Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Médecins Sans Frontières

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[edit] Médecins Sans Frontières

I've put some work into this article over the past two months. I submitted it for peer review five days ago (see Wikipedia:Peer review/Médecins Sans Frontières), and we fixed some problems. It has 79 references for verification, and the article is *cough* 62kB in size *cough*. --CDN99 18:14, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

• Support. Excellent article. – Quadell ^{(talk) (bounties)} 18:20, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
• Comment. The article is extremely long and the history section could easily be split off into a sub-page and then condensed on the article's main page. Kevin M Marshall 19:41, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
  • The history section also has organizational information and content relevant to other sections of the article. Is the length really a problem? because a lot of good articles are much longer than 32kB. --CDN99 20:09, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Over at peer review we discussed the possibility of separating out the History section, but we decided it would probably be better to keep it all together, at least for now. – Quadell ^{(talk) (bounties)} 20:22, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
    • I don't see the length as a huge problem, but I think the history section in the main article is too long. It is my opinion that a history section for an organization like this should give a generic overview of the group's development and very brief reference to some major operations they have conducted, not a list and description of every single noteworthy and encyclopedic intervention they have had. Kevin M Marshall 21:42, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
• Support. 62kb is far from being "too long," especially when dealing with one of the world's most prominent NGOs. Article is well-written and comprehensive. Andrew Levine 21:59, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
• Comment: A nice article, but I would have expected to see more about what makes MSF different from many other organisation (particularly the Red Crosss) - that it "seeks also to raise awareness of crisis situations; MSF acts as a witness and will speak out, either in private or in public about the plight of populations in danger for whom MSF works" which makes it "brash and outspoken in a way its Red Cross, UN and other international counterparts would not contemplate". -- ALoan (Talk) 22:02, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
  • To comment on your comment from a Red Cross point of view: MSF is, with the words of its founder Bernard Kouchner, always impartial but not always neutral, as opposed to the Red Cross which has Impartiality AND Neutrality among its seven basic principles, with neutrality playing a central role for what the Red Cross does. Apart from that, MSF is different from the ICRC regarding its legal constitution (NGO vs. private association), and the ICRC has a unique and special role in International Humanitarian Law. Though I'm not sure whether all of these points should be mentioned explicitly in an article about MSF, and some of them are already there in one way or the other. --Uwe 23:09, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
  • It is mentioned many times in the article that MSF speaks out, demands intervention, etc. I thought saying something like MSF is "brash and outspoken in a way its Red Cross, UN and other international counterparts would not contemplate" would be a strong POV, which I tried to avoid. --CDN99 00:22, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
• Support. Although I provided some of the information and sources for the article, I think it's still okay for me to throw in my opinion. I have no problem with the length of the article which I consider appropriate. The content is comprehensive and well researched, I see no NPOV issue, and the article has sufficient pictures to illustrate some points. More and better pictures are probably hard to get. So all in all, I think FA status would be well deserved for this article. --Uwe 22:03, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

• Support. Very good and informative article. Tarret 22:52, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

• Comment, I think that the List of deaths and abductions of volunteers could use some trimming, including the removal of the overly long quote, it could probably be reduced to a paragraph following from Dangers faced by volunteers. Having a list at this point in the article lets the rest of the prose down, the list also make it plainly obvious that deaths of MSF prior to 2003 aren't discussed. The lead gets a bit bogged down in the discussion of organizational structure. Does anyone think MSF does a bad job? A minor style thing, the inline refs are supposed to be places after the punctuation mark.--nixie 00:38, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Trimmed list of deaths, remove quote, reduced to paragraph (put some of the list as examples for the paragraph ). I removed the list of "support sections," but left the operational sections. Also fixed the punctuation/inline ref order. You reminded me about the controversy over whether MSF caused the Srebrenica massacre or not....I'll look for that story and see if I can add something to the article. --CDN99 01:22, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
• Object Support; I agree with User:Kevin M Marshall; the history section takes up 20kb of the article, which is the same length as a number of good FAs. I'd suggest dropping it to 10kb max and moving the original text to a subpage, working on that a bit, and getting that featured as well. See? Two FAs for the price of one =). Think about your readers—the longer the article, the less attention they will have for the end of it. I personally think that it's imperative that readers' eyes aren't bugging out once they get to the meat of the article, where we actually find out what the organization does. Some cleaning up is necessary as well—periods inside quotes when they shouldn't be, inconsistent note locations, and what really kills me, all the carat signs next to the 2nd reference. You could use ref note labels to fix that problem but I'd suggest just switching to the new method described at m:Cite/Cite.php. And finally, could we mention the translation of the title of the article in the first sentence? Not a big deal (waiting until the second sentence isn't the end of the world), but not everyone speaks a romance language and thus won't have any idea what's being referred to. --Spangineer (háblame) 03:19, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Fixed the three places where a " was outside a period/comma, but what do you mean by "inconsistent note locations"? The history section describes what the organisation does, its reason for creation and its development over 30 years; without reading it completely, you don't know about MSF. I didn't put the translation in the first sentence because part of the content is the fact that the group is known as Médecins Sans Frontières, not Doctors Without Borders, even to English speaking people. The Doctors Without Borders name is used primarily in the United States, and by some in Canada. --CDN99 04:03, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
    • By inconsistent note locations,^[1] I mean that all notes are not formatted like this.^[2] Some are here, ^[3] some others are here ^[4]. Sorry to be confusing; I never know what to call the things (citations? references? notes? Probably the first would be best...). I know it's a minor issue, so I'll gladly fix them if you're going to stay with the current referencing system. In fact, if you don't mind me doing it, I could switch the article over to m:Cite/Cite.php myself and take care of it all at once. Thanks for fixing the period/comma problem. I'll do a more thorough read through of the history section to see if I agree with your statement about its necessity; if I do after that, I'll support. Nixie's ideas for reduction seem sound, but I'll need to take a look to be sure I agree and to see if there is anything else. And again, the translation issue isn't a big deal; I like to throw ideas for minor improvement out there, and if you've got a good reason for doing it that way, I usually don't mind too much. I simply think that an understanding of the organization's name is essential context for the rest of the lead, and as such ought to be mentioned ASAP. It'd be a much bigger problem if the translation wasn't mentioned until the 3rd paragraph, but the 2nd sentence isn't a big deal.--Spangineer (háblame) 05:05, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
  • There were three places where a note was inside a period. Should notes be inside a period, but outside a comma and colons? I'll change over to the new citation style. --CDN99 13:56, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
    • I think general consensus is that citations should always immediately follow the punctuation, with no space in between the two. --Spangineer (háblame) 22:13, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Ok, I'll remove the spaces as I find them. I tried the new citation style with "show preview"... and unless I'm doing something wrong, the new style is extremely awkward. I have nearly 90 inline citations to put into the text, and they would greatly increase the size of the article themselves, not to mention being confusing when the entire reference is stuck in at the end of a sentence in the middle of a paragraph (that is, when someone goes to edit the article). I used "note_label" for the one book with all the references, to get rid of the carat symbols. --CDN99 01:28, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
    • You're right, the appearance of references within the text in edit mode is one of the disadvantages of this new system. However, it shouldn't notably increase the size of the article, since all you are doing is moving the text of the note from the notes section up to its location in the article. As for my previous objection about the history, I'm afraid I must continue to propose that its size be reduced. The Biafra section should be reduced to several sentences and incorporated into the last paragraph of the previous section, and the second paragraph of that previous section should be removed (However, the Red Cross has always...). People interested in that genocide can refer to the corresponding article, but the focus here must be on Kouchner. In the 1971 section, is there an outside reference for the claim "today known for its quick response in an emergency"? Other than that, I don't mind the rest of the two history sections—they seem to be written fairly tightly, and don't stray from the topic. Perhaps there's a little too much detail, but that's not worth arguing over. I will however agree with Ambi and Maclean25 regarding organizational structure and references, but I don't think I'll object over either, especially if at least a little effort is given to Ambi's concern. --Spangineer (háblame) 23:36, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Recent changes to the article --CDN99 17:10, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

Good job. I'm switching to support, though I still think that m:Cite/Cite.php would be helpful. You just added a new citation to the lead, but it's note number nine—keeping those numbers straight is going to be really tough as the article changes and other sources are incorporated. There are also two more notes that you cite twice, and as a result they each have two carat signs. To help reduce the amount of space they take up, the reference templates you are using can have the line breaks removed, so that the text in edit mode isn't a complete disaster to read. If you're too busy, I can make the change. --Spangineer (háblame) 05:32, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

New citation style switch made. You were right, it is better, and it also decreased the article size by ~1-2 kB. --CDN99 20:20, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

• • I think a good copyeditor would be able to get rid of some of the redundant text in the history section, for example the two paragraps about the red cross are completly unnecessary. The Biafra and Creation sections could also be shortened, for example the reader doesn't need a fairly in-depth recap on the political forces leading the the Nigerian Civil War, they just need to know that Kouchner was there and thats how he got the idea to star MSF. --nixie 04:26, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
    • I've just trimmed and rewritten some of the History section to leave what I feel is a reasonable amount of context for the article, which now stands at 59kb. Andrew Levine 06:37, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
  • I replaced the part about Kouchner being influenced by the large number of starving children, because that's the most significant thing he witnessed. --CDN99 13:59, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
• Object. While this is mostly a good article, the history section is too long and contains too much information that just isn't relevant to MSF. There are two paragraphs before it even gets to the conflict where the idea to create MSF came from, and three more before it gets to anything much about the actual creation of the organisation. This much background is unnecessary. Apart from that, I'd like to see a bit more about the organisational structure itself - things like its funding and staffing are covered with about one sentence each. Finally, it mightn't hurt to mention MSF's response to the tsunami - they were notable there for only asking for exactly what they needed to do the tasks they had the resources for, and no more. Ambi 06:08, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
  • The tsunami relief wasn't notable because it was broadcast right away to the rest of the world, and billions of dollars were poured in immediately. I stayed with the underreported missions because they're the most important field missions MSF sets up. As for funding and staffing, what else can be said? --CDN99 13:56, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
    • I think the tsunami relief may have been hum-drum, so far as those things go, but it's still notable. It doesn't deserve 2 paragraphs, perhaps, but it deserves a mention. About funding, the article doesn't mention (if I recall correctly) MSF's budget or annual income, or who their biggest donors are (if known). About staffing, are there many workers not in the field (fund-raisers, accountants, lawyers, etc.)? Here and here are info about MSF USA, but I'm confused as to whether the numbers they give refer to the US branch only, or to the entire organization. – Quadell ^{(talk) (bounties)} 18:44, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
  • I did mention the tsunami relief in passing, but only the fact that MSF is providing ongoing psychological support. I recently added MSF's budget (400 million USD), the distribution between donors and that there are 1000 permanent staff. I've been finding at various places that the number of volunteers sent to places is between 2000 and 3000, so I'll add that when I find a good source. --CDN99 19:08, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

• Comment, currently, by my count, there are 79 references. Of those 63 (or 79%) are from the subject organization (ie. www.msf.org or www.msf.xx). The article could benefit from a diversification of sources. There are many academic resources on this subject, such as these or these here. --maclean25 01:31, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
  • I can't believe I didn't find those sources (they're good!). I searched every medical journal I had access to and found only brief mentions of MSF. In some of those articles they cite Lancet and BMJ papers about MSF that I should have found immediately. Shit...unfortunately, I've already spent too much time, that I really couldn't afford, on this article, so if a diversification of sources is necessary (I admit, it would be very good), I surrender....someone else can rewrite it. --CDN99 02:18, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
    • Oh, c'mon :o). Don't stop short of reaching your final goal. As promised, your article will make it into the German Wikipedia in the near future, and we only accept true high quality work over there. See that as an incentive to raise your ambitions :o). --Uwe 09:27, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Well, since you put it so nicely. It will take a lot of time to go through the new sources and through the article to replace some MSF articles with some new sources. I'll do it, but I guess this effectively postpones FA status, because it will be over a long period of time. If you look at my edit count from Interiot's tool you'll see two long periods where I did zero edits, and I am (or, should be) in another one of those time periods. Sporadic minor edits are all I can handle, so I could use some help from a dedicated editor. --CDN99 16:14, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
    • You could keep it as is, with a "further reading" section that includes these. I think it's featured-quality, even if it could be improved. (Even featured articles could be expanded.) After all, Maclean25's comment was a comment, not an object. – Quadell ^{(talk) (bounties)} 18:25, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
  • That's what I was going to propose too. Lots of articles have a "notes" section and a "references"/"further reading" section. So this would be all right?--CDN99 19:08, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
• Support. Great article. --WS 23:41, 23 January 2006 (UTC)