Talk:Hadrian/GA1

GA Review
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Reviewer: Tim riley (talk · contribs) 10:52, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

Starting first read-through. More soonest.  Tim riley  talk    10:52, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

This is an impressive and substantial article, and unless I run across unexpected obstacles I fully expect to promote it to GA (and perhaps see it at FAC in due course) but there are some drafting points I should like you to look at first. It will take me two or three goes to get through them. Here is the first batch: Here endeth the first batch. More soonest.  Tim riley  talk    21:03, 25 August 2015 (UTC)
 * General
 * The article is mostly written with English spelling, but a few American spellings ("traveled", "honor" etc) have crept in, and need to be amended. (I have a techie shortcut that makes this easy, and I'll gladly do it if you would like me to. Please let me know.)
 * Sources
 * The second sentence is 69 words long, and really could do with breaking into two.
 * ("a mish mash of actual fact, Cloak and dagger, Sword and Sandal, with a sprinkling of Ubu Roi") – this calls for an an inline citation in addition to the reference. And "Cloak and lower case dagger but Sword and upper case Sandal: is this right? I see it's from a French book. If the translation is yours it would be as well to give the original French text in a footnote.
 * "absolutely necessary" – otiose adverb: something is either necessary or it isn't.
 * "However, this may be a ruse" – the word "however" appears 34 times in this article, mostly (as here) quite needlessly. "Howevers", as I well know, creep into one's prose unbidden, but they usually weaken the prose, and should be weeded severely.
 * "can be partially linked" – partially as in partly, no doubt, rather than in a biased way. The ambiguity is somewhat theoretical – who's going to misunderstand it? – but it's as well to make things completely unambiguous, nonetheless.
 * Public service
 * "His first…" – there seems to be a WP convention, with which I don't entirely agree, that at first mention in each paragraph "he" (or "she") won't do, and the name must be used. Here et passim.
 * "Later, he was to be transferred to the Legio I Minervia" – the "was to be" really is ambiguous: does it mean that he was sent to be tribune of the Legio II Adiutrix with the intention that he would go on to be Legio I Minervia or is it merely a succession of events, in which case the "to be" should be removed?
 * "governor of said province" – the "said" grates somewhat: how about just "the" or "that"?
 * "as was customary to the regular senator" – not sure about the preposition here: would "for" be more natural?

Before resuming my review of the individual sections of the text, I pause here to mention the quite remarkable excess of WP:OVERLINKs. In Early life alone Italica is linked four times. Rome does not need one link, let alone the five it has at present. I spotted other duplicate links (and there may be more) to:
 * Antinopolis
 * Antinous
 * Athens
 * Attianus
 * Augustan Histories
 * Baiae
 * Bar Kokhba
 * Barcelona
 * Bithynia
 * Cassius Dio
 * Danube
 * Ephesus
 * Eusebius
 * Fifth Macedonian Legion
 * Fronto
 * Hadrian's Wall
 * Hellenist
 * Hispania Baetica
 * Historia Augusta
 * Lucius Julius Ursus Servianus
 * Marcus Aurelius
 * Mauretania
 * Nero
 * Pannonia Inferior
 * Pantheon
 * Parthia
 * Pausanias
 * Roman Senate
 * Scipio Africanus
 * Second Temple
 * Sparta
 * Syria
 * Torah
 * Trajan
 * Vallum
 * Vespasian
 * XXII Deiotariana

Resuming the section-by-section review: More anon.  Tim riley  talk    09:51, 26 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Securing power
 * "relieve him from his post" – unexpected phrasing instead of the more usual relieve him of his post
 * "Or better, the reason" – who says it's better?
 * "It's probable" – conversational contractions of this kind are inappropriate for an encyclopaedia article. See MOS:N'T.
 * Hadrian and the military
 * "However, disturbances …" – This huge sentence (62 words) needs chopping up.
 * "conjectural and speculative" – how is conjecture distinguished from speculation?
 * "a Greek intellectual that had been" – unexpected choice of pronoun: surely "who" would be normal here?
 * "It's more probable" – chatty contraction, as above.
 * "proof to it" – two points here: first, "proof of it" would be more usual phrasing, surely? And how can it be "proof" of something you have just decribed as merely "probable"?
 * "Great Britain" – WP:OVERLINK – we do not link the names of "major geographic features and locations, languages, and religions".
 * "built on stone" – typo for "of stone"?
 * "Hadrian established intensive drill routines" – I was amused to see what this links to.
 * Cultural pursuits and patronage
 * "an Ancient anonymous source" – is the capital letter intentional?
 * "When Trajan, predecessor to Hadrian" – we have already been told that Trajan was predecessor to Hadrian.
 * "He also wrote an autobiography …" – citation for this sentence, please.

Please consider the above point about copy-editing before I go any further. I fear I am inclined to fail the candidacy if it is not addressed. –  Tim riley  talk    14:26, 28 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Purpose
 * First para, last sentence: lacks a main verb. Indeed, as I read this section I get the strong impression that it is written by someone whose first language is not English, and whether or not I am correct in that surmise I really think the section needs a good copy-edit. Some minor hiccups of English usage earlier in the article didn't seem to me serious enough to fail GA criterion 1a, but I think this section is another matter. I am perfectly happy to give the text a swift once-over – there is no reason why a GAN reviewer should not do so. Please let me know what you think best.
 * Africa, Parthia and Anatolia
 * Third para: this is a rehash of earlier material about the Hadrian-Antinous affair, and doesn't need serving up again here.

Cerme (talk) 13:27, 1 September 2015 (UTC) I will revise the article, mainly by adding some materials from the German version, which is a FA. Then I shall ask for copy edit.Cerme (talk) 13:27, 1 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Fair enough. I'll obviously have to fail the GAN on this occasion, but it is fundamentally a fine piece of work and I look forward to its future progress. Regards,  Tim riley  talk    20:33, 1 September 2015 (UTC)