Talk:Niqāb in Egypt/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Protonk (talk) 20:00, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Hi! I've marked that I plan to review this article. I'll take a look at images (for style and for copyright problems), style, completeness and accuracy. I can't do a complete check of sources but I will do my best to spot check claims or verify the more important references. This may take me a little while (~3-4 hours) once I get started. In that time if anyone else wants to come by and leave their own review or make a comment I would be happy to have their input. If I don't finish the review by tomorrow, please leave a note on my talk page or email me, as I might have gotten busy outside of wikipedia. Looks like a great subject and I hope to learn a lot by reading the article! Protonk (talk) 20:00, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Note - there are lots of refs in the article that are repeated, but not combined with a "ref name" tag. I fixed a couple of these, but this seems like a simple matter that should be attended to before the GA review. -- Ssilvers (talk) 20:42, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Update

I'm in class all day today. I hope to log in and finish the style section but I can't imagine I will finish the sources and content. Protonk (talk) 15:46, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Images

As a preamble to this section I want to point out that while the good article criteria mention images, the image requirements for GA are not as strict as those for the featured article process. Images should be helpful to the overall article content, have clear and identifiable copyright information and generally provide a good illustration in the context of the subject matter. Suggestions provided below which go beyond those (admittedly vague) goals should be taken onboard but aren't strictly required for passing.

• File:Huda Shaarawy.gif has a link to the source, but not a specific one. If possible, the link should be updated to indicate where on the site the image was found. Also there is no author information. As the picture was apparently taken prior to 1954, the author information may be tough to find.
• File:Cairo-Demonstrations1919.jpg. No author information and the link provided leads to a dynamic page (which are subject to link rot). If a static link on mideastimage.com cannot be found than the image description page should be updated with instructions on how to find the image (search terms, etc.).
• Consider moving one of the images to the lede. This works will for images which don't serve a specific purpose in the text but can give a reader interested only in a brief overview a good illustration of the subject. File:Ladies attired for Riding or Walking. (1836) - TIMEA.jpg might work well for this.
• Otherwise the images look good. If you feel that there are too many images, you may want to consider removing File:JehanSadat.jpg, but that is only if you want to. I don't have a strong recommendation either way. Protonk (talk) 20:47, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Style

• Consider (and this is by no means a requirement) merging some of the sub-sections in to each other. If a section deals with something which is conceptually very similar to the parent section or to another in the same level of the hierarchy, it is a bit easier on readers to address a topic in a few paragraphs, rather than only one to two paragraphs per section. For instance, you may want to consider merging the public reaction section into Al-Azhar controversy.
• Again, not a requirement, but since a number of your footnotes point to different pages of the same reference, it is sometimes easier on readers to have a "references" section and a notes section, with the notes section generated by {{harv}}. Converting from standard footnote references to Harvard references is very time consuming, but it can greatly improve the clarity in the references section.
• The spelling of "Niqāb" is not standardized across the article? Is it always spelled with the macron or are there cases where the spelling should differ? If the former is true then the article should always use the correct spelling.
• Likewise burqu'. Sometimes it contains the trailing apostrophe, sometimes not. Is this an error? Also, is this meant to be Burqa? If so there should be a wikilink in the body text.
• The lede is a tad short. For an article of this length, three paragraphs is a good ballpark figure. For this article, you would want the first paragraph as a brief intro (which you have), the second describing the history and the third talking about contemporary issues, as this is the rough format of your article.
• The level of wikilinking seems to be well measured. There are enough links to appropriate targets to offer contexts and not so many as to overwhelm the reader.
• "While many women in Egypt wear a black niqab along with a billowing black abaya as seen in countries such as Saudi Arabia, many choose to wear different colors of the niqab or manipulate the hijab to cover their face." This sentence is both awkward and assumes some level of understanding which you might not want to assume on the part of the reader. We can, of course, follow the links to hijab and abaya to see what that would mean and why it is important enough to be in the lede, but you should be a bit more clear. Also, the balance in the sentence is a bit off. It starts with "while many women..." and the next clause is "many choose", which gives us no real way to quickly compare magnititudes. If we don't know roughly how many choose to dress in a given way, we shouldn't make the broad statement so prominently. If we do know (even if we know it is 50/50), we should make that more clear to the reader.
• "Regardless, the growing trend of munaqqabat, or women who wear the niqab, has alarmed the authorities. They have begun to see this dress as a security threat, because it hides the face, and because it is perceived as a political statement, a rejection of the state in favor of a strict Islamic system." I would split this up differently. Something like:
  • "The growing trend of munaqqabat, or women who wear the niqab, has alarmed the authorities who have begun to see this dress as a security threat. The niqab is seen as a threat because it hides the face, and because it is perceived as a political statement, a rejection of the state in favor of a strict Islamic system."
• That sentence has its own problems, but it avoids beginning a sentence with the word "they", and it separates the two thoughts: that Egyptian authorities see the niqab as a threat and why they see it as such.
• the second paragraph of the lede is both out of order conceptually as well as too short. I won't give a detailed breakdown because I feel that both problems would be solved by building it into two paragraphs as I suggested above.
• Also, sometimes niqab is italicized and other times it is not. Is there a reason?
• "During this time wearing a face veil was described as “a national Egyptian dress for upper-class women, and it was called al-habara." The quote is never closed. Was it meant to end with "...upper-class women"?
• "...secluded in harems that were guarded by eunuchs." you can probably drop "that were"
• "Although these hareem women..." Hareem is the collective noun?
• Watch your sentence structure. Starting consecutive sentences with the same word is jarring for readers (e.g. "although... although"). If you have trouble fixing this yourself (as I do), I can ask a friend to punch things up.
• "Seclusion and veiling was a..." was-->were
• " ...could not afford; so, Cairo’s lower class women could not cover their faces with the burqu." you can probably drop the "so," after the semicolon.
• "Having to attend to their work in the villages and the city, it was impossible to inhibit their movement with seclusion or cover their faces like the elite women." This sentence is confusing, though perhaps it is just me. The second clause does not seem to follow the first. I could see why poorer women simply could not afford the face covers, and I can understand why needing to work would prevent them from sequestering themselves, but I am not seeing the importance. I should be more clear. You made a very similar point in the sentence immediately preceding this. Is this sentence attempting to reinforce that point? Is it attempting to make a new point? If it is the former, the sentence should provide some new claim or evidence and not restate the previous one. If it is attempting to reinforce the point (sort of summing up the paragraph), then I think the sentence structure should be tweaked a bit.
• Jurist is a very specific word outside of american english and should be wikilinked to its intended meaning.
• "Western-educated Egyptians and other leading figures of Egypt's national movement consequently were forced to reexamine the practices of veiling, seclusion of women, arranged marriages, polygamy, and divorce." More of a sourcing point, but this sentence (and presumably the one before it) was cited to a contemporary work which should rightly be considered as part of the debate. Is there some retrospective work we can cite which gives context to the issue at the time period?
• "This book is widely considered the beginning of the battle of the veil that agitated the Arab press." Widely considered by whom? What does the text of the source say about the status of the The Liberation of Women?
• That's all for now. I'll check back later with more notes. Also, so far I feel this article is above average. There are some style issues which can be resolved through editing and I think I see some areas where the sourcing could be improved, but I think that once I finish the comments all you would have to do to pass is resolve the bulk of them. Protonk (talk) 23:18, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

It's been a month and it doesn't look like the concerns have been addressed. It is time to fail it? Wizardman _{Operation Big Bear} 18:57, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

No work's been done, so I'm failing the article. Wizardman _{Operation Big Bear} 16:53, 12 January 2011 (UTC)