Talk:New Netherland/GA1

GA Review

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

Testing the systemDjflem (talk) 04:39, 3 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hello. I am going to have to fail this article's GA nomination, mainly due to referencing issues, but also a few other problems. Here is a list of the issues that need to be addressed:

The biggest issue with this article is that it is under-referenced. There are some sections that are completely unreferenced, and many sections that are at least partially unreferenced. It is especially important to reference direct quotes, dates, and statistics.
References should be formatted with titles, publishers and access dates at the very least. They should never be left as bare links.
References should be placed directly after the punctuation, with no space in between. Also, watch out for constructions such as ". .[18][19]".
Identical references, such as #3 and 4, should be combined using named references.
Ref #31 (Coins.nd.edu) deadlinks.
Refs #35 and 40 (of Capitulation of the Reduction of New Netherland) deadlink.
In the Sources section there are several books/websites that are not used for in-line citations. If these are not actually used as references, they should be either removed or moved to a "Further reading" section.
External links should be formatted so they are not bare refs.
The lead should be longer for an article of this length. Make sure that the lead adequately summarizes the entire article, but does not include any information that is not presented in the body.

This list is not exhaustive, as I didn't check prose, NPOV or coverage. Once the above issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated for GAN. It looks like a nice article overall, just needs some work on the referencing. Please let me know if you have any questions or comments. Dana boomer (talk) 17:10, 3 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Beyond the reference issues mentioned above, there are some problems of organization which I'd like to address. The sections have an unsettling crisscross of thematic and chronological categories, which I'd like to organize a bit more thoroughly. I'd suggest six top-level sections (à la == two equals signs ==):

Origins (background and context, also including early exploration; an account of contact and the aboriginal peoples on the scene would also be needed)
Development (a chronologically-driven history from 1614 to 1664)
Society (language, religion, ethnicity, slavery, economy)
New Netherland and its neighbours (aboriginal peoples, the New Sweden frontier, the New England frontier)
Fall (from 1664 to 1674; the section should then link to History of New York and History of New Jersey)
Legacy (which may need some pruning for POV, as it currently seems a bit too rah-rah)

Alternatively, we could cut the Neighbours section, and then the sections on aboriginal peoples, the New Sweden frontier, and the New England frontier could then be integrated into the main narrative.

All in all though, this is a very thoroughly written article into which serious good effort has clearly been put. Q·L·1968 ☿ 13:57, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]