Talk:Taj Mahal/GA1

GA Review

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Nominator: Magentic Manifestations (talk · contribs) 10:42, 24 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Reviewer: PearlyGigs (talk · contribs) 21:35, 1 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Starting review

Hi, Magentic Manifestations. I'll do this review. There is a GAN backlog drive this month. Hope to have some feedback soon. PearlyGigs (talk) 21:35, 1 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the review. I would like to point to User talk:Magentic Manifestations#Taj Mahal, regarding other major contributors/co-nominators of the GAC. Thanks. The Herald (Benison) (talk) 00:08, 2 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, The Herald and DreamRimmer. I'll include you both if I have any questions. I'm afraid I haven't had much time for WP today and I've only skimmed the article so far. Hope to have something for you soon. Best wishes. PearlyGigs (talk) 20:12, 2 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Spot-checks

I've looked through the list of sources and have no immediate questions, so I'll move on to the required spot-checks. I'm starting with six statements taken in no particular order:

FN 10 & 11 – The Taj Mahal was commissioned by Shah Jahan in 1631, to be built in the memory of his wife Mumtaz Mahal, who died on 17 June that year while giving birth to their 14th child, Gauhara Begum.

FN 10 is Asher 1992, page 210 which links to Google Books. I input a search for Shah Jahan and, although several pages were returned, page 210 was not and so this citation doesn't appear to verify the statement.

Because you cannot access the book does not mean that the source is not there. As per WP:CITEHOW and WP:RS, onus is on providing the required details and not that the book should be available for free or in Google books, I presume. This is not a valid grounds for the rejection of the source.

FN 11 is a direct link to Tresures of the World. This says Mumtaz Mahal died in April 1631 and does not name Gauhara Begum. While it does say that Shah Jahan "laid the foundation" six months after she died, it is rather vague and does not convey the sense that he purposefully commissioned the building.

Unverified.

The source states everything from the birth of fourteenth child, Mumtaz's death, Shah Jahan laying the foundation and the building being the tomb of Mumtaz. I do not even fathom what it means by "vague sense".

FN 28 – The calligraphy on the southern gate roughly translates to "O Soul, thou art at rest. Return to the Lord at peace with Him, and He at peace with you".

The link is to a page that is "no longer available".

Unverified.

Again same here. It has been clearly mentioned it is a book source where registration is required for accessing it. Without even attempting so, again a blind revert that it is unverifiable.

FN 36 – The elevated marble water tank is called al Hawd al-Kawthar in reference to the "Tank of Abundance" promised to Muhammad.

The statement expresses certainty but Begley actually says: the raised marble tank in the center of the garden was probably intended as a replica of the celestial tank of abundance called al-Kawthar, promised to Muhammad (my italics). Begley's meaning is different and the article does not reflect what the source says.

Unverified.

The source clearly says that the "raised marble tank in the center of the garden was probably intended as a replica of the celestial tank of abundance called al-Kawthar, promised to Muhammad". Again an invalid rejection citing dubious and assumed comments.

FN 83 – Lists of recommended travel destinations often feature the Taj Mahal, which also appears in several listings of seven wonders of the modern world, including the New Seven Wonders of the World, a poll conducted in 2007.

The source only verifies the fact of a 2007 poll in one newspaper. It does not confirm "lists of destinations" or "several listings".

Partially verified. More sources are needed for the first two clauses.

The given source does state so that it is part of the seven wonders of the modern world. If additional sources are required, it can be given.

FN 98 & 99 – Several court cases and statements by right-wing politicians about Taj Mahal being a Hindu temple have been inspired by P. N. Oak's 1989 book Taj Mahal: The True Story, in which he claimed it was built in 1155 AD and not in the 17th century.

The citations link to news stories in the Hindustan Times and India Today. Neither piece mentions 1155 or right-wing politicians.

Unverified.

This feigns ignorance on your part. Please do not take up reviews if you have limited knowledge on the subject or in that case, request to ask for clarity. The sub-title itself says it was by a leader of the BJP, which is the prominent right wing party in India. So again a dubious reason without due research.

FN 102 – Another such unsupported theory, that the Taj Mahal was designed by an Italian, Geronimo Vereneo, held sway for a brief period after it was first promoted by Henry George Keene in 1879. Keene went by a translation of a Spanish work, Itinerario (The Travels of Fray Sebastian Manrique, 1629–1643). Another theory, that a Frenchman named Austin of Bordeaux designed the Taj, was promoted by William Henry Sleeman based on the work of Jean-Baptiste Tavernier. These ideas were revived by Father Hosten and discussed again by E. B. Havell and served as the basis for subsequent theories and controversies.

I cannot read more than one page of The Vereneo Controversy so I cannot tell if the whole of Dixon's article supports the above paragraph.

Confirmation is needed that Dixon's article covers everything in the paragraph, especially Keene in 1879; the Itinerario; Austin; Sleeman; Tavernier; Hosten; and Havell. Incidentally, the source begins with a view expressed by Lutyens but he is not mentioned in the article.

Again a similar issue. It is a subscription issue. So if you want to read, you need to subscribe to read the source. Again dubious discounting of the source because you cannot access it.

Result

Of the six statements chosen for the required spot-checks, four are completely unverified and one is partially verified. The sixth requires confirmation of seven specific points and it is already apparent that the article does not include the source's opening and, presumably, most salient argument.

WP:GACR states unambiguously that an article may be failed without further review if, prior to the review it is a long way from meeting any one of the six good article criteria. The second criterion is that all sources must be verifiable, but none of the six chosen for spot-check can be fully verified. I have to conclude that the article is "a long way from meeting GACR #2" and I am therefore closing this review with WP:GAFAIL.

A lot more work will be needed before this article is ready for WP:GAN and, in particular, all citations need to be thoroughly reviewed to ensure that they are fit for purpose. PearlyGigs (talk) 21:58, 2 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@PearlyGigs While I appreciate the review, there are a few points of note: One, I have add a detailed note for the comments. The review seems to have been done in a haste. If the source cannot be accessed by you, it does not mean that it is not there, particularly for book sources. It is not a valid reason for discounting the source as unreliable. Multiple statements are indeed verifiable, but you have given dubious and assumed reasons claiming it as unverifiable. Also, request you to go through the background, details of the previous review etc. Your review does not help address or improve the article in any way as most comments are contentious/self-assumed. Please do not take up reviews if you cannot do justice to them and do it as per all the criteria. Thanks! Magentic Manifestations (talk) 04:11, 3 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Here from Magentic Manifestations's request for a second opinion at WT:GAN. It's true that not having access does not mean it failed verification, and PearlyGigs might consider simpler reviews than the Taj Mahal since they're a relatively new reviewer (and if you're participating in the drive PearlyGigs, there's a second part where new reviewers request feedback from an experienced reviewer before finishing). But most of these points are valid:

FN 11 does not mention Gauhara Begum. Unless it's mentioned in FN 10, Gauhara Begum being the 14th child is unsourced. It also does not say he "commissioned" it, it says he "laid the foundation", which is vague, and I'm not convinced that this supports "commissioned".
According to the quoted passage here, FN 36 does not express certainty, but the article does. Meaning the certainty does not exist, it was made up when it was added to the article.
For FN 83, I have no idea why this source would be used to support "Lists of recommended travel destinations often feature the Taj Mahal". It doesn't mention anything close to that.
For FN 98/99, if an article claims that "right-wing politicians" made a given statement, then the source had better say in plain language that right-wing politicians made a given statement. Not politicians that we consider right-wing, even if it seems obvious. We don't decide the facts for ourselves. This is a pretty critical error when sourcing information, which is explained in the first paragraph at WP:SYNTH. The fact that you're asking a reviewer to do research so they can infer information that a source doesn't verify makes me worry about how well text-source integrity holds up throughout the article.
For FN 102, I don't see the source being discounted, I see a request for clarification.

Based on some of these points, I probably would've failed this for original research as well. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 07:01, 3 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, Thebiguglyalien. Thanks for looking at the points raised. I am actually in the process of drafting a reply to User:Magentic Manifestations.

You're probably right that I should find shorter articles till I have more experience of WP, although I do have extensive reviewing, proofreading, and copyediting experience in the real world. WP, of course, is quite unlike the real world! I've been following the GA review instructions closely and that took me into the spot-check process which requires that the sample citations must directly support the material. Anyway, thanks again and best wishes. PearlyGigs (talk) 07:17, 3 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Thebiguglyalien

While Gauhara Begum is indeed the fourteenth child (evident from the article linked), I agree that FN 11 does not mention Gauhara Begum. Again two issues here: It vaguely mentions the statement is unverified. Fails to state that it is a mere clarification of a part. If FN 10 was not accessible, it certainly does not become unverifiable, at best a clarification should have been sought here and not a failed verification.
On the part of Shah Jahan commissioning it, FN 11 clearly states he was the emperor, the events after Mumtaz death and that he laid the foundation for it. Are you suggesting that it should be an exact WP:COPYVIO of the source?
Again if the article does express certainty, it is at best a minor correction here, which can be made in a jiffy and not an issue of failed verifiability as projected.
For FN 83, I have agreed as such that additional citations would be required.
For FN 98/99, better read what WP:SYNTHNOT is. Here there is no combination or inference of two sources, it is not a binding rule to be used. It is merely a generalization instead of taking a host of names of who ever have filed cases.
For FN 102, the net result was based on that it was not verifiable.

It is nowhere close to quick fail criteria based on your explanation. Magentic Manifestations (talk) 07:49, 3 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Response to Magentic Manifestations

Magentic Manifestations, you have raised several points and I'll answer them individually where practical.

First, you say the "review seems to have been done in a haste". Can we just be clear that the review was not actually "done". I applied WP:GAFAIL at an early stage of the process because, as I said above, the article is a long way from meeting WP:V on the basis of the spot-check findings. If you read point 1 of WP:GAN/I#R3, you will see that the reviewer must first read the article and check the sources. I did that and I commented above that I had no immediate questions about any of the sources, so I would move on to the spot-checks.

R3/1 emphasises: This must include a spot-check of a sample of the sources in the article to verify that each source supports the text in the article that it covers. As for taking a sample, I tried to be as random as possible by thinking of six numbers from 1 to 102. In a couple of cases, I had to combine two citations, as with FN 10 and 11 in the first sample statement. Note that R3/1 includes the word "verify" and that GACR #2 insists on WP:V. Within WP:V, you find WP:BURDEN which states: The burden to demonstrate verifiability lies with the editor who adds or restores material. It goes on to say that the cited source must clearly support the material as presented in the article and, further, there must be an inline citation to a reliable source that directly supports the material. The term "directly supports" is unambiguous – it means the source directly supports a given piece of material if the information is present explicitly in the source (see the footnote on WP:V).

So, the purpose of the spot-checks is to ascertain that each citation is verified or is at least verifiable – if the source is offline, then I would need confirmation that it does directly support the material. Having selected my sample of six statements for the spot-checks, I listed them and proceeded to carry out the verification checks. Lets take each one in turn and consider your comments about them.

FN 10 & 11 – The Taj Mahal was commissioned by Shah Jahan in 1631, to be built in the memory of his wife Mumtaz Mahal, who died on 17 June that year while giving birth to their 14th child, Gauhara Begum.

Here, I expected to find confirmation of Shah Jahan commissioning TM in 1631, his wife's name, her date of death, her 14th child, and the child's name.

FN 10 is a book source which would be unavailable to me if offline only. I would then have needed confirmation of direct support. In this case, however, there is a link to Google Books. This provides the usual list of contents and sample pages. To view page 210, I need to use the "search inside" function. The obvious key is "Shah Jahan". This brings up numerous pages but NOT page 210. I see in the contents that page 210 is about "Tank Shalimar garden Lahore" so it appears that we have an invalid citation which does not directly support the material.

You say that because I "cannot access the book does not mean that the source is not there". As I have demonstrated, I can access the book (online) but my search shows that Shah Jahan is not mentioned on page 210 so the citation must be incorrect and the material is unverified by that citation. WP:CITEHOW and WP:RS are both completely irrelevant in this context.

You say about FN 11 that it "states everything from the birth of fourteenth child, Mumtaz's death, Shah Jahan laying the foundation and the building being the tomb of Mumtaz". It does not. As I said in the review, it does not name the child and it gives a different date for Mumtaz's death. In other words, the citation does not directly support the material in the article. The statement is unverified.

FN 28 – The calligraphy on the southern gate roughly translates to "O Soul, thou art at rest. Return to the Lord at peace with Him, and He at peace with you".

You say it has been "clearly mentioned it is a book source where registration is required for accessing it". That is not the case. The citation is a link to the freely-available Internet Archive where that particular page is unavailable. Therefore, the given citation does not verify the quotation. You need to remove the archive link from the Ebba Koch entry in the sources list and provide confirmation that page 100 of her book does support the statement and the translation.

FN 36 – The elevated marble water tank is called al Hawd al-Kawthar in reference to the "Tank of Abundance" promised to Muhammad.

You say that my rejection is "invalid" and cites "dubious and assumed comments". The writer, Begley, expressed a personal opinion about the marble tank. You, on the other hand, have converted his opinion into a certainty. That is a breach of WP:NOR, never mind a failure to verify.

FN 83 – Lists of recommended travel destinations often feature the Taj Mahal, which also appears in several listings of seven wonders of the modern world, including the New Seven Wonders of the World, a poll conducted in 2007.

I agree that the given source says TM is one of the 7WW in one specific poll but it does NOT directly support any of that sentence prior to the word "including". Therefore, the statement is only partially verified, as already explained.

FN 98 & 99 – Several court cases and statements by right-wing politicians about Taj Mahal being a Hindu temple have been inspired by P. N. Oak's 1989 book Taj Mahal: The True Story, in which he claimed it was built in 1155 AD and not in the 17th century.

Accusing me of being disingenuous is a breach of WP:CIVIL and is borderline WP:NPA. It is not up to me, or any other reader, to KNOW that the BJP is a right-wing party in India. As the source does not say the party is right-wing, the article should not say it because doing so is expressing an opinion in a way that breaches both WP:NPOV and WP:NOR.

You add that I have not done "due research". As a reviewer, I am only interested in what I see in the article and in the given source. It is not within my remit to conduct additional research and find out where the BJP stand in the political spectrum.

You have not mentioned the fact that neither source confirms the view that the TM "was built in 1155". Thus, an unverified statement.

FN 102 – Another such unsupported theory re Vereneo, etc.

You need to READ what people write. I did not say "unverified" for this one. I requested confirmation that the rest of the Dixon article supports the points which need confirmation (Keene, etc.).

As regards your response to Thebiguglyalien:

What you said about FN 11 is obtuse. Of course he is not saying that you should breach COPYVIO. That is a ridiculous assertion. He said that Gauhara Begum being the 14th child is unsourced and that the source does not say "commissioned"; also, quite rightly, that "laid the foundation" is vague and is doubtful as a support for "commissioned".

Re FN 36, the whole point of the spot-checks is to ensure that everything in the sample is directly supported by the citations. This one is not a typo that can be fixed "in a jiffy", as you seem to be claiming. It is a misrepresentation of the source by converting Begley's opinion into a certainty. By the way, if it had been a typo, I would have fixed it myself.

Claiming that an essay like WP:SYNTHNOT should be observed in a formal review process trivialises the process. SYNTHNOT is fair enough for a start-class article but not for something that is going into GA or FA.

For FN 102, the net result was based on that it was not verifiable. No, it was not. I requested confirmation as agreed by Thebiguglyalien. Perhaps you would like to provide copies of the relevant sentences in Dixon so that we can read what he actually wrote about Keene, Austen, Tavernier, etc.?

Shall we look at Talk:Ken Anderson (animator)/GA1 for a moment and see how you do spot-checks when reviewing? The first thing to be said is that your sample is nearly at the bottom of the review when it is supposed to be the first thing done after the initial readthrough and you are supposed to satisfy the spot-check requirement before proceeding to the main part of the review. You say Random ref check: 21, 23, 25, 31, 33, 74, 75 all seem good. All refs seem good. You have not outlined the statements you are checking which would help anyone reading the review. The first one, FN 21, supports: "Anderson further contributed by creating layouts and conceptual sketches for the Someday My Prince Will Come dream sequence; however, it was ultimately cut during the storyboarding phase". The source is Canemaker 1996, pp. 172–173. This links to a 1996 book by John Canemaker listed in the bibliography. There is no online link so the book is offline and we need confirmation from the nominator that the citation directly supports the material. You have not asked for confirmation and you say that all the sample refs "seem good". Do you have a copy of John Canemaker's book yourself, perhaps? If not, why haven't you requested confirmation?

Finally, you ended your repsonse to Thebiguglyalien with It is nowhere close to quick fail criteria based on your explanation. Are you even aware of what GAFAIL actually says? Given that verification is the most important of the six GACR requirements, failure to fully satisfy even one of the spot-check sample is a clear indication of citation issues. In the words of GAFAIL, An article may be failed without further review (known as a quick fail) if, prior to the review, it is a long way from meeting any one of the six good article criteria. The spot-checks show that this article is a long way from meeting the requirements of WP:V, one of the site's key policies. I therefore stand by my decision to quick-fail the article. PearlyGigs (talk) 13:22, 3 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Looks like it's getting ugly. Magentic Manifestations, it's okay. There's no deadline here in Wikipedia. You can always pick it up later and make it a GA. Thanks for the reviews PearlyGigs and Thebiguglyalien. Another pointer to PearlyGigs is that to pick low traffic articles till you gain more experience in reviews. Happy editing :) The Herald (Benison) (talk) 14:39, 3 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@PearlyGigs Please stop engaging in discussions irrelevant to the review at hand. Request to follow the basic courtesy of keeping it to the point. You going an extra mile to bring my edits and other reviews to question, simply shows your insecurity and is nothing but a hounding tactic. I would have given responses/clarifications if this was a fruitful discussion and there was a means to it. As you are simply engaging in mudslinging, no use of going an extra mile to prove it. So please stop it and go engage in something fruitful. Magentic Manifestations (talk) 15:45, 3 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Before the Animation Begins by John Canemaker is available for preview on Google Books. I was able to find the relevant passage here. The page number does not match because the OCR scan was done poorly, so there are two pages per (digital) page, but it's readable. Recon rabbit 20:18, 9 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]