Wikipedia:Peer review/Christmas/archive2

Christmas

(The previous peer review discussion has been archived.)

This is a former Featured Article that has undergone extensive renovation in the past few weeks to add references, achieve balance between the Christian and secular aspects of the holiday, and in general move it back to something that could be an FA again. Additional input on what else needs to be improved would be greatly appreciated. - Eron ^Talk 16:59, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

See Also is a no-no. Wiki-newbie 17:03, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean. Many articles have see also sections and the Manual of Style refers to them. Is there a problem with the content of this one, or how it is formatted? Or am I missing something in the article? - Eron ^Talk 17:14, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

If I understand correctly, it is because the See also section has too many links. Remove all links there that have already been linked to in the article. AZ _t 22:28, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for clarifying that; it makes sense. I'll make those changes (more-or-less) immediately. Doc Tropics 22:45, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

• Please see automated peer review suggestions here. Thanks, AZ _t 21:54, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Very helpful, thank you. - Eron ^Talk 23:26, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Very timely article review.  :-) Here's a few comments that you can take or leave:

• Specific things:

1. The opening sentence needs to be rephrased. For now it reads Christmas or Christmas Day is an annual Christian and secular[1] holiday that celebrates the birth of Jesus, which suggests that Christian or secular, all people celebrate the birth of Jesus.
2. Footnotes should generally come after punctuation, a problem that I bet you can fix with the same reordering. I think this is applicable to footnotes 1, 2, 3 (further down) and 31.
3. My first thought was "whoa, there are a lot of links". This could be cut down by removing a few things are linked more than once in the article, e.g. Western Culture and Nativity of Jesus are wikilinked twice.
4. Also, links to "birth", "volunteer", etc. probably don't have much value to the reader and just break up the text.
5. Finally, many of the links that begin with "Christmas" can be written with just the latter word, disambiguated to the Christmas variety. E.g. Another tradition is for people to send cards to their friends and family members.
6. "Etymology" section has three paragraphs and only five sentences. Could these be combined with a clever topic sentence? There are a few other times in the article where a sentence is also its own paragraph. This makes the information look more like a list of facts than good prose, and it also makes it harder to read. Try to incorporate these unless you want to call particular emphasis on a single factoid (and I would not do this frequently).
7. In "Origin of the Christian holiday" there's an entire paragraph on March 25 and Jesus' death. I wasn't sure exactly how this was related to Christmas.
8. The article could be more consistent on its use of AD. The Origin section begins using AD with the year, it just kinda trails off, but then AD shows up again in the next section. Perhaps you can keep using AD throughout that section and then drop it once you're well away from the boundary?
9. (Although many stories about the truce include a soccer game between the trench lines (often reported as a 3-2 victory for the Germans) there is no evidence that this event actually occurred.) - ouch, parentheses within parentheses. At least one set should be removed.
10. What does "Modern times" mean? Being more specific (e.g. Post WWII, 1900s and beyond, etc.) would be great. "Modern times" is also used in the text.

• General thing:

1. The article mentions a few controversies over Christmas, but only gives us a link in the See Also section. You may want to incorporate a "Controversy" section with a "Main article:" link. I think the arguments over capitalism, secularism, and Christianity are interesting and even necessary for the reader to have a complete understanding of "how does Christmas stand today".

Good luck with the article, I hope some of these help!--Will.i.am 23:53, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Oh boy. More work. Thanks a lot. (But seriously, thanks. This is just the kind of input we've been needing.) - Eron ^Talk 00:33, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the many useful suggestions! We really appreciate the time and effort you put into your response. Doc Tropics 02:38, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

you shoyld put something about santa clause in it —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 70.146.153.170 (talk • contribs) 22:29, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, but there is a full section on Santa Claus. Is there information you think is missing? - Eron ^Talk 02:53, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Why info about Russia and Jehovah's Witnesses, Puritans, etc. are written in the same paragraph? These are not Russian religions, we are Orthodox Christians! And, actually, Christmas was not banned in U.S.S.R! We have Russian or Orthodox Christmas, and it is celebrated in December 7, Christmas Eve is December 6. Change it, please!

Considering that they have articles of their own, "Pre-Christian winter festivals" occupy a fair amount of the article -- and early, too, so that the reader has to page through a substantial amount to get to the information about Christmas. They should be pared down. Goldfritha 20:11, 1 January 2007 (UTC)