Talk:History of Somalia (1991–2006)/GA1

Good article nomination on hold

This article's Good Article promotion has been put on hold. During review, some issues were discovered that can be resolved without a major re-write. This is how the article, as of January 13, 2008, compares against the six good article criteria:

1. Well written?: Mostly very well-written, with engaging prose (again, nice work here) and Manual of Style compliance. Just a few minor points though. In the lead, it says "as of 2007", should it be changed to 2008? Next, the blockquote currently present needs to be not in block quote format. Per WP:MOSQUOTE, block quotes must be more than 4 lines or multiple paragraphs.

2. Factually accurate?: Generally the article meets or exceeds the GA requirements for referencing and in-line citations. However, there are a few places in the article needing further in-line citations. The rest of the article is well-cited, but there are several direct quotes without adjacent citations. The GA criteria requires that all direct quotes have citations immediately following. Places where this does not occur:

• the 1st sentence of Social conditions
• the 1st sentence of Communications
• early in Education
• twice in the Economic impact of anarchy section

One additional suggestion: in the lead, it might be better to put the cite at the end of the sentence in order to verify the evaluation of the tendency towards anarcho-capitalism. That might be a more controversial interpretation than simple anarchism, from my perspective.

3. Broad in coverage?: Broad and concise.

4. Neutral point of view?: Gives fair treatment to all significant points of view. Good work.

5. Article stability? Not exclusively the subject of unresolved current events or edit wars.

6. Images?: Gives proper source and licensing info for all images.

Please address these matters soon and then leave a note here showing how they have been resolved. After 48 hours the article should be reviewed again. If these issues are not addressed within 7 days, the article may be failed without further notice. Thank you for your work so far.— VanTucky 02:49, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Notes

For readability, please place any comments or questions pertaining to the hold below rather than within the body of the review. Thank you!

I have attempted to resolve all issues related to factual accuracy and use of blockquotes. With regard to the as of 2007 issue, the cited reference, a CIA World Factbook entry, was last updated on 2007-12-13 and I don't anticipate this can be reliably updated with a different reference. With regard to anarchism/anarcho-capitalism, this is editorial attribution of ideology on the part of the editors of the article; the reference pertains only to the "stateless society" and legal system elements. That Somalia was in a state of anarchy is established by the Tim Harford and Mazrui refs, as well as the reliable source in the External links. I haven't been able to find any reliable source from an anti-capitalist anarchist pov, so I am not sure how to respond to this suggestion. Thanks for reviewing the article so thoroughly, and I look forward to your response. Skomorokh ^incite 03:18, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your swift response and good work so far. The refs for the quotes are done. As for the date, you might look in Google news and other sites (such as NPR) for updated verification. It might be hard, considering we're still not even a full month into '08. It's not really a pass/fail issue alone though, so if it's not possible don't worry about it. On the other hand, the anarcho-capitalist issue is serious. However much I might agree, that kind of editorial analysis is quite obviously original research. Again, it pains me to ask, but if no ref can be found then it needs to be removed in order to pass as GA. I guess that's part of the "verifiability, not truth" conflict, unfortunately. VanTucky 03:26, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

No luck on the date issue, but I believe I have come to a solution to the anarchist attribution issues; I have added a non-academic source referring to "anarchy" in Somalia, and removed all references to anarchism in the lead sentence. In the final paragraph of the lede, I have included commentary by a notable economist on Somalia serving as a test case for the "theory of anarchy" propounded by David D. Friedman and Murray Rothbard, who may be uncontroversially identified as anarcho-capitalists. I hope the article has improved enough to meet GA criteria now.Skomorokh ^incite 04:31, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

That should do it. I'll make one more quick check over and pass the article. VanTucky 04:38, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Yup, all good. Fantastic work Skomorokh! VanTucky 04:46, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Much obliged! Skomorokh ^incite 04:47, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

This article is an absurdist example of original research if there was ever was one. No anarchist that I know of would say that Somalia is an example of an anarchist society! The reason why people can't find any references in anarchist sources is because anarchists don't see Somalia as being anarchist. From what I understand, Somalia is ruled by warlords and Islamic courts. That is 'not anarchism. Chuck0 (talk) 07:08, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

I think that most anarchists, even most anarcho-capitalists would deny that Somalia in the 1990s was an anarchist society. But Wikipedia is not written from an anarchist POV. This article used be called "Anarchism in Somalia", which was ridiculous because to the best of our knowledge there are no self-identified anarchists in Somalia. The sources do refer to the situation as anarchy, and even if anarchists like yourself take that pejoratively, that's what we should call it, because WIiki is a tertiary source. Whatever you want to accuse this article of, you cannot call it original research - the ideologically uncommitted Good article reviewers would never have countenanced this article had that been the case - because it is based entirely on the research of other highly regarded sources as The New York Times, BBC, Tim Harford etc.

I do think anarchist perspectives are sorely lacking from this article so tell you what Chuck, write an article for infoshop or in some anarchist publication saying anything you want about the issue and I'll include it here. Other than that, I'm not sure what constructive changes can be made in light of this. Skomorokh ^incite 14:50, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

If this article is not writing from an anarchist POV, it shouldn't a quote on how this is a "Test of the theory of anarchy", at least not without a counter opinion. But either way, it needs an anarchist perspective. "Go move to Somalia" is an attack I hear way too often against anarchists, and with a Google search for "Anarchy Somalia" bringing this article up first, I can only assume its partially to blame for this misunderstanding, even if unintentionally. If you call something an anarchy, people are going to assume anarchists support it, And of course there are anarchists in Somilia, maybe not a huge movement, but its kind of irrational to assume that there isn't a single person there with that viewpoint. But I'm just ranting now, somebody with good writing skills post something up on infoshop. And as a last note, to Lordmetroid below, chosen warlords? Since when is representative democracy considered anarchy?--76.112.67.33 (talk) 00:58, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

This is an encyclopedia - we collate the views of reliable sources, we do not publish original research. If you can find an article written in the anarchist press or by a notable figure, just show it to me and I'll put it in. Writing from a neutral point of view does not mean including no points of view, it means presenting the verifiable and reputable scholarship of others. Such scholars call the political environment in Somalia "anarchy". No reputable scholars, or other notable figures, have written anything to dispute that. If you can prove that last sentence wrong, then we can change or at least challenge the "anarchy" designation. Until then, all we are doing is bemoaning the quality of the scholars. It's not Wikipedia's fault if every astronomer thinks the moon is made of cheese. I'm very open to any constructive suggestions for changing the article, but complaining about the state of play over which Wikipedia has no control is fruitless. Regards, скоморохъ 01:10, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, I didn't mean to come off as complaining. My post was an odd mixture of personal opinions and how this article comes off as biased. Probably hard to tell where one ends and the other begins. And really, calling it anarchy isn't that offensive to me, as there are several interpretations of the word. The part that got my feathers rustled was the unopposed statement that this was the theory of anarchy, which makes it seem this in any way reflects anarchism (Nor is any single example enough to disprove a political view, but I know thats not wikipedia's role to point out). I did a quick five minute search, and found one kind of relevant article: http://www.syndicalist.org/archives/llr14-24/14b.shtml

Though I doubt that qualifies (I know nothing of that author or his reputation). But there is some evidence of the opinion out there. Too bad a couple hundred people don't have the same weight as one "reputable" scholar, as I have tons of forums on the debate. Oh well, if that article doesn't qualify I'll hit the library this weekend and hope to find at least one book showing dissent. --76.112.67.33 (talk) 04:39, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Nice work, I think the article qualifies under our reliable source guidelines - the Anarcho-Syndicalist Review is a published quarterly (with an ISBN number) with peer review oversight (it has an editorial collective) and the author is explicitly named. This makes it a good deal more reliable than "some dude with blog", so I'll add it in. Anything more like this you can find would be great. скоморохъ 12:14, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Somalia being a "real" anarchy depends, if warlords and courts are voluntary chosen by the clients then it would be possible to classify Somalia as an anarchy. Please, give sources of this being the case. Lord Metroid (talk) 10:50, 18 January 2008 (UTC)