Wikipedia:Peer review/British Cypriots/archive1

British Cypriots

• A script has been used to generate a semi-automated review of the article for issues relating to grammar and house style; it can be found on the automated peer review page for December 2008.

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because I've recently significantly revised it, with a good range of sources and want advice on where to go from here. Is the tone/balance correct? What needs to be done to get it to good article status? Thanks. Cordless Larry (talk) 18:28, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Finetooth comments: I think the tone is fine. I have a few suggestions for improvement.

• The lead is too short even for a short article. A good rule of thumb for the lead is to include at least a mention of the main ideas in the text sections. I'd suggest expanding the lead to include a bit more about history and something about population and notable people.

• UK and EOKA need to be spelled out on first use like this: United Kingdom (UK). After that it's fine to use the abbreviation by itself.

• Some of the citation data is missing. If possible, the citations should include author, title, publisher, date of publication, url, and access date. Citation 22 lacks a publisher, for example, and citation 19 lacks its access date. A different sort of problem occurs with citation 14, where the linked title leads to a Google search page rather than the article itself. If the full article or at least an abstract is unavailable online, it's probably better to leave the title unlinked. That way the reader can tell by glancing at the citation that the source is available only on paper.

• The Manual of Style advises against repeating the words of the article title in the heads and subheads. I'd suggest changing "Notable British Cypriots" to something like "Notable individuals".

• When multiple references appear together, it's customary to arrange them in ascending order. The 12-11 pair toward the end of the "History" section should be flipped to 11-12.

• Words like "now" "today", and "currently" are often ambiguous. Here's an example: "One estimate states that there are 130,000 nationals of the breakaway Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus currently residing in the UK... " This can be remedied by using something like "As of 2008, an estimated 130,000 nationals... " You should use the date of the estimate, not necessarily 2008. Another example of this same sort of time problem occurs in the last sentence of the "History" section: "Turkish Cypriots continue to migrate to the UK... " It would be better to fill in a specific year; e.g., "As of 2008, Turkish Cypriots continued to migrate... " When the situation changes, the sentence will still be true although a bit outdated. Later edits, say in 2015, might bring the outdated bits up to date.

• The first sentence of the "History" section stopped me because of a slightly different time confusion. "Prior to the First World War, very few Cypriots migrated to the UK and the Cypriot population at this time is given as around 150... " I think this would be more clear if changed to "... population at this time was around 150, according to... ".

• It would be helpful to include just a bit more about the independence struggle. For example, it would be good to state directly that the struggle was for independence from Britain. It would also be helpful to say in that paragraph why people from Cyprus would flee to the UK at the same time they were in some sense at war with the UK. Possibility for expansion of the article might lie in briefly explaining some of the complex relationships that must have been operating.

• If any material exists about British attitudes, pro or con, toward immigrants specifically from Cyprus, that's another possibility for expansion. General attitudes toward immigration might be relevant. Legal immigration controls, if any, might be worth mentioning. Does the UK limit the number of immigrants per year from Cyprus, for example?

• The prose generally flows well in this article but could be improved in places. Specifically, I'd look for ways to replace "there is" and "there are" constructions with something more direct. An example would be "whereas the Museum of London reports that there are 100,000 Turkish Cypriots in Britain – 20,000 more than in Cyprus... ", which would be better as "whereas the Museum of London reports that 100,000 Turkish Cypriots live in Britain, 20,000 more than in Cyprus."

I hope these brief suggestions prove helpful. If so, please consider reviewing another article, especially one from the PR backlog. That is where I found this one. Finetooth (talk) 18:04, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the review. I'll try to enact your suggested changes shortly. I just have a query about your point on reference 19 since it seems to have an access date to me... Cordless Larry (talk) 09:01, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes, you are right. I'm not sure why I thought it didn't, but it looks OK to me this morning. Finetooth (talk) 16:05, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

Just another quick question. You recommended specifying a date for estimates such as "One estimate states that there are 130,000 nationals of the breakaway Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus currently residing in the UK", but the source does not have a publication date. Any suggestions for what to do in this case? Cordless Larry (talk) 18:23, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I see what you mean. I hunted around at the BBC site where the source article appears, and I couldn't find anything to nail down the publication date either. I think as a temporary fix, you could just leave the claim as is since the BBC article uses the ambiguous "currently". A more interesting course of action might be to hunt for Viv Edwards' other published work in the hopes of finding more data than the short BBC piece provides. Even if this didn't produce the missing date, it might produce interesting surprises. Finetooth (talk) 19:10, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the comment. From a brief search, it appears that Viv Edwards is a linguist rather than a demographer (which isn't surprising given that the article she wrote for the BBC is about the Turkish language) so I don't think we're going to find anything that way. That aside, do you think that the article as it stands is worth nominating as a good article? It seems a bit short to me but I'm not sure there's that much more material out there to expand it with. Cordless Larry (talk) 21:18, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

<outdent> The GA criteria include "broad in coverage" rather than specifying a particular length, so I don't think length as such would be a problem. I didn't review with GA necessarily as the goal, but I didn't notice any POV problems or instability, and the article seems generally well-written. It might need another image or two to meet the "illustrated, where possible" criterion. I'd suggest checking the links to make sure none is dead. I'd merge the orphan sentence at the bottom of "History" with the paragraph above it. I see a few nit-picky things like "pp. 360-362", that the Manual of Style would prefer be "pp. 360–62" with an en dash instead of a hyphen. So my answer is "yes". When you get done with this round of tinkering, go for it. Finetooth (talk) 01:02, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

OK, thanks for your help. Let's see how it goes. Cordless Larry (talk) 08:39, 12 January 2009 (UTC)