Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Userkare/archive1: Difference between revisions

Userkare (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

As of 17 October 2025, 09:39 (UTC), this page is active and open for discussion. An FAC coordinator will be responsible for closing the nomination.

Nominator(s): Iry-Hor (talk) 10:59, 1 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This article is about Userkare, second ruler of the Sixth Dynasty of Egypt in the 24th century BC. Userkare is poorly known owing to the brevity of his reign. He may have been an usurper and there is a lingering suspicion that he was involved in the murder of his predecessor Teti. There is however no strong evidence favoring this hypothesis and he may well have been a fully legitimate albeit short-lived ruler. Next to nothing is known for certain about his ties to the other rulers of his dynasty and the location of his tomb is not known. Consequently Egyptologists disagree about almost everything regarding him ! Iry-Hor (talk) 10:59, 1 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Although he is attested in some historical sources, Userkare is completely absent from the tomb of the Egyptian officials who lived during his reign and usually report the names of the kings whom they served This sentence is a little unclear at the end; maybe “as they usually” instead of “as usually”?

Done I wrote “Although he is attested in some historical sources, Userkare is completely absent from the tomb of the Egyptian officials who lived during his reign and who usually report the names of the kings whom they served”.Iry-Hor (talk) 08:41, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Lot of commas in the sentence beginning with The copper mallet. Wadjet, a nome of Upper Egypt located around Tjebu would save you one.

Fixed I did some comma slashing, there is a single one left.Iry-Hor (talk) 08:41, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• When you have more than three citations in a row, try using Template:Sfnm to aid readability.

WOWOW I did not know about this template, thanks a lot this is completely amazing !! I updated everything with this here. That will also completely change the way I cite things in my next articles ! I will now be able to put tons more cites… and it will look clean and also I will be able to choose the order of the cites, whereas until now I had to sort by ref number ! Iry-Hor (talk) 08:41, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• I would briefly explain what a Damnatio memoriae is.

Done I added to the sentence “[…], whereby Pepi might have tried to erase all memory of Userkare from official records, monuments, tombs and artefacts.”.Iry-Hor (talk) 08:41, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

So I did not find any emphasis in the article, I mean everything italicized is either because it is a book title or a Latin word.Iry-Hor (talk) 08:41, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• (Also accessibility thing) use Template:Lang for italicizing Damnatio memoriae

Done.Iry-Hor (talk) 08:41, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• “disturbing” shouldn’t be said in wikivoice here; maybe rephrase it to say “both he and Theis called the silence in contemporaneous private biographies “disturbing”, with no official of the time period mentioning serving under Userkare. Same deal with “lowly”, where it’s unclear what academic described him as that (or you can just drop it and replace it with the more objective “low-ranking”)

Fixed thanks I updated with your sentence, and changed the sentence with the lowly to read that it was said by the Egyptologist Peter J. Brand.Iry-Hor (talk) 08:41, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• • Actually now that I look back on it, you quote single words from scholars a lot. I think it might be better to just paraphrase for most of these.

Actually I try to do it only when the word they employ is strong/surprinsing/unexpected etc. That explains the direct quotations for “lowly” and “disturbing”, as I would never have employed such a word myself. Do you see other examples that seem over the top ? Note that some quotes are just reporting ancient Egyptian court titles.Iry-Hor (talk) 08:41, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed.Iry-Hor (talk) 08:41, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• A brief parenthetical definition of Architrave would be helpful.

Done, I added “[…]—the lintel that rests on the capitals of columns—[…]” and also moved the wikilink to the first instance of architrave, which was earlier in the text.Iry-Hor (talk) 08:41, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Why is Roth’s interpretation of “Kh[en]t[…]” in a footnote, but others are in-text?

Fixed You are quite right, I do not know why I did that (did I unconsciously disagree with Roth?). I moved it to the main text.Iry-Hor (talk) 08:41, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• You link Wadjet nome at the end, but you mention it early on without linking.

Fixed.Iry-Hor (talk)

• ‘infirm’ as a verb seems very obscure, and I didn’t understand it at first. Maybe ‘disprove’ or ‘reject’?

Done I used “refute”.Iry-Hor (talk) 08:41, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Source quibbles:

• Berlev 1989 is a weird cite. Why is “Académie des sciences de l’URSS” in French? Also, is the title of the article originally in Russian, or is this a translation?

Done so the ref was from the French National Library, hence the French in the publisher, but I found the original names of the publisher and location so updated the ref in consequence. The article is actually in Russian but unfortunately I do not know what the non-translated Russian title is.Iry-Hor (talk) 08:41, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Include the trans-title parameter for works with titles not in English

Unfortunately I cannot do so because I do not know the original title in Russian and the template is saying trans-title needs the original title.Iry-Hor (talk) 08:41, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Oh, for that one work it makes sense (though it you are citing it from another source without having access to it, it would fall under guidance of WP:SAYWHEREYOUREADIT and require a special formatted citation), I’m more saying stuff like Zur Chronologie der sogennanten “Erste Zwischenzeit or Travaux et recherches à Saqqara. Campagnes 1966-67 et 1967-68, these should be given English translations of their titles.-G

Done all foreign works have translated titles now.Iry-Hor (talk) 18:16, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• You are inconsistent about linking publishers or not. Either way is fine as long as its consistent.

Fixed this is all unlinked now.Iry-Hor (talk) 08:41, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• One of the authors for Allen et al is listed as “Arnold Arnold” here. While that would be a wonderful name, this should be Dieter Arnold.

Fixed Ahah sorry for this silly mistake ! Iry-Hor (talk) 08:41, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Also, you should wikilink any of those authors who have articles.

Done.Iry-Hor (talk) 08:41, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Instead of “Charles University website”, just say “Charles University” as the publisher, a la what you did for Brooklyn Museum

Done.Iry-Hor (talk) 08:41, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Some journals have publishers listed, but most don’t. Be consistent one way or the other.

Fixed remove throughout.Iry-Hor (talk) 08:41, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Why does Barta 2012 have an OCLC? It has an ISBN. (Also, remove the space before the colon)

Fixed.Iry-Hor (talk) 08:41, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Some books have their series listed for some books, but these are not consistent. Routledge’s Who’s Who appears to be a series, for instance.

I gave the series whenever I was aware the book was part of one. If you know which book (except for Rice’s Who’s who) is part of a series that I did not indicate, please let me know.Iry-Hor (talk) 08:41, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Various books, chapters, and publishers have variant capitalization; these should all be consistent.

I do not know how to proceed: I tried to keep the title capitalization as presented in OCLC, indeed a consistent choice seems difficult otherwise, for example with all the German words that are capitalized and the proper nouns in titles. Do you have a suggestion for the uniformization ?Iry-Hor (talk) 08:41, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Oh, not for the foreign language titles (those can use whatever capitalization is standard) but the English ones should be consistent with one another in terms of whether they’re in sentence case or title case. For example A companion to ancient Egypt and Blackwell companions to the ancient world should be in title case if you also have The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt or Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization. Or vice versa, you could convert everything to sentence case. Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 16:57, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Done everything went to sentence case except for foreign titles. Every foreign title now has a trans-title.Iry-Hor (talk) 18:15, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Since the language tag on cites describes the work, Stadelmann 1994 should say “in French and German”

Done.Iry-Hor (talk) 08:41, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Everything looks good to me now – Support. Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 22:18, 6 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• InfoBox: caption Userkare’s cartouche on the Abydos king list – can you use a wikilink there to Abydos King List

Done.Iry-Hor (talk) 12:42, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• .. also: should caption Abydos king list be capitalized Abydos King List, as in the article?

I don’t think so, I don’t see why it should be capitalized per MOS:CAPS only things that are consistently capitalized in many independent sources should be here as well. But often you read “Abydos king list” because well it is a king list from Abydos. I would be happy to change though if you think I am wrong.Iry-Hor (talk) 12:42, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

As you say, the guideline is to follow the sources, so if they do not capitalize, that is fine. I only asked because the WP article Abydos King List used all caps. But apparently that article is mistaken. Noleander (talk) 13:25, 11 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• InfoBox: Mother field: Uncertain, possibly Khuit II, Khentkaus IV It is not clear what that comma signifies: is that a list of two possible people? Or is it a single person (name followed by a title?) If it is two people, consider adding word “or” or similar. If a single person, clarify it somehow.

Done. These are two distinct people. I added “or”.Iry-Hor (talk) 12:42, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• [As an aside, unrelated to this review, I personally find it helpful to do a WP:Good Article review and/or WP:Peer Review before nominating for FA. Those steps are not required, of course, but I view it as a courtesy to the FA reviewers. I see you have successfully nominated many FAs and GAs, so you are obviously a qualified editor. But I feel that skipping GA/PR is taking a shortcut that many other nominators are not using. Bringing an article directly to FA requires the FA reviewers to spend time pointing out simple issues that would have been detected during GA or PR. It also helps the FA ecosystem be more efficient and focused, and encourages FA reviewers.]

I understand your point, I actually used to do as you say but later changed because getting to GA took way longer than FA as nobody reviewed my articles for very long stretches of time, even with QPQ and there was a huge backlog of GA to review. Also I was told by a FAC reviewer that getting GA first wasn’t mandatory.Iry-Hor (talk) 12:42, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Iry-Hor You may want to look at Wikipedia:Good article review circles (GARC). It is a GA process that almost always gets the GA review completed within 2 to 3 weeks. The drawback is that the reviews may be middle-quality (not top quality) because they are done by random GA editors, not an editor that specifically selected your article. I’ve used that process several times, and it is not bad. Noleander (talk) 12:53, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Iry-Hor … Also: the WP:Peer Review (PR) process is usually fast: you can add your article to the PR list. Then immediately search through the other articles in the PR list; find an editor that may be interested in your article; then directly post a note on that editor’s Talk page, and offer to exchange peer reviews on each other’s articles. About 99% of the time they will be very happy to do so. Usually, your article will have its PR completed within ten days. Noleander (talk) 13:15, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks !Iry-Hor (talk) 15:49, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Make Lead more inviting to passers-by: Egyptologists thus suspect a possible Damnatio memoriae on Pepi I’s behalf against Userkare, whereby Pepi might have tried to erase all… Not sure that introducing a rater rare term of art “Damnatio memoriae” in the lead, especially before it is defined, helps readers. I love history, yet I’ve never seen that term before. The WP:EXPLAINLEAD guideline says that the lead section must be understandable to just about any reader, and that confusing, technical, or specialized info should be introduced in the body. “Damnatio memoriae” is properly explained and defined in the body, so consider changing the lead to make it less intimidating: Egyptologists thus suspect that Pepi might have tried to erase all…

Done !Iry-Hor (talk) 12:42, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Nationality of academics: held by soviet Egyptologists Oleg Dmitrievich Berlev and Yury Perepelkin .. and The Egyptologists William Stevenson Smith,[59] William C. Hayes[60] and Nicolas Grimal[61] believe that Userkare … and The Egyptologist Naguib Kanawati also finds … Suggest that this article either name nationality of all, or none, of the Egyptologists. (If provided: only the first time their name is used).

Fixed you are quite right, I should have removed the “soviet” here, done.Iry-Hor (talk) 12:42, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Capitalize? held by soviet Egyptologists Oleg Dmitrievich Berlev and Yury Perepelkin .. Should “soviet” be capitalized?

It should have been yes, but the point is moot now because I have removed it.Iry-Hor (talk) 12:42, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Footnotes at end of sentence? The Egyptologists William Stevenson Smith,[59] William C. Hayes[60] and Nicolas Grimal[61] believe that Userkare briefly ruled Egypt either as a … Not a requirement, but it makes a sentence more readable when the footnote superscripts e.g. [59] are at the end of a sentence, not the middle. There are situations were a mid-sentence footnote is better for readers, but in this case, all three footnotes have the exact same name as the academic (e.g. “Grimal 1992, p. 81”) so if all three were clustered at the end of the sentence, the reader would still have 100% clarity about which cite was associated with which academic.

Done Yes it is true that in this situation there is no ambiguity about which ref belongs to which author so no problem indeed with putting it at the end of the sentence.Iry-Hor (talk) 12:42, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• I see that the sources are in a variety of languages: Did you read them all? Even the Russian one? Berlev, Oleg Dmitrievich (1989). “Once more the tradition of king Userkare (VI dynasty)”. Древний Восток (Drevnii Vostok) (in Russian): 56–63.

Yes I did read them all directly (English + French + German sources + automatic translations in other cases like Dutch), the Russian article is an exception: I read about it indirectly only, in Spalinger (who details the article content), and referenced it exactly as Spalinger did. To make this clear I wrote “The Egyptologist Anthony Spalinger reports that Berlev and Perepelkin have proposed that Userkare was in fact the prenomen of Teti, which they claim is unknown.” in the section of the main text on this.Iry-Hor (talk) 12:48, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Should be “pp”? Kaplony 1965, p. 36, 38–39 and fig

Fixed thanks for spotting this.Iry-Hor (talk) 12:48, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Should vs would? Egyptologists conjecture that it should be located in … my ears want to hear “would” there, since “should” is more about morality or ethics.

Done You know best, I am not a native speaker.Iry-Hor (talk) 12:48, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Cite mid sentence: The copper mallet from the Michaelides collection[24][note 3] bears a small inscription giving the name of a crew of workmen “Beloved ones of Userkare” or “Userkare is beloved” who hailed from Wadjet the 10th nome of Upper Egypt, located around Tjebu south of Asyut.[27] Is there a reason for putting the [24] & [note 3] mid sentence? The MOS says The citation should be added close to the material it supports, offering text–source integrity. If a word or phrase is particularly contentious, an inline citation may be added next to that word or phrase within the sentence, but it is usually sufficient to add the citation to the end of the clause, sentence, or paragraph, so long as it’s clear which source supports which part of the text. To promote smooth readability, it seems best to put all cites at the end of the sentence …. UNLESS the sentence has two strong assertions, and you want to help the reader know which source made which assertion. But if the cite is simply stating “this object is held by museum ABC” that is not a claim/assertion that is contentious.

Done.Iry-Hor (talk) 13:06, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• should the = be a dash here? archaeo=topography

Fixed, yes it was a typo thanks !Iry-Hor (talk) 15:49, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Citation needed for alternative spellings: Woserkare, Weserkare I could not find any cites for those spellings. Suggest either (a) add citation directly into the InfoBox; or (b) Mention the names in the body text with cite there; or (c) mention both alternate spellings in Lead (first sentence?) with citation there.

Done, I added citations for the spellings in the infobox.Iry-Hor (talk) 15:24, 11 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• To clarify the comment above about naming the nationaity of academics: The English Egyptologist Flinders Petrie has tentatively… my point was that the article names about a dozen Egyptologists, and for half of them it names their nationality, and half it does not. That seems odd … some people might think it is a bias of some sort. I suggest that either (a) all the Egyptologists it the article have their nationality named (once, at first mention); or (b) none of the Egyptologists have their nationality named. Otherwise, some readers may find it suspicious.

Fixed it is my fault: I used to write all nationalities then changed my mind and forgot to remove throughout when you told me about the “soviet” adjective for Berlev. Now I have removed all nationalities.Iry-Hor (talk) 15:24, 11 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• There is a a red error message in the References section for citation [58]. That cite is sfnm|1a=Stevenson Smith|1y=1971|1p=191|2a=Hayes|2y=1970|2pp=178–179|3a=Grimal|3y=1992|3p=81 Compare with the similar citation sfnm|1a1=Stevenson Smith|1y=1971|1p=191|2a1=Theis|2y=2015|2p=58 I think the error is caused by 1a and 2a; I think the sfnm template wants 1a1 and 2a1

Fixed.Iry-Hor (talk) 15:24, 11 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Noleander Thank you for your review !Iry-Hor (talk) 15:24, 11 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Leaning support. Ping me around the end of October and I’ll make another pass. Noleander (talk) 15:31, 11 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I don’t have time to do a full review (will be very busy this week and away from home next week), but I can check sources. The sources are exactly the ones I’d expect for an article about the history of the late Old Kingdom. While I’m not particularly conversant with the literature on Userkare, the picture drawn in the article—the uncertainty about Userkare’s position in the dynasty, and resulting conjecture about coregencies or dynastic struggles—seems to conform to the picture in the sources available to me. I spot-checked ten citations and nine were fine, but one is strange.

• Citation 65: I can’t find any reference to Userkare in Murnane 1977. The cited page, 111, discusses a conjectural coregency between Pepi I and his son Merenre Nemtyemsaf I, not between Userkare and Pepi. I don’t have access to Theis 2015, but if he refers directly to a hypothesis by Murnane about Userkare, could he have misread what Murnane was saying on this page?

A. Parrot So first of all, here is what Theis says about Murnane’s claim : “William F. Murnane hielt zwar eine kurze Ko-Regentschaft zwischen Userkare und Pepi I. für möglich, allerdings ließ er offen, unter welchen Gegebenheiten diese zustande kam. Bisher fehlt allerdings ein zeitgenössischer Hinweis, der auf eine derartige Ko-Regentschaft hindeuten würde” which I google-translate as “William F. Murnane considered a brief co-reign between Userkare and Pepi I possible, but he left open the circumstances under which this came about. However, there is no contemporary evidence to date that would indicate such a co-regency.” He cites “Vergleiche MURNANE, S. 111 f.” for this and the only Murnane ref in his bibliography is “MURNANE, W. F., Ancient Egyptian Corregencies, SAOC 40, Chicago 1977”. Now in the version of Murnane available online, there is indeed nothing on p. 111 about Userkare. In fact Murnane is rather clear: even the section is titled “Pepi I and Mernerē”. In the conclusion Murnane discusses this again but once more with nothing on Userkare (in fact Userkare’s name and its variants do not occur even once in Murnane’s book). I could not fathom how Theis could think Murnane was talking about Userkare, so I thought perhaps Murnane’s book had another edition where there is something on this, yet I could not find any such second edition. Thus I thought Theis may simply have mistaken the reference he was referring to: that Murnane did talk about this, just not in his 1977 book. So I decided to keep Theis’ claims about Murnane opinion and his objections to it. I still think this is the most natural explanation because really you would have to not only completely misread Murnane 1977 to think it is about Userkare, but also imagine the very name of Userkare in the text as it is totally absent from it. Since I do not really know of Theis’s purported source but cannot believe he made the whole thing up, I propose to update this bit to “Alternatively Userkare may have been legitimate yet only reigned jointly with Pepi I in a true coregency, although as the Egyptologist Christoffer Theis points out this hypothesis lack direct evidence”: this keeps what Theis says but removes Murnane’s role in this.Iry-Hor (talk) 07:27, 14 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That is a bit bizarre, but I think your revised wording neatly sidesteps the problem.

First batch after canter through for typos etc:

• “Manetho who wrote an history of Egypt”” – “a history”

Done, I don’t know how many times I will do this mistake before I realize it is “a history”.Iry-Hor (talk) 11:28, 15 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• “the only secure attestions” – “attestations”

Fixed.Iry-Hor (talk) 11:28, 15 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• “the archeological record, which one could expect” – “archeological” here but “archaeological” later. The Oxford English Dictionary specifies the latter.

Done.Iry-Hor (talk) 11:28, 15 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• “in the mastaba chiseling out the figures of his father and brothers” – “chiseling” should be “chiselling” (and I’d put a comma immediately in front of it).

Done.Iry-Hor (talk) 11:28, 15 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• “king of the Sixth Dynasty as beloning to Userkare” – typo.

Fixed.Iry-Hor (talk) 11:28, 15 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

More to come, shortly. Tim riley talk 10:06, 15 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Although he is attested in some historical sources, Userkare is completely absent -> Switch he and Userkare so that the first mention of him uses his name.

Done.Iry-Hor (talk) 09:38, 17 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Furthermore, the figures of some high -> Remove Furthermore

Done.Iry-Hor (talk) 09:38, 17 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• In addition, the Egyptian priest Manetho who wrote a history of Egypt nearly 1,700 years later in the 3rd century BC states that Userkare’s predecessor Teti was murdered but is otherwise silent concerning Userkare. -> Change to “The Egyptian priest Manetho, who wrote a history of Egypt nearly 1,700 years later in the 3rd century BC, stated that Userkare’s predecessor Teti was murdered, but is otherwise silent concerning Userkare.”

Done.Iry-Hor (talk) 09:38, 17 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• In addition to the above attestations contemporaneous with his reign, details about Userkare’s time on the throne were once given on -> Same as point one

Done.Iry-Hor (talk) 09:38, 17 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• For the same reasons, his relations to his predecessor and successor are largely uncertain -> Make this the start of a new paragraph and add “A minority opinion held by Egyptologists Oleg Dmitrievich Berlev and Yury Perepelkin is that Userkare is not an independent ruler but rather a name of Teti.” as the ending sentence of that paragraph.

Done.Iry-Hor (talk) 09:38, 17 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]