Wikipedia:Peer review/Romania/archive3

Romania

Previous peer review

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because I have been working on it significantly lately and I would like to know what are its weaknesses (other than the citation tags that I left for myself).

Thanks, Nergaal (talk) 09:36, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Many thanks! Feel free to leave behind tags if that is easier for you. Nergaal (talk) 21:23, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

Finetooth comments: This is a huge article that took a long time to review. I tried to be thorough, but I know that I did not catch everything. Still, I am hoping this will help you along the road toward FA. I think you would do well to trim the article here and there to try to get it down closer to 100 kilobytes than it is now. I suggest a couple of places in my notes below where I think it could be compressed. Here are other comments and suggestions:

• The tools at the top of the review page find seven dead urls in citations and a couple of dabs.

• I see a lot of overlinking. A good rule of thumb is to link something no more than once in the lead and no more than once again in the main text. For example, Moldavia is linked once in the lead and at least six times in the early sections of the article. Many of the geographic entities are linked multiple times. "Cities" and "communes" are linked twice in consecutive sentences in the "Administrative divisions" section. These are just a few examples.

• Captions consisting solely of a sentence fragment don't take a terminal period.

Lead

• "monarchy, it gained recognition" - Semicolon instead of comma?

• "has the 9th largest territory" - Generally, numbers from one to nine are spelled out as words, and 10 or bigger appear as digits. Should this be "ninth"? Ditto for seventh and sixth? Ditto for other numbers in the article?

• "(with 21.5 million people)" - Generally anything like "21.5 million" needs to be held together with a no-break code per WP:NBSP to avoid awkward separation on line-break. I'll just point out this first one and leave the rest to you. Others to watch out for include things like 25 AD and 19th century.

• The lead is quite well-written and of appropriate length, but it is not a true summary of the whole article because it leaves out Culture, for example. A good rule of thumb is to at least mention in the lead each of the main text sections. It shouldn't be hard to sneak those in there without damaging the prose flow or making the lead too long.

Prehistory and history

• "in book IV of his Histories" - Italics for Histories?

• "in book IV of his Histories (Herodotus) written 440 BCE, where he writes about the Getae tribes" - Maybe tighten to "in book IV of his Histories, Herodotus in 440 BCE writes about the Getae tribes"?

• "between 82BC - 44 BC," - Use "and" rather than spaced hyphen?

• "but this was split into 4 or 5" - Four or five instead of 4 or 5?

• "Consequently, Roman Empire held only Scythia Minor province at present Romania after this withdraw." - Three problems. Suggestion: "Consequently, the Roman Empire held only Scythia Minor province at present Romania after this withdrawal. I'm not sure how to fix the third problem, because I'm not sure how to interpret "at present Romania".

• "group both South and North of the Danube" - Lower-case "south" and "north".

Middle Ages

• "until middle of the 19th century" - Missing word? "until the middle"?

• "The Habsburgs in turn expanded their empire in 1718 to include an important part of Wallachia, called Oltenia (which was only returned in 1739) and in 1775 over the north-western part of Moldavia, later called Bukovina. - Doesn't make sense as written. Maybe breaking it into two sentences would help.

World Wars and Greater Romania

• "on August 14/27 1916" - The front slash is rarely used. Better would be "on August 14–27, 1916"

• "(almost 300,000 km2/120,000 sq mi)" - Here I would recommend (almost 300,000 square kilometers or 120,000 mi²) with no-break codes to hold things together. Generally, the main units are spelled out and the secondary units abbreviated. Ditto for the other similar constructions in the article.

• "The authoritarian King Carol II abdicated in 1940, and succeeded by the National Legionary State" - Missing word, "was"?

Communism

• "which were won with 80% of the vote" - Generally, "percent" is preferred to % in simple cases like this. Exceptions would include complicated listings such as demographics sections, tables, and scientific documents in which % is repeated many times.

• "drained by mixed Soviet-Romanian" - En dash instead of hyphen?

• "In 1965, Nicolae Ceauşescu came to power and started to pursue independent policies such as being the only Warsaw Pact country to condemn the Soviet-led 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia, and to continue diplomatic relations with Israel after the Six-Day War of 1967; establishing economic (1963) and diplomatic (1967) relations with the Federal Republic of Germany." - This is a little too complex and is glued together awkwardly with a semicolon. Maybe two sentences would be better.

Politics

• "The president is elected by popular vote for maximum two terms," - Maybe "a maximum of two terms"?

• "Each county is further subdivided into cities and communes, which have own mayor and local council." - "have their own mayors and local councils"?

• "level divisions of European Union" - "the European Union"?

Armed Forces

• "The total defence spending in 2007 accounted for 2.05% of total national GDP, or approximately US$2.9 billion (39th in the world), and a total of about 11 billion will be... " - "Percent" instead of %. Probably no need for US in front of $2.9 billion. "$11 billion".

• "will be commissioned until 2010" - "in" rather than "until"?

Environment

• "In Romania there have been identified 3,700 plant species from which to date 23 have been declared natural monuments, 74 missing, 39 are endangered, 171 vulnerable and 1,253 are considered rare." - Suggestion: "In Romania 3,700 plant species have been identified, of which 23 have been declared natural monuments, 74 missing, 39 endangered, 171 vulnerable, and 1,253 rare."

• "The vegetation is distributed in an storied manner" - "a storied manner"?

Economy

• "Romania is an upper-middle income country economy" - Tighten to "Romania has an upper-middle-income economy"?

• "1855 lei" - Comma separator here and in $1,110.39 in the next line?

Transportation

• Spell out and abbreviate ISPA on first use? Lowercase "government"?

Tourism

• "In 2006, Romania registered 20 million overnight stays by international tourists, an all-time record,[162] but the number for 2007 is expected to increase even more." - Some of this section seems out-of-date, particularly this sentence.

• "are among the most popular attraction" - Plural, "attractions"?

• "Other major natural attractions in Romania such as Danube Delta,[99] Iron Gates (Danube Gorge), Scărişoara Cave and several other caves in the Apuseni Mountains have yet to receive great attention." - This sentence seems self-contradictory. If they are "major attractions", they are receiving "great attention", no?

• This section seems a little rah-rah to me and might be a candidate for compression.

Religion

• "Church officials place the number of believers at 80,000-100,000.[2]" - Something's gone awry here with the citation.

• "Unitarians represent 4.55%" - Would these percentages be more readable if rounded to the nearest whole number?

Education

• "It has subsisted and even prospered during the Communist regime." - Past tense, and is "subsist" the right word? Maybe "It persisted and even prospered during the Communist regime."

• "Out of these, 650,000 in kindergarten, 3.11 million (14% of population) in primary and secondary level, and 650,000 (3% of population) in tertiary level (universities)." - This sentence needs a verb.

• "The results of the PISA assessment" - Spell out and abbreviate PISA on first use? Ditto OECD?

• "was included in the first 500 top universities world wide" - Tighten to "was included in the top 500 universities worldwide"?

• "Using similar methodology to these rankings, it was reported that the best placed Romanian university, Bucharest University, attained the half score of the last university in the world top 500." - A bit awkward. Suggestion: "The highest-ranking Romanian university, Bucharest University, attained a score half as high as the last-place university in the world top 500."

Culture

• I would consider deleting the cultural overview, which largely repeats information from the "History" section. I think you could just start the section with the "Arts" subhead.

Arts

• "The German philosophy and French culture were integrated into modern Romanian literature, and a new elite of artists led to the appearance of some of the classics of Romanian literature such as Mihai Eminescu, George Coşbuc, Ioan Slavici." - The writers aren't the same as the classics, as the sentence implies. Suggestion: "German philosophy and French culture were integrated into modern Romanian literature, and a new elite of artists such as Mihai Eminescu, George Coşbuc, and Ioan Slavici created some of the classics of Romanian literature."

• "Although they remain little known outside Romania, they are very appreciated within Romania for giving birth to a true Romanian literature by creating modern lyrics with inspiration from the old folklore tales." - This needs a source and maybe should just be deleted; its meaning is vague. I think it means, "Although little-known outside their homeland, these poets are popular in Romania."

• "a central figure of the modern movement and a pioneer of abstraction, the innovator of world sculpture by immersion in the primordial sources of folk creation." - Like the "Tourism" section, this section seems a bit over the top. Would it be better to use plain language and to skip some of the adjectives?

• "a composer, violinist, pianist, conductor, and teacher,[200] the annual George Enescu Festival is held in Bucharest in his honor." - The festival isn't that list of things. Needs re-casting.

Monuments

• "The UNESCO List of World Heritage Sites[206] includes Romanian sites" - The sentence that starts this way is a bit of a run-on and might work better if re-cast as two sentences.

• "Also, in 2007, the city of Sibiu, famous for its Brukenthal National Museum, is the European Capital of Culture alongside the city of Luxembourg." - Here is another example of something that needs updating. In this case, just changing the verb from "is" to "was" will do, but other dated claims might need a bit more re-working.

Sports

• Spell out UEFA and FIFA on first use?

Notes

• Since this is the English Wikipedia, would it be helpful to include English translations of the notes?

• Note 3: Italicize the titles if they are books.

• Note 4 should not have direct links to external sources. Instead, use inline citations.

References

• The formatting of all of the dates in the citations need to be consistent; that is, choose one kind of formatting and stick with it.

• The refs that are in languages other than English should indicate which language. I believe you can use the |format parameter for this information; e.g. |format = Italian. Not quite sure since I haven't had to do this yet myself.

• Some of the citations are incomplete. For example, citation 118 could include the publisher and the publication date, which are available from the source document. When the information is available, web citations should include author, title, publisher, date of publication, url, and access date.

External links

• I would try to pare these down. You can delete any that are already linked in the main text, for example.

Images

• File:Mamaia above.jpg has a description page that is incomplete. Where did the image come from? How can readers verify that the license is correct?

• File:Bran Castle.jpg has a description page with too little information to verify the license claim.

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) 04:09, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

Thank you very much for all these comments and the tweaks in the text. I will go through them during the next weeks and then hopefully through GAN. Nergaal (talk) 04:59, 9 October 2010 (UTC)