Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Timeline of the 2011 Egyptian revolution under Hosni Mubarak's rule/archive1


 * The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was not promoted by 10:01, 11 April 2013 (UTC).

Timeline of the 2011 Egyptian revolution under Hosni Mubarak's rule

 * Nominator(s): The Egyptian Liberal (talk) 12:00, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

I am nominating this for featured article because I think it meets the featured article standards. The article covers the 18 days that forced Hosni Mubarak's resignation. I asked for a new peer review after the GA nominating but since no1 commented I assumed that the articles doesn't have any problems. If you do think the article needs improvement, please let me know where exactly it does. This is my first time nominating an featured article so I can use all the help I can get. -- The Egyptian Liberal (talk) 12:00, 2 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I have a problem with the article's title. The vast majority of sources I read refer to the "Egyptian revolution" as the events that led to the fall of Mubarak. The events that happened afterwords are considered the aftermath of the revolution. Therefore, the "under Hosni Mubarak's rule" part of the title is unnecessary.--FutureTrillionaire (talk) 14:19, 2 April 2013 (UTC)
 * If check the following articles: Timeline of the 2011 Egyptian revolution under the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces,, and  you find some sources the refers to the event following Mubarak's resignation (The protest against SCAF) as part of the revolution. Nonetheless, you have a better name for the article, please let me know. -- The Egyptian Liberal (talk) 15:56, 2 April 2013 (UTC)
 * There was a discussion about this at Talk:2011 Egyptian revolution with a consensus for this viewpoint.--FutureTrillionaire (talk) 14:23, 2 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I do agree with the requested move of the 2011 Egyptian revolution and most of the reason that lead to the move. However, I dont see how this move request applies to the nominated article. Meaning, we dont refer to the 1917 Revolution in Russia as that 1917-1918 Revolution but that doesnt mean that the revolution stopped there in 1917. Same goes the the French revolution. I might be wrong so please correct me if I am. -- The Egyptian Liberal (talk) 15:56, 2 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Opppose While it's good to see a comprehensive article on this topic, this doesn't meet the FA standards at the moment. At least one of the article's references is to social media websites (eg, the current ref 199 is to a Wikimedia Commons file), and many of the references are missing various standard details. Moreover, given that lots of books and journal articles have now been published on these events, there seems to be no good reason to reference the article almost exclusively to news stories which were published at the time the revolution was unfolding; researched works written after the events should provide a generally more accurate account of the events and their impact than these news stories (this is also required by FA criterion 1c). The quality of this article's prose is unfortunately also well short of FA standard. Nick-D (talk) 11:10, 4 April 2013 (UTC)
 * The ref 199 is a translation to Arabic graffiti on one of them images on Wikipedia and Wikimedia commons is part of Wikipedia. There are refs to facebook pages, tweets and facebook events but social media played a huge rule in the uprising so it's not odd to have some was ref st8 from the source.
 * As for your second point, I have read most of the books and articles that came after the event and most of them are either an analysis or talking about a personal experience during the uprsing. The ones that do talk about the actual events however dont provide any additional reliable info. If you know any books that might have some extra info that the article is missing, please let me know.
 * Last but not least, where does the article quality exactly fall short so I can work on it? Thanks for your time. -- The Egyptian Liberal (talk) 15:16, 4 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Large chunks of the text is sub-standard to be frank. As some examples picked purely at random: "Protesters were described by reporters as more confident and even celebratory as they felt they were nearing their objective—the end of Mubarak's regime—although they had no tangible evidence of this" (did the journalists or protesters lack evidence?), "Chaos was rampant in Suez during the night, but as day broke the streets remained relatively quiet" (what's the 'remained' doing here, and what's meant by 'chaos was rampant'?), "In Cairo, a standoff took place in front of the Egyptian Museum in the early morning hours with rocks and petrol bombs reportedly flying" (who was involved, and were rocks actually thrown?) and "Protesters responded that "he (Mubarak) will go" and they would not." (who were these 'protesters', and did they all really say such a specific thing?). Nick-D (talk) 09:00, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

I'm not going to make a big deal about the title. As for Nick-D's point about the sources, the article is a timeline, the purpose of which is to simply list the events. Therefore, using only news sources is okay. However, the twitter sources should be removed. If the content is notable, you should be able to find actual news articles for it. If not, then the content is probably not notable enough to be included in the article. Also, the ref with this url appears to lead to a removed video: http://www.charter.net/video/play/429085/channels/cnn --FutureTrillionaire (talk) 15:30, 4 April 2013 (UTC)
 * No, using old news stories for this kind of thing is not OK, especially at FA level - news stories are often called the 'first draft of history', and are typically riddled with errors (due to the journalist inevitably not having a full perspective of the events, not being an expert on the topic, having to write in a hurry to hit deadlines and/or simply not doing their job well). As such, they're not a substitute for proper research on historical topics - please see the essay WP:HISTRS. The result of relying on news stories is born out by the tone of this article - it's written in present tense, and there's no way to judge what actually did or did not happen from these sources (eg, " In a New York Times interview he rejected comparisons with Iraq and Afghanistan and said that antiquities were being safeguarded" - were they actually safe?, "an inbound Egypt Air flight from London to Cairo was diverted to Athens because of an alleged bomb threat" - did this bomb thread actually occur?, "The United Nations human rights chief Navi Pillay announced that there were reports that more than 300 people had died in the violence with up to 3,000 injured, although stressed that these reports remain unconfirmed." - what number of casualties do experts now believe had occurred by this time? and "On 2–3 February, 13 people were killed and 1,200 injured, according to the Egyptian health ministry" - is this estimate (which was released by a Mubarak-era institution) still considered credible? And so on. Nick-D (talk) 09:00, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Nick-D brings up some good points. More professional sources are needed to avoid the uncertainties and possible errors from news reports. Based on this, I oppose this nomination as well.--FutureTrillionaire (talk) 14:20, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Graham Colm (talk) 10:50, 10 April 2013 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.