Wikipedia:Peer review/Belgium/archive1

Belgium

This former featured article has been updated to respond to the earlier criticisms. I think the English is still not good but some native English speaker could do the job pretty fast. --131.220.68.177 15:25, 11 August 2005 (UTC) Sorry for the format that's my first trial --131.220.68.177 15:35, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

• The graphic Map-1477 Low Countries.png is rather strange - what do the gradient colors mean? Is there a diminishing amount of whatever orange represents as they move towards France? Give it a nice Caption

• This map is described in details at Seventeen Provinces. I added that in the caption. I think the author of the map intended to show that Picardy was only shortly included in the Seventeen Provinces. --81.209.204.150 09:33, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

• I tried rehashing the intro to make it read better. I'm not postitive it's still accurate, but it does read nicer I think.
• In general, the article could benefit from explaining to the reader the country's political division into three regions (and linguistic groups) more soon. I tried to do that a bit with my attempt at the intro.

• A problem of the intro is that most French-speaking people in Brussels do not not feel they are Walloons but simply from Brussels or Belgians. But I don't know whether such details belong to the intro. I am thinking at rewriting it in a more NPOV. --81.209.204.150 09:33, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

• However, watch out for redundancy. Several of the sections seem to reiterate this (and other) ideas that the reader has already learned.

• I have tried to do the job. I have merged politics and administrative divisions because it is not possible to understand one without the others. The editors which put the section administrative divisions as a subsection of geography was wrong because some Belgian administrative bodies (the Communities) have not clearly defined (at least at first glance) geographic jurisdictions (in Brussels the geographic jurisdiction are even overlapping -- This is even in some case a controversial topic --81.209.204.92 14:49, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

• The history section reads like a list of every history article pertaining to Belgium we have - that kind of summary is probably more appropriate for the History of Belgium page. You might want to condense it further into just a paragraph conveying a main theme or two about how the country has been at a sort of crossroads for some time. For a good example, compare with the history section in the United States article. Scott Ritchie 22:46, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

• I am aware of this problem. The reasons for choosing this type of presentation is mainly twofold: First, the history of Belgium is IMHO more complicated that the history of the United States because the rulers of that (poorly defined before 1831) region of Europe have changed each century since the Renaissance. Second according to the period of time you choose to emphasise or shorten, or even if you try to define a clear trend in the Belgian history (trend to the building of a Belgian, Flemish, Limburgish, Walloon or Luxemburgish nation) you offense one or the other belgian communities or the Belgians which believe in a Belgian nation. Therefore it is very important to present each period of time on an equal footing without introducing superfluous interpretations leading to a non NPOV. If you merge the history of Belgium before its independence into in a few paragraphs it becomes very fast unreadable because no clear structure appear. The present choice aims at avoiding these problems (too long unstructured and NPOV). --81.209.204.150 09:33, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

• • Take a look at the India page. =Nichalp «Talk»= 08:58, August 15, 2005 (UTC)
    • I did. I have tried to do that but I wonder whether it was not better before. Please tell me your mind or edit it. It needs at least copy-edit. --131.220.68.177 15:34, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

Ok the history section is very long. If it were in FAC, I'd oppose it. A summary is needed. I don't think the history of Belgium is so complicated, as say Indian history. Highlight the main points, don't add details such as names (unless they were really famous (like Gandhi in the India article), dates and speciic events here. Remove those subheadings. The history section should not be greater that 6 paragraphs. The regions should be split from the politics sections. There's nothing mentioned about the type of government/governance: legislature, judiciary and executive; PM, Prez etc. I suggest you remove the temps from the geography section. Otherwise the geog is ok.

Merge religion with demographics. All those numbers must be referenced from a credible website/book etc. Remove subheadings under culture. Cite all your references. After you finish all this, let me know on my talk. =Nichalp «Talk»= 06:43, August 16, 2005 (UTC)

• I have done work in the direction pointed by Nichalp. But I don't agree with him on sectioning. I think subtitles (like in the culture or before independence) help really the reader. The titles in the before independence section are now standard in European history. --131.220.68.177 10:31, 16 August 2005 (UTC)