Wikipedia:Featured article review/Behistun Inscription

Behistun Inscription[edit]

Article is no longer a featured article

Not a bad article, but I don't think it lives up to today's FA standards. The most serious problem is that it is not comprehensive. Reading through it left me with a barrage of unanswered questions.

The article says that Ctesias and Tacitus mention the inscription. That sounds very interesting to me and I'd like to know much more. What exactly do they say about it?
The history of scholarship on the inscription seems to end with Rawlinson in the 19th Century. What's happened more recently? Surely there has been a lot of research?
The inscription is a long text but the article tells us almost nothing about what it says. A decent summary would be appropriate.
I realize that some of this should to some extent be treated in other articles but it would be interesting to know how reliable an account the inscription is believed to represent. What other sources corraborate or refute the information in it?
I feel that more context is needed in understanding the importance of this inscription within Old Persian literature. Are there any other Persian inscriptions from the same period?
I would like to know much more about the actual decoding of the text. What were the major hurdles? What were the major breakthroughs? Were there false starts? Was comparison with other languages important? And how does this text fit into the framework of Indo-European comparative linguistics?
The article is just far too short for such an amazing topic. It prints on less than three pages. By comparison Hrafnkels saga, an article on another ancient text but one probably much less important, prints on seven pages (and I feel it could use two or three more as I outline on that talk page).
From what I can understand of the article the inscription is a spectacular thing to behold. Black-and-white scans from 19th century books can't possibly do it justice. A free photograph may be hard to find but this is a featured article so I feel we can make high demands.
The style of the writing is a bit flippant with parenthetical remarks like "oddly enough". This is no big deal, though, just my personal taste.
The references section seems completely inadequate. Surely there is a lot of literature on this. What are the standard works? Where should I go for authoritative information on the subject?
Again, this is a good article. I hope I haven't hurt any feelings by outlining what I think it lacks. I hope that the article is improved because this topic certainly deserves a featured article. - Haukur Þorgeirsson 20:22, 7 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Remove. Definitely not up to current standards. Everyking 20:29, 7 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Remove. This wouldn't be accepted as a featured article candidate today, there is a lot of room for improvement. — Wackymacs 21:31, 7 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Keep - as recent events have shown, I am probably completely out of step with community consensus on the requirements for a featured article (one of the reasons I have not nominated one for ages, perhaps) but I like this article. It says just enough and not too much, although I have added a few bits more. Haukur Þorgeirsson gives some excellent suggestions for areas where the article could be improved even further, but I think it is good enough. The main black spot for me was the lack of references. One of the external links was good enough to be a reference - [1] - and I also found this which repeats two other original references verbatim. Happy? -- ALoan (Talk) 21:39, 7 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not happy :P, I just don't think this would be accepted today by the voters at FAC, I would Object to it for one. — Wackymacs 21:43, 7 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, well, if the test of a featured article is whether it would pass FAC today, then about 90% of them should be demoted. -- ALoan (Talk) 22:20, 7 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. You've made a very good start towards fixing the problems I perceive with the article. Now I think the biggest gap to plug is to talk more about the contents of the text itself, summarize it a bit, maybe quote a part or two to give the reader a feel for it. If we could have some of that and a better picture I would be willing to give this a pass. I personally feel that rising standards are a good thing and that we should strive for true excellence in our featured articles. I would work on this myself except that I know almost nothing about it. I do Old Norse, not Old Persian :) - Haukur Þorgeirsson 21:55, 7 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Well, thanks for your thanks - don't do Old Persian or Old Norse, but I can read and summarise. In response to your specific points:

I have added a little about Ctesias and Tacitus from the references, but someone more knowledgeable than I will have to look at the original texts.

Definitely better than nothing, good job. According to the talk page the status of the Tacitus information is in doubt. Maybe that should be addressed in the article. - Haukur

I have added a little about scholarship since Rawlinson.

Again, thank you. Though more would be nice, especially something from a recent linguistic work. - Haukur

There links to the full text. As the article says, "[Darius] arranged for the inscription of a long tale of his accession in the face of the usurper Smerdis of Persia (and Darius' subsequent successful wars and suppressions of rebellion) to be inscribed into a cliff near the modern town of Bisistun". That is it really - "I am the king, these people tried to rebel, I won."

LOL! :) But still a sample would be nice, the article should stand on its own and not have to rely on external links. - Haukur

Actually, it is rather the other way around: the text is quite close to, and was seen as confirming, passages by Herodotus (and as the article says, the parallel between the text and Herodotus made the first translation easier). But clearly it is Darius propaganda. I have no idea how you would test whether sources from two and half millennia ago are accurate - we are lucky enough to have them at all!
The external links refer to many other inscriptions in Persian cities, palaces, etc, and there are heaps of cuneiform tablets, inscribed pottery, etc., etc. The difficulty is working out what they mean, and this text was the key.

Okay, that's important context which should be briefly mentioned. - Haukur

Sorry - I will have to pass on comparative linguistics. As the article says, Rawlinson was helped in that other scholars had already deciphered around a third of the cuneiform symbols.
Rather succinct than flabby. Are you saying that Hrafnkels saga is not comprehensive too? Are you going to nominate that here too?

Neah, it's decent enough. Though I do think it's a problem that it says nothing about English translations of the work. I hope to remedy that eventually. - Haukur

Please, anyone, be my guest and take a photo when next you are in Iran!

I appreciate that this is not a trivially solved problem but still. "I'm not going to Iran anytime soon so we'll have to settle for a b/w scan from a 19th century book" is exactly the kind of thinking I think we should try to avoid with our featured articles. - Haukur

If the style irritates you, please copyedit.
I have created a proper References section, and used the sources therein to check and augment the contents of the article.

Phew. -- ALoan (Talk) 22:20, 7 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

You've done lots of good work. That's exactly what I was hoping would happen when I nominated the article here. - Haukur Þorgeirsson 22:59, 7 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. Lets leave this here for a while and see if any further improvements are made, but would you reconsider your removal nomination if it stayed exactly the same? -- ALoan (Talk) 09:27, 8 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I just read it all again to get a fresh perspective. It's definitely improved though some of the same things are still bothering me. I think I've found a better way to sum that up. The Behistun Inscription can be treated from at least three perspective - a historical perspective, a linguistic perspective and an archaeological perspective. It seems to me that the article is overly fixated on the archaeological facts. I'll admit my bias up front - I'm a linguist and I'd like to see more about the linguistics here. But you can also look at the Rosetta Stone article for comparison. It's actually a worse article but it has a better balance between history, linguistics and archaeology. I'd be willing to give the crummy image a pass if the text was comprehensive but I still don't feel it is.

Any discussion about removing the featured status of an article is based on what we perceive the FAs as being so I think I'll explain my point of view briefly. By selecting this relative handful of articles for promotion I feel like we're saying: "Okay, we know that a lot of Wikipedia is not that good but we're willing to swear by these articles." There's talk now and then about printing the FAs and when I feel that it would be a bit embarrassing to see a particular FA in print then I think it should be brought up here for consideration.

I'll try to help and edit the article a bit but my knowledge is very limited and I'd rather do less than do something that might be incorrect. - Haukur Þorgeirsson 21:24, 8 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I see that a picture was just added. It's not spectacular - one would like much higher resolution and perhaps something to establish the scale - but it's still quite an improvement. If we expand the prose a bit this might pass muster. I still haven't got around to doing anything myself. - Haukur Þorgeirsson 18:08, 10 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Remove as per nominator; in addition, it needs a copyedit. Tony 01:55, 11 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Despite the valiant efforts above, it still does not meet the criteria. Remove --Jeffrey O. Gustafson - Shazaam! - <*> 08:28, 21 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]