Wikipedia:Peer review/National Museum of Beirut/archive1

National Museum of Beirut
This peer review discussion has been closed. I've listed this article for peer review because… I've been working on this article when it was only a stub. This article is about the only national museum in Lebanon and the biggest depository of national treasures, i have already submitted it to "request feed back" page and i got encouragement to submit it here. thank you for your help in making this article better.

Thanks, Eli  +  17:54, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Ruhrfsich comments: Good start and obvious that a lot of work has gone into this. Here are some sugestions to help improve the article: Congratulations on the DYK and I hope this helps. I see this is up for GA - to be honest I think it needs a thorough copyedit before making GA, but good luck, Ruhrfisch &gt;&lt;&gt; &deg; &deg; 21:00, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Make sure images have proper fair use rationales, for example the logo in the infobox. See WP:FAIR USE
 * Expand the lead so that it is a summary of the whole article. My rule of thumb is that every header should be mentioned in the lead in some way, even as a word or phrase. See WP:LEAD
 * Once the article is expanded, it will need a copy edit. For example, just in the lead there are some awkward sentences and errors - here is one example with my possible corrections: The museum's neo-pharaonic style building and some of its collection had suffered extensive damage throughout [in] the war, but the greatest part of it’s [its] artifacts was [were] saved thanks to last[-]minute preemptive measures.
 * References go after punctuation and are in numerical order, so The initial collection was rapidly enriched through the work of the successive directors, but also through donations from private collections,[2] among which were Henry Seyrig's private coin collection,[4] General Weygand's collection in 1925,[2] and that of Dr George Ford in 1930.[2][5] See WP:CITE
 * Per WP:MOSNUM, use numbers for 10 and less and spell out numbers above ten. So ..collection grew richer within 3 [three] decades..
 * Golden Era sectin is very short - can it be expanded or merged with the preceding section?
 * Try not to wikilink too much - most editors link once in the lead, once in the article, and that is it (plus once in the infobox).
 * You might want to use cite web, cite book and the other cite templates for uniformity. Internet references need url, title, publisher, author if known, and date accessed. See WP:CITE
 * Great pictures - you may want to alternate them (right and left sides).
 * A model article is often useful to follow for ideas, style, examples to follow, etc. I note that Palazzo Pitti is a Museum WP:FA and may be a useful model. GA articles on museums would also be useful at this point.

Peer review

Comments by Finetooth

Here are a few ideas for improving this article.


 * I recommend a top-to-bottom copyedit by someone who will fix the many small errors such as "it’s artifacts", which should be "its artifacts" in the lead.


 * Reference numbers in the text generally should be placed immediately after sentence punctuation rather than before. In the "Early beginnings" section, reference 1 is correctly placed, but reference 3 is not.


 * If possible, people mentioned in the article should be identified on first mention by first name and last name and, often, a brief description. Raymond Weill (a French officer stationed in Lebanon), is identified that way in the "Early beginnings" section, but General Weygand is not. Most readers will know nothing about Weygand, and so it would be helpful when first mentioning him to say something like "Maxime Weygand, a French general who was doing X and Y in Lebanon at times A and B".


 * The mention of Dr. George Ford involves a related naming problem. The Manual of Style says, "Academic and professional titles (such as 'Doctor' or 'Professor') should not be used before the name in the initial sentence or in other uses of the person's name. Verifiable facts about how the person attained such titles should be included in the article text instead." Look here for more details. This naming problem can be solved in much the same way as the other two, by explaining briefly what kind of doctor he was and how he came to be connected to the museum.


 * Quantities given in metric units should also be given in imperial units. See WP:UNITS. I added conversion templates to the article in three places to show how this works. The conversion template undefined undefined takes a while to get used to but handles many kinds of conversions, abbreviates correctly and automatically, and automatically prevents line-wrap separation of numbers and units. I find it extremely handy. See Template:Convert.


 * Lower Paleolithic and other geologic time periods are normally given in millions of years with no reference to calendar terms like BC or AD The reason is that when we are talking about numbers this big, BC and AD are essentially the same.


 * The main page of the Manual of Style, WP:MOS, is worth returning to again and again for the answers to small stylistic questions. In this encyclopedia, BC and AD appear without points, and date ranges use en dashes as separators rather than hyphens. Thus "3200 B.C.- 1200 B.C." should be "3200–1200 BC".


 * The Bibliography section has only two items in it and doesn't seem to add anything. Both items are cited and appear in the Reference section already. I would simply delete the Bibliography. If one is needed later, it can always be added.


 * Links 4, 5, and 17 are dead, and others may be too. You should check them all and fix the dead ones or replace them with good ones if possible. Please add the publication date to citations when possible.


 * I would suggest breaking the lead into at least two paragraphs and adding a bit more to the lead about the individual collections. See WP:LEAD.


 * I often find it helpful to look at models to imitate. WikiProject Museums includes a list of museum articles that have been promoted to GA or FA. They would be worth looking at for ideas. Finetooth (talk) 22:47, 23 April 2008 (UTC)