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Wikipedia:Featured article review/Istanbul/archive1

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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 via FACBot (talk) 8:00, 26 December 2020 (UTC) [1].

Istanbul edit

Notified: Tariqabjotu, WikiProject Turkey, WikiProject Cities, WikiProject Greece, WikiProject Ottoman Empire, WikiProject Asia

Review section edit

I am nominating this featured article for review because I posted on the tp more than 2 weeks ago:

The article needs substantial work to meet the FA criteria: better referencing (including citing the uncited content, as well as improving the quality of refs so that promotional claims are cited to independent sources), updating many sections that are out of date.

In fact the article was seriously out of date when it was run at TFA just under 2 years ago. No one responded. (t · c) buidhe 04:07, 18 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Hi there, I'm a new-ish editor who's interested in helping to preserve the featured article status. Are the out-of-date sections marked accordingly? I'm only seeing the header for the economy and demographics portion. Can you give an example of refs that you would consider promotional? Thanks! Portugal1337 (talk) 09:24, 1 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

  • Welcome, Portugal1337, thanks for your efforts! The economy and demographic sections are the worst in terms of being out of date. I know only a limited amount about the topic, so it's hard for me to tell if other sections such as Media or Public Services also may have changed from 2007/2008. The main issue with promotional claims are things like, "Turkish Offshore Racing Club also hosts major yacht races, such as the annual Naval Forces Trophy", sourced to their website. I suspect this information is not WP:DUE/the TORC is not sufficiently important to merit a mention on this major article. I flagged some issues with [citation needed] [better source needed] [needs update] [non-primary source needed] and [undue weight? – discuss]. (t · c) buidhe 09:39, 1 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the fast response -- I have already identified sources to be able to update the economy section. Demographics seems to be much harder. Do you know what kind of time frame I would have to make the relevant changes? I have a lot of free time this week and hope to dedicate some time to the article. I will post updates here Portugal1337 (talk) 09:47, 1 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

  • The article can stay under review as long as improvements are ongoing. (t · c) buidhe 10:02, 1 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Portugal1337 The article was promoted with 10,000 words of prose (long), but is now at 12. Once a Geography article sprawls like that, it just becomes harder to maintain. I recommend tighter use of summary style so you won't be right back here in two years, as editors chunk it one of everything. (Note that Edge cities was not in the promoted version.)
I don't want to overwhelm with a list yet, but for now, there are urgent MOS:SANDWICH issues everywhere, as editors have chunked in too many images. It is unlikely that most of those images passed an image review, and reducing them considerably would help.
Once you are through more of the basics, I'll look in again. There are still considerable other issues, like incomplete and incorrectly formatted citations. To get this one over the hump, it would help to have an editor familiar with FA standards on board; is anyone else helping you? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:40, 1 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
It might be worthwhile to email User:Tariqabjotu, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:41, 1 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I have updated the Economics section of the article and have moved on to demographics & religious groups section, which seems to be in much worse shape. I'd appreciate your feedback on the Economics section so that I make fewer mistakes in other sections. Thanks for the support so far! Portugal1337 (talk) 09:47, 1 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

  • Thanks so much for your edits! There's been a definite improvement. I don't really know much about location articles but here's some thoughts:
  • Phrasing such as Istanbul is the business center of Turkey, or international gateway should generally be avoided because they don't really have a concrete meaning and come across as promotional.
  • "Istanbul is an increasingly popular tourist destination" is an issue for another reason: it's likely to become dated (I'm guessing its popularity among tourists did not increase between 2019 and 2020, for instance). Also, you would need a source which explicitly states that it is increasing, rather than just data from two years with the second being higher. I removed this wording.
  • Historical dictionary of Turkey is a good source to use, but ideally you would include the pages cited as well as the author of the entry on Istanbul if credited separately. (t · c) buidhe 12:15, 4 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • No edits since 4 December (and substantial amounts of work remaining to be done). Portugal1337 are you still planning to attempt to restore this article? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:28, 9 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you so much for the feedback! Sorry for being late in replying, I moved out of my apartment in NYC and it was 10 days of pure chaos. I have updated the following sections:

  • Religious and ethnic groups,
  • demographics,
  • architecture

Two sections were almost rewritten from scratch

  • Climate,
  • Geography

I am working on the following sections:

  • History – in the process of adding a lot of social history of city; The current section only talks about the broad contours of Ottoman history, and is not very city-focused.
  • Politics and administration – I am thinking about merging the two sections
  • Toponymy
  • History to add the following archeological discoveries:
    • 8,000 years old canoe oar, the earliest ever found, again, 8,000 years old.
    • A thousand human footprints (barefoot, leather shoes, and possibly wooden clogs) from 8,000 years ago have survived.
    • Discovery of wooden coffin dating to 6000 BC


  • I will go work on updating the citations with page numbers.

Portugal1337 (talk) 16:58, 14 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Update by Portugal1337: I am currently unable to make additions because my account has been "banned indefinitely," and because editing the article requires "confirmed status." I have appealed the ban but was unsuccessful. The response to my appeal ranged from the outrageous, like requiring me to submit explanations for an accusation with no accompanying evidence or explanation, to the absurd, like concluding—based on the information disclosed to me, solely based on the accusation—that my account is a sock puppet, to the dumbfounding, like criticizing me for copyright violations without ever mentioning them beforehand. Reading the response and the accompanying unappetizing solipsistic subtext to my appeal “you haven't even mentioned the copyright violations,” I almost passed out with empathetic shame on the responder’s behalf. Maybe this episode was no more bizarre than the election in 1800 where Jefferson accused Adams of being a hermaphrodite and Adams responded by spreading rumors that Jefferson died. It is still out there. Puppetportugal1337 (talk) 09:40, 15 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

You did insert copyrighted material into Istanbul here, for instance. Taken from erenow.net/ancient/pompeii-the-life-of-a-roman-town/8.php here. And intentionally changed the sentence from Roman to Ottoman. From most elaborate and sophisticated pieces of architecture in the Roman world to Ottoman. We seem to have a problem here. RetiredDuke (talk) 16:32, 15 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Diannaa: re User:Puppetportugal1337, @FAC coordinators: SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:38, 15 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Oopsie ... sorry FAC coords ... @WP:FAR coordinators: SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:49, 15 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Move to FARC, not enough progress, and now sockpuppetry and copyvio issues. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:38, 15 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

FARC section edit

Issues raised in the review section include sourcing, promotional claims, copyright and potential datedness. DrKay (talk) 17:16, 15 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Just so we're clear on status here: are the copyright concerns solely about material added during this review, or is there other material of potential concern? If the former, has all of that material now been removed? Nikkimaria (talk) 21:56, 15 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
The copyrighted material was removed by Diannaa, it was added during this review. RetiredDuke (talk) 18:03, 17 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
The article is still far from featured standard. We have refs 173 and 174 that are literal photos serving as refs (they were added 2 days ago). The "eleventh-largest economy among the world's urban areas in 2018" claim is not in the source provided (added 2 weeks ago). So we are seeing bad edits creeping in during this review, all the while stuff like the citation needed tags still hasn't been taken care of. While trying to spotcheck some recent additions like the "34 active synagogues" claim added here, I found out that Historical dictionary of Turkey was actually written by three people instead of one. There are also no hits for Hemdat or 34 synagogues on that book. So I don't have confidence in the edits that have been made recently. There's no one keeping a close eye on the article, editors just come and go adding images and changing stuff as they please. RetiredDuke (talk) 23:30, 17 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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