Talk:Syama Prasad Mukherjee/GA2

GA Review
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Reviewer: Daniel Case (talk · contribs) 06:12, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

I am printing this out to go through it with a hard copy; I will be back in a couple of days with comments. Daniel Case (talk) 06:12, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

Okay ...

It has been three days, not all of which I have spent reviewing it, but it has been more than enough time to decide that I will be putting this article on hold pending the issues I have identified being addressed. I will give the editors, or any interested editors, one week (until 19 October).

I am perhaps an ideal reviewer for this article. I live half a world away and do not know much about the intricacies of modern Indian history, thus the article has the challenge of teaching me. I am happy to inform the editors that I did learn something about a man whose existence I only knew of due to his unsolved death; I can now appreciate that Mukherjee is indeed a seminal figure in the country's modern politics, since I am aware of the BJP as India's current governing party and it seems it could not have been established without him (although not with just him; others certainly played a part) and his predecessor organization.

First, let me say what is right with the article. The prose is generally well-written; I did have to do some trimming of redundancies and awkward phrasings as part of the copyedit I did, but compared to some GA candidates I've seen it wasn't that much; it went quickly and only shortened the article by less than 300 bytes overall (which is very good; my scale is that if a copyedit costs the article more than 1K, it needed serious work). Textual information was well-presented in accordance with the rules of standard written English (there may be, or have been, some moments which were particular to Indian English, of which I plead ignorance, and if I corrected or below complain about something that is proper in that context, please let me know and go right ahead and restore it).

It is (and this is a relief) adequately cited; I have found only one instance (noted below) where there should be a citation and duly tagged it.

It is also well organized; with one exception I will discuss below the article does not feel fragmented. What I read was mostly where I would have expected to read about it.

The editors have also shown admirable restraint with images. I did not have to remove any extraneous ones, adjust their placement, or edit the cutlines. It is the rare GAN about which I can say this.

Now, to my bulleted-list critique ...


 * The intro is a little short, perhaps not reflecting the full scope of the expanded article. I feel that at least a third paragraph could be teased out of what already exists, perhaps focusing more on Mukherjee's career prior to politics and more on that political career itself.
 * And in that intro, as well as in the text, it would be a good idea to briefly explain Article 370. I didn't know what that was until I clicked the link. When I was reading it in hard copy, I didn't have even that option. Perhaps to Indian readers, or indeed South Asian readers generally, it needs no explanation, but I'm not one of that group of readers. And there are a lot of people in that group.
 * It might also be a good idea just to put a footnote at the end of the intro for the circumstances of his death being mysterious (although I understand why we can say that, I personally think that in this case "unclear" would be better).


 * Without any warning, the third graf of the "early life" section skips over nine years of the subject's life. It makes sense upon reading the next section, when we learn he went to England, but we really should explain that was what he was doing in the interim.


 * Throughout the article, exact dates are given for many events. This many years later, is that information the reader really needs to understand the article? I removed some during my copyedit, but left most because I thought I might be missing something. I suspect the editor responsible has confused his/her desire to show that they did the research with the relevance of the information thus obtained. It happens ... . The only place I would see this distinction as necessary is when discussing his death, where key events happen within the last two or so days. (And, of course, in the lede)


 * As with Article 370, there should be a brief appositive explanation of what the Quit India Movement sought (independence, basically). It's not immediately obvious from the name (who is being asked to quit India? Indians? Muslims? Oh, the British), and again I had to look it up.


 * The "opposition to Quit India movement" seems perhaps to have been written by someone other than the writer of the rest of the article, as it relies heavily on extensive blockquotes from Mukherjee and a historian. While it does not quite reach the level of copyvio, and it is properly attributed, it is decidedly borderline, and as I've learned from GA critiques of articles I have written myself we are trying to discourage people from writing this way (otherwise, we'd get people "writing" articles by putting some brief phrases between copied and pasted text from sources). I think this section could really be shortened by quoting more selectively and paraphrasing the rest.
 * Also, in that second quote, I see that the word "defense" is spelled the American way, the way I just spelled it. Is that as it is in the original? Does written Indian English follow British English that way? (The graphic at the top of the article suggests that it does).
 * I have tagged the last quote, from his 1953 letter to Nehru, as needing a citation (the only instance of this, I am relieved to say).
 * In the group photo cutline, is it necessary to name everyone? And likewise, would the personal life section be more obfuscatory without the years of his siblings' births and deaths? I think it should just be sufficient to give their names.
 * I would also consider addressing the point made by the previous, abandoned review, regarding Mukherjee's legacy: Does the BJP do anything to honor or remember him today? Do people like Modi or others mention him in speeches? Do they have any events or awards named after him? If there are we should know.

I also wonder if the article should or could have more, especially on his earlier life ... I mean, if he was this important, someone probably wrote a biography of him. But that may be a function of the sources, and indeed I note that both Bengali and Hindi articles are shorter (But it may be worthwhile to look at their sources, in those languages, for material this article may not have).

I am not sure all these issues can easily be addressed in a week, but I do not think it's impossible to do so. Good luck and happy editing! Daniel Case (talk) 20:38, 12 October 2017 (UTC)


 * I have tried to address the issues raised by you. Can you please have a look now? -- Pankaj Jain Capankajsmilyo (talk · contribs · [//tools.wmflabs.org/xtools-ec/?user=Capankajsmilyo&project=en.wikipedia.org count])  03:36, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

Non-reviewer comments

 * I'd like to reiterate some points I raised at the original GAR, abandoned through no fault of the nominator, which may not have seen. I'm a little concerned by some of the sources used. Some are academic publications, which are reliable, but many others are relatively unknown non-academic publications. This does not necessarily make them unreliable, but they do need to be examined. At least one of the publishers, Lulu.com, is a thoroughly unreliable publish-what-you-like institution. Second, the treatment of Mukherjee's views and legacy strikes me as inadequate. Mukherjee's primary legacy was the political influence of his ideology; buildings and programs named after him are secondary. His views need to be treated systematically. Right now we have material on his activities, and on his views on Kashmir, which does not come to the same thing. Finally, there is some heavy usage of quotations. I'd suggest that these issues be resolved before the article is passed. Vanamonde (talk) 09:17, 22 October 2017 (UTC)

Failure
I was aware of that original review ... I believe I referenced the legacy issue you raised in the last bullet point above. But thanks for returning and noting the additional issues with the quality of some of the sources (or lack thereof), I apologize for having taken a couple of days to get back to you. However, you'll probably wish I hadn't. I have decided to fail the article as I believe it cannot be improved to GA status within a short time. First, your response to my review consisted largely of changing the format of the footnotes to sfn. You may well have felt this was necessary. However, I had not identified that as an issue. Your most direct response to my critique was to put in endnotes explaining Article 370 and the Quit India Movement. While some response was better than none, I don't see why this information required endnotes, the effective use of which is not always obvious to readers, when both could have easily been conveyed inline through appositive phrases (hypothetical example: "The Quit India Movement, which sought the end of British rule in India, ..."). I did not see any attempt made to address the overquoting, which the earlier review had found problematic and which Vanamonde also notes above, nor was any reason for not doing so put forth in response. I do appreciate that the early life section now explains that he went to England to study law in the mid-1920s. But, again, that wasn't the only change the article needed. Since you asked me take another look and Vanamonde responded, Sitush has gone over the article and added further tags. The list of issues that must be addressed before the article can be recognized as a GA has only grown not only since the article was nominated, but also since this review was initiated. Therefore I feel it must be failed as there are more issues to address than can be reasonably done within a couple of days. Once those things are done, it can certainly be renominated. Daniel Case (talk) 03:53, 23 October 2017 (UTC)