Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Sher Shah Suri/archive3

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 archived by FrB.TG via FACBot (talk) 25 July 2024 [1].

Sher Shah Suri

Nominator(s): Noorullah (talk) 00:25, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This article is about an Afghan Emperor of India, his reign is known for a myriad of administrative and economic reforms, alongside a highly military career. His reforms laid the ground-work for the Mughal Empire under Akbar after him. First nomination errors have been fixed with prose significantly improved. Nomination 2 was me accidently nominating it before waiting for a 2 week deadline, so ignore that. Noorullah (talk) 00:25, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Image review

Avoid sandwiching text between images

Why is there a Gallery section with one image?

Don't use fixed px size

Suggest adding alt text

File:Painting_of_Sher_Shah_Suri_(colored)_from_a_manuscript_of_Tarikh-i-Khandan-i-Timuriya,_prepared_by_the_court_painters_of_Mughal_emperor_Akbar,_circa_16th_century.jpg needs a US tag

File:Sher_Shah_Suri_by_Breshna.jpg: source link is dead; when and where was this first published?

File:North_view_of_the_fort_of_Chunargarh_on_the_Ganges_from_across_the_river..jpg: source link is dead; needs a US tag

File:Mughal_Emperor_Humayun.jpg needs a US tag

File:Portrait_of_Sher_Shah_Sur._Water_colour_painting.png: when and where was this first published? Ditto File:Portrait_of_Sher_Shah_Suri_with_a_Lion.png

File:H0900-L185162829.jpg is missing author, and when and where was this first published?

File:Sher_shah's_rupee.jpg needs a tag for the coin. Nikkimaria (talk) 04:03, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Nikkimaria I believe I have addressed all above issues (except alt text), let me know if there is something else to fix with them, or if I did anything incorrect. Noorullah (talk) 05:53, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Still missing alt text, and several images are still missing info on first publication. Nikkimaria (talk) 04:32, 24 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

UC

The sourcing here concerns me. Some illustrative but not exhaustive examples:

~~Four cites are to a website called Banglapedia: it appears to be down at the moment, but what makes it a reliable source?~~ Answered below, although I don't think it really changes the overall picture. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 11:03, 24 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Some of the sources do not look particularly scholarly:

Chaurasia 2002 doesn't really pass the "sniff test" -- lots of typos, grammatical errors and odd prose throughout -- but also comes from an Indian publisher called Atlantic Books, who look pretty close to a vanity publisher to me.
Bhattacherje 2009 is a big, popular book of dates and events -- not really a scholarly or specialist work of any kind. There are quite a few other books that are similarly broad-brush in scope: Welsh 2013, Puri and Das 2003, Wright (and Wright?) 2015.
We have quite heavy use of a source from 1925, one each to works from 1905 and 1903, and three citations to one from 1580. That's quite a lot of weight on very old sources.

Mehta ND (should be 1984) is a textbook (tertiary source), which we wouldn't normally consider a first-choice option.
Dias 1996 is a textbook -- for students of hospitality.

Oppose for now on quality of sources -- the article needs to be based on high-quality academic works which have undergone rigorous editorial and peer-review processes. At the very least, there is far too much "dross" here: sources which are not up to the bar as high-quality, up-to-date, scholarly works by experts in the article's subject. It may be that the article has enough to run on once they are removed, but we would be talking about a new draft by that point. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 13:44, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

A lot of these sources are very secondary in use mainly backing up other sources that are present in the article, a majority of the sources you've listed above can be removed completely without issue. Banglapedia is made by a historian and is on google scholars. [2] -- Zulfiqar Ali Khan (the 1925 source) is also cited on google scholars, and his source is often cited with a plethora more rather then being the only "primary" source.

Welsh is used to cite something in popular culture, not a significant part of the article. The Wrights are also on google scholars [3], I've limited the use of the 1580 source further.

The rest of the sources you mentioned that are fairly unreliable have been removed (with really no changes to the text). May you identify other sources that could have issues, or let me know if there's still something questionable about the above sources I've tried to clear? Thanks. Noorullah (talk) 17:06, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@UndercoverClassicist (ping) Noorullah (talk) 17:06, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I don't want this to turn into a WP:FIXLOOP, but:

Being on Google Scholar is a much lower bar than we need -- we need WP:HQRS, to be able to demonstrate that the source is reliable, reviewed by experts in the field, and generally represents the best of contemporary scholarship on its subject.
There are still some clearly non-scholarly and non-specialist sources in the bibliography -- Dhir 2022, for instance.
Note 97 is a YouTube video, which would normally be highly suspect (as WP:SELFPUB).

If the article citing unreliable sources in addition to reliable ones, that's a false economy -- better just to cut out the weaker sources and leave the best citations. If you've got information that's only found in second-rate or very antiquated sources, it's worth asking the question as to what it's doing in the article: in general, if high-quality modern sources don't think it worth mentioning, we don't either. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 18:12, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The sources (referring to Ali Khan here) are widely cited by other secondary sources on the topic of Sher Shah Suri. I think it's authenticity/general reliability is relatively undoubted.

I've done a last review of extensively checking out sources in this edit [4] and removing sources that would be considered non-WP:HISTRS.

The youtube video is a reference to popular culture section, which I've removed. -- Nonetheless, I've tried to cut out what I saw as the weaker sources.

I understand if you don't want this to become FIXLOOP, so you can ultimately stop responding and keep your decision an oppose if you wish (and the other nominators may weigh in what they think after on what could be improved). Noorullah (talk) 19:41, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@UndercoverClassicist: With regard to one issue you raised, en.banglapedia.org is the Asiatic Society of Bangladesh's web version of their ten volume print encyclopedia, Banglapedia. The site has been inaccessible for five days because the government of Bangladesh has shut down the internet in the country as part of an attempt to suppress wide spread anti-government protests.

After trying other content management systems over the years, the society settled on MediaWiki. Unlike Wikipedia and many other wikis, however, it is not open and their content is not user-generated. Banglapedia follows the old-fashioned encyclopedia model of the chief editor (Sirajul Islam) inviting a subject matter expert to write each article. Authors of important topics are often preeminent in their fields and have written multiple books on the subject. The author of one article cited here, for example, is ABM Shamsuddin Ahmed, a professor of history who, among other things, was on the country's National Curriculum and Textbook Board. Another author is Abdul Karim (historian), who was vice-chancellor of the University of Chittagong.

What makes Banglapedia a reliable source are the authors, editorial process, and academic publisher. As an encyclopedia, though, it is a tertiary source and so should be used to a lesser extent than secondary sources. --Worldbruce (talk) 01:36, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Worldbruce: Thank you: that's all extremely useful. Given that information, I'd concur with your judgement as to the use of the site. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 08:00, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Airship

Citation numbers refer to this version:

The "Rise to power (1497–1528)" subsection. "embarked on implementing numerous reforms. His early administrative career focused on combating corruption ... along with defining and establishing commissions for tax collectors...who had initially forced him to flee...resigning from his post in 1518, after serving as manager for 21 years. All of the above are not on Mehta p. 164.
Citation 2b: "following his conquest of the Mughal Empire in 1540" is not supported by the source
Citation 2d: NONE of "During this time, Behar Khan Lohani established an independent state in Bihar and assumed the title of Sultan Muhammad. With his jagirs secured, Farid Khan accompanied Behar Khan to Agra and arrived in April 1527, where he met Mughal emperor Babur. During this time, Farid Khan was conferred the title of Sher Khan after killing a tiger that lept upon the ruler of Bihar." is supported by Kolff p. 33
Citation 39: "Humayun remained in Gauda for months, restoring order to the city despite being stuck there due to the weather. Meanwhile, Sher Khan advanced into Humayun's territory, seizing Bihar" is not supported by Mehta p. 168

These were the first four citations I checked and they all have problems. The prose is also substandard—see the first paragraph of "Rise to power (1497–1528)". Ignoring that quite a lot isn't supported by the source, the prose is highly repetitive and rather clunky. I think that to achieve FA status, at least 500 words, maybe more, needs to be cut.

Oppose, clearly significant work needs to be done. Additionally, I agree with UC on the old sourcing: a 99-year-old source which is basically a hagiography is cited over twenty times. This article will not pass FAC without a sourcing overhaul. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 22:16, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for sharing this — I’ll definitely go over these and try to fix further issues when I have the time. Noorullah (talk) 23:38, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Coordinator note - the issues pointed out above are rather grave, and FAC is not the place to handle them. Noorullah, I don't think you have had an FA before so I would recommend that after you do a major sourcing overhaul, you take the article for a peer review. You might also want to consider seeking a mentor. I'm archiving this, and the usual two-week wait before another nomination will apply. FrB.TG (talk) 17:19, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Closing note: This candidate has been archived, but there may be a delay in bot processing of the close. Please see WP:FAC/ar, and leave the {{featured article candidates}} template in place on the talk page until the bot goes through. FrB.TG (talk) 17:19, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.