User:GumTreeKookabura/Potsdam Declaration/RubBec03 Peer Review

General info

 * Whose work are you reviewing?

GumTreeKookabura


 * Link to draft you're reviewing
 * User:GumTreeKookabura/Potsdam Declaration


 * Link to the current version of the article (if it exists)
 * Potsdam Declaration - Wikipedia

Evaluate the drafted changes
Hello Daniel! Below is my peer review for your Potsdam Declaration Draft,

Lead
Based on what is in this draft, the lead has not been updated yet to convey the new section being added so it would be a good idea to make sure that at least once brief sentence is added to the lead discuss the additions. This is important so that your additions share the same amount of weight that the existing sections have in the lead. More about potential lead additions can be found in the organization section.

Content
The added content is relevant to the Potsdam Declaration as the section details the intentions of three major Allies (China, United States, and Great Britain). The added content also examines the response by the Imperial Japanese Government, but this sub-section could benefit from the use of more sentences and details. Most of the content is up to date as some of the sources come from within the past 20 years with a few exceptions of sources being from the mid to late 1900s.

Tone and Balance
For the most part, the draft stays neutral and there were no claims made on the behalf of unnamed groups but the sentence in the "Imperial Japanese Response" section beginning with "Some historians contest that..." could be shortened to "Historians contest that..." so that it becomes clearer. Each sub-section is equally represented in length besides the "Imperial Japanese Response" section which restates the response by prime minister Suzuki Kantarō (unless the draft is intends to replace the existing sentence/paragraph over his repsonse), leaving one sentence that could be expanded on to make this sub-section as meaningful as the previous sub-sections included in the draft. The draft does a good job in not persuading the reader to favor one viewpoint over the other.

Sources and References
The draft uses reliable sources such as books and online articles and the content of the draft accurately reflects what is used from the cited sources. The draft does use websites that could most likely be replaced by better sources. Most of the sources can be considered current since three of the six sources do not have a listed date, though the undated websites seem to be current based on the style of writing, and the most recent of the other three is the book by Tsuyoshi Hasegawa published in 2006 with Saburo Ienaga's book being the oldest having been written in 1978. Speaking of Saburo Ienaga, I found that your use of his book, The Pacific War 1931-1945, to highlight the fighting between the Japanese military and the Chinese Nationalists was well-executed. The authors of the sources are different from one another as the books have established authors while the websites and articles are written and edited by various writers. All of the links provided for each of the online sources worked just fine.

Regarding the use of sources, I felt that the way you wrote the last sentence in the "Imperial Japanese Response" sub-section requires a source as it is a statement based on the beliefs of historians that Japan was communicating with the Soviet Union in hopes that their terms would be accepted. Adding a citation to this sentence would strengthen the statement since there is currently no evidence to prove that Japan was using the Soviet Union to push their terms like guaranteeing the emperor his throne. Another thought for this sentence could be to name or cite a few historians that believe the claim you made so the sentence appears better and is not led with "Some historians..."

Organization
The organization of the draft was effectively done as it was written in a clear way and was broken up into smaller sub-sections of the intentions or responses of the important countries that were involved. There was only one grammatical error found in the draft and is located in the "United States" sub-section where a comma is missing after Asia in the sentence beginning with "In the rest of Asia..." The sentence at the end of the United States sub-section, "All parties to the declaration stated a desire for war reparations from Japan," could be taken out from this part of the article and potentially added into the lead of the article to update it with the changes you will be making.

Overall Impressions
The content added in the draft is a good start for improving the quality of the main article, but each section could definitely be expanded more so that each sub-section does not appear brief. For example, a few more sentences for each sub-section could help the addition of your "Intentions of the Allied Powers" flow with the already existing sections of the Potsdam Declaration that contain plenty of details. The strength of this draft is the use of sub-sections to break down the importance of the declaration for each country and is why expanding on it will make for an effective and informative addition to the topic. The sources used are relevant to the topic and with the addition of more sources to strengthen existing or new statements will make this draft complete. As stated in the organization portion of this review, updating the lead with information from your draft will let the reader know what to expect from the section to be added to the article.

-Ruben