Wikipedia:Peer review/Unification of Germany/archive1

Unification of Germany

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A script has been used to generate a semi-automated review of the article for issues relating to grammar and house style; it can be found on the automated peer review page for April 2009.

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because… the revision is on my user page. it's a major rewrite of an existing article that was listed as in need of revision, citations, etc. I'm a newbie at creating new articles, and major revision, although not a newbie at writing. so I need some guidance Thanks, Auntieruth55 (talk) 20:16, 13 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Please don't paste the whole article here - there is a limit to the size of peer review and doing so strains it. Peer review is also for actual articles, not versions in user space - why not be WP:BOLD and put the version at User:Auntieruth55 in the articel? Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 00:26, 14 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Done. Now I cannot find the peer review space to remove it though. Or did you do that? Auntieruth55 (talk) 01:09, 14 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This peer review is also transcluded (shown) at WP:PR, so I removed the article from this peer review (and thus from the overall "peer review"). Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 11:14, 15 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Auntieruth55, I think peer review is a bit premature. Wikipedia's "peer review" is for articles that are bordering on "featured" status. But I'll move this along in a more appropriate manner. Thanks for hitting my talk page so I knew to keep an eye on this. - Jmabel | Talk 01:22, 14 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Jmabel and others, there is still a problem with the article that I cannot fix (don't know how, don't have access, don't have technical ability to manipulate a map). The map showing German colonies also has a colony labeled "Little Venice" (dates in the 16th century) in present day Venezuela, which I find more than odd. I think this should be removed, or redone -- eliminating the Little Venice would do the trick. The other colonies in Africa look about right. If Little Venice were to remain, half the United States should also be marked as a German "colony" which would be silly. As near as I could tell, the map may be in a template, thus inaccessible for me.Auntieruth55 (talk) 15:05, 15 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I assume you are talking about File:Map of the German Empire - 1914.PNG, which has a key in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of South America. The legend for the blue square says "Kolonien des 2. Kaiserreischs" or "Colonies of the German Empire" - there is nothing about Little Venice in German or English. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 05:07, 16 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Nevermind - I see Jmabel has made a new version of the map for you - the "Little Venice" version (no longer in the article) is File:Map of the German Empire.PNG. SOrry for the confusion, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 10:40, 16 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Ruhrfisch comments: While this is a very good start, there are still some issues that need to be resolved for the article to conform to Wikipedia's Manual of Style. I always assume people eventually want to get articles to featured status, so here are some suggestions for improvement. Done*The article needs more references, for example there are whole sections anmd paragraphs without a ref, such as The Zollverein or Founding a unified state. My rule of thumb is that every quote, every statistic, every extraordinary claim and every paragraph needs a ref. Done*Internet refs need URL, title, author if known, publisher and date accessed. {{cite web}} and other cite templates may be helpful. See WP:CITE and WP:V

Sources also need to be reliable - not sure that the Historyman website would pass muster at WP:FAC and this is a topic with many well done books on it. See WP:RS

Historyman is simply a compilation of original documents, or at least the page I used was a compilation of documents. the History man himself did not write them. I picked that, over, for example, other locations for those docuemnts because they are immediately available.

Done*Headers need to follow WP:HEAD better - no links in headers (Zollverein or Germanization of German Jewry), avoid articles if possible, and don't repeat the title (so The Contributions of the Prussian Kings to Unification could just be "Contributions of the Prussian Kings"). Many of the headers could also be much more concise. Done*I think there may be too many headers / sections as well.

I removed some, consolidated some, added some to make it clearer.

Done*Watch needless repetition - the crown of mud story is in at least twice - I am not sure the whole "The Contributions of the Prussian Kings to Unification" needs to be there at all (most of it could be integrated into the rest of the article). Keep the focus relentlessly on the topic at hand. Done*Watch that the tone and language are neutral and encyclopedic - so a sentence like ". During the 100 Days (which was actually more like 110 days), a largely Prussian force under the command of the wonderfully eccentric Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher, contributed to the victory at Waterloo." is problematic for a couple of reasons: do we really need the aside that the 100 days were more like 110 days in an article on German Unification? What purpose does it serve here? Also the phrase "wonderfully eccentric" is not really neutral in tone. Note that it is OK to say something like "von Bluecher, whom noted historian Joe Smith called "wonderfully eccentric", ...[1]" but the question is, does it help the reader to understand German unification to know that Napoleon ran around Europe for a bit more than 100 days or that von B was an odd duck? See WP:NPOV

I have looked at that NPOV page, and did take things out, as you've requested. It seems oddly inflexible however; there is a difference between boring text and neutrality. One can remain neutral without losing all sense of what these men and women were like. Especially with our friend vB, who imagined he saw elephants in his tent.

Hope this helps. If my comments are useful, please consider peer reviewing an article, especially one at Wikipedia:Peer review/backlog (which is how I found this article). Yours, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 01:04, 25 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]