Wikipedia:Peer review/Siege of Damascus (634)/archive1

Siege of Damascus (634)

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because i want to put it for feature article nomination, i need all types of comments and suggestion that would help me to further improve this article so that it may pass the feature article criteria.

Thanks, الله أكبرMohammad Adil 17:02, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Comments from Ealdgyth (talk · contribs)

• You said you wanted to know what to work on before taking to FAC, so I looked at the sourcing and referencing with that in mind. I reviewed the article's sources as I would at FAC.
  • Please alphabetize your references.
  • As I pointed out in the Yarmuk article, using Gibbon is not using the best quality sources. He's out of date, and at this point should only be used as a source for articles about the history of history.
  • Also, you've managled the Gibbon, it should be "Gibbon, Edward (revised by Henry Hart Milman). Although I'm not sure how much "revision" happened, as it doesn't look any different than a scan of a much earlier printing of the work (Victorian era, I'd guess.) Milman died in 1868, so this isn't a significant recent revision

Hope this helps. Please note that I don't watchlist Peer Reviews I've done. If you have a question about something, you'll have to drop a note on my talk page to get my attention. (My watchlist is already WAY too long, adding peer reviews would make things much worse.) 16:47, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

• wht should i do ? except for gibbon there is no other source tht illustrates siege of damascus in such a detail.

by the way almost all the references given to gibbon in the article are further supported by modern sources, so is it all right using gibbon since wht ever he stated is now supported by modern historians as well.

الله أكبرMohammad Adil 21:56, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

User:BirgitteSB

• General: I found this article to be interesting and informative, but it still needs work. This needs major copyediting. The grammar is often strange (Early Muslim armies lack siege equipments and therefore usually avoided siege warfare until it was inevitable as in case of Damascus, Emesa and Alepo, during the conquest of Levant.) and in some places incomprehensible (Blocked of the city cut off the supplies of Damascus.). Some of the wikilinks point to disambiguation pages instead of good targets; all links need to be checked. Is it "Byzantine" or "Eatern Roman", pick on and stick with it. Also be careful that you use "Rashidun Caliphate" and "Rashidun army" consistently. Was the "Thomas Gate" called this at the time before Thomas made these significant sorties from it?
• Intro: Need to be a more complete summary of article per WP:LEAD.
• Background: While this is nicely informative of where the offensive action is coming from, it neglects to give the background of the Byzantine side.
• The siege: The tone in this part is too dramatic at times. Also this narrative seems to have been broken during rewrites and never repaired. A subsection begins: After all hopes of the reinforcement from Heraclius were finished, Thomas decided to launch a counter offensive to drive the Muslims away. The following morning, . . . No time is established as the day of this initial decision to put "the following morning" in context. This would be best fixed by moving further away from a dramatic narrative and closer to encyclopedic tone. Bulleted lists should be avoided and worked into prose. While the events of the siege are laid out chronologically there is little context regarding the timing. How long they waited for relief? Between sorties? One way to fix this is to change the subsections here to chronological labels if the information of exact dates is available (i.e. see Siege of Malakand). It would be nice if there were more information on events within the city. Can we discover what festival was being celebrated when the city fell? I'm confused by the pact of surrender. It is formatted somewhat like a quotation but it has two separate references within different parts. This should be clarified.
• Aftermath: This gives the near-term battles and the long-term campaign aftermath. But nothing about the aftermath for the city itself. How was Damascus administered in the near-term and how did life change for the remaining residents?
• Images: A map showing Damascus in relation to Antioch, Bosra, and Ajnadayn would be helpful. File:Mohammad adil rais-siege of damascus.PNG use a font that is too small to be legible and the key calls for a Black marker for "Besieging armies" that is absent in the map. Captions should put the actual picture in context rather than contain an ancient narrative under a modern picture. The caption about the city rising so that the wall is now only 7m above street level is really great, but check the others.
• Notes and References: I don't know a great deal about how to make these work but I notice some here do not add up. There is a note b in the intro without ever seeing note a. There was a reference that I could not match to the Bibliography (number 36). These all need to checked. It bothers me to have the Bibliography split labeled "Primary Sources" and "Modern Sources". "Ancient" and "Modern" would be better. These aren't exactly first-hand accounts given the dates 100-300 years after the siege.

Good luck.--BirgitteSB 22:23, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Hi, thanks for your excellent peer review and suggestion,

You wrote....

• The grammar is often strange........etc

Will fix it shortly..

• Some of the wikilinks point to disambiguation pages instead of good targets; all links need to be checked.

Checked them all, Thomas was disambiguation, removed it.

• Is it "Byzantine" or "Eatern Roman", pick on and stick with it.

Its byzantine now.

• Also be careful that you use "Rashidun Caliphate" and "Rashidun army" consistently.

i have worked on it, now using muslims and muslim army instead of repeatedly using rashidun caliphate and rashidun army.

• Was the "Thomas Gate" called this at the time before Thomas made these significant sorties from it?

yes it was called so, its after the name of one of the 12 apostles of jesus.

• Intro: Need to be a more complete summary of article per WP:LEAD.

done, please check it if its fine now.

• Background: While this is nicely informative of where the offensive action is coming from, it neglects to give the background of the Byzantine side.

Done.

• The siege: The tone in this part is too dramatic at times. Also this narrative seems to have been broken during rewrites ..........

Done, cant label it chronological as no fixed dates are available. tone fixed.

• it would be nice if there were more information on events within the city.

No info is available on this.....

• Can we discover what festival was being celebrated when the city fell?

Birth of a son to a high priest. this has been added in the article.

• I'm confused by the pact of surrender. It is formatted somewhat like a quotation but it has two separate references within different parts. This should be clarified.

Both reference gave the same text of the pact, i hv fixed them putting both of them side by side.

• Aftermath: This gives the near-term battles and the long-term campaign aftermath. But nothing about the aftermath for the city itself. How was Damascus administered in the near-term and how did life change for the remaining residents?

added info about damascus city's later life.

• Images: A map showing Damascus in relation to Antioch, Bosra, and Ajnadayn would be helpful.

will try to make one as soon as possile.

• File:Mohammad adil rais-siege of damascus.PNG use a font that is too small to be legible and the key calls for a Black marker for "Besieging armies" that is absent in the map.

I see on most of the maps tht front is usually of this size, making it bigger may be look uglier.

In the military maps, the key usually have a black and white image of the boxes that refers to cavalry and infantry (Infantry is shown by a black box, while cavalry by a half black and half white box), It wasnt appropriate to give both cavalry and infantry symbols on info box for a siege, so i put only one by tagging it as "Besieging armies", you can suggest me some thing rather more appropriate, it will be helpful.

• Notes and References: I don't know a great deal about how to make these work but I notice some here do not..........

done.

الله أكبرMohammad Adil 12:47, 11 December 2009 (UTC)