Talk:Ancient Rome/GA1

GA Review
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Reviewer: Chiswick Chap (talk · contribs) 19:03, 18 September 2014 (UTC)

I'll bite the bullet (hope that's not falling on my gladius) on this one. Chiswick Chap (talk) 19:03, 18 September 2014 (UTC)

Comments
"States, such as Palmyra, temporarily divided the Empire in a 3rd-century crisis". Perhaps that could be clearer (how did small city-states divide a huge empire?).

" in his classical epic poem the Aeneid. In the Aeneid, ..." Maybe avoid the repetition. "Concrete made possible the paved, durable Roman roads": so they were constructed with concrete? Needs a ref, and I think some explanation. Roman_roads says nothing about the use of cement or concrete?

In fact the whole Ancient_Rome section needs more referencing.

I have marked up a few sections, e.g. Punic Wars, Government, Society, Economy, Games and recreation, that need more references.

There is scope for an image in Punic Wars - you could have Hannibal and Scipio side-by-side, perhaps.

"Quaestors were made automatic members of the Senate". Perhaps they were automatically made members.

"Portrait sculpture during the period" - which?

Adjectives are somewhat astray in some places, e.g. "the famous Hadrian's Wall", the "famously decisive Battle of Zama" - who says it's famous?

Military: perhaps add an image of a Roman ship to balance the infantry soldier.

Cuisine section - needs citations, and some expansion. At the moment it consists of WP:OR-ish generalities. I suggest you briefly mention what was eaten at a Cena and say a little about Food and dining in the Roman Empire. There is scope for an image (from a mosaic or fresco) here. You might briefly describe one or two characteristic ingredients such as garum, and the empire-wide trade in olive oil.

Scholarly studies: seems to fade out a century ago? I suggest you put the Russian title into a reference instead of the main text. But mainly it needs to be merged with Historiography, doesn't it? If there's a difference, do explain it, as it isn't clear. And move the merged section to the end of the article.

Images: all from Commons except the Valentinian III family and Trajan's Market (which ought to be moved there).

The image of the Forum should say it is a (CGI) model or reconstruction.

Image captions: there are many people here, over a very long time period, so dates might be a help in all the captions.

The maps are noticeably in very different (ok, random) styles, which is quite distracting to the reader. It would be desirable (so, not a GA requirement) to harmonise these.

References are formatted very diversely, from naked links to full citations. This is not a GA issue but needs to be tidied up radically for FA.

There are some footnotes mixed in with the references, e.g. #3, #226. It would be best to separate these out as "Notes" and to leave the refs as "References". This is not a GA requirement.


 * I'm unfortunately going to have to fail this for lack of any response. Nom seems to have ceased editing (since 6 September) and does not respond. So that this will not be a complete waste of time, let me say that if anyone wishes to revive this GA attempt, all they need to do is to address the above items, file it at GAN and ping me. Chiswick Chap (talk) 06:20, 25 September 2014 (UTC)