Wikipedia:Peer review/The Lion and Sun/archive1

The Lion and Sun

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because I am prepare it as possible GA and FA articles. The article is comprehensive and covers all important aspects associated with the topic. The article is written based on scholarly sources and all information in the body of article are sourced. My first concern is grammatical mistakes in the article, since English is not my first language. I appreciate any comment on the article.

Thanks, WIMYV? (talk) 01:35, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Ruhrfisch comments: This is an interesting article and while it is clear that a lot of work has gone into it, it needs more work to get to GA and especially FA. Here are some suggestions for improvement.

• WP:LEAD says the lead should be 4 paragraphs at most - this currently has 6 paragraphs.
• The lead should be an accessible and inviting overview of the whole article. As an overview, nothing important should be in the lead only - since it is a summary, it should all be repeated in the body of the article itself My rule of thumb is to include every header in the lead in some way
• There are many places where some context could be provided for the reader. For example the dates (years or even centuries) of many of the things referred to in the article are not widely known, so adding these would help the reader get a better understanding of the article.
• Per WP:HEAD headers and subheaders should not repeat the article title or and subheaders should not repeat headers, so change "Zodiacal and Semitic origin" in the "Origin" section (perhaps use roots as is used later?)
• Refs are in numerical order with no spaces between them, so fix things like The lion and sun symbol is based largely on astronomical and astrological configurations; the ancient zodiacal sign of the sun in the house of Leo,[2] [1] which itself is traced backed to Babylonian astrology and Near Eastern traditions.[2] [3]
• The main reference used is another encyclopedia - this might not be the best source - see WP:RS
• References need to be consistent - for example page is for one page, pages is used for multiple pages. See WP:CITE
• Many of the images are so close to other similar images that they do not add much to the article - for example does the article really need two images with the caption "Flag of Iran (1886 AD)" or two of the Order of Aftab (2 years apart)? Or three images from the visit to France in 1715 (none of which clearly shows the symbol on my monitor)?
• The article needs a serious copyedit - there are multiple typographical and spelling errors, and many places where the language is unclear or not syandard English ("motherhomeland" as one example).
• A model article is useful for ideas and examples to follow - there are several FAs at Wikipedia:Featured_articles#Awards.2C_decorations_and_vexillology that may be useful models.

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 _><>°^° 21:23, 20 October 2009 (UTC)