Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Douglas Adams

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[edit] Douglas Adams

Self-nomination - This article was recently in Peer Review, and most, if not all, suggestions made there have been carried out. (Peer review archive is here). While there has been a Douglas Adams article on Wikipedia since November 2001 (six months after his death), I have been working on the article since May of this year. I think it is a major improvement over the way the article looked six months ago. The author's most famous work, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was made an FA earlier this year, and I feel it would be fitting to have the article about the author himself also become an FA. Quoting one line of my own from the Peer Review: One snag that his published biographies point out is how difficult it is to keep Adams's life in any sort of chronology, since he was working on several different projects at once, especially during the late 1970s and early 1980s. One other thing that might give some reviewers pause are the images. When I started, there was just ONE photo, the promotional photo at the start of the article. Since then, four TV screenshots have been added - I know this may put some people off, but it's hard to review someone who was interviewed quite a bit on TV and wrote for different programmes for TV without a few screenshots! He also did a lot of writing for radio too, but I thought that trying to pick out a few soundclips from his body of work wouldn't do them justice! As Adams was also known for his writing, three book cover images are also included in the article. I genuinely look forward to reading other's opinions on the state of this article, and hope I can make everyone proud - I really DO think it's another example of good community work. --JohnDBuell 00:01, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

Object. Looks good, and the image additions help a lot (make sure not to make them so small that they're invisible, though), but could use some copyediting for style issues. Avoid linking to any non-essential pages—all the year links should be removed unless genuinely important or part of a "Month Day, Year" link.

Done.

Avoid inconsistencies (a footnote appears directly before a period in one sentence, directly after one in another sentence; after is better) (a comma appears inside of the quotes in ""The Remarkable Fidgety River,"", but outside in ""radical atheist","; outside is better)

I think I got all of these.

I'll try to help. It's difficult, and will take more time than most changes, requiring a full read-through to be sure. Of course, it's nitpicky enough that I don't oppose based on that alone. -Silence 04:02, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

I just pasted the article into MS Word and discovered a couple of typos that I should have caught a lot sooner. I also cleaned up a few of the sentences, but tried not to let Word's grammar/spell check influence me into making the article inline with US English usage :) --JohnDBuell 23:05, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

[A]nd make sure to include Fair Use justifications for images like Image:DNA_with_H2G2_towel.JPG. Also consider trimming the External Links section by at least a couple of links; it's starting to develop into a farm. -Silence 01:25, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

I'll recheck the other images, but I got that one. I also found one redundant link that's actually first mentioned in the Notes section. Images are always hard for me, with sizing - I've got a NICE widescreen monitor, but I know that's not common, so I try to leave the images as not being too obtrusive.... --JohnDBuell 02:07, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

Generally with horizontal images, 200-300px is a good size, though it depends greatly on context. With vertical images, a bit smaller, since the "px" marker is in terms of horizontal length, not height. Anyway, you clearly haven't been told what a "Fair Use rationale" is. Just saying "Fair use is claimed for Douglas Adams and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy." will just get Wikipedia's ass sued if someone feels like taking it that far. :) See images like Image:Chavezninas.jpg for examples of proper Fair Use Rationales. Anyway, images that still need Fair Use rationales: Image:Douglasadams.jpg, Image:DNA in Monty Python.jpg, Image:Remarkable Fidgety River Title.jpg, Image:DNA with H2G2 towel.JPG, Image:The Pirate Planet Writers Credit.jpg. -Silence 04:02, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

No, I think that this has become a growing issue - I don't think it was as much a concern when the Hitchhiker's article was put through Peer Review and FAC as it is now. I'm not blowing it off - in fact it's probably a good idea to go back and re-review past FAs to make sure they're staying up to the current standards. I appreciate that you're offering help with this :) --JohnDBuell 04:08, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

• Oh, I'd certainly agree with you that it's a relatively recent focus of FAs, and I bring it up exclusively to stay consistent with every other FA of the last few weeks, not out of any personal concern whatsoever for copyright law; personally I think the whole issue's a great big buzz-kill, necessary though it may be. :f But if it's gotta be done, best for you to know what you've got to do early.
• It's also certainly true that the FA standards are constantly changing, shifting, as the imaginary "perfect article" changes a bit with each new innovation and Wikipedia agenda. And with each new trivial requirement, the actual encyclopedia content itself shifts further and further into the backseat; the writing itself is the last thing most reviewers check when looking at a new FA nominee, whereas in a typical encyclopedia it would be the first thing checked, with editors poring over every line for errors. There are probably more typos in a typical Wikipedia article of over two pages in length than there are in the entirety of a typical print encyclopedia. (Not to suggest, of course, that typos are the most insidious threat to articles; they're a relatively minor inconvenience compared to many other subtle textual errors that can manifest.) :) Er, but I'm digressing big-time.
• It's tremendously true that most FAs from a year or two ago could never get Featured in today's FA world, at least not with a lot of revising. Standards change, and they change faster and with more vigor than people will bother to go back and nominate old FAs for un-FAing. So, it's not safe to assume that all FAs are equal; there's sometimes as big of a quality gap between one FA and another as there is between a stub and a good article. But, er, anyway, yeah; someone'd best get on those fixes. -Silence 04:26, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

I actually went back through all of the images included in the article, and tried to write up a better "fair use rationale" for each. As I said on your talk page, I hope this is on the right track :) --JohnDBuell 05:07, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

• Weak support. Comprehensive, although a lot of the information in the HHGG section is not really about him, but about HHGG's production history in general. Those should be dealt with in the sub-articles, and it be rewritten to concentarte specifically on his part in it. Also, could use with some general copyediting, but nothing substantial that would warrant any strong objections on my part. --khaosworks (talk • contribs) 03:20, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

Well, since most of the history of Hitchhiker's (until 2001) really revolved around Adams, the two really do intermingle. I don't want to sound critical, but do you have any specific suggestions? What would or wouldn't belong? Or should it be summed up/tightened up a bit more? There are detailed histories of the radio series and the TV series on those two pages - no one has yet written a page on the 20+ year development history of the Hitchhiker's movie, and I think that it would/does warrant its own article. --JohnDBuell 03:29, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

I've gone ahead and attempted a re-write and "tightening" of this section. Let me know if you think it helps! --JohnDBuell 04:08, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

Okay, take the last three paragraphs of the section, starting from "The books formed the basis of..." and ending with "dedicated to its author", which barely mentions Adams at all, especially in the middle paragraph about the production of the movie. I'm not saying do away with them entirely, but the information should relate more to Adams personally, like the rest of the stuff above, and if it doesn't at all, then it should be tightened or excised. --khaosworks (talk • contribs) 06:21, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

I've cut those three paragraphs down to two, trying to bring Adams back as the one who wanted the movie done for over twenty years, and who also had a part (literally) in the posthumous radio series in 2004-2005. --JohnDBuell 12:33, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

• Object - will have to read again later (the last version I read is two years old), but so far it is obvious that a longer lead section is needed. An article this size needs 3 good-sized paras that summarize the most vital info about the man and his work. --mav 17:14, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

I suggested during the Peer Review that I'm not very good at writing lead sections and asked if anyone wanted to either add another paragraph, or redo the existing ones. Sadly, nobody took me up on it. --JohnDBuell 19:03, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

Three of us have done a bit of work on the lead section now, making revisions and expansions. Proto started it, and IainP and I have both done some of the revising and editing for accuracy. --JohnDBuell 21:55, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

Looks good now. I'll have to read the article again to see if I can support. --mav 05:42, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

• Object, either remove those redlinks, or turn them blue. I'll do the lead for you. Proto t c 14:42, 2 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Say WHAT? I have never EVER seen an article denied FA just on the grounds of 'red links.' That's NOWHERE in the criteria. --JohnDBuell 17:43, 2 December 2005 (UTC) (postscript: I'm not trying to sound like I'm taking this personally, or trying to start a personal attack. Far from it. I'm just trying to explain my incredulity.)
  • Objecting on the basis of too many red links is generally inactionable (in that it does not apply to the material being nominated) Raul654 13:05, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
  • I don't think a Featured Article should have red links. There. I've said it. Proto t c 10:19, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
    • I have to disagree. Knowing that Wikipedia is expanding, and knowing specifically where Wikipedia can expand, into places that nobody has written an article for yet, I think these are both good and necessary concepts. I've taken a few "redlinks" out of other articles and built new ones, and I think they're constant invitations to new editors (though soon it'll only be new registered editors) to expand on what we already have. --JohnDBuell 12:34, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
• Support - This is a good wikipedia article and deserves recognition. SillyWilly 00:38, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
• Support Looks excellent. Tuf-Kat 17:01, 12 December 2005 (UTC)