Wikipedia:Featured article review/Sandy Koufax/archive1

The following is an archived discussion of a featured article review. Please do not modify it. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page or at Wikipedia talk:Featured article review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was kept 07:23, 8 March 2007.

[edit] Sandy Koufax

[edit] Review commentary

Messages left at Biography, Southern California, and Baseball. LuciferMorgan 22:09, 30 January 2007 (UTC) Additional messages at Gorrister and Baseball players. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:18, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

The article is not in good shape. It is very long and has a number of statements that lack a source and a number of statements that have not been verified. //Tecmobowl 16:03, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

• Comment: The length is 41K, which is hardly "very long". If all featured articles were limited by length, we'd have maybe five or six left. But aside from that, Tecmobowl is right that this article doesn't deserve feature status as is. In fact, as far as I can see its status as an FA was a little dubious to begin with. szyslak (t, c) 21:49, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Size is fine, but it does need citations. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:14, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Size is a complete non-issue and BRMo is adding citations, so I'd either put this on hold or oppose. Quadzilla99 07:50, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Size here is not a non-issue. >40kb may be OK for an article about "baseball" or a country, or a major world leader, but ... and I say this as a huge Koufax fan ... is too much for a single athlete. this article is long b/c of the interminable play-by-play descriptions that were conveniently lifted from one (or two) sources. BTW, the section on his early life is very poorly arranged, in choppy, mini-paragraphs that are more chatty than biographical.Sfahey 14:03, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

See Wayne Gretzky, among others Sfahey. Many sports articles are in the 35-40 kb range, Gretzky was 50+ I believe when it passed, showing that most editors that reviewed the article obviously disagreed with you. Your opinion is contrary to that, myself and Sandy feel other wise. Quadzilla99 16:43, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

I think I was reacting to the "size is a COMPLETE non-issue" comment, which is certainly not true. It IS disproportionally long compared to any standard encyclopedia's relative length for various topics. For example, it is about as long as "Canada", which would likely be >10x its length in a print encyclopedia. It is also twice as long as "Joe DiMaggio" and quadruple gold medal winner "Fanny Blankers-Koen", the first two sports figures I looked to compare it to. I think the reason it became long is that it is chock-full of game play-by-play details from Jane Leavy's book. You are correct in that I was and would still be one of the minority voting against it for FA for these reasons ... but then again I thought 25kb was too long for "Pepsi-can stove"! Sfahey 03:50, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

As I've been adding references, I've also been trying to prune out some of the trivia and unnecessary details. There's really only one game that's described in play-by-play detail--Koufax's 1965 perfect game, which takes up seven paragraphs--and I'm planning to spin that off as a separate sub-article. I think the article will be quite a bit tighter when I'm done, though it will still be a relatively long article. BRMo 05:10, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Good work. Now I remember that Leavy wove K's bio around that game's details, with each chapter featuring details of it plus flashbacks to his past.Sfahey 04:18, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

• Comment We do not opine whether to keep or remove an article when it is at FAR (Featured article review). Please keep us posted on progress - articles typically remain at FAR for two weeks, and may have a longer review period if work is ongoing. If work stalls, after two weeks, it moves to FARC (Featured article removal candidate), at which time editors enter Keep or Remove. Pls keep us posted on progress as the two-week review period approaches. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:37, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

• Comment Instead of just an unsourced tag the article could use specific ^{[citation needed]} tags to help BRMo out, now that it is partially sourced. Quadzilla99 16:48, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

• Status report: I've made good progress on adding citations -- the article is now about 75 percent done. I've tagged a few statements that I haven't been able to verify; if someone doesn't supply a citation in a week or so, I plan to drop the statements. I've also addressed the concern about excessive play-by-play descriptions by creating a sub-article for Sandy Koufax's perfect game. I've done some editing to the section on Koufax's early life; I could probably tighten it up some more. (So far, I've been concentrating more on finding citations than on editing the text.) The length of the article has been criticized; spinning off the sub-article has shortened it a bit. However, my experience has been that editors often disagree regarding the optimal length of an article. My own opinion is that the article is neither too long nor too short, so I don't plan to make any major cuts in the article, except to tighten the writing where appropriate. In general, we've made a lot of progress on improving the article; I think it needs about another week's work to finish it. BRMo 03:02, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

• Very nice! The unreferenced tag doesn't seem called for; are you leaving it on in hopes it will encourage others to fill in the few missing cites? Please add last access dates to all websources. I'll read the entire article when I have a free moment; I prefer to read a hardprint copy. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 04:40, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. I still need to add cites to the last section of the article--starting with "Hold out." I was planning to remove the unreferenced tag when those sections are finished (though I agree it could come off sooner). Once I've finished adding the missing cites, I'll add the access dates (unless another editor wants to help out with that task). BRMo 16:07, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] FARC commentary

Suggested FA criteria concern is lack of citations (1c). Marskell 08:55, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

• Citations have now been added to the entire article. I added "fact" tags when I couldn't find a citation; in some cases other editors found a citation, but there are presently three tags remaining. My general practice is to leave them on for one week, then delete the sentence if no citation is found. I still need to add access dates as requested by SandyGeorgia. BRMo 16:45, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

I've finished adding the access dates for Web resources and deleted the sentences with "fact" tags after allowing time for editors to find a reference. I think the article now is in pretty good shape. BRMo 04:47, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

• Conditional keep — refs look great so far. Only a few more are needed to cover the iffy spots. A copy-edit is also needed; I have give the top quarter of the article a look, but it's going to need another person to make sure nothing huge is missed. — Deckiller 10:11, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for the copy edit of the first part of the article. It would be helpful if you could identify the statements you consider to be "iffy." BRMo 17:25, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Your welcome, and thank you for taking the time to maintain this article so this review results in modernization instead of demotion. If I get a chance tonight, I'll take a look through the article and see some things that I think need refs. Sandy and Marskell are very strong in the ref department; when they get a chance, I'm sure they'll help. — Deckiller 22:51, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Progress looks very good; a couple of quick questions. Does the baseball project have a suggested layout? It is strange to see Career statistics between refs and External links; I'm wondering if they wouldn't be better placed above See also, and if there is a ref for the Career stats? Also, saw some minor inconsistency in formatting of refs to baseball-reference.com. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:58, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

I've moved career statistics and added a ref as you've suggested. (I haven't worked much on the baseball project, so if another editor knows of a suggested layout, please chime in.) I also noticed the inconsistency in formatting refs to baseball-reference.com -- there's a template that is used in most player articles, so I'm hesitant to drop it, but the template doesn't work for citing some of the other pages from that site. I'd prefer to live with the inconsistency unless you think it needs to be made consistent. BRMo 04:55, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Not a problem; I won't have time to re-read the article, but it looked good last time I checked. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:09, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article review. No further edits should be made to this page.