Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Zimbabwe/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 User:SandyGeorgia 01:57, 17 December 2008.

Zimbabwe

 * Nominator(s):  Mangwanani  (talk)

I'm nominating this article for featured article because I feel that the editors have fulfilled the FA criteria, and if not I believe constructive criticism would be most useful in helping us to make the article as best as we can.  Mangwanani  (talk) 12:53, 14 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Oppose - too much slant against Mugabe. Yes, it is most likely deserved. At the same time, though, I don't think this article is dispassionate enough. Also have concerns about stability for several issues happening there right now, e.g. cholera epidemic, widespread condemnation of Mugabe... Sceptre (talk) 13:11, 14 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Could you define slant and give examples at all? I can't say the Hitler pages are so rosy....  Mangwanani  (talk) 16:20, 14 December 2008 (UTC)
 * For example, "The country is dictated by President Robert Mugabe, who is accused by rights groups of massive violations of human rights". is clearly a POV statement because it moralizes. The article is full of statements like this. Sceptre (talk) 17:18, 14 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Well I hope I've repaired that incident a bit. Rephrased it to "The country is ruled by President Robert Mugabe, who has been accused by rights groups of violations of human rights"  Mangwanani  (talk) 17:28, 14 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Which groups are these? Attribute the claims. Unfortunately, this article is far from FA status. Sceptre (talk) 17:39, 14 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Would you consider giving us tips such as those which we got for GA status to help us improve the article?  Mangwanani  (talk) 17:48, 14 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Perhaps a better tack to take would be specific examples? I.E., can you find a list somewhere of how many African and international leaders have called for his resignation? Have Amnesty International or the United Nations ever condemned his human rights abuses? A sentence to the effect of "Over X African leaders have called for Mugabe's resignation, citing corruption, human rights abuses and electoral fraud" is much more NPOV than "Mugabe's a horrible human being and should be toppled." --Hemlock Martinis (talk) 18:59, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Oppose referencing issues.
 * A number of your website references lack publisher and/or last access dates, which are the bare minimum needed for WP:V. Books need publisher, author, and page number on top of title. A number of your references are just bare urls, and need formatting. The checklink tool shows a number of dead links. As it stands, I can't even begin to evaluate the references until they are in some sort of coherent system. Ealdgyth - Talk 15:10, 14 December 2008 (UTC)
 * This is the sort of feedback I was hoping for. Thanks.  Mangwanani  (talk) 16:20, 14 December 2008 (UTC)
 * If you're looking for feedback, the proper place for that is at WP:Peer Review. Generally, it's expected that articles coming to FAC should be highly polished, and just about ready for FA. I notice this article did have a PR, but it was almost a year ago. The references are in need of serious formatting, there are sections unreferenced that include opinion (examples: "Following the failed insurrections of 1896–97 the Ndebele and Shona groups became subject to Rhodes's administration thus precipitating European settlement en masse which led to land distribution disproportionately favouring Europeans, displacing the Shona, Ndebele, and other indigenous peoples." or "Mugabe began to redistribute land to blacks in 2000 with a compulsory land redistribution. Charges that the programme as a whole is designed to reward loyal Mugabe deputies have persisted in Zimbabwe since the beginning of the process." among others.) I strongly suggest withdrawing and submitting this to another PR. FAC is suffering from a lack of reviewers at the moment, and the nomination might not gather any reviews. At the moment, I must oppose based on the lack of references throughout. Ealdgyth - Talk 19:21, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Oppose by karanacs primarily on referencing and organization issues. The article has definitely gotten a good start, but I don't think it is close to meeting the FA criteria at this time. There have been a lot of books written about Zimbabwe, including about the leadup to the current crisis, but they do not appear to have been consulted. This leads to concerns about the comprehensiveness of the article; if we are cherry-picking from online sources and news articles and not consulting comprehensive scholarly works about the topics, then we might miss something important. The sourcing issues I've listed below are not 100% comprehensive, but should hopefully give you a good idea about what sources should and should not be used. I suggest at this time that the nomination be withdrawn, the article rewritten with more reliable sources, and then it should be brought to peer review. After that, it will likely be ready for a second FA nomination. Good luck! Karanacs (talk) 19:18, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
 * These are not reliable sources:
 * German wikipedia
 * About.com
 * http://www.zimbabwesituation.com/jun16a_2007.html#Z6
 * http://members.fortunecity.com/madzimbabwe/Buildings/Natural/Balancing%20Rocks/BalancingRocks.html
 * These are probably not reliable sources:
 * http://www.worldtrek.org/odyssey/africa/062699/062699monicabula.html
 * http://badley.info/history/ZANU-PF-Zimbabwe.event.html
 * http://www.usp.nus.edu.sg/post/zimbabwe/art/greatzim/gz1.html
 * http://zimbabwe.safari.co.za/spirit-of-zimbabwe.html
 * http://www.netpages.free-online.co.uk/sha/scouthistory.doc
 * These sources should be replaced: (avoid citing other encyclopedias)
 * NationsEncyclopedia.com
 * MSN encarta
 * There are a lot of primary sources cited, such as the Constitution of Zimbabwe, various government or organization websites, etc. We should avoid primary sources where at all possible
 * The external links section is much, much too long.
 * There are a lot of uncited statements, including statistics. ALL statistics must be cited. Also, all statements that provide an opinion need to be cited, and so do most that purport to describe someone else's opinion (including "it was generally acknowledged that the MDC had achieved a significant majority of seats")
 * Templates should not be in See also; they belong at the bottom of the article
 * The national symbols section has too many short subsections; most of this could likely be a single section
 * I don't know that Human rights needs to be its own section. That seems a bit inflammatory, and I suspect the information could be interspersed into other parts of the article
 * Don't use callout quotes, and don't offset quotes of less than 4 lines (per WP:MOSQUOTE)
 * For the military section, I'm unsure why there is a subsection detailing the ZNA but not the other two parts of the ZDF.
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.