Wikipedia:Peer review/List of current sovereign monarchs/archive2

List of current sovereign monarchs

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Just looking for some comments regarding where and how other editors feel I can make further improvements to the list. A previous submission is archived here. Any comments would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks, Nightw 14:47, 26 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Finetooth comments: This is an interesting and useful list, and I enjoyed reading it. Here are suggestions for further improvement.

"Current", "now", "today", and similar words are often troublesome because indefinite. Would it be better to rename the article "List of sovereign monarchs"? One advantage of the shorter title is that it makes no claim to be always up-to-date. Each time a monarch dies or otherwise leaves office, the list is bound to be out-of-date for at least a little while. During that time, the longer title will contain a false claim. Ditto for the "current" in the first sentence of the lead.
The dab checker at the top of this review page finds three links that go to disambiguation pages instead of their intended targets.

The Manual of Style advises against repeating the main words of the article title in the section heads. Instead of repeating "monarchs" in each of the heads, I think you'd be better off with "African", "American", and so on, to avoid redundancy.

Lists have been moving away lately from the formulaic opening, "This is a list... ". Something else might be more appealing. The exact words of the article title don't necessarily have to be completely repeated and bolded in the first sentence. See List of Governors of New Jersey, for example.

I see overlinking in the lead. Common words and phrases like "head of state", "birth", "authority", "inherits", "life", and "otherwise incapable" should not be linked since most readers of English already know what they mean.

Since the tables are static rather than sortable, there's no point in linking something like "Queen" more than once.

On the other hand, I think it would be worthwhile to link polity (in the lead) and primogeniture (in note 4), which many readers may not know. Oh, I see the latter is linked in note 20. The link should be moved up to the first instance.

The snippet view of citation 3 is of little use since page 6 is not included in the snippet. I would be omit the url and simply cite the book.

WP:MOSBOLD advises against double bolding. I would not double-bold the country names. Lesotho, for example, is sufficient and doesn't need to be Lesotho.

The background color in the country column seems to convey no information. I would consider deleting it.

Would it be useful to explain in the lead or in a note the difference between a flag and a standard? What is the importance of the standards? How are they used and by whom? Does a blank in the "standard" column indicate that no standard exists for a particular country?

I would not include anything in the "See also" section that has already been linked to in the main text, the notes, or the tables.

Note 34: "While" is preferred to "whilst", which is archaic.

Two really nitpicky things: (1) You don't need terminal periods at the end of notes consisting solely of a sentence fragment. (2) Even though the notes have internally consistent date formatting and the references have internally consistent date formatting, one set uses one system and one another. Since you use d-m-y (e.g., 30 April 1980) in the main text, the tables, and the notes, if this were my article, I'd change the ref dates to match.

Would it be worth pointing out in the lead that South America is the only continent with no monarchs?

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) 23:56, 2 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Wow, thank you, Finetooth, for your comments!

I'm in the process now of looking into the issues you've identified. Thanks again! Nightw 11:32, 4 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I don't get the first point at all. List of sovereign monarchs would not seem to exclude former monarchs. As far as being out-of-date for a little while, this just seems silly. It will be out of date for a couple of hours, at most, given how few monarchs there are in the world and how much stuff like that gets watched. I'll add that while I generally agree with most of the rest, especially on over-linking, I do think that head of state ought to be linked. john k (talk) 08:10, 8 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I agree with you there, John. Most of Finetooth's suggestions were very helpful, however. Would you have any? Even small details. I'll probably take it to WP:FAC after this, so I'm trying to smooth out as many kinks as possible. Nightw 09:43, 8 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I must agree with john k that my first suggestion is a bad one. I simply did not think of the category of former sovereign monarchs. Oops! :-) Finetooth (talk) 18:29, 8 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Short comments by Chipmunkdavis

Last sentence of lede seems fairly irrelevant to a list article. Perhaps move the last sentence linking to pretenders to the first paragraph, after you link to constituent monarchs.

Fourth paragraph of lede has "for example, "king" and "queen", "prince" and "princess", "emperor" and "empress", etcetera" I don't think you need "etcetera" if you have "for example", but that may just be me.

FAC might get your for sentences in the lede such as "These systems defy the model concept of a monarchy, but are commonly considered as such because they retain certain associative characteristics." which appear not to have a source and seem very OR (model concept). If these unsourced sentences are sourced by inline citations after following sentences, make sure that is known.

The idea of your wikilinks is brilliant, but due to this don't overlink things like Elective monarchy, which for example you've linked to twice in the african section. You may not want to link to them at all in the continent lists, as you already link to it in the lede. This would ensure that only further information about the monarchies is found in the lists, not just general information about monarchy. If there's an article on the election process, that could be wikilinked from Elective!
- Note Haven't gone through every single wikilink you have (though if I'm bored later...) but you've also linked to Constitutional Monarchy in places like Bhutan, Absolute monarchy in Saudi Arabia, etc. This is confusing due to some such as Thailand having the same word linked, but it goes to information directly about the thai monarchy, instead of in general. I'm convinced it would be better to just make sure everything is linked in the lede, leaving the lists for specific articles.
- Note2 Perhaps if you do remove all generic wikilinks, explain in the lede that the linked words go to specific articles.

Get rid of the List of Constituent Monarchs section. What is that doing there? You've already provided a link in the lede.

Especially due to the direct wikilinks, this is an excellent list. Good luck. Chipmunkdavis (talk) 11:21, 22 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks mate! These was really helpful, I was able to make a few improvements to things I'd overlooked. No more duplicate links in the tables, which only link to specific articles now. Do you have any suggestions about the shading? I don't like it as it is, but I'm trying to think of a way to highlight the subject being listed (i.e., the people). I still think it's best to sort them by country, but I want readers to know what the main links are (without bolding them). Nightw 10:46, 23 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Links still general:

Mixed in Asian (although there is currently no mixed in the lede)
Ef Officio after Andorra (again, no link currently in lede)

Additionally, kill the wikilinks that are redirects, such as most of the Commonwealth ones (Caribbean countries, PNG, Solomons) under Queen which redirect not to a list of Monarchs (like most other wikilinks) but to a description on the monarchy of the country, which you also link to under the Type.

Kuwait and Brunei, are they N/A for standards?

As for shading, the easiest way would be to just shift the grey from the countries to the monarchs name and title? The only problem with which may be looks. You could just remove the colour from the countries and leave it all white. If this is unwanted, perhaps just highlight the top cell of the monarch column (saying monarch) in a different colour? Chipmunkdavis (talk) 13:30, 23 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Sweet! Thanks, I'll play around with it for a bit and see what looks good. I'm not sure how to deal with the Mixed and ex officio... I have to incorporate them into the lead somehow. A blank in the Royal standard column means that they exist, but Wikimedia doesn't have them on file. I should probably mention something about that somewhere. Thanks again! Nightw 10:37, 24 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]