Wikipedia:Peer review/Augustinian theodicy/archive1

Augustinian theodicy

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I recently created this page and have been working on it since. I have the long term goal of getting this to Good Article status - I'd like feedback on how far I am to reaching that and what needs to be done to improve it.

Thanks, ItsZippy ^{(talk • Contributions)} 18:58, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Ruhrfisch comments: Thanks for this interesting article. I think it needs some work to get to GA and better follow the MOS, here are some suggestions for improvement. I will review both theodicy articles - this and Irenaean theodicy, so some of the comments will be the same on each PR.

• A model article is useful for ideas and examples to follow. There are quite a few FAs on religion at Wikipedia:Featured_articles#Religion.2C_mysticism_and_mythology, which may be useful models. I was also not sure why this is in the Philosopy WikiProject but not Religion.
• The lead is only three sentences and does not really follow WP:LEAD. The lead should be an accessible and inviting overview of the whole article.
• Nothing important should be in the lead only - since it is a summary, it should all be repeated in the body of the article itself, but this is only in the lead The theodicy was developed by Augustine of Hippo in his works, Confessions and City of God.[1]
• My rule of thumb is to include every header in the lead in some way. However neither the Biblical basis, nor any of the criticisms seem to be in the lead now.
• The article needs to do a better job of providing context to the reader - for example there is no real explanation or background on the problem of Theodicy, nor is there any information to put Augustine into context (when did he live, why did he write City of God)? See WP:PCR
• Or who is Friedrich Schleiermacher and why is his critique important?
• The article needs to do a better job with wikilinks. City of God and Confessions can both be linked. God should liked on first use, not its sixth use in the article (not counting City of God). Also does it help to link common terms most readers undertand like Perfect? See WP:OVERLINK
• Some things in the article seem wrong - Evolution does not argue that life is "improving", just better adapted to its environment.
• WP:See also says in general not to list links in the See also section which are already linked in the article.
• Given Augustine's importance as a church father and the effect of his theology on centuries of western religious thought, I expected there to be more history. What was the previous widespread theodicy in the church? How long did Augustine's theodicy hold sway? Whom did it influence (not just who criticized it)? What role has it played in the general development of theodicy in Christianity and beyond?
• several of the critiques are not attributed - who made these criticisms, when, and why?
• A Good Article has to be broad in its coverage (a Featured article has to be comprehensive). This is not up to either of these standards yet.
• References need to provide more complete information. For example, internet refs need URL, title, author if known, publisher and date accessed. {{cite web}} and other cite templates may be helpful. See WP:CITE and WP:V
• Make sure the sources used are reliable - see WP:RS. Augustine is very important in Christian theology and there have been a lot of books written on him, yet this article seems to mostly use some websites which are of questionable reliablity (what makes Scandalon.co.uk a RS?), and a textbook for A level students (again is this the best source possible??). Get thee to a library.
• I noticed that this topic is not mentioned in the body of the article about Augustine (though it is a hatnote and See also link there)
• Prose is decent.
• Please make sure that the existing text includes no copyright violations, plagiarism, or close paraphrasing. For more information on this please see Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2009-04-13/Dispatches. (This is a general warning given in all peer reviews, in view of previous problems that have risen over copyvios.)

Hope this helps. If my comments are useful, please consider peer reviewing an article, especially one at Wikipedia:Peer review/backlog (which is how I found this article). I do not watch peer reviews, so if you have questions or comments, please contact me on my talk page. Yours, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 04:25, 16 September 2011 (UTC)