Talk:Alexandria

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This article is written in British English, which has its own spelling conventions (colour, travelled, centre, defence, artefact, analyse) and some terms that are used in it may be different or absent from other varieties of English. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus.

On 12 October 2022, it was proposed that this article be moved to Alexandria, Egypt. The result of the discussion was not moved.

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History to present day.

Think the Egyptian Revolution, Suez Crisis (i.e. when did the British leave?) Dunc_Harris|☺ 11:19, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Surely interested editors can fill in the history from the tidal wave of the fourth century to the seventh century? 104.169.37.99 (talk) 17:31, 10 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The version you are referring to likely has changed, but yes I would agree that there are 2 major gaps in the history section: one between the destructive earthquake of Alexandria and its fall to the Sassanid Empire and one between the construction of the governor's palace and the battle where the Ottomans annexed Egypt. Adrian Velazquez 2003 (talk) 14:48, 3 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Overall, many strides can be made to significantly improve the citation practices of this article. There are entire sections and subsections without any citations. With regards to the initial summary, the information about Alexander's body being moved to Egypt is unecessary and should be removed. There are also major gaps within the history section that I commented on in a reply, and several subheadings like Christianity which can arguable be moved under the history heading. One thing this article does well is providing a lot of images. Adrian Velazquez 2003 (talk) 14:52, 3 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The article attempts to highlight too many aspects of Alexandria and has produced an overflow of information on subjects that only scrape the surface of Alexandria. Various lists within the article can arguably be shortened. The overproduction of train stations and routes makes the article seem like it is produced as a travel site not an informative article on Alexandria. Also, in the section on Education, and specifically within the "schools" subsection, there seems to be biased as the author seems to be ranking the schools based on which language is spoken, not the studies learned within. The subsection below "women" is clearly unfinished and does not do the proper justice to the development of women's studies within Alexandria. Furthermore, the section on Education does not mention the historical importance of education in Alexandria and how it has developed. Overall, the article tends to focus on various lists of entities within Alexandria and fails to explain their significance and contribution to Alexandria's uniquity.Ashg1177 (talk) 00:15, 4 April 2023 (UTC)Ashleyg1177Ashg1177 (talk) 00:15, 4 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I think in general you're right. I would add to that: one of the main problems is that even though the article is very long, there are large stretches of the article which are unsourced or very poorly sourced. When editors actually make the effort to cite reliable sources, they're also more likely to stick to what's important. Instead, some of this content seems like someone just wrote about their own personal experience in the city (e.g. like the discussion about tram fares), which is WP:OR and not what Wikipedia is for. I'm inclined to remove a lot of this unsourced trivia throughout, and maybe clean up some of the other awkward subsections.

The other suggestion that comes to mind is that there should eventually be a separate article about ancient Alexandria on its own, which can give proper focus to that rather large topic. History of Alexandria might be a place for some of that material. I also see that Not-A-Kitty has started a draft for Ptolemaic Alexandria, which could also absorb some of that topic. Of course, any other articles must still be carefully sourced, per WP:VERIFIABILITY. R Prazeres (talk) 23:45, 11 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

In addition to AirshipJungleman29's recent removals, I've just removed more redundant or poor-quality sections, cleaned up some things, and added maintenance templates and inline tags for much of the remaining unsourced (but relevant) content.

There's one more layout issue I recommend dealing with: the infobox contains too many images, in my opinion, and all the images in the history section suffer from WP:STACKING (images in "Ancient era" section are pushed down to "Islamic era" section, images in "Islamic era" section are pushed down into Geography section, etc). I would recommend picking the images that are the most informative in these areas and removing the rest, which should at least help. R Prazeres (talk) 15:03, 5 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Following up on my earlier comment above: I've reduced the number of images in the infobox from 10 to 6; the most I've seen in high-quality (GA or FA) city articles is 8, and many articles have less. Feel free to revise the selection itself, but please keep it to small number.

I've also trimmed some of the less useful images in and around the history section to reduce the stacking problem. Generally speaking, images that illustrate the city itself should be more pertinent here than artistic interpretations of people or events that have their own articles elsewhere. R Prazeres (talk) 05:16, 4 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 16 January 2024 and 7 May 2024. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Qaddoumio1 (article contribs).

— Assignment last updated by Issai920 (talk) 22:54, 11 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]