Wikipedia:Peer review/Syrian civil war/archive1

2011 Syrian uprising

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I've listed this article for peer review because I want to get some feedback for how I can further improve this page. Obviously it's going to change dramatically over the next several months, and I want to help update it as it progresses. But what can I do at this time to improve Wikipedia's coverage of the uprising?

Thanks, Master&Expert (Talk) 21:05, 16 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Ruhrfisch comments: Thanks for working on this important article, here are some suggestions for improvement.

A model article is useful for ideas and examples - some of the FAs at Wikipedia:Featured_articles#Warfare should be useful models
One circular redirect here
Lots of dead external links here - note that if the source is also available in print (like the Wall Street Journal) then the ref is still OK even though the link is dead
I would also make sure that all of the references used meet WP:RS - news outlets are generally reliable sources
There are places that need refs - for example at the end of the History section According to The New York Times, the Syrian government has relied "almost exclusively" on Alawite-dominated units of the security services to fight the uprising. His younger brother Maher al-Assad commands the army's Fourth Armored Division, and his brother-in-law, Assef Shawkat, is deputy chief of staff of the army. has a short direct quote without a ref.
My rule of thumb is that every quote, every statistic, every extraordinary claim and every paragraph needs a ref.
Make sure refs give enough information to allow someone else to check them. Internet refs need URL, title, author if known, publisher and date accessed. {{cite web}} and other cite templates may be helpful. See WP:CITE and WP:V
I would just make Socio-economics and Human rights their own sections (not subsections of Socio-economics and civil rights)
Since there is a hatnote to it, I do think there needs to be a subheader "Timeline" with no other content
The article has a lot of short (one or two sentence) paragraphs, which make for choppy prose and break up the narrative flow. Wherever possible these should be combined with others, or perhapos expanded - see for example the Protests and armed clashes section
Syrian opposition section has no refs either
N.O.H.R.S. needs to be explained / spelled out
The further down the article I read, the more disjointed the narrative became. The Background section is well written and coherent, the rest of the article feels more like something added to haphazardly over months
Watch WP:OVERLINKing
Per WP:See also, links already used in the article are generally not included in See also
This map is from 1976 File:Syria Political Governorates Map 1976.jpg so I am not sure the caption Protests and military sieges occur across Syria. is accurate (since the map dshows no protests or sieges)
Please make sure that the existing text includes no copyright violations, plagiarism, or close paraphrasing. For more information on this please see Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2009-04-13/Dispatches. (This is a general warning given in all peer reviews, in view of previous problems that have risen over copyvios.)

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 _><>°^° 15:30, 1 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your time and effort, I appreciate it. =) Master&Expert (Talk) 19:43, 2 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Glad to help - another thing to watch out for is needless repetition. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 04:03, 3 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]