Wikipedia:Peer review/Jeita Grotto/archive1

Jeita Grotto

• A script has been used to generate a semi-automated review of the article for issues relating to grammar and house style; it can be found on the automated peer review page for June 2008.

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I've listed this article for peer review because i expanded it from just a stub, i need expert opinion and already requested reviewing from the caves wikiproject (no reply yet) , i need some help in determining if the tone and the style is acceptable for a wp article, some suggestions about additional paragraphs, and just really need someone to point out where i went wrong

Thanks, Eli+ 04:38, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Finetooth comments: This is an interesting cave that I'm sure I would like to visit, and you've done a good deal of work to get the article started. However, I see several problems that need attention. Here are my thoughts and suggestions:

• The Geology section has been copied almost word for word from the cited source, the paper by Nawwar and Nader. One of Wikipedia's guidelines is: "Avoid including entire texts of treaties, press releases, speeches or lengthy quotations..." See WP:NPS. It's OK to cite this apparently excellent source, but you need to internalize what it means and re-write the geology section in your own words, using wikilinks or brief explanations to help the general reader. To do this, you should find as many reliable scientific papers as you can about this cave and some general material about caves, cave formation, limestone, and karst. This is a much much harder thing than copying what the two scientists say, but for the article to be considered acceptable, that is how it has to be done.

• A serious factual error appears in the History section above the Geology section. The article claims that the cave is about 9 kilometres (5.6 mi) deep and cites the tourism bureau. The deepest cave in the world is not nearly that deep; something like 6,000 feet (1,800 m) is the record. The tourist bureau is correctly cited, but its number for the depth is wrong. Nawwar and Nader say the cave is about 9 kilometres long. When citing sources, it's good to evaluate them and to compare what they are claiming with what other sources are claiming. Generally, blogs and tourist bureaus are weak sources, and scientific papers are strong sources.

• The number of entrances given in the infobox looks very strange to me. What people usually mean by "cave entrance" is a way big enough for a person to get into and out of the cave. Most caves that I know of have one entrance, although some have a dozen or so. But I've never seen a number like 270,000. Perhaps that was the number of paid admissions in 2000. This number should be carefully checked and sourced and explained if necessary.

• The lead needs to be more complete to adequately summarize the main text. See WP:LEAD for ideas.

• If possible, web citations should include author, title, publisher, date of publication, url, and access date. Sometimes not all of this information can be found, but it would be easy to improve on some of the citations in this article. For example, citation 14 could include the title, the name of the publisher, Jochen Duckeck, and the date of publication (his last update to this page).

• Quantities expressed in metric units should also be expressed in imperial units according to Manual of Style (MoS) conventions. I like using the {{convert}} template for this because it's versatile and "knows" the correct MoS spellings, abbreviations, and other details. Thus, with the template and quantities added, "a compound of caves in Lebanon located 20km north of Beirut" would appear as: "a compound of caves in Lebanon located 20 kilometres (12 mi) north of Beirut".

• In addition to the metric-imperial conversions, I see quite a few Manual of Style problems that could be fixed by a good copyeditor. You might enlist the help of someone at the League of Copyeditors. See WP:LoCE.

I encourage you to do more research and to continue working on this article. If you find this review helpful, please consider helping other authors by reviewing their work, especially articles that appear in the backlog list. Finetooth (talk) 18:58, 16 June 2008 (UTC)