Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Bobby Fischer

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[edit] Bobby Fischer

Bobby Fischer is famous not only as former World Chess Champion, but also for the controversy surrounding his views on September 11 and his long detention in Japan and subsequent adoption of Icelandic citizenship. The article has been through peer review, and includes a merge of the formerly separate Bobby Fischer (biography) article. I have made a few minor edits to this article, but all the real work has been done by others. Quale 17:43, 16 July 2005 (UTC)

• Wikipedia:Peer_review/Bobby_Fischer
• Mild object most of my concerns were addressed in the peer review, but the lead is not long enough and I still have concerns with the ==Fischer in popular culture== section. - SimonP 22:39, July 16, 2005 (UTC)
  • I've racked my brain, but I just can't think of any way to expand the lead. Can you give some ideas on what else could be included there? --malathion ^talk 14:02, 17 July 2005 (UTC)
    • The lead is now much approved, good work. I still do not think much of the popular culture section, but it is not a major issue and I have withdrawn my objection. - SimonP 00:59, July 18, 2005 (UTC)
      • I've merged the popular culture section into the Popularity of chess section. Is there anything else preventing a support vote? --malathion ^talk 01:31, 18 July 2005 (UTC)
        • Support, great work and thanks for being so responsive to comments. - SimonP 17:02, July 18, 2005 (UTC)
• I want to support, and will once Simon's points are taken care of. Very good article on the whole though. Harro5 02:05, July 17, 2005 (UTC)
  • Good work dealing swiftly with issues arising from the FAC. Support. Harro5 01:54, July 18, 2005 (UTC)
• Support with note: I inserted a 2nd paragraph of the lead. I fully understand if it's reverted, but I had wanted to indicate some of the areas that could be included to introduce the man's significance and interest and to give a thumbnail sketch of the parabola of his public life, his cultural significance. It's US-centric and leaves out, e.g., how the Icelanders have remained supportive of him, so I make no great claims for that paragraph except that I hope it's a vague pointer to a way of making the lead bigger. Geogre 19:02, 17 July 2005 (UTC)
  • I think that's great. I reworded it a bit but that's a good contribution. Thanks a lot! --malathion ^talk 20:59, 17 July 2005 (UTC)
• Object. The section on his recent detention and subsequent Icelandic citizenship needs expanding. Try yanking something from Wikinews ;) - Haukurth 22:49, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

  Oddly enough someone else said I should cut that part, because it used to be quite long. Anyway, I'll add some stuff back in from the old article. Check back in 10-15 minutes. --malathion ^talk 22:52, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

  Done. --malathion ^talk 23:08, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

  Thanks for a swift response. It's good to have more detail but the current text belies its origins as day-by-day news updates. Maybe this could be rewritten into a more readable account with less obsessive footnotes. That would solve my current objection. As for the rest of the article I'll read it again tomorrow before commenting further. - Haukurth 23:36, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

  I'm not certain that this objection is actionable. Since Fischer disappeared, information about him and what's going on in his life is very fragmented. An attempt to write a flowing prose account of his activities since his disappearance would either read badly because of the holes in the story, or obsfucate the holes. Also, I think this is the first time I've seen someone object to an article getting featured status because it had too many footnotes. ;) --malathion ^talk 23:53, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

  I think coherent information is not too hard to find. Fischer has given several interviews with Icelandic media and he's not even that hard to find. My dad ran into him at a restaurant the other day and chatted with him at length while they waited for their orders. Heck, *I* could maybe even get an interview with Fischer if I really wanted, in the name of Wikinews/Wikipedia/whatever. Talk about original research. At least that would get us a GFDL-picture. - Haukurth 00:07, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

  Hey, go for it. Maybe I just don't know what you have in mind, so its probably best if you could rewrite the sections you are having problems with. --malathion ^talk 00:14, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

  I found out that most of the in-text citations in that article were dead anyway. I removed them. I also tried to fix up the timeline feel of that section, but I left some dates in where I thought they were relevant. Let me know what you think. --malathion ^talk 13:41, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

• Weak objection. A lot of further reading resources and offline references cited, but the article does need some expanding (even though it is quite big by now). — Stevey7788 (talk) 17:19, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

  Expanding how? Please be more specific about what you think needs improvement. --malathion ^talk 18:08, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

  Changed my mind. No more expanding, great article. — Stevey7788 (talk) 20:27, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

• Object. The images Image:BobbyFischer.jpg, Image:Young Fischer.jpg, Image:Fischerchess92.jpg, and Image:Fischer arrest.jpg are claimed as "fair use". Wikipedia is not just an encyclopedia, it is a free content encyclopedia. As such, fair-use images should be avoided if at all possible. If they are used, the source needs to be identified, and a specific rationale for why the image can be used under fair use needs to be placed on the image talk page. --Carnildo 20:40, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

  The Wikipedia:Fair_use guideline permits the use of the images in this article. Please post on the talk page for that guideline if you disagree with it. Until the guideline is changed, this objection does not have a rational basis. --malathion ^talk 21:14, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

  • I'd prefer to see at least one picture of him that's not fair use. (suggestion - try googling for images of him and emailing the owner to ask permission). →Raul654 16:40, July 25, 2005 (UTC)
  • From Wikipedia_talk:Featured_article_candidates#Image_Copyright: CC, CC-by, CC-by-SA, GFDL, GPL, BSD (and alike), and public domain are all OK. Plus FA requirement five states: "Have images where appropriate, with good captions and acceptable copyright status. However, an article does not have to have a picture to be featured." Zscout370 (Sound Off) 21:45, 18 July 2005 (UTC)
• Comment. I've gone through the article and tried to help the prose a little but I still feel it needs polishing to reach featured standard. I tried rewriting the Icelandic chapter but it's still not very good. I'm afraid I must still object since I feel the prose is too disconnected. The article just doesn't flow well and even though the subject is interesting the article doesn't do a good job of drawing the reader in. It's too obvious that different authors have written different chapters at different times. The chapter about the religious beliefs comes out of the blue and breaks up the chess carrier narrative. What about his later religious views? Surely some information can be found. This just isn't comprehensive enough. I think the separation into References and Further reading is not useful, except perhaps to reveal the poor quality of the article. Fischer's major biographies weren't used as references? That's just not good enough. But the article is obviously improving and if it improves enough I will certainly change my vote. I'd love this to become a featured article. - Haukurth 23:03, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

  Generally speaking I think that in order to satisfy your objections, this article would have to be expanded until it is a full length biographical novel. Any biographical article is going to need to be highly selective about what is relevant enough to put in and what isn't and that's going to mean that a lot gets left out. Wikipedia's length requirements effectively forbid comprehensively covering anything as huge as a person's entire life. If you can think of something in particular that should be added and that we have information available for, that would be moving in the right direction. Otherwise I can't even begin to act on your objection on comprehensiveness. --malathion ^talk 23:32, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

  It's not so much that I want everything to be expanded - it's more that I want a better overall balance. The guy is famous for his chess so we need a reasonably comprehensive and coherent account of his chess carrier. The article doesn't really live up to that as it is. Fischer's "religious beliefs around 1975" and the speculation about the jewishness of his parents take up proportionally too much space. The best way to fix the proportions is to expand the important sections. We have many much longer articles on Wikipedia, especially featured ones. And I don't want the article to be the length of a biography but I want Fischer's biographies to be used as sources for the article. I wish you the best of luck. - Haukurth 01:50, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

  I sort of understand what you're saying here, but I just can't act on it. The kind of information you seem to want is just not available, and other featured articles like Garry Kasparov are less detailed and developed than this one. Let me know if you can think of any more concrete ways to improve this though. --malathion ^talk 15:18, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

• Support Although note I've done a lot of work on this article, and I'm clearly trying to get it featured, so maybe my vote shouldn't be counted. --malathion ^talk 22:03, 19 July 2005 (UTC)