Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Ziaur Rahman

Ziaur Rahman

I submit this article to your attention. It has been developed with diverse and thorough references and undergoing copyediting. One potential issue is that all pictures are fairuse, but rationales have been provided for all of them - no free substitutes were available to illustrate Zia's life. If there are problems persisting in this article, please lemme know so we can fix them pronto. Rama's arrow 12:58, 19 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

~~Comment~~Support. The article is well-written, well-citated and well-structured. But I have some concerns:

Inline citations problems:

"However, these measures isolated and embittered many ethnic and religious minorities in Bangladesh, laying in the opinion of many historians the foundations of future communal and ethnic conflicts." Which historians? Citation(s) needed.
"Zia is intensely criticised by many historians and the supporters of the Awami League for rehabilitating the assassins of Mujibur Rahman." Again! Who, when and where? Telling all the time "many historians" is not a nice thing; these are weasel words.
"Jurists regard this as a gross obstruction of justice and legitimisation of political murder, to which Zia himself fell victim." What is your source? Haque, Azizul? Citate!

I don't think the way references are exposed is the right one. You mention articles (I found them in JSTOR), but not with their own title and not in the right way-you don't mention year of publication, name of the Journal, number of issue (if available) and the full title of the article. These are online sources, but they are also printed articles. The same with the books you mention (year, publisher, full-name, ISBN (if there is one)). And also, since these are printed articles and books, you nust also mention specific pages. This is a rule for FAs.--Yannismarou 15:04, 19 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm... I had copied the citation format from some other articles, which asked only for certain info. I will fix these issues immediately. Thanks, Rama's arrow 15:17, 19 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've addressed your points. Rama's arrow 21:04, 19 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Conditional Support. It just needs a few things. I added a few {{cn}} tags that need citations, and those will need to be explicitly sourced. For reference formatting, you may want to look through Wikipedia:Citation templates. The images are fine, and the captions are so-so, but should be expanded to complete sentences, and should be more informative (Try "As president, Zia moved Bangladesh further from secularism.", for instance, instead of "Zia as president".) Other comments: the prose is adequate for a fa, and the intro para is just what an intro para should be. You might want to put a quote box around his speech/declaration, although only if you think it looks better that way. Great job! – Quadell ^{(talk) (random)} 17:02, 19 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've addressed your points. Rama's arrow 21:04, 19 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm glad you're working on it, and it's definitely improving, but. . . Your reference #3 does reference the fact that he married Khaleda Zia when she was 15, but it isn't a source for the unsupported statement "as customary at the time, marriages were arranged by parents for their children at a very early age". This could be seen as defending Rahman's marriage to a 15-year-old girl, so it needs some support. If you can't find a source to back up the statement that such marriages were common, then that clause ought to go. Similarly, your reference #20 doesn't support the statement "Zia suppressed numerous coup attempts, and some historians claim that thousands of military officers were arrested or executed in numerous purges staged between 1977 and 1981". Which historians? I haven't seen a reference that Zia supressed any coup attempts. Keep up the good work! – Quadell ^{(talk) (random)} 14:46, 20 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think the marriage age needs any explanation at all. This is not an exception of social practices in South Asia until the 1980s ... I think it might be easier to just remove the clause. --Ragib 14:53, 20 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've addressed Quadell's fresh points. Yes I was only trying to explain child marriage, but I understand your concern and I've taken it out. For #20, I've modified the statement as per the citation. Zia "did" suppress the coup attempt mentioned during the Japanese Red Army hijacking controversy - the reference is the US Country Studies article. Rama's arrow 14:57, 20 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Support - well written article. I think its fit to be an FA, pending resolution of a few facts as cited by Yannis above. But I'm sure Rama's arrow can fix that pretty soon. --Ragib 19:21, 20 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Comments- very well written. some comments before i support.

Assasination - two spellings for Major Monjur/Manzur appears.

Islam and nationalism - absolute trust and faith in Almighty Allah was added: would it be a better descrition to say that phrase replaced secularism?
That section also should have a succint statement saying that Zia espused "Bangladeshi" nationalism instead of the "Bengali" nationalism preached by Al (perhaps best expressed in their respective solgans "Bangladesh Zindabad" and "Joy Bangla").
though a contentious issue in Bangladesh, it should probably be mentioned that his family was under house arrest during the liberation war.

--ppm 20:17, 20 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Your points have been addressed. Rama's arrow 20:33, 20 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Support as per above. One minor point - the word BNP is introduced without explanation of what this refers to--ppm 22:51, 20 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've fixed this. --Ragib 00:02, 21 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Comments, quotes should not be in italics as per the MoS. The fair use rationales are uncompelling, see fair use rationales for instructions. Langauge is overly emotive throughout.--Peta 01:56, 22 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've addressed your first two points, but can you please provide a few examples for your third point? Rama's arrow 03:07, 22 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Support. Very informative article on an important subject. There are a few minor questions that I've left inline. Please fix the article accordingly and remove them. -- Sundar ^{\talk \contribs} 13:00, 22 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Support. Excellent article written in a very balanced style with a very important NPOV stance given that Zia is a controversial and POV issue in the history of Bangladesh. The article addresses facts, assertions, allegations, criticisms and view points. definitely worthy of an FARueben lys 15:29, 22 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]