Talk:Taliban attacks in numbers amidst Afghani political stalemate

Review of revision 2823591 [Passed]

Revision 2823591 of this article has been reviewed by Pi zero (talk · contribs) and has passed its review at 02:33, 22 August 2014 (UTC). Copyright: Passed Newsworthiness: Passed Verifiability: Passed NPOV: Passed Style: Passed Comments by reviewer: The lede is weak. I could have justified not-ready'ing the article on that; it does not do a good job of defining a specific focal event. Note the advice at WN:Basic questions that if the lede doesn't contain a "day" word (today, yesterday, or the name of a day of the week) the article probably isn't suitable for publication (emphasis added). The 'recount' half of the lede does gain specificity in the second paragraph, but that really should have happened earlier: focus on Karzai's statement on Tuesday, and bring in the trend amongst the Taliban as an augmentation of that, both in the headline and in the lede. However, it doesn't read too badly (the second paragraph is quite prompt about providing the missing specificity); this one article isn't a problem, imho, and since the reporter's track record suggests relentless self-improvement, I don't see it as likely to be a start down some sort of slippery slope. There was analysis here to be attributed or cut (some of each). When using VOA as a source, be aggressively cynical about interpreting it. It's very smoothly written propaganda (not like, say, F*X News). Concerning the election, it says "Allegations of fraud have come from both sides." No doubt they have. I wasn't sure, from the, sources, whether both candidates have accused each other (though they make that clear in one direction). Moreover, the sources give an impression of asymmetry (different accusations going in different directions), except that VOA makes it sound symmetrical; one should suspect a propagandist motive for wanting it to sound symmetrical. Since it seems clear they do both claim to have won, I backed off to that. As reviewer I couldn't get into trying to forge new text to explain the rather complex nuances of the election dispute (a source does it through lots of detail from which readers can make deductions for themselves), so I let other material in the Wikinews paragraph suggest to the reader that something smells fishy. The reviewed revision should automatically have been edited by removing {{Review}} and adding {{Publish}} at the bottom, and the edit sighted; if this did not happen, it may be done manually by a reviewer.

Revision 2823591 of this article has been reviewed by Pi zero (talk · contribs) and has passed its review at 02:33, 22 August 2014 (UTC). Copyright: Passed Newsworthiness: Passed Verifiability: Passed NPOV: Passed Style: Passed Comments by reviewer: The lede is weak. I could have justified not-ready'ing the article on that; it does not do a good job of defining a specific focal event. Note the advice at WN:Basic questions that if the lede doesn't contain a "day" word (today, yesterday, or the name of a day of the week) the article probably isn't suitable for publication (emphasis added). The 'recount' half of the lede does gain specificity in the second paragraph, but that really should have happened earlier: focus on Karzai's statement on Tuesday, and bring in the trend amongst the Taliban as an augmentation of that, both in the headline and in the lede. However, it doesn't read too badly (the second paragraph is quite prompt about providing the missing specificity); this one article isn't a problem, imho, and since the reporter's track record suggests relentless self-improvement, I don't see it as likely to be a start down some sort of slippery slope. There was analysis here to be attributed or cut (some of each). When using VOA as a source, be aggressively cynical about interpreting it. It's very smoothly written propaganda (not like, say, F*X News). Concerning the election, it says "Allegations of fraud have come from both sides." No doubt they have. I wasn't sure, from the, sources, whether both candidates have accused each other (though they make that clear in one direction). Moreover, the sources give an impression of asymmetry (different accusations going in different directions), except that VOA makes it sound symmetrical; one should suspect a propagandist motive for wanting it to sound symmetrical. Since it seems clear they do both claim to have won, I backed off to that. As reviewer I couldn't get into trying to forge new text to explain the rather complex nuances of the election dispute (a source does it through lots of detail from which readers can make deductions for themselves), so I let other material in the Wikinews paragraph suggest to the reader that something smells fishy. The reviewed revision should automatically have been edited by removing {{Review}} and adding {{Publish}} at the bottom, and the edit sighted; if this did not happen, it may be done manually by a reviewer.

Possible addition to category

I notice that Portal:Middle East lists Afghanistan as a part of this area. Would it be suitable to add this article to Category:Middle East post publication? CSJJ104 (talk) 14:27, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

Re post-publication. We routinely adjust categories on articles post-publication, even post-archiving; we don't treat the categorization as part of what's covered by archiving. Likewise we routinely adjust what is and isn't wikilinked, and what it's wikilinked to.

Re the category. I've always gone by the categories rather than the portals (indeed, I hadn't noticed Afghanistan is listed on the Middle East portal); in the cat hierarchy, Afghanistan is in Asia rather than the Middle East. I see the Middle East portal also lists Turkey, which isn't in the Middle East cat either. --Pi zero (talk) 15:06, 24 August 2014 (UTC)