Wikipedia:Peer review/Jacobus Arminius/archive1

Jacobus Arminius

This peer review discussion has been closed.

I've listed this article for peer review because… I want to try and eventually get it nominated as Good Article or a Featured Article. It was recently listed as a "level-4 vital article" with a B-Class rating. I would like some concrete directions from a reviewer on what should and could be done to improve the article. Arminius was the founding voice of a whole class of Protestant Christianity, and is a key figure in the debate between Calvinism and Arminianism. Thus he is just as important to Protestant theology as John Calvin, which was once a "Featured Article"; I want to do the same for ol' Arminius.

Thanks, TuckerResearch (talk) 05:40, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

Comments from JFHutson

Here are my thoughts. Caveat emptor: this is my first peer review.

Sourcing

• There are a number of references to Hugo Grotius: Ordinum Hollandiae ac Westfrisiae Pietas without page numbers. Please add page numbers or find a different source (see next point).
• The above source is the most widely used source in the article, but it is not even primarily about Arminius. The standard biography is Bangs's Arminius. Also important are Muller's God, Creation, and Providence in the Thought of Arminius, Jacob Arminius: Theologian of Grace and Arminius, Arminianism, and Europe. These works should probably be the backbone of the article, but they are hardly used.
• Schaff-Herzog is WP:TERTIARY, old, and unreliable in my opinion.
• Surely there's a better source for his grave than Find a Grave.
• There are a number of statements with no source.
• Other sources look OK, though I would prefer works on Arminius himself and the history immediately surrounding him (see above) rather than general histories of Christianity.
• There are a number of sources in the bibliography which are not referenced in the article. These should probably be moved to a "Further reading" section for now and some should be consulted and referenced in the article. A number of these sources are on Arminianism rather than Arminius, so will only be peripherally relevant.
• Pick a citation format. I suggest you use {{sfn}}.

Length

• Too short. This is a very important figure. Using the sources mentioned above, as well as others you may discover in the bibliographies, the article can be expanded significantly.
• Add a background section. Most readers will not know enough to understand the theological and political conflicts.
• See John Calvin, Martin Bucer, John Knox, Thomas Cranmer, and Ulrich Zwingli for examples of featured articles on sixteenth century Reformed theologians. I would think not as much has been written on Arminius as these figures, but if you poke around in WP:FA#Religion, mysticism and mythology biographies you might find some other figures of similar historical importance.

Prose

• There is a lot of unnecessary quotation wherever the Ordinum Hallandiae source is used. Use quotations sparingly; where someone has stated something in a distinctive way that makes it worth using the quotation rather than summarizing the idea in your own words. For example, there is no reason to quote that Gomarus was "a rather mediocre scholar".
• Don't italicize titles of short works like the Heidelberg Catechism (that's at least my experience in reading reliable sources, and I don't know of anything contrary in the MOS).
• There is more that could be said about the writing, but since I think it needs to be significantly expanded with more sources, and so may change dramatically, I'll leave it at that.

--JFH (talk) 02:16, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

I noticed that Jacob Arminius: Theologian of Grace is on Questia. You can sign up for a free Questia account at WP:QUESTIA. --JFH (talk) 20:57, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

Thank you. All very helpful. I have most of the works in the bib. I'll get to work when I get a chance. TuckerResearch (talk) 21:52, 15 December 2013 (UTC)