Wikipedia:Featured article review/Assassination

Assassination

Article is no longer a featured article

What the...? It's a Featured article? When I stumbled on this I thought it wasn't a proper Wikipedia article at all, I was thinking VfD. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, Assassination is an essay. Bishonen | talk 09:39, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

• Remove. Reads like an essay. No references. Glad to have learnt though that "in nations like India killings by knife or sword remain quite popular, as they do in sub-Saharan Africa (for example, with the machete)". — mark ✎ 12:17, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)
• Mmm, I'm not seeing what's so bad about this article. No vote. Everyking 12:26, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)
• Remove. Too much essay, no references. - Taxman ^Talk 15:38, Jun 4, 2005 (UTC)
• Remove. No references, not comprehensive (I'd like to see a 'famous assasinations' section, for example). --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus ^Talk 20:31, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)
• Remove. Neutrality^talk 14:12, Jun 6, 2005 (UTC)
• Remove -- ALoan (Talk) 17:45, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)
• Remove, too much like an essay. Phoenix2 19:30, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)
• Question: Could someone give me a more detailed explanation of the problem here, please? --Theo (Talk) 13:21, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Hi, Theo. I was hoping my terse complaint "essay" would say it all, because if I explain at all, it's going to have to be at unattractive length. But I certainly don't blame you for requesting some unfolding. OK... stand back!

1.) Style. Assassination is personal and argumentative in tone, and full of opinions, interpretations, and claims that are unsubstantiated and inherently unsubstantiable. There's too much editorial voice, and too much buttonholing of the reader. I don't mean these remarks in a negative way, I think it a good text of its kind. But that kind is the essay. Consider these rhetorical flourishes:

However, this does open larger issues concerning interpretation, notably regarding attempted killings by those with other motives ? is it an assassination simply if the person is a major leader or public figure espousing a cause, or only if the assassin's reason for the attack is due to that person's status as a figurehead for a particular issue? (No rhetorical questions, please!) [Lennon's] killer does not seem to have been more than an unstable fan (although it may be of note that the word is derived from fanatic). ..it could be argued that describing his killing as an assassination is no more appropriate than, for example, using the term to describe the murders of singers Selena Quintanilla or Marvin Gaye. (This is a significant point: we're supposed to deal in what has been argued, not what could be argued.)

While it must be acknowledged that attempting to read a person's thoughts is both imperfect and somewhat antithetical to the nature of such an issue... (No, that really doesn't need to be acknowledged in this context.)

there seems to have not been a good deal of moral indignation at the practice amongst the political circles of the time, save, naturally, by the affected. (Too unsourced, too much chat ("save, naturally, by the affected"). "Many allege".. "Many accuse"... "Most major powers"..."Many modern analysts".. (such vague, unsourced phrasing abounds.)

2.) The style is good on the whole (except that there seems to have been some unhelpful fiddling with some sentences--copyediting wanted), but it's idiosyncratic. That is true of the structure also. The choice of what goes in needs to be as neutral as possible, or, to put it another way, it needs to be clear to the reader why a particular piece of information or analysis is included/excluded. If the answer is "because it fits in/doesn't fit in with the argument I'm making", then that's essay thinking, not encyclopedia thinking. What, for instance, is the death in battle of Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden doing here? It's not offered as an assassination, as indeed it wasn't, but as an example of how armies can be galvanized by the sudden death of their commander. I'm sorry, but that's too stream-of-consciouosness, and that whole section, "Assassination as military doctrine", seems to me much too speculative. It illustrates well what is my biggest beef with the article as a whole: that it discusses the morality and expediency of assassination, where it ought to be describing the existing discussion of it.

After I nominated the page here, Wally, who I assume is one of the major contributors (see Talk:Assassination), has made changes towards a more encyclopediac style. Compare for instance the June 4 versus the June12 paragraphs beginning respectively "One of the earliest forms of defense" and "It is important to note that, in the final analysis". These changes need IMO to be bolder, and to address structure as well as style, because the text is still an essay rather than an encyclopedic text.

3.) References. There are none. Whether or not the reference criterion is to be applied retroactoactively, it's a fact that a lot of the claims in the article cry out for sourcing. This paragraph is fairly typical:

Nowadays is known that "hashishinnya" was an offensive term used to depict this cult by its Muslim and Mongolian detractors; the extreme zeal of Nizarites and the very cold preparation to murder makes it very unlikely they ever used drugs, while there is evidence that one of the first Hassan's sons was sentenced to death by his father only for drinking a little wine. Moreover, despite many unlikely legends, they usually died along with their target (a tale tells of a mother being sad knowing her son survived a "mission"). As far as known they only used daggers (no other weapons, poison or whatever fictional records make them use) and it seems that they killed only five westeners during the time of the Crusades.

Unlikely, there is evidence, a tale tells, as far as known, it seems that....I would really like to be able to evaluate the sources that these things come from, in particular to know how old they are, and whether superseded by later accounts. Please note that Taxman posted a carefully argued request for references on the talk page on 24 april, and has had no response to it. Please also note that this is not one of those cases where you can simply redefine some of the External links as references; I have looked at those external links, there are only three, and they don't cover the sort of stuff in the paragraph above by a long shot. They're purely Further reading and purely US. Incidentally, one of them links to a timed-out session at the Yale Universiy Press, and needs to be replaced by a permanent URL (I suggest Amazon.com).

I apologize, you did say more detailed. Finally, in view of the popular uprising (ahem) on the talk page against the new nomination rules, I think the article should be left on this page for three, not two, weeks. Vote about the rules in the straw poll at the bottom of the Talk page if you have an opinion! Bishonen | talk 12:07, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Detailed is good. Now I understand, and agree. Hence: Remove. --Theo (Talk) 19:34, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)