Talk:Romania/GA3

GA Review

Review by Epicadam (talk · contribs):

The following suggestions were generated by a semi-automatic javascript program, and might not be applicable for the article in question.

• Per Wikipedia:Manual of Style (numbers), there should be a non-breaking space -   between a number and the unit of measurement. For example, instead of 370 mm, use 370 mm, which when you are editing the page, should look like: 370 mm.^[?]
• Please make the spelling of English words consistent with either American or British spelling, depending upon the subject of the article. Examples include: honor (A) (British: honour), harbor (A) (British: harbour), meter (A) (British: metre), defense (A) (British: defence), defence (B) (American: defense), recognize (A) (British: recognise), recognise (B) (American: recognize), criticize (A) (British: criticise), ization (A) (British: isation), isation (B) (American: ization), enrollment (A) (British: enrolment), cosy (B) (American: cozy), mold (A) (British: mould), molt (A) (British: moult).
• As done in WP:FOOTNOTE, footnotes usually are located right after a punctuation mark (as recommended by the CMS, but not mandatory), such that there is no space in between. For example, the sun is larger than the moon [2]. is usually written as the sun is larger than the moon.[2]^[?]

The following terms linked in the article go to disambiguation pages, which is not ideal. They should be edited so they go to the actual article: Bod; Camus; Dacian Wars; European Champions Cup; Formation; List of countries by GDP; Louisiana Creole; National Salvation Front; Ottoman; Român; România Mare; Violinist.

Lead

• within and outside the Carpathian arch - I don't know what that means. Why not just say the country is within the Carpathian range?
• the second paragraph is a jumble of history that doesn't necessarily summarize Romania
  • The territory's recorded history encompasses such eras as" huh? poor prose.
  • As a nation-state - is Romania a nation state? I wouldn't think so, and no source provided in the article's text says that it is
  • Romania made economic reforms such as low flat tax rates in 2005 - really? that's the most important economic reform??
  • While Romania's income level remains one of the lowest in the European Union, reforms have increased the growth speed. - besides the poor prose (e.g. "growth speed") how is this measured?
  • In 2007, Sibiu, a city in Transylvania, was chosen as a European Capital of Culture. - just exactly how does this summarize Romania itself?

History

• This section has 40% of the article's readable prose; that is just far too long. Currently, the text is too unfocused to provide an adequate summary of the country's history for the average reader. If the United Kingdom, another good article, can edit its history down to 800 words, than Romania can certainly do the same. I would suggest following their route and provide only the most important aspects of the country's history and then leave the rest to the country's many sub articles. I won't provide a detailed review of this section since it is likely that most of it will be removed. In any case, however, there are entire paragraphs that are missing citations. That needs to be fixed.

Geography

• Some citations in this section would certainly be nice. Currently there is one... and it only references the UN heritage site.
• With a surface area - I don't think "surface area" is what's calculated; surface area takes into account topographical and elevation changes, which is not the typical way to measure a country's total area.
• Carpathians sweeten into hills - "sweeten"???
• Romania's geographical diversity has led to an accompanying diversity of flora and fauna. - remove this generic sentence
• "A high percentage of natural ecosystems (47% of the land area of the country) is covered with natural and semi-natural ecosystems."
  • Don't give generic terms, especially if there are exact percentages. Just say "Forty-seven percent of Bulgaria..."
  • What in the world are "natural" and "semi-natural ecosystems"? Does this mean undeveloped? If so, how can something be "semi-natural"?

Demographics

• The citations provided here don't reference all the information provided. For example, "Historically, French was the predominant foreign language spoken in Romania, even though English has since superseded it. Consequently, Romanian English-speakers tend to be younger than Romanian French-speakers." is sourced to a PDF that says that Romania hosted the Francophonie in 2006.

Economy

• Need to deal with FACT tag.

Transportation

• First paragraph entirely unsourced

Arts

• This just needs a general cleanup in both prose and content as it it currently a list of artists. It's not clear how many of them relate directly to summarizing Romania as a whole, or which ones (if any) had a direct effect on Romanian culture.

Sports

• Much the same problem as the Arts section. It's unclear why much of the information presented there is important for understanding Romania as a whole and why trivia such as World Cup rankings aren't included in the sub article.

Images

• There are many problems with the images:
  • Thumbnail images ideally should not be hard-sized (though that's not an absolute requirement), but if they are, they should not be hard-sized less than 300px (the maximum size that users can set in their preferences)
  • Images should not appear left-aligned directly underneath section headers.
  • Text should not be sandwiched between two images.
  • The captions should ideally say something extra about the information. For example, the picture of the library at Bucharest University could give the date that the university was founded. Some captions, however, like the Palace of the Parliament provide far too much information in the form of trivia.

This article is a great start and has many good sources, however, it suffers from deficient prose, WP:MOS issues, stability concerns (as evidenced in the page history and talk page), and a lack of focus in sections. I will place the article on hold for the time-being so that an editor can attempt an overhaul. Since that is unlikely, I would recommend instead that the GA nomination be withdrawn and the article undergo a peer review. While the comments I provided above do need to be addressed, this review is in no way completely exhaustive and would benefit from additional editing. Best, epicAdam^(talk) 17:15, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the review, and for all the details. I am just tired of having long lists of to-do stuff to get this to GA (this is the third or fourth time) so I stopped bothering to solve any of these issues... perhaps in the future... maybe... Nergaal (talk) 19:54, 26 September 2008 (UTC)