Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Malaysia/archive2

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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 Karanacs 15:44, 13 October 2009 [1].

Malaysia[edit]

Nominator(s): BejinhanTalk 14:45, 9 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
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I am nominating this for featured article because I believe that this article meets all the criteria for featured article status. This article has been a FA candidate before but was not given FA status. Since the last nomination, major work and expansion has been done on this article. BejinhanTalk 14:45, 9 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  • Oppose - There are a few "citation needed" tags and unsourced paragraphs for a start. Spiderone 15:09, 9 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Refs mix ISO-style (YYYY-MM-DD) and Day Month Year dates pretty evenly. Pick and use one for all of them. There's also a bunch of "bare" URL citations (no title or other info) and I noticed that ref 84 says "Retrieved December."—on what day and year? --an odd name 16:16, 9 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I fixed the date-format issue but the other citation problems (and there are many of them) remain. Eubulides (talk) 19:31, 9 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. Please add alt text to images; see WP:ALT. Eubulides (talk) 19:31, 9 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Done BejinhanTalk 03:29, 10 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
No, I'm afraid it's not done. No alt text has been added, although some captions have been modified. Please read WP:ALT: it describes the difference between alt text and captions, and what should go into alt text. Eubulides (talk) 04:54, 10 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I've started adding alt texts; there are still lots to do. --JN466 13:15, 11 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

  1. The numerical data given in the lead differ from the data given in the infobox. (I would suggest that most of the numerical data in the first paragraph of the lead are not required; but at any rate, editors have to decide which figures are more up to date, or more reliable.)
  2. Per WP:LEAD, the lead should not have more than four paragraphs. Perhaps the fourth paragraph, giving details of Malaysia's population, could be integrated in the first, which also mentions population. (Something like "The majority of its population of 27 million is formed by ...")
  3. It seems to me the lead may contain too much detailed information, with the result that the reader is a little overwhelmed with detail and "can't see the wood for the trees." I'd suggest going through the lead and scrutinising it for what is essential for a general overview, and what is expendable, given that the body of the article goes into all the details. --JN466 21:31, 9 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    Corrected I've removed the paragraph about the Malaysian population because the information given there is the same as the information in the 'Demographics' section. BejinhanTalk 02:41, 10 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  4. There are several wikilinks to disambiguation pages: [2] These should be rerouted to the specific pages containing the most appropriate information. --JN466 21:44, 9 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    Corrected BejinhanTalk 02:31, 10 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  5. Terms like Sabah and Sarawak should generally only be linked at their first occurrence, rather than being wikilinked each time they occur. (For further guidance, see Wikipedia:Wikilink#Repeated_links.) --JN466 21:50, 9 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    Corrected BejinhanTalk 03:26, 10 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    I have corrected and cleaned up this article following the above suggestions. BejinhanTalk 03:50, 10 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  6. In the lead we now say the landmass is 329,845 sq km, as we do in the infobox. It is good that the figures match between lead and infobox. But in the lead, we still cite the CIA World Fact Book, which says it is 329,847, as well as Article 1 of the Malaysian Constitution, which, at least in the version we have in Wikisource, does not give any numerical figure at all. The value given in the infobox is wikilinked to 1_E+11_m², where the area (unsourced) is different again (329,750 km2). The area ranking in the infobox, 66th in the world, is linked to List of countries and outlying territories by total area, where the area (unsourced) is once more different, i.e. 330,803 km2. In the absence of any cleverer ideas, I suggest choosing one value and one source (i.e. 329,847 km2 per the CIA World Facts Book, since this seems to be the only source actually cited in any of these articles for Malaysia's area), and sticking with it. --JN466 17:31, 10 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  7. The first three paragraphs in the Prehistory section are unsourced. Could you add the sources the material is taken from? JN466 13:50, 11 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comments: A great article, but personally not quite FA standard yet; several paragraphs and sections are without citations and there are some more minor issues. A few things:

  • Lead:
    • "term that is similar to King", shouldn't this be "position" or "title"?
  • Etymology:
    • "He favoured the former.", awkward, please incorporate fluidly into the previous sentence or drop it.
  • History > Prehistory:
    • What does "island Southeast Asia" mean exactly?
  • Early history:
  • Oppose — There is a huge problem with the citations. There are not enough of them and large parts of the text are not sourced. Taking a quick look at the references. Refs 4 and 8 are footnotes. Reference 23 is weird, to support the statement, "Anthropologists support the notion that the Proto Malays originated from what is today Yunnan, China" a long, long list of badly formatted and often incomplete sources is given. Reference 16 no longer exists. References 20 and 21 give no publisher or date. I would like to know what makes Sabrizan.org (refs 26-28) a reliable source. Ref 41 requires a subscription. Ref 51 needs to give more details and ref 70 is badly formatted. In the sources only one ISBN number is actually given and there are only six of them in the references proper (most of these are pairs that refer to the same source). This is a very poorly prepared candidate and I suggest withdrawing to allow time to address these serious issues. Graham Colm Talk 09:34, 11 October 2009 (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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