Wikipedia:Featured article review/Kargil War/archive1


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

The article was removed by User:Marskell 13:50, 20 October 2008.

Review commentary

 * WikiProject Military history, Noticeboard for India-related topics, Notice board for Pakistan-related topics, User:Mercenary2k, User:Idleguy notified.

This article fails to meet a number of FA criteria:

"factually accurate: claims are verifiable against reliable sources, accurately represent the relevant body of published knowledge, and are supported with specific evidence and external citations; this requires a "References" section in which sources are listed, complemented by inline citations where appropriate"

There are many section with nearly no citations in support of the facts, (e.g. "Location","Protection of National Highway","Impact and Influence of Media")

"neutral: it presents views fairly and without bias"

Although there has been a lot of work on this, the remaining problem is not so much particular statements as what facts should be included and excluded based on notability criteria.

"comprehensive: it neglects no major facts or details"

The "War progress" section is very summary (clearly doesn't compare with any of the Gettysburg battle descriptions) and the map is nearly useless.

"consistent citations—where required by Criterion 1c, consistently formatted inline citations using either footnotes[1] or Harvard referencing (Smith 2007, p. 1) (see citing sources for suggestions on formatting references; for articles with footnotes, the meta:cite format is recommended)"

Although there are a lot of citations (which need to be further checked), there are many statements without citations.

"well-written: its prose is engaging, even brilliant, and of a professional standard"

I have done a lot of copyediting in the past week, but I still find a number of the sections difficult to wade through.Vontrotta (talk) 12:02, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Agree with Vontrotta : I have not gone deep into the article. But from the surface, it's clear that the references need to be formatted properly with cite xxx templates. I'll also review the article. Kensplanet (talk) 12:44, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Minor changes in citation : I agree that some inline citations are out of standard and I'll be working to improve them. Regarding the lack of inline citations, all the statements are backed up with the references section, however I'll be adding newer and extra inline references for easy verification soon. Finally about the war progress section being viewed as a summary - and comparison with Gettysburg - it must be noted that it's often known that in the subcontinent, information (on anything, especially wars) is hard to come by and given this handicap I think the section strikes the right balance without confusing the reader with details - some of which may not be credible or from neutral sources. In this regard I'd like to back up this statement with a citation from the book: South Asia's Nuclear Security Dilemma By Lowell Dittmer, pp 238 "The Kargil war to date has received insufficient study. The official Indian government report, From Surprise to Reckoning: The Kargil Review Committee, is interesting but inadequate" Yet, the article doesn't omit any "major facts or details" which is the essence of being comprehensive, one of the criteria of a FA. --Idleguy (talk) 07:07, 5 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Factually accurate Let me give an example of the factual problems I have been struggling with. Let's take two simple sentences out of the current article:

"Before the Partition of India in 1947, Kargil was part of Baltistan district of Ladakh", and "The town and district of Kargil are in the Ladakh subdivision of Jammu and Kashmir."

When I originally looked at the article, the link in the first sentence was to Gilgit-Baltistan, which describes the areas on the Pakistan side of the LOC, and really didn't give any indication whether or not Kargil was part of it prior to Partition. Like most of the articles about Kashmir, the Baltistan article has pretty sketchy facts, but at least it had some historical information that implied, at least, that Kargil was a part of the Baltistan "district" prior to Partition, so I changed the link to that article. There was another Kashmir article, which I can't find now, that talked about Baltistan being part of the Ladakh Wazarestan, and since the second sentence above talks about Ladakh (somewhat redundantly), I incorporated the reference into the first sentence (without any real cite to the actual pre-partition administrative divisions). When I looked at the second sentence above, I went to the article on Subdivisions of India to see if there was a description of what a "town and district" are and whether there was confirmation that Kargil is currently in Ladakh, and I was unable to find confirmation.

Since the linked wiki articles are inadequate to support these very basic facts, than an FA, in my judgment ought to have a specific cite to support of them.

With respect to the complete comment, and the reference to the Gettysburg battles, I would just ask what Indian units were involved, who were their commanders, what was the order of battle? Looking briefly at some of the external links, these facts are imbedded in those articles. An FA article on a military conflict should include these very basic facts, and inline cites to support them. If there are two versions of the "facts" in two external articles, there should be a "but, see" rather than a fall back that there are too many ambiguities to draw a conclusion.

Please don't misinterpret my comments. I like the article, I just think it can be a lot better.Vontrotta (talk) 11:13, 5 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Point well taken. I'll be improving the inline citations & also including the Orbat wiki links after a couple of days --Idleguy (talk) 02:38, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

All of the endmatter seems to need work, e.g. notes, references, further reading, external links - why all the padding (especially on the last 2)? There are some broken links in the external links, but my main question is whether all these links are needed and conform to WP:EL. Smallbones (talk) 13:15, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

FARC commentary

 * Suggested FA criteria concerns are references and their formatting (1c and 2c), neutrality (1d), comprehensiveness (1b), and prose (1a). Marskell (talk) 13:19, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Suggested concerns are being slowly but surely ironed out. Regarding neutrality issue, I think I'd rather have a little bit extra information, because these articles relating to India-Pakistan tend to get heated up suddenly just because what appears to be non-notable to a third eye is often debated for days or results in edit wars for its inclusion etc. I believe user Vontrotta mentioned about this aspect earlier regarding the notability of facts as the main neutrality issue. Idleguy (talk) 12:23, 23 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment Rediff is definitely not good enough for serious stuff like military topics.  YellowMonkey  ( bananabucket ) 08:28, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
 * 2 out of 3 Rediff links have been replaced with other newspapers/book sources. There is only one rediff link remaining and it is basically a compilation of the media headlines from Pakistan. Being a media related news-story and the fact that any other single source alternative doesn't exit, I've used it because it doesn't affect the seriousness of this topic. Idleguy (talk) 12:19, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Can the remaining paragraphs with no references and half-paragraphs with no references be referenced? And the refs need to be filled out properly. A lot of them are just raw links with a self-made description, rather than the standard details in full.  YellowMonkey  ( bananabucket ) 06:26, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Idleguy and I have each been making some changes as we go along, but it might be helpful to have a more concerted effort by someone to get them in better shape. I did this once in another (much shorter) article, and am reluctant to dive into something that can be a major effort. Any volunteers?Vontrotta (talk) 11:39, 8 October 2008 (UTC)
 * End notes
 * Remove uncited paras are still about and references are no consistenyl formatted.  YellowMonkey  ( click here to choose Australia's next top model ) 05:08, 13 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Remove The article still has a number of unreferenced paragraphs and an inconsistent style of referencing. I don't think the current efforts will be sufficient enough to keep this article featured. Nishkid64 (Make articles, not wikidrama) 02:02, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Remove: Will take months more to bring it back to FA quality. Kensplanet  Talk  Contributions  09:24, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Remove Since I started this process, I wanted to give the principal contributors a chance to address all the concerns before I agreed with the conclusion - at the rate of progress, I agree that it will take months to correct. I don't know what the next steps are, can someone please comment.Vontrotta (talk) 10:17, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.