Wikipedia:Featured article removal candidates/Java programming language

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[edit] Java programming language

Article is still a featured article.

More than half of the article consists of lists. Single-sentence sections. Poor structure. Comprehensiveness is questionable. Fredrik | talk 23:43, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Please check again. I think it is much better now (not the greatest and likely not able to pass a current FAC, but IMO more than good enough for an old FA given the less rigorous standards back then). --mav 21:59, 13 May 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep. This is not a set of lists, there is a good set of descriptive information at the start and by its nature the subject lends itself to code examples (which are present. The article is very much alive, and some of the text has rightly been devolved to other articles in places where the narrative had grown too lengthy, which can make those too lazy to follow links believe their favourite hobbyhorse is absent. I believe this still represents an exemplar, especially in the light of the way an active editorial group manages the regular (often subtle) attacks that people make to the article. --Webmink 07:15, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep. no vote. Just as an aside, I was at Java's 10th birthday party a week ago. Gentgeen 07:18, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep. Yes, I see room for improvement. But it's a solid summary of an important topic. Tim Bray 07:24, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • Remove. I myself have done quite a bit of work on this article. When I first discovered it, it was terrible, and even now it clearly doesn't meet the criteria. – Smyth\talk 12:56, 1 May 2005 (UTC)
    Keep, thanks to mav – Smyth\talk 11:58, 14 May 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep. a real article. -Pedro 02:35, 8 May 2005 (UTC)
"real" and "featured" are not the same. Fredrik | talk 12:31, 8 May 2005 (UTC)
The article is a very good source of information! It deserves to be a featured article. You must be blind if you think the article are merely lists. You dont understand maybe cause you dont understand the subject. --Pedro 01:46, 9 May 2005 (UTC)
Pedro: Where did I say that I don't understand the article? Maybe you are confusing "comprehensive" with "comprehensible"? (For the record, I've taken three university courses involving software engineering with Java.) I did neither say that the article is "merely" lists. But over 50% of it is: essentially everything from "Version history" and below.
I agree that the article is decently informative. However, featured articles should also be well-structured; they should present information in a logical order, and emphasize the important while weeding out the trivial. Lists have their uses, but they pretty much always fail at those two points.
For example, the "Extensions and related architectures" section, unsurprisingly, contains a list of extensions and related architectures. But it does not tell me why extensions are important to the Java platform as a whole, or which extensions are most important and why (there is in fact plenty to tell the reader here). Why does it duplicate information from the "APIs" section? The "Related free software" section is even worse (by the way, why is it so important to list free software as opposed to any software?).
This article is a structural mess. For example, what is the "Hello World" section doing between "Extensions ..." and "Related free software"? As for the single-sentence sections, they not only represent poor writing but are a good indication that the article is lacking structurally. In particular, a section called "Miscellaneous" containing a single sentence is a bad sign. To offer constructive feedback, that particular sentence should be integrated with a discussion of the language's type system. I also think the content of the "criticism" section would be better integrated with the relevant parts of the article instead of listed in one place, though others may disagree with me here.
Two more complaints are that "Input/Output" seems rather too specific to be a top-level section, and that the points given in "Overview" are not elaborated upon clearly enough. The problem with having two sentences of "history" should be obvious to anyone. I think this article also fails to address aspects such as actual industry adoption of the language and platform (and related criticism).
It is not good enough that an article contains 4000 words of information. The article should contain the selection of 4000 words that presents the largest amount of the most relevant information in the best possible way. This is not a good example of such an article.
Webmink: "The article is very much alive, and some of the text has rightly been devolved to other articles in places where the narrative had grown too lengthy, which can make those too lazy to follow links believe their favourite hobbyhorse is absent."
As I said before, articles should strive to contain the most general and important information about the subject, providing pointers to other articles that cover the specific and trivial. This article does not handle the distinction successfully. Also, when content is moved, it should not be replaced with a simple link, but an appropriately sized summary of what was moved. The "History" section is a nice example of this being handled incorrectly.
Now, if this article is so mcuh alive, why has it not been edited substantially since I nominated it for removal 10 days ago? Fredrik | talk 18:01, 9 May 2005 (UTC)
I agree with you on "containing most of the info". And in fact this sub-articles is a serious problem in EN wikipedia which promissed to be good, but it is worse day by day. Featured articles in here are like websites (and the issue is not only a problem of this one). I'm constantly seeing good articles being dismantled, and people advicing to dismantle the rest. Do this people ever saw an encyclopedia? they are confusing it with a portal. If this should loose its status most articles in this wiki should also loose. -Pedro 22:14, 11 May 2005 (UTC)
I don't get what are you trying to say. Fredrik has clearly listed out the points and unless you can provide counterpoints, your constant claim that "this is a serious program in EN wikipedia" is quite unactionable. -Travisyoung 04:17, 12 May 2005 (UTC)
As I said: I CONTINUE to think this article is much better than many featured articles. It is still informative and good for remembering JAVA. And I said, another issue, that En wikipedia is getting worse because of a strange behaviour of chopping down good articles (refering to the size of it and references now occupies mot of the articles) while others like the DE are getting better. Finnaly and again, there are much 'worser featured articles than this. keep keep keep. And get back some of the lost info to the article. -Pedro 15:27, 12 May 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep - now that I've put the history back in (it really pisses me off when people chop out sections without leaving an adequate summary) and performed a major reorg. If anything, it now just needs to go through peer review for a clean-up. --mav 21:57, 13 May 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep, much better now - thanks, mav! James F. (talk) 23:04, 13 May 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep - the article has been greatly improved and I find it very worthy of being a featured article. -CunningLinguist 05:20, 14 May 2005 (UTC)
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