User:JSMoskowitz/Italian Wars of 1499–1504/Tylosaurus1248 Peer Review

General info

 * Whose work are you reviewing?

(provide username) JSMoskowitz


 * Link to draft you're reviewing
 * User:JSMoskowitz/Italian Wars of 1499–1504


 * Link to the current version of the article (if it exists)
 * Italian Wars of 1499–1504

Evaluate the drafted changes
(Compose a detailed peer review here, considering each of the key aspects listed above if it is relevant. Consider the guiding questions, and check out the examples of what feedback looks like.)

Hi JSMoskowitz -- my peer review is below. Note that in most cases I'm reviewing the current article as so far the sandbox draft does not appear to have new content compared to the original article.

Lead: the lead section has not been updated yet. Once you're ready, I would be sure to update the current lead section accordingly. The current lead section does not appear to cover some sections of the article, such as the Third Italian War and the Treaties; in fact, it seems to be written more like a Background section than a summary of the whole article.

Content: at the moment I do not see any new content added in the sandbox draft compared to the current main space draft. It seems you're working on the Second Italian War section and you've assembled some new sources that are not in the main space article's bibliography. (That said, I might check the author and publication date on The Italian Wars 1494-1559: State and Society in Early Modern Europe as J. Romaine seems to be the author of a related book with a different title.)

As for information, the current article is missing some information (e.g. the numerical strength of the Italian-Spanish forces), but what's in the current article appears relevant to its subject and reasonably up-to-date. The article at the moment does not appear to address a Wikipedia equity gap, though I can see how there might not be enough info out there to address that. It might be interesting to see what roles the queens of Spain (well, Castile) and France played in these wars and the political decisions surrounding them.

Tone and balance: some places in the current article could be cleaned up for tone (e.g. "French military adventures in Italy" -- "adventures" could be replaced with a more neutral word like "actions"). And also in the current article, "both Ferdinand and his uncle, Frederick IV, were considered illegitimate inheritors and usurpers of the Neapolitan title..." could be modified slightly to indicate that this argument was the French point of view. Otherwise the article appears mostly neutral; it does not make any heavily biased claims or try to persuade a reader towards one point of view or another.

Sources and references: there are several places in the current article that have a Citation Needed tag, so those statements are in need of verification from sources. The new sources you've assembled do appear to provide further, more thorough coverage of the article's subject and could be used to back up more of the claims made in this article. And, the sources you're proposing to add are indeed current, they would broaden the spectrum of sources in play, and they seem reliable (scholarly books from established presses).

Organization: the article as currently written is mostly well-written and free of major typos. The section divisions in this article also mostly make sense. Given my notes above, it might make more sense to craft a new short lead section that summarizes the whole article, and move the current lead section content to a new "Background" section. This is just a suggestion though and if you want to stick to expanding the lead section, that would work too.

Images / new article stuff: N/A.

Overall impression: As noted above, there doesn't seem to be totally new content for me to evaluate yet for strengths and weaknesses. The current article is a good first start, but there's definitely lots of room for improvement (adding more sources, verifying claims with these new sources), which it seems like you intend to do as part of your project.

-Tylosaurus1248