User:CantrellL/Nim Li Punit/Axolotl3 Peer Review

General info

 * Whose work are you reviewing?

CantrellL


 * Link to draft you're reviewing
 * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:CantrellL/Nim_Li_Punit?veaction=edit&preload=Template%3ADashboard.wikiedu.org_draft_template
 * Link to the current version of the article (if it exists)
 * Nim Li Punit

Evaluate the drafted changes
This is a review of the article as it currently stands.

Lead
The introductory sentence is a clear summary, but it could be more concise. Having the latitude and longitude in the introductory sentence makes the sentence longer than it needs to be and is too much information for readers to be hit with right away. As a whole, the lead doesn't include a brief description of the article's major sections, only really talking about architecture and etymology. Because the etymology of Nim Li Punit is only mentioned once, you might want to move it out of the lead into its own "Etymology" section. The paragraph about architecture is overly detailed, so I think you should move most of the information in this paragraph to the architecture section and then add a few sentences summarizing the other major sections of the article as an introduction. One final note is that it's not clear from the lead that Nim Li Punit was a city and not a small town or a temple complex or some other structure, so you might want to include the word "city" in the first sentence.

Content
The content of the article seems relevant and up to date, although as I will talk about later there are some problems with the citations. One part of the article that I would focus on in terms of content is the section on "Discovery and excavation", which seems very focused on the efforts of British and U.S. archaeologists. We have talked in class about how often the "discovery" of sites really means the discovery of sites by academia, when in reality locals already knew about the sites. Is there information out there about whether the locals in that part of Belize knew about the site? Did they help academic researchers find the site, did they help with its excavation? What is the relationship of locals in Belize, especially Maya peoples, with the site today?

Tone and Balance
The tone seems relatively neutral. I think one of the main problems with the way this article is written is that it takes a very Western academic way of describing the site. This is seen in the framing of the site's "discovery" as mentioned earlier, but also in the fact that in the architecture section it discusses cosmograms (we talked about these in class, these theories are largely B.S. and problematic in that Indigenous peoples are assumed to be more mystical and have spiritual purposes for everything they do, even the layout of cities; also the sentences where cosmograms are brought up does not have a citation). Some of the terms used, like "aboriginal" instead of "Indigenous", you might also want to change.

Sources and References
Many of the claims in this article do not have citations, or have citations that are dubious. The first citation, which is used for the entirety of the "Geography and geology" sections, links to another Wikipedia article. Only two of the other citations have links, which makes it hard to fact-check the other four citations. It's good that most of the sources apart from the first one are from the last 15 years, so relatively recent. I think you should focus on finding more sources, especially scholarly sources, to back up many of the current claims the article makes in multiple sections.

Organization
The content is readable with no major grammatical or spelling errors that I noticed. It also seems well-organized, broken down into logical sections that give a good overview of the site. I think you might want to consider adding a section about the relationship that locals and the government of Belize have with the site today.

Images and Media
The images enhance understanding of the topic and are well-captioned and enhance the article. The image of the stela is placed in a weird place, so you may want to move it somewhere else so the article doesn't seem as cluttered. You may want to include an image that shows the location of Nam Li Punit on a map.

Overall impressions
Overall, the article is well-organized, and its content provides a good overview of the topic and is easy to read. The article could be improved by having better/more citations, bringing in local viewpoints/relationships/histories with the site, and editing the sections that talk about cosmograms and "discovery" to be less Western-centric. Overall a cool topic. Good luck going forward! :)