Wikipedia:Peer review/Rock carvings at Alta/archive1

Rock carvings at Alta

I recently did a complete rewrite of the article after the original article was marked as a copyvio; I think my rewrite approaches Featured Article quality, but I'd like some other people to look over it. I'm a bit unsure about the large proportion of possible interpretations (which are necessarily conjectural) as opposed to the relatively small amount of hard facts, but that seems to be necessitated by the article's topic. There are also some points that might need fact-checking by someone really well informed about early Norwegian history (my main reference work dates from 1996, and there seems to be an ongoing debate on the dating of lots of the carvings - different online sources date the most recent carvings as far apart as 500 BC and 500 AD). There's also an ugly redlink to Komsa I would like ot get rid of - I could probably create a good stub about the Komsa culture, but I'm not an expert in that field, so I'd really appreciate some input there -- Ferkelparade π 10:07, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Looking good, interesting article. I'd make the following suggestions and comments: 1. an expanded lead section summarising more of the article content; 2. I think it needs a paragraph or two about the Komsa culture - who were their ancestors, and what is the relation between Komsa, Sami and Norse culture? 3. If possible it would be good to cite a reference for the suggestion that the land was rising rapidly immediately post-glaciation. 4. Are the carvings unique to the Alta region or are there other carvings in northern Norway? Any theories on why Alta has so many carvings? Worldtraveller 10:55, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for your input. I expanded the intro section a bit, is it better now? I'm also trying to dig up a reference for the rapid rise of land, but that proves to be difficult...all history and archaeology books i have consulted just state the rise as a well-known fact, and I have not found anything in geological papers so far (I have little specific knowledge of geology and no access to any special books, so if anyone else could find a reference, I'd be very grateful). Points 2 and 4 are a bit more difficult to address because so little is known definitely about that period and there's so much conjecture involved. I tried to elaborate a bit in the Komsa article (which I just created to get rid of the redlink, although it's very stubby at the moment) - do you think that's sufficient? -- Ferkelparade π 14:07, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The intro is looking better, content-wise - I'm a bit of a traditionalist on that though and I do like to see three nicely sized paras. Up to you though. Good to see the stub for Komsa, that's a help, but the article might want to be a bit clearer on what the relationship is thought to be between Sami and Komsa culture. Sorry if this is something that's just not possible at the current level of understanding, but the article seems to blur the lines a bit by mentioning that the period over which the carvings were created saw the emergence of Sami culture, but without saying whether or not they were the descendents of the people who began the carvings.

Regarding the post-glacial uplift rates, I found a paper that quotes the original research, which doesn't itself seem to be online. I think you can probably trust this paper to have quoted the original research accurately, it's not controversial, so quote a paper that he quotes. Worldtraveller 14:47, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Ah, thanks, I just added another paper as a reference...I'll have a look at the paper you found and see if it makes more sense to change the reference.

The origins of the Sami people and theri relation to their predecessors is unfortunately a bit of a controversial subject, but I agree that the article at the moment is a bit blurry...I'll dig around for some more references and try to think of a way of more accurately reflecting th ecurren tresearch situation in the article. -- Ferkelparade π 14:51, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Worldtraveller, very respectfully, I think it might be overkill to put in a source specifically for the rapid post-glacial land rise, I do believe it's a well-known and uncontroversial fact. (An academic paper would reference it, no doubt.) --Bishonen|Talk 18:49, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I thought that myself, as it's really quite tangential to the article - it's just that although post-glacial uplift is certainly uncontroversial, I was very surprised by the suggestion that it might have at one time been large enough to be noticeable over a human lifetime, so I thought that might be worth referencing. Perhaps a link to an appropriate Wikipedia article would be appropriate, although I've just checked and post-glacial rebound doesn't talk about the rate of rebound. Worldtraveller 19:26, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Right, post-glacial rebound now mentions uplift rates :) Worldtraveller 11:46, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Great, nice to see how work on one article leads to expansion in lots of only marginally related areas :) I added a link to post-glacial rebound and elaborated a bit on the possible connections to Sami and Komsa culture; maybe someone wants to look over my phrasing in that paragraph, I'm not too sure it's really brilliant prose -- Ferkelparade π 12:57, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• Well, you've listed three webpages as sources for the possible copyvio. Why not use them properly as references if they are good sites? The article currently only has 2 references which seems pretty meager. Any other quality references would work too. Also, the lead section still feels pretty short for an article this size. It would be better if it were two or three paragraphs that size summarizing more of the most important aspects of the topic. It is ok to be redundant, think of it as the executive summary before the details. All the information should be there for someone that only wants to read that. I don't know if there is significant other material that needs to be covered, as I know nearly nothing about the topic, but overall the article looks very good. Just wait out the copyvio issue and get some other good sources and you'll have a great FAC I'd think. - Taxman 00:52, Apr 13, 2005 (UTC)
  • The copyvio sources are from a commercial website that sells photographs of the carvings and includes small info blurbs on the carvings on every page - not exactly an academic resource, and I don't think we should link to commercial sites as references. Finding reputable online references for Alta turned out to be more difficult than I expected - Google gives hundreds of results, but almost all of the sites are of the type "Hi, I'm uncle Jimmy, and I've been on holiday in Norway". Unless I find one with a really good photo gallery, I don't really want to link to any of these pages :P I found a handful more sources, though...I'll add them and work on the intro a bit more -- Ferkelparade π 08:56, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I finally resolved the copyvio situation, the article now resides at its proper title. If nobody has any more suggestions for improvement of the article, I'll move on to FAC...thanks to everyone for your input! -- Ferkelparade π 08:27, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)