Wikipedia:Peer review/Bangalore/archive1

Bangalore

Part of the efforts made towards consolidating the Bangalore article, thereby making it more readable was to ultimately push the article for Featured Article nomination. Peer Reviews are deemed essential in channelling feedback and contributions from other Wikipedia contributors. Overall, I think the article is as concise as it could get without running into the risk of not painting an accurate portrait of the city. Some of the main areas I think that still need improvement are citations and references — many statistical and factual assertions within the article do not have in-line citations, as of yet. Spellcheck and grammatical errors need to be addressed, I feel. Rewording may also be required for some sections of the article where a logical flow of ideas around a central theme dosen't appear to be occuring. Please review Talk:Bangalore ("To-do List") for a list of issues that have been addressed and for any open issues.

Many of the previously over-expanded sections that made for uninteresting reading (History, Economics, Culture) have been moved to separate, independent articles. I invite you to please provide your thoughts and insight on improving the quality of this article, as we move towards pushing the article for a Featured Article nomination. Thanks. AreJay 17:06, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Well you've already identified some of the things it needs, so get to work! :) Why are you telling us? Peer review is not terribly successful at attracting contributors to an article but can be good for finding out what you need to do to get an article to featured quality level if you're interested in doing the work. The article is fairly well balanced in its coverage, which is something many candidates lack. It's largest problem next to needing more reliable sources is the short paragraphs leading to choppy flow of the prose. A featured article really shouldn't have any need for one or two sentence paragraphs. See User:Taxman/Featured article advice for some more. - Taxman ^Talk 19:32, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments — that's a great point...a lot of the paragraphs are one to two sentences long..I will work on seeing how I can incorporate them into other paragraphs. What are your thoughts on the length of the article..it's 34 kb...would that put the article at a disadvantage while we're trying to push it to FA status? Also, I included included some information on the work that needs to be done just as a heads-up of what I'm working on right now, and not neccessarilly as a request for user contributions (although, while I'm on it, I would love, and could sure use any help I can get with the article! :-) ). AreJay 00:52, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

34kb is about right, though if you find other material you need to add, you'll have to summarize and move out some of what is there now to make room. Basically it's prioritizing properly what's most important to cover, and leaving the rest to subarticles, ala Wikipedia:Summary style. - Taxman ^Talk 16:08, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Hi - AreJay and other editors have done a very good job thus far. I recommend the following next reforms:

(1) The lead should be more circumspect - brief history, geography, culture and economics. The present is not good enough, and should not be broken down into 2-3 lines.

(2) Paras within sections are too frequent. Need to have larger paras to embody consistency and fluency.

(3) check out Malwa, Geography of India and Chennai peer reviews for some subtle but good tips on India-geography FAs.

Aside from this, its a beautiful piece of work. All the best! Rama's Arrow 07:46, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

The article is really good and I hope that it would be an FA soon. Following are my comments. After content changes are completed, I'll come in for copyediting.

• The link density is excessive in some sections. Consider removing all repeating links.
• A map showing the city layout should be added.
• Italicise the likes of The Times of India etc., per WP:MOS
• Make the lead more comprehensive. You can look at Kerala for this.
• Desirable: Economy section can have a table showing some vital stats. Ask User:Pamri for his opinion.
• Transport section can talk about the proposed metro and can have a main article also.
• Add a section on flora and fauna, if possible.

-- Sundar ^{\talk \contribs} 10:05, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Forgot to mention earlier about my concern about the absence of "time-independence" in the article; first, the lead should not have "in the last decade" etc., and second, the current concerns should be reworded and refactored to make it time-independent. See this edit to get an idea. -- Sundar ^{\talk \contribs} 13:45, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

For fauna, consider visiting the Bannerghatta park to get some good pics. I'll do if I find some time for that. -- Sundar ^{\talk \contribs} 07:20, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

Apart from the comments already made, these are a few of my observations. I believe that an article should be interesting apart from being comprehensive. I think this article can be improved further to reflect that. The role of Mysore Kingdom in the industrialisation of Bangalore, esp. the role of Mokshagundam Visvesvarayya and Mirza Ismail need to be touched upon. Also, a reading of the history section gives the wrong impression that Bangalore was ruled by Britain alone, and not along with Mysore kingdom. This needs to be addressed. Facts should be presented in a more interesting manner. e. g. Instead of saying Wipro and Infy, 2 of the top 3 IT firms are headquartered in B'lore, it cd be stated that out of the top 10 IT firms , X no. have offices in Bangalore (or) more than 40% of World's SEI-CMM level 5 companies are in Bangalore etc. - I am just giving an example, the actual no.s may be somewhat different. Also, I believe the largest no. of engineering colleges were in Coimbatore. After the acts of Andhra Pradesh government in 1999-2001, maximum no. of engineering colleges are believed to be in Hyderabad-Secunderabad. I think we would need to quote from references like "Network City: Planning the Information Society in Bangalore – James Heitzman; Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2004, pp.368, Price: Rs.795/- (Hardbound)" to address WP:V concerns. Also, institutes of national eminence such as the ISEC and the fact that many MNC subsidiaries are located in Bangalore needs prominent mention. Comparisons between Bangalore's cosmopolitanism vis-a-vis rest of Karnataka's rural economy, thus leading to tensions between urban bureaucracy and rural polity need at least a passing mention. Interesting work, overall, I would say. --Gurubrahma 13:05, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Thank you Rama's Arrow, Sundar, and Gurubrahma for your insightful comments...some excellent points have been raised — I will start working on them later today. Please keep your comments and suggestions flowing! Thanks. AreJay 15:24, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Great work Arejay! Some tips/notes:

• Please double check the licenses of the images and remove all non-free images, like Image:Bangalore DoubleRd.jpg for instance. (BTW, the license summary on that image is wrong: Copyright is assumed for all published works unless there are exceptions in the law for that.) I am not sure we need a para on current concerns, since it would make the article too unstable. It could be linked from see also and the relevant bits moved around to other sections.

Be careful when you upload images from flickr. Image:Bangalore Mosque.jpg is tagged as {{cc-by-2.5}}, but the source shows the license as Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0, which is a non-free license.

It would also be great, if you can upload the images directly to commons.

• Please use {{inotes}} for inline citation and ref/note or similar system for footnotes. I had already used inotes for the history section, so check that out for an example. Its much cleaner that way.

But please do not add URL's directly to the paras.

More or less, its good, except for some copy-editing & rechecking of facts/references. --Pamri • Talk 15:21, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

In re some of the recommendations from Pamri and Sundar vis-a-vis "time-independence" issues, the Current Concerns section needs to be moved to related sections within the article. Sundar, I had an opportunity to review the link showing some of your time-independence edits to the Chennai article, and it looks like portions of that section were moved to the most relevent sections of the article. I am not too sure, but I hope this is an accrurate interpretation of your suggestions. For the Bangalore article, this would mean moving the discussion about infrastructure possibly to the Economy and/or culture section and moving the discussion about the airport to the Transport section.

Pamri, thank you for your comments on the images. I am researching alternatives to those images, as I write this. Thanks again, and please continue to QA the article and make your suggestions! AreJay 20:11, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

Yes, your interpretation is right, AreJay. All the best. -- Sundar ^{\talk \contribs} 05:28, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

• Potential improvements can come from citing the website references in accordance with Wikipedia:Cite sources/example style. Consider switching the reference style to the m:Cite/Cite.php style which is much easier for keeping track of them (see Hugo Chávez for an example of how this system works). Also, consider adding a map showing the street layout and the positioning of the rivers (or other waterbodies) in relation to the city. --maclean25 06:19, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestions. I like the way <references> works. It allows for multiple citations and automatically numbers and organizes your references. I think I will incorporate this style into the article as I start to cleanup the references section. I have always been partial to the MLA-style and will use that when formatting my citations. Thanks for your suggestions! AreJay 23:03, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Hi, AreJay, the article looks really good to me! I especially like the layout and picture choice in the economics section. Just a few suggestions, which I think a few other people may have already touched on.

• The introduction seems a bit overlong to me and could be condensed. I would also actually unlink some of the wikilinks because they are a bit dense.
• In the transport section, the word "indegenious" is used. I looked it up in the OED and couldn't find it, but I've been unable to find things in that dictionary before. Was this word intended?
• I looked at some of the other articles on the Indian cities WikiProject that have been featured, such as the article on Mumbai. In that article, climate is given its own entirely separate section. I would either combine the climate subsection in this article with the rest of the geography section and remove the subsection distinction, or put climate under a heading of its own. This is just for aesthetic reasons.
• On the whole, the article is pretty long. Is there any way the entire thing could be somehow condensed? It seems to me that a few of the facts in the article could be either removed or put into a table of some sort; for example, in the geography section, I'd put some of the details about elevation, average rainfall, etc. in some sort of table off to the side.
• On that note, I think some of the sentences could also be combined to give the article less of a choppy feel. Instead of several short factual sentences following one right after another, I would attempt to tell the story of the city somehow, using the facts as important details centered on a particular theme. I'm sorry, I realize that's kind of vague advice; still I hope this helps somehow. I agree with what Taxman said above about the flow of the article.

I hope the article gets featured soon! Mgummess 04:56, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments. Some of the other contributors and I have been involved in a cleanup/consolidation effort to reduce the "choppiness" of the article. Also, the article length now stands at 36k which I'm beginning to feel now is as condensed as I can probably get it, without running the risk of eliminating critical pieces to the Bangalore article. Please let me know your thoughts on the article as it stands now, as we continue to cleanup and hopefully, push this for a FA nomination pretty soon. Thanks! AreJay 16:56, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

Hi AreJay - this is a fantastic effort! Presently the quality of this article exceeds Mumbai and Chennai - two other city FAs. The 36kb size is darn good - high-content FAs many-a-times stand 40-50kb. Just for safety's sake, I think you should raise the number of in-line citations from 22 to around 27-30, by more extensively citing facts about politics, the economy, demographics and current concerns. For example - there is a para about a man whose biography is not present on Wikipedia, but who had a big influence on Bangalore's education system. I think this and others like it should be cited. Good luck! Rama's Arrow 04:04, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

I've read through the page again, and I must say I like all the improvements. The article is much easier to read and keeps my interest throughout. I only have two suggestions for minor edits.

• I'm not sure about the choice of the word "indigenous" in the section on transport; I've just never heard the word used in that context. I haven't made this edit, since it's more than just a grammatical correction, but I would suggest the following modification: ". . . to test and develop its own concept designs for new, experimental aircraft." I assume that's the meaning you want indigenous to have, but as I mentioned, I've never heard the word used in that way, and it might be confusing to someone else.
• I would include the date of Kempe Gowda's construction of the mud fort again under the history heading. I intended to add it myself, but didn't because I realized after scrolling up to the top of the page that the introduction actually leaves the actual date in ambiguity.

Once again, these are just incredibly picky suggestions for minor edits. Overall, I think the article flows very smoothly now and sounds great. It has a great chance of making featured in my opinion. Mgummess 04:46, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

• Finally someone's decided to get this article moving. :)

1. Lead should be rewritten and specific details removed.
2. Coordinates should be added in the lead
3. Use non breaking spaces (&nbsp;) between a unit and the number
4. Unbold and wikify Mysore Plateau
5. Rest of India has steppe type climate?? Plz verify
6. Wikify all proper nouns throughout the article
7. ...Tamil Nadu. prefix the first instance of the state with the word "neighbouring state of"
8. Use the word Chennai (formerly Madras) for the first instance of the the use of the city name.
9. Post 1961 hardly anything on the city is mentioned. Plz expand.
10. Mention Banglaore Urban district in geography
11. I had earlier added Banglore's extreme temperatures with a ref. Please check the history and include it.
12. Bangalore City officials table should be made narrower.
13. 'has come under fire from the non enc. tone
14. S$ 288 million (Rs. 1,300 crore) Indian currency should be given the first preference.
15. Udayan, Chalukya, Kurla Express), Chennai (Madras Mail, Brindavan Express), Kolkata (Yeshvanthpur-Howrah Express) : specific trains not needed.

=Nichalp «Talk»= 18:31, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

Hi Nichalp, I have addressed most of your recommendations. Can you please clarify whether I should wikify repeated proper nouns throughout the article as well as proper nouns that do not have corresponding articles in Wikipedia? I just feel that red wiki links are not aesthetically pleasing. Can you comment? Thanks! AreJay 16:17, 20 February 2006 (UTC)