Talk:Foreign workers in Saudi Arabia

A fact from Foreign workers in Saudi Arabia appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 19 January 2013 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that an estimated 90 per cent of Saudi Arabia's workforce is made up of foreign workers?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2013/January. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Foreign workers in Saudi Arabia.

Wikipedia

Foreign workers in Saudi Arabia was one of the Social sciences and society good articles, but it has been removed from the list. There are suggestions below for improving the article to meet the good article criteria. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
September 11, 2013	Good article nominee	Listed
July 27, 2024	Good article reassessment	Delisted

Current status: Delisted good article

Saudi Arabia High‑importance

	Saudi Arabia portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Saudi Arabia, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of articles related to Saudi Arabia on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Saudi ArabiaWikipedia:WikiProject Saudi ArabiaTemplate:WikiProject Saudi ArabiaSaudi Arabia articles
High	This article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale.

Human rights Low‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Human rights, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Human rights on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Human rightsWikipedia:WikiProject Human rightsTemplate:WikiProject Human rightsHuman rights articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Ideas for development

I was thinking about fleshing this article out as follows:

Background

Pertinent information about the country, including why it needs so much foreign labour, economic conditions, what native Saudis do, and other general yet pertinent information

Skilled workers

About skilled labourers, where they work, etc.

Migrant workers About persons in lower class jobs, blue collars and maids etc. Include a subsection on human rights issues.

Any thoughts? — Crisco 1492 (talk) 13:18, 14 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I've added in a section on "Composition and numbers" to give an overview. Happy to go with the skilled v. migrant headings to see how it goes. An alternative would be to do it on the basis of the experience of national groups, such as: (1) South and east Asians; (2) other Arabs (3) westerners, with a separate section on Human Rights covering all of them (I think there may be some human rights points to cover in the skilled section). But, as I say, happy to go with current structure.

Once that's done, I think additionally two areas that can be added are: (A) impact on Saudi Society. Issues there include (i) lethargy - effect on the Saudi psyche on having others do the bulk of the country's economic activity; (ii) resentment - part in the rise of opposition to the regime, Islamism etc (iii) the government response i.e. Saudization, or the lack of it. (B) Impact on the home countries of the migrants, economic and political impact. DeCausa (talk) 17:00, 14 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds very good. I'll try and give this some more work later today (focus on the oil industry, I guess) — Crisco 1492 (talk) 22:40, 14 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Just wanted to pop my head in and say you two are doing excellent work. The human rights situation (the only part I'm knowledgeable about) seems well covered, but I'll be glad to return later to do copyediting, etc. -- Khazar2 (talk) 17:12, 15 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Khazar! — Crisco 1492 (talk) 22:52, 15 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

yes, thanks. Also, thanks to Crisco for the idea, and also getting it going. DeCausa (talk) 23:12, 15 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I think you're the one who deserves the thanks, for bringing more specialised knowledge about the subject. I'm not quite familiar with the Middle East (including Saudi Arabia) — Crisco 1492 (talk) 23:22, 15 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Numbers

I've put in the section "Composition and numbers" a cut and paste of the numbers breakdown from the Saudi Arabia article. This is a reminder for future reference that:

there's quite a divergence in the sources on the numbers and there's probably a need for a survey + range for each country of origin rather than a fixed number.
the numbers are total non-nationals not just work-force (i.e. inclusive of family members). For many of the nationalities (migrant workers alone) they are one and the same, but for others they are not e.g I think total westerners are 100,000, but if you take out the families it is more like 40,000,

Both the above points means the numbers section needs adjustment (with citations) in due course. DeCausa (talk) 23:46, 15 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Foreign workers in Saudi Arabia/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Harrias (talk · contribs) 11:02, 11 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't really mean to come and review this, but I got interested in the article, and ended up reading the whole thing. I figured I might as well, therefore, review it! The article is generally very well written and well-referenced. I've carried out a few spot-checks for copyvio and close para-phrasing, which reveal nothing, but on the whole I will AGF given that it is written by an editor of good standing.

The lead appears slightly short, although reading it, it does appear to adequately summarise the article, so I have no real concerns. The article does lack images, but it is unsurprising that there aren't any relevant images to include, so again there is no real issue there.

I think the linking in the article could be improved: a few terms are linked later in the article than their first use, or linked more than once: Western world, for example is not linked until the Composition and numbers section, despite being mentioned in both the lead and the Background and history section. The list of nationalities in the Composition and numbers section should be more consistent in the articles it links to: there are links to XXX in Saudi Arabia, the country itself (Yemen), the people (Egyptians) and XXX diaspora. I appreciate there is an inconsistency in which countries have each sort of article, but this could be confusing for someone following these links. There is an article on Egyptian diaspora that could be linked to, and Yemeni diaspora redirects to Demographics of Yemen#Diaspora, which would be more useful than Yemen for the link, possibly.

In the Background and history section, the third sentence begins "As a result, in the post-war years.." but there is no mention of which war. I assume the Second World War, but this should be made clear. Later in that section you place the term "guest workers" in quotation marks with little explanation of the term: is it simply a alternative phrase for "foreign workers"?

In the Abuse and scandals section, there is a link to Death row. I have no real issue with this, but the death row article is very US-centric, and actually specifies that the term only applies to English-speaking countries. It is only of a side concern to this review, but it does sort of render the link inappropriate to this article. In that section, there is discussion about "in the millions of riyal" having to be paid: it might be useful to provide a note giving a rough estimate of how much this equates to in USD? I also made a small copy-edit relating to the acronym HRW.

Although I have written lots, the issues with the article are only very minor, and I found the article very interesting, on a subject that I had no knowledge of at all previously. Well done. Harrias ^talk 11:02, 11 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the comments! Replies follow

Western world - Thought this would have been overlinking, but I guess "Western" (from the West) and "western" (from a westerly direction) may not be enough distinction, so linked. Removed later link

Countries: All links should now either point to the country or the subarticle on said nationality in Saudi Arabia at first mention. Have removed several repeat links.

Post-war years: Right, WWII. Done

"guest workers" - Linked to Guest worker program

Death row: Can't think of another English-language term that sums up the concept as well (and note that several sources use it).

Currency: Have added a short note using the rates given by Google

Thanks muchly for the review, from me and my co-nom DeCausa. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 11:31, 11 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- Thanks for those fixes; I'm happy enough with the article now, although I note that there is still some inconsistency in the links to either a nation or "So-and-sos in Saudi Arabia", but it certainly isn't enough of a problem to hold up the review. Good work! Harrias ^talk 16:46, 11 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  - Thanks for the review! — Crisco 1492 (talk) 23:29, 11 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Photographs

Nicely done, but really could use some photos of foreign workers!♦ Dr. Blofeld 17:02, 12 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I know! Nothing on Commons though, and I'm certainly a ways away from the country. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 13:37, 15 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on Foreign workers in Saudi Arabia. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20141006080326/http://www.saudigazette.com.sa/index.cfm?method=home.regcon&contentID=2010112487888&archiveissuedate=24/11/2010 to http://www.saudigazette.com.sa/index.cfm?method=home.regcon&contentID=2010112487888&archiveissuedate=24/11/2010

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 5 June 2024).

If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 22:34, 2 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 4 external links on Foreign workers in Saudi Arabia. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 5 June 2024).

If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 23:22, 3 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

GA Reassessment

Foreign workers in Saudi Arabia

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

Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch • Watch article reassessment page • Most recent review

Result: Delisted. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 11:41, 27 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There's a few uncited sentences, but the biggest issue is statistics is mainly based on the time of the GA listing in 2013, and many statistics are quite outdated. LibStar (talk) 00:54, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.