Wikipedia:Peer review/PHP/archive1

PHP

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because I would like to nominate it as a Featured Article in the near future, and I consider it a good resource as a summary of the PHP programming language.

Thanks, Gary King (talk) 23:21, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Comments by PeterSymonds (talk · contribs)

Addressed

• "Zeev Suraski and Andi Gutmans, two Israeli developers at the Technion IIT, rewrote the parser in 1997 and formed the base of PHP 3, changing the language's name to the recursive initialism PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor" needs a citation
• History section is made up of a lot of short paragraphs. These need to be expanded in a similar way to Milton Friedman.
• "Currently, PHP 5.x is the only stable version that is being actively developed; active development on PHP 4 ceased at the end of 2007." Needs a citation – it doesn't seem to link with the next sentence, but I'm no expert so it may do.
• The "Usage" section is made up of short subsections. Could these be expanded or integrated into the rest of the text? It doesn't seem to warrant subsections at its present length.
• "Server-side scripting" section has only one citation.
• The last paragraph of that section is only one sentence; it would look better integrated and referenced.
• "Client-side GUI" section is unreferenced. But the subsections will need to be expanded or integrated if you're looking at GA/A/FA
• The second paragraph of the "Syntax" section has only one reference. Also, as I'm no expert, it would seem better to have a reference for "The usual Hello World code example for PHP is..."

• "Note that the delimiters are required to process PHP statements." Needs to be changed. It's an encyclopedia, not an instruction manual :) Also, avoid italicising words in the prose (except quotes and technical things and so on).
• "Everything outside the delimiters is ignored by the parser and is simply passed through as output." Needs a reference. Also I'd avoid the use of "simply", as to me it doesn't seem simple!
• The paragraphs are again too short, and could be expanded or merged.
• The last few paragraphs in "Syntax" (under the HTML text) are unreferenced.

• I'm not sure the phrase "It should be noted" should be used here, but I'm not sure; I'll leave that to yours/someone elses judgement.
• Sentences in "Data types" are short, as well as the paragraphs. That whole section is currently unreferenced.

• The list of data types. As this is about PHP, it might help to have an explanation of what they are and what they do.
• "Arrays support both numeric and string indices, and are heterogeneous." What?! The technical language needs to be explained: those who study IT or computer science might know, but not everyone will. You could follow on with something simple like "...which means..." or something. If a user doesn't understand your article, they won't read it.
• Functions: similar, short paragraphs, unreferenced. It doesn't seem to me very comprehensive (as it's quite short) so can a bit more info be added? (Again, it might be, but I'm no expert so I apologise for this)

• "...with the PHP new operator..." Why is this bolded?

• If you're using HTML text, I would probably italicise it, or use: <code>text</code>. Eg. "PHP supports quasi-anonymous functions through the create_function() function."

• "Function calls may be made via variables, where the value of a variable contains the name of the function to call. This is illustrated in the following example..." The following example means very little to me! Maybe have a paragraph explaining (in prose) what the HTML text is doing.
• "Object handling was completely rewritten for PHP 5, expanding the feature set and enhancing performance." needs a citation

• More citations needed in the "Object" section, only one so far.
• In the resources section, the "libraries" could be expanded. Perhaps detail a couple of the biggest/most important ones.
• You need citations in the "Resources" section.
• Alphabeticise the Further Reading section by author's surname

• Although you wikilink a number of technical phrases, explanations of what they are might be helpful within the article. Eg. "The program may otherwise output invalid HTML and make the website vulnerable to a cross-site scripting attack." Not all readers will see that and know what it is (eg. me :))

• First two paragraphs of the lead are made up of short sentences, making the prose choppy. These could be expanded into longer, more flowing sentences.

• Lead needs to be expanded to form a concise summary of the article.

Unaddressed

That's about it so far; it might be best to have someone familiar with computer science to have a look as well. I apologise for my complete lack of knowledge on the subject! GCSE was as far as I got with this subject, but we didn't look at any of this. It was enjoyable to read, and I think it can get to FA, but for me it needs a bit more info, lots more citations, and maybe a bit of rearranging of info. Feel free to ignore any comments that you disagree with, and good luck! PeterSymonds | talk 09:46, 23 February 2008 (UTC)