Wikipedia:Peer review/Sher Shah Suri/archive1

Sher Shah Suri

Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch • Watch peer review

I've listed this article for peer review because...

1. I want to improve the article and hopefully move it towards featured article status sometime in the future.

2. Looking to improve my own editing by doing so, as most of this page was written by me.

Thanks, Noorullah (talk) 21:40, 16 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Airship

There are still massive sourcing problems in the article.

At the FAC, you defended the reliability of Ali Khan 1925; I cannot see why. It is deeply clear from the first pages that it is a hagiography designed to portray the man in as positive a light as possible. It endlessly waxes lyrical about his accomplishments and merits; if he had one fault, it is not mentioned in the book. We have one section in the book titled "Sher Shah as an apostle of Indian unity" which starts with the following, completely non-neutral sentence:
"In contemplating the career of this man of exceptional gifts whose horizon was far wider than that of most of the rulers before or after him, the student is profoundly impressed with the idea that he has never come across the account of any other ruler who has occupied a mighty throne with so admirable a combination of heart and intelligence, nor one so uncontaminated by false political doctrine, nor one so honest and joyful in his laborious mission
I mean, seriously.
I consider the book to be an unreliable source, and given the extent to which it is cited in the article, the next quality review process this article should face is a good article reassessment, not a featured article nomination.
For other sources, I looked at the Conquest of Marwar (1543–1544) subsection: most of what is cited to Chaudhuri is borderline WP:CLOP: you should be looking to summarise, not paraphrase. What is not near-closely-paraphrased is not supported by the source: for example the assertion that "several of his generals were killed" is not verified by the source.

The article needs a top-to-bottom sourcing overhaul before it is ready for any quality advancement. If these issues are not fixed within a few months, I shall be obliged to start a GA reassessment. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 17:01, 29 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@AirshipJungleman29 The area for the "Conquest of Marwar" was pretty much untouched by me since I revamped the page, that's an area that's been untouched since 2022. Here's the version before I did major revamps unto the page and you can see the Conquest of Marwar is pretty much identical, and I've pretty much only added sources to it when it was first touched over by me. - [1]. That's an area I will definitely fix though. I'll also look into Khan. Noorullah (talk) 22:32, 29 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@AirshipJungleman29 I've begun removing Ali Khan entirely, and I did this with the first half of the article thus far, replacing him with the much more reliable Satish Chandra. I'll work on getting this through the rest of the article soon. (and fixing that Marwar section). Noorullah (talk) 23:35, 29 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@AirshipJungleman29 I think I'm done with that now. I've removed Ali Khan entirely, replacing him with a myriad of other citations that are much more reliable, while also adding/cutting down on content, and also reworking the Marwar section to clear up any WP:CLOP (that was not as a result of me I believe).

I'm gonna look toward more of the FAC suggestions to improve/add to the article. Noorullah (talk) 04:24, 30 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It is not enough for FAC to say "that part wasn't by me", you need to be certain that every part of the article meets the FA criteria. The WhoWroteThat tool is helpful for identifying parts of the article you didn't write. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 17:44, 30 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@AirshipJungleman29 I think it's been relatively brought up to standard now (for consideration), a major sourcing overhaul was done with the removal of Ali Khan entirely, being replaced by much more known historians. And sections that weren't up to standard have been improved to meet that. I'm currently focusing on just improving prose in a few areas now, do you know any other areas in the article that could be of concern? I went over some of the stuff said at FAC as well. Noorullah (talk) 18:47, 30 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@AirshipJungleman29 Repinging again ^^, (If you're available to check it out), I believe I've fixed the vast majority of these issues, (from sourcing - some prose issues). Do you know what else could be of issue in the article? Noorullah (talk) 04:47, 13 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Still needs a copyedit. I recall that "antiquated prose" was brought up at the recent FAC; I wouldn't go that far, but certainly there are dozens of poor wording choices. "Overwhelmed by poor weather", "Upon learning of disturbances", "the Mughal army's fragile state" jump out from one paragraph, in addition to the tautology "completely routed, and ultimately annihilated" which is immediately contradicted by the figure of "7,000 casualties" for an army of 200,000. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 21:29, 14 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That was more another page, Khalji Revolution which I nominated. (Per the antiquated prose line), I'll look into what you brought up. Noorullah (talk) 21:37, 14 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]