Wikipedia:Peer review/Pakistan/archive3

Pakistan

Previous peer review

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review to look for areas of improvement as I would like it to reach FA status again. Me and TopGun recently reviewed it's former FA revision and think the current version is in better shape and welcome any suggestions for further improvements.

Thanks, September88 (talk) 21:20, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Comments by TopGun: The current revision of article is better than the former FA coverage wise. We also have new images and better prose. I just fixed links etc and reviewed for WP:MOS. A read with aim of correcting spellings to a single English would be a good idea. British English's variant Pakistani English should be used for all spellings. Any American English spellings should be corrected (unless they are used in Pakistani English). --lTopGunl (talk) 23:43, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Structure

Some suggestions to the structure to be reviewed:

• Health (under infrastructure),
• Law enforcement (under infrastructure or independent - what ever the trend is).
• Energy (under infrastructure - week support for this).

Obviously all will have very small summaries and links to main articles to keep the article concise. Should these be included? --lTopGunl (talk) 08:42, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

*Answered below by Finetooth in 5th part of his comments. --lTopGunl (talk) 20:09, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

Comments by Casliber: sorry, missed this - will add some ideas Casliber (talk · contribs) 23:53, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

When did the 'i' become defacto? 1940s? 1960s? ok, I take it was pretty much straightaway. Casliber (talk · contribs) 11:25, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

Were there other name options?

link " gangetic plains"

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Casliber (talk • contribs)

I've added a citation for the significance of letter 'i'. It was used before that, see -istan; so became the defacto language word. The acronym, as it can be seen in the explanation was double intended to represent the provinces as well as the word "Land of (the) pure", correct translation for which is "Pakistan". Hence defacto. There were no other name options, rather name came before (in 1933) the actual clearly aimed aspiration/conception of a separate country (in 1938) as a concept, so was readily accepted for the same. For "gangetic plains" do you mean wikilink? (added) --lTopGunl (talk) 10:41, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

yes indeed. Now a tricky bit is going to be the Kashmir conflict - to try and write it so one could not guess the feelings of the writer. Maybe the best is stating each country's views. At the moment it reads mostly India's views. Casliber (talk · contribs) 20:59, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

I tweaked it a bit with adding Pakistani view. What do you think? September88 (talk) 01:16, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

Better, but is it possible to state in one sentence why India regards it as integral to India? Plus have placed the tags about to reference.Casliber (talk · contribs) 11:23, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

 Done.September88 (talk) 13:11, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

Finetooth comments:

Layout

The illustrations are generally fine, but the layout could be improved. Generally, it's best to avoid cramming too many images into a section. For example, "Early period" and "Medieval age" have three images; the two on the left make a kind of text sandwich with the one on the right, and File:TNMStandingBuddha.jpg overlaps the subsection boundary. My rule of thumb is to avoid text sandwiches and to keep illustrations entirely within the sections or subsections they refer to. To improve the layout in these two subsections, I'd consider merging them into one under the subhead "Early and medieval" and using only two of the three images. The third will still be available on the Commons for readers who want to see more images related to Pakistan.

Further down in the article File:Minar e Pakistan.jpg overlaps the section boundary between "Modern" and "Recent elections". It would be better to reposition the image to avoid overlapping the boundary.

In "Politics", five images is one too many, in my opinion. You can't make five fit there without creating a text sandwich. In the "Administrative divisions" section, for a cleaner layout I would eliminate the table, which repeats information already stated in the text.

"Tourism" has room for only two images, not four, if you wish to avoid a text sandwich.

"Demographics" looks cluttered to me. I would think of stacking the population table above the population density chart rather than placing them side by side. I'd change the two lists to straight prose paragraphs, and then I'd be able to see if there was enough room left for both of the other images or perhaps just one.

I'd turn the bulleted list in "Religion" into a prose paragraph. I'd think about slightly reducing the size of File:Rubab.jpg to make sure it didn't displace an edit button or overlap a section boundary. I see that it has an "upleft" parameter, which may be a mistake. If you change this to "upright", I think the image will be about the right size.

File:Miqbal4.jpg overlaps a section boundary and displaces an edit button. Maybe a smaller image size combined with a shorter caption would be sufficient to make the image fit.

"Cuisine" has a text sandwich.

"Sports" has room for two images, not three.

This is all I have time for at the moment, but I will add more comments in the coming days. Finetooth (talk) 19:07, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Working on it. September88 (talk) 01:16, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

 Done (something has to be done about population table yet). --lTopGunl (talk) 01:23, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

 Done September88 (talk) 02:28, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

Finetooth comments, part 2:

Overlinking

• The article includes a lot of overlinking. One kind involves links from perfectly clear words or phrases to articles elsewhere on Wikipedia. For example, "struggle for independence" is clear without a link. Likewise "four provinces and four federal territories" needs no explanation. The "second largest Muslin population" is perfectly clear, as is "170 million people". Even though the linked articles may in some way elaborate on the linked term, it's not a good idea to send readers away more often than necessary or to surprise them with non-intuitive links. They may link away and never come back.

• Common words like "geography", "wildlife", "military rule", "27th largest" need no clarification. I would not link things like this without some special reason.

• My rule of thumb for linking is to link uncommon or special terms no more than once in the lead and perhaps once again in the main text. Sometimes an exception will arise but not often. "Multan", for example, should not be linked twice in the "Early and Medieval" section, and "Sikh" should not be linked three times in the "British colony" section.

• I think an argument can be made for linking well-known countries like China and India once in the article. Since they are linked in the lead, I would not link them elsewhere. Most readers are familiar with both.

• Since "Pakistan People's Party" is linked and abbreviated PPP in the "Recent elections" section, I would use PPP on second use in the next section, "Politics", and I would not link it again.

• Individual years like "1963" in the "Kashmir conflict" section should not be linked. "Indus River" should not be linked twice in the "Geography" section. "Pakistan Railways" and "Islamabad" should not be linked twice each in the "Transport" section.

• The above sentences cite examples of overlinking, but it would be easy to identify many more. My advice is to comb through the complete article carefully and to remove all links that are misleading, non-intuitive, or redundant.

More to come. Finetooth (talk) 22:07, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

 Done Changes made. Linking in lead under discussion at talk. --lTopGunl (talk) 21:12, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Finetooth comments, part 3:

• To achieve FA again, I believe the article will need a few more inline citations to reliable sources even though it already has 240. My rule of thumb is to add a source for every set of quantities or statistics, every claim that is apt to be questioned, every unusual claim, and every direct quotation. As a practical consequence, this means that every paragraph requires at least one source. Specifically, I'd look for places in the article that have entire paragraphs or large parts of paragraphs with claims not supported by a reliable source.

• Aside from the lead, which may not need inline citations since the summarized claims in the lead presumably appear in the main text and are sourced there, the first paragraph in the article that has incomplete sourcing is in the "British colony" section and begins "Quaid e Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, espoused the Two Nation Theory... " The problem here is that the inline citation in this paragraph covers the direct quotation but not the remainder of the paragraph. Since the specific dates and claims in the rest of the paragraph are not common knowledge, they need support by one or more reliable sources. Other paragraphs in the article are parallel to this one; that is, they are partly sourced but end with claims that lack sources.

• In some cases, entire paragraphs lack sources and should have them. In the "Military" section, the third and sixth paragraphs are unsourced. Likewise, the first two paragraphs of the Geography section lack sources, and there are similar unsourced paragraphs further down in the article. It's tedious and time-consuming to find sources for claims that other editors may have added without including the sources, but there is no escape from the chore. If no source can be found for some of the claims, it is better to delete them or to modify them in a way supported by reliable sources.

• I think that only a small fraction of the article lacks reliable sources, but that fraction needs attention. One more example is this claim in the Cuisine section: "Among beverages lassi is a traditional drink in the Punjab region. Black tea with milk and sugar is popular throughout Pakistan and is taken daily by most of the population." I personally have no doubt that this is true; however, the claims are non-obvious, and I would try to find support for them.

More to come. Finetooth (talk) 18:45, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

Geography section, Two-Nation theory, military, and some from history sourced. --lTopGunl (talk) 22:42, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

 Done September88 (talk) 16:58, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Quick comments by Chipmunkdavis

In regards to Finetooths note that more sources are needed even though there are so many, I suggest you cut down the total article size. There are 33 sections in the TOC, and a total text size of 54kB. While not beyond the maximum MOS limits, it is still quite long. A country article with a whole section on "Recent elections" is crying out recentism. The Climate and Language subsections are very short, and per WP:BODY "Very short or very long sections and subsections in an article look cluttered and inhibit the flow of the prose." My rule of thumb is that if a section either can't reach a decent two paragraphs or doesn't deserve that length of prose, it should be merged with the larger section. As a last quick note, I'd do something drastic with the Tourism section. It reads very advertisment like, quite WP:PEACOCKy. It's also weird that it's not included as part of Economy. Good luck, Chipmunkdavis (talk) 18:55, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

• Recommend making the language section a bit longer in that case; also refer to my comment on top. I've renamed the "Recent elections" section. The content was not really recent but of last decade. I'll check the tourism section though I think keeping it separate from economy seems a bit better. --lTopGunl (talk) 21:18, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for comments Chipmunkdavis. TopGun making languages section longer will just increase article size which is already reaching towards maximum. I agree that its better to just merge the smaller sections. September88 (talk) 21:34, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

By merge, do you mean sending it to further subsections or to merge the text? I think all country articles are long or even longer... that won't matter as far as we stay with in the max limit. --lTopGunl (talk) 21:45, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Russia lost its GA status due to excessive length, Germany's length was reduced in a recent FAR (although it has since gone back up). See Indonesia for a well written and maintained but short FA. An FA doesn't have to be that short, but with great length comes great boredom. Give an overview, don't drown in detail (That's what main article links are for). Chipmunkdavis (talk) 22:12, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

I was comparing it to India which is an FA but quite lengthy. And all other country articles seem to be long. Let's see how much we can shorten it. I suggest removal of redundant text first and then see if it can be further shortened. You are right, we should use main article template where possible to reduce text. --lTopGunl (talk) 22:25, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

I mean remove the subsections and merge the text. September88 (talk) 22:17, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

That won't be a good idea - see the next few sections which are not much longer than "Languages". Infact as per second comment by Chipmunkdavis it means that the short length of this section amounts to the same and is linked with the main article. On a second thought, how about merging it with main demographics or ethnic groups? --lTopGunl (talk) 22:25, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Demographics it is. Doing the merge. September88 (talk) 23:01, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

I also think that answers your question above, so tag can be removed. September88 (talk) 23:05, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Actually not fully. There's no info on health or energy as far as I can see even in merged form. And I've seen health as a separate section of infrastructure. I've asked Finetooth to comment on it. --lTopGunl (talk) 23:08, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

 Done Tourism section has been removed and details have been fixed. --lTopGunl (talk) 17:41, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Finetooth comments, part 4:

Etymology

• The Manual of Style advises against linking anything from within a direct quotation since the links were not part of the original. Thus the links in the following quotation should be removed: "thirty million Muslim brethren who live in PAKSTAN—by which we mean the five Northern units of India viz: Punjab, North-West Frontier Province (Afghan Province), Kashmir, Sind, and Baluchistan".

References

• When I click on citation 27, I get a "site is currently unavailable" error message. For promotion to FA, the article's citation links will all need to be working. In addition, be sure that all of your sources meet the WP:RS guidelines. "Currentsocial.com" looks doubtful to me, though I can't be sure without looking at it closely, which I can't do because of the error message.

• At least some of the citations to books are missing some of the required data, and the data has been entered in the wrong fields. I fixed one of these, citation 23, to show you what they should look like. A handy template listing all of the possible parameters lives here. You'll never need to use most of the possible parameters, but the parameters for the author's (or multiple authors') last and first names, date of publication, place of publication, isbn, and page (for a single page) and pages (for multiple pages) are essential. Furthermore, I would list the original publisher rather than Google Books as the publisher.

• I use Google Books as a handy look-up tool, but I try not to rely on it as a source. Google Books are often incomplete, and clicking through to them may return an error message saying that the maximum number of free views has been exceeded, or words to that effect. If a Google Book is essential to whatever I'm working on, I try to somehow obtain a hard copy through a library or elsewhere so that I can cite the original rather than the Google partial reprint. Then I can consider the link to the Google version as a courtesy link for readers rather than my reliable source for the information. I'm not sure how Google Book links are being regarded these days at FAC since I try to avoid the problem by finding the original or another reliable source. It doesn't hurt to look in on FAC from time to time to see what is happening to other articles. You can view the ongoing proceedings at WP:FAC. If you do this, you will see that an editor there carefully checks every citation in every nominated article, and I believe that no citations with missing data or incorrect formatting slip through. It's very difficult to get all of them exactly right, but it's a good idea to aim for perfection in this area before nominating.

• What makes Pak Tea House a reliable source? Blogs generally don't qualify as reliable per WP:RS because they publish individual opinions not subject to fact-checking by an editorial board. Make sure that all of your citations meet the reliable source guidelines.

• Citation 225 is incomplete, and the link does not seem to work. Citations to web sites should include author, title, publisher, url, publication date, and date of most recent access if all of those are known or can be found.

• The date formatting in the citations needs to be consistent. Most of the dates use a format like 10 February 2008, which is fine, but a few are like 2010-09-19. Those should be changed so that all the dates are in the same format.

More to come. Finetooth (talk) 19:37, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

 Done September88 (talk) 01:02, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

Finetooth comments, part 5:

• I'm finding your questions about structure more difficult to answer than questions about other aspects of the article. My own articles have tended to focus on much more narrow topics than the gigantic topic of a whole country. Looking at Indonesia, Australia, Japan, and India, all featured, I see that there's no exact formula for structuring FAs about nations, though these four are similar in many ways. You want readers to be able to find information in a place where they might expect it, so it wouldn't make sense to put "Health" in the "Sports" subsection, for example, but it might reasonably fit in more than one of the other sections or subsections. Since you already discuss mortality rates and life expectancy in the third paragraph of the "Demographics" section, I would suggest adding anything new about health to that paragraph rather than creating a separate section or subsection.

• It would not be amiss to add something about energy, but rather than creating a separate section or subsection, I'd think about adding a paragraph to "Science and technology".

• If you decide to add something about law enforcement, my suggestion would be to try to add it to the "Administrative divisions" subsection. It could be something general that explains who is in charge of national, state, and local kinds of law enforcement. This could be blended with a brief overview of the court system of Pakistan, about which I think you need to add a paragraph or so to meet the FA requirement that the article be comprehensive.

• To reduce the number of short subsections, I'd probably change "Geography" to "Geography and climate" and merge the short "Climate" subsection with the material above it by making it simply a fourth paragraph.

• To further reduce the number of short subsections, I'd try eliminating the separate subsections for "Ethnic groups" and "Religion", leaving them where they are but simply as separate paragraphs of the "Demographics" section. The "main articles" list at the top could accommodate all four links rather than just two.

• Just to clarify, the structure requirements are not set in stone. When in doubt, use your best judgment and be prepared to defend it at FAC.

• On an unrelated minor issue, academic titles like "Dr." or "Ph.D." are generally avoided in Wikipedia articles. Thus "Dr. Salimuzzaman Siddiqui was the first Pakistani scientist... " should be altered to say "Salimuzzaman Siddiqui was the first Pakistani scientist... ". If it's important, you can always add a brief description right after the name; i.e., "Salimuzzaman Siddiqui, brief description, was the first Pakistani scientist... ". I see a few instances of academic titles in the article.

• Captions that consist solely of a sentence fragment do not take terminal periods. I fixed one of these, but there are a few others.

More to come. Finetooth (talk) 19:56, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for commenting on the structure issue. Will be working on that shortly. --lTopGunl (talk) 20:09, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

 Done --lTopGunl (talk) 01:11, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Finetooth comments, part 6 (and last):

Image licenses

• All of the image licenses will be checked at FAC to make sure they are complete and correct and that the images do not violate copyright law. Sorting the license questions out is often not easy, especially since the main contributors to an article may not be the photographers or image uploaders. It can't be assumed that everything appearing at the Commons has been licensed correctly or is actually following copyright law. In some cases, it may be possible to track down and fill in missing data by checking the source link or asking the uploader or finding the data elsewhere in the metadata at the bottom of the license page.

• File:TNMStandingBuddha.jpg has an incomplete summary section. I would suggest fleshing out the summary with the date the photo was taken and by whom to make it as easy as possible for fact checkers. File:Working Committee.jpg has a more complete model you could imitate. As you can see, it has five items in the Summary section of the license: Description, Date, Source, Author, Permission. In the case of the standing Buddha, the source can be listed as "Own photo"; the date can be cloned from the metadata; the author is World Imaging, and the permission line can say "See below" since World Imaging has released the photo without restriction (except that the law be followed) into the public domain.

• Alas, the standing Buddha may also be incorrectly licensed. I'm not sure. The image is of a three-dimensional work of art, and different countries have different copyright laws about such images. To determine whether this image is correctly licensed and should be on the Commons at all requires checking Japanese copyright law. Having run into "Freedom of Panorama" problems with some of my own images, I checked commons:COM:FOP to see what the case might be in Japan regarding images of statues. The first sentence explaining the situation in Japan says, "Japanese copyright law allows the reproduction of artistic works located permanently in open places accessible to the public, such as streets and parks, or at places easily seen by the public, such as the outer walls of buildings, only for non-commercial purposes; therefore, such photographs are not free enough for Commons." The uploader of the image might have no idea that a restriction of this sort might apply and that a public-domain license for a photograph of this statue might violate Japanese law. However, I am no expert on copyright law, and you might need to direct specific copyright questions to the Commons Help Desk at commons:COM:HD.

• I don't have time (or the expertise, really) to check all of your image licenses, but you should try to make all of the licenses as complete as possible and should try to make sure that the uploaders' licenses are appropriate.

• The link checker tool at the top of this review page finds one dead link, one probably dead link, and several connection timeouts that might or might not be transient.

• On the positive side, the prose flows nicely in this article, and the article seems to cover the topic comprehensively or nearly so. The dab-checker tool in the toolbox at the top of this review page finds no dabs.

• I ran a script to change the hyphens in date ranges and page ranges to en dashes per the Manual of Style. You can fix these by hand as you go along, or I'd be happy to run the script again any time.

• Please make sure that the existing text includes no copyright violations, plagiarism, or close paraphrasing. For more information on this please see Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2009-04-13/Dispatches. (This is a general warning given in view of previous problems that have risen over copyvios.)

I hope these suggestions prove helpful. If so, please consider commenting on any other article at WP:PR. I don't usually watch the PR archives or make follow-up comments. If my suggestions are unclear, please ping me on my talk page. Finetooth (talk) 20:47, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for taking time to give this helpful review Finetooth. We'll be working on the suggestions and hopefully will meet our goal by making the article FA. September88 (talk) 23:31, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

 Done All checked and compiled a list on talk page. No non-free images found and all images have license tags. --lTopGunl (talk) 02:25, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

Chipmunkdavis 2

A very quick skim pointing out problems (I use the term lightly!) I found.

• I spy a few Issues with the lead which need to be fixed before this article goes anywhere. Finetooth has already commented that the lead shouldn't need citations, as everything in the lead should be in the article. I've often found that something being cited in the lead is a good indication it's not in the article. At the moment, citation 8 notes the maritime border with Oman. Oman isn't mentioned again in the article (and neither is the Gulf of Oman). The second citation in the lead is about Pakistans strategic location. If this is so important, I'd expect to read something about it in the article. The third source is for "Initially a dominion, with the adoption of its constitution in 1956 Pakistan became an Islamic republic", which besides being nowhere in the article, isn't that informative: Islamic republic is just a name (speaking of, it may be worth unlinking it in the bold title at the start. Also, instead of "its constitution", "a new constitution" would make more sense), what Pakistan became was a parliamentary republic. Make sure everything in the lead is in the article, and if it is, you probably don't need sources for it.
• I'd remove the Pakistan declaration and resolution from the infobox. Although significant parts of the road to partition, I don't think either is a significant state-defining event.
• History of India would be a much better See Also in the History section than History of South Asia, which seems to be basically a disambiguation page. In addition, what makes the 21st century such an important part of the modern era that it needs its own tiny section?
• I can't click the clickable administrative territories map. I also question the inclusion of Chinese areas of Kashmir on it, as Pakistan has officially forgone them has it not?
• Try not to use terms like currently or presently or similar, the article is meant to be written for the present. "From 2001 to present, Pakistan Armed Forces..." --> "From 2001, Pakistan's Armed Forces" (and fix the grammar of that whole sentence). "India claims the entire state of Jammu and Kashmir and as of 2009, administers approximately..." --> "India claims the entire state of Jammu and Kashmir and administers approximately...".
• Concise image captions are better. "A scenic view of hilly terrains in Swat, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa" --> "Hilly terrain in Swat, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa". "A view of the skyline in Karachi's financial district" --> "Karachi's financial district".
• I'd recommend going over the article again in regards to concision. It's not too long for me, but do I have to know that, for example, W. J. M. Turowicz was Polish-Pakistani? Is he so important he needs a mention? Seems WP:UNDUE. Keep the reader interested, assume they're not looking for specific details on every topic (or they'd be at that topics page).
• Last paragraph in Demographics. What are those five sources sourcing?
• Watch out for short paragraphs, I see a few two liners scattered throughout the article.

The article is definitely in a good shape compared to many country articles, keep up the good work. The examples I've used above are just examples, not complete lists. Remember, no matter how good you make it, it will probably be hammered in FAC :) I'd say however you're definitely at GA level already. Chipmunkdavis (talk) 22:29, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Understood. Good to know its going somewhere! September88 (talk) 23:35, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

About the ceded part of Kashmir to China, although, it now belongs to China but there's still a provision for it to be reconsidered equally with the rest of Kashmir if there's a solution to the dispute with India. So this is not really an issue. --lTopGunl (talk) 00:44, 14 January 2012 (UTC)