This is not a Wikipedia article: This is a workpage, a collection of material and work in progress that may or may not be incorporated into an article. It should not necessarily be considered factual or authoritative.
Citations needed banner has been attached to the article for over 12 years, and no considerable effort has seen it removed as yet.
Original research banner has been attached to the article for nearly a year. It's still instantly, verifiably true (a go to, quick check): Smenkhare's listed reign is standalone of Akhenaten, preceeding Neferneferuaten, with no source, citation or reference. This is contestible and controversial. Another big example: "Dynasty 0", and other Predynastic sections seem arbitrarily grouped based on the editor's preference. In a normal world this would not be too much of an issue, but in Egyptology the periods and dynasties are strictly delineated by convention and it is not useful to start the article in contravention of this.
There is an over-reliance on primary sources throughout the article (King Lists, Aegyptiaca).
There are some instances of over-citing simple statements (three or four at once).
Erroneous citations supporting statements that the source's content doesn't justify (?)
Some pharaohs' inclusion are obviously important but have only been supported with very low quality references (2001 waybackmachine websites, etc).
There is not a careful balance of different academic voices in the article; some sections rely on one source entirely, other sections rely on another
The articles concerning the dynasties of Ancient Egypt contain forks of content from this article (or vice versa?); the tables are largely the same, but the content differs in several cases, for no good reason other than different editors at different times.
FIRST ACTIONS:
The {{Convert to transclusion}} tag can be used in the meantime.
PROPOSAL:
I believe it's an acceptable content fork in principle, but unnaceptable in its current form: the dynasty pages whose sections contain tables of lists of pharaohs should be transcluded from this page, to eliminate and further prevent the divergences.
The article's subject concerns a list of pharaohs. While the entries in King Lists and references to Manetho are pertinent, they are not pharaohs: they are list entries, and neither is this a list of entries in Kings Lists/references to potential pharaohs.
Potential pseudonyms to possibly fictional or already noted pharaohs exist throughout the article - not an issue in and of itself, but tiny unsubstantiated scraps of info just can't be equated with pharaohs who are known to have existed.
Copies of entries of the Turin (et al) lists verge on unacceptable content forks.
This is just a small selection of table entries that fall foul:
Tag article with {{Dynamic list}} to shift focus away from a simply unachievable standard of completeness
PROPOSAL:
Remove chunks of the various King Lists from the tables where they are not able to substantiate a particular entity that is a unique pharaoh (i.e., mentioning lacunae, unrecoverable names, pseudonyms, mythical/legendary/otherwise fictional pharaohs), unless an established secondary source can argue the case for the existence of that pharaoh
Funnel instead any encyclopaedic, notable, sourced info included in these tables toward the article of the relevant King List, if it does not already exist there
Create a small concluding subsection for any pertinent dynasty entitled "Possible pharaohs belonging to [number] dynasty" (or otherwise) where can be found a bulleted, annotated list, which highlights the pertinent King Lists where necessary, and a short explanation as to why those scraps of info aren't included here as substantive pharaohs
Use {{See also}} hatnotes to direct to the appropriate table in the relevant King List
The table formatting throughout the article seems inconsistent. There is a focus on pharaonic titulary, which is, by nature, changeable across different dynasties.
Images take precedent over the common name, and take the lead column, but many of the pharaohs have no personal image availabe - only attestations, and many more do not have any image at all.
The "Comments" column descends into some seriously extraneous detail at times. Some more needless examples:
The Pyramid of Unas is inscribed with the earliest instance of the pyramid texts. He also constructed Unas's causeway a 500m long causeway from the bank of the river Nile to his funerary complex, this is where his funerary precession would have taken place.
2375–2345 BC
^The funerary monument of this pharaoh is not pertinent information; it is covered in the pharaoh's article, the dynasty's article - and a few others - and even has its own article. It's unfortunately not appropriate information for inclusion in this list.
^Surely it would only be noteworthy if the end of his reign was not when he died?
PROPOSAL:
As far as list articles go, those with table structure list the entities of subject matter in the first column (a good example)
Redact a lot of the unnecessary information regarding the pharaohs found in the "Comments" fields out of this article- it's a list, after all, and should ony be very lightly annotated
Perhaps even remove the "comments" section altogether? Is it necessary? Maybe so, maybe not; at the moment it serves more as a nucleation point for blurb-like prose
Find consensus around what actually the columns should be- i.e. Name, Image, Personal Name, Throne Name, etc.
Would the article benefit from an "Attested" column, to delineate the primary sources for a pharaoh (i.e. the King Lists he/she appears on)? It was suggested before
Use {{CSS_image_crop}} to ensure consistent size of images
A simple, general table template that is appropriate for all dynasties/eras might be built in order to:
simplify the editing of this article
standardise the visual structure of the article
prevent a big entry in any field from distorting the table
The article begins to stretch the definition of a "Stand-alone list article" with the lengthy introductions to some of the periods/dynasties.
PROPOSAL:
Only what is necessary to contextualise the subsequent table columns should be detailed here; the rest should be funnelled to the appropriate era pages if not already present there.
Some pharaoh's common names are the same as names that belong to other pharaohs' royal titulary; the naming convention here is unnecessarily confusing and inconsistent.
PROPOSAL:
Names that are not the common name should not be pipe-linked to articles that use common names
Links to pharaohs' articles should only wrap the common name
Currently majority of years are suffixed BC; for simplicity sake, all dates should adhere to BC/AD
CONCERN: CHRONOLOGY
Multiple chronologies have been used throughout the article; since the article already presents itself as using the Conventional Chronology - that, and it has the most academic basis - all dates should be in the Conventional Chronology
MoS warns against using question marks (1923?), instead dictates explanation of uncertainty using text i.e. 'approximately', 'possibly', 'traditionally'
Greek names are italicised, and not consistently. Greek names are often used for Egyptian figures in common English, e.g. Osiris, Nephthys, etc. They shouldn't be italicised here, just as the Egyptian names aren't.
I've spent some time thinking about what needs to be done, and what a logical approach looks like. There hasn't been any feedback or input, yet, but feel free to make suggestions, propose changes, or simply debate the proposal itself.
The article is of high importance to several Wikiprojects and gains a lot of traction with pageviews, so the aim for improvement may as well be to aim for it to be promoted to a featured list. The criteria can be found at WP:WIAFL. I believe the proposal goes hand in hand with the criteria.
I think the most important aspect may be steering this article from its often-straying and varying approach to listing pharaohs into succinct, simple information with only light annotations. As part of scoping entries for inclusion, I think it's important that entries are reduce to attributes that make them a pharaoh. I propose: that extended pharaonic titulary should be removed (it is not the prerequisite of a pharaoh and the full titulary that we know for certain is used only by a minority of pharaohs), that excessive biographical details included in the "notes" column are removed, and that we limit the list to the following basic attributes: name, region of influence (Upper/Lower/Unified/Local/Monarch of foreign land), reign, image, breif remarks, and alternative names.
Remove the pharaonic titulary (it's often excessive, doesn't fit a standard we can encompass for all pharaohs, poorly sourced, poorly formatted, and subject to wide scholarly interpretation - indivudual articles do a better job covering it)
Use summary style; clear out detailed explanations or repitions which are covered in main articles
Follow all MoS guidance on dates, eras, transliterations, italics, formatting, lang tags, common names, over-linking, red-linking, hat notes, disambiguation
Strive for accessibility, mandate alts for all images
Create a table layout overview seen in many featured lists which encompass multiple tables (i.e. "lists of episodes")
Done