Talk:2009 Malagasy political crisis/Archives/2012/March

Major corrections to the intro
I went over the content in details, and here is what I added/modified/deleted along with my explanations:

-> biased (organized and spearheaded by Rajoelina), France24 source only says Rajoelina, a vocal government critic, called for a general strike against President Marc Ravalomanana's regime which he has labelled a dictatorship. and for the other ref, the link to source broken
 * REMOVE: The protests, which turned violent, were organized and spearheaded by Rajoelina, who was the mayor of the capital city of Antananarivo and a prominent opponent of President Ravalomanana.

-> No refs
 * REMOVE: while opposition leader Rajoelina called for the dissolution of the government and the formation of a transitional government under his leadership.

-> Opiniated
 * REMOVE: although he immediately installed himself in the presidential offices of the captured palace.

-> vague, anecdotal
 * REMOVE: Ravalomanana had already moved out of the Iavoloha palace to an undisclosed location.

-> Anecdotal since it did not actually happen + ref link broken
 * REMOVE: The military junta, consisting of senior military personnel, would have been charged with organizing elections within 24 months and re-writing the constitution for the "Fourth Republic".

-> Transfer of power was not mentioned, ref
 * ADD: In a presidential degree, Ravalomanana agreed to transfer his power to the oldest in the highest military rank, who would lead a Military Executive Board.

-> First is strongly opiniated, second doesn't have any refs
 * REMOVE: opposition-dominated and that he had appointed weeks earlier

-> Anecdotal, no need to be mentioned in intro
 * REMOVE FROM INTRO: On the same day, Malagasy navy troops called for Rajoelina's resignation by 25 March 2009, threatening to use force otherwise to protect the constitution of Madagascar.

Finally, I moved most of the intro inside the first paragraph (background), since the intro was too heavy in the first place.

-- Thistrackted, t, May 29 2012 2:42

Polish version is featured article
If you're interested in strengthening this article further, you could run the Polish version through Google translator... it's at FA level and very comprehensive, and you could use that material to get the English-language article up to those standards as well. Lemurbaby (talk) 11:17, 29 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Okay I decided to get started on this process myself. I ran the article through the translator and will be inserting content where needed. Afterward I'll do a full sweep of all the refs for formatting and content, to make sure everything here is truly verifiable. But realistically I will only be able to work on this gradually until June, given the demands of some other projects I'm working on. Admittedly the lead is long right now (as it was in the Polish version), especially relative to the rest of the article, but once the rest of the material is incorporated it won't look so strange. Then we can always look at it again after everything is inserted to decide what should be modified in the lead. I"m already seeing that the summary of events is too detailed and there is nothing about international reactions, interpretations, wider-scale repercussions economically/politically/socially/environmentally etc., so I think we will probably wind up revising the lead substantially in a while. Thanks for your patience and for contributing to this article to improve its quality. Lemurbaby (talk) 06:44, 31 March 2012 (UTC)