Wikipedia:Peer review/May Revolution/archive1

May Revolution
This peer review discussion has been closed. I've listed this article for peer review because all the important work (checking books, adding footnotes, explaining things, detailing all the things that had happen, moving excesive information to secondary articles, etc.) is mostly done. If there's something missing, it may be small details, easy to fix.

However, I'm not a native english speaker, and I'm too familiar with this topic. I need a review of 2 things: first, languaje (if there are things wich are not written correctly, or may be improved), and second, whenever there are details that may seem confusing to people with no knowledge on the topic and that may require higher explanations (or, on the contrary, if somewhere I overexplain something that is already clear for the casual reader).

Thanks, MBelgrano (talk) 12:44, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

Comments by H1nkles

From what I can tell you wish to get some input on areas of improvement from someone who has no prior knowledge of the subject matter. Well I can help with this. I will do my best to make suggestions and where I can fix prose issues I will do so. It is a very long article so I may gloss over areas and make general statements. I'm not sure what your goals are for the article. I see that it did fail GA review once, I think this would be a good initial goal. This is a rather long article so the review may have to be done in chunks as I have time.

Lead


 * This sentence is a run-on:
 * "The May Revolution (Spanish: Revolución de Mayo) was a week-long series of revolutionary events that took place from May 18 to May 25, 1810, in Buenos Aires, capital of the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata, a colony of the Spanish Empire which included the present-day nations of Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay and Uruguay."
 * Consider ending the first sentence at 1810. Then the next sentence starts with, "The revolution centered in..."


 * Also in the above sentence I would change "week-long series of revolutionary events". This is an awkward way of phrasing what was in essence a revolution or coup.  Instead say, "week-long coup d'état"
 * Watch using words like, "The May Revolution is considered..." These can be seen as weasel words, which are phrases used to lend credibility to ideas that do not have sourced support.  Examples of weasel words are, "experts believe...", "historians have concluded that...".  Twice in the last paragraph in the lead the words, "is considered" are used.  Be mindful of weasel words and try to avoid them wherever possible.  Instead attribute the claim to a specific person and provide a source.

Causes
 * I'm not going to change all instances of linking country names, I'll leave that to you. In general generic links to countries is not helpful.  If you want to link to a country please try to be more specific than just linking to the country.  In the context of this article, linking United States is not helpful because the article about the United States really has very little to do with this article.  If you linked to United States, that would be more specific and more useful.
 * American history buffs would question the accuracy of this statement,
 * "The United States had emancipated themselves from the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1776, which provided a tangible example that led Criollos to believe that revolution and independence from Spain could be realistic aims."
 * The US declared independence around 1776 but had not in any way emancipated themselves by this point. 1781 would be a more accurate date since it was then that the English surrendered.


 * Your description of the Abdications of Bayonne is very well done in my opinion.
 * This sentence is confusing to me:
 * "This whole situation created two antagonistic groups: leather products manufacturers who wanted free trade to be able to sell their production, and retailers who benefited from the prices of the smuggled imports, which they would have had to sell at lower prices if free trade was allowed."
 * No where prior to this do I see anything about leather product manufacturers. Weren't there a great many different types of products produced in Argentina?  Why key in on leather?  It just sort of comes out of the blue.  I would be less specific about the first group, unless there was some very contentious issue with leather manufacturers or if I'm misreading this whole thing.


 * There are quite a few small errors in spelling and grammar. While they are small, given the frequency of them it becomes distracting.  I would recommend requesting help from WP:COPYEDITORS.  You can do so here.  More to come.  H1nkles (talk) citius altius fortius 16:54, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

Prelude
 * I'm looking for areas in which to trim down the information. I feel that this section is too long.  It adds a lot of good information but how this information really pushes towards the revolution is unclear.  I'm not saying the entire section should be removed but I think it could be significantly trimmed and combined into one section.  The Cisneros government section, for example, is longer than all three of the articles listed as the Main article, and the see also articles combined.  Usually this information is done in summary fashion and the Main article tag is meant to direct readers to a more indepth article on the subject.  The opposite is the case here.  I would move a majority of this information to the main article and trim it down significantly.

May week
 * You only need to link a term once, open cabildo is linked at least twice. Plaza de Mayo twice and Junta several times.
 * There are several grammatical errors in the long quote under the Sunday May 20 sub-section. Is this directly quoted from the book or are the errors on the part of the editors of this article?  If the errors are in the book this is quoted from then please put a (sic) after errors to show the reader these errors are intentional.  If they are on the part of the editors of this article then please fix them.
 * This sentence is a fragment:
 * "At the time of the vote, Castelli's position coupled with that of Saavedra."
 * What is this trying to say? Did this position win out?  I don't know.


 * I don't see the need to outline every plan that was put forth and then count the votes for each plan. It seems a bit to detailed.  Give the two competing ideas along with their plans for resolution.  I think that would be sufficient.
 * The last paragraph in the May 24 sub-section has a lot of important information but no reference. I added a  template.
 * The article bogs down in the May 25th sub-section. Listing all the names of the various parties involved in signing the form just seems a bit too much.  More to come.  H1nkles (talk) citius altius fortius 18:14, 4 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately I'm going to have to end my review early. I have some real life concerns that will require much of my time and I won't be able to get to the rest of the article.  I apologize but I hope that I have given you some thoughts to help with the article. Best of luck to you.  H1nkles (talk) citius altius fortius 19:54, 9 June 2010 (UTC)


 * No problem, I will take those advises in consideration. I haven't replied here to allow for the review to end as a block of text rather than set of dispersed advises between comments, but I had already started working at some of the points. Good luck with your real-life tasks, and thanks for the help MBelgrano (talk) 19:05, 10 June 2010 (UTC)