User talk:Bluestarsjay/sandbox

From Prof Mc: You have some good material here, but the draft seems like it was a little rushed, so some of these revisions may be issues you were going to tackle anyway:
 * as you note, it's really important to get the sub-heads working and fortunately there are great Wikipedia user support pages you can look up to troubleshoot this
 * a key feature of Wikipedia entries is the system of links to other entries, so as you standardize Hagia Sophia's name you'll add links to it and throughout
 * I'm not sure why you haven't used the Pedone essay very much, and don't take its arguments into account for the dating. It's the central resource for your topic.
 * as is typical in a revision, you'll want to fine-tune the prose so, for example, that the sentence with "dearth" might be clearer if it had something like "who mention this feature" at the end.
 * revisit how to use semi-colons, this site has some tips: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/semicolon
 * delete sentence near the end: "St Sophia was added to..." or connect it more closely  with your argument.

Please touch base if you have any questions as you fine-tune! AMcClanan (talk) 17:35, 25 November 2017 (UTC)AMcClanan

Peer Review
Hi Jason,

Your article is very interesting and thorough. I'm assuming that you're expanding the already existing Omphalion page? When reading the article I had some thoughts on some of the points you made:

1. The part about how the Byzantines thought marble was frozen water. In the preceding sentence, maybe link the word marble to the main Wikipedia article on marble. When I read that part, I started thinking that I don't really know what marble is or how it's formed etc.

2. Is there a Wikipedia article for Antony of Novgorod? That may be a good link as well. I would say err on the side of too many links to other articles. When I read Wikipedia articles I'm always clicking on the links. Don't underestimate what people don't know, like the marble thing.

3. One of the most interesting sections is the part about spolia! Another strong part is that you make it very clear that there are different opinions about the function of the Omphalion.

4. Overall, I think you could keep adding more details because all the information is relevant and then break it up into sections. Maybe a history heading, and maybe the "jewel style" could be a heading. Is there a different word for that? Maybe Design could be the heading?

5. Are you able to find any public domain images of the Omphalion?

Jrmastor (talk) 21:54, 26 November 2017 (UTC)jrmastor

———————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————— Peer Review: Incredible start to your article. It's incredibly well informed and makes me believe that you really know your stuff on this topic. There wasn't a moment when reading that I didn't question your knowledge. There are a lot of points (information wise) that I would have never thought of putting in, like the thing with the marble and frozen water. I think that's excellent. Your references seem to be cited very well, and there is an overall consistency with your writing. As for improvement, you should probably add a proper heading like "History" and such. As well as spacing out your information into sections, which would make it easier to take in all of the information you put in. Other than that I think it's great, and I hope my feedback was useful, good work. - D.hallstead — Preceding unsigned comment added by D.hallstead (talk • contribs) 02:20, 28 November 2017 (UTC)