Talk:Dushanbe/GA1

GA Review
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Reviewer: Chipmunkdavis (talk · contribs) 14:06, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

Hello, I'm happy to take a look at this. It's clearly had a lot of work put into it, and is in a nice shape at first glance. The obvious glaring issue is the structure. It has an absolutely overwhelming table of contents, caused by a proliferation of tiny sections and paragraphs. The early History section is particularly egregious, but there's issues throughout. Some tables have their own subheaders! Compare to Kigali, which just became an FA. This article also trends a bit on the long side at 62kB of prose, but only a bit. I also note the references include a Facebook page, unreliable, and a Xinhua page, which has been deprecated on Wikipedia so should probably be replaced. CMD (talk) 14:06, 5 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks for taking the time to review the article. I definitely see your point on the sections. My reason for the sections in the early history section was the periodization in the book I used as a source for it, but I could definitely change it if it's too much. I've gone ahead and replaced those two references. Zoozaz1 talk  15:22, 5 March 2021 (UTC)
 * It's definitely too much here (good for a History of Dushanbe article perhaps), and elsewhere in the article. The Kigali article for example has 9 level 3 headers throughout the article body. I'm not asking you to go to that level necessarily, but there's currently 9 level 4 headers in the first level 3 section alone! Reviewing this will take some time, so please bear with me on it. I'll make minor edits as I go along as I find that's easier than raising them here and causing more work for you, but please do check them. As a start in addition to MOS:PARA concerns, the last sentence in Etymology is unsourced. CMD (talk) 15:52, 5 March 2021 (UTC)
 * That's fine. I've decreased the amount of section headers and added a source. Zoozaz1 talk  17:01, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

Part of this seems copied from the Factbook. I reworded the first part, leaving the second part for now but if you can think of a way to reword it please do.
 * Etymology
 * ✅ (a bit) Zoozaz1 talk  16:48, 6 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Ancient times
 * For foreign language sources, it's useful to include the language= parameter.
 * ✅ (for this section) Zoozaz1 talk  16:49, 6 March 2021 (UTC)
 * The first paragraph seems to repeat a lot. The Gissar Valley is named twice in two consecutive sentences, and the Hissar culture is mentioned twice in two consecutive sentences. There's probably not a need to refer to "modern-day Dushanbe" outside on an initial scoping sentence.
 * ✅ <b style="color: #fffb00">Zoozaz1</b> <b style="color: #fffb00">talk</b>  16:48, 6 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Image captions shouldn't say "Map of" or similar, see WP:MAPOF.
 * ✅ <b style="color: #fffb00">Zoozaz1</b> <b style="color: #fffb00">talk</b>  16:48, 6 March 2021 (UTC)
 * The treatment of all the image captions here is oddly inconsistent.
 * ✅ <b style="color: #fffb00">Zoozaz1</b> <b style="color: #fffb00">talk</b>  16:48, 6 March 2021 (UTC)
 * The second paragraph has Achaemenid's repeating twice, and it's unclear how "as the city was controlled by the Achaemenids for some time" relates to the preceding part of the sentence.
 * ✅ <b style="color: #fffb00">Zoozaz1</b> <b style="color: #fffb00">talk</b>  16:48, 6 March 2021 (UTC)
 * A lot of repetition of "near-Dushanbe" and similar throughout as well, probably unnecessary.
 * ✅ <b style="color: #fffb00">Zoozaz1</b> <b style="color: #fffb00">talk</b>  16:48, 6 March 2021 (UTC)
 * "International trade began during this period in the Dushanbe region." I find it hard to believe there was no international trade before this point.
 * ✅ <b style="color: #fffb00">Zoozaz1</b> <b style="color: #fffb00">talk</b>  16:48, 6 March 2021 (UTC)
 * There's lots of weird tenses, such as "Sasanid silver coins were discovered in the city". Something being discovered is presumably implicit, and it's odd to see "were" without a date.
 * ✅ <b style="color: #fffb00">Zoozaz1</b> <b style="color: #fffb00">talk</b>  16:48, 6 March 2021 (UTC)
 * "The region of Dushanbe was conquered by Timur during this time period and was controlled by different empires, including the Timurid Empire." It's odd to go from Timur to "other empires" to the "Timurid Empire".
 * ✅ <b style="color: #fffb00">Zoozaz1</b> <b style="color: #fffb00">talk</b>  16:48, 6 March 2021 (UTC)
 * "Crafts and trade began to further develop." This is very generic.
 * ✅ <b style="color: #fffb00">Zoozaz1</b> <b style="color: #fffb00">talk</b>  16:48, 6 March 2021 (UTC)


 * Market town
 * "Referred to as "Kasabai Dushanbe," when the village was under the control of Balkh." Not sure what this sentence means.
 * "This reflected Dushanbe's status as a town..." What reflected the status as a town, and when?
 * Is there a reason "turn of the century" is wikilinked?
 * I'm struggling to follow from this section the control of the city. Was the Balkh independent? When did Hisor come into control? How did the Russian Government have the power to reallocate the city?
 * The railroad was proposed to connect the town to where?
 * Why is Bu(o)khara spelt in two different ways?
 * "The population during the struggle" What is the struggle?


 * Capital of the Tajik SSR
 * "A Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic separate from the Uzbek SSR was created in 1929". My impression is that the ASSR was given a new status, rather than a new entity being created.
 * The "Dushanbe was chosen..." sentence feels very out of place, as it was already the capital at this point. There's other parts of this section that also feel out of place chronologically.
 * The map image also seems a bit out of place, with an insufficient caption.
 * The sentence on the Jewish population feels like quite an immediate red flag. The source isn't giving me much. The paragraph is also out of place.
 * "...was completed 90 kilometers south east of Dushanbe during that time period." Which time period is this?

Leaving the rest of history for now, but overall I did not feel this prose was structured as well as it could be.


 * Geography
 * "Before the 60s", the century needs to be specified.
 * Cyclones?
 * There's no explanation for what the "green line" is.
 * "one of the greenest capitals in Central Asia". There's only a handful of capitals in Central Asia.
 * "including five rodents, foxes, and bats", a bit ambiguous.
 * "300 insects inhabit the city", with insects and large numbers of species, it's often best to hedge with adjectives such as "identified species".
 * The text suggests there was an administrative reorganisation of some kind in 2020, but this isn't covered or explained.
 * The main sights list is unsourced. There should be an external source assessing significance as main sights.
 * This section oddly doesn't mention the Gissar valley.

The demographics section feels very very small. Outside of religion, it's two sentences. There's surely much more that could be said here in text, about the population structure, ethnicity, and so on. The tables and images provide additional detail, but shouldn't be relied on to convey the basic information. The historical population table is well-sourced compared to most historical population tables I see on Wikipedia, but there's still some parts missing.
 * Demographics
 * The text covering Islam should be in one block, not split between two paragraphs.
 * It feels misleading to call Orthodoxy "the second largest religious community", without the context in the source that it's only about 0.5% of Tajikistan as a whole. I'm not seeing the second largest claim in the source either.

Overall this section could have a better structure, with more general information in earlier paragraphs.
 * Education
 * "60% of university students", I assume this means 60% of university students in Tajikistan, but this should be specified.
 * Odd jump from pre-Soviet to modern day to Soviet again.
 * The shift from state to private education is mentioned, but it is unclear whether the institutions listed afterwards with growing enrolment are state or private.
 * What is a "national university" in terms of university classification?
 * The University of International Relations mention lacks dates.
 * "Other Russian branches" should be changed to "Other branches of Russian universities"
 * The paragraph beginning "The Tax Law Institute in Dushanbe" has no clear focus, and dips back into history after previous paragraphs covered the current period.


 * Transportation
 * The images in Air Transport lack captions.
 * The list of places served is a confusing mix of different political/geographical entities.
 * The road system subsection should probably occur earlier than the trolleybus subsection.


 * Infrastructure
 * It's unclear to me what the five stages are. What is the stage that occurred in the 1920s called?
 * Is the hydroelectricity really in Dushanbe, or is it produced near Dushanbe?
 * It is implied there has been a 13 year crisis. If so, it'd be good to get this stated more clearly.
 * The electricity section also has chronological jumps.
 * Water and sanitation is a bit repetitive, "Most of the water system in Dushanbe was built during the Soviet era...much of the water system dates from 1932"
 * When was the relevant 9 month period for the Sari Osiyo, Christian, and Shokhmansur cemetary burials?
 * Is the Jewish cemetery one of the 14 unofficial ones?
 * I would expect mention of temporary Covid hospitals to come after coverage of the permanent hospitals.


 * Economy
 * "The average salary of the city is 1402.67 somoni and there is a high inflation rate of 8.9% as of 2014, and $499.7 million were invested into the city from foreign sources during the same time period." This feels like a sentence of three unconnected points.
 * Retail is a clear example of an unnecessary subheading, it should be combined with the main text as financial services currently are.
 * "The industry produces over 300 types of products." What is "The industry"?
 * "Building materials, such as cement, oil and plastics, of which there are 3 main gas deposits,[173] wood, and printing, which was 80% of the republic's capacity and began in 1926,[148] are all created or completed in the city as well.[172]" This sentence is also unclear in meaning, seemingly combining a number of unrelated points.

It's often tricky to write Culture sections, but it is useful to have an introduction that gives an overall background/picture of culture, rather than jumping straight into subsections. As it is, the Culture section reads as a series of unrelated subsections, with no connecting thread.
 * Culture
 * "Continuing with a nationalist tradition". Is this a reference to the Tajik nationalist literature mentioned in the previous section? If so, this is the sort of connection that would fit within a general overview.
 * Was there really no painting until the 1920s? This feels like a significant claim.
 * The holidays don't seem that relevant to the city, as they all sound like national holidays.

Overall though I'm impressed by this section, it seem an unusually well sourced media section.
 * Media
 * The media section seems quite reliant on a 1999 HRW source. Is there nothing more recent?
 * Much of the rest comes from a 2009 souce, which is more recent but still misses the last decade.

This section lacks sources, and is probably arbitrary? Generally I think these sections get removed, as they are more approrpiate for categories unless a reliable source is found to support a list.
 * Notable people

Overall however this is quite a good lead.
 * Lead
 * The lead states the population is mostly Tajik, but as mentioned earlier this detail isn't covered in the Demographics section text.
 * Phrasing such as "After the war, the city became capital" should probably be avoided as the city was already the capital for decades prior, with the status of the entity it was the capital of changing rather than the capital status itself.
 * Why does the infobox have a map of Tokharistan?
 * What is the area rank a ranking of? Same question for population rank.

The above is not comprehensive, and I feel the issues I have found will take quite a bit to fix. I will be closing this GAN as unsuccessful due to this, although I am happy to offer further comments later if desired. As I noted at the beginning the article is slightly on the long side, so in general the need is less a question of adding information as it is consolidating and refining what already exists. Going a bit beyond GAN requirements, the image organisation seems a bit random, and in places they are overwhelming. The first source in the reference section is a bare url, which I thought was a bad omen, but the rest are formatted. This is an admirably ambitious article to get to GA, and I hope my comments can help improve it. Best, CMD (talk) 17:37, 8 March 2021 (UTC)
 * I appreciate the extensive feedback, I'll keep working on it to get it to GA status. <b style="color: #fffb00">Zoozaz1</b> <b style="color: #fffb00">talk</b>  18:26, 8 March 2021 (UTC)