Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Peer review/War in Afghanistan (2001–present)

War in Afghanistan (2001-present)
This is a huge article that was a former FAC and I think it can be moved up on the quality scale. I think with several sets of eyes this can work its way up to FAC again. Marine79 (talk) 08:57, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

AustralianRupert
I welcome any attempt to improve this article, although I fear that due to its high visibility/primacy of the topic it may prove difficult. These are my comments, they are mainly only technical in nature:
 * the lead should only be up to four paragraphs long, thus this is probably too long;
 * a number of paragraphs are without citation (e.g. Afghan Civil War section) and there are several citation needed tags;
 * citations should come after punctuation per WP:PAIC, there are several examples where citations have been placed inside punctuation, e.g. once in the lead and elsewhere in the Protests section ;
 * the images need alt text per WP:ALT
 * per the Featured article tools, there are many dab links that need sorting:


 * citations to the same source should be consolidated per WP:NAMEDREFS;
 * many of the citations are currently just barelinked urls, these could be formatted using the template cite web and details such as publisher and accessdate included ;
 * quotes should be straight, not stylised (there is an example in the lead “is not an absolute”)
 * where dashes are being used like parentheses, they should either be spaced endashes or unspaced emdashes, the article currently has spaced endashes, unspaced emdashes, spaced emdashes and just hyphens;
 * Citation # 319 looks like it has been vandalised with "MS was here" ✅

Anyway, that is it from me for the moment. Good luck with improving the article. — AustralianRupert (talk) 12:11, 9 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks, I haven't been a contributor for this article but I saw it sitting as a Start class and figured it could be reviewed some and re-assessed. I'll try to straighten things up where I can but I'm new concerning big edits so the offer is out for anyone that can help make these changes!Marine79 (talk) 12:22, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
 * No worries. Hopefully others will be keen to get involved too. — AustralianRupert (talk) 13:08, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

Nick-D
Thanks for taking an interest in this article - it's going to be a big, but very rewarding, job to move it up the quality scale! My suggestions for improvements are:
 * The article is too strongly focused on US and, to a lesser extent, western perspectives of the war - its character as an Afghan civil war is seriously under-stated in my view
 * The article is much too long and has an overly complex structure
 * The lead is much too long
 * The article is somewhat under-illustrated
 * The 'Air campaigns' section is too focused on hardware, and could do with better coverage of tactics
 * A lot of terms are repeatedly linked
 * The infobox is a mess - it contains way too many commanders and countries and the casualty figures are a bit dubious
 * A lot of material isn't cited, and some references don't appear reliable
 * The article doesn't appear to discuss the profound impact the invasion of Iraq had on this war
 * Some of the article appears to be regurgitating dubious claims made by the US military - for instance, its stated that Operation Moshtarak is "the first operation where Afgan forces lead the coalition" when the New York Times story provided as a reference actually says that this claim by the military doesn't reflect the reality on the ground (the story states "the operation has been led in almost every significant sense by American officers and troops.") Nick-D (talk) 06:27, 27 February 2010 (UTC)