Wikipedia:Peer review/Thomas Aquinas/archive1

Thomas Aquinas
This article has recently achieved GA status, and I'm interested to see how close it is to FA status. What improvements need to be made in order for this article to be a featured article? - David aukerman talk 13:08, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
 * The prose is a bit disjointed. Also, I'm a bit concerned that the two main sources are Schiff and Britannica, from 1914 and 1911 respectively. I'm no expert on Aquinas, but surely a lot of research must have been done since then, so that these are largely outdated? Eixo 15:57, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Could you give a couple of examples of where you find disjointed prose? (i.e. is it throughout the article, or in one or two particular sections?)  Yes, the use of Schaff and Britannica in the Biography section (the other sections are much newer) is problematic.  (There was some concern (see talk page) about incorrect information in the Biography section.)  So, newer biographical information would be helpful? - David aukerman talk 16:05, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Many of the paragraphs are just 1-3 lines long. If you look at the FAs, they're normally not like that; they try to get a narrative consistency through longer sequences. Here is a kind of 'Power Point'-presentation style that a lot of articles suffer from. Most glaringly, the last paragraph reads simply: "Many biographies of Aquinas have been written over the centuries, one of the most notable by G.K. Chesterton." This is not only out of context, but it begs the question: why isn't Chesterton in the reference section if he's so good? (Though there is a hyperlink to the book further down.) Another example is the paragraph "Aquinas also greatly influenced Roman Catholic understandings of mortal and venial sins." How?


 * It would certainly help the article if some new scholarship was incorporated, though that might be a tough demand in terms of extra reading and rewriting. It should be said that these are just my opinions though, and should not be taken as authoritative. Eixo 00:47, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your comments. I've checked out a couple of newer biographies of Aquinas from the library - it'll take a little bit of time for me to go through them (and through the article) to fix things up.  But you've provided some direction for the article, and I appreciate that! - David aukerman talk 01:42, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Good luck with that. I've read the page more in debth now, and it seems like a good article, but I've made a few suggestions on the talk page. Eixo 15:12, 3 September 2006 (UTC)