Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography/A-class review/Cyrus the Great

The following discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the review is not approved

Cyrus the Great[edit]

Another core biography that needs confirmation for A-grade. Er rab ee 00:13, 30 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

~~Support~~(see below). Article has no obvious gaps that a general reader (like me) finds wanting. A few reservations, none of which probably disqualify the article:

(1) Eleven paragraphs have no reference citations in them.

(2) The article presents two different spellings of Anshān (Anshan).

(3) Several paragraphs are only two or three sentences, and one or two lines in appearance, long. Expansion or merger might be appropriate.

(4) The content on the subject's father, who has his own article, and the separate "family tree" section seem to me at least to possibly be excessive.

In short, the article might stand for a rewrite, but I don't think that is grounds for disqualification. John Carter 01:16, 30 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose since article clearly needs more references. For example the "Median Empire" section :only has one single reference. That particular section should also have a "Main article:Medes" link in the beginning. There's a lot of that going around. The article is, however, near A status. -Duribald 16:53, 30 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - as sourcing is clearly something which is to be considered in determining if an article is to be counted as being of A class. John Carter 22:37, 30 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: While this article seems to be well written and thorough, I don't think it should receive an A-Class rating just yet. (I should also say that I don't know enough about Cyrus the Great to really judge the content itself.) Here are the major problems, as I see it:

Insufficient citations. As noted above, most of these are at the beginning of the article and dwindle off to few if any by the middle to end of the article.
A number of citations that don't seem to correlate with a reference, making them difficult to track down, if need be, particularly if the web link for an online source is broken.
A preponderance of online refereces, which, in and of itself may not be terribly problematic except that (1) it's difficult to tell which of these online references constitute highly credible sources without actually going to the site itself; (2) web pages change or can be eliminated, so having an article that's substantially written using online sources may make it difficult, if not impossible, to locate a source some length of time from now; and (3) I find it difficult to believe that there are not a large number of highly reputable, "hard" sources that would also cover this material. A great number of the online references fail to include access dates and fail to identify the actual source without clicking on the link involved. Finally, I would like to see that those that are actually books available online also include full bibliographic info for a "hard copy" that might be used by a reader in the event the online source is either unavailable or inaccessable for whatever reason.
While the idea of separating sources listed in the reference section into "ancient" and "modern" sections may be a good one, I would like to see a reference section that included appropriate bibliographic info telling me how to locate the ancient source involved, if I wanted to. (I know there are "modern" copies of Herodotus, Josephus, and the Dead Sea Scrolls, for instance -- many in highly reputable, good translations. These should be inlcuded here.) The reference section also needs to be properly alphabetized, and each citation should be clearly related to a reference provided in the reference section.
Personally, I found the family tree interesting, but thought that it should perhaps have a caption briefly indicating the significance of the three different "branches." Also, the "Dynasty" box should include Cyrus the Great -- or Cyrus II -- in the two cells (King of Persia & King of Media) that presumably apply to him.

Jancarhart 18:40, 3 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page, such as the current discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.