Talk:Capital punishment/GA2

GA Review

Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch

Reviewer: Cryptic C62 (talk · contribs) 02:34, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

Sorry mate, this article isn't even close. The sourcing is atrocious and the organization is terrible. The toolserver shows that you made only 16 edits to the article. In future, you would be well advised to actually try to make substantial contributions to the article before nominating it. Regardless, here are some specifics on how to improve it.

References

• I see lots of places without citations:
  • In History, the ends of the second and third paragraphs
  • In History, the entire fourth paragraph
  • In Ancient History, the end of the first paragraph
  • The vast majority of Ancient Tang China (which is also underlinked
  • Multiple paragraphs of Contemporary era
  • In Movements towards humane execution, the end of the first paragraph
  • In Abolitionism, the entire second paragraph
  • In Juvenile offenders, the last paragraph
  • And so on and so forth

• The article relies far too heavily on news articles and web sources, many of which are of questionable reliability at best. Where are all of the books? Where are all of the scholarly journal articles? A quick search on Google Books shows 1.8 million results, and Google Scholar shows over 100,000 articles. In my experience, a single book or journal article can often replace several web sources, and can also give some hints regarding how to effectively organize the article.

• The references section itself is a mess. Please review WP:CITE.
  • Why is there a bibliography section with only one book in it?
  • Ref 4: "Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union" needs a publisher and date
  • Ref 10: "AG Brown says he'll follow law on death penalty" is a dead link with no other information
  • Ref 13: What makes axisoflogic.com a reliable source?
  • Ref 14: What makes thelantern.com a reliable source?
  • Ref 16: "Shot at Dawn" is a dead link
  • Ref 18 cites an unnamed work by Waldmann, but Waldmann does not appear in the bibliography or the further reading
  • Ref 19: "Islam and capital punishment" needs a date
  • Ref 20: "The Caliphate: Its Rise, Decline, and Fall" needs a lot more information. This doesn't even tell the reader what type of source it is.
  • Ref 21: "arkan ad-din the five pillars of religion" is a dead link\
  • Ref 22: "http://global-right-path.webs.com/Siraat-al-Mustaqeem/102-Islaamic_Sharia_Law.pdf" Needs more information. Title? Date? Publisher?
  • Ref 24 cites an unnamed work by Lindow, but Lindow does not appear in the bibliography or the further reading
  • Ref 25 "The Abolition of the Death Penalty in International Law" needs page numbers
  • Ref 27: Why is Britannica.com being used? Secondary sources are almost universally preferred to tertiary sources. See WP:WPNOTRS for more details.
  • Ref 28: En.allexperts.com is not a reliable source.
  • Ref 29, 30, and 31 cite an unnamed work by Benn, but Benn does not appear in the bibliography or the further reading
  • Ref 93 is not a reliable source
  • Ref 151 cites a 1902 work by Roberts, but Roberts does not appear in the bibliography or the further reading
  • And so on and so forth.

Organization

• Why does the first paragraph of History discuss the modern era?
• In a top-level heading such as History, content that appears before subheadings should serve to introduce that particular topic. It should not be a random hodgepodge of factoids and misplaced paragraphs, which is what it looks like now. Why is there a paragraph about blood feuds here? Why is there a paragraph about Islam here when there is a Religious views section later on?
• Why is there a History subsection called Contemporary era when there is also a top-level section called Contemporary use?
• Why does the Abolitionism section start in the 700s AD when the History section also goes back that far in history? There are essentially two History sections; this is unintuitive, inefficient, and highly redundant.
• The list at the end of Global distribution should exist as a navbox, not a body paragraph.
• The External Links section needs to be trimmed per WP:EL.

Prose quality

Just a few random samples. Until the sourcing and organization are improved, phrasing is a fairly low priority.

• "Execution of criminals and political opponents has been used by nearly all societies—both to punish crime and to suppress political dissent." The phrasing here is somewhat redundant. It can be simplified: "State executions have been used by nearly all societies—both to punish crime and to suppress political dissent."
• "The 20th century was the bloodiest in human history." Unencyclopedic tone. Try "most violent" instead of "bloodiest".
• "The death penalty there remains a contentious issue which is hotly debated." Unencyclopedic tone and somewhat redundant. Cut "which is hotly debated".
• "In 1977, 16 countries were abolitionist." Ambiguous. Does this mean the countries had completely abolished capital punishment, or were in the process of doing so?

If you need clarification on anything, leave a note here or on my talk page. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 02:34, 1 July 2013 (UTC)