Wikipedia:Peer review/Purvas/archive1

Purvas
This peer review discussion has been closed. I've listed this article for peer review because…Purvas are one of the most important Scriptures of Jainism and hence this article needs to be rated/improved from a broader perspective

Thanks, Anish (talk) 12:12, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Ruhrfisch comments: I am reviewing the five Jainism articles that were left at Peer Review - since there are some similarities between them, I will make some similar comments. You may want to ask for other reviewer's comments at WP:PRV to get some more feedback. I also found this to be an interesting article and hope these suggestions help improve it: Hope this helps, Ruhrfisch &gt;&lt;&gt; &deg; &deg; 15:03, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
 * This article is about an important aspect of Jainism, but does not mention "Jain" until the third sentence - the first sentence should be a breif description of the topic that gives the most important points, so I think Jain should be in there - perhaps The Purvas, translated as ancient or prior knowledge, are fourteen Jain scriptures that were preached by all Tirthankaras, and believed to encompass the entire gamut of knowledge available in this universe.?
 * The lead needs to summarize the whole article. My rule of thumb is to see that each section header is at least mentioned in the lead, even if only a phrase or word. So, for example, Karma is a section, but it not in the lead. The current lead is one very long paragraph and could be split into two paragraphs or perhaps expanded to three. See WP:LEAD
 * Be consistent on spelling - is it "srut-kevali" (in the lead) or "Srutakevalis" (section title)? Since this is a word many readers will not be familiar with, these different spellings are needlessly confusing.
 * References come right after the punctuation and need a space following them, so "...blah.[1] Blah" See WP:CITE
 * References themselves need to follow consistent format - internet refs need url, title, publisher, author if known, and date accessed. The cite web and cite book templates help.
 * What kind of reference is Bh 20.8 in ...and eventually, the whole of Drstivada disappeared as well.(Bh 20.8)[2]?
 * Duplicate references can be cited repeatedly using the first time, then the next time you want to cite that, just write
 * The article needs many more references - any quote or attribution should be sourced, and the whole section "Subject matter of Purvas" has zero refs (See WP:V
 * Per the WP:MOS, please do not repeat the title of the article in section headers, or start a header with The, so "Loss of the Purvas" would just be "Loss" and "Subject matter of Purvas" would just be "Subject matter" since we already know the article is about Purvas. Also "The Srutakevalis" could just be "Srutakevalis" or "Srutakevali" unless they always have "The" in front of the name (not the case in the lead)
 * The article needs to be copyedited
 * Try to avoid jargon where possible or explain it. Provide context for the reader as well, for example the lead mentions "Drstivada" several times, but never really explains the term -See WP:JARGON and WP:PCR
 * There are three lists - many of these terms and names could perhaps be wikilinked

Finetooth comments:
 * The first thing that I noticed were the lists. I would suggest collapsing the two short Srutakevalis lists into plain text to achieve a better layout. Such short lists, especially ones with only three items, don't need to be broken out with numbers and special spacing. A better solution for the list of 14 Purvas, on the other hand, would be to expand each of the 14 items into a separate paragraph. For example, the first one, "Utpaad Pūrva – Living (Jiv), non-living (Ajiv), and its modes (Paryäya);" is essentially meaningless to an outsider. The only clear words are "and" and "its". It might seem clear what is meant by "living" or "non-living" because these are ordinary English words, but in this context it is not clear. I see great need for expansion in this list and great possibility for improvement.
 * The idea of an elephant volume of ink for the first purva, two elephant volumes for the second, four for the third, and apparently eight for the fourth, and so on, is especially effective and memorable. It would be good to give a published source for this concept, and it would be fun to see the final number in the series written out. Finetooth (talk) 20:26, 19 April 2008 (UTC)