User:Markbpaine/Wari Empire/Axolotl3 Peer Review

General info

 * Whose work are you reviewing?

Markbpaine


 * Link to draft you're reviewing
 * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Markbpaine/Wari_Empire?veaction=edit&preload=Template%3ADashboard.wikiedu.org_draft_template


 * Link to the current version of the article (if it exists)
 * Wari Empire

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.)

Lead
The beginning of the lead is very clear and concise, and the information and sources you added were good additions. The only thing that seems out of place is the last two sentences of the lead, which talk about the Northern Wari Ruins. These ruins are not mentioned elsewhere in the article and also don't seem to be super important to have in the lead section. I would recommend moving this information to its own section, maybe one about notable archaeological sites or something.

Content/Balance/Tone/Organization
The content you are working on in your sandbox is relevant to the topic and told in a neutral tone. All of the content in the main article seems to belong, but it seems like it's missing any historical information about the Wari Empire. I think historical information is important in this article because often pre-Colombian Indigenous societies are often dehistoricized and essentialized, which dehumanizes the humans who lived in these societies. For this reason I think the paragraph you have in your sandbox is really important, because it talks about the early expansion of the Wari, discusses the effects of imperialism on subjugated cultures, and provides archaeological evidence to back it up. As you continue editing this article, I think you should continue to add more of this kind of history, and maybe even add a history section, or sections for different major phases of the empire or for some of the relevant archaeological periods (Classic, Formative, etc.) like those we have encountered in class.

I didn't find any major grammatical errors and all of the writing seemed fairly clear. The only thing that I found a little confusing was the second-to-last sentence of your sandbox addition. Specifically, I think "seemingly 'paired'" could be replaced with just "paired" without quotation marks, because the way it is currently written seems out of place in a Wikipedia article, which should be authoritative. If you were trying to imply that there is uncertainty about the data, then I think you could state that more explicitly in a separate sentence.

A final note on organization is that you might want to think about renaming the section titled Debate on the "empire" label because most of the info in that section supports the Wari Empire being an empire, so it doesn't seem like there really is a debate. I think the info in this section should be redistributed into other sections or to new sections which you create, or at the very least you should rename the section.

Sources and References
The citation in your sandbox is from 30 years ago. Is it possible to find more recent information on the Carahuarazo Valley? I realize this may be difficult because as we've talked about in class often English-language research on Latin American sites is very scarce, so it's probably okay if you can't find any. The other references in the article are about a decade old, which is better, but it would still be good to find more recent scholarly sources if possible. The sources seem to accurately reflect both your sandbox paragraph and the article, and I like that some are academic articles and some are from books and other sources. I think in general you should try to find more sources, especially scholarly sources, if possible. I was able to access all of the references in the article except for the 7th one, so you might want to double-check that one.

Overall impressions
The content you added/are adding improves the overall quality of the article by making it more cohesive and adding more historical and archaeological data. I think that going forward you should focus on finding more sources, especially scholarly sources, and on developing the article to contain more sections on the history and culture of the Wari Empire. The section on the Carahuarazo Valley is a good start because it describes the effects of early Wari expansion on a specific region, but I think the article needs a deeper exploration of Wari history through time/space than just one conquered valley can provide. Overall you're doing a great job, keep up the good work! :)