Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Beslan school hostage crisis/archive1

Beslan school hostage crisis
Not a self-nom. This article went through a turbulent period in the couple of months after 1 September 2004, but has been pretty stable since November 2004, and looks quite good to me. One slight weakness is the descent into short one-sentence paragraphs towards the end, which I will try to address now. Another weakness is references, but I suspect that a large number of the "External links" are references. I doubt that there is much on paper yet (reportage? press coverage?). -- ALoan (Talk) 13:00, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * support -- I remember the disputes as it was written as the crisis evolved, and this is certainly a case where many eyes scrutinized the article's factuality. The lack of printed references is not an problem in this case imho, but it would be desirable to have a photograph of the siege (but I suppose they're all copyrighted by press agencies?) there seems to be some lingering dispute about use of the t-word, but that's a WP-wide issue and should not be held against this article. dab (&#5839;) 14:29, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * support. copyrighted images are not an issue, as long as its related to the subject a valid fair use claim can be made.  ALKIVAR &trade;[[Image:Radioactive.svg|18px|]] 12:39, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Object. ALoan himself already addresses the chief weaknesses and I think these should be resolved. In addition, the article is vague at times, and should quote sources more. Examples "Some injured died in hospitals.", "allegedly" (which sound like an episode of HIGNFY), etc.. The article displays "telegram style" at times: "A few of the escapees were said to be cornered in a residential 2 story house within 40 metres from the gym. Whether or not they had hostages is unknown. The house was destroyed using tanks and flame throwers by 23:00 3 September 2004.". A good copyedit seems needed. Jeronimo 21:29, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Object. Agree with the above. If the external links were used properly as references, then format them as such. - Taxman 20:06, Feb 25, 2005 (UTC)
 * Object. An article like this has a particular need of good references, as there were a lot of conflicting reports at the time, yet there is no references section and at least one of the inline links doesn't seem to be working. SlimVirgin 20:33, Feb 25, 2005 (UTC)
 * Object. Not nearly enough information about the political background for the average reader to put it into context. Fawcett5 04:46, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)