Wikipedia:Featured article review/Kingdom of Makuria/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 delisted by Nikkimaria (talk) 16:39, 13 June 2013 (UTC).

Review commentary

 * Notified: SimonP, 4shizzal, Llywrch, Mark Dingemanse, Africa WP, Ancient Egypt WP, Egypt WP, Former countries WP, Christianity WP

This is a 2005 FA that has not been reviewed since. It is severely under-referenced, with multiple paragraphs and at least one section completely lacking references. There has been a "references needed" banner on the article since January 2012, and a talk page post in September 2012 received no response. In the existing references, there are some formatting inconsistencies and a couple of book references missing pages. There appears to be a mix of list-defined references and references with the full information given in-line, resulting in a "notes" section and a "references" section that both include in-line references. I would be interested to know if there is more recent scholarship on this topic, as the majority of the references range from the 1960s to the 1990s, with very little from the past decade. Dana boomer (talk) 15:15, 17 March 2013 (UTC)


 * I would vote to remove this article from FA. The problems in this article are legion and it does not meet the high-standard of the FA criteria. How did this pass so many years ago? The paucity of footnotes seems to strike me as odd. There is a significant amount of information in a paragraph with one footnote at the end--a very dubious practice in my book, especially when a reader seeks specific information and sourcing, other paragraphs unsourced. Sentences like: (1) One report has a Nubian army sacking Cairo in the 8th century to defend the Christians, but this is probably apocryphal that are begging for further explanation (whose report? why apocryphal? etc.), others that are grammatically incorrect (2) Little is known about government below the king--Little what? Little is an adjective, not a noun and English is not a null-subject language. The writing is lackluster and fraught with errors. There's just too much to complain about this article and there's far too much work to be done that won't be done in the near future. Therefore, I support its removal.--ColonelHenry (talk) 15:38, 17 March 2013 (UTC)


 * Move to FARC. I know it's early yet, but I don't think the article has much chance of being improved to FA standard. Although I disagree with ColonelHenry about "little is known" ("little", used in this way, is listed in Webster's dictionary as a noun, and the online Oxford dictionary, in both British and American versions, lists this same usage, calling it a determiner), his broader points are valid. So the article fails on referencing, prose, and comprehensiveness. Only a few editors are at all active on the ancient Egypt project these days, and I doubt any of them are very knowledgeable about this period and place. I'm certainly not. The editors you contacted may be able to make improvements, but one is apparently retired and the others edit only sporadically, so I doubt these issues can be fully addressed. A. Parrot (talk) 19:01, 17 March 2013 (UTC)


 * Speedy move to FARC. If this article can be improved to FA standards, it won't look anything like it does now. Key sections lack referencing entirely (Language has zero refs, Decline only one despite quite a bit of historical discussion). The lead mentions the baqt treaty and the Makurian "Golden Age", but neither term is used anywhere in the body. And the references are a train wreck. At least two incompatible referencing formats are in use – see the numbered entries in the References section followed by the bullet-point list. There are journal sources without volume, issue, and/or page information (see Note 22 and the 3rd Shinnie reference). There are missing ISBNs, and missing page numbers for chapter references throughout. There's no consistency about the use of publisher locations for print works (or, at least once, even the use of a publisher at all – the Kropacek reference). Numbered reference 1 appears to provide a link to content online (especially with the inclusion of a retrieval date), but it actually links to a Google Books page that only permits snippet-view searches; the implication is that the citing editor did not refer to the actual source at all. Numbered reference 3 is a bare URL, linking to a dubiously-reliable source reprinting a 1954 pamphlet without evidence of a license to do so.  I also believe there are image licensing problems.  File:East-Hem 700ad new.jpg is on Commons as CC-BY-SA 3.0, as is the map it is cropped from, but I'm not certain that licensing template is valid as it doesn't match the licensing information at the source site, which includes terms incompatible with the CC-BY-SA 3.0 license: "2. If you alter the maps, you must get my permission, and 3. Any use of these maps for projects that are not free or open-source (including books, games, etc.) must have my permission and may have to pay for usage." I don't know what the FA standards were in 2005, but I don't believe that could even survive GAC today. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 20:39, 25 March 2013 (UTC)


 * Delegate comment - As per the instructions at the top of the FAR page, each phase (FAR and FARC), generally last at least two weeks. This is to allow time for anyone who is interested in fixing the article to declare their intentions, begin work, etc. If nothing happens during that two weeks, fine, the article can be moved to FARC and delisted without further ado. However, we try to err on the side of giving people more time to improve the article, rather than less. Dana boomer (talk) 10:52, 29 March 2013 (UTC)

FARC commentary

 * Featured article criteria mentioned in the review section include referencing, comprehensiveness and prose. Dana boomer (talk) 15:29, 6 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Delist - Many paragraphs are missing citations.--FutureTrillionaire (talk) 22:56, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Nikkimaria (talk) 16:39, 13 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Delist - Nothing has been done with the article since the review was initiated. Dana boomer (talk) 20:36, 14 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Delist, in terrible shape, under-referenced. Ten Pound Hammer • (What did I screw up now?) 04:17, 27 May 2013 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.