Talk:Napoleon/GA1

Initial GA review

I do not believe that this article was ready to be nominated. Rather than failing it outright, I will allow for one week to make the initial improvements to the article. If these are completed, I will continue with a more complete review. For now:

1. The article needs to be thoroughly referenced. Every fact that could be challenged and every quotation needs to be cited.
2. References must be properly formatted. Web references must include at least a title, publisher, url, and accessdate. If an author or date is available, it should also be included.
3. Fix the point of view treatment of Hudson Lowe in the "Exile and death on Saint Helena" section.
4. Ensure that all images have source information.
5. Ensure consistency: Napoléon or Napoleon?
6. In the "Legacy" section, the article claims that "Critics of Napoleon argue that his true legacy was a loss of status for France and many needless deaths". Currently, there is one example to back this up. This does not prove that "critics" argue this. Are more examples available? Similarly, the section begins with a claim that "Some see him as a great example of politician, following the doctrines of Machiavelli, led by ambitions for happiness of his people." Who are these "some"?
7. Also in the "Legacy" section, the article claims that Napoleon "became notorious for his effort to suppress the slave revolt in Haiti and his 1801 decision to re-establish slavery in France after it was banned following the revolution". These facts aren't mentioned in the article. If they made him notorious, they are worth mentioning in a little more detail.
8. The "Marriages and children" section should be in prose form rather than a list.
9. References 33 and 41 do not work. They should be replaced (they may be archived at http://www.archive.org/index.php).

This would be a good start and would put the article within striking distance of GA. I will keep the article on my watchlist and check back to see if progress is being made. Best wishes, GaryColemanFan (talk) 21:46, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

This article has had some substantial improvements over the past week, and the quality of the article is much better. I still have serious concerns about the lack of references. Because it has been 8 days and large sections of the article are still unreferenced, I am going to fail this GA nomination. The article has great potential, so I urge you to keep working on it and renominate it once the remaining concerns are addressed. Aside from more thorough referencing:

1. Book sources need to be formatted properly and consistently (see Wikipedia:Citing sources for the {{cite book}} template)
2. Reference 1 doesn't seem to be a reference at all
3. Reference 2 should be replaced with something more reliable than a Geocities page (the same goes for any self-published cite—see Wikipedia:Reliable sources
4. The "Lettres à Josephine" would be better if the link was to a non-Wiki source
5. The dates need to be consistently formatted in the prose (most go with the "31 March 1814" format, but there are also some with the "April 6, 1814" format)
6. Some images have no source information
7. Unless references prove it, avoid weasel words like "some" and "many"
8. The placement of some images, such as the one at the beginning of the "Coronation as Emperor") violates the Manual of Style ("Do not place left-aligned images directly below second-level (===) headings")

Like I said, it's a good article, but it's not ready to be promoted to GA status yet. A peer review might help find some other things, but this list would be a great start. Best wishes, GaryColemanFan (talk) 14:55, 5 June 2008 (UTC)