Wikipedia:Peer review/Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant/archive1

Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant

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I've listed this article for peer review because this article has been linked to on the front page of the English Wikipedia for the past several weeks and receives over 50,000 hits per day on most days. The group is in the news constantly and has had a major impact on the politics of the Middle East (and the world as a whole), and thus deserves a high-quality Wikipedia article for all who seek to better understand the topic. The article has already been checked against B-class criteria by the Military History WikiProject and I would like to get it up to A-class after I close this peer review.

Thanks, Tonystewart14 (talk) 08:19, 25 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: This is really not my area of expertise so I don't really feel qualified to criticize the content. What I would say, however, is that the article seems to suffer from the same thing as quite a lot of "in the news" articles in that for large chunks of it, every paragraph begins "In [Month and Year]...". I guess this is hardly surprising, but makes the content hard to follow. As with any article, some kind of synoptic judgment is needed and these will need to be integrated into some kind of narrative. The ideology section is a good example of this working well I think. Just my two cents anyway. —Brigade Piron (talk) 08:41, 25 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Comments by Simon Burchell
- Some sections appear very "listy", with multiple short paragraphs divided by year - my feeling is that many of these can be combined into single paragraphs. At first glance, the Names and As Islamic State of Iraq (2006–2013) could use some work converting them into more-easily readable prose text, rather than lists of facts. Simon Burchell (talk) 11:26, 26 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- There are some "clarification needed" tags sprinkled in the text in the As Islamic State of Iraq (2006–2013) section. Simon Burchell (talk) 11:28, 26 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- Following on from my first comment, in some sections (e.g. As self-proclaimed Islamic State (June 2014–present), lots of short paragraphs mentioning the full date with the year. Many of these can be combined, and the repetitive use of the year can be dropped. In some paragraphs the (same) year is mentioned repeatedly:

"In July 2014, ISIL recruited more than 6,300 fighters, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, some of whom were thought to have previously fought for the Free Syrian Army. Also, on 23 July 2014, Abu Sayyaf leader Isnilon Hapilon swore loyalty to al-Baghdadi in a video, along with the rest of the organisation, giving ISIL a presence in the Philippines. In September 2014, the group began kidnapping people for ransoming, in the name of ISIL."

This, and other paragraphs like it, could easily be tidied along the lines of:

"In July 2014, ISIL recruited more than 6,300 fighters, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, some of whom were thought to have previously fought for the Free Syrian Army. On 23 July, Abu Sayyaf leader Isnilon Hapilon swore loyalty to al-Baghdadi in a video, along with the rest of the organisation, giving ISIL a presence in the Philippines. In September, the group began kidnapping people for ransoming, in the name of ISIL."

I know each to their own referencing style, but multiple references in this article could really do with being combined. There's lots of text like "In its digital magazine Dabiq, ISIL explicitly claimed religious justification for enslaving Yazidi women.[315][316][317][318][319][320]", which severely interrupts the reading flow.

Comments. Some copyediting suggestions: - Dank (push to talk)

"and also has operations": with operations
"al-Nusra front": al-Nusra Front
"it conquered and conducted ground attacks": it conducted ground attacks
"that required renewal of US military action in Iraq": Almost every modern government that has ever launched an offensive did it while claiming that they had no choice, that someone else forced them into a decision they didn't want to make. Most journalists breathlessly repeat the claims, but historians are generally skeptical of monolithic rationales. Of course, time has to elapse before historians have the tools they need for proper study; nevertheless, at WP:Milhist, we generally prefer scholarly sources written or vetted by historians over daily wire stories, at least for the broader conclusions.
"the Dawlat al-ʻIraq al-Islāmiyah, Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) was": "the" before "Islamic", and a comma before "was".
"citing it was the preferred term": since it was the preferred term - Dank (push to talk) 01:52, 10 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Comment from nominator - Thanks to everyone so far for the input. I made Dank's changes above (except for the required renewal one - not sure exactly what to replace it with, although I agree it should be changed). I'll be sure to reword the paragraphs with the year in it repetitively and any other changes as appropriate soon. Tonystewart14 (talk) 00:29, 12 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]