User talk:Muwang988/sandbox

Peer Review - Islamic Art History

1. In your “Use of Water” section I really like how you bring in text from the Qur’an. I think it helps to contextualize the importance of water in the Islamic garden. The part about reflection is also very interesting and clearly written. To make these ideas more clear, it could be helpful to describe in more detail what these water structures look like and how they differ (still vs. moving water). You could even add images that demonstrate these concepts. I also think that the section on plants reads well, and I especially like the part about scents.

2. One thing I really dislike about the current “Sensory Experience” section is the use of the past tense, which makes it seem like Islamic gardens no longer exist, even though the Wikipedia article seems to say that they do. I like that you use the present tense and I think this is already a big improvement of the article.

3. The section on poetry feels a bit out of place. Maybe you could expand on this section or incorporate these sentences into the water section, plant section, or even the introduction.

4. I would avoid using the first person (“we,” “us”). I usually don’t see the first person used in Wikipedia articles because the prose is supposed to be objective and detached from a narrator. When you say, “Classical literature and poetry relating to Islamic gardens enable us to investigate the significance of water and plants in Islamic culture,” maybe you could replace “us” with “scholars.” I’m not really sure if this is the correct word to put here, but maybe to replace the first person you could think more specifically about who you mean when you say “us” and “we.”

5. There are a few grammatical errors throughout your sandbox that I would go through and proofread for. In some cases, it would be more clear to use simple rather than big words. I don’t know what “materia prima” means, and a lot of Wikipedia readers might not know either. In this case, you could use a simpler wording or add a link to the Wikipedia page about materia prima, so that readers can mouse over the link and quickly see the definition. Also, you’re probably going to fix this later, but you should add citations using Wikipedia’s “cite” feature instead of in-text citations.

6. I think that the most important thing to do with this Wikipedia article is to expand it, which you’ve already made a lot of progress on! So far it seems like you haven’t incorporated any of the current Wikipedia article into your sandbox, but I would go through and see if there are things already in there that are worth keeping, and incorporate those into your own text.

Josephineking (talk) 22:49, 14 March 2019 (UTC)