Talk:Sea Peoples/GA1

GA Review
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Reviewer: Caeciliusinhorto (talk · contribs) 13:04, 17 June 2016 (UTC)

The Sea Peoples are fascinating; I would be very happy to review this article.

The first thing that I notice is that there are a whole bunch of tags on the article: in the Sea Peoples, Sea Peoples, and Sea Peoples sections. This needs to be fixed immediately if the article is to have any chance of being classed as a GA – indeed, it is one of the four criteria by which an article can be immediately failed without further review. What I will do is put this article on hold for a week to give you a chance to fix this, and if these facts are cited then I shall return to the review. If these cn tags are removed significantly before those seven days are up, feel free to ping me or put a message on my talkpage and I will try to get back to the review asap. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 13:04, 17 June 2016 (UTC)

Hi thanks for taking this on, and being patient with the above. I have now fixed all these threshold issues. Oncenawhile (talk) 23:58, 19 June 2016 (UTC)

sorry I haven't managed to get back to this sooner, I was knocked over the head by Real Lifetm over the last week. Some initial comments:


 * WP:MOS (headings) says that the article title should be avoided in section headings: can "Hypotheses about the Sea Peoples" be renamed to comply with this? ✅
 * First paragraph of the lead repeats the word "conjectured": perhaps one of the instances can be replaced by a synonym.✅
 * WP:OVERLINK suggests that major geographical regions shouldn't be linked: Aegean sea, Egypt, and Cyprus are definitely unneccessary to link, others could probably also go. ✅
 * "year 8 of Ramesses III": is this the standard way of referring to dates amongst Egyptologists? To my (non-specialist ear) "the eighth year of Ramesses III's reign" sounds better.   These are regnal year formats, which are relatively standard in Egyptology. There are various alternative options, illustrated well by this page of the CAH. Using 8 / eight / eighth are all fine, but "...'s reign" would be unusual and superfluous.
 * Okay, that's fine. Just wanted to check. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 15:55, 7 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Is the Joshua J. Mark quote in the lead necessary? I don't really see that it adds anything that couldn't be put in wikipedia's voice.✅
 * First sentence of the section on "history of the concept", there's a quotation mark missing somewhere.✅
 * The Struggle of the Nations appears to be a book: should be in italic font, not quotes.✅
 * External links shouldn't appear in the body of the text✅
 * Can a source be given for "it is plausible to assume that the Tanis and Aswan stelae refer to the same event"?
 * Ramesses II's "Year 5" is capitalised (section on his reign), yet Ramesses III's "year 8" is not (lead). Which of these is correct?  Be consistent. ✅
 * "from which history learns that the Ekwesh were circumcised": a strange way of phrasing things.

That will give you something to work on, at least. I'll come back to the article and comment on the rest soon. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 16:18, 25 June 2016 (UTC)

Back with more commentary:


 * What is currently footnote 50 states that "The Woudhuizen dissertation quotes the inscriptions in English". This really isn't very helpful: the dissertation in question is 168 pages long.  A page number would be useful.  Are these the inscriptions quoted on pp.51–52?  If so, it's not obvious to me that this supports the statement that "some Hittites were operating with the Sea Peoples".
 * The article states that the "mainstream" view is that "Caphtor refers to Crete"; it doesn't cite this, but links to the wikipedia page on Caphtor which seems to contradict this claim. Can this be cited?
 * I'm not a fan of rhetorical questions in wikipedia articles, as they seem not to be in an encyclopediac style. Try to avoid. (e.g. "If the Greeks do appear as Sea Peoples, what were they doing?") Agreed and removed
 * And at any rate, I'm not sure what that question is meant to mean. Agreed and removed
 * Can the idea that the ancient Romans were concerned with whether the Teresh were the same as the Tyrrhenians or the Trojans be cited? It strikes me as unlikely that the Romans were concerned with who the Teresh were (though rather more likely that they might have identified the Tyrrhenians and Trojans).
 * "reputable Greek historian" is editorialising. As is "the cautious Chadwick". ✅
 * "the connection... seems logical" reads as dangerously close to original research to me. Better to say "Foo suggests that it is logical to connect". I have removed this instead, as there appears to be no source
 * I can't see what the "invasions and migrations" map has to do with the "Italic peoples hypothesis". Not sure whether that is because a better caption is needed, it would be better suited elsewhere in the article, or both.
 * If you are going to quote whole passages of ancient works in translation, I think citations should say which translation you are using.
 * "Connections to the Teresh of the Merneptah Stele, which also mentions shipments of grain to the Hittite Empire to relieve famine, are logically unavoidable." This definitely needs citing; it reads to me heavily as original research, especially as the quote from Herodotus isn't discussing shipments of grain to relieve famine.  (And nor is it at all obvious that Herodotus' Lydians are what we now know as Hittites: indeed, wikipedia's article on Lydia says that it formed as a state after the collapse of the Hittite empire). Agreed and removed as OR

Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 19:18, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

And now, after my first stream-of-consciousness run through, some more general comments.


 * I think the structure of the article could be made much clearer. Some examples:
 * In the section on hypotheses, the article certainly covers a lot of ground, but I come out of it with no clear idea of key points like which of these hypotheses are mainstream and which are minority viewpoints; which are long-standing and which are recent theories; and even in some cases exactly what the hypothesis says.
 * The section on sources is confusing to me. One reason for this is that there are two sections, one on Egyptian sources and one on non-Egyptian sources, which means that the article jumps around chronologically, for no clear reason: why are Egyptian and non-Egyptian sources treated differently?


 * There are quite a few places where I am not sure whether there is original research or synthesis happening, or it's just that views are not being clearly attributed and sourced aren't being cited.

Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 20:23, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

these are great comments, thank you. I will work through them over the next few weeks and will ping you when i'm done. Oncenawhile (talk) 21:36, 27 June 2016 (UTC)
 * I am beginning to make progress. As promised I will ping you when done. Oncenawhile (talk) 17:13, 6 July 2016 (UTC)

Over a month has passed and there are still serious structural problems with this article, Caeciliusinhorto. I'd recommend failing this one. Still, you've given lots of useful tips that can be used to improve the article so hopefully we'll see it appearing at GAN in a much better state in future. Midnightblueowl (talk) 21:13, 6 August 2016 (UTC)
 * I have been making steady progress over that whole period. Just look at the page history. Recently I have been working pages relating to John Beasley Greene because his work was the genesis to de Rouge's initial identification. I'm almost there with the key facts, and then I can fix the structure. I would like to request some more patience please. Oncenawhile (talk) 04:45, 7 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Putting this another way, the questions raised by Caeciliusinhorto require further research to resolve fully. I am investing significant time to resolve these and create a quality article. Oncenawhile (talk) 23:40, 7 August 2016 (UTC)
 * It's great that you are putting the work in, Oncenawhile. My issue however is whether it is best to leave a GAN open for such a long period of time. If I were the reviewer (and to be clear I'm not), I would probably fail it at this point and then encourage its improvement so that it can be re-nominated at a later date, at which it might be more likely to pass. Just my two cents on the issue. All the best with your work on it, Midnightblueowl (talk) 11:38, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

I agree with. It has been more than a month since I finished reviewing the article, and there were significant issues with the article at that point. Those issues still exist, despite your hard work on the article. And none of us can see at this point any prospect that the article will be GA-ready within, say, the next week. This is currently the fourth-longest outstanding review for GA status.

At this point, I think I really have no choice but to fail the article, but I do hope that you keep working on the article, and I'd be very happy to see it come to GAN again in a better-prepared state. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 15:37, 8 August 2016 (UTC)