Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Treaty of Ciudad Juárez/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 01:06, 26 June 2010 [1].

Treaty of Ciudad Juárez edit

Featured article candidates/Treaty of Ciudad Juárez/archive1

Nominator(s): radek (talk) 20:15, 15 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I am nominating this for featured article because it has achieved GA already, meets FA criteria and the suggestion to nominate it for FA was made during the GA review.radek (talk) 20:15, 15 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comments. Please be consistent in using "Ciudad Juarez" or "Ciudad Juárez". ~~The article has a dab link to Zapata,~~ but all external links are working. Ucucha 21:10, 15 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Changed "Zapata" to ~~"Zapatismo"~~ "Liberation Army of the South" (Zapata's army) since the brothers are linked separately (and Zapatismo links to modern day army). Changed all to "Juárez".radek (talk) 21:41, 15 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! Ucucha 04:53, 16 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Sources: The sources themselves look OK, but there are issues of formatting:-

References should not contain bare links to the Google book pages. These links should be incorporated with the book's title. A suggested format for the first reference is:

Katz, Friedrich (1998): The life and times of Pancho Villa Stanford University Press, pgs 104–119. (The remaining book references should be similarly formatted)

Ref 4: This needs to be properly formatted, showing author (Martin Donell Kohout), title (Orozco, Pascuel, Jr.), publisher (Texas State Historical Association), and retrieval date.
Convention requires appropriate use of captitals in book main titles. Thus, for example: ""Mexico: Biography of Power"; "In the Shadow of the Mexican Revolution:" etc
If "pgs" signifies page ranges, it should be used consistently. Adjust "pg" in final references

I also notice an uncited paragraph at the beginning of the "Military developments leading up to the treaty" section. Brianboulton (talk) 18:56, 16 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Citations formatted as suggested. Please check ref 4 to make sure the format is ok. I'll add sources to the uncited paragraph later today.radek (talk) 22:07, 16 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Added ref for the opening paragraph of the "Military developments" section.radek (talk) 01:43, 18 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose, regretfully, on comprehensiveness and prose concerns from Mm40 (talk)

I'm a bit concerned that the only sources used are books freely and fully available on Google Books or online. This suggests that not all potential venues of information have been explored.
The article needs a good copy-edit. Some examples, from the Results and implementation section
Shouldn't the header be reversed? The results follow the implementation
The first four sentences form a short, choppy paragraph. (Throughout the article, there are a number of short paragraphs)
"and ~~for the time being~~ the fighting"
"~~with time~~ he became ~~more and more~~ increasingly"
"were not being fulfilled" – goal's can't really be fulfilled; they can, however, be met

The article isn't bad, but I think some work is needed before it can be considered "our best work". Cheers, Mm40 (talk) 11:51, 25 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Re: "I'm a bit concerned..." - can you suggest any other sources that you think need to be used? Or do you see any areas in the article that look like they are in need of expansion? If not, I'd assume good faith with regards to author using sources that are good enough for the article to be comprehensive. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 12:59, 25 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

See results 2, 3, and 4 here. I can probably pull up more if you'd like. Mm40 (talk) 13:59, 25 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Hmmm, on this one I'm afraid that I must regretfully reject both the criticisms and the suggestions as I do not see that they are at all helpful in improving the article. You'll excuse a detailed response, but since I just took the time to read and study some of the recommended sources I believe the favor can be reciprocated:

"only sources used are books freely and fully available on Google Books or online" - why is this supposed to be a minus rather than a plus? The fact that these sources are available online facilitates verification of the text in the article and also helps to alley any potential concerns about NPOV. Should I simply remove the online links? If I had used more esoteric, hard to obtain sources I'm sure someone would have raised that as an issue at this review.

Furthermore, I'm sorry, but typing the article title into google scholar and showing that there are other works which mention the subject is not at all helpful. I'm assuming that since you're recommending "results 2, 3, and 4" you've read them. Could you suggest what information from these other sources that is not presently in the article needs to be included? Please be specific. As far as I can tell the sources you recommend only mention the treaty in passing.

Specifically: "result 2" is on a more narrowly defined topic and is not about the treaty that is the subject of the article but rather about revolution in the state of Pueblo. It mentions "Treaty of Ciudad Juarez" in passing only three times, each time only as a time-marker and nothing more: "in the months following the Treaty of Ciudad Juarez", "In the turbulent days following the signing of the Treaty of Ciudad Juarez", "following the signing of the Treaty of Ciudad Juarez". Basically, there is no information on the treaty in this article that could be included in the Wikipedia article so I really don't understand why this source is being recommended.

"result 3" is even more inappropriate as it mentions the treaty only once, in terms of establishing general background: "On 21 May, the Treaty of Ciudad Juarez was signed, marking the end of 35 years of Porfirian rule." Nothing more is said in the article about the treaty - it's about cotton production under Madero. Of course someone could start an article on that topic and use the article there. Again I am completely at a loss as to how this source would be useful.

I'm not sure if by "result 4" you mean "The spirit of Hidalgo: the Mexican Revolution in Coahuila" - which I don't have so I can't comment on it - but it appears to be, again, about a different and more narrow topic. If this is the work you are referring to, would you please indicate what kind of information is in it that needs to be included (if you could email me a copy or suggest a venue of access that'd be great)? If by "result 4" you mean "Latin America's Wars: The age of the professional soldier, 1900-2001" (or the following search result, M Gonzales, for that matter) then I assure you that I am quite familiar with that source (and the following search result). In fact ... it (and the following search result) is already being used in the article.

For good measure, the next item in your google scholar search appears to be an undergraduate thesis (though Honors), which I would not consider reliable enough for a FA article (or any Wikipedia article for that matter).

Overall, the article uses quite a range of sources, all of which are standard and widely recognized works in the topic area. The sources and the article are comprehensive and I don't see a need to cite every article on Mexican Revolution which might mention the treaty in passing.

As to your stylistic suggestions:

I've changed "Results and implementation" to "Implementation and results".
"Fulfilled" in reference to goals is more appropriate when it is a matter of degree, "met" is more appropriate where it's a yes/no 1/0 pass/fail kind of situation so I'm keeping original wording.
Short and to the point sentences are generally seen as a good form of writing, better than long, meandering ones. The division of text into paragraphs is done thematically but I can combine some of them if you really think it better.
I've changed "more and more" to "increasingly" per your suggestion. However, the qualifiers "for the time being" and "with time" belong in the sentences as they contain important information (i.e. first one indicates that this situation didn't last, while the second references the fact that this was a gradual process rather than an abrupt change) - keeping those.

Finally note that the article was found to be very well written in GA review.radek (talk) 16:08, 25 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

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