Wikipedia:Peer review/Myrrha/archive1

This peer review discussion has been closed.

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because… I rewrote this article from scratch and I can't seem to find much more to add. All I really need to do is add a picture of Myrrha in Hell by Gustave Doré and then I would consider the article finished (but I'm waiting for my account to be auto-confirmed so I can upload the picture). What I would like to ask you for is checking for eventual grammatic errors, places I need to put a reference or if one of my references is not defined clear enough. Anything else would also be appreciated - throw everything you can at me :)

Thanks in advance, Mottenen (talk) 20:25, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

• Whatever the reasoning, I don't think that a redlink in a hatnote is tenable.
• Ceres links to a disambiguation page
• Citation formats need a lot of attention. You need to give details of Bibliotheca Sacra, Ovid's Metamorphoses, Hyginus, Dante etc. We need full publisher details of the editions of these works you are using. Also, online citations need to be properly formatted, with the site's publisher shown in each case.
• The organisation of the article looks odd. Surely the "Origin" section should be at the beginning, rather than the end?
• Some spelling errors; "Appearences", "Pronounciation" (in citations)
• Prose: From my readthrough it is evident that the prose needs considerable attention. Here are a few pointers from the lead and first section, but I suggest that a full copyedit id undertaken:-
  • The opening sentence is overcomplicated by a lengthy parenthetical insertion which makes for very awkward reading, likely to put people off before they get into the subject. Do we need the ancient Greek spellings of Myrrha and Smyrna? We don't need to cite the pronunciations to dictionaries. A simpler opening might be:

"In Greek mythology Myrrha (pronounced //ˈmɪərə//), also known as Smyrna (pronounced //ˈsmɜrnə//), is the mother of Adonis."

• • "tricked him into", not "tricked him to"
  • "sexual intercourse" doe not need a link; everyone knows what it means. Likewise "incest"
  • "While being a plant..." is very clumsy. Perhaps "While in plant form..."
  • The lead needs some expansion, to fulfil the requirements of WP:LEAD that it be a concis summary of the whole article.
  • The words "As of today" are redundant.
  • "...while others like Apollodorus tell that in other accounts of the myth the story takes place in Assyria". This needs rewriting: "while Apollodorus and others place the myth in Assyria".

I hope these suggestions can help you start the process of improving the article, but I believe that further help with the prose is essential. Brianboulton (talk) 23:57, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

Response
Thank you very much for a fair review.

• The link in the hatnote is from the article that I almost completely deleted.
• Thanks for noticing that the Ceres link was not directing to the goddess
• I thought I'd given the information on Bibliotheca Sacra already in the bibliography or should it be cited in another way? My problem is that I have been using my own translations of the ancient Greek works most of the time and Wikipedia says not to cite non-english sources (I'm Danish). Should I put them on or should I try finding free editions online like I have done with Antoninus?
• I agree that the structure might look odd, but "Origin" was a last minute addition because I found a book on my local library that I could use (unfortunately I think I'm out of new sources now). It will be corrected.
• Most articles on Greek myths contain the spelling in Greek (e.g. Zeus and Adonis)
• I agree with the rest
  

Thanks again and at least I'm happy you did not find anything not referenced (except that the references might not have been formatted correctly). Mottenen (talk) 16:54, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

References:User:TCO has asked me to take a look at the references. I'm in the process of running the ones under "bibliography" through this tool. The "page(s)" field will be left blank so you can fill them in yourself (I have no idea which pages your using). I'll also anchor them, if you don't know what that is I'll explain it soon.--NYMFan69-86 (talk) 01:32, 20 January 2011 (UTC)