Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Peru

The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted 15:06, 14 August 2007.

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Peru

Self-nomination. This article achieved GA status on May 25, 2007. After undergoing further improvement I think it fully meets the featured article criteria. It is thoroughly referenced, mostly from books rather than webpages. Writing seems good and neutral. The article is pretty stable and complies with WP:MOS guidelines. Length seems adequate for the topic, issues not covered are linked to throughout the article and in a major topics template in the "See also section". Pics are mostly from Commons. All of this IMHO, lets see what other wikipedians think... --Victor12 20:25, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

• Comment Avoiding siding one way or another yet. The article is quite good, but needs someone to go over it with a fine-toothed comb for copyedit. Some quick problems I spotted, and there are probably more:
  • "In reaction to such developments, common throughout the Americas, and to growing concerns over the vulnerability of its colonies, the Crown enacted a series of edicts collectively known as the Bourbon Reforms" Needs a rewrite for clarity. The nested clauses make this sentance hard to parse.
  • "However, by the 1870s, these resources had been dilapidated, the country was heavily indebted and political infighting was again on the rise" Awkward use of the word "dilapidated". I get what you mean, but this isn't really what the word is used for.
  • Comparison of size to the state of Texas seems too American-centric. And I am an American and spotted this. Would be better left out.
  • "Common dishes include anticuchos, ceviche, humitas, and pachamanca to name just a few." phrases like "to name a few" should be avoided. Its redundant.

As I said above, these may not be the only problems, just what I caught on a quick read through. Give this a thorough copyedit, preferably by someone who hasn't been involved in the article so far (try the league of Copyeditors) and this will be a feature quality article easily. --Jayron32|talk|contribs 05:47, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

I've made the suggested corrections and scanned through the article for similar mistakes. Could you check it again? Do you think it needs major copyediting work or only minor corrections? --Victor12 16:19, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

• Support Actually, it looks pretty good. I can't see any real objections any more. I am sure some of the more strident editors will find some more problems, but I really cannot see any. Good job! --Jayron32|talk|contribs 17:08, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Discussion of my (SandyGeorgia) MOS concerns, completely addressed

• Fixes needed; I just left a series of sample edits to illustrate some fixes needed. {{es icon}} should be added to Spanish language sources. The article is overlinked; have a look at WP:CONTEXT and WP:MOSLINKS. Also, have a look at WP:MOSNUM and WP:CONTEXT for how to handle centuries and linking of dates. There is some inconsistency in how Spanish phrases are handled: sometimes the English word is followed by the Spanish word in parentheses, other times the Spanish word is used with the English word in parentheses, and other times only the Spanish word is used. I corrected a few date ranges to show correct usage of endashes, per WP:DASH. In terms of prose, there is some punctuation which is consistent with Spanish-language writing but not correct for English (sample: Economic policy has varied widely over the last decades, the government of Juan Velasco Alvarado introduced radical reforms, which included an agrarian reform, the expropriation of foreign companies, the introduction of a planning system and the creation of a large state-owned sector. ) and some prose that needs tweaking for English-language fluidity (sample: Its main inputs have been provided by Amerindian inhabitants and Spanish colonizers, which mixed after Conquest. Other influences have been made by various ethnic groups from Africa, Asia and Europe.), but overall the prose and content are a very good start towards featured status. The Bibliography is massive; were all of those sources really used in the article? If not, they may need to be pruned per WP:NOT. With some sustained attention to the prose and Manual of Style issues, I believe the article can reach featured status. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:04, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

I've just added {{es icon}} to all Spanish books in the Bibliography section. Should I put this template in the footnotes also or is that redundant? I'll try to work on the other issues ASAP. As for the sources, they were all used in the article; each one is mentioned in at least one footnote. --Victor12 23:13, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

I noticed you would have that issue; I think you should do whatever works best, just somehow indicate the Spanish language. Putting them in every footnote would seem redundant, but adding it to at least the websources used only once in the footnotes might work. Let me know if you need any help—you've got a very good start, and I'd be glad to review further. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:17, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Ok, {{es icon}} has been added to all footnotes with external links. The article has been delinked, en dashes added, centuries delinked and de-hyphenated, and Spanish phrases mostly removed (except in the "Geography" section, where they seem useful). As for prose, the examples you mentioned have been corrected. Do they look ok now? Could you point out other prose issues in the article? I'd appreciate that very much. Thanks, --Victor12 07:03, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Fast work ! I'll run through the entire article tomorrow or the next day; are you comfortable with inline queries if I find anything I'm not sure on? Also, I didn't want to drop too much on you at once, but I have some concerns about comprehensiveness. Cameroon recently passed FAC, and seems very comprehensive, so you might want to have a look. Or Canada or any other featured country you might compare to in terms of making sure you've covered everything. You can probably beef up some content in the areas of education, crime, or anything else you see in other country articles. I'll add more tomorrow. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 07:12, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

No problems with inline queries. As for contents, I checked all featured country articles, but tried to stick to Wikipedia:WikiProject Countries requirements, which suggest using a limited number of sections for contents and providing links for all other topics. Thus, there are eight sections for contents and links to all other Peru-related topics in the "See also" section. Anyway, that's just imho; can't wait to read yours. Greetings, --Victor12 07:36, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

• Comments: the writing needs a lot of work, and I've been working on copyediting. After the prose is cleaned up, I think the article is concise and interesting, and has the potential to be FA. One request: the history section ends at 2000. What's happened in the last seven years? A sentence or two to bring us to present day would be nice. Calliopejen1 10:42, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Calliopejen1, you're probably a much better copyeditor than I am (but that's not saying much :-), so I don't want to get in your way. Can you ping me when you're done, so I can run through it then? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:13, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
    • All finished w/ a first run-through. (As always, I reserve the right to dislike some of my changes on second thought, or to see other problems later...) Calliopejen1 11:12, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Thanks for your work Calliopejen1. If you find the time, could you also check the prose in the Culture section? As for recent history, it seems to me that nothing of great importance has happened since 2000. Certainly nothing that is in the same level of all other events mentioned in the article. We've had two presidential elections (the results of the last one are mentioned in the Government section) and a free trade agreement has been signed with the US (mentioned in the Economy section). So not much has happened, you can check a short summary of this years by The Economist here. Maybe its better not to say anything about them in this article to avoid Wikipedia:Recentism. What do you think? --Victor12 17:46, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
    • As a reader who knows basically nothing about Peru, I think it's important to have that one sentence. I was kind of left hanging, wondering where the country is today. I would suggest something along the lines of: "After five years under President Alejandro Toledo, who focused on decreasing corruption and improving Peru's economy, Peru is now led by President Alan Garcia." It's kind of a nothing sentence, but at least it kind of tells the reader, Don't worry, you're not missing anything. Calliopejen1 11:12, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
• Another comment. I'm still working a bit on copyediting, but one of my major concerns with the article is that most of the references are from Spanish-language books. As a practical matter, this reduces the verifiability of the article, since most readers of the article probably are not from anywhere these books are available. If they were even Spanish-language websites, that wouldn't be so bad, because at least a non-Spanish-speaking reader can go to Babelfish and do a machine translation. Many of the facts sourced to Spanish books are pretty basic, so I imagine there's no shortage of English-language sources. I'm not sure if Wikipedia has any policies relating to this. Calliopejen1 07:13, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

The Wikipedia guideline is (per WP:SOURCE): for the convenience of our readers, English-language sources should be used in preference to foreign-language sources, assuming the availability of an English-language source of equal quality. I think I can replace several of the sources in the History section with English books, probably by tomorrow night. As for other sources, I think some of them will have to remain in Spanish, for instance: laws, the Constitution and official statistics. I'll get back to you on this tomorrow. --Victor12 14:14, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Yes, your understanding is correct, Victor. There has been a lot of discussion of this topic on the talk page of WP:RS and other places; the nutshell is that foreign-language sources can be used, but English-language is preferred (and should be used) when available and of comparable quality. For an example of past FACs in this area, I can refer you to El Hatillo Municipality, Miranda and Same-sex marriage in Spain. On the Spain article, there were articles in English, I found some of them, and asked the editor to use them. For El Hatillo, Enano and I scoured the internet as well as bookstores in both the USA and Venezuela, and there simply is nothing in English, so it was acceptable to source it almost exclusively to Spanish-language sources. In the case of Peru, it may take you some extra work, but there are probably English-language sources for a lot of the information. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:05, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

PS, don't forget to search within the BBC and in the CIA world factbook for some of the basic facts. The BBC doesn't seem to pop up well on google, and you have to search on their site. I think they have a fact page for each country. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:08, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

• A few issues I've spotted: Calliopejen1 07:03, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Cacique is not glossed in English. The cacique article is vague. Would "local ruler" be a good description?
  • "imposed Spanish domination" strikes me as a little bit non-neutral and a little bit vague. Could you write some concrete things they did instead? (Which are likely more damning anyways.)
  • "The new laws alienated various social groups" - vague. Who was alienated and why? I would give an example or eliminate it, since you already have descriptions of the rebellions (which obviously imply unrest).
  • What does pluriform mean? Can you link this to a wiki article?
  • It says "The province of Lima is administered by [NB: my verb addition] by the city mayor," but the Lima province article says it's administered by a city council. What does each do, and which is more important?
  • It lists the rivers with the Amazon as the smallest (last). That can't be right because the Amazon and the Nile are the longest rivers in the world.
  • There are two export lists, one of which is (presumably) historical. It should be clarified which time each is relevant to.
  • There is a sentence about art after the Spanish Conquest and a sentence about art in the colonial period. Are these contemporaneous or two distinct periods?

I've made several changes to address this concerns. As for rivers, they are measured by their length in Peruvian territory, that's why the Amazon comes in last. It seems to me this is implied in The largest rivers of the country.... Do you think we should change this sentence? --Victor12 18:08, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

It seemed unobvious to me, so I added the explanation to the article. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:31, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. What do you think about the article? --Victor12 01:36, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

It needs a copyedit by a fluent speaker of English. I don't know Peruvian history well enough to judge otherwise. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:56, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

Calliopejen1 has made several passes on this regard. Could you point some instances of bad prose for further improvement? That would be really helpful. Thanks, --Victor12 02:10, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

• Officialized is not a word.
• "The Andes, proximity to the Equator, and the cold waters of the Humboldt Current" are not parallel. Any one would do in the context; but all three run into each other.
• Avoid English passives as far as possible. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:42, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! I'll try to work on these. --Victor12 15:38, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

Officialized is not a word? What does "word" mean? It is known by Answers.com, Dictionary.com, Infoplease Dictionary, Lexical FreeNet, LookWAYup Translating Dictionary/Thesaurus, Merriam-WebsterUnabridged.com, Rhymezone, UltraLingua English Dictionary. Even if not recognized by many other dictionaries, I did not need any to know what it means. — SomeHuman 17 Jul2007 22:04 (UTC)

Update: the article has improved a lot thanks to the suggestions and edits of all reviewers. It seems to me that prose is adequate now. As for the use of sources in Spanish (the other main objection), they have been brought down from 38 out of 55 to 23 out of 59. I think about 7 more can be replaced by English sources, however, here in Peru libraries have closed for the national holiday, so I won't we able to work on them until Tuesday. As for the rest they're mainly official statistics and laws which have no English equivalent of the same quality. That would leave the article with 16 Spanish sources out of 59 which does not seem like a bad proportion. More reviews are needed and welcome. --Victor12 21:22, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

• Followup. I'm not quite ready to support yet. I'm still frustrated by the overlinking (see WP:MOSLINK and WP:CONTEXT). Linking of terms over and over distracts the reader from the high-value links. I've delinked a lot, but another set of eyes needs to evaluate. I found one instance of uncited text, and several instances of "recently" or "currently" which need to be defined. Because I speak Spanish, the prose seems fine to me, but extra eyes are needed. Your method of citation is one of the most labor intensive I've ever seen. Because you have websources in both the Notes and the Bibliography, this means every time a websource changes, it has to be changed in two places; most editors link the websources directly in the Notes, and leave them off of the Bibliography. Also, most editors who list full sources in Bibliography then list a much shorter version in Notes, such as Author (year), p. x. I also am not sure why you've italicized article names throughout, which makes the refs somewhat hard to read; typically, only book names are italicized, but not article names. I found a missing publication date (there may be others). This article is very close to FA; I hope Raul will keep it open longer so others will have a look. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:25, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

• • I have delinked some more terms; it seems to me more delinking would be counterproductive. There are some words that have been linked twice in the article as according to WP:MOSLINK duplicating an important link distant from a previous occurrence in an article may well be appropriate. Could you provide some examples of overlinking to work on this?
  • The uncited text has a source now, please feel free to tag all other statements needing references with the {{fact}} template.
  • As for "recent" and "current", most of these words have now been removed except in places where their meaning is clear, for instance Congress is currently composed of...
  • Now as for citations, I'm not sure about removing web pages from the Bibliography. I think the Bibliography should provide a quick overview of sources used without having to browse through the notes and as webpages have been an important source for some parts of the article they deserve to have a place there. Is there any Wikipedia guideline on this?
  • Italics have now been removed from articles names and replaced by "".
  • As for shortening notes, it seems to me having a short title in the notes helps the reader to know what the book is about without having to search thorugh the bibliography. This seems important for me as most readers checking notes would go back and forth from text to notes, which they would not be able to do if they have to check the bibliography also. Admittedly this method means some extra work when editing but it eases reading and checking notes.
  • Finally, all publication dates are mentioned in the Bibliography section when available so I'm not sure which one had a a missing publication date.
  • Thanks for the comments, I also hope more reviewers check the article. --Victor12 03:12, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm mostly satisfied, but there seem to be few reviewers currently following this FAC. I know Raul has received objections to restarts in the past, but this article has been here for two weeks, the article is substantially rewritten and improved, almost everything above is resolved, and there have been no Opposes; a restart might prompt a fresh look at the article by more reviewers. I don't want to be the only one Supporting since I'm familiar with the text, and I'm not sure the other reviewers are still following :-) Maybe other reviewers will weigh in soon. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:59, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Hope so too. Thanks for your work. BTW, the article already has one support vote, by Jayron32 ;-) Greetings, --Victor12 16:06, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

• Comment Support These minor fixes needed:

• "Over the last two centuries" should be "Over the past two centuries"
• "has varied widely over the last decades" - as above

Not sure why these had to be fixed-- Google sees them as occurring w/ equal frequency. Calliopejen1 12:34, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Good writing doesn't depend on what Google says. Epbr123 12:38, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

• "foreign art currents intermingling with local developments" - typo?
• "a number of international organizations, such as" – the "a number of" is redundant
• Some year ranges in the bibliography section need en dashes rather than hyphens. Epbr123 23:24, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

All done now, except for the "foreign art currents intermingling with local developments". It is not a typo, maybe just bad prose. Any suggestions? --Victor12 23:46, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Just changed the sentence to Since the 1950s, eclecticism has characterised Peruvian art due to a mixture of foreign currents and local developments. Is that better? --Victor12 05:10, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Yes, that's clearer. Epbr123 08:18, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Hmm, I think that is much clunkier (though the original wasn't fantastic). I'll give it a go. Calliopejen1 12:34, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

• According to Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Images, text should not be sandwiched between two adjacent images. Epbr123 15:23, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Hmm... MOS says Avoid sandwiching text between two images facing each other. I think that refers to images on the same line aligned right and left. There are no such cases in this article. There's some "sandwiched" text at resolutions higher than 800x600, for instance in the "Geography" section but that is because some pics span more than one paragraph. I don't think that's forbidden per the MOS though I could be wrong. What does everybody else thinks? --Victor12 15:45, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Everything is displaying fine on my monitor; Epbr, in what section are you getting a problem? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:47, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Geography and economy. In the history section, text is also sandwiched between an image and the infobox. I'm using IE with medium text size and 1024*678 resolution. Epbr123 15:53, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm not seeing those; I'll look on my other computers later. I just made a change to Economy; is it OK now ? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:56, 3 August 2007 (UTC) I also juggled History; is it fixed now? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:59, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

The sandwiching has now gone in those sections, although the economy image now pushes the demographics heading towards the centre. Epbr123 16:07, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Also, there's now a blank space in the History section at 1024*768. I think some pics will have to go. --Victor12 16:09, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

I think I've fixed that blank space now. I don't think we'll be able to totally remove the sandwiching: at smallest text size, there are five sections with sandwiching. Epbr123 16:20, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Done some editing, now there's no sandwiched text at 1024x768 except for one line in the "Government" section. Is that OK? --Victor12 16:25, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

It seems fine now. There's still sandwiching at smallest text size but I think that should be allowable. Epbr123 16:33, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Looks good from here. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:46, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

• Support. (maybe weak support? I can't decide.) I think this article is great and has really been improved over the last couple weeks. The biggest lingering issue I see is that I bet some more of the Spanish-language sources could be replaced (in the climate, music, and cooking sections in particular), but I don't think this should keep it from being FA. Calliopejen1 12:34, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

• Provisional opposeSupport—Well done indeed! 1a. Needs another copy-editor to run through it. Here are random examples. Please don't just fix these. This is otherwise a good nomination.
  • I see "2" yet "twenty-five" yet "28". MOS says the boundary is normally nine/10.
  • "Rivers running through Peru are divided into three basins." This doesn't make sense.
  • "Finally"—I yawn when I see that word.
  • Read MOS on captions: when and when not to use a final period.
  • "a moderate per capita income"—Moderate is meaningless. Provide data instead.
  • "According to official sources, 51.6% of the total population is regarded as poor,"—Remove "regarded as".
  • Why is "China"—that obscure country—linked in a list in which no other country is linked. Only link countries that are likely to be little known to the readers. Tony 14:49, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Ok, the article has now undergone several copyedits, mostly by Calliopejen1. Hopefully you can check it again to see if your concerns have been addressed. --Victor12 01:38, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.