Wikipedia:Peer review/Syriac Orthodox Church/archive1

Syriac Orthodox Church

• A script has been used to generate a semi-automated review of the article for issues relating to grammar and house style; it can be found on the automated peer review page for February 2009.

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because I want to know how all ways I can improve this article. What more details should I add. That is to make this article a FA quality article. Also an outside review of the total article.

Thanks, -- ܠܝܓܘ Liju ലിജു לג"ו (talk) 07:02, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Brianboulton comments: I am genuinely interested in finding out about the history and workings of the Eastern churches, but at present, I'm afraid, this article looks unready, with a great deal of work necessary to bring it up to even C or B class.

• The most important defect is the almost complete lack of in-line citations. Whole paragraphs, whole sections occur in which there are no citations at all. Please see WP:Citing sources#When to cite sources, and WP:Verifiability, to inform yourself more fully on this aspect of Wikipedia policy. As a rough guideline, every statement that might reasonably be challenged (and in an article related to religious belief, that's a high percentage of statements) needs to be cited to a reliable source.
• The structure of the article is poor at the moment, with too many very short sections, badly organised. Some information, I believe, could be excluded or reduced to a couple of lines. For example if, as you say in the lead, the Syriac Orthodox Church arose from a schism following the Council of Chalcedon, this should surely be the starting point of its history. How much do we need the preceding detailed histories of previous Councils?
• I found some of the writing incomprehensible. The "Primacy of St Peter" section is a notable example. Thtroughout the article the prose tends to stray from standard English, as in the short "Bible in Syriac Tradition" section where the use of definite and indefinite articles is irregular. I also found the following statement very confusing: "Holy Qurbono, i.e. Eucharist, is celebrated every Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. Presently, Holy Eucharist is celebrated only on Sundays and special occasions." The second sentence seems to contradict the first (and you shouldn't use abbreviations like "i.e." in your text).
• There are numerous breaches of Wikipedia style requirements, for example:
  • See WP:LEAD for information about the function of the lead section in a wikipedia article. It should provide a concise overview of the whole article, summarising all its main points.
  • You frequently use bolded characters for emphasis. Please see WP:BOLD for information about the proper use of bolded characters in articles.
  • The few references that you have are not formatted properly. WP:CITE#HOW will help you here. If you can't follow what to do from there, go to another article and see what the editors there did (that's how I taught myself to format citations a year or two back)

I am sorry to have to be rather negative about this, as clearly a lot of work has gone in to the gathering of the information. I hope that you can use these review points as a basis for resuming work on the article and bringing it up to standard. I would strongly advise that the first thing you do is to cite the article properly. Brianboulton (talk) 23:08, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Redtigerxyz's comments

• Things like "It played a prominent role in the first three Synods held at Nicea (325) , Constantinople (381), and Ephesus (431), shaping the formulation and early interpretation of Christian doctrines." may be considered WP:PEACOCK terms without references
• Quotations like the one in "Council of Constantinople" need references
• The list in "Worship" should be prefably written in prose
• The template in "Monasteries" looks out of place. Mention the Monasteries in prose and move template to end of the article
• File:Catholica Bava.jpg has no author info, permission tag, possible copyright violation --Redtigerxyz ^Talk 13:46, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

llywrch comments

First, this is a subject worth the effort to make into a FA. Doing that would help Wikipedia not only better cover areas where its coverage is weak, but also illumine the history of Christianity by better documenting one of its major branches.

That being said, I find the chief weakness in the article as it now stands is that it is clearly slanted to make the Syriac Church appear to be orthodox as opposed to, I infer, Roman Catholicism. Much of the article is wrapped up in the claim that because it traces its origins to the church at Antioch, it is a more original form of Christianity, to the point of ignoring much of its history after Chalcedon: after the mention of the exile of Patriarch Severus in 518, the article mentions only one event before the 20th century. Now I am no expert about the Syrian Church, but I do know that much happened to the Syrian Church after that point: how Jacob Baradaeus almost single-handedly restored much of the clerical & episcopal structure after Justinian's persecutions; how the Syrians struggled to keep their faith under Muslim rule; & how they interacted with contacts from Europe in the form of the Crusaders & later with Protestants eager to find alternatives to the traditions of Rome & Catholicism. And then there were numerous internal disputes over power & belief.

The problem with its origins I believe could be solved by simplifying the presentation of this argument. (Note: I am not saying it reflect the truth or not. I am just trying to recast it in NPOV terms.) Instead of writing, "Syriac Orthodox Church is one of the ancient churches of the world. According to the New Testament 'The disciples were first called Christians in Antioch.'" I would state it this way, "The Syriac Orthodox Church traces its origins to the Christian community at Antioch, which is described in 'The Acts of the Apostles' as one of the earliest known communities outside of Palestine." Then, for example, try to structure the rest of its history around the theme of how the beliefs of the church have come down from this early community. (I believe this was one of the arguments its leaders used to reject the findings of Chalcedon.) Just remember that there is more to the history of the Syrian Church than the 5th, 6th, & 20th centuries -- & try to document that. -- llywrch (talk) 18:56, 2 March 2009 (UTC)