Wikipedia:Peer review/Fortress of Luxembourg/archive1

Fortress of Luxembourg

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because I have expanded it from a stub into a quite substantial article, and intend to get it to Good Article status at some point. Comments on every aspect are welcome, while those on article structure, layout, and missing supporting materials (e.g. pictures) are particularly appreciated. Also, if you think any sections need to be trimmed.

Thanks, Dr Gangrene (talk) 11:58, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

Hi Dr Gangrene,

You've done a good job, but there are some aspects that'll need work, mostly:

1. The citations you provide are per paragraph, not per phrase. Inline citations need to be just that - at the end of the phrase they support.
2. Tone. Some rhetorical phrases like "How were these troops to be accommodated?" are chatty and non-encyclopedic in tone, but the problem's not too widespread and shouldn't be a major issue.
3. Could do with a thorough grammar & syntax check. I noticed a couple of sentences in which the phrasing and grammar was very clumsy, presumably an oversight.

All the best. Brigade Piron (talk) 12:38, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

Thank you. I have now added more inline citations. After a thorough copy-edit, I think the phrasing and grammar are less clumsy, and have edited for tone as well. Dr Gangrene (talk) 19:49, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

Comments Just some copyediting comments: - Dank (push to talk)

• "the approaches between France and Germany": That may be too long a border for the meaning of the word "approaches" to be self-evident.

I have changed this to "border area".

• "France, Germany, United Kingdom": We're not usually linking countries that your readership will be familiar with.

I have unlinked these.

• "This domination was thought to be comparable to the dominance": You haven't mentioned a domination (only an "importance") at this point, and we prefer not to use words with the same root in two different senses in the same sentence.

OK, this part of the lead section has been re-written.

• "thought to be comparable", "historical nickname": Different reviewers will have different reactions to this ... some will call these weasel words, others will say that they're fine, because it's assumed in high-quality historical narrative that we're talking about the consensus of historians. There's no single approach that everyone agrees on, I'm just alerting you to be ready with a response.

These weasel words have now been removed.

• "unbowed resistance that the Gibraltar garrison offered to Spanish attempts to reclaim it": Heads can be unbowed, but not resistance. Also, this may be stretching a point; see our article on History of Gibraltar (which became Featured about a year ago). "offering resistance to attempts" isn't idiomatic.

This part of the lead section has now been deleted.

• "It thus had": See WP:Checklist#because. Bottom line: cause-and-effect words are fine when you need them, but it causes all kinds of problems when they're inserted randomly as fillers or segues. Skimming through the text, I see more of these words than you need.

I have gone through the article, it now includes fewer of these filler words, I hope.

• " 'Gibraltar of the North' ": Use double quote marks per MOS:QUOTEMARKS.

Done.

• "(French: Gibraltar du Nord, German: Gibraltar des Nordens)": If the purpose of giving the translations is so that people searching for those terms will find this article, that probably isn't necessary in this case. If the purpose is to assert that the terms, and thus the concepts, have credibility in French and German, simply asserting that the phrases exist doesn't make that point, you'd need to say something stronger ... even if it's as simple as "French and German sources also routinely refer to the fortress as ...".

These have now been deleted.

- Dank (push to talk) 14:03, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

Comments from SGGH (talk · contribs)

Hi there. Leaving some comments as requested, though I see that other users have jumped in ahead of me now. Sorry if I duplicate anything.

• Infobox Military Installation has more fields than are being used here, particularly the map references, current condition (though I appreciate that is easily deduced) whether the remains are open to the public, who built it, what materials etc.

I have added some more fields to the infobox.

• Slight copy edit for flow in the lead. Therefore rather than thus, and who thought this about the comparison with Gibraltar?

After copy-editing, the weasel words and instances of "thus" have been rooted out.

• "period of great construction activity" the activity is a redundant word here.

OK, I have changed this.

• You could get away with merging the last two paragraphs of the lead.

I have added some content to the last paragraph, so it can now stand on its own, I think.

• The roman section is uncited.

This is now cited.

• "Castle" is a bit of a generalised title for the second section, perhaps include the time frame? Also it has no references.

This now has references, and I have changed it to "Medieval castle".

• Same for "Fortress", general title.

Changed to "Development and use as fortress", what do you think?

All in all, however, I think it's an excellent article with a vast coverage. There's a lot of content in here and it covers many areas. You do need to have more in-line citations, rather than just one or two and the end of a paragraph, and there are a couple of paragraphs/sections with no citations. There are a few other copy-edit issues but the users above have mentioned the ones I've noticed, and also the "chatty" line that was mentioned at the top. Other than that, very good. Well done. --S.G.^(GH) _ping! 15:06, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

Response Thank you very much for your feedback everyone, it is appreciated. I will use your advice and continue to work on the article. Dr Gangrene (talk) 14:16, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

Suggestions generated by an automatic JavaScript program

Suggestions generated by an automatic JavaScript program

Suggestions generated by an automatic JavaScript program, and might not be applicable for the article in question.

• Consider adding more links to the article; per Wikipedia:Manual of Style (links) and Wikipedia:Build the web, create links to relevant articles.^[?]
• Avoid including galleries in articles, as per Wikipedia:Galleries. Common solutions to this problem include moving the gallery to wikicommons or integrating images with the text.^[?]
• Per Wikipedia:Manual of Style (numbers), there should be a non-breaking space -   between a number and the unit of measurement. For example, instead of 31 metres, use 31 metres, which when you are editing the page, should look like: 31 metres.^[?]
• Per WP:WIAFA, this article's table of contents (ToC) may be too long – consider shrinking it down by merging short sections or using a proper system of daughter pages as per Wikipedia:Summary style.^[?]
• This article may need to undergo summary style, where a series of appropriate subpages are used. For example, if the article is United States, then an appropriate subpage would be History of the United States, such that a summary of the subpage exists on the mother article, while the subpage goes into more detail.^[?]
• Please make the spelling of English words consistent with either American or British spelling, depending upon the subject of the article. Examples include: neighbour (B) (American: neighbor), meter (A) (British: metre), metre (B) (American: meter), defence (B) (American: defense), recognise (B) (American: recognize), realize (A) (British: realise), isation (B) (American: ization), signalling (B) (American: signaling).
• Watch for redundancies that make the article too wordy instead of being crisp and concise. (You may wish to try Tony1's redundancy exercises.)
  • Vague terms of size often are unnecessary and redundant - “some”, “a variety/number/majority of”, “several”, “a few”, “many”, “any”, and “all”. For example, “All pigs are pink, so we thought of a number of ways to turn them green.”
  • Avoid misplaced formality: “in order to/for” (-> to/for), “thereupon”, “notwithstanding”, etc.
• Please ensure that the article has gone through a thorough copyediting so that it exemplifies some of Wikipedia's best work. See also User:Tony1/How to satisfy Criterion 1a.^[?]

You may wish to browse through User:AndyZ/Suggestions for further ideas.

-(t) Josve05a (c) 23:15, 22 November 2013 (UTC)