Talk:Open Secrets: India's Intelligence Unveiled

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Yoninah (talk) 21:46, 21 April 2020 (UTC)

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• Comment or view
• Article history

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• ... that of all the memoirs written by intelligence operatives Open Secrets is one of the most vainglorious?

Source: "A good many exposes of the CIA, the FBI and the MI5 and MI6 have been published. None of them, however, was written in the manner Dhar writes. None of the intelligence operators was as vainglorious as he is." (Noorani, A. G. “Intelligence and the Political System.” Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 40, no. 13, 2005, pp. 1330–1333. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/4416397. Accessed 11 Mar. 2020.Copy)

• Reviewed: 1981 Benson & Hedges Cup Final

Moved to mainspace by DiplomatTesterMan (talk). Self-nominated at 08:49, 11 March 2020 (UTC).

• I'm not going to review this article, but I don't think the hook is acceptable. We can't have somebody's opinion stated as fact in Wikipedia's voice. SpinningSpark 21:29, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

• Article was new and long enough at the time of nomination. It's not particularly well formatted - please improve the use of quotations, especially - and the style and tone need work. Further, the hook is bad. Would like to see the article improved and for better hooks to be proposed (see Spinning's note above, too). Kingsif (talk) 16:49, 16 April 2020 (UTC)

• Both comments noted. Will make the changes. Thanks.  Working DTM (talk) 03:13, 17 April 2020 (UTC)

Some alternate hooks:

ALT1: ...that the book Open Secrets calls for legislative oversight for intelligence agencies in India? Source:The book has two central themes... On the former he makes a perfectly valid point. The intelligence services, IB and RAW, lack a statutory charter and are untrammeled by democratic oversight and accountability. (Economic and Political Weekly), In his prologue, he says the purpose of writing Open Secrets is to bring India's intelligence agencies under legislative control... This passage about his philosophy...breeding ground of Goerings and Himmlers in the backyard of constitutional democracy (Book page xvii)

ALT2: ...that the book Open Secrets describes how intelligence agencies in India were used for 'personal-political agendas'? Source:A book by former IB joint director Maloy Krishna Dhar has alleged that India's intelligence agencies are misused by political establishments to fulfil "personal-political agendas" (The Times of India).

ALT2a: ...that Indian intelligence operative Maloy Krishna Dhar writes in his memoir Open Secrets how assets of Indian intelligence agencies such as aircraft are used by politicians and their family for private use? Source:...later wrote a second book, Open Secrets, in 2005, revealing how the intelligence agencies had at times been misused by the government and individual officers (The Telegraph), Mr Dhar laments the misuse and abuse of intelligence agencies... a glaring example of misuse of assets of the RAW and BSF is the private use of ARC and BSF aircraft by the politicians, their family members and senior bureaucrats.

ALT2b: ...that the book Open Secrets reveals how assets of Indian intelligence agencies such as aircraft were used by politicians and their family for private use?

ALT3: ...that the book Open Secrets says that Indian intelligence operatives operate in the "breeding ground of Goerings and Himmlers in the backyard of constitutional democracy"? Source:“There were and still are several senior officers who pursue their own agenda,” wrote Maloy Krishna Dhar of his IB colleagues in the voluminous book he called Open Secrets. “Some make money out of the sacred national trust, some advance career prospects and a few dabble in ideological pursuits. This is a likely breeding ground for Goerings and Himmlers in the backyard of constitutional democracy.” (DAWN)

Spinningspark, I have cut hook zero and proposed alternates. Hope these are fine.

Kingsif, can you please give an example or two of what you mean by "improve the use of quotations" and "the style and tone need work". I will accordingly make the rest of the changes. Thanks. DTM (talk) 05:28, 17 April 2020 (UTC)

Hi DTM, re. quotations: the Description section seems to be built around giant quote blocks, which is inappropriate. On the style and tone, the body text of the article opens with V.K. Garg of Manas Publications took years convincing Maloy Krishna Dhar to write Open Secrets, which is conversational rather than encyclopedic, a tone that prevails throughout. Wikistyle is not followed for how to write about the subjects (e.g. Background should not be the author's biography, etc.). There's also some harv ref errors that should be addressed. Kingsif (talk) 15:39, 17 April 2020 (UTC)

 Working DTM (talk) 11:40, 18 April 2020 (UTC)

Changes made, changes still left:

1. Quotations from the description section removed.
2. Background section removed and material shifted to an efn note.
3. Style and tone, conversational rather than encyclopedic.  Working done DTM (talk) 10:01, 20 April 2020 (UTC)
4. harv ref errors  Working

DTM (talk) 08:09, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

Please do not dump an author bio into an efn. Kingsif (talk) 17:23, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

efn shortened DTM (talk) 08:54, 20 April 2020 (UTC)

Kingsif, I have addressed the first three points raised. If more needs to be done let me know. I am not sure which 'harv ref errors' you mean. DTM (talk) 10:29, 20 April 2020 (UTC)

The ref errors seem to have resolved themselves. Article looks better, satis for DYK. Approving Alt2b and Alt3, as the other alts are also just expounding on what an intelligence agency is/alt2a is an unnecessarily long version of 2b. Kingsif (talk) 18:12, 20 April 2020 (UTC)