Wikipedia:Featured article review/archive/August 2006

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Kept status[edit]

Free will[edit]

Article is still a featured article
Messages left at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Philosophy and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Neuroscience. Sandy 20:33, 13 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This article has very few inline citations, especially considering its 59 kb length. The scientific section, though it contains some references needs more references to be up to even GA standards. Its prose is not that great and could definitely be greatly improved with copy-edits (possibly trimming as well). For example, in one section there are three quotations in a row (two from the same author) without sufficient prose that could be made to flow much better. What really kills it is the lack of references in most sections, however. — ዮም | (Yom) | Talk • contribs • Ethiopia 03:55, 12 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It might be salvagable in that case. There is a superabundance of research resources on the philosophical arguments about this topic on the Internet alone. It might not be so easy with the scientific sections. But I'll start on it tomorrow, if possible.--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 21:29, 13 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It's frigthening, now that I look at it. Needs to be cut in half, at least. Completely reorginized. Prose is not the right word. --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 21:34, 13 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Hey, Francesco, do you think you can fix it in a day or two (just kidding — the FAR process is actually 2 weeks of review, followed by another two weeks of FARC, only if necessary :-) I've been watching the statement in there about Tourette syndrome for a long time. I have no idea what it's trying to say, so I hope you can address that. I can't figure out what a neurological condition has to do with Free will. Regards, Sandy 22:28, 13 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I just read through the comments and some of the history of edit-warring and such on this thing. Could you perhaps extend that period to three YEARS?? Oh my!! I will need to call in the reserves on this one. But none of them seems to be home right now. This should be intersting. </terror>--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 21:05, 15 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well, that's the way the consensus wants this thing apparently. Sickening!! --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 09:13, 18 August 2006 (UTC) Latest assessment (somewhat subjective because personally involved though): significant improvements have been made. Not quite there yet, but we're making progress. Sections have been forked, the science section has been massively improved and there are many,many more citations. Still needs some rewrite on phi. section for content and quality of prose. More cites in several areas.--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 07:50, 21 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that the article is greatly improved. It would be helpful if other reviewers would have a look, and comment on any work remaining to be done. Hopefully this one will avoid FARC. As the diff shows, the article has been rewritten this week. Sandy 11:46, 22 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
What's the process? How could it be stopped from going into FARC anyway?--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 12:42, 22 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
If the consensus is that it has been brought back to FA status, it doesn't go to FARC. Even if it does go to FARC, that just gives you a longer period to work on the article, so not to panic :-)) Sometimes, editors don't get around to looking at an article seriously until it moves to FARC. I've sometimes missed a few in the FAR stage, and found things that needed to be addressed only after it moved to FARC, but that doesn't mean the article will be delisted. As long as progress is ongoing, most reviewers are happy. Sandy 21:44, 22 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The article looks pretty good now — much better than when I put it under FAR. The references and the like are fine. I'm not very well-versed in philosophy, however, so I'll leave it to those who have been working on the article to determine if it's comprehensive enough to be considered an FA. Good work, guys! — ዮም | (Yom) | Talk • contribs • Ethiopia 17:29, 24 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Oh yeah it's comprehensive enough for an FA, indeed, the danger is that it will become too comprehensive and cease to be encyclopedic, but I think we've avoided that. Bmorton3 19:27, 24 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There's one important observation I wanted to add: this is absolutely the first example of concrete, contructive collaboration that I have seen on a philosophy article on Wikipedia since I've started on this thing back in January. I think we have genuinely managed to improved the article, while avoiding edit wars, personal quarrels and all the other nonsense that usually takes place. Some of you guys are fairly new and will tend to underestimate this accomplishment. Very impressive, folks.--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 20:03, 24 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Status? Major rewrite, article is well-referenced, can we get more opinions as to avoiding FARC? Sandy 23:40, 25 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Most of the people I know are in the philosophy "depatrtment". I am extremely histant to ask for their specific input for two reasons, Sandy: 1) Most of the ones I trust have already worked on the article. 2) The others might (will!!) almost certainly want to add their own quotes, favorite philosphers, and so on, to an already realtively lengthy article. This could even lead to instaibility and edit-wars.

Many of the non-philosophical people I have some familiarty with, on the other hand, are hesitiant to edit such an article becuase it is not their field and so on. But I will see what I can do even in this respect, just for you (;? --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 07:09, 26 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Dawson Creek, British Columbia[edit]

Article is still a featured article

Review commentary[edit]

Messages left at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Geography, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Cities, and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Vancouver. Sandy 21:29, 20 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry to say I feel this article's prose falls far below brilliant or compelling. There is a lot here that is really tedious, like the second and third paragraphs of 'demographics' and the final paragraph of 'economics'. The City maintains 83 km (52 mi) of paved and 15 km (9 mi) of unpaved roads is surely just not worth mentioning, and similar excessive detail includes the length of the runway of the nearest airport, and the length of the sewage system.

There's also lots of text that doesn't appear to be staying focussed on the main topic. I find it hard to believe a town of 11,000 people has its own distinct climate and so the article seems to be discussing the climate of the area the town is in rather than the town itself.

Finally, a lot of text reads like promo material. For outdoor recreation, there is a golf course, ice rink, tennis courts, baseball diamonds, a skateboard park, and a speed skating oval within the municipal boundaries, and For indoor recreation, the city boasts two ice hockey arenas, a curling rink, and an indoor swimming pool, all grouped together in the heart of the city are a couple of examples. Worldtraveller 20:29, 19 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think a lot of city articles include a lot of cruft. I think this article is a lot less crufty than many city articles and the demographics section reads fairly well. Between the demographics and the climate sections, I think there might be a sentence or two or three that could go, but I think that can be easily fixed and wouldn't really harm the article.
I noticed that the article doesn't mention BC Rail at all, which I found curious but I don't think is a problem.
I don't see the outdoor recreation sentences reading like a promo, other than the word "boasts" (I decided to be bold and change "boasts" to "has"). Other comments on that one? JYolkowski // talk 21:30, 19 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Hmm, well I disagree there - I think this is the most crufty article of this type that I've seen - especially as it's not even a city but a pretty small town. The 2nd and 3rd paragraphs do not remotely try to give the reader the important information, but simply give a list of statistics in prose form. This will inevitably result in tortuous sentences, which really aren't very interesting. For example Of these households, 30% were one-person households, 26% were married couples with children, and 26% were married couples without children - why is this information deemed worthy of inclusion? The median age of Dawson Creek's population is 34.0 years old, younger than the BC median of 38.4 years, with 22.4% of its residents under the age of 15, more than BC's 18.1% - extremely tortuous, and I would argue that an encyclopaedia article should not include data such as this.
As for the promotional tone, it just reads more like a brochure inviting people to move to the town than an encyclopaedia article. I can't believe, as I said, that a town with 11,000 people has a distinct culture of its own, so a section entitled 'culture and recreation' seems like an odd thing to have. I don't see why the town's recreational facilities are worthy of discussing, and I note that WP:CITY's template doesn't include a 'recreation' section.
Other problems - information about water supply is duplicated, and the lead is too short. But the excess detail and promo tone are what concern me most. Worldtraveller 12:41, 20 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Prose needs work. Here are examples.
    • Second sentence lacking a full-stop, ahem. "with an estimated 2004 population of 11,394 people" - aren't all populations estimated? Even a national census uses stats to extrapolate.
    • While we're on population: "This helped the village's population surpass 500 people" - "village's" is pretty ungainly, and surpass isn't the usual word in this context.
    • Isn't is "centre", not "center" in Canadian English?
    • "the twenty-one officer Dawson Creek Royal Canadian Mounted Police" - better as "the 21-officer ...", surely.

It's full of awkwardness. I hope that the contributurs can find someone (preferably a stranger to the text) to fix it up. Tony 16:04, 20 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • I think "twenty-one officer" would be better in this case because its paragraph is full of stats which already have many digits. --Maintain 07:01, 2 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Note left for Worldtraveller. Sandy 02:22, 31 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I made some copyedits, eased the promotional tone and cut some details that were perhaps a little excessive. I did not find the length of the runway (indicative of type of airport) or the total length of streets to be out of place. The "recreation" title is new but perhaps it is more appropriate (opposed to "Sports") in this case. I don't think this article needs to be placed in the FARC section. --Maintain 07:01, 2 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Maintain. There's been some work done on it since nomination. I've copy-edited the top, but more needs to be done. Silly things like "a new highway to southern B.C. made the city a crossroads between British Columbia and Alberta" (fix treatment of the abbreviation). Quite a few of these matters sprinkled through the article. Tony 02:36, 3 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

FARC commentary[edit]

Main FA criteria concerns are writing quality (2a), excessive and over-specified information (5). Marskell 18:41, 5 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. The concerns here strike me as exceptionally minor. I know this one rubbed WT the wrong way, as it seemed too much space was being devoted to a small city, but I don't see how we can penalize an article on that basis. Marskell 09:29, 17 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. Not stellar, but not too troublesome either. Sandy 22:46, 18 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Status Waiting for more reviewers to generate a clearer consensus before this FAR is closed. Joelito (talk) 18:26, 21 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Quite a lot of work has been done on it, and it's certainly better written for it. But it's too easy to find glitches.
    • "Population level"—This is wrong; I wonder whether "level" can be removed. In the caption, it's "trend", which can probably also go. Just "Population"?
    • "BC" vs "B.C.". I prefer without the dots, but whatever, as long as it's consistent.
    • "on that same per 1,000 people basis"—ouch, why not "per 1000 people,"?
    • compared with, not to, for contrasts.
    • "Livestock was also important to the region, but less so since a Canadian BSE crisis." Remove "also"; "is" rather than "was" would resolve the tension with "since". Why "a" and not "the", and when was this crisis?
    • Please audit all of the "alsos"; for example "Dawson Creek is also a regional node for air, rail and bus service." This starts a new paragraph, and is weakened by this insipid back-connector. Should "service" be plural?
    • "Prince George—Peace River riding": why the em dash? That's wrong (em dashes don't join items, they separate them); consider piping it with a spaced en dash.

I'm leaning towards "Keep", but would be happy for the prose to be brought up to "professional" standard, as now required.

Small note: B.C. rather than BC is quite common (speaking as a Canadian) but I know of no definite rule surrounding it. A look at the .gov site shows both in use. It seems to me that B.C. is used to abbreviate the name as a single noun (e.g. "the unemployed in B.C.") while BC is used in noun compounds (e.g. "the BC employment insurance program"). Someone else should look to see if they agree with that observation. Marskell 05:51, 26 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, that explains it. If that's what B.C.ians do, fine, but it does appear to be an odd distinction to make. (Tony)
In fact, a ctrl-f through the document shows that B.C. is used alone and BC used in compounds. I believe it is consistent. A few sentences have been edited since the last comment, including your last three Tony. All that remains is "level", which is in the graphic. I'm not sure why you think it's not appropriate. Other than that, I see no reason to continue to hold up this review. Marskell 08:19, 29 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Just "Population in Dawson Creek, BC", without the "Level". And BC should have the dots here <grin>. But yeah, it's in the graphic, so can't be helped. I'm OK if this is retained. Tony 13:54, 29 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Economy of India[edit]

Article is still a featured article

Review commentary[edit]

Messages left at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Business and Economics/BEF, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Countries, and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Business and Economics/Version 1.0 assesment/Featured content. Sandy 14:17, 23 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Message left at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject India. Sandy 00:28, 26 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Needs references (2c). Prose could do with a run-through. Stats and qualitative information could be updated for such a fast-changing topic. Tony 13:05, 23 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Update:I have updated a few stats. I have also added many refs making the total refs in the article as 71. — Ambuj Saxena (talk) 14:02, 24 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Update. I have updated the statistics. Couldn't find any qualitative information that has changed so much as to deserve a mention in the article or get removed from the article. The article, as of now, has 73 inline references, in addition to many more overall references. I believe this was what was asked of from this FAR. — Ambuj Saxena (talk) 08:34, 29 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Good work, Ambuj. I'm copy-editing it. Tony 14:00, 29 July 2006 (UTC) PS The prose clearly fails Criterion 2a. If I weren't copy-editing it, I'd be FARCing it. I'll need some assistance where the economics/stats are unclear. Tony 14:20, 29 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • I was wondering why I still haven't heard that :P. Anyway, I am keeping a watch on your edits and will clarify any doubts once you are finished editing (so as to not get an edit conflict). — Ambuj Saxena (talk) 15:49, 29 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • If Tony's editing it and Ambuj is updating, I don't think there should be too much of a problem anymore. The maps and diagrams should ideally be converted to svg. If higher res images are available, we could replace these. --Nichalp
  • I looks crowded on a 15 inch monitor with the tables and images, could some be left aligned to break up the mass of illustrations on the right?--Peta 05:05, 3 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • I tried to juggle the pics around a touch. Marskell 16:02, 6 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Status: Does this one need to go down to FARC? Here is the dif showing the work that's been done. Marskell 08:12, 8 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • I've nearly finished copy-editing it. I'm not entirely happy with the depth and scope. Maybe it just passes at the moment, but others may want to comment on that. I think it should be updated and tweaked regularly, given the changing nature of India's economy. PS There are still unaddressed inline queries. Who will address them? I'll contact some of the original contributors. Tony 10:25, 9 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'm delighted that already some of the contributors I contacted are weighing in. This article really does need guardians to update it regularly. On a more negative note, the more I read, the more I see lacking (Criterion 2b). You can't really summarise an article on a country's economy without mention of how micro- and macro-economic management have developed. We need mention of the interest-rate policies in India over the years; I mean, who sets interest rates? The government or the central bank? And I find the section on currency extremely superficial. I corrected—from general knowledge—a mistake about pegged external currencies, but we need to know about convertibility of the rupee, and to be given an idea of inflation and exchange rates over the years. I think this is readily recoverable from the CIA World Factbook on the net (surprisingly, an authoritative source). I'm not an economist, and not Indian, so I hope that the contributors will beef up these aspects. They're kind of ... basic. PS Elsewhere, I see fuzzy statements, such as "India holds second position in the world in roadways' construction, more than twice that of China." In terms of what? The number of kilometres of paved road? Better per capita if it can be found, but whatever it is, it must be specified in precise terms. More is required in "Physical infrastructure".
For this not to move to FARC, I think the reviewers here will need to be satisfied that the article has a few "friends", and that these areas are covered. Give it four or five days? Tony 00:18, 10 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The last section (Foreign direct investment in India) needs references. Sandy 22:08, 10 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've taken care of the some of the embedded comments. Please see if the section needs additional references, Regards, =Nichalp «Talk»= 18:18, 12 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

FARC commentary[edit]

Main FA criteria concerns are references (2c), prose (2a), and whether the article is up-to-date (2b). Marskell 06:15, 12 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment—Great to see the increased activity here. On the info box:
    • Why a separate box for "current fiscal year"? Isn't it obvious from the previous one?
    • What is "Union budget"?
    • The default year might be at the top somewhere, rather than stuck down in a little grey box at the bottom: it's kind of important.
    • Prime Minister and Chariman of ...
    • "Mostly unfree" under "Index of economic freedom"—Is this elaborated on somewhere in the article? Is it POV? Should it be referenced somewhere?
    • "GDP per capita"—Is this PPP? Same for the "by sector".
    • "Exports"—no year.

Thanks. Tony 05:07, 13 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Keep Tony 03:59, 26 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep Sandy 05:40, 26 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. I missed parts of the earlier discussion, but am now confident of the article's quality. I have also addressed some of the concerns raised by Tony in the comments above. Clarifying, though not asked for, since the "Union budget" article deals with what it is, there is no reason to clutter the infobox. "Mostly unfree" is being quoted from the source provided. Exports are of default year (as said in footnotes). Other concerns have been addressed. — Ambuj Saxena (talk) 16:13, 26 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep per above. But I hope the diagrams and maps can be converted to svg. =Nichalp «Talk»= 16:20, 26 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep per above.--Dwaipayan (talk) 17:22, 26 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Korean name[edit]

Article is still a featured article

Review commentary[edit]

Messages left at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ethnic groups and Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Korean) Sandy 14:26, 23 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • No references (2c); lots of stubby paragraphs (2a). Tony 12:12, 23 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Lead does not summarize the article. Rlevse 21:56, 23 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • Two many single sentence paragraphs as well. Fifty edits takes us back eight months... Marskell 19:36, 5 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

FARC commentary[edit]

Main FA criteria concerns are lack of citations (2c), and LEAD (3a). Marskell 08:09, 8 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Question... I wonder if we could get some feedback on whether the changes thus far have adequately addressed the concerns above? I'm curious to know how we're faring. -- Visviva 14:46, 14 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Looks like extensive work has been done (edit comparison). That's great, but the prose still needs copy-editing to remove the many redundancies and to address other problems.

  • Although "hanja" is linked in the first sentence, a comma plus brief explanatory phrase is required immediately after it.
  • "Quite limited" is not good encyclopedic language (vague). Just "limited", or another word?
  • You mention "South Korea in the first para, so perhaps you need to deal with the fact that the same language is spoken thourghout the pensinsular, in North and South Koreas. (Is it?)
  • "Currently used today"—one of these words should be removed.
  • "List of" in the first para may be redundant.

Please find someone to copy-edit the whole article. It looks as though it has its supporters, and is worth saving. Tony 12:29, 15 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Keep. Excellent work done here. The lead is vastly improved and the article subsequently details the info in the lead sequentially, which is nice to see. Citations are enough for an FA this size. Marskell 17:58, 21 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove Very poorly referenced. Many statements and paragraphs have no citations at all, and the citations/references that are provided are sketchy. Footnote 16 says: (See External links for more on the Sōshi-kaimei policy.) The External link is to a non-existent, personal website. Footnote 16 references an entire paragraph. Footnotes 3, 4 and 12 refer to other Wiki articles. I can't tell what footnote 13 is supposed to be. Sandy 00:33, 22 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • Holding off on remove, Visviva working on improving references. Sandy 03:40, 22 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • Keep, now referenced, and improved. Sandy 16:03, 24 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep, much improved.--Peta 06:16, 24 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • Keep, I think the only Korean-related article that is "featured" & referenced extensively. (Wikimachine 15:44, 29 September 2006 (UTC))[reply]

StarCraft[edit]

Article is still a featured article

Review commentary[edit]

It's got a trivia section. I shudder at the sight of these abominations, and am bringing this to wider attention in the hope that reviewers will assess which bits are actually trivial and remove them, and which bits should be moved elsewhere, so the trivia section can be scrapped. Worldtraveller 20:22, 12 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • That article was nowhere near as crufty as I expected it to be, although it got cruftier the longer it went on. The trivia list looks as though it could be axed entirely, except maybe for the guy who died playing it - I remember hearing about that, it seems notable enough. Some more citations would be nice, as well...The Disco King 22:05, 12 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • In general, I've found that any trivia section can usually be folded into the regular text. If a fact won't go into the regular text in normal progression, it probably should be axed. Also, if a fact cannot be cited, it should be axed or go on the talk page with a request for a cite. A lot of that stuff is crufty though... Good luck. — Scm83x hook 'em 08:31, 13 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • I removed the trivia section (except tho or three that were dispatched elsewhere) and converted the external links to the <ref> format. Hopefully it will be OK :) -- Grafikm (AutoGRAF) 12:33, 15 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep as FA. Not nearly as bad as you made it sound at first. :) —Nightstallion (?) 13:24, 15 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep as FA. The trivia section is gone now. KdogDS 17:20, 15 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Minor reviews do not require keep or remove votes. Voting to keep or remove occurs if the article moves to FARC. Sandy 21:02, 16 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Not so fast, it still needs work.
    • There are six images in the article — the first five are claiming fair use, but do not have fair use rationale, and I'm not convinced that the last image does not inherit its copyright status from the individual box arts.
    • I'd like to see an {{endspoiler}} to match up with the spoiler tag.
    • References are missing information such as author and publication date.
Pagrashtak 05:39, 16 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Talk message left at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Computer and video games. Sandy 21:01, 16 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Polish the prose, please. In particular, different ideas are poorly integrated into some sentences. Here are examples.
    • In the lead, this sentence comprises two ideas that have been forced together with just a comma: "Blizzard estimated in 2005 that 9 million copies of StarCraft and its expansion pack, StarCraft: Brood War had been sold since its release, and it has achieved an international cult-like status in the computer gaming world, especially in its online multiplayer form." Not good.
    • " It was initially released for the PC platform in 1998, with a Macintosh version of the game being released in 1999." "With" is a poor back-connector, and the grammar is awkward in the second clause.

With further work, you might be proud of this article; not yet, though. Tony 15:55, 20 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • The spoiler tag detracts from the flow of the article - the campaign contains no plot twists that merit the spoiler tag. Hipocrite - «Talk» 15:49, 25 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Status. Does this one need to proceed to FARC or may we close it successfully? Looks like a minor review and I notice some work has been done. We should definitely make sure about the image issue before closing. Marskell 10:47, 28 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • I think the prose is tortured, but maybe that's only because I don't speak the language. I did find some statements that need citations; for example, Even as of 2006, StarCraft is still one of the most popular online games in the world, with the number of players online at any given time varying from 50,000 to 100,000 or more. Sandy 12:55, 29 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • The prose varies from poor to undistinguished: certainly not "compelling", as required. For example: "A player plays as a colonial magistrate of the Terran Confederacy, and quickly meets Jim Raynor,..."—"player plays"? How did they meet quickly? By talking fast? Tony 14:51, 29 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

FARC commentary[edit]

At issue are 2a (prose), 2c (references) and 4 (images). Changes since nomination—a bit of a poke around, but inadequate to address the issues. Tony 15:01, 29 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm working on copyediting, but I've run into a fairly serious problem in the "Influences" section. Several of these alleged "influences" are really just resemblances, which may be coincidences or simply common tropes in science fiction. This sentence is particularly questionable: "The game displays elements from the novel Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein, most noticeably, the name of the Starship Trooper's civilization and the Humans in Starcraft share the name "Terran", as well as some general themes of military science fiction and space opera." Is the article really suggesting that using the term "Terran" to identify humans proves a direct influence from "Starship Troopers"? Can "some general themes" of "space opera" legitimately count as influences? The claims accompanied by evidence, such as StarCraft characters quoting directly from "Aliens," seem legitimate, but others, like the tenuous resemblances to Heinlein and StarCraft's use of an insectoid race with a hive mind, are way too vague to assert without references. Could this section be saved by renaming it somehow? Peirigill 23:04, 30 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Message left at User_talk:Worldtraveller. Sandy 03:07, 31 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I've copyedited the prose. It could still use work, but I'm hitting diminishing marginal returns. A few things that stand out to me:
  • The "Influence" section is weak. It needs citations to support its claims, which feel like original work.
  • There's still some cruft; for example, what's a "ladder?"
  • The section on replays is just awkward, and I'm not sure how to fix it.
  • The section on the sequel was fairly POV, with phrases like "diehard fans" and "eagerly anticipated." I don't understand the chronology in this section.
  • The organization of the article doesn't make sense to me. I don't understand the wording of some subsection titles. I don't understand why some subsections are where they are, especially when there is only one subsection to the article.
On the other hand, the prose is cleaner, and 3 KB shorter than it used to be. Peirigill 10:37, 31 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove unless open-issues above are resolved. --jwandersTalk 13:47, 5 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep pending... a source on the influences or an axe of the section. It's OR as it stands. Otherwise, I think this is within the criteria. It's not crufty, the prose has apparently improved, and the issue that brought this here, a trivia section, has in fact been addressed. I removed the sentence that Peir was concerned about. Marskell 19:58, 5 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • I reworked a few really awful run-on sentences in the plot summary. Still waiting for sources on influences. I have placed a note regarding this. Marskell 12:57, 13 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep Great article but I agree with Marskell. It is a valuable section so I moved the it to the talk page and requested clarification and citations (rather than remove it).Maintain 20:15, 13 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep - I have been working to standardize headings, reorganize, trim, and work on the prose, please don't remove for a little while, I am going to be working on it. Thank you for your consideration. Judgesurreal777 00:09, 19 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Status The review will be kept open until your work is finished. Please notify when you are done so that the article's review may be finalized. Joelito (talk) 22:05, 19 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong Keep -There has been massive improvement, new images, good rationales, gone from 17 to over 40 reliable references, tons of material trimmed and referenced, and is now worthy again of being called a Featured article. I have to find a definition of "ladder", but other than that, this FAC can be closed. If there are any other issues, please say so :) Judgesurreal777 16:04, 21 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I also have here for your inspection the day it was called an FA, and I think it is currently much better than then. [[1]]
  • Keep. Tony 04:51, 22 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep, and FYI, the ladder example isn't cruft, it's an unexplained term :) — Deckiller 06:43, 22 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Bulbasaur[edit]

Article is still a featured article

Review commentary[edit]

Messages left at Wikipedia talk:Pokémon Collaborative Project, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Nintendo, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Role-playing games, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Computer and video games/Featured articles, and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Computer and video games. Sandy 14:26, 29 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This article consists of a fairly weak intro section followed by a number of unstructured sections with grammatical errors. --Doradus 13:52, 29 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, and it's also mostly in-universe. --Doradus 14:28, 29 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Intro section begins with some quotes about the popularity of Bulbasaur. The format of these citations is very unusual; for example:
CNN calls them one of the "lead critters"
We would normally present this as follows:
Bulbasaur are one of the "lead critters"[1]
...with the citation to CNN. When written in this form, it becomes obvious that this statement's presence in the article is hard to defend: it is a subjective statement, and while CNN is a credible source for news, it's hardly an authority on Bulbasaur. The same criticism goes for the statement attributed to Time.
Intro reworked - is that any better? —Celestianpower háblame 15:40, 29 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Intro section then contains a sentence that begins with the origin of the name "Bulbasaur", and then degenerates into a run-on sentence about the Japanese name for the creature (which wasn't even mentioned until this point).
    The Japanese name is in the Infobox and at the top (just after "Bulbasaur"). —Celestianpower háblame 15:40, 29 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • The final intro paragraph starts with an oddly prominent statement about what Bulbasaur looks like "in one version of the Pokémon series", without contrasting it with other versions. It then ends with a statement about how the artwork has remained unchanged, despite the fact it was immediately preceeded by the "in one version" statement. The confusion caused is characteristic of this article as a whole.
    It looks like that in all versions. Corrected. —Celestianpower háblame 15:40, 29 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • After the intro comes a sequence of formless sections about Bulbasaur's various appearances. Each section is an unstructured grab-bag of facts.
  • Furthermore, the sections are strewn with commas, comma splices, and parenthetical remarks.
Runaway commas example:
The Bulbasaur’s reasonably high Special Attack and Special Defense statistics mean that they both have strong Grass attacks, such as Vine Whip and Razor Leaf, and resist these sorts of attacks well, but their standard Attack statistic is quite poor, causing the Bulbasaur’s physical attacks, such as Tackle, to be relatively weak. However, Bulbasaur have the ability to undergo evolution, a metamorphic change within a Pokémon caused by gaining experience in battle, twice.
Comma splice example:
It also took part in the Orange League Tournament, however, it was quickly defeated by a more experienced Electabuzz, making it the only Pokémon on Ketchum’s team not to defeat at least one of the opposition’s Pokémon.
Parenthetical remarks:
There are seventeen different Pokémon types (a special attribute determining strengths and weaknesses of each species), offsetting each other in a complicated series of rock-paper-scissors relationships. Bulbasaur are a Grass/Poison-type (though they don’t have the ability to learn any damage-dealing Poison attacks naturally) so their attacks are particularly effective against Ground-, Rock- and Water-type Pokémon, but Psychic-, Fire-, Ice- and Flying-type attacks are particularly effective against them.
If these parenthetical remarks are worthy of being in the article, they should be worked in without the parentheses.
Fixed this problem. Highway Return to Oz... 14:38, 29 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Is there really a need for this FAR? The article was just on the main page and was virtually unchanged [2]. Most of these problems are minor and could have been taken to the talk page. Please remember that talk pages are for article improvement also and FAR is for articles that lack the qualities/criteria of a FA. Joelito (talk) 16:13, 29 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • The minor parts above have been addressed, but I still think the sections are unstructured grab-bags of in-universe "facts". --Doradus 17:42, 29 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment I agree with the above user. This is going to turn into another 200 KB "debate" about Bulbasaur being "worthy of a FA". Editors should spend more time editing their target articles, not degrading themselves to childish behavior because an article about a children's icon is featured. Yes, saying "eww! a pokemon is featured; delist!" is equally as immature as watching this show at the age of forty. Concerns like the nominator's are reasonable can be addressed, but I seriously sense this turning into something much more volitile. — Deckiller 16:21, 29 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • I agree, but the above comments are mostly the memoirs of a GrammarNazi, no offence to the nominator. ;) Unfortunately, I think people are going to long remember the problems Bulbasaur caused, which will most likely hinder the promotion/main paging of other Pokémon articles. I am not saying that the vandals are right, but we need to think of the enclyopedia, are we just dmaging it by putting these articles on the main page. Highway Return to Oz... 16:28, 29 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
      • But I think grammar nazihood is appropriate and even important for featured articles. --Doradus 17:48, 29 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
        • I agree, but I was noting that the user probably isn't a Poke-hater, wnating to start a notability argument. Highway Return to Oz... 18:11, 29 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
          • I didn't say that either; I'm just worried that people may seize the moment and start one while it's on FAR. — Deckiller 18:16, 29 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Joelito says above that "Most of these problems are minor and could have been taken to the talk page." - I agree, but I will note here that I have raised several problems (not really that minor either) on the talk page, and there has been no reponse yet. This sort of makes a mockery of the "raise it on the talk page" philosophy. See here, for the comments where I point out that historical context is not prominent enough or has to be found in other articles (ie. say that Pokemon's creator was born in 1965 and Pokemon began in the 1990s), and location context is either missing or unclear (ie. say that Pokemon is Japanese in origin before going into Japanese name details). Carcharoth 09:19, 31 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • I'm sure you can appreciate that Friday was a busy day for the article, and people replied. If you still have concerns, please note them here in full. Cheers, Highway Return to Oz... 10:16, 31 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, the specific examples of problems I pointed out above seem to have been addressed to some extent, but the systematic problem of this article is that each section is an unstructured collection of in-universe "facts". This should disqualify it as a featured article. --Doradus 10:37, 31 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • As requested above, concerns copied from the article talk page to here. Carcharoth 16:25, 31 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • After the lead section, the article is heavily detailed and probably only of interest to Pokemon fans. Sounds like its been written by fans for fans. Not much here of interest to the reader of a general encyclopedia.
    • The inventor of Pokemon, Satoshi Tajiri, is mentioned in the article, but the article doesn't say that he was Japanese and was born in 1965 - stuff which help put the subject of this article in a real-world context.
    • The article fails to make clear that Pokemon is Japanese, or at least originated in Japan - you have to click through to the Pokemon article to find this out, or at least infer it from one of the Japanese references (eg. the bit about the Japansese names).
    • The article fails to give the historical context of Bulbasaur within Pokemon history - the Pokemon article says that it started at least by 1995, and since Bulbasaur's debut date is given as 1996, it would seem relevant to know that Bulbasaur was one of the first Pokemon. There is a fleeting reference to "original series", but this is not made clear. Also, it would be nice to say how many Pokemon existed before Bulbasaur, and how many have been invented since.

The above can be summarised as a lack of "where" and "when" context in the article. These real-world facts are missing, and the article is skewed towards detailed Pokemon fan trivia. Carcharoth 16:25, 31 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

These concerns are easily fixable. Be bold. Joelito (talk) 16:27, 31 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If I may interject - these problems are indicative, not definitive. The whole article has similar systemic problems. If these examples (like the ones I gave) were to be fixed, this would still be a largely unstructured collection of in-universe pseudo-facts. --Doradus 02:56, 1 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, I will fix them if no-one else does. But I'm deliberately making a fuss because this is a featured article. I could hang around FAC and point these things out then, but I don't. This article came to my attention when I saw people on the Main Page talk page defending it as a "well-written article". I think a note should be added to the "be bold" guideline along the lines of "be bold, but also make sure others learn from their mistakes". I can't be bothered to find those who originally wrote the article, but there should be a general attempt to keep standards high to avoid poor writing overwhelming Wikipeidia. Carcharoth 17:12, 31 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Even if the article does have these errors/ommissions etc, I really don't think that you could call this article's writing poor... —Celestianpower háblame 18:00, 31 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry for any offence caused. I tend to lump "errors and omissions" in with "poor writing" as I think writers need to learn not to leave stuff out, and get the basic facts in an article. Maybe call it lack of comprehensiveness? You are right, the actual writing style and basic grammar and spelling and articulateness is mostly fine. Carcharoth 12:39, 1 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Is this any better? —Celestianpower háblame 18:54, 31 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Not really, though I appreciate the effort. Putting context into a section called "Context" is rather odd: context is something that should be available for every statement in the article, not something to be corralled into one corner of the article. And the sections themselves are still as unstructured and as "in-universe" as before. --Doradus 02:54, 1 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think Celestianpower's sandbox version has improved the article. Doradus's comments are still relevant, but I think context like this does help. I would also suggest weaving such comments into the "in-universe" bits to make those bits more accessible to the layperson.

One simple way to do this is to put dates for the release of all the games and other media mentioned: FireRed; LeafGreen; Pokémon Yellow; Pokémon Stadium; Pokémon Gold and Silver; Pokémon Snap; Hey You, Pikachu!; Pokémon Channel; Super Smash Bros. Melee; plus some date context for the "Pokemon anime and series films" section; the trading cards section already has date context (1999); the Pokemon manga section has no dates, but the books are dated to 1999 and 2000, though not all the books are dated. It would also be nice to have a date for the McDonald's and Burger King promotions. Carcharoth 12:36, 1 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, that's it. Talk about how Bulbasaur started, where the idea came from, how it was promoted, how it spread, its cultural significance, etc. That's an encyclopedia article. Currently the article is almost devoid of this kind of information. --Doradus 02:09, 2 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've just been reading the Pokemon article, and what I find worrying about all this is that Bulbasaur is a featured article, but Pokemon isn't (though it is a former featured article candidate). I find it easier to understand what the Bulbasaur article is talking about after reading the Pokemon article, but the ridiculous thing about this situation is that I have to read a non-featured article to understand a featured article! I would suggest that the Pokemon WikiProject get Pokemon to featured article status (it has lots of interesting encyclopedic stuff), before trying to get any more Pokemon creatures to featured status. Carcharoth 12:47, 3 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Many of scientific FAs also require some degree of previous understanding of a topic in order to understand them. Even though as we try to make articles as same contained as possible, the line has to be drawn somewhere in order to keep readability and article length manageable. Check for instance Raney nickel; are you suggesting I should have got catalyst up FA standard before?
Also there's nothing particularly hideous (or "ridiculous") about reading non-featured material: more than 99.9% of Wikipedia's content is not featured. -- Rune Welsh | ταλκ 17:43, 3 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with what you say, but in my opinion Raney nickel does a better job of this balancing act than Bulbasaur, which is probably why Bulbasaur is up for review and not Raney nickel. Carcharoth 09:30, 4 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Pokémon is unlikely to meet any reasonable stability standard any time soon, given that a new wave of games and a new anime are in the very near future. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire | past ops) 11:48, 5 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • The characteristics section flunks WP:WAF miserably; it describes Bulbasaur as though it were a real creature, and borderlines on original synthesis of the Pokédex entries. We shouldn't be repeating the Pokédex entries as real-world fact, and this section probably needs sources other than verbatim quotes of the Pokédex. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire | past ops) 08:09, 6 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • I'll fix that today, I do the rest of them anyway. Highway Return to Oz... 09:24, 6 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
      • Fixed! Cheers, Highway Return to Oz... 19:26, 6 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
        • Is this diff fixing it? You've just weasel-worded it; who has said this? Who is thinking this? This doesn't add any out-of-universe perspective; it just makes you sound like a Pokédex with a major confidence problem. These parts need to be attributed to a speaker: for example, "Such-and-such game describes Bulbasaur as such and such, but such and such later anime episode fills in more about their evolution" or whatever. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire | past ops) 19:31, 6 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
          • I've tried to fix a bit, I'm not sure how to work out what you're getting at without making it very messy. If the franchise kept to one version of a story throughout, it'd be easy, but it's not. Highway Return to Oz... 20:15, 6 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
            • If it is messy, the encyclopedia article needs to reflect that. Trying to streamline or simplify what the history is would be misleading. Carcharoth 14:46, 7 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've reworked the intro to remove questionable "facts" like the "lead critter" bit. I tightened it up and made it more factual. This is what the whole article needs. As it stands, it's certainly not Ffeatured Article quality, especially with the "in-universe" tag. I don't see these systematic problems being fixed any time soon, so I think this needs to become a Featured Article Removal Candidate. Thoughts? --Doradus 12:14, 12 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Is the "Biological characteristics" section now non-in-universe and tighter? Thanks! —Celestianpower háblame 13:13, 12 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
No, not really. For example...
...that's more or less gibberish to anyone who hasn't played the games. I think there's a bit too much to try and synthesize a 'characteristics' section that covers all of the various incarnations; instead...well, I'm not sure. There's not much more to say other than "Bulbasaur has both plant and animal-like characteristics. It has a pair of retractable prehensile vines, and can attack by throwing seeds or razor-sharp leaves, or blasting with stored solar energy." Maybe looking at the powers sections in the comic-book character FAs (e.g. Captain Marvel) would be a good model to follow? - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire | past ops) 16:58, 12 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I wasn't sure about that paragraph - it seemed in the wrong place to me. Is the rest any better though? Is quoting the way to go? —Celestianpower háblame 20:45, 12 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure. I know it feels wrong, but I don't know how to make it feel right. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire | past ops) 20:53, 12 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Then that's a dilemna indeed. We've tried tonnes of ways of making it work, and none seem to fit. Perhaps we have to review the whole section structure? The "Powers" idea sounded like the start of a good one. —Celestianpower háblame 21:04, 12 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

FARC commentary[edit]

Suggested FA criteria concerns are prose errors (2a) and LEAD (3a). Marskell 09:36, 19 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep featured - I don't agree that the problems are too great. The lead certainly isn't (by the nominator's own submission - he fixed it to his liking). It was recently Main Paged, meaning that Raul still thinks it good enough to be featured (or at least, that was my impression). Generally, I think it's a great article that many people spent lots of time on, and so deserves to keep its star. Thanks! —Celestianpower háblame 09:54, 19 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Anarcho-capitalism[edit]

Article is still a featured article

Review commentary[edit]

This article has extensive problems that have existed before and after its recieving featured status:

  • 2(a) The article continues to suffer from many copyedit issues as evidenced by continuous fixing, 23:45, 14 July, 19:14, 14 July, 15:17, 7 July, 13:10, 5 July, 14:18, 22, 16:44, 21 June, 01:45, 20 June. Many of the passages are long-winded or tangential due to multiple editors adding one line at a time in response to each other, rather than writing a coherent passage. These issues call into question the status of its prose as "compelling, even brilliant".
  • 2(c) The article fails to cite proper sources and in some cases even misrepresents them, I removed 8 already today. Many of these sources where placed by two editors (RJII and Hogeye) who have since been banned for intentionally disrupting wikipedia, in part by continuously misrepresenting what they cite. Some of the sources that remain are not peer-reviewed, are secondary sources that do not use primary sources themselves, are not independent, and have conflict of interest in representing the issues they discuss, violating reliable sources guidelines.
  • 2(d) It is not uncontroversial in its neutrality, with the discussion page displaying a prominent warning that it is a controversial topic next to 14 pages of archives dealing with many POV objections that have been resolved/ignored/dismissed to various degrees.
  • 2(e) The article has changed considerably both from when it was first nominated and on a day to day basis, with many editors making extensive changes on a semi-daily basis. It is also occasionally the subjet of ongoing edit wars, both of these issues compromise its stability.
  • Several previous calls by myself and other editors (172, Revcat, AaronS, infinity0) to address these and other issues have largely been ignored or dismissed by editors, and while some issues have been slowly resolved, others have resurfaced or never been addressed. This page is simply not up to the standard of being the best wikipedia has to offer, the controversial nature of its subject matter seems to draw edit warriors to it like a magnet.

Blahblahblahblahblahblah 10:58, 15 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Agree, I'd add that the whole "Modern Somalia" is uncited. - FrancisTyers · 12:35, 15 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Agree. I've been trying to clean up this article, removing a lot of fluff and theoretical speculation. I'll add more when I have time. I'm not sure why it was ever given FA status. --AaronS 18:56, 15 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • WP:NPOV, WP:NOR and WP:V problems. Not our best work. Jkelly 19:31, 15 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Agree. I'd also note the content problems noted above are likely symptoms of the article's overall poorly laid out structure. 172 | Talk 11:17, 16 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Agree, the article at present is a mess, and featured status reflects poorly on Wikipedia. Sarge Baldy 01:35, 22 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Agree with all of the above. The article's lack of stability and the constant disputes regarding its neutrality and factual accuracy, alone, are enough to remove its FA status. These problems have been exacerbated by the recent influx of anarcho-capitalist partisans, some of them sockpuppets. -- WGee 00:30, 1 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Response to Blahblahblahblahblahblah's comment:

  • 2(a) You showed that copyedit problems were fixed, not that this article suffers from them.
  • 2(c) I don't see any unreliable sources [3]. Can you point out which sources are you contesting?
  • 2(d) There is no POV tag on the article or on any of its sections; taking into account number of the people who strongly oppose anarcho-capitalism as an ideology, that's quite a proof of its neutrality.
  • 2(e) This version of the article was featured. Article remained basically the same. Only difference is that objections regarding size, neutrality and verifiability were taken into account; so the article only gained on its quality and readability.
  • Their objections were taken into account. 172 and Revcat were skeptical about Modern Somalia section – that section is now removed since it was largely based on original research. AaronS complained about article's length of "nearly 70KB", article in now long 51KB (40KB in readable prose). Infinity0 complained about presence of personal webpages, blogs and podcast links in the "External links" section. After short discussion, they were removed [4].-- Vision Thing -- 13:37, 16 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I would like to see a review that focuses on the article content and issues, rather than editors involved and past edit history. There is a lot of detail provided in the review request about editors and edit history, but little in the way of actual examples of the current problems with the article. Please provide specific examples of the following mentioned above:

  • The article continues to suffer from many copyedit issues ... Can you list some examples of current issues.
  • The article fails to cite proper sources and in some cases even misrepresents them, Can you list some current examples of sources that aren't "proper".
  • Some of the sources that remain are not peer-reviewed, are secondary sources that do not use primary sources themselves, are not independent, and have conflict of interest in representing the issues they discuss, Rather than discussing banned editors and their edit history, please give concrete examples of current sources which are problematic.
  • It is not uncontroversial in its neutrality ... 14 pages of archives dealing with many POV objections. Examples, please, of current POV problems.

Also, have you notified the authors who originally brought the article to FA status? And can you give us a link to the article when it attained FA status? Sandy 14:24, 16 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, I see VisionThing provided that link. Sandy 14:33, 16 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure I can oblige your requests. The reason I gave evidence of recent problems in the article, rather than current ones, is that the moment I see a problem in the article I fix it. My evidence was not meant to point out particulars that could be easily remedied, but a series of problems with the entire article that are ongoing. As evidenced by my numerous examples above, all the copyedit and source problems that I have found I have done what I could to fix, rather than simply complain about them here, my goal is not to remove from FA status an article that could be easily fixed. I would encourage anyone who is interested in verifying the status of the page to just give it a quick read themselves and check the current sources and external links that are still there (and are currently being added even now), to see if they accord with the explicit standards of FA status for wikipedia, or if like myself and others you feel this is an article that still needs a good deal of work. If nothing else, the major edits and somewhat frequent edit wars that are added or removed on a regular basis call into question the stability of the page.
One thing I can at least address is the POV problems, as they are more systemic than particular and more difficult for me to fix. For example, the page includes a box which gives a series of definitions that anarcho-capitalists use in non-normative ways. Many of these definitions are highly selective and do not match those used in dictionaries or even in the field of socio-politics. Because these anarcho-capitalist definitions are then used as such in the article, it thus transforms the article from a neutral wiki presentation of anarcho-capitalism into a pov anarcho-capitalist presentation of anarcho-capitalism every time they use one of these words. Any subsequent criticism of their use of terminology can then be immediately removed by citing "the box" as evidence that the article is upfront concerning its bias. This may be the case, but the fact that it readily admits bias does not make for a neutral description of the subject matter.
In addition, there is a strong tendency by editors of this article to remove sourced evidence that is critical of anarcho-capitalism or contradicts statements made by anarcho-capitalists, and insert in their place highly selective quotes from particular sources rather than ones which represent the field they are taken from. For example, in the last day alone Vision Thing has removed quotes by E Armand (citing that he is only an individualist and not an american individualist), Joe Peacott (claiming it was "not important"). He then included a series of quotes that he has carefully farmed from various sources to suggest that anarcho-capitalism is a form of anarchism, while specifically (and I would guess willfully) ignoring those that contradict his prefered conclusion.
There is also a strong tendency to give summaries of all issues in anarcho-capitalist terms, for example explaining individualist anarchism primarily in terms of the labor theory of value, which is an anarcho-capitalist method and not one generally used by historians or individualist anarchists themselves. Of course, most anarcho-capitalist editors on the discussion pages immediately dismiss these concerns, and I imagine Vision Thing will attempt to give a quick response that dismissed them here, but the fact that they exist (and in most cases have been brought up repeatedly) demonstrates that the page is not "uncontroversial in its neutrality". I hope that helps Sandy. Blahblahblahblahblahblah 20:48, 16 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for the long explanation. Besides the problems you mention, the article is a blooming link farm and a subsidiary of Amazon.com, which is a tipoff the POV issues that are occurring.Sandy 01:11, 17 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Unfortunately, his explanation is not an objective one. All problems he mentioned above are more or less fabricated. Also, if you look into his contributions list on the day he started this review, you will notice that he had left a note about it only on a talk pages of editors with a negative stance towards anarcho-capitalism. [5][6][7][8][9]
What do you mean by subsidiary of Amazon? -- Vision Thing -- 21:36, 18 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'd ignore that comment about us awful editors. Vision Thing has a tendency to characterize anybody who does not endorse an anarcho-capitalist point-of-view as being a hardline communist with dark ulterior motives. I for one could care less about anarcho-capitalism in itself. What I do care about is the accuracy of the encyclopaedia. I'm not here to endorse a viewpoint. Wikipedia is the worst place for that, not only because it ruins the project, but because, unless you're looking to raise an army of pimply-faced technogeek revolutionaries, you're better off evangelizing in the real world. --AaronS 13:51, 19 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
And if I were to ask you to show me were I characterized anybody as "a hardline communist with dark ulterior motives" you, just like Blah..., couldn't do that because that claim is made up. -- Vision Thing -- 20:08, 20 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Talk message left at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Politics. Sandy 21:59, 16 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Response to Blahblahblahblahblahblah's comment:

1) Can you show examples in which are words from box used in a non-normative ways?
2) For example, I removed [10] Joe Peacott claim from section "Dispute over the name "anarchism"" because he doesn't deny that anarcho-capitalists are anarchists and his claim was already mentioned in part of the article about Individualist anarchism.
3) I don't know how you can claim that article describes individualist anarchism primarily in terms of the labor theory of value when labor theory of value is mentioned exactly one time in the whole section about Individualist anarchism, and even then only in a context of differentiating individualist anarchism and anarcho-capitalism. -- Vision Thing -- 21:36, 18 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Given Vision Thing's history on this issue and the quality/tone of his responses I'm happy to let my previous comments stand. I believe I have provided sufficient evidence for any reasonable person to take the time to review the page themselves and come to their own conclusions. Blahblahblahblahblahblah 07:44, 19 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
article review[edit]

I would like to see that those who argue that anarcho-capitalism should loose its featured article status, present their arguments based on the diff of the current article in respect to the version of the article when it was given featured article status [11]. Thanks! Intangible 17:07, 20 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Opposition and Extreme Objection to this Review

I agree with Intangible and oppose this review for the following reasons:

The Anarcho-capitalism article meets the requirements for a featured article by easily passing each and every one of the criteria necessary to pass it's tests.

  1. [12] here,
  2. [13] here,
  3. [14] here,
  4. [15] where User:Blahblahblahblahblahblah makes 15 edits on July 13 alone. here,
  5. [16] where User: AaronS makes 7 edits on July 12 and 8 edits on July 6, and User:Blahblahblahblahblahblah makes 6 edits on June 27.

As far as an attempt at sabotaging this article goes I find it a bit odd that User:Blahblahblahblahblahblah joined Wikipedia as an editor on June 27, [17] and went straight to work at editing this article on that date.

This looks like not only a clear case of a group of editors who are pointedly against the notion of anarcho-capitalism, going out of their way to degrade the quality of the article, and then starting on a deliberate campaign to lower it's high quality. This extreme vandalism having been done, these same editors then suggest that this article lose it's featured article status. I suggest that this entire case be dropped by the aforementioned evidence, all of which are in blatant violation of Wikipedia policy. Shannonduck talk 20:28, 20 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

As the current article stands, I do not see any inaccuracies or slander that would require any changes at this time. - MSTCrow 22:30, 20 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I think it is easy enough to answer Shannon's criticism of my attempts to "sabotage" the article. Look through any of the edits that Shannon listed, or any of my other edits, and see if the article is better or worse for it, rather than simply criticising my number of edits (whose purpose was to improve the article).
As for it being "a bit odd" that I edited the article right after joining, this explaination is also pretty easy, I was a user of wikipedia (Kevehs) for several years previously. I left, waiting until users Hogeye and RJII got themselves banned with their abusive behavior, so that some resemblance of civility could be brought back to the pages I edit. I created a new identity, in accordance with wiki policy to avoid being harassed by the sockpuppets of RJII and Hogeye that continue to plague these articles. Blahblahblahblahblahblah 01:51, 21 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Huh?[edit]

*** Shannon (User:Lingeron): do not censor the comments of other editors. The following comments have been replaced. ***

Perhaps you should provide diffs to my edits. If I am so opposed to "the notion of anarcho-capitalism," why were all of my edits working towards improving the article? I removed fluff, made sections more concise, fixed grammar, fixed references, moved long sections to their own articles, deleted theoretical speculation, and made the article more like a featured article candidate. I think that this article should be here and that every article should work towards this status. Before throwing around words like "sabotage," "deliberate campaign," "extreme vandalism," and the like, provide some evidence. I think that you just don't like the idea that this article is being reviewed. Well, if it's a great article, then this review won't matter, and it can certainly stand for itself without you attacking various editors. Next time you want to throw around accusations, provide some actual proof. If anybody takes the time (but why would they?) to look at the diffs in question (which you did not link to), they would see that my edits improved the article. Anarcho-capitalism is monitored by many, many anarcho-capitalists and interested parties; if my edits were so terrible, they would have been reverted. Of course, they were not. --AaronS 20:50, 20 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

In fact, here is the diff that you didn't provide. All of my edits improved the article. All of my edit summaries explained what I was doing. I discussed them on the talk page. So, please, these accusations are starting to get silly. If you don't stop, I'll have my secret cabal of Communist henchmen make you stop. --AaronS 21:03, 20 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
This article already has this status. Apparantly you have no faith in those who make these decisions. Shannonduck talk 00:30, 21 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Blind faith in authority never helped anybody. --AaronS 00:49, 21 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]


FWIW[edit]

Oppose: As one of the editors who worked hard to get this article to FA status, including doing my damndest to get individual claims cited correctly, I think I can say that the article has not degraded from its original FA state. In fact, I think some parts are better. (The lead section I think has turned out very good, and efforts by subsequent editors to trim the fat off of quite a few sections has been to the good without losing content.) The current problem it seems (which is the perennial problem) is the fact that ancaps and anarchists do not use a common lexicon (both of which subtly diverge from common usage). This is the reason for the sidebars. You just can't adequately discuss a philosophy with out using the terms as used by that philosophy-- and the article is being very up front about that. To gain some perspective, try and imagine an article about Marxist Theory that doesn't involve at least some idiosyncratic definitions. I don't think it's possible. --Saswann 17:22, 27 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It seems to me that not all articles on wikipedia have to be featured articles. The problem you point out of "requiring" use of specialized anarcho-capitalist definitions for common terms to describe the subject just speaks to me that the article cannot be uncontroversial in its neutrality, you are saying that the only way it can be presented is to present it, literally, in anarcho-capitalist terms. I actually disagree with you that this is a necessity, but if it is then I would say it precludes featured article status. Besides, I think it is a bit of a stretch to compare use of specialized marxist terms like, I dunno, "dialectical materialism" to non-normative uses of much more common terms like "voluntary".
In addition, just recently the criticism section (and external links) has been all but removed, that section being referanced by two of the support voters during FAC. The external links that remain still have ones in violation of wikipedia policy on appropriate links as do many of the sources, and I'm getting less and less motivated to fix these issues given the "we refuse to accept that there is anything wrong with this article at all" attitude I keep getting on the talk page.
I simply can't agree that all the changes since FA status are improvements, or even that the article as it was originally submitted was good to go. I respect your professional editing Saswann, and I readily admit to having bias as concerns this subject, but you really pushed to have this article put up for featured status and I'm not sure you have enough distance from it to avoid being, understandibly, defensive. Blahblahblahblahblahblah 18:22, 27 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Well there's obviously a disagreement between us as far as terminology goes. IMO it is very hard to describe the subject in a neutral way without using terms as ancaps define them, otherwise you head straight into the POV thicket of qualifying every statement in the article again and again and again, to the point where the article presents a clear anti-ancap bias. It made a lot more sense to me (and it still does) to present the terms as they're defined by the ancap usage, and present clearly what the terms mean in ancap philosophy in a prominent manner, once. The alternative seems a whole lot uglier to me, both aesthetically, and in terms of POV problems. Also, I didn't say all the changes were improvements, just that some were. I'm afraid I just don't see the wasteland of Ancap Advocacy<-->Rampant Vandalism everyone else does. Most of the arguments seem more tangential and, in the grand scheme of things not nearly as important as everyone makes them out to be. --Saswann 20:27, 27 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Then again, I can't help but feel that if you are correct, this article will never be featured status quality. You say that it would be POV and ugly to point out when and where the anarcho-capitalists are using terms in non-normative ways, but I can't imagine how it would be NPOV to make a small box on the left hand corner as a cheat that allows editors to then proceed to use the voice of wikipedia to describe anarcho-captialism as the anarcho-captialists would most want it described. There really is a problem with having the article go on and on about anarcho-capitalism being the height of voluntary, non-coercive philosophy, and side-stepping rather large issues like the fact that if we used normative definitions anarcho-capitalism would entail the very things it claims to be against. You used the example of marxism to show that some ideologies need to be presented with specialized terms. That is fair. But how about if I used the example of white nationalism to show that some ideologies, if presented in their own terms, will do so to the detriment of a balanced presentation for wiki readers? Blahblahblahblahblahblah 08:08, 28 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
That's just it. If you refuse to present white nationalism in its own terms, and insist on qualifying their statements, you are essentially enforcing an anti-white supremacist POV on the article. Now, I don't see many people becoming upset over that particular bias, but it's still a bias, against the whole idea of NPOV, no mater how many people agree with the sentiment. Also, I think you're severly underestimating the reader's intelligence in parsing the article. It is quite obvious, not only from the sidebar, but from the context of the article, what's being talked about. And, to put an even finer point on it, the "anarchist" definitions of the terms "voluntary," "coercive," and "capitalism" aren't any more normative than the ancap ones. If I were to walk up to anyone in my office here and suggested their employment was somehow not a voluntary arrangement on their part, they'd think I was nuts-- but by the "anarchist" definition of voluntary, that's exactly what it is.--Saswann 17:31, 28 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
While I don't want to get into theoretical speculation, that's really only at first glance, and it does depend on the circumstance. Perhaps that's the case in your nice, air-conditioned office, but it is certainly not the case everywhere. Some people feel compelled to accept poor employment because their circumstances demand it. Quite differently from you, I could very easily ask my friend who earns minimum wage at a supermarket and who has no health insurance whether or not he felt coerced into his situation, and he would respond with a hearty "hell yes."
This isn't the point, though. I think that what Blah is saying is that the way the article presented right now might be a bit too advocative (is that a word? It is now). --AaronS 18:46, 28 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Just because an article achieved featured article status does not mean it is "done" by any means. To believe so is foolish, counterproductive, and generally in opposition to the way Wikipedia works. If featured articles deserved to remain in the state they were when they became featured, they would be locked then and there. The review process exists to continue to examine such articles, and simply being a featured article is not sufficient evidence for not revising an article. Shannon's reverts to the article have made significant progress on the revision difficult to achieve. In fact at one point, as nearly as I can tell, she reverted the whole article to its revision as of when it gained featured article status. While her edits may have been in good faith, she has shown noteworthy inability to assume good faith herself.--Rosicrucian 12:23, 29 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think that in general it is headed in the right direction, though the removal of the entire criticism section and the all criticism external links was a step in the wrong direction, imho. Still, work needs to be done with the external links that remain, which do not meet wiki standards and seem too numerous. I also think it is important to continue checking the validity of the referances section, since several of the referances were not reliable and added by now banned uses. I don't currently have access to a university library, so I've only been able to remove those that were obviously invalid on the surface. Last, I think both the "definitions" box and the "other names for anarcho-capitalism" box still have reasonable standing objections, I don't agree with saswann that the only way to present a subject in NPOV is to tacitly accept anarcho-capitalist definitions by having wikipedia's voice use them in its presentation. Other than that remaining problems are pretty minor from what I can tell, some grammar and the use of two templates, for example. In short I still think it could use some work. Blahblahblahblahblahblah 15:37, 29 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Also, I think that User:TheIndividualist is pushing it in the wrong direction by inserting highly contentious claims like "anarcho-capitlaism is a form of individualist anarchism" in the very first sentence of the article. Those are the kinds of claims that we're trying to avoid, and which have dubious sources at best. --AaronS 15:40, 29 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It does definitely seem like an effort to make an assertion that as of yet has achieved no consensus in Template Talk:Anarchism. As such, I'd agree that it's premature to call Anarcho-Capitalism anarchism in the political sense. Given Individualist's edits in the template talk it's evident which side he weighs in on, but it has no place in the article until it's resolved--Rosicrucian 16:09, 29 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Topheavy[edit]

The introductory section of the article is rather dense with information, perhaps needlessly so. If one can't see the ToC without scrolling at 1024x768, I think things may have gone somewhat awry. I'd favor coming up with a more concise introductory paragraph, with any other information moved to the appropriate section of the article as needed. It fits Wikipedia:Lead section better that way.--Rosicrucian 21:26, 30 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Worked this. Rlevse 00:19, 31 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

FARC commentary[edit]

Main FA criteria concerns are prose writing quality (2a), sources (2c), POV (2d), stability (2e). Marskell 08:05, 1 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Neutral. There does seem to have been a lot of work done on this—about 240 edits since nomination on just over two weeks ago; this compares with roughly the same number of edits between the start of April and nomination (three and a half months). Blah, do you think it should be saved? Tony 13:39, 1 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I think a lot of positive contributions have happened over a short time, so the review seems to have had a good effect on the quality of the article. However, there have also been some backwards steps as I noted above. A lot of the unfortunate changes have been the direct result of edits by now banned sockpuppets (shannon and individualistanarchist), and one of the better editors twobitsprite has recently had enough of the partisan bickering and given up. I'm on the verge myself actually. I would really like to see someone like saswann or radgeek return to the article and work on it. At the moment I would say it definately fails to meet featured article status, but I'm certainly not the least biased individual for making such a determination. Blahblahblahblahblahblah 15:44, 2 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. I think that under circumstances, there's not enough firm evidence to remove it, and significant work has been done on the article since nomination. Tony 10:38, 6 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. I think the reviewers may have exhausted themselves with all the comments early in this FAR :). Taking a look, I think this is quite a fine article and agree much work has been done. I would only add that the TOC is a touch verbose—could we shorten "Real world systems with characteristics similar to anarcho-capitalism", for instance? Marskell 17:02, 13 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Reject for now, mainly on the grounds of (2e). Removing the FA status of this article would not be a sleight towards the many people who have worked on it; it's quite a good article, but the topic is too contentious for some people. There are many good articles on controversial topics that aren't featured articles for this very reason. --AaronS 23:08, 13 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. The only problem I currently see is the top heavy verbose lead, which should be re-written. It shouldn't be too difficult to correct. Most of the description of the article's problems appeared aimed at *editors* of the article, rather than the actual article or its content. I haven't seen a good argument for delisting an article of this quality. Sandy 18:54, 15 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Reject for NPOV concerns and some troublesome citing. While the article is a fine (in fact, hyper-enthusiastic) description of AnCap, it terribly misrepresents everything else. The article as it stands make's good use of exploiting first appearances, stating matter-as-factly things that are actually hugely contentious (the best part about this article is the sidebar that states that they use terms differently from others - fair enough, but a red flag). The article can do without ad-hominem attacks on those who disagree with central tenets of AnCap (the highly troublesome Anarcho-capitalism#Individualist_anarchism_in_the_United_States is the best example). Also problematic is the tone of argument through intimidation, with reams of texts being cited at any point where AnCap isn't assumed to be the political theory-of-everything, without the same courtesy extended to the better represented POV that contest these claims. The best example of this is the line "Several scholars see anarcho-capitalism as a form of anarchism" with 13 citations, all lined up, of which one stated the opposite of what it claimed (till I pointed that out and it was removed). This isn't a good thing - it's clumsy and betrays an overly aggressive bearing. It's especially bad because this phrase has worked itself into every article tangentially related to the question of whether AnCap has a place in the anarchist tradition.
If I can summarise my problems with it: I would not oppose this article's FA status, I'd probably even endorse it, if it didn't attempt to contextualise itself into other traditions (which it shouldn't do in the first place) and change those traditions to fit. There is a group of editors who have been very aggressively pushing an AnCap POV over Wikipedia (and elsewhere) especially within the Anarchism series which keeps a group of editors like myself busy with trying to defend the articles of more modest pretentions. Let this article say what it wants about AnCap - it is what it's there for, and does it well - but let it keep quiet about everything else except as to how it directly ascertains to AnCap (for instance, name and influence but neglect to attack the influence for not being AnCap enough). When this attempt at theory-of-everything POV violation falls away the dodgy citations and contamination of other articles will as well, and we will actually have worked towards an agreement.--Marinus 23:18, 17 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, the "definition box" is a bit troublesome. Namely, if anarcho-capitalists use or interpret terms differently, that should be explained in the article. I'm sure that there must be criticisms of anarcho-capitalism based upon their unique interpretations of these words. At this point, the article assumes that the infobox is enough; or, worse yet, it presents itself as if it is using those terms in their every day sense. The lead is also troublesome. Note that the lead of socialism, for instance, does not say "Socialism is an ideology seeking to overthrow the ruling class as an oppressive means of exploitation and replace it with a system where every individual is free." The lead for this article, however, tends to take an advocate's stance. --AaronS 03:21, 18 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Currently...[edit]

... the article has seemed to stabalize, most of the editors who have filed complaints about the article have seemed reduce their edits, disruptive users have been dealt with for the most part. Most of the complaints filed above have been rectified. What do you all think now? I'll start with my vote:

  • Keep. The article has gone under significant reworking since the review began, and most of the complaints filed have been resolved. Two-Bit Sprite 14:16, 15 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

*Reject. Comment. This article will never be stable. While there are many good editors working on it, there are a few bad apples who will always be around, and it will always be undergoing edit wars and significant changes. I might support a future nomination. --AaronS 14:25, 15 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

AaronS has entered a duplicate vote, please strike. Sandy 18:48, 15 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Isn't this a re-vote? --AaronS 18:51, 15 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Votes entered above still stand unless the editor who entered the vote strikes the vote. Sandy 18:55, 15 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
My apologies. --AaronS 18:58, 15 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
No need :-) Sandy 20:31, 15 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
That's an awefully negative view point, to say that this article will never reach some amount of relative stability. I'm sure there are plenty of featured articles that get vandalized often enough; the fact that there are people who will try to use wikipedia as a platform for thier beliefs should not nullify the fact that the article as it stands is of high enough quality to be considered one of the best articles on wikipedia from an encyclopedic stance... —Two-Bit Sprite 15:38, 15 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Sure it does. It may be a negative belief, but some articles on Wikipedia are just like that. See George W. Bush for an example. --AaronS 15:43, 15 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I also think it would be unfortunate to remove on the basis of "cannot be stable". GWB is the exception of exceptions. Look, for instance at abortion—it gets hit by mass vandal/anon edits, yet the core article has remained stable. If we can do it there... More pertinently, is there POV issue in this article at this moment that needs to be addressed before closing the FAR? Marskell 08:35, 16 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I believe there is - not in the way the article represents AnCap, but in how it represents other movements. This is especially troublesome because these POV misrepresentations are repeated in various other articles. --Marinus 23:54, 17 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Premature closing of vote[edit]

Most of the people originally involved in this review have not even voted, yet. Was there a discussion about closing it that I missed? --AaronS 16:31, 17 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There was more than a full month review period, and the article was at FARC for more than two weeks. There were no requests to extend the review period due to unusual circumstances, the article had stabilized, and yours was the only vote to remove. All editors had more than two weeks to enter a vote. Sandy 16:36, 17 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Sometimes there are circumstances in real life which prevent people from monitoring Wikipedia. I can think of 3 or 4, perhaps 5, editors who would be interested in this vote, if they were around. --AaronS 16:40, 17 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

My reasons for closing:

  • Original concerns were addressed.
  • There was a concensus for keeping the article's featured status.
  • Work was not being done on the article at the time of closing.
  • Article had been stable for more than four days.
  • Article had been in review for a month with no outstanding requests for extension.
  • I understand that not everyone can check Wikipedia every day, however the FARC was open for 2 weeks. We cannot have a FARC open until everyone votes. Joelito (talk) 17:44, 17 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Those are good reasons, and I wasn't assuming that you didn't have any. :) It's just that I happen to know that a few people haven't been active in a few weeks, but were originally very active in the FAR. A recent rise in sock puppetry regarding anarchism-related articles has driven them off for a bit. To date, I am the only original person who thought that the article should be reviewed to have voted. --AaronS 18:03, 17 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, nobody has counted Blah's vote, so that makes two of us. The vote currently stands at 4 to keep and 2 to reject. --AaronS 18:06, 17 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see a vote from Blah. Sandy 18:33, 17 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
"At the moment I would say it definately fails to meet featured article status" --AaronS 18:44, 17 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see a vote there, and FARCs are closed based on consensus on the issues raised. There was never a strong argument in this FAR that the article did not meet FA criteria. The nomination and subsequent discussion read as an issue with the *editors*, not the actual article. Sandy 18:50, 17 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
There isn't a consensus, yet, is there? The fact that some of the discussion was marred by sock puppets and banned users does not devalue the points raised by some of the original editors questioning the article's status. Forgive me, but I do not understand the motivation or reasoning behind closing this discussion, other than "that's just the way it is, and that's the way I think it should be." --AaronS 18:54, 17 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

A wee extension[edit]

I have notified interested parties of the closing of the vote. I request that there be a wee extension while they consider whether or not they would like to vote or add anything to the discussion. This includes editors who I believe might vote to reject as well as editors who I believe might vote to keep. Due to the controversiality that often surrounds this article, I feel that it's important that we make sure that the issue will be settled when it is settled. --AaronS 18:18, 17 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It's unusual to canvas editors after the FARC has closed, considering it had a two-week review period. I don't see a vote above from Blah. And I was wondering why you didn't also canvas Intanglible, MSTCrow, and Saswann ?Sandy 18:32, 17 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I notified the main editors on the first page of the histories of anarcho-capitalism and anarchism, as well as those who I could remember off of the top of my head. I'll notify those editors, as well.
It may be unusual, but during this FAR, there was a great deal of edit warring and sock puppetry going on with regard to the anarchism-related articles, discouraging quite a few editors and causing them to take a bit of a leave. I'm one of them, although I've stuck around for things like this.
I don't see any harm in leaving it open a bit longer while all of these people have their say. The harm in closing it, right now, would be the continual questioning of the legitimacy of the FA status of the article. I wish that there had been some kind of notification before close, akin to a little "well, are we ready?" for everybody. --AaronS 18:37, 17 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I would support an extension of the FARC. Blockader 15:24, 18 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure if it's legit to call for an extension for something after the fact... I mean, I suppose you have the option of openning a new FARC... It has been a month, after all; if you were going to canvas and get more votes, you probably should have done it sooner. Two-Bit Sprite 18:11, 18 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Bad faith F.A.R.[edit]

I know all about "assuming good faith," and I do, but after looking this over, I suspect that the attempt to remove this article from Featured Article Status was not done in good faith. I can't help thinking that this comes from the typical anti-capitalist psychology of wanting to destroy or discredit what others have built through their hard work. Not only is the article itself the fruit of enormous intellectual and physical labor but the article itself is about a philosophy that supports profiting from one's achievments. On top of that, the article is awarded with a Gold Star. It fills the anti-capitalists with envy and resentment. Instead of building anything of value themselves, they work destroy what others create. (Compare to the attack on the World Trade Center). DTC 18:40, 17 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, my. --AaronS 18:42, 17 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It read that way to me as well (that is, the nomination was not about the article, rather editors of the article). Sandy 18:50, 17 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
If you truly believe that, then I question your neutrality in deciding whether or not this issue should be closed. --AaronS 18:55, 17 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
My vote counts no more or less than yours. The FA criteria are clearly defined: this FAR never showed that the article failed to meet the criteria. Sandy 18:57, 17 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I also believe that it meets all criteria, except that it is unstable, and that there are issues regarding NPOV. Just take a look at Template talk:Anarchism. --AaronS 19:01, 17 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
DTS: you scold me, Aaron, and others for assuming bad faith, yet here you are assumimg that we "work [to] destroy what others create? Outrageous. -- WGee 01:26, 18 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
DTS: Didn't lingeron use that exact same phrase? Or maybe it was one of the other banned users. I can't keep you all straight anymore. Ungovernable ForceThe Wiki Kitchen! 09:01, 18 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Um, are we voting on something that was already voted on? I'm confused. - MSTCrow 02:17, 21 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

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 Gimmetrow 03:01, 23 April 2009 [18].

Phishing[edit]

Previous FAR: Wikipedia:Featured article review/Phishing/archive1. Notified: WP:COMP and ZeWrestler (talk · contribs)

Review commentary[edit]

Several portions of this article, quite frankly look in an absolute mess, this section should be reworked completely: a) it lacks ref; and b) Wikipedia is not a guide for things. Other sections contain no references and some of it appears to be a point of view. D.M.N. (talk) 19:07, 2 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not entirely convinced by the fair-use rationale for File:Paypal Phishing.png since there is a free-use example of a phishing e-mail (File:PhishingTrustedBank.png). DrKiernan (talk) 09:33, 3 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

There are six dead links (see [19]). DrKiernan (talk) 12:38, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

FARC commentary[edit]

Suggested FA criteria concerns are citations, original research and synthesis. YellowMonkey (click here to vote for world cycling's #1 model!) 02:29, 17 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delist, per FA criteria concerns, and referencing issues throughout. Cirt (talk) 02:14, 18 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment What happened to the article? This version looks fine. Artichoker[talk] 15:51, 5 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delist citations needed; short sections should be merged or expanded; "See also" should be trimmed. DrKiernan (talk) 13:27, 17 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment It's been neglected by editors, and left to the devices of individuals who don't understand or follow the policy of not writing unreferenced nonsense. Just delisting it now is the wrong approach - there are just a couple of problem areas. Remove the unreferenced sections on social engineering and identifying legitimate websites (I tried, Cluebot reverted my edits), or rewrite those sections and reference them. Simples. --82.33.50.145 (talk) 16:34, 17 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.

Right whale[edit]

Article is still a featured article

Review commentary[edit]

A number of editors have pointed out on the talk page an inconsistency in this article: the article intro states that there are four species of Right Whales, while the majority of the rest of the article refers to three species. A knowledgable editor should resolve this. Outriggr 01:39, 30 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

And a spruce-up of the prose is in order:

The lead: ambiguous "finally" and redundant "geographically". "During the active years of the whaling industry"—why not give us a chronological idea if you're going to raise this?

Then: "After many years of shifting views on the number of right whale species, recent genetic evidence has led scientists in the field to conclude that there are in fact four distinct species." Two two parts of the sentence don't seem to be logically relate (population versus number of species).

"Today the species still stands alone in its own genus as it has done since the work of Gray in 1821." What, before Gray's work it didn't?

"Thus, it is likely that all four species will be placed in one genus in some future review." "Some"?

I'm wondering whether a major review would be more appropriate. Tony 02:19, 4 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I concur with Tony. The prose needs some clean-up, yes, though that's true of almost every article here. However, this article is unclear about the very topic it purports to discuss. The article on Right Whale ought to, at bare minimum, make it clear exactly what a Right Whale is, and this article doesn't do that. If the issue really is unresolved by marine biologists, then we need to state the current state of events, the past misunderstandings if relevent, and other hypotheses as needed. I would vote to remove under a FARC unless this can be cleaned up. Matt Deres 16:17, 6 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Here is the diff in the almost two weeks since it was placed for minor review [20]: time for major review. Sandy 22:15, 15 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Talk message left at Wikipedia:WikiProject Mammals Sandy 20:50, 16 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Talk message left at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Cetaceans. Sandy 22:28, 16 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Talk message left at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Marine life. Sandy 23:10, 16 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

FARC commentary[edit]

Not a single edit since this article was moved to major review (when the processes were separate). Criterion 2a is at issue, including the nominator's query at the top. Tony 13:05, 21 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Keep - I am not an expert, but I have tried to address these issues. It seems clear to m that "right whale" is used primarily to refer to the three species in the genus Eubalaena, which is what this article concentrates upon, but the term can also refer to the fourth species, which has its own "main article" at Bowhead Whale. However, the Bowhead Whales needs to be discussed briefly in this article for completeness. -- ALoan (Talk) 20:16, 24 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Message left at User_talk:Outriggr. Sandy 02:31, 31 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove. (Thank you for the message, Sandy.) In addition to the prose concerns listed by others, the original concern remains, and is highlighted by sentences like these two, which are one paragraph apart:
    • "...recent genetic evidence has led scientists in the field to conclude that there are four distinct species of right whale, in two genera."
    • "...There is, however, little genetic evidence to support this two-genera view."
The article's approach to the four-species/three-species issue does not seem clear to me. Outriggr 04:54, 31 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Well, my reading is that there is genetic evidence for 4 distinct species, but the number of genera is not so clear. To quote more extensively: "recent genetic evidence has led scientists in the field to conclude that there are four distinct species of right whale, in two genera" ... "The Bowhead Whale is clearly an individual species ... The remaining three species are classified together in a separate genus. There is, however, little genetic evidence to support this two-genera view" ... "it seems likely that all four species will be placed in one genus in a future review." ... "In dealing with the three populations of Eubalaena right whales, authorities have historically disagreed over whether to categorize the three populations in one, two or three species." [concluding that there is sufficient evidence for three]. -- ALoan (Talk) 10:33, 31 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. Four species-two genera, seems clear to me. Several editors, including myself have made copyedits. --Maintain 06:51, 1 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • I'm not clear where the article decided that the Bowhead Whale is no longer among its subjects. We still have this, for example:
      • "Today, the three right whale species inhabit three distinct areas of the globe..."
      • "The four right whale species live in distinct locations..."
    • No one has actually explained how the sentences I mentioned above are not contradictory. Is there genetic evidence for two genera or not?:
      • "...recent genetic evidence has led scientists in the field to conclude that there are four distinct species of right whale, in two genera."
      • "...There is, however, little genetic evidence to support this two-genera view."
    • I have no desire to see this article de-frocked. If these are "just" mistakes in wording, then they can be changed easily enough, but I am not in a position to judge that. Outriggr 07:59, 1 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I think it is just wording that can be clarified. My understanding is that the genetic evidence relates to the separation into species, not into genera (that comma was quite important, but I have separated into two paragraphs for clarity). I think the article is talking about all four species, up to the point where is says that the Bowhead Whale is in a different genus, and refers to its own article for further details). -- ALoan (Talk) 10:08, 1 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I would like to see more commentary by other Wikipedians. (There was earlier a significant contingent of concern regarding the FA-worthiness of this article.) Failing that, the decision can be left in the hands of a wise administrator, whom I expect to be conservative and not de-feature the article. That's OK with me. Outriggr 03:11, 2 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I would love to see more commentary - better, input - from other Wikipedians. -- ALoan (Talk) 09:26, 2 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Demote If there's this much debate, article should go back through FAC to ensure a high FA standard. --jwandersTalk 13:35, 5 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sarajevo[edit]

Article is still a featured article

Review commentary[edit]

Comprehensive indeed, but overpacked with images, often badly referenced and using strange markup. Could use inline citations, footnotes, etc., and needs some cleaning up ({{main}} instead of poor plain-text imitations). Many minor issues make a major one, so I think this article needs some considerable work to be up to date with the FA criteria and expectations. Todor→Bozhinov 18:13, 25 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

A lot of those images appear to be copyright violations, by the way. Pagrashtak 19:47, 25 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yep, seems like User:Bosna 101's image contributions to the page are all blatant copyvios. He mentions Flickr and other websites as the source and claims they're {{cc-by-sa-2.0}} when the source says clearly they're copyrighted and there's no mention of Creative Commons whatsoever. They sould all be listed for deletion... another (this time quite serious) problem with the article. Todor→Bozhinov 19:55, 25 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I am beggining some image cleaup but I have been reverted once by the same user. I hope the cleanup will not be further reverted. Joelito (talk) 20:58, 25 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. The article is fantastic, but has continual problems with edits inadvertently making it worse. If the present version is deemed to be poor, then at the very least revert to Asim Led's last - brilliant - version - which was filled with images he took himself, rather than removing its much-deserved FA status. Rebecca 01:24, 26 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Major reviews are not votes. Here we try to address which FA criteria an article does not meet and try to correct them. If that is not possible then the article is moved to vote on Featured articles removal. Joelito (talk) 02:05, 26 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Rebecca, be bold! :) - FrancisTyers · 08:31, 26 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Ditto, Rebecca. If there's a good, older version, that may provide the best starting place for improving the article. Sandy 13:07, 30 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Copy-edit required to satisfy 2a. Here are examples.
    • "According to a 1991 census, its population was 529,672; currently estimated at around 600,000." After a semicolon, the clause must function as a stand-alone sentence.
    • "Sarajevo is located close to the geometric center of the triangularly-shaped Bosnia and Herzegovina"—Spot the redundant word. And "triangularly" must be one of the ugliest words in English.
    • "Sarajevo experiences warm summers, with temperatures of 35 °C (95°F) not being uncommon,.."—"With" is a poor back-connector; the last three words are clumsy.
    • "snow is guaranteed due to the city's high altitude"—500 m is high? Minus one degree needs a minus dash or an en dash, not a hyphen.
    • "The warmest month of the year is July, when the average temperature is about 19 °C (66 °F), although August's average temperature is only a degree lower." What's "although" doing here?

This is on the express train to FARC, but please note that "keep" and "remove" declarations are appropriate only for FARCs, not here. Tony 03:22, 4 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

FARC commentary[edit]

Main FA criteria concerns are prose (2a), lack of citations (2c), images and reference formatting.
Message left at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Cities. Sandy 23:49, 16 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Message left at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Geography. Sandy 23:57, 16 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Remove, since nothing has been done to address the problems in the prose since review listing. Here are the differences: [[21]]. Tony 13:00, 11 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose. Excellent article. If the current version is not sufficient, then at least revert back to Asim Led's last version and judge that before removing this deserving article from FA status. Rebecca 13:37, 11 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Rebecca, if you revert, is the older FA version referenced? Can you provide a link to the older FA version? My vote depends on references and citations, so I need to know if the potential revert would result in a better referenced article. And, would the reverted version have problems with the images? Sandy 21:38, 14 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove. A comprehensive article, but lacks citations and needs better referencing. Also, many of the images seem suspicious. Todor→Bozhinov 22:25, 11 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove - no inline citations and still contains images with copyright problems. Pagrashtak 01:24, 12 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Can we leave this one on review for a little longer? Asim Led's original article ([22]) is still of excellent standard, lacking only really references and a few minor changes made in the intervening two years. I really don't think there's any need to delist when it could be back at a perfect standard with a little bit of work. Rebecca 05:47, 23 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Still, it's not referenced, needs some cleanup, and most of the problems with the prose that Tony mentioned seem to be present in that older version too. Although I agree it's probably better, not FA quality according to the present standards. Todor→Bozhinov 18:20, 23 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I agree in leaving this a little longer, the article is getting improved Jaranda wat's sup 00:13, 24 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Me too, someone's working hard to save it, so let's give him a chance. Inappropriately-licensed images are being deleted, inline citations are being added, so I'd like to wait and see how it shapes up in the end. Todor→Bozhinov 09:50, 24 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. I've been working to add inline citations and making the prose sound more professional. If anyone would like to volunteer some time I would really appreciate a copyedit to make the prose acceptable. Also, could someone please provide a link to where I can see how to format references for websites and books? --Maintain 06:41, 25 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Status Per Maintain's obvious commitment here and above comments, we should leave this open. Refs have jumped from zero to sixteen. I'll try and do a copy-edit myself (of course, I'm always making promises of that sort...). Marskell 13:06, 25 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep now that the article is better Jaranda wat's sup 23:20, 26 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • I have not finished my copy-edit, but I am a tentative keep as this is going to get there, I think. A few things, if Maintain doesn't mind:
    • I have placed a fact request in the intro. I think a ref from demography can be moved up to take care of it.
    • There are two squared area stats given (142 twice, and then 200). Perhaps one is for the city proper and the other for the metro.
    • There is a hidden note asking for a bit of expansion in the history section. Marskell 19:46, 27 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
      • It should be 142 km². The 200 km² was already there and I don't know what it refers to. The metro is more like 350 km². I added a bit about the wars (but most of the Balkan fighting occurred in Serbia near Belgrade). I also corrected another inline comment about the date of the founding of the city. A settlement was there for centuries but became a city in 1461. --Maintain 23:20, 30 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • It's still easy to find things like:
    • "Sarajevo at winter" (first caption)
    • "It is comprised of"
    • "Sarajevo experiences mild summers"—why not just "has"?
    • "The rainiest month is October when the city receives 103 mm (4.0 in) of rainfall"—"wettest" is idiomatic. Mostly redundant; try "The wettest month is October (103 mm or 4.0 in),...".
    • "The area of present day Sarajevo has a long and rich history dating to the Neolithic period"—Awkward. Try "Sarajevo has a long and rich history dating back to the Neolithic period."

These are things I've picked out at random from the top few paragraphs. If Rebecca is keen to keep, can she pitch in and help us? Tony 01:41, 30 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Remove Work seems to have stalled: there are still sections lacking citations, sections that are stubby, random typos, and sections which seem uncomprehensive. I'll change to support if work is completed over the next few days. Have a look at the Sports and Education sections, for examples. I hope someone who knows Sarajevo will pitch in and finish polishing this article. Sandy 13:47, 30 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Update I see Maintain is at work on it again today, so I'll hold off on my remove. Sandy 19:37, 30 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yah, I'm still moving it along. I added a table to make the Sports section look less stubby, what do you think? --Maintain 23:20, 30 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I was hoping Maintain would return here to comment as he seems best able to track down info. The only real absence on the page that I see is two or three sentences on the World Wars. The history doesn't seem complete without this. The rest is minor to my mind and the ce'ing has not stalled. Marskell 16:27, 30 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks to everyone who is helping with the copyedits. --Maintain 23:20, 30 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I've done a little copy-editing. Culture has a mass of red links. It's not possible to fill in a sentence for each of them, to turn them blue, is it? Tony 14:27, 31 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Asperger syndrome[edit]

Article is still a featured article

Review commentary[edit]

This article requires major review. Since it was originally given featured article status, this article has changed significantly. In particular, the sourcing for much of the article is now vague, with many column-inches given over to handwaving and speculation. For example, there is an entire major subsection of the article, "A gift and a curse" wherein nearly every sentence begins with qualifiers like "Some speculate...", "Some claim...", "many critics...claim...", "Many people think..." without a single citation in sight. This section of the article is also rife with what appears to be original research (eg: "Such speculation may simply be an attempt to create role models for autistics to demonstrate that they can be exemplary contributors to society.") More or less the entire latter half of the article currently reads like a personal essay. Nandesuka 13:56, 26 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • It's been in bad shape for quite a while: so bad, I was afraid to tackle it alone. If there isn't significant editing to clean it up, I'll support FARC quickly. I agree the article is a speculative, poorly-sourced essay, in bad need of cleanup. Sandy 15:53, 26 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support sending to FARC as I was part of the group of editors (me, User:PurplePlatypus and User:ManekiNeko basically, of whom I'd reccommend ringing for those who need help in keeping it a FA) who helped save it from its last FARC at Wikipedia:Featured article removal candidates/Asperger's syndrome. Since then it has been the victim of a lot of soapboxing and dubious edits - there is likely some original research, etc.. Mainly the problems are lack of sources/cites - also someone might want to check and see if any useful info got nixed from the (second) featured version (circa [23]). RN 20:17, 26 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • FARC it. I can't add much more to the above, but it doesn't read well and does lack citation and solid evidence. S.Skinner 08:50, 3 July 2006 (UTC) I am currently awaiting the outcome of the review. Opinion: Withdrawn S.Skinner 09:16, 7 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • Please allow sufficient time for the major review. RN and myself have gotten other editors involved now in improving and referencing the article; a good chunk of the speculation has been identifed, some removed, and much has been referenced; and other editors are now working with us to improve the article. There appears to be resistance from one editor only, but consensus has developed around the need to improve the article to a medical standard. Work is in progress and, with a few more days, we may be in shape to ask for some help with a major copyedit, to smooth out the prose. I'll be the first to vote to FARC if work stalls or resistance to improving the article prevails. Work remaining to be done is outlined on the article talk page. Help is welcome. Sandy 14:50, 3 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
      • The article has come a long ways. There are still problems (some vague unreferenced portions, in need of wikilinks, and others), but massive speculative sections have been removed or sourced, and the article is better organized and referenced. Some help with a major copy edit would be helpful at this point, and would go a long ways towards encouraging the involved editors to continue making the needed improvements. Comments on work still needed would also be helpful. Sandy 02:30, 7 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • I've had a go at copy-editing the top half. It was a lot of work. Can someone help by going through the rest and changing all references to the syndrome to "AS". I think this is better than the inconsistent terminology that is currently used, including Asperger syndrome and Asperger's syndrome. Tony 16:32, 7 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'll do that. Thanks, Tony ! Sandy 17:14, 7 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Looks like RN beat me to it, changing all references to Asperger syndrome.AS. Sandy 17:16, 7 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I guess it's OK now, but I'd be happy for further tweaking to be done over the next few months. BTW, I'm a little concerned that one text appears to have been the source for too much of the text (I may be wrong, but I just get that feeling). Tony 00:11, 10 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The article has come very far, with the combined efforts of many people. I am also concerned about the sourcing, though, and prefer to see mostly PMID sources for medical articles, rather than a couple of books. Although the sourcing could be better, at least the article is now based on reliable sources, without speculation, and more comprehensive. It will need to be watched closely to make sure original research doesn't creep back in again. I've got in on my watchlist, and I think the editors there now understand the standards for referencing any new content. Sandy 00:24, 10 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The current state of this article is horrible. It should imidiately be sent to FARC. The article currently is reading like a promotional effort for NIH, and basically every opinion that goes contrary to NIH-disorder view has been remooved in the name of "peer-review". It is horrible that the insight of people in the autistic community have been effectively silenced. Not only that, controversial information put in separate articles have also been "dragged back" into the article, but only the views that fits NIH. Every effort to remove this stuff has failed. --Rdos 20:50, 13 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

RDos, original research has no place on Wikipedia. You have been encouraged several times to present your views by referencing them to primary and peer-reviewed sources. Your own surveys are not a primary source. Please refrain from blanking entire sections which are based on peer-reviewed sources. Sandy 21:23, 13 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Sandy, ownership also has no place at Wikipedia, and POV is one of the cornerstones. Both these seems to apply to this article. --Rdos 14:40, 14 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
So what's the status then? Still at work? Marskell 16:14, 14 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It's hard to say. The large majority of editors working on the article are collaborating on introducing, upgrading and refining text with appropriate references and a consensual process, and their effort was a good one. It is difficult to know what will happen once the article moves out from under the examination of FAR. It would be sad for their work to be in vain because of insertions of original research, but they are going to have to police it, I guess. My inkling is that, at this point, it is what it is and has been for a long time, and perhaps it should be submitted for a broader vote under FARC. But I defer to RN, who has been involved longer with the article, and who has seen it go through FARC before, only to end up back here with the same problems. I will ping RN. Sandy 17:13, 14 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Like Sandy, I think it is hard to say as well. If it stays, it is very likely to end up again on FARC in several months from now - if it does go to the "round table" of FARC the stability issue needs to be considered. The article itself has vastly improved in referencing though, and seems to meet at least some of the FA points at the moment. RN 00:39, 15 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Ryan, as it has improved on one account, it has degraded on another. I don't see this as any general improvement. AFAIK, NPOV is not less important than citing reliable sources. --Rdos 07:53, 15 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I will leave this up two more days to give it three weeks in the review period before going to FARC. It has had in the range of 700 edits since the nom; at least it's getting attention. No, POV is not less important than citations, but a lack of citations is the most difficult fault to correct in an FA. Given that that isn't an issue here, I see no reason this can't be retained if you can work out the other issues. Marskell 12:06, 15 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

FARC commentary[edit]

Main FA criteria concerns are supporting assertions with appropriate citations (2c) and POV (2d). Marskell 15:23, 17 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Additional concerns emerging during the Major review: 2b) Comprehensive, 2c) Suitability of references, 2e) Stability, and 3a) Lead. Sandy 17:09, 17 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Talk messages left at Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Collaboration of the Week. Sandy 17:09, 17 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Article history:

  • First promoted FA on April 10, 2004: [24]
  • Kept FA in September 2005 FARC: [25]
  • Prior to June 26, 2006 Major Review: [26]
  • After major copyedit by User:Tony1 July 9: [27]
  • Compare between Tony copyedit and current: [28] :Struck compare, outdated, significant changes/improvements since article moved to FARC. Sandy 23:41, 18 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sandy 18:22, 17 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Additional concerns:

  • 1) Our best work:
    • Please see Cystic fibrosis, the most recently promoted FA for a genetic condition. (Almost every source used is a PMID, medical journal article.)
  • 2a) Prose:
    • In good shape since Tony's copyedit, with some minor deterioration since his copy edit (easily corrected). For example, a change after Tony's copyedit resulted in: The cause of AS is unknown, but since it was properly defined several possible causes of AS have been investigated by researchers. Another example is: "AS is defined in section 299.80 of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV) by six main criteria. These criteria define AS as a condition in which there is: ... " There are other examples, which could be fixed.
      • Strike comment above, as text has changed significantly from copyedit. Sandy 18:24, 20 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • 2b) Comprehensive "covers the topic in its entirety, and does not neglect any major facts or details": this is a larger problem to overcome, but not insurmountable. This information is readily available, but is deleted when added. [29] Omissions occur in three main areas:
    • Audience: Because AS is a relatively new DSM condition, it is increasingly diagnosed in pediatric populations. It is defined by significant impairment in several realms of functioning. Yet, many editors working on the article have the POV of successful adults with AS, leaving out easily available and much needed information about children with AS who may be coping with difficulties or distress in academic, behavioral or social realms. Specific examples are the lack of information about treatment options, management therapies, diagnostic information, screening tools, school accommodations, and differential diagnosis (for example, what other conditions, such as Stereotypic movement disorder and other Autism spectrum disorders, can be confused with AS, and information helpful in distinguishing between them).
    • Causes: the article completely glosses over Causes, in spite of a growing body of information easily available. It doesn't mention twin studies and other genetic studies which demonstrate a genetic factor, it doesn't discuss the interplay between genetic and environmental factors, and it gives equal weight to all causes, even though a genetic underpinning enjoys wider medical consensus. It would not take more than a couple of paragraphs to summarize what is known and not known about causes. [30] The current version has two sentences.
    • Treatment/Diagnosis/Screening: there are numerous screening tools available, which are not mentioned. [31] Information about a differential diagnosis -- what other conditions to consider -- is not well covered. Treatment is almost entirely glossed over, although there are numerous options that should be discussed. Again, this is a result of an article focus on adult advocacy (acceptance of AS), neglecting significant issues confronting pediatric populations. The diagnosis section (in fact, much of the article) ignores the main diagnostic criteria in use in the USA (DSM), and goes into more detail on other sets of diagnostic criteria (Gillberg, Szatmari, etc.). By overlooking the DSM - the main diagnostic tool used in the USA - undue weight is given to other sets of criteria. It would not be difficult to give equal weight to all.
  • 2c) Factually accurate (references): the article is now thoroughly referenced from primary sources, but there are some problems with the sources used. Several of the sources are not independent, medically reliable, or peer-reviewed sources, even though references could be easily found in PubMed (NIH database of journal-published medical literature, identified by a PMID number).
    • A large part of the article is referenced to Attwood's book. While Tony Attwood is held in very high regard by families with AS, he is not widely published in medical journals (relative to his peers), and it is not clear if his book enjoys peer review. Attwood also has his own set of diagnostic criteria, so undue balance is given to that view, overlooking the DSM.
    • Myles has a PhD in special education and learning disabilities. Her CV indicates she is not a physician, and her books are self-published: Autism Asperger Publishing Co was founded by her husband. [32]
    • Kirby (of Romanowski and Kirby) is held in very high regard by families with AS, and is popular because of the OASIS website [33]. Nonetheless, according to book jacket information, Romanowski is an educator, and Kirby is the mother of a child with AS. It is not clear that their book enjoys medical peer review, although its foreward is written by recognized AS experts. [34]
    • There are other examples. On the other hand, the references show a paucity of information from the leading AS experts in the USA, from such places as Yale Child Study Center, Kennedy Krieger, and several of the California UCs, and well-regarded medical texts are never mentioned as resources (example [35] )
  • 2d) Neutral:
    • Discussed above. Some editors feel the article is too medically-oriented: I conclude it 1) has an adult with AS POV, overlooking parents of children with AS, and 2) ignores basic medical facts. Presenting accurate medical facts is not incompatible with presenting the view that AS need not be considered a "disorder": it is possible to cover both medical facts and advocacy for acceptance in one article. In spite of repeated requests, alternate text has not been added, even though it should not be hard to find and reference.
  • 2e) Stable:
    • The article has been submitted to FARC before, but similar problems have re-surfaced.
    • One editor has appealed outside of the Wiki community to have content removed. [36] (Although this message board professes 5000+ members, only 4 endorsed Rdos concerns, but the potential for disruption and future reverts exists.) Other original research (Wiki spam blocked, see rdos.net) has been deleted from Wiki [37] [38], but original research is an ongoing problem with the AS and other autism articles.
  • 3a) Lead:
    • Following Tony's copyedit, it was 3 paragraphs. It is now 2, and does not summarize the article or basic information about AS. Struck. Sandy 02:46, 21 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • 4) Images:
    • None of the images have clear Fair Use tags.
  • 5) Summary Style:
    • Several sections (for example, Causes) rely on daughter articles which are in dismal shape, with tags, and not referenced.

Forgot to add, 1) our best work: not well wiki-linked. For example, one encounters Attwood's name many times before finding his Wiki entry. Sandy 20:11, 17 July 2006 (UTC) Mostly wiki-linked. Sandy 02:46, 21 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Neutral. Many editors have brought this article very far in two weeks. In spite of this lengthy list, I believe the necessary work to retain FA status can be completed within the review period, if the editors commit to the work, avoiding original research and using referenced information. I also believe all POVs can be incorporated. I will re-evaluate my vote at the end of the FARC period. Sandy 20:01, 17 July 2006 (UTC) Remaining neutral. Sandy 17:09, 28 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Update: Referencing is greatly improved, and NPOV and stability concerns seem to have subsided. But, 2a) prose needs attention, 2b) comprehensive isn't quite there yet, and the lead needs to be massaged into a compelling summary of the article. Work is ongoing, and editors are aware of and working on these areas. Some prose examples:
    • Aspergers in children and adults assistance can consists of contraversial therapies that address the core symptoms of the disorder:
    • Some research is to seek information about symptoms to aid in the diagnostic process. Other research is to identify a cause, although much of this research is still done on isolated symptoms. A lot of research have exposed base differences in things such as brain structure. To what end is currently unknown; however, research is on-going.
    • The direct cause(s) of AS is unknown. Even though no consensus exists for the cause(s) of AS, it is widely accepted that AS has a hereditary factor.[42] It is suspected that multiple genes play a part in causing AS, since the number and severity of symptoms vary widely among individuals.[5] Studies regarding the mirror neurons in the inferior parietal cortex have revealed differences which may underlie certain cognitive anomolies such as some of those which AS exhibits.[43][44] ther possible causes being investigated include: a serotonin dysfunction and cerebellar dysfunction.[45][46] Simon Baron-Cohen proposes a model for autism based on his empathising-systemising (E-S) theory [47][48]
    • A few studies are more useful for determining efficiency of treatment with control group and pre-test and post-test designs and statistic evaluation of efficiency of treatment. These interventions typically are packaged to treat the entire syndrome (UCLA and TEACCH for instance). [55] Side effects are unintended effects. This topic has largely been ignored in the intervention literature on children. [55] Behaviorally based programs rarely include measures of the core symptoms of autism such as the ADI-R or CARS. [55] Sandy 18:24, 20 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Keep Despite the negetive critisms from Sandy. I feel like the article has done very well in the past 2 weeks, it has less original research and more referenced sources. It is has more then 700 edits which means that people really do care about the article. It is in many parts well written with the minor exceptions of the Causes section and the beginning. I will not re-evaluate my vote at the end of the FARC period.Natche24 23:51, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Keep Remove unless NPOV is restored. In the last month or so Sandy, RN and several other pro-medical, pro-disorder advocates have completely distroyed the once neutral article. In its current state it reads as a promotional essay for NIH, and should be unlisted from featured status and the entire article should be tagged as biased and POV. Sandy claims we can reinsert the opposing views, but history shows this not to be the case. Attempts to replace biased terms and neutralize unproved claims have systematically been reverted. The best option is probably to revert the entire article to the last FA status review, and then insert the new citations. Sandy above compares AS with Cystic Fibrosis (CF). This is really symptomatic of the problem here. While CF is a disease with known genetic factors, AS is not a disease, neither is the genetic background known. There is a large online autistic community today, and they oppose calling autism an disease, they oppose the disorder-view of NIH and they usually think that many of the problems are due to intolerance. Sandy claims we need to use NIH as a reference for any claim made in the article, but since NIH is clearly a part in this ongoing debate about autism, this is what causes the bias and POV. --Rdos 08:58, 18 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Just a note: that is not my claim. Please check the talk page. Thanks, Sandy 13:17, 18 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment The article is improving, but there still exists two sections that are both highly controversial and where NPOV seems very hard to introduce (research into causes and treatments). The rearrangement of the article into a clinical and non-clinical part seems appropriate, but the claims that there is no need to provide NPOV in causes because it is in the clinical part are worrying. I think eventually it would be possible to write a better (and neutral) summary of causes, especially since several neutral reviews have been posted to the talk page. --Rdos 11:01, 19 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Neutral Keep Very concerned that this article has become, effectively, the province of a single editor and their attitudes/opinions, frequently stated as established fact or policy, editing by bulldozer rather than concensus. As long as the article is subject to this degree of personal autocracy and bias I really do not see how it is worthy of representing the best efforts of the community of Wikipedia which, in my opinion, are always achieved by a genuine concensus of equals.

  • Comment What a difference a day makes...staggering improvement in the spirit and execution of consensus, kudos to all who managed to "bury the hatchet" in places other than one another's skulls. --Zeraeph 00:00, 19 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Sadly, that didn't include everybody, one person just had to keep stirring the pot as soon as I posted the above, see:http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Nandesuka&curid=3199574&diff=64570655&oldid=64351761 - still there is no reason to take that out on the sterling efforts made by other editors today, with 22 carat results, but I am very sad to see it --Zeraeph 00:56, 19 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I also think it would be faintly ridiculous to have a featured article so heavily loaded with invisible "directives" from a single editor.

  • Comment They are thinning, but they REALLY need to go --Zeraeph 00:00, 19 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with the solution suggested by Rdos above of reverting the article to it's last reviewed state and adding in new citations, and would be prepared to commit some time to so doing.--Zeraeph 09:24, 18 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comment I think we may have found a better solution - fingers crossed, reserving my final opinion a while
  • Comment I am was going to stay neutral, I had to really sit down and think about it, so let me explain why. The problem of one editor's control has now ceased in the context of this article, this is not the place to speculate why it has ceased, it is sufficient that it has ceased, and is very unlikely to resume before the review is completed, that's the end of that problem.

However, I may not care about FA status, but I do care about fairness and justice, seeing that this same editor, after constantly assuring other editors that they must do things her way to retain featured article status, and having seen the huge body of work these editors put in towards that end, only to note that same editor is too mean-spirited to give the a "keep" vote, I'm giving mine...because peeps, you EARNED IT. ;o)

Apart from that there have been some remarkable elements of melding and bonding into a serious effective team from other editors, at times so diverse in their view and approaches you wouldn't think it was possible for them to form a team, but they did. IMHO they deserve a Nobel Prize each for the team work they achieved against the odds. Unfortunately that isn't the primary point of a Wikipedia article.
The resulting article is excellent and I have a feeling the editing team will be hanging around a long time to come, tweaking and improving. But the fact is, I genuinely do not care about featured article status, I am not sure I fully agree with the criteria for it either. If it had not been for the problems associated with this article I doubt if I would ever have been aware of whather it had featured status or not, let alone read this page or posted on it, so, it seems, the RIGHT thing for me to do is revert to my personal default and not cast a vote one way or ther other --Zeraeph 00:00, 19 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Also feel it is essential that everybody involved in editing this article familiarise themselves with what Wikipedia:Reliable sources actually SAYS about identifying reliable sources, which advice seems to have been misunderstood throughout the recent editing, to the extent of excluding invaluable sources, diverse POV and information, and even disputing the appropriate inclusion of acknowledged experts in favor of the exclusive use of PMID, medical journal articles. --Zeraeph 11:16, 18 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Neutral. The article as it stands is quite good from a medical standpoint and with some minor tweaks, could very easily continue to be a Featured Article. However, the POV it pushes is not terribly balanced from a non-medical standpoint (that of the patients and general "community"). Inclusion of said counter-point may not be able to pass the rigorous sourcing requirements for any given FA, as peer-reviewed citations to that effect are slim (or non-existant)--the overwhelming majority of scientific focus is upon a message/ideal counter to the desire of said "community". Nevertheless, it would be an important incorporation, but I honestly have no idea how to balance it properly and maintain FA status' higher/est standards regarding medical articles' source requirements. --Keyne 12:07, 18 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • It can be done, Keyne: this job is doable. Let's discuss on talk page, where several good examples have already been proposed. Sandy 13:22, 18 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment I think you have just opened the real "Pandora's Box" here; the dilemma being, which should take priority, FA status or the integrity of the article? I would then go further and say that if FA status takes priority over the integrity of that article it doesn't warrant FA status anyway and shouldn't have it. I do, however, believe it is possible to cite sources for all POV in accord with Wikipedia:Reliable sources, which, in turn, should be enough for FA status.--Zeraeph 13:19, 18 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. Yes, I agree. What is the use of an article that passes FA on the bases of an medical article but fails to give readers a balanced with of AS? --Rdos 14:01, 18 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Revised opinion: Keep, pending continued rework prior to close of the FARC. The article is in much better (POV) condition now, and with a some work, it should be quite acceptable. --Keyne 22:56, 18 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep It meets every featured article criteria...NCurse work 17:48, 20 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. (I should declare that I've copy-edited the article and work with Sandy in this and the FAC rooms.) Although the article might benefit from further work and updating over the next few months, I feel that it's now well within the standards of FAs. Tony 11:33, 24 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • I will stay neutral on this one. The effort to return this article to FA status was remarkable: the prose has been largely cleaned up, the references are significantly improved, the lead is fixed, and POV concerns seem to have subsided. Involved editors have been vigilant about original research and the link farm. I am still concerned about the lack of comprehensiveness in Causes, Treatment, Diagnosis, and information relevant to a parent of a child with AS, but my concern is not enough to lead me to vote for removal. I hope editors will continue to guard against original research, and maintain the quality of the references, so we not see this article back on FAR again. Sandy 17:08, 28 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Removed status[edit]

Economy of Africa[edit]

Article is no longer a featured article

Review commentary[edit]

Messages left at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Business and Economics/BEF, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Countries, and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Business and Economics/Version 1.0 assesment/Featured content. Sandy 14:15, 23 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This article needs a good copy-edit to meet modern FA standards (2a). Tony 12:04, 23 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Does this topic really exist? Africa isn't socially unified, and the regional economies aren't integrated at all. Oil states in the north, failed states in the center, Euroized states in the south. Harmonica Wolfowitz 20:04, 31 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Good point. I wonder whether there's commonality in the post-colonial economy? Tony 03:02, 1 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

FARC commentary[edit]

Main FA criteria concern is writing quality (2a). Marskell 08:07, 8 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I started to copyedit this article (see diff) and found it rather tough going. I'd appreciate some feedback before I commit a significant amount of time and effort to this task: is my copyediting going to be adequate to rescue this article from FARC? Just to be clear, "No, your copyediting skills are not adequate to the task at hand" is a perfectly acceptable answer. I'd rather have slightly hurt feelings now than feel I wasted my time and energy later.
In response to Harmonica Wolfowitz' query, I'd say the topic exists, as much as Economy of Asia or Economy of the United States or even Economy of Scotland. The economies of Delaware and Arkansas, or Edinburgh and the Isle of Lewis, are vastly different, and yet we can meaningfully talk about the economy of the larger region. The fact that Africa has broadly identifiable economic "regions" just means that all of those regions should be addressed in a comprehensive article on the topic. Peirigill 23:45, 8 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It would be excellent if you continued your ce! I'm full up doing Economy of India at the moment. Tony 01:55, 9 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This looks just fine to me - it was one of the best FAs when it was featured, and IMO, it still is. Rebecca 05:59, 20 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Update I'm about halfway through with copyediting, in part because it's difficult, and in part because I haven't logged enough hours yet. The article did need copyediting, but I think I'm resolving the main prose issues. I'm still concerned about the length and detail of the TOC, which reflects organizational problems with the article. I suspect that a few of these subsections can be consolidated. Peirigill 19:37, 21 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You're doing a great job on the copy edit, so I don't want you to feel blindsided when I vote to Remove if there is not a single inline cite in the entire article. (Contrast with Economy of India.) Sandy 01:33, 22 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove. Better written thanks to Peirigill's magic wand, but Sandy's right: no inline citations, no FA status. It's particularly important for a technical article such as this to ground the facts in authoritative references. In addition, I'm concerned at superficial treatment of a number of key aspects of the topic. For example: "Central banks and currencies"—Two short sentences with red links, and a huge list of central banks. Um ... what's the relationship between the central banks and their governments? Who sets interest rates? How are appointments made to the boards? I've carpet-bombed about eight of the contributors to ask for their input. Tony 04:16, 26 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. I disagree that more detail is needed, this article has to be kept quite general as it is such a massive subject. It is already quite lengthy, and more depth would be better placed in subpages. Peirigill has done some great work copy editting this, and that concern has for the most part been addressed. The other real issue is the lack of citations. I am the primary author of most the text, and some time soon I will go through my sources and add some more specific references. - SimonP 05:06, 26 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove (Reluctant). It's been 18 days in FARC, over a month in FAR, and still no inline citations. The work done has been impressive, but FAs must have inline citations. Sandy 05:36, 26 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment — Since I'm still working on the prose issues, and the primary editor has just promised to address the citation problem, I'd like to petition for more time before final consensus is determined. Thanks! Peirigill 09:02, 26 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • Oh, by the way, I've just added the first three in-line citations. (Hey, it's a start!) I'm counting on SimonP to do the lion's share of this, of course. SimonP, I'm cutting out and reorganizing whole paragraphs and sections. Please feel free to reorganize or restore as you see fit. Peirigill 11:25, 26 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
OK! But inline cites need to start appearing in quantity soon. Marskell 22:08, 26 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'm willing to wait (not too much longer though), because it is such a good article, it's a shame to delist it for lack of referencing. Sandy 01:30, 27 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Further comment about the level of detail. Simon, "quite general" is different from "summary style". Generality is not a good objective; we need specific, precise details in summary style. In other words, we need a few key facts about central banks under that heading, not just a couple of red-link sentences and a huge list that mostly comprises red links to central banks. The role of central banks has changed significantly in many countries over the past few decades: where do African central banks stand: two or three sentences would be adequate, informing our readers, say, that "Of the ?38 CBs, ?nine are run on Western lines, with independent appointments to boards and the responsibility for setting interest-rates without interference from politicians. The remaining CBs have a restricted role in administering what is, in effect, the will of their political masters." Something like that?
This relates to a broader problem that I have with the article: it purports to cover an economy (that of Africa), but contains almost no mechanistic information. The terms micro- and macro-economic policy/practice are absent. I'm not an economist, but my reading of the daily newspaper has given me enough general knowledge to want to know a basic summary sketch of the CB roles. And the CFA franc, largely administered by Paris, is an interesting experiment in post-colonial control: has it been good for their economies? Has it effectively linked them? In these respects, the article is superficial, and fails to provide our readers with valuable information. Perhaps the CIA World Factbook (quite good, despite its name), would provide a quick and easy source for fixing such gaps. Another gap is the absence of information about Africa's economic prospects—at least a summary is required at the end, of the main issues that the continent, and the rest of the world, will need to address if Africa is to pull out of its current crises of post-colonial mismanagement, global heating and its economic ramifications, the patently unfair international rules on trade, and the impact of disease. Where are these issues tied together in summary style.
Against this, there's rather too much information on dependency theory and its competing siblings; and the sections on language and culture, and on foreign aid and debt relief, might be merged and trimmed. Why, for example, tell us that "An average African faced annual inflation of over 60% from 1990 until 2002" if the very next sentence admits that "This number is somewhat misleading as much of the inflation is accounted for by only a few countries"?
I want this to remain an FA, but I'm afraid that it's not yet of FA standard in terms of 1b (comprehensiveness), specifically, the control of the level of detail. Where are the contributors I messaged yesterday? Tony 04:05, 27 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
In response to a few of Tony's points:
  • "the sections on language and culture... might be merged and trimmed." Um, Tony, I merged and trimmed those sections a day before you posted. ???? I'll look at doing the same for the foreign aid and debt relief sections.

OK, sorry, I didn't mean to impose a burden on you, Perigill. I was addressing the contributors, wherever they are. Perhaps moving the CB list into a daughter article might do the trick WRT length?

No burden... just a little confused. Peirigill 09:15, 28 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • "The terms micro- and macro-economic policy/practice are absent." Does that matter? It seems to me those topics are covered in the article.

I do think it's a gap. I suppose if none of the original contributors can be bothered to address the issue, one might turn a blind eye to it for now; I think that economy-of-country articles do need to cover basic technicalities such as these.

  • The table of central banks appears to be a stumbling block. Why not just create a new page called Central banks and currencies of Africa, remove the table from the Economy of Africa article entirely, and include the link to the new list of banks in the "See also" section? The article discusses how African governments rely on non-African banks, and why banks in Africa have struggled, so removing the table won't affect comprehensiveness. A detailed discussion of African banking policies seems a little "micro" for this article; I don't think it's essential here, given the broad scope of the topic.

Good idea.

  • "Another gap is the absence of information about Africa's economic prospects—at least a summary...of the main issues that the continent, and the rest of the world, will need to address if Africa is to pull out of its current crises." Talking about Africa's prospects sounds like a violation of not predicting the future. The article devotes a large amount of time to this issues of poverty and the factors (such as corruption, geographical barriers, disease, unfavorable foreign trade policy, etc.) that contibute to or perpetuate the cycle of poverty. I really think this concern is already adequately addressed. Peirigill 01:02, 28 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

OK. Tony 02:47, 28 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comment - When adding web references, it's important to note the date the page was accessed to help recover the reference if the link goes dead. An easy way to do this is with {{cite web}}. I've converted one such reference here as an example. Pagrashtak 15:32, 29 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The Giver[edit]

Article is no longer a featured article

Review commentary[edit]

Messages left at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Books and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Novels/Worklist. Sandy 16:25, 23 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Message left at Wikipedia:WikiProject Novels/GeneralForum. Sandy 15:10, 27 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

In the FAC discussion a year ago, some strong objections were raised (one of them mine). Checking, I see that nobody replied to the objections, and no one's done anything much about them either. The article had received three support comments, which I would without offense characterize as rather thin--they're short, with unspecific reasons to support and most of their space spent on minor objections. After Jun-Dai and I posted long Oppose comments with plenty of meat in them, nobody else supported. Both the Opposes basically say the article needs more cultural context, is poorly structured, and has unencyclopedic stuff in it . "... it should at least provide some scope in the opening passage with regards to the book's significance... We don't need a long overview of the plot in an encyclopedia... Lack of concision is the most critical problem. All of the FAs on books are more concise... a section with lesson plans is totally redundant (Wikipedia is not a how-to guide) ... no excuse for this kind of aggressive POV in an FA." Please take a look, there's more. I'm surprised Raul featured the article based on that discussion, I hadn't noticed he did. I stand by my FAC objections, and would add today that the weak structure and lack of context seem linked to the weakness of the section called "Major themes": ok, I haven't read The Giver, but considering the rest of the article, how can color, music and "a motif of nudity" possibly be its major themes? It's ... unreasonable. The nominator and — I assume — main author, Anville, has told me he doesn't have time to work on it at present and encouraged me to take it here for more eyeballs.[39], [40], [41], [42] The criteria I invoke are 1 and 2b: I don't think it exemplifies our best work, or is comprehensive. It lacks major aspects, notably cultural context: see especially Jun-Dai's analysis and comparison with other literary FAs. Bishonen | talk 15:53, 23 July 2006 (UTC).[reply]

  • I'm inclined to agree with the nominator. The article is certainly well written on the clause level, but a shift in emphasis from plot details and—ahem—the trivial, tenuous section on school lessons, would be welcome. A deeper cultural context, e.g., in the "Themes" section, which is pretty weak, might make this FA material. Have the contributors read Wikipedia:Manual of Style (writing about fiction)? Tony 12:24, 24 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • I had a look at it and am a bit surprised at the strong criticisms. This seems like a truly excellent article. It is as sensitive as possible without becoming POV, and very well written. The material about how the book has been used in schools is slightly tangential but is not a how-to guide (no one could use it for that purpose; at least I couldn't). I found it to be interesting info about how this YA book is actually used in the educational system where it evidently has such a strong niche. Bear in mind that much of the notability of the book relates to its popularity as a school text, rather than to its place in a canon of high literature, or even in a science fiction canon. It's clear that the underlying themes are to do with the repression of emotion, the futility of attempting to avoid, or protect people from, potentially painful experience, etc., and that the "themes" of colour, nudity, etc., all fit with this. Maybe this aspect could be changed just slightly so that these are described as "motifs", or something, but it did not throw me at all, so I left it alone for now. I'm surprised that there is no comparison with Brave New World, but of course it would have to be attributed rather than original research. Otherwise, I did a few minor copyedits, but couldn't see any need for major changes. Metamagician3000 08:12, 29 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Agree with nominator. After going through it I feel there are parts that are poorly written. The Major Themes section is unsourced and smells of original research. Other parts of the article are unsourced as well. There seems to be a dubious source for the 'post-modern' sentence (more about that is on the article's talk page). The article goes on many lengthy tangents that need to be trimmed extensively or removed. Examples:

  • The Allen Say story in parenthesis. Distracting and only loosely relevant.
  • "City Reads" paragraph. Do we really need to list each city?
  • The "For instance, 50 children . . . this profession is looked down upon in the book" sentence. Isn't the "logical lapses" quote that follows sufficient?
  • The Science and Mathematics section. It reads like a math lesson.
  • The long paragraph about the book's controversy in Blue Springs, Missouri. Why is so much devoted to one specific instance of controversy?

Article needs to be restructured and rearranged. For example, the "Allusions/references from other works" section is almost useless, and its parts should be moved elsewhere. The "Ambiguity" section should be moved to the end of the Plot summary section or around there. The Classroom use section can probably be consolidated into one succinct section after all the fat is trimmed. There are too many parenthetical side comments throughout the article. Punctured Bicycle 01:18, 26 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

FARC commentary[edit]

Main FA criteria concerns are comprehensiveness (2b), structure and focus (5). Marskell 16:05, 9 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove per my comments above. Punctured Bicycle 01:12, 26 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove. Well, this has been kicking around so long I thought I'd review it myself. Lack of concision is indeed the biggest problem. If we are pointed down in an article six times, there's a good chance sections need to be merged for clarity. The plot summary is too long and yet it doesn't actually detail the ending so that we can understand the section on ambiguity (which arrives well after). The themes section is also off-target—motifs, not themes are described. I wouldn't call the lesson plans totally out of place as this appears to be a major work on syllabi, but they should be described much more briefly. Finally, there's OR phrasing here ("Of course, Lowry's futuristic setting means that this particular young adult book can only address "contemporary topics" in an allegorical fashion, a point which raises questions of its own"). Some work obviously went in to this one and if someone who has read it were to reengage the article it can surely be brought back up. The refs are there to do it (though they need formatting). Marskell 12:08, 31 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove certainly not "compelling or brilliant"; I had to force myself, on the third try, to plod through it. Agree with Marskell. Sandy 12:21, 31 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thunderball[edit]

Article is no longer a featured article

Review commentary[edit]

Messages left at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Novels/Worklist, Wikipedia:WikiProject Novels/GeneralForum, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Novels, and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Films. Sandy 23:05, 26 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This article seems to be a jack of all trades, and yet a master of none. For starters, both of the main sections of the novel do not satisfy criterion 2b. The novel section, the best of the two, does not provide much of a commentary of the critical reception of the novel, and the legacy of it, but that's not my main niggle. The film section is really, really lacking. It starts off with a fairly comprehensive section on the production, though it probably should be split up a little. The Plot is fine, but the Cast section is horrible, should be looking more like that of Casablanca (film), and crew is not required. The soundtrack should have it's own article, and for some reason, there's a trivia section in a FA. Also, whilst in the header of this section there is detail about the financial success of the film, there is nothing about the reception from fans and from critics. There is also no info about any Home Video release of the film.

In my opinion, the Film section should be split from the rest of the article, with what's left behind constituting a reasonable FA (apart from what I mentioned), but the film section in no way conforms with the manual of style set about by other film articles. ....(Complain)(Let us to it pell-mell) 05:05, 26 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with the above totally. The film should be separated from the novel and have their own articles, as well as the soundtrack. It tries to be all things to all people, so is totally unfocused. A consensus of editors should come to a decision and execute the above plan of action. Also there is no info about its reception from fans and critics. Night of the Living Dead, as well as Casablanca (film), are examples of what this article should look like. The novel also lacks an infobox, and does not detail what inspired Ian Fleming in writing this novel, and how long it tokk him, and so on. LuciferMorgan 14:21, 26 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Split - another jack of all trades article. Split into a good Novel article and a goods Film article. They are substantially different works using very different mediums. Both have significance. Not helped by the fact that that a unified approach is confused by the second film treatment having a different title, "Never say, never again". The Novel article should stand on its own with reference to other addaptations. Two film articles should exist with comparison sections to discuss the adaptation differences. :: Kevinalewis : (Talk Page)/(Desk) 07:50, 27 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Split - as per User:Kevinalewis. Your one true god is David P. A. Hunter, esq. III Talk to me! 23:58, 27 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Split per User:Kevinalewis, as they are two different works, despite the novel's "origins" as a film vehicle. ♥ Her Pegship♥ 04:48, 28 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Comment Well, the article has been split, and I think what exists is fine as an FA, but the Film article is a long way away. ....(Complain)(Let us to it pell-mell) 07:30, 28 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. I still object to the splitting of any of the Bond film/novel articles (and yes I'm speaking as a major contributor to them). However now that they've been split I see nothing wrong with the two halves. My questions are -- 1. which article retains the FA status or does the fact two articles have now been created disqualify it from retaining FA status and 2. If this was such a big concern to people, how did the Thunderball film/book article receive FA status in the first place? 23skidoo 21:10, 30 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

FARC commentary[edit]

Main FA criteria concerns comprehensiveness (2b) and focus (5). Note that the article has been split into components. Marskell 16:51, 13 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Better since the split, but not well referenced, still needs work. Sandy 01:40, 22 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. The split made the article better. Thunderball is clearly a better article than Thunderball (film), so it is the only article of the two that should remain a FA. It does however need more references. --Maitch 10:50, 27 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: It should probably be retitled Thunderball (book) and the old source become a disambig. See Thirteen Days, for instance. How drastic was the makeover? I almost wonder if it should go back to FAC. Marskell 18:33, 27 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • I agree with the proposed retitling and the creation of a disambig. I think that the majority of people are looking for the film, so it seems wrong that it goes straight to the book. --Maitch 10:55, 28 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • I also think the movie is likely to be the more popular search, and that Thunderball should be the disambig. Also, Remove. The article on the book can probably go back on FAC with a little more work. Andrew Levine 13:11, 28 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove: More than two weeks in FARC, still not thoroughly cited. For example, the Bond Battle Royale Section details legal action, which should be amply cited. Sandy 13:55, 29 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove as per Sandy. And it's disappointing to see a treadmill-sentence right at the top: "The novel was first published on 27 March 1961 and stands, technically, as the first novelisation of a James Bond screenplay, even though at the time it was written and published, no such film had yet been produced." Tony 02:16, 31 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Post-removal comment from intrested administrator[edit]

I would like to state on the record that I believe this article would not have been removed from Featured Article status had the Wikipedia not insisted on the article being split in the first place. I protest the split and its removal in the strongest possible terms and am strongly considering resigning as an administrator and as a Wikipedia contributor due to this (and other unrelated) issue. 23skidoo 14:01, 1 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The Beatles[edit]

Article is no longer a featured article

Review commentary[edit]

Messages left at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject The Beatles, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Albums, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Music, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Biography, and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Songs. Sandy 15:17, 27 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This article was promoted over two years ago, see original FA. The current version is vastly different and in my opinion fails criterions 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. I will highlight a few major things:

  • Poorly sourced; citations are slim.
  • The Beatles had an immense impact on popular music. This isn't discussed anywhere except in the lead (The Beatles' influence on popular culture, an unsourced article, is linked to in passing). If the subject is too broad to be contained in the main article, then it should be succinctly summarized in its own section with a link to a child article (i.e. summary style).
  • The influences section is an overly long list. And it probably shouldn't be isolated in its own section, but rather assimilated into the section(s) that describe their music. It also has random historical anecdotes like when Bob Dylan introduced them to pot.
  • The films section is likewise overly long.
  • The current structuring is disjointed and does not seem the most logical.
  • Overall the writing quality is poor, which can be expected from a popular subject that gets 500 edits per month.
  • Fair use images and sound clips don't have rationales. Punctured Bicycle 14:34, 27 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The problems with this article in my opinion all stem from what should be Wikipedia's strength, and it's your penultimate point: this is a very popular article and it attracts a lot of edits. Most of the edits are of low quality and are of the "mention everything and the kitchen sink" variety. Unfortunately when WP:BEATLES was created we inherited an article that was already in very bad shape, so all we've been able to do so far is watch it judiciously and at least try to prevent it getting any worse.

I agree that in it's current state the article is at best borderline. It probably deserves to be delisted. However, I think that would be a terrible shame for Wikipedia (and, less importantly) the WikiProject. Are we really willing to defeature one of our top articles? I would hope not. No, much better would be to work to bring it up to the modern standards for Featured Articles. We have plenty of eager helpers at WP:BEATLES (and I have taken an article through FAC before) but the "troops" will need expert help to get it into the shape it should be in. I ask then that instead of considering delisting we develop a plan to make it one of the best FAs on Wikipedia.

While we're at it, the nomination mentions The Beatles' influence on popular culture. We have another fork at History of The Beatles. We need to merge these pieces back together or at least refork. We have started planning this at Wikipedia:WikiProject The Beatles/The Beatles history and discussing the problems of the forks and cruft in The Beatles at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject The Beatles/The Beatles history.

If we could get a plan together either here or at a WikiProject page, and if we could have some volunteers who know how to write properly referenced brilliant prose, how to structure articles and so on, I or one of my colleagues can send out a bulletin to project members and get working. --kingboyk 16:14, 27 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

As long as the members of the WikiProject are willing to lend their time and work on the suggestions given in this review the article will likely remain featured. After all, one of the main objective of FAR is to uphold and maintain the quality of featured articles. I will read the article before the end of the week and present some suggestions. Joelito (talk) 16:44, 27 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

As a member/participant of The Beatles WikiProject I would welcome the views of a third party indicating where the article needs improving. Sometimes it is all the usual contributors can do to ensure that grammer and spelling of edits are correct and sources cited, let alone reviewing whether it is germaine to the article/section. A concise review will likely identify areas which need addressing. With any luck work can be started before said sections are edited out of recognition.LessHeard vanU 20:25, 27 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Punctured Bicycle has given a correct overview of the article, and I echo his opinions. As for being defeatured, although we shouldn't be discussing this right now, I don't think it would be shame just because it is "popular" - featured articles are meant to showcase wikipedia's best written articles, not what is the most popular. Popularity is irrelevant - the article's quality is the issue. I can't see it being defeatured though while on the subject, because a ton of Beatles fans'll most likely object, even if the problems aren't addressed. LuciferMorgan 18:34, 27 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That's a bit harsh. If you look at our assessment of the article at the top of the page you'll see we've acknowledged it isn't up to scratch. This article's deterioration is Wikipedia's problem - if it had been locked and nobody was allowed to edit it we wouldn't be having the discussion now. If you think it's not a problem for the wiki system that a popular FA can be allowed to get into this state, and it's not a problem for the enyclopedia to have a less than top quality article on The Beatles, I'll have to disagree with you I'm afraid.
All that said, my point wasn't that it shouldn't be delisted because it's popular. By all means delist it if it doesn't improve. My point is that it would be preferable to bring it up to scratch. I'm unable and unwilling to do it by myself, but I'm happy to help with the work or coordination. --kingboyk 19:07, 27 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It has (possibly) deteriorated from its FA status because of its popularity, therefore it seems sensible to ensure it maintains a standard which reflects well upon Wikipedia. The article will continue to attract readers (and therefore editors) whether it keeps its status or not, but if it is of a FA standard it will encourage contributions to a similar level. In this way the popularity of the subject matter certainly does have a bearing on keeping its FA classification.LessHeard vanU 21:26, 27 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Some of us here might be able to pitch in and help: since there are different WikiProjects, can you just give us a talk page where you all are coordinating the work, and we can move conversations about ongoing work to there? Are you using the article talk page, or a WikiProject talk page? It's very exciting to find a group actually willing to work on improving an article :-) Sandy 23:21, 27 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

We have the page I mentioned above Wikipedia:WikiProject The Beatles/The Beatles history; we could coordinate work there, or we can start a new one. As long as it's a subpage of Wikipedia:WikiProject The Beatles it doesn't really matter where it is :) Wikipedia:WikiProject The Beatles/The Beatles or something like that would be fine. Thanks everyone for their feedback so far and in particular to Tony for diving in and doing some editing. --kingboyk 21:47, 28 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with what you said LessHeard vanU - I think you misinterpreted what I was saying though. Long ago it met FA criteria, but it hasn't kept up to FA standards. I didn't say it should be delisted because its popular, but rather it isn't a good reason to keep it as FA based on popularity. My point was that an article's quality is what should keep it as FA, and that popularity is an irrelevant issue.

Indeed, it is in wikipedia's best interests to have such a popular article as FA, but as long as it actually reaches the required FA criteria in the first place like other less popular FA articles have to also strive towards. In other words, just because its the Beatles it doesn't mean FA criteria is more flexible. LuciferMorgan 02:30, 28 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with your points, LuciferMorgan, as I feel that the article is not of the same standard as when it became a FA. I am commenting that maintaining the standard of a "popular" subject is more difficult, given the variety and volume of subsequent contributions, as opposed to a perhaps more esoteric article. A review would be an opportunity to address areas where the "quality control" has not been as rigorously applied as may have been desirable. I also maintain that keeping popular subjects to such standards, whilst hard work, is perhaps more beneficial to Wikipedia owing to the volume of hits such subjects creates. I agree that the standard should be the same as everyone, but suggesting that it is recognised some articles are harder to maintain to that standard.LessHeard vanU 21:58, 28 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • I've copy-edited the long lead to kick-start the process—only about 40 changes. Who else will help? It's not poorly written, and is excellent in some respects. Should it be an upper-case "T" in all instances of "The Beatles"? Tony 08:06, 28 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Please see the archived talk pages regarding capitalising the "t" of The in "The Beatles". To summarise, we took the advice of third party grammarians on Wikipedia who concluded that the current format is correct, and it is Project Policy (as is the use of British English, generally).LessHeard vanU 21:33, 28 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think a copy edit for old times sake and a lot more inline citations will bring it up to scratch. A small number (emphasis on small) of paragraphs are stubby though - whether to leave them alone, combine them with other paragraphs, are expand them, its up to everyone to decide. The influences section - can influences be instead mentioned as each album is cited and briefly critiqued throughout the group's career? The influences section is something reviewers will highlight if they think it isnt up to FA - another course of action would be to keep the section but instead remove the bullet points, give it a good copy edit, and tie together the disjointed paragraphs in the section and discuss how the band's musical endeavours changed over time, while citing some Beatles music experts with their comments here and there. LuciferMorgan 10:00, 28 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Maybe some of the "random historical anecdotes" belong on the undernourished Beatles History page. As for the influence section being too long, I doubt that's possible.--Crestville 09:11, 30 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Status? Needs more citations and Summary style, move to FARC. Sandy 20:59, 13 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I have to agree. But let's hope this one is saved in FARC. Tony 13:02, 14 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

FARC commentary[edit]

Main FA criteria concerns are insufficient citations (2c), length and summary style (5), images (4), and writing quality (2a). Marskell 19:45, 14 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove (if shortcomings aren't addressed) The article basically needs more inline citations (2c). Also, my views on the influences section have fallen on deaf ears. I think it would be much more interesting to document (with appropriate inline citations) what the musical influences of the Beatles were and how they changed from their earlier years to their later years, as opposed to the bullet point format which creates disjointed prose and breaks up the overall flow of the article (2a). Also, the bullet point style isn't encyclopaedic (not in my opinion anyway - Wikipedians please note this is just my personal opinion). LuciferMorgan 23:05, 14 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove The fact that this article is completely different than the one promoted two years ago is reason enough for it to have to go through the FAC process again. Aside from some copyeditting, the problems outlined above have not been addressed adequately since the article was nominated here: limited citations for such a big topic, poor structure/organization/layout, not comprehensive (their influence needs to be discussed), etc. Punctured Bicycle 23:31, 14 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove per all of the above, and still lacking thorough inline citations. (I can't believe I'm voting against the Beatles :-( Sandy 01:33, 27 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Status. I don't want to remove something where there's been fifty edits in three days (much was reversion, but still!). Is anyone working on this? Marskell 21:47, 28 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove. Sad to say there hasn't been much improvement in the article, and most of the recent edits were reversions or tinkering rather than adding references or brilliant prose. The article clearly isn't up to modern FA standards. It might be unusual for a member of the associated WikiProject to support removal, but fair's fair and there's been plenty of time given for the article to be improved. --kingboyk 09:54, 29 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Pet skunk[edit]

Article is no longer a featured article

Review commentary[edit]

Message left at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mammals. Sandy 23:09, 26 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This article deals exclusively with pet skunks in the USA. While the lead does specify that the animals are native to the Americas, there is no mention whatsoever about the practice of keeping these animals as pets in other countries round the world. The "Legality" section is especially poor, as it has a long list of American states and their respective legal stances... but makes no mention of how legal keeping skunks is anywhere else in the world! This is en.wikipedia.org (English-speaking world), not usa.wikipedia.org. The article should be re-written to include a WORLD-WIDE view, or it should be de-listed as a featured article. I hope the former - because it is an interesting article, but that will take someone writing who knows about the topic, and is able to find suitable references. Otherwise... de-list. EuroSong talk 12:24, 26 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I have several issues with this article.

  1. At no point does it state what species of animal is being kept as a pet. Presumably it's a striped skunk, but are hooded, spotted, or hognosed skunks also kept? Does the same information apply? This situation needs to be addressed in the first paragraph.
  2. I tend to not oppose articles on the basis of red links, but the species of skunk that is being kept as a pet (presumably the striped skunk, Mephitis mephitis) doesn't even have an article. The same applies to the genus Mephitis. The previous blue link exists because someone set up a redirect to the family page (and it needs to be speedy-deleted). The skunk pages seem to either receive a lot of attention (Pet skunk and skunk) or are in really bad shape (striped skunk and hooded skunk). Striped skunks are among the most frequently encountered animal in the Eastern US and it's quite a gap in our coverage to not have an article.
  3. I have to assume the statement "Some veterinarians say they are in the hamster family and treat them as such." is a joke added in by a vandal, but it may be an indication that the page has been neglected.
  4. The de-scenting process should be dealt with at the beginning of the article. I had a hard time buying the line: "The amusing thing about baby skunks, however, is as they make their move, they will be looking you straight in the eyes with their two black eyes, while aiming, with tail raised high, their potent "weapon" directly at your eyes simultaneously." Like many of our pet articles it begins to stray pretty close to both how-to and POV.
  5. What are the natural social behaviors of this species and how do they relate to its domestication?
  6. The article discusses the process of owning a skunk in Canada and then says: "Black-and-white skunks are illegal in Canada." Aren't most skunks (of most species) black and white? Is this saying that only brown, white, or other color morphs are allowed? Such color morphs should be discussed earlier in the article. Why are black and whites illegal?

Overall, I'd have to vote to de-list. --Aranae 02:39, 27 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

When I saw this nomination, my first inclination was that it was nominated for reasons that should be easy enough to fix ourselves. I spent time looking for the original author, who apparently is no longer on Wikipedia. I also spent time yesterday in this article cleaning up the references per WP:FN, and I was troubled by what I found in the article. My impression, based on the very high number of external jumps, was that this is an article written around a link farm, and there are a number of statements that don't appear to be properly referenced. I've done what I can, but this article needs expert help, and its problems may be deeper than appears from the nomination. Sandy 14:55, 27 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • I'd also vote to delist. This appears to have been made an FA at a time before WP:NOT stated that Wikipedia should not contain "how-to"s. Much of this article feels like a guide to skunk ownership, which would more suitable for Wikibooks. Following the external links, a fair amount of information seems to come from self-published personal websites, unacceptable per Wikipedia:Reliable Sources. This leads to a few pro-pet pov issues. Lines like "Skunks tend to be very friendly, loving, entertaining and playful. However, they can also be stubborn and headstrong." are iffy; we should probably aim to be more scientific in describing the behavior of an animal. Also, under politics, no consideration is given to groups that oppose the ownership of non-domesticated animals for ethical reasons, which is a relatively serious omission. In any case, once all the how-to stuff is stripped out, it will be worth considering whether what's left should be merged with skunk -- most other pet animals have their pet related information adressed as a part of the main article. See also: cat, dog, rabbit, mouse and ferret, to name a few. -- (Lee)Bailey(talk) 13:16, 28 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • Bailey has explained better some of what I found in the article. I'm not sure it's not an AfD, with some salvageable content that could be merged to skunk. Sandy 13:35, 28 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
      • I oppose the idea of a merge. Of the examples you give, dog and cat already pertain to the domestic variety so they don't apply. Rabbit isn't merged, it has a separate page for domestic variety that is only summarized in the main article. Same for mouse and fancy mouse. Ferret is the only fairly good example of domesticated information contained within the page for the species and it's long enough that it really should be separated into a new article. Check out guinea pig, hamster, and chinchilla. They're all a mess. Articles about pets tend to get really long, attract how-to and POV editing, and make it frustrating for people who want to read (or write) articles about about the biology of the animal. I think there are only rare cases where articles about the pets should be merged with the wild variety. Secondly, I am not convinced that anything but the striped skunk, Mephitis mephits is kept as a pet. I know the pet skunk article doesn't pertain to Javan Stink Badger or Channel Islands Spotted Skunk. Why would we merge an article about pet striped skunks into the article for its family? Why would information on the care of domestic dogs be found in the Canidae page (along with a list of foxes and maned wolves) or information on care of cats in the Felidae page? If it should be merged (it shouldn't), it should be merged into the nonexistent page for Mephitis mephitis. --Aranae 18:07, 28 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • I don't think this article should be merged, but it does really need a cleanup; it fails the criteria as it stands.--Peta 00:14, 4 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Most if not all of the images are problematic. Most of them are tagged as public domain when they are "used by permission of ..." Some of them have accompanying emails where the author gives permission, but 'public domain' is not indicated anywhere. With permission does not equal public domain. Its unclear whether the permission given extends to third parties (if it didn't, they would need to be deleted immediately). The newspaper image is "used by permission" of Jane Bone, but as noted on its talk page, Jane Bone does not own the rights to the image. If by default we treat all the images as fair use, then many can be removed on the grounds that they are used for decorative purposes and that it is possible to create free alternatives. Punctured Bicycle 18:24, 13 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

FARC commentary[edit]

Main FA criteria concerns are a POV US perspective (2d), focus (5), and comprehensiveness (2b). Marskell 16:55, 13 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove. No one is working on it, too many problems. Sandy 22:28, 15 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove fails all criteria of a FA.--Peta 01:57, 16 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove Not FA quality. Punctured Bicycle 22:06, 18 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Coronation Street[edit]

Article is no longer a featured article

Review commentary[edit]

Messages left at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject British TV shows and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Television. Sandy 17:26, 24 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

A massive "list of characters" makes up the bulk of this article, should really be described in prose. There is a significant "trivia" section, which should be merged into the body of the article if the trivia is truly relevant. far too many external links. no inline citations at all (and statements like "In some ways Coronation Street has charted the changes in public attitudes towards religion, politics, community, family breakdown, the gentrification of working class areas" really need inline cites). the lead fails to summarize the body of the article. doesnt seem comprehensive; for instance there is no reference to critical discussion and evaluation of the show over the years (of which there has been plenty). Zzzzz 17:00, 24 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. The excessive bullet point format makes the article stubby, a violation of criterion 2. a. of "What is a featured article?". I think it fails criteria 1. and 5. also. It's also recommended that on wikipedia that articles talk from an out-of-universe perspective, which in many areas I think it doesn't. There are no inline citations either to support certain opinions made. This article needs a MAJOR overhaul in addressing its shortcomings. LuciferMorgan 21:12, 24 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It's pretty bad: the prose is poor and it's seriously under-referenced. Little was done until I copy-edited the lead five minutes ago. This one's heading towards FARC. Does anyone care out there? Tony 07:38, 4 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

FARC commentary[edit]

Main FA criteria concerns are inline citations (2c), comprehensiveness (2b), and focus (5). Marskell 06:19, 12 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'd like to add prose (2a), as I flagged above. Tony 12:59, 14 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Remove If its shortcomings aren't addressed (which I outlined in the FAR), then I feel it should have its FA status removed. Tony worked on the lead some time ago in a good faith effort in the hope it provoked other editors interested in the article to improve its worth, but sadly the effort fell on deaf ears. LuciferMorgan 06:34, 14 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove. Mostly unreferenced, very listy, prose problems, nothing is happening to improve the article. Sandy 01:38, 22 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Nineteen Eighty-Four (TV programme)[edit]

Article is no longer a featured article

Review commentary[edit]

Message left at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject British TV shows. Sandy 02:26, 24 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

In my opinion, this article fails to meet criteria 2. (c) which a featured article should meet, which is as follows;

  • "factually accurate" includes supporting of facts with specific evidence and external citations (see Wikipedia:Verifiability); these include a "References" section where the references are set out, complemented where appropriate by inline citations (see Wikipedia:Citing sources). For articles with footnotes or endnotes, the meta:cite format is strongly encouraged.

Within the actual article, there particularly are no inline citations to compliment it, which I feel should be thoroughly addressed. LuciferMorgan 00:54, 24 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Just wanted to say that, despite being mainly responsible for the page, I support its removal as an FA. It was written some time ago now, when I was much newer to Wikipedia and not so adept at referencing my contributions, and when the FA standard was lower. I'm afraid I lack the time currently to try and save it as an FA, but hopefully at some point I will go back over it, fully cite it and try and re-nominate it. Angmering 20:25, 25 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Note - I'd like to say that this review is to get a consensus of editors as to how to improve the article, not whether to remove it, as its not an FARC yet (if ever). I welcome Angmering's brutal honesty though, it's real commendable. LuciferMorgan 23:53, 25 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Since I nominated this article for FA review, not one edit has been made to improve it. I'm keeping an eye on the situation, though if no edits have been made once the two week period is up (I nominated it on 23rd July) then it should be possibly moved to FA removal candidates. LuciferMorgan 14:09, 2 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

FARC commentary[edit]

Main FA criteria concern is 2c. Joelito (talk) 16:00, 11 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comment. Sorry Lucifer that no one got around to work or comment on this at all—perhaps a victim of our over-loaded FAR page. Obviously, it does fail 2c (inline citations) but its not entirely irretrievable. The coverage of background, production, broadcasting, and reaction seems sound. The most obvious gap, however, is that there is no description of what actually occurs in the play. "Subversive nature and horrific content" is quite intriguing, but it's never laid out what happens exactly except for a couple of examples in the reaction section and elsewhere. Marskell 16:16, 11 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. It's ok that nobody got around to working on it (I haven't had the time really), and I would agree with your comments that it isn't irretrievable. The background, production, broadcasting, and reaction, is sound (may need some inline citations but that's it really). The plot does need addressing though. I hope the user who nominated this does find the time one day to bring it up to scratch and possibly renominate it as an FA. LuciferMorgan 17:14, 11 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove per 1c and 1b. One edit in a month. Marskell 08:15, 24 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove no change, no improvement, no one working on it. Sandy 16:05, 24 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove - No inline citations, images lack fair use rationale. Pagrashtak 21:01, 25 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Kibbutz[edit]

Article is no longer a featured article

Review commentary[edit]

Messages left at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Judaism, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Jewish culture and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ecology. Sandy 14:06, 23 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

A FA for two years and has degraded. Issues:

  • an entire section has a wikify tag - Decline of the kibbutz movement
  • there is at least one citation tag
  • refs: refs follow a very old style and there is an external jump

Rlevse 11:40, 23 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Needs a copy-edit to comply with modern standards (2a). Some POV issues (2c). Tony 11:53, 23 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Just a note about the refs. It seems to use Harvard referencing, which is fine for Wikipedia per WP:CITE, and actually preferred nowadays outside WP. SlimVirgin (talk) 08:33, 5 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

FARC commentary[edit]

Main FA criteria concerns prose (2a), structure (5), and citation format (2c). Marskell 08:45, 7 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
What is wrong with the citation format, Marskell? SlimVirgin (talk) 10:01, 7 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I've gone ahead and changed it to footnotes. Was it the Harvard refs you didn't like, or something about the way they were written? SlimVirgin (talk) 20:20, 7 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry for the non-reply. I was simply noting as a matter of procedure that it was something mentioned in the original nom above. You'll see I leave that sort of note on every review that gets moved to FARC. Perhaps I'll re-word to "Suggested FA criteria concerns..." in future. I'll try and read this one over. I looked at and was a little daunted by the size. Marskell 15:16, 9 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep it's in much better shape now. I vote to keep it FA.Rlevse 15:25, 9 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, thoughts then.

  • I believe this may be too long. It's generally summary style but it may be summarizing too much. For instance, the history section begins with a five paragraph description of the status of Jews in Tsarist Russia, which could be abbreviated; it also lacks a topic sentence/paragraph ("The movement began with...") and reads oddly in this regard.
  • At points it may come close to panegyric. In 1.3: "Degania in the 1910s seems to have confined its discussions to practical matters, but the conversations of the next generation in the 1920s and 1930s were free-flowing discussions of the cosmos." This is followed soon after by a fairly long quote from an ordinary woman beginning "Oh, how beautiful it was..." It's good to add colour, but I don't find this encyclopedic.
  • For 65k the refs need to at least double. Stats particularly remain unsourced.
  • More should be dabbed, even if it leads to red links. For instance, the "Communal life" section has a massive block of undabbed text.
  • I didn't notice any one sentence paragraphs but there's still a lot of short two sentences ones, which could be incorporated into larger paragraphs (that's partly personal taste).

So, I guess 5 is my criteria concern ("appropriate length, staying tightly focused"). I'll try and come up with more specific stuff and do some copy-editing myself, but Slim (or anyone else interested) might think how to trim the over-all structure. One thing I notice is that there isn't a single sub-article listed under any of the headlines. Perhaps a few are in order here. Marskell 15:58, 9 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Marskell. I may try to find some time to work on it, though I can't promise. I haven't been involved with the article prior to this, so I don't know the history, but if it has deteriorated, it might be worth reverting back to the version that got FA status. SlimVirgin (talk) 00:15, 12 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Needs a lot of work. On size, it is 65KB overall (which is not a problem), but 58KB is prose (only 7KB overhead). Summary Style is needed. Not only is 58KB prose size large, but in relation to overall size, it reveals the next problem: a critical lack of inline citations. I fixed the ref tags, but there were very few of them. Is anyone working on citations and Summary style? Sandy 23:45, 11 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Sandy, when you say you "fixed" the refs, do you mean that you moved the ref next to the period? WP:FN doesn't say (or didn't when I last checked) that the ref has to be pinned against the period without a space. When it says ref after period, it means "after" rather than "before," which had to be stressed because there were people writing ref then period. There was a discussion about the placement of the ref but it was agreed not to recommend anything, although if you look at any published work, you'll see a space between the punctuation and the ref. SlimVirgin (talk) 00:15, 12 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
WP:FN gives multiple examples throughout the article, but no example contains a space. I typically try to clean up the refs while I'm in there checking the inline citations. Sandy 00:44, 12 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
That's fine if that's your preference, but publishers do put a space between punctuation and refs, and we're allowed to do the same on WP. If you think about it, it's odd to want to cram them together. We don't write Harvard refs like this(Smith 2005). We don't write sentences like this.And like this. So it's odd to want to write a ref like this.<ref>abc</ref> I don't mind much and wouldn't revert over it, but I just want to clarify that both are acceptable on WP. SlimVirgin (talk) 01:03, 12 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Also, further reading and external links are not two sections. Further reading is for material, on and offline, that sheds further light on the topic but was not used as a source. See WP:CITE. SlimVirgin (talk) 00:23, 12 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I see now that you changed them in the GTL a few days ago. I always check the FAC nom and edit history before working on a FARC, and didn't see any main editors present in this case, and I didn't realize the article had an owner; sorry for the intrusion. Sandy 00:44, 12 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I changed it in the Guide to layout to make it consistent with WP:CITE, which is the relevant guideline, and which has said for a long time that what used to be called External links may now be called Further reading, but they're the same section, referring simply to any interesting and relevant material not used as a source. I'm not sure what your WP:OWN comment means. Someone posted a note about this to Wikiproject Jewish History, so here I am responding. Was that not what you wanted? SlimVirgin (talk) 01:03, 12 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Needs also a lot of work for neutrality. For such a controversial topic, you're using only "Israelis" sources and not one "Arab" sources. In addition, there's so little mention about criticism and impact on Arab population which I think is essential to balance the article and to make it more accurate. More effort should be put into this article to meet the primary policies of Wikipedia, so for now I vote for its removal. Minor comments: The article is too long, summary style and wikifying of some sections is needed. Plus, could you name the "About" section something more comprehensive? CG 16:52, 19 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove. Still too long, needs Summary Style, not well cited, and work seems to have stalled. Sandy 21:44, 21 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove per a week with no work (or at least very little). At a minimum I think the history needs to be taken to a sub-article, and the section then greatly compressed on this main page. But I think this requires someone with familiarity with the article. Refs still insufficient and CG has pointed to a pertinent POV concern. Unfortunate, because there's a lot of good info here. Marskell 10:30, 22 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Platypus[edit]

Article is no longer a featured article

Review commentary[edit]

Messages left at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Australia/Assessment and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mammals Sandy 14:01, 23 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This article has been the subject of at least 1 FARC, and a FAR - none of which achieved any improvement in the article. The article does not meets today's FA critera. Problems include

  1. Comprehensiveness, inlcuding the lead which mostly discusses taxomony
  2. Prose is grammatically poor and for a general reader probably hard to understand - for example technical terms are not linked or explained
  3. References were added after the fact, and I doubt any verification has taken place in the interim; inlines are mostly absent

--Peta 06:03, 23 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • I agree with Peta: prose OK in parts, bad in parts. Under-referenced. Disorganised. Can the contributors be marshalled in time to save this? Tony 11:45, 23 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

FARC commentary[edit]

Main FA criteria concerns are comprehensiveness (2b), LEAD (3a), prose (2a), insufficient references (2c). Marskell 08:42, 7 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove.--Peta 05:32, 9 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove. Tony 02:16, 12 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove. (Yikes!) Sandy 22:19, 15 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Dawson's Creek[edit]

Article is no longer a featured article

Review commentary[edit]

Message left at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Television. Sandy 02:22, 24 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

An FA for over an year, the article has some issues that needs to be resolved.

  1. Article is way too long per WP:MOS, 74 KB could use some heavy trimming especially the Synopsis section
  2. This type of article requires inline citations
  3. No fair use rationales, and several of the images are in PUI and others are used for decreation, which violates WP:FU
  4. Trivia section should go as it's unencyclopedic
  5. Fails 2A with some rather strange paragraphs like
Dawson's Creek's ultimate impact was far broader than the Nielsen Ratings would imply, alluded to in such disparate places as Jim Borgman's comic strip Zits, a Maureen Dowd column about the Republican leadership of Congress, and the film 10 Things I Hate about You. It made stars of its leads and now seems ripe for the kind of academic analysis its former lead-in Buffy the Vampire Slayer has already been subjected to.'

Not up to FA standards Jaranda wat's sup 05:09, 22 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • I agree with Jaranda's comments. Over the past six weeks, a small amount of copy-editing has been occurring; the pace needs to accelerate dramatically to recast the many illogical and/or faulty sentences. Tony 07:30, 22 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • I also agree with Jaranda's comments entirely. They seriously need to be addressed, especially criteria 2. a. and 2. c. of "What is a featured article". LuciferMorgan 00:25, 25 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Message left at User talk:Jaranda. Sandy 02:26, 31 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Move it down to FARC, only a few typos and link repair and also some extra expansion of the already too large Synopsis section happened, doesn't look like it will be fixed. Jaranda wat's sup 02:29, 31 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Not much has been done, I'm afraid. "Insipid" in the first sentence is POV. The word "show" is repeated far too often in the lead. The prose is generally undistinguished. I think it should go to FARC. Tony 03:05, 3 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

FARC commentary[edit]

Main FA criteria concerns are length (5), fair use images (4), and writing (2a). Marskell 13:13, 6 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove nothing much have been done to fix it. Jaranda wat's sup 18:05, 6 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove per Jaranda Niz 12:50, 7 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove Here's the diff since it was nominated: nothing happening. Sandy 22:14, 15 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Lastovo[edit]

Article is no longer a featured article

Review commentary[edit]

Needs a copyedit, some better wording and formatting. Incorrectly uses hyphens instead of dashes on some occasions, has a repetition of the number 46 trivia thing, needs some more references (citing a source for the vampirism trivia, the Bernard Shaw quote, etc.) and proper ({{cite book}}) reference formatting. Many of the images seem to be possible copyvios by User:Uvouvo and User:Luka Jačov. Needs a detailed map of the island. Featuring the article on the Main Page should be postponed until problems are solved, if this is possible. Todor→Bozhinov 15:52, 2 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Most of the issues have been resolved. The article is now quite ready for the Main Page, though it may need a little copyediting for style and/or typos. This should be moved to Minor reviews or downright removed. Todor→Bozhinov 20:14, 2 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Not so fast: it's not disastrously written, but a thorough copy-edit is required to satisfy 2a. Take these two sentences from the lead as an example.
"The island is rich in architecture, featuring many buildings from the 15th and 16th centuries. There are a large number of churches for its relative size, which is a testament to the island's long standing Roman Catholic tradition. The major cultural event, apart from the normal celebrations on the Catholic calendar, is the event known as the Poklad, or carnival.
The" "its" is a little distant from the referent to be clear. What is "relative" size? Relative to what? "Long standing" should be hyphenated (look it up). Is the relative size of the island testament to the RC tradition? That's what it says. I don't like "normal". Can you avoid the repetition of "event"?
Later in the lead:
"The Romans conquered and settled the entire area until the Avar invasions and Slavic migrations in the 7th century."
They spent a long time conquering and settling, did they?
And:
"Lastovo has a dynamic landscape consisting also of 46 hills and 46 karstic fields that often contain layers of red soil ..."
Not good.
Please fix the whole text; that's why the article has ended up here. Tony 01:55, 4 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This article fails 2(a) — it still needs a copyedit, even some of Tony's examples above still have not been addressed. It also fails 4 — Image:SLB.jpg and Image:Kuzma.jpg have no copyright tag. Pagrashtak 18:18, 16 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Talk message left at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Geography. Sandy 21:09, 16 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I ce'ed the intro a week ago and just had a go at geography. Wow. This needs some work on writing and even sourcing (sentences that begin "this is probably because..." are not on). I'll try and go over the rest before the main page date. Marskell 18:49, 17 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I got clarification on the images, and they are acceptably tagged now. Raul654 22:22, 20 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I came across this article earlier, and it didn't strike me as being quite at featured standard. It lacks an image that really illustrates the article, there are some prose problems, and it just didn't seem to capture the subject all that well. Rebecca 05:40, 23 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • The prose of this article is poor, it is too fragemnted, and I question that is is comprehensive - for example there is no real information on the population (demographic or otherwise). The articles largest failing is that it is entirely unclear whether the article is talking about the island, the town or the municipality in the majority of places, it certainly feels like the municipality aspect is entirely neglected.--Peta 02:24, 24 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Agree that it lacks comprehensiveness. Nothing about current economy and not a word about the government.--Enano275 05:19, 24 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

FARC commentary[edit]

Main FA criteria conerns are prose (2a) and sufficiency of citations (2c). Marskell 17:28, 24 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
And (2b) comprehensiveness Peta 00:31, 25 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Here's what has been done to it since nomination: [43] Tony 13:45, 25 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove--Noisettes 10:21, 5 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove—although it has been significantly improved since nomination, there's still a problem with comprehensiveness, and there are still other faults. I'm persuadable if more work is done on it. Tony 13:45, 25 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove - I think only somone with access to the right documents in the right language will be able to clear up the issues with the comprehensivness.--Peta 05:15, 27 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove. Not comprehensive, has prose quality problems. Todor→Bozhinov 14:38, 31 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Message left at User talk:TodorBozhinov. Sandy 03:10, 31 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Could people actually state what precisely they think is missing? I was actually quite astounded this was made an FA in the first place as when I first edited it there were some blatant errors (no definite article in sentences, for instance) and it was obviously underweight. However, it has improved and I hesitate to remove on the basis of comprehensiveness unless we can suggest things that should be there. I still hestitate to comment keep, however, so I'll call this a neutral. Marskell 18:49, 4 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • The lack of economy and government sections was noted above. Todor→Bozhinov 10:08, 5 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
      • Short sections on economy and demographics did get added but it is still underweight. Marskell 19:39, 5 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove--jwandersTalk 13:44, 5 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep I added a demographics and economy section but they are short and I don't know what to do with them - are they ok like that? I could find nothing about how their municipal government is set up. I note this passed FAC in April 2006 with an oustanding objection based on "nothing about economy, administration and other things one would expect from a town article." I actually think the article has improved (not degraded) since it passed FAC. If it was good enough to pass FAC a couple months ago (without a government section) then I'll err on the side of keep now. --Maintain 05:09, 6 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I looked at the original FAC. I think the promotion was a clear error on Raul's part given the unstruck objections (particularly the one you cite Maintain). This review seems headed down in flames, which is shame given your work. It can always go back to a second FAC if it gets filled out more. Marskell 13:38, 6 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Appreciate your last-minute work, Maintain; "Mediterranean" is misspelt, and those sections are both a little raw (when, for example, did the army leave?). The table is jammed up against the text. But the prose in the rest of the article is a problem. That's the killer for me. Tony 10:48, 6 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The article still makes no clear distinction between the town, island and municipality. There is also still no mention of government.--Peta 02:15, 7 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for replying. It is good to see that people aren't voting-and-running but are paying attention. I'm going to play the devil's advocate (if that is the correct metaphor) and stick with a keep vote. If the promotion was a mistake then why was it featured on the main page, too? I don't mind if it gets defeatured, I'm just happy to do what I can while it still has a chance. --Maintain 05:48, 7 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I can be of assistance in fixing up some of the objections as i have access to the material and sources in both English and Croatian. I havent got time at the moment, but will be able to fix/contribute to most things by the weekend. I just wanted to point out, that the limited size of the place (its tiny) will be a natural limit to some of the suggested sections. Please keep this in mind as you expand on the list of some things below for us to work on. Maintain has already done some good work adding some of these, we'll see what we can come up with. Uvouvo 04:08, 8 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • General copy edit (noting above suggestions)?
  • Government, politics section?
  • Demographics section?
  • Economy section?
I'll try get through these when I get the chance. I guess while i'm going through the sources you might as well lump on all the objectives. Uvouvo 04:08, 8 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • If possible, try to find historical population levels for the island. We have access to the 2001 census, but I can't find any thing before that (was there a 1991 census?). For the government section how is the municipal government set up? how many representatives are elected and how are they elected? The Economy section could be supplemented by a paragraph on transportation (highway, piers, airport?). --Maintain 06:35, 8 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

*Remove. Tony 02:17, 12 August 2006 (UTC) Goof. Tony 12:15, 16 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Tony, watch for duplicate comments. Also, are the people still working on this finding it literally impossible to find info on the government of the municipality? It's the last major gap (though some of what's been added is still stubbish). Marskell 06:23, 12 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove per "a week is too long with no editing." This is another unfortunate one to have stalled because so much had been done. However, no gov't and politics section has been created, there are still too many stub sections, and the 20th history is a bit of an unsourced mess. Marskell 15:42, 18 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Economy of the Republic of Ireland[edit]

Article is no longer a featured article

Review commentary[edit]

  • has a POV dispute tag
  • has a large number of citation needed tags
  • would benefit from footnotes instead of simple hyperlinks
  • may need some cleanup

Todor→Bozhinov 20:27, 13 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Talk messages left at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Business and Economics/BEF and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Countries. Sandy 21:50, 16 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • The prose needs to be improved. For example, in the lead:
    • "Agriculture, once the most important sector, is now dwarfed by industry, which accounts for 46% of GDP, about 80% of exports, and employs 29% of the labour force." What industry accounts for is an A plus B list, so remove the comma after "GDP" and insert "and".
    • "down from recent rates of between 4% and 5%." Tell us when those peaks were. "Recent" is too vague for a FA.
    • "House price inflation has been a particular economic concern (average house price was €251,281 in February 2005)." Since house-price inflation is the issue, cite figures for that, rather than absolute values of houses, which are hard to interpret without other data.
    • "Unemployment is very low and incomes have been rising rapidly although costs have also been rising [5]) as well as service charges (utilities, insurance, healthcare, legal representation, etc.)." "Very" is vague. "Also" and "as well as" would be better not appearing in a reworded sentence. Please don't use "etc." in serious writing.

There's a lot of good in this article, and Ireland's economy is an interesting case study. I hope that the contributors can arrange to have the prose improved significantly. Tony 12:47, 21 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Status? One edit since it was nominated over two weeks ago (to remove the POV tag). Sandy 13:08, 29 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

FARC commentary[edit]

Main FA criteria concerns are POV (2d), number and format of references (2c). Marskell 15:19, 30 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Message left at User talk:TodorBozhinov. Sandy 03:08, 31 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove unless there's a sudden burst of improvements. I've mass bombed about 10 contributors from the history list with a polite request for assistance. Let's see what that yields. Tony 14:12, 31 July 2006 (UTC) PS Nothing about the huge debt of more than a trillion US$, apart from the info box. 2b. Tony 03:19, 1 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • National public debt cannot be higher than external debt, the figure shown is a clearly completely erroneous figure from the 2006 update to the CIA World Factbook. Its physically impossible that its true, so the 1998 figures have been restored. --Kiand 21:22, 1 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove per my nomination (POV dispute seems to be over, but there are still citation needed tags and references don't use inline citations, but hyperlinks). Todor→Bozhinov 14:42, 31 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove per nom, except as I understand it the choice of inline citation style (html links or cite.php footnotes) is entirely up to the editor and there is not even a WP guideline recommending one over the other; thus the consistant use of inline html links cannot be counted against an article. The lack of response to the other issues, however, is valid grounds for demotion. (Forgot to sign this before) --jwandersTalk 13:48, 5 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove per jwanders Niz 13:12, 7 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove still needs better inline citations. Sandy 20:44, 13 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Bicycle[edit]

Article is no longer a featured article

Review commentary[edit]

I'm bringing this article here primarily due to reference problems.

  • 2(a): There are lists that need to be converted to prose. The article needs a copyedit: compare this sentence: "No single time or person can be identified with the invention of the bicycle." with this sentence from the next paragraph: "Scottish blacksmith Kirkpatrick MacMillan refined this in 1839 by adding a mechanical crank drive to the rear wheel, thus creating the first true 'bicycle' in the modern sense." Confusing.
  • 2(c): This article has several reference problems:
    • Improper reference formats — for example, "The New Columbia Encyclopedia" is listed as a reference with no specifics and web references have no access dates given.
    • Inline citations use a strange style that should be converted to a better system, such as cite.php. (minor) - Fixed myself
    • Note 5 reads "'Bicycling Life' (external link, below)", which indicates that the site should be moved to the references section, but I do not see the link in either section.
    • Insufficient inline citations.
  • 3(a): The lead section is not concise. It looks a little long, but that may be able to be corrected with a copyedit. It mentions the static nature of bicycle design twice in its current form.
  • 4: Image:Utility bicycle.jpg uses an obsolete license tag. Its source is an image on the Polish Wikipedia, but appears to have been deleted. The image layout at the top of the article is poor.
  • 5: The History section is too long for a summary style section.

Pagrashtak 23:00, 14 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Talk message left at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Cycling. Sandy 21:54, 16 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Left messages at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Environment and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Energy development --jwandersTalk 18:45, 25 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've copy-edited the lead, as Pagrashtak suggested. Reduced it from 4 paras to two, without losing any pertinent information. --jwandersTalk 18:45, 25 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Also removed the image with the offending license tag... just the difficult issues to go... --jwandersTalk 18:53, 25 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've copy-edited the first few sections. Here's what has been done since nomination. Can we have a reassessment of progress, perhaps by the nominator? It's a very worthy article. Tony 15:39, 27 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Almost no inline citations; for example, There are reports of mountain bicycles being used in scouting by U.S. Special Forces in the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and in subsequent battles against the Taliban. The only country to recently maintain a regiment of bicycle troops was Switzerland, who disbanded the last unit in 2003. Sandy 13:14, 29 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

FARC commentary[edit]

Main FA criteria concerns are prose and summary style (2a and 5), format of citations (2c), LEAD (3a), images (4). Marskell 15:23, 30 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove The article is overly reliant on lists (in violation of 2.a) and hasn't enough inline citations (a violation of 2. c.) LuciferMorgan 21:00, 30 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove I hope to get this back to FA someday, but don't have time to add the citations it needs at present. It can go around the loop again --jwandersTalk 10:12, 5 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove, reluctantly. Since I had a go at the lead on 27 June, nothing much has been done. Pity. Tony 10:56, 5 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove per jwanders Niz 12:53, 7 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove mostly due to a lack of inline citations and problems with the existing references as mentioned in the nomination. Pagrashtak 23:56, 7 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove lack of inline citations. Sandy 20:45, 13 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Papal conclave[edit]

Article is no longer a featured article

Review commentary[edit]

Article was featured back in 2004 when community standards were much lower. It needs in-line referencing and contains a lot of original research-type stuff that needs to be cleaned up. I noticed one of the more egregous examples of this having to do with Pope Pius XII but basically the entire "Historical voting patterns" needs a careful rewrite. The "Voting" section is also almost unreadable. Also, the whole "conclave"/"election" discrepancy between the title and the intro is annoying but is also indicative of a larger problem of the poorly defined scope of this article. The page at conclave should only be about the conclave itself, i.e. the part where they are locked in the room and they elect the new pope. It should should cover the history of when the conclaves started and the changes that have been made as well as notable papal conclaves (and there have been quite a few interesting ones). I hope that someone can fix this, otherwise I think a FARC may be in order after this. savidan(talk) (e@) 22:45, 2 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • The prose needs a spring clean. Here are examples from the opening.
    • "Since the year 1061"—spot two redundant words.
    • "replacing the entire College of Cardinals if they were to so choose"—spot two redundant words.
    • "The candidate would then be submitted to the people"—or "The name of the candidate"?

The whole text needs treatment, not just these examples. Tony 02:43, 4 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Ten days have passed, 3 non-minor edits, talk page shows no action, no change in prose problems. Sandy 02:22, 15 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Should go to FARC after 14 days, in that case. Tony 13:58, 16 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Talk message left at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Catholicism/Collaboration . Sandy 21:17, 16 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Message left at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Catholicism. Sandy 01:35, 17 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

FARC commentary[edit]

Main FA criteria concers are lack of citations and factual accuracy (2c), prose (2a), and comprehensivenss (2b). Marskell 12:08, 20 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Weak remove. There have been a few patches of rewriting, one yielding the following gem:
"It should be noted that through much of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, the number of cardinals often hovered around the 20s, travel was difficult and usually at least some cardinals did not get to the conclave in time, and the cardinals were usually factionalized along political and family lines."
    • Telling our readers what to note is undesirable. The "hovering" bit is loose. "Usually at least" is clumsy. "On time".

I'm willing to change to "keep" if a little more work is put into it. Tony 12:37, 21 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Another editor began tackling the copyedit on 22 July, but inline citations still lacking. Sandy 19:34, 27 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I saw your recent edit to the bibliography. That editor would be me. I got through the first section (Electorate) and did add inline cites there. Fixing this entire article is going to be a huge task. I suppose there is some time constraint for FARC, but unless it is at least a month I probably can't work within in. How does this process work? Gimmetrow 01:19, 29 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
You have at least two weeks from the date of FARC (July 20), and the past consensus here has been to allow more time when steady progress is evident. Specifically, I would advocate for more time since I only began leaving talk page messages on 16 July. If there is any way we can help, please let us know. Can you network to find people able to help with inline citations and copyediting? With a little more work on this one, I will also vote to keep. Sandy 13:27, 29 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The practical matter is that nobody seems interested in the topic. I did see a note at some wikiproject, but only you or I have edited the article in 10 days. I'm currently handling another FAC; you probably know the time that involves. Gimmetrow 02:09, 30 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Another editor is working on this article now, too. Gimmetrow 06:22, 31 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Message left at User talk:Savidan. Sandy 02:38, 31 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
To be perfectly honest, I think this article was so problematic when I initiated the review that I'd like to see it be renominated. Otherwise, obviously I think it has improved, and I don't mean to discourage those who are working on it. If I knew more about this subject, I would be working on it with you. To summarize, the first section has some footnotes now, but this article needs more than footnotes at the end of every other sentence, it needs a rewrite. savidan(talk) (e@) 06:54, 31 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Update: Two more editors began working on the article on July 30. Sandy 21:54, 2 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Status. We can leave this open a while. I see half the article has received citations and half still lacks them. Hopefully, Gimmetrow has some more time for lonely Wiki-work. Marskell 15:58, 3 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Remove a week has passed since my last update, no change. Sandy 15:08, 6 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Striking my remove, considering editors are still interested. Sandy 23:25, 7 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'm sure the Putnam article has nothing to do with the lack of work on Conclave. Gimmetrow 17:28, 6 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Status This article is next in line as the Catholic Collaboration Effort, a fortnightly blitz of work. The last article that was the CCE was submitted and passed as a GA. I would reccomending keeping this as a FA, at least until the CCE group has done their work. Then it can be reviewed again. --Briancua 14:16, 7 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delay I'd support defering this until collaborative work is done; in the absence of this pending project, I would have been a delist voice. Sam 17:51, 7 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
That would be quite an extension as its already been up an extra few days. If the work gets started shortly though, I don't see that it would be right to close it. Marskell 19:38, 7 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
This article has been in a bad state for quite a while. I'm a little unclear why there is a rush; this just puts a time limit on writing a featured article. Above I said it would take at least a month for me to rewrite this on my own. With CCE it would go faster, but if I understand the CCE page, they have this scheduled starting August 17. PS Sandy, not all wikiwork involves saved edits. Gimmetrow 21:10, 7 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
By "rush" you mean we are rushing to make a decision on this review? Sav explains it well below: reviews can't be indefinite. There needs to be some urgency. Marskell 08:18, 8 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
There are two things at issue here. The first is the quality of the articlce in question. We all would like to see that as high as possible. The second is the credibility of the featured article distinction. The improvements so far, while good independtly, are far from adequate towards addressing the quite substantive objections made by myself and others here. I would prefer for this to be de-featured now, and then invite the contributors to re-nominate it after the Catholicism Collaboration. De-featuring this is not a punnishment for those working on the article, but merely an indication that it is far from up to the current standard.
There is no rush, as long as you are willing to renominate. The FAR is meant to give people a heads up for minor corrections, and also for major corrections as long as they are improved quickly. It is not meant to allow sub-standard articles to remain featured indefinitely as long as they continue to improve. There are better articles than this which are not featured and also are improving at a faster rate, in my opinion.savidan(talk) (e@) 23:37, 7 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I estimate this article needs 40-200 man-hours to get into decent shape. You have convinced me that in this case, the better is the enemy of the good. Gimmetrow 19:14, 8 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I am moving to remove, partly based on the above comments about how much work remains and partly because it has received zero edits in a week. We have agreed things may be left open, but this one is completely stalled. And I agree that substantial work is still needed. For instance, the voting section is totally undabbed and uncited, and the prose needs to be dramatically compressed ("On the afternoon of the first day, one ballot may be held. If a ballot take place on the afternoon of the first day and no-one is elected...").

With the Catholic collaboration still moving forward, perhaps a re-nomination can be their goal. Agreed de-featuring is not a punishment—it can be extra impetus if and when substantial work starts again. Marskell 12:37, 13 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Reluctant concur. Sandy 20:40, 13 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Agree. I'm not going to work on this anytime soon, and as good as the collaboration group may be, I think they will be pressed to get this back to even GA quality in a weekend. Gimmetrow 21:29, 13 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yet another reluctant concurrance; ping me back when you get some work done on it and I'll be happy to critique. Sam 21:53, 13 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Race[edit]

Article is no longer a featured article

Review commentary[edit]

Race was featured on the main page on October 26, 2004.

I have not attempted to notify the original authors who brought the article to FA status, as I have not been able to find the original FAC in archives (can anyone help?). The edit history shows a preponderance of anon edits, so I am leaving a message for User: Slrubenstein, the editor who appears most often in the edit history.

I will leave (2a) prose to Tony, and am not able to evaluate the article for (2b). There is a pending To Do list on the talk page, which includes removing redundancy and editing for NPOV (2d) needed. I found no evidence in recent talk page or edit history of stability (2e) issues. I have not checked the images for copyright issues (4), since I don’t speak that language yet.

The article needs review mainly on 1) not our best work (general cleanup, article tag and reorganization needed); and 5) length and summary style.

2c) Factually accurate (references)

  • There are three different citation styles employed, which does not provide an example of our best work.
  • There is a concern on the talk page, from 9 May 2006, that “the whole thing smacks of original research”.

3b) Headings and 3c) Table of contents

  • There is a talk page concern from 13 April 2006 that a major reorganization and cleanup is needed. The Table of Contents is overwhelming, rambling, and disorganized.

5) Length and Summary Style

  • There is a {{summarystyle}} tag on the article. Overall size is 110 KB, and prose size is a very large 76 KB. In October 2004, the article was 49KB overall, so it has grown considerably since it received FA status. The article is not “of appropriate length, staying tightly focused” on its topic. The large increase in size warrants a new review of the article.

Sandy 21:52, 15 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Here is a version from the date it appeared on the main page: [44]. Sandy 03:27, 16 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Image:Cavalli-SforzaMap.jpg has a nonsense fair use rationale. It should probably be deleted. Jkelly 04:10, 16 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
This article dates back to the Brilliant Prose days. Here's the archive of the promotion — not much to look at. Boy, have we come a long way since then! Pagrashtak 04:33, 16 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks: I left a talk page note for User:JDG. Sandy 05:08, 16 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Per User: Slrubenstein, I also notified User:FrankWSweet and User:Guettarda.
  • Which variety of English is it written in? I see "color" and "rigour". There are far too many instances of "as well as", which is a marked form of "and". There is unscientific language, such as "presumably". The article appears to be not well organised. Tony 13:56, 16 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Status? In the two weeks since it was nominated for review, the article has grown from 110KB to 116KB overall size. Here is the compare: [45]. No activity to clean up the problems, suggest moving to FARC. Sandy 13:18, 29 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • The refrences section here is rediculous. It takes up 3 whole screen legnths on my monitor. I know we want good sourcing and that most wikipedia articles are under refrneced, but there is such a thing as over refrencing. And with no inline citations, it would take days to find the proper refrnece here. There needs to be some way of organizxing the refs so that we know what refs what here. I have never seen a larger more confusing refs section. I would have to vote to remove the article Tobyk777 06:20, 1 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

FARC commentary[edit]

Criteria 2a, 2c, 2d, 3b, 3c, and 5 are at issue. Tony 14:40, 29 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Remove. There's been a little work performed on this article since nomination, but not nearly enough, IMV. Looking at random, there are problems such as:
    • "The term race distinguishes one population of humans (or non-humans) from another." (First sentence.) I hate the reference to "non-humans"—what does it mean? Can the last two words be removed as redundant ("The term race distinguishes populations of humans on the basis of relatively superficial genetic differences, and culture."? ... or something liket that?
    • "physical anthropologists at PhD granting departments, rising from 41% to 42%"—Yuck to the "PhD granting" bit; is the rise from 41–42% statistically significant? I doubt it, from that small sample.

Too many problems, and no one seems to care. Tony 03:30, 1 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Remove. No effort to address all of the issues raised, and no one apparently even trying. Sad, since the original FA was a good article. Sandy 22:00, 2 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove or roll back to the version that was featured.--Peta 05:08, 3 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The original featured version – while far better than what is there now – had only two inline citations. I'm so disappointed the original authors and involved editors and Projects didn't take this on. :-( Sandy 22:01, 3 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, Sandy. I'm afraid it's more than I can handle right now. I'm quite ill (cancer, unfortunately). It needs a whole rewrite with good inline cites and I'm just not up to it. Oddly, if you go back to around June, 2005 you'll see quite a fine article with more sourced research than the original FA, and written pretty intelligently. It looks like a couple editors with shaky prose skills got hold of this only recently and really did a number. If you roll back, I'd say a version in early-mid `05 would be best. I'm surprised User: Slrubenstein is happy with the current version. I agree with most of the comments here that the writing, in many spots, verges on embarrassing. I think Slr was so close to it for so long, he must have lost perspective... Ah well, I suppose demotion is the best thing for it now. JDG 09:56, 6 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
My best wishes for a good outcome, JDG, and thanks for letting us know. I will raise questions about the possibility of a rollback on the FAR talk page. Best, Sandy 14:48, 6 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Adding cites to a good article is easier than cleaning up a bad one.--Peta 00:00, 4 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Comment Here are some older versions for comparison before, during, and after the 2005 growth phase. --Rikurzhen 05:25, 8 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Mercedes-Benz 450SEL 6.9[edit]

Article is no longer a featured article

Review commentary[edit]

This article was promoted in August 2004 and has not kept up with the increasing standards of featured articles.

  • 2(a): The writing is not of featured quality:
    • Filler text - "The 6.9 also has the distinction of being among the first vehicles ever produced with ..."
    • Tense errors - "The engine was a cast iron V8..."
    • Inappropriate abbreviations - "... the system circulated twelve L of oil..."
    • Incomplete sentences - "Top speed was factory-rated at 140 mph (225 km/h), but..."
    • Inappropriate tone/not formal - "High price of admission" as a section title"
    • Lists that need to be converted to prose, or simply removed. Much of the "Famous owners" and "Notable versions" sections is trivia that does not belong in the article. Some does not even fit the current section titles; John Frankenheimer is listed, but is not said to have owned the car.
    • Lacks {{Infobox Automobile}}
  • 2(c): There is no distinction between the references and external links. The sole inline citation references a point of trivia that is unimportant to the article, and is not formatted properly.
  • 3(a): The lead omits major points from the body and thus is not a sufficient summary of the article.
  • 4: The only image in the article is used under fair use without rationale, but ultimately needs to be replaced with a free alternative.

Pagrashtak 05:46, 11 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Talk message left at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Automobiles. Sandy 21:31, 16 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

FARC commentary[edit]

Main FA criteria concerns are writing quality (2a), citations (2c), LEAD (3a), and images (4). Marskell 11:21, 26 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I checked the article for progress, and found a series of vandalism/nonsense edits since it was nominated here on July 11: reverted to July 11 version, no change to this article. Sandy 23:23, 28 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Neutral, but I'll go "Remove" if nothing is done. (It has hardly been touched, thus far.) This is quite well written (but needs a light copy-edit; e.g., this snake—"Originally developed for use in race cars as a way to prevent foaming of the engine oil by the crankshaft which in turn would create a serious drop in oil pressure, the system circulated twelve L of oil between the storage tank mounted inside the right front fender and the engine as opposed to the usual four or five L found in V8s with a standard oil pan and oil pump.")

It's a pity that the nominator's issues have not been addressed. I'm carpet bombing the recent contributors with a message. Tony 04:07, 1 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • I was able to get permission to use another image under a CC license. --Interiot 18:45, 3 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove per my nomination. One (rather irrelevant) inline citation and references thrown together with external links is not acceptable for a featured article. The writing still needs much improvement. I notice three paragraphs in a row that start "The 6.9 was..." (and some of those should be is instead of was). Pagrashtak 00:12, 8 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove – Almost a month, still no inline citations. Sandy 21:54, 10 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Lego[edit]

Article is no longer a featured article

Review commentary[edit]

Quite an old FA, appears not to meet important criteria.

  • lacks inline citations
  • needs cleanup and better structuring
    • has inappropriate (incl. inappropriately capitalized) section titles
    • external links coming before references?
    • external links awkwardly formatted
    • references awkwardly formatted
  • a trivia section is generally not recommended

Todor→Bozhinov 13:00, 12 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Also - did anybody else notice the self-referentiality? Not kosher...This one needs a fair bit of work. The Disco King 22:10, 12 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with the above comments - criteria 2. a. and 2. c. aren't met. Also where is the original featured article candidate page where this article was nominated for FA in the first place? I can't find it. LuciferMorgan 13:26, 27 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Talk message left at Wikipedia talk:Wikiproject Lego. Sandy 21:35, 16 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

FARC commentary[edit]

Main FA criteria concerns are writing and structure (2a) and lack of citations (2c). Marskell 10:50, 28 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove per nom. Todor→Bozhinov 14:00, 28 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove. Not Enough sources. Hezzy 20:07, 28 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove per nominator and Hezzy. Tony 15:06, 29 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Message left at User talk:TodorBozhinov. Sandy 03:10, 31 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove, refs, tone and comprehensivness - the history for example could be a much better summary of the daughter article.--Peta 05:10, 3 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove refs Niz 12:54, 7 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Billboard (advertising)[edit]

Article is no longer a featured article

Review commentary[edit]

This article does not meet modern standards for FAs with respect to:

  • Criterion 1 ("our best work" is more attractively and consistently formatted than this—in particular, there's an oddly indented paragraph in the lead, and the "x" symbols are inconsistently spaced;
  • 2a—the main problem is stubby sections. Other examples:
    • "A San Diego law championed by Pete Wilson in 1971 cited traffic safety and driver distraction as the reason for the billboard ban, but that law too was narrowly overturned by the Supreme Court in 1981, in part because it banned non-commercial as well as commercial billboards." Snake that needs chopping up.
    • "Example found at http://www.brandsinmotion.com"—stubby non-sentence in the body of the article.
    • Insufficient commas for ease of reading and, in places, precision of meaning.
    • Clumsy repetitions: "They have to be readable in a very short time because they are usually read while being passed at high speeds".
    • "One focal point for this sentiment would be the magazine AdBusters,"—should be "is".
  • 2b—not comprehensive; in particular, the history section is just a timeline, which shows the potential for significantly broader and deeper coverage by the article.
  • 2c—No inline citations.
  • 2d—not neutral in places; e.g., the assumption that all readers are American ("currently, four states -- Vermont, Alaska, Hawaii, and Maine -- have proscribed billboards.") Elsewhere, it's highly US-centric.
  • 3—MoS is not followed with respect to linking: dictionary words, such as "mechanical" are linked.

Tony 11:15, 9 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You know the LEAD is insufficient when weird formatting is deployed to cover it up. I tried to fix that much at least, and added the globalize tag—though tagging obviously indicates I don't think it an FA. The sections are definitely too short; the whole article is. Marskell 06:53, 11 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Talk message left at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Business and Economics/BEF, Project found in "what links here". Sandy 21:27, 16 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

FARC commentary[edit]

Main featured article criteria concerns are comprehensiveness (2b), lack of citations (2c), lack of global perspective (2d), formatting and style (3). Marskell 11:19, 26 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove. Someone's had a bit of go at it, including the insertion of faulty and poorly formatted text. Much more would be required, I'm afraid. Tony 03:51, 30 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove. The US-centrism is particularly noticable, otherwise Tony's review sums it up perfectly. I wouldn't even call it a good article in its current state. Todor→Bozhinov 22:01, 2 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove--jwandersTalk 13:45, 5 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove -- not enough improvement, not enough involvement, article is not referenced or formatted. Sandy 15:11, 6 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove per Sandy Niz 12:56, 7 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Cyclone Tracy[edit]

Article is no longer a featured article

Review commentary[edit]

This article fails to meet Criterion 2a ("compellling, even brilliant" prose). Here are examples.

  • "Approximately 30,000 people were homeless and fitting into makeshift housing"
  • "The city was subsequently rebuilt with modern materials and techniques." A bit lame for the lead—as if you'd use outmoded techniques. Why not remove "subsequently" as redundant?
  • "Tracy killed 71 people, and destroyed over 70 percent of Darwin's buildings, leaving over 20,000 people in the city of 48,000 homeless." There are enough commas in this sentence without the unnecessary one after "people". "More than" is preferred to "over" by most style manuals, with good reason. "The city of 48,000 homeless".
  • It's odd to see the size of the event calibrated against a map of the US.
  • US spelling of "centered", and inconsistent with other occurrences. And would a cloud mass be centred in the ocean, or over it?
  • Quote from newspaper in the lead has no reference, and not even a date.

Plus loads more. The whole article needs a thorough copy-edit. Tony 11:08, 6 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • As the author of most of the article, I'd be inclined to just send this one to FARC. It was written at a time when the featured article standards were vastly different. IIRC, the article was basically thrown together by myself and another editor in a week. To meet today's featured standard, it really needs to be rewritten based on a broader variety of sources, with appropriate referencing. Rebecca 11:14, 6 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Well, in response to some comments below: you can't downgrade a FA to GA, as they're two entirely different process. However, I'll give it a complete makeover as soon as I can (I've started already). Titoxd(?!?) 00:59, 7 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • I will try to help where I can. I have also started a dicussion on the articles talk page to list things to do. Aeon 19:13, 7 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Honestly, while it's nice to see the prose receiving a bit of a reworking, I think it would take a full rewrite to see this article even be of GA status. Rebecca 12:05, 8 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Talk message left at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tropical cyclones. Sandy 21:23, 16 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

FARC commentary[edit]

NB Please ignore this little section for the moment, which arises because I prematurely moved the article to the FARC list.

Moved here on advice of the main author. Tony 11:20, 6 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Remove—fails Criterion 2a. Tony 11:20, 6 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep-Just needs a little fixing up... íslenska hurikein #12 (samtal) 13:14, 6 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove I say down grade to GA status. This one needs fixing up Aeon 15:55, 6 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove. I don't even think it passes GA criteria, so it should go down to B class. A complete redo is needed. --Hurricanehink (talk) 16:01, 6 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe this whole process isn't working (boo-hoo) but the whole point is no keep/remove before a review. Let's do the review comments first and it will be moved down in due course. Marskell 22:24, 6 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
As a result of the FAR, the article has undergone an extensive revision. Titoxd(?!?) 00:29, 22 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
So what happens to the remove votes created before this was moved down to FARC? darkliight[πalk] 07:07, 22 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
They weren't votes; here, consensus is the aim. All of the comments in the review and FARC processes, and the work on the article in the meantime, are taken into account when deciding how to close this nomination. I'm afraid that the new lead doesn't give me much confidence that the prose, at least, now satisfies 2a.

"Cyclone Tracy was a tropical cyclone that devastated the city of Darwin, Australia, from 24 December to 25 December 1974. After forming over the Arafura Sea, the storm moved southward and affected the city with Category 4 winds in the Australian cyclone intensity scale, although there is evidence to suggest that it had reached Category 5 when it made landfall.

Tracy caused 837 million dollars in damages (1974 AUD), killed 71 people, destroyed over 70 percent of Darwin's buildings and infrastructure, thus leaving more than 20,000 people homeless, out of the 48,000 inhabitants of the city prior to Tracy's landfall, and required the evacuation of over 30,000 people.[3] Most of Darwin's population was evacuated to Adelaide, Whyalla, Alice Springs and Sydney, and many never returned to Darwin. After the storm passed, the city was rebuilt using more modern materials and updated building techniques."

    • More concise to write "from 24 to 25 December 1974".
    • "On", not "in" the intensity scale.
    • If there's "evidence" of something, please provide a reference.
    • "Damages" are what courts award; you mean "damage".
    • "More than" is preferred to "over" by most style manuals.
    • Aren't "buildings" part of "infrastructure"?
    • Remove "to Darwin" as redundant.

Looking further down at random:

    • "Tracy was the most compact tropical cyclone on record, with gale-force winds extending only 48 km (30 mi) from the centre"—Why is this the final, stubby paragraph in "Storm history"?
    • "Originally, the reported death toll was numbered at 65, but it was revised upwards in March 2005, as the Northern Territory Coroner officially proclaimed the remaining missing persons as "perished at sea"." Why not state when "originally" was? Remove "numbered at" as redundant. What does "as" mean here (because? while?)? Is "officially" necessary here? (Does the Coroner make unofficial announcements too?) Are "the remaining" part of the 65? I'm confused.
  • "There were several factors that delayed the dissemination"—Why not "Several factors delayed the dissemination"?

I feel a heel, because a bit of work has gone into this during the review process, but I can't withdraw my earlier recommendation to Remove: too much needs fixing. It is better than it was, though, which is why we have the FAR process. Tony 11:56, 24 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Two problems with your recommendations: WP:MOSDATE asks us to keep the date as [[December 25]], [[1974]] so it can be rendered differently if the user specifies differently in his or her preferences. I can't think of a way in which that order can be preserved, and the date shortened. Also, the reference you request is at included in the article (185 mph winds = Cat 5 cyclone), and since references should not be stated in the lede, I'm at a loss as to what to do about that. The other ones I'll try to address. Titoxd(?!?) 18:44, 24 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

What's a "lede"? Tony 13:29, 25 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Lede is an alternative spelling for Lead.--Nilfanion (talk) 13:41, 25 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove - article does not meet current FA criteria.--Peta
  • Staus Given that most of the remove comments occured before the re-write I'm wondering if there is any further commentary on this one. Marskell 15:56, 3 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove Seriously underreferenced. Sandy 01:15, 5 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove per above. --jwandersTalk 13:37, 5 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia[edit]

Article is no longer a featured article.

Review commentary[edit]

The article is unbalanced, the "Criticism and Controversy" section is the largest single section of the article and is topped off with a "Weasel words" tag. I know there are counterarguments to the critics in that section like mentioning the article in Nature magazine, but I still feel the article is unbalanced. I'm not too sure how much of it is criticism either, the subsection "Authors" barely deals with any criticism.

Smaller points include the tiny "funding" section, it's so minimal and mentions nothing of how the Wikimedia Foundation and Wikipedia is funded, I'm not sure why it's there.

There are a handful of "citation needed" tags in the article, surely for a featured article, this should not be the case. An example of one of these reads:

Some of Wikipedia's editors have explained its editing process as a "socially Darwinian evolutionary process", but this description is not accepted by most Wikipedians.

This is an encyclopedia article about Wikipedia, what would a reader care about how some Wikipedian's perceive Wikipedia? Some Wikipedians are probably perceive it to be a Time Cube.

In general, this article does not represent the best of Wikipedia and is not of featured article standard. - Hahnchen 03:19, 29 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Two sections: "Scientific analyses of Wikipedia" and "In popular culture" are very short, they should be either expanded or removed. CG 11:00, 4 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Ten days have passed, edit history shows numerous reverts, talk page shows no ongoing effort to improve the article, and there are numerous citation tags. Sandy 02:25, 15 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

FARC commentary[edit]

Main FA criteria concerns are neutrality (2d) and comprehesiveness (2b). Marskell 12:04, 20 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove unlikely to be fixed Jaranda wat's sup 19:50, 20 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove per Jaranda. Rebecca 05:44, 23 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove as above - lack of references and more.... RN 07:55, 24 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove as above. And I don't like the navel-gazing, self-referential aspect. Tony 06:41, 1 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Lord Chancellor[edit]

Article is no longer a featured article.

Review commentary[edit]

Honestly, I find FA(R)C fairly inhospitable places, so I shall say what I mean to say and then likely leave the thing alone, apart from the odd response perhaps.

This article is somewhat the victim of circumstance (and sweeping constitutional change in the UK...) and is now rather out of date. Much was changed by the Constitutional Reform Act 2005 which, although mentioned in the article somewhat vaguely a few times, is only really dealt with in a "current events" way in the Reform section. In fact, the effects of the Act are now being seen and it has long passed the parliamentary hurdles (with amendments). There are several other articles affected by these reforms and together with this one, they need a comprehensive seeing-to. It is short on references for much of what it says, and none of them are inlined to particular facts. None of them deal properly with an academic history of the office: the first is a text from 1868 which (I guess) documents the office holders rather than the detail of the office (it is hard to say from a single mention at the bottom) and the others mean to deal with the reforms which the article also has a go at. The sections which have long been tagged as needing attention do; the prose is not poor, but not crisp and the progress of the material is rather uneven. It also does not use 'summary style', although that particular method would be out of place in this article really (as it is in most). It seems that at present, and without significant re-working and inter-working, with other articles this no longer meets FAC standards. (As a side note, its FAC was cursory at best.) -Splash - tk 19:32, 28 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If it's a victim of circumstance, it further suffers because the uninformed will have no idea. Not knowing the Lord Chancellor from the broad side of a barn, I read it and it seemed just fine. The writing level is good (even a touch ornate) and it appears comprehensive. But if it's out of date as you say than it probably shouldn't have the star now. The refs are definitely a problem; there is a lot of very obscure dating in this that's just begging for in-line cites.
Did you, by any chance, contact the initial nominator? Marskell 12:51, 7 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Fails 2a. Here are random examples of why the whole article needs to be thoroughly copy-edited.
    • "and is, by convention, always a peer"—spot the redundant word. Is he, by convention, a man? If so, you might make that point somewhere, to justify the male pronouns.
    • "Some give the first Chancellor of England as Angmendus, in 605." Some what? Computers? Where's the reference?
    • Start of paragraph: "The Lord Chancellor's judicial duties also evolved through his role in the Curia Regis"—spot the redundant word.
    • Why are the simple, undated years blue?
    • "discharged the duties of the office until an appropriate replacement could be found." Spot the redundant word.

Tony 01:59, 8 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I would add that I don't think this "fails" 2a. To the extent I find the writing off it's due to phrasing more appropriate to book form. For instance, "A further historical instance may be mentioned:" Here "Further," is sufficient. And there's some sentences that sound like legalese: "with the exception of the Lord High Steward, which office, as aforementioned, has generally been vacant since the 15th century." Marskell 08:53, 8 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

FARC commentary[edit]

Main FA criteria concerns are citations (2c) and whether the information is up-to-date (2b). Marskell 16:18, 14 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Talk message left at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Politics. Sandy 22:23, 16 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
what's been done thus far. Tony 23:35, 26 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • For clarity, none of my mentioned issues have been dealt with, so my nomination to remove FA status stands. -Splash - tk 20:15, 18 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Remove. Nothing happening on this one. Marskell 10:13, 21 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove as per Marskell and my comments during the review. Tony 07:24, 22 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Re content: did no-one notice User:Mhardcastle's edits on 16 July? -- ALoan (Talk) 19:59, 24 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • Thanks for pointing that out. Mhardcastle has (I think) brought the article reasonably up to date. It does still lack any proper level of referencing though. -Splash - tk 00:29, 25 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Looking again, yes, Mhardcastle did some good work. It's a shame about the citations because it's a good article. Unfortunately, per the consensus on 2C it should be removed. Marskell 10:44, 28 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove as above. Tony 10:59, 28 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove - most unfortunate, but without citations, we're asking Wiki readers to "take our word for it." Sandy 00:29, 29 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove as above. No refrerences, unexciting prose. Harmonica Wolfowitz 20:15, 31 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
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