sounds (vowels, consonants), morphology (the way words are put together) and grammar. Any decent article on any language should contain this basic information.
• The history section should say more on the genesis of Esperanto. An article on a constructed language should contain info on its construction, it's as simple as that. The closest we get is the highly interesting single paragraph on 'Classification'. There must be more to say.
• It is customary in language articles to use the IPA transcription. Recently, templates have been developed to ensure correct display in all browsers (Template:IPA). So it would be cool to see IPA in the example sentences, instead of a loose approximation that is meaningful only to English speakers.
• It is stated in both Esperanto and Esperanto history that 'a first grammar was published in 1887, but both articles don't mention that grammar in the References section.

— mark ✎ 12:39, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Back in the mists of pre-history, this article used to have sections on grammar and phonology, but they expanded and then were spun off into separate articles, if I recall correctly. (Haven't looked at the history recently, though, I may be misremembering.) I should put a summary of each back in, with links like Main article: Esperanto grammar.

There is an article on Esperanto pronunciation which I think probably ought to be moved to Esperanto phonology, and summarized in a short section of Esperanto.

I'll figure out how to use the IPA template, then fix the sample sentence transcriptions. I'll also try to find bibliographic information for a currently available reprint of the Unua Libro. Thanks for the comments. --Jim Henry 14:57, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I think I've addressed all or almost all of your concerns now, though you may not be satisfied with the amount of detail on the early development and history of the language - there's a link to Esperanto history for those who want more detail, though that article itself needs a lot more work. I added sections on phonology and grammar, added more references (to Wells Lingvistikaj aspektoj de Esperanto, the Unua Libro and the Fundamento), and expanded the brief section on history. I also added IPA transcriptions of the sample sentences, but left the rough Englishesque transcriptions there as well - do you think I should remove those?

I changed my mind about moving Esperanto pronunciation; its title is appropriate, as it's a nontechnical presentation for readers with little or no background in linguistics. There's a link to it from the section on Phonology, but this section now has more detail on consonant clusters and allophony than that separate article. --Jim Henry 22:13, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Great improvements! Still missing some sentences on construction history indeed, but I can get over that. Some remaining and/or new points (hope I don't discourage you...)

• About the transcription of the sample sentences: I don't like the English approximation if you ask me — but I'm not the only one with an opinion.

I don't really like it either, but I hestitate to get rid of it; I want to article to be tolerably accessible to readers with not much lingustics background. I'll ask for other opinions on the talk page.

• Structure: the one sentence section on 'Geographic distribution' looks awful. I suggest merging it with 'Number of speakers' into a 'Geography and demography' section. Maybe 'Computer writing' could be incorporated in 'Writing systems' in the same way.

Sounds good. When I eventually get Esperanto sen mitoj back from the friend I loaned it to, I might expand in more detail on geographic distribution and demographic trends.

• There are other things about structure. Take a look at the TOC: 15 level 1 headings is just too much. Incorporate more sections into meta-sections (like in 'Linguistic properties'), and make the arrangement of the sections more logical. For example: what is 'Official status' doing just below the Examples? I'd expect it earlier; same holds for 'Esperanto in English-language media' (BTW, that last section title begs the question: why only in English-language media?). Maybe 'See also' could be merged with 'External links' into a 'Further reading' section.

That'll be it for now. — mark ✎ 00:58, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)

OK, will think about how to combine some sections under higher-level headings. Thanks. --Jim Henry 17:34, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Vocabulary

• Many other Wikipedia articles on languages have sections dealing with their vocabularies. (Compare Nahuatl language, for example.) Much of the discussion deals with the importing and exporting of words from and to other languages. This doesn't apply so much to Esperanto, but there is still something that can be said on the subject of vocabulary. By coincidence, I am busy excising roughly 50 dictionaries from Wikipedia and putting them on Wiktionary (a "list of words" article on Wikipedia is a simple category of words in Wiktionary), adding links to the Wiktionary categories to the Wikipedia language articles; and someone else is busy populating Wiktionary from Universala Vortaro. I've therefore supplied you with a starter Vocabulary section, with the same form of Wiktionary link as in other encyclopaedia articles. As a bonus, there's a Wiktionary category specifically for UV words. So you've got a link to that, too. Uncle G 21:54, 2005 Mar 2 (UTC)

Thanks. I've added some material on patterns of borrowing, idiomatic compounds, and idiomatic use of root words. --Jim Henry 22:53, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC).

Size of the article

After adding material as recommended by the FAC objectors and peer reviewers, the article is now over 35KB. Any suggestions about which sections could most profitably be abridged or spun off into separate articles? IMO, the Esperanto in English-language media section is the most easily dispensible. We can probably move some of the material in the Writing system section to Esperanto orthography. What else? --Jim Henry 22:53, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)

First, I want to say that I very much like the changes you've made recently. The structure is more logical now; the content is presented in a more logical way. And the writing is excellent, I like your style.

Thanks!

Now, how to cut it down in length? Both of your suggestions are good. The ASCII transcription, which encoding to use, and so on, is not what people will expect in a general article about Esperanto; send them to Esperanto orthography for that. And indeed, this awkward 'Esperanto in English-language media' thing could be disposed of. The 'Language evolution' section is really huge. Maybe some of it could be moved to 'Esperanto history' or a more appropriate article. Make sure to summarize it, there is a lot of relevant information there.

It's still 34KB after spinning off the English-language media section and removing the excessive stuff about ASCII and Unicode representations. I'll work on moving some of the Language Evolution material to Esperanto history later on.

On a sidenote, 'Official status' is a really short level 1 section.

Would it make sense to indent it under History? --Jim Henry 20:24, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

It's a pleasure to see this article evolve! — mark ✎ 15:54, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Abridging the Language evolution section (while copying the original version to Esperanto history), and making some other minor cuts throughout, brought it just under 32KB.

I've been spending a probably excessive amount of time editing Wikipedia lately; now when this article is stable seems to be a good time to take a break for a few weeks. Further comments should probably go to Talk:Esperanto. Thanks for all your advice. --Jim Henry | Talk 23:09, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Fourth International

This article received a peer review back in February 2005 (Wikipedia:Peer review/Fourth International/archive1). Since then, several contributors including myself have made extensive changes and additions to the article. I believe that all the suggestions received back then have been addressed, and the article is now considerably more comprehensive. I think it may now be close to WP:FA status, and I'm keen to pass it through peer review for comments. Warofdreams talk 19:14, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

• Well-presented considering it is a subtopic of Trotskyism and it must be hard not to recover aspects covered in other Trotskyism articles. It provides enough background for a novice without being too simple. Good referencing and neutral point-of-view writing. Certainly a lot closer to FA status than last time. Some comments:
  • Use of capitalisations (such as SWP,IEC,RCP and FI). I suggest you add the abbreviation in brackets after the full name before using it alone. For the SWP in particular it was used first as US SWP and I had to scroll up two sections to find out what it referred to. There are also sections later in the article where the abbreviations become somewhat overwhelming. Perhaps the occasional substitution with the full name (or when the reference is unmistakable 'the commitee' or 'the party') would make it more readable.
  • Too many redlinks
  • Still too little explanation about the previous Internationals (second doesn't appear, first mentioned in passing). I was looking for background like this at the beginning of the article.
  • Some style inconsistencies: U.S. vs US, first International v Fourth International,international v International.
  • The grouping of The Founding Congress and WWII seems a little strange, these could be split to make it flow better.
  • Alternative viewpoints suggests that the article is written from a certain point-of-view. I'd suggest changing it to External links or Further reading

Hope this helps. Yomangani 23:35, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

1. I've now completely worked through the capitalisations; there are now considerably fewer (I've expanded some and removed some unnecessary ones). All remaining capitalisations are now explained the *first* time they are used, and again if they not used for several sections.
2. Now I've worked through the capitalisations, there are even more red links - I noticed a couple of groups mentioned which were never linked! Most of these shouldn't be too difficult to write articles on, so I'll work through them.
3. I've fixed the link for the Socialist International to point to the Second International. The difficulty is that interaction between it (strictly, its successor, the Socialist International) and the Fourth International was limited, and the story of the link is historic, in particular lying in the WWI splits from it which mostly ended up in the Comintern. Perhaps a brief mention in the intro and a section on communist concepts of an International would clarify this?
4. I've standardised to "U.S." in each case, and capitalised "International" when it refers to a specific International. I don't think it would be appropriate to capitalise "first International"; the "Fourth International" termed itself as such; for obvious reasons, the International Workingmen's Association did not call itself the "First International"; rather, the idea of it being the first of a series of Internationals is a later concept.
5. I've split the Founding Congress and WWII sections. You're right, this does seem to make it flow better.
6. Good point on "Alternative viewpoints"; I've changed it to "Further reading".

Thanks for taking the time to look through the article and for your useful comments. Warofdreams talk 01:04, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Heh, no comments for two days, then I get an edit conflict. :) It really has improved. I've been trying to allocate time for a thorough review without luck yet, but here's what I see so far: 1) Some of the paragraphs are too short and have some choppy prose, adding up to poor flow in places. There's probably about 10 short paragraphs in that situation, I didn't check the prose in others. 2) The lead is much better but still needs more context. It still uses terms that you already need to know the material to know what they are. GPU, Third International, Comintern. It also doesn't say if they had any success or why they are the most important Trotkyist organization. It doesn't really tell us what their ideals were or what they tried to do, except a little through inference on what you tell us they were unsuccessful in. 3) The article's largely chronological structure makes it difficult to see at a glance the organization's impact, legacy, importance or lack thereof, etc. I would recommend shrinking down the chrono stuff to a reasonably small section to give a contextual overview, then use other broad sections to cover the various most important aspect of the organization. Are their views one and the same with Trotskyism, and would other groups agree with that? The Trotskyism section seems to be to only one giving overview of their views/goals. Hope that's a start - Taxman ^Talk 23:50, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Yes, thanks, that's useful. I'll think about your third suggestion and reply later, while getting to work on the others. Warofdreams talk 01:04, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Sounds reasonable. I'm not sure it's the best way, but it seems better. It is unfortunately a lot of work, but if it results in a great article it will be worth it. - Taxman ^Talk 15:11, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure I agree with that (although I'd have to see both versions to make up my mind, that's how close it is). I like the chronological approach, although I agree with Taxman that it makes it difficult to see the impacts of the organization: it might be better to dedicate a section to this at the beginning and then maintain the chronological layout. Yomangani 15:23, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

That's probably fine too, but if you add something, you'd still probably need to summarize the chronology a bit in order to not make the article too large. - Taxman ^Talk 16:54, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Having thought about these suggestions, I prefer this idea - it avoids rewriting large sections of the article which are already in pretty decent shape, while clarifying the FI's impacts. Warofdreams talk 11:52, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

• Please see automated peer review suggestions here. Thanks, AZ _t 01:35, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks; I've been through and addressed everything but the redundancies. Warofdreams talk 02:51, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

An update for various suggestions: almost all the red links are gone, and there is now a section on political internationals and how they relate to the Fourth International. The lead has also been simplified, and explains or avoids less obvious concepts (other than Trotskyism and political internationals, which are detailed in their own sections, immediately following the lead).

Still to do: check for redundancies and short paragraphs, and write a section on the impact of the organisation. Warofdreams talk 00:32, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

It looks much better to me: the section on internationals and the brief section on Trotsky are just what it needed for the novice reader. Like you say, the impact section still needs writing but apart from it looks good. Yomangani^talk 17:22, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

I've made a start on the section on the FI's impact; there is little agreement on it, so I've considered the views of various tendencies and compared it with the tasks it set itself. Warofdreams talk 03:29, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

And I've now checked for redundancies and short paragraphs and fixed them as best I can. Warofdreams talk 23:20, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

• There we go. It's as ready for FAC as I can think of after one thing. The lead still throws the reader in too abruptly. What's Trotskyism? Give us one or two more sentences in the lead adding that bit of context. Tell us earlier (in the first sentence) the fourth international is a socialist political organization working for x. The new sections later in the article cover this extremely well and though I still think the impact section could more clearly come out and tell us whether historians in general regard the organization as being widely influential or not, the article is clearly currently among Wikipedia's best. - Taxman ^Talk 00:41, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

• Thanks! Is the new intro clearer? Warofdreams talk 02:05, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

I changed "has been" to "is" in the lead as it seemed to be an artifact from the rewrite. Looks good to me though, and I agree with Taxman: you should now put it forward to FAC. Yomangani^talk 10:24, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Yael Dayan

Author: Could someone with a greater familiarity with current Israeli politics please review this? I'm afraid most of my research was from older (1980s) sources, and I cobbled together the more recent stuff from internet research. -Thanks Fernando Rizo 05:46, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Xanadu House

I wrote this from scratch a long time ago, it has been copy-edited and worked on a lot since. What do you think? — Wackymacs 17:49, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

Good work on the article! Here are my concerns. 1) The introduction could be expanded. For an article of this length it should be about 2 paragraphs. 2) The interior photos have no source. If this goes up for FAC, that will certainly be questioned. 3)The section "Using Computers at Home" should be renamed "Interior" and combine all the subheadings. In addition the bulleted items should be turned into prose. The reason for renaming it is that it sounds more like a promotional brochure than an encyclopedia article. 4) The sections of the book listed in the final section aren't really necessary. 5) There are a number of one sentence paragraphs throughout that should either be expanded or integrated into other paragraphs. 6) I think some of the photos could be bigger in the article. It'll help to create a much nicer looking article. Good job so far, keep up the good work! *Exeunt* Ganymead ^Dialogue? 20:13, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

• Thanks for the useful feedback. I have sorted out the sections, according to your suggestions. I have also sorted out all the images, two of the interior photos are scanned from a book (see the image pages for more detail). I have removed the book contents listing from the book section, and improved the book section as well. I have added another (relevant) image to the History section, which makes it look a bit nicer. I have also enlarged the main photo, you were right, it does look better. I've split the lead paragraph into two paragraphs, but they now need extending and I'm not sure what to write. Further suggestions, thoughts? Thanks. — Wackymacs 21:40, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

Singapore

This article recently failed FAC, but I've tried to address the remaining objections. Can somebody take a look and give an opinion? Johnleemk | Talk 11:57, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

• Needs to use Template:Infobox Country. In the lead: "known for its tough stance on corruption" seems POV and possibly inaccurate. "An economic powerhouse" seems to be a peacock term. I suggest rewording by giving facts. The "religion" section is too short - are there notable houses of worship that we can write about? The Singapore Zoo is given only a passing mention; it would be nice to have two sentences or so about it. Also, I imagine that there must be a national library? The death penalty in Singapore is also only mentioned in passing - this is a veyr important part of Singapore, considering that it has the highest execution rate per capita in the world. Neutrality^talk 06:54, Jan 26, 2005 (UTC)
  • How is it now? Johnleemk | Talk 09:59, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)
    • Sections seem really long. Much of the information could be pushed over to the referring articles. We only need the broadest of summaries. The article as it stands is a bit too long for my tastes.
      • Really long? Three paragraphs per section seem reasonable to me. The only long ones are naturally the history and geography sections; should there be more paring there? Johnleemk | Talk 11:12, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)
  • I thought the Night Safari deserves more mention as well. ;) The long sections can be complemented with more photos. - Mailer Diablo 12:40, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)
• More referrences, offline or online, will help, too. - Mailer Diablo 09:42, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)
• I kinda think it's pretty good. Relist it on FAC. - Ta bu shi da yu 02:22, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Dae Jang-gum

I have read this article and proposed some improvement:

• Add the full content of the drama in a new article.
• Open a new article: Dae Jang-gum Fever, to describe how this drama affects Japan, ROK, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Chicago.

Is it OK? --Cheung1303 03:17, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

• The second new article you suggest sounds very interesting and worthwhile! I'm not so sure about the first one, it might be considered "fancruft". But the purpose of peer review is to bring articles up to Featured standard (see instructions on this page). Dae Jang-gum is too short for that, and the new articles you propose wouldn't take it any closer to Featured standard, since they're not changes to the article itself. Seems to me that your questions would go better on the article's talk page than on peer review—you would probably get more response there. Would you like to make your suggestions on Talk:Dae Jang-gum instead? Or just Be bold, go ahead and create the new articles! Bishonen | Talk 17:55, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • Cheung, since I know you never respond to comments, I will move your suggestions to Talk:Dae Jang-gum myself. Bishonen | Talk 00:57, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Gmail

I'm embarking upon my first real Wikipedia mission: The Gmail article.

It really isn't too bad (and I've improved it a bit already, I think), but I'm still not sure about a lot of it. Is it really necessary to have that huge list of links at the bottom? Does our incredibly detailed description of how the labeling function works really add anything to the article? Basically, I want to know at what point "encyclopedic" becomes "who cares". Care to help? Starwiz 05:20, Feb 19, 2005 (UTC)

"Most of the criticism, however, was against Google's plans to add context-sensitive advertisements to e-mails by automatically scanning them." Given the amount of criticism this received, that slim coverage is a huge understatement. (*NOTE: I have added a couple of sentances of elaboration on this topic, though it still rather glosses over the issue -- anorris) "Features" is an overused press release word that assumes components of the software are beneficial or should be seen positively, and I think a neutral word is needed. 119 05:29, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)

While features can certainly have a slight positive connotation , I believe can also be interpreted as reasonably neutral. Even in development processes, it is the technical word most often used for components and/or functions of the software that fulfill a specific task. You'll note "Features" is also widely used and accepted on Wikipedia to designate the objects in question, as exemplified by featured articles Emacs and Firefox. Even on highly controversial pages like Internet Explorer, use of the term is not disputed, so it is unlikely anyone will take issue at it being used in Gmail. That being said, your point is an interesting one, and it certainly couldn't hurt if we had a more "neutral" term. Can you think of any? Phils 09:00, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)

What do you guys think of the huge list of links at the bottom? How about the list of keyboard shortcuts? Should I move the former into webmail and the latter into a new article? Starwiz 15:37, Feb 19, 2005 (UTC)

Yes and yes. All the links not specific to Gmail should be moved to the general article, but kept at all only if they are relatively important. Wikipedia is not a link farm. The shortcuts should be moved because they are simply too detailed to be needed in a general overview article. They are no less usefull in a separate article that is linked to, but are much less in the way that way. 2) The 'Competition' section is way to detailed, and especially so about the storage issue. That whole section could be condensed to one paragraph of a few sentences that describes the issue and some external links for citation. It would be much easier to read and just as useful. 3) If you would like this so be a featured article, work to meet all the criteria for those. The biggest one this doesn't seem to meet is references. If some of the external links are reliable and were properly used as such, they can be formatted as references as shown in the link I just gave. - Taxman 19:55, Feb 21, 2005 (UTC)

• pointing device or similar, not mouse (what about a trackpad then?), gmail4the troops should be under the invatations subheading not under general links. –Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 03:53, 2005 Feb 23 (UTC)

You need to cite a source for this: "Independent tests conducted in May 2004 showed this spam filter to be about 60% accurate for a wide variety of spam, ...." --Jim Henry 20:32, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I think that the list of other email providers should rather be in the email article. The webmail providers could be moved to webmail article, too. People look for such lists in email or webmail articles, they don't want to guess, which webmail service article has such list. Or are you willing to type the same list to every article about a webmail service, and maintain the duplicates, too? And then people start adding more email services to the list, and the lists grow and grow... Also, you should decide whether to spell e-mail or email throughtout this article. -Hapsiainen 20:18, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

The Country Wife

A comedy that's been offending right-thinking people since 1675. Comments on any level welcome, but I'm especially hoping for input from non-specialists at this time. I think it's pretty comprehensive (too much?), but is it boring? Is it clear? Is the background section helpful? Do sections come in a reader-friendly order? Is the "First performance" section too long? Please be frank, will pay cash for concrete and specific suggestions. (Never mind the footnotes, I know they're incomplete, they're on their way.) Bishonen | Talk 00:42, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I think it's perfection what more can I say; but who are your audience, at whom are you pitching the article, this is a subject that needs to be understood against the culture of the day in which it was written, I think you have explained that climate well, but will he man in the Bronx or the "Hooray" in SW1? understand it, or even bother to read it - probably not, but you can't be all things too all people so it's fine - believe me. Giano 21:38, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Thanks very much, compliments are indeed good too (more! more!), though I only pay cash for practical advice. Bishonen | Talk 19:11, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Well then, here you go. As a complete outsider to Restoration comedy I have put this article to the layman test. My impression is most favourable, but I have a few minor points.

• Our 'Cuckold' article mentions that 'Cuckolds are sometimes written of as "wearing the horns of a cuckold" or just "wearing the horns". I would think that this apparent connection between Horner's name and his character is worth mentioning.
• Nearly all persons are properly introduced when they are first mentioned, which makes for pleasant reading, but Mrs. Squeamish, mentioned only once in the 'Key scenes' section, is not. Who is she?
• There are two seemingly important persons on the 1675 cast list that are not mentioned at all in the article: Mr. Dorilant and Mr. Sparkish. From online sources I gather that Dorilant is a friend of Horner; he doesn't seem to play an important role although he is present in many scenes. Mr. Sparkish apparently is 'someone Horner really does hold in aversion' [1] and he turns up in quite a few scenes; I think that his being affianced to Alithea, and their torpedoed marriage, would make him important enough to mention briefly. Another person not mentioned in the article is doctor Quack, but he seems not notable enough indeed.
• The article mentions that during the china scene, "Horner is purportedly discussing his china collection with several noble ladies". Only Lady Squeamish and Lady Fidget are involved, right? Somehow, 'several' gives me the impression that there are more than two ladies involved.

All in all, this is a fascinating article and I've learnt a lot of interesting things by reading it. Keep up the good work! — mark ✎ 10:57, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Great job, Mark! I've been waiting since forever to input some interlined responses, here goes:

Our 'Cuckold' article mentions that 'Cuckolds are sometimes written of as "wearing the horns of a cuckold" or just "wearing the horns". I would think that this apparent connection between Horner's name and his character is worth mentioning.

See, that shows you in a nutshell how much I needed your help. It never occurred to me.

Nearly all persons are properly introduced when they are first mentioned, which makes for pleasant reading, but Mrs. Squeamish, mentioned only once in the 'Key scenes' section, is not. Who is she?

They're introduced...? See, I was unaware of that. Mr Squeamish doesn't have any personality or circumstances attached to her, actually, she's just Lady Fidget's friend who tags along, and who wants the same thing LF wants, sex with Horner--she's like a paler version of LF. It turns out that Mrs Squeamish has a grandmother--appearing in the china scene only--and that's the whole of her personal situatedness. I hadn't thought of it before, but it's quite remarkable how unsituated these characters are, all of them. Well, it's not remarkable for the period, it's normal, but it's odd to us today, who expect characters in plays to be more like characters in a novel. Hmm. Just call her "Lady Fidget's friend", I suppose? Actually she and the third lady, Mrs Dainty Fidget, wouldn't even have had names at the première, before the print version came out, because nobody addresses them by name.

There are two seemingly important persons on the 1675 cast list that are not mentioned at all in the article: Mr. Dorilant and Mr. Sparkish. From online sources I gather that Dorilant is a friend of Horner; he doesn't seem to play an important role although he is present in many scenes. Mr. Sparkish apparently is 'someone Horner really does hold in aversion' [1] (http://www.gashakespeare.org/history/1995/wife-synopsis.html) and he turns up in quite a few scenes; I think that his being affianced to Alithea, and their torpedoed marriage, would make him important enough to mention briefly. Another person not mentioned in the article is doctor Quack, but he seems not notable enough indeed.

No, right, Quack the doctor is more just a plot convenience, someone Horner tells his secrets to, so that we the audience get to know them. Sparkish gets a look in in "Plots", plot 3, but you mean the actor isn't mentioned? Indeed not, and that's a bit of a disaster, because he was notable all right: the comedian/clown Joseph Haines, probably the best-known of all the actors, and the biggest draw. Sparkish was a big part, too. It's kind of a boring part for the modern taste--well, mine, at least--just a regular caricatured affected fop, the fiancé who's destined to not get the girl. And he doesn't do anything for my argument, since famous Jo Haines was someone who did draw attention to the Harcourt-Alithea plot that I'm claiming was so unnoticable (part of my cunning plan for showing that it's quite wrong to "moralize" the play the way Norman Holland did), and so I didn't think to mention him (cough). Not realizing people might miss him, as you did (serious coughing attack). I must put in Jo Haines, absolutely, thanks for demonstrating it. I worry about the cast section getting too long, or it would be very nice to discuss Mrs Dainty Fidget and Mrs Squeamish and their actresses a bit also--actually do them before Dorilant, --but I keep feeling that the whole original cast thing is a bit of an idiosyncratic interest of my own, and should be kept trimmed, if not lifted out. It's not what you usually see in play articles (checking out some Shakespeare articles as I speak), and it's within shouting distance of original research. Can I ask you, Mark, did it seem at all out of place or unexpected to you, to have a section about the première performance? I could always just skip it, the article's long enough without it, and of course stage history and critical history could be enlarged ad libitum if desired, they're so compressed they hurt. Or, alternatively, do you think it's desirable to emphasize more that the first performance section speaks to Wycherley's composition process, as he was writing for these particular actors? (Or will it sound more like original research the more I emphasize that? you see how I go round and round on this. :-()

The article mentions that during the china scene, "Horner is purportedly discussing his china collection with several noble ladies". Only Lady Squeamish and Lady Fidget are involved, right? Somehow, 'several' gives me the impression that there are more than two ladies involved.

Lol, yeah, you're absolutely right, and not only that, but I think I do the same thing wrt the drinking scene--give a false impression of a milling crowd of ladies jostling for Horner (the magnetic Charles Hart). The fact is that the whole "virtuous gang" is just three ladies, and indeed only two of them are involved in the china scene, as you say. I must change the way I refer to Horner's ladies as a collective, but also make it clear that there is a general sense that there are other ladies (in the wings, so to speak) that we never hear about, and that there will be more ladies after the final curtain, too.

Thanks very much, Mark, for catching that stuff. I see with horror how confusing those items must have been, it's really great to have them caught. I've been trying to fix them in a text editor, lessee if I ever get to input either those emendations, or these replies. Meanwhile, enjoy the admin mop and bucket, congratulations! Bishonen | Talk 07:27, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

To answer your questions, Bish: It is comprehensive without being overwhelming and it is not at all dull. It is clear. The background section is a real strength and I like the way that the article flows. No section is too long. I have added the Beerbohm anecdote to illustrate just how far the play fell from critical awareness; it needs to be placed more elegantly. --Theo (Talk) 14:24, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

• Thanks, Theo. I'm taking a shot at merging in the anecdote in a place where it'll be more illustrative, and also avoid the need for a separate section (thinking ahead, I feel that an section titled anecdoteS might risk inviting other contributors to twist it towards a "Trivia" section, a favorite FAC antipathy, and I'm not crazy about them myself either). But for that, could you please tell me what The Country Wench is? I've never heard of it. Bishonen | Talk 11:56, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)

What he said. I haven't much else to say (sorry for digging up Jo Haines :) ); the recent additions are great. To be clear, I very much like the section on the first performance, as it sort of 'grounds' the article for the reader who is not familiar with the historical context. So nothing is out of place; in fact, the article is in perfect balance. And no, there was nothing confusing about the article. It's just that I have a sharp eye when there's a chance to earn some pocket-money. Please contact me via email to arrange the cash payment. — mark ✎ 15:21, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Cool! I'm very glad it communicates, it's really impossible to tell, when you wrote the stuff yourself. Both you guys should get in touch with my accountant for settling of scores, in fact the chauffeur will take you there. See him? Burly chap carrying a sack of cement? Bishonen | Talk 11:56, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)

fff

Apollo 8

I have just completely rewritten, and expanded the article. I am looking for people to go over it and make sure that it is understandable to the layperson - ie someone who doesn't have a nerdish knowledge of the Apollo program. At the moment it is probably too long as well, and I plan to work on the article to cut back its size and would appreciate comments on where the pruning could take place. Evil Monkey∴Hello 10:06, Mar 9, 2005 (UTC)

• Lead is too short, online references need confirmed retrieval date. I don't think that the article is too long, it seems to cover the subject quite good in its current size (36kb). It does seem fairly light on ilinks though, I think it would benefit from careful ilinking (here are a few examples of therms that should be ilinked, just from lead and first paragraph: manned mission, Earth, parking orbit, velocity, translunar trajectory, stage (rocket). I'd also move 'crew' and 'Mission parameters' sections somewere below the lead, the screen of lists under lead makes a rather bad impression, IMHO. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 11:52, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)
• This has all the markings of a great article. I think I'll be joining you over the next couple of days to do some editing. I already did some copyediting and ilinking on one section and will work my way through the article. Some general grammar and punctuation checks are in order, and I agree that some trimming is required; some excessive detail and trivia could be excised. I'd also suggest to take a look at that Apollo Program template at the bottom: I think it's kinda bare at the moment and could be expanded to provide a full overview of the category. I'll list some specific comments on the article when I've had the time to read it in detail. Good job so far! --Plek 21:17, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)
• That image of Goclenius crater is actually on the near side. It's visible from Earth. — RJH 22:48, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for all the comments. I agree that in places my grammar needed some work and there are also probably some tense issues hidden in there (some of the sources I used were written in the present tense). As for the bit about Goclenius crater, the image comes from http://www.apolloarchive.com where it is just labelled as being "view of lunar farside from Apollo 8", and the information what the craters actually are comes from http://history.nasa.gov/ap08fj/13day4_orbits123.htm (search for the text AS08-13-2225).

My feeling is that it could be either shortened in the areas concerning the cruise to the Moon, or that the cruise back to Earth could be fleshed out more (probably the former). The problem is that the Apollo 8 Flight Journal currently only goes up to the third orbit of the Moon and the other sources (A Man on the Moon, Genesis) really only give a cursory overview of this part of the mission. I'll have to see what Carrying the Fire (by Michael Collins who was one of the three capcoms) has to say about that part of the flight.

I've moved the mission parameters and crew section to the end of the article. I too felt that they were, to put it bluntly, ugly sitting right at the top of the article. If a person came along they usually want to read about the flight, not how much the spacecraft weighed. As well as this, quite often there is alot of discrepancy between various values that are given for mass, heights and distances between various sources. Evil Monkey∴Hello 23:22, Mar 9, 2005 (UTC)

• Obviously, one aspect is missing from the article that should definitely be added: the historical importance of the mission. Humankind was traveling to the Moon for the fist time in history! That was a Very Big Thing, and it received lots of media attention. The crew were welcomed home as heroes. They were received by President Nixon. They were chosen as Time Men of the Year (that cover should really be in the article). Stuff like that. I think the space saved by trimming some of the "techy stuff" should be assigned to document this important aspect of the mission. --Plek 19:58, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • I agree totally, though I wouldn't know where to start having been born 17 years after the flight. I also think that there could be a look a just how terrible a year 1968 had been. There was the Prague Spring, Tet Offensive, My Lai massacre, Martin Luther King, Jr. & Robert F. Kennedy assasinated, French May rioting, 1968 Democratic National Convention rioting and occupation of university campuses by students. Maybe something along the lines of how the From the Earth to the Moon episode on Apollo 8 was put together. Evil Monkey∴Hello 02:21, Mar 11, 2005 (UTC)
    • Being from that era, I'd say one of the biggest impacts has been just that image of the blue Earth hanging in a great void. It generated an awareness of how fragile a rock we live upon, and how it is a precious, irreplaceable little place that ties all of our destinies together. So in that sense it raised environmental awareness, and perhaps had some significant impact on the environmental movements to come. On top of that, as you mentioned, the mission was a big ego-boost for the US, which had been suffering some setbacks. Otherwise I just thought it was totally, totally cool, although not in those words. I was glued to the TV for every manned Apollo mission. :) — RJH 20:12, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

• • • • Absolutely. Great comments. Strangely enough, the first mission to the Moon might have told us more about Earth and mankind's place in the universe than about our little satellite. In that regard, Lovell's quote should be in here as well (from Lost Moon): "The loneliness up here is awe inspiring. It makes you realize just what you have back on Earth. The Earth from here is an oasis in the vastness of space." (The man surely knows his way with words.) --Plek 20:41, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)
• I've added a section I've entitled Historical Importance. Basically just looked at what else had happened in 1968 as well as the press coverage, the TIME Magazine bit and also the environmentalism. Evil Monkey∴Hello 06:32, Mar 15, 2005 (UTC)

Monty Hall problem

The conclusions drawn in the article appear to be based on a misunderstanding or misstatement of the factors involved. There's no edit war (yet) but the last two items in the talk section are verging on the acrimonious.

Mathematicians particularly encouraged.

The disputation of the conclusions drawn in the article are quite clearly based on ignoring information stated in the first paragraph of the article, namely, that a party in the problem who is removing incorrect choices the player might otherwise make knows they are incorrect choices -- he is not randomly picking choices to remove which only happen to be incorrect choices. Acrimony is because the only disputant is basing his disputation on non-facts which reading the problem statement would make very clear are non-facts and yet insists he is not trolling. -- Antaeus Feldspar 04:17, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

The problem statement is ambiguous. Someone needs to adjust it so that it describes a game in which the host always opens a door that the contestant did not pick. Leaving this constraint out admits the possibility that the two are playing a game in which the host sometimes opens the same door that the contestant picked. For example, he may have chosen the door to open at random among all three doors, or at random between the two doors with goats. These seem to be the games that some reviewers have in mind, when they conclude that the two remaining doors are equally likely to conceal the car. -- Wmarkham

"... after Jane has selected a door but before she actually opens it, the host (who knows what is behind each door) opens one of the other doors ..." How is "one of the other doors" ambiguous? How does it admit the possibility of the host choosing to open the same door that the contestant picked? -- Antaeus Feldspar 23:30, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

It is ambiguous as to whether or not the host will always do this, when the game is played multiple times. Probabilities can only be interpreted in the context of a repeatable process. The question does not clearly describe any particular repeatable process. One way to construct one from the question, as stated, is to suppose that every time the game is played, the host will choose another door, and that that in doing so, he will reveal a goat. However, this is not the only possible game.

The fact that some people interpret the question differently than you do is the very definition of ambiguity. -- Wmarkham 23:37, 3 May 2005 (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)

Mumbai

Wrote an exhaustive article. Need it proofread as well as feedback, suggestions, critique and images (if possible). Please also let me know on the encyclopedic tone and if further references are needed on contentitious issues. Nichalp 20:44, Mar 9, 2005 (UTC)

• Very good overall. Looks pretty complete. Points for improvement: 1) The beginning of the lead uses too many technical terms without explaining them well and almost in a self agrandizing way. Is pointing out that it is the largest conurbation really that critical? If so, it should be worked in a little smoother. The lead should ease the reader into the subject, not require the reading of three other articles just to get what the sentence means. 2) Three references is pretty minimal. And the BMC site would not be considered as entirely unbiased of course. No source is, but you get what I mean. Ideally cite individual important or contentious facts directly to reliable sources. Consider the format at Wikipedia:Footnotes. - Taxman 00:11, Mar 10, 2005 (UTC)
  • I referenced most of the parts relating to the geography and government from the BMC site. Figures in the economy section are taken from Manorama. Most of the other parts are "common knowledge" and I don't know if it should have references. Just asking: wouldn't the "Further Reading" section mitigate the "common knowledge" issue? What should be the ideal Reference limits?

• Well ideal referencing is any fact that could reasonably be disputed would be cited to the most authoritative source available. For truly common knowledge things it is not as critical for sure, but what you may consider common knowledge I may find novel or unbelievable. So just work from the most contentious facts on down and that will be a great start. - Taxman 22:47, Mar 10, 2005 (UTC)

I think if there was anything controversial on the page it should have gone by now due to relentless copyediting by many. :) Nichalp 20:32, Mar 11, 2005 (UTC)

• I think the connurbation part should come in the lead-in. That's the only thing that the city is the world's #1 in. Should I put a defination for the two terms in brackets? (It would look ugly, I've made a minor edit on the page -- added outlying so that a reader could guess the meaning.) Nichalp 20:13, Mar 10, 2005 (UTC)

• Re-ordering helped that issue a bit, but yes, agglomeration could use a parenthetical explanation so that the difference between that and connurbation is clearer. I see your point that it should be in there as it is an important fact about the city, but the explanations would help since most people will not know what those words mean. - Taxman 22:47, Mar 10, 2005 (UTC)

I'll try and do that Nichalp 20:32, Mar 11, 2005 (UTC)Made a few improvements. Nichalp 19:55, Mar 12, 2005 (UTC)

• Looks pretty good. I'll give it a copyedit if I have time. There are still a couple of "todo"s on the talk page; should it be at Bombay (I can't see much discussion on the talk page)? -- ALoan (Talk) 10:17, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for taking the time off. It should be Mumbai. Nichalp 20:13, Mar 10, 2005 (UTC)

Oh, it was pretty good already, but fresh eyes are always a good idea. I'm still not convincede that Mumbai (or Chennai, Kolkata ...) is the most common name. Yes, official name; yes, 10^9 Indians; but Bombay Stock Exchange, Bombay duck... -- ALoan (Talk) 20:36, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

In this case, I think we should favor the correct name over the common name. The common name is a bastardization, and Mumbai is becoming more and more common. Besides, it could fall under the case where the guidelines say not to use the common name if many people find it offensive. Most of those things that use the old name are not directly about the city itself. As long as there are redirects in place and the lead clearly notes that the former name is Bombay then its not a real big deal anyway. - Taxman 22:47, Mar 10, 2005 (UTC)

I won't get into the naming debate, but city institutions were free choose whatever name they wanted and shouldn't be confused with the name of the city. Nichalp 20:32, Mar 11, 2005 (UTC)

Carbon chauvinism

Two things bother me about this article.

One is that the entire contents of the article after the introduction para discuss the opposite of the topic indicated by the title.

Two is that the title seems to be pejorative and therefore NPOV. It also smacks of neologism.

I don't know enough regarding these concerns to feel comfortable putting it up for RFC or VFD.

- Keith D. Tyler [flame] 23:16, Feb 17, 2005 (UTC)

I think a better title would be Non-carbon based lifeform. User:Ben Standeven 16:05, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

• Yes I agree with the above suggestion, with the first paragraph just becoming a section within the full article. (Or else just Non-carbon-based life or Non-carbon-based biology.) — RJH 23:35, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

How about Non-carbon-based biochemistry? --PuzzletChung 09:26, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I appreciate the advice so far. Personally I feel that the suggested names so far are a bit unwieldy. Is there no accepted term in the field? - Keith D. Tyler ¶ [AMA] 19:48, Mar 1, 2005 (UTC)

• Why not just Carbon-based organism? There's no article for it, and it seems the most neutral defining term for what the article is (not) about. That such a term would exist (and it does exist) implies the question of whether there's any such thing as a non-carbon-based organism. A carbon-based organism is, as far as we know, "all life." That aside, the article should move on to discussing possible non-carbon-based organisms. But there's that problem, above, that the title is not what the article is about. I think we're just gonna be stuck with a sort of long title, but it should be the best possible neutral, descriptive title (and all the other possibilities could redirect there). -- Wapcaplet 20:45, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)

• "Carbon Chauvinism" appears to be a lead-in to a general discussion on non-carbon based life forms. I know an appropriate title might be a little unwieldly but that should be an issue if you're linked to from other articles (or even get "Featured Article" status). My vote is for "Non-carbon biology". -- 17:46, Mar 8, 2005 (UTC)

Mag Mell vs. Tír Na nÓg

We need an Irish mythology buff to clear up a bit of an article mess.

The article for Mag Mell (MM), a mythical Irish place, has been conflated with another mythical Irish place, Tir na nOg (TNN). But I'm starting to think that these two places should not be combined into one article. It seems the legend of Ossian belongs to TNN, and TNN is an island. MM, on the other hand, is beneath the sea and has a legend related to Cúchulainn. That's as much as I can make out.

So far I've been redirecting all TNN articles to MM, but if someone more knowledgable weighs in I'll bet we end up wanting two separate articles. If so, I recommend placing the TNN article at Tír Na nÓg. See the links here page of MM for all the redirects that will need fixing in that case...

Someone who knows what he/she's talking about: please help.

--Chinasaur 10:18, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I checked and I think I found out why these two got confused. Mag Mell is ruled by Tethra after he had died and the place is supposed to be underworld. The article of Manannan mac Lir says he ruled over "Blessed Islands", which is probably Tir Na nOg, and "Mag Mell". I don't know if Tethra got overthrown on Mag Mell or if it may just be a case of a parallel universe but it doesn't make sense for an underworld, Mag Mell, to be "Blessed Islands" as well but get mentioned separately so these two had to be different. Revth 00:58, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

The Western Star

A thorough life of Ohio's second oldest newspaper, with a photo, a map, and references. This needs another pair of eyes to read through it. PedanticallySpeaking 17:32, Mar 8, 2005 (UTC)

• I'm archiving this and posting article as a featured candidate. PedanticallySpeaking 16:54, Mar 17, 2005 (UTC)

Book of Esther

This text needs to be differentiated from the possibly historical figure Esther. The additions to the text need to be discussed. The interpretations of Esther as a didactic fiction as well as a literalist historical document need to be neutrally assessed. There is a Rabbinic tradition that is untouched. I have done what I can. your help is needed. --Wetman 04:32, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

• Wetman, may I suggest you'll get better and more relevant response to this type of problem if you take it to the article content section of Request for comment, which is specifically for editing disagreements. Peer review is primarily for getting near-FA quality articles up to FA standard. No offense, I hope. Bishonen | Talk 07:47, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • I've moved Wetman's request to WP:RFC. Bishonen | Talk 15:58, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Bath

Clearly not a FAC yet, but I'd like to know what exactly people feel needs to be done to get it to this standard. --Oldak Quill 02:56, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

• Considering the importance of the architecture, I don't think you've got anything near enough on that aspect. How about roping in a specialist for a substantial section on it? Giano comes to mind. Less essential, but for my taste interesting, would be a short section on Bath as depicted in literature, and maybe in other arts. A large portion of Jane Austen's Persuasion (1816) takes place in Bath, with topical descriptions of taking the waters, social life, and cultural resources like music recitals. (Jane Austen lived there for some time, and disliked the place, which kind of shows in the novel.) I guess that's optional, though; expanding the architecture isn't. Very nice pictures, btw! I love the top one. Bishonen | Talk 00:23, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)
• The whole thing needs pulling together, as requested I've done an architectural section, but there is insufficient space for an architectural appraisal of each street and building, somebody needs to take the 'bull by the horns' and do a bold re-write redistributing the information already there under new headings. Don't look to me me I dislike Bath - It's faux and contrived (my POV) Giano 19:34, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)
• Based on my experience with San Jose, California, it would likely get objections for the number of redlinks (mostly in Culture section), and possibly for "Places of interest" being a list, instead of prose. It would be nice if the Demo section noted what nationalities the 3% were, or most likely to be. Any sport (US meaning) teams? Something on education--ie any universities? Ah, just found mention under Industry--might try to add enuf to make education its own section. Media?--TV/radio/newpapers. Economy/workforce/resident companies (more specifics than currently under "Industry")? Favorite sons?--notable people born or raised in Bath? Libraries/Parks? any particular damage from either world war (or any of the 'I had no idea how many' wars prior)? For a timeless encyclopedia, maybe put History before 'Local government'? San Jose is not perfect, but it did make it as an FA. Seattle, Washington (which seems to have comprable physical limitations) is another example of a near FA-quality article--most of my comments are based on my knowledge of those articles (although I think Seattle puts too much emphasis on the current elected leadership--most of those people will be historical footnotes, at best, 100 years from now). The History section mostly covers up to the 18th century, with a brief mention of the 19th cent. Seems like a discussion of the 18th-21st cent is in order, even if faily bland. I agree with Bishonen that 'Bath in lterature' might deserve more coverage. How about Transportation?--any light rail, airports, bus system, etc.? Try to put yourself in the mind of a 22nd cent. historian--what would you want to know about 21st cent Bath, and how it got there? Niteowlneils 12:53, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)
• I suppose a section on the university would be comtemporary and useful, isn't a new spa being opened there also last year or next year, it went grossly over budget, or am I thinking of somewhere else? Giano 16:22, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

• Well, compared to Paris or London, it's missing coordinates, area, a map, coat of arms, transport and an origin of the name. Otherwise it looks pretty decent, if sketchy in places. Perhaps merge Tourism and Industry into Business. — RJH 23:52, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Neanderthal

I'd like to get creative and professional input regarding this article. One day, I think it could be a Featured Article candidate. Jason Potter 10:30, 16 Feb 2005

This article is in bad shape factually. Don't feature it without a substantial rewrite. 72.177.40.111 (talk) 00:54, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

A lot of interesting stuff here, but a few things occur to me. Content-wise, there is not a huge amount about what they evolved from and nothing about why they were superceded by modern man. Also, I recall reading that Neanderthal and modern man may have co-existed for a while, more information on that would be interesting. You mention the term Mousterian in the intro, but I think it should also be discussed when it first appears in the main text. And a minor point, but at one point the article says they were about 5'6", then later says they are known for their greater size compared to modern humans.

Style-wise I think a general proofread would be good, there are a few sentences which seem slightly awkwardly worded. I will give it a proofread myself shortly. Worldtraveller 17:27, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

• It looks good. I didn't notice anything about the controversy over whether humans and neanderthals interbred. Otherwise I generally agree with above comments. — RJH 23:56, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I was surprised also by the lack of mention of human-neanderthal interbreeding aside from in external links. Also would like to see the possible reasons for extinction considered (I've read evidence - cited in Guns, Germs and Steel I think - that modern humans had no perceptible advantage over Neanderthals in overlapping territories such as modern Israel until a time period when modern human suddenly began rapidly developing new tools. The conclusion from this is supposed to be that the sudden spurt of new developments and inventions was due to the advent of advanced language, and that this became our major evolutionary advantage over neanderthals). Point is that there's a lot of theories out there on what gave us the edge that seem to belong to this article.

Also, I think that the Human evolution link should be more prominent instead of an afterthought, and that the main article should discuss more thoroughly how neanderthals fit into human evolution (ie where we think they evolved from, if any date has been mentioned as last common ancestor between us and them, etc). Laura Scudder 00:47, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Ah, I've found the Neandertal interaction with Cro-Magnons article at the bottom now. Seems important enough to warrant a summary section in the Neanderthal article with a "Main article:" link. At least right now the article doesn't seem fully fleshed out on its own. Laura Scudder 00:51, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

In the Tools section you are missing much learned from Ötzi the Iceman, and other sites in recent years in that they did use bone tools and performed copper smelting. The few simple things he carried with him are known to have a multitude of uses. The specific specie of polypore he carried is used for tinder, medicine, leather, and as a razor strop. Schlüggell 01:48, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)

This isn't my area of expertise, but I do read a lot. I'd like to add a little spin to this discussion. I see no reference in any of this discussion on the Neandertal infant skeletal remains documented in Bruce Bower, “Neandertal Tot Enters Human-Origins Debate,” Science News 145 (1994), and Schwartz and Tattersall, “Significance of Some Previously Unrecongnized Apomorphies in the Nasal Region of Homo Neanderthalensis,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, vol. 93 (1996), pages 10852-10854, which conclude that Homo Erectus neither descended from nor bears any biological connection to the Neandertal species.

Nor can I find reference to the following genetic studies: Kahn and Gibbons, “DNA from an Extinct Human,” Matthias Krings, et all, “Neandertal DNA Sequences of the Mitochondrial Hypervariable Region II fromthe Neandertal Type Specimen,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, vol 96 (000), Matthias Hoss, “Neanderthal Population Genetics,” Nature 404 (2000), Igor V. Ovchinnikov, et al., “Molecular Analysis of Neanderthat DNA from the Northern Caucasus,” Nature 404 (2000) or Matthias Krings, et al., “A View of Neandertal Genetic Diversity,” Nature Genetics 26 (2000), which conclude and reinforce the position that Neandertals did not contribute mtDNA to the contemporary human gene pool.

Correct. And this is a glaring error, and it makes all the hybridization discussions laughable to those in the field. 72.177.40.111 (talk) 00:55, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Windsor uniform

I believe that the Windsor uniform is the coat that is used by the males in the Windsor family, a blue jacket (tuxedo style) with red cuffs and collar. This is a government uniform, that has varriation based upon rank. Used by ambassadors etc. Glenlarson 04:19, 16 Feb 2005

• Explanation here: [2]. The dinner-jacket the above editor is describing is called a Windsor something, but I'm not sure what. Giano 11:45, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Surtsey

Surtsey is a very interesting island, not even 40 years old and one of the few times the formation of a volcano from the ground up has been observed. I've done quite a bit of work on this article but I'm sure there's many ways it can be improved, so I'm casting around for any ideas and suggestions of what else should be included. Worldtraveller 16:30, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

• An enthralling subject! I'm delighted it's getting attention, but was horrified to see in the Lead the statement that since 1967, when the island reached its maximum size of 2.7 km², "wind and wave erosion has seen the island steadily diminish in size, in the year 2002 it was only 1.4 km² in size." (Hasn't anybody measured it since 2002? Measurements given under "Settlement of life"—slightly odd placement— are from 2001.) That sounds horribly like it'll be all gone soon, especially that "steadily". Some reassurance was brought by the soothing heading "A permanent island" below, and the statement that since 1967 "erosion has seen the island diminish in size somewhat". But I'd really like to see this apparent contradiction resolved. 2.7 to 1.4, practically halving in size, is to diminish "somewhat"...? And can we, or can't we, trust that "hard cap of extremely erosion-resistant rock" to protect what's left of the island? An explicit and internally consistent projection of hopes and fears for the future of Surtsey would be great.

I think I gleaned from a documentary the claim that Surtsey was colonized by plants (from seeds dropped by birds) and birds much more quickly than the scientific community had predicted. Do you know if that's true? Would it be worth including, to qulify the "gradually", and to inject a little more bzazz into the rather short and sedately narrated "Settlement of life" section?

The image is hauntingly beautiful. (Well, I have a taste for the bleak.) Is it possible to get more images? The scientists allowed on the island have presumably brought cameras sometimes: is everything of that nature copyrighted? Naturally it would be wonderful to have an image (or, fevered dream, a video clip!) of the original eruption. To my memory, the documentaries I've seen about Surtsey (I'd get up off my deathbed to watch a Surtsey documentary) have had lots of great footage of the island being born, filmed from airplanes, of course. But I suppose none of it is PD? Failing that, perhaps an animated GIF, like of the tsunami on the Main Page? A map showing growth, then diminution over the years? Btw, I read the image caption as claiming that that image ("Surtsey from plane, 1999.jpg") is a satellite image, which is obviously not the case. Could the article also display inline the cool satellite image that's linked to? Those NASA images are free to use, aren't they?

But I especially need a state-of-the-art prediction for Surtsey's future, you want me to sleep at night, don't you? Bishonen | Talk 17:54, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Thank you very much for these very helpful suggestions! I can only hope that the section I've added about the future of Surtsey has come soon enough to prevent a sleepless night for you - you'll be relieved to hear that it seems the island will be with us for a long while yet :) I hope I have made the article consistent with itself now on that score. I've expanded the 'Settlement of life' section a bit, hopefully made it more lively reading. I'll have to do a bit more reading around to try to discover how the spread of life compared to scientific expectations though. I found some PD photos of the eruption. I also removed the confusing link to satellite image in the caption of the top photo, and uploaded that image for use later in the article. No luck in finding any PD footage unfortunately, I am not sure there is any, sadly.

Thanks again - grateful for any further thoughts you might have. Worldtraveller 22:48, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Phew! [Breaking out major bath towel to wipe sweat of anxiety from brow]. I did see the new section just before bedtime, thanks for saving me the nightmares! The NASA pic is calming too, by displaying the classic round volcano shape + sandspit: it shows this is no mere falling-apart sliver, as it could have been from the airplane image, but a robust island wearing a hard hat. Cool. I really can't think of anything else. The "Settlement of life" section is very nice, with the suggestive mention of the intrepid early scouting gulls. :-) Maybe the page still needs something... a little more flesh, somehow. I can't exactly think of what, though. Maybe something about the shape you don't see? The island is the tip of a big-ass underwater mountain, presumaby? Are there PD drawings of what the mountain looks like? Have divers been permitted to go down there? Does it have, uh, I don't know, a special underwater fauna of its own? Anyway, I do appreciate your taking on this coolest-ever subject, I'm sure it'll make a great featured article. (Many apologies, incidentally, for chatting with Giano on your talk page.) Bishonen | Talk 20:05, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Glad the info got to you in time :) Thanks very much for further suggestions - I'll see what I can find out about the under-sea portion of the volcano, it may make an interesting section. And no worries about chatting on my talk page, I'm happy to play host any time! Worldtraveller 15:32, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

First, as Worldtraveller pointed out most of what has been washed away is stray tehera, Surtsey is likeley to looks something like this in the future once most or all tehera is washed away and the ocean starts (slowly) to erode the bedrock.

I think there's alot that can be added to the article, Worldtraveller and others have done a great so far of bringing this up to par, a large obsticle for them however is that alot of the source material is in Icelandic.

First, the plant and animal life, I found information on the plant and animal life to be incomplete and in some cases (as far as I can see) wrong, e.g. in total some 30 species of plants are found on Surtsey. this conflicts with this which lists findings as of 2003: Með þessari viðbót hafa fundist 60 tegundir háplantna í Surtsey frá því fyrsta plantan nam þar land árið 1965. (Icelandic: with these additions sixty species of high plants (I'm unaware of the proper translation for this technical term or its definition) have been found in Surtsey since the first plant settled there in 1965), this only lists high plants which are presumably plants beyond a certan size or plants which just grow upwards (as opposed to e.g. moss), although I have no idea, one thing that is certain however is that the number of plants in this subset of all plants is tvice as large than the number of plants claimed to be in the universal set in the article.

Furthermore information on animal life is lacking, in an expedition to the island in 2004, detailed in this article (complete with pictures), several Atlantic Puffins were found. Although the scientists 'saw' no nests they presume them to be 2-3 judging by the behaviour of the birds as they were feeding (they frequenty disappeared into the side of rocks at thee different locations, puffins often nests at such locations). A section on all these findings, and all plant and animal findings by year should be added to the article.

On to other issues, there is no information at all on the naming dispute, there is a paragraph on the issue in Íslenska Alfræðiorðabókin (The Icelandic Encyclopedia) which I have a copy of but cannot find at the moment, several names were apperently proposed including Ísleifsey (Ísleifs Island, a reference to the boat that first witnessed it), Vestey (West Island, a references to the Vestmannaeyjar archipelago) was apperently quite popular with the population of Heimaey at the time. Also, one proposed name (IIRC) was nýey (new island), proponents of this name made (IIRC) the argument that when the island disappeared back into the ocean, as was presumed would happen soon at the time the name could simply be changed to nýei, but ei is a one of the words in Icelandic that can be used as not (also as a suffix), ei and ey are pronounced in the same way in Icelandic, and i don't know about you but native speakers at least think this proposition if funny:)

Also, regarding the french landing, the Icelandic Coast Guard was critisised at time for not being the first to make a landing on the island, their directors response was something like "it's not my place to risk the life of my men for petty nationalism" (note, I'm writing this from memory so this is almost most certanly not exactly what he said, but you get the idea), I can dig up his name and the exact quote if I ever find the book mentioned above. —Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 21:06, 2005 Feb 17 (UTC)

Many thanks for very detailed comments! I have added more information about life on the island, although undoubtedly there is more that can be said. I'd need to do more reading around on that, and my knowledge of Icelandic is certainly lacking so as you say, many sources are not available to me :) I also mentioned the other possibilities for the name of the island (very interesting, I hadn't heard of them before), and the criticism of the coast guard. On both those, if you have a printed source, you can probably make what I've said more accurate. Worldtraveller 15:26, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I commented out some of your new additions for now, as I said I'm not sure about some of the information I provided and will have to find the source, I'm not even sure about the name Nýe(i|y, just of the suffix. If it proves to be correct it can be reinstated but as it is I fear it might do more harm than good by providing misinformation. —Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 03:27, 2005 Feb 23 (UTC)

Well, I hope you might be able to provide confirmation of the information at some point. In the meantime, I'll see if I can find any non-Icelandic sources with further info. Worldtraveller 16:47, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I can see Surtsey whenever I take walks to the west side of town - I live on Heimaey (the only populated island in Vestmannaeyjar). Despite the fact that nobody is allowed to go to Surtsey, there are a couple of people who get to go there each year, and I have asked for permission tag along in the next trip, responce pending - if I go I'll take loads of pictures.

Anyway, last summer I held a dimunitive lecture for some NASA scientists about the errosion of Surtsey, based on the masters thesis of some guy named Björn who I can't recall the full name or e-mail address of right now; but I have it at work - I'm thinking of asking him permission to use his echogrammetric photographs on Wikipedia. Bug me about it, by all means! --Smári McCarthy 23:35, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Hope you get your permission to land on the island, that would be a fabulous opportunity! If you can get the permission to use the thesis work you mention, that would be great. It occurs to me that if you live on Heimaey, you might possibly be able to ask at the Volcano Show (I think it's called that) if there is any footage of the Surtsey eruption in the public domain - that would really enhance this article no end. I was going to get in touch with Villi Knudsen of the Volcano Show in Reykjavík, but he doesn't seem to have a website any more unfortunately. Worldtraveller 17:38, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I know the curator of the volcanic film show - it's on the same street as I live on and her son is one of my closest friends. Unfortunately the footage they have is not public domain, but my former maths teacher probably has some good footage of the erruption; I'll ask him. I haven't yet contacted the man who made the thesis, been a bit busy recently. Regarding the trip to Surtsey, it won't be until around the end of July. Until then, there's work to be done... keep me posted. --Smári McCarthy 11:30, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Staten Island

There are three bridges to New Jersey. The Outerbridge Crossing to Perth Amboy and the Goethals Bridge to Elizabeth opened in 1928 and the Bayonne Bridge to Bayonne in 1931. I can't offer anything current, I haven't lived on the Island since 1978. RossPatterson 20:17, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Four bridges if you include the recently restored Staten Island Railway Bridge, also connecting Staten Island to Elizabeth, New Jersey, and it's the oldest. Digit LeBoid 21:22, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Split Enz

This article has some great content, but its structure is really hard to read. It has a lot of potential, but it needs some work, and some news ideas to make it a feature article.--Brendanfox 03:52, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Hmmm... that structure could definitely do with a going over. I'm thinking that there should be a secitn calld "History", and then a whole new section that deals with the songs. The songs are amazing, by the way. Two of my favourites are "Shark Attack" and "I See Red"! I own the Enzo album - it's pretty amazing. I'm a fan, though not as big as others. However, that said: the article needs some NPOVing and a good copyedit. Also, I'd like to know what references we are using here! - Ta bu shi da yu 02:07, 21 Feb 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 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 Describe cryptanalysis of digital signatures -- what are the various notions (See all to-do lists for this WikiReader)

1898 invasion of Guantánamo Bay

This was taken from a U.S. military website and is in the public domain [3]. I've gone through it and done a copyedit, wikified it and taken out some minor POV wordings. What else should be resolved in this article? - Ta bu shi da yu 13:06, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)

• I would love to see maps of the various operations if some can be found or made. Apart from that, I can't see anything missing / needing attention. WegianWarrior 08:20, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)
• More research to back up the facts in the article and to see if there is anything else important that needs coverage is the only thing I see. It looks really good otherwise. - Taxman 15:46, Feb 25, 2005 (UTC)

Walt Disney

Note: the first request for peer review can be found at Wikipedia:Peer review/Walt Disney/archive1. - Ta bu shi da yu 02:59, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I am going to re-request this article for peer review, because it needs a major rewrite, and the bulk of its content needs to be split into a second article called Walt Disney animation studio which should contain the infor that is currently at Walt Disney Feature Animation as well. See its talk page for more information. --b. Touch 22:27, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Once the article is split, little will be left. There needs to be more information about his personal life, and the subheadings under the main Biography heading need to be merged with one another. Alexs letterbox 07:49, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I've finished my contribution to an alternate version of the article at Walt Disney/temp. What do you think; is there anything that should be changed, added, or deleted? As far as the Disney studio is concerned, I tried to cover it as consisely as possible for the entire period that Disney himself was directly involved and interested in it (early Kansas City days until roughtly 1950). After that, the focus shifts to Disneyland, television, and Disney World. The article on Walt Disney animation studio would cover the studio in slightly more detail, and of couse be equally concerned with all of the studio's animated features and short subjects series. --b. Touch 17:18, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Well, if no one objects, I'm going to replace the old article with the new one tomorrow (didn't anybody want to try and help out?) --b. Touch 18:46, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Disgaea

I've been working on this article for quite some time. I'd like to eventually send it to featured article candidates and would appreciate any relevant feedback. - RedWordSmith 01:41, Feb 15, 2005 (UTC)

I love the fact that I can stumble over new stuff every day here on Wikipedia ;) Overall, good article, but I noticed a few things:

• The sections 'Gameplay features' and 'Characthers' are bulleted lists... which I'm personly ain't too keen on. Would it be possible to turn it into 'proper' sentences and paragraphs instead? I think that would make it easier to read.
• Part of the article - in particular the section 'Gameplay features' reads like an advertisment blurb. Again, turning it into 'proper' sentences and paragraph might help, as well as a carefull rewording.

I'm looking forward to seeing how this turns out after PR. WegianWarrior 08:42, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I've had a stab at "De-listing" the Gameplay features section. What do you think of it now? Has the change in format made it seem less like an ad? - RedWordSmith 04:26, Feb 17, 2005 (UTC)

Looks - and reads - much better. I think part of the reason I felt it rad like an ad was the format used (bulleted list).WegianWarrior 10:17, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

King Crimson

This article has been maturing gradually for quite some time now. It is approaching what I would consider featured-article status, but is probably in need of some fine-tuning before it should be nominated. Is anything still lacking? Would a non-Crimson fan find it interesting and worth reading? Is the history of band membership rotation boring? -- Wapcaplet 02:19, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

• Band membership is not boring. I had no idea so many notable musicians are part of King Crimson's history. I'm a fan of progressive rock, but never made the effort to learn about King Crimson. Maybe that was a mistake. BTW, Tony Levin has also recorded with Pink Floyd. --Trweiss 05:26, Feb 11, 2005 (UTC)
  • Boy, it'd probably be shorter to list the musicians that Tony Levin has not worked with :-) Man gets around. I agree that the band membership history is interesting, but I want to make sure it has a good narrative flow, and incorporates other important things, such as the style of music produced with various members, other activities such as recording and touring, etc. I'm worried it still comes off sounding like "And then, all these musicians joined unto King Crimson with their respective instruments, and yea, did vamoose a year later, replaced by so-and-so, who did depart after recording YACK: Yet Another King Crimson. And thenceforth came an unusually long period of three years, during which the band contained the same members, and did not change", etc. Steps have definitely been made in the right direction, but I suspect it needs the touch of a fan more familiar with the band's past. I'm a young'un, and only started getting into them with Thrak. -- Wapcaplet 17:14, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • P.S. - I guess part of the problem is that so many of the albums have their own nicely-written articles, where the musical style and direction is covered in detail, leaving little about that topic to the main article. Perhaps a few bits of information could be extracted from each album's article, for inclusion here, just to flesh out the story a little. Hardly anything is said here about In the Court of the Crimson King, arguably their most influential album. I picture this article as a more scholarly version of a Behind the Music documentary (which, by the way, have they ever done for KC? It'd have to be three hours long!). -- Wapcaplet 17:27, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)
• I'm not a King Crimson fan (although I recently watched and enjoyed the Eyes Wide Open DVD). I found this article to be well-written, interesting, and happily avoids any tendency for overly-sympathetic hagiography (something that often marrs this type of article). Well done to those responsible. To be featured, it would definitely need some photography as illustration. The band rotation is essential information, even though it's never going to be that fascinating for a reader with only casual interest. The article deals with King Crimson's influences, but it might also be worth addressing who they have influenced themselves, if such information can be added without speculation. — Matt Crypto 21:48, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Sausage Race

This is a self-nomination. I'm relatively new here and was hoping for some pointers and suggestions from the community. This article is fairly complete and I want it to fit in. - User:Trweiss 09:44, 11 Feb 2005

haha! It made me laugh :-) that said, I think perhaps, er, "Sausagegate" could do with some NPOVing (see Wikipedia:Neutral point of view. For instance, calling someone classy is kind of boosting them (which on any other site would be OK, but we don't hold those positions here). I personally think that bullet points where not really needed are evil, but that's just me :-) Can we get a source for "It's hard to say what accounts for the popularity of the sausage race. Undoubtedly, four adults dressed in oversized foamrubber sausage suits "competing" in a race is so absurd, so outrageously exaggerated, that it's hard not to smile. But that hardly explains the cult following. Perhaps Brewers' fans need something to cheer for other than the long-suffering home team." I know that sounds odd, but we don't allow for original research. Perhaps we could find a commentator who says that? Or perhaps it should be toned down a bit. Lastly (and I've done this for you), external links and references should be split into different sections. External links is really like further reading or interesting related links. References is for sources you've looked at to gather info on the article. For more info, see Wikipedia:Cite sources. One last thing: you say that "The Associated Press quotes Laurel Prieb, Brewers vice president, as saying the sausages were introduced "as a lark" around 1995. At first, the sausages were just another dumb animated scoreboard race. Bringing them to life was key to their current popularity." Which article? We need a reference to it to add to the references section. - Ta bu shi da yu 03:11, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)

French legislation on cult abuses

Some other editors seem to contend that the content of this article is too biased in favor of the point of view of the French government. I have made a large number of edits to this article, and as much as possible I tried to stick to facts and legal cases, and avoid quotations of opinions, suppositions, hypotheses and alarmism.

I am somewhat unhappy with the external link section. First, the section seems to be solidly biased in favor of the criticism of the law. Second, the relevance of the linked articles is not obvious to me. Some articles are written by self-described human rights groups, but I wonder whether they have any kind of wide recognition. Some of the articles discuss paragraphs of the law... that do not exist (or only existed in early drafts); presumably, the authors of such "references" did not know what they wrote about. Etc. David.Monniaux 21:24, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Complaint of abuse of sysop privileges by David Monniaux moved to Talk:French legislation against cult abuses#Controversy with an anonymous user. Note: Anon user believes this complaint to be at the core of this Peer Review. --38.119.107.72 16:42, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Look at that, the first anon ever to be a sysop candidate. Who is For ? Against ? Neutral ? ;-))) --Pgreenfinch 17:34, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

---

Regarding his request for peer review, the external link is just a small sample of the criticism by European nations, US and human rights organizations against what they consider a degradation of freedom of religion in France.

Do you call these "Self-described" human rights advocacy groups?

• The Council of Europe
• The International Federation for Human Rights
• The European Court of Human Rights
• The Helsinki International Federation for Human Rights

--38.119.107.72 03:27, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

The Council of Europe has expressed concerns on the legislation, but has refrained from considering it to be an infringement on human rights. The European Court of Human Rights has not expressed itself on the topic. The International Federation for Human Rights, this one is notorious. The Helsinki International Federation for Human Rights, I had never heard about it, it seems to be less notorious than the preceding. The remarks of the US government have ceased with the Bush administration, giving credence to the thesis that they were motivated by financial support of the Clinton administration by financial groups. Where are the remarks from European nations?

The external links that I disagree especially with are two from un-notorious sources (a Canadian professor and some organization) that criticize non-existant disposition of the law. One of them, for instance, quotes some disposition in "section 1" of the law... and if you read the actual law, there's no such disposition, in section 1 or anywhere. How relevant is "criticism" of a law from un-notorious people who haven't even read it?

Who is the Coordination des Associations & Particuliers pour la Liberté de Conscience? Who is the International Foundation for Human Rights and Tolerance? David.Monniaux 08:55, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Aren't you confusing the interventions of some advocates of a position in some mmeting of those organizations or some reports presented to it, with an official positions from those organizations?

You can cover biased statement by using such official-looking attributions. There is a craze by some to find attributions for every line of every article. Not only it makes for confusing articles, unaccessible to the common reader, as playgrounds for specialists only, but also it smacks of lawyers' ploys. Attributions, playing on the notoriety of the attributtee, and presented to support a thesis, sometimes stink as just maneuvers.

I suggest that all quotations and attributions should be kept out of the main texts, and become footnotes, for the specialists to play and have their solitary pleasures. This is my theory, "always isolate the side mess from the main mess". You are welcome to quote it and attribute it to me, or to the International Organization and Court of Greenfinch Rights on Attributions and Quotations;-)) --Pgreenfinch 08:36, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Don't see what the problem is here. As far as I can see the ongoing debate between Pgreenfinch, Mr. Monniaux, anons and myself, has led to a substatially better and more comprehensive article (check the history!). This energy is what fuels WP. Let it be, rather than quash it. Let the critics make their point, let the pro About-Piccard make theirs. All will contribute to a better article and more informed readers. --Zappaz 17:35, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I researched what the European Court of Human Rights had to say on the matter, and it seems that, on two occasions, they rejected recourses against the main matters discussed of the article (the parliamentary reports, and the About-Picard law).

I contend that many of the "references" and quotations added by our anonymous (and anonymized?) friend are not that relevant. Criteria for relevance include: 1) being from a notorious, identifiable source on the topic being discussed 2) being well-researched and documented. This is especially true about criticism.

If, for instance, somebody went to George W. Bush and added any criticism about Bush's policies that he could find worlwide in the word of any, however minor, left-wing group, the size of the article would explode, and other editors would remove the irrelevant material.

On aspect 2), I do not think that it helps much to include criticisms from unknown sources that, for instance, criticize inexistent sections of a law. I mean, it's not rocket science to get the text of a French law, there are free Web services for it; it's not rocket science either to use Google translate or Babelfish. If somebody cannot do those two simple things, then I wonder what kind of criticism he or she can write.

On aspect 1), it must be pointed out that, nowadays, (almost) anybody can found an association of protection of the rights of anything, open a Web site, and post "reports" and opinion pieces on it. But, seriously, how is that relevant to quote such opinions in an Encyclopedia?

Institutions such as the Council of Europe and the European Court of Human Rights are certainly notable (plus, in the case of the ECHR, they may issue legal rulings on the matter). Associations such as Amnesty International or the French League of Human Rights have a long history and are well-respected. The French Protestant Federation is an association of note. But, seriously, should we include the rants of any random association, just because they show up on Google when one types certain phrases and they show the POV that the editor wishes?

I have strived to, as much as possible, include references from well-identifiable, reputed sources. If there was discussion of legal aspects, I strived to obtain the legal texts – of laws, of rulings –, in preference to posting what somebody (who may not even have read the text, or knows about it from hearsay) commented upon it.

(Note for Zappaz: I'm not a big fan of some of the actions of my government with respect to "cults". Still, I think that they should not be mis-represented, especially when authoritative documentation is available.) David.Monniaux 17:53, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Furthermore I think, like Pgreenfinch, that we should be careful not to represent the position of somebody intervening at a meeting organized by an institution as the position of that institution. In all cases, precise attributions should help dispel any doubt or misunderstanding. As an example, I replaced vague wording about some criticism from an OSCE meeting to those who uttered it during that meeting (representatives from the Church of Scientology and other groups). David.Monniaux 19:09, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

NATO phonetic alphabet

This is an interesting article, and I'd like to get it featured. What should I do to get improve it? - Ta bu shi da yu 01:02, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)

For me, the table is rather ugly and dominates the top of the page. It may be better in two column: since there are 26 letters and 10 numbers, that would make 18 lines plus a header, rather than the 37 lines at present. Also, shouldn't the pronuncucation be in a recognised phonemes, such as the International Phonetic Alphabet, rather than, for example, "AL FAH" (or is this representation specified by ICAO/ITU/FAA?). Also, no images. -- ALoan (Talk) 11:45, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)

What images could be used, however? I'll try and get that table into two columns. - Ta bu shi da yu 06:35, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I found and added an image which may make the table partially redundant, though I think the table offers more detail. The image of an FAA morse and phonetic chart shows that the alphabet is in current official use. Also, the Roman phoneticisms used in the table are backed up by their similar appearance in the image. I've also added an attempt at IPA based on careful reading of International Phonetic Alphabet for English. - Keith D. Tyler [flame] 20:06, Feb 18, 2005 (UTC)

Gymnopaedia

See: Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Gymnopaedia/archive1 (Peer Review suggested instead of FAC - that page contains comments regarding the original article, only "referencing" has been elaborated since the first remarks there).

Additionally,

• It appears unclear when Ancient Greeks used the term gumnopaidia, whether they referred to a festival or to a dance. Depending on source, one get one definition or the other. As far as I could determine in the oldest times it was the festival that was meant; later Greek writers (from the Roman era) referred to it as a dance only. Would that be correct?
• (No peer review issue, but nonetheless): I think the article would greatly benefit from an image from an antique Greek vase (or so) picturing some war-dancing ancient Greeks (or anything else related to a "gymnopaedia"-like dance setup). All my searches have not been able to come up with such image in public domain or copylefted compatible with Wikipedia. Anybody having a clue?
• I wrote an e-mail (in Dutch) to Mr. Naerebout, drawing attention to the article (one never knows he'd be interested in becoming a wikipedian...). I'll leave a note on this page if I get any reaction to that outside the wiki medium.

--Francis Schonken 09:24, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Mount Pinatubo

I've been working over the past few days on fleshing out this article about the volcano and its huge 1991 eruption. Would very much appreciate any comments on how it looks and what else might be worth including or expanding on. Worldtraveller 14:04, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The range is the Zambales Mountains.

Perhaps a mention of the Pinatubo Aeta? RJH 20:14, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Don't know about the name, I'll see what I can find out. Will include info about the Aeta, they're mentioned in the main reference I've used and I'm sure lots more can be said about them. Worldtraveller 23:27, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I found out a bit about the etymology of the name, that's in there now, and also quite a lot about the Aeta and how the eruption affected them. Worldtraveller 22:38, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Certainly it's a good article already. Here are my ramblings about how it might be improved.

• I think the title needs to be changed. "Mount Pinatubo" would be an article about the mountain/volcano; I would expect such an article to contain information about its geological formation, its cultural and religious significance thoughout history, prior eruptions—stuff like that. Instead, this article is about a specific event in the volcano's history: the 1991 eruption. You might want to rename it to something like 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo. Compare Mount St. Helens with 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens to see what I mean.
• A set of maps, showing the topology of the area, the surrounding villages and maybe the extent of the different flows and ash precipitation would be helpful.
• I get the feeling that the article in its current state is a good, scientifically sound and factual treatise of a geological event. Nothing wrong with that. However, it makes the story a bit sterile. I kind of miss the human aspect of it all. For instance: the effects on the local population are described in a single paragraph. How many people were living there? What kind of an economy were they running before the eruption? The scientists who worked for the institutes that did the predictions remain nameless in the article. Who were they? Very little is said about the evacuation: who organized it? How was it conducted? What happened to all these people? Where are they now? Have people returned to the area? Etcetera. To summarise: an event of this magnitude most likely had a huge impact on the lives of the people it affected; I think the article would be greatly enhanced if it shed light on that side of things: it would make it a lot more personal and engaging. Good luck! --Plek 20:56, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)

These are great comments, and I'll set to work on addressing them. A question regarding the article title though - would it be better to change this to an article just about 1991, or instead expand it to include information about before? I'd been thinking about this myself and thought I'd rather add a bit more info about what's known of previous eruptions, and the pre-1991 local significance of the mountain. Worldtraveller 23:27, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Ah, yes, of course. Adding all that to the article under its current name is an option I was thinking about, but failed to include in my ramblings. I guess it all depends on the amount of information you've got and whether you think it's enough to build a comprehensive article about the mountain. Alternatively, working on just the 1991 eruption for now might prove to be a shorter path to a Featured status, because I imagine it's easier to obtain good sources for such a recent event. Translation: it's all up to you ;-) --Plek 23:49, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)

OK, on point 1 I've broadened the scope of the article and I hope there's enough about things other than 1991 now. Point 2, got a map of the area showing locations of villages, and also an aerial photo showing locations of pyroclastic flow deposits and a map showing where tephra fell. Point 3, I've now included lots more about the effect of the eruption on the people of the area.

Thanks again, Plek and RJH, for very helpful comments. How do you think the article is looking? Ready for FAC? Worldtraveller 22:38, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Julia Stiles

I've done a lot of work on this article, just posting a complete rewrite with a good bibliography. I know it needs a photograph, but otherwise I think its getting closer to meeting the FAC guidelines for content. PedanticallySpeaking 17:40, Feb 25, 2005 (UTC)

• It looks good to me; one of the better-developed pages on modern actors I've read on wikipedia. — RJH
• I like it too, however, it could use a few photos, even just one head shot. It could also be a bit lengthened, but I do not know enough about her otherwise to know if that is everything, as in, there is not really much more. Nice overall. --Lan56 02:43, Feb 27, 2005 (UTC)
• Yeah, needs photos. Vidcapture screenshots could be considered fair use I guess. Better yet would be to see if you can contact someone that has seen her perform and has taken pictures and is willing to release one under the GFDL. Maybe you could start by contacting a fan club and see where that goes. Great work on the referencing. Overall looks pretty good. I can't think of anything missing, so maybe check some other biographies of stars to see if they have covered anything missing here. - Taxman 18:16, Mar 2, 2005 (UTC)
• I also like the article. She's an interesting actress - I didn't realize she'd done so much. It's far superior to many other "celebrity" articles, well written and free from POV statements. I think also it needs some photos. If you decide to go with screenshots, and you're stuck, let me know - I may be able to come up with something. Rossrs 15:09, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)'
• Niteowlneils has added a photo. My thanks to him. PedanticallySpeaking 15:48, Mar 5, 2005 (UTC)
• I nominated this article at WP:FAC today. PedanticallySpeaking 17:56, Mar 7, 2005 (UTC)

Wladyslaw Sikorski

A very interesting bio I'd like to see FACed one day. But as any article that contains words 'controversy' and 'conspiracy theory', this needs help, like NPOVing. ATM I am not sure what to fix/expand - I'd appreciaty any other comments you may have. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 21:36, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Add another conspiratorial note: I don't see mention here of Sikorski's pilot, the Czech Prchal, sole survivor of the crash. Why was a Czech assigned to fly Sikorski, when there were so many fine Polish pilots, while the Czechs held a long-standing antagonism toward the Poles?

The article otherwise looks good overall, except for needing language editing in places. Logologist 10:16, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I expanded the article yet again. As for Prchal, here is the answer from Irving's book: Through the Polish Consul, General Sikorski asked one favour of the R.A.F.: he had been greatly impressed by the skill and experience of the R.A.F. pilot who had flown him out from England, Flight Lieutenant Edward Prchal: could he have the same pilot to fly him back? The favour was granted, and Prchal and his crew were detailed by R.A.F. Transport Command to fly Sikorski’s party back to England, in the same Liberator, AL523, as had flown them out. To mark his esteem of Prchal, General Sikorski procured a silver cigarette case in Cairo, and had it inscribed and presented to the officer. That Prchal was the pilot for the return flight purely as the consequence of a specific request from Sikorski is one of the main factors in dismissing the credibility of certain allegations that followed the disaster --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 18:54, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Lord Dufferin

I nominated this article on FAC a while ago (see the old nomination). It didn't garner any great support, though I tried to address the objections that were raised. I wonder if anyone's got any suggestions on what could be done to improve this article? Worldtraveller 17:29, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

It looks good, and old objections are adressed. I did some minor appearance fixes. While it is a bit short (it could use more expantion at least to 32kb), this is no objection. I think it is ready for FAC again. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 11:14, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments. Having found a reference that contains information about some of Dufferin's other diplomatic postings I think I can expand the article quite a lot. Also, Fawcett5 has noticed that a lot of the Canada info is at least partially in violation of copyright, so definitely a bit of work to do now before it can be nominated for FA again.

I see you resized the image at the top. At 200px wide it looks horribly pixelated to me - that was why I'd reduced it. I think maybe it would be better to swap the two images over and have the higher-resolution portrait at the top. What do you think? Worldtraveller 14:32, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Good idea. The black&white one may be slightly decreased, but its previous tiny stamp size was too small, IMHO. I look forward to reading the rewritten article. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 21:44, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

This article has now undergone what I would characterise as an extremely productive peer review, and I believe it very close now to FAC-worthiness. Does a consensus now exist that the article is FAC-ready? If so, I will nominate it. Please comment either here or on the discussion page. Fawcett5 23:20, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Nominated this for FAC today Fawcett5 00:07, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)