This is a very important article, and yet since failing a good article nomination, it has been in the doldrums for months, with no real ideas as to how to substantially improve it. I'm hoping a peer review will kickstart efforts to bring it up to code. Serendipodous 13:57, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
- Sure, I've got a few suggestions:
- Reiterating: It fails the Wikipedia:Lead section definition as a stand-alone summary of the entire article. Section-wise I think the definition should take up no more than one paragraph. It would also help if the lead off were more engaging, rather than a dry discussion.
- Etymology, para. 2: the first sentence is much too long and could be readily broken into two smaller, bite-size chunks.
- Parts of the writing could use a bit of polish. For example, the following seems awkward: "Some Romans, following a belief imported from Mesopotamia into Hellenistic Egypt,[7] believed that the seven gods after whom the planets were named took hourly shifts in looking after affairs on Earth, in Ptolemaic orbit order listed inwards." A trick some writers use is to read the text out loud. If it comes out badly, odds are good it needs a re-write.
- There is no discussion of planetary interiors, which would seem at least as important as their atmospheres. For example, mass segregation, radioactive decay, generation of magnetic fields, convection, and so forth. Also, very little is said about the reason for a planet's (oblate spheroid) shape. There is no discussion of tidal/perturbative interactions between the planets (and moons), or the reasons for their varying axial tilts.
- The dash in the first para., Attributes section should be a —.
- The formatting of the references section is very inconsistent. It would probably be helpful if they all used cite templates.
- There is some redundancy between the "See also" list and the main article. For example, a "main article" link such as "List of Solar System bodies formerly regarded as planets" or "Definition of planet" shouldn't also need to be mentioned in the "See also" section.
- Hope this helps. Thanks. — RJH (talk) 16:07, 12 April 2007 (UTC)