Talk:Siege of Sparta

Siege of Sparta has been listed as one of the Warfare good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.
Review: April 7, 2015. (Reviewed version).

A fact from Siege of Sparta appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 21 April 2015 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that the Siege of Sparta failed despite the deployment of 24 war elephants?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2015/April. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Siege of Sparta.

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GA Review[edit]

This review is transcluded from Talk:Siege of Sparta/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Tim riley (talk · contribs) 11:40, 7 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Comments[edit]

This article looks in promising shape for GAN. A few drafting points:

the wording has got itself in an impenetrable tangle at "she would commit suicide rather tif the city fell Cleonymus to Pyrrhus". Usually one can see what a garbled phrase is intended to mean, but this one defeats me.
- The wording was abysmal in that sentence. Hopefully it makes more sense now.
this is a matter of style and therefore not something on which the GA criteria permit the reviewer to insist, but I think the nine incidences of "however" in the text weaken the prose ("howevers" almost always do), and in all nine cases their removal would be an improvement.
- I have removed all of the 'however's.
the word "slain" in the lead strikes me as a bit quaint, but again, such a drafting point is no bar to promotion to GA.
- I replaced slain with killed, which sounds a bit more encyclopaedic.
There are four incidences of "In order to" which would be better trimmed to just "To".
- Done.
Sources
- Odd mix of locations – "United Kingdom: Routledge", but "Oxford: Oxford University Press", followed by "United Kingdom: Oxford University Press". The town or city is usual, rather than the country, but consistency whichever you choose, please.
  - Changed them all to town or city of printing.
- No ISBN for Wallbank?
  - Added.
Duplicate links: Epirus and Macedon within the lead, and war elephants, Megalopolis and Eurypontid King in the main text.
- I removed the duplicates.

Nothing too difficult to put right there. I'll put the review on hold to give you a week to address the various points. Tim riley talk 11:40, 7 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I hope that I have adequately addressed all of your concerns. Kyriakos (talk) 15:07, 7 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

You have. I leave you to consider how to deal with the link in the lead image (and in the popular culture section) to a non-existent page on French WP. Leave the name intact but blitz the link would be my advice.

GA review – see WP:WIAGA for criteria

Is it reasonably well written?
A. Prose quality:

B. MoS compliance:
Is it factually accurate and verifiable?
A. References to sources:

B. Citation of reliable sources where necessary:

C. No original research:
Is it broad in its coverage?
A. Major aspects:

B. Focused:
Is it neutral?
Fair representation without bias:
Is it stable?
No edit wars, etc:
Does it contain images to illustrate the topic?
A. Images are copyright tagged, and non-free images have fair use rationales:

B. Images are provided where possible and appropriate, with suitable captions:
Overall:
Pass or Fail:

I see you have a related article up for GAN, and unless another reviewer gets to it first I hope to look in later in the week. Meanwhile, this article is a worthy promotee to GA. – Tim riley talk 16:40, 7 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]