Knowledge (XXG)

:Featured article review/archive/January 2008 - Knowledge (XXG)

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Kept status

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

The article was kept 20:14, 31 January 2008.

Review commentary

Notified Lovelac7, Nburden, and Knowledge (XXG):WikiProject Michigan.

I was looking thourgh this article and there are a number of things needing attention. Dylan 06:07, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

MoS problems I've noticed various MoS violations:

Verifiability problems

NPOV problems These are particularly noticeable in "Michigan State University Honors College" and "Professional schools"; the following are only some examples I noticed.

Copyright problems

Comment I have not edited this article in quite some time. I'll give it a thorough edit this week and get back to you. Lovelac7 12:54, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Nominator update: Just wanted to review the article after two weeks and see how it's doing:

Otherwise, my objections seem to be addressed. Good work. Dylan (talk) 01:25, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

FARC commentary

Suggested FA criteria concerns are MoS and formatting (2), verifiability (1c), and NPOV (1d). Marskell (talk) 19:48, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Comments:

Sample edits; all these need to be reviewed throughout. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:11, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Keep, looks fine now. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:31, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Good work, Lovelac! Marskell (talk) 20:15, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

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

The article was kept 17:59, 30 January 2008.

Review commentary

Notified Knowledge (XXG):WikiProject Macintosh, Knowledge (XXG):WikiProject Video games, User:Wackymacs, User:HereToHelp, User:Angelic Wraith and User:Grm wnr. --Kaypoh 15:59, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

This article has a few problems:

  • Many sections have no references. For example, "Terminology", "History" except "1979 to 1984: Development", "Processor architecture" and "Effects on the technology industry".
  • The "Software history" section has a tag that says "This section has been nominated to be checked for its neutrality." Other sections also have problems with POV. For example "Effects on technology industry" and "Advantages, disadvantages and criticisms".
  • The lead section is a bit poorly organised.
  • Some references, for example 9, 21, 37 (and the one after "but have also made inroads into the educative and scientific research sectors") have formatting problems.
  • The 1984 image has no fair use rationale.

--Kaypoh 10:34, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

I took a quick glance over the article. Some points.

  1. The article is getting large (70K) so it should be trimmed. In that light, is the Litigation section all that relevant to the Macintosh itself?
  2. The Hardware section is poorly referenced but should be farmed out into 'history of Macintosh hardware' article and the section rewritten as a short concise summary of current Mac hardware. The ‘’Expandability and connectivity’’ section should at least have references for the Warranty claim and the Apple detractors claim.
  3. Proper references seems to be lacing. ‘’The Effects on the technology industry’’ makes at least one claim about Mac 128k audio I can’t find a reference for – not in this article or the Mac 128k article. The closest is the Technical Specifications listing a speaker port, but that is not 8-bit audio.
  4. ’The Effects on the technology industry also does a poor job telling about effects on the technology industry, instead listing ‘firsts’ without telling what effect – if any – it had on the industry. IOW calling it ‘’ Effects on the technology industry’’ is misleading.
  5. With a bird eyes view – images could be better laid out, and the USB plug image should be shrunk/removed.
  6. Advantages, disadvantages and criticisms is not quite feature article quality. Remove or rewrite it in proseline. At the very least provide more references for the criticisms.

--Anss123 11:52, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

I have started to improve the article section by section and will do so over several days. To start, however, I reworked the lead and the 1984 image. Skimming the article, I realize that it definitely needs work; hopefully it will benefit from this process. (I work best under pressure.)--HereToHelp 02:36, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

The new 1984 image has a fair use rationale. Can I strike that out now? --Kaypoh 06:31, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
Sure.--HereToHelp 22:31, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
  1. As Anss123 points out, the article is too large. The edit view says it is currently 73K, and further the edit view of History of Apple is 50K. What is needed is a History of Apple Macintosh (with it pulling a bit from both articles). I'd like to see this main article trimmed down to ~32K — half! Unless you are an old salt (like me), or really digging, no one cares about the Raskin's board design or the problems with LC series, etc.
  2. The article also misses the point of what a Mac is — both the hardware and the software. The lead mentions it, but the sections largely dwell on the hardware alone. A case in point, the single button mouse is not just a hardware factoid, but the end result of a design philosophy that existed under the old System and Finder.

--Charles Gaudette 10:30, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

  • You bring up a good point: the main history section needs to include less hardware and more software. We can export or delete the technobabble, copyedit out the bullets, add sources, etc. to the later sections that need them. In the mean time, I'll work on integrating the software into the main history and adding the "essence of the Mac" into the article.--HereToHelp 22:31, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

After significant changes, I feel like I have improved the article significantly. I have "exported" the hardware data to Macintosh hardware, pruned or deleted sections, reorganized content to reduce redundancy, and as a result, brought the total length down from 72kB to 54kB; I estimate the length of the text only to be about 35kB. Having addressed all the major issues, I believe the article is more readable without sacrificing much information. There may be some minor things yet to fix, but I think that as it stands now Macintosh is now more worthy than ever of its featured status.--HereToHelp 22:43, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

I think you have done a great job and agree.--Anss123 23:00, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
Good edits, HereToHelp! :-) I still feel the article should be more general and that as-such the "Hardware" and "Software" sections could be copyedited down and possibly more elsewhere too. Of all the Mac articles this one should be the most accessible to a general audience (someone with a question in their mind along the the lines of "What is a Macintosh computer?"). ... One other observation, we are on the cusp of 2008, which will make the "1998 to the present: New beginnings" section a ten year span — most spans are five years. A break could be made at the Intel transition and then clarifications made in that area. --Charles Gaudette 19:59, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

I trimmed the hardware and software sections to each be one paragraph and main article links. Upon tackling the criticisms section, I found that half of the information was redundant, but half of it was legit and need to be included somewhere — so they got appended to the hardware and software sections. The article has previously been criticized for focusing too much on the history section, so it's necessary to include hard/software information dispersed through the history section and then again, summarized, for readers interested in solely one or the other. So the criticism paragraphs can be moved (if you can find a better place), but the sections themselves need to stay. As for "what is a Mac?", real estate in the lead is extremely valuable, so there's a lot of links, "outsourcing" information. Since the jargon is explained in separate articles (remember: space is valuable), it can be confusing. As for the ten year time span, it's a a valid point, and I'll see what I can do. I would like to request an extension because I will need a few days to make these edits.--HereToHelp 01:01, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

No extension. The article still has many problems which you are not fixing. --59.189.57.215 (talk) 08:18, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

FIrst of all, that's not your decision, and secondly, care to name them?--HereToHelp 21:30, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

FARC commentary

Suggested FA criteria concerns are referencing (1c), focus and coverage (4), images (3), and LEAD (2a). Marskell (talk) 09:29, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Extension, no problem. It will be a minimum two weeks in the FARC section. People working should update us here. Marskell (talk) 09:29, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Thank you. Two weeks should be long enough; no further extension is required. Anyway: I've worked with the lead a whole lot, and frankly I'm out of ideas. The images I'm happy with; I've deliberately put software on the left and everything else (mostly hardware) on the right. Length has been a big deal, but I've brought it down a lot and I think the current 55k is acceptable (the guideline is 32k of text). Admittedly, the "Effects on the technology industry" section is perhaps a little wanting. I personally think that it clearly presents why the various components Apple introduced are noteworthy, and is sufficiently cited by article-wide sources such as MacTracker. If requested, I can rename it ("Innovations introduced" sounds a little POVish; better ideas?) or remove it entirely and put it in Macintosh hardware.--HereToHelp 22:31, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
If the main concern is referencing, I can work on that instead. If you care to highlight specific unsourced claims with {{fact}}, I will see that they are either sourced or removed. HereToHelp 14:15, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
Reference the whole article and maybe I will vote Keep. --Kaypoh (talk) 06:33, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
Please bear in mind that some references, like Apple's Press Release Library, encompass the entire article and not a specific fact. I'm going to be away from the computer until the weekend, but I'm going to try to add a few more references then. It's a good point, which is why I have not yet formally voted keep (yet).HereToHelp 14:28, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep After many, many changes over the FAR and FARC process, hardly a paragraph has been left untouched. The concern here referencing, and there's no definite way to measure how much is enough. I will continue to try to keep everything sourced, but at the moment, I think the article has sufficent references to be retained as featured. HereToHelp 15:58, 23 December 2007 (UTC)
There is no way to measure how much is enough, so I will let the person who closes this FAR decide whether there are enough references, but I think that now there are not enough. So many paragraphs have no references. Also, maybe the article needs a copy-edit. --Kaypoh (talk) 03:11, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm sympathetic to HereToHelp on this one. People should tag examples, as he's asked. Don't bomb the article—a few at time for information that jumps out. Marskell (talk) 02:24, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

  • Comment Quite well written. However, specific facts (the cost, amount of RAM, processor speed, etc.) of different versions should be cited (take a look, for example, at the first and second paragraphs of 1990 to 1998: Growth and decline). Lead could be expanded to include at least a mention of what happened with the Mac between its release in 1984 and today. Really like the layout of the page, and the timeline is neat, although its text is quite ugly on my computer. BuddingJournalist 16:15, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
  • Remove I still think the Effects on the technology industry is simply a list of first without actually explaining what effect the Mac had on the tech industry. Saying that it is "obvious" is IMO not good enough, as it's far from obvious to me. The article is also rather 'history' heavy, the section weighing in about 32 KB (on top of this, all the other sections seems to touch on Mac history). A History of the Apple Macintosh could absorb a good chunk of this and perhaps even expand further on the subject. The Effects on the technology industry section can also be considered to be part of Mac history, rather than having its own main heading.--Anss123 (talk) 13:52, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
The problem with the big history section is that there's more to say about what the Mac was than what the Mac is. Most of what a Mac is has been exported daughted articles, but the history hasn't. I'm not completely opposed to this, but it would be difficult to summarize the history section. (We don't even have a summary as it is; it just launches right into the development!) Speaking of summary paragraphs, I added one to the Effects section, hoping to prepare the reader for the text that follows. I'm worried that the title might be misleading, i.e. implying a discussion about how the Mac is seen by third parties; its "image". This might not be a bad thing, but it's hard to source something like that, and in the meantime, I can't think of a title that better reflects the section as it currently exists. (Innovations introduced sounds too POVish to me.)--HereToHelp 17:06, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep I think this is pretty much there. Specific comments:
    • I still think the lead could be expanded into three paragraphs to better summarize its 30+ years of history.
    • The specifications of the various Macs in the 2nd paragraph of "1979 to 1984: Development" need citations.
    • I'd like to see the Advertising section better referenced, especially since the daughter article is poorly sourced (the only references there are given for the Criticism section, which does not translate to the main article). The two footnotes given only link to the current Get a Mac campaign.
    • "The iMac also had no floppy disk drive, prompting the decline of that media, but not before a resurgence of external drives." I was a bit confused by the "but not before a resurgence...". What exactly does that mean? Also, the first half of the sentence seems to imply the lack of the floppy disk drive on the iMac caused the decline of the floppy disk. Isn't that stretching it a bit?
    • Since the section is titled "Effects on the technology industry", I don't think the MacBook Air should really be discussed...we don't really know what effects it will have yet.
    • Whenever a claim is given that something was the first to feature a new technology (see the third paragraph in "Effects on the technology industry"), it usually needs a citation. BuddingJournalist 20:05, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
The history is difficult to summarize (we don't even have a section summary; should we?) but I'll tab a stab at it. The info in the Development section is cited under reference #1; I have moved it down a little to make that more apparent. I have reworded the sentence about external drives, and removed the reference to the MacBook Air (Knowledge (XXG) is not a crystal ball). There seems to be a lot of contention over the Effects on the technology industry section. Firsts are hard to prove (the 'Air is not the thinnest notebook ever). How much opposition is there to removing the entire section outright?--HereToHelp 21:40, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
I don't mind the intent of it, but if you believe it factually inaccurate and can't source things, then cut away. Marskell (talk) 13:46, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
I agree with BJ that because so much of the article is devoted to history, the lead must cover it. I added two summative sentences myself, which I think improves things. HtH, the beginning of the 1979 to 1984 section lacks refs, as noted. If that and BJ's other concerns are met, we can keep this. Marskell (talk) 09:05, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Lots of little issues here and there to be resolved; see my edit summaries. Also, citations aren't correctly formatted, there are missing publishers, and sometimes publishers are listed as author. I'm continuing to pick through and leave sample edits, but someone should address the citations. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:11, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

The second paragraph of Development is sourced to this reference, written by a member of the original Mac team. Of BuddingJournalist's suggestions, that leaves:

Anything else?--HereToHelp 20:22, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Apple is used as an author repeatedly where it should be used as a publisher. Try to pick Apple, Apple Computer, or Apple Inc. as the publisher name consistently (the website uses the last). Marskell (talk) 07:10, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
I like the expanded lead. BuddingJournalist 02:56, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
So that's done, unless someone cares to say otherwise. I'll reference the ads section when I get a chance (a week?), and by that time I think it's safe to remove the Effects section too. As for the references, should we retroactively call documents from the Apple Computer era written by Apple Inc.? I'l look into that also.--HereToHelp 02:45, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
As I don't see an objection surfacing, I have cut that section to the talk. I've made the refs consistent; there's a note on talk explaining my formatting choices. Advertising remains; it doesn't seem especially difficult and H2H has shown a commitment. I'll drop back in on the page, in a week. In the meantime, I'm keeping this. Ten weeks is long enough. Marskell (talk) 17:52, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
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 Knowledge (XXG) talk:Featured article review. No further edits should be made to this page.
The following is an archived discussion of a featured article review. Please do not modify it. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page or at Knowledge (XXG) talk:Featured article review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was kept 18:16, 25 January 2008.

previous FAR


The nominated article fails to satisfy the following criteria:

1. "(c) "Factually accurate" means that claims are verifiable against reliable sources and accurately represent the relevant body of published knowledge."

The article omits fundamental modern academic references and authors on the subject, most notably G. Ostrogorsky, R. Jenkins, A. Cameron, A. Laiou, W. Treadgold, T. Gregory, C. Mango's "Byzantium: The Empire of the New Rome" etc.

Attempts by other readers to replace historic but antiquated sources such as Gibbon and Paparrigopoulos by more modern sources have been inexplicably resisted. It is undeniable that Gibbon and Paparrigopoulos are extremely important for History: the former was one of the first historians to base his work on primary sources and the latter was a pioneer in the study of the history of the Greek Nation from Antiquity down to the 19th century. However, they wrote in the 18th and the 19th century respectively and, obviously there has been a huge amount of work done on the subject since then. In particular, many of the prejudices that strongly manifest themselves in their work have been overcome during the last several decades (Gibbon's anti-religious and anti-"oriental" fervor has famously compromised his interpretation of Byzantium and Paparrigopoulos's narrative is often driven by his Greek patriotism.)

This does not mean that the work of either of them or the other older authors quoted in the article is worthless but rather that their contributions that have stood the test of test are included in works by modern authors. It is odd to base a Knowledge (XXG) article on 18th and 19th century authors rather than on modern scholarship which anyways mentions those conclusions of the older authors that haven't been discredited.

2. "(d) "Neutral" means that the article presents views fairly and without bias."

As mentioned above, the article relies disproportionately on classical references to the expense of modern scholarship that has in the meantime superseded older works. As a result, the prejudices of the older works about Byzantium feature prominently in the article although they are now largely discredited. That would not be a problem if these views were juxtaposed with modern scientific opinion. This is not done in the article in its current form. On the contrary, the old prejudices are given as facts and characteristically, a typical Gibbon citation is enclosed in a box! Today citations such as those are given only in reference to Gibbon himself to illustrate his prejudiced view of Byzantium and not in reference to specific aspects of Byzantine history, especially since their factual content is anyways limited.

Again, attempts to edit the article (by at least removing the box mentioned above) so that presents views fairly and without bias have failed.

3. "(e) "Stable" means that the article is not the subject of ongoing edit wars and that its content does not change significantly from day to day."

There have recently been "edit wars" related, among other things, to the points made above.

In my opinion, if the above three points are addressed, the Feature Article status can be maintained. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12gh34 (talk • contribs) 22:32, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Your concerns would be taken more seriously if you did not use multiple accounts. Please choose one of them and stick to it. DrKiernan (talk) 15:17, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

My responses to the 3 points above:

  1. The article uses a series of reliable sources (more than 50), so the argument about Gibbon and Paparrigopoulos does not stand. From the 87 citations of the article, only 7 rely on Gibbon or Paparrigopoulos. So, even if we accept that there are better sources, the article remains as a whole adequately referenced and cited according to criterion 1 (c). To the contrary, the changes that the nominator here tried to introduce tended to undermine criterion 1 (c), since he insisted on removing the citations he did not like and add his own without mentioning particular pages, something repeatedly condemned in WP:FAC. When he proposed a compromise to keep both his sources and mine, I accepted, but I insisted on one term: his sources should be in accord to the article's FA status; therefore, pages should be included. Unfortunately, the nominator failed to do that. And a final note: Yes, G. Ostrogorsky, R. Jenkins, A. Cameron, W. Treadgold, T. Gregory, C. Mango may not be here, but why the nominator conceals the fact that the article uses modern sources, such as Magdalino, Birkenmeier, Angold etc., namely the standard sources for the Komnenian period? Even from this point of view, the article is in accord with criterion 1 (c). And I would also ask the nominator to be a bit more careful and accurate, when he speaks about the sources. For instance, he says that Laiou is missing, but he fails to mention that works edited by Laiou are there (e.g. "Jeffreys, Elizabeth; Jeffreys Michael (2001). "The "Wild Beast from the West": Immediate Literary Reactions in Byzantium to the Second Crusade", The Crusades from the Perspective of Byzantium and the Muslim World edited by Angeliki E. Laiou and Roy Parviz Mottahedeh").
  2. The argument for violation of criterion 1(d) is based on the mere fact of the existence of the Gibbon box! Even if we accept that the box is POV, this is obviously not enough, in order to support such a claim by the nominator, who fails to provide further reasons supporting his weak POV argument. An article should be examined again as a whole and a box out of the main text is definitely not enough in order to stigmatize a FA article as POV. Now let's speak about the box itself: The box constitutes part of a whole section, so it cannot be examined separated from it. The second paragraph of the section analyzes Manuel's contradictions: his pros and cons. And to this direction works also Gibbon's box, which I strongly believe that it is not POV. Gibbon's style is vivid, exciting and adds a lot to the section and to the article as a whole. And when he says that "The most singular feature in the character of Manuel is the contrast and vicissitude of labour and sloth, of hardiness and effeminacy", he makes a very interesting remark. We should we lose that? Wouldn't the article be poorer without such exciting and witty comments by prominent scholars? Probably, the nominator wishes just an hymnology of Manuel. I am also an admirer of this emperor, but, when you admire somebody, you should have the guts to point out his possible wrong-doings and any negative assessments. That is what I did since my first FA (Pericles), and that is what I did re-writing Manuel. The nominator accused me once of trying to discredit Byzantium and Manuel! How wrong and unfair he is! Yes, this is an unfair comment about the editor who strove to keep FA three article of this period: Byzantine empire, Manuel, and Treaty of Devol. To close, I believe that the argument according to which because of the box the whole article is POV does not stand, and IMO the article gets poorer without this box, without Gibbon and his comments. Of course, if the reviewers here have a different opinion, and support the removal of the box and the complete eradication of Gibbon, I'll respect that and I'll follow their advice, but I'll still believe that they are wrong.
  3. It is strange the person who participates in an edit war to uses this edit war as an argument to disqualify a FA article! In any case, the nominator never brought his arguments in the article's talk page, and, instead of doing that, he now prefers to initiate a FAR. I let the reviewers judge his stance (and mine as well, of course!).

And a final remark: I would like to point out that 11 months ago this article was again in FAR and FARC, and, at the end, FA status has been confirmed, and my efforts have been lauded. Todor: "It is certainly much better now. Yannismarou, you've, expectedly, done a tremendous job". Bigdaddy1204: "I commend Yannismarou for his excellent progress on improving Manuel I Komnenos. I am much impressed by the changes that have been made. I also entirely approve of the new images that have been introduced. Good work!" qp10qp: "Excellent restoration work by Yannismarou". Nothing has changed since these comments were written. Therefore, I am open to any improvements (as I also stated above), but allow me to regard this nomination as a bad joke.--Yannismarou (talk) 14:50, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

  • Move to close I think this nomination was premature. Any issues on very specific sources should have been brought up on the talk page or with the primary editors before bringing the issue here. The nomination seems to have been started by a sockpuppeteer who failed to respond to requests for further discussion and clarification, and then brought the issue here as part of his dispute. Apart from the nominator's own edits the article is stable. The essence of the dispute has been raised on the talk page, and further discussion should be re-directed there: Talk:Manuel I Komnenos#Gibbon. DrKiernan (talk) 10:19, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
    • I see that the account nominating was single purpose. Sorry for not noticing. I will close this; it doesn't seem substantially different from the version closed less than a year ago and FARs shouldn't proceed with sockpuppet noms. Marskell (talk) 18:11, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
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 Knowledge (XXG) talk:Featured article review. No further edits should be made to this page.
The following is an archived discussion of a featured article review. Please do not modify it. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page or at Knowledge (XXG) talk:Featured article review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was kept 07:15, 24 January 2008.

Review commentary

Knowledge (XXG):WikiProject Football‎, User:Oldelpaso‎, User:IanManka‎ notified This is a Secret 23:39, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

This article has a few problems:

  • Referencing is not FA standard.
    • Only 2 references in "Growth" section.
    • "Qualification" section has no references.
    • Only 1 reference in "Final tournament" section.
    • Paragraphs 2 and 3 of "Selection of hosts" section has no references.
    • Only 2 references in "World Cup summaries" section.
    • "Successful national teams" section has no references.
    • "Performances by host nations" section has no references.
    • Only 1 reference in "Best performances by continental zones" section.
    • "Awards" section has no references.
    • Only 2 references in "Overall top goalscorers" section.
    • "Fastest goals" section has no references.
    • "Most tournaments appeared (players)" section has no references.
    • "FIFA World Cup winning captains and managers" section has no references.
  • The article is poorly organised. It has too many lists. Info like how well host nations do, the best Asian and African teams, the players who score 5 goals in the World Cup, who can score goals in 11 seconds, who played in 5 tournaments, is trivia and FAs should not have trivia. Also, the "Media coverage" section needs more info.
  • The lead section is weak.
    • Maybe the lead section needs some information about the trophy and "selection of hosts".
    • "The most recent World Cup Finals were held between June 9 and July 9, 2006 in Germany, where Italy was crowned champion after beating France in the final, winning the penalty shootout 5-3 after the match finished 1-1 after extra time. Germany placed third after beating Portugal 3-1. The next World Cup Finals will be held in 2010 in South Africa, and the 2014 Finals will be held in Brazil." I think this is called recentism.
      • I disagree with this. The Olympic Games has a similar statement in its lead paragraph, as well as other international sporting event articles. It gives information to the reader about the timeframe of where the cycle of the World Cup is currently and also who was the most recent champion with some details added for some flavor. If pressed, we could reduce the details of the match, but I think that it is interesting to note in the lead section without having the reader trying to hunt for the answer in the article. If you have any questions, please contact me at my talk page. Ian Manka 06:59, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
        • Upon further reflection, I have since edited the lead section to address your concerns. How does it look now?
          • Yes, there is less recentism. That is OK. Now add some information about the trophy and selection of hosts. Also write a section about the Women's World Cup or remove that sentence from the lead. But the lead is not the biggest problem. The biggest problem is not enough references. --Kaypoh (talk) 03:17, 24 December 2007 (UTC)
    • The lead section says "Since 1991, FIFA has also organized the FIFA Women's World Cup every four years" but there is no info about this in the rest of the article.
      • At one point or another, I believe there was a brief section discussing the Women's World Cup, with a link to the appropriate article. It appears that this section has been removed. This should be re-added into the article. If you have any questions, please contact me at my talk page. Ian Manka 07:02, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
        • This has since been edited. If you feel our coverage of the Women's FIFA World Cup is acceptable, please strike your comment, or otherwise suggest ways we can improve it. If you have any questions, please contact me at my talk page. Ian Manka 20:35, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
          • I think you should expand the "Other FIFA tournaments" section, but that is not a problem with the lead. The lead no longer has a sentence about the Women's World Cup, so I strike that. --Kaypoh (talk) 11:36, 29 December 2007 (UTC)
  • The article needs a copy-edit but I cannot help because my English is not very good.

--Kaypoh (talk) 07:32, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

  • The problem with this article is that it's mostly written from a football statistician point of view. It's okay as a sports article, but not really as a featured article, which should be directed to a general audience of both football and non-football fans. We can easily remove most of the statistics and lists, but then there won't be a lot of material left. I have some ideas of what topics we need to add, but it's going to take time to make the new material well-written and well-referenced. I suggest as a starting point, we identify a few books and almanac written about the World Cup that we should cite, and by going through them we'll also know what we need to add. Chanheigeorge 09:01, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
I will attempt to replace the tables of statistics with a prose section similar in style to that of Arsenal_F.C.#Statistics_and_records. Oldelpaso (talk) 10:33, 23 December 2007 (UTC)
You need to think what statistics are important to keep in the article. Remove the other statistics. --Kaypoh (talk) 11:36, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

FARC commentary

Suggested FA criteria concerns are citations (1c), LEAD (2a), and organization (4). Marskell (talk) 17:06, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Yes, seems good. Any last comments? Marskell (talk) 08:32, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

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

The article was kept 20:37, 21 January 2008.

Review commentary

Notifications left at WP:US, WP:MUSIC‎, Raul654, Misfit Toys‎, Jkelly. —Preceding unsigned comment added by TUF-KAT (talk • contribs) 03:25, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm the one that originally brought this to FAC, and I thought it was quite a nice little article. I haven't been too active in Knowledge (XXG) for a long time, so when I came back to take a look, I was disappointed that most of the changes were negative -- actually, most of the changes revolved around multiplying the amount of info on modern alternative rock by some six times... I've completely reverted the altrock stuff back to my original version, which I think is plenty for an article that is meant to cover more than three hundred years of music spanning hundreds of millions of people from literally thousands of cultures, in addition to modern hipsters. Anyway, I thought it might look like I was being protective of the article, since I reverted most of the really substantive edits (except for some good changes made on the R&B/soul section), so I thought I'd bring it here to get any additional thoughts. Also, since the original nomination, I added a few new things, specifically the "social identity", "diversity" and "scholarship" sections. Here's the diff. Tuf-Kat 03:03, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

TUF-KAT, please follow the instructions at WP:FAR to notify involved editors and relevant WikiProjects with {{subst:FARMessage|Music of the United States}} and leave a summary of notifications here as in this sample. Thanks, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 07:19, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Needs work and to be honest, I don't think it deserves to be a Featured article now, and nor do I think based on the way we assess articles now, would it have passed inthe way it used to be. The layout of the page is generally good, but there's a vast imbalance in musical style areas. R&B/Soul and the whoel rock sections are either too long, or all sections need to be about that long. What sequence are the styles in? It's not alphabetical, nor is it in sequence of when the styles came into prominence, nor is it based on similarities in style, so I'm struggling to see why they're listed as such. And lastly, I'm concerned that at an article as sourced as this has so few inline citations. There's possibly the ability to reference every sentence in the article twice based on the works that are listed as references. I'm certain either it's laziness/apathy that has not allowed for the information to be adequately cited, or it's from the lack of reading the source material and only citing what they can verify is from said source, or (and this is the reason of most concern) it's simpy original research and cannot be supported. There's likely a combination of all of these reasons throughout the article, but for this reason, I don't believe the article meets the Featured Article criteria any more, in fact I think it would struggle to make it past Good Article, based on these concerns. Also, on an aesthetic matter, the map needs a lot of work to be usable in the article. It's terribly cluttered, the text is too small to read on the article, and even on the standard image preview. One has to actually open the image to view close up what the indicators state. While it's an informative list, I would prefer a numerised list of the musical styles and place the numbers in place of the current lines indicating the styles. See this. One last mention about the image is that its comment states The United States is home to a wide array of regional styles and scenes. Now, a "scene" is any demographic region or division, be it socio/econo etc division, and a "music scene" is simply the music of the scene. I don't think it's wrong to indicate that musical scenes and styles differ from place to place, but to distinguish this in an image caption is unwise, as it could potentially be misleading. --lincalinca 10:28, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
There are 117 inline citations - while you're probably correct that many things could be cited to more than one source, I don't see how that would be a major benefit to the article, and it's certainly not typical of Knowledge (XXG) articles, even featured ones, AFAIK. If there's something you'd like cited that isn't, I can probably do that; if there's something you'd like cited more than once, well, I can probably do that too in most cases, but as long as there are wide swathes of Knowledge (XXG) with no citations at all, that seems not very important for noncontroversial claims. There is an average of 1 citation for every 87 words (actually more than that, as I calculated the word count with the footnotes themselves).
I'm insulted that you are accusing me of laziness/apathy after spending hundreds of hours working on this article, and I'm even more insulted that you would accuse me of intellectual dishonesty by not having read the sources I cited. I assure you I've read them all multiple times, and that there is no original research here (or if there is, it's crept in without my being aware of it). Please Assume Good Faith, and if you'd like to accuse me of something, please provide some sort of evidence. If you'd like me to fix something in the article, please make some sort of specific suggestion about what is subpar.
Regarding the length of the specific genres sections, "blues and gospel" is 414 words, "jazz" is 506 words, "country" is 529 words and "hip hop" is 410 words, well within range of equal coverage ("blues and gospel" may seem short, but there's 167 words on "blues and spirituals" under folk music). "R&B/Soul" and "Rock, metal and punk" are longer, at 670 and 1093 words, which I think is appropriate as these sections cover a wider range of styles than the others, and because they constitute most of non-hip hop popular music of the last few decades (and hip hop doesn't have the history or diversity to warrant being treated the same).
The genres are in chronological order by the earliest significant popularity.
I agree that the map would be better with some work, and I've been trying to cook up a better version, but I don't know of any better images that could be neutrally said to warrant being at the top of this article at the moment. I'm not sure I understand your concern regarding the use of "scenes", but feel free to change the caption. Tuf-Kat (talk) 18:10, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
Please don't misunderstand my intent here. I've reviewed your version and it was adequately cited and referenced, but the newly added information since it achieved FA is for the most part under-referenced or completely unreferenced, and by the looks of the article history, much of this is by IP users or occasional editors, so I'm not accusing you at all. --lincalinca 21:58, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
Oh sorry, I guess I should have assumed good faith in your comments then, myself (though I submit that you could've phrased your comment more tactfully). Anyway, I agree that most of the additions since the original FAC were downgrades. I reverted the worst of it before placing it here. (It did have a whopping six paragraphs entirely about the seven or eight years immediately surrounding the grunge era...) Anyway, specifically referring to the map, I had originally meant for it to go at the top of the article, but I don't have any knowledge of image manipulation and thus the result wasn't as great as I had hoped for. I moved it down from the top of the article for the same reasons you note, but during the FAC it was suggested to move it up. I'm going to go to the WikiCommons and ask if anyone there can help make a map - I envision something like one of those National Geographic fold-out maps, or the kind of thing that could even be a dorm room poster, with particular symbols of some kind that could depict everything from the cities with a notable blues scene, to the regions with a significant history of Armenian or Bulgarian folk music, to the best-selling/most critically-acclaimed symphonies, largest music venues, institutes of higher music education, etc, and I think it could be a fascinating map. But it's way beyond my ability to actually produce. If anybody here is willing to help let me know - I can provide all the info about what to include, so you'd need to find a sufficiently detailed map, come up with the key and put the symbols in their place. (We could even take a subset of the map's symbols and make images for articles like Latin music in the United States). Tuf-Kat (talk) 04:23, 18 November 2007 (UTC)
Well, I know a lot about image manipulation, though this sort of image would be better served as SVG (i.e. a vector graphic) so that its scalability is vastly improved. My issue is that I don't know US geography all that well, and frankly have a little bit of difficulty reading some of the bits that are filled in, even with the size at full. I've downloaded it, as well as a governmental (i.e. state division) SVG map from U.S. States and will set to try to give it some sort of better co-ordination. The existing map already employs colours, so I think I'll use them as a key, but I will probably tap your shoulder occasionally to check what goes where (for things such as Cowboy music, it could be a little bit unclear). It might take me a while. I don't have the time to give to Knowledge (XXG) that i used to have. --lincalinca 05:33, 18 November 2007 (UTC)
Great, I'll see if I can come up with a more detailed list of stuff to put on the map tomorrow. Tuf-Kat (talk) 06:34, 18 November 2007 (UTC)
I think I'll just make an article, list of music areas in the United States, and the map would more-or-less be a graphical representation of that. If you can just make a good start on it, it might prompt others to fill in the details (which is kind of what I was hoping for to begin with...). Tuf-Kat (talk) 18:28, 18 November 2007 (UTC)
It has occurred to me that I might want to make the sections currently devoted to the specific styles of popular music and make them the basis for a new version of American popular music (which was a bloated mess last time I saw it), leaving behind an ultratight 10-12 paragraph summary as a replacement. This would allow for expansion on topics that are relevant and currently not really covered (there could be more stuff under "social identity", like "regionality" or something similar, for example). Any thoughts? Tuf-Kat (talk) 18:28, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

FARC commentary

Suggested FA criteria concerns are comprehensiveness and focus (1b and 4). Marskell 14:11, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
  • Fixes needed. External jumps (for example at: These researchers included Robert W. Gordon, founder of the Archive of American Folk Song, and John and Alan Lomax; Alan Lomax was the most prominent of several folk song collectors who helped to inspire the 20th century roots revival of American folk culture.) Copyedit needs: (for example: Early 20th scholarly analysis of American music tended to ... 20th century perhaps?) Incomplete references, see WP:CITE/ES (for example, Library of Congress: Band Music from the Civil War Era). WP:MOSNUM (example: During the '70s ... ) The size is a concern: at 59KB of readable prose, can some of the sections could be summarized better? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:12, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
Clearly, this can be saved and I'm tempted to default keep it, if there aren't more comments. I'll work through a CE over the next few days. Marskell (talk) 20:33, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
Another criteria concern is POV, with words like "popular" used too sparingly. LuciferMorgan (talk) 20:49, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
  • I think I probably did some copy-editing on this during the FAC process. I'm afraid I lean towards removing this. Scope is a problem: the topic is so huge and complex, and this is not well handled in terms of WP's summary style. Too much of it is a highly selective (arbitrary?) flash tour ("The New York classical music scene included Charles Griffes, originally from Elmira, New York, who began publishing his most innovative material in 1914."). Daughter articles would be a good project now rather than trying to fix this main article. That might, in reverse, make the summary style easier to arrive at. Take the map: I'm very uncomfortable about the labelling, say, of "Omana sound" or "Cowboy music" in specific locations. The eastern seabord and Michigan look very crowded. There are many unsatisfactory statements. This one starts the Folk music section: "Folk music in the United States is varied across the country's numerous ethnic groups". Tuf-kat, have you thought of preparing and nominating some of those historic recordings for Feature Sound status? Tony (talk) 12:10, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
Above Tuf-Kat noted "It has occurred to me that I might want to make the sections currently devoted to the specific styles of popular music and make them the basis for a new version of American popular music (which was a bloated mess last time I saw it), leaving behind an ultratight 10-12 paragraph summary as a replacement." This might be a good idea because scope is most definitely an issue. Unfortunately, Tuf-Kat may have lost interest in this review as he didn't reply when I pinged him. I could still go either way here (hate these +2 month reviews). Marskell (talk) 13:58, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Dammit, I'm going to "default" this. While there have been many difficult reviews, this, weirdly, has crystallized the difficulty at FAR. Nothing is happening after two months. There are no solid removes and there are no solid keeps. No one watching. There is no clear remove indication—and there's no flagrant WIAFA or policy breaches that I would normally hold it up on. I take Tony's points, but we've never explicitly removed for summary style (in the absence of explicit removes). This crystallizes the problem, because it's the first keep that I really don't like. But I think I must keep it.

If an interested editor wants to bring this up again (Tu-Kat?), we could go over it without the formal process. Marskell (talk) 20:34, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

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

The article was kept 17:12, 17 January 2008.

Notified Knowledge (XXG):WikiProject Books, WP:COMEDY, Talk:Jonathan Swift, User:Geogre, User:Ling.Nut, User:Filiocht, User:Hobbesy3, User:Danny, User:Susurrus, User:Taxman, User:Kevinalewis. Cirt (talk) 14:27, 14 January 2008 (UTC).

Specifying the FA criterion/criteria that are at issue:

  • 1. - It is well-written, comprehensive, factually accurate, neutral and stable.
  1. Prose is not "engaging, even brilliant, and of a professional standard." -- Several sentences in the article are phrased and read such that one is led to believe something is the opinion of the author of the article, as opposed to of some secondary source. This also leads to blatant violations of Knowledge (XXG)'s No Original Research policy, which will be laid out in a bit more detail, below.
  2. "Factually accurate" means that claims are verifiable against reliable sources and accurately represent the relevant body of published knowledge. Claims are supported with specific evidence and external citations; this involves the provision of a "References" section in which sources are set out, complemented by inline citations where appropriate. -- Fails this point noticeably. Only one inline citation is used, and it is virtually impossible to tell precisely what other parts of the article are sourced to where, if anywhere. What pages of the sources listed below are used, and where, and which author are various parts of the article backed up to/attributed to? Very hard to tell without in-line citations.
Some specific examples of WP:OR/WP:V/WP:WHEN issues
  1. The "tale," or narrative, is an allegory that concerns the adventures of three brothers, Peter, Martin, and Jack, as they attempt to make their way in the world. -- Says who? Who initially calls it an "allegory"? Is this the original Knowledge (XXG) editor's assumption who wrote this sentence, or from one of the sources listed below?
  2. This part of the book is a pun on "tub," which Alexander Pope says was a common term for a pulpit, and a reference to Swift's own position as a clergyman. -- Alexander Pope is not listed in the sources section. Where does Pope say this?
  3. The third brother, middle born and middle standing, is Martin (named for Martin Luther), whom Swift uses to represent the 'via media' of the Church of England. -- How do we know Swift uses this character in this fashion? Assumption of a Knowledge (XXG) editor, or laid out specifically in a source? Which source? What page?
  4. In as much as the will represents the Bible and the coat represents the practice of Christianity, the allegory of the narrative is supposed to be an apology for the British church's refusal to alter its practice in accordance with Puritan demands and its continued resistance to alliance with the Roman church. -- "In as much", "the allegory of the narrative is supposed to be.." Says who? Where?
  5. From its opening (once past the prolegomena, which comprises the first three sections), the book is constructed like a layer cake, with Digression and Tale alternating. -- "Constructed like a layer cake" - is that a literary term, or a phrase made up by a Wikipedian? A source?
  6. However, the digressions overwhelm the narrative, both in terms of the forcefulness and imaginativeness of writing and in terms of volume. -- This type of language shows the editor is making up their own assumptions. Who says it is "forceful" and "imaginative" writing?
  7. Many critics have followed Swift's biographer Irvin Ehrenpreis in arguing that there is no single, consistent narrator in the work. -- "Many critics"  ? Which critics? Where have they made these arguments?
  8. One difficulty with this position, however, is that if there is no single character posing as the author, then it is at least clear that nearly all of the "personae" employed by Swift for the parodies are so much alike that they function as a single identity. -- "Difficulty" ? Says who? "then it is at least clear..." Clear to whom?
  9. In general, whether we view the book as comprised of dozens of impersonations or a single one, Swift writes the Tale through the pose of a Modern or New Man. -- "We" ? Who is "we"? Who is saying that "Swift writes the Tale through the pose of a Modern or New Man" ? The editor that wrote this sentence, or a specific source? Unknown at this point.
  10. Hobbes was highly controversial in the Restoration, but Swift's invocation of Hobbes might well be ironic. -- Who says this "might well be ironic" ? A source, or a Knowledge (XXG) editor?
  11. The narrative of the brothers is a faulty allegory, and Swift's narrator is either a madman or a fool. The book is not one that could occupy the Leviathan, or preserve the Ship of State, so Swift may be intensifying the dangers of Hobbes's critique rather than allaying them to provoke a more rational response. -- Who says this is a "faulty allegory" ? Who says "Swift may be intensifying the dangers of Hobbes's critique" ?
  12. In his biography of Swift, Ehrenpreis argued that each digression is an impersonation of a different contemporary author. -- Where did Ehrenpreis make this "argument" ? A quote from Ehrenpreis would be more appropriate here than an assumption/interpretation of what Ehrenpreis wrote.
  13. In any case, the digressions are each readerly tests; each tests whether or not the reader is intelligent and skeptical enough to detect nonsense. Some, such as the discussion of ears or of wisdom being like a nut, a cream sherry, a cackling hen, etc., are outlandish and require a militantly aware and thoughtful reader. Each is a trick, and together they train the reader to sniff out bunk and to reject the unacceptable. -- Says who? Is this just reading into the primary source of the piece itself, or was this conjecture derived from a secondary source? Which source, what page?
  14. During the Restoration period in England, the print revolution began to change every aspect of society. -- Really, says who? "every aspect of society" ? This is assumption.
  15. The change in British society brought about by the print revolution was roughly analogous to our own experiences with the Internet. Just as now a silly person may spend a small amount of money and publish silly opinions, so it was then. Just as now we are confronted with a staggering array of conspiracy theories, "secret" histories, signs of the apocalypse, "secrets" of politicians, "revelations" of prophets, alarms about household products, hoaxes, and outright fraud, so it was then. The problem for them, as for us, was telling true from false, credible from impossible. -- Obvious WP:OR violations here.
  16. This narrator is in love with the modern age and feels that he is quite the equal (or superior) of any author who ever lived because he, unlike them, possesses 'technology' and opinions that are just plain newer. -- Is this a paraphrasing of something Swift wrote, or assumption/OR ?
  17. Although it is somewhat extreme and simplistic to put it this way, failing to be for the Church was failing to be for the monarch; having an interest in physics and trade was to be associated with dissenting religion and the Whig Party. -- "somewhat extreme and simplistic to put it this way" - says who?
  18. When Swift attacks the lovers of all things modern, he is thereby attacking the new world of trade, of dissenting religious believers, and, to some degree, an emergent portion of the Whig Party. -- "thereby attacking..." Who makes this comparison? A Knowledge (XXG) editor that wrote the sentence, or a source? Conjecture/OR, drawing your own conclusions?
  19. as A. C. Elias persuasively argues -- Oh really, "persuasively argues" ? Who is callling Elias's argument "persuasive" ? Conjecture drawn from a source.
  20. The entire discussion in England was over by 1696, and yet it seems to have fired Swift's imagination. -- "seems to have fired Swift's imagination" - says who?
  21. The Tale of a Tub attacks all who praise modernity over classical learning. -- Again, says who?
  22. There is no normative value in Rome, no lost English glen, no hearth ember to be invoked against the hubris of modern scientism. -- This almost appears to be a plagarized quote from a source. And if not, it's WP:OR.
  23. Some critics have seen in Swift's reluctance to praise mankind in any age proof of his misanthropy, and others have detected in it an overarching hatred of pride. -- Which critics? Where is this said?
  24. If Swift hoped that the Tale of a Tub would win him a living, he was disappointed. -- Did Swift write "I was disappointed that..."  ? If not, this is WP:OR.
  25. Upon its publication, the public realized both that there was an allegory in the story of the brothers and that there were particular political references in the Digressions. -- The public realized? Says who? Is this an inference drawn from the next section about the "Keys", or is this statement backed up by a source?
  26. Attacking criticism generally, he appears delighted -- "Generally", "appears delighted.." - These appear to be assumptions on the part of whoever wrote this sentence.
  27. The notes appear to occasionally provide genuine information and just as often to mislead -- Again, "appear to", "just as often to mislead" - Who is saying this and making these assumptions about the work?
  28. It is hard to say what the Tale's satire is about, since it is about any number of things. -- Entire paragraph that follows, and this sentence, appear to be assumption/conjecture/WP:OR drawn from the text itself.
  29. An important factor in the reception of Swift's work is that the narrator of the work is an extremist in every direction. -- Who says that this is an "important factor"? Where is this said?
  30. Additionally, Swift's satire is relatively unique in that he offers no resolutions. -- Who says this? Again, entire paragraph appears to be assumption/conjecture/WP:OR.
  31. the most important political events might be -- "might be.." Says who? Who is drawing this conclusion, "might be" ?
  32. The threat posed by these dissenters was keenly felt by Establishment clerics like Jonathan Swift. -- "keenly felt" - says who? Also numerous similar problems in this entire subsection.
  33. It was Swift's habit to publish anonymously throughout his career. -- His "habit" to publish anonymously, or did he just publish anonymously? Who says? Proof of this?
  34. The Tale was immediately popular and controversial. -- Says who? What sources asserted that it was "popular", "controversial" - or is this more conjecture drawn from subsequent events that occurred in the time period?
  35. The quotes in the last two paragraphs of the article are also without page numbers/inline cites.
  • 2. - It follows the style guidelines.
  1. (a) a concise lead section that summarizes the topic and prepares the reader for the greater detail in the subsequent sections; -- WP:LEAD section is inadequate, at only five lines, does not adequately summarize subsections Summary, Cultural setting, Authorial background, Nature of the satire, Historical background, Publication history, Authorship debate - The Lede itself also contains WP:OR/conjecture issues: "It is probably his most difficult satire, and possibly his most masterly." - "probably...possibly" ?? Says who? Who is making these assertions? The Knowledge (XXG) editor who initially wrote the lead? No one knows, impossible to verify.
  2. (c) consistently formatted inline citations using either footnotes<ref>Smith 2007, p. 1.</ref> or Harvard referencing (Smith 2007, p. 1), where they are appropriate (see 1c). (See citing sources for suggestions on formatting references; for articles with footnotes or endnotes, the meta:cite format is recommended.) -- The one in line citation could be formatted better, perhaps with WP:CIT, not sure which referencing format they were going for here.

Please respond to above points below, and do not intersperse replies between the points I made, above. Thanks, Cirt (talk) 14:16, 14 January 2008 (UTC).

Responses to Cirt
  1. It is extremely stable. It has been extremely stable for years. It has been the top Google search for the novel for years. In all that time, no one has had complaints.
  2. Has the nominator ever read A Tale of a Tub? Most of your questions are moot, if you have. Utgard Loki (talk) 15:12, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
  • I did not address the stability issue, I have no qualms with the article's stability, but just because others have not brought up anything before does not mean the article does not have problems. This is specifically the purpose of WP:FAR. Cirt (talk) 15:16, 14 January 2008 (UTC).
  • What does reading A Tale of a Tub have to do with the article on the subject matter? The reader should be able to read the article and understand a bit about the subject matter, without actually having to go and read the actual piece itself, and without being subject to WP:OR assertions, as outlined above. Cirt (talk) 15:16, 14 January 2008 (UTC).
  • KeepComment What Utgard Loki says. The article gives its references at the bottom, common knowledge doesn't need to be cited and I see very little in this article which is controversial or likely to be challenged by those who know about the subject. Examples: the book is constructed like a layer cake, with Digression and Tale alternating - you can tell this is true just by looking at the table of contents. Who initially calls it an "allegory"? Just about everybody who's ever read the book. It's obvious it's an allegory. There is no more need to cite this fact than there is for The Faerie Queene or Pilgrim's Progress. --Folantin (talk) 16:25, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
  • No 24:If Swift hoped that the Tale of a Tub would win him a living, he was disappointed. -- Did Swift write "I was disappointed that..."  ? If not, this is WP:OR. It's just a turn of phrase, it's not research, let alone original research. You've just established that the article isn't written in the usual Knowledge (XXG) duckspeak. While I personally always aim for dull, dry and lifeless prose I think it's okay to keep around a few dinosaurs who write like this. Haukur (talk) 22:53, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
In fact it is only necessary to show that he had the hopes; being disappointed (as a good dictionary will explain) is not only an emotional condition, but the objective fact of failing to achieve an ambition. Why do you keep saying things like this are OR? Let's face it you haven't a clue whether it is or not. Have you even looked at the article on Swift to see what this says about his ambitions in the Church? Say it needs a reference by all means, but your accusations of OR have no credibility. Johnbod (talk) 01:49, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
If you noticed, I struck that point out, above. If you wish to discuss a specific point from above, I'd be glad to, but with comments like: Let's face it you haven't a clue whether it is or not. - it's difficult to continue to assume good faith in this discussion. Cirt (talk) 01:58, 17 January 2008 (UTC).
I'm sorry - I thought someone in this long page you disclaimed knowledge of the period, apart from saying you had not read the work. Comments like 3, 33, 34 etc etc above suggest next to no knowledge. Excuse me if I'm not impressed by your complaint; where is your AGF towards the original authors? I'm prepared to assume good faith, but from your own comments it seems assuming minimal background knowledge would be inappropriate here, which you must see vastly reduces the credibility of your accusations of OR. Johnbod (talk) 03:26, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
If you wish to individually discuss "Comments like 3, 33, 34 etc etc above" I'd be happy to do so. Cirt (talk) 03:36, 17 January 2008 (UTC).
  • I think he's trying to tell you that he feels that your admitted lack of knowledge of this time period and this piece of literature invalidates your ability to adequately assess this article. It's a valid critique that several have made now. -- Bellwether C 03:40, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
  • And I'm trying to tell you that if you wish to individually discuss a complaint with one of my above examples, that's fine. But this sort of ad hominem attempt to simply negate all of my above points in one fell swoop with some overgeneralized complaint - is not productive in this FAR. Cirt (talk) 03:42, 17 January 2008 (UTC).
  • Okay, count me out of this discussion. You refuse to even consider that your admitted (thus, not ad hominem, you admitted it) lack of knowledge of this time period/piece of literature could be a problem in properly evaluating what is or is not OR. If you won't even acknowledge that possibility, what's the point of even attempting to discuss this with you? -- Bellwether C 03:47, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Please stop. We're not making about you "personally." We're discussing the fact that you have admitted that you have little or no knowledge of this time period and this work. There are several of us that think that creates a large problem with the nomination. It's not about you, it's about your lack of knowledge about the subject of the article that you nominated for de-listing. Dicussing your lack of knowledge is not "making it personal." It's something you've admitted, and many of us think it creates a serious problem with the nomination. You don't have to agree. But please don't try to downplay it by claiming we're attacking you. -- Bellwether C 03:56, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
  • I still maintain that if the article had inline citations or any kind of attribution of sourcing actually next to the sentences and the info that looks like WP:OR, it would be much easier for a non-expert in the subject matter to actually tell what is and is not actually OR. And I feel like your attempts to shift discussion to me, and constant refusals to bring up or discuss any of the points I raised about about WP:OR violations in the article - is simply a way to deflect debate and avoid discussing the article's content itself, specifically. For as long as we are discussing me and my supposed knowledge or lack of expertise or lack of a Ph.D. in "A Tale of A Tub"ness, then we are not discussing the article and its content, are we? Cirt (talk) 04:00, 17 January 2008 (UTC).
  • Did you miss the part where I told you I did an experiment on this? I had two non-experts (middle school students, to be exact) read the article. They understood it clearly, and were not confused by the lack of inline citations. I've explained several times that I don't even grant your premise that the lack of citations is a problem at all, nor that any of the points you've made constitute original research. Thus, I won't be going point by point refuting them. I deny the premise you base them on. As such, whenever we're allowed to vote, mine will be a resounding keep. Regards, -- Bellwether C 04:22, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Your logical fallacy of the appeal to authority doesn't gain any more weight even by repetition. Marksell's view that this nom isn't invalid carries no more weight than any other editor participating in the discussion. It's simply one editor's opinion, and you should probably stop citing it as some kind of "evidence" against those who think your admitted lack of knowledge of the time period and the piece causes problems with the basic premise of your nomination. Cite Marksell again if you wish, but I'm done. You can have the last word if you must. Regards, -- Bellwether C 04:35, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
  • 'Keep'Comment. "Prose is not "engaging, even brilliant, and of a professional standard."" is complete rubbish. There is no reason at all for this page to be here. An exemplary page. Congratulations to the author. Giano (talk) 22:58, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
    • Inappropriate to vote "Keep" or "Remove" at this time. Too early, per WP:FAR: In this step, possible improvements are discussed without declarations of "keep" or "remove". The aim is to improve articles rather than to demote them. Cirt (talk) 23:00, 14 January 2008 (UTC).
This is not a place to vote but build consensus, and I can say what I like, and I'm saying keep. I don't agree with you on any level. Giano (talk) 23:03, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
I'm just pointing out that you are commenting in contradiction with WP:FAR rules, set out at the top of the WP:FAR page. As for "I don't agree with you on any level." - well, you haven't even begun to address several of my points from above about the numerous violations of WP:OR. Cirt (talk) 23:05, 14 January 2008 (UTC).
No, and I shan't be addressing any of your points either. I don't agree with them. This is a perfectly good FA and I see no reason for it not to remain one. Giano (talk) 23:07, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for clarifying that you will not be addressing any of the WP:OR violations that I have mentioned from above. Just so we know that you are expressing your "keep" sentiment (early) here, without actual specifically clarifying as to why, and why you feel the article does not violate WP:OR, as mentioned above. Cirt (talk) 23:09, 14 January 2008 (UTC).

You can spend the rest of your life listing "violations" but this will still remain a brilliant page, and there is not a lot you can do about that. Giano (talk) 23:11, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Parts of it may read like a "brilliant page", but there are many many parts that read like this should be an article written in a magazine or something by an individual person about the piece, and not something that claims to be backed up by secondary sources - most of the language used reads like the opinion of one author. Cirt (talk) 23:13, 14 January 2008 (UTC).
  • In his biography of Swift, Ehrenpreis argued that each digression is an impersonation of a different contemporary author. -- Where did Ehrenpreis make this "argument" ? A quote from Ehrenpreis would be more appropriate here than an assumption/interpretation of what Ehrenpreis wrote. Where did he make this argument? I don't know, maybe in his biography of Swift, like it says in the text you quoted? There's a handy References section at the bottom of the article where you've got the bibliographic information for this biography. Once you've got your hands on the book I fancy it won't take you long to learn a bit about Swift's impersonations and Ehrenpreis's view on them. What makes you think the sentence is an assumption/interpretation of what Ehrenpreis wrote? Why do you insist on a direct quote for exactly this point? Haukur (talk) 23:14, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
    • "Ehrenpreis argued that each digression is an impersonation of a different contemporary author." Because without knowing more, e.g. a quote from the book, a page number, something, this appears to be the original opinion of whichever Knowledge (XXG) editor initially wrote this sentence. Cirt (talk) 23:15, 14 January 2008 (UTC).
      • I don't follow you at all. Why does "Author A argues point B in book C" appear to be the opinion of the Knowledge (XXG) editor? How would that be any different if you had page ranges (maybe it took more than a single page to make this point, just saying) in addition to bibliographic information on the book? I don't see how it makes any difference until you actually get your hands on the book and run into trouble confirming the information. And you haven't made any indication that you're even trying to obtain the book. Haukur (talk) 23:22, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
        • Even with the source info, saying that a certain Author "argues" a specific point, is an assertion by a Knowledge (XXG) editor. Saying that a certain Author says something specifically, or using a direct quote from that Author, would be less prone to POV. Cirt (talk) 23:25, 14 January 2008 (UTC).
          • The word argue indicates that the author didn't merely say this, he put forth reasons for it. Since you don't think a Knowledge (XXG) editor can accurately report that an author is arguing a certain point then I certainly understand that you'd want direct quotations. But that's not how it works; our articles are still articles, not quotation collages or salads of atomic facts. You've got to allow our editors reading comprehension, the ability to follow an argument and the ability to write coherent prose. Haukur (talk) 23:46, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
            • You make some good points, and perhaps you are right about this one. But it certainly would still help the article and that particular section, to have a quote and/or page number(s) from that book, to back up the previous sentence. Cirt (talk) 23:50, 14 January 2008 (UTC).
              • I wouldn't object to the addition of page numbers. Whether a quotation would help depends more on what Ehrenpreis actually says than the context in our article. Does he have some pithy words on this subject? I don't know, I haven't read the book. Neither have you, unless I'm much mistaken, so we're like two blind men arguing about the color of the sun. It's on Google Books if you want to get a glimpse. Didn't get me very far, though. Haukur (talk) 00:13, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
                • Sounds good. So at the very least, we're both agreed that an in-line citation with some page numbers as to this section of the book, would be helpful. Cirt (talk) 00:15, 15 January 2008 (UTC).
  • Have you read the copious references the Knowledge (XXG) article cites? For that matter, have you read even one of the copious references the article cites? Because from where I'm sitting, it looks to me like you haven't, otherwise you wouldn't be asking the questions you are. While I understand that some misguided souls fetishize inline citations, it is a bit hopeless to discuss potential original research claims if you don't follow up and check the citations. Otherwise, we just move from "How do we know which of the references n the article says this?" to "How do we know that this really appears on page 323 of Essays in Eighteenth Century Literature". I'm all for disallowing original research, but I think that throwing that claim around requires a higher standard of diligence than "I didn't bother to check any of the references that are already in the article." Let's find some smoke before we call in the fire department. Nandesuka (talk) 00:36, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
    • An interesting argument, though you don't actually specifically respond to any of the individual points I had brought up, above. And it would certainly help if one were to wish to check some of these sources, to know which pages to check for which specific sentences. And yes, citations would help to delineate which sources were being used on which specific sentences. Otherwise, yes, let's just throw some random sources at the bottom and make up whatever we want. No, that would be silly. Citations help show which sources were used where in the article. Cirt (talk) 00:39, 15 January 2008 (UTC).
      • So, you haven't checked any of the sources, then? OK. Thanks for clarifying that.
      • I think part of the reason you're getting such pushback here is that you lead off with the claim that the 'prose is not "engaging, even brilliant, and of a professional standard."' I could not disagree more. Even with the most cursory reading this article leaps out and smacks you upside the head with its engaging text. It takes a subject that is potentially impenetrable and dry to the modern reader, and makes it both accessible and terribly interesting. So the uphill battle you're facing is: here is an article which is clearly brilliant - at least, so leans the balance of discussion on this FAR -- and you are claiming to see invisible nits on it, and then offering to pick them off. I'm sorry, but there needs to be a higher standard of care when dealing with something this good. So far, all I see from you is ignorance ("I haven't checked the sources, but there's no page number, so it must be original research") and snarkiness. Nandesuka (talk) 00:46, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
        • It is difficult to continue in this FAR when we seem to be straying from ways of discussing improvements to the article itself... If you could perhaps bring up a specific point from above that you think I wrongly illustrated as WP:OR ? Cirt (talk) 01:00, 15 January 2008 (UTC).
          • How can I check the sources, when I don't even know which source to check for which specific sentence ??? Cirt (talk) 01:01, 15 January 2008 (UTC).
            • Good point. You can't. You (or someone) have to read the sources and as you go, annotate the article with what you've learned. That's a fair bit of work. (which is why I suggested maybe seek help, have several people each take one source and annotate inline cites in together). But it also suggests why, for a solid article like this one done in an older style, is there really a big benefit from bringing it up to modern standards? That "fair bit of work" is a significant fraction of the effort that went into writing it in the first place, I'd bet. And for what? To deny this article FA based on the sources being old style and nothing else (what everyone else is telling you here is that this article really IS brilliant prose and an example of what this wiki really really is good at... even if, yes, the cites are back level from current practice)... to deny it the retention of FA status on that basis would be a travesty, I think many of us feel... valuing motion and change over substance. I hope that helps you see the perspective. When an article is freshly minted is a better time to ask the original author(s) to use our new cite style then after it's been at rest for a while, eh? And maybe that's a meta criticism of FARC, that maybe a guideline change is needed, so a comment better placed at where guidelines are decided than here. But still I hope it helps and I hope you see where others are coming from. Happy editing. ++Lar: t/c 04:18, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
              • Thanks for the reply, and I am trying to see where others are coming from. If the sources were cited with just the last name of each sourced used for the sentences I cited above, yes, that would be one thing. But we shouldn't expect the reader to have to read every single source below, in order to see which source was used for which specific sentence. I'm not saying inline cites are the only fix, perhaps noting the last name of the source used, in parenthetical documentation at the end of the noted sentences, or perhaps attribution would be better "According to X..." or instead of "Many critics have followed Swift's biographer Irvin Ehrenpreis in arguing that there is no single, consistent narrator in the work." It could be rewritten as "In addition to Swift's biographer Irvin Ehrenpreis, critics such as X, Y, and Z have followed in arguing that there is no single, consistent narrator in the work." But when generic phrases like "many critics" are used (and this occurs in examples given above) we have no idea which critics said what, and it becomes very difficult to determine that, without cites giving at the least the last names of the people who said what, and at best, page numbers as well in specific sources. Cirt (talk) 06:44, 15 January 2008 (UTC).
  • comment This FAR (and in particular the general approach taken to replying to comments made) seems a bit, well, process wonkish. Here we have a brilliant and thorough article about a very important topic which has been around for a long time, and therefore, no longer meets "current best practices" as far as how things are cited, since it doesn't use inlince cites. I think instead of having spent the time creating the review, the review creator's time might be better spent reading the sources provided and adding inline references, without changing the way the article is written. That would be a far better use of resources, I'd wager. I bet if Cirt had went to the talk page and said "hey everyone, who wants to give me a hand with inlining some of the cites in this article to bring it up to modern standards" some of the very folk pointing out how daft this review is in their view might well have helped out and the job would be half done already. Note that this isn't a specific response to anything, just a general observation, so Cirt may well find it out of order or whatever. ++Lar: t/c 00:53, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
    • No, Lar, I don't find your comment "out of order or whatever" at all, it's most welcome in fact. But do check the talk page of the article itself, the issue of cites had been brought up before and discussed there, though it seems some stood on both sides of the aisle with regard to their usage. Cirt (talk) 00:58, 15 January 2008 (UTC).
  • Comment. As an educator who specifically deals with literature, I've a special interest in such articles as this. This article is thorough, well-researched, and, yes, well-written. The "questions" raised by the nominator for review are simple ones, easily answered simply by reading the book. There should be a proviso added to the FAR process that does not allow nominations for review of literature articles when the nominator has not read the piece of literature. I find it disheartening a bit that even such a wonderful article as this can fall victim to the process wonkery of Knowledge (XXG). Personally, I use inline citations with gusto. However, these are not required for an article to be FA standard (at least according to my reading of them, anyway), nor should they be required. This article is a fine and worthy FA, and delisting it would make a strong (and negative, in my view) statement about the current state of the FAR process. -- Bellwether C 13:37, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
    • Response to comment: I am confused, should we place a notice or "proviso" at the top of the article that people should not read the Knowledge (XXG) article unless they have first read A Tale of a Tub ? No, of course not. The article should be able to function on its own without having to put up such a notice. So why would you make similar assertions/qualifications about the FAR nominator? It would be more productive if you could bring up some sort of specific question about one of the WP:OR points from the article that I had mentioned, above. Cirt (talk) 13:40, 16 January 2008 (UTC).
      • And no, many of the points from above don't have to do with the actual content of the work itself, and couldn't be answered by reading the work. And even if they could, that is the very nature of Original Research, isn't it? If these types of questions could be answered in secondary sources, that would be a different matter entirely. Cirt (talk) 13:45, 16 January 2008 (UTC).
        • (ec)I did not claim, nor would I, that people should have to have read the book before they read the article. I have an issue with a reviewer nominating such an outstanding article for FAR without having read it first. The facts that you claim need citing are plain from a first reading of the book. The book is cited as a reference. Your (and my, for that matter) love of inline cites has nothing to do with whether or not this article is a worthy FA, or commits the egregious sin of original research. I'm not going to argue with you here. It's my view that this is an incredibly flawed nomination, based upon the fact that the very problems you cite in your review stem only from the fact that you have not (as a reviewer, not a reader of the article only) read the book. This is a major issue, in my view. I would encourage you to withdraw the nomination, and take some time to read the book. If you do, and reach these same conclusions, fine. Nominate it for review. Or, better yet, fix the problems you might still see. But please don't nominate such great articles for review without having at least had the courtesy to read the source material. I repeat an earlier point I made: inline citations are not necessary to be a FA, nor to prove there was no original research.
(Note after EC: making points that are blatantly obvious on the face of it does not constitute "original research." If a secondary source couldn't be found that cited the fact that Huckleberry Finn was a vagabond (which is a great word, BTW), should that word not be used in an article about that character? Would that constitute OR? Of course not. Neither do such patently obvious claims (to those who have read the work) in this article.) -- Bellwether C 13:56, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
Again, you state as a caveat at the end of your comment "(to those who have read the work)". Must we write the article in such a way such that all readers must read the work first before being able to understand the Knowledge (XXG) article without relying on Violations of the Knowledge (XXG) Original Research Policy ? Cirt (talk) 20:00, 16 January 2008 (UTC).
  • I've stated it numerous times: the "those who have read the work" refers to people who would wish to nominate it to be reviewed for delisting. I'm not referring to general readership. To test your hypothesis about it somehow being confusing for general readership, I had two of my after-school book club students read the article. They are neither one gifted academically. Two normal intelligence, middle-school students read the article, were well-informed, and not confused at all by the lack of inline citations. This tells me that the issue is really a non-issue. And for the record, I only voted "keep" below, because I thought that Johnbod had opened the voting. I will strike through the vote and added comment if you wish. -- Bellwether C 20:54, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Thanks for removing the early "vote". As for your "after-school book club students" I have no doubt that it may be possible to understand the article without inline citations - but that does not negate the fact that the majority of it still reads like WP:OR. Cirt (talk) 03:37, 17 January 2008 (UTC).
  • (Just noticed this reply) So now it's not even about the readers, which you claimed before, it's about policy-wonkery regarding WP:OR? I contend that if such young readers can understand clearly the article, and appreciate how masterfully it's written (which they did), perhaps this whole discussion is "sound and fury, signifying nothing." -- Bellwether C 04:39, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Note Do not "vote" to keep or remove in the review section of a FAR. Joelito (talk) 23:41, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

  • (Keep, but clearly needs inline citations to meet the current FA standards). Most of the allegations of OR are completely ridiculous - a very little research would show that these are the things that every textbook on the subject says, not the wild hypothesising of a single WP editor, as the reviewer implies or asserts again and again. As someone says above, he could probably have referenced the article, or most of it, with less effort than writing the review took. Johnbod (talk) 17:52, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
As people keep violating WP:FAR instructions, no longer watching this discussion, sorry

Again, as clearly laid out by WP:FAR: In this step, possible improvements are discussed without declarations of "keep" or "remove". -- This was noted above by Joelr31 (talk · contribs), above DIFF. As no one seem to be able to follow these instructions, or point out any specific issues with my above comments regarding Original Research violations in the article (aside from Haukurth (talk · contribs), thank you), I believe further involvement in this discussion is not constructive for me, save some active involvement from one of the delgates of the Featured Article Director. Thanks for your time, Cirt (talk) 20:07, 16 January 2008 (UTC).

Cirt, I have found your tone on this page to be rude, curt, and unacceptable. In the future, please moderate your tone, and treat your fellow editors with more respect. And I'm specifically disappointed in your indication that, since no one (so far) has agreed with your WP:OR analysis, you are not going to participate in — or even read — the discussion. That's simply not how one achieves consensus here. I urge you to reconsider your behavior. Kind regards, Nandesuka (talk) 20:19, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
  • As I am not a FAR regular, & the "Note" above had no references, I took a leaf out of Cirt's book & assumed it was an individual OR view of one editor. Votes can always be ignored of course. Cirt should not be surprised people do not address his comments individually if they are not numbered, are very numerous, and ask for comments below only. This hardly makes commenting easy! Johnbod (talk) 21:06, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Procedurally, keeps are being ignored right now, although useful comments are welcome. This is not an invalid nomination, so shouldn't be speedied. I see nothing particularly rude, curt, or unacceptable about Cirt's tone (relative to others). Marskell (talk) 20:32, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

You don't see anything rude in "I'm going to ignore any further comments on the discussion I started?" Seriously? Nandesuka (talk) 21:32, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
No one other than Haukurth (talk · contribs) responded to any of my specific points, and people kept violating the WP:FAR instructions, as noted by Joelr31 (talk · contribs) and by Marskell (talk · contribs). Cirt (talk) 21:33, 16 January 2008 (UTC).
I hope your return here means that you are ready to discuss the issues. This means, in addition to asking for input on the things that you are interested in, addressing the points that others raise as well. In any event, welcome back.
I myself did address your specific issues, although perhaps not in the way you desired. I don't understand how we can have a discussion about what consists of original research without actually having the sources referenced at hand. Would you agree that it is standard Wiki (and Featured Article) practice that one does not provide in-line citations for well known facts? That seems like a good jumping off point for discussion. Do you agree? Nandesuka (talk) 21:39, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
I think that the points you raise now are overly generalized, and not constructive to this FAR discussion - but would certainly be welcomed by the policy wonks at the talk page for WP:OR, or even probably at the talk page for WP:RS and WP:V. I have numbered the points from above that I laid out as violations of WP:OR. If anyone has responded to a specific point, feel free to let me know on my talk page. If not, I respectfully defer to the better judgment of Joelr31 (talk · contribs) and Marskell (talk · contribs). Cirt (talk) 21:42, 16 January 2008 (UTC).
OK, let's take a specific point. You say:

The "tale," or narrative, is an allegory that concerns the adventures of three brothers, Peter, Martin, and Jack, as they attempt to make their way in the world. -- Says who? Who initially calls it an "allegory"? Is this the original Knowledge (XXG) editor's assumption who wrote this sentence, or from one of the sources listed below?

My reply to this is "The text of the book explicitly says that it is an allegory. It does so on page 2 of the book." This is Featured Article Review. In order to review a featured article, we must actually pay attention to the topic, the works cited, and what they say. That one might claim that describing this work as an "allegory" is a "violation of WP:OR" is, quite frankly, astonishing, and only possible if one was not performing a review diligently. I urge you again to not turn this review into a drive-by shooting. You started this review, so I fully expect you to finish it. Nandesuka (talk) 21:51, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
Good point, and the other points about the "allegory" issue from above were also valid. I have struck out that point, from above. Cirt (talk) 21:54, 16 January 2008 (UTC).

(un-indenting for readability) My turn to have a specific question answered. Which of the points in the 35 (now 34) numbered paragraphs you list above do you consider "likely to be challenged"? That is essential to performing any sort of sensible WP:OR analysis. Thanks in advance for addressing this. Nandesuka (talk) 21:59, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

  • I have no idea, I would hope that they could all be addressed in some fashion, either through use of in-line citations, parenthetical documentation, direct attribution of whichever specific source said something specifically in the mentioned sentences, or something like that. That was why I brought up all those specific points in the first place in this FAR. Cirt (talk) 22:03, 16 January 2008 (UTC).
Cirt, The reason I'm asking which of those points are likely to be challenged is that I think you are working against yourself here, in a very serious way. You raise a large group of points whose gravity ranges from reasonable to ridiculous. To give two specific examples: I think wanting a reference to Pope (or someone) indicating that a "tub" is slang for pulpit is perfectly reasonable. If nothing else, as a reader that might be an interesting point to follow up. However, right next to that you are asking for a cite for the simple phrase "constructed like a layer cake" (which is followed up with an exact explanation of what is meant by that). The net result is that this looks to us, the other reviewers, like you've thrown a handful of darts in the air in the hopes that one or two might hit the board.
Something is original research, in Knowledge (XXG) terms, only if it is likely to be challenged. I will politely suggest that you revisit your list and cull it down to only those items which are likely to be challenged. That would better serve everyone involved here. To the extent that you don't know which items on your list are likely to be challenged, then I will suggest that you have been hasty and premature in declaring these 35 items to be original research with such a high level of stridency. Nandesuka (talk) 01:31, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
Stricken, above. Nandesuka (talk · contribs), I think you will quickly find that all that has to be done is for individuals to actually address some of the specific points I had brought up, as opposed to complaining and making vague overgeneralizations about the manner in which I presented the nom. Marskell (talk · contribs) has already clearly stated: This is not an invalid nomination, so shouldn't be speedied. Cirt (talk) 01:36, 17 January 2008 (UTC).

I'll (as an outsider and naif when it comes to FA related process and how one changes it) repeat something I said to someone offline: The thing is, although perhaps Cirt started out badly, both sides here have a point.... the article is a wondrous thing, worthy of FA in the quality and depth and breadth, and damnit, beauty of the prose, AND yet it has a serious deficiency of referencing inline. We now want inline, for good reasons, but it's also a bit naff to ask the original authors to either fix it RIGHT NOW or have the article lose FA. Perhaps we need a new class of thing... "FA but with known mechanical/standards deficiencies that need fixing even though we love the prose and article" (well maybe something a trifle shorter? :) ) which volunteers could fix at their leisure without the stress of a FARC sword hanging over their head, and would acknowledge that yes, in what MATTERS, the article still has that brillaint prose quality that we want in FAs... and yet, needs fixing. Zenlike in a way in that it has good and bad, both at the same time, and that's OK. ++Lar: t/c 23:22, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

  • As I said above, most (but not all) of the listed points should have inline citations, but Cirt's own comments make it clear he has no knowledge of the subject area, & is in no position to form a worthwhile judgement as to what might be OR & what is a basic fact about the work, author, or period. His repeated accusations of OR would therefore appear to be breaches of WP:AGF and generally otiose and unhelpful to the process. The style of the articles - "we" etc - is at points unencyclopedic, but this should be capable of being changed without altering the sense (though referencing it). (delayed by server issues)Johnbod (talk) 00:15, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Re Nandesuka's "You don't see anything rude in 'I'm going to ignore any further comments on the discussion I started?'" Under the circumstances, no. This is an enormous gang-up on the nominator, presumably driven by off-site chatter. I've seen this extact review before: numerous people trip over each other to tell the nominator how stupid they are, know nothing of the subject area, etc. It occurs with a small pool of FAs written in '04, and it's poisonous.

Beginning with a lead that fails to summarize the article, this is a legitimate article for FAR. If someone wants to create an exemption for certain older articles, then I suggest a discussion here and a note to Raul. Marskell (talk) 08:03, 17 January 2008 (UTC) Oh, and there is no RIGHT NOW involved. It's the most off-base comment that gets made about FARs. The most recent record for a review is four months. If someone intends to pick up the books a couple of weeks or a month from now, that's perfectly fine. Marskell (talk) 08:14, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for clarifying, Marskell. I don't generally participate in "off-site chatter", my opinions as to what was going on here were driven entirely by the quality (or lack thereof) of the criticism in the nomination itself, I haven't called anyone "stupid," and I have tried at every turn to address the central question: what makes an article good?. However, now that I understand FAR isn't intended to conduct a legitimate review of the article, and that my comments here are, apparently, simply viewed as "ganging up" on the nominator, I won't bother wasting your time by participating further. Best of luck with whatever it is you think you're accomplishing here. Nandesuka (talk) 12:12, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
"I don't generally participate in 'off-site chatter'". Likewise. I'd like to know the basis for Marskell's assertion. There's a perfectly obvious reason why a group of users who know about the subject might come to the same conclusion independently. "My opinions as to what was going on here were driven entirely by the quality (or lack thereof) of the criticism in the nomination itself". Likewise. I was also struck by the needlessly aggressive and inquisitorial tone of Cirt's initial review. --Folantin (talk) 12:20, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
I don't know about off-site chatter. I noticed User:W.marsh telling Cirt how interesting it would be if he stuck this bean up his nose and that's what got my attention. Haukur (talk) 12:21, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

This article holds almost no inline citations and the lead is too short per WP:LEAD. Therefore the article doesn't meet the current standards and is suitable for FAR. Cirt was right to nominate this article. --Maitch (talk) 11:25, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

The immediate reason for my off-site chatter comment was Lar's "...repeat something I said to someone offline." More generally, I have been puzzled how a certain group of FAs—Filiochit's, Giano's—immediately attract a half-dozen people demanding closure and criticizing the nominator, when they come to FAR.
Now, I understand that asking that "The work is an allegory" be cited shows unfamiliarity with the topic. But there are gentler ways of approaching a nominator than the disdain shown above. As for legitimacy, my opinion is indeed one of many. But we have never restricted nominators and we have never grandfathered articles; on both points I would suggest a thread on WT:FA.
FAR is certainly meant for a legitimate review. If we could slow this down, here are some legitimate points: it does not have a proper lead; it does not provide citation for direct quotes, a basic policy requirement; critics are mentioned in the body that are not, in fact, listed in the references (where did Johnson question Swift's authorship?). I don't know that we can slow it down, however, so this may require a drama avoidance closure. Marskell (talk) 12:53, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
  • You derive a comment that all (or most) of the opposition to this nomination was driven by "off-site chatter" from Lar's off-hand remark? Well, okay then. If you must know, that remark was directly relating to me. Well after we had both commented here, I contacted Lar (a friend) privately to see if he felt I was being too hard on Cirt. I trust his judgement. He sent me an e-mail back regarding how the FAR was going at the time. That you somehow extrapolate Lar's off-hand reference to something he wrote in that e-mail to a cabal of some sort that has conspired to gang up on Cirt is amazingly bad-faith. I can't speak for others, but I came here completely independently of any other person involved in this discussion. I'm simply a person who teaches subjects (History and Language Arts) that cause me to be interested in these types of articles. As this is one of the finer ones out there, when it was nominated for de-listing, it drew my curiosity, especially when the nominator admiitted he'd never read the book, nor any of the source material, and yet was accusing the original authors of having done original research. This struck me as odd, and I've attempted to make a few points here regarding that. It seems that far too often on WP, people assume that heavy criticism of a person's ideas or actions equals criticism of that person as a person. This is simply not true. One can think that Cirt made a large error in judgement without thinking Cirt is a bad person or even a bad editor. -- Bellwether C 13:35, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
You're right that I should not have conflated users based on the comments of one. I apologize.
While a gang-up may not have been intended, a gang-up it became. After, say, the third time he was told that he hasn't read the book and has no knowledge of the subject, it seemed petty to keep repeating it. Did he need to read it to nominate? No. There are no restrictions on nominations beyond not doing too many at once and not nominating recent TFAs. Do we need more restrictions? Maybe. If this same pattern is going to be repeated everytime material from Geogre is nominated here, then something must be done: either grandfathering them or restricting nominators. Part of my garrulousness is due to the fact that This Happens Everytime. If you'd told me a week ago this article was going to be nominated, I'd have told you in advance what was going to happen.
I realize you haven't been a part of previous discussions, Bellwether. I do apologize for any lack of AGF. Marskell (talk) 14:24, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
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 Knowledge (XXG) talk:Featured article review. No further edits should be made to this page.
The following is an archived discussion of a featured article review. Please do not modify it. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page or at Knowledge (XXG) talk:Featured article review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was kept 17:21, 13 January 2008.

Review commentary

Notifications left at WikiProject Italy, WikiProject Architecture, Giano_II

No longer meets FA criteria. The total number of inline references is 1. It wouldn't even come close to the GA criteria now. (Caniago 14:40, 16 November 2007 (UTC))

  • I have de-featured it. I have all the reference books, no-one else will have them and I don't have the time or the inclination to fully cite it. so it can be de-featured. That will save you all the trouble of pontificating about it and give you all the time to go and write FAs yourselves. Giano 16:10, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Understandably so. There are so many uncited controversial statements - who says it is in Florence? who says it is a mainly Renaissance palace? who says it on the south bank of the Arno, or near the Ponte Vecchio? Delist this engaging and beautiful article as quickly as possible. -- !! ?? 16:24, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
Not to worry !! - if they feel my efforts are not even GA standard, then it is bettre to put it back to how it was before I ruined it. Giano 16:26, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
This isn't about trying to delist the article. This is above trying to improve it, in this case by adding inline citations where appropriate. If Giano is unwilling, we can wait to see if someone else has the capability and will. No one is saying you haven't improved the article, Giano. Pagrashtak 16:47, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
It is no longer a FA as far as I am concerned, if it is nowhere near GA either then the work involved is too great. If the intention of those nominating the page is merely to cite the obvious facts, then they will find all the reference books used in any major lending library. In should not take them more than a couple of weeks to read the lot. I can assure you nothing was made up. -- Giano (talk) 16:54, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
Whether plastering footnotes all over this article would "improve" it or not is a matter of taste. Is anyone seriously suggesting that the claims made in this article are incorrect in any material respect, or that the interested reader could not check (and also find out more) in the sources already referred to (if they could find them)? -- !! ?? 16:58, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
Its not a matter of taste at all, referencing is a fundamental part of the criteria for promoting articles to GA and FA standards. Read Knowledge (XXG):Featured article criteria and Knowledge (XXG):What is a good article?. (-- Caniago (talk) 17:07, 16 November 2007 (UTC))
Thank you for your suggestion, although I do not see how Knowledge (XXG):What is a good article? is relevant to the discussion here.
(i) The article already has references which are entirely adequate. You are asking for footnotes (aka inline citations). (ii) "... where appropriate" certainly strikes me as a matter of taste. Or are you suggesting an objective test of "appropriate"ness? One footnote per fact? Per sentence? Per paragraph? -- !! ?? 17:24, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
Well this is obviously a "very bad article" and I have better things to do with my time than cite non-contracersial facts to meet a criteria of one footnote to every 10 words of text. As I said all the facts are in the books, it won't take you too long. Giano (talk) 17:11, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
  • This seems a bit pointy. WIAFA doesn't require any particular citation density; it requires citations "where appropriate". Which specific things need citing? A few opinion-like statements perhaps, such as it being "more spendid" than ever, or it having a "powerful atmosphere". What else? Gimmetrow 21:58, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
  • It's a worthy article. I don't see where all of these controversial statements are that require specific references beyond the list at the bottom—it doesn't seem to be that type of subject. Having said that, inline citations might be considered for one or two of the more specific statements, and would take just five or ten minutes to insert. Tony (talk) 00:39, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
Well the reffs are all listed. So should be easy for an Italian speaker. Giano (talk) 08:42, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
I have looked. What's your point? Show me an article which has passed FA review, or even GA review, in the past 6 months which has almost no inline citation. Funny how acquaintances of Giano, including some who are "no longer active on Knowledge (XXG)", show up when his pet article is in need of saving. (Caniago (talk) 14:27, 17 November 2007 (UTC)) BTW: good guess, I have just come back from the library. (Caniago (talk) 14:49, 17 November 2007 (UTC))
Not my pet article at all - I keep saying delist it, how many more times, add some cites wherever you feel they are needed or get rid of it. Giano (talk) 16:41, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
You should tell your Knowledge (XXG) allies to back off then, they haven't yet got the message. (Caniago (talk) 04:14, 18 November 2007 (UTC))
Please do not atack those who happen not to agree with you. I have no need for allies, it is just that obvious facts and logic, are just that - Obvious. Giano (talk) 12:27, 18 November 2007 (UTC)
Rather than hem and haw about it, let's see if we can get something done. Caniago, could you please identify the sentences or claims that you believe are in the greatest need of citation? Pagrashtak 15:16, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
I've added some citation needed tags for statements which seem like opinion or claims which could be disputed. (Caniago (talk) 17:01, 17 November 2007 (UTC))
That's essentially asking for a cite every sentence. "The early history of the Palazzo Pitti is a mixture of fact and myth."? Gimmetrow 22:02, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
Oh, I think Caniago missed a sentence or two in his carpet-bombing of {{fact}} templates. I could help him out and tag the few sentences he missed, except that would be a little WP:POINTy. But he has identified lots of controversial statements and unsupported opinions, such as the resemblance of Palazzo's facade to a Roman aqueduct - three rows of rusticated arches? who could ever think such a thing. -- !! ?? 22:51, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
Just how many FA's have you worked on !!? Here's (Indonesia) what one looks like for you armchair experts. Please contribute to improving this article to FA standard or keep the sniping to yourself. (Caniago (talk) 03:58, 18 November 2007 (UTC))
Sorted all uncited phrases removed. Giano (talk) 23:09, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
Your actions don't match your rhetoric about not being concerned about whether the article is defeatured. (Caniago (talk) 04:14, 18 November 2007 (UTC))
  • Can we avoid the drama? For the sake of reference, these edits show Caniago's addition of fact tags. I have restored the article to the version immediately before, rather than lose so much of the prose. Even if the article is defeatured, it doesn't need to be defaced. Worst case should be a coherent text with a {{refimprove}} somewhere. Gimmetrow 23:48, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

*Yawns and rubs eyes* OK, option 1 is simply defeaturing this now because Giano has agreed to have it defeatured. That would save a month of shouting. (I would ask you not do it yourself Giano, because it just screws up the templating for people like Gimme who look after article history.) Option 2 is grandfathering it in. It's something I've been thinking about. If a) it meets all other criteria besides 1c and b) the original author of it is clearly active and vouches for the info, then it retains FA status. If Giano leaves Knowledge (XXG) it would become a candidate for defeaturing as no one is vouching for the info any longer. All of this would require wider discussion, however. The principal argument against is that it would be unfair to people like Nichalp and Mav who have older FAs and have done the work meeting current expectations and/or have had articles lose FA status. Marskell (talk) 09:42, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

  • So far I have removed the phrases you feel need cites, and that apparently is not right. I have de-featured the page myself and that is not right either. So why does not one of those concerned not pop out get the books and cite them themself. I, and others, clearly feel they are accepted and noncontroversial facts that don't need citing. I do this to unreffed pages all the time if I have concerns - Why can't those who are so bothered do the same? Giano (talk) 12:41, 18 November 2007 (UTC)
You're confusing roles, reviewer does not necessarily equal author or fixer. Maybe someone will help out, but then again you already have the sources, so it's probably easiest for you to do the work. As for not needing inline citations, I say bollocks. Take a look through some of the opinionated claims I marked: "Palazzo Pitti is more splendid and better maintained than at any time in its history", "the palazzo still impresses visitors with the splendours of Florence", "it is Fancelli that is generally credited", "the palazzo does not have the overpowering and commanding presence". The list goes on, and some of this article verges on sounding like a tourist brochure. Someone has already pointed out it contains weasel words. Its a shame that some people here are so resistive to criticism. (Caniago (talk) 13:36, 18 November 2007 (UTC))
"Bollocks"....I'd stay another year at the finishing school if I were you. I keep saying de-list it, so where is the problem? You are obviously not interested in improving it yourself, I don't think it needs the cites - so delist it. If you are correct why stop there why not delete it as well. Giano (talk) 14:09, 18 November 2007 (UTC)
Your position is quite confusing. First you say you want to avoid pontification by delisting it, but here you are continuing to stir up arguments. Shame you need to resort to personal insults rather than make any serious defense of the article and the criticisms that have been made. (Caniago (talk) 14:30, 18 November 2007 (UTC))
Not personal insults at all just some advice to someone who argues using your vocabulary. My view remains quite unaltered. You started this, just ex[end some effort and finish it. 15:13, 18 November 2007 (UTC)
You still don't seem to understand what "reviewer" means. Please stop the pontification. (Caniago (talk) 15:15, 18 November 2007 (UTC))
I feel like I should apologize. When I asked Caniago to identify phrases that needed citation the most, I didn't intend for him to overload the article with {{Fact}} templates. Why are both sides so unwilling to meet common ground here? Yes, large portions of this article can be supported by a book without the need for inline citations, but yes, there are some sentences that when cited inline would improve the article. Why can't Caniago list his (her?) top ten citation concerns here, then Giano can cite them, (hopefully that shouldn't be too time-consuming, yes?) and then we've met halfway, and can move on. Pagrashtak 16:00, 18 November 2007 (UTC)
I've already spent enough time going though and adding where I think it needs citation, based upon your invitation. On average there was probably 1-2 citation needed tags per paragraph, with substantially more in the last section, which in my opinion needs some rewriting to present the facts in a NPOV fashion. I don't see that as particularly excessive compared to other FA articles. If the facts within a paragraph are sourced from the same book, a single citation for the paragraph would suffice. (Caniago (talk) 16:42, 18 November 2007 (UTC))
For the hundredth time, if you want them cited, you know the names of the books Caniago, then please get on with it. I certainly have not asked you to review the page, you chose to do it, so now solve it. Giano (talk) 23:36, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

I looked for samples of citations needed (starting at the bottom as I usually do), but the first example I found revealed other issues. Regarding this sentence:

  • Control of the palazzo, today transformed from royal palace to museum, is in the hands of the Italian state through the "Polo Museale Fiorentino", an institution which administers twenty museums, including the Uffizi Gallery, and has ultimate responsibility for 250,000 catalogued works of art.

On the surface, it looks like an example of hard data that requires citation (particularly since the number can change over time). But I question why this number is in the article at all, per 4. ... staying focused on the main topic without going into unnecessary detail ... It is the Polo Museale Fiorentino that has responsibility for the 250,000 works of art and twenty museums including the Uffizi. How is this extra information about the Polo Museale tightly focused on the topic of Palazzo Pitti? If the relevance can't be established, the data could be removed. Can a stub be created for Polo Museale Fiorentino with this data and info moved to that article?

By the way, Polo Museale Fiorentino should be italized I believe, as it is non-English.

Also, per WP:MOSNUM, twenty but 250,000.

Right below that, we also find:

  • Florence receives over five million visitors each year, ...

with no citation or as of date. I didn't go farther. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:24, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

oops, also I was going to suggest that the references need to be formatted, but it appears that http://www.arca.net/db/musei/pitti.htm is a commercial (non-reliable) source, and would better be removed. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:27, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
Is something stopping you Sandy? Giano (talk) 09:45, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

FARC commentary

Suggested FA criteria concern is referencing (1c). Marskell (talk) 09:31, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
I suggest people take the time to read that paragraph rather than the distorted version by DrKiernan above. Or is the date of Brunelleschi's death in dispute? Giano (talk) 18:07, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
As you appear to have misread both my comment and my intent, I have revealed the hidden comment. DrKiernan (talk) 18:15, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
Gosh! "Hey presto" it is magic! Giano (talk) 23:30, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
To update, the book has only one page on Palazzo Pitti so I'll look in the Uni library this week for others. I agree the writing was a bit weaselly and will do more. This is not far off being a keep and should be readily do-able in a few days. cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 23:28, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
Bless you. Marskell (talk) 07:55, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
(aargh, holy water...it burns, it burns.....)....cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 08:00, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
Thanks Cas. I added a few weblinks and dug up a short journal paper on the Costume galleries. The referencing drops off somewhat toward the end but is fine, in general. I'll wait for a couple of more comments. Marskell (talk) 13:21, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Looks good; I am otherwise entertained elsewhere (and just having the time of my life), so I haven't had time for a thorough re-read, but on a quick glance, everything looks great. Pass the holy water for Cas, and relieved to see a Giano piece in Keep territory. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:39, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
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 Knowledge (XXG) talk:Featured article review. No further edits should be made to this page.
The following is an archived discussion of a featured article review. Please do not modify it. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page or at Knowledge (XXG) talk:Featured article review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was kept 12:30, 12 January 2008.

WikiProject Biography notified; inactive creator PRiis notified

This article, promoted to FA almost three years ago and scheduled to appear as today's featured article on January 10, no longer meets the criteria. It possibly fails 1b, because the DNB entry is some 2200 words and lists around fifteen sources, while this article is about 1000 words and only lists one source other than the DNB. It very possibly fails 1c: DNB states Day "was married twice, and had thirteen children by each marriage", while this article says he "married twice and had twenty-four children". It certainly fails 2c in its total lack of footnotes. Biruitorul (talk) 04:05, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

User:BuddingJournalist and I have busily brushed this into shape (reffed and expanded), ready for the main page. I was about to urge that the FAR tag might be removed before the article went on show tomorrow, but now I've noticed it's just been de-scheduled to go on the front page (sigh). Hmm, needn't have rushed. qp10qp (talk) 04:23, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Move to close Quite a turnabout I must say! Two things: (1) I think you've removed the snippet about his two wives and many children, concentrating on his professional career, but I see no reason why it shouldn't be put back. (2) "the largest publishing project undertaken in England to that time." Yes, quite likely, presumably from King (2006)? Biruitorul's source, DNB, says "...we lack any precise information about the production process". Is everyone agreed that such a definite assessment can be made? DrKiernan (talk) 13:56, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
    • 1) Added that back in with a ref.
    • 2) Yeah, that was in the original FA version, but I couldn't find it in either the DNB or Evenden sources. It certainly makes sense, but I commented it out for now. If a source is found later, it can always be added back.
    • I think this is pretty much good to go and could probably be closed. BuddingJournalist 21:08, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for reffing the children. I had removed it because I couldn't find refs (don't have DNB) and because of the objection above to the accuracy of the information. qp10qp (talk) 21:46, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
I've put in a ref to the claim about the size of the Book of Martyrs project, from Hattaway. I don't know if the DNB article was written before King did all his research, which is overwhelming—though, of course, sixteenth-century information about anything is necessarily patchy. qp10qp (talk) 22:33, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Agree - close. I think it will be agreed this was in no shape to be an FA at the close of 2007, but now it's eminently qualified. Very impressive work by the pair who made this happen. Biruitorul (talk) 00:52, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

More excellent from qp10qp and BJ. Closing. Marskell (talk) 12:29, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

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

The article was kept 12:26, 12 January 2008.

Review commentary

Notified primary contributors and relevant WikiProject. KnightLago (talk) 16:09, 22 November 2007 (UTC) WP Pennsylvania, SimonATL, BartBenjamin and Kaisershatner notified. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:14, 22 November 2007 (UTC)‎

This article became a FA in 2005. Below is a list of issues that I think need to be addressed.

*A number of references needed in history section, note the fact tags I added.

  • More information is needed about citation 10. This is a reference to the New York Times.
  • There are too many pictures jammed together on the right of the article.
  • A number of references needed in the Address section.
  • The Lincoln's sources section contains a one sentence paragraph.
  • Reference needed in the five manuscript sections.
  • References needed in Nicolay section.
  • The writing in the individual letter holders sections is not great.
  • References needed in the Under God section; this also poorly written with a long uncited quote.
  • The myths and trivia section needs to be incorporated into the article. Per the manual of style and WP:TRIVIA specifically, such sections are to be avoided.
  • The in popular culture section needs to be completely reworked also.
  • Sources have problems, see: 6, 8-13, 15-18, 20, 22, 24-33.

KnightLago (talk) 15:59, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

  • Comments, also External links should be reviewed per WP:EL, WP:NOT (surely there is a DMOZ category) and references need to be completely and consistently formatted (see WP:CITE/ES). WP:MSH, WP:MOS#Captions (punctuation), WP:MOS#Quotations/WP:ITALICS and WP:MOSDATE attention needed. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:18, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
    • Followup: I'm confused about the capitalization (and not) of "Copy", in the section headings and in the text. It's not consistent. Please see WP:MSH. Citations still aren't correctly formatted, and there are missing publishers. Date ranges should be separated by endashes, not hyphens (saw several in the citations). There are still s in the citations. There is still inconsistency in the emdashes (some are spaced some are unspaced). There are still links needed per WP:MOSDATE, for example, From July 1–3, 1863, ... and ... Wills originally planned to dedicate this new cemetery on Wednesday, September 23, ... SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:12, 3 December 2007 (UTC) Also, there is a completely strange citation method of mixing a partial citation template with some manual formatting items within individual citations; I've gone from never seeing this done, to seeing it twice today. Where is this coming from? If using the citation template, why not use all the template? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:18, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Updated Concerns:

Looks like you have made a ton of progress, just a few other things:

  • Is there another citation for the two claims made in the first sentence? The claims: "most famous speech of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln and one of the most quoted speeches in United States history;" are not supported by the citation there now.
Cited.Kaisershatner 17:42, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
  • The first and second sentences of the first background para need work, try breaking each into two sentences.
Broken. Kaisershatner 17:42, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Is the seventeen in supposed to be capitalized: "Although there is some evidence Lincoln expected Wills's letter, its late date makes the author appear presumptuous...Seventeen days was extraordinarily short notice for presidential participation even by nineteenth-century standards."
Yes. The ellipsis deletes the end of the first sentence and since the next item is the (capitalized) start of the next sentence, it should be capitalized. (See AP stylebook/search "ellipsis" if you want to check).Kaisershatner 15:49, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Others believe that the delivery text has been lost, because some of the words and phrases of the Nicolay copy do not match contemporary transcriptions of Lincoln's original speech.
  • "This version has been described by historian Garry Wills as "the most inexplicable of the five copies Lincoln made," and is sometimes referred to as the "second draft."" needs a citation.
  • "He pronounced that speech in a voice that all the multitude heard. The crowd was hushed into silence because the President stood before them...It was so Impressive! It was the common remark of everybody. Such a speech, as they said it was!" It supposed to be capitalized? I am not sure if that starts a new sentence of what, but it doesn't look right. Check the rule for ellipses.
In this case, it is a direct quotation from the source in which "Impressive!" is capitalized, I think this is just 19th Century style, but it is a direct quotation in any case.Kaisershatner 15:49, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
  • You need publishers, even if just the name of the website for web cites. 19 seems to be an abbreviation of the website name. You also need access dates for websites. 49 shouldn't display the url like it does, the title should be linked.
  • For the external links, I normally link them fully, I changed one so you could see what I mean. But I have seen it done a number of ways.

That's all I got. Fix those things, and I think you will be great. Good work! KnightLago (talk) 18:01, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Comment. After putting many hours into this article trying to clean up the references and MOS issues, I'm concerned that there are serious issues in what I am finding about the sourcing. The example I give below occurs many times; it may not be the best example, it's the one I'm working on at this moment. First, the link was dead. Next, I found the link in the internet archive, and it's only a jpeg picture of the Everett copy of the Gettysburg address. The text says:

  • The Everett Copy, also known as the "Everett-Keyes" copy, was sent by President Lincoln to Edward Everett in early 1864, at Everett's request. Everett was collecting the speeches given at the Gettysburg dedication into one bound volume to sell for the benefit of stricken soldiers at New York's Sanitary Commission Fair. The draft Lincoln sent became the third autograph copy, and is now in the possession of the Illinois State Historical Library in Springfield, Illinois, where it is currently on display in the Treasures Gallery of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum.

But nothing in that text is verified by a link to a picture of a copy of the Gettysburg address, and with many samples just like this, I'm finding that although the text is sprinkled with citations that make the article appear to be well sourced, these citations don't actually verify the text in many cases. Sorry for the bad news, but this article needs to have every citation checked and verified. Showing a picture of the Everett copy of the Gettysburg address doesn't verify that it was sent to Everett in 1864, that Everett was going to sell a bound volume, that it became the third copy, or that it's now in Illinois on display. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:03, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Also, there are still numerous unformatted citations; still working on those, but it's time consuming. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:11, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
I can't sort this out:
  • Charles Hale "had notebook and pencil, and as Lincoln spoke very slowly, Mr. Hale was positive that he caught every word. He took down what he declared was the exact language of Lincoln’s address, and his declaration was as good as the oath of a court stenographer. His associates confirmed his testimony, which was received, as it deserved to be at its face value."
It's a citation to one book source inside a direct quote cited to another book source. I think there may be some missing quotes in here; if not, it's unclear what book is being cited and what the exact quote is. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:18, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
I've done all the ref cleanup I'm able to do. I also had to remove a lot of strange retrieval dates for book sources that weren't attached to any URLs. Lastaccessdate is used to indicate when a URL was retrieved, so without a URL, they don't make sense; it's unfortunate the URLs weren't listed when the books were accessed. I tried to solve part of the sourcing issue by moving the images to Notes (a, b, c ... ) instead of References (1, 2, 3 ... ). Now that the images are distinguished from citations, it would be helpful if someone would go through and see if the article is sufficiently cited. There are a number of statements in the sections about each copy which appeared to be cited before, but weren't cited by the images, so now should be rechecked for verifiability. I think that's all I can do for now. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:24, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
There is also still a problem with capitalization. Each copy section has a capital Copy (example, Nicolay Copy), but within the text, we find uncapped (example, Nicolay copy). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:48, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

FARC commentary

Suggested FA criteria concerns are referencing (1c) and formatting (2). Marskell (talk) 17:05, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Obviously a lot's been done. Moving to get further comments. Marskell (talk) 17:05, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, can you clarify what is meant by "formatting (2)." Also, I have to disagree about the sourcing - it is much better than when the FAR began and IMO it is currently at least adequate. Kaisershatner (talk) 16:58, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
Per WP:WIAFA, 1c refers to the level of citation, while 2c refers to consistently formatted citations. I think I've gotten most of the 2c issues now. I'd like for others to look at the 1c issues. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:20, 22 December 2007 (UTC)
^ e.g., see infra, Nicolay's statement that Lincoln brought the first part of the speech on Executive Mansion stationery.
Avoid using abbreviations like ibid: Knowledge (XXG):FN#Style recommendations. Use named refs instead. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:11, 22 December 2007 (UTC)
Looks good to me. Well done, everyone. Marskell (talk) 12:24, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
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 Knowledge (XXG) talk:Featured article review. No further edits should be made to this page.
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The article was kept 07:23, 12 January 2008.

—Preceding unsigned comment added by Coloane (talk • contribs) 03:03, 11 January 2008 (UTC) This article should be improved more in order to re-consider itself as FA article:

  • There is no source in the lead.
Sources are not required in the lead - its just a summary of the article itself, no unique claims are made which require citations. (Caniago (talk) 03:07, 11 January 2008 (UTC))
Sources should be given no matter it is a lead or the body of the article. Coloane (talk) 03:16, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
We do provide the sources for any claims made in the lead : they're in the article body. (Caniago (talk) 03:23, 11 January 2008 (UTC))
Sources should be shown not only in the lead but also the body of the article. In this case you do need to link the related reference(s) on the same reference(s). Coloane (talk) 03:42, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
Show me a policy which supports your claim. (Caniago (talk) 03:45, 11 January 2008 (UTC))
Please read WP:V. The very first line in the policy states that "The threshold for inclusion in Knowledge (XXG) is verifiability, not truth." There should be a couple citations in each paragraph at the least, especially to verify claims that are likely to be challenged.Coloane (talk) 03:57, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
All our claims, including those in the intro are cited in the article. (Caniago (talk) 04:08, 11 January 2008 (UTC))
so you fully do not understand the concept of verifiability. Anyway, I am not going to make my comment here anymore so that I can go back to my operation room as I am a brain surgeon here. good luck! Coloane (talk) 04:14, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
  • size is relatively big that spliting this article into smaller, more specific articles is necessary.
There is only 30KB of prose which is within the guidelines at WP:SIZE. (Caniago (talk) 03:07, 11 January 2008 (UTC))
Guideline is guideline and it should be respected. Currently the size of that article is 82kbs. Coloane (talk) 03:16, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
We do respect the guidelines: which with 30KB prose says "< 30 KB Length alone does not justify division" (Caniago (talk) 03:23, 11 January 2008 (UTC))
This article is currently 82kbs long. Did you check it carefully? Coloane (talk) 03:42, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
Yes, I have a tool which does it. You are not calculating the prose size correctly. (Caniago (talk) 03:45, 11 January 2008 (UTC))
Don't try to confuse me. It is 82kbs. Period!
You are plainly wrong. Here are the stats: File size: 241 kB, Prose size (HTML): 64 kB, References (HTML): 92 kB, Prose size (text only): 30 kB (4445 words), References (text only): 23 kB (Caniago (talk) 04:08, 11 January 2008 (UTC))
  • A clear stat didn't provide in the section of demography (i.e. ethnic group, languages, religion practise, etc)To.
Have no idea what you are referring to. Please explain. (Caniago (talk) 03:07, 11 January 2008 (UTC))
Please refer to the section and clearly there is no table to show the point(s).
The points are more clearly explained with prose. (Caniago (talk) 03:23, 11 January 2008 (UTC))
You should provide a clear table to illustrate the % of each ethnic groups(that should not be in the section of culture) and language used as well. Coloane (talk) 03:42, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
No, our presentation matches other FA standard country articles. (Caniago (talk) 03:45, 11 January 2008 (UTC))
If you stubbornly claimed this as an FA standard, it is your personal view. Coloane (talk) 03:57, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
No, its the collective view of the people who have reviewed FA standard country articles. (Caniago (talk) 04:09, 11 January 2008 (UTC))
  • Too few external links provided.
There are no requirements on the number of external links. We've provided only reliable external links as per WP:EL (Caniago (talk) 03:07, 11 January 2008 (UTC))
same as above. Links doesn't cover extensively. Coloane (talk) 03:16, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
Which links are missing? (Caniago (talk) 03:23, 11 January 2008 (UTC))
I am not obliged to let you know which links should be provided. There are currently 5 links are provided with 4 links are totally from "government". Coloane (talk) 03:42, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
If you can't tell us what we need do to improve, there's nothing we can do. (Caniago (talk) 03:45, 11 January 2008 (UTC))
Again, I am not obliged to provide what link is situable and let you add the related links over there. You should judge by yourself. Coloane (talk) 03:57, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
We have judged it for ourselves - all the relevant links are already included. (Caniago (talk) 04:08, 11 January 2008 (UTC))
No valid reason for a merge has been provided. The sections are fine to stand-alone. (Caniago (talk) 03:07, 11 January 2008 (UTC))
Ecology and geography should be in 1 group. This article is only the introduction and details should not be over-informed. Coloane (talk) 03:11, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
Why? (Caniago (talk) 03:23, 11 January 2008 (UTC))
ecology is a relatively specialised subject that should be removed and put it to another article like geography of Indonesia. Coloane (talk) 03:42, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
No, its an important part of the country. (Caniago (talk) 03:45, 11 January 2008 (UTC))
It is important but it doesn't mean that all details should be written in the introduction article. Coloane (talk) 03:57, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
We don't include all details. Its a high level overview. (Caniago (talk) 04:08, 11 January 2008 (UTC))
This is not a section for voting keep or remove, please read the policy carefully. Coloane (talk) 04:06, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Close - per Caniago's comments above - nulified empty arguments against nomination, and per my comments on this being a bad faith pointy argument. In fact, this review should be removed. --Merbabu (talk) 04:15, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
Bad faith pointy nomination

This is a bad faith nomination because of comments made to his Macau FAC. THis should be withdrawn or report to FAC. Each of his points are invalid - for example, the first one: the info and sources are all in the text. Stop wasting time. --Merbabu (talk) 03:01, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

This is not related to FAR. Plus I don't know Caniago is from Indonesia. I think it is a co-incidence. I also put several reviews here like South Africa, Cape Town, etc. See below! there is no conflict of interest. Coloane (talk) 03:11, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
Please see instructions at WP:FAR, Nominators typically assist in the process of improvement; they may post only one nomination at a time, ... SandyGeorgia (Talk) 04:45, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
It is not coincidence. You were discussing Indonesia with Caniago himself on the Macau user page. This is disruption only because caniago has opposed the nomination for Macau, your home town and an article for which you seem quite defensive about. --Merbabu (talk) 04:22, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
There is currently a tread open at 3RR regarding Coloane. I'm sure the administrators would be more than happy to hear any third party opinions. Cheers, Bogdan 04:34, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
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 Knowledge (XXG) talk:Featured article review. No further edits should be made to this page.
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The article was kept 06:02, 9 January 2008.

According WP:FACR an article that is the subject of an edit war should not be featured. The current edit war has caused page protection and thus Islam no longer meets the featured article criteria Alexfusco 21:45, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Expanding on the nomination: Islam has been protected multiple times since becoming a featured article in May 2007 (admittedly, by myself multiple times). It was protected once in June 2007, once in July 2007 (other than during its appearance on the Main Page), once in September 2007, once in December 2007, and now, again, in January 2008. This seems to be a persistent problem. I understand this is a contentious subject and the repeated edit wars are not surprising at all, but criterion (1e) is about stability. Thus, the question of whether the instability of this article should lead to demotion should certainly be on the table. Additionally, the persistent edit wars are a signal that there might be other problems with the article. -- tariqabjotu 01:16, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
The article might do a lot better if substantial changes are proposed and discussed on the talk page first, or if this approach is effectively enforced. Too many people have too many views on the topic, and, given the topic's breadth, it results in people deciding to rewrite sections they think need changing - which other certain editors may oppose. I am partial to some of the disputes mentioned above, so I won't comment on them in general. I will however state that the most recent dispute is the result of a one-man pointish editing spree by Arrow740 who decided that he was just going to add more and more incredibly biased material anytime he was reverted by other editors, thereby baiting multiple editors into reverting him yet managing to avoid violating 3rr himself. Surely cases such as these should be assessed differently than the free-for-all's from last June/July (which were rightly protected). ITAQALLAH 02:13, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
The recent protection was due to the actions of User:Tigeroo, who reverted six times. He has been the cause of the recent edit-warring. Itaqallah and I agree to the consensus version that was in place before he started whitewashing the jihad section. I've asked itaqallah to explain how my edits violate guidelines or policies and he hasn't been able to do so. The discussion can be found on the page. He didn't mention that I actually removed many of my additions after discussion on the talk page: . Arrow740 (talk) 02:42, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
Arrow, there had been at least four editors explaining to you why your additions violated policies on Talk:Islam#New additions. Please don't play these games. You did self revert, but several hours later you were back again making more tendentious insertions. ITAQALLAH 02:50, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
(edit conflict) As pointed out above, it is not only the recent edit war, Islam is not a stable article look at the page protection log and tell me why with so many dispute protections the article while it was featured how the article is stable Alexfusco 02:53, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
I don't think the article has a low quality. As Itaqallah said: "the most recent dispute is the result of a one-man pointish editing spree by Arrow740 who decided that he was just going to add more and more incredibly biased material anytime he was reverted by other editors". This can not be more true. --Be happy!! (talk) 10:46, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

FAR is not dispute resolution. Someone needs to better explain why the criteria are at issue, or this will be closed. Marskell (talk) 07:40, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

The criteria at issue is 1e because an article that has frequent edit wars is not stable and as seen in the page protection log edit wars are a frequent problem Alexfusco 12:29, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
My question would be: is there a basic version underneath the reverts (so to speak) that is holding up over time? I read this at the time of FAC and it's stilll recognizable to me.
1e needs to be treated carefully. Certain articles—Islam is obviously one—are always going to face a constant, low-level instability. 1e has not been used to preclude such articles; if it were, certain core topics could never be FA. That protection log is no worse than Global warming, for example, which was kept here. Marskell (talk) 19:13, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
Fine, but there's no reason for you or Joelr31 to imply that there was no legitimate reason for opening this FAR. Note that neither I nor Alexfusco5 are involved in the conflict(s) with this article, so the reminder that this is not dispute resolution is misplaced. If you were talking to one of the other editors who have commented here, please make that clear. -- tariqabjotu 20:27, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Reply to Marskell: Yes but the protection for has mainly been for vandalism and on Global warming there has been less content disputes in more time Alexfusco 22:26, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

I don't think this was illegitimate in that anyone means badly. But this nom misses what FAR is and can do, and has not properly cited the criteria:
  • The article is f-protected anyway. We can't do anything to improve content at FAR. At least until the 28th the appropriate forum is the article talk.
  • If the problem is that people just can't get along and are shouting at each other on talk, Knowledge (XXG):Dispute resolution is that way.
  • Protections in-themselves do not mean a 1e breach or, again, we would be excluding a great many important articles from FA. Global warming, Barack Obama, even Lion, have significant protection logs. One needs to show how the warring has compromised the base article. Here is Islam at the time of featuring; compare to today and you see substantially similar pages. In fact, I find this quite encouraging: the article is holding up well (with the possible exception of Jihad). I've watched it and commented on the initial FAC, and I think it's a good example of Wikipedians keeping their house in order.
Joel has closed this twice and I'll be closing again. If people want to talk about 1e in general, WT:FA might be appropriate. Marskell (talk) 06:00, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
2 points 1) I was not suggesting it was due to the protection, I was saying thereis a dispute problem. 2) You can't close this FAR just because of your opinion Alexfusco 12:43, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
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 Knowledge (XXG) talk:Featured article review. No further edits should be made to this page.
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The article was kept 19:04, 8 January 2008.

previous FAR
I don't know who the nominator is. Notified WP Chess, WP Strategy games‎, User:Ioannes Pragensis, User:Bubba73 and User:Andreas Kaufmann‎. --Kaypoh (talk) 08:15, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

The article has many problems:

  • Referencing is not FA standard:
    • Only 1 reference in "Rules" section.
    • Paragraph 2 of "Predecessors" section has no references.
    • Paragraph 5 of "Birth of a sport (1850–1945)" section has no references.
    • Paragraphs 2, 3 and 6 of "Post-war era (1945 and later)" section has no references.
    • Last two paragraphs of "Modern" section has no references.
    • Only 1 reference in "Notation for recording moves" section.
    • First two paragraphs of "Strategy and tactics" section has no references.
    • Only 2 references in "Fundamentals of strategy" section.
    • First paragraph of "Fundamentals of tactics" section has no references.
    • First and last paragraph of "Opening" section has no references.
    • Only 1 reference in "Middlegame" section.
    • Only 1 reference in "Endgame" section.
    • No references in "Chess composition" section.
    • Last three paragraphs of "Organization of competitions" has no references.
  • The article is poorly organised.
    • The "Rules" section has no info about the how each piece moves.Fixed
    • The "Strategy and tactics" and "Notation for recording moves" sections should go after the "Rules" section. Then the "Competitive" play section. After that should be the "Variants" and "Computers" section which are about other types of chess. Last should be the "Mathematics" and "Psychology" sections which are about the study of chess that is not about the moves, and the "Place in culture" section. The structure is OK.
    • The "Variants" section needs more info.
    • Some paragraphs are too short.
  • The lead section is too long.Fixed.
  • References 4, 9, 10 and 15 have formatting problems.Fixed.

--Kaypoh (talk) 13:57, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

    • I would take issue with some of your comments:
      1. I don't think the rules section could give a useful treatment of all the piece moves in a reasonable amount of space, so this detail is best off being broken into the subarticle.
      2. What's the reason behind the order of sections you recommend? I kind of like bringing the interesting history and culture sections to the front and moving the technical details to the rear.
      3. Since there's no minimum number of references, telling how few footnotes appear in a section isn't very useful; it would be more helpful to indicate which statements you feel are likely to be challenged and why so. For instance, the materially in the rules section seems very unlikely to be disputed by anyone.
    • Thanks, Christopher Parham (talk) 02:31, 11 December 2007 (UTC)


    • Referencing: As far as I know, there is no rule for exact number of references in a paragraph. I agree with Christopher Parham, you should give explanation, why this or that is challenged, and then we can discuss the matter further. Otherwise it is a pure formalism.
    • The "Rules" section has no info about the how each piece moves: Agree, I will revert it there from a previous version.
    • The "Strategy and tactics" and "Notation for recording moves" sections should go after the "Rules" section etc. Is a matter of taste, I like more the current structure. But if a majority of editors will wish another version, I am not strictly against it.
    • The "Variants" section needs more info. Disagree, "Variants" are not "International chess", which is the article about.
    • Some paragraphs are too short. Which ones?
    • The lead section is too long. Should be long, because the article itself is very long and rich. But I will try to shorten it a bit.
    • References 4, 9, 10 and 15 have formatting problems. I see that only 4 has a problem, and I will fix it. What is bad on 9, 10 and 15?
Thanks,--Ioannes Pragensis (talk) 09:16, 13 December 2007 (UTC)


  • Kaypoh, I do not understand your first sentence "I don't know who the nominator is". If we are talking of the nomination of Chess to FAR, I thought it was you ?
  • The last FAR on this article was in December 2006. Does that mean this article will go under a FAR every year ? Just putting some concerns on the Talk page and asking the help of the WikiProject Chess could be a simpler way to get the concerns addressed, could'nt it ?
  • I would agree with most of Pragensis' comments: we would need a bit more detail about your constructive remarks so that we can assess them.

Thanks anyway for giving us the opportunity to improve this crucial article! SyG (talk) 10:53, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

I notified the main contributors and WikiProjects, and I am supposed to notify the person who nominated the article for FAC, but I don't know who it is. If the article is always at featured quality then it will not have an FAR every year.

There is no minimum number of references but when there are so many unreferenced paragraphs, you have a problem. References always go after a comma or full stop, with no spaces in between. But if you agree that the structure is OK, no need to change it. --Kaypoh (talk) 14:33, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

I have fixed the references, so that they all come after a punctuation now. SyG (talk) 17:12, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

OK, I will strike that. I see the lead section is a bit shorter now, so I will also strike that but try to make sure the lead is a summary and does not have details like "In 1997, a match between Garry Kasparov, then World Champion, and a computer proved for the first time that machines are able to beat even the strongest human players." Since a few say the structure is OK I strike that also. The biggest problem is not enough references, and the second biggest problem is that it is not well written. You can see many short paragraphs with only one or two sentences, and English mistakes. --Kaypoh (talk) 10:05, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
  • Close FAR, seriously reviewed less than a year ago, I see no compelling reason for a new review. Further, I asked Kaypoh not to overwhelm FAR with multiple noms, and this is the fourth. Considering the number of articles with serious issues, this is not a productive use of FAR time. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 06:11, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
So you let lousy articles have the FA star? There is a good reason for a new review. The article has many unreferenced paragraphs and is not well written. I waited for the Premier League and Macintosh FARs to go to FARC before filing this one. That's why I create FARs but don't put them on the main FAR page. Somebody else put the FIFA World Cup FAR on the main FAR page before I want to. I think I can find many lousy FAs which should not be FA. Only after the Premier League and Macintosh FARs are closed and this one and the FIFA World Cup FAR go to FARC, then I will add a new FAR to the main FAR page. --Kaypoh (talk) 10:05, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
You do nothing for the credibility of your case by calling this a "lousy article." -Stellmach 19:28, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
OK, this is not a very lousy article but it is not good enough to be FA because it is not well written and has many unreferenced paragraphs. I see the Rules section now has info on how each piece moves, so I will strike that. Keep improving the article. --Kaypoh (talk) 06:42, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
  • Close FAR, I agree with SandyGeorgia. The bad reference and lack of rules were corrected, and now I see no further major problems. Minor issues can be solved on the discussion pages without formal FAR.--Ioannes Pragensis (talk) 22:48, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
Do not close until all problems are fixed. --Kaypoh (talk) 06:42, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
All problems are never fixed. FAR is for problems which are not compatible with the FA status, and I do not see such problems now. The other -minor or debatable- problems are to be discussed on the talk page or you can try to fix them yourself.--Ioannes Pragensis (talk) 13:48, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
Most of the rest of these issues are related to lack of references, but are not specific. Perhaps the proper thing to do would be to add {{fact}} tags to the statements that need references? Blanket "section has insufficient references" statements are not very useful in this respect, IMO HermanHiddema (talk) 15:47, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
Sorry, my English is not very good. I mean, do not close the FAR until you improve the article so that it is good enough for FA. An article with so many unreferenced paragraphs is not good enough for FA. If there are only a few unreferenced paragraphs, you can ask me what I want to "challenge", but there are so many unreferenced paragraphs. But that is not the only issue. The article is not well-written and there are many short paragraphs. The Premier League FAR is closed and the Macintosh one is on FARC, going to close. The FIFA World Cup one is also on FAR, and Secret took it, so it is not mine. So you have no reason to close this when the article is not good enough for FA. --Kaypoh (talk) 06:58, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
But your English is well enough to understand our rules and usances; please read WP:V, WP:FACR and WP:WHEN. This is all about when and why cite. Please read it and tell me where you see the rule "each paragraph has at least one reference".--Ioannes Pragensis (talk) 19:51, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
  • Close FAR A heck of a lot of work was done to save this article's status a year ago and current issues are maintenance not deep-seated. Article still represents the best of our work. --Dweller (talk) 16:05, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
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 Knowledge (XXG) talk:Featured article review. No further edits should be made to this page.
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The article was kept 19:04, 8 January 2008.

Review commentary

Notifications left at WP Astronomy, WP Astronomical objects and WP Solar System, as well as Wiki alf, CKatz and BillC. Serendious 00:02, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

This article is very good, but it is nowhere near as good as it needs to be. Its levels of citation and comprehensiveness are not anywhere close to those of the other planetary articles. Plus, a recent spate of information from ESA has completely outdated much of this information, yet no effort has been made to include it. Serendious 10:45, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Please follow the notification instructions at WP:FAR to notify relevant WikiProjects and involved editors, using {{subst:FARMessage|Venus}} and post a list of notifications at the top of this FAR. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:32, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
I've added a note to the Solar System and astronomical objects wikiprojects, but I don't know who the main editors are for this article. Serendious 15:53, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
The now departed Worldtraveller wrote about two-thirds of the article prior to it becoming featured. I wrote the remainder on exploration and Venus in Culture. Others, of course, have added much to it since. — BillC 22:57, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
Serendipodous, I left you a sample at the top of this page. Next, as in the WP:FAR instructions, please click here, notice the top editors, notify them on their talk pages using {{subst:FARMessage|Venus}}, and complete the list above. Thanks, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:16, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
I will start work on bolstering the referencing in the next day or two. Can you highlight some of the recent spate of information from ESA that has completely outdated much of the article? — BillC 15:40, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
This page links to five separate issues that Venus Express has updated. Serendious 15:43, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Note Please state where you feel the referencing is inadequate. Joelito (talk) 22:24, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Comparing Venus to Mars reveals certain elements are not as well covered. For instance, Venus has no climate section. Its geography section mentions a number of interesting features, without going into any detail as to how they formed or what they are. There is no mention of Eve, Venus's prime meridian, and no mention of Venus's lava canyons like Styx. It's magnetosphere section barely rates a paragraph. The cultural section barely mentions the "morning star" and "evening star" without going into much detail about their cultural and historical significance (Mars gets an entire subsection on science fiction, for instance). Serendious 14:23, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
The absence of a climate section is because, as the article says, Venus has no climate: The surface of Venus is effectively isothermal; it retains a constant temperature between day and night and between the equator and the poles. The planet's minute axial tilt (less than three degrees, compared with 23 degrees for Earth), also minimises seasonal temperature variation. The only appreciable variation in temperature occurs with altitude. I suppose we could include a table of temperature against altitude, but would it add much? Does the data for it exist?
That absence of climate in itself would be worth noting in more detail. Also, that Venus Express seems to have confirmed lightning in the atmosphere would suggest there is more to Venus's climate than initially thought. Serendious 01:36, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
How could there possibly be even more detail about the absence of something? I'm not trying to be facetious; just trying to understand what it is you're expecting. --Doradus (talk) 20:40, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
There are processes at work in Venus's atmosphere that maintain this lack of climate. It might be a good idea to go into detail about what they are and how they work. Serendious 16:06, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
Not sure. Are Venusians as entrenched in popular culture to the extent that Martians are? Serendious 01:36, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
Not where I come from; for one thing, there was never a standard "Venusian": compare Heinlein's to C. L. Moore's; and the flying saucer people have added a few more. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:57, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

I believe that the issues suggested that this article has can be summed up as follows:

  • Lack of citations
  • Lack of comprehensiveness on:
    • Recent science developments, in particular atmospheric and climate science
    • Venus in culture, such as science fiction and the evening and morning star

The lack of citations in parts in the article I can accept, and am happy to accept this, for the parts that suffer from this are the exploration and cultural sections, which were my contributions. I wrote earlier that I would endeavour to bolster the referencing in the article; other wiki and non-wiki activities have kept me from doing this, but I should have time over the holiday season. Although much do not constitute particularly controversial statements ("The Venera 3 probe crash-landed on Venus on 1 March 1966"), but I agree it needs better referencing.

With regard to the comprehensiveness of the article about Venus in science fiction, I'm not sure what substantially more could be written here without descending into a list of Sci-Fi associations, which already exists at Venus in fiction. Venus doesn't have the same historical traction in fictional literature Mars has had, perhaps for the reason that Mars is a better candidate for life. The conversation above on this matter makes reference to this, but I wasn't able to detect a consensus emerging from that: perhaps one will.

The Venus in culture section draws from a wide cross section of cultural heritage including mentions of the many cultures that viewed the plant as two separate bodies. I acknowledge that it's a little disorganised with respect to cultural, geographical or historical lineage, but a bit of rearranging (and referencing) should sort that.

The recent scientific developments issue I find interesting. I find it hard to agree that 'much of the article' has become outdated, since the recent developments seem aligned with atmospheric and climatic science, and I see coverage of that, while important, unlikely to become the dominant section of an article on Venus, for there is much else to say about the planet. But the recent developments seem very recent: I tend to look in on the Venus Express website every few weeks and, though I might be mistaken, the link you added here ultimately refers to a series of science press releases that were issued by ESA on 28 November. If so, perhaps the charge that 'no effort has been made to include it' is a little unjust, as it was made only ten days after the press release. This is, after all, an encyclopaedia article, and not a science news blog. I may of course have misread your meaning here, so please correct me in this, or any other regard. — BillC 00:36, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, sorry about that. I'm a bit overloaded at the moment and sometimes I get the feeling that I'm carrying the entire solar system topic on my shoulders. Ruslik emailed me a series of science papers on the new discoveries. I'm planning on getting going on them as soon as I finish Europa. Serendious 00:41, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
That is an entirely self-appointed feeling. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.69.182.106 (talk) 00:00, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

FARC commentary

Suggested FA criteria concerns are comprehensiveness and not up-to-date material (1b) and referencing (1c). Marskell (talk) 16:11, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Keep (though I would of course say that.) Since the FAR was raised, 15 more references have been added to the article, a {{cn}}-tagged sentences has been removed and another provided with a reference (there are no further), referenced text describing some of the atmospheric science findings of Venus Express which were released on 28 November has been added, and a discussion of Venus's prime meridian added. — BillC 23:21, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Keep BillC's revisions have addressed my initial concerns. The current revision is fine by me. Serendious 23:27, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
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 Knowledge (XXG) talk:Featured article review. No further edits should be made to this page.
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The article was kept 14:51, 7 January 2008.

Review commentary

Notified WP Biography (A&E group), WP Ireland, and User:Filiocht (main contributor and nominator but now inactive)

1(c): no inline citations. Calliopejen1 17:19, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

FARC commentary

Suggested FA criteria concern is citations (1c). Marskell 19:40, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Status? Five edits in a month; are there still plans to work on this? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:40, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
    • Perhaps someone who feels the citation is inadequate could identify some specific problems? Christopher Parham (talk) 19:19, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
      • Only one of the quotes is referenced. References for the others would be good, as well as for the statements: "Moore's work is sometimes seen as outside the mainstream"; "he is as often seen as the first great modern Irish novelist"; "generally recognized as representing the birth of the Irish short story"; "George and Maurice had become estranged, mainly because of the unflattering portrait of the latter"; and "It is now believed that he was the natural father of her daughter". I'd prefer to see the lesbianism part referenced too. Two other points: "traveled to India to learn wisdom," implies that Indian mysticism is wisdom, which is a matter of opinion; and "As of 2004, a plan for the restoration of the house is being considered" should be updated if possible. DrKiernan 13:40, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
        • I would add cites for the statements on the influence of Zola and "...widely recognized as the first major novel in the realist style". In my opinion, the article is also rather weak on 1b, the "Comprehensive" criterion. I would assume that if he did "absorb the lessons of the French realists", there would be much more described on his interactions with Zola and others. His controversies are simply stated in single sentences without details. There are two biographies listed in the references section so I assume there is plenty of material to make a more interesting article. --RelHistBuff 15:11, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Hold on a bit before closing I only found out this Irish article was up for review a few days ago and have just collected 2 books on Moore from my library today, so will try to add some useful citations in the next few days. TIA ww2censor 03:18, 28 October 2007 (UTC)
Great, thx censor. Marskell 10:15, 28 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Remove—1a and fails the requirement for a professional standard of formatting in its obsessive overlinking. Problems in logic, integration of ideas into sentences, organisation of the flow of ideas within paragraphs. I've copy-edited the lead and first section as samples. Tony (talk) 14:10, 31 October 2007 (UTC) And under-referenced—1c.
I have a question, Tony. Looking at the WP:MOSLINKS standard, there may be some low added-value links in the article like some of the country links. In your opinion, what links are not needed? For me, the 1b problem is more serious. At the moment, the article seems like GA-level bare-bones. --RelHistBuff 16:37, 31 October 2007 (UTC)
OK, if you guys are gettin' stuck into it, we'll hold off - good luck and give us all a hoy when ready for review. cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 12:25, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

*Remove—1b and 1c. Tony (talk) 13:41, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

We are still on hold here, as Wcensor and Ceoil have edited recently. Marskell (talk) 19:46, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Update: Not ignoring this but have been traveling for the last few weeks. I'd like this to be held as I think it can be saved given another 2 weeks work. Thanks. Ceoil (talk) 09:52, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Seriously stalled. We'll need another update soon. Marskell (talk) 10:22, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm still working on it. ww2censor (talk) 20:56, 15 December 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep There is only one thing that I'm still concerned about, which is the lack of a citation for: 'Lady Gregory wrote that it: "hits impartially all round".' Not enough to demote over. DrKiernan (talk) 12:10, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

After four long months (!!!) I am going to keep this. Not perfect but much better. Marskell (talk) 14:47, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

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Removed status

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

The article was removed 18:16, 25 January 2008.

Review commentary

Notified WP:TROP, WP:TEXAS, WP:HOUSTON and User:Cyrius.

Primary failure is on 1(b). As noted on the talk page, the article almost exclusively is about the events in Galveston - not the wider events surrounding the storm. There is little synoptic history of the actual storm, and no information on any damage outside of the one city.--Nilfanion (talk) 01:54, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

Nilfanion, please follow the instructions at the top of the WP:FAR page to notify involved editors and relevant WikiProjects with {{subst:FARMessage|Galveston Hurricane of 1900}} and post a note about notifications back here, following the example on other FARs. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:07, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
Done, though this strike me as an obvious bot function...--Nilfanion (talk) 23:33, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

There exists references to impact from the storm at other locations (Cuba) etc., I will have to dig them up out of the NY Times archives. BUT, you have to remember this was 1900 and much of the American South, outside of a few large cities, was sparsely populated -- and Galveston was the leading city in the State of Texas. The storm's notability comes from the fact that in 1900 Galveston was as well known nationally as New Orleans or Houston is today. As with today's Hurricane Katrina, the focus of much of the "damage" from the storm is noted on the major city/population center it impacted; lack of media and communication infrastructure imposes limits on how much information was available in 1900. Nsaum75 (talk) 10:23, 17 November 2007

I agree its hard to obtain, but without them we cannot call this article comprehensive, Hurricane Katrina does detail the limited effects in Cuba for example. The infobox also mentions the Great Lakes regions and Canada: what happened there? As for problems with the meteorological information, it is not clear from the prose if the minimum pressure of 936mbar occurred at landfall or whilst the storm was still at sea.--Nilfanion (talk) 12:01, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
Hurricane Katrina happened in 2005, when news spread quicker and more technology existed to track storms. WhisperToMe (talk) 16:46, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Massive external link farm needs to be pruned per WP:EL, WP:RS, WP:NOT and references and notes are not fully formatted. A whole lot of WP:UNITS work is needed. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:11, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
    • I've done the first and the third point. I'll work on the second point later. Titoxd 18:38, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
      • One question: since when do we add &nbsp;s before hours and minutes? I'm talking about something like 8&nbsp;p.m.... I had never seen that before. Titoxd 01:00, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
        • Numerical and non-numerical elements :-) If you think of it in terms of preventing line wrap, it makes complete sense. The idea of non-breaking hard spaces is that we not have items separated by line wrap, so ...
          • Would you like to see 3
          • am ?
        • I add them on roads, highways and routes as well, and asked that they also be added to the 7
        • World Trade Center article, since separating the 7 from the WTC looked dumb. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:26, 24 November 2007 (UTC)
As I understand it, little is known about what happened outside of Galveston. There was flooding in Havana, Cuba and that's about all I've heard. There simply may not be information on what happened in other affected places, I can't imagine that someone hasn't looked. As to the lack of synoptic history, well, with storms before 1950, you're not gonna get much in the way of a meteorological deconstruction. IE: "Formed from a tropical wave that came off the African coast at such and such date and moved westward in response to a high pressure ridge to the north..." We can certainly look, but most of those kind of judgements involved a lot of guesswork in those days. Certainly these things are something to look into, but I don't think it should jeopardize the status of the article. -- §HurricaneERICarchive 02:12, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
On the contrary, if we don't have information on the deaths the storm caused in the mid-west, the NE US and Canada the current status is not really deserved. Its not like we do not have reliable sources.--Nilfanion (talk) 12:48, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
Nilfanion, his point is that there are unlikely to be any reliable sources that specifically address the following. We need a good-faith effort to find this, but if that effort fails then the lack of information should not count against the article. WhisperToMe (talk) 01:51, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

FARC commentary

Suggested FA criteria concerns is comprehensiveness (1b). Marskell (talk) 19:31, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
  • No matter how hard I look, I cannot find any sources that talk about the storm's impact outside Galveston. I've already searched several databases, such as EBSCOhost, Lexis-Nexis, and Jstor, but I cannot find either a primary source from the period, nor a secondary source describing non-Galveston effects. If anyone finds anything that can help the page satisfy WP:V for new info, please put them here. Titoxd 04:50, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
Seek in the NYT archives with suitable queries and there ye shall find. Try other major papers too and follow up leads from the new information and you'll find more. Further meteorlogical info is also out there too.--Nilfanion (talk) 16:07, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
Oh and how about the actual article on the storm in the monthly weather review?--Nilfanion (talk) 16:27, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
  • Remove unless information is added; no progress since FAR started on that. I'd expect information about Cuba, the Gulf Coast, elsewhere in Texas and right along the storm's track to the dead fishermen off Newfoundland.--Nilfanion (talk) 23:30, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep Storm affected town which was one of the largest and wealthiest at the time of landfall, however in 2008, town is no longer notible on global scale. This should not affect, nor be a factor in removal of the article from feature status. Due to limits of media & forecasting of the day, limited information exists outside of where it made landfall (although NY Times and NWS archives some information). However, given the amount of information that does exist, it should not negate the impact it made on Texas and the 6,000-12,000 people who died; nor does it negate the fact that the storm is a poster child of what *can* happen in a storm. History repeats itself, especially if we reduce the importance or visibility of previous lessons learned. Nsaum75 (talk) 03:59, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Hurricanes are not point events. Hurricane Katrina deals primarily with the impact of that storm on the Gulf Coast; like you would expect. However,inland effects are covered. "The most disastrous storm that has visited this section in several years" would make it notable in its own right (judging from current standards), and that's purely the effects in/near Ohio. Information is there, to leave it out is to not be comprehensive.--Nilfanion (talk) 10:46, 5 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Now that I have come to a slow point here at my work, I'll dig through NYT and the weather reports to try to give the article a more "national" perspective. Suprised that no one had done so as of yet. Nsaum75 (talk) 20:40, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Closing: I appreciate WhisperToMe's suggestion of waiting, but we can only wait so long. No work is happening here. I think the citation and comprehensiveness concerns raised are non-trivial. Marskell (talk) 18:14, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

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 Knowledge (XXG) talk:Featured article review. No further edits should be made to this page.
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The article was removed 08:54, 23 January 2008.

Review commentary

Message left at Josh the Nerd, Warren, WP Microsoft Windows and WP Computing by OSX. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:25, 18 December 2007 (UTC)‎ Additional messages left at Ta bu shi da yu and SchmuckyTheCat SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:32, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

I've been periodically viewing this page every-now-and-then waiting for it to be improved to FA quality, but this simply hasn't happened so I am listing this article for FAR. OSX (talk • contributions) 10:17, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Please state which criteria you feel it does not meet or this FAR will be closed. Joelito (talk) 11:31, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
The criteria that the article does not meet are 1.c and 2.c, as the article has missing citations, and the article does not use a wide variety of sources with more than half of the references from Microsoft (biased). On top of this, the references don't contain all the parameters like the access date and author. The article also fails to meet criterion 1.a, as the article is not well written in some places as sentences have been substituted by bullet points. Just look at the Windows Vista article, which is a GA class article, yet is more worthy of featured article status than this one. OSX (talk • contributions) 06:21, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

There's also no section about its history/development (1.b). Strangely, though, the lead talks about its history/development (2.a). Punctured Bicycle 08:59, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

OSX, please follow the nomination instructions at the top of FAR and notify involved editors and relevant WikiProjects with {{subst:FARMessage|Windows XP}}, and post a note back to here confirming notifications. Thank you, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:45, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
Sorry, done now though. OSX (talk • contributions) 08:32, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

This "article" is absolutely the worse case of an advertisement I've ever seen on Knowledge (XXG). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.164.60.172 (talk) 13:13, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Hardly. Now if you have something constructive to add, I for one would be happy to hear it. - 211.30.82.214 (talk) 10:57, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

FARC commentary

Suggested FA criteria concerns are references and their formatting (1c and 2c). Marskell (talk) 02:19, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Remove - Large parts have no inline citations (1c) and the lack of a development section means it is not comprehensive (2b). Also the sentence Windows XP is available in many languages - Could we be a bit more precise maybe.--Peter Andersen (talk) 09:09, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

  • Remove Lacks sufficient inline citations. Existing citations are poorly formatted. Improper use of non-free media, the box art does not benefit the article. Jay32183 (talk) 22:40, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Closing: Listish, stub sections, missing publishers in references (my absolute minimum), unsourced areas. It's also poorly rationalized (e.g. criticism should be woven throughout and sales/market share have a clear headline). Removing. Marskell (talk) 08:52, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
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 Knowledge (XXG) talk:Featured article review. No further edits should be made to this page.
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The article was removed 17:57, 19 January 2008.

Review commentary

Notifications were added at WP Portugal, WP Disaster management, Sandover, Rbellin, Aloan --Donar Reiskoffer (talk) 07:28, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

2(c): no in-line references at all.--Donar Reiskoffer (talk) 07:51, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Remove, unless citations added. Comment I would agree it has plenty of references—in the "References" section. I would not, however, agree that it has sufficient in-line references. There are a very few page numbers, which can be found immediately after direct quotes. However, most of the paragraphs throughout most of the article have no reference citations at all. Unless these are added, the FA star should be removed. The article is well-written overall, and someone with access to the listed references could surely cite the facts accordingly and save it from that fate! MeegsC | Talk 14:03, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
So, um, how do we know how many citations are needed? I mean, if a paragraph has only one reference, do we know that it needed three? One per sentence? Is there a formula, or do we do something like, "Statements likely to be challenged?" That last would then seem to ask who has challenged the factuality, wouldn't it? Wouldn't it be necessary then to have Donarreiskoffer actually say that something is untrue? Wouldn't it wait for the talk page to have challenges? Otherwise, would the people nominating please list exactly the proper density of note per word so that all articles may be saved from the fire? Also, if page numbers are necessary, is it possible that there are no page numbers? I've used references before that didn't have them. If you know that there are page numbers, does that mean you have the references at hand? If you do not have them, what does that mean? Again, the magic formula would be nice. That way people could enter their articles into databases and produce stars. Utgard Loki (talk) 15:55, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
The reader should be able to find, looking at the article alone, where any assertion which "is challenged or is likely to be challenged", can be supported. If it is genuinely consensus of all the authorities listed, fine; but this article is (quite sensibly) divided into historical and philosophical sections, and sources which support one will not gp into the other. What we should require is enough citation to find the book in which the assertion is, and then to find the page on which it is stated, once one has the book in hand. Page numbers are preferable for this; but common sense should apply. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:53, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
Marvellous page. Nothing wrong with it at all. Giano (talk) 14:38, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
  • Questions: For the sort of citation that makes an FA, compare Edward Teller, just successfully reviewed.
    • It looks like the history of the quake itself is a collation of Brooks, Kendrick, and perhaps Chase. Is this true? (If it is, the article should say so, and not leave the reader to guess.)
    • Is every detail in those sections easily found there?
    • If not, what are the exceptions?
    • What did you use Seco y Pinto for?
    • Where is Pombal's survey found (and the comparison with Chinese work)? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:43, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment - this is featured article standard. No need to remove. Put on a list of articles that need the connection between their content and their references made clearer. Carcharoth (talk) 12:54, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment - Compared to Great Fire of London this article does not seem comprehensive and therefore fails criteria 1b. Questions I would like to have answered when reading this article are for example: What was Lisbon like at the time? If there were political tensions after the quake, then what were the political situation at the time. Also the lead mentions that the quake disrupted Portugals colonial ambitions - this is not mentioned later. On a more scientific note it would be nice to know if Lisbon is located on a major fault line and is there a history of earthquakes in the area?--Peter Andersen (talk) 21:38, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
    • I agree it could be more comprehensive, but that is something that should be addressed over the next few weeks (hopefully). For now, your fault line query can be answered by Image:1755 Lisbon Earthquake Location.gif (which should be discussed in the article). The red line is the boundary between the Eurasian plate and the African plate. See also Image:Plates tect2 en.svg. The epicentre was to the south of that boundary, and Lisbon is to the north. It would be nice to know how the USGS (and others) calculate epicentres for historical earthquakes like this. Carcharoth (talk) 01:02, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
    • "Could be as good as X" is not the same thing as "is not FA standard." It is FA standard. It's not a footnoterphone traffic jam, but it has references and citations for statements that are or are likely to be challenged. With that standard, the burden is on those who wish to remove: what do you challenge, and where is the contrary information that challenges it? This is not, "Where can you imagine having a question," like the fellow who wanted "Montana is a state" footnoted, but where is there contrary information that throws this into question? The article is pretty faithful and synthetic. Geogre (talk) 02:14, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment My recollection is that the disparate sections of the article (philosophy and seismology, for example) came from various subject experts, not from those named book sources; it's very much a synthetic article. I think it will be hard to retrofit the article with footnotes. Though largely accurate, the most debated fact in the article is the death count; I've seen estimates a fraction of the 60,000-100,000 thousand figure, and the article would benefit from a discussion about the limits of our actual knowledge about how many people died. (There was no census taken, etc.) In any case, however, it's unfair to compare this article to the one about the London fire. There's far less readily-available source material for the 1755 earthquake, in my opinion, and no good recent book-length studies, at least in English. Sandover (talk) 02:55, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment There are two main issues: WP:WIAFA 1(b) "Comprehensive" and 1(c) "factually accurate", which includes consideration of WP:V.
  • 1(b) is actually the more important one in this particular case, IMO, for reasons I'll explain in the next section. I think we are spending time rehashing tired old philosophical arguments about 1(c), when we have a responsibility (to the general readership of Knowledge (XXG)) to spend more time digging into the topic itself to see where we can improve the content of the article. For example, "is the article comprehensive"? Well, I dunno (yet), but I have found & downloaded 12 articles so far from JSTOR that hold the promise of interesting nuggets of info to be considered. I'd be happy to email those articles (and potentially more, as I find them) to anyone who so wishes.
  • 1(c) Squaring off and rehashing our entrenched views is counterproductive. Not only is the horse dead, it's starting to stink like something rotten.
  • This article's topic is both "dead history" (as opposed to current events; of course it has made some mark on the present) as well as being completely noncontroversial (aside from the fuzziness of our knowledge about the number of casualties). There's probably little content here which can be attributed to any particular scholar. These facts do not completely excuse the article from the burden of supplying inline cites, but they slide it down the spectrum toward "fewer" rather than "more."
  • In the past, in other reviews, I've seen Sandy and others provide bullet points showing where they believe inline refs should be placed. I've also noticed such bullet point lists are sometimes summarily ignored. :-) However, some people complain that {{cn}} tags disrupt the flow of the article. So this is what I'm gonna do: Below this I'll list places where this article in its current incarnation needs cites (IMO). Anyone can (and probably will) challenge my justification for any item on the list; I'll try to explain further. If no action of any kind is taken in a couple days, I'll uglify the article with {{cn}} tags. here we go:
  • "as many as 90,000 were killed" Specific number; functionally the same as a direct quote.
  • "Eighty-five percent of Lisbon's buildings were destroyed" Ditto.
  • "It is said that many animals" Who said it?
  • "Now? Bury the dead and take care of the living," Direct quote.
  • one day they will be small Ditto .
  • "among the first seismically-protected constructions in the world" Strong claim.
  • "whose severity he believed was due to too many" OK. There's no reference by Rousseau in the references, so mentioning his name doesn't point me directly to a particular source for that quote. Yes, Rousseau is mentioned in the title of a publication by Dynes, but connecting that fact to the quote requires two steps of logic abstarcting (perhaps slightly) away from the idea of an easily locatable quote. That's one step too many. Plus Knowledge (XXG) is not a mind reader.
  • "powerful Duke of Aveiro and the Távora family" There is a cause-and-effect logical sequence in this whole paragraph that just wafts a vague aroma of being WP:OR, even though I am fully aware that it is not. This chain of logic is an analysis that has been put forward by some scholar. That scholar needs to be credited. It is his/her thought; not Wikipedi'as, and should not be expressed in Knowledge (XXG)'s voice. However, I would be OK with a single cite at the end of the paragraph.
  • "discussed and debated by contemporary scientists" This last one is a marginal case. It is not one that clearly falls under WP:V so much as it reflects common sense: many readers will want a footnote (as logically distinguished from a cite, but may include or consist entirely of a cite) which points them to the locus of this debate.
  • "studies by modern Chinese seismologists " Ditto.
  • "reconstruct the event from a scientific perspective" Ditto.
  • Not quite done! I have nitpicks:
  • "Negative Dialectics 361" Whose Negative Dialectics? Please put them in the ref section.
  • (263). Ermm, umm, OK I guess that's probably some kind of MLA thing to place a naked page number out there in the text, isn't it?
  • Ling.Nut (talk) 08:45, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
    • Some great points there. If I find time over Christmas, I could be persuaded to work on this article, as disaster articles and history articles are topics I both enjoy reading about and writing about. I think three weeks takes us up to the end of the year, so Ling Nut, if no-one else takes you up on the JSTOR article offers, put me down as a possible. One point for now - it is not an entirely uncontroversial article - see the talk page for the discussion on the "hanging priests" issue. Carcharoth (talk) 22:00, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
Sorry, I have put notifications on a few relevant talk pages but forgot to put a mention of those notifications on this page. I added tese now. --Donar Reiskoffer (talk) 07:28, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
  • Remove from featured status The prose is unprofessional, littered with poetry and bias. Its not comprehensive and its not clear what is referenced and what is not. And that "birth of seismology" section is very poor for its otherwise grandiose title. ShivaeVolved 16:25, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

FARC commentary

Suggested FA criteria concern is referencing (1c). Marskell (talk) 04:02, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
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 Knowledge (XXG) talk:Featured article review. No further edits should be made to this page.
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The article was removed 12:17, 19 January 2008.

Review commentary

Messages left at WP Cetaceans, WP So Cal, WP MilHist and Johantheghost. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:44, 18 December 2007 (UTC)‎ Message left for Spangineer. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:48, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
  • Nominating because it is grossly undercited, there's a POV tag, and there's all sorts of criticism of factual accuracy on the talk page. I notified Johantheghost (the main contributor), and WP cetaceans, socal, and milhist. Mangostar (talk) 00:41, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
Please follow the nomination instructions at the top of WP:FAR and notify involved editors and relevant WikiProjects with {{subst:FARMessage|U.S. Navy Marine Mammal Program}}, and post a note back to here confirming notifications. Thank you, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:43, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
I did this when I nominated, see above. Mangostar (talk) 23:36, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
See above. Mangostar (talk) 23:36, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Alright. I believe this article is undercited and needs more in-line references in order for it to stay an FA. Buckshot06 (talk) 06:05, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

FARC commentary

Suggested FA criteria concerns are citations and factual accuracy (1c), and POV (1d). Marskell (talk) 04:01, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
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 Knowledge (XXG) talk:Featured article review. No further edits should be made to this page.
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The article was removed 11:27, 17 January 2008.

Review commentary

Notified Tizio and WikiProject Linux. I believe that the original nominator, Liberatore, is now Tizio, but I'm not sure.

This was promoted in March, 2006. Like X Window System before it, I believe this article no longer meets the featured article criteria, including 1(a), 1(b), 1(c), perhaps 2(b) and 4.

  • 1a: Prose is not engaging, reads like a manual. I'm a technically-oriented person, and I quit reading halfway through. As a programmer, I would find this a useful starting point for learning about the protocol. As a layman looking for an interesting read on a technical topic, I would pass on this.
  • 1b
    • No history of the protocol, outside of a blurb in the lead. It's been around for a long time and gone through several revisions. Information about why design decisions were originally made would be interesting. In the original FA nom, it was suggested that this article may not need a history, since it's a subarticle of X Windows. But I think there's a distinction between the history of the protocol and the history of the larger system.
    • Similarly, there's no info about the influence of the protocol. A lot of similar systems have been made since X was created. Surely there have been lessons learned.
    • No criticism. A lot of people don't like the X architecture.
    • No information about notable implementations of the protocol (may be more appropriate for the main article).
  • 1c: Inline referencing is sparse. Most of the information in this article can probably be sourced from the spec (which is in the references), so this may be ok.
  • 2b
    • There are a lot of headings, but they're only one level deep. A lot of them could be grouped under a "System architecture" heading or some such.
    • There's an "Example" heading right in the middle of the sections on system features. Seems out of place (the original author did address this in peer review).
  • 4: Not sure about this one. There's a lot of detail that would be dry or incomprehensible to most people, including specific event names, and even hex identifiers.
  • Other
    • I'd like to see a clarification on the responsibilities of the client and server. It's often not obvious to new users what processing is going on where.
    • Uses C-style hex notation (0xABCD, etc) without explanation.

On the positive side, there's a lot of good information here, and the images are helpful. This article went through peer review and FA nomination without a lot of criticism, and I think it shows. Maybe some experienced editors should have another look at it.Demian12358 21:17, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

FARC commentary

Suggested FA criteria concerns are prose (1a), comprehensiveness (1b), citations (1c), ToC (2b), and focus (4). Marskell (talk) 02:20, 24 December 2007 (UTC)
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 Knowledge (XXG) talk:Featured article review. No further edits should be made to this page.
The following is an archived discussion of a featured article review. Please do not modify it. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page or at Knowledge (XXG) talk:Featured article review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was removed 14:51, 7 January 2008.

Review commentary

Notified User:DrKiernan, User:Emsworth and Knowledge (XXG):WikiProject Peerage

This is an Emsworth classic, and will pretty much rap up our reviewing of the Peerage. Same issue as the last review, no in-line citations, and should probably needs a quick copyedit check and image rationale check as it is an older article. Judgesurreal777 (talk) 21:20, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

A couple of notes, Judge. Notify User:DrKiernan. But do not notify Emsworth; it's pointless, and I was hoping people would stop doing it. Also, when FAR is up around 35 reviews the regular people might hold back a little before new noms. Marskell (talk) 08:34, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
I only added it after the Privledge of Peerage article was kept, but I understand what your saying. Judgesurreal777 (talk) 15:05, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

FARC commentary

Suggested FA criteria concerns are referencing (1c), prose (1a), images (3), and LEAD (2a). Marskell (talk) 17:24, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
The three images are all public domain. DrKiernan (talk) 09:02, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Nothing doing here, so removing. Marskell (talk) 14:50, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

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 Knowledge (XXG) talk:Featured article review. No further edits should be made to this page.
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The article was removed 19:48, 5 January 2008.

Review commentary

Knowledge (XXG):WikiProject South Africa‎, Knowledge (XXG):WikiProject Africa‎, User:PZFUN‎ notified.

This is my first time nominating an article for Review, so hopefully I've gotten this right. Okay, I'm nominating this article for review because it doesn't meet the Featured article criteria #1 (Neutrality) and #2 (In line citations). This article has been nominated for review before, but only for neutrality reasons due to the fact that it was nominated before inline citations were an absolute must in featured articles. This article is definitely not neutral and has no inline citations whatsoever. I'm going to contact the creator and nominator about this review. Cheers, Spawn Man (talk) 01:44, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Okay, the creator was an IP, so I only contacted the nominator and the article's talk page. Spawn Man (talk) 01:48, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
The nominator hasn't edited since 15 October, so may or may not know about this. -- Rick Block (talk) 02:31, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
Please notify the two WikiProjects listed on the talk page. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:04, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
Notified. :) Spawn Man (talk) 03:10, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

FARC commentary

Suggested FA criteria concerns are neutrality (1d) and citations (1c). Marskell (talk) 16:33, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
  • Remove - per nom. No work done. --Peter Andersen (talk) 18:19, 15 December 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment This is a piece of the 1911 Britannica, as many of our articles are; originally part of the History of Cape Colony. The neutrality concerns on the talk page consist largely of the use of Kaffir, when Xhoza would be more civil; this has been fixed. Beyond that there is some mention of such phrases as the enemy were beaten back, which is certainly a British perspective; but the same phrase can be found, for the same reasons, on many of the articles on the Napoleonic Wars. (It has better excuse here; it is very likely that there is no Xhoza account of that battle.) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:11, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
  • Remove. Issues from the lead on down and no significant work. Even the definition of the historical period in the first sentence isn't sensibly explained. Marskell (talk) 21:46, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article review. Please do not modify it. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page or at Knowledge (XXG) talk:Featured article review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was removed 21:17, 4 January 2008.

Review commentary

Notified Knowledge (XXG) talk:WikiProject Physics, Knowledge (XXG) talk:WikiProject Mathematics, and major contributors. —Preceding unsigned comment added by King of Hearts (talk • contribs) 01:38, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

1b. The early years section is very short; perhaps add the story about solving 1 + 2 + ... + 100? (Remember to cite it!) Also, a Legacy section should be added, describing his main contributions to future mathematics.

1c. This article is severely short of citations. There are only four inlines, and many places are tagged with {{fact}}.
2a. The lead should be expanded slightly as the other sections are expanded.
As a whole, the article's still pretty good; some parts just need to be fixed (emphasis on 1c). -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 01:25, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Citations are the main issue, certainly, wow, the standard for FA has increased tremendously after all these years. This really looks crappy next to newly promoted FAs (Leonhard Euler for example). I was the guy who put this through FAC when it passed the first time, and I'm probably in the best position to find all the references again. However, I'm a bit busy now, and I'll only be able to start work in the middle of December. Borisblue (talk) 04:20, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
Actually, no, it hasn't; footnote counting has merely become fashionable. Most of the existing {{cn}} tags are frivolous. This has also missed the "righteous stamp" business, which could badly need a citation. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:25, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
I'll leave this here til the fifteenth, per Boris. Marskell (talk) 16:30, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

FARC commentary

Suggested FA criteria concerns are comprehensiveness (1b), citations (1c), and LEAD (2a). Marskell (talk) 23:49, 15 December 2007 (UTC)
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 Knowledge (XXG) talk:Featured article review. No further edits should be made to this page.
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The article was removed 21:17, 4 January 2008.

Review commentary

Notified WP England, WP Architecture, and Lord Emsworth

This article, a 2005 promotion, lacks in-line citations (1c), and as a result contains some weasel words, such as this line: Probably the most famous attempt. Who says this? hbdragon88 (talk) 19:36, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

FARC commentary

Suggested FA criteria concerns are referencing (1c) and weasel words. Joelito (talk) 12:32, 15 December 2007 (UTC)
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 Knowledge (XXG) talk:Featured article review. No further edits should be made to this page.
  1. Everett Copy. virtualgettsyburg.com. Retrieved from internet archive 2007-06-14 version on 2007-12-10.

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