Talk:Evan Lysacek

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Good article Evan Lysacek has been listed as one of the Everyday life good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can delist it, or ask for a reassessment.
March 12, 2007 Good article nominee Listed
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Something should be mentioned about Evan's skates at Nationals. His free skate was the highest score ever awarded by a domestic US judging panel.

[edit] Good Article Review

This article is close, and I don't doubt it can be a Good Article, with a little work. Here are my suggestions:

  • The following items need citations:
    • "Lysacek lost motivation, had a poor showing at the U.S. Championships and was not selected for the World Junior team."
    • "After that, Lysacek changed his diet and his training habits and made goals for himself." It's also an awkward piece of writing. What goals?
    • "a competition for which his only goal was to make it out of the qualifying round."
    • "He became the first American men's single skater to win a medal in his first attempt at Worlds since Tim Brown won the silver in 1957"
    • "He placed second at Skate America, but it was clear that his Grease free skate was not working. Lysacek and coach Frank Carroll made the decision to find a new long program."
    • "At the Olympics, following a disappointing 10th place finish in the short program, he was hit with the stomach flu. Unable to practice, he stayed in bed at the Olympic village, receiving fluids from IVs. After considering withdrawing, he decided to skate the next day and went on to skate a career best free skate."
    • "I'm very happy," he said. "It was close to getting a medal, and I think that if I was a little bit better in the short program I would have challenged for a medal. So that's upsetting, but it gives me a lot of confidence."
    • "Once again troubled by illness, he captured the bronze medal despite being on three different antibiotics to fight a bacterial infection, which at one point, caused him to cough up blood."
    • "He appeared in the indie film Skate Great, playing a Russian Olympic gold medalist. He has also done some modelling."
  • The following weasel phrases (the underlined material) should be removed or attributed:
    • "He placed 12th in his senior debut at nationals, a very promising start for a fifteen year old."
  • "Lysacek literally jumped from third to first while sitting backstage..." No he didn't. He figuratively jumped from third to first. Simply jumped would be sufficient.
  • The programs need a source.
  • If you can't provide wikilinks for U.S. Junior Title and U.S. Novice Title, briefly mention what ages these competitions are for. This provides context for readers not familiar with the sport.

Please strike out my suggestions as you make the changes. Leave a note here if you have any questions. The nomination will be on hold for between two and seven days, depending on whether progress is being made.--Djrobgordon 08:17, 5 March 2007 (UTC)


Thanks for doing this. Questions on citations:
Lysacek lost motivation, had a poor showing at the U.S. Championships and was not selected for the World Junior team. Which part do you want cited? That he lost motivation? The fact that he had a bad showing (12th, a repeat of the year before) and didn't go to Junior Worlds is self-apparent.
The part about the motivation was what I was questioning. Actually, I seem to remember him saying this in one of the sources you provided, so it may just be a matter of providing a second footnote to that source. I noticed you don't have multiple citations pointing to any one ref. Here's how you do it, just in case you don't know: instead of beginning the reference with the <ref> tag, use <ref name="SOURCE">, with a name of your choice in place of SOURCE. Then, each additional time you cite that source, use <ref name="SOURCE"/>, and it will automatically ref to the same source. Sorry if you were already aware of that. Just wanted to note it, in case.
a competition for which his only goal was to make it out of the qualifying round This is something he repeatedly said in interviews after the competition. I can try to track down newspaper articles, but is there a way to cite ESPN on-air interviews?
A print source would be preferable, but if you can't find one, you can cite the show using {{{title}}}.. You should have the exact date of the broadcast, which doesn't seem like a problem, since you can find out the date of the competition. I did find an article with some quotes about the competition[1], but he doesn't specifically make this point.
He became the first American men's single skater to win a medal in his first attempt at Worlds since Tim Brown won the silver in 1957 Again, this is something from the ESPN broadcast. Is there a way to cite that?
You could use the template I provided above, but it would be better to have a print source. Try looking for any articles that summarize the competition.
He appeared in the indie film Skate Great, playing a Russian Olympic gold medalist. Already cited.
Move the reference to the end of the paragraph. Right now, it looks like it's only the source of the first sentence.
The programs need a source. Most are from his website. How should I cite a large block of information like that? The ones that aren't on his website are from vids I've seen of his programs. They are up on YouTube, though for Copyright CYA reasons, I'd prefer not to link to them.
I wouldn't link YouTube either. This site[2] also lists quite a few of his routines. It's not exactly kosher, but I'd put a note at the bottom of the section saying something like "All program information was obtained from..." I think having a link after every song would be unseemly.
If you can't provide wikilinks for U.S. Junior Title and U.S. Novice Title, briefly mention what ages these competitions are for. Novices and Juniors compete at the United States Figure Skating Championships. There are not currently pages for the 1999 Nationals or 2000 Nationals. I can link to the U.S. Figure Skating site for the results,[3] and [4], or I could make a page for the competitions. Which works better?
If you want to make those pages, that's great, but it's certainly not necessary just to clarify this article. If I were you I'd use footnotes. It would be cleaner than putting the clarification in text. It would look something like <ref>The U.S. Junior Championships are for skaters between the ages of __ and __.</ref> It'll show up below, just like a reference.
Working on the rest. Again, thank you for taking the time. Kolindigo 21:06, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

If you have any other questions, let me know.--Djrobgordon 00:47, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm going to experiment with putting a couple of sub-headers in the career section, just to break up the block of text a little. Let me know if they don't work for you. I'm not up on my skating lingo, so I'll probably word them wrong, but I think splitting the block makes the page look better--Djrobgordon 19:46, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm going to format the references with citation templates, so that readers can easily see what the source is without following a link.--Djrobgordon 22:40, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

Looks like you've done everything I've asked, so I'm happy to promote this to Good Article status. As soon as I finish converting the refs (which I'm going to do right now) I'll go through the steps of making it official. Congratulations, and thanks for helping make Wikipedia a better encyclopedia.--Djrobgordon 04:17, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Good article status in question

From reading through the article, I noted several concerns that warrant delisting. 1. The lead is too short. See Wikipedia:Lead section. 2. There are several instances of Wikipedia:NPOV#let facts speak for themselves and Wikipedia:Words to avoid. 3. The personal life section has too many small paragraphs and the last sentence in the coaching changes section could use some rewriting. Some of the overall writing quality can be improved, such as typical journalist style of switching from subject's name to he/her and back instead of he, he, he. 4. There are a few instances where facts of questionable value are introduced. Placement in relationship to Johnny Weir is too frequent. Lysacek appearing on a tv show to comment on his performance after the Olympics doesn't seem noteworthy (unless perhaps some detail is to the mater is given). I'll give other editors some time to address these concerns before delisting.User:calbear22 (talk) 01:18, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

WP:SOFIXIT. 141.151.176.204 (talk) 07:49, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

It would take hours for me to fix these problems and I am currently working on several other wikipedia projects.User:calbear22 (talk) 09:29, 11 March 2008 (UTC)


There are numerous errors in this article that I have corrected but which someone who apparently has "their" version of this article copied in a file keeps simply reverting by pasting "their" entire article back in. Some of the errors include:

  • He could not have "aged out" of Juniors at 19 - figure skaters can skate in Juniors until they turn 21
  • The fact that he wears Graf skating boots should not be in the article - product placement is never appropriate in an encyclopedia article
  • As the administrator above said, there is no reason to mention that he appeared on a minor, temporary fluff show to talk about his free skate at the Olympics.
  • Saying "he won the title due to the tiebreaker" without explaining what the tiebreaker is or providing a link to the ISU rule for it is nonsensical
  • There are numerous spelling and grammatical errors ("forarm", "commentating", the word "his" where "the" should be used, etc. - I have fixed them repeatedly, but the "paster" just puts all of the errors right back again)
  • Too much fangirl gushing that does not belong in an encyclopedia article; Wikipedia is not an extension of the Evan Lysacek Fan Fanatics, it is an encyclopedia - just the cold, hard facts, please. Save fan worship for fan clubs. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.222.244.219 (talk) 07:39, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

As for your first point: single skaters age out at 19. Learn to read the rules.

Olympic Ice is notable.

Commentating is a word.

Graf boots are his equiptment and are therefore useful in an article about his skating career.

All you did was add way too much info about Weir, including a factual error that ties are somehow unprecedented, which they aren't, since it happened at 2007 Worlds, which was before 2008 Nationals, which makes the tie, by definition precented. Keep your Weir-bias for the Weir article. 70.17.181.241 (talk) 11:55, 9 May 2008 (UTC)