Wikipedia:Peer review/Sri Lankan Tamil people/archive1

Sri Lankan Tamil people

• A script has been used to generate a semi-automated review of the article for issues relating to grammar and house style; it can be found on the automated peer review page for June 2008.

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because I want to take it to featured article status. I am looking for help with prose, style and simplification. Thanks, Taprobanus (talk) 20:33, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Ruhrfisch comments: Interesting article, while it is clear that a lot of work has been put into it, some more is needed to improve it for FAC. Here are some suggestions for improvement:

• A model article is often useful for ideas on style, structure, refs, etc. I note that Azerbaijani people is a FA and may be a good model. DoneWatchdogb (talk) 04:17, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
• The current lead does not follow WP:LEAD. An article 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. My rule of thumb is to include every header in the lead in some way - for example, Genetic affinities is not in the lead.
• The lead should be four paragraphs - the paragraphs in the current lead seem a bit long - if they were summaries, they could each be split to give a total of four paragraphs.

 DoneWatchdogb (talk) 13:28, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

• I am not sure I understand why this article excludes Upcountry Tamils and Moors, since the lead says Sri Lankan Tamil people or Ceylon Tamils, are Tamil speaking people of Sri Lanka. and they speak Tamil and live in Sri Lanka too.
  • Upcountry Tamils are called Indian Tamils of Sri Lanka and Moors are called [[Sri Lankan

Moors]] and in the census and in academic books they are listed not under Sri Lankan Tamils. It is a political issue as well. Taprobanus (talk) 14:10, 12 June 2008 (UTC)  Done

• Images should not sandwich text as they do in the Religion section - see WP:MOS#Images
  •  DoneTaprobanus (talk) 19:01, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
• Avoid one or two sentence paragraphs as they break up the flow of the article. For example There is a significant Tamil-speaking Muslim population in Sri Lanka. Unlike Tamil Muslims from India, they do not identify themselves as ethnic Tamils and are therefore usually listed as a separate ethnic group in official statistics.[19][20] or The Negombo Tamil dialect used in Negombo area by bilingual fishers who otherwise identify them as Sinhalese has undergone considerable morphosyntactic convergence with spoken or colloquial Sinhala, as a consequence of contact with it.[46][47]

 DoneTaprobanus (talk) 21:03, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

• While the article is generally well-referenced, some statements that seem to need refs do not have them. Some examples are ... whereas Hindus have a number of temples with historic importance such as those at Ketheeswaram, Koneswaram, Naguleswaram, Munneswaram and Nallur Kandaswamy temple. Kataragama temple along with Adams Peak are venerated by all religious communities. or the whole second paragraph of the Education section.
• My rule of thumb is that every quote, every statistic, every extraordinary claim and every paragraph needs a ref. See WP:CITE and WP:V
• I agree this needs a copyedit - my understanding is that WP:LOCE is very slow, but asking an editor listed at WP:PRV or asking on the talk page of an editor listed at LOCE should be faster.  DoneWatchdogb (talk) 04:17, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
• Please use my examples as just that - these are not an exhaustive list and if one example is given, please check to make sure there are not other occurrences of the same problem.

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). Yours, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 03:50, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Comments from Ealdgyth (talk · contribs)

• You said you wanted to know what to work on before taking to FAC, so I looked at the sourcing and referencing with that in mind. I reviewed the article's sources as I would at FAC.
  • Bibliographies, unlike the footnotes, work best in one column. Also, please alphabetize. DoneWatchdogb (talk) 15:03, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
  • Titles of books should be italicised. Authors of cites/books, etc. aren't italicised, they are in plain text. Done
  • A lot of your websites don't give publishers
  • You don't need to specify html format in the cite web templates, it's assumed that it's html unless otherwise noted. Doing...
  • What makes the following reliable sources?
    • http://www.tamilnet.com
      • Per this DoneTaprobanus (talk) 14:06, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
    • http://www.parisfranceguide.com:81/index.php?module=pagemaster&PAGE_user_op=view_page&PAGE_id=41 removed  Done Taprobanus (talk) 14:54, 20 June 2008 (UTC)
    • http://tamilelibrary.org  DoneTaprobanus (talk) 21:19, 25 June 2008 (UTC)
    • http://www.joshuaproject.net/
      • Requested third party opinion  Doing...
    • http://www.uthr.org/index.html
      • Per this DoneTaprobanus (talk) 20:29, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
    • http://www.hindu.com/br/2007/02/27/stories/2007022700341800.htm (it's a book review) Done
      • It is a mainstream sourceTaprobanus (talk) 14:10, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
    • http://www.lankalibrary.com/
    • http://wanni.org/south-vanni.htm (also a book review)
    • http://www.defonseka.com/k21.htm
      • It is fixed now, per WP:CITE 12:40, 24 June 2008 (UTC)  Done
    • http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~lkawgw/nindavur.html
      • Fixed per WP:CITE Taprobanus (talk) 12:52, 24 June 2008 (UTC)  Done
    • http://vedda.org/
      • Per this DoneTaprobanus (talk) 17:15, 1 July 2008 (UTC)
    • http://www.caingram.info/Sri_lanka/Ancient_cities/htm/shiva_devale.htm removed  DoneTaprobanus (talk) 14:53, 20 June 2008 (UTC)
    • http://www.cinesouth.com/specials/specials/singala.shtml  DoneTaprobanus (talk) 20:32, 24 June 2008 (UTC)
  • http://lucy.ukc.ac.uk/EthnoAtlas/Hmar/Mar_dir/XMarriage.1949b dead links  DoneWatchdogb (talk) 15:41, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
  • Current ref 63 isn't a website, it's an abstract of a journal article. Should use {{cite journal}} to format it. DoneWatchdogb (talk) 15:03, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
  • Current ref 78 is lacking a publication date. DoneWatchdogb (talk) 15:03, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
  • http://www.tamilnation.org/conferences/cnfUS91/pfaffenberger.htm has moved. DoneWatchdogb (talk) 15:25, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Hope this helps. Please note that I don't watchlist Peer Reviews I've done. If you have a question about something, you'll have to drop a note on my talk page to get my attention. (My watchlist is already WAY too long, adding peer reviews would make things much worse.) 23:45, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

 Doing...Thanks will work on it Taprobanus (talk) 12:20, 16 June 2008 (UTC)