Wikipedia:Peer review/British Museum/archive1

British Museum
I'm yet to find a Museum article on wikipedia that has acheived FA status, which is unfortunate considering they represent a repository of learning likened to Wikipedia itself, in their respective genres.

I've worked extensively to expand the British Museum article since December, as it was a shambles beforehand. I would like feedback from the wider community on what works, what doesn't, where can I improve, where are the weaknesses, comments about accuracy, depth, WP:MOS observations, prose, etc, and any suggestions that anyone has would be greatly appreciated.

All comments appreciated!

Cheers --ImperialCollegeGrad 21:39, 16 April 2007 (UTC)


 * The article seems to use couple of non-standard bits of layout; notably, starting every paragraph with a colon, which makes article feel more cluttered, especially at lower res. Secondly, I think there are probably a few too many photos, and I think the templates such as Prints and Drawings would be better at the bottom of the article. Also, I'm not too sure about the copyright status of some of the images: Image:2.Upper Floors (Rooms 36-73, 90-94).JPG for example has been copied from the British Museum website, but the template attached to the article is not valid for this particular case; the image is not +70 years old, and maps fail criterion 1 of the Non-free content policy. Laïka  22:51, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Comments by Ham
Some points:


 * 75 KB is very long – I think the creation of some breakaway articles may be in order. The Departments of Egypt and Sudan, the Near East and Greece and Rome all have enough content devoted to them to merit their own pages – simply cut and paste from what's already here and compress the info into one or two paragraphs for the main article, as was done with the Dept. of Asia (probably easier said than done). Most of the image galleries currently taking up space on the main article could then be moved to those pages.


 * The history section is, in my opinion, at the right level of concision as it is. The title of each subsection needs to be changed in accordance with Manual of Style (headings), however. ('Capitalize the first letter of the first word and any proper nouns in headings, but leave the rest [in] lower case'. So The largest building site in Europe (1825-50), not The Largest Building Site In Europe... Incidentally, that section title sounds like a quote – do you have a citation for it?)


 * One-paragraph sections tend to be frowned upon, so the sections on the Dept. of Coins and Metals through to Libraries and Archives may need to be lengthened. At least one footnote for each of those sections would also be a good thing.


 * Regarding the Museums with major collections of X antiquities templates: one of these has 10 items, another 12, and a third only 5. Perhaps we should standardise them so that each is a top ten?
 * According to Avoid trivia sections in articles, the contents of such sections 'are better presented within the context of the text' than in a dedicated trivia section. This is easily done: the Secretum has an article, so simply drop a link into the Department of Prehistory and Europe section, and the Haytor Granite Tramway info could go either in the main body of the Building section or in a footnote.


 * Footnote e states that 'understanding of the foundation of the National Gallery is complicated by the fact that there is no documented history of the institution'. If by 'documented history' you mean a general study of the Gallery's history, may I direct you to The Nation's Mantlepiece: A History of the National Gallery by Jonathan Conlin (London, 2006)?


 * It would be better to conflate footnote 45 (a footnote of a footnote) into b.


 * To which book do footnotes 46 and 47 refer? There's no book by Bernard Ashmole in the bibliography.

Good work on this page so far; keep it up!  Wham! Bam! Thank you,  Ham 08:56, 20 April 2007 (UTC)