Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/Lumumba Government

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

No consensus to promote at this time - Peacemaker67 (talk) via MilHistBot (talk) 02:20, 28 September 2018 (UTC) « Return to A-Class review list[reply]

Lumumba Government

Instructions for nominators and reviewers

Nominator(s): Indy beetle (talk)

After over a year and a half of work in userspace, I present an article on the Democratic Republic of the Congo's first independent government, led by the famous Patrice Lumumba. I call it my magnum opus. Though only in power for barely two-and-a-half months, a fair amount of history occurred under its watch. In terms of being relevant to military history, its tenure was dominated by a widespread army mutiny, a Belgian military intervention, and two secessions, making it more or less a civil war government. There's also plenty in the article about policy disputes, administrative problems, and financial issues, for those of you whose interests are piqued by political affairs. This is the culmination of months of exhaustive (*cough* exhausting *cough* but fascinating) research, and I've drawn on a mix of new and old materials written by historians, political scientists, and even ministers of the actual cabinet. I've done my best to copy edit as I went along, but feel free to correct any mistakes and make any improvements to the prose. I tried to be concise while retaining all relevant content, but I must warn you of the length; there's 525 unique citations. Hopefully this puts us one step closer to giving Africa the coverage it deserves. -Indy beetle (talk) 07:14, 15 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Comments by Catrìona

I note that the readable prose size is over the general limit of 100k and the lede, five very long paragraphs, does not meet MOS:LEDE. I highly recommend that you split off some subtopics of the article and use summary style. However, the article appears well researched and very thorough. Catrìona (talk) 23:42, 15 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Catrìona: I'm in the process of slimming and trimming to rectify that, but I don't think I can make it too much smaller (definitely not below 100k) without cutting critical details or relevant context, lead included. If you have any specific suggestions, I'm all ears, but I'll defend what I think needs to be included. One of the reasons I brought this article to A-class review is that I could get some consensus on size before dragging it over to FAC. -Indy beetle (talk) 01:57, 16 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note - I have condensed the lead into four paragraphs per MOS:LEAD and slimmed the readable prose by several kilobytes. -Indy beetle (talk) 16:47, 25 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Comment I also think that this article is much too long. The lead alone remains rather daunting - it takes up the full screen on my large monitor. Catrìona's suggestion that elements of the article be split out is a good one. I'd suggest that this nomination be withdrawn while the article is reworked. Nick-D (talk) 11:16, 26 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Nick-D: I've already begun that process. A total of 11 kilobytes have been cut so far, and I'm making progress on the lead. I'm hesitant to withdraw because then I won't have a venue where people can suggest what should be moved/removed. It's an unusual case I think to have an A-class nom with too much information rather than not enough. My only other alternative would be a peer review, I suppose. I think it is better that everyone's suggestions are discussed where they can all be seen and built upon by others because this is a topic that few people are familiar with and a consensus needs to be built around what it is "important" enough to worthy inclusion and what is not. -Indy beetle (talk) 16:27, 26 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

With respect for your fine work here, I don't think that you should be asking editors to review an article which is undergoing major changes - the article is not stable, and editors can't be confident that the version of it they review is close to that at the end of the process. I'd suggest that you pull this review, and renominate when the changes are settled. The article certainly has very strong potential. Nick-D (talk) 11:24, 27 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Requesting this review be withdrawn pending further revision. -Indy beetle (talk) 14:46, 27 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.