Talk:Ahmad Tajuddin

death of Sultan Ahmad Tajuddin of Brunei on 4th June 1950

Interesting that it is stated that the Sultan died in Singapore from natural causes. The new biography of Sylvia Brooke, Ranee of Sarawak (Sylvia, Queen of the Headhunters, by Philip Eade), states that he died of alcohol poisoning. If the cause was indeed "natural" it should be stated what it was. R R Clyne —Preceding unsigned comment added by 218.212.172.23 (talk) 10:50, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

In history book published by one of the government department of Brunei, it says, Sultan Ahmad Tajuddin actually died of haemorrhage.

Frankly, I do not regard either source as authoritative. R R Clyne —Preceding unsigned comment added by 218.186.12.209 (talk) 01:43, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

GA review

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.

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This review is transcluded from Talk:Ahmad Tajuddin/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Nominator: Pangalau (talk · contribs) 00:11, 6 July 2025 (UTC)

Reviewer: Jens Lallensack (talk · contribs) 19:42, 21 July 2025 (UTC)

Prose

• please check for MOS:CONTRACTIONS throughout
• Although the Ahmad Tajuddin's early behaviour had been difficult and necessitated strong warnings, Thomas wrote to MacDonald in early 1940 that he had demonstrated progress in the previous five years and had no vices. – This would make sense if you write In early 1940, Thomas wrote to MacDonald that although Tajuddin's early behaviour had been difficult and necessitated strong warnings, he had demonstrated progress in the previous five years and had no vices.
• As a result, he suggested that Ahmad Tajuddin get a Knight Commander of the Order of Saint Michael and Saint George (KCMG) during his coronation, thereby making him the only Malay ruler who had not received an honour from the British Crown before. – I really read it multiple times but it does not make any sense to me. He gets an honor, and this makes him the only one who did not receive one? What am I missing?
• The commissioner did not attend the coronation, but Robert Irvine, the private secretary, did give a report. – I am not sure here to whom "the commissioner" refers to. Is that Thomas, or the "high commissioner" who was also mentioned previously?
• Following up on the above comment: I highly recommend to stick with one title for one person. I understand that you try to make the text less repetitive by replacing "Thomas" with "Commissioner" once in a while, but what matters in Wikipedia is clarity, and a reader already has to remember enough names and titles when they want to follow the article. A general writing advice is "use the same term for the same thing". If you could check for this throughout, I think that would improve comprehensibility.
• specifically furnished chamber of the Government Office devoid of any furnishings – a furnished chamber devoid of furnishings?
• with European viewers sat on the left – "sitting"
• The Chief Police Officer of the 24 Brunei Police commanded the Guard of Honour that the litter carrying him was put in front of. – "carrying him" here refers to the Police Officer, but did you want to refer to the sultan instead? Also, I cannot really follow this sentence; put in front of what?
• Secretary of State for the Colonies Arthur Creech Jones accepted MacDonald's recommendation to maintain Brunei's independence from the administrations of North Borneo and Sarawak, upholding pre-war arrangements until new constitutional changes were proposed, as the deadline of 1 July 1946, for restoring civilian government in Brunei drew near. – Only after reading the source, and then reading this again, I could slowly understand what you wanted to say in this sentence. One problem is the missing comma before "drew near"; without that comma the sentence is incomprehensible. Even with the comma, it still is very difficult to read because it is very long and convoluted; try to split it into two sentences.
• At four feet eight inches tall – No idea what that is, can we have a unit conversion?
• He looked ludicrous and theatrical, more fitting for a musical play than royal regalia. – I see an entire paragraph with sentences like this, and more. This does not comply with WP:NPOV and WP:EDITORIAL. One way around this would be author attribution: "Author xx described him as xx". But in this particular case, which even looks like mocking to me, I think you could only use a quote, if anything.
• I would consider trimming the appearance descriptions down a bit (like that in the comment above), it seems excessive to me. Also consider having a dedicated section about appearance, rather than distributing them at various places in the "reign" section. That info has nothing to do with his reign.

Sources

• checked one paragraph supported by source 25; looks good, only a minor thing – you write that the litter was "pulled by thirty men", but the source actually says "carried", and the meaning is quite different. I thought it was something on wheels when I read this.
• Another section from that source looks also good.
• Statement sourced to source 38: checks out
• Don't use external links in the article text (you link to a pdf in the Malcolm MacDonald quote). Instead, that should be a footnote or reference.
• I have issues with "Vol. 40. Borneo Research Bulletin". The link does not point to the original article apparently, right? So can we have an issue, pages, etc. here to allow readers to find the original article? Furthermore, in the page you linked, I cannot find "Balabub Damit" or "Balabub Tengah", for which you used that source. Please give me a hint, thanks.
• Optional: I suggest to add language tags to all non-English sources (for some, you have "in Malay" but not for others). I would also be of great help to use the "trans-title" parameter to offer a translation of the title, so that the reader can get a better impression of the source.

Images

• Caption: Pengiran Muda Omar Ali Saifuddien (first from the left), Ahmad Tajuddin (third from the left), and British Resident Ernest Pengilley (third from the right) pictured with other members of the Indo-Ceylonese community in 1940 – The file description explicitly says "seated" when providing the names. Since there are seated and standing individuals visible, the sultan should be the fifth from the left, not the third?

Note: I will place this on-hold. The sourcing seems very-well done in general, you did great work with providing page numbers, and you are very good at avoiding close paraphrasing. However, the article does not meet criterion I "Well written" just yet; there are numerous major issues and many sentences that I just cannot understand. Note that my above prose review is only a spot check (i.e., examples); I did not read the entire article yet. I can suggest the following:

• Run a grammar checker
• Read the article again, try to split and unconvolute the long sentences, check your use of commas, use the same word when referring to persons, etc.
• Find a solution for the excessive appearance descriptions (see above)

Please ping me when done, and I will check again if the article (not just the mentioned examples) meet the GA criteria. Thanks! --Jens Lallensack (talk) 19:42, 21 July 2025 (UTC)

Hi Jens Lallensack, thank you for taking up the review request for this article. I have done major changes to all but one of the recommendations and suggestions you have given above. One exception being the image caption, I believe it to be correct as I it should be:

Picture shows (seated from left to right) the Pengiran Muda, Mr. E. E. Pengilley (M.C.S., British Resident, Brunei), the Sultan of Brunei, Mr. R. S. Evans (Resident, British North Borneo), Mr. Abdul Kadir Sahib and Mr. E. Rajaratnam. Pangalau (talk) 04:12, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

Second look, and closing note (Fail) The issue about the neutral point of view that I already pointed out above seems to be much more severe than I originally assumed, especially further down in the article. There is a lot of highly biased, subjective, and partly defamatory information about this person, all presented in wiki voice. Much of this is sourced to the personal diary of MacDonald, that, in your source (Borneo Research Bulletin, 2009, p. 104), is described as "scurrilous in the extreme". This goes against so many Wikipedia policies that I cannot even list them all. This diary is absolutely not a source that we can use, but large parts of the article seem to rely on it. I think that anything judgemental, including subjective physical characterizations, have to be removed from the article, unless they are scholarly consensus, which would have to be demonstrated by respective sources. I have to fail this; I suggest to seek help from editors who are more versed with biographies than I am. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 20:56, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

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.