Talk:Al-Rashid of Morocco

Comment on style/copy-editing

AvaBrandon2000 thank you for all your work expanding this page. I'm just adding these notes to make clearer the reasons for the cleanup template I added in this edit. I fixed one mispelled word and imposed consistent English spelling of al-Rashid's name, and I believe there are probably a few more spelling and style issues of this nature that would benefit from anyone making a read-through. There's also the occasional verifiability issue, like some paragraphs or statements without citations; AvaBrandon2000, could you have another look when you have a chance and add citations to any factual statements, quotes, uncited paragraphs, etc? I haven't checked systematically, but I assume at this point that most of the material was added by you, so you're much better placed to review this.

A more nitpicky issue, depending on whether there are appropriate sources verifying everything, is that the tone is maybe a little too narrative/story-like (e.g. like a novel), whereas it should maybe read in a more matter-of-fact way. This issue doesn't deserve any flagging or tagging on its own, but just something to keep in mind. What this style of writing can make less clear is whether all the informational details come from the cited sources or whether they're filled by a Wikipedia editor to fit the style. For example, unsourced statements like this (in the Rise to Power section): "The man lacked resources and money to attract followers but the odds were more with him than before, since he now commanded a body of troops. He needed to cross this last leap to rise to power. To do so, seizing a mighty fortress was paramount. He set his sights on the citadel Dar Ibn Mich’al, a fortress of strategic importance." This statement evaluates the circumstances of the moment and describes Rashid's strategic thinking and his intentions, but if cited sources aren't providing that level of detail then it's best to skip this kind of material as it skirts Wikipedia policies like WP:OR. If references only describe events, for example, then it's better for the text here to merely describe events as they happened (according to historians), without further interpretation. If, however, these details do come from the references, then please add citations to them per usual. Thanks, R Prazeres (talk) 17:23, 23 September 2022 (UTC)

Hello ! Yes I've made most additions in this article. Sure I'll add more references for quotes to the best of my ability. I think the doubt resides on the ones without URL link, I'll make the addition then: For example, I saw you requested a "Citation needed" tag for "A Prince who buries them (riches) in the ground do not deserve to reign; come, my friends, let us share what your pains and affection for myself made you deserve". it's actually in Louis-Sauveur de Chenier (1787) ref a line bellow. About the narrative/story-like style I'll also make it more matter-of-fact writing style as you said. I'll remove my interpretations. In the section Rise to Power: Mouette in "Histoire des conquestes de Mouley Archy, connu sous le nom de roy de Tafilet ..." p.10 wrote that Al-Rashid wanted to secure a mighty fortress before his coup to Ali Soliman, so I'll change it this way. Good day ! -AvaBrandon2000 AvaBrandon2000 (talk) 18:30, 23 September 2022 (UTC)

That sounds great, thanks! For cases where the supporting reference is simply included further down, don't hesitate to simply repeat the same citation more than once to make things clearer. No need to go overboard, of course; in general each different significant piece of information should come with a citation (e.g. each event, or each major point, etc). There's only a brief guideline for this at WP:CITEDENSE for this, so it's really up to judgement, but in my experience it's better to include a bit more than a bit less, and it also helps to have at least one per regular paragraph. One reason is that future editors can legitimately move information around or add new material inside existing paragraphs, so if the original citations are not immediately obvious it can get hard to keep track of text-source integrity (WP:INTEGRITY).

And for any quotes there's general convention I think to always include a citation with the quote (e.g. the "blockquote" template you used has a parameter conveniently for this), even if the source is cited somewhere else nearby. I'll just manually add the citation for the quote you just mentioned (I figured it was probably the next citation like you said, but didn't want to assume). R Prazeres (talk) 19:04, 23 September 2022 (UTC)

PS: Actually I should clarify/correct my last point; the convention for quotations and citations is more about when you copy text from a source directly, not so much about including a reported speech from a historical person. I think it still applies incidentally here, but the way I phrased it may have been a little confusing. R Prazeres (talk) 19:11, 23 September 2022 (UTC)

Thank you a lot for your help ! AvaBrandon2000 (talk) 19:22, 23 September 2022 (UTC)