- Previous peer review
This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because I don't know where to start! The article is finally stable - the conflicts have died down. Reading through, I think one of the issues is weight in the various sections - some might be too heavy, and others too light. I can see a vague case for restructuring the headings and forming larger sections out of the smaller ones, but without an idea about the weight of some of the subsections, it's a bit tricky. I'd like some outside views of this so that we can proceed. GA is a first target step, with a longer-term view to FA, so any related comments (sources, depth, etc) would also be greatly appreciated.
Thanks, Fritzpoll (talk) 19:38, 8 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Finetooth comments: A lot of work has gone into the article, which has good potential. You are right in thinking it has significant problems that would need to be corrected to advance, say, to Good Article. The first one I'd suggest tackling is sourcing, which is quite good in places and entirely absent in others. The lead should be re-written, and I have a few suggestions about subdivisions and image placement. Happily, the prose is good.
- I'd suggest re-writing the lead to make it a stand-alone summary of the entire article. Imagine a reader who for some reason can only read the lead and nothing else, and write the lead for that person. The existing lead says nothing about the economy, science, education, society, and so on. A good rule of thumb is to include at least a mention of the main text sections and not to include anything important in the lead that is not mentioned later in the article.
- Generally, it's a good idea to write in complete paragraphs consisting of two or more sentences and to create sections and subsections that are substantial rather than tiny. Otherwise, the prose begins to look like a list without a smooth and natural flow or much in the way of connection between one thing and the next. I think "Law and courts" is too short a section to stand alone, for example, and I'd be inclined to merge it with "Government". "Tourism" is also too short, and the fix I'd consider would be to expand it to triple its current size by adding a bit more of a summary from the main article it links to. With a one-sentence orphan paragraph like "According to Eurostat data, Macedonian PPS GDP per capita stood at 32 per cent of the EU average in 2008," I'd consider expanding or simply merging with another paragraph.
- Many paragraphs, such as the first two of the "Medieval period" subsection in the article, all of the "Climate" section, and so on are unsourced. To avoid violating WP:V, my rule of thumb is to source every set of statistics, every direct quotation, every claim that has been challenged or is apt to be challenged, and every paragraph.
- I'd recommend rendering the lists in the article as straight prose. For example, in the "Education" section, I'd change the list to say, "The Macedonian education system consists of pre-school, primary, secondary, and higher education". Then I'd merge this sentence with the paragraph that follows.
- The article is overloaded with images in a few places. The Medieval period subsection, for example, has a text sandwich (text squeezed between an image on the left and another on the right). A bit further down in the article, the boundary map and the history list-box form another text sandwich. The boundary map also displaces a section head. It's best to arrange the images so that they don't make text sandwiches or displace the heads or "edit" buttons.
- I'd suggest moving the individdual images in the image gallery to the Republic of Macedonia gallery on the Commons and adding a Commons template to the External links section. Readers who want to see general images of the Republic of Macedonia can then click through to the gallery.
- The link in citation 79 is dead.
- Quite a few of the citations are incomplete. A good rule of thumb for Internet sources is to include author, title, publisher, date of publication, url, and access date, if all of those can be identified.
- It's disconcerting to the reader to see entire notes rendered as a single blue link as in citation 11. Generally, the title should be blue-linked (clickable to the source url). In some cases, it may be useful to link other elements, but in those cases the links should be separate.
- The images need alt text, which is meant for readers who can't see the images. Alt text is not the same as a caption. You might not need alt text for GA, but you will certainly need it to pass FAC. WP:ALT had details.
I hope these few suggestions prove helpful. If so, please consider reviewing another article, especially one from the PR backlog. That is where I found this one. Finetooth (talk) 23:05, 17 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]