Wikipedia:Peer review/War of the Triple Alliance/archive1

War of the Triple Alliance

This is basically a translation of the featured Portuguese version of the article. Any comments are helpful. (Clearly more references/sources would be nice, but there aren't any in the Portuguese article, which is where this comes from). As an aside, tell me if you see any pro-Brazil POV - I tried to remove what I saw. Finally, what more does this article need to be featured? Zafiroblue05 22:53, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

• I'll comment more on the text itself once I've read it a few more times, but some technical issues that could be fixed:

• Use {{Warbox}} instead of {{Battlebox}}.
• References (which you mentioned) are necessary; once those are present, some footnotes for the major points in the article would be appropriate.
  • Now, how exactly would that work? If we cited the books you listed below as sources, there wouldn't be points in the books that specifically match up with points in the article, would there? In other words - what do you think needs to be footnoted? Thanks. Zafiroblue05 05:55, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
• A longer lead section; 2–3 paragraphs would be good.
• Remove articles at the start of section headings.

More comments to come soon! —Kirill Lokshin 22:58, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

• Some more substantial comments:

• A list of battles (preferably using the campaignbox format) would help to keep track of the chronology. Each of the battles should have at least a stub written about it. On a more general note, liberal stub-creation may be appropriate here. At the very least, the number of redlinks should be somehow reduced.
• I don't see any significant POV issues. There are a few instances of suspect wording (e.g. "heroes of Tuyutí"), but without more supporting articles, it's unclear to what extent these are POV.
• Phillips and Axelrod's Encyclopedia of Wars cites Charles Kolinksi (Independence Death: The Story of the Paraguayan War, 1965) and Harris Gaylord Warren (Paraguay and the Triple Alliance: The Postwar Decade, 1869–1878, 1978) as references. I have no idea about the quality of those works, however.
• The various sections should be more balanced in size. "Declaration of War" and "The Treaty of the Triple Alliance" can be merged. So can "The first Brazilian reaction", "The battle of Riachuelo", and "The retreat of the Paraguayan troops". The "The end of the war" section either needs to get more subsections or to be merged with something else.
  • Followed your suggestions; I think "the end of the war" section can be expanded, more subsections (60-80 percent of the Paraguayan population - non-military, civilian! - died, and it wasn't in battles in Brazil and Argentina), so I'll have to lookm for more info. :) Zafiroblue05 06:33, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
• A minor point—the term "squad" appears to be mis-used in some places. A squad is usually a fairly small body of men (under a hundred), but sections such as "the Brazilian squad forced its way past Curupaity" suggest that a larger group is being referred to.
  • Yeah, I believe the correct word should be "squadron." (I'm not a military expert - but does that word make sense here?) As I said, this is mostly a translation from Portuguese, and because I only know Spanish, I based it off a Babelfish translation, which gave "esquadra" as "squad." I changed it to "squadron" in some places, but apparently not all. Thanks. :) User:Zafiroblue05 05:48, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

All told, it's a good article, but still some ways from being ready for a FAC nomination. The biggest problem is the lack of references and citations; once that is fixed, the rest is merely a question of extensive copyediting. The other issue that will definitely be brought up during FAC is the number of redlinks. At least the battles and major commanders should get stubs. —Kirill Lokshin 23:36, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

• I already wrote José E. Díaz and battle of Curupaity. Will try to do more... Zafiroblue05 06:09, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

• Great work! A general comment about references and footnotes: you'll definitely want to get your hands on a book or two that you can use to cite specific points. As far as what to cite, anything that seems controversial or significant could potentially have a footnote. I tend to favor having more notes—see War of the League of Cambrai, for instance—but articles get promoted to FA status with far fewer than that. You'll have to follow your own judgement on how many you want to add, but try to be in a position to provide more if asked for them during the FAC process, as it's a common objection :-) —Kirill Lokshin 06:50, 11 December 2005 (UTC)