Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Rwanda/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 SandyGeorgia 03:16, 2 July 2011 [1].

Rwanda

Nominator(s): — Amakuru (talk) 12:25, 7 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Why is this topic already archived? The path to this discussion estranges me a bit. Tomeasy_{T C} 08:16, 14 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Are you referring to the "archive1" in the page title? FAC/FAR discussions are automatically created with those titles; that doesn't mean the discussion is closed. Nikkimaria (talk) 14:25, 14 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, that's what I meant. I don't find this path particularly helpful, but if it is always done like this, then just ignore my comment. Tomeasy_{T C} 18:11, 14 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I have been working on this on and off for the past two years, and feel it is time to try a nomination for featured article status and to get the community's feedback on it. The article was loosely modelled on Cameroon, another African country featured article, and also followed guidelines at WP:COUNTRIES. It has undergone two peer reviews in the past year, here and here, the second being a lengthy review by User:Cryptic C62. Thanks, and I look forward to hearing the feedback on this. — Amakuru (talk) 12:25, 7 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I corrected the layout (templates go at the bottom, not in See also), why do we have a gynormous template at the bottom only to house the coordinates, and the first ref goes nowhere when clicking on it. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:35, 7 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Oops - not great if the very first link doesn't work.... it seems it was due to an error with - vs – symbols in the CITEREF coding. I have fixed that now. I have also got rid of the giant coordinates from the geographic locale box. They are not there in Japan and don't seem to add much. — Amakuru (talk) 13:56, 7 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Source review - spotchecks not done. Nikkimaria (talk) 14:04, 7 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Missing bibliographic information for DFID 2009, MINEDUC
Done. DFID 2009 replaced with Independent article. MINEDUC (2010) added to refs. Also provided new source for second fact wrongly attributed to MINEDUC 2010. — Amakuru (talk) 12:23, 8 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
FN 98, 158: why no date?
Fixed. — Amakuru (talk) 12:29, 8 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Why spell out WCS in FN 117 but not FN 114
Fixed the originally initialised one was actually a missing link and I've replaced it with two new refs to IUCN and RDB sources. I've also constricted the citation for the remaining one to just "WCS" as initialising seems a bit more consistent with the general convention in the article. — Amakuru (talk) 13:12, 8 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
What is your rationale, when a source has no named author, to sometimes place the title first and use that for shortened citations, and other times to do the same with publisher?
Fixed - the rationale was that when copied and edited from another article, or it seemed convenient, the title was used; however for consistency I have now moved all of them to a consistent publisher=author format. (with the exception of nationsencyclopedia which will shortly be removed per comment on reliability below). — Amakuru (talk) 20:42, 8 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Why is WCS between Al Jazeera and Amnesty International in the reference list? Check alphabetization
Fixed - plus a couple of others. It seems to be correct alphabetization now. — Amakuru (talk) 20:53, 8 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
No footnotes to BBC News IV, Geohive, GlobalSecurity.org, Mbabazi 2011, Merriam-Webster, Munyakazi & Ntagaramba 2005, WFP
Fixed - removed them. — Amakuru (talk) 20:58, 8 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
It's not clear which of the HRW sources are being cited in FN 74 and 75
Fixed - they both refer to the first. The second was dead and has been removed. — Amakuru (talk) 11:50, 9 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Don't include cited sources in External links
Query - the only entry which seems to break this rule is the CIA world factbook, but I personally think that's a useful external link, for users who wish to do some further reading, and might easily be missed by readers who skim over the full bibliography. I'm happy to remove it if necessary, however. — Amakuru (talk) 11:29, 9 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Check for WP:MOS issues in references: italicization, capitalization, etc
Fixed - I have done some work to make sure each cite ... template is used with the correct parameters, which should take care of italicisation. For capitalisation of titles I have generally gone with the exact text used in the source, for reference integrity reasons. If you'd prefer some other consistent format for that, for example not to use caps at all except for the opening letter and proper nouns, let me know and I can change it. — Amakuru (talk) 11:36, 23 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
In general reference formatting needs to be much more consistent
Fixed (hopefully) - I have made ISBN numbers consistent, locations, use of templates. If you can see any other outstanding issues, again, let me know. — Amakuru (talk) 11:36, 23 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Be consistent in how locations are formatted
Resolved - I have now used "traditional" form of City, State (abbreviated) for all US locations, and just the city for others (London, Paris, Geneva). The exception to this is "Cambridge, England" as this could reasonably need disambiguating from "Cambridge, Mass." Hope that's OK. — Amakuru (talk) 18:23, 12 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
What makes this a high-quality reliable source? This? This? This?
Fixed - I have removed all the mentioned sources and removed or recited facts which rely on them. — Amakuru (talk) 12:31, 9 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Use a consistent date format
Done - Tomeasy has resolved issues so that all refs use ISO format and all prose uses Commonwealth English format. — Amakuru (talk) 20:56, 9 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Retrieval dates not required for convenience links to print-based sources (like Google Books)
Removed — Amakuru (talk) 12:09, 10 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Be consistent in how editions are notated. Nikkimaria (talk) 14:04, 7 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Done - edition now only noted where there is more than one. Then it is either 3rd, 4th etc. or it is "Revised" or "Reprint" as indicated on the Google Books page. — Amakuru (talk) 18:08, 12 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - Subseections are missing, especially for History, but also elsewhere. I will try to work on this. Tomeasy_{T C} 17:17, 7 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

AFAIK subsections are not a must. --Victor12 (talk) 21:10, 7 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I would be marginally inclined not to have subsections in History, but happy to defer to others' judgement on this one. Subsectioning seems useful where there is a distinct mini topic that falls within the realm of the wider section, rather than merely as a means of splitting up a six or seven paragraph section into one to two paragraph chunks. i.e. is the newly added subsection title useful as an entity within the table of contents? If the History section were much longer (which it shouldn't be in this instance, as the detail is to be found in History of Rwanda) then it would need subsections; as it is it is probably borderline. Thanks — Amakuru (talk) 21:56, 7 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The History section is huge, perhaps too large. One way to deal with it, and allow the reader to find the content they are looking for, seemed to me to the introduction of subsections. I just went ahead with it. Now, i see there are some objections here. If most people here agree not to have them, feel free to revert me. Tomeasy_{T C} 22:35, 7 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I think it makes no sense to create so many subsections on an article which is supposed to be only a summary of more specialized entries. We now have very small subsections even of just one paragraph. I'd prefer to revert back to the former arrangement. --Victor12 (talk) 17:43, 8 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Victor12. If there's only a paragraph on a piece of information it shouldn't have a subsection. It's noted in Wikipedia:Manual of Style (layout) that short subsections break the flow of prose, so the tiny history and demographic subsections are probably not needed. Climate also looks a bit weird. The better solution mentioned before would be to shorten the history section slightly. The articles already at WP:Article size maximum. Chipmunkdavis (talk) 18:04, 9 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Fine by me. Tomeasy_{T C} 19:57, 9 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Resolved - I have removed the History and Demographics subsections per the above consensus. — Amakuru (talk) 17:05, 11 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Support/Comment - After an exhaustive and exhausting peer review, I am supremely satisfied with the quality of the prose in this article. Of course, every article can benefit from one more pair of eyes. If anyone else does a prose review or has questions about particular statements, I will try to help out as best I can. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 21:48, 7 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Media: Somehow I doubt File:Coat of arms of Rwanda.svg is GFDL- stronger sourcing/licensing information is required. File:Rwandan refugee camp in east Zaire.jpg needs its source updating. Rather odd licensing on File:RwandaGeoProvinces.png. File:MarabaPacket2.jpg is a photograph of (presumably non-free) artwork on packaging, and so I am not confident about the licensing there. Obviously, the use would not meet the NFCC. Other images look good, copyright-wise. J Milburn (talk) 09:57, 8 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed - I have removed the seal from the article, and replaced the Maraba packet and the refugee camp with equivalent images with undoubted licences. Regarding the RwandaGeoProvinces, this is a derivative work by me, in which I added more content to a public domain map issued by the CIA. As far as I know this is legitimate, so please advise as to how it should be licensed (or let me know if I'm mistaken). Thanks — Amakuru (talk) 12:00, 10 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comment The quality of prose is excellent, very clear which is no small thing given the complicated history. Still reading through. Ceoil 13:38, 11 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm glad you enjoyed it :) — Amakuru (talk) 17:06, 11 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

enjoying. Its a long article, 3/4's way through now, no issues on wording so far (well done Cryptic), the page is engaging and the summary style well judged. I'm thinking this is a huge achievement, by far the best article on a country I've read (outside of Geist's work on the US), leaning support with nitpicks -not on prose- to follow. Its great to see this core article here at FAC. Ceoil 09:54, 12 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

TCO comments

MAJOR props for working on something this broad and important. Go core!
Lead seems long. Advise cutting.
Agree. Tomeasy_{T C} 08:16, 14 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
OK, I've had a stab at this but I'm reluctant to commit it to the main article without first doing some consultation, as it is always tricky to know what to cut and what to leave (and also the original lead was quite carefully worked out in conjunction with Cryptic C62, meaning some of his issues may now need re-resolving). The proposed new lead is at WP:Featured article candidates/Rwanda/archive1/Proposed lead, and I've also put up a copy of the "original" lead at WP:Featured article candidates/Rwanda/archive1/Original lead, since the current version is already altered from how it was when I first nominated the FAC. Please could all interested parties review the proposal and pass comments. Also feel free to edit the proposal in place if you have good ideas. Thanks — Amakuru (talk) 11:59, 28 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Done - the consensus at Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates/Rwanda/archive1#Lead discussion and Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates/Rwanda/archive1/Proposed lead is that the proposed form was acceptable so I have now copied it across (with suggested amendments) to the main article. Please advise if it is now passes the test for FAC or if more action is required. — Amakuru (talk) 13:03, 30 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
First sentence: I don't think the form of government has first sentence priority...and especially sending us to the link for unitary republic seems pedantic. Why not just define it as a country locationally. (the government form fits better in last para of lead anyway).
Done - changed "unitary republic of ..." to "country in ..." — Amakuru (talk) 11:29, 15 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
First para too long especially reads like two paras mashed together. Also the sentence order is not well organizing the content (e.g. why talk about capital city, then skip a sentence, then the other cities).
Agree. Tomeasy_{T C} 08:16, 14 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Fixed - I believe the newly written lead resolves this issue. — Amakuru (talk) 13:05, 30 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with keeping history without section breaks if you want. There is a strong narrative structure. (In other cases where it is more grouping topics or content is very technical, then section headers help...but history is a story.
No action required — Amakuru (talk) 13:05, 30 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Not a fan of using redlinks for "concept" type articles you plan to write (e.g. dance of Rwanda). For a more discrete thing (like a person) seems OK because the rationale is the links will pop in when someone does an article and may come from multiple places. But not so with dance of Rwanda.
Agree. Tomeasy_{T C} 08:16, 14 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Fixed - I have delinked all redlinks that I deemed as fitting this description. — Amakuru (talk) 22:12, 28 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Not a fan of using disguised links (word music wikilinked, but goes to music of Rwanda or Tourism...but goes to tourism of Rwanda). Is confusing, espeically when sometimes we are really just linking to the concept (like subsistence agriculture...not subsistence agrictulture of Rwanda).

Disagree. There are few things as useless as linking music to music. What the readers really want to explore would probably be the music of Rwanda. I see the problem of disguising such a link, however. What I would propose here would be the use of a see also head template for music of Rwanda, and not link the word music at all in the prose. However, I have seen that this article does not use the see also template at all, so I was reluctant to introduce it. Are there objections to this kind of template? Tomeasy_{T C} 08:16, 14 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

See also would work well if we can't link a true phrase that contains the overall concept. Also, when we have these piped links interacting with redlinking, we get peculiar appearance. Like on the lead "healthcare" is redlinked. Like huh, Wiki does not have an article on healthcare? Well, yeah we DO. We don't have one on "healthcare of Rwanda". But since the link is piped...it looks like we lack an article on healthcare at all. (Just a distractor from reading.)

Well, if there are no objections, I would introduce these templates. I was thinking of using for for Rwandan Genocide as well, on top of the history section. Tomeasy_{T C} 18:20, 14 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

That's fine by me, Tomeasy. — Amakuru (talk) 07:28, 15 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The different tribes are not well explained. I got the picture..."not supposed to call them tribes", but it seemed cart before horse to emphasize their sameness in describing them and not to explain how they differ (ethnicity, appearance?) This is a major gap and an important thing people need to learn from coming here. They want to understand what these people with funny names really are.

Agree. I also found that the quoted phrase came a long as a rule to make a point, but then fell short of evidence. There is evidence, however. Same language and territory, for instance. so the point may be made with explanation. Nevertheless, we need to agree on how to introduce and characterize the terms Hutu, Tutsi, Twa. Is this what you meant by funny names??? Tomeasy_{T C} 08:16, 14 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Does anyone have ideas on how we might present this? There are three areas that need a decision: the lead, the history section and the demographics. Every time I look at it I can't quite decide how best to arrange things. Since practically every point is in dispute, it's hard to know where to start. In particular:

Plenty of sources say the Tutsi arrived separately from the Hutus. But the government and some other sources say the whole dichotomy was constructed much later on.
Some sources say there are differences between the two groups in the present day (e.g. skin colour, height, lactose intolerance) while others say there is no difference.
There's not even consistency on what to call the categories, other than that they are "not tribes".

If anyone has any ideas then happy to try and move on with this. — Amakuru (talk) 11:02, 28 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Seems like a lot of over-blueing. Mountain gorilla is linked at least 4 times in article. Would like that to be once. TCO (talk) 03:05, 14 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Agree, of course. Tomeasy_{T C} 08:16, 14 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Fixed - I have unblued a lot of repeated links. I have, however, per WP:MOSLINK, retained repeated links in (a) infoboxes and picture captions, (b) occurrences far apart where the link is genuinely useful in both cases and (c) links occurring in both the lead and the body. I was a bit unsure about this last one, and MOSLINK is annoyingly vague about the matter, but given that the lead is supposed to stand alone, as is the body, I thought this seemed reasonable. — Amakuru (talk) 22:16, 28 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Victor12 comment: I think the History section is somewhat unbalanced with three paragraphs dedicated to the 1990s out of nine. I do realize the importance of the 1994 genocide for Rwandan history but I think most of its details should be left to the relevant article, Rwandan Genocide in this case. --Victor12 (talk) 13:55, 14 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure on this. Realistically people are going to come to this article to learn about the genocide [and to try to understand what all these people with funny names (hutus and tutsis, etc.) really are]. We should satisfy this interest. Perhaps doing a subsection would make this feel better? TCO (talk) 14:06, 14 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Allow me this personal comment, TOC: Calling these groups repeatedly people with funny names, sounds rather ignorant to me than funny. Tomeasy_{T C} 18:20, 14 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Tomeasy, "people with funny names" is quite an unfortunate expression. Also, the reasoning that "people come to this article to learn about the genocide" is not correct IMHO, this article is about Rwanda as a country; devoting so many paragraphs to the genocide goes against WP:UNDUE. --Victor12 (talk) 03:08, 17 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

There is only one paragraph on the genocide!

I think the entire history section is too long, but that applies to all of its parts. With a carefully conducted, general shortening of the section, the genocide paragraph could be shortened as well. However, within the current size of the history section, the length of the genocide paragraph is not undue. Tomeasy_{T C} 06:52, 17 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I´m sorry, I meant three paragraphs dealing with the 1990s (in which the main event is the genocide) out of nine paragraphs for the whole history section. I think this distribution is unbalanced. --Victor12 (talk) 13:03, 17 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, even as stepping toe over the line humor, it loses its impact, if I say it twice. Moving on...big picture, I feel very warmly to this article in that it is covering a country. I would be realistic that people coming here need/want strong coverage to explain the noteworthy genocide as well as the ethnic groups. And IN ARTICLE. They will also be getting a little better perspective on the countries geography, history, etc. so it is find that they are coming here for one reason and then leave with a deeper perspective. Please keep after it...get the STAR. We need vital articles that are FA. I understand that others feel differently, which is fine, just sharing. I like the length, content, and org of the current genocide treatment. Very well done, please don't skinny it. (I had extremely tangential experience related to the possible intervention that EUCOM argued Clinton out of...and your article was the first that I really understood what the heck was going on in there.) I really still don't think we nail it in terms of explaining the ethnic (or whatever) groups. At a minimum, we should present the different points of view and communicate the lack of understanding...not pick a dog in the fight. As of now, it is confusing, to have the doctrainaire "social, not genetic" coming after a discussion of how different population migrations were the genesis...or for that matter how the heck did the Hutus know who to murder?TCO (talk) 19:50, 20 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

There's a Rwandan Genocide article to explain in detail all the things you just mentioned. --Victor12 (talk) 02:25, 21 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah...I'm very aware of that. I just think a lot should get covered here as well. Think it serves our readers well in the end instead of depending on the click through. We probably disagree. That is fine...article does not need to match what I say...just throwing my thinking out. Peace. TCO (talk) 02:31, 21 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with TOC. The ethic groups and the genocide are probably major attractors for our readers to come to this article. The description of the ethnic groups is insufficient at present, and should be improved. I think we all agree here. I will give it a try when I have some relaxed time.

The history section: Does anybody think its total length is OK, or do we agree that it should be shortened? I feel that the only disagreement here is about the relative proportions of this section. I believe that, given 9 paragraphs, it is perfectly balanced to dedicate one to the civil war, one to the genocide, and one to modern Rwanda. If however, we condense the section and, as a result of shortening, we also merge some paragraphs, I could imagine to merge the civil war and the genocide sections. However, before I touch this difficult task in the article, I would want to see where consensus is. Tomeasy_{T C} 07:58, 21 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Although the history section is on the long side and in principle I can see a case for shortening it, I don't personally think it is a show stopper, and the risk is that the balance of the text would be upset - it's not simply a case of removing sentences. For what it's worth it already took some considerable work to condense it down to this length, while making sure that important events and eras are not omitted (the section was way longer than this when I first started working on this article). When considering featured or good country articles in general, the current length of the History section is probably about average - it is still considerably shorter than, for example, Canada (a Featured Article) United States (currently a Good Article). It is also on a par lengthwise with Japan, another FA. Thanks — Amakuru (talk) 11:08, 21 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The problem is not length but undue weight as I mentioned above. --Victor12 (talk) 13:57, 21 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Disagree, Victor: 1 paragraph out of 9 is not too much weight for the genocide.

I see it will be difficult to get a common agreement on the history section. However, do all agree that the ethnic groups need a better description? Tomeasy_{T C} 20:04, 21 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

As I said above, the History section currently has nine paragraphs, three of them deal with the 1990s; I think this is undue weight. --Victor12 (talk) 23:17, 21 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It is well balanced that the civil war is dedicated one out of nine paragraphs. The same holds for modern Rwanda. Tomeasy_{T C} 07:20, 22 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Two paragraphs for precolonial history, two paragraph for colonial history, one paragraph for independence, one paragraph for post colonial history and three (3) paragraphs devoted to the 1990s (including two sentences devoted to the 2000s); doesn't seem balanced to me. --Victor12 (talk) 13:35, 22 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

You're just repeating yourself. Let's get more people to take a look. Maybe start a thread on FAC talk page and ask a few disinterested parties to look at it and make their call. (And I don't know if this would scratch your itch, but we could go back to section breaks, so at least the reader can decide which part of history interests him more.) 16:52, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

I'm actually in general agreement with Victor12 here, although I understand the genocide was a very important event in Rwandan history. Perhaps as a compromise there could be an aim to generally reduce the length of the history section, and in the meantime have two subsections, perhaps pre and post independence? Chipmunkdavis (talk) 14:28, 24 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Re the debate it's a difficult one. You clearly can't give identical weighting to every decade because (a) the time periods discussed get longer the further back one goes, and (b) there are some decades (e.g. 1980s) when nothing happens that's really worth mentioning while others (1990s) are full of separate events, each of which shapes the whole history in its own right. However I concur with Victor and Chipmunk that 2.5 paragraphs out of 9 is on the overweight side even for one action packed decade.

So if we can reach a decision on our best course of action to resolve this issue for FAC then that'd be good. I'm happy enough with Chipmunk's suggested compromise if others are. — Amakuru (talk) 12:21, 30 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.