Wikipedia:Peer review/British Museum/archive2

British Museum

Previous peer review

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because… The article looks to be in good shape but before it is nominated for GA status, I wanted to see what improvements could be made. Thanks, Harrison49 (talk) 00:29, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Comments by Chipmunkdavis

Long article, with some very interesting formatting. Generally well written too, although there is some WP:PEACOCK here and there (but quite understandable, it is the British Museum after all). My thoughts, take them as you will:

• In the lead there should be no new information, and there shouldn't need to be references. Make sure that everything cited in the lead is included somewhere within the main article text. Currently some information exists only in the lead.

History

• I took one look at the table of contents and was shocked at the apparent length of the history section. Is it necessary to have this huge number of subsections? In my opinion they need to be combined somehow. Perhaps the Sloan and Founding sections could be combined, and perhaps 1753-1859 combined, 1850-1900, 1900-2000. These were just grouping I thought of on the fly, but I do think the number of subsections is overwhelming.
• Images in this section are all right-aligned. More variety would be more attractive.
• "he bequeathed it to King George II, for the nation, for the princely sum of £20,000." This is unclear. Did Sloane ask for £20,000 in return for the collection? Also, "princely" seems to be not very encyclopaedic.
• "including those by Albrecht Dürer" Is Albrecht Dürer important enough to warrant the only actual naming of any artist in that paragraph? Seems odd and out of place.
• Okay, first word on the notes. Is there are reason that these are not included within the text? At any rate, wikilinking things such as "Jacobite rebellion" would be very helpful.
• "including the Lindisfarne Gospels and the sole surviving copy of Beowulf." This statement and the note following appear to be unsourced.
• "which it bought from the Montagu family for £20,000." Was it funded from parliament? Does this have a relation to the money mentioned earlier?
• " In 1757 King George II gave the Old Royal Library and with" Reword somehow, to say that King George II donated the contents of the library or something similar.
• Citation needed tag here, this needs to be dealt with.
• Second paragraph of Indolence and energy (1778-1800) is unsourced.
• "for the extensive collection of sculpture began to be laid" Should "sculpture" be plural? If not, ignore me.
• "King George III presented the Rosetta Stone" Instead of "presented", maybe "donated" or something similar. "presented to the museum".
• "Many Greek sculptures followed, notably the first purpose-built exhibition space, the Charles Towneley collection, much of it Roman Sculpture, in 1805" Needs to be rewritten or split or something. Meaning is unclear to me.
• "masterpieces of western art, were" Errant comma?
• Big citation needed in the The largest building site in Europe (1825-50) section.
• "assembled a fine library" Adjectives like "fine" would best be avoided.
• Archaeological excavations section may be better suited under the Collecting from the wider world (1850-75) banner.
• First paragraph of Collecting from the wider world (1850-75) needs to be sourced.
• "became a well-organised institution worthy of being called a national library" Very opinionated statement, is this a direct quote from somewhere?
• First paragraph of New century, new building (1900-25) needs to be sourced.
• "the collections kept growing" may be better written as "the collections continued to grow"
• "In 1923 the British Museum welcomed over one million visitors" is a statistic, definitely needs a source.
• The Disruption and reconstruction (1925-50) section needs sourcing.
• "organization" American spelling?
• Many parts of A new public face (1950-75) need sources.
• The The Great Court emerges (1975-2000) has two short paragraphs which should be combined, and then sourced.
• "The original 1753 collection has grown to over thirteen million objects at the British Museum, 70 million at the Natural History Museum and 150 million at the British Library." needs to be sourced.
• I've skipped some footnotes, but make sure they too are sourced.

Governance

• The name of the current director and maybe other important admin staff could be included here.
• "For a list of current trustees, see here." This needs to be reworded somehow. This is the kind of sentence which would make a good footnote, with the reference showing as an external link.
• Make sure it's all sourced, I believe the second half of the second paragraph currently isn't.

Building

• The section as a whole needs a lot of sourcing. Combine shorter paragraphs and leave no paragraph without a source, no dates names or numbers without sources. As a whole this section would be improved by some sort of overview or guide to the overall shape and a description of how all the areas interconnect.

Departments

• This section could use an overview briefly describing what the departments are, how they are formed and arranged, and other general information.
• Maybe the sections could be rearranged into a different order? Current order seems random. Maybe keeping geographical departments together, historical departments together, etc. would be better.
• Large white spaces are scattered throughout, if possible they should be eliminated.
• How were the items listed chosen? Is there a central list? If possible, have a link to a list of items in the museum somewhere easy to find (another good footnote usage) so that all items listed throughout the section can be double-checked. In addition, some sections have lists of items, some don't. Why?
• "most comprehensive collection" What does it mean to have a comprehensive collection of artefacts? "virtually every site of importance" What defines an important site? Wording here could be vastly improved, and should be sourced anyway.
• The second paragraph may need more sources, unless the source at the end covers everything. Lots of figures names etc.
• Third paragraph perhaps needs the citation moved backwards, if not the second half needs to be sourced.
• Fourth paragraph needs to be sourced.
• "Wendorf Collection of Egyptian and Sudanese Prehistory" wikilinks included here seem randomly chosen and don't really add.
• The Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities section lacks sources.
• The Department of the Middle East has a when? which needs to be addressed, and should be reformatted with short paragraphs combined and long paragraphs split.
• Similar peacock issues to Egypt section. Words like "comprehensive" should be avoided, and claims like "has the greatest collection of Mesopotamian antiquities outside Iraq" definitely need a source.
• General lack of sources again, make sure every paragraph has at least one source and every fact etc.
• "with near complete holdings of most of the great names before the 19th century" is subjective and needs a source.
• Third paragraph of Department of Prints and Drawings has a citation needed that needs addressing.
• The Department of Asia is the only one with a gallery, maybe the gallery should be moved to the galleries section below?
• The Department of Africa, Oceania and the Americas has a citation needed, and frankly the part has been added two is simple puffery anyway.
• Other paragraphs of this section need combining and sourcing.
• Department of Prehistory and Europe, Department of Conservation and Scientific Research, and Libraries and Archives all need sourcing.
• External link in Department of Conservation and Scientific Research should be removed.

Controversy

• The prose in this section needs sourcing. I'd actually recommend expanding, with maybe a paragraph detailing each separate dispute that the museum has been in or is in. Theres a source for each item, so hopefully no new ones need to be found to do this.
• Explain what the Tasmanian Ashes are, and why they were disputed.

Floor directory

• What's the difference between a floor and a level?
• If every level has the wheelchair symbol, it loses its meaning.
• The red triangles, do they mean limited time?
• Add a key to address these issues.

I enjoyed reading the article, and it has some very good information there. Hope you take this all into account, sorry if I was too critical at some points. Any questions, I've watchlisted this page, reply under the bullets or just below here. Good luck with the article, Chipmunkdavis (talk) 18:17, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

Another note, See Also should not contain links already in the article. The British Museum Friends is linked to in History. Chipmunkdavis (talk) 03:34, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Thank you very much for your review. I will get to work on the improvements you have suggested. It really is a very interesting article to read with plenty of fascinating facts and certainly should be a Good Article at the very least. Harrison49 (talk) 13:21, 26 March 2011 (UTC)