Talk:Beslan school siege/GA1

GA Review

the lead

I think there are some issues with representing the sources. For example:

• The lead mentions the "poisonings and arrests of journalists who rushed to Beslan", citing [1] as a source, yet the source only mentions one person that was poisoned (and so the plural is misleading), and doesn't mention anyone getting arrested in Beslan (although it does mention one person being detained, but that is not the same thing)
• The lead states "the government's use of excessive force" as if the 'excessive' part is a fact, whereas the only source cited that mentions excessive force [2] is asking *whether* it was excessive. "The government's use of force" would be less POV and would make more sense as the sentence is in the context of 'asking questions'

day one

• the first two sentences have too many commas, which makes the text read in a rather disjointed manner
• "However, witnesses Kazbek Dzarasov and Svetlana Dzebisova have since testified they were made to help their captors remove the hidden weapon caches from the school." This sentence is rather confusing - the sentence previous to it says that reports of hidden weapons caches were officially refuted. should this be 'denied'? 'refuted' would imply that there was some kind of proof that such reports were false (and therefore the testimony would be false?) As for 'removing them from the school', does this mean that the hostages helped the militants remove the weapons after it was all over? Confused.
• "the number was downplayed by the government to merely 200-400, for some reason announced to be exactly 354" "for some reason" doesn't sound too great, and there's no cite for this
• "when discovered to be still alive, he was allowed to return to the sports hall, where he finally had lost concious." where he finally lost consciousness?

beginning of the siege

• "The perimeter they did make"; the perimeter they made.. ?
• "he chaos was worsened by the presence of Ossetian militiamen (opolchentsy) and armed civilians among the crowds of relatives who had gathered at the scene;[45] there were perhaps as many as 5,000 of them." chaos seems a little POV, especially as the preceding sentences doesn't give me the impression of 'chaos', and it's not clear why the presence of militiamen would worsen the situation

day two

• "The locals also said they won't allow"; wouldn't..

the first explosions

• "However, at 13:03, when the paramedics approached the school, an explosion was heard from the gymnasium and the hostage-takers opened fire, killing two of them" too many commas, reads poorly

• "There were several conflicting versions of the events leading to the storming:" - I think this is quite a poor way of introducing the storming. It goes from talking about the fire on the roof to "the storming", assuming that the reader is following - I had to stop and figure out whether you were talking about the fires on the roof at first. I think you should preface it with something like, "Shortly after the fire on the roof, there was an explosion/shooting/event that no one can agreeabout/whatever that led to the school being stormed." I appreciate that this is a difficult thing to explain concisely, though, with so many conflicting reports.

• flicking through the article I find various things that need to be rewritten dotted around, such as "Criticism, including by Beslan residents". The article needs a good copyedit.

government response

• "The Russian government defended the use of tanks and other heavy weaponry, arguing that it was used after surviving hostages escaped from the school. However, this contradicts the eyewitness accounts (including by reporters, photographers and videographers[227]), as many hostages were seriously wounded and could not possibly escape by themselves, while others were kept by the militants as human shields and moved through the building." no cite for this

• I'm going to stop writing a detailed review as such here, as it's clear the article is going to fail.

minor MoS type stuff

Not stuff I'd fail for per se, but as I'm here I may as well note:

• The following references lack access dates: 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 24, 25, 26, 27, 29, 30, 31, 34, 36, 37, 40, 41, 43, 44, 45, 46, 48, 50, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 60, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 81, 83.. you know what, I can't be bothered to list them all, but at least 2/3 of the internet sources.
• There are also a lot of references that are missing publishers and so on.
• The external links section could probably be trimmed.
• Does there really need to be a 'charity efforts' subsection for all of one sentence?

overall

The article needs a good copyedit and could probably stand to be cut back a little. There are far too many names mentioned that are re-mentioned later in the article with the assumption that the reader will remember who those people are - they won't, as this article has masses and masses of people mentioned. A better method would be to refer to less-important people by their titles/job description to avoid confusion and to avoid having to ctrl-f to find out who a specific person is. I gave a 'no' to focused in the checklist above as I think there's too much time spent on less important details. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Naerii (talk • contribs)