Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Aafia Siddiqui/archive1

Aafia Siddiqui

Aafia Siddiqui (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

Nominator(s): Epeefleche (talk) 08:22, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

• Featured article candidates/Aafia Siddiqui/archive1

I am nominating this for featured article because:

1. IMHO it meets FA criteria;
2. When the subject of the article was convicted, the article received over 12K hits;
3. Her sentencing (which will be 30 years to life) is set for May 6, and I think it would be great for the project to have it featured that day if possible, as it is likely to be of great public interest.--Epeefleche (talk) 08:22, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

• Comments. Dead links to http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/mother-on-terrorist-link-counts/story-0-1111117125228 and http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/03/AR2010020302293_2.html; both marked as such, but they'd better be replaced with an archive or with another citation that is still accessible. Ucucha 11:41, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

• Tx. Both addressed. One that was not needed, deleted. The other, replaced w/two live links.--Epeefleche (talk) 17:43, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. The second link I mentioned is still in the page. Ucucha 21:05, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

• Whoops. Absolutely right. That one has now been replaced.--Epeefleche (talk) 21:59, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Good. Another one: http://www.chicagotribune.com/topic/sns-ap-us-al-qaida-suspect-shooting,0,3232452.story appears to link to a page of search results, not the news story. Ucucha 23:14, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

• Comment External link source under "Disappearance and FBI warning" needs made as a citation. Grsz¹¹ 17:53, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

• Hi -- before I address, just want to make certain I understand. Are you suggesting that the inline of "wanted for questioning" be changed into a ref? Happy to do it, but just want to make sure I understand the comment.--Epeefleche (talk) 22:05, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Oppose because this BLP article contravenes policy in several ways. In particular, primary sources (court records, indictments, psychiatric/psychology/forensic evaluations, affidavits) are liberally used, often without secondary sources to support them, in direct contravention of BLP's Misuse of Primary Sources section. Also very worryingly, allegations sourced from legal documents of accusation are inappropriately presented as facts rather than attributed: the first 5 sentences of the third paragraph of the Lead are a particularly obvious example of this, but there are multiple other instances. I pointed these major problems out at length on the talkpage several weeks ago,[1] and others have given similar advice at WP:RSN [2]. No changes have been made, and unfortunately I haven't yet had the time to fix the problems myself.

There are also other reasons why the article does not meet FA standards, including problems with prose, manual of style and citation, and some very close paraphrasing of sources (cf: the WP article "She also helped establish the Dawa Resource Center, a program that distributed Qurans and offered Islam-based advice to prison inmates" with the source "She helped establish the Dawa Resource Center, a program that operates out of Faaruuq's mosque, distributing Korans and offering Islam-based advice to prison inmates."[3]), but the sourcing and verifiability difficulties are significant enough in themselves. --Slp1 (talk) 22:11, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

• Eppefleche asked me to comment on the sourcing. The article seems to depend upon good secondary newspaper sources. That the primary sources are given also is a plus, not a minus. I'm just commenting on this, not the article in general. DGG ( talk ) 23:11, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

But they aren't given as a plus. As you say and as I have made clear on the talkpage of the article, if they supported secondary sources there would be no problem. But on no less than 28 occasions primary sources (court documents) are used as the only citations for information on a BLP. Check the occasions where references (currently) numbered 4, 6, 10, 11, 28, 72, 76 are the only source(s) used either alone or in combination. Likely the primary sources could be replaced or supported by secondary sources for some/most of the information. But this needs to happen for this to be a FA, or frankly BLP compliant. --Slp1 (talk) 23:42, 9 April 2010 (UTC)