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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was not promoted by SandyGeorgia 02:29, 6 February 2010 [1].

July 2009 Ürümqi riots

[edit]
Nominator(s): rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 16:33, 17 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
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I am nominating this article for FAC because it has been worked on carefully by numerous respected editors since July, and has had many eyes on it to try to maintain a balanced POV on a difficult and divisive topic. We've been careful about POV, weight, referencing, and the reliability of sources; we also recently got some images and even video from an editor who was in Urumqi during the riots. With all the people who have been involved in this article, we have a small army of spot-checkers to keep watch over the article and catch vandalism, POV-pushing, and silly errors (like me accidentally using American English :P). Ultimately I'm hoping to get this to FA status on time to make TFA on July 5, 2010 (the first anniversary of the riots).

The other editors involved heavily in this article include Colipon, Seb az86556, Jim101, Ohconfucius, and Benlisquare. Wasn't sure if I'm supposed list them as co-nominators or not; feel free to add yourselves if you like.) rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 16:33, 17 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

By the way, great alt text on the video. It portrays the violence well.
  • "The number rose sharply, though, after the first night's rioting; at midday on Monday, 6 July (China standard time)". You mention time throughout the section before without indicating the time zone. Why mention it now?
  • I don't like the "as for property" in "As for property, Xinhua reported that 627 vehicles and 633 constructions were damaged."
  • "Despite many blocks and censorship, Internet watchers monitored continued attempts by netizens to publish their own thoughts on the causes of the incident or vent their anger about it." Is the "it" at the end talking about he censorship or the violence?
  • Also a lot of references need publishers.
TheWeakWilled (T * G) 22:09, 17 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Good prose suggestions, I have made the changes. As for publishers, I believe a lot of the news refs have |agency= and |work= (with work being used in place of publisher in the cases of things like, for example, an AP article found on the Los Angeles Times website, and agency being used in place of publisher in the case of, for example, a Xinhua article found on the Xinhua website). I'm not aware of any references that have none of the above. rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 23:22, 17 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Prose looks good (for me at least). However a lot of the refs need accessdates, and the xinhuanet.com refs are missing work/publisher or whatever you wish to use there. aa.com.tr ref is also using a bare URL. Other than the refs, I think the article is FA quality, though just me saying this isn't much of a consensus TheWeakWilled (T * G) 15:26, 18 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. Alt text done; thanks. Thanks for adding all that alt text; it greatly improves the article's accessibility. However, there is still an accessibility problem with all those flags in the text. For example, the article currently uses the Wiki markup "{{flagicon|European Union}} The [[European Union]]", which generates "European Union The European Union", which a screen reader will read aloud to a visually disabled person as something like "link European Union the link European Union"; this is not good. These flags are purely decorative in the W3C accessibility sense, and so should be marked with "|link=|alt=" as per WP:ALT #Purely decorative images. If you want to keep the flags, the wiki markup "[[File:Flag of Europe.svg|22x20px|link=|alt=]] The [[European Union]]" generates " The European Union" which a screen reader will render as "The link European Union"; this is much better. However, Wikipedia:Manual of Style (icons) #Do not use icons in general article prose suggests that this sort of usage should be avoided altogether, and certainly it'd be simpler just to remove the flags. Eubulides (talk) 22:54, 17 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • I'm fine with any of the above solution (although, just my two cents, I think the flags make it a bit more easily legible—but perhaps they could be replaced by bolded country names); to be honest, I've barely been involved at all in the editing of that Reactions section. I'll leave a message with User:Midway, who did most of the work in that part of the article. rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 22:59, 17 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I think bolding would be the best idea. You probably want the country name to stick out. TheWeakWilled (T * G) 23:06, 17 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I see that bolding has been used and this fixes the remaining alt text problem; thanks again. Eubulides (talk) 03:03, 18 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose: Admirable effort, but the section beginning with "All parties in the dispute..." leans effectively towards the conclusion that the protests were organized, giving amply room to the PRC position but it fails to investigate the possibility of a spontaneous eruption of violence. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 21:56, 20 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • I'm not sure where you get that reading; I personally believe the opposite (that violence was spontaneous) and have been criticized in the past for not putting enough in about how the protests were organized—over the past few months we've fielded criticism for not have enough of the Chinese view (Talk:July_2009_Ürümqi_riots/Archive5#Pro-Uyghur/Anti-Uyghur, User talk:Rjanag/Archive7#Xinjiang Riots update, User talk:Rjanag#July 2009 Ürümqi riots info for Chinese views). It seems that no matter which way I go, people on each side are upset. rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 21:59, 20 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • Also, the paragraph you are pointing to is only one paragraph of a two-paragraph section. The whole point of that paragraph is to present the Chinese view. The previous paragraph presents the other view. (And later paragraphs in the article also return to this controversy; specifically, the third paragraph of "Initial demonstrations" addresses the turn to violence.) Of course the paragraph presenting the Chinese view is going to give more weight to that view; that's what the paragraph is about. You only get the balanced view by reading the whole thing. rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 22:01, 20 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      • Then why don't you mark the paragraph as a summary of the Chinese position? "Immediate causes" is hardly the right section title for that. And the Uyghur counterposition should follow immediately, and not the reader to be forced to piece it together from the rest of the article. Right now, the paragraph starts with whether the violence was planned or spontaneous, winds through several government allegations, each getting stronger, and ends with a supposed terrorist connection to Al Qaida without ever representing the view of the opposition. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 22:13, 20 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
        • Yes, "Causes" is the right section title. The Uyghur position is that the cause was the Shaoguan riots; the Chinese position is that the cause was terrorist intervention. We can all agree that that's a load of BS, but that view has been widely published and it's not Wikipedia's place to post an opinion on it. Besides, every time one of the Chinese views is mentioned, it's tempered with something along the lines of "X claims that..." to distance the Wikipedia article itself from that opinion.

          As for the Uyghur counterposition/view, it is located right before the Chinese position, in the preceding paragraph. To be honest, this is probably one of the first times I've heard someone call this article too pro-Chinese. Usually the criticism is the opposite. rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 22:19, 20 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

          • I think people won't stop complaining about this point until someone tag every non-Uyghur viewpoints with a template like {{Warning Chinese Propaganda}}, but that would just give excuses to all the pro-Han POV pushers to invoke terrorism on every pro-Uyghur viewpoints...I would say move on until there are more substantial concerns with this issue. Jim101 (talk) 22:36, 20 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
            • In any case, I have now moved some things around and made some additions ([2]) to make the structure and message of this section clearer. It should be pretty clear that the purpose of the section is to present 1) the Uyghur story of what caused the riots; 2) the Chinese story; 3) a brief summary of what differs about them. rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 22:48, 20 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
              • "it fails to investigate the possibility of a spontaneous eruption of violence" Yes it does fail on that count. It's a typical situation in China, and we must accept that there will never be an investigation. Even if we do, it will never be independent, will almost certainly point to a separatist plot. Ohconfucius ¡digame! 01:41, 22 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Just here to reaffirm my oppose. Two times I tried to add "Chinese" analysts and both times I was immediately reverted. I looked the cited references up and actually the two of us were wrong: it is only a single expert, Mr. Rohan Gunaratna, who makes the allegations of an Al-Qaida or ETIM connection! Two references for one source, while the third, China Daily, can be considered a propaganda instrument and does not actually cite a single 'expert'. So the line should actually run: "According to a single terrorist analyst, ...." I am sorry, but I have no patience nor understanding for people who are quicker on the reverse button than looking into what they actually quote. In other words: I am now lacking faith in the way the article deals with citing references, and trust is obviously the most important capital with such sensitive topics. Good article status is already quite an achievement, let's keep it at that level. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 23:12, 23 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

We all know that China Daily is a government mouthpiece and much of its stuff is propaganda, but unfortunately it's still a widely-disseminated source that has had a huge impact on the perceptions of this event, especially in the minds of Chinese citizens. We may all think that it's a load of crap (I know I do), but we're in no position to sit here saying which sources are allowed to stay and which should be whitewashed out of the article based simply on our beliefs. It is sad that we live in a world where people believe this crap, but unfortunately they do, and to exclude it from the article would be an injustice and make this article just as much a propaganda piece as China Daily is (which is essentially what User:David Straub pointed out to me at my talkpage when he persuaded me to add this material). You are welcome to oppose if you wish, but for the sake of maintaining a well-balanced article (which means allowing room for opinions we dislike or even hate) I will have to disagree with you. rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 23:20, 23 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
(And, for what it's worth, good article status is not that much of an achievement, especially when it does nothing to get this article closer to what we're ultimately hoping for, which is main page exposure on 5 July 2010.) rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 23:20, 23 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Finally, if you haven't noticed yet: Ohconfucious already edited that section of the article to name Gunaratna specifically (instead of saying "several experts") and to reflect that China Daily made this claim without citing anyone. If nothing else, that should address all your concerns. rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 23:21, 23 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
It all started well and now I realise that the assembled editors of the article were being damned by Gunpowder's faint praise. Please refrain from falsifying a text without adding a reference or looking at the source already supplied. The sources clearly named at least one foreign 'expert', although he writes very circumspectly about a terrorist plot on the part of the WUC. I don't think anyone can object to the neutrality of the text as it is now, exactly as source, and adequately attributed. Whether it's relevant or not is another matter. Ohconfucius ¡digame! 06:35, 24 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Otherwise, sources look okay, links checked out with the link checker tool. Ealdgyth - Talk 17:04, 21 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • The second is a press release from the state news agency of Turkey (Anatolian Agency). The first one is a bit more of a stretch; it's a blog, but one of the only sources available from within Urumqi, and one of the few to have long-term perspective (most of the sources are news articles that came out when the events were going on and are prone to errors and hearsay; these posts were written several months after the events, since the writer didn't have internet access for a while). Also, the one place it is used in an article is with a statement that is already confirmed in another reliable source (Shanghai Daily) and gives some more information on pretty much the same thing. Overall, I thought it was safe to IAR here since it's a useful source, and it's not like the whole account of the riots is based on a blog (indeed, this source was only referenced once, and for a quite uncontroversial point). rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 17:10, 21 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
On the first one, how about you use the blog as an external link instead? Our requirements for those are much less strict, and as you say, it's already backed up by another source. Ealdgyth - Talk 17:19, 21 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure if putting it in the EL section would be helpful. It would distance that source from the particular spot where it's relevant, and I think it would attract POV issues (people might, rightly, ask "If this guy's blog is good enough to be listed as an external link, why not this other one?"). Plus, although external links have looser requirements, I actually believe putting a source in the EL section gives it more weight than using it as an inline reference: it seems to send the message "if you want further information, check this Wikipedia-approved external source, we've specifically chosen it for you". rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 17:23, 21 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
But by using it as a source, we're saying the same thing. It does not meet the FAC "high quality" sources requirement, unfortunately. I don't think it even meets the basic requirements for a reliable source, but it's more of a gray area there. Personally, I'd just delete it, as it only barely comes close to meeting WP:RS and definitely does not meet the higher bar of the FA criteria. Ealdgyth - Talk 17:33, 21 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I've removed it. I think it was nice, but its inclusion is not going to make or break the article so it's not a big deal. rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 21:34, 21 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • WP is not a dictionary. Why are items such as "riots", "excessive force" and "armed police" linked? Can you please audit the whole article for overlinking? "Central Asia" is next to more specific links: why is the sentence crowded out with three links? Plus much more. Tony (talk) 07:48, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • Thanks for commenting. OhConfucius has now removed a good deal of links, and I have just gone through as well. But there are also some specific links that I believe are important to keep, even though they might normally be considered overlinky:
      • Uyghur and Han in the beginning of the Background section: yes, they are linked in lede as well, but it's easy to miss links there, and here those terms are used in closer context with what's important about them (i.e., they're used right next to a discussion of ethnic identities and stuff). Since these terms pop up a hundred more times through the course of the article, I think that it's good to make sure they're made easily available to readers, and that one extra link is a drop in the bucket.
      • "an incident" in "Immediate causes" section: pretty much the same thing.
      • Xinhua News Agency in same section: The article relies very heavily on Xinhua material, and often has to temper that with language such as "Xinhua claimed..." or "According to Xinhua...". I think in this case a link gives readers an opportunity to better understand why we're so hesitant to trust Xinhua (referring to it as "the official government news agency" also helps, but its own article is much more explicit about those issues). Although, I'm not sure if links to other publications, such as The Australian and New York Times are as necessary, so if anyone wants them removed I'd be fine with it.
      • separatist at the end of that section: looks like a dicdef, but this is a major concept throughout the whole article so I think it's good to present the reader with an easy way to clarify what it refers to if they want, rather than being confused for the entire article.
      • People's Armed Police in "Media coverage" section: technically this was also linked in the lede, but that was a long way away and in a different context (reference to a different incident). It's entirely possible that someone wouldn't have clicked on it back there but then wonder what it means when it pops up here, so a link shouldn't hurt.
      • Human Rights Watch in "Media coverage" section: linked in the "International reactions" section as well, but that section (a long list) is one that people tend to skip—few people sit down and read it, just like few people sit down and read the dictionary. I think it's fair to duplicate links in this situation.
    • Finally, I should probably point out that the reason the article looks so blue in many places is the relatively high density of refs (this being a controversial article, it has a ton of refs—there's 40,000 characters of references, as opposed to just 30,000 of actual prose). If I were to, as an experiment, remove all the references, I wouldn't be surprised if people said the article didn't look blue enough and asked for more links. rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 17:22, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Quick comment — Why is their no cite for the last para of the Background sub-section (well it's not really but you get what I mean)? Aaroncrick (talk) 12:15, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, I don't get what you mean, I don't see any paragraphs in that subsection without citations. rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 16:30, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
"These disagreements have sometimes led to violence and ethnic clashes, such as the 1997 Ghulja Incident and the 2008 Kashgar attack, as well as the more widespread 2008 Uyghur unrest preceding the Olympic Games in Beijing." This statement I presume. And I believe the reviewer is trying to ask for a reference to see if other "violence and ethnic clashes" are within context and on topic. Jim101 (talk) 18:51, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I see. (Aaroncrick left me a message saying essentially the same thing.) I guess the issue, then, is whether there's a source saying that those three incidents are connected to/caused by the underlying ethnic tensions that are described above them. Personally I thought that was pretty much a no-brainer, but I can look around to see if there's an external source as well. rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 22:18, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I think this should address Aaroncrick's concern. I reworded the sentence so it's not really controversial (just saying that, for example, "the Ghulja Incident happened" doesn't really need a reference), and added a reference anyway. rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 00:33, 29 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • oppose
firstly the background section, if possible, would benefit from sources from scholarly journals, as the Uighur/Han thing there has been going on a for a while, and some expert analysis is better than a random journo. I see only 1 out of about 10 cites are from journals/textbooks and not newspapers.
The international reaction is rather undue weight. I know it's customary for every current event bombing/natural disaster etc for every govt to make an obligatory condolence to the dead, condemn violence, etc, but it does get a bit repetitive, eg, every news outlet will report on the major bits, eg, the brawl in Guangdown, counter-riots in Urumqi, martial law, trial of rioters etc all the time, but they will only give a selection of responses by other worldl leaders, which are usually clones of each other. At the moment, the list of generic quotes are about 5 times longer than the brawl in Guangdong. I mean, the Micronesian response is the same weight as the Uighurs claiming the PRC covered up the Guangdong brawl. The international reaction section has to be summarised to say what the consensus is, it's uunsustainable to have endlessquotes like that
Fallout needs stuff on China trying to intimidate Australia, and maybe some other countries to not give KAdeer a visa. There was a filme festival in Melbourne with a doco about her, and after the directors wouldn't censor the film, Chinese hackers attacked the website and there was a uighur v han demonstration outside the festival. This type of thing might have been repeated in other countries YellowMonkey (bananabucket) 01:48, 28 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for your input. I will look around for more sources for the background section, but to be honest it was only meant to be a brief summary (which is why it contains links to some other articles) rather than an in-depth analysis. As for the international reaction section, I agree that most of the quotations are 'sweet nothings' (and, in fact, I myself have in the past suggested they be removed), but it was discussed here and the consensus that time was to keep it. I don't think it can really be considered "undue weight" since I doubt anyone will really read through the whole thing; it's more like a big long table that people more or less skip over, or maybe look up one or two places that are of interest to them and skip the rest. As for the Australian film festival, I remember that as well and it is covered in Rebiya Kadeer#The 10 Conditions of Love. I chose not to bring it up in this article (and no one else ever asked us to) because I thought the connection to these riots in particular, while it certainly exists, is somewhat tangential. At some point we need to draw a line, otherwise this article could just include everything that ever happens to Kadeer (and Wang Lequan, Li Zhi, Ilham Toxti, etc.) for the rest of her life, under the excuse that "well, the riots influenced that". rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 02:09, 28 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, the assembled editors all agreed that a tight scope would be desirable. It seems that all the diplomatic pressure from China is targeted at marginalising Kadeer, and yes, people probably would expect to see this stuff mentioned here. Therefore, I have put in a small paragraph. However, it does not go into great detail about the film festival or the computer hacking - all that can be found in the Kadeer article. Ohconfucius ¡digame! 02:46, 29 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I have now rewritten it into more streamlined prose, removing much repetition and redundancy. Ohconfucius ¡digame! 04:11, 28 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Linking on newspapers and channels in teh refs is inconsistent YellowMonkey (bananabucket) 23:42, 28 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, I've removed some of the links. I believe the agreement some time ago was to remove links to common names or names already used in the prose, such as NYT and Xinhua, but to keep links to relatively unknown news outlets (especially in the international reaction section, there are lots of names that would be unfamiliar to most readers). You're right that there were some stray links there, so I've removed them, but I did leave many links in using the standard just described, If you think all links should be removed, I would have to discuss that with the other editors. rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 23:58, 28 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I've also added some scholarly sources to the Background section. Also, I'm not sure if you were counting the "immediate causes" subsection in your above comments, but I just wanted to point out that there's no problem for now with having a large number of news sources in that section, as it's all recent stuff. The first half of the background section is what I tried to add some more sources to just now. rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 01:08, 29 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
That's fine. I meant scholarly sources for the long term stuff, not the punchup YellowMonkey (bananabucket) 03:05, 29 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, you're right; now that I look at your numbers again, there was no reason for me to think otherwise. Striking that part of my comment. rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 03:56, 29 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comments—I looked only at the first bit. It does need cleaning up a little.

  • Lead: communication was "curtailed" or there was a "blackout"? One or the other. "have faced criminal charges for their actions during the riots"—this says these charges are ongoing, still being dealt with, unresolved (the "have").
    • Changed "communication blackout" to "communication limitations" [3]. As for the "have", yes, they're still ongoing (new trials are happening periodically, I believe the most recent was just a few days ago). rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 02:58, 31 January 2010 (UTC) addendum: I've updated the article to reflect the most recent death sentences, which were on 26 January. rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 15:27, 31 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • "and 10% are of other ethnic groups"—remove "of".
    • Really? I think it sounds better with "of"—people aren't ethnic groups, people are "of" or "from" ethnic groups. (The reason it's not parallel to the elements earlier in the sentence is that people are Han or Uyghur.) rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 02:58, 31 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • "in the area" and "in the region" in the same sentence?
  • "Uyghurs believe that they are gradually being"—they is unclear. "Uyghurs believe that their ancient culture is ..." might be clearer.
  • This strikes me as rather forced POV: "Some say that their culture and traditions are being suppressed under the influx of Han migrants,[20][21] and that they are denied the rights to worship and to travel.[22] On the other hand, some Han people are dissatisfied by government policies which they believe favour Uyghurs,[23] and believe laws are more lenient towards Uyghurs than towards Han people." It's not parallel.
    • I'm not sure I see the problem. Are you saying that the Han complaints are presented as more petty/less concerning than the Uyghur complaints? These are what the sources say, though, and as far as I know these points pretty much summarize each side's view in the dispute. (And, for what it's worth, someone taking the opposite perspective could say that the article is currently presenting the Uyghur's complaints as more radical/blown-out-of-proportion, therefore giving more credibility to the Han ones). But I have added a bit more to the Han side to be safe. rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 03:06, 31 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • "mostly-Han government"—no hyphen, please.
  • "manpower shortages;"—see Gender-neutral language. "labour"? Tony (talk) 02:29, 31 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]


The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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