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

The article was promoted by Karanacs 15:14, 31 August 2010 [1].

The Boys from Baghdad High

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The Boys from Baghdad High (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

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Nominator(s): Matthewedwards :  Chat  21:54, 31 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

After working on this for a couple of years, I think it's finally ready. The Boys from Baghdad High is a British-Iraqi documentary television film, depicting four boys in their final year of an Iraqi high school. The boys were given video cameras and were told to record their lives over the course of a year. When I originally watched the film I found it to be extremely powerful and eye-opening. I hope I've done the subject justice. Matthewedwards :  Chat  21:56, 31 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comment No dabs or dead externals, and dates are Day Month Year throughout after a small edit—good. Looks well organized from a glance. --an odd name 00:04, 17 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. Yes, dates and language should all be British English, although it's possible a couple of Americanised spellings may have slipped in by accident. If anyone spots any, just let me know. The longer I'm here, the harder it is for me to continue writing the British way. Matthewedwards :  Chat  00:44, 17 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Sources comment: All sources look OK, no outstanding issues. Brianboulton (talk) 22:21, 17 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  • Well, the article hasn't changed and Ucucha confirmed below that all the ELs still work. That isn't to say you shouldn't recheck (I don't want anyone to say later that it wasn't) but that there shouldn't be a rush if you have other things to do first. :) Matthewedwards :  Chat  00:33, 1 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment—still no dab links or dead external links. If the above timestamps look confusing: the nomination was reopened after a few weeks, and the nominator re-signed his statement. Ucucha 22:07, 31 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Make sure that you use a single tense throughout the synopsis section. For example: "In discussing the state of Iraq, Hyder's mother stated that many people were hopeful about the arrival of American forces, and that it is wrong to blame America for all of the problems in Iraq when the bloodshed has yet to stop as the Sunni continues to kill Shiite, and vice versa. As the film continues, the family loses its income and has to disconnect their Internet and begin selling their furniture to make ends meet." and "Anmar passes the retakes and hopes to study English literature in college ... Mohammed failed four subjects and must repeat his senior year to graduate." WackyWace converse | contribs 12:26, 5 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Before working on the film, O'Mahoney had been a United Nations peacekeeper in Bosnia and an attorney in the Netherlands, and had worked on the documentary How to Plan a Revolution." Since the documentary does not have an article, perhaps provide a brief summary of the film, or replace the "the" with another word, since it seems to imply that the reader should automatically know about the documentary. WackyWace converse | contribs 12:26, 5 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • "O'Mahoney and Winter realised it would be too dangerous for the students to be seen with either a Western or Iraqi camera crew because it would draw too much attention to them. This is why they decided that the students would film the documentary themselves." This sounds like one point in two sentences. Consider changing it to "O'Mahoney and Winter realised it would be too dangerous for the students to be seen with either a Western or Iraqi camera crew because it would draw too much attention to them, and so they decided that the students would film the documentary themselves." WackyWace converse | contribs 12:26, 5 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Footage that was nearly edited out included the scene where Anwar had to siphon petrol out of the family car for the house's generator". Consider changing "the scene" to "a scene", since many readers will not have seen the film. WackyWace converse | contribs 12:26, 5 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support Comments from Dabomb87 (talk · contribs) I'm making copy-edits as I go, here are things I encounter:

  • In the lead: "The documentary also received the Radio Times Readers Award, and nominations from Amnesty International." Nominations for what?
  • "Ali Shadman, a Kurd, gives a report one night of neighborhood news, but finds there is nothing to speak of by explosions, violence, and death." "by" doesn't sound right.
  • Not sure here. I'll look back through the page history and try to figure out what it originally said. Matthewedwards :  Chat 
  • "Ali wonders why he has to do the task over studying" Not sure what you mean by "over studying". Does it mean he prioritizes fixing the generator when he should be studying?
  • done, changed to "Ali wonders why he should prioritise it over studying" although I think the spelling might be messed up. Is it still ize in British English? Matthewedwards :  Chat 
  • "As the film continues, the family loses its income and has to disconnect their Internet and begin selling their furniture to make ends" Any elaboration on the loss of income (lost job, savings dried up, etc.)?
  • I'll have to rewatch it, but from memory I think it's from someone (Dad?) losing their job. Matthewedwards :  Chat 
  • "They chose Tariq bin Ziad High School for Boys to source the students from." This sentence is not particularly well-written. "to source the students from"???
  • In your sources, did you find out why the four boys dropped out?
  • "and even had families and a school on board" Avoid colloquialisms such as this. What do mean by "on board"; were they supportive of featuring women in the documentary? Also, was the entire school privy to the fact that the documentary was being filmed?
  • The source of that is an interview with one of the producers.

    NE: Why didn’t you choose any girls?
    Winter: The short and easy answer is, that while we had a girl's school on board and families who wanted to participate, the then minister of education said, "No."

    I've changed it to "and had found a school and families willing to take part in the documentary" Yes, the entire school was privvy. Other kids and teachers are obviously aware of the cameras, and occasionally make comments to the cameras about the boys. Matthewedwards :  Chat 
  • The reception section is rather choppy. For example, the third paragraph starts with a good topic sentence (similarities between Western and Iraqi boys), and proceeds into a slew of "he said" / "she said" quotes, some of which basically parrot each other—compare Michelle Nicholls' comment and Patrick Huguenin's and you can see that they essentially copy each other. I feel that if you cut down the quoted material and paraphrase more, the flow will improve considerably. Dabomb87 (talk) 17:14, 5 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for taking a look, DaBomb. Matthewedwards :  Chat  15:56, 16 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support Oppose - the prose is below FA standard. The problems are mainly in the Synopsis section. Here are some examples of poor writing:

  • Here, "Ali Shadman, a Kurd, gives a report one night of neighborhood news, but finds there is nothing to speak of by explosions, violence, and death" the by is wrong. Does it mean "except" or "apart from"? The sentence is also vague and leaves the reader guessing as to whom the report was given to.
  • There are several problems in this section, "One of the few Kurds remaining in Baghdad, Ali and his family are struggling financially and must siphon petrol from their car to run their back-up generator when the power grid fails. While fixing it one night against a backdrop of gunfire, Ali wonders why he should prioritise it over studying." There are too many loosely connected ideas. If they were siphoning petrol from someone else's car, than this would logically connect with their financial problems. And, it is not clear what the antecedent of the pronoun "it" is, which is used twice in the later part of the section.
  • This sentence sounds wrong, "His family, however, is more nervous about any nearby gunfire, as their Christian beliefs increases the threat to their lives if anyone were to find out." Should this be "increase" and should the sentence end with "about these". Actually, I think the whole sentence needs rewriting.
  • Here, "believing that his later execution was the right choice", choice sounds odd. How about "decision" or "his later execution was justified"?
  • This sentence is a snake and needs chopping, "When discussing Iraq, Hyder's mother states that many people were hopeful about the arrival of American forces, and that it is wrong to blame America for all of the problems in Iraq when the bloodshed has yet to stop as the Sunni continues to kill Shiite, and vice versa."
  • This sounds odd, "to disconnect their Internet".
  • There is tedious redundancy here, "At the end of the year, the boys must pass seven final exams to graduate. Anmar, Hyder and Ali each fail two subjects, and are given the option to retake the exams so they can graduate. Anmar passes the retakes and aspires to study English literature in college, while his family plans to move to the safer region of Arbul now that he has graduated. Hyder also retakes his exams and passes, but his family can no longer afford to pay for the university courses. Ali chooses not to retake the exams, and his family decides to leave Iraq. Mohammed fails four subjects and must repeat his senior year to graduate.
  • I think this would be better than it here: "it would draw too much attention to them".
  • This lakes logical flow, "Principal Ra'ad Jawad selected eight boys to take part in the documentary because he knew they would be discreet" - it sounds like there is something special about 8 boys as opposed to 6 or 7.
  • This sounds odd "Haydar filmed outside at night on occasion" Does it mean Hayder sometimes filmed outside at night?
  • The two parts of this sentence are not connected, "The students filmed more than 300 hours of footage, along with occasional footage from the two Iraqi associate producers."
  • Here, "Receiving the tapes from Iraq proved difficult". Receiving is too weak a word, something much stronger is needed such as getting the tapes out of Iraq proved difficult.
  • There's a double period here, "Die Jungs von der Bagdad-High in Germany.[20]."

I did make a start on copy editing but I haven't seen the film and there are more problems than I originally thought. Graham Colm (talk) 13:08, 21 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for commenting. Though my internet has become limited recently, I will go through your concerns and address them over the next day or so. Matthewedwards :  Chat  23:38, 22 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I've now completed editing the article to address these points. What happened is that over the last few months it has been through several copy edits by different people and two peer reviews to cut down the synopsis section which was originally about three times as big. I guess some stuff was chopped and moved around a bit carelessly, and I failed to notice. As for why the Principal chose 8 boys, there is no further details in the references, just that he originally chose 8, 4 dropped out, and he chose them because they could be discreet and committed. Thanks again, Matthewedwards :  Chat  04:47, 27 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support, but:

  • Matthew, why link "television film" and "documentary film"? These are common terms that are well-known. Worse, I see multiple tags at the top of the first, which looks like a crummy article. And they breach MOSLINK's advice about bunching. "Sheffield Doc/Fest" is the high-value link here—it's VERY hard to get readers to hit a single link, so let's be discriminating to encourage them. BBC is repeat-linked. New York Daily News is italicised, but not the preceding broadsheet title? Don't like the flags and linked country-names in the infobox (but there's no rule against it); but instead, why not simply link "Iraqi" before "schoolboys" in the top para. Could you link "video diaries" first time rather than second? "priotitise" typo. This quote: "I wanted to tell the story of Iraq in a different way", said Winter. "As journalists, we do stories about ...". It's clear that Winter is saying this, so why not remove the "said Winter"? If it's continuous in the original, fine, it's smoother; if you used the speech tag to indicate a gap in your quotation, why not use ... ellipsis dots. While on quoting technique: "generals and militants ... [who] claim to"—just remove the ellipsis points and have [who]. Then this: The Huffington Post said it that giving the video cameras to the students was an excellent idea because the depiction of their school-life versus the increasing danger was captured "with neutral equality ... the film is able to capture the interiority of its subjects more acutely than a straight-forward examination of violence would".—Glitch at start. Then the grammar of the quotation doesn't quite work in the larger sentence, specifically in the ellipsis-point gap. Replace points with [so that]. And: ""The 90-minute documentary doesn't say much about the larger issues facing Iraq, but it does capture some small and captivating human stories ... They live in"—just checking that "stories" doesn't finish a sentence in the original; if it does, you need.... to do that. Then: Perigard commented, "despite the". In the "Ten rules for writing" by Elmore Leonard, American crime fiction writer (on which he was interviewed last year on ABC Radio National), there is this advice: "Never use a verb other than 'said' to carry dialogue'. Not 'stated', not 'declared', not 'exclaimed' ". Tony (talk) 02:13, 24 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, Tony. I've done as you suggested re wikilinks, flags and ellipses. I changed "commented" (and a "stated") to "said", but it seems a bit repetitive now. Are you sure he wasn't talking about rules for writing fiction? Thanks for taking the time to read, Matthewedwards :  Chat  04:47, 27 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comments – A good piece of work from start to finish for the most part, but there are a couple remaining issues. I cleaned a few things already in the text, so that's worth checking as well.
    • Is the one boy's name Mohammad or Mohammed? It differs at varying points in the article, particularly in the synopsis.
    • Near the end of the reception section, there is a quote from one Huguenin that is uncited. The last sentence was unreferenced as well, but I was able to track down that quote and cite it. For the other one, I couldn't find it until after coming here. :-( Oh, and is the reviewer's first name anywhere? I can't find it at a glance. Giants2008 (27 and counting) 01:55, 30 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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