Wikipedia:Featured article review/archive/February 2012

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

The article was kept by Dana boomer 15:41, 28 February 2012 [1].

The Relapse

Review commentary

Notified: Bishonen (no other editors have over 13 edits to article since 2006) Projects: Theatre and Books.

Article was promoted in 2005. Notices about the lack of citations were given in 2008 and 2009 but little has been accomplished. The first page of the article history goes back to 2006, for example.

  • 1a The article reads like a review of The Relapse and it has many peacock terms and weasel words. Some examples:
  • This unusual document is signed by nine men and six women, all established professional actors, and details a disreputable jumble of secret investments and "farmed" shares, making the case that owner chicanery rather than any failure of audience interest was at the root of the company's financial problems.
  • Following the surprising success of this young cast, Vanbrugh and Rich had even greater difficulty in retaining the actors needed for The Relapse.
  • John Verbruggen was one of the original rebels and had been offered a share in the actors' company, but became disgruntled when his wife Susanna, a popular comedienne, was not. For Rich, it was a stroke of luck to get Susanna and John back into his depleted and unskilled troupe.
  • 1c Overall lack of citations throughout the article. I'm not familiar enough with the article subject but of the sources that are listed, they appear to be acceptable. I'm aware that "plot" sections are not normally cited therefore that section would be exempt.
  • 2c The citations that are in place make little sense to me. Page numbers are missing and several of them only point to a "see also" type of reference.
  • The above three issues are the most important. If serious work begins then further review will be warranted. Brad (talk) 16:42, 4 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Regarding 1a: I think you misunderstand the purpose of WP:PEACOCK. When talking about the subject of an article, terms like "unusual", "established professional", "surprising success", "popular comedienne" are often inappropriate. That is not because such expressions are bad per se but because when applied to the subject, they are either relevant and should be explained in greater detail using the principle Show, don't tell, or they are not relevant or even false and should be omitted. That's why {{peacock}}, which you have put on the article, says the following: "This article may contain wording that merely promotes the subject without imparting verifiable information. Please remove or replace such wording, unless you can cite independent sources that support the characterization." (The italics are mine.) Moreover, many of the "peacock" terms can be accurate description rather than puffery, depending on context. Let's look at your three examples in detail. I will make my best effort to guess which words you are actually objecting to.
  • There is no harm in pointing out that a document is "unusual" if that is the case. For all I know, many documents similar to the one described in the article may have survived from the era. This is a question of verifiability, not style.
  • That the signatories are "established professional actors" is a verifiable or falsifiable (or borderline) claim, and relevant in this context.
  • That Vanbrugh's previous play, Love's Last Shift was a "surprising success has a precise meaning that is obvious from context: He lost all his experienced actors, had to write something for the unexperienced troupe that remained, and to his surprise it became a success anyway. This created even greater problems for the cast of the play that this article is about.
  • Whether Verbruggen's wife was a "popular comedienne" herself, rather than an insignificant one, is absolutely relevant for understanding why he was pissed when she wasn't offered a share. There is no problem with pointing this out unless it's false. Describing her career in great detail ("Within 5 years, the Times printed 12 letters to the editor that praised her for her breeches roles." -- completely made up example) would be totally inappropriate here. This kind of information must be summarised, and sometimes an accurate summary looks like a peacock description.
  • You also included the "stroke of luck" sentence. Unless you are also including negative descriptions under "peacock", I just can't see how anything in this sentence could fit. Hans Adler 18:17, 4 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, Hans, very good points. None of the "peacock" (?) terms which Brad exemplifies represent my own opinion; nothing in the article does. To start with Susanna Verbruggen, that Brad quotes me as promoting (? is that it?) and via her, start with the actor information generally: when I FAC'd the article way back in the dawn of time, I first wrote more-or-less short articles on all the actors involved, I think. (Well, Thomas Betterton already existed.) Even though these actors were mostly established and highly regarded at the time, actors were barely respectable as a class, and therefore little verifiable information about them has survived. What we do know about them is summarised, and of course fully cited, in the standard work Highfill, Philip Jr, Burnim, Kalman A., and Langhans, Edward (1973–93), Biographical Dictionary of Actors, Actresses, Musicians, Dancers, Managers and Other Stage Personnel in London, 1660–1800, see my "References" section. Thus, I based the article Susanna Verbruggen on the entry "Susanna Verbruggen" in the Biographical Dictionary, and linked to it from "The Relapse", and so with the other actors. (Btw, per MLA, and per common sense, I haven't given page references to entries in an alphabetical dictionary.) I couldn't very well repeat all about her, about John Verbruggen, George Powell, and so on, here; The Relapse is long enough as it is. It's supposed to be in summary style, per FA criterion 4. If you click on the link to Susanna's own article, you'll get the details of how and why she was a "popular comedienne". Though to know I wasn't making stuff up in that article, I guess you'd have to go to a library, probably a first-class academic library, and check the Biographical Dictionary. I'm well aware that that's not realistic for most people, but you just can't get this stuff from webpages. (If you're affiliated with "NC State Unity Users" or "NC State Library Patrons" you can supposedly access the dictionary via prox.lib.ncsu.edu as an online library resource, in case anybody out there is in this fortunate position.[2])
I was green in some respects when I wrote the piece. I guess I must have thought that even without noticing the links to the individual actor bios, it would be sort of obvious to anybody who read the "References" section that the Biographical Dictionary was the origin of all the individual actor information. (My listing for it does say "All details about individual actors are taken from this standard work unless otherwise indicated".) But with more wiki-experience I realise that looking at that section might be a too roundabout, or unfamiliar, procedure for the average reader. What do you think, Brad, would it help if I put a main article template on top of the "Casting" section, which referred to all the relevant actor bios?
As for your other two examples, "This unusual document is signed by nine men and six women, all established professional actors, and details a disreputable jumble of secret investments and "farmed" shares, making the case that owner chicanery rather than any failure of audience interest was at the root of the company's financial problems, and Following the surprising success of this young cast, Vanbrugh and Rich had even greater difficulty in retaining the actors needed for The Relapse, as well as all the other specifics of the breakaway of the established actors from Rich's "Patent Company", come from Milhous, Judith (1979), Thomas Betterton and the Management of Lincoln's Inn Fields 1695–1708, as detailed in the current footnote 4. That rather elaborate note is supposed to be a citation for the entire five-line paragraph it's placed after, which includes the "Following the surprising success" sentence you use as an example above. Perhaps that wasn't clear. I should probably put in specific page references to Milhous here and there, as is current practice, and I will if I can face it; but I don't think I'll ever literally footnote every sentence.
You know, if anything, I've downplayed the colourfulness of my sources at every opportunity. The unusual document mentioned was not only unusual but bloody unique, and there are very interesting reasons why the actors, for once, and against all the normal social odds of the period, dared sign such a frank... but never mind, I digress. It's all in Milhous, but it can't all go in this article. It's only about The Relapse, with a summary bit of background to how it came to be written the way it was. Perhaps not summary enough, is my own feeling.
More later. Bishonen | talk 23:36, 4 December 2011 (UTC).[reply]
This is a lot of tl;dr and arguing the meaning of terms. The prose in this article is not encyclopedic style and I did my best to describe why. A related independent observation at Talk:Restoration_spectacular#Featured_article_concerns points out the same problem even though I made no mention of prose. I'd welcome the same independent observation here as well. Read words to watch per MoS. Brad (talk) 22:41, 5 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
That the prose here is "not encyclopedic style" is your personal opinion. It is not typical Wikipedia style, but that's simply because the vast majority of editors cannot write half as well as Bishonen and would create a huge, unreadable mess if they tried to, and because many articles were written peacemeal by a large number of editors plagiarising from who knows where, adding ungrammatical sentences, and then trying to somehow turn the result into something that makes sense without properly rewriting anything. Wikipedia does not and should not have rules against good style. The "independent observation" you are relying on is from an account that was blocked as a sock after 4 edits, together with 3 other accounts. [3] Hans Adler 23:32, 5 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
My first time at FAR, but the above asks for independent observations. I defer to those more experienced regarding citations, etc., but I think the fact that the prose of the article is engaging and colourful is to be celebrated. Our concept of encyclopaedic style is pretty broad and I hope that doesn't mean all of our articles need to be dry as dust. While the tolerance levels for authorial colour may necessarily be restricted for BLP's and the like, surely there is no harm in it in this context. So I'm left a bit scratching my head at the claim that this FA suffers from "peacock words" or "reads like a review" - seems to me it gets into the spirit of things and therefore makes a subject that might otherwise be dull for the random reader quite engaging. (An extreme case of this is Eats, Shoots & Leaves). Let's encourage and celebrate articles written like this one rather than pushing them to "conform". Martinp (talk) 14:43, 6 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Glad to hear it, Martin, thank you. I only just saw your comment; I'll proceed to do what I came here for; post a reply to Brad101. Bishonen | talk 20:00, 6 December 2011 (UTC).[reply]
  • @Brad101. I was sure your nomination was made in good faith, and I responded in the same spirit, Brad, trying to address what I though your major concern: the shortage of inline citation, which I agree about. And I undertook to return to the other concerns later. You have given your opinion of my response — "a lot of tl;dr and arguing the meaning of terms" — but haven't addressed any of it. If you'd got a bit farther than you did in reading it, you'd have seen me acknowledging that inline cites are needed, and proposing to add them for Milhous, the source for most of the longer sections. And you might have seen me ask a direct question, namely if you thought adding "Main article" templates would help some concerns. None of that worth a glance, let alone imparting advice on?
You don't often see tl;dr in civil wiki society. Not unless somebody has been wearing out your patience with a lot of irrelevant ramblings. Why do you speak to me like that, Brad? Am I personally offensive to you in some way? Do we have some disagreeble history (I can't remember any) or did I talk too academically above, and it sounded conceited? I don't think I come off as the uni professor in most of my wikipedia communication, but "The Relapse" is a sort of academic article, so there's bound to be a touch of that when I discuss concerns over it, especially in matters of referencing and verifiability. Those are also matters that inevitably do run long, see all over FAC. Or was it the "if I can face it"? That was a personal confession that I hate returning to old articles. I do understand that that can be necessary, and was prepared to do it to keep a FA in trim for the sake of the encyclopedia, but it's just.. it's boring. I have a threshold of reluctance to climb. :-( Don't know if that's universal, or just me.
I can't see where I argued the meaning of any terms, perhaps you'd like to specify. My response to your nomination took me a long time to write, and of course I'm now sorry I wasted that time. If it needs saying, I won't actually be returning to this page to address any more of your points. (But I will probably post on Talk:The Relapse about the driveby tags you have added to the article.) As for editing the article to bring it in line with current FA standards, well.. I'll try to gird myself for it, but frankly, it's probably not going to happen. This is a lazy time for me for personal reasons (see the top of my talkpage if you're intolerably curious about them), plus my threshold of reluctance just got higher. Bishonen | talk 20:00, 6 December 2011 (UTC).[reply]
  • P.S. Anybody who's genuinely interested in this FAR might like to take a look at Talk:The Relapse, where Rex and I have now posted about Brad's tags to warn readers how bad the article is, so they don't risk taking it seriously. Bishonen | talk 00:35, 7 December 2011 (UTC).[reply]
  • The article reads, in my humble opinion, as a well researched and equally well written piece. I believe that Featured article criterion number 1(a) requires it to be "well-written: its prose is engaging, even brilliant, and of a professional standard." I'm in no position to judge how much has to be paid to make writing 'professional', but I fancy that I am able to spot engaging prose – and this is undoubtedly so.
Without anything more specific to substantiate the {{review}} and {{peacock}} templates, I am at a loss to address those concerns. Since Template:Review#Usage requires "Add a new item to the talk page explaining the problem so editors will know what to address, and when to remove this tag" and nothing related has appeared on the talk page, I've removed the misused {{review}} template. I'd suggest that Talk:The Relapse#Cleanup templates is the correct place to seek consensus on the removal of the {{peacock}} template, should no further explanation of its placement be forthcoming.
I would make one small suggestion to assuage the concerns expressed by Brad. At the end of the ante-penultimate paragraph of The Relapse cast section (or penultimate if you treat the quotation as part of the last paragraph), Cibber is described as having a "squeaky personality". Now, that may be the phrase employed in the source, but modern English is dynamic and current usage associates "squeaky" too strongly with "voice" or with the idiomatic compound adjective "squeaky clean" for the phrase to ring true now. It jars slightly in my reading because of the immediate mental association with "clean" - which is a doubtful epithet for Cibber, even more so in the context of the imprinting of his personality onto Lord Foppington. Consequently, I'd recommend removing "squeaky", or perhaps searching for a new mot juste to convey what the source intended. Hope that helps. --RexxS (talk) 22:14, 6 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Cibber's "squeaky voice" in the first line of the same paragraph is from the Cibber entry in the Highfill etc,Biographical Dictionary of Actors, Actresses, Musicians, Dancers, Managers and Other Stage Personnel in London, 1660–1800. I probably did go too far (as in, did editorialise) in applying it to his entire (acting) personality when I rounded off the paragraph in the last sentence. I'll try to think of another way of putting it. Bishonen | talk 00:35, 7 December 2011 (UTC).[reply]
  • Can't see any problems with the writing style, perhaps the person who thought it had peacock problems is using the term in a different way to how I normally see it used ("The Scrotums" are the greatest band to come out of Camden Town since Madness...yeah, right!). There have been some changes in custom and practice to do with references - quotations now always have an inline citation for example, and there's no reference or footnote for Sheridan's version of the play, even though it is quoted. These would be easily fixed by any editor, as would adding ISBN's (indeed, whoever tagged it could have done that job). The general style of separate footnotes and references with fewer inline citations is still in use by WP:MILHIST - who generally prefer not to overcite articles (except for claims of numbers killed in battles, and the performance of the fly-by-wire english longbow). Indeed, 5 citations per 10 words is usually a sign of very contentious content, got out between clenched teeth or under mortar fire. Unless one actually takes exception to any of an article such as this (or wants to pirate it for homework) there is no reason to cite every sentence. Elen of the Roads (talk) 00:17, 7 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you, Elen. I was going to improve the sourcing but, as I say above, I lost momentum when my proposals for doing that were rudely dismissed by the nominator. Maybe later. The FAR delegates should feel free to de-feature it in the meantime, I don't really care. (That's the upside of being less than interested in my old work.) But for the ISBNs, Elen, on principle, I wish you wouldn't encourage people to add them. Some people seem to think ISBNs are compulsory, or recommended for FAs or something, but that's not the case. Please see my talkpage post where I argue the case against including them. Bishonen | talk 00:35, 7 December 2011 (UTC).[reply]
Indeed. The ISBN can be helpful when one is citing specific pages and the book has appeared in a variety of formats, but even then a full citation is usually sufficient to establish one has a copy of the same edition, size and shape, unless we are talking about something like Mrs Beeton, which exists in hundreds of versions. Elen of the Roads (talk) 00:52, 7 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
As somebody who has added very many ISBNs in his time, and who continues to add them, let me third this. ISBNs can be very helpful indeed (and we needn't be discouraged by the fact that no dead-tree style guide that's taken seriously recommends, let alone prescribes, their inclusion). They're for when one really does have a single edition in mind. Often, however, more than one edition fits the bill, and then the ISBN for one of these editions is a mere distraction and can mislead the reader. (Incidentally, even for their purpose of specifying a particular edition of a particular book, they're not always helpful: see a conspicuously long footnote to this article.) -- Hoary (talk) 00:59, 11 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment - There hasn't been much talk here since the initial flurry, so I'm hoping to get some additional input... Do the editors commenting here feel that the article in its current state can be kept as a featured article, or does it not meet the WP:Featured article criteria? Please consider that there are still two cleanup tags on the article, which should be dealt with regardless of any other issues that may be present. Bishonen, I know that you had been considering reworking the article - if you would still like to and/or need more time to consider, please let me know. Dana boomer (talk) 00:19, 31 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Other than Bishonen's drones removing the tags I placed, no further effort has been made to address the problems. 1a, 1c, and 2c. Time for FARC. Brad (talk) 13:04, 1 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Like I've said, I don't much mind if the article is FARCd or defeatured. It's Wikipedia's, not "mine", so presumably I don't have to feel responsible for it. Especially as my attempt to take responsibility on December 5 only got me a pie in the face from Brad (see above). Please move it to FARC if you like.
But my "drones"? That's infamous. It presumably refers to the sex life of bees, casting me as Queen bee and User:RexxS as one of my drones. (As for the plural droneS that Brad says removed the tags, they're in his head; nobody other than myself and Rex has removed any tags.) That's not something I need to put up with for the crime of writing a FA back in the dawn of time, and even less something to be flung at Rex for posting civil disagreement with Brad on this page and at Talk:The Relapse. Brad, I hereby request you to strike through your infamous slur and to post no further attacks. Struck through my own stupid request instead. Who cares? B, 00:48, 2 January 2012 (UTC).] WP:FAR isn't AFAIK a free zone for any and all attacks, or an overseas territory of Wikipedia Review in our midst.
@Dana Boomer: You're an admin, Dana. Do you intend to block Brad, for being this far out of line? Or to warn him, a proper stern warning on his talkpage? I merely ask, because if not, I will post this business on WP:ANI. I'd rather not, because I think it's feeble for admins to complain on ANI about PA's against themselves, and I never have before. But since the most direct slur was directed against Rex, I would feel justified this time. On another note, Dana, how do you mean, there are still cleanup tags on the article? I removed the last of Brad's drive-by tags on December 9, after first explaining my objections to them on the talkpage and giving Brad plenty of time to respond. Nobody has put them back, and nobody has responded on the talkpage either. In fact Brad has never addressed anybody's arguments or answered anybody's questions in connection with this nomination. I'm nonplussed and frustrated by the way he'll only weigh in when he has a pie to throw. Is all of WP:FAR this kind of sham? Bishonen | talk 17:45, 1 January 2012 (UTC).[reply]
I've warned him; I would much prefer he engage here and this issue be resolved rather than anyone be blocked. Bishonen, there's a {{refimprove}} and a {{deadlink}} in the Notes section; that's likely what Dana was referring to. By the way, I don't think the bee definition for "drone" is the one being used here, but that's not really important. Nikkimaria (talk) 19:01, 1 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • I rather think that "drones" was an unfortunate turn of phrase and was clearly meant to be belittling or insulting. Furthermore, the tone of the post was clearly meant to be threatening and intimidating. Does Brad have some extra power here? Are he and Dana Boomer in some form of business union? or is he her heir apparent? Because if not, then he is way out of line. I think we should be told Giacomo Returned 19:16, 1 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Really? The kerfuffle over Malleus' block along proves that a block for something as minor as this will not stick. Give him a chance to respond, redact, etc. before condemning. No one has extra power here, but this isn't anywhere near the level we block at. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 19:31, 1 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • As fun as the debate over prose is, the article clearly fails 1c—much like John Vanbrugh—and a FARC will delist the article unless it is given citations to meet current standards. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 19:31, 1 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
(after two edit conflicts) If I were personally attacking you, you would most certainly know it. Given that I've been attacked several times now for just the act of making a FAR nomination let alone any comments I've made, I've become shell-shocked in the process. You can look at Francis Petre below here for a good example of that. When I get mobbed either by one or many I don't engage because sooner or later the conversation becomes unproductive. I would rather have seen all of the effort put into debating the prose, put into article improvement. Your comment about "drive by tagging" seems to imply that I just go around to articles and slap tags on things for the fun of it. If I had considered the prose "not so bad" rather than "not meeting criteria 1a", I wouldn't have tagged it. Brad (talk) 19:36, 1 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Oh I see, you felt you were being ignored. Oh that's so sad - can we help you in any way? The problem is that the article looks just fine from here. Giacomo Returned 20:33, 1 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
It looks fine to me as well, but that isn't the same as whether I think it meets the FA criteria. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 20:37, 1 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Do you have a comment on the FA in question or are you here for decorative purposes? Giacomo Returned 20:40, 1 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I'm believe that you are writing that at me (hard to tell with your indent?), but I made a comment about the article above at 19:31. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 20:44, 1 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I saw that you were expressing your opinion there. Is that it? Are you going to specify exactly what it is that offends you so? Or just jump on the bandwagon? Between ourselves, the problem is that Wikipedia's best editors on these subjects don't really care about FAs anymore. They laugh and are amused by the criteria set up by those who know nothing of these matters and their low literary styles and the prose they demand. These serious editors earn their worldly money from being experts, if a bunch of Wikipedia type people don't feel it's up to much; quite frankly they are not that concerned. I hope that answers any further problems that you, Brad and Dana Boomer may have. No one serious is that bothered by the page. Giacomo Returned 20:52, 1 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not jumping on anyone's bandwagon, it's just that the article doesn't have enough citations to meet FA's current standards. I have no beef with the FA system, but I'm also far from earning my "worldly money by being [an] expert". I'd like to think I know more about South American dreadnoughts than 99% of the world, but that assumption is probably wrong, and I'm at peace with it. What I do know is that putting articles through FAC has improved my writing and taught me how to cite things I write – a few tweaks was all I needed to translate it to academic writing. But all that is going off topic. If you don't feel the need to engage with the FA system as-is, you don't have to, but without improvement the article will lose its star. If you and the editors monitoring this page don't mind that, then we should all disengage to prevent further bad blood from developing. Internet fights always seemed ridiculous to me anyway. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 21:04, 1 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Oh dear, this is getting rather hard to make clear. No one other than you, Dana Boomer and Brad is much bothered by the star. Some work was done to try and help you all, but the editors who tried to help were insulted and accused of being "drones." so I'm afraid, it rather looks as though the three of you must remain here in isolation surounded by decaying articles. Giacomo Returned 21:11, 1 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I don't really care about the star either. I have no interest in the article, its subject, or its rating on a website. Essentially no work has been done aside from adding and removing templates, unless you're seeing something I'm not. [4] Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 21:24, 1 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I couldn't care less about some child throwing meaningless insults at me, but it would help if folks followed at least the barest minimum of guidance given to them when tagging articles. Would you be kind enough Ed, to review the comments I made at Talk:The Relapse#Cleanup templates on 6 December 2011 please? The {{review}} template was misused and no explanation was made of the {{peacock}} template. Failing to engage in process is the very definition of drive-by tagging, and demonstrates Brad's contempt for good-faith editors who attempt to take these issues seriously. The article talk page is the place where tags are discussed, and I am still awaiting Brad's first post there.
I have no intention of playing games was if this were a MMORPG, and I have little time for editors who seem to think that it is acceptable to ignore the prompt requests for clarification for almost a month, and then to attack the very editors who would be willing to respond to genuine concerns. No wonder Bishonen is discouraged from putting in further work on the article.
Let me make this as clear as I can:
  • 1a concerns are complete garbage. The OP has no idea of what peacock and weasel terms are, and there is no such concern to address in the article, with the possible exception of the "squeaky personality" issue which should be easily addressable.
  • 2c concerns are equally ill-founded. Every single one of the 14 Notes makes perfect sense to me. Page numbers are given for the longer works with the exception of Biographical Dictionary of Actors, which is arranged in alphabetical order. If the OP is having difficulty in finding "Verbruggen, John" in an alphabetical dictionary, he has greater problems than even I can solve for him.
  • 1c concerns: I accept that the style of providing a set of sources at the end of an article – rather than an inline citation for every sentence – has fallen out of favour in Wikipedia since this article was promoted. I have little doubt that anyone who read the 10 works cited in the References section would be able to verify the text presented, but I do understand that such faith is unfashionable nowadays. More's the pity then that this entire process has been conducted in a manner almost calculated to ensure that the person with access to all those sources is unlikely to see the value in putting further effort into refining the citations. Frankly, I'd be sorry to see another fine article lose its FA status, but the article will remain among Wikipedia's finest works with or without a star in the corner. --RexxS (talk) 00:22, 2 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • (e/c with Rex) Thanks for that, Ed. I guess you don't have any interest in reading the first part of this thread either — can't really blame you — where my good-faith attempt to get input on some proposals for improving the referencing came to grief. I no longer care, either. I quite agree it shouldn't be an FA as is, I've said so repeatedly. Perhaps in fact it should be on WP:AFD rather than here, per Brad's {{review}} template.
@Brad: As well as putting forward and asking for input on suggestions for how I could improve the referencing — suggestions which you dismissed out of hand as "tl;dr" — I've put a number of direct questions to you on this FAR. You have never replied to any of them, it's ridiculous. I was going to repeat the questions here, but meh. They're still above, in the unlikely eventuality that anybody cares. About your latest post: You've been attacked several times now? As in, you've been attacked by me? Please specify where I have "shell-shocked" you, as that seems to be your excuse for the rebarbative and dismissive way you speak to and of me. If you're burned out and tired of FAR, shooting the nearest harmless bystander is hardly the remedy. And no, by drive-by tagging I don't mean to "imply that [you] just go around to articles and slap tags on things for the fun of it". I explained exactly what I do mean by drive-by tags on Talk:The Relapse on December 7: "Drive-by" is the term used for tags posted without any talkpage justification. You haven't posted once on Talk:The Relapse, beyond the addition of the {{featured article review}} template which is a technical part of this FAR nomination. This in defiance of the explicit requirement at the top of the FAR page for raising issues on the article's talkpage first, before nominating on FAR, and in nonchalance towards my repeated invitations to discussion, here and on article talk. And now you speak of what I "seem to imply", after I've defined exactly what I did mean? Haven't you even looked at Talk:The Relapse, despite my links and recommendations above? OK, it's official: I give up.
@Nikkimaria, thank you for saving me a pointless ANI brawl, I'm sure that wouldn't have done much for the state of the FAR process. Pity you troubled to say anything to Brad about striking his comment, I don't actually give a shit any longer what he thinks or how he acts. I've struck out my own mealy-mouthed request for comity. Yes, there's a {{refimprove}} template still on the article, I'm well aware of it. (Hardly a cleanup matter.) I haven't challenged or removed that one, in fact it seems to me that I've already said many times that I agree with it: the article would need more detailed referencing to meet today's FA standards. There's a deadlink? Guess what, I don't give a shit about that either. Happy editing, all.
@Giacomo: For god's sake stop posting here. Bishonen | talk 00:48, 2 January 2012 (UTC).[reply]
Hey Bishonen. A more accurate statement would have been "little direct work". Sorry about that. The templates were a bit off, and I do question why the ISBN template has not been deleted when they are certainly not required... Anyway, I don't agree with Brad that 1a is necessarily a problem. I do believe that there is not enough citations for this to remain featured, which is apparently a point on which we agree. I'm sorry that you think the FAR process is flawed, and I'm not entirely happy with it either, but in this case it is working, albeit in haphazard fashion – issues have been raised, one has been defended against, and two remain. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 02:17, 2 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Let's see if it is actually working as claimed then:
1(c) well-researched: it is a thorough and representative survey of the relevant literature. Claims are verifiable against high-quality reliable sources and are supported by inline citations where appropriate.
The English Wikipedia's Verifiability policy requires inline citations for quotations, whether using direct or indirect speech, and for material that is challenged or likely to be challenged. Editors are also advised to add in-text attribution whenever a source's words are copied or closely paraphrased.
Nobody has indicated which parts of the article are uncited quotations, closely paraphrased, challenged, or likely to be challenged.
2(c) consistent citations: where required by criterion 1c, consistently formatted inline citations using either footnotes or Harvard referencing.
The article has 14 citations. Nobody has indicated which ones fail 2(c) and in what way.
It appears that anybody can make vague claims about issues without any requirement for specificity. They can indeed ignore the established protocols for raising such issues (e.g. talk page first). Surely any thinking editor can see that this is bound to set up the "defenders" for failure – the principal author is being given the same treatment that was handed out to Josef K. No matter what improvements may be made to the article, the "prosecutors" can always claim that that their unspecified concerns have not been met. Fix your flawed process; look for ways of encouraging principal authors, not alienate them from the process; ensure that initiators of FAR have at least followed the very basic instructions at WP:FAR.
Do you still maintain, Ed, that the Raise issues at article Talk and the Nominators must specify the featured article criteria that are at issue and should propose remedies steps have been observed? I'm sorry to be so blunt, but I am having difficulty in understanding why a respected editor such as yourself is prepared to excuse such a badly-executed process as this particular review. --RexxS (talk) 04:51, 2 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I apologize for not being more direct. Would you rather I come out and state that I wish to challenge all of the paragraphs that are currently lacking citations? I assumed that was implied, as that's why FAC today has an unwritten rule of at least one citation to cover every paragraph. As for 2c, it's readily apparent that "See Faller" is not consistent with "The London Stage I, 470.", which isn't consistent with "Unless otherwise indicated, the information in this paragraph comes from Harris xxvi.", which isn't consistent with "Dobrée."
The lack of a talk page notification is unusual for Brad, ex. Talk:USS Kentucky (BB-66)#Featured article quality has deteriorated. I do disagree that he did not specify the "criteria that are at issue", as he certainly specified that the article was lacking citations. In my mind, that statement implicitly challenges the unsourced statements in the article, but I'm relatively sure my view is not shared by everyone here. ;-) Perhaps in the future Brad could state that directly. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 08:08, 2 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
... that's why FAC today has an unwritten rule of at least one citation to cover every paragraph. It does? I sure wish someone had told me !!! It's shameful what's going on in here; are we here to improve articles or to exercise our muscles? I have yet to see a nomination from Brad that addresses WP:WIAFA, I've raised that at WT:FAR,[5] and I hope we will see some collaborative effort to improve articles take hold in here. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 04:38, 25 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I found one: Wikipedia:Featured article review/Katie Holmes/archive1. Improvement noted. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 10:20, 25 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

FARC commentary

There was a good deal of ill feeling around this nomination, with some poorly-chosen words on the part of the nominator. However, there were also some valid points made as to spots where the article failed to comply with the featured article criteria. Because of that, and the lack of movement on the article over the past few weeks, I am moving this review to the FARC section. I would ask that the participants refrain from attacking or being uncivil to each other and instead focus on the article and whether or not it meets the featured article criteria. Dana boomer (talk) 23:15, 5 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]


Additional closing note: At this point, with the article having been in the FARC section for over a month with no additional comments, I am closing the review as "keep". The discussion above pointed out some valid issues with the article, but also deteriorated into ill feeling in several spots. Editors who believe the article no longer meets featured standards should feel free to bring the article back to FAR in a few months if they can still identify significant issues with the quality of the article. Dana boomer (talk) 15:44, 28 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
The following is an archived discussion of a featured article review. Please do not modify it. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page or at Wikipedia talk:Featured article review. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was kept by Dana boomer 23:08, 5 February 2012 [6].

Solar eclipse

Notified: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Moon, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Eclipses, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Astronomy, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Solar System. Nominator and main editor vanished.

I am nominating this featured article for review because the article has declined in quality, and does not appear to be watched or cared for. Specific criteria of concern are:

  • 1a (prose): Take for example the repetition in the very first sentence: "As seen from the Earth, a solar eclipse occurs when the Moon ... blocks the Sun as viewed from a location on Earth."
  • 1b (comprehensiveness): The history section leaps from 1095 to 1879 completely ignoring the entire Renaissance and Enlightenment periods.
  • 1c (verifiability): An example claim requiring attribution (and possibly balance) is "The last total solar eclipse on Earth will occur in slightly less than 600 million years."
  • 2b (structure): The final section is a collection of links.

DrKiernan (talk) 21:59, 16 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I have fixed the specific examples you give in 1a and 1c, as far as 1b I'm not sure there is much history to mention, but I'm not sure. Does 2b refer to the External Links section? This is bad? I have not looked at the FA criteria in a while. For now I seem to be the article's only Shepard. --TimL (talk) 06:03, 17 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. I'm reassured by your response. On 2b, it's the section Solar eclipse#Recent and forthcoming solar eclipses that concerns me. I'd like to examine other ways of formatting this section that do not involve listing bare links to templates, but I'm having trouble coming up with an alternative idea. DrKiernan (talk) 09:42, 17 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I removed the bare links, but I still don't like it, visually, however I think it is better than before. --TimL (talk) 20:39, 17 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
It's now a table. Don't know if this is a great solution, but better than before. Fixed a couple image formatting bugs. The section on Geometry needs better image positioning, but I can't quite wrap my head around how to do it the best way yet. --TimL (talk) 21:14, 17 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment - Dr. Kiernan (and anyone else who's interested!) will you please give us an update on your thoughts about this article? Is the work done enough to keep it as an FA, or should the article be moved to the FARC section? Dana boomer (talk) 18:00, 3 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm still working on the article, and would like it to remain in the review section for the moment, as I was hoping for some other independent comment. The history section is the weak point for me, as I'm not convinced it's focused on the most important eclipses in the history of observational astronomy, as one would expect. DrKiernan (talk) 19:48, 3 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • OK, I've re-written the section. I'm not planning any further work on the article, and have no more comments. DrKiernan (talk) 17:23, 4 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Comments
  • 1a I don't see any reason why the article needs bullet points; they should be in prose.
  • 1c I have concerns over the quality of references. What makes mreclipse a high quality and reliable source? There is a book by Mobberley listed but no citations from that book are used. A few paragraphs are missing citations.
  • 2c Missing page numbers, publisher information, retrieved on dates.
  • 3 and 4 No problems found.
  • A move to FARC would be appropriate. Brad (talk) 23:53, 5 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
On 1c, MrEclipse is operated by Fred Espenak. I've moved Mobberley into a "Further reading" section. DrKiernan (talk) 08:25, 6 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Brad, when there is someone obviously willing to work on the article, try working with them in the FAR section before advocating a move to FARC, please. (Dr. Kiernan, thank you for your work.) Dana boomer (talk) 21:23, 6 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Dana, DrKiernan said: "I'm not planning any further work on the article, and have no more comments" Therefore it appeared he was finished. That will teach me not to believe anything anyone writes. Brad (talk) 20:42, 10 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, I meant that I was done with my own comments and plans, not that I would refuse to consider or respond to other editors' comments. DrKiernan (talk) 21:34, 10 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The only concerns I have left are 1c and 2c. Brad (talk) 09:36, 15 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Changes made [7]. DrKiernan (talk) 17:26, 20 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • No FARC My concerns were fixed; thanks. Brad (talk) 20:44, 21 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
1a: I'll take a look at the bullet points. What is the problem with the bullet points? They seem highly appropriate to me.
1c: "MrEclipse" is the maintainer of eclipse predictions for NASA. I think that alone makes hime a very high quality and reliable source.
2c: I may not have access to the publications to fix this.

A move to FARC would be premature. --TimL (talk) 07:22, 9 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

  • Overall I think this article is not too far off being kept but some more work is needed. The section that needs improving is the viewing section, concerning danger to the retina from the sun. One would hope for some medical literature on the matter to tighten up the section. I'll post at WP:MED and take a look myself a bit later. The history section reads well now but some of the top segment is a bit choppy. Casliber (talk · contribs) 19:33, 8 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • I see DrK is still at work; have you pinged in Serendipodous (talk · contribs)? This is curious in the lead:

    The last total solar eclipse was on July 11, 2010; the next will be on November 13, 2012. The solar eclipses of 2011 were all partial eclipses; the last one occurred on November 25, 2011. The next solar eclipse will be an annular eclipse on May 20, 2012.

    It reads newsy, but more, it is written in a way that will require constant updating (last, next, etc). The lead seems to focus on lesser important aspects of the article. Four types of solar eclipses uses incorrect WP:ITALICS rather than WP:MOSBOLD, which should be used for lists. Image clutter in the Geometry section. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:27, 26 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I removed the info about recent and upcoming eclipses, definitely does not belong in the lead. Image clutterI agree is a problem. --TimL (talk) 23:26, 1 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Move to FARC to keep the FAR process on track as intended (two weeks in each phase). DrK has done most of the work, but issues remain. Serendipodous is editing, but hasn't responded to four-day-old ping. Move this along for feedback as to Keep or Delist in the FARC phase-- if someone shows up to help DrK, all the better! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:37, 30 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Heading towards "keep" territory, I'll scout around for anything else to add on the medical/eye damage bit. That's the last piece of the puzzle for me. Casliber (talk · contribs) 02:15, 31 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The lead has now been fixed, Serendipodous didn't weigh in, but I don't see anything egregious enough now to warrant a move to FARC. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:59, 4 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Close Consensus against move to FARC; Casliber can work on the article, if he wishes, outwith this process. DrKiernan (talk) 10:58, 5 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]


The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.

Removed status

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

The article was removed by Nikkimaria 14:30, 29 February 2012 [9].

Francis Petre

Review commentary

Notified: Top three editors by edit count; Peter Entwisle, Grutness, GiacomoReturned, Projects: Biography, New Zealand, Architecture.

Talk page notice was issued during April 2011 that descended into drama. I find the following criteria are not up to 2011 standards:

  • 1a Prose in general reads ok but the "works" section is a long list of bullets that should be in prose.
  • 1c The obvious problem is the overall lack of citations throughout the article. The lack of citations leaves "well researched" and "high-quality and reliable" sources questionable.
  • 2a Lead section lacks a lot of points raised later in the article body.
  • 2c Lack of citations leaves this criteria open to later question.
  • 3 File:Frank Petre.jpg, File:StJosephsDunedin2.jpg, File:Sacred Heart Cathedral.jpg, File:Sacred Heart Interior.jpg and File:Blessed Sacrament Christchurch.gif all have various problems such as missing source and author information. Files with no author information are using the life +70 tag which obviously can't be determined when the author information is missing. All of the files need US copyright tags as required at commons.
  • MoS Various issues here with MOS:LINK and MOS:IMAGES. Brad (talk) 08:25, 14 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

FARC commentary

Featured article criteria mentioned in the review section include prose, referencing, images and MOS compliance. Dana boomer (talk) 12:57, 3 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Then do something about it Dana - fix the page up if you feel it so bad! I don't agree it all looks fine to me, and no else seems to agree with you, it has languished for weeks since you encouraged it to be reviewed on FAR. You and Brad seem to be the person with the problem, why not act yourself? Or is that beneath you to actually write something? The writing editors are not your servants at your beck and call, I'm sorry if that is a shock for you, but that's the way it is. There are millions of terrible articles for you to concern yourself with - why spend your life knitpicking other peoples hard work. No doubt others will now leap on the bandwagon, but I have watched it for weeks on FAR without gaining one single comment, so you had better go and belatedly stir some of your cronies up! Giacomo Returned 18:07, 3 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Giano, my comment was a summary of the issues mentioned in the review section, not my own assessment. As you see, it says "criteria mentioned in the review section" as needing work, not "I think that these criteria are at issue". You should really do some research before writing - I may not have written as many FAs as you, but I've been involved in a fair few, so no, I don't consider writing something to be beneath me. As for "cronies"...really?!? The hyperbole at least made for a good chuckle at the end of my working day. If you wanted this review to not progress, there were plenty of opportunities for you to comment - when the notes stating the article needed work were placed on the article talk page, when I placed a note on the FAR page saying that "work needed" notifications has already been made on the article talk page, and during the over two weeks that this article was in the review section. The fact that you chose not to do so is not my problem. Dana boomer (talk) 21:36, 4 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Query to Dana: does really a single post by a single user deserve the highfalutin appellation "review section", as in your "Giano, my comment was a summary of the issues mentioned in the review section"? In other words, is it appropriate to proceed to list the article as a "Featured article removal candidate" purely on the basis of a nomination on FAR, when the community has shown zilch interest in either agreeing or disagreeing with Brad's concerns, or coming up with any comments of their own, since September? Also, I'm not sure about those "notes stating the article needed work ... placed on the article talk page" of which you speak. I don't see them, unless you're going with Brad's reference above to a talkpage notice given by User:Ultraexactzz in April, which according to him "descended into drama". Here it is; life must be pretty sheltered here on FAR if you call that "drama". It's barely relevant at all to the concerns raised by Brad, obviously, and in any case stale. For Brad to refer to that in lieu of giving notice of his plans, and his concerns, within a reasonable timespan before he nominates the article for Featured Article Review is, well, just lazy in my opinion. The concerns mentioned by Ultra were only "citation needed tags throughout", a charge he immediately withdrew when Giano challenged it ("Oh hell, I don't know - I just wanted to clear out the category"), and "some image formatting issues.. in that I see a minor bit of sandwiching - though that might be my screen's fault". Ultra is extremely laid back about the inline citations issue, even stating that "it's a non-issue, as far as I'm concerned". Most of Brad's concerns enumerated in his nomination aren't even glanced at on that talkpage. Did you take a look at the supposed drama, Dana? Do you think it's acceptable to refer back to that as Step One of the three "requisite" steps named at the top of this page. when FAR'ing the article in October? To sum up the point I want to make: But is it surprising that Giano is pissed off by this supposed review (putatively, for the purpose of improvement), with two out of the three supposed stages more or less shrunken and mummified, and only the "Removal" step full-size and lively? I don't follow FAR much, so I don't know if this happens a lot. I hope not. Surely it can't have been what the regulars had in mind when they (I presume collaboratively) hammered out the description of the "three requisite stages" at the top of the page ?
That said, the article may well fail to comply with current citation practice. I'll go take a closer look to see if I consider it adequately referenced by the FAC criteria (rather than by the pepperpot practice some editors insist on) as soon as I have time, before I come back to !vote. Sorry for the rush. Bishonen | talk 01:16, 5 December 2011 (UTC).[reply]
Thank you for your comments, Bishonen, and I'm glad that you are taking a look at the article - I look forward to seeing your comments. As to the bulk of your statement: There are always two sections in a featured article review: the review commentary section and the FARC commentary section. The latter always begins with a summary by the delegates of the issues brought up in the former. Yes, in this case, there was only one editor commenting the review section, but that does occasionally occur. FAR is unfortunately not as busy as FAC, and what editors we do have tend to only chip in on the review section when there appear to be editors interesting in improving the article or they see other major issues that the initiating editor didn't address. In this case, Brad posted his comments as to why he believed the article no longer met FA criteria, no-one said anything in defense of the article in the over two weeks it was in the review section, and so it was moved to FARC. The FARC was not going to go through without more editors commenting, so it wasn't as if Brad could delist the article by himself. If other editors (you, Giano, whoever) had posted to the review section either resolving or rebutting Brad's points, then it is likely that the article would not have moved to FARC. Ultra's comments on the talk page were valid (and were not rectified until Brad initiated this FAR), and the fact that he backed off rather than argue with Giano says more about his lack of interest in conflict than his believing that he was wrong, in my opinion. I would also like to point out that Giano's comments both here in the FARC section and on the talk page were filled with hyperbole and insults - classic commenting on the editors instead of the article. A reasoned rebuttal of the issues in question, in either place, would probably have gotten him a lot further. Dana boomer (talk) 21:32, 5 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
After almost 3 months of process nothing has been done to address the issues. The article has a total of 7 inline citations and a long bullet list that should be in prose. I'm at a loss as to why more editors have not seen those two obvious problems and asked for a delisting. This article should have been delisted out of common sense over a month ago. Brad (talk) 15:16, 6 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep, with the proviso that I am not up to date on current citation practices and the degree of urgency with which we wish to update previously written FAs to this standard. The long bullet list does not bother me in the slightest - insofar as an exhaustive list of works is encyclopedic, it would be much less legible in prose than as a list. Bottom line: does this article remain one of those of which we should be particularly proud? To me seems that clearly yes. Martinp (talk) 15:48, 6 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • OK Brad, the fact that you and Ms Boomer have had to leave this here for four months and still can't quite grasp that no one is that bothered about the dreadfulness of this page speaks volumes. However, seeing as you both wish to play these games: the bulleted list, that offends you so, which most people find quite useful has been removed to List of buildings by Francis Petre. I have rearranged the pretty pictures. I'm afraid there are still a few testing words with more than two syllables, but they can soon go too. Now, how many words would you and Ms Boomer like removing so that we have adequate footnotes per ten words and not test the attention span of you and our readers too far? Giacomo Returned 20:15, 6 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep, or else keep on hold while Giano adds more citations, as I suppose he intends, from his latest comment. (Nice new list of Petre's works, Giacomo, but do you have to keep stirring people up so?) I agree that the article needs more specific citations; I suggest a minimum of one at the end of each paragraph (when it's all from one source), plus at the end of any direct quote. Isn't that a sort of standard today? Mind you, it's not my own preference. In my academic field, we footnote the first sentence of a paragraph, making sure it's clear in one way or another that the rest of it comes from the same source and page. That seems more reader-friendly to me. But that's by the way: it's not the house standard on wikipedia. I like the lively, light style, but some of the opinions need sourcing. Bishonen | talk 01:06, 7 December 2011 (UTC).[reply]

I have no intention of adding more citations. I wrote this page, a series of 'New Zealand architecture' pages years ago, when there were very few Kiwis on the site – I thought it was a way of evening the balance. Since I wrote these pages, they have all been edited by Peter Entwisle editing at User talk:Peter Entwisle. I have absolutely no intention of setting myself above a recognised national expert,so you must do with the page as you, the very far removed experts, see fit. Books, I found to assist in the writing of the page, were all returned to libraries years ago, and I am not going to go trudging about trying to find them again just to satisfy the self appointed custodians of Wikipedia's reliability. Ms Boomer and Brad can either verify the facts themselves or demote the page – we must all gain our job satisafaction where we can - mine is in writing not humouring. Giacomo Returned 19:46, 11 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  • Keep - Agree with the concerns by GiacomoReturned and Bishonen, this is a featured article and is very informative. I believe it satisfies all of the criteria. Darth Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 01:42, 22 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delist - per 1(c). A 30Kb article with 7 inline citations. Unfortunately, the major contributor of the article (Giacomo) has made it clear that he/she has "no intention of adding more citations."--Artoasis (talk) 10:14, 4 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Clarification, since I've been brought back into this review. This article was one of only a few listed at Wikipedia:Unreviewed featured articles, and I posted a notice on the talk page indicating that fact and highlighting the most critical issue I saw - the issue with citations. I had no previous interest in the subject or in the article itself; as I said, I only saw that the article had not been reviewed. The talk page notice is a requirement to bring the article to FAR, as you are all aware. The response I got was a fairly angry note questioning the quality of the articles I've created (none of them even close to GA, none of them recent, and few in number besides). I chose not to push the matter further, partially because I was not in the mood for drama or personal attacks, partially because I really don't care one bit whether this is or is not a Featured Article, and partially because I thought other editors might add citations to prevent a Featured Article Review. The concern was there, and perhaps it would stir some progress - which is precisely why such notice is required in the first place. I did not withdraw the concern about citations - that problem was still present, and did not magically go away merely because GiacomoReturned pissed me off. Between my comment and the start of this review, there were all of 7 edits to the article. Two added categories, three were wikiformatting, and two were the deletion (and its reversion) of a section of the article. Until the day this review was filed, no citations were added and no movement made. On the merits, I don't think the article in its present form meets the Featured Article Criteria, but there's enough recent progress to suggest that it can easily be brought up to standard - and I agree that it is a fine article even without the citations. But that's not what gets reviewed here. UltraExactZZ Said ~ Did 14:50, 5 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Minor correction: there were 11 edits between your comment and the start of this review, including 4 by me in the morning before the review started (adding two inline citations). --Avenue (talk) 04:30, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    • I guess a question worth considering is this - would it pass as a FAC today? I'd like to think so, but I don't know. UltraExactZZ Said ~ Did 14:51, 5 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Hold - this shouldn't be hard to sort out really. I'd always planned to go to Dunedin as I had ancestors there. Will see what I can do about inlining in next few days. Casliber (talk · contribs) 19:42, 8 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Still holding; nothing happening. Brad (talk) 16:49, 17 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delegate note - as Giano seems to have retired, is anyone else willing to step in and address remaining issues here? Cas, you up for it? Nikkimaria (talk) 14:09, 15 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • As it appears no one has been able to respond, unfortunately this article has been delisted.


The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
The following is an archived discussion of a featured article review. Please do not modify it. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page or at Wikipedia talk:Featured article review. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was removed by Dana boomer 15:57, 28 February 2012 [10].

Polish–Soviet War

Review section

Notified: WT:RUSSIA, WT:POLAND, WT:MILHIST, User talk:Piotrus (asked for futher commentary after he posted here on 9/4), User talk:Novickas

I raised some issues on the talk page on the 10th. So far, only minimal work has been done.

  • Image bunching issues before Prelude; the previous image juts down too far, making the Prelude section very narrow.
  • Two one-sentence paragraphs in "Diplomatic front, part 1".
  • "Red Army" needs a copy edit. Several sentences begin with "by".
  • Other sections need copy editing; "Kiev Offensive", "String of Soviet Victories", "Battle of Warsaw" and "Aftermath" have multiple one-sentence paragraphs.
  • "Battle of Warsaw" also has several sentences beginning with "the".
  • A few [citation needed]s here and there.
  • Red links all over the place, particularly in the refs. These should be checked to see if any have article potential.
  • There are ibid.s in the references, which is a no-no.
  • Some instability issues, as another user started an edit war.
  • Way too much "further reading". It takes up more than one screen just for the English books, and another for the Russian ones.

Ten Pound Hammer, his otters and a clue-bat • (Otters want attention) 03:16, 1 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comments
  • 1a TPH mentions several prose issues but the entire article suffers with prose problems. Thorough copyedit needed.
  • 1c Is a major problem. Many citation needed tags, several paragraphs without citations and dead links. WP:NOENG should be followed.
  • 1d Seems to be a long standing problem with this article. Talk page threads are full of disputes.
  • 2c There is no uniformity of citations whatsoever. Missing requirements for authors and publishers. The "further reading" section is unbelievably large. There is no "bibliography" section for the material that was cited in the article.
  • 3 Too many problems to bother listing each file. Incorrect licensing, incomplete information on authors and publication dates leaving files with questionable copyright statuses.
  • MOS Problems with MOS:Images, MOS:LINK. Brad (talk) 20:38, 4 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delegate note - TPH, have you notified the primary contributors? According to this tool, that would seem to include, at the very least, User:Piotrus. Once you have notified them, please list them at the top of this review page. Dana boomer (talk) 12:14, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Piotrus has already posted here, so I've asked him for further input. I've also notified the second-highest editor who's still active (all the others haven't edited since at least 2008). Ten Pound Hammer, his otters and a clue-bat • (Otters want attention) 19:54, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Ah, wonderful, thank you! I had missed seeing Piotrus's comment here; my apologies. Dana boomer (talk) 10:53, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This is a more general question but one that I've been wondering about for awhile and this is as good as place as any to raise it - what exactly is the problem with "one-sentence paragraphs"? I mean, obviously if there's a bunch of them, then that's a problem. But if you look at lots of scholarly articles (though I'm sure this varies by discipline) or even literary works, one sentence paragraph, while uncommon are usually not entirely absent. Sometimes a one sentence paragraph says exactly what it needs to say and it does its job in a way that it's supposed to. Is this addressed in MOS anywhere (I looked, couldn't find anything about it, might have missed it though)? Or is this just another one of those Wikipedia conventions that have developed (for no reason, except possibly hubris on part of some past reviewers)? It's not hard to fix here, but the question is, should it? Volunteer Marek  22:12, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Brad says: "Many citation needed tags". NO. There are 2 (dos, dwa, two, 1+.9999999999...) cn tag in the article currently. That's not many, that's something that can be easily fixed. Let's not have a replay of what happened at the Katyn massacre FAR. Please take some time before making comments here. Volunteer Marek  22:18, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Per Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Layout#Paragraphs, "The number of single-sentence paragraphs should be minimized, since they can inhibit the flow of the text;". While I (and I think pretty much everyone else) agree that occasionally single or double sentence paragraphs are a good thing, since they help to provide emphasis on certain points, having an excessive amount of them can render the article listy and choppy. On the issue of location of publishers (I just saw your question elsewhere, but am answering it here for ease), the convention is to include publication locations for either all books or no books, for the sake of consistency. AFAIK, there is no guideline that says you must include them, but to follow FAC criteria 2.c (consistent citations) the article needs to be internally consistent about either providing them or not. If you would like examples of this being enforced, I can provide them from current FACs. Hope this helps, Dana boomer (talk) 10:53, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, it does, thank you very much, both for the location and thing and the single sentence thing.
However, I'm not so sure that "two" single sentence paragraph is "too many". Actually, I don't see any single sentence paragraphs in that section (Diplomatic front, part 1) - there are two two sentence paragraphs but they are used to summarize and "wrap up" the section, which I think is stylistically appropriate. I guess they could be combined into one four sentence paragraph if this is really that important.
Also, I took care of the two citation needed tags, and the "ibid" thing in the refs. The reference section does need to be cleaned up a bit and streamlined though it's not as bad as it's being made out. The "Further reading" list is in fact too long, but removing unnecessary cruft is easy and quick. Volunteer Marek  11:38, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I have went and did image cleanup, all seem to be free. I've added descriptions and sources to the ones which were missing them (but they were PD anyway). --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me 17:15, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Media criteria 3
The "Missing US copyright tag" issue - looking at images in a whole bunch of other similar (warfare) FAs on military topics that are non-US centric, I'm not seeing many US copyright tags. Are they always necessary or something? For example Battle of Arras (1917)'s images mostly have copyright tags for the EU, UK and Australia. Most images in these kinds of articles have the tag that states "This applies to Australia, the European Union and those countries with a copyright term of life of the author plus 70 years." - which I presume includes the US. But that's essentially the same tag as the images here. I don't work with images that often so am I missing something? Why isn't that tag sufficient? Volunteer Marek  10:54, 15 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Hrrumph. I think that commons:Template:PD-1996 may be the one useful here (since 20+70=90<96), so adding it to all the pictures should deal with this breeze of meta:copyright paranoia. That aside, I am however curious about commons:Template:PD-EU-no author disclosure which I think is the one VM mentions. This seems applicable for numerous items from 1926 to 1940 (and of course, from before 1926). I see that this template says nothing about requiring a corresponding US copyright tag. Why the difference? Also, the weird claim about having to prove it was not published with a claim of autorship seems like a joke, how are we supposed to prove something like this satisfactory? Other than saying "the used source does not cite an author", I see no reasonable way to fulfill this condition. PS. Anyway, why does it even exist when commons:Template:Anonymous-EU makes no such requirement? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me 16:54, 15 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
There isn't much doubt that the files in question here are PD. The trouble is making sure that the files have the correct license. A lot of the older files on commons are a terrible mess for various reasons. {{PD-old}} is the tag that claims Life *70 and you will see that it also requires a US copyright tag. If the author is unknown the file should have a tag based on date of publication from the country of origin or commons:Template:PD-EU-no author disclosure seems to fit as well. Commons requires files to be out of copyright in the US because the commons servers are located in the US. For FAs the copyright tags need to be without question. Those of us here are confident that the files are PD but it must be made clear via the license for those who don't. To make every file look nice and neat and uniform the information template should be used: {{Information |Description={{en|}} |Source= |Date= |Author= |Permission= |other_versions= }} Brad (talk) 11:49, 16 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I think I fixed the templates for all but the Russian posters, for those I am not sure what other template would be more appropriate. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me 16:36, 29 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I struck the ones that are ok now. If you can't fix the licenses on the remaining files ask at commons for help or remove them from the article. Brad (talk) 07:03, 2 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Update - Can we get an update here on how things are going? Have the comments by Brad and TPH been addressed in full? Can those two revisit? Does anyone else have any comments? Thanks, Dana boomer (talk) 12:49, 26 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Some work was done on the references but the majority of issues still need attention. Brad (talk) 11:08, 29 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • It's not that the sentence begins with "the". It's that so many of them do, and many of them are adjacent. In other words you have "The blah blah blah. The blah blah blah. The blah blah blah. The blah blah blah" and it reads rather tediously. Ten Pound Hammer • (What did I screw up now?) 18:37, 29 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • TPH and Brad, can you provide more specifics on what needs work, maybe by striking the issues above that have been resolved? TPH, can you please provide examples of the spots where you feel that the prose needs work? Above, you mention that the prose of the Battle of Warsaw section is repetitive with sentences starting with "the", but I can't find any spots in that section where two consecutive sentences start with "the", and only half a dozen or so sentences at all that start with "the", which is definitely not too many. I believe some other issues have also been resolved, including the "ibid"s and a pruning of the furthur reading section, so an update to the comments above would be appreciated. One thing that I should mention is that the image sandwiching in the Prelude section needs to be resolved, per MOS:IMAGES. Dana boomer (talk) 15:38, 10 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • I removed one image, I hope it is better now. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me 16:31, 10 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • It seems that pointing out specific problems results in only the pointed out issue being fixed and ignoring any others. Based on what I learned down below with the Katyn article I'm not playing that game again. As for this article, only a blind person could miss the still open maintenance tags. I've already struck what has been fixed and will only strike when issues are addressed. Article needs to move to FARC. Brad (talk) 20:24, 12 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • The Kiev Offensive section still has four sentences in a row beginning with "the". Copy-edit that. Ten Pound Hammer • (What did I screw up now?) 19:42, 10 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Almost everything looks fine now. I only have one more issue: Does "opposing forces" really need its own section for one sentence? Expand this or combine it. Ten Pound Hammer • (What did I screw up now?) 16:50, 12 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. The infobox states 47,571 – 96,250 from the Polish-Ukrainian side killed; a major variance. In trying to verify this, I did an internal Gbook search in the book that 96,250 is referenced to (Bohdan Urbankowski, Józef Piłsudski: marzyciel i strateg, (Józef Piłsudski: Dreamer and Strategist), Tom pierwszy (first tome), and it found no instances of 96. [11]. Other numbers show up, for example 1920 [12] or 26 [13]. The number 96 doesn’t show up in Volume 2 either [14]. Could someone confirm the higher number? Novickas (talk) 18:56, 12 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I changed this number to about 48,000 based on Norman Davies's White Eagle, Red Star. I can only see a snippet on Gbooks [15] so I called a friend who owns a copy of the book to verify the context. Because I see the 96K number as an outlier that isn't confirmed by either a search of the book or of other sources, I also removed the ref named Urb 493. Novickas (talk) 21:31, 23 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
So what did your friend say? Typo? Wrong context? I believe it was me who added the Urbankowski's refs, so I am curious what did I do (read) wrong? I don't have the book with me to check it now, unfortunately. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me 23:03, 23 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The Davies passage reads: The Polish-Soviet War did no more than perpetuate the existing misery. It was fought off people's nerves, off the remnants of inherited resources, off foreign relief, and with surplus weapons. The effects of its termination were far more definable than the effects of its prosecution. In Poland, miserable conditions were mitigated by the belief that 'victory' would bring improvement. Conditions did not suddenly improve, however, and for a time actually deteriorated. The winter of 1920-1 saw hard times indeed. Demobilization started in January 1921. Casualties totalled a quarter of a million; the number of dead stood at nearly 48,000.(reference) The number 48,000 is repeated in a University Press of Kentucky book. [16]. Up to you and other readers and reviewers about the 96K. Taking in good faith that you found the 96K deaths in a book by Bohdan Urbankowski, I would still want to note that the author is not a historian. Per the Bold/revert/discuss policy you had ought to restore it if you are vouching for it. Novickas (talk) 02:01, 24 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Query - are reviewers satisfied that this article can be kept without FARC, or do significant issues remain? Nikkimaria (talk) 03:10, 6 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Move to FARC; like I said a month ago. Anything that I've not stricken from my review above is still an open problem from 2 months ago. There are still dead links and maint tags. New problems are a neutrality tag and File:Bij_Bolszewika.jpg which has an incorrect license. Instead of fixing the problems they just ram in more photos and move commas around. Brad (talk) 22:31, 7 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Neutrality tag was added by an anon without an explanation, removed. What's your problem with Bij Bolszewika image? It is pre-1923, so clearly PD. Which links are dead? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me 22:51, 7 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I already explained to you in an above conversation the reasons for correctly licensed media. From that above conversation you did fix many files but three others are still awaiting correction. Asking me what links are dead when there are tools available to find them and links that are clearly marked with the dead link tag totally boggles the mind. Brad (talk) 00:24, 9 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
So as far as I can tell, everything has been fixed. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me 02:34, 10 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Delegate note - extended commentary related to Brad's !vote has been moved to talk. Everyone please remain calm and civil, and keep commentary focused on the article rather than on contributors. Nikkimaria (talk) 17:57, 9 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

See this tool for a list of dead links - it looks like four dead links altogether. There is also a fact tag in the Diplomatic front, part 1 section which needs to be dealt with, but that is the only maintenance tag that I see. Dana boomer (talk) 13:58, 8 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, these are the four Ukrainian and Russian ones that were left in there with the hope that someone who speaks these languages fluently can track down an up to date link. Anyway, I just removed the links, though where available I left the Wayback Machine version. The cn tag - I'll try to put something in there though the tag is really superfluous as the citation is right there at the end of the sentence. Volunteer Marek  16:57, 8 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Re cn tag - nm, I see what the problem is. Hold on. Volunteer Marek  17:01, 8 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, fixed. Volunteer Marek  17:13, 8 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

FARC commentary

The initial nomination focused on prose, referencing and general structure. Quite a bit of work has been done on the article, and the nominator has stated that he thinks the article is now in a state to be kept. However, another editor has disagreed, and no other uninvolved parties have commented. I am hoping that by moving this to the FARC section we can get some outside commentary that focuses on how this article does or does not meet the featured article criteria. Dana boomer (talk) 16:17, 9 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. So how long will we keep this dead horse live before agreeing that we can keep it and moving on? :) --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me 21:22, 21 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Kicks the tumbleweed, mutters about bureaucracy, and moves on. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me 17:33, 2 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - Sorry, Piotrus, I hadn't seen your comments until just now. I was planning to close this today (due to no-one apparently taking an interest in it), but then saw a few things that needed to be addressed:

  • Brad is correct that there are still three images that need licensing work. Listing them here:
  • Two dead links (see here.
  • A mix of British and American spelling - I see both organize and organise, neighbor and neighbour, realize and realise, for example.
  • It feels like there's rather a lot of images stacked along the right-hand side of the page, but they're not sandwiching text or anything, so this is more of a personal preference.

Other than that, the article looks fairly good (although I didn't do a full read-through of prose). So, unless anyone else pops up with concerns, I think it should be good to go once the above are addressed. Dana boomer (talk) 19:51, 4 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I fixed the deadlinks, removed the Podarok file (since it DID have inaccurate license) and standardized the spelling. For the two other images, it's true that the author is unknown. But isn't this often the case with historical images? Anyway, I'll see if the authors can be tracked down.Volunteer Marek (talk) 20:05, 4 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
This is strange. For this image [17] the "description" given is completely incorrect "Petlyura (second from left) and Polish General Antoni Listowski (left). 1920 Petliura (segundo desde la izquierda) y el General Polaco Antoni Listowski (izquierda), 1920 |Source= http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Petlyura_Lis" - and it appears to refer to this image [18] instead.Volunteer Marek (talk) 20:08, 4 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I honestly don't know about that specific image... As for the author thing, there's another tag that (I think) licenses an image as free use if it was first published before 1923, and is used especially for when the author is unknown. I don't know what the coding is for it though :( That might be helpful here, if you know when the images were first published. Dana boomer (talk) 21:44, 4 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Should I even bother commenting about what problems remain? Brad (talk) 04:48, 16 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
No, you should simply go away and stop wasting people's time.VolunteerMarek 06:16, 16 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
VM, that was unnecessary. Brad, if you have comments that relate directly to the FA criteria and are presented in a polite manner (no commenting on contributors!), then please, go ahead. Please be sure to present solid examples, rather than generalizations. It is looked kindly upon if the article editors work through the whole article with a reviewer's comments in mind, rather than just fixing the given examples. I feel like a broken record here. You guys are adults - you should be able to figure out a way to work together to improve content without all of this bickering. Dana boomer (talk) 23:22, 19 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Proceeding with caution I'm expecting my concerns will be dismissed as usual so I won't list everything atm.

  • Citation # 10 is a broken harv ref claiming credit to "PWN" but there is nothing linked to or identified elsewhere in the article that tells us what "PWN" is.
  • File:Bij Bolszewika.jpg has no author information listed but is using the life+70 copyright notice. Obviously +70 cannot be determined when the author isn't listed.
  • Citations to Britannica are not high-quality sources. Brad (talk) 18:56, 24 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Putting bad faith aside, I welcome constructive comments like the ones above. I restored PWN cite to an older version, when they were still not broken by the evil harvard template. Britannica is used three times, the first two in discussion of name and dates, where it is rather indispensable (proof that sources differ); the third time it is used for a rather "blue" fact and I think we can simply and safely remove it (needing to cite that JP had a major influence on Polish politics is like saying that Stalin had it on USSR, or Washington on US). Doh! Pic's license changed to PD-1923, as it dates to 1920, so it shouldn't matter who was the author. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me 22:40, 24 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
My comments haven't changed since day one. But anyway... I see that PWN is Internetowa encyklopedia PWN which like Britannica, is an encyclopedia. WP is an encyclopedia too and citing WP articles with another encyclopedia is not acceptable for an FA. This situation is a big blockade that needs resolution. Keep in mind that a mixture of citation styles (harvs mixed with non-harvs) should not be used. This is a good place to stop for now. Brad (talk) 19:28, 25 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
While tetriary sources are discouraged compared to secondaries, I am not familiar with a policy that they are not allowed, article class being a factor or not. WP:RS states clearly: "Tertiary sources such as compendia, encyclopedias, textbooks, obituaries, and other summarizing sources may be used...". I agree we should try to replace them with secondary sources, but I see it as an optional thing to do, not required by the current policies. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me 21:07, 25 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delist From a quick skim of the article (focused on the references and without reading any section of it in detail) I noticed the following problems, any one of which would be sufficient to derail a new FAC. These all seem pretty obvious to me, and as they should have been fixed at the outset of this process I think that the article should be delisted.
    • A fair amount of material, including several paragraphs, doesn't have any supporting references
    • Several of the notes at the end of the article are referenced to works in the 'further reading' section. Page numbers aren't provided for these references.
    • I'm a bit uneasy about the use of three Polish propaganda posters in the article. Including one seems OK to give a flavour of the approach the Polish Government used to whip up public support, but three is excessive as these images obviously aren't NPOV (even if they are amazingly crude to modern eyes)
    • The lead is probably too long
    • At least one of the books in the 'further reading' section was actually used to reference material in the body of the article.
    • Several of the references to books don't include page numbers
    • The references section includes several notes despite the presence of a dedicated section for these
    • There does not seem to have been a consistent style used for the references
    • Given that Adam Zamoyski's 2008 book appears to be the most recent book-length English language study of the war, it should be used as a reference rather than be included in the 'Further reading' section
    • While the titles of most Polish-language books and articles are translated into English, several are not
    • What makes this a reliable source?
    • All the images in the article other than maps and a photo of Lenin are of Polish or Polish-aligned topics. As images created by Russians who died before 1943 are PD, it should be possible to include at least some photos of Russian forces.
    • I own the 2003 Pimlico edition of Norman Davies' excellent book White Eagle Red Star, and have checked the references to it in this article. Worryingly, all of them are seriously flawed:
      • Page 39 gives the Soviet strength in February 1919 as 46,000, and not "~50,000" as is referenced to it in reference 1
      • The text referenced to this book in the second iteration of reference 2 (which begins with "In the course of 1920...") has been lifted word for word from the book
      • Page 41 doesn't say that the strength of the Polish Army in early 1919 was "~50,000" as is referenced to it in note three - the only use of "50,000" on this page is in regards to the number of Polish World War I veterans from France who arrived to reinforce the Polish military during early 1919. The page doesn't appear to give an estimate of the total Polish strength at this time, though it states that Poland had 110,000 serving solders at the time the Army Law was passed (I'm not sure when this took place) and the military seems to have then been expanded.
      • Page ix is the right-hand side of a two-page map of the war's theatre of operations, so obviously doesn't support the text cited to it in reference 99
      • I'm not sure why the 1972 edition of this book is being cited in note 8 given that there's a much more recent edition available. Likewise, the reference to the Polish-language edition of the book seems unsuitable given that there are English editions available. Nick-D (talk) 00:13, 1 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
        • I fixed the close wording issue in the sentence you mentioned. Overall, I think you raise a number of good points, which I am not prepared to address right now, so I am withdrawing my support for the article. I do disagree with one argument - the one about using the latest reference (or English, when translation is available). We should not force editors to discard the book they bought (or found in the local library) for another, which may have nothing updated. I am pretty sure there is nothing in WP:V/CITE encouraging that. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me 17:36, 1 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
          • As Brad noted earlier, WP:NOENG specifies that English-language sources should be used whenever practical. Nick-D (talk) 21:53, 1 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
            • Practical means that if I have a Polish translation of a book on my shelf, I am certainly not going to waste money buying it in English just so that some page numbers can be updated. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me 04:01, 2 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Looking through it, I also have to admit that some (maybe all) of Nick's points are valid. I will try to fix some of these issues but given limited time it will probably take a while.VolunteerMarek 19:28, 1 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I'll put in some time over the next week to make a full copy-edit pass for anything missed. I have the Davies book, so I can check through any of those as well. PЄTЄRS J V ►TALK 23:11, 3 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Can we get an update on how work on this is going? VM, is this possibly something you want to work on outside of FAR, given the limited time that you have said you have? Thanks, Dana boomer (talk) 12:34, 22 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]


Additional closing note - Based on the concerns identified by NickD, and the lack of work over the past month, I am delisting this article from featured status. If editors return to address the comments, the article can be taken to WP:FAC as soon as they feel the article meets the criteria. However, I would first suggest working with NickD to make sure that all of his concerns have been addressed. Dana boomer (talk) 15:59, 28 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
The following is an archived discussion of a featured article review. Please do not modify it. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page or at Wikipedia talk:Featured article review. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was removed by Nikkimaria 18:16, 11 February 2012 [19].

Superman

Review commentary

Notified: Alientraveller, Ace ETP, Hiding, Maestro25, (all users with over 100 edits to article who have been active in past year) WP Media franchises, WP Film, WP Fictional characters, WP Cleveland, WP Comics, WP Comics - Superman work group

I am nominating this featured article for review because I began cleaning up the numerous dead links that were present in this article, and in the process discovered there were a number of issues that I couldn't fix that together made the article of sub-FA quality. Examples:

  • Three dead links
  • Update banner in Copyright issues section
  • Video games section needs referencing
  • Critical reception and popularity section is trivia heavy and could easily be presented as prose rather than in bullet points
  • Reference formatting, particularly for books, is not consistent
  • Prose could use a go-over. For example, what does "By 1943, Jerry Siegel was drafted into the army in a special celebration," mean? The staff had a special celebration when he was drafted? The Army had a special celebration to draft him?
  • Image issues:
  • It should also be noted that this article has grown from 41 to 55 kb of prose since the last FAR in 2007. It would be interesting to know what all had been added and if this significant growth was really necessary, or if there is fat to trim. At the moment the article is over 9,000 words, which is headed toward the high end of the length guidelines at WP:SIZE.

At this point, due to the number of the issues and the lack of response to two postings over several months on the talk page, I feel that this article needs to go through the FAR process. Dana boomer (talk) 20:37, 24 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding the image issues...

  • Harold Lloyd in A Sailor-made Man.jpg is in the public domain as per the file hosted at Commons. An explicit source line would be nice, but based on the notes on Commons it looks like it was lifted from A Sailor-Made Man. If scanned or captured from the film or a related still, finding out who the photographer/cameraman was is highly unlikely.
  • Superman.jpg used in this article is hosted on the English Wikipedia and is compliant with non-free content guidelines. The commons file of that name - [20] - is not up for deletion nor is it relevent/useful for this article. What is up for deletion is essentially any of the files related to the Fleischer animated shorts that contain an image of Superman - see: Commons:Deletion requests/File:Superman-fleischer.jpg. The upshot being that the films maybe in PD but the copyright on the character that was licensed for them is still valid and putting them under non-free content.

- J Greb (talk) 21:00, 24 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

And looking at the other issues...
  • Size: Yes, the article currently is in the "upper end" based on size. That means we take a look at the difference between the last FAR reviw - [21] - and today - [22]. The comparison nets this - [23] - which is at least somewhere to start.
- J Greb (talk) 21:42, 24 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I fixed the Lloyd image myself. Yes, I apologize, the image is up for deletion on the English WP, not Commons. It's still up for deletion, though, with some editors arguing that it doesn't meet non-free guidelines. As for the size, it looks like the major additions were sections on Merchandising, In other media, and Musical references, parodies and homages. I would be interesting in hearing the opinion of the major editors to the article on why they feel that relatively large sections are needed for information some might consider trivia, especially when the article is already so large. I'm not arguing that they be cut altogether, simply wondering if it might be better to make better use of summary style and move some of the immense amounts of information and popular culture references to Superman in popular culture, History of Superman, List of Superman comics, Alternative versions of Superman, Superman in other media or one of the dozens of other articles on various facets of Superman that are floating around WP. Dana boomer (talk) 21:46, 6 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Comments
  • I agree the article seems to be filled with trivial type entries and tries too hard to include as much as possible. Further along I see many uncited passages that appear to have been tacked on after the fact. Two examples:
  • The "S" shield by itself is often used in media to symbolize the Superman character. It has been incorporated into the opening and/or closing credits of several films and TV series.
  • Furthermore, the surname Kent, in early 20th century real life, was a common Americanization of "Cohen," and Clark Kent's wimpy, bumbling persona strongly resembled the classic Yiddish schlemiel. But there are so many others I can't list them all.
  • At this point it doesn't look like much is going on toward article repair. Brad (talk) 15:03, 23 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

FARC commentary

Issues raised in the review section include referencing, coverage and prose. Nikkimaria (talk) 04:42, 25 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delist - Basically nothing has been done to improve this article since the FAR was initiated. Still major problems with focus, sourcing, cleanup banners, etc. (details above). Dana boomer (talk) 14:36, 30 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment; it's not clear to me why a revert to the version that passed FAR in 2007 wasn't discussed or contemplated. At the least, it would then mean less repair work to bring the article to standard, and even if the article is defeatured, it would theoretically be left in better shape than when it came here. At minimum, that option should be discussed. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:42, 30 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • A revert to the 2007 version would fix the sprawl problems, but would introduce comprehensiveness issues, and I don't think it would fix much else. A glance at the 2007 version (here), shows issues with sourcing (places needing references, unreliable references, etc) and images at the very least. It also shows that the Copyright issues section (currently hosting an update banner) would be put even farther out of date. What would probably work is a reversion to 2007, followed by the integration of necessary material that has been added over the intervening 4+ years, followed by additional referencing, image and general cleanup work. However, I think we need someone with a solid background in the subject matter (or at least access to all of the pertinent sources) to know what "necessary material" is... So, basically, I'm not sure that a revert to the 2007 version would help anymore than, say, wholesale chopping the sections on Merchandising, In other media, and Musical references, parodies and homages that have been added. Dana boomer (talk) 15:01, 31 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delist. Thanks for looking Dana. OK, so I'm a Delist on that basis, but even if the star can't be salvaged, we can still hope that someone may show up to do the basics you suggest above, as that will at least leave the article in better shape than it is now. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:18, 31 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delist per above. JJ98 (talk) 08:05, 6 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]


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