Wikipedia:Featured article review/archive/October 2019

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

The article was delisted by Nikkimaria via FACBot (talk) 5:12, 13 October 2019 (UTC) [1].

Kolkata

Notified: User:Dwaipayanc, WikiProject Cities, Noticeboard for India-related topics

Review section

I am nominating this featured article for review because it has consistently and persistently been listed as the article with the most cleanup categories (currently 12) at https://bambots.brucemyers.com/cwb/alpha/Featured_articles.html. Even on a brief scan it is obvious that there are unsourced statements; miscellaneous and unsourced lists of companies, consulates, neighborhoods, research centers, festivals and sports personalities; extraneous and ungrammatical text, such as "Calcutta drainage and sewerage 1856" inserted into the middle of a section; and outdated data from over 10 years ago. Attempts to address these multiple problems, e.g. [2][3][4], are actively resisted and reverted[5][6][7][8][9][10]. As can be seen in those edits, editors of the article are not even agreed on whether or not to include the absurd (and unsourced) claim that the city's population is 65 million. DrKay (talk) 08:07, 7 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

There does appear to be issues here. I clicked on the source for the population table, and couldn't not find a reference to the city. Likewise in the second population table, the source only contains 1 of the 4 figures. Mattximus (talk) 14:09, 7 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from RetiredDuke

This article is a monster to review but I tried to. Some issues:

• I spotted serious, extremely close paraphrasing of reference 62 (Das, Diptendra; Chattopadhyay, B. C. (17–19 December 2009). Characterization of soil over Kolkata municipal area) in the geography section of the article. We're talking copy-paste here.
• Swathes of uncited text.
• The history section needs a copyedit to make it less disjointed and confusing. For instance:

• “The partition of Bengal in 1905 along religious lines led to mass protests, making Calcutta a less hospitable place for the British. The capital was moved to New Delhi in 1911. Calcutta continued to be a centre for revolutionary organisations associated with the Indian independence movement. The city and its port were bombed several times by the Japanese between 1942 and 1944, during World War II.” - This makes no sense at all, we’re just jumping from topic to topic here.
• Also “Job Charnock, an administrator who worked for the company, was formerly credited as the founder of the city; In response to a public petition, the Calcutta High Court ruled in 2003 that the city does not have a founder. The area occupied by the present-day city encompassed three villages: Kalikata, Gobindapur, and Sutanuti.” – More jumping around.
• “The Nawab of Bengal, Siraj ud-Daulah, condemned the militarisation and tax evasion by the company.” – This came absolutely out of nowhere in the flow of the text. Etc, etc.

• The North, Central, East and South Kolkata sections are bloated to the high heavens with the names of dozens of neighborhoods without showing their notability in relation to the city in general, making these sections a WP:SEAOFBLUE that is quite frankly a bore to parse through. Mostly without references.
• Much of the data in the economy section seems a bit dated, no? I see statistics from 2000, 2005, 2001, 2003. That was almost 20 years ago.
• There’s a lot of puffery in the article. Why do we need five references to show that in the 2000s several shopping malls and hotels were launched in the city? It’s not a big claim at all. After that bit, it becomes promotion galore; we get five sentences that don’t do much other than list companies and institutions, without references.
• More promotional listing of companies in the utility services section.
• ”Parts of the city lack proper sewerage, leading to unsanitary methods of waste disposal.” – don’t be shy now, what exactly are we talking about here?
• “Calcutta drainage and sewerage 1856” – this seems out of place
• We get more dated data in the healthcare section.
• The last part of the education section is currently a mostly uncited promotional listing of institutes
• “Nobel laureate Sir C. V. Raman did his groundbreaking work in Raman effect in IACS.” –Uncited promotional puff-trivia.
• The last two sentences of the culture section should be cut off, they currently feature 31 events that range from Christmas to non-notable music festivals. And they have no references (somewhat predictably).
• Last sentence of the sports section, an excuse to add your favorite athlete to the text without having to reference it.

All in all, I think it needs serious work (copy-editing wise and adding of references) and a lot of puffery removal. RetiredDuke (talk) 17:14, 14 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• Move to FARC Substantial problems have been identified during the review phase (my thanks to the reviewers above), and these are not likely to be resolved anytime soon. DrKay (talk) 15:35, 28 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

FARC section

Concerns raised in the review section include paraphrasing, organization, and referencing.

• Delist. Problems identified in the review section remain largely unaddressed. DrKay (talk) 08:05, 5 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Delist I understand that this is a broad topic, but the article is currently too unwieldy (216 kB!) and disorganized for FA status, thus violating criteria 1a and 2b. There are also too many images for my liking, esp. too many horizontal-scroll images, violating criterion 3. – John M Wolfson (talk • contribs) 21:10, 6 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Delist The article is not up to date, the prose in the History section is clunky, the 4 sections about the geographical areas are severely undersourced seas of blue, I still see random unsourced lists of research centers, festivals, companies, celebrities, sports personalities and whatnot. There has been no improvement of the article for it to meet current FA requirements so yeah, it has to be demoted. RetiredDuke (talk) 22:34, 12 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• Closing note: This removal candidate has been delisted, but there may be a delay in bot processing of the close. Please leave the {{featured article review}} template in place on the talk page until the bot goes through. Nikkimaria (talk) 15:12, 13 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

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