Wikipedia:Featured article review/Pashtun people/archive1

Review commentary

 * Messages left at User talk:Tombseye, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Pashtun and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ethnic groups. Marskell 11:51, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Is this really a featured article? It seems generally speculative and the sources don't seem to meet WP:RS. Particularly, the population figures from the "Joshua Project", an evangelical Christian missionary organization, seem suspect. Mike Dillon 03:54, 19 October 2006 (UTC)


 * There are a number of references, but still large swathes that are only partially wikified (see Women section). I don't think this meets 1a either. "Their history can literally be traced back millennia"—do people normally assume "millenia" is a non-literal denotation? List numbers should not be inserted into the text as they are in "Pushtans defined". "This is the most prevalent view among the more orthodox and conservative tribesmen who do not view Pashtuns of the Jewish faith as actual Pashtuns even if they themselves might claim to be of Hebrew ancestry depending upon which tribe is in question." Wha..? Marskell 11:30, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
 * It's always nice when FAs follow WP:LAYOUT; perhaps one of the main editors will fix that. Sandy 13:45, 19 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Needs a serious copy-edit to pass 1a. Here are examples of redundancies and other problems in the first three sentences.
 * Right at the start, "Pashtuns" and "ethnic Afghans" are plural, yet all of the alternative terms are singular.
 * "are an ethno-linguistic group living primarily in eastern and southern Afghanistan"—Remove "living".
 * Insert "the" before "Balochistan"—presumably, they're identifiable.
 * The listing is wrong technically: "The Pashtuns are typically characterized by their language, adherence to Pashtunwali (a pre-Islamic indigenous religious code of honor and culture),[20] and Islam." I think it should be ", and adherence to ...", without another comma.
 * "Pashtuns have managed to survive a turbulent history despite having rarely been united. Their history can literally be traced back millennia, while their modern past began with the rise of the Durrani Empire starting in 1747." Replace "managed to survive" with just "survived". Just why the "despite" is the case is not immediately clear. Remove "literally". Choose either "began" or "started", not both. Tony 11:16, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Note that even through the article has some inline citations, there are still entire paras without a single one.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 17:16, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

FARC commentary

 * Suggested FA criteria concerns are quality of sources (1c) and prose. Marskell 13:41, 7 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Hello. Sorry for the late reply, but 'real life' has kept me away from wikipedia for months. I got the message regarding the review for the article. Firstly, since I wrote the article and it won FA status it has devolved into personal views and irrelevant additions and now we have an ever expanding view of what defines Pashtuns (that does not correspond with encyclopedias). I will try to repair it as much as I can, but people seem adamant at turning it into a sub-par article just to get their point across regardless of whether it is academic or not. I agree with the above comments as well as and will see what I can do. Any further input would be appreciated. Thanks! Tombseye 21:44, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Update ? By the way, what is the Literature section - are those References or Further Reading?  Sandy (Talk) 15:17, 22 November 2006 (UTC)


 * As Tony notes below, there is still work to be done. I'm doing some on and off and I'm in the middle of a ton of work in real life. As for the language and lit. section it's about the Pashto language. Tombseye 23:45, 29 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Quite a lot has been done on this article since my last comment. But I'm not yet happy that the prose is of "professional" standard, and I think that it's still under-referenced. I've copy-edited the lead as an example; a few of the edits are based on personal preference; most are not. Plus a few random points that suggest that there are problems lurking throughout.
 * "They share with their menfolk a free-willed, strong and fiercely independent character that values freedom and self rule." Reference required. "Due to numerous social hurdles, the literacy rate for Pashtun women remains considerably lower than that of males"—Reference required (I guess stats are unavailable, but you are making this assertion ...).
 * "for example, though women are technically allowed to vote in Afghanistan and Pakistan, many have been kept away from ballot boxes by males.[69]"—By males? Is this a systemic, cultural behaviour? How is it manifested? More details would be nice, since most readers won't bother to go to the reference.

I'd like to see this survive as a FA; at the moment, it's on the wrong side of a knife-edge. Tony 14:46, 23 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Is anyone still working on this? Many of the references are just blue links that need to be expanded. If there is actually an effort to improve the article, I'll help expand the refs to bibliographic style, but if no one is working on it, it's not a good use of my time.  Sandy (Talk) 16:01, 30 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Remove: Citations are needed in several sections ("Women", "Genetics"), some restructuring is needed as there are overlapping information in the "Pashtuns defined", "Culture", "Putative ancestry", and "History and origins" sections, and a through copyedit should be done. --RelHistBuff 13:33, 4 December 2006 (UTC)