Comments from Joe
- Lede section. In the "lede" section, provide more of a summary of material in your subsections. The lead section is often the only thing a reader will read. You want to give a fairly complete overview of your subject in this first section, and not have it serve merely as a lead-in to the article.
- Linking and relation to other wikipedia articles on climbing. You are doing a great job of linking to related wikipedia articles. I think that some terms still need to be defined in the text as you go along. For example: leading. Give that an internal definition; don't make the reader read a whole other article to figure out what it means. I think "protection" also needs a bit of explanation (with a "such as" phrase, perhaps). Other terms are more easily understandable, such as "rock climbing" and "bolts". However, I think you could say more about how gear such as expansion bolts and rock drills are used. I am guessing that you don't want to be redundant when equipment is already covered in other articles, but I think that you want to try to give a reader a slightly more complete picture of what slab climbing is like. You are good on the hands and feet, but I don't have a clear idea of how ropes and anchors are used (and how it might differ from trad climbing, which needs to be defined). For that matter, I don't know what you mean by traditional protection, although you imply a comparison between this and slab protection. You can write explicitly about differences between slab climbing and other kinds of rock climbing; otherwise the only way a non-climber can know these differences is to read all the related articles and do the comparison himself, which is work you should do for the reader.
- Hyphenate compound adjectives. Example: "balance- and friction-dependent moves"
- Use terms that are more specific, less relative or vaguely intensified. "Relatively new" does not have a permanent meaning; in 20 years it will mean something different. "Incredibly" dangerous seems a little subjective - is there a way to rank slab climbing danger? Maybe "one of the most dangerous forms of climbing", or "x number of climbing accidents per year in the U.S."
- Verification through sources. You need to provide a source to verify every assertion and fact that you present. If several sentences come from the same source, then you can scope them together by beginning with an introductory phrase such as "According to the xyz...." and ending with the footnote. But you have many claims that need to be attributed to published sources.
- References. All citations need to have a standard bibliographic entry. Include author (when known), article title (on a web site that might be the page title), title of publication (on a website that might be the site name), date of publication (when known), and date accessed. The article or book title should be the link name; don't display URLs in the references. None of the climbing articles I have looked at have very good use of references yet. Look at one of the "featured" articles to see the style for references.
Update: I think the article on Ice_climbing has good style for references, and also has good description of gear and technique. (It could be better verified by citations, though.)