Wikipedia:Peer review/Fourth International/archive2

Fourth International

This article received a peer review back in February 2005 (Wikipedia:Peer review/Fourth International/archive1). Since then, several contributors including myself have made extensive changes and additions to the article. I believe that all the suggestions received back then have been addressed, and the article is now considerably more comprehensive. I think it may now be close to WP:FA status, and I'm keen to pass it through peer review for comments. Warofdreams talk 19:14, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

• Well-presented considering it is a subtopic of Trotskyism and it must be hard not to recover aspects covered in other Trotskyism articles. It provides enough background for a novice without being too simple. Good referencing and neutral point-of-view writing. Certainly a lot closer to FA status than last time. Some comments:
  • Use of capitalisations (such as SWP,IEC,RCP and FI). I suggest you add the abbreviation in brackets after the full name before using it alone. For the SWP in particular it was used first as US SWP and I had to scroll up two sections to find out what it referred to. There are also sections later in the article where the abbreviations become somewhat overwhelming. Perhaps the occasional substitution with the full name (or when the reference is unmistakable 'the commitee' or 'the party') would make it more readable.
  • Too many redlinks
  • Still too little explanation about the previous Internationals (second doesn't appear, first mentioned in passing). I was looking for background like this at the beginning of the article.
  • Some style inconsistencies: U.S. vs US, first International v Fourth International,international v International.
  • The grouping of The Founding Congress and WWII seems a little strange, these could be split to make it flow better.
  • Alternative viewpoints suggests that the article is written from a certain point-of-view. I'd suggest changing it to External links or Further reading

Hope this helps. Yomangani 23:35, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

1. I've now completely worked through the capitalisations; there are now considerably fewer (I've expanded some and removed some unnecessary ones). All remaining capitalisations are now explained the *first* time they are used, and again if they not used for several sections.
2. Now I've worked through the capitalisations, there are even more red links - I noticed a couple of groups mentioned which were never linked! Most of these shouldn't be too difficult to write articles on, so I'll work through them.
3. I've fixed the link for the Socialist International to point to the Second International. The difficulty is that interaction between it (strictly, its successor, the Socialist International) and the Fourth International was limited, and the story of the link is historic, in particular lying in the WWI splits from it which mostly ended up in the Comintern. Perhaps a brief mention in the intro and a section on communist concepts of an International would clarify this?
4. I've standardised to "U.S." in each case, and capitalised "International" when it refers to a specific International. I don't think it would be appropriate to capitalise "first International"; the "Fourth International" termed itself as such; for obvious reasons, the International Workingmen's Association did not call itself the "First International"; rather, the idea of it being the first of a series of Internationals is a later concept.
5. I've split the Founding Congress and WWII sections. You're right, this does seem to make it flow better.
6. Good point on "Alternative viewpoints"; I've changed it to "Further reading".

Thanks for taking the time to look through the article and for your useful comments. Warofdreams talk 01:04, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Heh, no comments for two days, then I get an edit conflict. :) It really has improved. I've been trying to allocate time for a thorough review without luck yet, but here's what I see so far: 1) Some of the paragraphs are too short and have some choppy prose, adding up to poor flow in places. There's probably about 10 short paragraphs in that situation, I didn't check the prose in others. 2) The lead is much better but still needs more context. It still uses terms that you already need to know the material to know what they are. GPU, Third International, Comintern. It also doesn't say if they had any success or why they are the most important Trotkyist organization. It doesn't really tell us what their ideals were or what they tried to do, except a little through inference on what you tell us they were unsuccessful in. 3) The article's largely chronological structure makes it difficult to see at a glance the organization's impact, legacy, importance or lack thereof, etc. I would recommend shrinking down the chrono stuff to a reasonably small section to give a contextual overview, then use other broad sections to cover the various most important aspect of the organization. Are their views one and the same with Trotskyism, and would other groups agree with that? The Trotskyism section seems to be to only one giving overview of their views/goals. Hope that's a start - Taxman ^Talk 23:50, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Yes, thanks, that's useful. I'll think about your third suggestion and reply later, while getting to work on the others. Warofdreams talk 01:04, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Sounds reasonable. I'm not sure it's the best way, but it seems better. It is unfortunately a lot of work, but if it results in a great article it will be worth it. - Taxman ^Talk 15:11, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure I agree with that (although I'd have to see both versions to make up my mind, that's how close it is). I like the chronological approach, although I agree with Taxman that it makes it difficult to see the impacts of the organization: it might be better to dedicate a section to this at the beginning and then maintain the chronological layout. Yomangani 15:23, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

That's probably fine too, but if you add something, you'd still probably need to summarize the chronology a bit in order to not make the article too large. - Taxman ^Talk 16:54, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Having thought about these suggestions, I prefer this idea - it avoids rewriting large sections of the article which are already in pretty decent shape, while clarifying the FI's impacts. Warofdreams talk 11:52, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

• Please see automated peer review suggestions here. Thanks, AZ _t 01:35, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks; I've been through and addressed everything but the redundancies. Warofdreams talk 02:51, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

An update for various suggestions: almost all the red links are gone, and there is now a section on political internationals and how they relate to the Fourth International. The lead has also been simplified, and explains or avoids less obvious concepts (other than Trotskyism and political internationals, which are detailed in their own sections, immediately following the lead).

Still to do: check for redundancies and short paragraphs, and write a section on the impact of the organisation. Warofdreams talk 00:32, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

It looks much better to me: the section on internationals and the brief section on Trotsky are just what it needed for the novice reader. Like you say, the impact section still needs writing but apart from it looks good. Yomangani^talk 17:22, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

I've made a start on the section on the FI's impact; there is little agreement on it, so I've considered the views of various tendencies and compared it with the tasks it set itself. Warofdreams talk 03:29, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

And I've now checked for redundancies and short paragraphs and fixed them as best I can. Warofdreams talk 23:20, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

• There we go. It's as ready for FAC as I can think of after one thing. The lead still throws the reader in too abruptly. What's Trotskyism? Give us one or two more sentences in the lead adding that bit of context. Tell us earlier (in the first sentence) the fourth international is a socialist political organization working for x. The new sections later in the article cover this extremely well and though I still think the impact section could more clearly come out and tell us whether historians in general regard the organization as being widely influential or not, the article is clearly currently among Wikipedia's best. - Taxman ^Talk 00:41, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

• Thanks! Is the new intro clearer? Warofdreams talk 02:05, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

I changed "has been" to "is" in the lead as it seemed to be an artifact from the rewrite. Looks good to me though, and I agree with Taxman: you should now put it forward to FAC. Yomangani^talk 10:24, 26 August 2006 (UTC)