Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Noah's Ark

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[edit] Noah's Ark

This article has had a lot of work done it by numerous editors, and has reached a state where it's both informative, complete, and stable - quite an achievement for a religious subject. PiCo 09:55, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

• Support -- The article is well-written, concise, highly informative, ccontains all pertinent details without going outside the scope of the topic, stable, neutral in its presentation and factually accurate, using a number of valid sources to establish said accuracy. Jim62sch 12:15, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

• Support -- Echo the above, but mostly it shows what can be achieved in even contentious articles with perseverance. Codec 13:38, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

• Object; an article this long needs a 2-3 paragraph lead that summarizes the entire article (see Wikipedia:Summary style). Also note that — should be used to separate clauses and   should be used between numbers and their units to prevent lines from breaking. I've fixed a number of them. --Spangineer (háblame) 17:19, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Excellent lead for an excellent article. My last concern (for the moment!) is the section quoted from the Jewish Encyclopedia. Have they explicitly released the text under the GFDL, or have they just said, "yeah, you can use our entry in the text of your article"? The distinction is crucial. If it's the latter of the two, it needs to be rewritten to contain the same or similar content but with different words. --Spangineer (háblame) 02:54, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
  • I sent them an email asking permission to use their article on Noah's Ark and they replied as follows: "Fine to use in a non-profit way (Wikipedia) as long as JE is cited." Where does that leave us? PiCo 05:45, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
    • GFDL allows for commercial reproduction, so that text isn't compliant with GFDL. If you really like the info, I'd suggest emailing again and asking them to explicitly license it under the GFDL (and send them a link to the full text of the license; though I certainly would never want to read the whole thing). Otherwise, it should be rewritten to comply with Wikipedia:Copyrights. --Spangineer (háblame) 07:13, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
      • After reading about GFDL I feel very doubtful that the JE would agree - they'd agree to non-commercial use, but not commerical reproduction. I re-wrote the two subsections so that they use the material from JE but arranged in my own setting. If you feel this is still too close than I guess we'll have to (regretfully) delete. PiCo 08:08, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
        • Should be fine. Support. --Spangineer (háblame) 21:13, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
• Object as per WP:LEAD. Change that and I will support. Batmanand | Talk 17:33, 28 February 2006 (UTC) Support now lead has been dealt with. Batmanand | Talk 02:39, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
• Support, pending lead summary. It's basically just a well-written, enlightening article. I love the line "the number of animals had expanded beyond biblical proportions;" literally and figuratively true!--ragesoss 00:34, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

• Enthusiastic support: Very well done and a very clear featured article. I'm pleased that the mainstream Christian rejection of literalism is included (although one could wish that it were stressed that these churches definitely believe the story is true but that the literal is only one level of meaning). In fact, I believe Augustine says that, while he believes that the Ark is literally true, it doesn't have to be -- indicating some disquiet even then -- and it was always the story that had theologians on edge. Very well done, very balanced and fair. Geogre 14:34, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

• Support -- a good concise guide to the various facets of this subject. ...dave souza, talk 19:35, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

• Support Belting! --PopUpPirate 23:41, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

• Support Looks good to me. Duran 00:28, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

• Support pending resolution of the Jewish Encyclopedia copyright concern. (It shouldn't be hard to rewrite those paragraphs, if need be.) Nicely done all around. Anville 10:59, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
  • I've re-written the subsections on Rabbinic and Islamic traditions so that they aren't simple cut-and-paste; sources are clearly identified, and acknowldgement given as requested by the Encyclopedia. Hope this is sufficient. PiCo 03:12, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
    • If it has been rewritten, all that is necessary is a citation at the end of the section crediting the source—there's no need to have the disclaimer in the beginning of the section thanking them for allowing it to be used. --Spangineer (háblame) 04:30, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
      • Done. PiCo 08:08, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

• Object. The prose is not "compelling, even brilliant". Here are examples.

First sentence: "... to save Noah, his family, and a core stock of the world's animals safe from the Great Flood." Save and safe?

"Chapters 6 to 9" or "6–9" (with an n dash) rather than a cramped little "6-9".

"the process of composition over many centuries helps to explain apparent confusions and repetitions in the text"—use a clearer expression than "composition"

"any perceived inadequacies"—get rid of "any".

"the various Abrahamic traditions"—get rid of "various"

"A painting on board by the American Edward Hicks (1780 - 1849), showing the animals boarding Noah's Ark two by two." (First caption) "on board"? Close gaps around hyphen, and why not change it to the proper n dash? "animals boarding" is not strictly grammatical ("animals as they boarded" would do).

Weed out most of the "alsos" and all of the "in order tos" (just "to", please). It's really not very distinguished prose, and needs a few hours' work by a copy-editor.

And one more point: please consistently apply upper-case H to He, when referring to God; then at least it looks as though the male ascription is used as part of the ideology, and that WP isnt' buying into the 'god is male' thing.

Not good enough. Tony 07:49, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

• • I took up some of your suggestions, but I suspect that you might be impossible to please. PiCo 01:17, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

No, just hard to please, with good reason. The text is better now, thank you, but please keep working on it. It's important to get one or two people who aren't close to the writing of the article to copy-edit it. Take, for example, this huge snake that needs to be split:

Nevertheless, the differing agendas of the two sources can still be traced, most notably in the seven of each clean animal required by the Jahwist text so that some can be sacrificed to God without killing off a species, contrasted with the pair of each animal given in the Priestly text, as no sacrifices can be made under priestly rules until the first priest (Aaron) is created in the time of the Exodus.

In the end, I won't object, on trust that futher improvements will be made. Tony 01:23, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

*Minor object. Under the In Islamic tradition section, it says ...built a town at the foot of Mount Judi named, Thamanim ("eighty").... Please provide a reference for this statement, since I am quite sure that the arabic word for eighty is Thamanin, and not Thamanim. LordViD 13:31, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

• • You're right about thamanin/thamanim - I'll change it. The source is as given in the reference - the on-line Jewish Encyclopedia, which is wrong about the spelling at least. PiCo 22:21, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
    • Great, thanks. Support. LordViD 12:41, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

• Object. 'Modern allusions' (what a strange section title...), if it wants to be a 'noah's arc in popular culture' type of section needs expantion. Where is Indiana Jones? And the space ark paragraph is wrong - space ark is used not only in apocalyptic and postapocalyptic science fiction (that red link should be fixed, too).--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus ^Talk 05:23, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
  • I didn't create this section and it doesn't seem to attract the attention of many editors, which no doubt accounts for the thinness of content and the skew towards pop culture. Everyone thinks they're an expert on space opera but no-one's heard of Benjamin Britten. I cleaned up the "space ark" entry by pruning it back - no more red link :). Since I didn't write it I can't speak for the original author, but I imagine that by apocalyptic/postapocalyptic he/she meant things along the lines of global nuclear wars - the term seems to me appropriate in that framework. In short, the section seems valuable enough to keep, although I'd like to see it expand beyond pop culture; and I lack the expertise to expand it myself and no experts have come along - yet. PiCo 08:08, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
    • I looked at the section again and sort of agree that it's pretty thin, so I took it out. Perhaps a "Cultural References" or some such section can be written up at some point in the future, but what was there was too thin to put in an encyclopedia. PiCo 01:15, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

• Support good article. --Terence Ong 05:43, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Comment Only a minor point, but easy to fix - there are several red links cluttering up the article, which need to be removed. Otherwise, fairly good lead, good use of illustrations, good coverage of the topic. Bigdaddy1204 00:31, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

• • Cleaned up red links. A bit concerned that oyu think the lead is only "fairly" good. What would make a "good" lead? PiCo 01:07, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

When I was putting an article through Wikipedia: Peer review, I was faced with this same question, and someone kindly referred me to the recent featured articles on Epaminondas, the ancient Theban general, and Sir Isaac Newton, which I found were really helpful as examples of articles with a good lead section. I know they are not perfect exapamples because they are about people rather than religion, but hopefully they will still be useful. Bigdaddy1204 18:48, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

• Comments, some of the section heading are overly wordy, the MoS suggestes that section headings be as concise as possible (sections 2,3,6 by the TOC in particular). The lead should be in three sections. Are there any good external sites that could be linked? Is that little disclaimer box really necessary? The see also in the Narrative probably doesn't need to be there.--nixie 02:07, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
  • Shortened some of the section headings
  • The lead should be in 3 sections? Why? At the moment the lead reflects the sections, which seems logical
  • External sites have been assimilated into the footnotes
  • Yes, the disclaimer box is really necessary - without it we get objections every time we mention the word "myth". (We get them anyway, but at least with the disclaimer box we explain ourselves)
  • The "see also" in the Narrative section is a guide to anyone wondering why this article doesn't mention the covenant, which is directly connected with the Ark story. PiCo 07:53, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

• Support Article is impressive, readable, meets criteria, its all that and bag of chips boat of animals. Well done! I personally prefer brief intros, these mini-article summaries are sometimes overdone. KillerChihuahua^?!? 23:48, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

I just want to thank everyone who helped get this through to Featured Article status. I feel overwhelmed! PiCo 09:31, 12 March 2006 (UTC)