Wikipedia:Peer review/Manila/archive1

Manila

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because the article had met FA criteria.

Thanks, Harel (Not what you think?) 12:39, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Ruhrfisch comments: I am not sure what you mean by "the article had met FA criteria" - this has never been a FA and did not pass its one FAC. I think this needs a lot of work to get to a point where it would pass at FAC, so here are some suggestions for improvement.

• Biggest problem I see is that the article is seriously lacking references in places - there are whole sections without refs (Government and Education, for example), while other sections have whole paragraphs without refs (Economy and Culture and contemporary life ). My rule of thumb is that every quote, every statistic, every extraordinary claim and every paragraph needs a ref.
• Some refs are incomplete in the amount of information they have - for example current ref 13 is only a link and title and date "^ "Mahal Ko Si Lolo, Mahal Ko Si Lola". http://litoatienza.org/about/projects/mahal-ko-si-lolo-mahal-ko-si-lola/. Retrieved 25-04-10." This needs a publisher Internet refs need URL, title, author if known, publisher and date accessed. {{cite web}} and other cite templates may be helpful. See WP:CITE and WP:V
• Refs also need to be formatted properly - so for example years should be four numbers (2010, not 10; 1945, not 45) and ALL CAPITAL LETTERS should be written in Title Case (All Capital Letters)
• I would also make sure that only REliable sources (RS) are used in the article. For example, as a world city, I would expect many more than three books would be used as sources. Encyclopedia Brittanica is not the best source to use here, and I wonder why things like http://getrealphilippines.com/legacy/3-00_Makati/pollution.html are relaible sources - where is the fact checking and editorial control here?
• The article has to tell a coherent story for the interetsed but ignorant reader. For example the infobox says Manila was "Settled June 10, 1574" but this is not in the body of the article. The History section seems to start in the 13th century, with the city apparently already in existence, but a sentury is not given until 5 sentences in. Someone who knows little about the history of the Phillipines will not know what is going on
• Make sure to provide context to the reader - see WP:PCR - for example, the first sentence of the History section is "First known as Gintu (land of gold) or Suvarnadvipa by its neighboring provinces." (with no wikilinks). There is no context given here - no year, and no indication as to what was known as Gintu (assume it is Manila, but not sure). This is also a sentence fragment - it has no verb.
• There are places where the logical flow needs to be improved - for example, in History this is what is given on the Second World War: "In 1899, the United States purchased the Philippines from Spain and colonized the whole Philippine archipelago until 1946.[10] The Philippine-American War followed that. The war destroyed Manila but the Americans made modern contributions to the urbanization and planning of the city, but even this was wiped out during World War II. Manila was the site of the most fierce battle in the Pacific theater during the war." First off there is a difference between colonizing a place and ruling it as a colony. Second WWII was over in 1945, and then the Philippine–American War supposedly followed this, but the article on the Philippine–American War says it was over by 1902. Then the next sentence starts with "The war destroyed Manila ..." but it is unclear which war is meant (WWI or Phillipine-American War?)
• Only four sentences on World War II with 100,000 dead in Manila, only one sentence on the Marcoses, but a very large paragraph on events since 1995 and Lim and Atienza (in which we are twice told Lim was mayor). See WP:WEIGHT and WP:RECENT
• One of the FAC criteria is a professional level of English - the writing here is in serious need of a copyedit.
• A model article is useful for ideas and examples to follow - there are several FAs on cities at Category:FA-Class WikiProject Cities articles that would be good models

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). I do not watch peer reviews, so if you have questions or comments, please contact me on my talk page. Yours, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 02:52, 15 June 2010 (UTC)