Wikipedia:Peer review/Peer review/archive2

Peer review
This peer review discussion has been closed. I've listed this article for peer review because…it's brand new, it's my first time writing a Wikipedia entry and because I'd really like someone knowledgeable to look it over and give me some advice. I appreciate all the help you can provide. My subpage is found at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mhsprecher Thanks, Mary Helen Mhsprecher (talk) 20:21, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Previous peer review
 * Peer review is usually for well-developed articles rather than new ones, but I'm happy to give advice. I've left some feedback at your talk page. --Physics is all gnomes (talk) 23:32, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Finetooth comments: This is especially fascinating to me because I do so many peer reviews for Wikipedia. Before I looked over the article, I was already aware of at least some of the ways that peer review here is less formal and more open than academic peer review. Your article goes well beyond what I already knew, and I appreciate it. In addition, the writing is professional and clear.

The main problems with the existing article, in my opinion, are pretty well laid out by the tags that other editors have added to the page. They mention problems with jargon and organization and the lead, and while I don't disagree, I would not have flagged those first. I would say that the most important issue is that so much of the article violates WP:V. Much of the material seems to be coming from a single mind that has a broad and deep understanding of the subject; unfortunately, because its claims are not supported by inline citations to reliable sources, it does not meet the basic Wikipedia guidelines explained by WP:V and WP:RS. Large sections of the article, the entire "Justification" subsection, for example, are unsourced. The claims made in these sections are therefore not verifiable. Claims generally need to be supported by citations to external publications that are vetted by editors and often peer-reviewed as well. My rule of thumb is to provide a source for every claim is unusual or that is likely to be doubted, every direct quotation, every set of statistics, and every paragraph.

I think this is an important article that can be improved by finding and citing published sources for its claims. After that is done, other things may fall into place.

One other thought: Since other editors seem to have strong opinions about this article, it would be good to settle the questions about mergers with other articles before going too much further.


 * I see that some of the inline citations in the existing article use the "cite" family of templates to help organize the footnotes. You can find the complete family at WP:CIT. You don't have to use templates or this family of templates, but you should choose one kind of citation formatting and stick with it throughout. Don't mix the "cite" templates with the "citation" family of templates that are also found at WP:CIT.


 * The tools in the toolbox at the top of this review page can be quite handy for checking any article for certain kinds of problems. The link checker, for example, sees four dead URLs in the reference section of this article.

I hope these suggestions prove helpful. If so, please consider commenting on any other article at WP:PR. I don't usually watch the PR archives or make follow-up comments. If my suggestions are unclear, please ping me on my talk page. Finetooth (talk) 21:05, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Please make sure that the existing text includes no copyright violations, plagiarism, or close paraphrasing. For more information on this please see Wikipedia_Signpost/2009-04-13/Dispatches. (This is a general warning given in view of previous problems that have risen over copyvios.)