Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Peer review/Sword

Sword
Creating subpage for IP user, Woody (talk) 10:07, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Thank you Woody! As per Aeonx's advise, I'm requesting a peer review of Sword as it has been edited heavily recently with many references, links, images, grammar corrections and structural changes made. This changes already promoted the article from start to B-class. It was then that it was suggested a peer review might provide a more thorough feedback as to what should be improved with the article.

IMO, there are still many claims and assertions in the article that require proper citation,some paragraphs and sections need restructuring, and some sections should be added- especially a "making of swords" section or something of the sort.

As a Vital Article I would be glad to see it improved, if anyone cares to help with article it will be appreciated.

I expect there are many issues which escaped my notice and I'm looking forward to your reviews, thx.--84.229.106.220 (talk) 10:32, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

AustralianRupert
A very interesting article. Although I don't have specific content knowledge, I have the following comments/suggestions:
 * in the Bronze Age section, "middle-east" should be "Middle East" as it is a proper noun;-✅
 * in the Bronze Age section, the abbreviation "UK" appears without being first formally introduced, e.g. "United Kingdom (UK)";-✅
 * in the Bronze Age section, this sentence needs work: "The earliest available Bronze age swords of copper discovered from the Harappan sites in present-day Pakistan that date back to 2300 BC";-✅
 * in the Bronze Age section, "1700-1400 BC" should have an endash per WP:DASH;-✅
 * in the Bronze Age section, the caption for the second image should be capitalised at the start: "the swords found together with the Nebra skydisk, ca. 1600 BC";-✅
 * in the Iron Age section, this sentence needs work: "Iron became increasingly common from the 13th century BC, Mainly due to the collapse of the bronze producing Civilizations" (capitalisation of "Mainly" is the issue here);-✅
 * in the Late Middle Ages and Renaissance section, some of the citations appear before punctuation, however per WP:PAIC they should come after. E.g. here: "A number of manuscripts covering longsword combat and techniques dating from the 13th-16th centuries exist in German[29], Italian, and English[30], providing extensive";-✅
 * in the Terminology section, the dot pointed list in the Blade subsection needs more citations (particularly at the end of the paragraphs);✅
 * in the Terminiology section, this sentence needs a citation: "From the 18th century onwards, swords intended for slashing, i.e., with blades ground to a sharpened edge, have been curved with the radius of curvature equal to the distance from the swordman's body at which it was to be used. This allowed the blade to have a sawing effect rather than simply delivering a heavy cut. European swords, intended for use at arm's length, had a radius of curvature of around a meter. Middle Eastern swords, intended for use with the arm bent, had a smaller radius.";-Tell me about it!, I've spent hours trying to verify this claim. Will try again soon!
 * in the Typology section, this sentence needs a citation: "Swords can fall into categories of varying scope. The main distinguishing characteristics include blade shape (cross-section, taper, and length), shape and size of hilt and pommel, age, and place of origin";✅
 * the Swords in history list needs some more citations;✅
 * the Swords of myth and legend section needs more citations;✅
 * the Swords of modern fiction section needs more citations;✅
 * in the Bibliography section, the titles should be capitalised in accordance with WP:MOSCAPS, e.g. "Stage combat resource materials: a selected and annotated bibliography" should be "Stage Combat Resource Materials: A Selected and Annotated Bibliography";-✅
 * in the Bibliography section, the title of the Withers work should be in italics and the year should appear directly after the author's name;-✅
 * in the Further reading section, the title should not be presented in capital letters;-✅
 * the citation style seems a little confusing to me, I'd recommend using short citations for the inline citations and include the full bibliographic details in the Bibliography per WP:CITESHORT, although it is a matter of personal preference and shouldn't really prevent promotion of the article at GA if you take it there (they need to be consistent, though);
 * I recommend putting in a request to have the article copy edited by someone from the Guild of Copy editors if you haven't already done so. The request can be made here: WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors/Requests;-✅
 * there appears to be a mixture of US and British English variations, for instance "armor" (US), "center" (US), "defense" (US), "armoured" (British), "armour" (British) - either variation is fine, but the article should be consistent;-✅
 * there is a lot of whitespace on my screen because of the placement of the images on the right. If someof them were alternated (some left, some right), this whitespace might be fixed;✅
 * watch out for overlinking terms, the general rule is that a term can be linked once in the lead, once in the infobox and once in the prose. AustralianRupert (talk) 04:51, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks very much, mate! I've addressed some of the issues and will address the rest shortly.--84.229.106.220 (talk) 08:03, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Aeonx
I'll review the article more thoroughly later, but for now I've listed a few points for improvement that I noticed earlier when assessing.
 * Try to find ISBN or OCLC numbers (or both) for each book reference used, some references are missing this information.✅
 * In regards to WP:Layout and content:
 * The lead can be expanded by 1 paragraph; for a large topic/article like this a 3-paragraph lead is acceptable; although I would probably not go to 4.
 * I would perhaps include a section for 'Modern Day use'✅
 * The section for 'Punishment device' I don't think deserves to be a level 2 section; the history-aspects should be incorporated into History and the Executioner's sword is really more a type (so under Typology I guess)✅
 * The Further reading sub-section needs to contain a better list of resources.
 * For suggestions, you might be able to find online notable websites with sword details or even a list of books on swords recommended by academics or enthusiasts in the field.✅
 * The See also section includes far too many links to asian martial arts, this list should be revised to alternative topics that are of most interest✅
 * The right-hand side of the article is over-balanced with images, they should be roughly alternated (or paired) across either side of the page. (generally don't alternate within the same sub-section though)✅
 * Major Point: This article, and the majority of sword-related articles, could really benefit from a navigation box;
 * For an example in a related topic, see: Template:Knives; - Though I do not believe this is a particularly good example to base swords on.
 * Generally I've seen navboxes roughly based around categories, but this varies, it may be better to separate types of Swords by historical period? Not really sure.✅

Aeonx (talk) 10:40, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. Very good points, about the navbox- I'm thinking either by geographical location(Europe, Americas, Asia and such..) and within each section the sword will be named in chronological order or by historical Eras and geographical subsections. I'm more inclined towards the former since I believe most readers who'll use the navbox will want to check some peculiar sword or another from a specific region- it will also fix the problem of swords that have been used and modified during the centuries- like the katana,longsword and even the kukri.--84.229.106.220 (talk) 12:30, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Yoenit
Hey, I don't have time to do a detailed review at the moment, but I will post my observations with regards to the structure of the article:
 * Get rid of the "Famous swords" lists, they do not belong in a general article. A prose section about the symbolic value of the sword (which is currently missing) could probably integrate many of the examples and just link to List of swords for the rest.
 * "Punishment devices" section should be integrated with history. Either that or expand it and write similar sections for other sword applications (ceremonial swords, military swords, coathanger, etc) ✅
 * I am not sure what the intention behind "typology" section is, but it seems rather incomplete and listy.
 * History section seems to focus to much on Europe. It might actually be a good idea to create separate history sections for Europe & Asia as they seem to have developed independent from each other (maybe also for the middle east & india, but I know very little about that). ✅

Overall I see a definite improvement of the article since the last time I read it, but there is still a lot of work to do. Yoenit (talk) 23:15, 17 November 2010 (UTC)