User:5734hls/Scarab (artifact)/Skibbitybop Peer Review

General info

 * Whose work are you reviewing?

5734hls


 * Link to draft you're reviewing
 * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:5734hls/Scarab_%28artifact%29?veaction=edit&preload=Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org_draft_template
 * Link to the current version of the article (if it exists)
 * Scarab (artifact)

Evaluate the drafted changes
 Do I feel satisfied that I know the importance of the topic?

Yes, there was more than enough information that described what they were, and how they were important religiously through their mythology and mortuary practices.

 Looking at the lead again after reading the rest of the article, does the lead reflect the

most important information?

Personally I think the lead is a bit wordy, I think you can remove where it talks about the dimensions of the scarabs and whatnot. If you want to include it, I would just place it under a different tag. They also change the metrics from mm to cm for some reason later in the article. I do think that these fine details should be closer towards the top of the article rather than at the end, because it is describing exactly what they are. I also think that the general ideological significance could be talked about more. It is mentioned towards the end of the lead with commemorating royals achievements, but it doesn't explain much else. Later in the article it does talk more about the religious and mortuary significances and I think that the lead should include more of those ideas to fully summarize the article.

''' Does it give more weight to certain parts of the article over others? Is anything missing?'''

As already stated, I think it gives more weight to what the scarab is specifically but not its overall importance to the Egyptians. I'd just reword some of the things stated under the religious and mortuary practice tabs and insert them there.

Is anything redundant?

Not necessarily, but there is a lot of information on what they look like and what they were made of thats mashed together. You can maybe try created new tabs for the materials they were made of and how they were made. But overall it works fine.

''' Are the sections organized well, in a sensible order? Would they make more sense'''

presented some other way (chronologically, for example)?

Overall I think its pretty well organized already, and I think you've been doing a good job of reorganizing the texts to have them fit better in certain areas of the article. One thing that I think you should keep might be the original "Historical development" tab and keep it separate from the general descriptions of the scarabs. It was a very easy to see, well summarized description of their use throughout the periods. Honestly I think it might work very well if you placed that information closer to the top of the lead, and cut out some extra information for the other stuff. Otherwise its pretty good.

''' Is each section's length equal to its importance to the article's subject? Are there'''

'''sections in the article that seem unnecessary? Is anything off-topic?'''

Yes, overall each section length corresponds well with each subjects importance. I was thinking that the religious significance was a little short but it was very well summarized and I can't think of how you add more to it since the mortuary practices are separated. So I think it looks good. On that note, I would re-include the information about the god Kephri - it seemed like interesting and significant information to me, but you do mention him in the "Funerary scarabs" section but I think it should also be mentioned here. Other than that just maybe remove some of the extra descriptions of the scarabs dimensions and appearance as I've already said.

''' Does the article reflect all the perspectives represented in the published literature? Are'''

any significant viewpoints left out or missing?

Not that I know of. The article presents all of the different sources of information neutrally and has a good collection of them.

 Does the article draw conclusions or try to convince the reader to accept one particular

point of view?

No, the article in fact admits that there is information that we still do not know. In some cases sentences such as those could be removed or rewritten but you've done a really good job at fixing those from the main article already.

 Do you think you could guess the perspective of the author by reading the article?

No

''' Are there any words or phrases that don't feel neutral? For example, "the best idea,"'''

"most people," or negative associations, such as "While it's obvious that x, some insist

that y."

Not that I can notice.

''' Does the article make claims on behalf of unnamed groups or people? For example,'''

"some people say..."

No, but I talk about something similar in the citation questions below.

''' Does the article focus too much on negative or positive information? Remember, neutral'''

'''doesn't mean "the best positive light" or "the worst, most critical light." It means a clear'''

reflection of various aspects of a topic.

No, overall the article is very neutral despite having an array of information.

Are most statements in the article connected to a reliable source, such as textbooks and

'''journal articles? Or do they rely on blogs or self-published authors?'''

The sources mostly seem reliable, as they were published by either reputable companies or were taken from museums and whatnot. There are a few however that come from sources that end in ".com". ".com" sources can be very reliable at times but in general it's best to avoid them. A couple are from the "Weather Channel" source or the "Beetles in Stone..." article. So even though it's tedious you may want to try removing those sources they put there and find other more reputable ones that can give you the same information to replace them. But you've done a lot with this article already so I don't know if its necessary.

''' Are there a lot of statements attributed to one or two sources? If so, it may lead to an'''

unbalanced article, or one that leans too heavily into a single point of view.

The entire first 3 paragraphs are tied to one source, and the "Funerary scarabs" section has only two sources. But the sources used don't seem to be biased information, although it's a little dated (1974).

 Are there any unsourced statements in the article, or statements that you can't find

'''stated in the references? Just because there is a source listed, doesn't mean it's'''

presented accurately!

So this is the main problem I've seen with the article, and I honestly don't think it can be fixed efficiently. There are so many GIANT detailed paragraphs that have no in text citations at all, so there's no telling where this information was drawn since they didn't connect them with the sources. It's kind of weird honestly. The entirety of the "Description" and "Scarabs with royal names" tabs don't have a single source attributed to them, even though they have a ton of specific information. They may have included the source in the source tab but forgot to link it in the text. It would be very tedious to try to find where they got this information, but if you're willing you can try. There are also some paragraphs like at the one for the "Commemorative scarabs" tab where the person dumped all of the sources they used for that information at the end of the paragraph. You might be able to click those links and find the information from each sentence specifically, and reinsert them where they are being talked about. They might have mixed information from the same sources in different areas of the paragraph and thought it looked ugly to show the same link multiple times in the paragraph or something.

Overall I think it looks great so far and you've been doing a really good job of rearranging paragraphs and rewording them to have them make more sense! Good luck!