Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/West Bengal

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[edit] West Bengal

Previous nomination

A state on eastern India. Capital Kolkata (previously Calcutta). Major works have been done on the article in last 2–3 months. Passed through a peer review and further edits by several wikipedians.

The article failed the previous nomination largely due to the factual inaccuracy in the map. That problem has now been solved. Other concerns raised in the first nomination have also been addressed. Please help this article to become featured. Thanks. Regards.--Dwaipayan (talk) 17:04, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Support: The article definetely meets the criteria. What more can I say? - Tutmosis 17:35, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

• Comment. Support. I see no pages in the printed sources which are citated. This should be fixed.--Yannismarou 18:49, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Reply A major source has been "West Bengal Human Development Report 2004" published by Development and Planning Department, Government of West Bengal. This is a printed source, also available online. 6 more books/anthology have been used and cited. I shall try to cite more. Regards.--Dwaipayan (talk) 18:57, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

No, I'm ok with the number of the printed sources. I just want in these printed sources you already have to mention a specific page for each one. When you citate a book, it is not enough to mention it, you must also specify to which page of this book you refer. Is that clear now?--Yannismarou 19:05, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Ok. Thanks for clarifying. I am trying to fix that ASAP. Thanks a lot.--Dwaipayan (talk) 19:08, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Reply Page numbers/ranges, as applicable, have now been included, except in the case of one particular book [Mukherji, S.J. (1984). College Botany Vol. III: (chapter on Phytogeography).]. Another user used this book for citation. I have requested the user to provide us with page numbers. Please see if I've overlooked something else. Regards.--Dwaipayan (talk) 20:43, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

I was the user that used this book for the citations while updating the Flora and Fauna section. The book was borrowed and I should have noted down the pages while writing it. Fortunately, I can get a hold of it again within a day or two and update the reference immediately after. I apologize for the lapse while entering the reference the first time. Thanks for pointing out this important issue. --Antorjal 18:37, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

I have updated the reference with page numbers. I have also verified the information with the newest available edition of this textbook (2000) and changed the reference to reflect this. Thanks, all. --Antorjal 17:41, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Support as I did in the last nomination. Very good article, nice work. — Wackymacs 19:06, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

• Support excellent work. Rama's arrow 19:56, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

• Comment the pictures have alignment issues - many are clustered, especially due to the size of the Durga pic. Could you please left-align some of them and sort this out? I don't see why the Durga pic isn't enough for the "Demographics," and the same for the RBT in "Flora and fauna." Rama's arrow 21:24, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

ReplyThe Durga image has now been replaced with another Durga image. See if it fits in the resolution you are using. Hmm, the number of images is borderline, I mean may be considered to be excessive. IMO, RBT image is better to retain, rather the forest image can be deleted. However, in culture, trying to retain both images. Feel free to left-allign images, as I am a bit confused while left-alligning. It seems to block the reading speed sometimes! In fact, some editors like Nichalp (talk • contribs) makes it a point that images are right alligned, unless absolutely necessary to left allign them. Your help will be much appreciated. Regards.--Dwaipayan (talk) 05:14, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

I didn't ask for the Durga and RBT to be replaced, just re-ordered. I hate cluttering, with sections thrown out of line - it just ruins the aesthetic value and cohesion. But I'll leave it to your discretion. Rama's arrow 16:54, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

• Support Well written  Doctor Bruno  22:07, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
• Support Well written article. -- P.K.Niyogi 23:34, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
• Support It's a pleasure to encounter a geography article with such a clean table of contents—a reflection of a well-organized article! Sandy (Talk) 02:33, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

• Support : Excellent article, and has improved a lot since the last nomination. --Ragib 02:41, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

• Support : A well written article and has improved from last FAC. There is not any points not to be selected as FA.

Sorry I forgot to sign the last support. Amartyabag 11:47, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

• Object per lacking of unreferenced facts:
  • The whole Culture section is unsourced.... but there are still unsupported qualitative facts. I've put some tags in it.
  • The Media section is a bit akward and sounds ads. There is no source for facts with qualitative words: "popular newspapers", "smaller audiences", "widely popular", "major cellular phone operators", "available throughout West Bengal".
  • Also in the Sport section, there are a lot of "popular" words without any source to support them.
  • A strange citation #47. At the end it says: "Unlisted in this list is West Bengal University of Health Sciences". Why this word is asserted in the citation?

— Indon (reply) — 16:28, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Reply Some citations have been incorporated in "Culture". More will be done soon. Most of the qualitative words have been changed/ given citation. However, it is not unusual to assert one or more sentence in a citation. There are many examples of this practice, even in FAs. In this particualr case, as the cited source does not include a new university, that new university has been seperately mentioned (that university has its own article in Wikipedia, with reference). Thanks.--Dwaipayan (talk) 19:22, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

It is very strange and it is an unusual practice of citing source. Why? Why should it be asserted? If it is not in the reference, then why should the editors deliberately write at the end of the citation to give a message "hey, there is one missing fact in this citation!"? Is the source not reliable? Then why did you use it if it is unreliable? — Indon (reply) — 00:57, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Reply Ok. The reference has been changed. Now the number of universities are supported by two citations. One citation is linked to the official site of West Bengal University of Health Sciences, while the other citation lists universities. Please see. --Dwaipayan (talk) 04:10, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Solved. but I have additional comments, see below. — Indon (reply) — 16:32, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

• Additional comments:
  • In the lead section, there is a sentence: "Known for its cultural heritage, West Bengal has been home to legendary poets, writers, artists and performers.", but I can't find this claimed "legendary" fact in the body.
  • I found inexact time information, as this article should be accurate whenever it is read, either now or 20 years later. Here are the words: "recent years" (found 2 in Media section), "at present" (found 2 in the Governments and politics section)
  • In the Demographics section:
    • This sentence: "At 904/km²,...". What does this number mean per squared kilometers? A number of people? a number of houses?
    • This sentence: "The sex ratio is 934 females per 1000 males while the literacy rate is 69.22%." is odd. Is there a contradictory relation between literacy rate with the sex ratio?
  • In this long list of universities: "The state has many higher education institutes of national importance including the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, the first of its kind in India, the National Institute of Technology, Durgapur, the Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics, the Asiatic Society, the Indian Statistical Institute and the Marine Engineering and Research Institute.", what does "the first of its kind point" to?
  • In the Sport section, I don't get it. Which one is the most popular? Football or cricket?
  • Please supply the source for the [citation is needed] tags that I've put there.

— Indon (reply) — 16:32, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Reply to Additional Comments Thanks for the excellent review. Following measures have been taken:

• "legendery" has been replaced with "notable". Names of poets, writers are there in the culture section.
• Inexact time information words has been removed/changed appropriately. Please see if some has been missed.
• 904 people. clarified.
• sex ration and literacy. copyedited.
• "the first of its kind" refers to Indian Institute of Management. Clarified.
• Football is most popular. Cricket is also popular. Tried to clarify. Is it ok now?
• citation needed tags - managed. Please see. Thanks a lot. Regards.--Dwaipayan (talk) 17:59, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

• Possible copyvio image

I was just going to add this comment from the last additional comments above, but had to run for other thing. The image Image:Victoria_memorial_water.jpg used in this article has a possibility of copyvio. The link to its source in Flickr said that the image is released under "(c) All rights reserved", meaning that the photographer did not irrevocably released all rights as it is said in the license tag. The author's permission (written in the image summary) links to a talk page here, but it is unsigned; thus it cannot be verified whether the message came from the copyright holder. The link in that talk page is also a broken link. Please remove this image first from the article, before the article can gain FA status. Meanwhile, I'm going to tag the image with copyvio message to admin. — Indon (reply) — 20:47, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Reply to Possible copyvio image Thanks again for pointing out the error. The image has been replaced. However, we'll communicate with the owner of the victoria memorial image to give consent in the proper way so that the image can be used in future. Regards.--Dwaipayan (talk) 18:02, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Solved. — Indon (reply) — 11:12, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

• Support very strong article. well references and informative--ppm 19:28, 27 October 2006 (UTC)
• Support - I fixed the beguni redlink by creating the article. I dont think there are any more redlinks there.Bakaman _Bakatalk 02:00, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
• Support - Lots of imporvement since last FAC.--thunderboltz^(Deepu) 12:21, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
• Comments: The last three sections, i.e. Education, Media and Sports, seem to be a big mess of wiki links. Could these links be shortened to look good the page. e.g. instead of Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, IIM Calcutta, etc. Shyam ^(T/C) 20:45, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Reply Of course the article would look good if acronyms are used for the institutions. However, there may be a problem. The international audience may not understand the names at one go. If we use the full names, the names are relatively easily understandable. As for overwikilinking in other sections, we'll de-wikilink some words. However, it won't be possible to dewikilink proper nouns, unless already wikilinked upstream in the article. Regards.--Dwaipayan (talk) 05:29, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

I am not unable to understand the problem associated with shortening the name. The link I have provided earlier is not a redirected link. If any reader wants to know the full form of the name, (s)he can know by keeping cursor on the link itself. There is nothing necessary to click the link to know about. Shyam ^(T/C) 09:34, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Please read Acronyms and abbreviations in Wikipedia:Manual of Style. It states "Do not assume that your reader is familiar with the acronym or abbreviation you are using. The standard writing style is to spell out the acronym or abbreviation on the first reference (wikilinked if appropriate) and then show the acronym or abbreviation after it, in parentheses. This tells readers they will probably find it later in the text and makes it easy for them to refer back to it." This article follows the MoS. That's why full names have been used. Regards.--Dwaipayan (talk) 10:59, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Its clearer to me now, I support the article to be featured. Shyam ^(T/C) 12:30, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

• Other comments: Now, it's a nicely organized article, but after I read again and again, I realized that this article still looks like a page in a Lonely Planet book. The whole article explains about situations in West Bengal when you're going to live or to visit or to study (with list of universities) there. There's something missing from this article to become a comprehensive encyclopaedic item, as stated in criterion 1.(b) of WP:WIAFA. Here are some missing major facts from the article:
  • Environmental problem. There is an ongoing major environmental health disaster in Bangladesh and West Bengal, where ground water has been contaminated with arsenic. It has been reported in many places, but nowhere it is found in the article.
  • Industrialization problem. In a rapid growth of economy with high dense of population, industrialization becomes a major problem in West Bengal. This includes the land acquisition problem to convert agricultural fields into factories, which is missing in the article.

  — Indon (reply) — 11:14, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Reply Thanks a lot, again, for drawing attention to this aspect. We shall try to incorporate these things. However, this land acquisition thing is relatively new and needs some time to get stabilised. Still, will try to incorporate. Regards.--Dwaipayan (talk) 11:19, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Further reply The points raised and a few additional points have been incorporated in the text. Citations have been provided/ texts modified where "citation needed" tags were placed. Please see and comment. Regards.--Dwaipayan (talk) 16:06, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Reading at the assertion, I'm a bit disappointed for the ground water contamination issue in this article. I am okay with the one-sentence of land acquisition problem, because it is a new issue. However, the arsenic contamination is huge problem in the Ganges river, and it is only stated by a single sentence and a single source. I expect more of 1-2 paragraphs, or even 1 section about Environmental issues. It is not enough to explain about how many people are affected, what are the long-term causes and effects to the health of the people and also to the agricultural products, what are the main cause of this problem, the government response to handle this problem, etc. This is a big disaster for the area, because it is the world's biggest case of ground water contamination. Take your time to dig into references and literatures (I'm sure there are abundant reliable sources for this issue) and present here in a balance weight. Otherwise this article is merely a tourism guide page. — Indon (reply) — 16:45, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

As far as I know, sections for Indian states are following an established template. The question about arsenic or any other environmental problems the state faces should be proportional to its importance relative to all of "Geography and Climate" of West Bengal. "Arsenic problem in Ganges delta" should have its separate article linked from this article. --ppm 17:10, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

As ppm has indicated, the article follows the guidelines laid out in WikiProject Indian states and, of course, tries to follow summary style (...staying focused on the main topic without going into unnecessary detail...) as described in Wikipedia:What is a featured article?. That is why a full section on Environmental Issues cannot be done. And creating 1 or 2 paragraph on arsenic contamination or pollution as a whole would not be proper for summary style. That is why one sentence has been incorporated. The points Indon has raised on Arsenic poisoning are very important, but more suitable for a seperate article probably. Of course it may be stated that this contamination is a part of world's biggest case of groundwater pollution - I am adding that soon. However, if you may attract our attention towards some more problems that we may have missed in the article, that will be truely beneficial for the exhaustiveness of the article. Regards.--Dwaipayan (talk) 21:04, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

If this is a FAC for Indian portal, then I'll follow the Indian guidelines. Here, I'm just following WP:WIAFA guideline. There was one major fact missing in this article, and now it is inserted as one single line in the article. I still feel it is not enough, compare to the magnitude of the issue. I don't want to attract your attention toward a certain problem, but this issue really relates directly to the WB state. I don't think by giving one section of Environmental issue would distract readers from the main topic. A general reader will be interested to read all views about the state, not only list of universities, list of newspapers, list of cultural events, etc. — Indon (reply) — 03:35, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

WP:WIAFA states that the article "...complies with the standards set out in the manual of style and relevant WikiProjects..." That is why the article tries to follow WikiProject Indian states. And lists of institutions/newspapers/sports venues are provided per the guidelines in this relevant wikiproject.There is no entity such as "a FAC for Indian portal".

Of course, for being "comprehensive", the article has to discuss all aspects of the state. And thanks a lot to Indon for pointing out the major omission of the arsenic problem. But this article is not a place to discuss the details of the problem. The problem has been discussed in the article arsenic contamination of groundwater, and that has been linked to the article West Bengal. May be we have missed even more aspects/problems which should have been there. It would be greatly helpful if those are ponited out. Regards.--Dwaipayan (talk) 06:25, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

In that case, I have no comment about this FAC, neither support nor object. — Indon (reply) — 12:33, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

• Support. Exemplary per above. Hope others will study this article and get the other states featured. Saravask 01:47, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

• Object—1a and 2a. There's a lot of good in this article, but before I support it, I'd like to see some thorough copy-editing. Here are examples (don't just fix these, please, get a good word-nerd who's unfamiliar with the text to sift through the whole article).
  • Second para: ruled by empires and kingdoms is not quite right, grammatically. Ruled by emperors and kings (and dynasties), yes. Incorporated into or conquered by kingdoms/empires, yes. I'm unsure which is correct. "the reign of the Mughal empire"—nope, empires don't reign, people do.
  • "would serve for many years"—journalistic conditional would be better IMV as simply "served for many years" (not compulsory, though). "ALthough" better in this register than "though" (personal preference, supported by several authorities).
  • In the lead, there's rather too much detail about who governed it when. I'd have thought a summary of this was better in the lead—the region was part of a number of empires and kingdoms during the past two millenia; in ... , the British East India Company .... Also: "Known for its cultural heritage, West Bengal has been home to notable poets, writers, artists and performers. West Bengal has been ruled by the CPI(M)-led Left Front for three decades, making it the world's longest-running democratically-elected communist government." I'd put the culture bit last, and remove the first clause "Known for its cultural heritage", which is implicit in the next clause, and will be fleshed out in the culture section below.
  • No hyphen after -ly words.
  • "date back 4,000 years ago"—Remove "ago", or add "to" before "4,000".
  • "From the 3rd to the 6th centuries CE" and "sixteen"—Please consider consistently doing the reverse: spell out numbers 10 and above, and use numerals for nine and below.
  • Inconsistent use of hyphens, en dashes and em dashes as punctuation for nested clauses. I use em dashes without spaces, but you do have a choice here (en dashes with spaces are acceptable, but not hyphens).
  • WPians all too often use "with" as a connector. It's not classy, and strictly speaking leads to grammatical problems. "Bengal played a major role in Indian independence movement, with revolutionary groups like Anushilan Samiti and Jugantar dominating the scene." Try: "Bengal played a major role in THE Indian independence movement, IN WHICH revolutionary groups SUCH AS Anushilan Samiti and Jugantar dominatED." "The scene" is very informal. There's another "with" connector in the subsequent sentence.
  • "Certain portions of Bihar were also subsequently merged with West Bengal." "Certain" adds absolutely nothing here; try "Parts of Bihar ...". "Also" is redundant and should be struck out.
  • "Over the 1960s and 1970s"—no, "during". Tony 07:19, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

CommentI have not looked through the list that you've made, but I've gone through the entire article and made as many revisions and changes with words and phrases that caught my attention. I am hoping that I've caught most of your objections without deliberately trying to pick only those out. I'll run through the article once again but in the meantime thanks for the constructive criticism. --Antorjal 18:06, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

• Support. Very good article. It wouldn't hurt to do a little more to describe the differences between the city life and the villiage life, which are very different. But the article is very good. HeBhagawan 14:22, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
• Support. Very well written and concise. A few points which I feel might be optionally included :
  • Demographics could mention the chinese immigration during the cultural revolution years and the formation of a chinatown.
  • The food section contains a lot of urban food details. No mention of traditionally village staples like pantaa bhaat, or popular rural sweets like pithey or morobba, or rural brews like hadiya, mahua and chhaang.
  • Maybe a line on the role Bengali media played during the Independence movement.

I strongly support the article in its present state, though. Pradiptaray 15:58, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

• Weak support The article is informative and has a good amount of references. But, it needs a thorough copyedit for prose issues. The sentences are long and frequently have separators like mdash; and ";" which make it hard to read. Will fully support once such issues are fixed. I've done some copyedit myself and might work on it tomorrow too, but it would be great if someone else too steps in. -- Sundar ^{\talk \contribs} 13:26, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

CommentAgreed. I've revised all sections of the article extensively and substituted commas for semicolons where possible. I've also reduced the number of parentheses, and introduced variants and explanations within the body of the text. There were a few long sentences and some run-ons that I've endeavored to fix. Please take a look at the article again. Thanks. --Antorjal 18:04, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Full support now after great copyediting by Antorjal and Dwaipayan. -- Sundar ^{\talk \contribs} 05:54, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

• Support. My only suggestion is that it could be a little longer to provide more information.HeBhagawan 04:31, 2 November 2006 (UTC)