Wikipedia:Peer review/Igbo people/archive4

Igbo people

Previous peer review

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review to improve it quality by getting someone to put some significant input into the article.

Thanks, Ukabia (talk) 00:49, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Ruhrfisch comments: I am always glad to see articles on important topics like this come to peer review. That said, this needs a fair amount of work before it would have a good chance of passing at WP:FAC. So here are some suggestions for improvement.

• The tool for diambiguation links finds 8 or so dabs that need to be fixed.
• Although there is some debate on this, having alt text for readers who cannot see the images is also a requirement for FAC. The alt text tool in the toolbox shows no alt text at all now - see WP:ALT please
• One of the biggest issues I had reading this article was a lack of context to help the reader not already familiar with the Igbo and their history - see WP:PCR Just in the Identity section for example, there is only one date (Olaudah Equiano's 1789 narrative) - without other dates the reader is not sure if this is before, during or after the slave trade period, for example.
• In the identity section I was a bit surprised not to read something about how many Igbo there are today, or where they are primarily found, or even how many speakers of the Igbo language(s) there are and their geographic ditribution. Does the Nigerian government identify people as Igbo? If so, how many and on what basis?
• Also in the identity section there are three sentences in a row with a ref to [28]. As long as they do not have direct quotations or extraordinary claims, it is OK to put on reference at the end of several sentences that all rely on the same source.
• In Etymology, define what words in foreign languages mean - "gboo"?
• Another example of missing context as well as organization that could be improved, is the Origin section. It starts with 4500 BCE, skips ahead to opinions in the 1970s and then jumps back to 5000 BCE. The first paragraph mentions many places, all of which seem to be in Nigeria, most or all in the southeast, but the paragraph does not mention in what country they are. To me it would seem best to start with the earliest dates and the farthest removed geography and then work forward in time and closer to mdoern day Nigeria. The main article here, while not perfect, does a better job of organization and providing context
• In the Nri Kingdom section again much is assumed that is not clear to an interested reader who knows little about the Igbo. Often when I write aboutthings I know a lot about,I have to be extra careful to explain details which I already know, but an average reader will not. For example, the Kingdom of Nri article clearly gives the dates of the kingdom in the first sentence - here they are never given and there are no dates until the second paragraph. Again geography is muddled too
• Watch for apparant self-contradiction within the article. If the Kingdom of Nri lasted until 1911 and is described as "The Kingdom of Nri was a religio-polity, a sort of theocratic state", but in the very next section, Traditional society, it reads "Traditional Igbo political organization was based on a quasi-democratic republican system of government." So which is it? Theocratic kingdom or quasi-democratic republic?
• Images are usually placed in sections that they have a relationship to - what is the relation between Paul Robeson and the slave trade? This needs to be clarified
• One of the FA criteria is comprehensiveness. I would think the end of British rule and the independence of Nigeria would need to be mentioned in the history section (if they are I missed them)
• Watch for short (one or two sentence) paragraphs in the article, especially in the Culture section. These break up the flow and should be combined with others or perhaps expanded.
• I did not check all the sources - most look OK to me, though I note the recent FAC worried that many books had only been looked at in snippet form on Google Books. Make sure sources meet WP:RS. Also note that Enyclopedia Brittanica is generally frowned on as a source.

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). I do not watch peer reviews, so if you have questions or comments, please contact me on my talk page. Yours, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 15:03, 25 March 2010 (UTC)