Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Second Malaysia Plan

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Second Malaysia Plan[edit]

I just created this a few minutes ago; I've sacrificed my sleep to produce a really good article, despite my (self-admitted) lack of knowledge about this subject. I hope the writing is up to par, and that my reliance on a limited number of sources won't hurt. (I'll try to dig up more tomorrow, if I can.) Johnleemk | Talk 18:26, 15 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Object - message me when you've added some external links and added som <small> tags around the references and I'll gladly support. Keep up the excelent work! --Celestianpower háblame 19:04, 15 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    Okay, you persuaded me. Support --Celestianpower háblame 17:58, 16 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Object
    • Can probbaly use more cats (Why "government?" wouLdn't "economy" and "history" be much more appropriate?) and a "see also" sections. Also, could you reduce the repeated list of author to just "Henderson et al"?
    • "Malaysian Chinese" I think is misleading, besides, it redirects to "Chinese Malaysian", which is clearer.
    • In several instances, it mentionned that the plan "continues the first", you might want to explicitate a tiny bit more than just linkingto the other article, especially seeing as said article is a stub. I think Second Malaysia Plan might contain more information about the First Malayan Five Year Plan than First Malayan Five Year Plan itself!
    • While not a requirement, I'd like to see more of these agencies made blue links before the article is featured.
    • Article has virtually no backlink.
    • the 1974 Green Book program encouraged farmers to grow minor crops such as fruits and vegetables I'm sure it's possible to be more explicit/precise about the crops
    • The land development and resettlement policies [...] failed to make an impact on rural poverty. Always the question: why, oh why? Enquiring minds want to know! If it is supposed to be explained in the paragraph, then it fails at it. I found it quite confusing.
    • Needs to make sure refs don't slip on next lines by removing preceding spaces or making them non-braking.
  • That'll be it for now. Most of the article looks good, though, and it is well structured. Circeus 00:49, 16 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'll try to tackle some of these problems later on; I see somebody has already shrunk the references section appropriately. I'm not sure why external links are necessary; in the first place, there is already a rather large systemic bias in Malaysia that ignores the plan (Google only turns up about 300 hits for it), and considering how few Malaysian government departments have gotten anything substantial onto their websites, I'd be surprised if there are any links relevant to the article. I'll see what I can find, though (but it's just as likely I might end up citing those as sources, too). Means' book is my source for the death figures; I'll probably add it to the May 13 Incident article later today as well. I've been trying to scrape together material on the government agencies, but again, there's a dearth of published works available on these, especially in Malaysia (note how my main source for this article was an American book). I'm not sure where the article could be linked from, since in the first place, our Malaysian government/policy articles are rather lacking. (Malaysian New Economic Policy could link to it, I guess.) I'm not sure what's meant by implying this article has more on the First Malayan Five Year Plan than the article itself does; the plan is mentioned only once. Have you confused it with the First Malaysia Plan, a rather substantial article? Johnleemk | Talk 06:25, 16 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • Yes, it does seem that I confused these two Circeus 11:26, 16 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Okay, I think I've handled everything except the external links (which isn't an FA criteria, last time I checked) and the red links. Most online documents I've found mention the Second Malaysia Plan only in passing or as part of a greater topic (i.e. Agriculture in Malaysia), so linking them would be irrelevant and pretty pointless, IMO. I'm trying to work on the red links, and hopefully most of them should be blue in a few days. (I'm trying to get quality, not quantity for them, which makes it a bit hard to just create a stub for all of them -- see what I did with Majlis Amanah Rakyat.) Johnleemk | Talk 16:52, 16 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • There are actually quite a fewpoints you didn't cover,ornot quite adequately:
    • Needs citation in places, notably for the numbers of death in the May 13 Incident, as said article does not cite either. Stats on unemployment wold be nicve to be sourced too.
      • "although others have given much larger estimates" → This really needs a citation, I believe. Are there reports from NGO or the UN that can be cited?
    • The mining section is glossed over without explaining, for example, why the malay participation in the industry remained so reduced.
      • While the section has been expanded, the reasons (if any) why the plan failed in this area is still not explained.
    • by the end of the plan, the rise of oil palm estates, and the decline of the rubber industry had been assured. How is this relevant or a good thing? I certainly can't tell by just reading the article.
      • I'm still not sure, reading the article, whether the devellopments on this front were what was intended or considered successful.
    • I found the paragraph on rail transport to have very little in the way of actual information.
      • Still think the section is a bit lacking compared to the others, though I can't tell if it is to be expected as I know next to nothing about malaysian economy/history.
  • And an extra wild shot: Could there be more illustration (say one by big section)? Generic,but related pics should be available, I think. It is also a small pet peeves of mine, but I think it's overall pertinent that pictures should not be placed at the end of a section if they are meant to illustrate the next one. Circeus 17:33, 16 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Object: If you cite the same source multiple times, use ibid and op cit rather than repeating the author information several times. Also, I really think that the references should be the same size as the rest of the body text. Miss Madeline | Talk to Madeline 18:59, 16 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • While one might dislike a given ref style, it is not a valid FAC objection (what criterion can it fall under?) Also, plenty of FA and FAC (actually, almost all of them, I think) do not use the ibid or op cit abbreviations. Circeus 19:03, 16 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
      • The reason I suggested that ibid and op cit be used is so that Henderson et al would not appear 29 times over a in mostly consecutive chunks. Having it the way it is is not brilliant or compelling. Miss Madeline | Talk to Madeline 01:26, 17 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
        • I support the usage of ibid. It would be better if Wikipedia starts adhere to acception referencing style. Ibid is cleaner too. __earth (Talk) 09:58, 25 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • The problem with this is that it depends on the document being stable (i.e. new sources being added or old ones being removed infrequently, if at all). On a wiki, the document in question is rarely ever stable. For instance, even though Article 153 of the Constitution of Malaysia became featured less than three months ago, it's already changed quite a bit -- especially in terms of citations. Using ibid would only complicate the process of editing. And op cit still requires the author's name, so I don't see how it changes anything; if anything, my method is more brief, since it just omits the op cit and cites the page number right after the name. Johnleemk | Talk 10:35, 17 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • As I said, my source for the casualty estimates is Means. Although he (and most proponents of the "more than 200 deaths" theory I've found) admit there's no concrete evidence to back up their claims, many eyewitnesses refuse to believe only 200 died, based on their experiences. The commenters at this local news website didn't bat an eyelid estimating the number dead at "10,000". In this post to a mailing list, journalist MGG Pillai (who personally knew many politicians of the time, including then Prime Minister Tunku Abdul Rahman) offhandedly estimated the total dead at "less than 1,000", while another commenter put it at "thousands of people". I've never heard of any NGO or UN reports on the riots; Means attributes the claims to "journalists". I'd cite the stuff I linked to, but the problem is I doubt they're credible enough for WP:V, and don't really deal with the subject in depth. For illustrations, I've tried to find relevant pictures, but it's very hard. I'll see if I can take any of my own, but there's only one source in the whole of Malaysia for free images (LensaMalaysia.com), and parts of it are still down after it was hacked earlier this month. I'll try to work on the rest, but it's going to be difficult -- Malaysia is not known for publishing credible academic reports (nearly all my sources for this article have been foreign in origin, and practically all the academic reports on May 13 that I turned up were written by foreign academics). Johnleemk | Talk 10:35, 17 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • Re May 13, for something more immediately verifiable, the World Bank says "Unofficial estimates suggested that many more Chinese had died." Johnleemk | Talk 11:00, 17 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • Okay, done -- I've expanded the mining, agriculture and transport sections as best as I can. No further luck with credible research on May 13 casualties, however. Johnleemk | Talk 14:58, 17 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Article seems to adress everything. Would still like to see more pics, but can see promotion as is nonetheless. Circeus 16:07, 17 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Object - there are still quite a few places missing refs. For example: It boldly set out to "restructure society" and.... Why is "restructure society" in quotes? Is it taken from somewhere (which would require a ref) or is it original writing? (It reads like it's taken from somewhere, but that's only my guess.) Also: M$7.25 billion in total was allocated for the Second Malaysia Plan. Source? in the words of one commentator, "a virtual monopoly of private industrial and commercial employment" Which commentator? When, where, why, who? This contrasted with the 15% growth achieved in 1974, which well exceeded the target of 12.5% growth per year during the Second Malaysia Plan. Again, needs ref. In other words, I'd like to see more refs, especially to those quoted materials. Thanks! Flcelloguy (A note?) 22:56, 17 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • I've cited my source for "restructure society", and all the others have already been cited. I generally place my footnotes at the end of a paragraph, unless there's a specific fact that is corroborated by a different specific source. There's no point in citing the same book over and over in consecutive sentences when you can just merge all of them into one "Foo, pp. 76–80." at the end of the paragraph. I can't find any information about the commentator in question (J.P. Arlès), so if you really don't like the article with it, I'll just chop it out entirely. Johnleemk | Talk 08:20, 18 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
      • Thanks for the reply! Do you remember where you got that commentator's quote? If so, couldn't you add it in? It's not that critical, but would be nice to provide attribution. Thanks! Flcelloguy (A note?) 04:16, 19 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
        • The same source where I got 2/3rds of the article content from — Henderson, et al. ;-) Johnleemk | Talk 06:49, 19 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
          • Thanks for the reply! I'll withdraw my objection and re-read the article. Thanks! Flcelloguy (A note?) 20:54, 25 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. —Eternal Equinox | talk 03:21, 18 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. __earth (Talk) 09:59, 25 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]