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Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Archived nominations/June 2006

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Gospel of Judas

It has a previous FAC - Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Gospel of Judas/archive1. It failed that FAC because the Gospel of Judas was too much of a current event at the time. It is not now a current event. Clinkophonist 22:44, 23 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Object Needs more citations, especially in the Responses and reactions section--Peter Andersen 07:06, 24 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Object per above. It could use some more images too, though I doubt there would be much of a variety. The writing is not "brilliant" in some places: During the second and third centuries AD, various semi-Christian and non-Christian groups composed texts which are loosely labelled as New Testament Apocrypha, usually but not always in the names of apostles, patriarchs or other persons mentioned in the Old Testament, New Testament or older Jewish apocryphal literature — some of this is confusing. The centuries should be reworded properly and the text needs to be split since this has essentially become a run-on sentence. There are some other issues as well. —Eternal Equinox | talk 20:13, 25 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • As there are no official Wikipedia guidelines regarding the role of the FA director or how an article is promoted to featured status I am giving this article my support. Please see the discussions [[1]] and [[2]] at the featured article talk page for my reasoning.—Preceding unsigned comment added by Jayzel68 (talk • contribs)
  • It can be improved by reducing links to solitary years. In this article, there is only link: '2006'. A monobook tool allows this to be done with one click on a 'dates' tab in edit mode. You can then accept or reject the changes offered and/or do more editing before pressing 'Save'. Simply copy the entire contents of User:Bobblewik/monobook.js to your own monobook. Then follow the instructions in your monobook to clear the cache (i.e. press Ctrl-Shift-R in Firefox, or Ctrl-F5 in IE) before it will work. Hope that helps. bobblewik 19:41, 28 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/National Hockey League Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/37th Chess Olympiad

Martin Luther

This article is a perfect example of a well written, comprehensible, and neutral article. It incorporates quotations and pictures smoothly into the text, and provides refrences for everything. It is an of an appropriate length, yet still gives all the information that is required. It also complies with the style manual, and has an appropriate table of contents length. Overall, this article is informative, neutral, and very well written. Thetruthbelow 16:31, 15 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

NOTE: This article has 46KB of prose as of 24 June 2006. See Wikipedia:Summary style.
NOTE: This article has 51KB of prose as of 15 June 2006. See Wikipedia:Summary style. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Maveric149 (talk • contribs)


Done --CTSWyneken 02:10, 18 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • Per WP:MOS#Headings, headings generally do not start with the word "The". For example, ==The Biography== would be changed to ==Biography==.
Done, removed all "The" articles from subheadings.Ptmccain 19:47, 17 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Done--CTSWyneken 00:30, 18 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • Per WP:WIAFA, this article's table of contents (ToC) maybe too long- consider shrinking it down by merging short sections or using a proper system of daughter pages as per WP:SS.
    • This article may need to undergo summary style, where a series of appropriate subpages are used. For example, if the article is United States, than an appropriate subpage would be History of the United States, such that a summary of the subpage exists on the mother article, while the subpage goes into more detail.
    • As is done in WP:FOOTNOTE, for footnotes, the footnote should be located right after the punctuation mark, such that there is no space inbetween. For example, change blah blah [2]. to blah blah.[2]
Done--CTSWyneken 11:02, 18 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support, provisionally. It's mostly well written—congrats. But you could get someone else to go through it and polish it. Here's a snake that needs to be chopped up: "Luther was born to Hans and Margarethe Luther, née Ziegler [10], on 10 November 1483, in Eisleben, Germany, and was baptized the next day, on the feast day of St. Martin of Tours, after whom he was named." Seven commas, too.
Done by Ptmccain. --CTSWyneken 19:30, 18 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

A few random problems I spotted at the top:

    • Influenced the doctrine and culture of traditions—category problem.
    • "can not"—this should be "cannot"; it's a translation of a quote, so it can be fixed.
    • "His family moved to Mansfeld in 1484, where his father first worked in, then operated, copper mines." Did he work in and then operate every day? It's just a little unclear, but it's a minor point.
    • "Having risen from the peasantry, Hans Luther was determined to see his eldest son serve as a lawyer." I'd be happier not implying that lawyers serve anyone but themselves. What about "become a lawyer"?
Done by Ptmccain. --CTSWyneken 19:44, 18 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • "In this way, Martin would bring further honor to the family. "Further"?
    • "... sent to schools in Mansfeld and Magdeburg, where he attended a school.... He then attended school in Eisenach." Can you avoid the repetition?

I'm concerned that most readers won't realise that a "hymn" is just the words; the sentence talks of congregational singing. Did Luther write the music too? (I think that he did, so this could be explicit—it's unexpected that he should have been a composer as well.)

The "Early life" section is short, and comprises three paragraphs, two of which are stubby. Can you do a structural audit of the whole text to ensure optimal cohesion and flow? Tony 10:43, 16 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Suppport, with reservations. Well written and supported, but I find it hard to understand Luther without more context. The article has a brief mention of Zwingli and a few other contemporary dissenters, but no disucssion of prior dissenters. It notes actions of certain anabaptists and has him reacting to their radicalism without any explication of the substance of the dispute (was it just the violence or was there any substance or social explanation?). Similarly, the article doesn't mention Calvin at all, and has no substantive discussion of the Counter-Reformation and the reaction to his work, yet the Calvinist and Catholic reactions to Luther are among the most important topics in European history. I think a "legacy" or "influence" section and an "historical background" or "context" discussion would be useful, even if they are short and primarily create bridges to other articles. This is an excellent biography as such, but doesn't take full advantage of Wikipedia's ability to weave an article about an isolated topic into the whole. Still, worthy of FA status. Sam 13:16, 16 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. This article has been written through the joint effort of many Wikipedians, and represents the "blood, sweat, and tears" that go into making this the best online source of encyclopedic information on the web.--Drboisclair 02:02, 17 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Sorry to appear to be high-handed, but at a later stage, I'll not want to be able to pick out problem sentences at random. If that is still possible, I'll change to Object. This is what my eyes first came across:
"Soon terms like penance and righteousness took on new meaning for Luther, and he became convinced that the Church had lost sight of several of the central truths of Christianity taught in Scripture — the most important of them being the doctrine of justification by faith alone. Luther began to teach that salvation is completely a gift of God's grace through Christ received by faith alone. [22]"
    • Perhaps it's a stylistic matter, but many writers would agree that "Soon, terms such as ..." is preferable at the start.
    • If they "took on a new meaning", why not tell us more about it; this appears to be important to understanding the man, yet it's vague. Is the text largely copied from another source? (I don't mean to accuse; I'm just trying to determine the circumstances of the writing of the text—it may help us to improve it.)
    • "in Scripture"—I suppose that we need the upper-case S (do we?), but why is it "the Scriptures" above? Consider using the same terminology.
    • There are a few instances of "began to ..." that I don't like; it indicates a starting point, and begs for a year. It also begs the question of whether this new state of affairs continued right through his life. Better wording required?

So there's serious work to do before this is "compelling, even brilliant" prose. Tony 10:19, 17 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: thanks, Tony! Your comments are appreciated. When time permits, if no one gets there first, I'll tend to your points. --CTSWyneken 10:53, 17 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: Thanks of the suggestions, Piotrus! We've been struggling with the TOC since yesterday and will keep in mind your suggestion for subsections. Do you have a page that fits your criteria that you'd recommend we study? --CTSWyneken 10:41, 19 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Please look at my userpage: in top left section you will find a list of FAs I have worked on. The newest one are usually better then the old, and I hope they give you some ideas (especially the biographies).--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 15:53, 19 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose – A> needs to be written in sumamry form. B> ToC placement is odd C> Images squeeze the text in between, reduce the presence of so many images. D> Heading not according to MoS: Monastic and Academic Life -->: Monastic and academic life E> Left aligned images cause the headings to be pushed to the right. =Nichalp «Talk»= 10:46, 19 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Object; summary style please. And use subsections, not level two sections for everything. The TOC is huge, and poorly placed. Some sections are short and need to be merged into other sections (Small and Large Catechisms, Peasants' War, Theology of Grace, etc.). The supplementary sections (starting with the inexplicable "Bibliography" section) are extremely non-standard. Also, images per Nichalp (some people still use 800x600). --Spangineer[es] (háblame) 12:49, 19 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Please Note I have fixed the layout of the page, including the TOC. For all that opposed because of this reason, please inspect the page now. Thetruthbelow 03:25, 20 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • SuppportObject on layout. The TOC comes after the first (Early life) section and the TOC forces some sections to the right. Also, the Luther seal should not be split by the line on the left. Rlevse 17:19, 20 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
For those working on this, I'd suggest a review of Wikipedia:Section#Floating the TOC. Frankly, the thing looks horrible right now, and should not float into the first section. I would suggest deleting the TOC codes and working with the default. Sam 18:11, 20 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
We're in a no-win situation with that one, folks. If we go to the default code, we end up with a ton of white space. It is very difficult to fill that space. I don't like it that way, I do not like it this way, either. So, any suggestions? --CTSWyneken 18:45, 20 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Object; no offense, but while the doctrinal side and major historical events of his life are meticulously, and even brilliantly detailed, the man himself is described in such sanctified terminology and bowdlerizing his earthy character in toto, that the image of the person is not only un-recognizable, but indeed false. I am sorry if that is a blunt statement, but it cannot be put more nicely. I respectfully submit that (coming as I do from a country with an Evangelical Lutheran state church) Finnish or German Lutherans are much more comfortable with a human Luther of Flesh and Bone, than American Lutherans. While this is is the English Language wikipedia, I seriously question whether that is good enough justification to let a bowdlerized, stylized image of Luther suffice here. In my view such particularism should not fly, at least in matters of content. -- Cimon avaro; on a pogostick. 10:35, 25 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • P.S. I specifically refer to for example this line from the German version of the same article: Auch Luthers Predigten und Schriften waren in einer kräftigen und volksnahen Sprache verfasst, wobei er vulgäre Ausdrücke nicht verschmähte. Bekannt wurden viele deftige Zitate wie: „Aus einem glücklichen Arsch kommt ein fröhlicher Furz.“ - references to even such subtle hints (he was really much more earthy even than that) at the human Luther behind the religious figure, have been systematically excised from the article no matter how many times and how carefully worded, not to offend. I really must put the foot down here. -- Cimon avaro; on a pogostick. 10:58, 25 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Comment Thank you for yout comment. However, I do not see what you would find necessary to change in the article. We have cited the article thoroughly. The dilemma ahead of us is that the article is already overlong for an encyclopedia presentation. Why is it necessary to detail aspects of Luther's personality, such as his vulgarity? After all, we see nothing of the kind in article printed in physica; encyclopedias, nor are their similar details in articles like: Henry VIII of England, Erasmus and his contemporaries. (The latter does not even detail the humanist's anti-semitism). So why, in our context, is this needed? --CTSWyneken 14:49, 25 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Shortening the TOC would help. Rlevse 18:48, 20 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Part of the problem before was that with short headings (generally a good thing) and only one level to your TOC (generally a bad thing), the white space was just enormous. With two levels and at least one longer heading, there will be less white space now. But I'd be tempted to move one of the photos you'd like to have larger to run side-by-side with the TOC. It probably means getting rid of the Luther seal, but that could be stuck down at the end to decorate the lengthy notes, bibliography, etc. If you're looking to shorten the TOC, you can do it by moving some of the sections at the end out of the TOC, using bulleting instead of a heading that appears in the TOC (I did this, for example, to the references section of Franklin D. Roosevelt to address the same complaint during the FA process). Sam 19:03, 20 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment THe current main page FA, Absinthe, has the TOC and spacing very similar to the way yours is right now. I think it'd be fine. Rlevse 19:06, 20 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Comment Exactly the point. Thanks! The problem with moving it down is that we have an editor that really likes it where it is. I've got to admit, is is quite attractive. I tried the reduce to bullets trick, but that eliminated second level headings, which folk did not like. Yes, I agree that its probably OK, but it still bothers me. It says, "fill me! fill me!" I keep thinking, this is to be a feature article. It should be the best. But every technique I know, going back to HTML 1.0 results in funny spacing. I'm at a loss as to how to fill it. Does anyone know how to create some sort of info box that wouldn't look bad, fit like a glove, provide good information and the coding tricks to put it there? --CTSWyneken 19:12, 20 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure there is a solution. In books, these things go on separate pages so they don't much up the works, but here, there is no way around that list with dead white space on the side. But, it is a part of every Wikipedia article, so everyone knows where to look or where to scroll on by. But embedding it makes it all worse, since then it gets in the way of the actual article. Sam 19:33, 20 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment In my impression this english version of the Wikipedia Texts about Luther is not better than the german one. And the german Version was not able to become a featured article despite there have been four candidate runs in the last year. The reason is clear for the german version: it ist lacking essential parts in theology, the chapter about music and liturgy is rudimentary and the important eucharistic controversy is not so well documented. This is also true for the english version. Shurely I will not object in this case, because i cannot contribute to this article. But the deficites should be obvious to the authors. Greetings -- Andreas Werle 00:40, 24 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for your comments, Andy; to declare object or support, you don't have to be able to contribute. Tony 04:34, 24 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Conditional Support -- I think the header "Luther's Excommunication" should be renamed so that it doesn't imply that he actually was excommunicated. "Widening breach" is not clear enough in its meaning. The Diet of Worms section should explain what the Diet of Worms actually was (just in a sentence). Lastly, the large scale structure is too linear; there needs to be more leveling in the TOC. I'd like to see the whole thing divided into "Biography" and "Views" or something similar. The article gets very dense at the end and doesn't flow. Otherwise, this is a great article; an achievement worthy of the prestigious FA status. -- Rmrfstar 14:40, 25 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong oppose, as per Cimon Avaro. This article verges on hagiography; it has been an uphill battle to get even the tiniest amount of negative material into the article, so as to provide even a modicum of balance. Even now, any source which says the slightest negative thing about Luther is downgraded or denigrated in some way, e.g. [3] [4], and attempts are made to remove their words altogether, based on clearly false policy claims, e.g. [5], while falsely pumping up the credentials of Lutheran theologians who support Luther, e.g. [6]. In this case, attempts are made to pump up the qualifications of Luther supporter Uwe Siemon-Netto, a journalist and theologian who did a PhD in sociology, to make them appear equivalent to that of critical historians such as Robert Michael, Professor Emeritus of European History at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, who in 1997 received the American Historical Associations James Harvey Robinson Prize for the most outstanding contribution to the teaching and learning of history, and Paul Johnson, who has written 16 works of history, many of them best-sellers. Jayjg (talk) 21:58, 26 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: This can be seen two ways, Jay. It appears from this side as an attempt to downgrade scholars who have done doctoral level work, studied Martin Luther and his works in-depth and deserve to be accorded respect. Instead, it appears they are attacked because they do not have the "correct" opinion on a single issue. In this article, a Catholic scholar was even questioned, apparently because he said something nice about Martin Luther. I would rather simply accept all of the scholars mentioned on that issue, introduce them neutrally and let the reader decide. This has been said repeatedly. The comments about Johnson and Michael were stated only show where things go when the qualifications of credentialed scholars are questioned. But it appears that others do not wish it to be so.
You and others are welcome to introduce other negative characteristics of Luther's legacy. The reason this has not been done is that the Luther and the Jews issue is constantly raised and efforts made to represent only one side of the debates involved. The article is incomplete in many respects because so many Bytes have been taken up on it. I'd urge neutral editors to read several encyclopedia articles to see how they portray the man, what is included and what is not. I suspect you will find little different from what is included in such essays and what we have placed here. --CTSWyneken 23:39, 26 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Isn't the judgment as to sources generally based on whether they are in peer reviewed journals or published by reputable presses, preferrably academic? I think the article would be better off without detailed description of the qualifications of any source; if qualifications beyond the publisher or journal are needed to lend credibility, another source should be found. Sam 03:29, 27 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
To comment on the academic titles: elsewhere we routinely remove PBUH and honorifics. In science we shouldn't need browbeating with academic titles, and if we want to convince the audience that someone's views are valid we present evidence that they are widely accepted. Dr Zak 04:02, 27 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Object per Cimon Avaro and Jayjg. I'm surprised to see this nomination. Martin Luther has been the subject of some of the most POV editing I've witnessed in the 20 months I've been at Wikipedia. It has been edited largely by three employees of the Lutheran church — User:CTSWyneken, User:Drboisclair, and User:Ptmccain — who have fought hard to keep out or minimize any criticism of Luther, and there have been some serious attempts to bully editors who add criticism, with the result that the article can't be trusted to be a comprehensive description of Luther's life and work. Talk:Martin Luther and related talk pages became completely toxic, with endless, spurious arguments and wikilawyering about policies that none of them understood; Ptmccain e-mailed me with what he believed was my real name (based on what he read on an attack site) and then posted a reference to his e-mail on Talk:Martin Luther in an attempt to intimidate me [7]; the same user was blocked three times in 18 days for 3RR [8]; engaged in vandalism when thwarted [9] [10] [11]; and when I requested two citations for Martin Luther, [12] he responded with a WP:POINT by going to articles I had created or edited and randomly requesting citations, [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] including one for the sentence: "The terms extermination camp (German: Vernichtungslager) or death camp (German: Totenlager) specifically refer to the camps whose primary function was genocide." [19] There's a lot more of the same behavior, but these highlights are examples of their response to the insertion of criticism.

Even today, as this nomination is being considered, Ptmccain and CTSWyneken are coooperating to stop historians Robert Michael and Paul Johnson from being called by their normal titles unless their favorite source, a Lutheran writer called Uwe Siemon-Netto, who works with these users, is called a historian too. [20] But Siemon-Netto is a journalist who took a degree in theology or sociology and who now, like them, works for the Lutheran church. He has no degrees in history, has never published any history, and there are no credible third-party sources who say he's a historian. Even his own Wikipedia article, which was written by CTSWyneken, doesn't call him a historian. Ptmccain deleted that Robert Michael, who is very critical of Luther, is "Professor Emeritus of European History at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth," and reduced it to "historian," and Paul Johnson, who has published 16 works of history, many of them bestsellers, was downgraded from "historian" to "journalist" (which he also is), with the edit summary "shorter and more accurate descriptions of people." [21] CTSWyneken is engaged in similar editing. [22] [23]

As for the article itself, it contains sentences like: "[Luther] insisted that the impious and even beasts eating and drinking the consecrated elements eat and drink the body and blood of Christ, but the "unworthy" eat and drink it to their judgment," which is meaningless. The text is full of that kind of writing, but they won't allow it to be copy edited. SlimVirgin (talk) 03:37, 27 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

With respect, Slim, I believe that you are being unfair here to make a judgment on Christian theology by calling it meaningless. This is the clear teaching of the New Testament that is being spoken of here about the eating and drinking of the body and blood of Christ. I do not think that you would take it too kindly if we were to comment on teachings of the Talmud in an uninformed way.--Drboisclair 01:21, 28 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It was not the religious aspect that I described as meaningless, Drb, and I apologize for giving that impression. It is the writing. Perhaps it's a quote, but then it needs to be in quotation marks. In the absence of those, I have to assume it was written by a Wikipedian, and if so, I have trouble working out what it means exactly, and I have to guess how it should be parsed. SlimVirgin (talk) 01:26, 28 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
You have a good point here. Emendation is in order with irrelevant matter deleted. Thank you for pointing that out. As it stands it would confuse a reader.--Drboisclair 01:40, 28 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I have edited the passage in question, please see Martin Luther#Eucharistic views and controversies. I hope that this helps some.--Drboisclair 02:43, 28 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, it's much better, thank you. I removed "with equal clarity" to make it more neutral. I've also put up a query on the talk page about the use of "Christ" or "Jesus Christ" throughout the article, even when not in quotes, because people who are not Christians don't believe he was Christ. It's a bit like adding PBUH after the name of the prophet. That would constitute another objection from me, unless there's a "When in Rome" guideline somewhere in relation to religious articles.SlimVirgin (talk) 12:55, 28 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: Dear Slim: I'd appreciate civility from you. What has my status or those of other editors have to do with the article?
It would help the article if you would, rather than attack, compare the article against encyclopedia articles and provide tell us: what is covered in them that is not covered in our article? What is in our article that is not in them? If something is not in our article, then, please make a case for including it. --CTSWyneken 23:03, 27 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
My comment was civil. Featured articles are supposed to be "well written, comprehensive, factually accurate, neutral, and stable," according to the FAC page. (a) The article isn't well written. I gave an example above. (b) It isn't comprehensive, as someone pointed out earlier: you've left out, for example, how crude Luther was, and he is famous for it. (c) I can't trust the factual accuracy because I've watched you try to keep out any criticism. (d) Ditto for neutral. (e) It isn't stable. You're edit warring on it even now so that Paul Johnson isn't called a "historian," despite his 16 published history books, but so that your source, Uwe Siemon-Netto is called one — someone who works with you, has written no works of history, has no degree in history, is not called a historian by a single third-party source that we can find (except of course Wikipedia, [24] because you added it to the article), and who doesn't even call himself a historian. [25] And Ptmccain has just been reported for his fourth 3RR violation on that page. [26] SlimVirgin (talk) 00:16, 28 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
First of all, attacking me and others is not civil, no matter what you think of us. Second, you have a right to your opinion on the fitness of the article for feature status. Third, I have to date not found an encyclopedia article that mentions that Luther was crude -- or others from his time for that matter. Fourth, Uwe Siemon-Netto does not work with me at all. He works at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, not Fort Wayne. I have never met the man. You are also attacking a scholar you do not know and have not noticed that we have quoted from a book of history written by him. Also notice that I did not add the title "historian" to the Siemon-Netto article. Please check your facts. Fifth, if you do not trust the accuracy of the article, why not compare it to an encyclopedia article. You added a citation to the article from one. In fact, every fact tag you placed in the article I have tracked down a source for. You are welcome to check these, too.
You may have the last word now, because the only way we can move on is if I do not reply. So, please, live up to your own standards. --CTSWyneken 00:31, 28 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
CTSWyneken, by "status", do you mean employment? As in, when you explained in On the Jews and Their Lies (on 04:01, 14 June 2006 UTC) that your full time paid "position" within the Lutheran Church included writing Wikipedia articles related to Martin Luther?--Doright 00:51, 28 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
This does seem to require an explanation. CTSWyneken wrote: "For your information, in any case, my position is tasked with the generation of electronic resources, which does take in projects such as wikipedia." [27] It appears to imply that editing Wikipedia is regarded as part of CTSW's job. SlimVirgin (talk) 01:07, 28 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
CTS, why must you find another encyclopedia article that says he was crude? You know he was extraordinarily crude. There are good sources for it. It's a very interesting aspect of the man, and makes him come alive, in fact. But you are censoring it, calling it "not necessary." (Your problem is that you want to defend him, and therefore see the charge of being crude as criticism, but it really isn't. It makes him human and it would probably be the most interesting section on the page.) I didn't say you had added the word "historian" to Netto's page. I said even his own article doesn't say that about him, and he doesn't self-describe as one either. But you have added it to other articles, [28] [29] even though no sources back you up. The behavior of the main editors on the page is directly relevant to whether this article can be regarded as comprehensive, factually accurate, and neutral, which is why I've described it. SlimVirgin (talk) 00:56, 28 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Let's calm down everybody. While I don't agree with everything CTS said, that is no cause to start attacking. Let's all remember that everyone is working their hardest on this article before we start attacking. Thank you. Shalom--Thetrutbelow 21:21, 28 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
No-one's attacking and everybody's calm. :-) SlimVirgin (talk) 21:22, 28 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
That good, I must have misinterpreted some of the above conversation. Thanks Slim! Shalom--Thetrutbelow 21:26, 28 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Nye kampskrifter

Samtidig forfattede han også små lejlighedsskrifter, som Om munkeløftet. Med dem indledede han en lang række kampskrifter, hvor han ofte kritiserer katolsk lære og katolske skikke. Han kritiserede også det, som man skulle mene stod ham særlig nær personlig: munkestanden, cølibatet, messeofferet, den præstelige tjeneste, osv. Hans svar på kritik fra Latomus af Leuven, Hieronymus Emser og fra det teologiske fakultet ved universitetet i Paris, har ofte en grov karakter, hvor de får tørt på. Hans kommentar til den nyudsendte pavelige skærtorsdagsbullen «In coena Domini» på folkeligt tysk, spiller på utilsløret folkelig humor og krydser også grænserne for, hvad man opfattede som religiøst anstændigt. Den ligefremme form og tone i disse skrifter, som takket være bogtrykkerkunsten fik hurtig spredning, bidrog til at skærpe den almindelige atmosfære, men Luther forsvarer sin stil bla. i indledningen Om den trælbundne vilje.

The above is from the Danish wikipedia article on Luther. The corresponding information does not appear to exist in the English language version. I do not agree that adding it to the English version would be irrelevant or out of place. To give a proper like for like comparison, please read Philipp Melanchthon. That article has a remarkably three dimensional view of the works and the person of the man considered. The evaluations of his character, whether lauding, or critically examining, do not detract from the article, but greatly enhance it, and present the man in a sympathetic light, as a real human being. That is all I would wish for in the Luther article, and while it is not present, the article is a torso. If someone would undertake to translate the information present in the Danish Article into the Featured Article Candidate, I would freely drop the major objection I have.

Additionally, I would like to take the opportunity to completely dissociate myself from the whole debate of how prominently Luthers anti-semitism is presented. That is not my objection at all. -- Cimon avaro; on a pogostick. 10:33, 2 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Oppose, but emphatically not per Cimon Avaro, Jayjg and SlimVirgin. Much has been made of Luther's antisemitism. Admittedly I'm a simple chemist and a total layman. Wikipedians should be used to defending their views against laymen. The article devotes one paragraph to the development of Luther's views of the Jews and three his late work On the Jews and their Lies. This seems out of proportion. We should see the development of Luther's view on the subject, the reception of of his views by his contemporaries, and how his views fit into the context of antijudaism in the Late Middle Ages. This must include "On the Jews". de.wikipedia has a much more balanced view. Dr Zak 04:02, 27 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: I've checked two encyclopedia articles, one in Collier's, the other in Funk and Wagnalls. The former does not take up Luther's relationship to the Jews at all, the latter makes a two sentence mention. I am not against the longer treatment in the later article, but have opposed the paragraph in the intro. It is there at the insistance of SlimVirgin, JayG, Doright and others. --CTSWyneken 23:03, 27 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose per Cimon avaro, Andreas Werle, Jayjg, SlimVirgin, and Dr Zak.
--Doright 22:40, 27 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
A glimmer of the magnitude of just one aspect of the POV problems already identified can be seen in edits in the last few hours.
For example:
  • (1) sourced material is again deleted,
  • (2) the anti-Semitic Person category is again removed and to top it off,
  • (3) the POV flag itself is unilaterally deleted in an attempt to deny that POV concerns even exist. [[30]].
Just as ontogeny (in some ways) recapitulate phylogeny, this example of whitewashing disputes recapitulates the whitewashing of the Martin Luther article itself. Disdain for the well documented POV concerns identified by highly respected and experienced editors on this page (plus the Luther and its sub-article pages) is then typified by the edit summary for the above diff. "No justifiable reason for this flag." --Doright 19:31, 29 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Only 1 vote per editor--Doright 19:57, 29 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Comment Who do you think voted more than once? It strikes me that posting things like this without looking does not assume good faith, and is part of the reason this entire page is simply painful to read (and it has been done on both sides). As I read it, the complaints here are over (i) the failure to describe Luther's vulgarity and (ii) disagreements over how the section on Luther's anti-semitic attitudes should read. Are there any other issues with the article? If not, I'd suggest someone who wants the part on vulgarity inserted propose a couple of interesting sentences, and that there be an attempt to find a good historian on the site without an axe to grind to review and rewrite the antisemitism section. Then objections get withdrawn and the article moves forward. Or is the fight you relish? Enough already, guys! Sam 20:19, 29 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Have you check the name of the nominator? I presume that the nominator is assumed to support their own nomination. Is this correct? Please review [here] and report back to us how many of the 43 nominated articles have a separate Support vote submitted by the nominator. (BTW a quick glance suggests it might be zero). --Doright 22:59, 29 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed, your own post is a nice example of what you complain about. It is personal attack rhetoric, self-contradictory and attempts to reduce a systemic problem with the article to a catfight. The concern simply states that only 1 vote be counted per editor. The concern arises only because of the unusual circumstance of the nominator placing a separate vote (and at some distance from the ___location of their nomination).
Additionally, you remarkably claim to know what I have not looked at. Through what device are you able to know this? Then you claim that by virtue of this special knowledge you can conclude that one "does not assume good faith." This all seems a bit odd to me. One can't help wonder about the explanatory power of [Projection].

--Doright 22:59, 29 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

My comment was that he had not voted, and it seemed you had not looked for his vote. Nominators often do vote. My broader comment was that there are ways to solve this other than what everyone here has been doing, and it would benefit the article to see someone avail themselves of those ways. I hear "broader systemic problems" but every complaint I read relates to the question of how to describe and discuss the section on Luther's anti-semiticism. Get a third party editor in, someone who can draft with input from both sides. It's a suggestion. Take it. Leave it. Your choice. Sam 23:46, 29 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong Oppose per Cimon avaro, Jayjg, SlimVirgin. Tone of article is far too reverential. (P.S. regret my tardiness but just became aware of this vote -- not even sure if this is still active.)--Mantanmoreland 18:11, 12 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Earless Water Rat Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Pokémon Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Cars (film)

Final Fantasy VII

I would like to nominate this article for the following reasons;

1) It is already on the Good Articles section

2) Length is at a considerable length

3) It is well known and very popular

4) In my opinion, it is well written meets the neutral POV and is factually correct with the citations

5) Not the target of vandalism (not as much as the popular articles)

6) Edit wars are non-existant.

(Feel free to add any more reasons why this should be on the featured. Thank you!) Please comment and if you oppose, please state why so it could be fixed. -ScotchMB 12:31, 20 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose Lots of uncited claims in the Sales and critical reception section. --Peter Andersen 13:38, 20 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support It is time for this to be on the featured-68.160.209.234 14:10, 20 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose This article is coming along, but it hardly seems ready - Nominator claims that all citations check out, yet a quick glance turns up at least one (citation needed) {{fact}} box, with many other statements still needing a reference as well. The constant opening and closing of spoiler tags are a serious problem; from what I've seen only one is needed for these types of articles. This nomination was made in haste; a little more work could have resolved the simpler issues, allowing for more sophisticated concerns to be voiced here. Kil (talk) 16:14, 20 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Object. Too many lists, should be converted into prose, also, other user's concerns about references are vaild. Given the fact that this game is quite possibly the most well-known non-Mario video game of the last fifteen years, the article does not seem comprehensive. RyanGerbil10 (Drop on in!) 18:22, 20 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Object per others. Prose and quality of writing needs work, amongst other things. — Wackymacs 16:16, 21 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Object - List need to be converted into prose. Lead is insufficient. The first sentence after the lead contains a link to a dab page (RPG - didn't check for others past there...) Too many small spoiler sections. Writing is often clunky, for example: "The game was also noteworthy in that it..." and "Another notable aspect of the game comes at the end of its first disc. There it features a scene in which..." These sentences contain a lot of weasel and filler text.
This game is an important one in CVG history, but that alone is not reason to feature an article. Pagrashtak 16:37, 21 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Update - while doing some reference checking, I discovered that the sentence "Producer Hironobu Sakaguchi allowed Aeris to die as an expression of grief after his mother died during the production of Final Fantasy III." is a direct copy from IMDB. I hope there are not any further copyvios in the article. A tip of the hat to the editor who was bold enough to put a link to the plagiarized source at the end of the setence, though. Pagrashtak 21:25, 21 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Lawyer

Daniel Webster

(Self-nom) Well, I've worked on it the past week or so and I think its a good article. I applied for peer review status but I only got an automated bot (all of whom's suggestions I acted upon). So here I am. I hope you find it acceptable.TonyJoe 18:12, 22 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Oppose. The Peer Review started yesterday. You should have waited at least a week to get the suggestions before bringing the article for FAC. Talking about merits to be an FA, it clearly isn't neutral. I am pointing a few examples:
    • "Though poor and uneducated, Ebenezer Webster, who was widely respected and trusted throughout the community, was made a judge on the local court in 1791, a position which carried a salary of four hundred dollars."
    • "Seeing great promise in his son’s prodigious memory and strong budding intellect and knowing the regret of never having been educated himself, the Elder Webster resolved to use his new found windfall to educate young Daniel."
  • Look for such examples throughout the text. They are even in the lead but sometimes claims substantiated in the sections thereafter are exempted. -Ambuj Saxena (talk) 18:33, 22 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Reponse:Honestly after a day and only an automated bot I couldn't be sure that the Peer review would come to anything valuble looking toward the bottom of the list with articles like United Buddy Bears having no comments (having been submited on June 4th and others like Merv Griffin as well; either up or down, FAC is more likely to recieve comment while PR seems to be at times up in the air, hence Webster's presence here.
As for Neutrality... Ebenezer was poor and widely respected, else getting the position he received was a not impossible and was a big deal. Daniel Webster also did have a prodigious memory his entire life— he never referenced a sheet of paper during any of his many orations. I don't see these facts as violating any neutrailty whatsover. If you'd like I guess I could reference my sources in these claims if that's not going into too much detail but claims of his memory and intellect wouldn't be found to be objectional by even the most ardent Webster critic, contemporary or otherwise. I don't think the claims are stated with any sort of awe toward Webster or his dad, they just state as fact that webster had a great mind and people liked his dad so they gave him a job.TonyJoe 19:08, 22 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Explaining: If you found that the article was good enough, you should have first closed the Peer Review before bringing it here. Coming back to objections, I had purposely italised words/phrases to point out POVs, etc. Explaining in words, how do we know that Ebenezer Webster was "widely respected throughout the community". Why is the sentence dramatised by stating with "Though poor and uneducated...". How do we know that he regretted never being educated himself and it was a deciding criteria for Daniel's education? Hope you understand the problems I am pointing out. -Ambuj Saxena (talk) 19:50, 22 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Once more: Not seeing a requirement that Peer Reviews be closed before a nomination, I didn't think it mattered either way. As for "widely respected throughout the community" and his regret at being uneducated, the latter has always been cited under page seven of the biography ("his thoughts at once toward that education which he had missed, and he determined that he would give to his children what he had irretrievably lost himself) since its insertion into the article (a citation which followed two other claims of being educated and bullied at Exeter) and the latter ("widely respected") has since been deleted as it was uncited though its source is found on page five of the same biography ("His neighbors trusted him. They gave him every office in their gift, and finally he was made judge of the local court."); perhaps merely having their "trust" and "giving him every office in their gift" is not enough to declare respect so I axed it.
There is a definite requirement that peer review be closed before FAC. See WP:PR for list of instructions and rules. I have archived the PR myself. -Ambuj Saxena (talk) 06:27, 23 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
As for the so called "dramatization" of "though poor and uneducated," I admit it to be a bit superfluous (though it helps in establishing Webster's life long money problems) but its hardly an indication of a lack of neutrality, do I have to provide a reference for something a small as his family being very poor? If its required I will but it seems neither controvertial nor critical enough for such a measure.

Also, I've also added a direct quote on Webster's memory. TonyJoe 20:57, 22 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Update: I've gone through the article and attempted to further address some of Ambuj Saxenal's concerns and removed statements like "eloquently defended" and "equal skill". I hope that this is the end of this problem?TonyJoe 03:20, 23 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

As I said, reports of Webster's memory are now specifically cited (attributed to JFK), as are claims of his being one of America's greatest orators (in the legacy section and that's always been so). Claims of his father's respectibility have been removed. I do believe any of these minor pov problems have been dealt with, having been removed or cited, unless anyone has spotted more... :TonyJoe 16:55, 23 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. From what I know, if there are sentences that carry POV, they must be attributed in text. I will let others review it and if they don't agree with me, I will strike out my comments. -Ambuj Saxena (talk) 17:01, 23 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/FIFA World Rankings Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Sesame Street

Goldfish

I have expanded this article a lot, allowed a thorough peer review, and added many pictures. QuizQuick 00:21, 19 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose: One of the major issues from the old Peer Review and the old FA nomination have not been addressed... and that is the lack of any inline citations. (If you need any help on this, feel free to ask.) --P-Chan 00:42, 19 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Functional programming Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Programming language Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/King Crimson

Beer

I made this a FA because I noticed that absinthe is a FA and beer is much more compreshensive. Richardkselby 00:14, 20 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Forth

Self-nom. This article has had major edits and restructuring since the last nomination, and most importantly now has citations, about one per section. Ideogram 07:52, 22 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There is now exactly one subsection without inline references, not counting the Code examples section. If this is not satisfactory, please let me know. Ideogram 22:27, 22 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I feel it could be better referenced. One per subsection is sort of a minimum... ideally, there should be a citation for every fact, which might be around one per paragraph, maybe more. I can help with this, if you aren't in a hurry. Armedblowfish (talk|mail|contribs) 18:08, 23 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
That would be really great. I'm not good at looking up references. And yes, I can wait. Ideogram 18:14, 23 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I have made a first pass at this. See what you think. Ideogram 20:21, 22 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Improvements are satisfactory. Please take note of other suggestions. Also, try to get references for unsourced statements. -Ambuj Saxena (talk) 20:26, 22 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I have obtained references for the unsourced statements.
I believe all the cites are consistent now, with one exception; there was a special issue of BYTE Magazine devoted to Forth, and I don't know how to cite a magazine. Right now it's using {{Harvard reference | Surname= | Given= | Authorlink= | Title=The Forth Language | Journal=BYTE Magazine | Volume=5 | Issue=8 | Year=1980 | Page= }} but it doesn't look right. Ideogram 22:57, 22 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The article has been in existence since November of 2001, so this objection is coming rather late. That said, a disambiguation article already exists (and is pointed to by Forth). For that matter, Forth programming language (which uses the Wikipedia standard naming for programming language articles) already exists too, it just redirects to Forth. --Allan McInnes (talk) 19:45, 25 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Forth

I believe this is an excellent article, on a par with other featured articles in the same category such as C programming language and Java programming language.

This is a self-nomination. Ideogram 04:06, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It was the most popular introduction to Forth for a time and the one most users are familiar with. Ideogram 18:04, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Is User:Mhx really the copyright holder? Jkelly 18:50, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Err, no. I have fixed it to use an image with the proper copyright and fair use rationale. Ideogram 19:01, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Could you expand on the Fair use rationale a little, as the article isn't about the book? I'm not disputing that it may be fair use, but I suggest more explanation is needed. Jkelly 20:31, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'm a little unclear on this myself. I was following the model of C programming language which isn't really about the book either. I don't know what to say; if this is a problem we can remove the image. Ideogram 21:35, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Added rationale. Staxringold talkcontribs 02:58, 5 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. Ideogram 04:23, 5 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Object. The image isn't being described at all in the text- in fact, the words "Starting Forth " don't appear in the entire article. That makes the fair use assertion rather sub-par. Another, free-er image would be better. --Rory096 20:11, 6 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Ok I've deleted the image. Ideogram 20:17, 6 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'm unclear on what this means. Can you give an example of what is required? C programming language has only three footnotes, and Java programming language has none. Ideogram 21:09, 7 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The standard of WP:FOOTNOTEs has risen greatly - before, references were not even required to become a WP:FA. Nowadays, most voters on this page look for at least somewhere around 1 footnote per section minimum. Andy t 00:36, 8 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'll see what I can do about the citations. Do you mean the External links section at the bottom? Can you give me some guidance as to what could be removed? Thanks. Ideogram 20:40, 13 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'd say cut the communities, and reduce the number of implementation links drastically (does the average reader need all of them? There is google). Other redundant links can be removed too (only one on the history, for example). The idea is to provide links that are particularly useful and encyclopedic, not to include every good webpage that's related to the topic. --Spangineer[es] (háblame) 21:19, 13 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The problem with Google is that Forth hits the river, not the programming language, and phrases like "go forth" etc. This has been a common complaint amongst Forth advocates for years. The list is certainly encyclopedic in nature, and afiak is the only list of its kind. Alex 12:17, 14 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I fail to see how a list of implementations is encyclopedic. Wikipedia is not a directory. Not to mention that directories like dmoz.org already have reasonably comprehensive lists of implementations. --Allan McInnes (talk) 19:39, 19 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment This article now has many citations and has been substatially rewritten. If anyone is still watching this page, please read the article and comment. Ideogram 21:20, 21 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Jang Yeong-sil

Ammonia

This article's previous nomination was knocked down to a incomplete table but now everything is perfect. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Protarion (talk • contribs) 12:00, June 4, 2006

  • Commentjust about sourcing I think its quite well sourced and considering the abundant information on Ammonia this aspect is quite good. User: Protarion
  • Comment - I would love to support, but I am the person who nominated it for the Science Collaboration Of The Week, and thus helped clean up the page to close Featured Article status. Am I allowed to vote? Kilo-Lima|(talk) 11:32, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose, many places don't have inline sources. Other than that, though, it looks pretty good. Hurricanehink (talk) 18:38, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose for now - I'm sorry I wasn't aware of this article sooner. This is not at all to take away from the wonderful work that has been done on the article, but there are several areas which need work. First, stylistically there are several single sentence paragraphs/subheadings which are generally to be avoided. But more importantly, I would expect a featured article on ammonia to have at least some information about its crucial biologic roles in nitrogen and acid/base balance. The current article mentions them in passing under toxicity and biosynthesis, but I feel a dedicated section would be helpful. Also, some small discussion of urea cycle defects as a cause for human disease with resultant hyperammonemia would be nice. Unfortunately, this is not an ideal weekend for me to write the section - perhaps in a few days I can devote the amount of time needed. Sorry for the opposition, as you've done a great job! InvictaHOG 19:31, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I've struck my opposition after adding a short section about the biology/biochemistry of ammonia. I will support once copy-edited with removal of those one sentence paragraphs and short subheadings! InvictaHOG 05:03, 8 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong Support Pretty much perfect in all areas and a wealth of information. Felixboy 16:07, 6 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support per above. But it could be improved.
      • Some sections are short. (eg Handling and storage of ammonium compounds)
      • As InvictaHOG mentioned, it needs to have at least some information about its crucial biologic roles in nitrogen and acid/base balance.
Nice job on the article though.

Anonymous_anonymous_Have a Nice Day 19:38, 6 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Object; sorry, we should not be using online Encarta as a major source. Find a good chemistry textbook and use that instead. Also, the TOC is rather large for an article of this length—combining level 3 sections in "Safety precautions" would be a good idea. Maybe incorporate Biosynthesis into the Synthesis and production section. Wording is also a little clumsy and informal. --Spangineer[es] (háblame) 20:28, 13 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • Comment The 6 references two Encarta are all on points which do not really relate to chemistry and are minor points of information, so it is not really a major source. --Protarion

support Richardkselby 00:54, 20 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Oppose needs inline citations for figures, such as the chart under "Laboratory use of ammonia solutions". Consider moving the bolded term into the lead (presumably it redirects to this title?). There should be a paragraph or two summary under all section headings, such as "Safety precautions". Tuf-Kat 02:34, 20 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • Oppose opposition as I'm not sure I understand what is wanted :). If by "figures" you mean the molarity values which correpond to certain percentage concentrations, the reference is the CRC Handbook listed at the Bibliography section ('twas I who added most of the Safety material). Physchim62 (talk) 13:35, 20 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
      • By "figures", I mean essentially all numbers. The source needs to be cited using inline citations to make it clear which numbers come from which source. Tuf-Kat 22:05, 20 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support I think people are missing the point of an encyclopedia. It covers everything you could want to know, referenced, neat, yeah, go ahead. ....(Complain)(Let us to it pell-mell) 07:08, 22 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Elliott Smith

A very well written article, that includes many sources. It is the best article, out of all the offical bios.

  • Comment: Haven't read through the entire thing, but right off the bat, I see that lead may cause some controversy. "Elliott Smith... deemed by many fans and peers to be one of his generation's most gifted songwriters". I think this may be a misrepresentation, as the article clearly states that it was his own record label that said that, in response to his death! Now, I don't mean to be bashing this person, nor am I saying that that statement is necessarily wrong, but it may be a little on the POV side. Can you substantiate this a little better? If you can't, it should be removed or changed. --P-Chan 03:26, 15 June 2006 (UTC). I'm now going to Object, as the point that my last comment was refering to should definetly be addressed next time this article goes up for an FA.--P-Chan 21:52, 16 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Object. Close, but the trivia section will have to be merged into other areas of the article, and the lead section should be expanded. However, it's much better than the aver musician article on wiki. With a bit of hard work, this can be made FA standard within the nom time. RyanGerbil10 (Drop on in!) 06:03, 15 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Object Not bad, but a few problems. For starters, there's a few places where "citation needed" is inserted. The lead section could use a bit more text (not a blocking objection). Moving the full discography to a separate article is OK, but I would expect at least some of it to remain in the main article, a "Selected discography". Also I think we could do without the section of trivia and cultural references in their current (list) form. Jeronimo 07:03, 15 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Object—2a. In some ways, it's not badly written. However, it's not good enough yet. With just an hour's work by a good editor, it will satisfy the explicit requirement of this criterion. Here are examples from the top.
  • Three stubby little paragraphs don't make a lead. The paragraphing throughout tends to be choppy. Our readers need smooth flow.
  • Do I care that he was born at 12:59am?
  • "who was allegedly abusive"—Begs for a reference, even though (I think) you're saying that it's in his lyrics.
  • "the majority of the album"—grammar.
  • "were in attendance"—can't this be simply "attended"? Someone distant from the writing process needs to go through it and weed out redundancies such as this. Here's another: "he had just written it earlier that day"—Which word can go?
  • "the record contained a style"? Unidiomatic.
  • "invited onstage"—unsure whether onstage is correct here as one word. Please check. Tony 15:02, 15 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Object
  1. "The evidence surrounding his death is still inconclusive. [2]": the reference is two and a half years old. Can this be brought up to date?
  2. "This time seems to have impacted Smith immensely": this is speculative interpretation, not encyclopedic writing.
  3. "Some speculate it came from the name of a street in Portland, while others believe it to be an idea of his then-girlfriend, who derived it from the last name of her ex-boyfriend. [7]" Again, speculation.
  4. "'It was weird because it was black, but when it got rolled on, it turned silver and started reflecting the sun up at you. I got incredibly sunburned, and I had no idea.'": If this has any place in an encyclopedia article, it needs a lot of explanation. Please remove this or explain why it is important.
  5. "He was told that anything he requested would be fine, but, a chair would not be granted.": What does this tell us about Elliott Smith?
  6. "Smith never voiced disappointment about his loss - if anything, he seemed relieved." Seemed to whom? Can we get a reference for this, or is it just a Wikipedian's assessment of the mood of the subject?
  7. "He is also rumored to have recorded a version of "Hey Jude" for the film Royal Tenenbaums to be played during the opening scenes. However, the singer's version of the song was dropped and replaced by an instrumental. No recording or hard evidence of this version existing has yet surfaced.": rumors and speculation. Not encyclopedic.
  8. "and proceeded to jump off a cliff.": does this mean something more than "and jumped off a cliff"?
  9. "Nugent's book says that during this time, Smith hardly ever ate, subsisting primarily on ice cream (bizarrely, it was the only thing that he kept in his freezer).": did Nugent's book use the word "bizarrely" or is it the Wikipedia author's judgement? If it's a quote, it should be marked accordingly; if it's the Wikipedia author's description, it should be removed.
  10. "the investigation into his death continues [2]": Again, this footnote is 2 1/2 years old; we need an update or closure.
  11. "The producer also noted that the track "Ostriches & Chirping", a strange and short instrumental made from sampling and looping the noises made by a toy bird, had nothing to do with Smith and was something that McConnell had recorded by himself." Did the producer describe the instrumental as "strange" or is that the opinion of the Wikipedia author? If it's a quotation, it needs to be marked so; if it's a Wikipedian's opinion, it should be removed.
  12. "Smith most likely did not intend for this song to be on the album." Is this Wikipedia's judgement? Or is there a source for this?

Fg2 15:50, 15 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • As User:Tony1 said above, an hour's work could clear up the objections I raised. Fg2 22:48, 16 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: I've been working on working in some of the suggested edits. Phasing out the "Trivia" section, making the intro a little more meaty, etc. Shamrox 01:30, 17 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Feel free to strike out any of my objections as you address the issues. That can make it easier to gauge the progress toward featured status. Fg2 13:26, 17 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Alright then, here's a few:
  1. "'The evidence surrounding his death is still inconclusive. [2]': the reference is two and a half years old. Can this be brought up to date?" Literally no information has been released about the case since early 2004, which was the autopsy report (linked as a refrence for the article). Some fans have actually tried contacting the LAPD to get more information, but they're not telling anyone anything. So, nope, can't really be brought up to date.
If there's a published article saying that fans sought information but the LAPD released none, that would be the update I'm looking for. But if there's nothing, there's nothing. Fg2 13:05, 22 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
As far I know, there's no article with anything like that. I think I read about the fans going to the LAPD from friends or on messageboards, which is obviously not super-credible. Shamrox 22:45, 22 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
In that case, maybe an "as of 2006" notice is the best that can be done. Fg2 22:48, 22 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  1. "'He was told that anything he requested would be fine, but, a chair would not be granted.': What does this tell us about Elliott Smith?" In a way, it speaks volumes about the guy. He was so nonchalant about being on the Oscars that he didn't even care to stand up to sing to the crowd. However, I removed the line because I felt it made the paragraph drag on.
  2. "'Smith never voiced disappointment about his loss - if anything, he seemed relieved.' Seemed to whom? Can we get a reference for this, or is it just a Wikipedian's assessment of the mood of the subject?" Not speculation. Found a refrence, see article.
  3. The "Hey Jude" ordeal - I removed it for the time being (to figure out where it would most aptly fit in the article), but Wes Anderson talked to Entertainment Weekly in December 2004: "For the opening sequence, Anderson wanted the Beatles' 'Hey Jude.' 'The timing was bad,' he says. 'George Harrison was dying and we just couldn't get the stuff cleared.' He then tapped Elliott Smith to record a cover of 'Jude,' but the troubled singer backed out. 'He was in a bad state and just wasn't able to,' says Anderson."
  4. "'and proceeded to jump off a cliff.': does this mean something more than 'and jumped off a cliff'?" Don't know what you mean...the guy got really drunk and depressed, then threw himself off a cliff.
If it means "and jumped off a cliff" then let's say "and jumped off a cliff." It's simple and direct. That's all I meant by it. Fg2 13:05, 22 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  1. "'Nugent's book says that during this time, Smith hardly ever ate, subsisting primarily on ice cream (bizarrely, it was the only thing that he kept in his freezer).': did Nugent's book use the word 'bizarrely' or is it the Wikipedia author's judgement? If it's a quote, it should be marked accordingly; if it's the Wikipedia author's description, it should be removed." Noted and amended.
  2. "'The producer also noted that the track 'Ostriches & Chirping', a strange and short instrumental made from sampling and looping the noises made by a toy bird, had nothing to do with Smith and was something that McConnell had recorded by himself.' Did the producer describe the instrumental as 'strange' or is that the opinion of the Wikipedia author? If it's a quotation, it needs to be marked so; if it's a Wikipedian's opinion, it should be removed." Amended.
  3. "'Smith most likely did not intend for this song to be on the album.' Is this Wikipedia's judgement? Or is there a source for this?" Cited refrence.

Shamrox 18:49, 17 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for doing these. They strengthen the article. Fg2 13:05, 22 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Weak support: I like this article, we've done a lot of work on it recently and it's really become something great. However well referenced it may be, some of the prose could be better. There's also some kinda borderline case moments such as "many a fan cried sell-out" <- if we can't verify this somehow it has to go.
  • On a less serious note, I think the Shutt biography footnotes could be condensed into one reference (like the Nugent reference) and then cited in brackets throughout, eg. "(Shutt, p.8)" - Phorque (talk · contribs) 12:42, 22 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted 01:38, 29 September 2007.

Truthiness

Previous FAC

Since the article was last nominated for FA status last year, the article has been dramatically improved. I believe that this article is now worthy to be of such status. ISD 06:39, 21 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  • Weak Support Subject obviously has had relevant cultural impact and coverage since Colbert popularized it. However, currently it seems to have too many sections that are arranged more in a time-line fashion than an article fashion. So, support on the grounds it is notable, but I wouldn't mind seeing a restructuring. The Clawed One 19:05, 21 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Supporting on the grounds it's notable seems sketchy. If it wasn't, it shouldn't have an article at all... Featured articles are not about the subject, but about the article quality. - Mgm|(talk) 22:49, 22 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support This a great article, it has all the information anyone would need on Truthiness and has great citations. "Truthiness" should be used as a model for other word articles. Voot42 23:04, 24 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • A few comments:
  • First, the prose in the first few sentences of the "Origins" section sounds very stilted: "Stephen Colbert did this. He did this. He used the word here." I'd like to see it flow a little better in more compelling, coherent prose. (Should only require some minor restructuring).
  • The Wikipedia section seems to exhibit to me the bias of authors writing about it in Wikipedia -- that is, I feel its authors are forgetting that not everyone is a Wikipedian. I see this particularly in the last sentence in that section, which deviates entirely from the subject at hand (truthiness) and simply discusses Colbert's history with Wikipedia, which is entirely irrelevant. I would say this of the entire closing paragraph, but if the elephants thing was directly linked to truthiness -- i.e., "You should change it because it makes it truthy" -- I suppose it is okay. (Was it linked in that way? Because there's nothing about elephants in the excerpted monologue, and no citation supporting the fact that "This lead [sic, fix] to Colbert encouraging his viewers to vandalise the Wikipedia.") In that continuing vein, concepts like an article being protected should either be explained better or wikilinked to the relevant sections of the article Wikipedia or the relevant policy page explaining that practice.
  • The article's organization seems a bit off: only two main body sections. "Popularity and widespread use" seems like it's trying to take too big a bite out of the material. I would recommend splitting that material up into one section dealing with the history of the term, post-first-episode -- how it took off, its trajectory and media coverage, its getting Word of the Year, etc. -- and then another section on "Applications" or "Instances of use" or something -- like the James Frey controversy, Colbert at the WHCA dinner, and Colbert's further discussion of wikiality, all of which are really post-phenomenon events still relevant to the subject.
I don't have time now to give this a thorough reading-through, though I intend to later today or tomorrow. At any rate, I will give my overall impression, which is that I'm reluctant to support -- I'm not sure this article is ready yet. I realize that's not helpful to you trying to improve it, though, so when I come back, I will have specific objections that can be addressed, as per WP:FAC. Dylan 22:45, 26 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The article is being improved in response to your comments. ISD 06:32, 27 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Sequence profiling tool

Selena

Self-Nom Selena was a spanish singer who's life ended very short and since then she cult status in Hispanic countries and was one of the best-selling hispanic artists of all-time. I worked though the article and gravely expanded it, added plenty of refs, and it had a successful peer review I will welcome all comments to improve the article. Note I do need help copyediting the article as I'm poor on it. Thanks Jaranda wat's sup 02:16, 6 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Neutral. Looks good, but has a few minor issues. The article's naming of Selena (either as Selena or by her last name, Quintanillas) is inconsistent and feels haphazard. The tone is a bit off in spots, especially the death section. It's very close though, It can definitely be improved to FA status within the nom period. RyanGerbil10 (Drop on in!) 04:30, 6 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I fixed the first comment, I'm not sure about the second. Can you clafify please. Thanks Jaranda wat's sup 04:37, 6 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
<Sigh> I hate having to object on tone issues because it's so hard to make them clear. Give me a moment (or a day) and I'll put together a list of examples. By the way, thanks for fixing the naming issues so quickly. Good work. RyanGerbil10 (Drop on in!) 04:42, 6 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Well this is embarrassing... I reread the article more carefully, and discovered that instead of the article needing tone editing, I need more sleep. Sorry to have been such a bother. Support, and I'm going to bed... RyanGerbil10 (Drop on in!) 04:46, 6 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
was considered a budding superstar, which jump started her career and landed her a contract, career took off, witnessed her big break, Selena's fans embraced the touching biography
  • The phrasing and grammar also needs work
When she was six she started singing and by the age of nine, her father founded the singing group Selena y Los Dinos, which she fronted.
Meanwhile, Selena and her band continued to receive accolades; Billboard's Premio Lo Nuestro awarded them a total of six prestigious awards, including Best Latin artist and song of the year for "Como La Flor," and Coca-Cola released a commemorative bottle in her honor to celebrate their five-year relationship together.
  • There are many more instances of the same kind of problems, I suggest you look for a disintereted third party for a good copyedit.--Peta 01:09, 8 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
OK I removed as much as I can. Thanks Jaranda wat's sup 05:48, 8 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Note User:RN did the rest of the copyediting last week, article is fan language free. Thanks Jaranda wat's sup 17:53, 16 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Some copyediting was done Jaranda wat's sup 04:30, 20 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I have no idea how to fix that, and no one will help. I need help on that before Tuesday when I leave for arm surgery. Thanks Jaranda wat's sup 01:44, 19 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
That's something I don't know how to do sorry. Jaranda wat's sup 19:08, 8 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
You need to upload .ogg formatted samples of some songs to Wikipedia and then link to them using the correct format (look at the code on those suggested articles). There is probably a WP page somewhere about this. — Wackymacs 19:20, 8 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Ok I uploaded one, I don't know if I did it right though, and I probaly going to upload another before the night is over. Thanks Jaranda wat's sup 23:22, 8 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Ok I loaded the second one. Thanks Jaranda wat's sup 03:32, 9 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Looks like a well written article to me. --digital_me(t/c) 03:45, 9 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • I want to support this but can't at the moment. There is overuse of passive voice and it just doesn't seem to flow well in some places. Maybe if I have time I'll try to tidy it... RN 09:38, 9 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • OK - I did a whole-article pass, probably screwing everything up :D. It does come off as awfully glowing though.... EDIT: in case I don't find time to etc. I want to mention that this article is VERY good besides that point - it reads almost like a fitting tribute to the singer...RN 11:02, 9 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Object. Too much fair use content. Song samples are unnecessary and long. --Rory096 04:44, 10 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • Too much fair use content is not a FA criterion. Plus it is necessary for a music article to contain some sounds to make it more understandable just like a painter article would require pictures of his paintings. In addition many featured articles have a lot of samples: Genesis (band) has 18, Kylie Minogue has 10 and Mariah Carey has 4. CG 05:47, 10 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
      • Actually, FAs have to have "acceptable copyright status," which having too many fair use assertions may violate. It is not necessary to have samples, it is only helpful. Pointing to other articles that violate fair use doesn't make the point any less valid. --Rory096 05:55, 10 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
        • There are 4 uses of copyrighted "fair use" material in the article, which is not excessive and they all have rationales. Song samples are useful for the reader, and thats what an encyclopedia must be. — Wackymacs 06:40, 10 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
          • These samples have all good fair use rationals. And yes they are helpful and encyclopedic. CG 08:23, 10 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
            • They are also unfree, while this is a free encyclopedia. Since the article was just fine without them, there's no need to have these, making the fair use rationales invalid. --Rory096 20:59, 10 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
              • Since when fair use content is prohibited in Wikipedia? You're making up policies. CG 12:32, 11 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
                • Rory, read Wikipedia:Fair use. — Wackymacs 13:44, 11 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
                • Of course fair use content is allowed in Wikipedia. However, when you have too much of it, it makes the fair use assertions less likely to hold up in court. Since there was plenty there before, there's no need to have these 2 extra 30 second song samples. --Rory096 04:42, 12 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
                  • I don't see your reasonings, they don't even make sense. Why would the record company sue because of short song *samples*, they're not the full length songs, it isn't piracy. It isn't illegal. If you are so concerned, go find some free use pictures and stop complaining. — Wackymacs 06:34, 12 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
                    • We're taking their copyrighted work without permission and using it anyway! That's what fair use is! I shouldn't have to find free use pictures, as it was fine as it was, with 1 free use picture and 2 fair use. That's plenty! There's no need to have 2 song samples. --Rory096 21:50, 12 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
                      • Wikipedia policies allows us to use fair use content as long as you provide a rationale. If you contest this policy, suggest an amendment in WP:FU not here. CG 08:16, 13 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
                        • I believe I've made it clear that I'm not objecting to fair use content, just needlessly putting more than is necessary in. The article was perfectly fine without two long music samples. From Wikipedia:Fair use#Policy: "The amount of copyrighted work used should be as little as possible. Low-resolution images should be used instead of high-resolution images (especially images that are so high-resolution that they could be used for piracy). Do not use multiple images or media clips if one will serve the purpose adequately." --Rory096 03:45, 14 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
                          • the policy says, as you clearly quoted just now, that copyrighted work used should be as little as possible . - It seems getting free use content for Selena is not very possible, otherwise it would be there - we can't magic free use content up, you know. — Wackymacs 06:43, 14 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
                            • The page was perfectly fine BEFORE anything was added because of comments in this FAC. Just because you can't get unlimited free content doesn't mean you can assert fair use on as much content as you want. --Rory096 04:13, 20 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Object. I like the article, but it didn't seem to tell me a whole lot about the progress of her actual career. I'd like to the "successes" section expanded some, and explain more of her significance, rather than it being a meandering discography. Rebecca 05:07, 10 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I will try but I really can't expand it anymore without becoming too crufty, her significance was mostly after death. Thanks Jaranda wat's sup 03:12, 14 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Peugeot 205 Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/ITunes Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Tent pegging

We Belong Together

The last nominations [31] [32] [33] had failed. It has been one and a half months since the most recent FAC listing, so I'd assume enough time has passed to nominate this one final time. I had intended to leave the Wikipedia project, but I just can't let go until We Belong Together finally reaches FA status. I hope this will be lucky number 4. Any suggestions are welcome. —Eternal Equinox | talk 22:52, 3 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Support. My only content oppose was the graph, which was replaced by a more accurate scatterplot. With that done, the article as it stands now is featured quality, and the wait before nominating again assures me that the nominator respects community will and isn't just trying to force the nom past. Very comprehensive article. -Mask   00:52, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've moved the personal debate to the FAC talk page. Tony 01:29, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

(Note from FA director - The nominator waited a reasonable amount of time since the previous nomination, a has used the time to make substantial changes (presumably to address previous nominations). Thus, I'm content to let this nomination go forward Raul654 01:32, 4 June 2006 (UTC))[reply]

Oppose. The copy of the article has not improved substantially. I see many of the actionable items from the last three nominations remain. In particular, I find the following howler disturbing:

"As Carey vocalises, rhythm and bass are elaborated into the background, which creates an understated, relaxed tempo denoted by a 4/4 time signature set in C major."

FYI time signatures don't "denote" anything except maybe how to dance to the song. They're just a devise used by composers to define the beat. It's not uncommon for an R&B tune to be in 4/4 and it's unnecessary to mention it in the article as if it had any significance other than time. The text tries to be compelling, but just ends up sounding overwrought. There's a fair bit of reaching here with the vocabulary. Just speak plainly and if the subject is interesting the prose will be compelling. -- Malber (talk • contribs) 01:49, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm a bit confused at your objection. Could you explain why the blockquote sounds disturbing? If it is because of the content, there is a reference that can be verified. If this is not the case, then I'm confused. —Eternal Equinox | talk 01:56, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, it is not uncommon for any song to be conducted in 4/4 time, so you're right, I will remove the redundancy. —Eternal Equinox | talk 01:57, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I've removed the 4/4 time signature indication and corrected the blockquote which you found to be disturbing. Is there any prose in particular that you don't find to be brilliant? —Eternal Equinox | talk 01:59, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Now it's even worse. "...relaxed tempo composed in C major."??? A tempo is not a key! There are similar bad phrasing that makes the prose inflated. If you want to copy edit this, here's a start: remove every superfluous adjective. Please do not post to my talk page on this. My oppose will stand. This needs a major re-write. -- Malber (talk • contribs) 05:16, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Please try and remain civil. I will continue to copy-edit the article. —Eternal Equinox | talk 13:08, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Object—2a. Needs a thorough copy-edit.

    • Second sentence: "The song was primarily composed and written by Carey, Jermaine Dupri, Manuel Seal and Johnta Austin (though as many as ten songwriters are credited)". You say "primarily", so "though" is inappropriate, because it doesn't contradict the preceding information. Can you remove "as many as" and, later in the sentence, "initially"? Remove "it" from the next sentence. Remove "numerous" (or state how many).
    • What's a "singing approach"? More precise language is required.
    • "It was also a worldwide success, where it peaked at number-one"—what place do you mean by "where"? (Fuzzy grammar.)
    • "Carey had finished recording The Emancipation of Mimi by as early as November 2004"—it's unclear to the readers why you've marked the date ("as early as"); either explain in the context that this was unexpected or unusual, or replace by "in".

That's just the lead. The density of problems indicates that the entire article suffers from substandard prose. Please get someone to fix it—one to two hours' work by a good copy-editor. Tony 03:09, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Could you provide one or two more examples? I have read-through this article so much that my eyes tend to just jump from sentence to sentence without really observing the text. In addition, I have copy-edited the article so much that I cannot locate anymore content — to me anyway — that requires further editing. —Eternal Equinox | talk 03:41, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
That's why you need "strategic distance" from the text (see, for example, User:Tony1/How_to_satisfy_Criterion_2a). Can you find another editor to do it? Tony 05:36, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

All right, I've tidied a lot of the prose. Comments? —Eternal Equinox | talk 03:53, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I've conducted another major copy-edit. What do you think? —Eternal Equinox | talk 04:03, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comment: Keep working at it, and try to find one or more collaborators. To pick up where I left off, let's look at the very next sentence.

I'm still finding problems in just about every sentence. Tuf-Kat is an expert in this general area and has established a system of quality control for articles such as this. Have you asked him for assistance? Perhaps he could suggest copy-editors. Tony 10:14, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Problems in every sentence? Oh dear. I don't quite understand this, but I will request that Tuf-Kat locate some copy-editors since at this point, unfortunately, I believe there is not much more that I can do regarding text and content-editing. I will search for him immediately. —Eternal Equinox | talk 12:45, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
My Canadian dictionary does not have a hyphen in the word "hip hop" and neither does the main article hip hop music. —Eternal Equinox | talk 12:56, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Message received. I'm an expert though, at least formally - no education beyond high school. Anyway, I had a few comments in PR, of which not all were addressed. I agree that the Music and structure section needs some copyediting. I'll see what I can do now.
    • It's not clear to me what "heavy" means exactly.
    • Not clear what the bit after the semicolon has to do with "The hip hop influence is further exhibited in Carey's vocal delivery" -- don't write something like that unless the "hip hop influence" in vocals is clearly expounded on.
    • Also not sure exactly what "effusive" means here.
  • I only got about halfway through that section, but now I've got to go. Tuf-Kat 15:43, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • Hello, thank you for the response and thank you for tidying the portions of the music and strucutre section which did not quite make sense. "Effusive" and "heavy" could be described as irrelevant to the section now that it has been copyedited; from what the new material that I've read, it seems to make more sense without the use of these words. I apologize for not correcting all of your concerns at the peer review (I had become rather lazy, I must admit), but your knowledge has helped enhance the vocabulary! Excellent work! Are there any other parts that you think may require rewriting? —Eternal Equinox | talk 17:37, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support, impressive article. —Nightstallion (?) 15:39, 5 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support, one of the best articles about a song I've seen on Wikipedia. --Musicpvm 19:35, 5 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The prose of the article has been improved upon and I would appreciate it if the editors who voted "object" reanalyzed their vote and commented further. Thank you.—Eternal Equinox | talk 21:22, 5 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

A few collaborators helped to trim and tidy the prose excessively. The material remains the same but is summarized significantly. I feel that the writing has greatly advanced, so please comment. —Eternal Equinox | talk 23:01, 5 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Please read my comment--I didn't say the article was boring. How could anything concerning Mariah Carey be boring? I said it was banal (almost juvenile). The vocabulary and phraseology are limited and the prose doesn't flow. In some places it's verbose, in others it's monotonous, hampered, and lumpy. Aspern 12:25, 6 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • I have repeatedly edited sections to exemplify that which needs changing. I look forward to changing my vote when you have fully addressed my concerns with your prose and text. I am capable of following your edits. Please do not trouble me again on my talk page. I shall be watching with interest. Aspern 21:01, 6 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. I did not have the time to listen to the samples, but is it right to put two 30-second samples (1 minute) for a 3 minutes and 20 seconds song? CG 18:54, 8 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think the sections should be expanded. Especially the download controversy section, which is only one paragraph long. Everyking 03:52, 9 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose -- Just the first paragraph is enough to make me want to burn my wife's Mariah Carey Greatest Hits CD.
    • "We Belong Together" is a pop–R&B song performed by singer do you really need to point out that she's a singer? think of thew audience that might search for this article Mariah Carey. The song yes, let's restate that it's a song was primarily who else was involved? composed and written as a musician, the diference between compose and write eludes me by Carey, Jermaine Dupri, Manuel Seal and Johnta Austin the rest of this paragraph is a non sequitur -- unless you mean during through additional studio sessions after Carey had initially completed her ninth studio album The Emancipation of MimiNo link? (2005). how can you initially complete something? Complete is an absolute -- it's either done or it isn't The popularity of "We Belong Together" is often attributed to its retro-soul appeal, and the understated, rap-inspired music and vocal approach, is this thing R&B, pop, retro-soul or rap? which received critical praise following the reviews of Glitter (2001) and Charmbracelet (2002).Are they albums? Do they have their own articles? If so, link them. Also, from whom did the song receive critical praise
    • Essentialy, a complete rewrite is needed. &#0149;Jim62sch&#0149; 21:00, 9 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
      • Just to comment on your last point, I don't think it's necessary to be specific—the sources of the praise are more properly identified later in the article. Everyking 04:08, 10 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
        • True, but a ref wouldn't hurt. In any case, the article is simply not good enough to even be considered a good article let alone be given FA status.
  • Object. Agree with the others above; the writing is simply not up to scratch for a FA. Sarah Ewart (Talk) 06:20, 11 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Object. Redundancy in the lead section (when talking about the critics) and an expansion could be done. Fair prose but not brilliant. Lincher 03:44, 18 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Busking Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Arecaceae

Tikal the Echidna

This article is well-written, covers the topic, has enough references, stable, has a lead section, and is factually accurate. Is it good enough to be a featured article? --71.105.14.68 18:42, 10 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Object. The article completely lacks an out-of-universe perspective. Please read Wikipedia:Manual of Style (writing about fiction).
  • Object—2a. The prose will have to improve significantly to meet our standards here. Here are examples.
    • "Her character is described as 14 years old, 3 ft 1 in tall, and 52.8 lb in weight." "is described as"—who's doing the describing? Do we need to say this? Replace with "is"? Metric equivalents for 96% of humanity, please? "Her character" is then "The character" in the following sentence. Confusing.
    • "voice acting"—do you mean "voice-over"?
    • "Moreover" is inappropriate as an agent of cohesion here. Ask me if you don't see this.
    • I don't want to read in passing of "Pachacamac's power-hungry ways" in the lead without some prior mention of it. More logical treatment in the lead is required, or remove it and treat in the body of the article.
    • "Tikal's role in the game, Sonic Adventure, is to show what happens thousands of years prior to the game and is the plot of it." The last five words go "clunk".
    • "to stop all his fighting, stealing, and killing"—spot the redundant word.

I won't go on. This needs to be "compelling, even brilliant" to pass, no matter how many fans support the nomination here, or vote "Support" just because they like the topic. Tony 07:02, 11 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

PS It would be nice if the anonymous nominator bothered to register; there may be reason to communicate with this person one-to-one—you never know. Tony 07:04, 11 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Object per Tony, and also the lack of referencing in the article. And, I know that this is minor, the japanese pronunciation has a help symbol next to it, which I feel needs to be sorted out. This little problem no longer matters now that the referencing has been made better, along with 2a. However, 2a and referencing still isn't up to FA level yet.The Halo (talk) 22:38, 11 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ivan Alexander of Bulgaria

I have followed the article's development for quite some time now and I believe it meets the featured article criteria. It has had a peer review that has now been archived. Todor→Bozhinov 11:33, 10 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Basically, you have put pretty much the entire article into various subsections of section 1 and you have a section 2 for "Family". It just seems weird. The subsections should be sections. — Ravikiran 10:07, 13 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • That is not the only problem with the article. It is not comprehensive enough. It does not educate someone like me, who knows nothing about his story. For example, right in the first paragraph of "Early rule", we have "This defeat precipitated a succession crisis exacerbated by foreign invasion." Which invasion? I guess it is the Serbian invasion, but in the second paragraph it talks of Bulgaria's "recent losses to the Byzantine Empire." Where did that come from? Also, in the first paragraph, we have "After the conspiracy that drove..." What conspiracy? More details please! The "flow" does not seem right. — Ravikiran 10:07, 13 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Social promotion Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Airbus A380

Alan Moore

This article is currently a good article, it has been a Comics Collaboration of the Month and has addressed the majority of issues from the previous two nominations.[34][35]. I believe this article is ready, and I am prepared to handle any objections which may arise.--DCAnderson 19:41, 11 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Done--DCAnderson 21:14, 11 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
There might be a more clever way to incorporate the link to the list, but I will withdraw my objection. --Maitch 21:16, 11 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I just added a little blurb to each picture explaining why specifically it is Fair Use in the Alan Moore article.--DCAnderson 21:32, 11 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It has to be more detailed. Please read Wikipedia:Image_description_page#Fair_use_rationale. --Maitch 21:36, 11 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'll work on something, but could you maybe point to a similar image in a similar article thatyou believe is an example of how it should be? I don't know if there is a whole lot I can think of to say beyond "this image is being used as an example of something by Alan Moore."
Are there images in this article that you believe will never justify fair use and can be cut entirely?--DCAnderson 21:58, 11 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I've made the fair use rationales be more like the ones you listed here[36]--DCAnderson 22:36, 11 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
They seem to be alright now. Images that don't have a function in the article besides looking pretty will never justify fair use even if it is related to Alan Moore. The ones in this article are book covers and are only used in sections about the corresponding book, so therefore they add significant value to the article. However, I'm a little bit worried about Image:V for vendettax.jpg and Image:Swampthingmoore21.jpg not being low resolution. --Maitch 07:42, 12 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Well both those pictures are nowhere near full size, so they are at the least, lower esolution than the original. I personally don't have the software to edit them, so someone else is going to have to do it if it is a problem.--DCAnderson 00:07, 13 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose, for a number of reasons, many unresolved from the last FAC
  1. Biographical information still lacks details on his marital status
  2. There are quote and references to opinions that really should have a source cited inline, the biography and major works section are both problematic, with no evidence for the source of direct quotes.
  3. In the major works section, Swamp Thing and From Hell are disproportionately long. The section on Watchmen (arguably his most famous work) is poorly written and underdeveloped. Promethea could also be added to this section, as -interestingly- it is a comic about the authors mystical ideas, and one of the few comics with an interesting female protagonist. As is the reader could get the impression that Moore hasn't written anything major since 1988, which simply isn't true.
  4. Poor development on of detail on this religious beliefs which get a brief mention in the lead (why?) and nothing more.
  5. Terra Obsucra should probably be in the list of Americans Best Comics releases
  6. Current work is underdeveloped and Albion is out, what is he currently working on? Does he appear at cons? Why is he having ideas and getting other people to write the comics (Albion, Terra Obscura)?
--Peta 05:16, 15 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Germany

I'm nominating this article as I feel that it is the best article I've read based on a country. The writing is very clear and concise while in great detail stays to the point. It also makes fabulous use of linking to other articles and the images included go very well with the point being made. Jboyle4eva 14:14, 11 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Object. Far from FA. Just to name some problems: At more than 80k, the article is too long (especially the history section) and badly referenced. The "Culture" section is just a list of names, transportation section should be written more in summary style. Exports and imports list breaks up economy section. Kusma (討論) 17:34, 11 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong Object. Article is too long, however some sub-sections are insufficiently short. Lead must be expanded to actually summarize the article. Lists should be converted into prose. Image layout is messy, all images are different sizes. Some citations are inline HTML links, some are actual footnotes - they should all be footnotes, see WP:FOOTNOTE. Article needs a copy-edit, spell check and general cleanup. — Wackymacs 18:59, 11 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Object for length and refs before even giving the article too close a look-over for finer details. Staxringold talkcontribs 20:19, 11 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Object. The article is too long. The history section alone is 24 KB. It needs to be summarised. --Maitch 21:24, 11 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment I'd object due to its state now, but think it is appropriate to hold off and see if the already identified work starts getting done. Jboyle4eva, you may want to look at what happened during the process for Canada recently, where significant improvements during this process, including shortening and summarizing, ultimately put it on the front page (well, it will be on the front page shortly). Sam 20:32, 12 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Homestar Runner Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Great Neck Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Charmed Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Liverpool FC Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Ulster and Delaware Railroad

Second Battle of Kharkov

Self-nom. This article failed its previous FAC because of quite legitimate, yet not major, reasons. Following a major overhaul, a lot of points were taken care of.

  • References were expanded (more books used) and a lot of inline citations added.
  • A map of the offensive was drawn.
  • The lead was expanded
  • The conclusion section was dealt with its possibly POV points.

I think this article deserves an FA star. Comments? :) -- Grafikm (AutoGRAF) 20:48, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Support. Excellent article; all the issues raised in the peer review have been addressed. Kirill Lokshin 21:05, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support easily now that everything has been nicely fixed. Staxringold talkcontribs 02:55, 5 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Weak oppose. Needs proof-reading by an uninformed reader and explanation of some of the difficult terms. What is Stavka? What is Izium salient? Also, pic captions could be extended to include not only the names of the people, but also a brief mention of why are their pics there. Finally, could do with some more sources from the outside world. Don't get me wrong, but the article seems to be written almost entirely with books by three of the Soviet commanders, which is quite one-sided. Some on-line sources could also be nice, but it's just a wish, the "term explanation" is the basis here. //Halibutt 06:53, 5 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Response The article is written using primarily two Western books (Beevor and Glantz) and two Soviet (Moskalenko and Zhukov). Anyway, since the battle was a Soviet defeat, I don't see nothing wrong with using Soviet sources, since the bottom line of all three books is "yes, we got owned big time by the Wehrmacht, and it's our fault". Propaganda does not matter here. I know you don't like Soviet Union Halibutt, but you should admit they sometimes go beyond propaganda.
As for captions and explanations, I'm going to take care of that. -- Grafikm (AutoGRAF) 09:22, 5 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Update: I added a pic to illustrate what the Izium Salient is and added an explanation for Stavka (it was already there but I made it simpler).
As for sources, I insist that a) They're mixed and b) Most important information (strength and casualties) are either Western- or double-sourced to make sure they weren't minimized on Soviet side. And since the most interesting aspect of the battle is actually centered on psychology, the sources can only come from people who oversaw the operation at Stavka. -- Grafikm (AutoGRAF) 09:59, 5 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong support --Ghirla -трёп- 10:33, 5 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose ==Conclusions== needs to be reworked. The big quote could probably be cut down and/or summarized. However, my biggest issue is with the phrase "the truth is". Per WP:V The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth The wording throughout the section needs to be changed to make it more clear who is drawing these conclusions. Currently, it reads like the conclusion of a paper on the battle, not an encyclopedia article. - The Catfish 21:01, 5 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Uh, you're quite right. Wasn't me... :( Anyway, I reworked the conclusion section by summarizing Zhukov's quote and by rearranging a few thing. Tell me what you think please! :) -- Grafikm (AutoGRAF) 21:31, 5 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Much better, though I have one last question before I strike my objection. Is this this the only significant interpretation of the events, or are there other notable interpretations? Do the western sources (not cited in this section) have a different view? I ask merely becuase I am not very familiar with the subject. If there truly are no competing views, consider my objection struck. - The Catfish 19:20, 6 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Well, this was a stinging defeat for the Soviet Army, there can be no doubt about that. You will note that the article uses Western authors, too.
I daresay that in these books, Russian commanders make (a rare thing, but still) a honest analysis of the situation, recognizing their own defeats. Starting from that, the risk of POV and propaganda is almost non-existent, since even Stalin censorship could not transform a defeat into victory. And to top it off, most important information (strength and casualties) are either Western- or double-sourced to make sure they weren't minimized on Soviet side.
As I said to Halibutt, the main interest of this battle is psychological, involving dangers of armchair generalship and interference between propaganda and military. And I daresay there is no better view sources than those used for this article.
Hope I managed to convince you :) -- Grafikm (AutoGRAF) 19:30, 6 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
To clarify, I meant that the Western authors should be cited under ==Conclusions== if they had a different point of view about the causes and effects of the defeat. I was not refering to the rest of the article, where, as you say, you used both Russian and Western sources. So, since I'm still not quite clear, do Western historians have a different view of the causes and effects of the battle than the Russians? If so, please add their interpretations in. If not, maybe cite them as well to emphasize that the view in the section is widely held. - The Catfish 00:34, 7 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose - Not fundamentally, but in my opinion the article is not there yet. I think a lot needs to be added in terms of the conflict between Soviet command levels, and I think at the moment the conclusion is far too generous on the Red Army's performance. I strongly recommend the use of Ziemke for the German side and Erickson for the Soviet side for this article, to improve it further. Also Bagramyan's memoirs, since he was Chief of Staff to Timoshenko, IIRC. If I did not have my books in storage I would add things myself. Andreas 09:15, 7 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Neutral Although mostly written well, there is not much on the Germans as the article reads as if it is written strictly to cover the Soviet perspective. Entire article should be written to give both sides equal time or as close as possible. Tombseye 16:31, 7 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Emanuel Swedenborg Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Thomas Edison Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Jehovah's Witnesses Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Volcano

Joseph McCarthy

This is a great article that was previously nominated to be a featured article over a year ago. Many people have worked very hard on this article (myself excluded) and it deserves recognition. --MZMcBride 02:12, 7 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Oppose & Comment: Well written article, but needs more citations where there are quoted statements such as under the Tydings Committee and Anti-Communism. Also, some quotes appear to be from the listed references such as Richard Rovere, but it's not clearly stated that the statements are from his book. Not that I doubt the accuracy of the statements as I've read and heard them myself on different occassions, but many readers may wonder where the statements are quoted from. If that can be fixed, I'll definitely support as it is otherwise a very complete and well written article. Tombseye 02:43, 7 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose - right off the bat, lead extremely POV against McCarthy. Also fails to mention that McCarthy in the height of his popularity was very well approved in national polls for his anti-communist efforts. Needs to go significently further in shedding bias. Judgesurreal777 03:26, 7 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose—not well written. Stubby little paragraphs. Poor prose.
    • "These accusations were largely directed towards people in the U.S. government, particularly employees of the State Department, but included many others as well." After "largely", "but" is not a contradiction of the previous text; therefore it's inappropriate.
    • It takes a while before we learn the country that you're talking about. Some readers won't have guessed until then. Why not "the US state of Wisconsin" (first sentence)?
    • Can you find a more specific (piped) link for "Congressional", since it's the inquiry system that is at issue here? Why does "Communist" start with an upper-case C?
    • If you're going to refer to the Second Red Scare in the lead, please tell us what the first one was. For this reason, the term is probably better introduced in the body of the article.
    • Why are "McCarthyism" and "witch hunts" in italic?
    • If you're quoting dictionary definitions, which is kind of tedious in a WP lead, provide references. Regardless of which dictionary the source is, remove the redundant "in order" from "... in order to suppress opposition" .

Please find someone who's relatively unfamiliar with the text to perform a thorough copy-edit on this article. Tony 11:03, 7 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Oppose per Judgesurreal. Even in the lead, the POV is obvious. (Just because somebody called him "freewheeling" in his accusations doesn't mean that it's a neutral fact.) Tony also has some good criticisms. Also: the sections "Actual Soviet Activities" and "Evidence" seem out of place. Could they be integrated into the more relevant biographical sections? Lastly, I've never been a big fan of "X in pop culture" sections, but if you think it's relevant, could you prosify it a bit? Cheers! The Disco King 12:49, 7 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Object. POV, language, context, tone problems. Some places not referenced properly - and the last few sections are too short. Popular culture list should be converted to prose. — Wackymacs 07:40, 8 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi

  • Strongly Oppose: This article is clearly biased and an example of commentary, not a factual writeup. I depend on this Wiki to be fair and factual. The following statements illustrate my meaning:

"...he didn't shoot because they were wining and dining the French in an effort to get them to assist us in the invasion of Iraq."[18]

Zarqawi is believed to have had two wives. Al-Zarqawi had consentual sex with his second wife Israa, when she was 13 and she bore him a bastard child when she was 14."

Please delete this article, and have someone write one without the clear right wing bias towards Bush. And leave out "wining and dining the French," as well as the statement, "and she bore him a bastard child..." —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 66.229.53.224 (talk • contribs) .

Good and indepth article which covers the life and death of this brutal terrorist. Good FAC. --Mercenary2k 1:44AM June 9, 2006

  • Comment (leaning to object) - Given the recent news concerning al-Zarqawi's death, I would hold off on nominating this article for FA for about a week or so until everything has settled down. PentawingTalk 05:44, 9 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Weak Oppose - what Pentawing said... wait for the vandalism to calm down... we're still working on minor cleanup here and there too... - Adolphus79 05:50, 9 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose - there will be too much change in the next month at least, especially if he may not actually be dead. Then whatever his followers do may keep on necessitating a change in whatever his "legacy/consequences" on history that he may have left.Blnguyen | Have your say!!! 06:30, 9 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose: I agree with Blnguyen. Becasue of recent events, this won't be a stable article, which is one of the requirements of an FA.--P-Chan 06:41, 9 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Object. Unstable, uses at least 1 copyvio image. --Rory096 07:02, 9 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Object. Unstable, recently been on Main Page. Too many short subsections. Could do with a copy-edit. — Wackymacs 08:05, 9 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Object. Obviously too soon. Everyking 10:30, 9 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Object - Way too soon. New material is still being released on him in regards to the airstrike.--ZeWrestler Talk 12:44, 9 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment - I agree that its too soon but absence of vandalism should never be a criteria for FA noms. savidan(talk) (e@) 13:33, 9 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. This is incredibly soon. Many FA's have much more info than this one does. Just because this is news doesn't mean it should be a featured article. We should wait until there's much more information about the details surrounding the impact his death will have (or lack thereof). This article is certainly not Wikipedia at it's best! Rondmc170 16:55, 9 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose, fails stability requirement. --Golbez 17:46, 9 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Object: one of the criteria for a featured artiare is that it be stable. Numerous changes surrounding the exact circumstances of his death, as well as other changes, mean that this article will become different rapidly. By waiting for a period of time after the current-eventness to die down, this article will become stable.

Miss Madeline | Talk to Madeline 20:23, 9 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think the issues concerning the timing of the nomination (in light of him just dying) is something that any user can really change. Maybe we should just move the article off of the FA nomination list (for now) and just put it back in a month of so. What do you think? (Right now, it feels a little cluttery to have this here).--P-Chan 02:48, 10 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Strong Oppose Because of recent events with his death and who he is, this article will be an even heavier target for vandals than it already is now if it was featured. Also, just because it's major news right now does not make this article a good article. --Shizane 16:09, 12 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Scooby-Doo

Help, I'm trying to nominate Scooby Doo for FA, but apparently my Newb-ness is overwhelming mt ability to follow simple instructions. Reimelt 00:59, 9 June 2006 (UTC)Okay, I think I've got it now. In any event, stumbled on the Scooby article and was impressed with its quality--especially for an article about a cartoon show. And no, I did not work on it. Reimelt 01:03, 9 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

*Object Images need a fair use rationle Jaranda wat's sup 03:57, 9 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Big thank you for the rationales; there is a LOT of citing to be done, and not having to worry so much about pics is a big help.Reimelt 17:32, 9 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Comment by op Clearly, the pics must have rationales as to fair-use, and should probably be right-aligned; does anyone have any non-pic objections? It seems to me the most serious problem is the citing--anything else? (Oh, and I realize now I should have had it peer-reviewed first, to catch the obvious pic rationale problem. I apologize for my inexperience.) Reimelt 04:28, 9 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The article also needs to undergo a major case of copy-editing. The Wikipedia:Manual of Style (links) should give a good idea as to what is expected.--P-Chan 06:39, 9 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I added fair use rationales, I may work on the article when I got time Jaranda wat's sup 16:34, 9 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Good improvements on copyediting; I will try to improve further. Question--where can I find instructions as to how to move pictures?71.224.192.29 15:09, 9 June 2006 (UTC)Reimelt 15:10, 9 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Close, real close. Fix the above and FA should be no problem. Rlevse 15:30, 9 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Therion (band) Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Project Apollo Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/FIFA World Rankings

United States

(self-nomination)

This important article is very well-written, not too long and not too short, and full of references.
Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/United States/archive2
Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/United States/archive1
Wikipedia:Peer review/United States/archive2

NOTE: This article has 48KB of prose as of 9 June 2006

Oppose The prose is flabby in some areas and awkward in others. Per various comments below.
--Richard 15:43, 8 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong Support. The main arguements against this nomination are that some things important to the objector are missing. However, it simply is not possible to say everything about the United States in one encyclopedic article. Instead, the purpose is to give a good introduction to the topic, which I think this article does a great job of doing. PDXblazers 23:23, 1 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    We summarise the content here, and move detail to dedicated articles. =Nichalp «Talk»= 05:56, 2 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
      • Response' I didn't ask that Hollywood, Silicon Valley, the American Dream, Entrepreneurship, and the development of computers after 1969 be described in detail. Most people suggesting additions fully understand that this is a summary overview article. What we're asking is that these things be at least mentioned in the corresponding sections. The whole point of a summary overview article is that includes mentions of major terms and topics. Can you show how mentioning Hollywood is less important than mentioning the influence of Disney on Chinese comics? Or why the American Dream isn't important to reference properly rather than dump in the See Also section? Bwithh 14:42, 2 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
        Are you asking me? =Nichalp «Talk»= 17:29, 2 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Uh, I was being rhetorical, I think. Oh, and for the record, I support letting this article be longer than normal for a FA due to the scope of the subject Bwithh 18:59, 3 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Ahem, that was rather bold of you. (Too bold, in my opinion, since it goes against an established consensus) However, if it will get you to support the FA status, let's leave it out and re-vote on whether the table belongs in or out of the article later. Personally, I don't like the table either and would have voted against it if I had been aware of the poll.
--Richard 17:21, 3 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I don't mean to imply this is what you meant, but let me just state that it would be in bad faith for the editors of this article to remove the table simply for the purpose of this FAC only to re-add it once this nomination is completed, if it does succeed. Pepsidrinka 03:16, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
No, you got me right. I'm not suggesting that I would deliberately manipulate things in the way that you described. However, it is inappropriate for you to be so bold as to delete text from an article knowing that a previous consensus had been formed around keeping it. (Remember that I am not personally in favor of keeping it myself.)
What good is it going to the trouble to form a consensus if people won't respect it enough to form a new one in the opposite direction?
If you won't vote for the article with the table in, then leave it in and vote against the FAC. If it makes you happy to delete the table and then vote for the FAC, be my guest. However, Wikipedia being what it is, don't be surprised if one of the people who does care about the table puts it back in either before or after the FAC closes.
That's the funny thing about Wikipedia. It would be a great place except for all those pesky editors that you can't control.  ;&)
The right way to get that troublesome table out of there is to re-open the poll and see if enough other people hate it also.
--Richard 03:38, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Weak Object. This article is great indeed, but there are still some minor issues in comprehensiveness. For example, the lead section does not mention the Civil War, rather, it jumps from the Revolutionary War directly to World War I. Also, the map showing territorial acquisitions of the United States, even though it comes from the United States government, is not accurate. It's close, but it does not show the result of the Webster-Ashburton Treaty which changed the border of northern Maine in 1842. I hate to be such a pain, but it's the small things that distinguish good articles and truly great ones. RyanGerbil10 14:44, 1 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • Having done extensive research on the US's borders very recently, I would say that northern Maine would not count as a territorial acquisition, it was a territory dispute. The other areas - Louisiana, Florida, Mexican Cession, Gadsden Purchase, Red River Basin, etc. - were clearly unowned by the United States until received via purchase or cession. Maine, on the other hand, was only disputed, claimed by both sides. Therefore, I don't think the northern half of Maine belongs in any list of acquisitions, only in a list of disputes and changes. --Golbez 14:53, 1 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: I added a paragraph in the opening of the article that breifly talks about the civil war. Edit as seen fit. RENTASTRAWBERRY FOR LET? röck 03:42, 7 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Object Good article, but missing some key points which I raised in the previous nomination discussion but were apparently just ignored:
    • No mention of Entrepreneurship or "the American Dream" in neither the Economy or the Culture sections nor anywhere else. The American Dream is key to both the ideological legitimacy of the US economic system and to its positive image around the world.
    • Glaring ommissions from the culture section - the "American film industry" is mentioned (inadequately) but the term "Hollywood" is not mentioned anywhere. Also, television is not mentioned in the culture section, but is definitely more important culturally (and economically) than cinema. (Also this newest version now bizarrely refers to Disney's influence on Chinese cartoons and Japanese manga but still does not refer to Hollywood). Also, what about fast food?
    • Science and technology section has no mention of Silicon Valley or the Internet (there is only a very brief mention in the History section - it is not clear that the internet revolution began in the US). Computers are only mentioned in a pre-1969 context.
    • "The country has also sought to fight terrorism and control the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, but its main goal remains to protect American interest and the safety of its citizens at home and abroad". How is the "main goal" different from the first goals mentioned? (And it should be "interests", not 'interest") Bwithh 14:50, 1 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Article should probably also mention that the idea of immigration being crucial to US history and identity ("a nation of immigrants") rather than just an useful economic boost - this would tie in with mentioning the American Dream Bwithh 15:00, 1 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I think you forgot to read the Culture section, the Population migration and growth section, as well as the History section of the U.S. article.--Ryz05 t 15:06, 1 June 2006 (UTC)\[reply]
No, I didnt forget to read those parts. They give stats and talk about economic impact. They don't talk about the American Dream. Bwithh 15:26, 1 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I was talking about the mentioning of immigration. I also added the American Dream to the See also section. If you can think of a more suitable place to incorporate it, please say so. --Ryz05 t 15:35, 1 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
At the risk of putting words into Bwithh's mouth, I think he is saying that the American Dream is central to the American ethos. Although it will be seen as POV by some, it is important to highlight the sense that Americans have of having a dream that was previously unattainable in Europe and other countries (that of achieving material success and upward social mobility solely on the merit of intelligence, talent and hard work rather than being born into an upper class). This should not just be a "See also". I recognize that this was more true in the 19th and early 20th century and that the differential narrowed in the last half of the 20th century to the point where there may be very little difference between the U.S. and some European countries on this dimension now. However, the difference still exists between the U.S. and many Latin American countries. Why do you think we get so many immigrants? It's because of the American Dream. Not just that we are a wealthy country but that you can get some of the wealth if you are willing to work hard. You don't necessarily even need to be educated. A hard-working entrepreneur can make it big here. It is this American Dream that has fueled immigration for two and a half centuries and some will argue that this is the basis of American greatness, that we did not have a rigid class structure when most everybody else did.
Similarly, we should highlight the idea that we are a "city on a hill, a light unto the nations" shining a beacon of democracy, justice for all and human rights. It's not for nothing that Superman stood for "truth, justice and the American way". Others may not agree that we are this and we may not be this in reality. But that is the way many of us like to think of ourselves. It affects a lot of how we act domestically and abroad. (No, not just Republicans, Democrats think and act this way, too.) Of course, you've heard this from me before but haven't been willing to incorporate it into the intro as I suggested. --Richard 17:03, 3 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
OK, I've inserted an encyclopedic version of the above text into the article. I disagree with Bwithhthat "The American Dream is key to both the ideological legitimacy of the US economic system and to its positive image around the world." I think that's hyperbolic and POV. I've tried to strike a more NPOV stance in the article text.
Bwithh, would you review the new "American Dream" section and tell us if this addresses your concern?
--Richard 17:47, 3 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, I think the section is great. I just added one small fragment mentioning entrepreneurship. As regards whether the my statement was hyperbolic, I was referring to the idea that the American Dream is a key part of the basic social contract between the politico-economic system and its citizens - and is important in this role today, not just in the 19th century - through which citizens accept less of a state social welfare safety net and greater economic inequality in return for a better chance at social mobility and improving their financial worth and enhancing their class through free market capitalism. I don't think this is hyperbolic - its a common part of political and academic discourse in the US and is not regarded as an exaggerated kind of position. Whether this social contract functions effectively is another matter of course. You addressed the second part regarding the positive image around the world in the passage. Bwithh 03:50, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for this explanation. I think the bit about "accepting less of a social contract, etc." is important and I will try to make this point in the text.
--Richard 17:03, 5 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
About the protection, see Talk:United_States#Request_unprotection.--Ryz05 t 16:08, 1 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

*Oppose per WP:WIAFA 2e. This article is well-written, well-referenced, comprehensive, but it is not stable, and that is a major criteria for FAC. There has to be some guarantee that it won't degrade over time, and a page which is protected for vandalism can't guarantee that kind of stability. You could, of course, argue that my objections are unactionable (which they probably are); I'm not sure where I stand on that point right now, but for the moment, I'm voting against. Sorry. The Disco King 18:03, 1 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

From WP:WIAFA, "(e) "stable" means that an article does not change significantly from day to day and is not the subject of ongoing edit wars."
The article is only changing "significantly" in response to coomments on this FAC page. The semi-protection is to ward against vandalism by anonymous IPs. There has not been a significant edit war on this page in a couple of months. There are some pages which are more habitually vandalized than others (this is one of them). As a result, this page is almost continually protected as are some other notorious targets of vandalism.
--Richard 18:54, 3 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • Also, some minor, actionable points. Why are "Science & Technology" and "Transportation" subheadings of "Economy"?

The Disco King 18:06, 1 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Truly a minor quibble, eh?. They could be moved out of "Economy" or left in. It's hard to define what belongs in "Economy" and what does not.
--Richard 18:54, 3 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Could the History section be subdivided to make it less daunting, or could some information be moved to History of the United States? Cheers! The Disco King 18:06, 1 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It would be difficult to shorten the History section much without opening it up to the charge of leaving out something important.
Insert non-formatted text here


    • Canada recently became featured. It is far shorter than this article. The US may be more important and more powerful, but it's article should still cover the same information and should be able to do so in the same length. —CuiviénenT|C|@ on Thursday, 1 June 2006 at 19:02 UTC
      • On the other hand, if this article becomes to long with the additions, more of it might be eligible to be split off, per summary style. Obviously, if things have been split off to their maximum potential, then length can't be counted against it. Fieari 22:43, 1 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. Size issue is a major concern for me although an article on USA is bound to have a lot to write on. Please summarize further. Also image captioning is improper with many images having 9 lines long caption. For guidelines, please see WP:CAPTION. Image problems in "Largest cities". Please have a look at "Largest cities" in 800x600 screen resolution. One advice: It is better to have a reasonably big image rather than 5 tiny ones. Images are there to provide visual aid for the readers to understand the subject. Seeing one representative skyline is enough to fire the imagination of a casual reader. There is no need to fill the page with images as additional images aren't very helpful. Why does mile has "sq mi" and kilometre has "km²" in the table? Also, the references are sometimes after the punctuation and sometimes before. -Ambuj Saxena (talk) 19:08, 1 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • The area measurements use the standard abbreviations - square miles are sq mi while square kilometres are km². It's much like the in-tandem use of mph and km/h for miles per hour and kilometres per hour. —CuiviénenT|C|@ on Thursday, 1 June 2006 at 20:03 UTC

"The country has also sought to fight terrorism and control the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, but its main goal remains to protect American interest and the safety of its citizens at home and abroad". How is the "main goal" different from the first goals mentioned? (And it should be "interests", not 'interest") Bwithh 14:50, 1 June 2006 (UTC) The country is not a person with goals. This is instead the primary interest of the curent administration and may take a back seat to other issues at another time. It maight better fit in a polotics or modern events section. Feel free to change my post to conform to the style of this section.

  • Object. The human rights section does not even mention the fact that the US is among the top five nations WRT death penalty, nor the intense domestic and international controversy surrounding that fact. That makes the article looks incomplete. Furthermore, phrases such as "unprofessional military tactics in Iraq and Afghanistan" to describe the well-documented organised violation of human rights by US soldiers, CIA et al. look ever so slightly euphemistic, don't they. 87.122.36.179 22:24, 1 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Object per my comments on last FAC and peer review - in summary some parts are too long and others underdeveloped (like culture), the article still relies on some poor sources. Laregst cites table still poses a problem, its inclusion is not consistent with other featured country article and is over a screen in length, and I am yet to hear a compelling reason as to how/why it is useful to the reader.--Peta 03:42, 2 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Just had a brief look at the article and i can't find anywhere a discussion of the flora or fauna of the U.S.A. I think this would be a positive addition to the article.Yakuzai 12:04, 2 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: As I said above, the article is too long. To those objecting because topic XY is not mentioned in the article: It should not be. Check that it is mentioned in the appropriately titled and linked and easily found subarticle. Kusma (討論) 14:43, 2 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Object—2a. Here are examples of awkward prose.
    • "the U.S. displaced most Native American nations residing in the area." Can "residing" be removed as redundant (it's awkward, too).
    • "This belief was thwarted somewhat by the stalemate of the War of 1812,.."—"somewhat" is pretty clumsy here; can you find a better word than "thwarted", if that is too strong by itself?
    • Why is it sometimes "the U dot S dot" and sometimes "the United States"? Most US style manuals say to spell it out when another country appears in the same sentence (after the initial appearance in the text, of course); beyond that, consistency is required.
    • A few snakes need chopping up; e.g., "In the mid-19th century, the nation was divided over the issue of states' rights, the role of the federal government, and the expansion of slavery, which led to the American Civil War when, following the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860, South Carolina became the first state to declare its secession from the Union.[9]"
    • "The post-war era in the United States was defined internationally by the beginning of the Cold War in the late 1940s,.."—a bit jumbled ("internationally"?).
    • "Specifically, the nation operates as a presidential system, also known as a congressional system." Do we need the first word? Is it an overstatement to say that a whole nation, rather than its system of government, does this?

Now, I've looked at just a small part of the text. The density of the problems suggests that the whole article fails to meet 2a. Tony 01:09, 3 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that there were instances of "awkward prose". I have fixed (IMO) some of the ones that you identified. Could you review my edits and see if the changes address the issues to your satisfaction? Also, I notice that your comment suggests that the problems you mention are only representative of a larger problem with awkward prose. I acknowledge that this is a failing of at least one editor who seems to prefer anacondas to common garter snakes. My problem is that I don't always focus on a snake until someone points it out to me. Would you do us the favor of doing some snake hunting for us? If you will point out the snakes, I will slice and dice them into snake steak. --Richard 16:52, 3 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Object per my previous objections concerning the article size. Please consider further summarizing. See WP:WIAFA, number 5. Pepsidrinka 01:20, 3 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • I was asked to justify this objection further, so I shall give some suggestions on what can be shortened/removed to decrease the size of this article. The "Demographics" section can be vastly reduced. Five paragraphs should suffice for the entire sections, rather than the monstrosity it is now with many subsections. Further, there is no need for that much information regarding public health in the main article. Also, the information does not have to be cut, just moved to a more, in my opinion, deserving ___location for the information, i.e., Demographics of the United States. Also, as stated previously, the largest cities table is not neccessary (yes, I know, there is a discussion in one of the talk page archives). Pepsidrinka 03:20, 3 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
While I think the article is "good to go" in its current state, I agree that the above suggestions by Pepsidrinka would improve the article. --Richard 04:07, 3 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • Further objections. I objected earlier based on size, but I'm going to provide more details on my objection. From WP:WIAFA, this article fails to comply with 2e, with the largest cities table being added and removed several times within the past few days. This article's lead paragraph is hideous. Three short paragraphs filled mainly with historical facts does little to summarize the topic (See other country FAs on what a lead should be like). Also, the article seems to disregard consensus from Wikipedia:WikiProject Countries (Number 3 from WP:WIAFA). Pepsidrinka 02:48, 9 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Weak object I hate to object to an article that's obviously had so much work done to it, but there are a few things I just can't overlook:

  • The size. Yes, the US is a complicated place, but that's all the more reason to create a good summary article. This article is nearly twice as long as the article on China, which is just as complex, but with a history ten times as long. The US history section could probably stand some pruning, which might help reduce the number of references cited on the page.
  • The history section also weighs too heavily on the recent stuff - fully half of it is from the 20th century onwards.
  • Do we need to have a map and a list of the states? I would remove the list since it's redundant (there's also a list at the bottom), but I realize nation articles typically list their divisions in the article itself.
  • The Foreign Relations section might work better if it was reworked into the military and economics sections somehow.

Again, it's obviously a very good article, but it just doesn't feel like a FA (yet). Matt Deres 00:57, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Further comment. The size issue alone looks as though it will sink this nomination. I know that some of the contributors have resisted the relocation of such details as the list of the largest cities, but they appear to be out of touch with WP's summary style. My advice is to be bold and reduce the size by making proper use of the daughter articles: that's what daughter articles are for. I'd make a strong case in the edit summaries and on the US talk page for why this has been done.

It's simple. Tony 01:36, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It needs to be reduced by about 20%, which is a tall order. You can probably weed out 10% of the text by identifying redundancy. Look: "the United States foreign policy became highly concerned with the threat of terrorist attacks." Make it: "U.S. foreign policy focused on the threat of terrorist attacks." Magic wand got rid of more than a third, and it's much nicer to read at the same time. Everywhere I look, there are extraneous words. This might help you to define the scope of the task. The other 10% might come from relocating material to daughter articles, or from just getting rid of it. The list of 50 states takes up a lot of room; the states are named on the map nearby, and readers can easily type a state name into the search box. "American dream" risks being a little sentimental; why not shorten it and integrate into the "Culture" section? There are lots of opportunities for tightening up the article. Tony 02:10, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Oppose. Until a majority of the citations are to reliable paper sources with page-level granularity (that is, by page number), I cannot support this nomination. --Coolcaesar 01:58, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Comment What is the obsession with paper references? Any intelligent person should be able to tell the difference between legitimate sources and junk on the net. I believe that for a project like Wikipedia, Internet sources are actually better because the user can verify the accuracy of the information with the click of a mouse, whereas there is no guarantee that the print reference in question is availiable at the local library. PDXblazers 02:51, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
That's what WorldCat and interlibrary loan are for. Furthermore, in areas of the world with a high density of good public libraries and community college libraries (New York and California), it is extremely likely that the reference in question is at the local library. Also, you are making the hilariously false (and uninformed) assumption that Internet sources are always self-authenticating, when they are not. If information on the Internet was inherently self-authenticating (and if the majority of people were capable of intelligently discerning such authenticity) then we wouldn't be having so many phishing scams or downright crazy disasters like the Craig Shergold mess. That is why few scholarly works rely upon Internet sources as reliable unless their assertions are heavily corroborated against reliable print sources. At a top public university (like the one I attended), turning in a history paper that cites solely or primarily to amateur Web sites is likely to earn a D or F. Wikipedia can and should do better than that.--Coolcaesar 06:42, 6 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Flab is the problem here. The writing is uniformly flabby—all 88 kB of it, except for the bits that have been fixed in response to complaints in this room. Thus, not only does the nomination fail 2a, but the opportunity to reduce the size of the article with no loss of meaning is being passed up. Take this paragraph, for example:
The United States is a constitutional republic and its government operates as a congressional system, meaning that it operates through a set of limited powers imposed by its design and enumerated in the United States Constitution. There are three levels of government: federal, state, and local. Each level enjoys certain exclusive powers and obligations, and the precise delineation of these powers has been a matter of considerable ongoing debate. Officials of each of these levels are either elected by eligible voters via secret ballot or appointed by other elected officials. Almost all electoral offices are decided in "first-past-the-post" elections, where a specific candidate who earns at least a plurality of the vote is elected to office, rather than a party being elected to a seat to which it may then appoint an official. The relationship between the state and national governments is rather complex due to the country's federal system. Under United States law, states are considered sovereign entities, meaning that the power of the states is considered to come directly from the people within the states rather than from the federal government.

Here's a much improved version:

The United States is a constitutional republic; its government operates as a congressional system through a set of powers specified in the Constitution. There are three levels of government: federal, state, and local. Each has exclusive powers and obligations, although the precise delineation of these has been a matter of debate. Officials at all three levels are either elected by voters in a secret ballot or are appointed by other elected officials. Almost all electoral offices are decided in first-past-the-post elections in which candidates who earn a plurality of the vote are elected, rather than appointed by the governing party. The relationship between state and federal governments is complex. Under U.S. law, each state is a sovereign entity, its power arising from its people rather than from the federal government.

The existing version is 1160 characters; the new version is 832 characters, and more precise to boot. There's your size problem solved, and Criterion 2a satisfied. Gone are awkward/redundant expressions such as "enjoying obligations" and "specific candidate". There are many occurrences of "the Constitution of the United States" in this "Politics" section; for some reason, all are fully spelt out and linked, and in one instance, piped into an inconsistent wording.

I wonder why so much detail is given over to elected officials (80% of the existing paragraph), when critical information about the relationship between the president and congress, and the fact that there are two houses of congress, has been removed. It used to be there, and it's likely to be needed by foreigners who consult the article to try to understand the system of government. I suspect that most Americans don't properly understand it either, which is more reason to explain it here succinctly. This is a very disappointing shift of emphasis, considering how much space is squandered in the article.

When you say "Under U.S. law", I hope you don't mean "Under the Constitution". If not, whose law? That of the Congress? I don't think so.

I can only assume that the reviewers who have expressed effusive approval of the nomination haven't read the article, or at least, haven't read it closely. Tony 13:01, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comment. I have noticed that the article actually has gotten larger since the nomination. It is moving in the wrong direction. At this pace it's going to hit 100 KB next Sunday. --Maitch 17:03, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Version before nomination: 88 KB
Current: 94 KB
--Maitch 17:13, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. Trying to think of things I would expect to see covered in more detail in an encyclopedic article (or at least mentioned), and I came up with: the industry of the USA - the economy section and the main article about the US economy doesn't really go into any detail on the industry of what is, after all, an industrialised nation; Hollywood - there is currently a piped link hidden behind the word 'cinema' and a link in the template "see also" monster; US TV networks don't get a mention in the 'Culture' section - there is only a passing reference to sedentary people watching sports; I would expect to see references to TV shows around this point somewhere. Carcharoth 18:51, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]


  • Oppose because of unconcise, flabby writing. --Shaanxiquake 10:22, 5 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose The article needs a lot of copyediting, condensing of some material, while expansion of other areas...there is zero mention of biodiversity, the world's first National Park (Yellowstone), etc. I noticed many run on sentences, missing commas and there is a need for more precision: for example, the word "several" was used intead of the more exact "ten" when discussing the states that joined South Carolina and formed the CSA in 1861. I do think this is an excellent article overall, but some tweaking is necessary in my opinion.--MONGO 13:18, 5 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I think he means that the article can be summarised a bit more, but overall, it's a good article and deserve to be featured. Also, your comment about the article's expansion is unjustified.--Ryz05 t 16:29, 5 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Oops. It was probably a bad attempt at humour which didn't go very well. Hence I am striking my observation completely. Hope this is ok. -Ambuj Saxena (talk) 16:39, 5 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong support I believe that such an article is meant to be an lengthy as ours is. It is well written, fully documented, full of well placed photos, and has plenty of links to related topics. --Chris 23:26, 5 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Object Sorry, but the article really is too long. It's up to 94k now, and needs to be trimmed. I suggust trimming public health, and maybe removing completely the American Dream section. The Halo (talk) 01:33, 6 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong Support More than enough pictures, refrenes, links etc. I don't think the article is too long. Felixboy 16:01, 6 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support per discussion. -- Wikipedical 23:52, 6 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Great article. --MZMcBride 02:45, 7 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Object based solely on first two paragraphs. America's history, while certainly noteworthy, is not the most notable thing about it today, and isn't what the entire second paragraph and some of the opening paragraph should be devoted to.
    • America is the world's sole superpower, a nuclear power, the world's largest single-country economy, the large country with the highest per-capita GDP, the country most important to scientific and industrial research, seat to the United Nations, dominant NATO member, largest Western country by population (as well as economy), the country in control of the world's reserve currency, ... not all of this needs to be in the opening paragraph, but I find "oldest existing constitutional republic" a bit weak.
    • America has a democratic form of government. While this is nowadays seen to be implied by "constitutional republic", I would think it important enough to point out specifically. RandomP 02:11, 8 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support per the discussion, I find the article to be acceptably summarized, and the main article is informative enough but is covered more extensively in sister articles. Meticulously referenced. NorseOdin 03:33, 8 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support With those cluttering lists gone, the article has become readable enough. Earlier it was difficult to go through the article at one go. It's good that the editors decided to go for good summarisation rather than obstructive thoroughness/comprehensiveness. The article is still comprehensive and abides by all the points of becoming an FA. And yet, it has much improved from the previous riot of information to an article that is a treat to read. Regards.--Dwaipayan (talk) 04:59, 8 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Another note, which leads me to weak object: The article quotes the economic assessment in the CIA World Factbook as a fact. This is unacceptable, as that publication does not have a neutral point of view on certain issues. I've drafted a proposed (very short) policy on this at Wikipedia:The CIA World Factbook, since it's an issue to many country articles. I think discussing things there would be best, but the statement as it stands is arguable at best. RandomP 05:16, 8 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I concur. Ryz05 challenged me on this issue on my talk page, which leads me to believe that he does not understand that the CIA is not a neutral source as far as Wikipedia is concerned. Its primary job is to provide intelligence to the President of the United States that supports American sovereign interests. It is not the CIA's job to write balanced assessments of every aspect of every country, especially when those assessments might conflict with the political views of Presidential aides who could then get the responsible analyst fired. --Coolcaesar 05:45, 8 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I find the CIA site surprisingly NPOV. It is widely used as a reference. Tony
The economy sections, in particular, do contain both predictions and value statements - it's perfectly usable as a source, it just cannot be used as sole reference for a statement that is either controversial or meaningless (the US has "low" inflation compared to countries that do not make low inflation a monetary policy goal. It has high inflation compared to the other world currencies.)
Read the economy - overview section of the "china" (i.e. PRC) article. I'm happy to discuss this further at a more appropriate page, but it just doesn't satisfy NPOV
RandomP 11:35, 8 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Whatever the CIA writes on their World Factbook is based off of data collected, either by themselves or from other government agencies. Accusing them of not neutral is a matter of opinion at best.--Ryz05 t 15:10, 8 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Weak object Lotta good stuff, but I'm also concerned a bit about the size. Trim about 10-15% out. Also, in the Human rights section, scrap the crud about South America, Iraq and Afghanistan. In the scheme of American history, any abuse there ranks far down the list. Events such as the Trail of tears, or the Japanese American internment camps rate much higher. --Jayzel 03:17, 9 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - I agree but, since you haven't fixed them all, perhaps you could identify the passages that you find creaky and awkward? Then, others can work on them. The appropriate place fo this would be the Talk:United States page. --Richard 18:28, 12 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - I've added many comments in recent days to the Talk page there, and will continue to do so. Moncrief 18:55, 12 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

No Opinion I would generally support the article. I do not have a problem with its length, find the level of bias to be minimal, and find the choices of what to include very acceptable. The article is comprehensive and clearly took a lot of work. I still, however, find the prose to be rather clumsy. MikeNM`

Autostereogram

I haven't been involved with the article, just clicked through to it from the reference desk, but it blew me away. Thorough, informative, well illustrated. I actually understand how Magic Eye pictures work now, something I'd wondered for a long time but assumed would be too complicated. A fantastic job that deserves recognition. Skittle 15:52, 23 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • I agree, excellent work. I'll give it a thorough proofreading. —Keenan Pepper 16:24, 23 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • Keenan, I see that Skittle restored a sentence you removed during proofreading. I agree that it sounds nonsensical. The problem is that I did not find a consensus on how variations of RDS should be called at the time. I will again remove that sentence, and instead write another paragraph to explain the current lack of agreement on nomenclature, in the next few days. I've asked members of the 3D Stereograms forum to donate their images to wikimedia, so I can refer to them in this new paragraph. See nomenclature Fred Hsu 04:47, 31 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • I just re-wrote a few sentences to clarify the concept. Fred Hsu 02:23, 16 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • I just added a new discussion section where people can discuss how to best classify various types of autostereograms.
  • Comment:
    1. The lead section needs at least 2 more paragraphs, and should adequately summarize the entire article. Think of the lead section as being a separate mini-article, something the size of an average Britannica article.
    2. There are no inline citations. While the references are listed at the end, they are not connected in any way to the content in the article. --BRIAN0918 18:08, 23 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Weak Object as of now for the following reasons: (arrange from major to minor)

  • I'll be working on the intro and cites. As I said, I haven't really been involved with this article so if anyone else wants to have a go, please do. You probably know more about this stuff than me. Skittle 09:41, 26 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • In response to AndyZ's bullet point about date links. This can be done easily using a 'dates' tab in edit mode. Simply copy the entire contents of User:Bobblewik/monobook.js to your own monobook. Make sure you follow the instructions in you monobook to clear the cache. You will also get a 'units' tab. Hope that helps. bobblewik 00:38, 29 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • Thank you, Bobblewik. I copied your .js script to my own page, and I now have 'dates' and 'unites' tabs indeed. I will use the 'dates' tab tomorrow to edit dates. Fred Hsu 04:59, 31 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • I haven't looked at the article thoroughly yet, but the referencing still needs to be improved. As of now, only the "History" section and "3D perception" have WP:FOOTNOTEs. Many editors on WP:FAC nowadays request for at least one footnote per paragraph, though I think that there should be at least 1 footnote per section. Remember that web references can be used ({{Cite web}}). Please shift up the image in the lead all the way to the top. Also, "Influential work" should probably be renamed "Further reading" or "Bibliography" (see WP:GTL). Thanks, Andy t 22:03, 3 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • Lead Image and Bibliography: fixed
    • Most of the information on this article come from Pinker's book and Magic Eye books from my own collection, and various websites I found during my research. These are corroborated by my own software which I wrote and used in order to create images shown in this article. But I did not want to keep referring to the same footnotes over and over, nor was I sure web references were not frowned upon. I created the original Reference section by carefully reading my books and sources to see what they had to say about "who did what" as described in "which book/paper". I also listed the top few papers cited by every source.
    • I can probably place footnotes at every paragraph with fairly high accuracy. But I do not feel comfortable attributing a paragraph to a book/paper, unless I have read it with my own eyes (or I know with 100% confidence that author X has writen Y). To that end, I have just bought 5 books online, all of them out-of-print (including the $175 classic, "Foundations of cyclopean perception").
    • I don't know how long an article can remain in the candidate list. But I think I can have the reference situation corrected in a week.
    • OK, boys, I've received the Foundations of Cyclopean Perception and am working on better inline references. Fred Hsu 01:17, 8 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • I am slowly fixing (previously missed) incorrect statements in the article, adding links to other wiki articles and inline references wherever appropriate. Please check out the History page. This is not yet done. I need a few more days. Fred Hsu 04:29, 10 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • I know this nomination has been archived. But, I've just received two more books (Kinsman and Cadence Books). These two have tons of information. So, I will continue to add citations. Fred Hsu 23:57, 15 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]


  • As is done in WP:FOOTNOTE, for footnotes, the footnote should be located right after the punctuation mark, such that there is no space inbetween. For example, change blah blah [2]. to blah blah.[2]
  • Could you provide a bit more information for the web reference (date of publication, date of access, authors, etc.)?
  • You might want to give the article a light copyedit, for example, In 1959, Dr. Bela Julesz, a vision scientist, psychologist, and MacArthur Fellow, discovered the random dot stereogram Who is the psychologist? A few more commas can be added before the word "which", as in The brain does not rely on intelligible icons which represent objects or concepts.
  • I find it kind of odd that you define "Autostereogram" in the "Terminology" section. Hopefully the reader will know what it means by the time he/she looks at the terminology section...
  • Otherwise, great job! Thanks, Andy t 15:13, 16 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Gulf Oil Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Elisha Cuthbert Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/New Jersey Supreme Court Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Rent (musical) Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Christian Bale

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

The article was promoted by User:SandyGeorgia 00:50, 30 July 2008 [38].

Washington, D.C.

Nominator(s): epicAdam
previous FAC


I have been working on this article for several months and I do believe it is ready to submit as an FA candidate. The article has also undergone a recent peer review that I think has hammered out any minor issues. I would like to thank the following users for their dedication in helping the article reach FAC: Patrickneil for his dedicated mentorship; Brianboulton for his extensive peer review; Maralia, Realist2, and Juliancolton for their copy editing prowess; Ealdgyth for being a tireless reference checker; Dr. Cash for his help over at WP:CITY; and last but not least, Saxonthedog for relentlessly making sure the article reflects a NPOV.

I am happy to address any other concerns the editors have about Washington, D.C. Thank you. -epicAdam (talk) 17:23, 24 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Resolved comments from Aude (talk) 17:42, 24 July 2008 (UTC) Oppose The article is quite good, but I see some changes that should be made.[reply]

  • The history section jumps from 1874 to the 1930s. Around the turn of the century, the McMillan Plan was devised and major changes to the city made (e.g. National Mall created, Union Station built and the railroads relocated there, etc.) I know this is mentioned in the cityscape section, but it could also be tied in with the history.
  • Cites are missing in some places (e.g. slavery outlawed in 1850).
  • The mention of 9/11 is awkward. That bit doesn't tie in very well with the rest of the article. How has 9/11 affected DC since then?
    • I would mention the effect on security, but 9/11 had the same affect pretty much everywhere else. I think it would be pretty redundant to say that security was tightened as a result. But, I'm not married to having the information in the article in the first place. I'll wait to see if any other editors are concerned about it.
  • I don't think the coordinates should be mentioned in the geography section. The numbers are meaningless to most people. Anyway, the coordinates are already provided in the infobox.
  • The geography section could really use a picture of one of the park areas (e.g. Rock Creek Park, C&O Canal, or other park area). Parks are very important as part of people's everyday life in DC, as a place for recreation, perhaps more so than other cities.
  • In the climate section, the average amount of snowfall is mentioned. There, the article should also mention about the major blizzards that Washington has from time to time. They tend to be a big deal, with schools closed and other impacts.
    • When they happen they are a big deal but they tend to be few and far between; I wouldn't think most of them to be a major aspect worthy of mention. The Great Blizzard of 1899 is already mentioned, however, because it was the largest. epicAdam (talk) 18:18, 24 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
      • Mentioning 1899 is fine, but mentioning generally that blizzards happen on occasion might be appropriate, similarly to how the article mentions about occasional flooding in Georgetown and the occasional hurricane. --Aude (talk) 08:47, 25 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • The article might be better if it cited Zachary Schrag's book on the development of the Washington Metro system. He talks a lot about transit-oriented development and gentrification, as relates to construction of the Metro system.
    • I would agree that would be great information for the article on Metrorail (Washington, D.C.), but I think is probably too in-depth for a main summary. epicAdam (talk) 18:18, 24 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
      • I think something is missing. One thing is that I can't find when the construction of the Metro system began or when the system first opened, yet the system has had important impacts on the city. Schrag mentions how the Metro system helped stimulate gentrification in the Downtown/Chinatown area, as well as U-Street and other areas with transit-oriented development. At the time the system was planned, building freeways was the popular thing to do. Washington had the option of doing that, and had plans to build a freeway through Adams Morgan and other neighborhoods. But they ended up choosing to build the Metro. Some brief mention in summary style about construction of Metro might fit in the history section, the transportation section, or elsewhere. --Aude (talk) 08:47, 25 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
        • I added information about Metro's role in gentrifying areas along the Green Line, referencing Schrag's book. The information about Metrorail's opening is already present in the transportation section.
I think the story of the Washington metro is fascinating, but I don't want to overemphasize its role in this article. One has to remember that the transit system wasn't meant to help revitalize the city; it was built to quickly shuttle suburban residents to and from work downtown. Plus, gentrification has been uneven. Areas like U Street and Columbia Heights are successful, but other neighborhoods in southeast and northeast aren't really any better off than they were before Metro came through. I don't want to make it sound like Metro was the city's great "development messiah" when it was really one of many factors that aided development. Also, just for comparison, the article on New York City gives its subway a grand total of five sentences, and it is arguably one of the most important subway systems in the world! -epicAdam (talk) 18:00, 25 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

--Aude (talk) 17:42, 24 July 2008 (UTC)}}[reply]

Support - With the changes, the article looks good to me. It does a excellent job of summarizing all the subtopics, and the sources look good. Excellent work with the article over the past few months. --Aude (talk) 20:42, 25 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Support I remember the numerous problems this article had when it was first up for FAC. It was ugly and had issues with citation formatting. I have been astonished with the work that has gone into it in recent months, to the point where I found myself wondering just this week when it would appear up here. I have given advice to editors and have worked on the images at times, but am not a major contributor. I think the criticisms mentioned already are not enough to withhold support, and have been, as far as I can see, already remedied. With attention to the History section, I don't worry that it skips too much, but that it could be shorter yet. Still, it is no longer than that of other similar city articles such as New York City, which is already a featured article. I encourage readers to compare DC with New York to see that Washington, D.C. now deserves to be elevated to featured status.--Patrick Ѻ 20:11, 24 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Support: I did a very detailed peer review for this article (a review which, by the way, is still open and needs to be closed). I raised a great many points, all of which were responded to in a positive manner. Since my review a considerable copyediting and revision exercise has taken place which has improved the article further. I share the view expressed above, that the criticisms on which the oppose is based are relatively trivial and easily rectified. Of city articles, this is probably the best I've seen and is in my view thoroughly deserving of promotion. The only question which I have is about the wikilinking of dates. My understanding of current policy on this is, don't link dates unless they are of particular significance, e.g. a person's dates of birth and death in a biographical article. In this article all dates seem to be linked - including a year-only "1973" in the History section which has got to be wrong, whatever the dispensation. I suggest the editors check whether they are within current date-linking policy and act accordingly. But this is nothing to do with the quality of the article, of which the editors ought to be proud.--Brianboulton (talk) 20:48, 24 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I de-wikilinked the year. But I too have asked for clarification about the dates. I think it makes sense to only wikilink relevant dates, but it seems like full dates are supposed to be linked. If not, then I can quickly delink irrelevant dates. -epicAdam (talk) 21:00, 24 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
P.S. Peer review is now closed. Thanks for catching that, Brian! -epicAdam (talk) 21:16, 24 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Support I did a peer review of the article, and after some minor issues, the article meets the criteria, and then some. I'm not concerned about the history section skipping a time period, as a subarticle exists. An excellent piece of work on such a notable topic. Juliancolton Tropical Cyclone 23:41, 24 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Support, as I couldn't find anything to complain about except for one sentence, which I fixed myself. Tuf-Kat (talk) 02:30, 25 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

  • Current ref 146 "Haynes, V. Dion and Theola Labbe "A Boom for DC Charter Schools" is lacking a last access date.
Otherwise souces look okay, links checked out with the link checker tool. I did a check at the peer review, and the concerns there have been addressed. Ealdgyth - Talk 12:53, 25 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Ref 146 now has an access date. Thank you, Ealdgyth! -epicAdam (talk) 15:48, 25 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

  • There appears to be over wikilinking per WP:CONTEXT. For example, in the intro the following probably do not need to be wikilinked: United States, states, workweek, commuters, trade unions, area, Minority-majority state (Washington D.C. is not a state). Additionally, you could consider not wikilinking the dates, since it is optional per WP:MOSNUM to do so and does contribute to the "sea of blue" effect. Autoformatting (wikilinking dates) only benefits the small percentage of readers who are both logged in and who have set their preferences. The rest just see a blue jumble. —Mattisse (Talk) 22:49, 25 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Note: Wikipedia:CITE#Scrolling lists "Scrolling lists, for example of references, should never be used because of issues with readability, accessibility, printing, and site mirroring. Additionally, it cannot be guaranteed that such lists will display properly in all web browsers." There are also some faulty italics in the citations, resulting from using the "work" parameter on sources rather than the publisher parameter; newspapers, journals and periodicals use WP:ITALICS, but why is the website CNNMoney in italics, for example? See what graphic? For example, the District's unemployment rate fluctuates greatly within the city; in August 2006, unemployment ranged from 1.5% in affluent Ward 4 to 16.3% in Ward 8 (see graphic). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:10, 26 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thank you both for your comments. I have just gone through and performed a section-by-section sweep of the article and have removed unnecessary and/or redundant wikilinks, empty reference fields, adjusted publisher settings to conform to WP:ITALICS, corrected problems with date autoformatting, and removed the hidden scroll bar. Please let me know if you have any additional concerns. Best, epicAdam (talk) 05:33, 26 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - What about the fact that Washington D.C. is not a state? It is jarring to see it called a state in your introduction. Perhaps thinking of Washington D.C. as in the class of "states" is why the article glosses over how its special status contributes to its positives and negatives in the present day. —Mattisse (Talk) 22:47, 26 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Re above comment "it is jarring to see it called a state", the last sentence of the lead begins with the qualifier "If Washington DC were a state...", which is rather the opposite of calling it a state. I see no confusion here. Brianboulton (talk) 15:42, 27 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I apologize for overlooking that. —Mattisse (Talk) 15:57, 27 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Support I'm a little hesitant to support or oppose this article, because I've contributed to it in the past. Though the vast majority of the work has been done by Epicadam, who has done an awesome job recently. It has gone through a GA review, peer review, and improved significantly in the past year. I think Washington, D.C. represents one of Wikipedia's finest city articles, and I would not hesitate in promoting it, IMHO. Dr. Cash (talk) 02:12, 29 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - I am disappointed that this article gives so little space to the architecture. It does not contain a description of the ensemble design of the important buildings with squares adjoining each other in the Italian manner, the streets radiating from the center etc., and other characteristics of the complex geometric overlays famously designed by Pierre L'Enfant and then revised and implemented after L'Enfant was dismissed. Its descriptions of artchitectural style are very general, as provided by wikilinks. —Mattisse (Talk) 17:17, 29 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Alas, therein lies the problem with summary style. Much like like the issue about the role of the Metro, it's hard to pinpoint the exact level of detail that should be reflected in the article. I will say, however, that the cityscape and architecture section is as detailed as that of New York City#Cityscape.
  • As for the street layout, the start of the cityscape section does say, "In 1791, Pierre L'Enfant drew up a basic plan modeled in the Baroque style, which incorporated broad avenues radiating out from traffic circles, providing for maximum open space and landscaping." There is a "see also" to the article on Streets and highways of Washington, D.C., which goes into further detail.
  • Based on your suggestion, I also added a footnote about Andrew Ellicott's role in creating the final plans. We had originally decided against mentioning him because not only was L'Enfant's plan not significantly altered by Ellicott, the plans were never entirely executed, either. It's for this reason that the McMillan plan is highlighted; those architects are largely responsible for the appearance of the city today, even as they followed L'Enfant's general design scheme.
  • The architectural styles are general. Again, relating to the summary style guidelines, it's hard to choose just exactly what buildings and architectural styles should be highlighted without providing undue weight to some subjects. Perhaps a sub-article on the Architecture of Washington, D.C. would be warranted to deal with this in greater depth, but I have a hard time imagining how it would all fit into the main article.
Thank you again for your comments. Best, epicAdam (talk) 18:41, 29 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.

RuneScape

The article is very well written, and I think it is finally stable. It has been improved very well, and it is very informative. Someone who didn't know the game could probably learn the game inside out just by reading this article. WIKIPEEDIO 01:55, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Oppose - Apart from a tiny criticism section, there is no critical reaction to the game whatsoever. I know that a browser game is going to get less traditional reviews as retail games, but with 2 million active players, it will not have gone unnoticed in the press. - Hahnchen 03:03, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Agree with the above comment.--Matthew Fenton (TALK - CONTRIBS) 09:25, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • I can help I remember the Criticism section used to be much longer than it currently is. I remember contributing information to the Criticism section on 10 April. A few days after I made that edit, someone removed most of the Criticism, retaining only a tiny Criticism section. I once nominated a similar article, NeoPets, for Featured Article status. It was rejected for reasons exactly opposite to those mentioned there. The Criticism section of NeoPets was too long, lacked reference and used weasel words. My response is: it is difficult to find reliable sources criticising an online game. NeoPets practises censorship, and most of the criticisms would come from users which have been frozen. I hope you bear this in mind regarding the Criticism section of RuneScape. I am willing to upload "proof of concept" screenshots to the article. Do you think it's currently good enough for Good Article? --J.L.W.S. The Special One 07:32, 5 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
      • What you need from a critical reaction section, isn't just criticism. It's what good external sources thought of the game. Things like weasel words and unsourced complaints are not the kind of thing that should go there. I do understand that a browser game is going to get less attention than a retail release, but surely there has to be some articles about it somewhere. For example, it mentions that the game has an optional paid members section, what was the reaction to this? Was it not documented anywhere? If the Horse Armour addon for Oblivion can cause an absolute outcry in every piece of gaming press, surely this showed up on some radars?- Hahnchen 10:45, 5 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
        • Actually, whether you choose to believe it or not, sourced criticism for this game is rather hard to find. I mean, the only place I can think of is these Runescape-Hater websites, but that isn't actually criticism. I also know of some common stuff that my friends and neighbors and schoolmates tell me, but those will get removed because I don't source them to a website. So my question for you guys is: Does something need to be posted on a website to exist? Because that is what you are implying. WIKIPEEDIO 16:38, 5 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
          • Exactly. That's what I mean. Most of the criticisms are player opinion, and will not be found in sources that pass the reliability criteria. Hate sites, perhaps. Forums, yes. In-game screenshots, yes. Could these be used as sources? Remember, NeoPets also failed Featured Article for reasons underlined above. I am willing to contribute information to the RuneScape article, particularly the Criticism section. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 01:59, 7 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Weak support It's come a long way since it was semi-protected. Some more criticism would be nice, it is usually quickly deleted though. It is an extremely great arcticle though. --pevarnj(t/c/@) 19:59, 5 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • OPPOSE It's horrible. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.109.206.88 (talk • contribs) .
    • Comment Not that it matters or anything cause it kinda looks like this article won't be featured, but the vote above was by an anonymous IP (who probably hates RuneScape), therefore it should be ignored. WIKIPEEDIO 21:53, 6 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose The article and its related articles contain a lot of information, but being one of the top 30 or so edited articles, there is not enough coordination amongst the information to be considered a good article. The RuneScape articles mirror too much what happens in the game and not enough about it's status as a computer game. It is a mismatched collaberation of a game guide and player reviews. It should be rebuilt from the ground up, but even then, I don't think it will be good enough to be featured. --Chris 23:22, 5 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose A very popular article is not always a good one. I think making this a featured article will put it on the fast track for more vandalism than it has previously seen, which is quite a lot given its semi-protected past and continued tendencies for vandalism. Most of us have seen what happened with the Pink Floyd article when it was featured, now multiply that by a million annonymous immature RuneScape players instead of a few people that don't care for a particular band. --yaninass2 | talk 02:52, 6 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Article is unstable, currently protected, lead needs to be expanded per WP:LEAD, few refs, Criticism section is very small and unsourced. Thanks Jaranda wat's sup 23:02, 6 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The main objection seems to be the Criticism section. It is a good article otherwise. I am nominating it for Good Article. Someone please pass it. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 01:59, 7 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Oppose For many of the reasons outlined above. I also feel this article is not very encyclopedic often having a gameguide feeling to it. (Koolsen0 01:38, 8 June 2006 (UTC))[reply]
  • Oppose very instable. Computerjoe's talk 15:05, 8 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose - The only thing it should be featured for, is an example of how letting anonymous users run amok is a stupid, STUPID policy, wouldn't have half the edits, if it wasn't for the need to keep reverting silly vandalism and misguided expansion. The criticism is another area where nobody seems to agree. Ace of Risk 18:44, 8 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Agree I think people might like to see a game guide. (Except for the fact its mainly a child's game so adults who mainly look at Featured articles wouldn't be too thrilled.)Eugene0k2 15:34, 15 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Complutense University of Madrid

Myanmar

Myanmar's article is well written, providing a history of the country, the junta now in power, the regions of the country, and the short-lived free elections that the junta cracked down on shortly thereafter because they were not pleased with the results. SushiGeek 21:03, 1 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comment. There are "citation needed" templatees somewhere and one section is marked as to be wikified. -- Grafikm (AutoGRAF) 21:18, 1 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Object - Insufficient inline citations. Fieari 22:41, 1 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Object. This article should go through both Peer Review and have a good copyedit first. There are several problems with this article, including:
    • A section is marked to be wikified, per Grafikm
    • Inline citations are insuffiecient, per Fieari
    • The country is alternately referred to as Burma and/or Myanmanr in several sections
    • The article is very list heavy
    • No explicit references section
This could benefit from a Peer Review, before renomination. RyanGerbil10 04:48, 2 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Grille (cryptography)

This is superb coverage of a now essentially obsolete crypto technique, with connections to signficant mathematicians, politicians, and jurists of European history. Nicely done, well illustrated, full of interesting and obscure facts. Worth featuring. Unlike many crypto articles, I've not made a single edit to this one, so my nominational motives are pure. ww 18:51, 29 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Object - Lead is nonexistant, and no inline citations. Fieari 18:56, 29 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • Lead fixed. Inline citations are a bad fit given the antiquity of use and obsolescence. References and links have been formalized, however. ww 14:38, 30 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
      • Lead is still insufficiant, and inline citations are not a bad fit, in that they connect references to the specific facts claimed. There are too few sections, I cannot believe that this is all there is to say on the subject. What about history? How about some more about its cryptanalysis? Some of the sections are too short. There is information contained in the lead that is not covered in the article, and the other way around as well. Four references may be insufficient for an example of our very best work. Fieari 19:31, 1 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
        • Unlike many topics, crypto history is largely covert and opaque; so literature references are sparse. Especially for old and now obsolete crypto techniques. The additional details suggested (eg, on cryptanalysis) are usually objected to when present in crypto articles (see Cedar-Guardian comment below), and so there is a compelled tendency to try to avoid technical material on the part of crypto editors. An annoying Scylla and Carybidis! The links to other articles, in the lead and elsewhere, are largely expected to slake curiosity on those points. Too short sections can be remedied, but risk including 'too much' technical detail. ww 21:15, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support now! Sorry, but Object:
  • Comment. Much of the formatting is non-standard: the redlinked heading in 'Grille Ciphers' for example; plus the bullet points in 'References'. (Use *) --BillC 22:11, 29 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Object. No inline citations. Text looks like a usage guide rather than encyclopedia article. -Ambuj Saxena (talk) 20:34, 30 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • Not sure how to address the 'usage guide' objection. In some sense, cyphers are nothing but an algorithm; as such, illustrations of the algorithm will be obligatory, and probably look like a usage manual from some perspectives. The history and connections given here provide some context, and the cryptography section discuses grille cyphers' value as against the Opposition. To wit, basically nil. Suggestions? ww 23:24, 30 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. As the proposer, and responder to the objections above (which have each been addressed in the last few days), I think the article has been imporved and is an excellent example of a good WP article, a featured quality one. ww 02:06, 1 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • Note: FAC isn't a vote, so there's no need for the nominator to formally support like that. Just for future reference. We assume you think it's ready because you nominated it. Fieari 22:56, 1 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong Object. The article is too technical and does not provide sufficient context. There is no definition in the lead about what is a cipher, a Cardan grille... When I read the lead begining with Grille ciphers are written with cardboard sheets that have holes cut in them at regular or irregular intervals. I never would've though about a crypto technique. The first section starts with Although Francis Bacon used... Who's Francis Bacon? And many other examples. Plus there should be an image in the lead. CG 18:13, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • The objection as to overmuch technicality is a problem. See comments by Fieari above is that there is too much. The lack of local repetition of contnet from other articles may not be. The links to other articles are expected to be used by the curious. I will suggest (or do it myslef) a first sentence along the lines of "In the history of cryptography, a grille cipher is ... A Cardan grille is the first known implementation of such a cipher..." This should address this concern. I will also suggest moving an image higher into the article. Lead, perhaps? ww 21:15, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • We could add some explanatory context, but probably not to the extent of defining things like "cipher", which would encumber it considerably, IMO. — Matt Crypto 22:48, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Object for now. Good article with very nice diagrams. Featured Articles do need inline citations, and there's plenty of specific facts which could be sourced. — Matt Crypto 22:42, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Roman naming conventions

If you look at this articles talk page, you will see that I have fulfilled the previous criteria given for the failure of my first nomination. I have also attempted to add more interesting topics and I feel it is an excellent example of what a FA should be. Rrpbgeek 17:17, 29 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]


Current unanswered issues for nomination:

  • Absence of inline cites
  • Shortness of sections, esp. lead
  • Improper source formatting


It's a nice start, but the footnotes need to be listed in a separate section, the lead section needs to be expanded, and the sections themselves shouldn't contain so much bolded text. Keep up the good work, RyanGerbil10 03:50, 30 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

For these reasons :

    • Fix the prænomen and praenomen, which one is the good one.
    • More info on the nomen gentile as per why these name, what is the origin and where the -ius comes from.
      • -ius comes from the masculine form. Shown in history. Rrpbgeek
      • More info on Nomen Gentile and origins. Rrpbgeek
    • Support information with inline citations. Lincher 18:04, 29 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Object. The footnotes go nowhere (fixed Rrpbgeek) and there's no book sources.(added Rrpbgeek) Also, prænomen needs to turn into praenomen,(done Rrpbgeek) and more details need to be added. Might be more appropriate for WP:GA. UnDeadGoat 23:17, 29 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. In the Foreign names section the article reads "A number of the names below are of Greek origin..." but there's nothing listed. Should this link to a separate article? Very interesting topic, but the article needs a strong copyedit. --NormanEinstein 14:47, 30 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. No inline citations. Most of the sections are so small that they should qualify as stubs. Probably more suitable for WP:GA per UnDeadGoat. And please respond in a separate paragraph and don't include your responses inline. -Ambuj Saxena (talk) 20:40, 30 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: I am not sure that all of the references were actually used in the creation of this article. For example, I have significant doubts that the "list of roman derived names" is a references rather than just an external link inadvertantly labeled a reference. Also, the article would be improved by adding inline citations and also formatting the references properly, see WP:CITE. Miss Madeline | Talk to Madeline 23:05, 31 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Syd Shores

I believe Syd Shores is an informative and well-written article about legendary-in-the-industry yet unsung-among-fans comic book pioneer who went into obscurity since, until the last decade or so, comics historians were rare; indeed, despite all my sources, I could not a specific birth date for Shores, but just a year. This article also exemplifies a mix of both print and online sources. -- Tenebrae 18:28, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, it has 11 references, both print and online — is that really considered "few"? — and only one list (singular). I do agree a Peer Review would be great. -- Tenebrae 18:07, 30 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
11 is pretty low for a featured article, and without inline citation to show multiple uses then absolutely. Staxringold talkcontribs 20:17, 30 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong Oppose Article has only one footnote in the name of internal referencing. The article's lead is very short. Writing is generally poor with too much boldface and italized text. The list is poorly formatted (actually it shouldn't exist at all). Too much attention given to his quotes. Many more issues. I suggest a Peer Review first. -Ambuj Saxena (talk) 19:50, 30 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
This is all good to know. For the record, just so we're on the same page, the short lead follows Wikipedia:Manual of Style (biographies) and Wikipedia:WikiProject_Comics/exemplars#Comics_creators. That latter source also advises that a bulleted bibliography actually is expected to exist. If this particular list needs work, that's a whole 'nother thing, obviously! :-) Thanks for the input. -- Tenebrae 20:02, 30 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Toledo War

Partial self-nomination. This article has undergone an extensive amount of work, by myself and many other members of the Wikipedia:Wikiproject Michigan. It has undergone a positive peer review, and has already achieved Good Article status. Project members will address any comments or concerns. Thanks. Hotstreets 02:36, 31 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Minor object on a few points:
    • The contents of the "See also" section are already linked in the article, and should be trimmed.
      • Trimmed these to items not linked within the article.
        • I'm not sure how useful a link to Military history of the United States is from here, since that article is extremely general. The categories seem much more useful in a case like this. Kirill Lokshin 03:16, 31 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
          • The Military History article has blurbed the Toledo Was as part of its content and we thought it helpful to link to where there's some additional background to the the time frame where the militias were forming post War of 1812 and pre-Civil War.
    • The use of "Ibid." in the footnotes is fine, but are there any style guides that still permit "op. cit."?
      • I'm working off the 1998 MLA Handbook. AFAIK, opus citarse still remains a valid citation form.
    • All of the sources used for the article should be listed in the "References" section, if one exists separately from the footnotes.
      • I added the Way book into the Reference sections since it was originally a hard copy book. For the small number of other web-exclusive sources, these are linked in the footnotes as well as in external sources.
Overall, though, the article looks very good! Kirill Lokshin 02:56, 31 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the Feedback Jtmichcock 03:09, 31 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Object. Poorly written. The lead provides many examples.
    • "The matter went unresolved until Michigan began to press for statehood in the early 1830s." "was" preferred to "went". Do you mean that when Michigan began to press for statehood, the matter was suddenly resolved? Surely not.
    • "The dispute originated from conflicting state and federal legislation passed between 1787 and 1805 that left the exact ___location of Ohio's northern boundary uncertain." Fuzzy. Surely the dispute originated from the conflict: the grammar gives the wrong emphasis. Try "The dispute originated from the conflict between state and ...". Can you remove "the exact ___location of"? Same for "Overall".
    • "The situation on the ground remained a standoff for over a year." Do you mean "The result was a standoff for more than a year." What does "on the ground" mean here?

The rest of the article has lots of fuzziness and awkwardness. Please get someone else to cop-edit it thoroughly. Tony 04:43, 31 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I have gone through the article to address your specific concerns and to parse back the writing. The introduction and balance of the article reads much better now. Please let us know what you think. Jtmichcock 12:13, 31 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Royal Grammar School Worcester

This is a self-nomination for an article I have been working on with several other editors. I feel that it meets all of the FA Guidlines and that it is a very useful addition to Wikipedia. From looking at several other school articles I feel this is of a very high standard, both in its content, research, and also style. I'd welcome any constructive comments if you feel that it is currently not at FA standard. --Wisden17 17:07, 31 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Fair use rationale now added, and more info added to remove all one sentence paragraphs, plus some ideas gleaned (e.g. maps etc.) from the two FAs suggested. --Wisden17 14:45, 1 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson

The largely unsung Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson is first publisher of an American comic book containing exclusively original, non-newspaper-reprint material. The company he founded evolved into the major media corporation DC Comics, yet he was forced out by business partners and went into obscurity until the last decade or so. This is one of the few available articles anywhere on Wheeler-Nicholson, and this article also exemplifies the use of print sources, which many Wikipedia articles do not use, relying instead solely on online sources. -- Tenebrae 18:24, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Object. The lead section is not of sufficient length, for one thing. Other problems include, but are not limited to: too few footnotes, no explicit references section, and doesn't seem comprehensive. The section concerning the man's life seems terribly short, if there really is such a poverty of information about his personal life, an explanation as to why there is so little to mention is needed. Should be referred to WP:Peer Review. RyanGerbil10 20:00, 30 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
There actually is an explicit References section, at Malcolm_Wheeler-Nicholson#References -- Tenebrae 20:20, 30 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Another observation. Please explain what "Ibid." stands for. I think its a shortening of the name of some book. Atleast expand the first occurance. Suggestion to get my support (I thought it would be no-brainer): Convert the external link within text to inline reference as footnote. Merge "Other works" into any other section. Explain the meaning of "Ibid."; and you will get my support. -Ambuj Saxena (talk) 05:47, 2 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the support offer. "Ibid." is a standard footnote reference, widely used in all types of research writing, meaning "in the same place". It serves to keep a researcher from typing out an entire citation repetitively time and again whenever one quotes more than once from the same source. Thanks for the opportunity to clarify!-- Tenebrae 13:24, 2 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
In response to Ambuj's point about WP:DATE not followed: This task is easier with the aid of a 'dates' tab in edit mode. Simply copy the entire contents of User:Bobblewik/monobook.js to your own monobook. Then follow the instructions in your monobook to clear the cache (i.e. press Ctrl-Shift-R in Firefox, or Ctrl-F5 in IE) before it will work. You will also get a 'units' tab. Hope that helps. bobblewik 18:47, 1 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I think I should have been more clear. The point that I raised is that why are lone years wikified? And that too inconsistantly. -Ambuj Saxena (talk) 19:14, 1 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
You're right; there's wikidate overlinkage. I wasn't watching the article carefully enough for edits. Removing them now. THANKS! -- Tenebrae 19:40, 1 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Good question. If you want to delink lone years, feel free. The 'dates' tab tool described above will make it easy. bobblewik 19:39, 1 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Everett M. "Busy" Arnold

Arnold is a publishing pioneer involved in the creation of the comic-book medium, and of great historical importance in publishing. -- Tenebrae 18:13, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hebrew grammar

This article gives lots of information, in a non-biased and clear manner. It uses Wikiformatting in a good way, and is divided into quick sections. It doesn't have pictures, because it doesn't need them. At the end, it clearly lists its sources. I therefore think that it should be a Wikipedia Featured Article. What do you think? Daniel (‽) 18:44, 31 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Oppose for now.
I'm a fan of that article (I should be — I've contributed to it a lot), but I'm not sure it should be a featured article at this point. My concerns are as follows:
  1. When I go to edit the article, I get a message reading, "This page is 41 kilobytes long. This may be longer than is preferable; see article size." (That said, this is rather easily remedied, by splitting up the article into subarticles, and using summary style.)
  2. Yes, there are references at the end, but the article doesn't actually cite any of them. (This is much more work to remedy; people with relevant reference works will need to make sure the article is in accord with them and cite accordingly.)
  3. A lot of major points are missing. For example, there's no discussion of pronouns; someone could read the entire article without learning that object pronouns are suffixes rather than separate words.
  4. Pronunciations are given using an ad hoc romanization. As it happens, I think the article's romanization is actually a good one; but it's never explained, and it differs from the one that's used (and that is explained) at Hebrew language. (I think the best fix here is to change the romanization at Hebrew language, and to state at Hebrew grammar that we're using the romanization described at Hebrew language.)
(To be honest, I think these are things that should be fixed regardless of whether this becomes a Featured Article; but your proposal gave it some urgency.)
Ruakh 19:30, 31 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose I have a basic understanding of Hebrew language. From the factual standpoint this article is very good and if FAC were purely about information, this would have my support, however, there are elements to how this is presneted which go agasin't wikipedia policy and which don't look good. The lead section is very short, and the text it does have is not an introduction, but rather somewhat tangantial. The table of contents is massively overwhelming. Most of it's sections are very short, so I sugest doing what World War II did, and replace the minor section headers with bold text, so that the table of conents isn't grabled with minor stuff. With most articles I would say that you need more than 2 refs, but this one is an exception. Most Hebrew speakers (My guess is that the people writing the article speak Hebrew) can write this article from knowlage, thus I don't think verfifibiltiy is a huge problem here, but I do think that the refs you do have, which are necisary to fulfil wikipedia policy are good, but not presneted right. Usualy, numbered refs are unsed when di0splaying inline citations. Since this article has none, the refs should just be displayed with bullet points. I think that an admazing amount of the text in this aticle is displayed in lists. although I think that list are a good way to display information, and an easy way to find information, this article uses it to the extreme. There are some places where the bullet points should just be made intro paragraphs. Lists are good here and there, but this isn't a featured collection of lists canidate, it's a featured article canidate, meaning that it needs more text. The lists are great supporting it, but it's too much. Also I disagree with the nominator in that I think that this article needs pics desprately. This page looks dull as it is. Giev it a few pics for color. It will be more attarctive, and will make people want to read it. Also, an article can't be on the main page without at least one pic. If these objections are adressed, ill change my vote. (I admit, this is long, but I felt passionate about this one.) - Tobyk777 03:49, 1 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Move to peer review.
    • The lead should be in accordance with WP:LEAD.
    • Subsections should utmost [sic] be one-level deep.
    • One can think of book cover images, or screenshots of grammar checkers, any special orthographic detail - (the RTL to LTR shift during code-switch?)
Will support once these issues are fixed. -- Sundar \talk \contribs 10:01, 1 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Question. By "utmost," do you mean "at most"? If not, could you explain that sentence? Thanks. Ruakh 12:16, 1 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
My bad. I meant at most. -- Sundar \talk \contribs 12:37, 1 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strongly object: it seems to be based on the article on English grammar, which is in a mess. This FAC portrays Hebrew grammar in a very narrow sense, i.e., in terms of word classification, based on no larger structure than the sentence, and assuming that the written mode is the only one worth discussing. So much is missing that it fails Criterion 2c by a long shot. It ends up being superficial. Tony 10:25, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Rapping

This article covers the topic completely. It is well written, accurate, sourced, and readable! Chubdub 21:53, 26 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comment I think if there is no criticism section under that justification, then shouldnt most of identity be in Hiphop as well? Also, I think having the Vanilla Ice image is inappropriate. Cvene64 23:26, 28 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
A rock guitar is included in rock music, should we have criticism on the guitar page? The reason identity is included in this page and not hip hop is because there isn't a big controversy over white dj's like scott storch or the alchemist-- the controversy is over vanilla ice and eminem, and that controversy is sourced.--Urthogie 13:09, 29 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Object - For the following reasons:
    • Not comprehensive, as above; it definitely needs a discussion of controversy, including more about the "rap culture", with both sides of the issue presented, and presented neutrally. The "identity" section begins with an assumption that the reader is already familiar with the topic, and as such begins with what amounts to a non-sequitor. There is surely MUCH more to be said with regards to "identity". I bet you could find entire sociological disserations on the subject if you looked hard enough. I mean, just the concept described in the quote you've included, "I hate when white people try to sound black"... that merits discussion. "Sounding black"? And there's a whole racial divide thing here to talk about!
Good points. I will work on adding a cultural criticism section, and I will try to add more analysis to the identity section.--Urthogie 13:13, 29 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • Lacks "compelling, even brilliant prose", using informal language in many places. The article makes assumptions not backed up by sources; the assumptions probably shouldn't be made in the first place. Example: a fact often unrecognized outside of hip hop culture is that not all rappers are MCs. How do we know this is a fact? You have references for this, but how do THEY know it's a fact? Do they even use the words? Can you just turn this into a quote?
I'll turn this into a quote. How else could I make the prose more brilliant?--Urthogie 13:13, 29 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • Insufficiently referenced. I've put a few {{fact}} tags in on some obvious spots, but I haven't gone over the WHOLE article with a fine tooth comb yet, and there may be more references needed than I've tagged. Of course, when you've made the article more comprehensive, the additions will obviously need to be sourced too.
I'll work on referencing them. Perhaps you could help by adding more fact tags or even helping reference things?--Urthogie 13:13, 29 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • Could use more images to go along with the expansions you need to make. Pictures of rap, possibly of crime, since that's another topic that needs to be added.
Finding images of rappers (and celebrities in general) is difficult because of fair use restrictions. But finding images of related things shouldn't be very hard.--Urthogie 13:13, 29 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • Lead section will need to be expanded when the article gets longer.
People said the lead is stubby. What could I add to make it better? (Aside from adjusting it to incorporate the new section[s] you've suggested)?--Urthogie 13:13, 29 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Well, they just got added, so we'll work on citing them.--Urthogie 13:13, 29 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

USA PATRIOT Act, Title III, Subtitle B

Self-nomination: I have finally gotten through subtitle B of Title III of the USA PATRIOT Act. I am submitting this to FAC as I think that it is well written and comprehensive. - Ta bu shi da yu 13:50, 27 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Support - Very interesting. michael talk 13:58, 27 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose because it doesn't do what an encyclopaedia article should do. It doesn't explain the thinking behind the sections under discussion, doesn't mention who was responsible for drafting them, where the impetus came from, why each section was considered necessary, what criticisms there have been, and so on. All it does is very dryly give the author's interpretation of what each section of the act means, and as such it's well short of being comprehensive. Worldtraveller 14:10, 27 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • Yeah, well. You've already tried to get such articles deleted, so I was waiting for your opposition. You really do contradict yourself though: you are basically asking for analysis, which is the very thing you are opposed to. I doubt I'll be able to satisfy you. - Ta bu shi da yu 14:34, 27 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • Original Research is not allowed. michael talk 14:38, 27 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
      • I'm not asking for analysis - I'm asking for an encyclopaedic article. Have a look at two FAs relating to laws - Parliament Act and French law on secularity and conspicuous religious symbols in schools - and you can see they discuss the relevant law, its background and consequences, rather than simply offer an interpretation of the law in plain English. None of this sort of discussion is present in this article so it clearly is not comprehensive. Worldtraveller 15:57, 27 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
        • Let me get this straight, they discuss the law? Under your narrow interpretation of original research, that's a strict no-no. - Ta bu shi da yu 16:02, 27 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
          • You're not even trying to understand my opposition. Just look at the TOC here - does it look like the article makes any attempt to do anything other than describe the law piece by piece? It's as if our article on Hamlet just had sections entitled 'Act 1, scene 1', 'Act 2, scene 2', 'Act 3, scene 3', and so on, which described the play, without any decription of where Shakespeare got his ideas from, contemporary reactions to it, influences on other works, and so on. As for the token criticism section, it really isn't adequate. What about public opinion and newspapers? What about such things as Michael Moore and the congressman who told him he hadn't read the bill before voting on it? Why is all this omitted? Worldtraveller 18:06, 27 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
            • Public opinion and newspaper polls were not done specifically on Title III, and certainly were not done on Subtitle B alone (feel free to prove me wrong). Therefore it follows that opinion polls should be discussed in the main article USA PATRIOT Act. As for Michael Moore and the senator who didn't read the Act: yes, I saw Farenheit 911 also, and you know what? I was outraged at the time, but now I sort of wonder if Michael Moore didn't read the Act himself... anyway, I digress somewhat. My point being is that this sort of commentary is best left in the main USA PATRIOT Act article. This article is about Subtitle B, and I'm darned if I'm going expand its scope to material that is better off in another article. As for your comparison of the Patriot Act article I've written to an article I'd write about Shakespeare's Othello (f'rinstance): well, I might well do things differently. But then again, they are two entirely different articles, about two entirely different subjects. I don't find the comparison valid. - Ta bu shi da yu 18:27, 27 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
              • OK, so it seems that what you're saying is that there's really nothing to be said about title III subtitle B - that it's not a significant thing in its own right, but only within the context of the whole act. So, why split it from the main article? Worldtraveller 15:02, 28 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
                • Excuse me, but I never said it wasn't significant. Worldtraveller, I know you've been on Wikipedia for a long time now, so I know you are fully aware that when an article becomes quite large that it is normal practice for the article to be split. - Ta bu shi da yu 07:43, 29 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
                  • Yes - but normally what's split off is expected to be an encyclopaedic article in its own right. What you're saying here is that all the discussion and comment that one would expect to be reported here only applies to the act as a whole, not to this one bit. So, why was this split off? If all the comment and reaction only refers to the act as a whole, isn't it better for an encyclopaedia to have an article on the act as a whole, rather than having articles on several arbitrary bits of it that don't tell the reader anything about the act as a whole? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Worldtraveller (talk • contribs) .
                    • I don't get what you're saying. TBSDY is saying that most of the criticism of the PATRIOT Act applied to the Act as a whole, and not to this piece, and as such it does not fall within the scope of this article. This is an article about Subtitle B of Title III, not criticism and comment of Subtitle B. What you're asking for is a total red herring. Johnleemk | Talk 11:32, 29 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
      • I don't see how what Worldtraveller is asking for is original research, provided sources are citable (which they probably are). I can't believe this section of the law was totally uncontroversial when it passed - surely it would have been debated, even a little? Is there any criticism we should know about? The impetus for the law would also be good to mention, as the article seems to assume some familiarity with the PATRIOT Act itself. Johnleemk | Talk 16:06, 27 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
        • Perhaps I'm missing something, but I thought I had actually provided the impetus for the subtitle: "The second subtitle, entitled Subtitle B: Bank Secrecy Act Amendments and Related Improvements, largely modifies the Bank Secrecy Act to make it harder for money launderers to operate, and to make it easier for law enforcement and regulatory agencies to police money laundering operations." As for it being uncontroversial when passed: the Patriot Act was passed with very little debate I'm afraid. But I'll do some more digging and see what I can find. - Ta bu shi da yu 16:09, 27 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
          • OK, here's the facts about this part of the Act: Basically this bill passed in the House of Representatives: 412-1. There was only one senator who dissented from passing the Act,a and that was Texas senator Ronald Paul, who stated the following (which I'll see if I need to update in the article):
            "The so-called Financial Anti-Terrorism Act of 2001 (HR 3004) has more to do with the ongoing war against financial privacy than with the war against international terrorism. Of course, the federal government should take all necessary and constitutional actions to enhance the ability of law enforcement to locate and seize funds flowing to known terrorists and their front groups. For example, America should consider signing more mutual legal assistance treaties with its allies so we can more easily locate the assets of terrorists and other criminals.
            "Unfortunately, instead of focusing on reasonable measures aimed at enhancing the ability to reach assets used to support terrorism, HR 3004 is a laundry list of dangerous, unconstitutional power grabs. Many of these proposals have already been rejected by the American people when presented as necessary to `fight the war on drugs' or `crackdown on white-collar crime.' Even a ban on Internet gambling has somehow made it into this `anti-terrorism' bill!
            "Among the most obnoxious provisions of this bill are: expanding the war on cash by creating a new federal crime of taking over $10,000 cash into or out of the United States; codifying the unconstitutional authority of the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) to snoop into the private financial dealings of American citizens; and expanding the `suspicious activity reports' mandate to broker-dealers, even though history has shown that these reports fail to significantly aid in apprehending criminals. These measures will actually distract from the battle against terrorism by encouraging law enforcement authorities to waste time snooping through the financial records of innocent Americans who simply happen to demonstrate an `unusual' pattern in their financial dealings.
            "HR 3004 also attacks the Fourth Amendment by allowing Customs officials to open incoming or outgoing mail without a search warrant. Allowing government officials to read mail going out of or coming into the country at whim is characteristic of totalitarian regimes, not free societies.
            "The Financial Anti-Terrorism Act of 2001 (HR 3004) is a package of unconstitutional expansions of the financial police state, most of which will prove ultimately ineffective in the war against terrorism. I therefore urge my colleagues to reject this bill and work to fashion a measure aimed at giving the government a greater ability to locate and seize the assets of terrorists while respecting the constitutional rights of American citizens. (source, thomas.loc.gov)
            Ta bu shi da yu 16:27, 27 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
            • OK, this is now updated. - Ta bu shi da yu 16:38, 27 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
              • Thanks! I'm a bit concerned about the section appearing out of place, though. Still, it's better than nothing. Johnleemk | Talk 17:44, 27 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
                • No problem. If you think it's out of place though, I should get it moved. What's your thoughts on that matter? I thought that this would be appropriate in it's own section, after all, Ron Paul is the only one to object in Congress. That's fairly notable in its own right, I'd have thought. - Ta bu shi da yu 17:51, 27 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
                  • I don't know, it just feels odd, considering it doesn't fit in with the other sections of the article. Perhaps if it was meatier it might look less out of place. Johnleemk | Talk 18:11, 27 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
                    • I'm contemplating the irony of dissent in America looking out of place, because there was precious little when the Patriot Act was originally passed. Anyway, I'm not rightly sure that there is a more appropriate spot to put that info. I do see what you mean though, but there is no elegant solution to this one I'm afraid. - Ta bu shi da yu 18:15, 27 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. The only issue I have with this article is that now that I am part of several translation WikiProjects, the prospect exists that I may have to translate this into German someday. That might be enough to make me contemplate WikiSuicide. Other than that though, excellent work. RyanGerbil10 16:35, 27 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Neutral Oppose This article DOES NOT comply with condition (e), that being that it has not shown its stability. This article is only 1 day old! It needs more time to be worked over, and in places, simplified. If this article were to appear on the home page, image going through so much information: sometimes, it is just too much. That being said, some excellent work went into it: it just needs some fine-tuning and simplification. -- Chris Lester talk 18:32, 27 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • Actually, that's not entirely true. Yes, it is one day old. However, please review the first edit in the history: I split it from USA PATRIOT Act, Title III. That material has been in there for quite a while: have a dig around the history if you want to confirm. If you can tell me the areas that need to be simplified, however, I'll try my best to sort this out. As for it having too much information... sorry, but I really don't see how I can do much about that! In order to understand the Subtitle you need to provide information about all the aspects of the subtitle. Out of interest, what information did you want me to remove? - Ta bu shi da yu 18:35, 27 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
      • I agree that there is limited scope with regards to what you can cut out, however to put this as a front-page article will simply not work, as the average citizen may simply not be interested. The information is too specific for such an award. Most people will be interested in a parent article of, say USA PATRIOT Act - this is far more relevant. -- Chris Lester talk 12:21, 28 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
        • Just because an article is an FA doesn't mean it will appear on the front page. Johnleemk | Talk 12:41, 28 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
          • As John says, I don't really believe it should be main page material. However, all articles that are not deletion candidates should have the ability to become FAs. Also, it is quite normal for an article to be split into daughter articles if the parent article becomes too large. Obviously a split article will have more of a reduced or focused scope than the parent articles, which is meant to be more comprehensive and cover more aspects of the topic being covered. Incidently, apologies if I seem combatitive (I am a little when I'm on FAC), it is nothing personal. - Ta bu shi da yu 13:31, 28 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • Several FAs I've helped write passed on their first nomination, which came on the day of their creation. Not once has anyone suggested that they were ineligible for stability issues. You may be right on account of it needing work, but that's a different issue in itself. A one-day old but brilliant article can certainly be made an FA. Johnleemk | Talk 20:30, 27 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
      • The concern of 1-day runs deeper than purely time. Remember that other editors have not gone over the article in great depth: thus extensive changes may be neccesary. -- Chris Lester talk 12:21, 28 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
        • The idea is that FAC provides them a chance to do just that. If extensive changes may be necessary, it's not a stability issue, because it indicates that the article has major structural problems. Johnleemk | Talk 12:41, 28 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • I have changed my stance to NEUTRAL. -- Chris Lester talk 15:31, 29 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Object when I read this article I feel like I was on findlaw.com. I totally agree with Worldtraveller comments above. This page is just not up to FA quality. Remember what the F in FA is for. JohnM4402 04:33, 28 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • I am well aware what the "F" in "FA" means. I have been a sole or major contributor to at least 11 of them. Now, could you please be more specific? Funnily enough, many articles on findlaw.com are of high quality, and had they been on Wikipedia I would have submitted them to FA. Please state exactly where the problem is, as this does not give me enough to fix any issues. - Ta bu shi da yu 10:15, 28 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Great article, but I miss legal opinions about this section of the act. Have there been no articles published in legal publications? The only sources I see are government sources. Garion96 (talk) 16:50, 28 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. This reads more like a Wikibooks commentary/explanation on the act itself, not an encyclopedia article. There's little reference to cases involving the act (are there any?), there's little on the process or thinking that went into writing this section of the act...it seems that there's little more than a lay explanation of the act itself. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire | past ops) 20:56, 29 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Object per A Man in Black. Needs more on the history, e.g. one might be interested in questions like "On what date was this act passed?" More importantly, the article gives the impression that effectively no qualified sources have commented on any aspect of this piece of legislation. As far as I can tell, every one of the sources is a product of the United States government or government officials -- the breadth of sourcing needs to expand or it should be explained that there are no alternate POVs on this issue. I understand the Patriot Act to be fairly controversial; perhaps someone, somewhere, has commented on these provisions? As it stands this article severely fails the comprehensiveness requirement. Christopher Parham (talk) 04:44, 30 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. Needs more references other than the text of the act itself. -- Rune Welsh | ταλκ 10:38, 30 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. I already see one problem. From Template talk:Did you know, which you never bothered to go back to address the concerns of DYK and mine:
    Isn't this the part of the act that also makes it harder for coin dealers and people who deal in bullion because they need to keep meticulous records concerning certain transactions, namely the aforementioned bullion sales, and also transactions like junk silver? Or is it another part of the act?
    Also, to recopy the concerns in DYK:
    * his is way too political (and IMHO, inaccurate, and slanted to be pro PATRIOT ACT) for me to ever pick it, although I can't speak for others. ++Lar: t/c 20:06, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
    * Technically its also not a new article, it was just cut out of a longer related article.--Peta 06:31, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
    I mean, if you can't even bother to address that minor problem with DYK, what makes me think that this article is even FA worthy??--293.xx.xxx.xx 03:34, 1 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
      • I've been very busy, and I didn't notice the comment on DYK. I added it because I thought it might be something we could use, you seem to be taking it as a personal affront that I missed your comment. Technically it actually is an article in it's own right, so I dispute this assertion. Can you point out the inaccuracies, and where I am being political? I'd also like to point out that it is not too pro-PATRIOT Act, though if you can give me parts that are pro (or even anti) Title III, Section B then I'd be very interested in rephrasing or improving whatever you pick out. Incidently, nothing in Subtitle B deals with moving currency. That's the first section of Subtitle C. - Ta bu shi da yu 11:43, 1 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Montsalvat

Montsalvat is an artists colony established in 1934 near Melbourne, Australia. It is one of the most noteworthy and well known artist colonies in Australia, and there are over a dozen artists of varying media still residing and practicing there. Exhibitions and performances of all sizes and styles, as well as weddings and receptions are held at Montsalvat today. It is perhaps most notable for it's unique style of buildings constructed of many different materials from all around Victoria.

Self-nomination: I believe this article has what it takes to reach featured article status. It has been in peer review for a while, and I took every suggestion seriously and made some major changes ad alterations. Peer review didn't seem to attract the audience I was hoping for, but what audience it did attract, their info and advice was very helpfull and greatly welcomed. If it is suggested I improve some of the pictures, I can with some time. I understand my grammar and spelling isnt as good as most, so a basic read through would be welcomed to get a neutral opinion and to an outside source to check spelling etc. Any other suggestions would be greatly apreciated and warmly welcomed, taken seriously and acted upon in a professional manner. Nick carson 05:31, 28 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It could diffinatly have more references but not hat much information exists out there about it in referencable form so I wish I could add in more but I can't. Fortunatly though, the references I do have are of a very high quality and come straight from the source itself. And don't forget my first hand expirience, just because I started writing the article dosent mean the information I can contribute should be discarded. I kept the sections a bit shorter as I didn't want the reader to be too bored with things, I offered further reading and external links if you want more information and pictures. By the way your a very fast reader ;) Nick carson 05:53, 28 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I read the articles on referenceing and citing sources, I also looked at other FA candidates and articles in peer review, and I got the general impression that there are multiple methods of referencing, some articles even employ methods that are unique to that particular article. So I tried to combine everything I've seen and read and cite my references in as simple a way as possible, if there are better ways or ways I am yet to figure out how to do then I would be more than welcome of them to be incorporated into this article.Nick carson 10:06, 28 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The referencing is now fixed, but I am not sure if such a small article (~13kb) can be comprehensive. If this is all what is relevant (most likely because its about a colony only and not a town or city) and the editors find it complete, I suggest that it be nominated for good article instead. -Ambuj Saxena (talk) 19:41, 28 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. The article looks great, but it does have only two sources. I've made them into "cite" style, but that's just polishing a blemish, really. I am quite certain that there exist unbiased sources for this, given it's place in an extensivly documented period of australian art. - brenneman {L} 11:05, 28 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Object - I'm just uncomfortable with the use of only two sources. If those sources aren't 100% completely reliable and without bias, that could look bad on this article. FAs are supposed to be our -best- foot forward. Too much a risk. Fieari 19:19, 28 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Obejct—Criterion 2a. Grammatical errors and redundancies throughout. For example, in the lead, what are "richly established gardens"? "Melbourne and it's surrounds"—rather exposed boo-boo at the top. Why square metres vs acres (should be hectares vs acres). "Visitors can pay a small fee to walk throughout its historical gardens, artists houses/workshops and explore the surrounding buildings." Oh dear, apostrophe again; remove "can"; "through", not "throughout"; insert "to" before "explore". "It's grounds and buildings today are used"—learn about apostrophes, please; remove "today". Tony 14:11, 29 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Well excuse me for not getting A+'s throughout english, for having poor spelling and grammar. I wont remove today because it refers to the present day not an ambiguous point in time. I should have added a comma in like this "It's grounds and buildings today, are used..." and yes there are further words after the word "used", please cite examples correctly. Richly established gardens are gardens that are fully established, can't understand my phrasing then change it to "Fully established gardens" or "totally established gardens" or any other way that would be better understood. Thankyou for your comments, if you were 100% positive of your objections you can of course change them yourself at any time. I might also add that I did make it clear that this article needed somone with better english skills than mine to do a proper spell/gramatical check. Nick carson 06:48, 2 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Chicago Bears/Archive2 Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Jonathan Clarkson Gibbs

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