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Indonesian killings of 1965–66

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This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because of fairly basic/standard reasons: it's a topic I was interested enough in to start and develop the article. Now I would like general advice on how to improve towards GA and even FA.

Thanks, Merbabu (talk) 10:47, 12 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]


Review made on this version

Finetooth comments: This is an interesting article about a set of events that seemed hidden from view for a long time. GA has six criteria. This article seems to me to meet four of them. It seems factually accurate, broad in coverage, stable, and it seems to have a neutral point of view. The one cleanup tag will need to be addressed, but that shouldn't be difficult. The writing is fairly good, but I have concerns that I elaborate upon below. In addition, more copyediting would be a good idea. The complete lack of images is a big problem. To earn promotion to GA, the article will probably need three or more images. Aiming for one image per section is a good rule of thumb. You might have to resort to images of buildings, landmarks, rivers, or generalized things that seem to fit if you can't find specific images related to the conflict. I'm guessing that you can find licensed photos of Suharto and Sukarno on the Commons.

Lead

  • You should try to include a mention of the ideas in the "Impacts" section in the lead. I'm thinking specifically of the historical and scholarly analysis mentioned in the last paragraph. It wouldn't be unusual for an article this long to have a three-paragraph lead.
  • The phrase "incumbent and Indonesian founding president Sukarno" is a bit awkward. I'd suggest re-casting, breaking the sentence in two if necessary.

Background

Killings

  • PKI chairman, Aidit, had flown to Central Java in early October, and where the coup attempt had been supported by leftist officers in Yogyakarta, Salatiga, and Semarang. - This is an example of a passive voice construction that you could easily render in active voice: "PKI chairman, Aidit, had flown to Central Java in early October, where leftist officers in Yogyakarta, Salatiga, and Semarang had supported the coup attempt." - Active voice is often better than passive. I see quite a few other passive-voice constructions in the article. Try to make more of them active.
  • "Adit" - Dipa Nusantara Aidit. - On first mention, it's customary to give the full name. Adit is OK on second and subsequent references. Ditto for Njoto and Lukman. It might also be good to include a brief title or job description for readers who might have no idea who Njoto and Lukman were.
  • "The situation varied across the country and the role of the army has never been fully explained; in some areas the... ". - Period instead of semi-colon
  • "Many of the bodies had been dumped in rivers, so much so that in parts they became clogged with corpses." - Repetition. I'd suggest deleting this sentence and merging the other two sentences in the paragraph with the paragraph above them.
    • I deleted the sentence as recommended, but left the rest as a short stand-alone paragraph. I know this looks odd, but it is about the end of the killings - ie, i think it might get a bit lost if I joined it up with the preceding paragraph. --Merbabu (talk) 02:02, 8 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • "the mystical Solo River" - What makes it "mystical"?


Java

  • "amongst" - The MoS prefers "among".
  • "The killings extended to more than PKI members; in Java many considered 'left PNI' were killed, others killed were just suspects and other killings were simply the settling of old grievances with little or no political motive." - This sentence is spliced together with a semi-colon and a comma, and I notice a tilt toward this kind of punctuation in the article. Something like this might work: "The killings extended beyond PKI members and Javanese labeled "left PNI". Others who died were merely suspects or the victims of old grievances unrelated to politics.
  • "left PNI". I don't think PNI appeared earlier in the article unless I am missing it. If this is the first instance, it should be spelled out thus: " 'left PNI', meaning left-leaning members of the Indonesian National Party (PNI)".
  • "The Muslim group Muhammadiyah proclaimed in early November 1965 that the extermination of "Gestapu/PKI" constituted Holy War ("Gestapu" being the military's name for the '30 September Movement'), a position that was supported by other Islamic groups in Java and Sumatra." - This should be recast to pull the almost complete sentence in parentheses out of the middle.
  • "truckloads of arrested communists" - Throughout the article, Communists is sometimes uppercase in the article and sometimes lowercase. Unless you have a reason for using both, consistency would be good, most likely uppercase since they either were members of the PKI or were being portrayed as such.
  • "Where there had been communist centres in Central and East Java, Muslim groups portraying themselves as victims of communist aggression justified the killings by evoking the Madiun Affair of 1948." - The MoS generally frowns on paragraphs this short. The two solutions are to expand the paragraph or to merge it with another paragraph.
  • "traditional mysticism" - Repetition of "mystical". Also, it might be good to elaborate on the mysticism. What kind? What did it involve?


Sumatra

  • "around the plantations" - What plantations?
  • "The regional revolts of the late 1950s complicated events in Sumatra as many former rebels were forced to affiliate themselves with Communist bodies to prove their loyalty to the Indonesian Republic. The quelling of the 1950s revolts and 1965 killings were seen by most Sumatrans as a "Javanese occupation". - I don't understand what is meant here. What were the former rebels before they affiliated with the Communists? Who forced them? How is this related to the idea of a Javanese occupation? "Quelling" and "killings" don't mean the same as "occupation".

Deaths and imprisonment

  • "In the first 20 years following the killings, thirty-nine serious estimates... " Numbers from 10 and up are usually written as digits. For consistency, thirty-nine here should be 39. You should check throughout the article for other similar situations.
  • "2 million" - two million. Ditto for one million. Numbers from one to nine are usually spelled out.
  • "1.5m" - 1.5 million
  • "as did their children" - as were their children?
  • "Conflict resolution methods have broken down, and Muslim groups and the military adopted an "us or them attitude", and that when the killings were over, many Indonesians dismissed as something the communists had deserved. - "Had" broken down instead of "have? This probably should be two sentences, the second saying, "When the killings were over, many Indonesians dismissed them as something the Communists had deserved."

References

  • It seems counter-intuitive, but if you use the "work" parameter instead of the "publisher" parameter in the cite news template, it will correctly italicize the newspaper name. I fixed citation 52, so you have an example. Citation 56 also needs italics, and maybe those are the only two.

I hope these comments prove helpful. If so, please consider reviewing another article, especially one from the PR backlog. That is where I found this one. Finetooth (talk) 04:51, 18 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Many thanks. This is the most helpful review I've seen. Very detailed, and clearly a lot of effort went into it. cheers. --Merbabu (talk)
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