Wikipedia:Peer review/List of chemical element name etymologies/archive1

List of chemical element name etymologies

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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 August 2008.

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because it contains a very good amount of information and may possibly be listed as a featured list. I want to know what else it needs besides an intro and references. Also, if referencing the entire article with a few general sources is enough - for example, http://www.etymonline.com/ would be enough?

Thanks, Nergaal (talk) 22:38, 22 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Ruhrfisch comments: This has a lot of infromation, but it is a very long way from FL. Very briefly, here are some suggestions for improvement. If you want more comments, please ask here.

There are so many good print references for Chemistry that I would definitely use them. The CRC Handbook has little histories of each element that include etymology, as does Greenwood and Earnshaw, there are whole books devoted to the History of the eleements that give etymologies and would be good sources. Perhaps the online source could be an external link, but definitely not the only source.
I think I would make the whole list just one table and make it sortable (take out the alphabetic subtables - if you keep the subtables make them all the same width please). I would also add a column for the Languages - then someone could sort and see all the Greek or Latin or Arabic names. Might even add the atomic number as a sortable column.
Article has NO lead and NO images. The lead should be an accessible and inviting overview of the whole article. 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. The article may need fewer sections / header too. Please see WP:LEAD
Article has NO images.
What text there is needs a copyedit
WHat refs there are a very fragmentary - Tin - The American Heritage Dictionary publisher, date, page, etc?

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). Yours, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 19:06, 25 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

RJH comments: I hope these are of some use:

The article needs a lead of some type.
I would like to see a citation for every single element, even if it is the same set of citations frequently reused.
The citations should not have a space in front of them; they should be snug against the punctuation and each other.
There is also some cleanup needed: Iridium has a dangling </ref>; Bohrium explanation has two periods; Cobalt and Lanthanum have empty double-quotes; Francium has double right parentheses.
Missing a period: Americium, Uranium, Carbon, Palladium, Samarium, Sodium, Strontium, Plutonium, Tellurium, ...
Neptunium has a red link.
Per the MoS, there is far too much bold text. I think italics would work in many cases; others just don't need any emphasis.
Some of the entries seem a little unpolished. E.g. why is (on mythology) attached at the end of Promethium?
Why so many single-sentence paragraphs when they can be merged. E.g. in Radon.
Why the italics in the last sentence of Seaborgium?
Can the text be reworked to remove most of the parentheses? I don't think that so many are needed.

Thanks.—RJH (talk) 22:45, 25 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]