Wikipedia:Peer review/Common Eland/archive1

Common Eland
This peer review discussion has been closed. I've listed this article for peer review because I have tried my best to bring this article from the start status. But no one has rated this again. I think this article requires the attention of other editors. I hope it will be peer reviewed soon.

Thanks, Sainsf&lt;^&gt; (talk) 16:17, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

Finetooth comments: This is a fair start, but it does not yet completely satisfy WP:V. I'd suggest working on the sourcing issues first, then making other changes, then rewriting the lead to summarize the revised article. Here are further comments and suggestions:


 * Parts of the article lack sources for claims that need support. Examples include whole paragraphs in some cases and large parts of paragraphs in others. For example, what reliable source or sources support the claims in the "Etymology" section beyond the first sentence? My rule of thumb for sourcing is to provide a source for every set of statistics, every direct quotation, every unusual claim, and every paragraph. An inline citation early in a paragraph can't be assumed to apply to claims that occur later in the paragraph.


 * I would not mix citation styles. Since you are using the "cite" family of citation templates for most of the citations, they should be used for all. For example, in the "Physical description" section, the two references to "Pappas 2002" are out-of-sync. Furthermore, no reference to Pappas seems to appear in the "Reference" or "Bilbiliography" sections. It is not possible from the information given to verify the claims. The same can be said for the "Bergstrom and Skarpe" reference in the "Feeding" section. Who are Bergstrom and Skarpe, and what does this refer to?


 * The material in the "Uses" section is confusing. What is meant by the African Elands of Israel? What are they?
 * "A coat of arms is, strictly speaking, a distinctive heraldic design on a cloak used to cover and protect armour, but the term is more broadly applied to mean a full heraldic achievement which consists of a shield and certain accessories." - What is the source for this? Please make sure that editors have not paraphrased sources too closely or violated copyright by copying. This particular sentence looks suspicious to me. There may be others.


 * Some of the citations are incomplete or malformed, citation 24, for example. Citations to web sites should include author, title, publisher, date of publication, url, and date of most recent access, if all of those are known or can be found.


 * Check to be sure that the citations are to sources that meet the WP:RS guidelines. For example, what makes "Bio.davidson.edu" reliable? By the way, an url is not a publisher. The author seems to be someone named Will Rivers, who is perhaps a student at Davidson College, and the site appears to be self-published.


 * Some measurements have been appropriately expressed in both imperial and metric units, but others have not. See the "Physical description" section, for example.


 * The dab tool at the top of this review page finds seven links that go to disambiguation pages rather than the intended targets.


 * If the materials listed in "Further reading and bibliography" are important, why not include references to them in the main text?


 * The links to the portal, the Commons, and Wikispecies belong in an "External links" section.


 * The lead is to be an inviting summary of the entire article rather than an introductory paragraph. My rule of thumb is to try to include in the lead at least a mention of each of the main text sections. WP:LEAD has details.


 * It's often helpful to look at featured articles to see how other editors have handled similar topics. You'll find a list at WP:FA that include featured articles like Guinea pig.

I hope these suggestions prove helpful. If so, please consider reviewing another article, especially one from the PR backlog at WP:PR; that is where I found this one. I don't usually watch the PR archives or check corrections or changes. If my comments are unclear, please ping me on my talk page. Finetooth (talk) 21:56, 8 January 2011 (UTC)