Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Yoweri Museveni/archive1

Yoweri Museveni

Partial self-nom: mainly copyedits and suggestions. This article on the president of Uganda went through peer review with little comment after a massive expansion by TreveX. Very well referenced and footnoted, with explanations for every fair use images. - Banyan Tree 17:57, 4 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Support' Weak Object. Extraordinary article. ~~Minor problem: "Death of an ally" section uses inline links. Is there a reason to not use footnotes as with the rest of the article? I look forward to changing my vote.~~ Jkelly 18:07, 4 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Done. I think all the in-line refs that slipped through the first scan have now been caught. - Banyan Tree 20:05, 4 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Support. This a remarkable article, though I have two minor gripes: There are a few one sentence paragraphs. These should either be expanded or merged into neighbouring paragraphs. I'm not sure that I like the smaller font for references. I have never seen references formatted like this; notes yes, but not the references section. Again, this is a truly marvelous and important article! *Exeunt* Ganymead ^Dialogue? 22:02, 4 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! I have merged the one-sentence paragraphs. The references section font was set to 80% to reduce the amount of scrolling needed to view them; I have increased their size to improve readability. - Banyan Tree 14:14, 5 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Support. Marvellous article. Ambi 07:41, 5 November 2005 (UTC) Object, per Michael Snow below. It's a very good article, but he raises a very serious objection, and one which should be able to be solved with some more research. Ambi 02:58, 11 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Support. A great deal of work has gone into this article. Wizzy…☎ 08:39, 5 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Support. This is a great article. Carioca 19:09, 5 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Yeah! ~~I'll sort the inline links thing.~~ We just used it to be quick when writing stuff in. TreveX^talk 19:24, 5 November 2005 (UTC) Woops. BanyanTree has already sorted it. TreveX^talk 19:25, 5 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
~~Object.~~ What's there seems pretty good, but upon reading it's clear that the article overall is heavily skewed toward Museveni's international image. For instance, the only mention of Lord's Resistance Army (itself a featured article) is in the context of diplomatic relations with Sudan. Even when the article tries to deal with matters internal to Uganda, it ends up drifting into reliance on quotes from people like Bob Geldof and the US and Norwegian ambassadors. This sort of thing tells me I'm only getting a heavily filtered perspective from the article, even though the editors undoubtedly have good intentions and are doing their best with the material to hand. --Michael Snow 23:13, 5 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Wow. Here are some initial excuses as I am not sure that I can fix the issue Michael Snow is describing.

There are, as far as I know, no regular editors contributing from Uganda. The one regular Ugandan editor (User:Ezeu) lives in Europe and has already contributed to this article. TreveX was in Uganda for summer and I for almost two years. There is clearly an "outside perspective" editor bias, but this is the best set of editors Wikipedia can manage on this topic.
Quite frankly, the data coming out of Uganda is a muddle. Once you cut out the knee-jerk pro-Obote/Amin/etc material that floods forums and political party websites the two national newspapers are the most accessible. Both the New Vision (semi-government mouthpiece) and the Monitor (independent newspaper that occasionally gets shut down for spurious reasons) are referenced here. I was also pleased to see that TreveX included the work of J. Oloka-Onyango, Museveni's most erudite critic, and Murray Oliver, a Canadian journalist based in Kampala, was linked. Domestic journalism has been recently suppressed, as the article makes clear, and there is quite frankly not a lot of good quality critiques coming out of Uganda. I am actually astonished that TreveX was able to find so many academic critiques through his searching of JSTOR to balance out the materials from Museveni's own fluff pieces. In short, of the materials originating in Uganda much is either incredibly biased or by people whom nobody has ever heard of and who have no credibility from which to launch an argument.
There are obviously a number of things that a Ugandan editor would include, starting with Museveni's infamous hat and the astonishing number of cows for his daughter's dowry and going on to relative merits of different presidents. As for the Lord's Resistance Army, the two national newspapers both often put LRA attacks in northern Uganda under the International section, rather than National, so deep is the psychological division between the north and the flourishing south. My personal take is that it directly affects Museveni not at all. He has never gotten political support from the affected region and doesn't need it, while he does need foreign donor support. I may just be a cynic.

Now that I've rambled on, I'll try to wind down. I acknowledge that there is an "outside perspective" bias, and the Geldof thing did throw me the first time I read it, though it's a notable incident. I think that the editor bias is the least noticeable possible among Wikipedias regular editors. Given the paucity of quotable critiques from Ugandan sources, I think this article does amazingly well in finding a wide variety of sources. TreveX may have some other sources in mind that can help address Michael's comments, but I'm afraid I'm at a bit of a loss. - Banyan Tree 07:00, 6 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that there is an outside perspective bias here, but, as BanyanTree points out, that's mostly due to the the lack of material coming out of Uganda. Both BanyanTree and I are members of Wikipedia:WikiProject Countering systemic bias, so we're both quite sensitive to these issues. The particular section in which this problem is most apparent is the one regarding constitutional term limits. I've tried to balance this out now by including a large quote from the Forum for Democratic Change. The section was already illustrated with a cartoon from Gado, a Kenyan political cartoonist. I second BT's comments above and hope you will reconsider your vote :-) TreveX^talk 17:30, 6 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

If, as you say, Museveni "has never gotten political support from the affected region and doesn't need it", I think more discussion of this kind of thing would help balance the article in giving internal Ugandan politics equal prominence with international affairs. Right now it's difficult to pick up on the significance of regional issues, such as where Museveni's power base comes from (both as a rebel leader and now as president), how he's consolidated his authority, and the extent to which he does or does not wield power in particular areas. Part of the problem is that the article identifies most everything in terms of personalities or formal organizations (rebel/army groups and political parties); it barely touches on regions or ethnic groups, even though this second set of factors has a great deal of influence on the first set.

One other point: the narrative dealing with Museveni vis-a-vis the Rwandan genocide is a bit disjointed. I improved some of it, but the article still discusses his OAU chairmanship of two years previous as if it would have some bearing on the situation. Why it would matter is not at all clear the way it is currently presented, but I wasn't sure how to fix that. --Michael Snow 05:23, 7 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, now your words sink into my slowly trundling brain. Much of the content of the article is missed if one doesn't already know that former president Obote was a Luo from Lira and the head of the Uganda People's Congress, so they all end up being conflated in a situation where politics is ethnic and personal, and so on with the other major figures. That definitely should all be explicit within the article. I'll see what I can do. - Banyan Tree 14:12, 7 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, that's the idea. The Obote-UPC connection is mentioned once already, so I could sort of follow to whom the political parties belong, but the ethnic/regional aspect of it is largely missing. Once that's taken care of, I'll be more satisfied. --Michael Snow 04:43, 8 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

OK, I've tried to make explicit what the regional/ethnic implications of the various events are without turning this into an article on ethnic factionalism in Ugandan politics, but I'm not sure that my edits were subtle enough. Your comment directly above raised some red flags for me as you hadn't caught that Obote was a Langi from the central north, which is the UPC base, so "Obote" is code for one of the "ethnic/regional aspects" you mention. Thanks again for pointing this out as there is a tremendous amount of backstory that is implicit. Tell me what you think. - Banyan Tree 01:15, 12 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Ever so much better, I can support at this point. If someone could still clarify why Museveni's 1991-1992 OAU chairmanship is mentioned in the leadup to the Rwandan genocide, that would be appreciated. --Michael Snow 06:30, 12 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I couldn't figure out a link between the OAU chair and genocide and moved that sentence to a more relevant section. - Banyan Tree 13:42, 12 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Support: So far as I can tell, it's accurate, complete, and thorough. What Michael says, above, is true, but I file those into the category of "things to be wished for" rather than "deficiencies." After all, some filtration would occur no matter by whom or how the writing was done. Geogre 23:45, 5 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Object. Table of contents is to big. Try looking at Wikipedia:Guide to layout. Tarret 02:40, 6 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- I do not see the guidelines for TOC length on the layout guide. In the meantime, I have made the subheaders for references list headers so they do not appear in the TOC. All of the sections in the main body of the article are pretty meaty, and I am concerned that getting rid of some may end up weakening structure for the benefit of a couple centimeters. - BanyanTree 05:30, 6 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  - It's larger than usual, but it wouldn't be hte largest TOC I've seen on a featured article. →Raul654 01:57, 13 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Support - Featured articles desperately needs more non-Western articles like this Bwithh 18:19, 7 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Top-notch work. (It'd be nice to have those question marks filled-in in the bottom NavBox, though). — Matt Crypto 00:48, 10 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Minor oppose, while the article is great there are too many fair use images.

Image:Amin1975.jpg is used to illustrate the person Idi Amin, the image is not discussed in the article, I doubt it meets the requirments for fair use. Image:MuseveniCampaign1996.jpg and Image:MuseveniVictory.jpg (from AP) basially illustrate the same thing- Museveni and supporters, I would suggest removing the AP image and decreasing the size of the first image.--nixie 01:58, 11 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I replaced the Amin image to a PD currency scan, followed your suggestion for the photos from the 96 and 01 elections, and added a PD photo of displaced children from the north. Hopefully, TreveX won't be too disappointed after all the work he put into writing fair use explanations. :-| Cheers, Banyan Tree 13:42, 12 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Support - I shouln't even be giving my opinion here, given that I am a Ugandan (hence POVed on the issue). The problem with this article is that it is too godamn neutral – it evokes niether hatred nor love – sucks because it is too damn POV.