Talk:Hadrian/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Tim riley (talk · contribs) 10:52, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

Starting first read-through. More soonest. Tim riley talk 10:52, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

This is an impressive and substantial article, and unless I run across unexpected obstacles I fully expect to promote it to GA (and perhaps see it at FAC in due course) but there are some drafting points I should like you to look at first. It will take me two or three goes to get through them. Here is the first batch:

• General
  • The article is mostly written with English spelling, but a few American spellings ("traveled", "honor" etc) have crept in, and need to be amended. (I have a techie shortcut that makes this easy, and I'll gladly do it if you would like me to. Please let me know.)
• Sources
  • The second sentence is 69 words long, and really could do with breaking into two.
  • ("a mish mash of actual fact, Cloak and dagger, Sword and Sandal, with a sprinkling of Ubu Roi") – this calls for an an inline citation in addition to the reference. And "Cloak and lower case dagger but Sword and upper case Sandal: is this right? I see it's from a French book. If the translation is yours it would be as well to give the original French text in a footnote.
  • "absolutely necessary" – otiose adverb: something is either necessary or it isn't.
  • "However, this may be a ruse" – the word "however" appears 34 times in this article, mostly (as here) quite needlessly. "Howevers", as I well know, creep into one's prose unbidden, but they usually weaken the prose, and should be weeded severely.
  • "can be partially linked" – partially as in partly, no doubt, rather than in a biased way. The ambiguity is somewhat theoretical – who's going to misunderstand it? – but it's as well to make things completely unambiguous, nonetheless.
• Public service
  • "His first…" – there seems to be a WP convention, with which I don't entirely agree, that at first mention in each paragraph "he" (or "she") won't do, and the name must be used. Here et passim.
  • "Later, he was to be transferred to the Legio I Minervia" – the "was to be" really is ambiguous: does it mean that he was sent to be tribune of the Legio II Adiutrix with the intention that he would go on to be Legio I Minervia or is it merely a succession of events, in which case the "to be" should be removed?
  • "governor of said province" – the "said" grates somewhat: how about just "the" or "that"?
  • "as was customary to the regular senator" – not sure about the preposition here: would "for" be more natural?

Here endeth the first batch. More soonest. Tim riley talk 21:03, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

Before resuming my review of the individual sections of the text, I pause here to mention the quite remarkable excess of WP:OVERLINKs. In Early life alone Italica is linked four times. Rome does not need one link, let alone the five it has at present. I spotted other duplicate links (and there may be more) to:

• Antinopolis
• Antinous
• Athens
• Attianus
• Augustan Histories
• Baiae
• Bar Kokhba
• Barcelona
• Bithynia
• Cassius Dio
• Danube
• Ephesus
• Eusebius
• Fifth Macedonian Legion
• Fronto
• Hadrian's Wall
• Hellenist
• Hispania Baetica
• Historia Augusta
• Lucius Julius Ursus Servianus
• Marcus Aurelius
• Mauretania
• Nero
• Pannonia Inferior
• Pantheon
• Parthia
• Pausanias
• Roman Senate
• Scipio Africanus
• Second Temple
• Sparta
• Syria
• Torah
• Trajan
• Vallum
• Vespasian
• XXII Deiotariana

Resuming the section-by-section review:

• Securing power
  • "relieve him from his post" – unexpected phrasing instead of the more usual relieve him of his post
  • "Or better, the reason" – who says it's better?
  • "It's probable" – conversational contractions of this kind are inappropriate for an encyclopaedia article. See MOS:N'T.
• Hadrian and the military
  • "However, disturbances …" – This huge sentence (62 words) needs chopping up.
  • "conjectural and speculative" – how is conjecture distinguished from speculation?
  • "a Greek intellectual that had been" – unexpected choice of pronoun: surely "who" would be normal here?
  • "It's more probable" – chatty contraction, as above.
  • "proof to it" – two points here: first, "proof of it" would be more usual phrasing, surely? And how can it be "proof" of something you have just decribed as merely "probable"?
  • "Great Britain" – WP:OVERLINK – we do not link the names of "major geographic features and locations, languages, and religions".
  • "built on stone" – typo for "of stone"?
  • "Hadrian established intensive drill routines" – I was amused to see what this links to.
• Cultural pursuits and patronage
  • "an Ancient anonymous source" – is the capital letter intentional?
  • "When Trajan, predecessor to Hadrian" – we have already been told that Trajan was predecessor to Hadrian.
  • "He also wrote an autobiography …" – citation for this sentence, please.

More anon. Tim riley talk 09:51, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

• Purpose
  • First para, last sentence: lacks a main verb. Indeed, as I read this section I get the strong impression that it is written by someone whose first language is not English, and whether or not I am correct in that surmise I really think the section needs a good copy-edit. Some minor hiccups of English usage earlier in the article didn't seem to me serious enough to fail GA criterion 1a, but I think this section is another matter. I am perfectly happy to give the text a swift once-over – there is no reason why a GAN reviewer should not do so. Please let me know what you think best.
• Africa, Parthia and Anatolia
  • Third para: this is a rehash of earlier material about the Hadrian-Antinous affair, and doesn't need serving up again here.

Please consider the above point about copy-editing before I go any further. I fear I am inclined to fail the candidacy if it is not addressed. – Tim riley talk 14:26, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

Cerme (talk) 13:27, 1 September 2015 (UTC) I will revise the article, mainly by adding some materials from the German version, which is a FA. Then I shall ask for copy edit.Cerme (talk) 13:27, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

Fair enough. I'll obviously have to fail the GAN on this occasion, but it is fundamentally a fine piece of work and I look forward to its future progress. Regards, Tim riley talk 20:33, 1 September 2015 (UTC)