Talk:Tyre, Lebanon/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Artem.G (talk · contribs) 17:14, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

I wanted to review that article, but after a quick glance I think it's a fail, with a lot of problems that require a lot of work.

• "This article may be too long to read and navigate comfortably." and "It has been suggested that this article be split into a new article titled history of Tyre. (Discuss) (October 2021)" - this should be addressed; article is really long and tells more about the history of the place.
• there are three [citation needed] tags and quite a number of unreferenced sentences.
• I find quote style to be unreadable - small sentences like "one of the deadliest days in Israeli military history.[200]" or "This angered the French who apparently encouraged an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate Sharaf al-Din.[88]" or "The Cathedral of Paulinus is considered the oldest in Church history.[20]" can be used in text, not as blockquotes that broke text. Besides, there are a lot of paragraphs that consists of a single sentence, f.e. in Independence from Seleucid Empire (126–64 BCE) or Crusader period (1124–1291), that makes the article hard to read.
• "Public Domain This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Easton, Matthew George (1897). Easton's Bible Dictionary (New and revised ed.). T. Nelson and Sons. Missing or empty |title= (help)"
• Galleries should be significantly trimmed or even removed - 175 (!) photos are way too much. see WP:NOTGALLERY
• Notable people - all should be sourced
• I would focus on just one section, Hellenistic period (332–126 BCE), to highlight some problems:
  • "Angered by this rejection and the city's loyalty to Darius, Alexander started the Siege of Tyre despite its reputation as being impregnable.[16] However, the Macedonian conqueror succeeded after seven months by demolishing the old city on the mainland and using its stones to construct a causeway to the island:[7][43][20][40][44]" - very awkward phrasing. It is a quote or just an opinion and should be more neutral; 5 refs are a lot, among them:
    • "Strolling in old Tyr – LebanonUntravelled.com". - seems to be not a reliable source for a historical event
  • "The tallest siege towers ever used in the history of war[citation needed] "
  • "Alexander's legacy still lives on today, since Tyre has remained a peninsula instead of an island ever since." not very encyclopedic - would be fine if the idea would be expanded, but right now there are a lot of such awkward phrases.
• "After Alexander's death in 323 BCE", "In 315 BCE", "In 275 BCE, Tyre abandoned" - reads like WP:PROSELINE
• "Anyhow, the grip of the Seleucid rulers over Phoenicia increasingly weakened during the next quarter of a century:" - unreferenced and strange tone.

I recommend to discuss splitting the article, split it (just my opinion, discuss it on talk page) to Tyre and History of Tyre, and ask help for copyediting at Wikipedia:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors.

Right now it's a fail, though I think it can become two GAs after splitting and major copyediting. Artem.G (talk) 17:14, 2 January 2022 (UTC)