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Wikipedia:Peer review/Cuisine of Madagascar/archive1

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Cuisine of Madagascar

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This peer review discussion has been closed.
I'd like to take this GA article to FA but since this is my first time, I invite an experienced editor to provide feedback on any changes that may be required to achieve the FA level of quality.

Thank you! -- Lemurbaby (talk) 16:20, 26 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Finetooth comments: This is very good. The prose is professional throughout; the article is well-organized and well-illustrated. The one thing that caught my eye again and again were the over-linking and under-linking. Here are a few comments and suggestions:

  • The linking in the lead is a bit strange. For example, Malagasy is linked on second use rather than first; zebu is linked twice; rice is linked, but maize and cassava are not.
  • My rule of thumb for wikilinks is to decide what terms to link, then to link them no more than once in the lead and no more once in the main text. Exceptions occasionally arise but not often. In every case, it's best to link a term on its first appearance rather than later. I would not link pastoralist more than once, but I'd link swidden agriculture on first use. You are right to link tenrec, but why not link hedgehog?
  • I'd suggest making the heads and subheads more telegraphic. For example, "History of Malagasy cuisine" would be better as "History"; readers will know from the article name what kind of history is meant. Rather than repeating "cuisine" and Malagasy" in "Contemporary Malagasy cuisine", I'd suggest something like "Contemporary dishes". "Early period: Prior to 1650" could be shortened to "Before 1650"; there's no need to say that this was early. The post-colonial subhead could become "After 1896".

Early period

  • "which corresponds with the emergence of complex, structured polities in the Highlands" - Link to polity?

Slave-trade period

  • "Manioc was brought after 1735... " - Link "manioc" to cassava or change to "Manioc (cassava)... "?
  • "and drinking coffee and tea on the northern coast and rice cakes" - For clarity, maybe "and drinking coffee and tea on the northern coast, and eating rice cakes... "? Otherwise the sentence suggests that "drinking" applies to the rice cakes.

Kingdom of Madagascar

  • "King Andrianampoinimerina successfully united these fractious groups under his rule, then used slaves and forced labor (exacted in lieu of taxes for those without means to offer material payment) to systematically work the irrigated rice fields around Antananarivo, ensuring regular grain surpluses enough to feed the entire population consistently and export products for trade with other regions of the island." - Too complex. I'd suggest breaking this into two separate sentences.

Colonial and post-colonial

Images

  • I'd make the lead image 300px instead of "thumb".
  • I'd consider moving File:Zafimaniry woman.jpg to the right side of the page so that she aims in rather than out. Because of the way she is bending, she is directional. She might swap places with the rice-paddy image to maintain your left-right alternating layout pattern.
  • I might suggest fleshing out some of the image description pages a bit to make it easy for the FAC fact-checkers to determine that the licenses are correct and the descriptions complete. I looked at all of them; I replaced the old "move to Commons" tag on two of them with the new tag since they'd already been moved. That's how I came to notice the two that hadn't been moved. Any photos that you took yourself should say something like "own photo" in the description so that there's no doubt about the authorship. As far as I can tell, the licenses are valid; one of the Flikr photos is not checkable, but the other Flickr photos were licensed CC-by-SA with no restrictions that would cause problems on Wikipedia.
  • I made all your suggested changes to the images in the article... although I had a little trouble figuring out how to change descriptions once the files were moved to commons. Any suggestions would be helpful. Thank you, -- Lemurbaby (talk) 18:25, 4 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

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) 03:00, 30 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Ruhrfisch comments: Thanks for your work on this very interesting article (which made me hungry reading it). I agree with all of Finetooth's comments above and, as requested, here are some affitional suggestions for improvement.

  • I would try to avoid vague time expressions like "to this day" and "today" and "recently". Instead if possible try to use terms like "as of YEAR", so Bol renversé, a type of fried rice from neighboring Mauritius, has been recently popularized in upscale urban restaurants.[19] could perhaps be something like Bol renversé, a type of fried rice from neighboring Mauritius, became popular in upscale urban restaurants shortly before 2010.[19] (I am guessing based on the date of the ref book) One problem is that things can become outdated fairly quickly, so "recently" in 2010 may not seem so in 2012 (only 366 days away).
  • There are a few sentences that may be challenged at FAC as needing references. The two I found just now were By 600 CE groups of these early settlers had moved inland and began clearing the forests of the central Highlands. as well as Smoked and dried seafood and meats, fruits, dried maize and cassava, salt and other products were exchanged between regions at designated marketplaces. My rule of thumb is that every quote, every statistic, every extraordinary claim and every paragraph needs a ref.
  • I would say explicitly somewhere early in the article that French is one of the official languages of the island (since so many of the foods have French names)
  • Imports section has two paragraphs which are only one sentence long - the effect is a bit choppy and I wondered if these could be combined with other paragraphs (or perhaps expanded)
  • Great images!
  • I was a little surprised that only three cookbooks are cited as refs (as far as I can tell - my French is non-existent)
  • Please make sure that the existing text includes no copyright violations, plagiarism, or close paraphrasing. For more information on this please see Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2009-04-13/Dispatches for more details
  • There are very few cookbooks on Malagasy cuisine in any language. I'm working on an English-language one for publication early this year. I have made changes to remove vague language as well as I could in ways that can be substantiated. Thank you for your helpful comments. -- Lemurbaby (talk) 18:25, 4 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

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 ><>°° 05:39, 31 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

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