Wikipedia:Peer review/Inland Customs Line/archive1

Inland Customs Line

This peer review discussion has been closed.
This article has recently been promoted to GA and wanted to know if there were any improvements people can suggest to it. I may one day take it to FAC (I'd like to fill out some of the red links first and the, perhaps understandable, reliance on one source may be a problem) but would appreciate if someone took a look at the prose first. Cheers - Dumelow (talk) 11:05, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

Finetooth comments: This is a truly fascinating article about a barrier I'd never heard of. Amazing. Most of my suggestions are related to prose and the Manual of Style. Overall, the article is quite good and has FA potential, though the heavy reliance on Moxham might be an obstacle. I can't help with the content or suggest any sources; I'm sure you've been looking.

Many thanks for such a thorough review. I'll work through your comments as I can and try to solve the problems you've pointed out, cheers - Dumelow (talk) 14:40, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Layout

• MOS:IMAGES suggests arranging the images in such a way that they do not overlap sections, displace heads or edit buttons, or create text sandwiches between them. The "Great Hedge" section has a text sandwich of about five lines on my computer screen. I think it could be fixed by moving the Indian Plum image down about five or six lines. There's another text sandwich in the "Legacy" section, and File:Marche sel.jpg displaces an edit button and obtrudes slightly into the "Rediscovery" section.

• I'd consider moving the image of Lord Lytton to the left-hand side of the page so that he looks into the article rather than out.

No-break codes

• I added quite a few no-break codes as I worked my way through the article. The codes hold logical groups like 25 rupees together so they won't be awkwardly separated by line-break on computer screens. I probably missed some, which you can fix if you see them. WP:NBSP explains the code.

Lead

• "These customs houses were eventually formed into a contiguous barrier... " - Would "continuous" be better?

Done - Dumelow (talk) 13:40, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Origins

• "This was due to the lack of a contiguous barrier, corruption within the customs staff and the westward expansion of Bengal towards salt-rich states.[8][7][9]" - The normal order for serial citations like this one is ascending; i.e., [7][8][9]. The article has quite a few of these groups that need re-arranging in ascending order.

I fixed all I saw, thanks - Dumelow (talk) 14:40, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

• Would "continuous" be better than "contiguous"?

Done - Dumelow (talk) 13:40, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

• Would it be helpful to briefly explain why salt was taxed as opposed to some other commodity? What was special about salt? What made it attractive to the taxing authorities as opposed to, say, water or income or rice or something else?

Great Hedge

• "The decision was made to abandon the hedge in 1879 in anticipation of that all maintenance work was halted in 1878." - The sentence doesn't make sense as written since it would be impossible in 1879 to anticipate something that had already happened. Would this better: "After maintenance work was halted in 1878, the hedge was abandoned in 1879"?

I have reworded this part - Dumelow (talk) 13:40, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Staff

• "the customs men carried out 18 million miles of patrols, dug 2 million cubic feet of earth and carried over 150,000 tons of thorny material for the hedge." - At least two of these quantities also need conversion to metric. The convert template will do them all, but 18,000,000 miles (29,000,000 km) may be awkward because of all the zeros, so maybe 18 million miles (29 million km) would be better. The cubic feet conversion is 2,000,000 cubic feet (57,000 m³). The tons are either metric tons or long tons, I assume, and probably don't need to be expressed in two forms since they are so close to the same.

Fixed - Dumelow (talk) 14:50, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

• "The officers undertook at least one customs excursion per day on average, weighing almost 200 pounds (91 kg) of goods, in addition to personally patrolling around 9 miles (14 km) miles of the line." - I'm not sure what "customs excursion" means. Did the officers have to carry 200 pounds from one place to another?

I have (hopefully) clarified this now. Thanks - Dumelow (talk) 14:50, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Abandonment

• "The small difference between the tax bands... " - Maybe "zones" instead of "bands"?

Reworded to make more sense - Dumelow (talk) 16:54, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

• "Although the trans-Indus districts of India continued to be taxed at eight annas per maund until 23 July 1896 and Burma maintained its reduced rate of just three annas." - Not a complete sentence. Maybe just substitute "However," for "Although"?

Done - Dumelow (talk) 16:54, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

• "eight annas" - Would it be helpful to express eight annas also as ½ rupee?

Yep, done - Dumelow (talk) 16:54, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

Impact on smuggling

• "A large incident occurred in September 1877 when two customs men attempted to apprehend 112 smugglers and were both killed." - Slightly smoother might be: "A large incident occurred in September 1877 when two customs men attempting to apprehend 112 smugglers were both killed."

• "Many of the smugglers also died, with examples including one killed by his fellow smugglers in a fight with customs men and another drowning while trying to escape by swimming an irrigation tank." - "With" doesn't make a good conjunction. I'd suggest splitting this into two sentences: "Many of the smugglers also died. Examples include one who was killed by his fellow smugglers during a fight with customs men; another drowned while trying to escape by swimming an irrigation tank."

• "swimming an irrigation tank" - This is hard to imagine. Was he trying to hide in the tank? Surely he would run around it rather than swim across it if he was trying to escape.

Legacy

• "The line has been written of as an infringement on the principles of free trade and the freedom of the people who lived within it." - "It" at the end of this sentence seems to refer to "the line". Does it actually mean "the nation" or "India"?

Fixed - Dumelow (talk) 16:59, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

Bibliography

• The place of publication is missing from a few entries. If these places are not in your notes, you can usually find them via WorldCat.

Dabs

• The dab checker at the top of this review page finds two links in the main text that go to disambiguation pages instead of the intended target.

Fixed - Dumelow (talk) 16:59, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

Licenses

• The license page for File:1stEarlOfNorthbrooke.jpg is missing the author information, the date of publication of the original, and the clickable link to the source is circular; it pops up the image but reveals nothing about the source. It would be good to fix the link so that image reviewers can make certain that the license is valid.

• The source link for File:John and Richard Strachey.jpg seems to be broken and might be fixable.

I hope these suggestions prove helpful. If so, please consider reviewing another article, especially one from the PR backlog at WP:PR; that is where I found this one. I don't usually watch the PR archives or check corrections or changes. If my comments are unclear, please ping me on my talk page. Finetooth (talk) 18:14, 3 January 2011 (UTC)