Wikipedia:Peer review/Liber Eliensis/archive1

Liber Eliensis

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I've listed this article for peer review because I'd like to take it to FAC, but want to make sure the prose is good, as well as it being comprehensible to the non-specialist. Does it give enough context to make it understandable? Does it lack something to make it comprehensive?

Thanks, Ealdgyth - Talk 16:56, 8 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Rod's comments You asked for the views of a non-specialist & as far as this topic goes I know very little, so in that spirit a few comments:

Infobox

In the infobox the picture caption says "early 19th century print of Ely Cathedral, which produced the Liber Eliensis" - how can a building produce a document?
Date says "early through second quarter 12th century" which doesn't make sense to me
Manuscripts - what do the letters in brackets (EFGBE) signify? They are used in the manuscripts section, but there is no explanation of why these letters were used for the different copies. Should the letters in the infobox be linked to that section in some way or have explanatory notes?

Background and authorship

Should Old English be wikilinked for those not familiar with Old English? I note this is linked later in the Sources section.
I found the sentence about Gesta Herewardi confusing. NB this link seems to be a redirect (as is the link to Hereward the Wake) but there may be a reason for the different spellings I'm not aware of.

Contents

Should "Danish invasions" be wikilinked to Danelaw or similar - or at least give some dates for context?
King Edgar is mentioned - presumably this is Edgar the Peaceful rather than Edgar, King of Scotland perhaps a wikilink would help? I note this is done later in the influence section.
Should 20 or 30 miles have km conversions?
Should Bushel be wikilinked for those unfamiliar with this measure. Any way of indicating the significance that it "rose to 200 pence" - what was it before?
The use of Monastery twice close together in the sentence "A frequent stress in the miracle stories is that those who wished cures or miracles similar to those in the Liber would need to come to the monastery, where they could donate to the monastery" could be reworded.
The paragraph about the division of lands etc between the monks & bishop seems to include some repetition - but I'm not sure of the best way to revise this.
Similar repetition occurs in the next para on burials

Influence

Should Benedictine be wikilinked?
In the section discussing possible forgery is "doctored" an encyclopedic term?

Manuscripts

I found this section very confusing - which may represent the limited understanding of their provenance, or my own ignorance.

Printing History

I try to avoid "recent" as this is a relative term and the date 2005 is given anyway.
Would this section be better chronologically?

I hope these comments are helpful & please excuse my ignorance of some of the technical aspects.— Rod ^talk 10:49, 9 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you very much for the comments, I'll try to get to most of these over the next few days or week. I'm not surprised that the manuscript section would be confusing, and honestly, that's like dealing with graduate level physics in historian terms, so there's a limiit to how much I can dumb it down. Ealdgyth - Talk 16:13, 9 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]