Wikipedia:Featured article review/Congo Free State/archive1

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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article review. Please do not modify it. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page or at Wikipedia talk:Featured article review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was removed 19:18, 4 October 2007.

[edit] Congo Free State

[edit] Review commentary

Notifications, project: WikiProject Africa and WikiProject Former countries
Notifications, user: User:172 (FAC nominator), User:Kingturtle (many useful suggestions during FAC), User:Rexparry sydney (recent major contributor), and User:Tannin (many comments on article's talk page)

This article, promoted to featured status in April 2004, falls short of the FA criteria in several respects:

  • 1(a): The prose is at times informal/essay-like (e.g. "In a dazzling display of diplomatic virtuosity, Leopold ..."; "the most telling blows came from a most unexpected source")
  • 1(c): The article contains a total of 7 inline citations (added relatively recently) from three sources and a further five sources are listed as "General references". Most sections are not supported by inline citations. The article has been tagged as "missing citations and/or footnotes" since May 2007.
  • 1(d): The article at times seems to cast an admiring light on Leopold's skill and ingenuity and at other times seems to condemn the barbarity of his rule. This may largely be an issue of how content is worded.

I still think it's a good article ('good' in the normal sense, not necessarily a Wikipedia:Good article), but it doesn't meet our featured article criteria in its current state. — Black Falcon (Talk) 20:33, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] FARC commentary

Suggested FA criteria concerns are prose (1a), citations (1c), POV (1D). Marskell 19:39, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

It is an excellent article, and grounds for deleting WP:WIAFA. These are the complaints made against it:

  • It is written in decent, colloquial, and vivid English.
  • It expresses the (clearly consensus) views that the Congo Free State was an atrocity, but that Leopold was competently amoral in organizing, exploiting, and above all concealing the atrocity. I presume there is a lunatic fringe that contests these, but I do not know it, or any evidence that the present silence is not due WP:WEIGHT on controversies.
  • That it cites only some statements. Citation is required for statements which are challenged or likely to be challenged. None have been specified. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:08, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
  • I can understand your suggestion that the tone of the article makes it more interesting to read, but your third argument, that citations are needed only for controversial statements, is too extreme. ... Entire sections should not be unsourced. Quotes and statistics should not be unattributed. At heart, the article suffers from a problem of verifiability: it makes many claims of fact and opinion, but it's essentially impossible to tell if they are true.
  • As regards the issue of neutrality, you may have a point: if the consensus view is that Leopold was both brutal and ingenious, the article should reflect that view. However, those claims should be attributed. Note, for instance, that I've not noted WP:OR as a problem because I suspect that many of the books listed in the "Further reading" section were used as references. Of course, the lack of inline citations prevents me (and anyone else) from ascertaining whether this is indeed the case. – Black Falcon (Talk) 03:59, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
    • "Challenged or likely to be challenged" is the language of WP:V, carefully chosen and consensus. Please do not call it too extreme unless you believe consensus has changed.
    • Footnotes do not guarantee truth; they don't even guarantee verifiability. Many footnotes are corrupt; some are fraudulent.
    • The lack of inline citations is not the barrier you seem to suppose. With the sources in front of you (equally necessary if there were a footnote at every semicolon), it should be no trouble to verify these assertions, and see which of the Further Reading were used as references.
    • All (five) direct quotations are attributed.
    • Clear, vivid, and vigorous English is not merely easy reading, but good writing. This is supposed to be one of our criteria. Imitation of the Britannica's more wooden moments is a bug, not a feature. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 04:29, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
      • WP:V also says: "any reader should be able to check that material added to Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source". If the article does not state what sources were used and where/how they were used, that is not possible.
      • Footnotes do not guarantee truth or verification, but they make verification possible. If a footnote is provided, it's at least possible to check whether it is used accurately.
      • Without inline citations, all I have is a list of 20 or so books. How can I know which statement is supported by which source? In addition, how can I know where to look within a particular book when page numbers are not provided?
      • All quotations are not attributed. The quotes by the "junior white officer" and the "Danish missionary" are not clearly attributed. The quote by Forbath can be traced to the book in the 'Further reading' section, but no page number is provided. Janssens' quote is not attributed at all. The quoted phrase "few isolated instances" is not attributed either. – Black Falcon (Talk) 15:37, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

It would be a genuine service to Wikipedia, especially since the original author is gone and not expected back, to list all the points which fulfill all of the following.

  • Not sourced
  • Challenged or likely to be challenged.
  • No source is readily apparent with Google books, or a general history of Africa. It does not help Wikipedia to demand sources for information that is trivially available (the Conge Free State was in Africa; the Congo river flows through it); and most of these assertions are only one or two steps up from that level.

This would probably be better on the talk page of the article than here, or as a to-do, which could be transcluded both places.

Again, this is a better article than most of the stuff we promote nowadays, and the author is gone. To demote it is a disservice; but it can be improved. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:25, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

The number of sentences/points that meet your three criteria are really too many to list. The nature of information provided in the article goes far beyond what could be classified as 'general knowledge', even for someone with more than a passing familiarity with Africa's colonial history. I agree that this is a good article and you are certainly correct that the article can be improved, but improving it to the point that it meets the FA criteria (mostly by confirming content and adding inline citations) requires a significant investment of time and effort and is not likely something that can be done using only Google Books. Black Falcon (Talk) 23:40, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
Please supply a list; we may be focusing on different statements. I see a lot of statements which have no footnote, but which any competent history of the Scramble will support - and which are therefore verifiable by taking a book from the references almost at random; the mention of books.google.com was intended merely to keep both of us from wasting time on those. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:44, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
Simply knowing the title of the book is really not enough: for specific claims, page numbers (or page number ranges) should be supplied. As for your request, I have listed below those sentences which I think should be inline cited, taken from the section "Demographic catastrophe?":
  • According to Roger Casement's report, this depopulation was caused mainly by four causes: indiscriminate "war", starvation, reduction of births and diseases. The author is attributed, but the work's title and relevant page numbers are missing.
    • The title of the document itself is, as may be found at Casement Report, Report of the British Consul, Roger Casement, on the Administration of the Congo Free State. It may be found several places, including The eyes of another race : Roger Casement’s Congo report and 1903 diary edited by Seamas O Siochain and Michael O’Sullivan. It is the length of a journal article, and it is not our practice to require page number in citing those. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:27, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
  • Sleeping sickness ... was used by the regime to account for demographic decrease.
  • P.G. Janssens ... wrote ... [quote from Janssens]. Again, the author is attributed, but the work's title and the location of the quote in the work are not provided.
  • In the absence of a census (the first was made in 1924) ...
    • Oh, come on! Is the date of the first census of the Congo "challenged, or likely to be challenged"? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:18, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
      • It's a claim of fact and is not one that constitutes 'general knowledge'; thus, it should be attributed. And, yes, the date is something that could be challenged, given that it's used to make a point about the difficulty of measuring the actual population loss. Black Falcon (Talk) 01:30, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
        • WP:V says likely, not possible; one reason is to avoid pointless footnotes. Either deny it yourself, or find a reliable source that does. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:40, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
          • WP:V also states that the burden of evidence lies with the editor who insists that a particular claim is true. Since my original comment, listing this sentence as one that needs to be sourced, is (for all intents and purposes) an actual 'challenge', the distinction between likely or possible is moot. Black Falcon (Talk) 02:09, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
  • Forbath, at least 5 million; Adam Hochschild, 10 million; the Encyclopædia Britannica gives a total population decline of 8 million to 30 million. The source is identified (using the 'Further readings' section), but page numbers (and in the case of EB, edition) are not given.
  • On 24 May 2006, a motion (EDM 2251) was presented to the British Parliament, recognising the tragedy caused by King Leopold II as genocide and calling upon Belgium to apologise to the people of Congo for it. As of 16 June 2006, EDM 2251 is officially backed by 42 British MPs.
    • Source for this is the motion itself, and presumably Hansard's. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:18, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
      • I'm not questioning the existence of sources to verify the article's content, but it's not enough to just say "The source exists". The source information should be provided, either via a direct link or by providing the information requested by Template:Cite. Black Falcon (Talk) 01:30, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
        • Given the motion's serial number, this is frivolous. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:40, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
          • No, it is not. Complete source information (author, title, URL (if applicable), work/publisher, date of access (if applicable), date of publication, page numbers) should be provided whenever possible. Since the sentences in question are relatively easy to source, I'll go ahead and do so. However, that still leaves most of the article unattributed. Black Falcon (Talk) 02:09, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
Most other sections lack even the amount of attribution present in this section, where authors' names are at least provided. Black Falcon (Talk) 00:18, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
  • Dead certainty remove. It reads as though copied straight from a textbook or second-rate source. Is that why there are precious few citations? This will not do. The writing isn't as appalling as I was expecting, but there are problems in it. The lack of citations, however, is the killer.
    • "5 million to 20 million"—MOS breach in the repetition.
      • I don't find this anywhere in MOS; in fact, the following sentence suggests that it is permissible, but may in some cases be avoided by using M: Where values in the millions occur a number of times through an article, upper-case M may be used for million, unspaced, after spelling out the first occurrence. (“She bequeathed her fortune of £100 million unequally: her eldest daughter received £70M, her husband £18M, and her three sons each just £4M each.”)
      • More importantly, this introduces pointless ambiguity. "5 to 20 million" could be read as implying a David Irving of the Congo, who insisted that there were fewer than half-a-dozen proven deaths. This "correction" therefore degrades the article. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 13:35, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
    • Spaced en dash in the infoblot: MOS breach.
    • Periods at the end of non-sentence captions: MOS breach.
    • "Through corrupt treaties with native chiefs, rights were acquired to a great area along the Congo, and posts were established"—Yeah, the piped link on "posts" goes to "military bases", but we shouldn't have to click it to learn what the hell "posts" means.
      • "Military base" would be misleading for a hut with a handful of soldiers. "Posts" is both contemporary and modern usage for such things and should be retained; Black Falcon's "military posts" is good. Use English; the simple English Wikipedia exists for a reason, and our articles should not be cut to its standards. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 13:35, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
    • "The treaties were extremely one-sided in favor of Leopold. In some cases chiefs not only handed over their lands, but also promised to help provide workers for forced labor." UNREFERENCED! Hello.
      • This approaches subject-specific common knowledge, as WP:When to cite puts it. We do not write this article for those ignorant of "posts", any more than we write computer articles for those ignorant of "processors". Septentrionalis PMAnderson 14:43, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
    • Why the bullets under "Other powers ..."?
    • Not comprehensive: we learn nothing of life, culture, the economy during this period. Tony (talk) 11:18, 30 September 2007 (UTC)
      • I've tried to address some of the more minor points you raised, but (as I've noted above) I don't think that anything short of a sustained/dedicated effort will solve the sourcing issue. On your last point: since the Congo Free State was essentially a private corporation/colony, it may be understandable that the article does not focus as much on things like life, culture, and the economy. Black Falcon (Talk) 17:40, 30 September 2007 (UTC) P.S. could you clarify what you mean by "spaced en dash in the infoblot". Thanks.
        • Unspaced for ranges. Why does life and the economy not exist where the country is a colony? Surely someone has written about it? Tony (talk) 15:31, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
          • Oh, you mean the spacing in "1885 – 1908"; OK, thanks. As for coverage of "life, culture, and the economy", I'll retract the statement I made above. After reading the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica article for the Congo Free State, it's apparent that some content (maybe not as much as for current countries) can and should be written about these topics. Black Falcon (Talk) 18:50, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
          • As Tony himself has said, this emdash stuff is not grounds for opposing; why pretend it is? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 12:47, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Remove, 1c, largely uncited, citations needed. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:13, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Closing: Kudos to Black Falcon for working on this. But as s/he admits "a sustained/dedicated effort" is needed on citations. (Compare to the recent TFA on Chad.) As for "life, culture, and the economy," the last is woven throughout but the former two are fair: the article never pauses to consider the people in their own light, even when describing the depopulation. Marskell 19:07, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article review. No further edits should be made to this page.