Talk:Albanian cuisine/GA1

GA Review
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Reviewer: Chiswick Chap (talk · contribs) 20:24, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

I'm really sorry but this is going to have to be a quick fail. Some 35 paragraphs are entirely uncited, probably a sufficient reason in itself. Further, there are bulleted lists in 'Meat and fish' and 'Pies' in which only 1 of 16 items is cited; the lists are not introduced with any kind of explanatory material.

Equally seriously, a variety of foreign dishes is presented with no explanation in most cases of the foreign origins, and again mostly no citation: for example, "Byrek" is correctly linked to börek but the dish's origins are neither explained nor cited beyond the statement that it's "Albanian vegetable pie" – something that could scarcely be more misleading: it could rather be described as Turkish, sometimes containing meat, and a filo pastry or pasty rather than a pie. Similarly Japrak links to dolma/dolmades, and Kadaif to Kanafeh "popular throughout the Arab world" as that article rightly states; such dishes can hardly claim to be distinctively Albanian. If more examples are needed, Eklera rightly links to eclair, and is of course a French dish as well as a French etymology, while Bakllava too "is characteristic of the cuisines of the Levant, the Caucasus, Balkans, Maghreb, and of Central and West Asia." "Proshute" is at least stated to be Italian, but uncited, and so it continues.

The linking also needs attention; for instance, Fërgese (Fergese of Tirana with Peppers) is bluelinked but it points back to the article itself.

The article's referencing is clearly a major issue, mainly as a matter of coverage. However some of the citations seem doubtful: the existence of a thousand-year old tree (even if true) does not prove that olive oil was made in antiquity (2000 years or more ago), not least because olives can be salted for eating rather than used for oil, so if the reference was provided to prove that olive oil "has been produced since antiquity throughout the country particularly along the coasts" then it's OR or SYNTH, whether the claim is correct or not (a matter on which I have no opinion). On that example, there's also something very wrong when 6 citations are given for the first paragraph of the lead, which should be introducing the whole article, not making disputable claims and trying to shore them up with multiple citations. The last paragraph of the lead states that onions are "arguably" the main ingredient, again providing citations and further argument in the following sentence. To repeat, this is not the job of the lead section, if indeed arguable matters are appropriate anywhere in the article.

The article will also need to be more careful with its use of descriptive words - I notice "typical breakfast", "traditionally the biggest meal", "typically served", "fertile .. soil" and so on.

I hope these comments will be of some help when working further on the article. I'd recommend having it peer-reviewed once the comments have been taken into account. Chiswick Chap (talk) 20:24, 16 January 2018 (UTC)