Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/Indian Air Force

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

Indian Air Force[edit]

Nominator(s): Sumanch (talk)
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I am nominating this article for A-Class review because —

  • this article is already a B-class article and I believe exceeds GA requirements
  • this article is consistently referenced with an appropriate citation style, and all claims are verifiable against reputable sources, accurately represent the relevant body of published knowledge, and are supported with specific evidence and external citations
  • article is comprehensive, factually accurate, neutral and focused on the Indian Air Force; it neglects no major facts or details
  • the article has an appropriate structure of hierarchical headings, including a concise lead section that summarizes the topic and prepares the reader for the detail in the subsequent sections, and a substantial but not overwhelming table of contents
  • the article is written in concise and articulate English; its prose is clear, is in line with style guidelines, and does not require substantial copy-editing to be fully MoS-compliant
  • the article contains supporting visual materials, such as images or diagrams with succinct captions, and other media, where appropriate.

Sumanch (talk) 01:36, 11 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comment(s)
    • Five websites are reported as suspicious, including at least two computer confirmed dead links. Please check and advise. Two disambig links need to be located and if at all possible fixed.
* Deadlinks — I went through the article. Looks like I am missing them. I will appreciate if you can list them.
* Suspicious links — I thought only 3 of them were (Bharat Rakshak, GlobalSecurity and domain-B). Can you please give the other two. I will address issues with each citations individually. Let me know if that will work.
* Checklinker says that Tejas_LCA_test-fires_its_first_missile and India_may_test_futuristic_jets_by_2015 are dead. Both are highlighted in red, which implies a dead link, but the tool occasionally misreports linksif you need a subsrpition or something of that nature to get to the link in question. At any rate, both need to be checked; if they are dead, they will need to be recalled, fixed, updated, or removed. TomStar81 (Talk • Some say ¥€$, I say NO) 01:46, 12 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
* Disambiguous(?) links — I think I completely missed what you meant by that. Sumanch (talk) 02:56, 11 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Looks like, them are fixed. Sumanch (talk) 04:34, 11 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
disambig links fixed. --Redtigerxyz Talk 05:03, 11 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • Third paragraph of the history section, second to last sentence: "During the war, the RIAF did not engage Pakistan Air Force in air-to-air combat; however, provided effective transport and close air support to the Indian troops.[14]" I think it would be better worded as "During the war, the RIAF did not engage Pakistan Air Force in air-to-air combat; however, it did provide effective transport and close air support to the Indian troops.[14]"
Done Sumanch (talk) 07:57, 11 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • Do you really need the table in the command and structure section? It looks great, but as the article is already big I wonder if you may be able to get by without it.
Fixed — Used a template instead of the table. Sumanch (talk) 03:02, 11 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • The above comments also apply to the officers section and airmen section.
These two templates and the template for Command & struct are necessary. These provide valuable info about the IAF. Now, for the size issue, using template instead of a table actually helps reducing the size because the article size is based on the characters in the article. These templates are contributing less than 50 KB in this article. The citations are one of the biggest reasons that this article is this big. Sumanch (talk) 03:17, 11 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • Consider alternating your images more, a lot seem to be aligned to the right.
I think this is sufficient. Sumanch (talk) 12:08, 11 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • Can we get away with the removal of the weapons section? I understand why its there, but to me it seems a little redundant since what the planes can carry should be noted on the planes articles.
Done. However, I feel that a list of surface-to-air missiles should be mentioned. --Nosedown (talk) 07:43, 12 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • Eliminate the gallery section. If you have a link to the commons then adding a gallery is a waste of resources, any image here should be there as well.
Agree — Eliminated Sumanch (talk) 07:51, 11 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • See if you can trim the see also section by removing those article already linked from the main text.
I left 5; deleted rest. Sumanch (talk) 12:01, 11 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • Consider removing the video links in the external links section. Those links are not doing anything to the article, and may be used against you at FAC should you elect to go there.
I agree — Removed. Sumanch (talk) 02:32, 11 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • One more thing that I did not notice until just now: It seems like a lot of the expansion and future development points are written in bullet form. That doesn't really bother me, but at FAC you may catch some heat for it since that appears to be more of a list than part of the article. I would recommend looking into a rewrite of the section to turn the bullet points into paragraphs of there own to address this. It may or may not be a problem at FAC, but as a coordinator I feel obliged to point out any trouble you may hove on the horizon so you can better prepare for it.
  • Outstanding article. Its nice to here about an air force other than the USAF, but I would like to see the above points addressed before penning an opinion on the article. TomStar81 (Talk • Some say ¥€$, I say NO) 02:13, 11 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose This article has serious undue weight problems, especially with the extreme weight on the future development section. Massive undue weight on crystal-balling. It reads more like an techonology advertisement or an article about a military hardware parade than a neutral article about the air force of a country.
    • Article needs a copyedit. "The" is missing in many places. The English is broken
    • Almost every big army, govt service bureaucracy often has a lot of inefficiency problems. Are they absent in the IAF? Corruption is generally quite prevalent in India. Is it absent in the armed forces? Political interference? From reading this article it would appear that the IAF is the best in the world and has no problems at all.
    • Nothing about strengths and weaknesses of IAF; studies into the capabilities and strategic challenges facing India and how the IAF fits into the scheme of India's needs
    • Budget??
    • US English should not be used

YellowMonkey (cricket calendar poll!) paid editing=POV 13:20, 12 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Done — If I missed anything, let me know.Sumanch (talk) 22:31, 12 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Firstly, the article does mention several problems facing the IAF - delayed development of the LCA and the high crash rate of MiG-21. Secondly, unlike the Army and the Navy, the Air Force has so far not faced any major corruption scandal. Thirdly, a section discussing the strengths and weaknesses of the IAF is highly un-encyclopedic. An encyclopedia needs to be as objective as possible, especially when it comes to articles on various branches of the military. Fourthly, the government of India only publishes a combined defense budget for all branches of the Indian Armed Forces. No individual data detailing the budget of the IAF is released. And lastly, excessive information on the future procurement of the IAF will be skimmed down. Thanks for your suggestions --Nosedown (talk) 05:45, 13 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I went through the future section and observed that apart from a few sub-sections, most were to the point and precise. It would be better if you could specifically point your concerns rather than calling it "techonology [sic] advertisement". --Nosedown (talk) 06:22, 13 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment
  • It badly needs a copy-edit. In many places it is written very badly and needs a thorough going-over by a good copy-editor.
  • "the Indian forces had successfully liberated Kargil from Pakistani forces and Islamist militants." I seriously doubt the Pakistanis would say that, can you please make sure everything is NPOV?
Can you provide the rationale for the validity of such dispute?
Is there any evidence that this claim is misleading?

This is a referenced claim and if that reference does not satisfy a reader, I can provide more. I believe there are fringe groups who will dispute the validity of the claim but satisfying every fringe idea is beyond the scope of an encyclopedia. Sumanch (talk) 19:02, 25 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]


Overall it has promise, but it can't go anywhere until someone does a good, high-quality copy-edit to make the prose readable. – Joe N 17:06, 16 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comments I've given a copyedit to the article for prose (although use of spelt-out numbers vs. figures should be checked against MOS requirements) except for the Land Based Air Defence and Ongoing Expansion sections. The first of those sections is bullet points, which should be put into prose. The second also contains a number of bullet points and seems to be overkill for the overall length of the article. I wonder if in fact the details in the 'future' section should not be broken out into a separate article and a couple of brief paragraphs of prose used here instead. In addition I would've thought the items in the See Also section could be integrated into the main body. Generally I think this article can make it to A-Class but the above concerns need to be addressed. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 00:42, 17 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: I've fixed the last disambig link and the consolidated the refs that were the same as per the ref checker tool. Should be no issues with disambig links and refs with the same content now. I had a look at the external link checker tool also and it seems (I'm new to the tool so might have it wrong) that the external links are all okay now. I have a concern about the stability of the article, e.g. it seems like an article that might get a lot of POV edits or 'drive-by' changes from anon users due to the subject and hence it might not meet the no 'edit wars' criteria for a GA (although this doesn't seem to be part of the A class criteria). However, I suppose if there are a few editors who are willing to keep an eye on the article, maybe that is okay. Just thinking out loud. — AustralianRupert (talk) 02:02, 18 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose I'm not seeing any work at all on the article to address the points above, since its been more than two weeks I am officially opposing until such time as the work resumes. TomStar81 (Talk • Some say ¥€$, I say NO) 05:56, 25 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: I am working on the prose of Ongoing expansion section and then start with copy edit. Sumanch (talk) 23:55, 4 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose It seems this article is not even of Good quality judging by the project assesment. It does not warrant status A-class until it meets GA status. Burningview (talk) 00:08, 6 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page, such as the current discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
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