Wikipedia:Peer review/Proto-Indo-European religion/archive1

Proto-Indo-European religion

I have been working on this article for several months now. When I first came to it, it was a complete mess, absolutely riddled with copyright violations and factual inaccuracies. It had very few citations and the material was presented in a manner that was, quite frankly, absolutely horrendous; almost everything was organized in bulleted lists rather than actual paragraphs. I have devoted a great deal of time and effort into cleaning up this article and would very much like to eventually bring it up to good article status. I am looking for any kind of feedback or constructive criticism that you can offer. The article may or may not still have a long way to go. Thank you very much for reading this and I look forward to reading your feedback. --Katolophyromai (talk) 20:17, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

Hello Katolophyromai, very interesting article. This used to be a topic I once studied quite much when I was in secondary school. Although I have little experience in bringing articles to GA or FA status, I have written or expanded several B-level articles about religious topics. I will just give you some advice, based on what I know is needed or helpful for an assessment at a higher quality class. First of all, apart from the topic being fascinating, the article is well-written.

1. Your reference list would better be formatted with the parameter 20em rather than 2, because of the high number of shortened footnotes.
2. The shortened footnotes do not link to a source on the bibliography when you click on them, because:

• • The sources on the bibliography list should be formatted as {{citation|..., not {{cite book|...
  • The shortened footnotes should have a year of publishing that agrees with the source (e.g. Anthony|2010), not another year of publishing (e.g. Anthony|2007)

1. The phrase "bearing fruit of immortality" in the lead could be interpreted in different ways. If the meaning is supposed to be literal, i'd rephrase as "bearing fruits" or "bearing a fruit" to clarify that no other abstract meaning is intended.
2. You have a wikilink that links to a disambiguation page, e.i. Indo-European. Per WP:MOS, you should select one article on the dismabiguation list.
3. "The religion of the Proto-Indo-Europeans is not directly attested and archaeological evidence is difficult to match to any specific culture in the period of early Indo-European culture in the Chalcolithic." This sentence does not read smoothly, and should be broken up in two.
4. phrases like in recent years can quickly become ambiguous, and may have to specified in terms of period, even if it is the 2010s.
5. I would spend a few words on explaining Trifunctional hypothesis, even if it is wikilinked. Per Wikipedia policy.

This is my assessment of the lead and first section (and a bit on footnotes). I'll assess more later. I hope it is useful.--Farang Rak Tham (talk) 15:15, 10 May 2017 (UTC)

Added numbers. Edited main point nr. 3: grammar is okay, but sentence does not read smoothly.--Farang Rak Tham (talk) 16:56, 10 May 2017 (UTC)

Thank you very much! I really appreciate your feedback and will try to take care of the problems you noted right away. --Katolophyromai (talk) 19:16, 10 May 2017 (UTC)

Katolophyromai, I have more suggestions.

1. "Nonetheless, despite this": select either one sentence connector, not both.
2. "frequent bald statement": statement by who? Scholars? Journalists? Popular science?

1. "the Romans actually possessed": remove actual, because it is redundant and may not be neutral.
2. "has attained the privileged position of being one of the three most important ": redundant and not an encyclopedic tone, replace by "is one of the three important"
3. "are seen as being a major source": replace by "are seen as a major source"
4. "Despite the uncontested primacy": not encyclopedic tone, rephrase.
5. "which overwhelms what little Indo-European material can be extracted from it": sentence implies that there are other causes that Indo-European material cannot be extracted, apart from the influence mentioned. Rephrase.
6. "relatively minimal": relatively little or minimal. Choose either one.
7. "seems to have been demoted": in what period?
8. "springtime festival who is mentioned only once": remove only, redundant.
9. There are some duplicate wikilinks in the article. Try using this tool to find them.
10. Hermann Collitz can be wiki-linked.
11. Weyland the Smith or Wayland? You use both spellings.
12. "may also be preserved in the Greek goddess": may also have been preserved.
13. "Vague remnants of this goddess may also (...) It is highly probable that the Proto-Indo-Europeans also... (...) Celtic religion is also rife... Also is used too often. Try other sentence connectors.
14. "Bruce Lincoln:" remove colon.
15. "Although it is commonly stated that the Romans had no mythology": repetitive.

Okay, I have run out of time now. Hope this helps. I'll continue.--Farang Rak Tham (talk) 08:07, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

Thank you so much for the additional feedback. I have implemented all of your suggested changes except for #5, #12, and #14. I do not see how the statement mentioned in #5 in any way implies what you say it implies. As for #12, Greek texts describing Athena are still extant, hence the usage of the present-tense verb. Finally, for #14, the colon is there because it is introducing the description of the myth. --Katolophyromai (talk) 20:43, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

Nice editing! Let's continue.

1. "Hermóðr must cross a bridge over the river Giöll in order to reach Hel": disambiguate Hel.
2. (...)"but also in the Slavic tradition as well": choose either also or as well.
3. (...)"usually translated as "(cosmic) order": delink cosmic per WP:LINKING.
4. "We have here one of the cardinal notions of the legal world of the Indo-Europeans": add comma
5. Having read the entire article, I found the section name Proto-Indo-European religion#Societal deities a bit the odd one out. Is there some other word to classify these type of deities? Or is this the common term used in the literature? Perhaps other deities will do just fine.
6. The article is still full of errors in the shortened footnotes. Use this tool to spot and fix them. I believe it is also necessary to start your source list (to which the shortened footnotes refer) with the template {{refbegin}} and end it with {{refend}}
7. When you link a url of a Google Book, you only need to include the basic book number, e.g. https://books.google.com/?id=5tM9cA-ubd0C. The rest of the url is just mess you can cut out.
8. There are a number of markup errors which you can fix with this tool.

Finally:

1. You might want to expand a bit on the schools of thought. It is a bit too concise, compared to the detail you are providing in others sections. It is hard to follow.
2. I was wondering whether anything had been written on the impact that the traced proto-indo-european religion has on the arts and sciences in general, and our understanding of the common origins of the European people, or even on humankind in general. But perhaps such speculations are hard to find in specialized literature.

With a bit of tinkering, I think your article will become a good article. Keep up the good work! To close, I would like to say that I have enjoyed reading you article. As a student, I read many books about mythology, and was absolutely fascinated by it. That fascinations is not dead yet. It has been nice to remember this, and your article helped me to. Thanks for that.

I have also submitted an article for evaluation and assessment at Wikipedia:Peer review/Dhammakaya meditation/archive1. I'd appreciate your input.--Farang Rak Tham (talk) 23:46, 23 May 2017 (UTC)

@Farang Rak Tham:, I saw that you reassessed the article Hippolytus (son of Theseus), which I am assuming you did because I reevaluated the article Dhammakaya meditation and you saw that I had recently edited Hippolytus (son of Theseus). If you are looking for an article to reassess, you can always reassess this one since it is still rated "Start class" for WikiProject Religion, despite my recent efforts to improve it. --Katolophyromai (talk) 19:54, 29 May 2017 (UTC)

Frankly speaking, I was just strolling around on Wikipedia, and yes, using your contribution list as my index. Which article do you think requires assessment?--Farang Rak Tham (talk) 15:19, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

I was referring to this article (and by that I mean Proto-Indo-European religion). I thought that, since you reviewed it, but have not made any major contributions to it, you would be in an excellent position to assess its quality. Its quality rating for WikiProject Religion is still only Start class. I think that, after my recent changes, that assessment surely ought to be changed. --Katolophyromai (talk) 15:25, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

Oh, okay. But the article is assessed as "B" on the mythology wikiproject anyway. If you wait long enough, there will be a bot which pulls the different assessments on wikiprojects to an even level. But we do not need to wait for that to happen. There, it is done, Katolophyromai.

--Farang Rak Tham (talk) 21:45, 1 June 2017 (UTC)

I apologize if I caused any inconvenience to you. I did not know that a bot would come by and change the assessments to match. The article had had those different ratings for the two different wikiprojects for quite a while and no bot had come along to remedy the situation. --Katolophyromai (talk) 22:00, 1 June 2017 (UTC)

No inconvenience, Katolophyromai. You're right, better not wait for the bots too much. They might take over the world some day. See you!--Farang Rak Tham (talk) 23:51, 1 June 2017 (UTC)