Wikipedia:Featured article removal candidates/archive/December 2005

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This is the archive of Featured Article Removal Candidates for mid-to-late December 2005. For the active archive and list of previous arhives, click here.

Contents 1 Iowa class battleship 2 Spam (electronic) 3 Cold fusion 4 Garry Kasparov 5 Platypus 6 The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask 7 Peer review 8 Christmas 8.1 Discussion 9 Paradox 10 KaDee Strickland 11 Christianity

[edit] Iowa class battleship

Article is still a featured article

This article is badly written. It's full of unexplained military and nautical jargon "wet forward", "narrowness forward", "scuttles", "mothballed battleship"; grammatical errors "because a reserve … are in storage"; and other problems: why is "fast" quoted? why does participating in the US Navy make a battleship unique? And why begin the article with a sentence explaining how many were built? Better a simple descriptive "the Iowa class battleships are …" -lethe ^talk 17:55, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

• Keep. For things that minor, fix them yourself instead of listing them here. For that matter, you never even bothered to leave a mention on the talk page pointing out errors you see. I'm sure the articles authors could explain the jargon pretty easily and quickly. This appears to meet all other important criteria and easily fixable. That's not a good FARC candidate. - Taxman ^Talk 18:20, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
• I agree 100% with Taxman. Raul654 19:08, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

• Keep as per Taxman. Kuzaar 19:10, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
• Keep "wet forward" explained now, "narrowness forward" I think obvious and understandable TestPilot 04:36, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

"scuttles" & "mothballed battleship" links now to articles that explane them, "because a reserve" corrected way long ago(and that was a very minor edit), article never stated that Iowa is uniq becose it belong to US navy, article begins with "Iowa class is" as sugested... As per Tsavage, it sounds more like common phrases for me. IMHO. TestPilot 15:38, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

• Keep I agree with Taxman as well. The issues cited are relatively minor and easily fixed. ---B- 20:19, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
• Keep 100% agree with taxman. TomStar81 22:17, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
  • For the record and for your information: A)"wet foward": the Iowa clas s ships had a tendence to accumualte seawater forward of the no. 1 turret, which made that part of the ship wet. B)"scuttles": this refers to the demolish of a ship either by high explosives set inside the ship or its use as a target in a live fire exercise. C)"mothballed battleship": mothball is a reference to ships in a reserve fleet, in this case the United States Navy reserve fleets. D) "because a reserve ... are in storage" I don’t know how much clearer that statement could be. E)"fast": During World War II battleships usually did not steam as fast as their carrier cousins, the top speed for a battleship was about 25-28 knots; carriers could do about 32. "Fast" battleships were therefore concieved to keep up with aircraft carriers. The term has since stuck. TomStar81 22:32, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

• Remove as per TSavage below. Let's live up to the FA standards, or WP will devolve into a second-rate resource, a wasted chance to democratise knowledge on the Internet, but I'll change to Keep when the following matters are addressed:
  • Delink all trivial chronological links, as per WP policy. Retain only if date and month are included.
  • Go through all measures to check for consistency with respect to (1) imperial/metric order (does imperial come first always?); (2) abbreviations (in vs inch); (3) hyphen between value and unit when the unit is abbreviated and it's a double attributive, e.g., '16-inch diameter', but '41 mm diameter'); and (4) non-breaking hyphens, which should be inserted in all cases where the unit is abbreviated.
  • Spell out numbers less than 10, although perhaps not for measurements. This is a matter of style, but '4 decks', '5 decks' and '8 Armored Box Launchers' are pretty unkewl.
  • Do we really need Iowa etc, in italic?

Tony 01:44, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

• • Please allow me to strike out my text; I've remove the strike-line. Tony 02:42, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

• Please clarify "trivial chronological links"; I ca not fix that until I know what that is. As for the measures, thats going to take me a little while to check, so have some patients with me. Lastly, ship names and a ship’s class name are commonly itallicised in other publications such as the Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, and have appeared itallicised in news reports and online news sites. I do not see any reason to change this. TomStar81 02:30, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

Sure, italic is fine in that case; the trivial chronological links are the years without dates (e.g., 1981), and periods such as 1980s and 20th century. Tony 08:27, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

• All "trivial chronological links" have been removed. TomStar81 08:49, 1 January 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. I read this article yesterday when it was on the main page and it is an excellent example of a FA. Yes, the jargon can be explained better but that should have been raised on the article's talk page.--Alabamaboy 14:35, 1 January 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. A Wikipedian who may be in the USN or was in the USN will clear up any confusion. "Scuttles" means to destroy one's ship to keep it out of enemy hands in wartime. Martial Law 22:05, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

Technically to "scuttle" means to open holes in the hull of a boat or ship -- sinking is a common, but not required, result. In usage "scuttle" means to sink one's own ship -- though not necessarily to keep it out of enemy hands (though that was frequently the reason for it)---B- 06:16, 2 January 2006 (UTC).

• • We do have members who fill that niche, althou I only know two of them: User:Bschorr, who is a volenteer crew member aboard USS Missouri, and User:Husnock, who is actually in the USN. TomStar81 22:20, 1 January 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. The quality of the article is superb, and the technical language issues are easy to solve in any case. I'd like to see many articles that currently have featured status as complete and informative as this one. Phaedriel 22:52, 1 January 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. Needs some minor corrections (see the Talk page), but one of the best BB articles I've ever seen in 25yrs' reading on the subj. Trekphiler 11:49, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
• Comment Shoddy writing, inconsistent formatting, poor proofing seem to be acceptable in FAs, as if organizing a bunch of facts on a page is most of the battle won. That's just not so. Having terms without explanation or context doesn't seem such a big deal either. Seeing poor work on the front page of WP time and again really kills me. It's kind of hypocritical to point to the high-flying FA criteria, and in practice, let substandard stuff represent everyone, and then make excuses for it afterward. Try getting a grade by convincing the teacher that someone will come along and explain the terms and correct the spelling...later. This is FEATURED ARTICLE, the best of the best, not REMOVAL FROM WIKIPEDIA. (I'm not voting because I don't have time at this moment to through this thoroughly enough to fairly comment, but I did read it once quickly, and at the very least, it obvioiusly needed a good copyediting before going on the front...or not gone at all...) --Tsavage 04:51, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
• Keep I searched in vain for "shoddy writing" and other such wikisins, but there is one serious issue that does need to be addressed viz. references. They stop abruptly in the middle of the article and hence much of the information is unverifiable. Mikkerpikker 02:01, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. I'm a bit peeved by the short first two sections, but they can easily be merged. The references should be converted to the new format, but again, a minor peeve. And once we're objecting because of a couple bits of jargon, or overlinking of chronological dates, it seems clear there are no major errors that can be found. While this might (and even so, only might) hold up an FAC, this isn't good enough for an FARC. These complaints are easily fixed. So, again, keep. Johnleemk | Talk 05:16, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Spam (electronic)

Article is no longer a featured article

No references section or Notes section, no use of footnotes at all. Very choppy Table Of Contents and general layout. Lots of short sections/subsections. (particularly the 'Spamming in different media' subsections, all one short paragraph each). Could do with more photos (although this is not an FA requirement). Too many external links. This is not an example of Wikipedia's best work. — Wackymacs 11:49, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

• Remove per nom. Although there is one footnote—at the bottom of the "Overview" section! —Kirill Lokshin 17:12, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
• Remove. This one is not so easily fixable. It has terribly short paragraphs, poor balance of coverage and no real references. - Taxman ^Talk 18:26, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
• Comment. A lot of work has clearly gone into this, and it'd be a pity to see it de-listed. I'll try to have a go at it soon. Mark¹ 19:25, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
• Remove, per nom. «LordViD» 07:13, 1 January 2006 (UTC)
• Tentative remove—let's see what Mark can do. Start by fixing the pointillistic paragraphing? Tony 06:58, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Cold fusion

Article is no longer a featured article

This page has been radically transformed since it became a feature article. The fringe view that this phenomenon actually exists has been extremely active, while the scientific mainstream that does not believe it exists has been relatively absent. The article as is clearly fails at 2(d)- it is neither uncontroversial nor neutral and 2(e)- it is rapidly changing, with over [600 edits] since it became featured in August 2004- more than a hundred of which were in the last two weeks. It also fails at criterion 5 - it is far too long (currently 60kb) and it repeats itself often. Finally, I would argue that the prose is not of adequate quality to satisfy criteria 1 and 2(a), and the sources used in much of it are too disreputable to well qualify for 2(c). --Noren 18:05, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

• Remove or Revert and Keep - FrancisTyers 18:06, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
• Remove I don't think there are any well informed cold fusion skeptics editing this page to keep it NPOV. –Joke 18:45, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
• Remove or revert. Lunatics running the asylum. Mark¹ 18:50, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
• Remove or keep and revert. This is a case where the article was better before. So lets go back to the version that was featured. This is an unfortunate example where a determined POV pusher (or possibly one posing as two) can be successful, at least in the short run. I fear the article may be removed anyway, but I'd like people to try improve/resolve issues with the article instead of voting remove. - Taxman ^Talk 21:11, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
  • That's not a realistic suggestion. The cold fusion advocates would just revert it. Nathan J. Yoder 16:51, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
    • Sure it is. It appears we are already establishing consensus the recent changes are ruining the article. Consensus can be enforced since reverting in violation of consensus is a blockable offense. A sockcheck may be in order here too. - Taxman ^Talk 02:50, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
    • Nonsense. The cold fusion advocates have reverted NOTHING. Not one sentence. They have written some rebuttals to the skeptical claims, and they added material drawn from the experimental literature. Only the skeptics have erased and reverted material, (and only a few of them do that). What you want is a one sided diatribe against cold fusion without a single reference to objective, peer-reviewed science. You want to see only your own point of view, and your unsupported opinions and biases. Stop being a crybaby. We have left your opinions and fantasies intact, and added only a few well-documented facts to counteract them. --JedRothwell 21:34, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Please remain civil and refrain from making personal attacks. - FrancisTyers 15:12, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

FrancisTyers writes: "Please remain civil . . ." I suggest you redirect that comment to people who claim that cold fusion researchers are "lunatics running the asylum." and that I am a "pusher" posing as two people. As the Japanese say, "hotoke no kao mo san-do made." (roughly: 'That would try the patience of a Buddha.') --JedRothwell 16:58, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

No-one referred to you as a lunatic. You referred to Taxman as a crybaby. Please be careful in making assumptions. - FrancisTyers 17:15, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

You wrote: "No-one referred to you as a lunatic." Ah, I see what you mean. Mark1 wrote: "Lunatics running the asylum." Since he favors reversion, he means that all supporters are lunatics, not only me. It is okay to insult opponents en mass, but not individually. And it is okay to make insinuations about "pushers" "posing as two people," as long as you do not say specifically who you have in mind. Okay, let me apologize and rephrase: "Don't be one of several unspecified crybabies."

Let me suggest that you stop splitting hairs. --JedRothwell 18:41, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Actually, I haven't the faintest idea who you are. Mark¹ 18:45, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Greetings. I am one of the people you referred to as lunatics. Whether you know me personally or not, you have still violated the Wikipedia rules regarding civility. See: [1]. You are forgiven, and have a Happy New Year. --JedRothwell 18:54, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Jed, first of all, thanks for the apology, although I am not entirely convinced of its sincerity. Secondly, please remember that Wikipedia is not a battleground. If you would like to swap insults please keep it to private communication, not a Wikipedia talk page. Thanks :) - FrancisTyers 18:55, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

• Keep. One only has to go to the LENR website to recognise that this is far from being pseudo science. Frank Grimer
• Remove or Revert absurd changes have gutted this article. --Ryan Delaney ^talk 00:23, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
• Comment which particular revision of the article would be reverted to in this case? - FrancisTyers 00:36, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
• Remove For now. Until this article in no longer being stalked by POV warriors, I fear it will continue it's slide into the realm of the bizarre. Ronabop 02:29, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
• Remove Suffers from serious POV issues. One of the main editors of the article has even admitted that he doesn't abide by NPOV policy and that he doesn't even think it's possible, despite not having even READ WP:NPOV. I agree with Joke137's sentiment. I don't think there even is a single well informed skeptic editing the article anywhere near as much as the cold fusion supporters are. Even I haven't bothered to do any edits because I know it's not worth the effort. Nathan J. Yoder 16:03, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

• Replace entire article with the new version written by E. Storms. (See Discussion) I think this version fixes many of the problems described by people on both sides of this debate. I will upload it in a few days unless someone objects. I have temporarily uploaded an unformatted version to the Discussion section. --JedRothwell 17:06, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

• (Was "Keep and expand" -- this vote deleted. See above.) The article finally has some real science based on actual, credible, mainstream journals. Before it was nothing but unorganized "skeptical" POV hot air written by people who have not even read the literature. --JedRothwell 20:59, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

• You should reallize that expand doesn't even make sense considering that expanding an article that is already too long would only make it further not meet the FA criteria. Also the problem is that you have no credibility because your POV and that you want to promote it is so obvious. - Taxman ^Talk 02:50, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

You lack perspective. Most cold fusion researchers say that I am unbiased and I am merely reporting their results without commenting on them or inserting my own opinions, whereas they believe that people like you are highly biased, and you are writing only your own opinion, without any reference to the experimental literature. Naturally, you disagree, but you should at least be aware of the fact that my views are a mirror image of yours, and I consider you every bit as biased as you consider me. You see the mote which is in your brother's eye; but you do not see the beam which is in your own eye.

As a practical matter, if an article describing experimental results and quoting theorists such as Schwinger is biased, what would you suggest the article consist of, instead? What would be unbiased? --JedRothwell 16:16, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

That's humorous. Most people that agree with my views think I'm unbiased too. We have a unique situation where few bother to report results negative on cold fusion because that is the accepted scientific position. It's fine to disagree with that, but as it is a minority position it should get only a minority of coverage in the article. In other words there isn't space in this article to describe the results of each of 237 (just throwing out an example number) papers that claim to have found something because they are generally not accepted. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and that has not so far been demonstrated to the satisfaction of the scientific community. The reason that's easy to see is that if a cold fusion result really was beyond reproach it would make major waves. That has not happened, and the theories proposed by cold fusion advocates are not accepted yet. Again that's fine to disagree with the establishment and history may show the cold fusion proponent's view to be correct, but that's not our job right now. If this were 1900 we would need to characterize Newton's laws as dominant and that they model reality to a very high degree of accuracy. History would later show there to be more to the story, but the story can only change with conclusive evidence. There is not that conclusive evidence for CF to the satisfaction of the scientific community and that is what we need to report. Right now we need only to accurately describe the debate in a balanced way. - Taxman ^Talk 18:16, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

• Keep and expand. The article seems fair and balanced enough. The opening paragraph makes it abundently clear to the uninformed reader that cold fusion is still highly controversial and not accepted by the mainstream of science, so the tone is set front and center, not hidden. The rest of the articel just goes on to inform of developments in the controversial field of cold fusion. Seems fair enough to me, anyone looking for information about cold fusion would find the page very useful and informative. --Rock_nj 20:59, 28 December 2005 (UTC) User has a total of 8 edits.
• Remove. I don't think reverting it will do any good. I do not presume to know whether cold fusion is real or not, but I do know that my college class that covered it was "Fraud and Error in Science", and this article fails to show that side well.--Prosfilaes 00:05, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
• (Was Keep and expand). Remove. Short term: replace with Storms version. Long term: rewrite from scratch, then go through the process to make it featured again. Especially after the recent major revert going to a version more than a year old, and in view of the major omissions and generally poor writing and lack of sources for claims in the text, I cannot in good conscience recommend keeping this as a featured article. It will take considerable work to get it to that level of quality. If it is removed from featured status, it can and should be nominated for an Article Improvement Drive WP:AID. I have also listed it as an RfC in order to get more people involved. ObsidianOrder 01:38, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
• Keep There is far too little good information on cold fusion available, and very little that's actually balanced. Far too many people hear about it only in the context of articles and classes on pathological science, and get the impression the field died in 1990. The field is controversial, and the article makes that clear; the field is not dead, however, and the article makes that clear, too. Far too few people are aware of this. -- Salaw 03:06, 29 December 2005 (UTC) User has a total of 10 edits.
• Remove. Fails Criterion 2(a) miserably. Let's take a look at the second sentence in the lead, which would fail at high-school level:

The most well known claim in this area is one that cold fusion can occur in palladium electrodes in electrochemical cells under the correct conditions. In a recent review of the topic by the US DoE was mixed, mainly negative. (See 2004 DoE Review below.) The majority of professional chemists and physicists do not believe this phenomenon exists, referring to it as pseudoscience, while some regard the subject to be an example of pathological science.

The most well[-]known claim in this area is one that cold fusion can occur in palladium electrodes in electrochemical cells under the correct [certain] conditions. In [The findings of] a recent review of the topic by the US DoE [spell it out] was [were] mixed, [and] mainly negative [(see the] 2004 DoE Review below). The majority of [Most] professional chemists and physicists do not believe [deny that] this phenomenon exists, referring to it as pseudoscience, while some regard the subject to be an example of pathological science.

Any reason for the itty-bitty paragraphing?

The itty-bitty paragraphing is caused by two things: 1. The controversy and 2. People being polite. Most people, both supporters and skeptics, take pains to avoid deleting text written by the opposition, so the article becomes fragmented. That is unfortunate. The changes you recommend to the paragraph above are good, but I would not implement them because this paragraph is skeptical, and I would not want to step on the skeptics' toes. --JedRothwell 16:17, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

JedRothwell did edit that paragraph, adding the false statement that ', and only a third found it "somewhat convincing."' I corrected it, and a third party had changed it again prior to the revision quoted in green above. This instability does not inspire quality prose, both directly and because editors will tend to take less care when aware that their contributions are likely to be hacked to pieces. --Noren 20:10, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

Noren wrote: "Jed Rothwell did edit this paragraph, adding the false statement that ', and only a third found it "somewhat convincing."' I corrected it, and a third party had changed it again prior to the revision quoted in green above." Well, if I did edit this, it was an accident. I moved it to the new section on the DoE review. The part about "two thirds" is a direct quote from the DoE summary, and it is intact, so I do not see what you are complaining about. Please note that there are two separate documents: 1. The DoE's own summary; 2. The DoE review panel reviewer's remarks. You were writing about #1, and you correctly noted that it says "two thirds . . ." I mentioned that #2 seems be split more evenly. (You may disagree.) Let us not confuse the two. --JedRothwell 18:35, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

I linked above to the edit you made, you may follow the link if you do not recall making it. It is clear that you have not refrained from editing paragraphs that you label skeptical. In reference to the statement you added, I quote from the summary document: "Two-thirds of the reviewers commenting on Charge Element 1 did not feel the evidence was conclusive for low energy nuclear reactions, one found the evidence convincing, and the remainder indicated they were somewhat convinced." As there were 18 reviewers, this sentence means that 12 of 18 found it inconclusive, 1 found it convincing, and the remaining 5 were somewhat convinced. The clause you added that ', and only a third found it "somewhat convincing."' is false, as 5/18 is not equal to 1/3. Let us not confuse the true '2/3 were unconvinced' statement with your false 'and 1/3 were somewhat convinced' claim. --Noren 04:21, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Noren wrote:

I linked above to the edit you made, you may follow the link if you do not recall making it.

I will take your word for it! As I said: Sorry about that! It won't happen again. I encourage you to put back the exact phrase you had before, in a 35 KB introduction to cold fusion written entirely from the skeptical point of view. Then I will add in the 15 KB Storms draft, and everyone will be satisfied. --JedRothwell 02:28, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Will those who assert that it should be kept, reverted, and/or expanded please be more specific and perhaps lend a hand to implement what are mostly their vague directions? Tony 03:53, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

I have uploaded a completely new draft written by an expert that I think addresses all of the issues raised here. See the Discussion section. --JedRothwell 18:35, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

• • To clarify my position: revert to the featured version, with enough neutral editors involved in the long term to keep it neutral. No, I'm not volunteering. Failing that, remove. Mark¹ 11:24, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
• Remove. The historical narrative about the original experiment has very few citations, and is very much in need of them, at practically every sentence. Where are the links to the announced agreements with the original results, where are the retractions? What's the source of all the quotes? I'm a graduate student in particle physics, for what that's worth, but I'm not really able to bring whatever expertise I have into reviewing the article because of the lack of citations. I think the article, which has other problems as well (see above), needs a major cleanup, and would benefit from being re-reviewed and re-nominated for FA status. -- SCZenz 05:18, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

SCZenz writes: "The historical narrative about the original experiment has very few citations . . ." Good point. I have no idea where most it came from, and I have read a lot about the early history of cold fusion. The whole history section should be chopped, in my opinion. ". . . where are the retractions?" What retractions do you have in mind? The only one mentioned in the article was Paneth & Peters. Paneth wrote a letter to Nature in 1927 "partially retracting" their 1926 paper in Berichte der Deutschen Chemischen Gesellschaft. I am not aware of any other retractions. --JedRothwell 15:36, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

• • I'd also like to note that lenr-canr.org, which is extensively and repeatedly used as a source of documents and arguments, does not appear to be an even remotely unbiased source. -- SCZenz 05:26, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

• • LENR-CANR has original, peer-reviewed source material: reprints of the research papers and data. When you judge a scientific issue, you are supposed to look at original sources. Calling them "biased" is a novel, new-age take on the scientific method. What would you suggest people look at, if not the actual research results? --JedRothwell 15:36, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

• • My issue is that the article currently, in parts, draws from LENR-CANR exclusively. The papers, scientific and peer-reviewed though they may be, are chosen selectively, as far as I can tell. We need sources on both sides, and we need to be sure that they reflect the scientific consensus. I've not been able to verify that, so I don't think the article is up to featured standards at the moment. -- SCZenz 20:06, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

With all due respect, you have it backward: LENR-CANR is drawn exclusively from the literature. It is a library open to any author, skeptic or supporter. The skeptics have contributed some papers, and they are welcome to contribute more. If the selection of papers is unbalanced it is up to them to make it right.

Our master list was put together by Britz and Storms and it includes over 3,000 papers. There are hundreds more, especially in Chinese and Japanese, but I doubt there are thousands more. If this is unbalanced, where are the missing papers? Send me the titles. Better yet, have the authors send me the papers!

Of course the comments that I have added to the article are selective; I cannot summarize hundreds of papers in a few paragraphs. It is the skeptics' job to read these papers and add statements reflecting their point of view. I cannot do that for them. Frankly, I think they have a tough job. I have read HUNDREDS of cold fusion papers, and I do not know of many by skeptics. Please suggest a few titles. The skeptical papers I have seen are of such low quality, they would embarrass me if I were a skeptic. If you think the skeptical viewpoint needs beefing up, I encourage you read whatever literature you can find and beef it up. --JedRothwell 21:13, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

• Keep. Just because some people can't understand the work does not mean that it is invalid. Science is not about neutrality it is about truth. The truth is that cold fusion and its related discoveries are an expanding field of science and that ongoing work exists and will in all probability result in significant technology. The debate will not end until we reach commercialisation. Wiki handles well theology debates (many of which will never be finished) but seems to think it can judge science debates before they are ended. If cold fusion is wrong then it should be dead. The fact that there is on-going work means that we aren’t finished yet. If any of the sceptics can tell us conclusively what is going wrong in these experiments then they should submit papers to the relevant journals. So far every proposed error has been countered with an experimental proof that CF did not make such errors.-- Wesleybruce 13:33, 29 December 2005 (UTC) User has a total of 1 edit.

• Hello? Don't mention 'sockpuppet'. Tony 14:00, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
• Remove. Biased sources and a major article dispute doth not maketh a featured article. Ambi 14:03, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

• Keep but Edit. Good material but clearly English was the first language of most contributors. -Hohlraum User has a total of 1 edit
• Keep and modify What is the point of this exchange? As any intellegent person can discover by reading the extensive literature, the phenomenon called cold fusion is real. The issue here is how best to describe the subject. Of course any description of any subject can be improved. The problem is, can any description provided here survive the changes made by people who know nothing about the subject? Apparently not, so what is the point of making an effort?--((User:EdmundStorms|EdmundStorms)) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 68.35.57.25 (talk • contribs) 18:08, 29 December 2005. User has a total of 1 edit.

  This is not a discussion of the subject; this is a discussion of the article, which as it is appears to be biased and not terribly well-written. Thus we're just removing it from "featured article" status, not doing anything else to it. -- SCZenz 20:09, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

You wrote that the article ". . .appears to be biased and not terribly well-written" so it should be unfeatured. Your solution seems counter-productive. If you think it is biased, I suggest you add material to make it less biased. Do something to counteract the bias. (But please refrain from simply erasing statements you consider biased.) If you think it is poorly written, I suggest you rewrite it. This article attacts a lot of attention and revisions, so it is noteworthy. --JedRothwell 22:11, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

You misunderstand the critera for featured articles. See Wikipedia:Featured article criteria. The article must be more than noteworthy; it must be an excellent article already. If it's not good, it shouldn't be featured until it is. I've made specific suggestions on how to fix it, but I personally don't have the time or motivation for the extensive research needed to do so myself at the moment. -- SCZenz 02:59, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Well I think parts of the article are excellent, so I think we should keep it. Excellence is a matter of opinion, after all. The only parts that should be cut out are the skeptical assertions that are not referenced to any scientific literature. Ed Storms is working on a revision of this article that will make it even better. --JedRothwell 17:11, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

• Comment. Now, we need to clarify something here: there's no expectation that reviewers should fix what they criticise in an article. On the other hand, those who want to keep an article will improve the likelihood that it will be retained as a FA by picking up a spade and getting to it, directly, before the crunch comes. Tony 04:00, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

I do not think that the critics arguments' have any merit. I cannot think of any way to "fix" the nonexistent problems they point to. The critics claim that papers have not been written, but I have uploaded hundreds of papers. The critics claim that plasma fusion theory overrules replicated experimental evidence, but I think that violates the scientific method. Do you expect me to defend invalid, irrational and factually incorrect points of view? If you agree with them, it is up to you to defend them. Their skeptical arguments are, in any case, fully represented in this article, and supporters have not touched them or altered them in any way as far as I know. --JedRothwell 17:11, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

• Remove, pooly written, not adequately referenced, and clearly unstable.--nixie 11:12, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

nixie says this article is "not adequately referenced." I can fix that! The article contains over 40 references to peer-reviewed, mainstream journal papers (whereas the article on plasma fusion contains only three such references). But if that is not enough to suit you, please let me know how many more references we need. I can add hundreds more. I agree that parts of this article are poorly written, but only the parts written by skeptics. I cannot help that. --JedRothwell 19:09, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Jed, I think you're confusing creating an article through consensus with a battle. There are no sides, we are all here to make a high quality article. If the parts written by the sceptics are not well referenced then why don't you reference them? Go the extra mile. This isn't a fight; skeptics vs. you. You don't have to take sides and refuse to work with certain parts of the article just because you don't agree with them, that there is a recipe for disaster which has resulted in this FARC. I can see that cold fusion is a very emotive subject for you, but please try and help make the article better as a whole not just represent your point of view :) - FrancisTyers 19:19, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Please do not think I am being sarcastic here! I am sincere. Nixie says this article is not adequately referenced. I take him (or her) at his word, and I stand ready to correct this fault. I personally think it is adequately referenced, but perhaps because this is such a controversial subject, more footnotes are called for. If nixie and others want to see more, and if they will revise their opinion of the article, I can add more easily with the EndNote program. For example, I can insert footnotes here: ". . . similar autoradiographs have been published by the China Lake Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division [FOOTNOTE], Iwate U. [FOOTNOTE], SRI [FOOTNOTE] and many others [THREE MORE]." That is what I would do in a formal paper. It is not unusual for a scientific paper to have many footnotes. At this moment, I am working on a cold fusion review written in 1991 that has 174 footnotes. (See the article's ref. 1, which I will upload soon.) Actually, Ed Storms is working on a revised version of this Wikipedia article, and he just asked me whether to include many footnotes or not. He typically adds hundreds. I told him 40 or 50 would be enough, but I will tell him to go all out if that is what the readers here want.

"If the parts written by the sceptics are not well referenced then why don't you reference them? Go the extra mile."

As far as I know, their claims are not in evidence. In other words, I do know of any experimental evidence or published papers to back up what they say. Actually, most of their claims appear to violate the laws of physics. So I cannot help them. Please note that I have added what might be considered backup to some "skeptical" claims. Just yesterday, for example, someone wrote: "Their results proved difficult to replicate {needs reference} . . ." I added 14 references confirming that the results were difficult to replicate. (Actually, I do not think that "difficult to replicate" is a "skeptical" claim. Fleischmann and other researchers have made it several times.)

I suppose I could add some "skeptical" papers I know of by Morrison, Hoffman, Jones and Shanahan [see the LENR-CANR index], but the quality of these papers is so abysmal that if I were a skeptic, I would prefer to see them buried instead. I do not know of any worthwhile or convincing skeptical papers. --JedRothwell 19:49, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

• keep, the article looks balanced to me. The sceptical parts look more to be mindlessly parroting opinions of those who feel themselves to be the great and the good - the sceptics here are obviously trying to bathe in this reflected glory. The non sceptical parts look to be based on many published scientific papers. Extraordinary claims do not require extraordinary evidence - that is just silly rhetoric - all that is required is ordinary evidence replicated and not falsified. For Gods sake, can we see some of the objectivity that is supposed to be displayed by those of a scientific bent? Nick Palmer User has a total of 1 edit

• Remove or Revert. It's true that most physicists are very conservative. But I think this is for a good reason (at least nowadays). If someone comes to you saying he can transmit information with a speed faster than $c$, you'd be rather skeptical because SR has proven itself over the years. Now, whenever you hear about cold fusion the first reaction is "what ? not again!", although it's sometimes quite hard to dismiss some publications in that field, in the end something is always found to dismiss cold fusion. And the fact is that no experiment has so far convinced most physicists that cold fusion is real. In my humble opinion, the article should be kept ONLY if it will be made much smaller briefly explaining the main ideas. --Just a tag 22:37, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Just a tag writes: ". . . in the end something is always found to dismiss cold fusion." I doubt it! There are ~40 papers referenced in this aricle. If you can find a reason to dismiss one of these papers, I suggest you add it to the article, and also please inform me. I will inform the author (if he is still in contact). I also invite you to write a critique and upload it to LENR-CANR.org. Frankly, with all due respect, I do not think you are capable of doing this, because people have had 16 years to find significant errors and dismiss these papers, but in my opinion they have failed. Bear in mind, these papers survive extra tough peer review. Here is an example of someone who tried [2] (see "Reviewer #7). I think this is mere handwaving. Perhaps you disagree.

I think you should not make assertions such as "something is always found" unless you are willing to back them up with specific statements about what is found regarding specific papers.--JedRothwell 23:18, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

• Comment. Who's going to do the work to restore it to featured quality? I don't know anyone who will, so I think all these 'keep and revert' votes are a bit counterproductive. -- SCZenz 22:40, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

SCZenz writes "Who's going to do the work to restore it to featured quality?" No work is needed to "restore" this article. All of the skeptical content that you think made it a good article previously is still incorporated in the article. The only change is the addition of new material by supporters, and this information is based on papers in peer-reviewed, mainstream journals. Why do you think this has degraded the quality? Do you have some objection to the use of such information? --JedRothwell 23:18, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

They are valuable, SCZenz because they are establishing a consensus that Jed's edits are degrading the article. That can be used to return the article to a better state and even improve it. - Taxman ^Talk 04:50, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

But they raise the possibility that the article will not be fully improved, but will be kept as featured anyway. That would be a big problem. -- SCZenz 05:02, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

That's true, so the revert or remove is a better point then. I think I was the only keep and revert the rest were remove or revert. - Taxman ^Talk 08:41, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

• Remove, badly written, "Cold fusion in fiction" section, bad "see also", no inline cites except external links, references badly-formatted and don't all appear to have been used in the writing of this article. Tuf-Kat 16:09, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

• Remove or revert as per Taxman. Anville 19:53, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

• Remove: It is not stable, comprehensive, nor neutral at this point. Questions of reversion and revert and protect would belong on an RFC. Since "revert and lock" isn't a thing FARC should consider, the minimal step and the mandated step is to assess whether the article is now FA quality. It isn't. Geogre 23:52, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

• Keep When seeking consensus there is bound to be POV disagreement. I remain relatively neutral on the subject as I am a Biologist and Chemist not a physicist howwever what one reads in actually peer reviewed journals makes it clear that the "supposed" mainstream on this issue is not nerely as black and white as some would believe. The article as it is presented seems to address both sides to me. — Falerin^{<talk>,<contrib>} 23:59, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, there has not been a publication in a top flight physics or fusion journal (Science, Nature, the Physical Review, Nuclear Physics etc...) since 1991, two years after the discovery was initially claimed. (This is not to claim they don't exist, but I haven't seen any references.) Information is disseminated in the field entirely through conference proceedings and the decidedly unskeptical Infinite Energy magazine as well as a handful of other cold fusion journals. –Joke 19:26, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Might be worth looking at the impact factor of the Journals cited? Of course it isn't infalliable. - FrancisTyers 19:36, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

I've just looked at Infinite Energy, New Energy Times and Cold Fusion Times. None of them even appear in the ISI citation index, let alone have a credible ranking. They are non peer-reviewed journals. They are junk. J Electro Anal (the original F+P publ) is an unimpressive 2.228. William M. Connolley 20:22, 3 January 2006 (UTC).

I did a more detailed publication search at the lenr-canr.org webpage. I searched for all the major physics and fusion journals, and found some publication in Phys. Lett. A in the 90's (most recently 1999), one in Phys. Rev. C (in 1993), one in J. Fusion Energy since 1990 (in 2004), one in JETP since 1993 (it was in 1998), three in Europhys. Lett. (including one in 2002) and nothing in other major fusion and physics journals. For a claimed groundbreaking discovery in physics, this is nothing at all. –Joke 21:01, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

• Revert and keep or remove, as per Taxman. In addition: I don't see why leaving this one to the loonies is acceptable: reverting to sanity should be no problem in a well-conducted encyclopedia. William M. Connolley 19:58, 3 January 2006 (UTC).

  There being no obvious reason not to, I've done the said revert. William M. Connolley 20:11, 3 January 2006 (UTC).

  The reason I think it needs to be removed, not just reverted, as there is a big problem here that I have trouble seeing how the encyclopedia can deal with. The editors JedRothwell and ObsidianOrder are very well informed, motivated cold fusion advocates. There are no well informed skeptics currently editing the page, just a bunch of people, such as myself, who don't know anything about calorimetry or cold fusion, but know that the publication record amounts to squat, that there is no known mechanism for cold fusion, and that the physics community as a whole is doubtful. –Joke 20:51, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Joke writes: ". . . just a bunch of people, such as myself, who don't know anything about calorimetry or cold fusion . . ." With all due respect, if you do not know anything about calorimetry or cold fusion, why do you think you can pass judgement on the subject with such assurance? You should at least hesitate before dismissing them. Dozens of the world's top electrochemists have done the experiment and are convinced the effect is real. You agree that you have not studied their work in detail. So why are you certain they are wrong? It seems unscientific to me.

". . . but know that the publication record amounts to squat . . ." I think that publications such as Jap. J. Applied Physics and J. Fusion Energy are pretty impressive, but I suppose it is a matter of opinion.

". . . that there is no known mechanism for cold fusion . . ." Since the discovery is experimental, no mechanism is called for. There is no known mechanism for high temperature superconducting, and before 1952 there was no known mechanism for cellular reproduction.

". . . and that the physics community as a whole is doubtful." The article makes that abundantly clear. How much clearer can we make it? Why are you complaining about this? It seems to me that none of your objections has any merit. --JedRothwell 02:46, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

• I think this is unduly pessimistic. And anyway, dropping the FAC status won't of itself stop them editing it. Umm... does this remind you of Reddi at all, or am I being unfair? William M. Connolley 21:11, 3 January 2006 (UTC).

  No, you are not being unfair. –Joke 21:46, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

  Joke - I do not consider myself to be an advocate (although thanks for the "well-informed" compliment). I do have quite a bit of graduate physics under my belt, and I am somewhat familiar with the cold fusion literature (i.e. I've read maybe 2% of it). I believe that the phenomenon is real, based on the fact that a number of scientists with impecable reputations have performed the experiments and described something which pretty much has to be fusion. That said, there are obvious problems with the field. Please have a look at my outline for a rewrite of the article at User:ObsidianOrder/Cold fusion redux and then see if your opinion that I'm an advocate changes. ObsidianOrder 21:42, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

• Remove or revert to featured version. --Pjacobi 20:02, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
• Remove as FA, continue to improve. Enough apparent shades of PV that it should be looked at more carefully by a broader range of editors before continuing to represent WP at its best. Still a good article, though. Martinp 02:26, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Above is needlessly wordy. Fails 2(e) and maybe also 2(d), not sure. Martinp 02:43, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

• Keep. If you have a look at the LENR-CANR site, you'll see that the problem is that the effect was difficult to reproduce because it is so faint. It will never amount to a useful energy source; it took twelve years before it could be reliably reproduced. Some people still believe that it's not reproducable. Look at the LENR site. —James S. 10:32, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
• Remove. The article has deteriorated, and the FA standards have increased greatly since August 2004. It needs to be run through FAC again. — ₀₉₁₈^BRIAN • 2006-01-6 06:32
• Remove--not stable. Chick Bowen 18:42, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Garry Kasparov

Article is no longer a featured article

Fails criteria 2.a, not brilliant prose, choppily written and does not flow well; 2.c, very few citations in the article, even for direct quotations; 5, wanders into politics of the World Championship. Further, according to this article's original FAC, it probably shouldn't have been featured to begin with (I count 1 support vote and 1 oppose). --Ryan Delaney ^talk 11:54, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

• Remove Featured articles have improved a lot since 2003, and this article no longer qualifies. (Bjorn Tipling 15:10, 27 December 2005 (UTC))
• Remove, no references, poor prose. —Kirill Lokshin 02:55, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
• Remove. Per existing arguments by Ryan Delaney, Bjorn Tipling, and Kirill Lokshin. -Rebelguys2 21:34, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
• Reluctant remove. Pity, it would make a good FA if fixed up, but who's going to do the considerable amount of work required? Tony 07:00, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
• Remove. Ryan Delaney makes valid observations. The article is not awful, but it is not an outstanding one either. Sjakkalle (Check!) 09:32, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Platypus

There is no consensus. Article is still a featured article.

Article is not very well referenced - the last section does not comply with the manual of style. Also, the article does not use footnotes (has in-line html citations instead). It was nominated in 2004 without any voting under Wikipedia:Archive/Refreshing_brilliant_prose_-_Science. It doesn't really demonstrate our best work. Image:Oz20cent.jpg is missing a source. I doubt this would pass today. — Wackymacs 02:24, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

• Keep. Footnotes are not a requirement, and the naming of the References section is trivial. It's not a spectacular article, but it still looks pretty good to me. Mark¹ 18:55, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
• Remove', I've been slowly restructuring the article- but there are lots of gaps (not comprehensive) and frankly it is not clear that the references in the list were actually used to write the article since they were added when taxman made a list of FA's without refs, so they are probably token refs rather than supporting the text of the article.--nixie 01:44, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
• Remove. FA standards have toughened significantly since this article originally came up, and we should not "grandfather" articles in to dodge valid issues. Featured Articles do generally require inline citations, as mentioned here: Wikipedia:Inline Citation. -Rebelguys2 21:38, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
  • The nominator was complaining that it does have inline citations, not that it doesn't. Mark¹ 21:49, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
    • I apologize for being unclear and implying that your "footnotes" were synonymous with all forms of "inline citations," as it doesn't matter what form they are in - as long as they are there and preferably somehow inline. I did mean to imply, however, my agreement with the first part of the nominator's complaint about references, per nixie's argument, in that we shouldn't allow previous acceptance of such minimal use of any type of inline citation and unorganized references and links to in any way grandfather this article in. I have no complaint with whatever kind of inline citation is used - only that it's still there and supporting the article as a whole, and not simply a few sentences in the conclusion. Thanks for the catch. -Rebelguys2 00:04, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
• Remove as per Wackymacs. Tony 03:56, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
• Remove. Would change my vote to keep if references inserted.--Alabamaboy 14:46, 1 January 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. The references look good to me. The sentence structure and word economy could be better. But otherwise I see no reason to remove this article from featured status. -- Hurricane Ericarchive -- my dropsonde 03:18, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
• Ultra-weak keep. Separate the references from the external links, and convert those inline HTML links to footnotes or something. This is rather minor, and those book references are enough. IIRC, inline citations are not a must for FAs, although they are encouraged. Wikipedia:Cite sources/example style doesn't even mention them as examples (last time I checked). Might be time to change this, though, seeing as we now have native support for footnotes in MediaWiki. Johnleemk | Talk 05:21, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask

Illegitimate FARC of an illegitimate Featured Article. See Below. Article is currently not featured.

This article achieved featured article candidate status via fraud; see Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Votestacking FAC sockpuppets: Hollow Wilerding. I intend to be bold and remove it presently, but am listing it here just to be complete. I suggest that because of the fraud, this article in fact never honestly became a featured article. To avoid even the appearance of impropriety, it should go through the full FAC process again, from the beginning. Nandesuka 16:00, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

Just for those who are confused, here's the procedure we're going to follow w/ regard to the controversy over this article. Raul654 18:37, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

• Keep. Wikipedia is going to be the end of itself. —Hollow Wilerding . . . (talk) 16:10, 1 January 2006 (UTC)
• Remove. I did not want to be involved in the FAC process, but regardless of this quality, it is my opinion that Hollow Wilerding cheated the FAC process, and I cannot in good faith vote Keep, regardless of quality. - A Link to the Past (talk) 16:29, 1 January 2006 (UTC)
• Remove for now. The article may be worthy of FA status, but I'd rather a clean vote be cast. Nandesuka, please let this run its course before removing the FA status. Hermione1980 16:40, 1 January 2006 (UTC)
• Remove, I am a Zelda fan, but proofs seem overwhelmings. The article looks FA worthy, but the vote should be recast in the future. I also agree with Hermione1980 that the article should keep its status until the votation is finished, if only for courtesy with all those who contributed in good faith to the article. -- ReyBrujo 16:50, 1 January 2006 (UTC)
• Remove per User:Hermione1980. With regard to the issue of the issue of posting a FARC notice on a recently promoted article, which should be mentioned, Raul654 indicated in an earlier dispute that it could be an appropriate way to address claims of "gaming" the FAC process, and that is the issue here.Monicasdude 17:01, 1 January 2006 (UTC)
• Remove. In fact, considering the irregularities I'd support "speedy removal" of FA status and immediate relisting at FAC. Coffee 17:13, 1 January 2006 (UTC)
• Remove. Thoroughly tainted nomination process- no way of knowing how the debate would have gone without the puppetry. Mark¹ 18:58, 1 January 2006 (UTC)
• Remove Needs to go through a legit FAC process. --Wgfinley 19:17, 1 January 2006 (UTC)
• Remove. Terrible abuse of FAC process by Hollow Wilderding and "associates". Harro5 22:20, 1 January 2006 (UTC)
• Remove, if we want to keep the good name of WP, then the transparency of the process must be ensured. Phaedriel 22:41, 1 January 2006 (UTC)
• Remove Removal should have been speedy as far as I am concerned, but if it's slow OK as long as it is removed. DreamGuy 05:06, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
• Remove. If the article were resubmitted to FAC by an honest editor, I might consider supporting it (even though I voted oppose in the first place — apparently my objection wasn't well-considered), but as it stands this article's FA status is an indicator not of the article's quality but of how broken the FAC system is. --keepsleeping sleeper cell 06:40, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
• Remove as per all above. Regardless of the FA-worthiness of this article, fraud is not on. Delete, then resubmit to FAC. Batmanand 11:50, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
• Remove as per all above. And an investigation into all other FAs nominated by User:Hollow Wilerding should be done. --malber 14:24, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

• Remove: Fraudulent FAC deliberation. Geogre 23:54, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
• Remove per the nominator. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 01:03, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
• Remove—oh please, let's clean up the FAC process. Tony 06:56, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

NOTE
This article should have been re-FAC'ed rather than FARC'ed. There is precedent for re-FAC'ing: See Wikipedia:Featured_article_removal_candidates/History_of_South_Carolina. Additionally, this FARC and the majority of the remove votes are clearly about the illegitamacy of the article's FAC, rather than issues with the article itself, which is the purpose of FARC. The FAC was illegitamate, this FARC is illegitamate, and as such I am both Being Bold and Ignoring All Rules, speedy "demoting" the article and closing this discussion. It will be up to the article's creators to re-FAC the article. --Jeffrey O. Gustafson - Shazaam! - <*> 09:26, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Peer review

Article is no longer a featured article.

Fails criterion 2(c) - Un-referenced. Fails criterion 2(b) - not comprehensive (one section is actually a stub). «LordViD» 14:13, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

• Remove per nom. There's also a link-farm at the bottom, but that's a rather minor issue in comparison. —Kirill Lokshin 14:24, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
• Remove per nom. Johnleemk | Talk 18:28, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
• Remove per nom. Needs to be peer reviewed. (Sorry, I couldn't help it!) *Exeunt* Ganymead | Dialogue? 14:56, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
• Remove Tobyk777 21:24, 25 December 2005 (UTC)
• Remove — the external links section needs a major cleanup. --zenohockey 00:05, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Christmas

Article is no longer a featured article

Because of this holiday's popularity, the article attracts a lot of editors, in particular those adding random sentences in random spots which don't necessarily harm the article on their own, but collectively reduce its quality over time.

Consider this:

• The article became featured on December 24, 2004. Compare the version that was promoted as featured-quality to the current version.
• Since it became featured, it has been edited over 1100 times. Of those edits, about 600 were neither vandalism, reversions, nor minor edits. So, about 600 major edits were made to this article since it became featured.
• For a quick comparison, look at the tables of contents for the Featured-quality version and the current version.
  • In particular, look at the section titled Regional customs and celebrations: in the Featured version, it was a detailed breakdown of the customs in different continents. Now, it consists of four words: "Further information: Christmas worldwide". Do we really want this to be presented to the world as what we consider "Featured quality"?
• I've been watching this article over the past couple weeks. It has attracted massive amounts of "holidaycruft". Anyone who has ever seen Christmas represented on a TV show has tried to add something about that into this article. I've been reverting what I can, but this has been going on for the past 12 months. I really doubt that the original supporters of the FAC would support this version.

This has nothing to do with religion. It has everything to do with presenting our best content to the world. Maybe there should be a time limit for Featured Articles, so that they have to be reconsidered for FA status once they have been edited too many times... — ₀₉₁₈^BRIAN • 2005-12-19 22:16

[edit] Discussion

• Reluctant remove. This is going to stir up a whole lot of grief, what with the Main Page listing and all, but I find I have to agree with the nominator. Also, while reading through I discovered one gross copyvio—from Isaac Asimov's Guide to the Bible, of all places. I paraphrased and trimmed it into something legitimate, but this makes me worry that there are other copyvios present I wasn't eidetic enough to notice. Anville 00:15, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
• Remove per nom and Anville. Ambi 01:34, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
• Comment: This is exactly why we need some sort of "stable article" system. — ₀₉₁₈^BRIAN • 2005-12-20 01:38
• Comment (somewhat facetiously) - so do we revert it all the way back to the old version? — Ambush Commander^(Talk) 01:43, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Be bold. :) -User:Fennec (はさばくのきつね) 01:47, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
  • While this would seem like the best solution, there were 600 major edits since it became Featured, so I wouldn't suggest it. If you could determine who the main contributors have been since last December, and ask them if it is alright to revert all of their changes, then maybe. — ₀₉₁₈^BRIAN • 2005-12-20 01:52
• Remove This article, there should be an entry for Christmas, but the article is almost unreadable in it's current form. Drn8 01:49, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
• Remove. "[…] Making large-scale changes to Featured articles, which are recognized as Wikipedia's best articles for their completeness, accuracy, and neutrality, is often a bad idea." (--Wikipedia:Be bold). That is exactly what has been happening here, and the article in its current form is not worthy of the distinction given to articles which exemplify Wikipedia's very best work" . --Wikiacc (talk) 02:11, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
• Remove, needs a very competent editor to reintroduce old text and trim much of the new text, and remove any other copyvios. Not up to standard at the present time.--nixie 04:18, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
• Keep. — Dan | talk 06:29, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
  • This is not a vote, this is a discussion attempting to reach consensus. You haven't added anything to that discussion with your one word answer. --Cyde Weys _vote^talk 21:04, 25 December 2005 (UTC)
• Remove as per nixie. Tony 07:19, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
• "Remove' -- needs a lot of work. =Nichalp «Talk»= 08:08, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
• Reluctant remove. The article seems rather Western-centric, and the copyvio worry is enough for me. A pity, though, because in most other respects, this could have very well been a featured article. Johnleemk | Talk 08:09, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
• Comment - Do you not think 4 days of fervent editing would get it approaching featured status. It might not be good enough now, and it might not be a "true" featured article on the 25th, but if we got it close, it'd still be a great mainpage. - Hahnchen 10:47, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
  • The truth is that the article has changed so much from its original version that it wouldn't make sense to accept a new version as also being "Featured quality" without it going through an FAC process of its own. — ₀₉₁₈^BRIAN • 2005-12-20 12:49
• I think we couuld just revert to the Featured revision in this case. Filiocht | The kettle's on 11:02, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
  • There are no guidelines for such an action, and I'm sure positive changes have been made since it became featured. I would suggest instead a change to the Featured Article policy, giving articles a "featured lifespan" after which they are no longer featured because they have changed too much. This will be basically fixed next month, however, when "stable versions" goes live. — ₀₉₁₈^BRIAN • 2005-12-20 12:51
• Remove however, before I do I wish to comment on a few things: firstly, our content is very fluid. Articles still change after being FA, this is as it should be. However, as Brian has noted they do change and therefore FAC does have a lifespan. This is where Wikipedia:Stable versions would be very handy to have! However, the reasons I would like it removed are:
  1. "Some scholars maintain that December 25 was only adopted in the 4th century as a Christian holiday after Roman Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity to encourage a common religious festival for both Christians and pagans." - which scholars?
  2. Merge tag up the top needs to be dealt with
  3. "All extant evidence indicates that Christianity was generally adopted as the official religion decades after Constantine's death in most parts of the Roman Empire." in that case, can we have sources?
  4. Systemic bias: there is nothing on how countries such as Japan celebrate Christmas. This is significant because they have their own unique take on the event. - Ta bu shi da yu 11:43, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
• Comment: If the old version was so good and the current version sucks why not just revert it? —Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 11:53, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
  • There are no guidelines for such an action, and I'm sure positive changes have been made since it became featured. I would suggest instead a change to the Featured Article policy, giving articles a "featured lifespan" after which they are no longer featured because they have changed too much. This will be basically fixed next month, however, when "stable versions" goes live. — ₀₉₁₈^BRIAN • 2005-12-20 12:51
• Remove -- lack of sourcing, major objectivity problems. BYT 12:40, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
• Remove. Like most featured articles from that long ago, no longer demonstrates Wikipedia's best. -Silence 13:07, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
• Keep. Article is steadily improving and is acceptable. I am not persuaded by the arguments below - and while there is a deadline, the article doesn't reflect a rush job. Trödel•talk 22:27, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
• Withhold vote This nomination has brought attention to the article and we should give it a day or two. If not improved, I would reluctantly have to agree with remove, but believe it can get in shape in time for main page posting on Dec 25th. Trödel•talk 13:44, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Yes, but would it still be featured-worthy? The content has changed quite a lot since it became featured. I think that letting it remain Featured when it has changed so much is a misuse of the system. The only way I would be comfortable with the article being featured is if it were put up for FAC again. We should not be so concerned about the Main Page date of December 25th. It is better that Featured Articles remain FAC-approved quality than to be an abuse of the process. — ₀₉₁₈^BRIAN • 2005-12-20 14:16
    • That is the purpose of this vote - to decide if it is - and we should take into considerations the ongoing changes. Trödel•talk 14:21, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
• Keep. Entirely predictable I am sure given the "debate" over Christmas and Omnipotence paradox on WP:TFA recently, and given my votes below I doubt anyone will agree with me anyway, but: (i) Yes, it has been edited a lot since 24 December 2005, but much of the structure and content remains quite similar, as far as I can see. Merciless editing is really the point of a wiki. If the concern is that there have been major changes, then perhaps Wikipedia:Featured article review would be a better place to start? (ii) I'm not sure it matters how many edits that an article has had ("major" or otherwise - a loaded term if ever there was one, given the differences of opinion on when an edit ceases to be "minor"); surely the content is the thing. It is obviously harder to maintain the quality of high-profile articles - the slew of vandalism that appears when an article is on the Main Page is rather depressing. But the older version is just sitting there in the history. All it needs is someone to go through, accept the good changes and reject the bad. (iii) Spinning out a over-long section to a new article is the essence of summary style. It is just unfortunate that a summary of the new article was not retained in this article, but there are already mentions of different customs in the rest of that section. I don't see how this article could possibly discuss the differing customs in 200 countries, let alone within countries. (iv) I don't see why an article should lose its featured status simply because it attracts "cruft", holiday or otherwise. Finally, at the end of the day, we can always revert to the 24 December 2004 version, and I don't think we need to ask editors for permission to do that if the old version is clearly much better than the current version. -- ALoan (Talk) 14:35, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Um, I think you miss the gist of most of these complaints. The issue is that the article wasn't good enough even then to be featured on the main page now (else we'd simply revert it to its state year ago), and all the edits since then haven't much improved it. It's not that the article's gone downhill especially (most FAs go downhill after being Featured anyway, since there's no longer much of an impetus to improve), it's just that Wikipedia's standards have changed, and it hasn't changed with them. Personally, I strongly supported featuring the article on December 25th, and still think it would be an excellent idea—if the article itself was good enough to merit appearing on the main page on that, or any other, day. Since it's not, I'd try working on it over the next year or so and see if you can get it FAd in time for next Christmas. :) I'll support its appearing on the main page then, if it's improved enormously from its current state. -Silence 16:25, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
  • I could see someone wanting to keep the article if it was greatly improved from its current state, but as others have pointed out, it's almost unreadable right now. If I had not brought this FARC up, we would have been presenting to the world a copyvio and a section consisting of 4 words as our "highest quality". — ₀₉₁₈^BRIAN • 2005-12-20 16:25
• Remove (and fix and re-apply for featured status and find a true featured article for Dec 25) --Dystopos 14:39, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
• Strong Keep - "HUMBUG!" --Mistress Selina Kyle 18:14, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
  • The article contained a copyvio and a section with 4 words. You consider this featured material? — ₀₉₁₈^BRIAN • 2005-12-20 18:23
    • It doesn't contain it anymore, so it's still featured article quality. --Mistress Selina Kyle 18:40, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
      • Nope. There are dozens of other major errors in this article. This article needs cleanup tags, not parading on the main page as though it were our best when it's in fact mediocre. -Silence 18:47, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
      • It's even worse now than it was before! The lead section mentions that "regional Christmas traditions are still rich and varied", but all of that has been wiped out of the article. What exactly is the lead section summarizing now, and how can the article be considered neutral? The original Featured version contained 23 paragraphs on Regional customs. This version contains a few sentences.. — ₀₉₁₈^BRIAN • 2005-12-20 18:50
• Remove per nom. Rampart 18:30, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
• Comment At its present state this article is not featured article-worthy. I've been trying to integrate the content that is new with the content when the article was featured. I've also rewritten some of the sections so that they are a bit more clear. I hope to begin editing again starting with the "Religious customs and celebrations" section. Obviously the article has large sections that lack sources. "Theories regarding the origion of the date of Christmas" should probably be merged with "The origions of Christmas", perhaps as a subsection. The same is probably true of "Dates of celebration". Some have cited bias in the article--apparently this was the case with the reference to Christmas being celebrated in Japan (a statement that was in the article when it was featured). If others could elaborate on other instances of bias in the article, these can be corrected. After I finish with the initial rewrite, I'll go back and tag the areas that need to cite sources and then hopefully find sources for them. Theshibboleth 19:12, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
• Keep Any diminution in quality should be fixed (and indeed can be fixed if desired by a simple revert). It still has the feel of a FA, jguk 19:40, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

• I've read the article version from when it was FAd. It might have been good enough to appear on the main page a year ago, but it wasn't good enough to appear on the main page now. -Silence 19:48, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

• Comment How about moving the old version (which everyone seems to think is preferable) to Christmas/Featured, and then locking that page? Anyone who wants to can still edit the main article, and changes to the new article can be proposed on talk. Then, once the featured period is over, we can go back to normal. Firebug 19:54, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
  • What is considered "featured" has changed over the last year, and I know of several older featured articles which would not be featured material today. It may be the case with this article as well. — ₀₉₁₈^BRIAN • 2005-12-20 20:37
  • And, it is generally frowned upon (and in the case of Raul654, vehemently opposed) to have an article featured on the main page and be locked for more than 5 or 10 minutes at a time. — ₀₉₁₈^BRIAN • 2005-12-20 20:40
    • Beating the drum won't change anything if the current efforts of dedicated users are successful. But giving up and not making any changes to the article is one option. Trödel•talk 20:56, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
      • Regardless of the improvements that are made, the article needs to be put back through FAC. We should be more concerned about it actually being Featured quality (according to current standards of what is "Featured"), and not about it being on the Main Page at the scheduled time. — ₀₉₁₈^BRIAN • 2005-12-20 20:59

• I agree. The entire concept of putting the article up on the main page around this time was just a funny game we were playing, an amusing bit of synchronity to get a few more readers interested in the article. All of that is infinitely less important than the actual quality of the article itself, which is clearly lacking to the extent that we should put at least a few more months of hard work, research, reorganization, and copyediting into it before attempting to navigate the more rigorous FA process again. And while we're at it, we could try to get some other former FAs re-featured, like Mozart and Julius Caesar. :f -Silence 05:09, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
• I second that emotion. Better we took our time and did the article right than rushing through to repair it before the 25th (or even 7 January, ha ha!). Anville 09:52, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

• Weak removal, but I have high hopes it can be saved beforehand. Summarise that section, add more images, then perhaps we can discuss re-entry. -- Natalinasmpf 23:26, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

• If anyone doubts the poverty of writing, here are a few random gems:

'for which there are different traditional menus in many country.'

'This practice has led to much adjudication, as some say it amounts to the government endorsing a religion.' (lexical and grammatical problems)

'a family newsletter telling activities of family members' (good one, folks)

'gives gifts at two occasions'

'the many customs of gift timing'

'Christmas customs and traditions transmitted through mass culture have been adopted by Christians and non-Christians alike' (let's be careful about POV)

'As it is implied that John the Baptist could only have been conceived during that particular week; and as his conception is believed to be tied to that of Jesus, it is claimed that an approximate date of 25 December can be arrived at for the birth of Jesus.' (great punctuation and sentence structure).

It's tripe. Tony 04:31, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Tony, you seem to have lexical difficulties with the word random. Perhaps if you are so capable of finding problems in the article, you might also try to fix them. Really though, grammar and spelling are minor things. Right now this article needs to be edited so that it can at least be understood. And what do you think is POV about "Christmas customs and traditions transmitted through mass culture have been adopted by Christians and non-Christians alike"? This is a fact. Further, one can reach conclusions without being biased. Some of your other cited problems are not problems at all either. Theshibboleth 08:53, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

• Remove to avoid further negative publicity. ‣ᓛᖁᑐ 10:10, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
• Keep: It's quite good enough to be a featured article and quite good enough to be on the main page - as per the long, lengthy and very recent discussion on the subject here, [3]in which the nominator was a full participant even if he did not get his own way. Giano | talk 16:27, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
  • I agreed with Raul's rationale for having Christmas on the Main Page on Christmas. I didn't agree with anyone else's. How much clearer do I have to be? The problem is the article has turned to crap since it was featured a year ago. Had I not mentioned anything, the article would have gone on the main page containing a copyvio and a section with 4 words. Quite good enough? — ₀₉₁₈^BRIAN • 2005-12-21 16:32

• Thank you for withdrawing your claim of bad faith. [4] as I am not inferring bad faith merely pointing out that you were a participant in that discussion and your suggestion to put Omnipotence paradox on the main page on 25th December was not successful. Giano | talk 16:57, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

• Keep until after 25 Dec, then decide again. Sometimes featured articles do get transformed when they are on the mainpage, sometimes for the better. Let's not lose hope on this article. - Mailer Diablo 17:51, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

All right, so this is the season for hope, but I can't quite summon up the Wikifaith to believe that Main Page exposure would bring the right sort of edits. This article deteriorated, in large part, because it is a natural topic for "holidaycruft": everyone who sees a Christmas movie writes a sentence, and everyone who has a viewpoint on whether or not it's overcommercialized adds a paragraph. The noise accumulates until it drowns out the signal. (I've seen this happen many times before, Calvin and Hobbes being a good example of a similarly vulnerable page.) What this article needs is concentrated attention by dedicated editors with serious attitudes toward scholarship. This is not, by and large, what getting on the Main Page gives you. Wide exposure works, sometimes, but this just isn't one of those times.

We do not need more sentences like "Christmas can be a time steeped in a sense of belonging for those who celebrate it while those who do not may feel left out." Yes, that is an image caption. The sections beginning with "Economics of Christmas" are, simply put, dreadful.

Finally, if we put the article on the Main Page in the hope that elves will come along and fix it, then we are still presenting a bad article to the world. Maybe the elves will come and make it all better, but until they do, this article just isn't worth the placement we'd be giving it. Anville 19:52, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

• Strongly agree. The article is not ready for prime time, and mainpage exposure will a) degrade it further and b) send the wrong message about the level of quality WP considers to be "high." BYT 20:30, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
• Well said. — ₀₉₁₈^BRIAN • 2005-12-21 20:50
  • Is there something wrong with your preference setting Brian - or is this sort of minuscule obscure slash signing deliberate? You must have far better eyes than mine. Giano | talk 22:56, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
    • I didn't follow that... at all... — ₀₉₁₈^BRIAN • 2005-12-22 13:31
      • I believe Giano's referring to your superimposed signature, and the requisite eyesight needed to make it out. GeeJo _{(t) (c)} 16:32, 24 December 2005 (UTC)
• At first I agreed with you that the article's content is weak. Now I'm beginning to wonder about your standards. Just because you have to write from a NPOV does not meant that an article must be a disconnected recitation of facts. I, who added the cited caption, did not do say anything that the article already did not. Granted, perhaps we do need a source for the statement (which is made in the article, if not in as many words). It bothers me though that people point out "problems" like that particular image caption and not what I see as a much more pressing problem: the inconsistency and redundancy of the section on the origins of Christmas. Theshibboleth 21:42, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

• Strong Keep Give it a chance first. FAs always can be improved. Needs some cleanup though. --Terence Ong ^|Talk 05:01, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Yes, FA's can be improved, but this one has spent a year being destroyed, and over that year, FA standards have greatly increased. It needs to be put back through FAC to make sure that all the destruction has been undone, and that it meets current standards. Many of the current FA's wouldn't be featured material today, and if someone tried to nominate them for Main Page, they probably would go through the same FARC process this one is going through. — ₀₉₁₈^BRIAN • 2005-12-22 13:34
• Strong Keep Thanks to those that brought attention to this article needing some clean-up, but removal is premature - the article is shaping up nicely for a christmas main page feature. Abeo Paliurus 05:24, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
  • It still has none of the sections on regional customs that it originally had (previously 23 paragraphs). I would say that it still has quite a lot of work to do, and that it should be resubmitted to FAC to make sure it meets today's FA standards. — ₀₉₁₈^BRIAN • 2005-12-22 13:29
    • Of course then some will object that the article is too long (it is 39kb as is). Abeo Paliurus 13:46, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
      • The article used to have a large section on regional customs. That version became Featured. This version has no sections on regional customs. If you're worried about the article being too long, trim away some of the other stuff to add in a section on regional customs. Otherwise the article is showing a strong western bias, particularly toward the U.S. — ₀₉₁₈^BRIAN • 2005-12-22 13:50
      • It's pretty normal for unwieldy sections to split off into a separate article as WP grows. I don't necessarily see the creation of a separate article as "degrading" the main one. The problem is when the split creates a POV ghetto, leaving readers of the main article oblivious to other significant facets of the topic. This seems to be the Brian's concern, and I agree that the issue does need editorial attention. (copied to Talk:Christmas). --Dystopos 14:41, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
• Remove this article so it won't litter the mainpage. Bah, humbug! *Exeunt* Ganymead | Dialogue? 15:06, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
• Strong remove and, if this FARC discussion lasts until after December 25, please don't feature it on the main page. I'd been staying out of this discussion but I finally read the article and it really has become awful. The "Social impact of Christmas" section is particularly embarassing — it strongly violates NPOV, which makes the whole article violate NPOV, and it's weasel-worded and utterly unsourced, which calls the entire article's verifiability into question. When these are the most common criticisms of Wikipedia already, this is not the sort of article we should be presenting to our readers under a banner calling it "one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community". --keepsleeping sleeper cell 17:23, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
  • I have removed this section - are there other specific areas which need improvment. Trödel•talk 22:26, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
• Remove... The social impact section is particularly bad... 24.126.232.208 19:04, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

This section has been removed until it is sourced and reflects the WP:NPOV standard. Trödel•talk 22:26, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

• Remove not ready yet. Needs to be improved in the areas mentioned by voters above. Some parts are good. --a.n.o.n.y.m ^t 20:55, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
• Remove - The article really just isn't well-written. And considering how well-known Christmas is, the number of references is frighteningly small. It's almost as if no one has done any real research, and instead, just written on what they think they know about it. --Cyde Weys _talk^contribs 21:21, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
  • My final two cents' worth: the ballooning of Xmas into an orgy of comsumption and commercial activity is treated in just one sentence—a good one, but it's woefully inadequate given the cultural and political implications of this trend at the expense of the religious/spiritual meaning of the occasion. Along with the inadequacy of the treatment of regional customs, which could be fascinating if it shed light on the wider cultures in question, fixing this aspect needs thoughtful, cooperative effort that is almost certainly unachievable in two days. Tony 23:58, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
• Remove Article has five footnotes, only four of which are linked to from the text. The floating fifth is a quote from Gandhi (mv to Wikiquoute?). References are given, but there is very little link between the text and which of these are referencing claims, and the references themselves don't inspire a lot of faith. Suggest a massive rewrite with a couple of the popular histories of Christmas at hand. Jkelly 00:46, 23 December 2005 (UTC)
• Remove. First: it can always be featured next year. Second: it can - and should - be so much better, especially if this should be main paged during XMAS. The style is bad: too many short paras, too many stub-sections, no pic in lead. Plus, few inline citations and for a bizzare reason, a reference section with several positions AND a {{unreferenced}}. Unless this is fixed in a few hours, I say we should improve it and feature next year. Then we can be truly proud of our work.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus ^Talk 01:59, 24 December 2005 (UTC)
• Comment - I really hope someone is paying attention to this discussion, there are many valid objections with this article and very few have been addressed. The article is still heavily overlinked and is not cited well. --Cyde Weys _vote^talk 20:16, 24 December 2005 (UTC)
• Keep - Tarret 03:00, 25 December 2005 (UTC)
  • This is not a vote, this is a discussion attempting to reach consensus. You haven't added anything to that discussion with your one word answer. --Cyde Weys _vote^talk 21:04, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

Objections:

I am a little confused on this WP:FARC. I have only recently helped review a few WP:FAC, so if I am being a newbie I apologize. In FAC objections were raised and the editors attempted to address the objections with an eye towards improving the article. Is the purpose of a Feature Article Removal Candidate vote to just demote the article or not? If so that seems counter-productive to creating a great encyclopedia. It seems to me that the purpose of farc should be to get an article back up to feature status - or up to the current standard (if the FA standard has been raised).

Or is the FARC a process like FAC that provides feedback to make sure the article is up to feature standards? If so, then that is not what has happened here. Since this article was listed, I have watched objections raised and addressed, and tried to address a few myself, but unlike the FAC process - there doesn't seem to be any willingness to review the changes made to resolve objections and further comment on them to the benefit of the quality of the article.

Is there something that I am missing? Trödel•talk 22:26, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

• I see FARC as basically a process for "forcing" an article to go through FAC again. This article was featured a year ago, and in that time, its quality has dropped significantly, while the FAC standards have risen significantly. So, FARC is basically a way to see if others agree that the article's Featured-status is at best questionable, and therefore should be unfeatured and put back through the more structured, well-understood FAC process. — ₀₉₁₈^BRIAN • 2005-12-22 22:36
• You are essentially right - on FAC, a person nominating an article is under an obligation to make good-faith efforts to deal with objections. Here, the person nominating an article has no interest in maintaining its featured status. The only way that objections here (remove votes) are dealt with is if someone interested in the article (often the person who nominated it as a FAC in the first place, or someone who contributed significantly to its content) is willing and able to deal with them. But the original nominator or authors may not be around to deal with objections, and it is rare some else to pick up the baton. I think the archive will show that it is more common than not for articles nominated here to be "removed", mainly because noone has any responsibility to deal with objections. This is one reason why the threshold to remove "featured" status has been "consensus" (that is, broad support for removal) rather than "no objections" (as on FAC). -- ALoan (Talk) 23:42, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Thx! That makes sense. Trödel•talk 23:46, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
    • Hello. I am the creator of WP:FFA and, since August, have been the one closing FARCs and, where needed, demoting articles. Copying what I have said elswhere, like ALoan has said, 2 to 1 is not consensus. However, featured content does not always work by consensus. For instance, Raul can deny featured status to an article if it has just one objection among a sea of supports, if he feels the objection is substantive. I use a similar methodology when I close FARCs. Like Brian says, we are sortof forcing it through FAC again, and if there are reasoned, logical calls for removal, and any number of keep votes that do not actually respond to the objections raised, I am more likely to discount those keeps. Indeed, this is a discussion, and not a strict vote, and we must hold our featured content to a higher standard. As an aside on the current didcussion, I will not comment on the progress of this current discussion and will withhold contemplating a decision until the two week limit has expired, and I have not decided on whether or not to make a vote myself. All FYI on how the process has worked to date. --Jeffrey O. Gustafson - Shazaam! - <*> 08:45, 23 December 2005 (UTC)
      • Thanks for the explanation - but I am completely disenchanted with the process - because as I've reviewed some editors contributions - they suggest (though, of course I can't be sure) that there is a desire to see this article demoted because it is about Christmas, rather than any substantive arguments about its quality, and they have shown no interest in improving the article or in giving feedback about the edits that are being made to improve the article. Trödel•talk 12:31, 23 December 2005 (UTC)
        • I am interested in demoting this article for the specific numerous reasons listed by myself and others above, and also for the reason that I do not want low quality articles being shown on the main page as top quality. Nowhere has myself or others said that we wanted it demoted for the reason you claim of us. — ₀₉₁₈^BRIAN • 2005-12-23 15:40
      • It seems to me that instead of just saying "Keep because XXXXXX", the people who are in favor of keeping the article should actually pay attention to the problems we're finding with the article and fix them. And as for Trodel ... I've celebrated Christmas all my life, but my support of this FARC has nothing to do with Christmas itself. I merely think this article isn't up to snuff. And I have been giving feedback about improving this article: get more quotes, add a bit more to the section on rampant consumerism, etc. --Cyde Weys _vote^talk 13:35, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

NOTE:New article for December 25

Raul has changed the Main Page article for December 25th to Ido. — ₀₉₁₈^BRIAN • 2005-12-23 19:09

• Um - is this relevant to this FARC? Are your objections are now less strong are a result? -- ALoan (Talk) 19:35, 23 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Probably, and no. — ₀₉₁₈^BRIAN • 2005-12-23 20:05
• I guess I'm glad, because I really don't think the quality of this article is up to snuff. It's sure not going to change my vote though. The article continues to not be up to snuff. I've raised numerous objections with the article (and even fixed some of them), but it just doesn't seem like anyone else is paying attention. --Cyde Weys _vote^talk 20:23, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

Note: I am demoting this article, and locking this sub-page. There will be no further discussion about removing or not removing this article - if you feel it should be featured, take it to WP:FAC. --Jeffrey O. Gustafson - Shazaam! - <*> 07:14, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Paradox

Article is no longer a featured article

This article is most likely a holdover from the Brilliant Prose days, but God knows why. The article doesn't seem to have any prose at all outside of the lead section, only has one picture, which isn't terribly topically relevant. Should be on featured lists. RyanGerbil10 01:42, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

• Remove; this is mostly a list, and an unreferenced one at that. —Kirill Lokshin 01:52, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
• Remove - could be a candidate for featured lists, but it's not a FA.--nixie 04:24, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
• Comment - it made the transfer from Brilliant Prose to Featured Article with a one to four vote here Wikipedia:Archive/Refreshing brilliant prose - Science#Paradox. --maclean25 04:32, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
• Remove. As per Kirill Lokshin and nixie (Petaholmes). -Rebelguys2 09:29, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
• Remove It's not a bad list, as lists go, but that doesn't mean it's an article (in any sense except that the MediaWiki software treats it as such). Sigh. Funnily enough, this is where I first found omnipotence paradox, which after several rounds of cleanup and expansion eventually made FA. Anville 12:05, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
• Speedy Remove - This certainly isn't up to Featured Article status anymore. --Cyde Weys _vote^talk 20:32, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] KaDee Strickland

Article is still a featured article

Blatant Hollywood starlet exercise in self-promotion (or fanzine hagiography). Not sure which it is at this stage -- probably a bit of both -- but it sure isn't encyclopedic.

Who, beyond the article's prime mover, is actually willing to maintain that this was an appropriate selection for the main page? Nobody now seems to want to take responsibility for that decision, or for the vanity-press move of running the article on the actress's birthday. Presumably she was logging on eagerly at home at the stroke of midnight. See the dispute on the article's talk page and at User talk:Raul654. BYT 15:12, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

I'm a bit amused that a (to me) totally unknown actress is causing this ruckus - makes it more enjoyable than if it had been Jennifer Aniston or Brad Pitt or any other annoyingly *over*exposed celebrity - but in the main I'm rather shocked at the total pointlessness of this babe, and embarrassed for Wikipedia. Hope a healthy discussion about avoiding self-promoters ensues in the Wiki community. 70.137.167.170 21:46, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

• Week Keep. I don't think this should be here, but really it's too early to have nominated this. From the Featured article removal candidates main page: Do not list articles that have recently been promoted—such complaints should have been brought up during the candidate period. --MisterHand 22:03, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

• Keep. As the user who wrote the bulk of this article, I can say that the state of the article when it appeared on the Main Page yesterday was almost exactly the same as it was when it passed through peer review (see Wikipedia:Peer review/KaDee Strickland) and FAC (see Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/KaDee Strickland) last August and September (the diff, for anybody who's interested). There were no concerns raised about the article's length, level of detail or NPOV at the time. I tried to make the article about as comprehensive as Sharon Tate (another FA), and I believe that I was successful. I can understand why it may seem like a "fanzine hagiography" on the subject, but as the press generally seem to rate Strickland quite highly (this is from all of the articles I have read), I tried to reflect this in the article. I wrote the article in compliance with WP:NPOV#A_simple_formulation, i.e. by using quotes about Strickland from the media (in other words, attributing points of view to sources). Also, I think the article is quite similar to Henry Fonda (another FA), and I tried to have everything about that article (and other featured articles about celebrities, such as the Sharon Tate article, Julia Stiles, Kylie Minogue etc.) influence my work on this article. I'd also appreciate if the nominator were to stop suggesting that I am associated with Strickland in some way, and refrain from using inflammatory edit summaries (see, for example, [5]). Extraordinary Machine 22:28, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

• Okay, the quotes are now all individually sourced, which removes my primary cause for suspicion. I will not imply that you have some connection to Strickland any more, and I apologize for doing that.
• At the same time, I encourage you to create article content that could not possibly be confused with press agent blather. Wikipedia is not a propaganda machine or an advertising medium.
• If the article was "neutral" when it passed through the FA process (a contention I find laughable), I'd like to ask what, exactly, it is now. Now that we've incorporated the real-world critical drubbings she's received, which were all carefully airbrushed out of the version that landed on the mainpage, and now that we've excised the shrine-to-KaDee stuff like her high-school extracurricular activities ... is this current version closer to what we should have been shooting for all along, or further from the mark?
• There remains the question of whether an actress of this stature even deserves more than a paragraph of WP's attention. I firmly believe she does not, and that the article is still wildly off scale, and I maintain we should remove. BYT 13:11, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

I apologise if I caused you distress, irritated or offended you in any way during our debate on the article's talk page. I'd like you to consider this from my point of view (if you already have done, then I thank you for doing so). I wrote the bulk of this article and created it in June. I developed it over the following weeks, and eventually requested a peer review in August. One concern was raised (related to the number of references in the article), which I responded to. Then, I submitted the article for FAC, and it drew nine support votes (and no objections), with nobody complaining about the article's POV or comprehensiveness (in fact it was complimented in relation to those things). It was promoted to featured status in early September, and months later, I decided to request for it to appear on the Main Page on Strickland's birthday, as I felt that is the date that was most suitable for the article. It has drawn criticism due to the subject's lack of notability, and some users cited problems regarding the article's POV. Now, you might be able to understand if I didn't really take this seriously, as the article had received a positive response during the FAC process, and it had changed very little since then. Even on the day that the article was featured, there were comments both on the article's talk page and my user talk page from users who believed that it is a very good article, and user:Raul654 himself has said "the Kadee Strickland article is, in fact, neutral."

Also, the information on her high school extracurricular activities may be considered excessive detail, but I do not think it should be considered POV. If Strickland had done very badly in school, I would have covered it in as comprehensively as I did with the facts that were there. I still maintain that the majority the articles and reviews I came across while researching Strickland that referred to her specifically spoke of her positively, and I tried to reflect this in the article. I welcome the negative quotes in the article as well, as they show to the reader the reasons why some critics may not like her. Regarding the Strickland article, user:Rlevse wrote: "...you can not resolve both objections when they are diametrically opposed. For example, if objector A likes layout A, and objector B likes layout B, you can not resolve both objections and one will remain unsolved. I could cite more examples dealing with style preferences, etc too. There should be more standardization in the FAC process." I think that he is exactly right, but I hope that my recent edits to the article (which I hope did not destroy, but improve upon, your work on this article, BYT) have created a "compromise" of sorts, between the previous version of the article that a lot of people liked, and your series of edits that a few users liked as well. Thanks. Extraordinary Machine 21:40, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

• With all respect to both you and Raul654, he probably felt that he had' to say it was neutral, because he had let it through. But he was wrong. It wasn't neutral. At that point, it was an embarrassment to WP. And you'll notice that he has chosen not to respond to a half-dozen or so specific questions about article content that I posed on his talk page.
• I realize you mean well, but you keep repeating this business about the article sailing through the FA process. That's irrelevant. People missed huge problems with this article -- like the inclusion of high school extracurricular activities and, frankly, they missed some basic writing and punctuation problems. The article would have benefited from some pain in the ass like me looking it over before the vote concluded. But everybody loved KaDee, apparently, so the ship sailed on. The question of how to fix the FA process is separate from the question we're discussing here, namely, where we go from here. For me, your continued insistence that the original piece, the one that landed on the mainpage, was somehow a sterling example of NPOV writing -- that insistence is a major obstacle to a meaningful discussion about what we do next.
• She has recieved brutally negative reviews for her appearances in mediocre or terrible film projects. Your opening paragraph, though, warbled obediently, and without anything remotely resembling qualification, about "acclaim" from movie critics for her work. My "offense," insofar as there is any, arises from your unwillingness to admit that failing to quote these negative reviews, in the version that landed on the homepage, was a huge breach of editorial responsibility. BYT 13:00, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

I think that's a rather bold assumption to make about Raul654's thoughts when he made that comment. Everybody at peer review and FAC didn't "love KaDee", and some voters said that they had never heard of her. I hope you're not implying that the editors who were in support of the article are unable to comment fairly on Wikipedia articles; regardless, it is not "irrelevant" that the article "sailed" through the FA process as it's impossible to remedy "huge problems" that I am unaware of if nobody else thinks that they are there either. As I said, most of the articles and reviews that mentioned Strickland specifically spoke of her positively, so I tried to reflect this in the article per WP:NPOV#A_simple_formulation. I don't see how not quoting negative reviews when they are (as far as I could see) significantly outnumbered by positive ones is "a huge breach of editorial responsibility"; in fact, I'd argue that my submitting the article for peer review shows that I was trying to uphold editorial responsibility and Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Yes, you had problems with the version of the article that appeared on the Main Page, but now there are quotes from negative reviews as well (although I still maintain that Strickland's press has been mainly positive), the prose has been altered, and some things trimmed here and there. Extraordinary Machine 15:58, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

• Re: 'I don't see how not quoting negative reviews when they are (as far as I could see) significantly outnumbered by positive ones is "a huge breach of editorial responsibility"
• You don't? After opening your article with all that business about "acclaim," you really can't see any obligation to provide evidence that there might possibly be an alternate viewpoint, and that that alternate viewpoint required the same level of detail as the one you favored? Can I suggest that you review WP:NPOV?
• I note, for the record, that we've moved from (presumably overwhelming) "acclaim" (in the mainpage draft) to the current notion that negative reviews have been "significantly outnumbered by positive ones." This progression is disturbing to me, and it undercuts your credibility, especially in light of the fact you have carefully deleted a review I inserted that described the entire cast of the film -- including Strickland -- as awful. I am not inclined to accept your assessments of this woman's talents or the critical response to them. And Wikipedia is not a @#$%^& fanzine. BYT 17:33, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Per WP:NPOV#Undue_weight, "Articles that compare views need not give minority views as much or as detailed a description as more popular views, and may not include tiny-minority views at all...To give undue weight to a significant-minority view, or to include a tiny-minority view, might be misleading as to the shape of the dispute. If we are to represent the dispute fairly, we should present competing views in proportion to their representation among experts on the subject, or among the concerned parties." I wrote "critical acclaim" in the article's lead section as most of the articles and reviews I read that mentioned Strickland specifically spoke of her positively; I did not, however, write "universal critical acclaim" or "unanimous critical acclaim". I replaced the critical quote you inserted into the Anacondas paragraph with another negative one that specifically referred to Strickland's performance as "unintentional comedy", as I think it's better to use quotes that refer to Strickland directly than ones that comment on the entire cast. Extraordinary Machine 23:21, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Okay, but the problem is, you're the only person who has made this assessment that most of the references to her acting have been positive. I've been looking all week, and what I've tracked down falls into three categories, roughly evenly distributed: a) no mention of KaDee whatsoever b) negative, sometimes sharply negative reviews, as for Anacondas, and c) positive assessments of her comic turn in Fever Pitch. Mentions to the effect that her career is on the upswing are irrelevant to her ability as an actress -- we're talking about critical "acclaim". So I do think we have an obligation to show the critical downside in more detail than you did in the version that landed on the mainpage. BYT 13:24, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

I am being completely honest when I say that most of the articles and reviews I read that refer to Strickland specifically discuss her positively; however, I do not have any reason to believe that you are lying when you say that the articles and reviews about Anacondas you have read are mostly negative, either. Since I believe (based on my research) that the reception of Strickland's performance in Anacondas has been more positive than negative, and you believe (based on your research) that it has been more negative than positive, how about we combine both of these statements and say that reception to her performance was mixed (although the current ratio of positive to negative quotes implies that to the reader by itself). Extraordinary Machine 21:01, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

• Keep. The article was promoted in late August, so I'm not sure that is recent enough to stop a FARC. That said, this seems like a good article about someone I did not previously know much about. A FA doesn't have to be about someone or something famous, just cover the subject in FA level detail, which this one does.--Alabamaboy 23:31, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

• Keep. Small topics have just the same right to be here (and get attention) as broad ones. Unless there is some major flaw in the article that doesn't meet the FA criteria (I can't think of any), I see no reason whatsoever to remove it. Jon Harald Søby \ ^{no na} 00:41, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

• Remove. I was originally not decided, giving this article the benefit of the doubt, untill I reread it and noticed such lines as "Strickland's career began with a brief appearance as a ghost in The Sixth Sense in 1999, a two-line part (snip) The supernatural thriller, which starred Bruce Willis, was well received by critics and audiences alike." I mean come on... she was an extra with two lines in that movie, it doesn't matter how well it was recieved because she had nothing to do with that. The article has been improved SINCE it was featured, but at the time it was featured it was abysmal and the fact that it was featured on this broad's birthday makes BYT's claim that it being featured was a set up slightly more believable than the article itself. Robrecht 00:29, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Some more negative quotes from critics have been added, and the sentence concerning the reception of The Sixth Sense has been removed. Extraordinary Machine 21:40, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
    • Which is very nice, but it doesn't take away the fact that at the point when it was a FA it wasn't deserving of that status. Hence to let it retain that status would suggest that anyone can just get any article they want featured and then change it to be up to the FA standards if someone complains. Robrecht 12:07, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
      • Well I thought that if the article wasn't deserving of FA status, then somebody — anybody — would have expressed this opinion during the peer review process, and most certainly at FAC. Anyway, I thought the article is supposed to be judged on its current state, which is somewhat different from when it was the FA of the day. Extraordinary Machine 15:58, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
• Keep. Excellent article that will not be removed. —Hollow Wilerding 02:10, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Remove. In the past twenty-four hours, this article has greatly declined. Unfortunately, I no longer approve of its FA status. Therefore, I now vote remove. —Hollow Wilerding 21:43, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
    • Keep. —Hollow Wilerding . . . (talk) 22:03, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
    • I have made some edits that I think have created a "compromise" of sorts, between the previous version of the article that a lot of people (including you yourself) liked, and user:BrandonYusufToropov's series of edits that a few users liked as well. Extraordinary Machine 15:58, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

• Weak Remove. I'm very surprised at those asking for the removal of this article from FA status because of it's seemingly trivial content or that fact that it was featured on KaDee Strickland's birthday. Of course only a fan of hers would devote time to writing this article - that's not the point. However, there still exist many grounds that should have been noted during this article's FAC and peer review:

NPOV: Resolved. Per Robrecht's comments. Commenting on the success of The Sixth Sense seems like nothing but a publicity student for KaDee Strickland. It is completely unbalanced and hardly neutral. For example, the section on "Fever Pitch" works - the article analyzes critical response to KaDee's performance. Everything in that section is talking about the actress's performance, unlike the neutrality violation earlier.

Style and Grammar: Resolved. There are two blatant mistakes in the single sentence, "She also appeared briefly in the direct-to-cable independent film Knots, and in the ill-fated Nicole Kidman vehicle The Stepford Wives." "The Stepford Wives" should follow the style of the rest of the article, and be italicized, as here it is most likely referring to the movie adaptation. In addition, the insertion of a comma is simply poor grammar: comma splicing. It continues here: "That same year, she served as an extra in the unreleased independent film The Sterling Chase, and won a slightly larger part in James Mangold's Girl, Interrupted." Almost every instance of a sentence describing a sequence of works is spliced and mutilated. FAs look for brilliant prose.

References: Resolved. While overall citation is well and good, if you look closely, the numbers are not always lined up. For example, clicking on in-line citation 15 takes you to the correct reference, but it's located at 17 in the list. Everything needs to be rechecked and lined up.

Red links and unliked links: Resolved. More a comment than a real complaint, but for a featured article on the main page usually, it's usually best that there not be such a high number of red links. In addition, linking years is always a pain for any article - finding the first instance of every year and making sure it hasn't been linked to yet. You'll want to recheck the article for this; at first glance, I noticed that 1999 was not linked to until the "Filmography" section. -Rebelguys2 02:32, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Some more negative quotes from critics have been added, and the sentence concerning the reception of The Sixth Sense has been removed. I've also tweaked the prose to reduce the amount of commas (mostly by splitting sentences into two), and added the italics around the film titles (they were there earlier this week, but disappeared for some reason). Also, I've reduced the number of year wikilinks in the Filmography section, and the article now only has two redlinks (to the titles of upcoming films Strickland is in). Extraordinary Machine 21:40, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, and nice work; I'll change my vote to Keep. Nevertheless, I'm still left a little bothered by many of the arguments here. It's a well-written, largely neutral article about an admittedly not A-list, but still somewhat notable, female actor. What, honestly, is left to debate, besides the opinion that Wikipedia shouldn't be a repository for topics straying from traditional encyclopedias? Nothing. -Rebelguys2 09:27, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

• Remove. POV and poorly written. In particular, there are no quotes from any negative reviews to balance the copious puffery and the use of commas is poor all through. Filiocht | The kettle's on 08:16, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Some more negative quotes from critics have been added, and the sentence concerning the reception of The Sixth Sense has been removed. I've also tweaked the prose to reduce the amount of commas (mostly by splitting sentences into two). Extraordinary Machine 21:40, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
• Keep for two reasons: 1)The article was recently nominated and there was no indication whatsoever that there were problems with the article. That implies that any problems are with the FA process, not the article itself. 2)The tone of the person who nominated this for a FAR, with words like 'starlet' and 'babe' imply that the problem s/he has with the article is as much about who the article is about as the style of the article itself. I was considering a weak remove but I don't like the tone of the proposal. Mithridates 11:33, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

The "babe" thing wasn't mine, but rather that of an anonymous editor. But I take your point. I still beleve we should delete. Er, remove. There are probably heads of state who don't get this kind of obsessive detail. BYT 12:54, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Ah, got it. Well, we'll see how the rest of the voting turns out. Mithridates 14:27, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

• Keep. I would have voted "remove" just over 24 hours ago, but, ironically, BYT's edits to the article have greatly improved it. — BrianSmithson 18:24, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

I'm flattered, but must note with alarm that EM is even now patiently reinserting material I edited out. So for all I know, we may be back to square one before too long. BYT 21:00, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

• Remove. Should never have been used as a Featured Article. This is not an inspiration to other actor articles. If every sinlge celebrity article follow this one's example and level of extraneous, pointless detail, Julia Roberts' would have to be split into 20 separate pages, each one covering two years in her life.Vulturell 19:23, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
  • As I said to you on the article's talk page, I tried to emulate the style and comprehensiveness of featured articles such as Sharon Tate, which I feel covers its subject in a similar level of detail to the Strickland article. Extraordinary Machine 21:40, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
    • That's great. Unfortunately, Strickland is no Sharon Tate, and the Sharon Tate article is intself longer than it needs to be. As I said, and as I will keep saying, the Strickland article should by no means be considered a model actor article. We aren't writing a book on these people. We're presenting the important and relevant details of their lives and careers. And almost nothing in the Strickland article is as relevant as it's made out to be. Vulturell 22:32, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
      • Well then maybe you should suggest on Talk:Sharon Tate that the Tate article be trimmed also. I think that if the Strickland article were to be cut down to the size of an article such as Johnny Messner, it would fail the "comprehensive" FA criterion. Extraordinary Machine 15:58, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

• Remove.Wikipedia is a collaborative free encyclopaedia, not a platform for 'fanboy' hagiography. It's a shame that EM is taking so much flak, as he has obviously devoted plenty of effort to this article (not least the presumed effort entailed in actually digging up any information on this lady, whom I myself and I believe almost every other contributor to this debate has never even heard of). That does not change the fact that it is very disappointing that this article was ever granted FA status, and it is VERY disappointing that the timing was designed to deliberately coincide with her birthday. (An abuse of wikipedia). As well as the more explicit POV and slavering statements (now thankfully minimised and balanced to some extent) the whole article is implicitly POV in that it attributes excessive space and importance to irrelevant minutiae in the life of an irrelevant individual. Much of the article consists (even now, and it is MUCH better now) of totally extraneous detail that does not in any way further our understanding of this individual or her work. The comparison to Sharon Tate is completely redundant; Tate is an internationally known historical figure, because of her relationship with Polanski and of course her untimely death- NOT because she was a b-movie actress. (And at any rate, I would suggest that the Tate article should be shortened by at least a third). The Strickland article seems to my reading to violate (at the very least) articles 1, 2d and 5 of the Wikipedia:What is a featured article guidelines, and as such should not have been considered. I would suggest that these should be amended so as to demand an enhanced standard of notability and potential interest (as defined by feedback during the FA selection process). I agree however with Mithridates that the status of this article flags important failings in the peer-review (Strickland garnered one single comment in PR, which was not acted upon anyway) and FA nomination (numerous comments, none of which addressed the points that have been raised in the furore over this article's FA status)processes themselves, and that (especially in light of recent events) these should be sorted out urgently. I also note that the article was self-nominated and had editorial input from only a single wikipedian (EM) when it was chosen as FA. One might consider whether this is correct given the danger of POV 'sneaking' in and the simple fact that wiki is supposed to be collaborative. In a week when wiki has been making the national news (at least in my country) the first experience that many new users had of this encyclopaedia was Kadee Strickland [[[6]]]. Is that what we want? Mistakes happen in any process, and this was one and it shouldn't have happened. Remove remove remove. Sorry EM.86.142.232.45 00:37, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Thanks for complimenting my efforts on this article. Are you saying that the comprehensiveness of the Strickland article, in and of itself, is POV? Yes, Sharon Tate is probably better known for being the wife of Roman Polanski (and also for the circumstances surrounding her murder). But if you'll notice, the Tate article covers her career as a "b-movie actress" in quite a lot of detail, and I tried to emulate this with the Strickland article. As I said at the time, I couldn't address the comment on peer review as it would have been in violation of Wikipedia's verifiability policy. There's no policy against self-nominations on WP:FAC, or articles only being edited significantly by one person. I agree that "wiki is supposed to be collaborative", but nobody else at all seemed to be touching the article (apart from minor edits here and there)...and anyway, I made an attempt to attract input from other editors on peer review (and then FAC). Extraordinary Machine 15:58, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
    • The comprehensiveness of the article is not in itself POV. The importance attributed to irelevant detail is POV. As has been noted previously, this level of inclusiveness would probably be somewhat out of place even in the biography of a world-statesperson or similar international figure. Material that does not further our understanding of her work (i.e. that is unrelated to her career) should automatically be stricken. As for the Tate article- I myself mentioned that it could stand to lose a third or more, and much of this would be culled from her career summary. Having said that, I feel that even Tate's career eclipsed Strickland's (can you get C-movie actors? Perhaps we could efine a new category...). Part of the beauty of wikipedia is that there are no space limitations- but waffling serves no purpose except to obfuscate the focus of an article. Much of the Strickland piece is, I'm afraid, waffle, and it was even worse when I first saw it. I would suggest that the reason no-one edited the article was because nobody cares about this woman, and hence I wonder whether notability and wider interest should now be included as FA criteria. Notwithstanding that, I feel KDS does not even satisfy the EXISTING requirements for FA status, as I outlined above. I do not mean to denigrate you or your effort EM, you went about things the right way and you seem to be at least somewhat pliable when it comes to revisions. This debacle does however outline MAJOR failings of process that now MUST be addressed if wikipedia is to be taken seriously as an encyclopaedia and ever move towards a stable version. I feel it's really unfortunate that it is likely that the first (and perhaps only) experience of wikipedia for many people this week was this article. It does not showcase the best of what we have here. 86.139.28.9 18:46, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
      • In hindsight, I think that while the article may have been a little too detailed when it appeared on the Main Page, in my opinion this issue has improved. It's more succinct now (but still comprehensive), and I think it makes for a more interesting read. You make some very valid points about the FAC process, and maybe you could leave a post at Wikipedia talk:Featured articles and Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates expressing your concerns. I disagree, however, that a notability criterion should be added, as I just love the diversity of Wikipedia's featured articles (and all of its articles). Extraordinary Machine 23:21, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
• As far as I can tell, the discussion on the talk page is being addressed promptly, and the particulars discussed in the nomination statement here seem uncompelling -- the article was run on the main page because it is a featured article, and articles are regularly featured on days of special significance (my article on Blaise Pascal was on the main page on the anniversary of his death.) Frankly, this is a nice little FA, demonstrating the sort of coverage that WP can give to subjects that wouldn't even get a mention in traditional general encyclopedias. Keep. Christopher Parham (talk) 06:56, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, but Blaise Pascal is both notable and dead. KaDee Strickland is utterly obscure and very much alive. (And, as an aspiring actress, no doubt eager for good PR.) Turning our mainpage into a birthday present for her, or appearing to do so, smacks of fan-driven bias, even though her people didn't create the article for pay. BYT 13:23, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

BYT, may I ask what date you suggest the article should have been featured on? I thought that Strickland's birthday was the most suitable date to represent the article (in fact, it pretty much seemed like the only date directly linked to the article's subject at all). Extraordinary Machine 15:58, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Any date that wasn't her birthday (or the opening date of a new film, I guess). It's not like the article was about something special that happened on that date, unless of course we count her coming into the world as some kind of turning point in civilization. I suppose I should be glad you didn't lobby to have the article coincide with the release date of some new film she's putting out. Would that have been acceptable, in your view? BYT 18:38, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

I would not have lobbied for it to be featured on the release date of one of her new films, and might have protested any proposal to do so, as a) it would be only distantly related to the subject of the article and b) I'm not trying to promote her career. Extraordinary Machine 23:21, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

• Keep. Once you get past niggling details like quotations only being covered in footnotes and not individually attributed, or not mentioning enough negative reviews for her films which may not even criticize her directly...it seems that the primary problem people have with this article is the subject's alleged "insignificance." That is part of the joy of Wikipedia, for me and presumably for thousands of others...finding well-written, authoritative articles about people, places, events, and subjects that were previously totally unknown to me. Finding a story where one never would have expected to find one. Maybe it's not to your liking, but that's a matter of taste. If we claim that press agents are infiltrating Wikipedia to promote their up-and-coming clients (which sounds a bit ridiculous to me, to be honest), where do we draw the line? Perhaps articles on relatively forgotten people from history are only placed here to promote some historian's upcoming book, perhaps articles on places or monuments are only planted by some tourism board or chamber of commerce...et cetera, et cetera, ad nauseum. There's no way to ferret out the "real reason" behind an article, and it's irrelevant anyway. Is it truthful, is it well-written, is it documented; that's really all we ought to consider, in my opinion. Sleeper99999 10:45, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

I appreciate what you're saying, but you're putting words in my mouth. What bothers me is not her insignificance, though I would have written a shorter article. What bothers me is that the article that made it through the FA process was so totally awestruck by her life story that the mainpage looked, for all the world, like it had been bought and paid for. A week's worth of patient questioning has determined that that was not in fact what happened, but even so, this was a manifest failure of the editorial neutrality WP is supposed to produce. BYT 13:28, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

As I said, most of the articles and reviews that mentioned Strickland specifically spoke of her positively, so I tried to reflect this in the article per WP:NPOV#A_simple_formulation. Also, no complaints concerning the article's POV were raised during the peer review and FAC processes (in fact some editors complimented it on that aspect at the time), and the article changed little between then and when it appeared on the Main Page. Extraordinary Machine 15:58, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

I may be repeating myself, but I consider the peer review and the FAC processes on this article to have been woefully deficient, ignoring as they did massive neutrality problems, and only slightly less massive problems with style, punctuation, and sourcing. I'd appreciate it if you responded to the content of what I'm saying, rather than repeating the fact that the article was peer reviewed and selected as a featured article. I know that. I'm introducing additional topics to the conversation, BYT 18:43, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Maybe the problem is that both sides to this are talking over each other, complaining about generalities without discussing specifics. I don't think we can resolve this by just making the sweeping charge that it's all POV - if we tackle specific passages, maybe we can come to some kind of middle ground. Which sentences are the most guilty of demonstrating POV, in your opinion? Sleeper99999 10:06, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

I still have a problem with the very end of the article, which advises us about what new KaDee projects to keep an eye out for, and offers the details of a dropped pilot. If you applied this same level of analysis to the career of, say, Drew Barrymore, the article would extend to War and Peace dimensions.

We mention twice that she has been panned for a lousy Southern accent, but tactfully avoid mentioning what an extraordinary accomplishment this is for an actress born in Georgia.

I also think the following is totally extraneous, and have tried twice, in vain, to delete it:

"Strickland is also an advocate of the arts. Prior to the release of Anacondas, she hosted the art debut of fellow actress Heidi Jayne Netzley at the Edgemar Center for the Arts in Santa Monica, California.

Again -- are we going to cover everything in this woman's life? Why not talk about what party she went to last night? It's not a blog, after all, it's an encyclopedia. BYT 13:35, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

I reinserted the paragraph about Strickland's art advocacy because I believe that it's worth mentioning her activities outside of her acting career, and the Julia Stiles and Ian McKellen featured articles (as well as non-featured ones) do this as well. I reinserted the bit about her next film because I've seen articles on actors, actresses and singers that contain information about their forthcoming projects and nobody has ever objected to it. I also put back in the sentences about the recently cancelled television series she was going to be in, as it would have been only her second leading role after Anacondas and it received quite a bit of coverage in more recent articles and interviews about Strickland that I have read. I have, however, added a note after the negative quotes about her accent in Anacondas about her coming from the American South. Extraordinary Machine 21:01, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Keep - She's notable enough for wikipedia. Yep, the front page was the first I had ever heard of her. But so what? I don't like too much trivial information in an article, and would probably edit it out or talkpage about it if the article was too long. But this one isn't, it's a short yet comprehensive article on the actress' life and works. - Hahnchen 05:15, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

• Keep. She is obviously notable, and the article is really good, comprehensive and well-sourced. There is no evidence of self-promotion. Carioca 19:57, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Keep. Issues have been addressed. For good or bad, wikipedia will always have comprehensive articles on pop culture - because that is what some volunteers care about. If the person is notable that is all that matters - if we wish that the article on a significant historical figure were better - then all we can do is work on it - we shouldn't denigrate the efforts of those that write good articles because we don't like the subject matter they write on. Trödel•talk 15:15, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Keep. Maybe a bit too comprehensive. But keep.

• Remove. This article is an embarassing display of fannish obsession, extensively sourced from dubious sources which mostly provide favorable comments about whatver they cover and repackage publicity materials. The opening section is mostly name-dropping, and the comment about "gained prominence and critical attention" is grossly overstated. Monicasdude 23:47, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

• Keep uncertain what particular bits are unencylopedic. This appears to be an argument about the subject, not the content, however. In which case, I don't think it's a valid FARC. - Ta bu shi da yu 01:59, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

• Remove My first vote on here. Anyway, I thought she was a strange choice. The article is ok but I think that notability is part of featured article status, is it not? I had no idea who she was and I'm still not sure how it became a FA. --Woohookitty^{(cat scratches)} 12:24, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Notability is definately not part of featured article status :). WhiteNight ^{T | @ | C} 19:26, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

• Keep Ohhhh boy. This is an article I remember back from FAC... for starters, the version on FAC was terrible in the sense that it was so unbelievably glowing of her. I was a bit miffed at all the support... I wanted to object myself but whenever I object I want to try to explain my reasoning - especially in this sense since pop culture articles on wikipedia are really tough to pass FAC and you inevitably get a lot of people coming out of nowhere to oppose it on the silliest of grounds. That all said, the current version is sooo much better and passes my tests, so I think it should stay as a FA WhiteNight ^{T | @ | C} 19:26, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Christianity

Article is no longer a featured article

I must admit that I have not read through this article completely, but my first impression is that it is very messy. It has no images except a chart at the beginning, it uses bullet points in the middle of a paragraph (#Beliefs), and most of it consists of a table "Christianity By Country", which could well be moved over to an article of its own. It just doesn't look featured. And the page documenting its featurification (that's not a word, is it?) is practically non-existant. I would very much like to see a featured article on Christianity, but it better be good. Jon Harald Søby \ ^{no na} 14:26, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

• I like this article and find it to be finely written. I posit my vote to keep it as a featured article. -JudgeX (User's only edit)

• Remove. Fails Criterion 2(a) (poorly written throughout). Here's an example of clumsy writing, taken at random, from the start of the history section:

'The history of Christianity is difficult to extricate from that of the European West (and several other culture-regions) in general. By way of summary, we may note ...

Fails Criterion 2(c) miserably ('the supporting of facts with specific evidence and external citations')—take, for example, the numerical estimates that are trotted out in the lead: who says?

Fails Criterion 2(b) ('does not neglect any major facts or details'). The history section is one para long.

BTW, the lead might mention that it's one of the great 'revealed' religions.

Tony 04:41, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

• Remove I side with the nominator and Tony on this. The lead is a mishmash, the table "Christianity by Country" is overbearing, and the prose is a long shot from "compelling". It could use a copy edit for starters, and a fact check to boot. To pick a random example, the article treats the story about Hypatia getting murdered by a mob as, if you'll forgive the phrase, gospel. It's a great story, but the last time I read any scholarly work on her, it wasn't proven, and the details are still up for grabs. Anville 22:10, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
• Keep, FAs can be cleaned up. Good article. --Terence Ong ^|Talk 03:24, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
• Remove Also in agreement with Tony. The balance of the article is wrong and the prose is in many places wanting, such as this: Again, while some churches take exception to some of these articles, to the extent that they do so, this usually represents a conscious departure from the Christian mainstream. Some Christian traditions, such as those of the Baptists and the Churches of Christ, would accept these beliefs, but not the creed itself, since all creeds are regarded as unnecessary and even counter-productive in these circles. Also the list by country is unnecessary in the main article, and including the entire Nicene creed is offputting, given the summary nature of most of the article. The text should be referenced to the main article on the Nicene Council. Also, missing is any pertinent overview of early Christian conciliarism and fracture (obliquely offered up in this convolution: Obviously, not all Christians have accepted all of these articles of faith, or else such a creed would never have been written. The Creed's lines frequently target certain opposing beliefs of other early Christians, which the council regarded as heretical. Examples would include Ebionite groups which denied Jesus's divinity, a well as Docetist groups which denied that Christ was a human being, or Arians, who disputed that the Father and the Son were "of one being". Other early heresies included Simonianism, Marcionism, Gnosticism and Montanism.). This article is really, in its implicit function, a clearing-house for the numerous sub-articles on the different aspects of Christianity and should thus provide much more synthesis in a way that interested readers can be directed to more detailed articles. Eusebeus 10:41, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
• Comment After seeing some of the issues brought up with this article, I went in and repaired several major problems, including moving the "Christianity by country" table to a sub-article. Nevertheless, there are several problems with prose that I am still trying to resolve (notably in the "history" section), and would appreciate someone helping out on this. Pentawing 01:53, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
• Remove Agree with critiques; this article simply does not deserve featured status at this time. --Zantastik 10:33, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
• Comment This article dates back to the old "brilliant prose" days; the vote which raised it to FA can be found here. Also, does anyone see a way to make Note #3 an encyclopedic statement? "Many Christians identify themselves as such not by the adherance to a set of religious rules or rites but instead by their personal relationship to Jesus Christ" sounds like the sort of statement which desperately needs elaboration, rephrasing or something. The footnote in question is actually attached to a section title ("Worship and practices"), which is an unbelievably gauche practice. This statement may reflect the views of modern-day evangelical Protestants, for example, but how does it square with the strife between Homousians and Homoiusians, between those who crossed themselves with two fingers and those who crossed with three? Anville 12:02, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
• I am amazed this is a featured article. I recall saying on IRC not too long ago how surprisingly short and uncomprehensive this article was. Little did I know it was a featured article. Definite and strong remove. Johnleemk | Talk 20:15, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
• Strong Remove - This is a travesty of an article about a major subject, let alone a travesty of a featured article. - Cuivienen 04:02, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
• Remove another article that is not ready yet. Like Johnleemk I also think that the article is too uncomprehensive and also long to be a FA. --a.n.o.n.y.m ^t 18:48, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

• Remove -- contains a couple of stunners, one of which really took my breath away:

If Christians largely agree on the content of the Bible, no such consensus is forthcoming on the crucial matter of its interpretation...

Christians "largely agree" on the Bible's content? This sentence blithely passes over the literally thousands of disputed/variant readings in the texts, not to mention the fierce partisan disputes that have played out for five hundred years or so concerning how (and, not infrequently, whether) to print translations of the Bible in local languages. Christians do not largely agree on the content of the Bible, and I invite anyone who thinks they do to explain why no two contemporary authorities seem to be able to agree on what to translate -- or even, in many cases, where to put what has been translated. For instance, the placement of the story of the woman caught in adultery, or the end of Mark's gospel. These are not minor issues. Protestants and Catholics can't even agree on how many books there are! Right now we've got (in English) Catholics who swear by Challoner-Rheims (derived, not from Greek, but from the Latin Vulgate) and fundamentalist Christians who swear by KJV (derived from Greek sources consulted by Jacobean scholars whose work is now hopelessly archaic and out of date). If you think those two versions "largely agree" with each other, you haven't read them. Major problems here. BYT 22:32, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

• Remove. - Mailer Diablo 08:41, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

• Remove could be a lot better, will read through it more carefully after Christmas to say why I think so. - Ta bu shi da yu 08:17, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

• Remove. CG 22:33, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

• Remove - I side with the other people who are saying Remove in this debate. The article has many poorly written sentences, the organization is terrible, and the article pretty much lacks sources except for The Bible, which it takes as the inerrant truth. Maybe this is going to "offend" some people but just because it's written in a single book doesn't make it a verifiable fact. See the above example about Hypatia, for instance. --Cyde Weys _vote^talk 04:26, 26 December 2005 (UTC)