Wikipedia:Peer review/Republic of Guria/archive1

Republic of Guria
Thinking of bringing the article to FA status, so would like to have some reviews before I get that far. Any comments are appreciated. Kaiser matias (talk) 21:32, 9 June 2020 (UTC)
 * OK, it's been here for a while; I'll print it out and take a look. Daniel Case (talk) 20:33, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

OK, sorry it's taken me longer than it should have to get back here after doing my copyedit, during which I also expanded the intro a little to reflect the expanded article.

The copyedit took care of most of the issues I would have had with the article had I been reviewing it as a GA nom. It shaved about 1.4K off the total length, so there definitely was some fat, mostly excess verbiage that seems a little better for an academic paper than an encyclopedia article ... a lot of passive voice, starting sentences with participle phrases, the use of words we try to avoid like "Indeed" and some other stealth-POV terms like "Surprisingly". There were also some misused words ("rectify" for "reconcile") and some other bits which made me wonder if whoever wrote them was not someone for whom English is a first language.

Also, I realize the nominator is Canadian, which explains why the article seemingly couldn't settle on British or American spelling ("labour organizer" ... I particularly liked that one. Only when you live in a country where there are a lot of businesses with "Tire Centre", would that not seem unusual). I decided that British English would probably be the one predominant in scholarship about this, so I defaulted to that.

I also decided to eliminate most of the given dates from the article and sort of reduce this need to indicate that they're Old Style. Over a century later, unless it helps us keep track of events (and in this case I don't think it does), the exact date something happened is really not necessary (except when, say, a commemoration is held on the anniversary). It's more a result of the urge to show your work, to make all the time spent researching seem justified.

The GA reviewer gave it a light copy edit ... I would have gone a lot further, because the reviewed version had a lot of the same issues that attracted my red pen.

As for FA: I think it's on the right track once the copy issues were addressed and that one quote is properly cited. It covers the subject comprehensively ... I don't see many things I'm asking myself after reading.

Nonetheless, I think we need to go further than just English language sources. I would bet that there's a lot of stuff in Georgian or Russian that would, if researched and translated, add to the article. Sure, those articles are less comprehensive than this, but both cite native sources that don't appear to be cited here. It would not be easy to do the research, maybe, especially not now, but I think that we could find out more granular but interesting detail about the people and events involved that way.

Also, speaking of foreign-language articles, the French article leads with this less colorful but more direct map showing exactly where Guria is in relation to the rest of Georgia. I daresay that should be in the lede, maybe. The existing historical map is colorful, but it's also crammed and cropped in so tightly on Guria that I bet most readers will skip it and have no idea where in Georgia Guria is as they read. I know I did, and I'm normally a pretty diligent reader.

(As an aside, I have to admit that reading the parts near the end about the Empire coming to crush the rebellion and destroy the Republic sounded familiar. I couldn't help but imagine Alikahnov-Avarsky at the front of a column of marching stormtroopers as I hummed the Imperial March to myself).

Good luck in developing it further and taking it to FA, if you decide to do that. Daniel Case (talk) 18:23, 17 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks for going through it so thoroughly. I really appreciate the effort, and am glad that you enjoyed reading it. I do hope to go through again myself and ensure that the wording is good to go. I see what you mean about the quote; that seems to have been added when I wasn't paying attention, but I do think I have a second-hand citation for it. Also thanks for noting the foreign-language articles again; while they don't have much more information than what is available in English (I can read both Russian and Georgian, but the whole episode is largely brushed aside for various, political-based reasons), I see a 2005 article that I missed before and will look over and incorporate. Likewise about the map, it certainly can be an improvement. Looking forward to working on it some more and eventually moving onto FAC. Kaiser matias (talk) 02:13, 19 August 2020 (UTC)