Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/2012 Summer Olympics bids

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

The article was promoted 21:24, 28 April 2007.

[edit] 2012 Summer Olympics bids

Self-nomination – This article is under the scope of the Olympics WikiProject, of which I am a member. Yet I only started to contribute to its improvement after a peer-review request was open for it, by another member. Since then, I've been the main editor and I believe this article has reached a very high level of information and, in general, it follows the style guidelines and the criteria needed to reach featured status. Parutakupiu talk || contribs 20:24, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

  • Comment. Since I was one of the editors who got the article up to GA status, I'll abstain from voting, but will just comment and say that the article is a great overview of the 2012 Olympic bids candidate cities, like London and Paris, and of the progression of the bid in general. In all, the article is well sourced and contains a whole bunch of encyclopedic information in a logically progressive and flowing way. └Jared┘┌talk┐  20:53, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
  • Support. A lot has been put into this article since it was last edited by myself. This article has been copyedited numerous times, and the editors have finally started settling down on a good copyedited version. I believe this article is great, and I think I can now, without bias, give my support for this article's FAC nomination. └Jared┘┌talk┐  14:12, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment. I participated in the peer review and I am currently copyediting the entire article. It has shades of poor prose and layout here and there. On the whole, this is a very visually pleasing and informative article that has a lot of potential. However, a subject like this needs a little more referencing that it currently has. I'll try to highlight specific "trouble spots" that you might want to address:
    • "They were granted the right to use Olympic symbols and the label "Candidate City" (or "Ville Candidate") in their campaign literature." This sentence should have a citation to the official IOC rules regarding this.
    • "Originally, London was seen lagging behind Paris by a considerable margin, however this started to change with the appointment of Sebastian Coe as new head of London 2012, on May 19, 2004." This sentence needs a reference if it is not covered by your wrongc ref.
    • "After the Games, the East London region will have of one of Europe's largest urban parks created in decades and will be home to the Olympic Institute, a centre for sports medical centre and a place to study the Olympic ideals." This sentence is hard to rework considering I don't really know the details. In general, could you try to get the fluff out of these cit bids sections? Make them read like a Wall Street Journal report, not an IOC bid pamphlet ;-D.
      • Well, I didn't write these bid summaries, but I'll do what I can. Parutakupiu talk || contribs 04:23, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
        • I think I solved it and I referenced that "largest urban park" part. Parutakupiu talk || contribs 04:59, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
    • "The bid committee also proposed the London Paralympic Games, which would be as important as the Olympic Games." Same thing here. "As important as the Olympic Games?" According to whom? Who says the Olympic Games are important or not important? This phrasing has to go unless it's specifically stated in the official literature of the London bid in which case you'll have to put quotes around it and mention who said it from a NPOV.
      • I simply deleted it as I couldn't find refs nor did I find it necessary to stay. Parutakupiu talk || contribs 04:59, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
    • "London was considered by many to be second favourite for the bid after Paris, but last-minute intense lobbying by the bid team in Singapore probably swung the votes in their favour." By whom were they considered? If you find a source for this sentence, I suggest rewording it to this: "...but intense lobbying by the bid team at the later stages of the bid process in Singapore swung the votes in their favour." Careful with words like probably. Remember: According to whom?
    • "Following the success of the bid there were further developments and announcements, including reactions to the security fears highlighted by the 7 July 2005 London bombings." This definitely needs a citation and you need to figure out where you want to put it. Don't leave it sitting out there on its own as a one-sentence paragraph. Avoid one- and two-sentence paragraphs.
    • "Paris's plan was very compact, with the placement of several sports in the Northern and Western Clusters and the Olympic Village between the two clusters." What do you mean by "compact?" I mean, I know what you mean, but reword it better and say that they were going to be placing several sports facilities in the...
    • "The plan had gained high technical merit due to the city's well-maintained transport system, its ability to handle a peak number of tourists with plentiful accommodation, and very high support for the bid among Parisians and the nation. I understand the first two for technical "merit," which should be referenced, but I don't understand how the last one fits in. The whole thing needs to be referenced. If you have access to the IOC review of Paris, that would suffice, but be sure to say in the prose "...high technical merit from the IOC."
    • "Paris also planned to build temporary venues for some sports that can be moved and reused elsewhere after the Games (dubbed "pre-cycling")." Reword and reference this sentence.
    • "Its rich cultural and Olympic heritage were also emphasized. All of these items placed Paris in a very strong position." Now don't get me wrong, I like this sentence because it is, obviously, true. However, my problem with it comes with the use of the words "rich cultural...heritage." Paris is a fantastic city with a rich cultural heritage, but the way you word it in this sentence makes it seem like the other cities didn't have this going for them. Reconsider it unless you can find a direct IOC review reference.
    • "Madrid, Spain's capital city, beat out Seville to represent the country on the international stage." I'm sure it's easy to ref this one. It might be something people want to look into, so give them the news story.
    • "Madrid presented an above average bid, with almost all sports contested in three clusters, all within very close proximity of each other." I don't really get this sentence. What were the sports contested? How did that relate to the bidding process?
    • "The public transport infrastructure would have been able to accommodate the hundreds of thousands gathering in the capital, and this positive situation was coupled with the use of renewable energy and hydrogen vehicles." This sentence needs a reference and it needs clarification. Do other cities in the world not have renewable energy vehicles? I live right next to NYC and I know I've seen some driving around.
    • "Madrid had also organised several high-quality European and World championships, accounting for the city's hosting experience. The bid gained resounding support among the city and national population and was helped with the support of former IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch, who was lobbying votes for the Madrid bid." These two sentences are POV and need citations and a reworking.
    • "New York City was selected over San Francisco as the sentimental favourite during the United States competition, in 2002." Could you please reference the "sentimental" favorite part?
      • Added reference and removed that POV part. (I didn't put it but I also didn't proofread it earlier) Parutakupiu talk || contribs 18:32, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
    • "The Olympic X Plan was the main concept proposed by the NYC2012 Bid team: two primary transportation lines would have strung the several individual clusters in Manhattan, Queens, and Brooklyn together." You have to really reconsider using so many colons. They can really begin to hurt prose if you overuse them. Was it at any point officially referred to as "NYC2012" or is this your shortening? You should call it by its full name or "the New York City bid." Why is "Bid" capitalized? Was this the entire plan?? If not, rework the whole section to make it flow better.
      • I also didn't write this part but I tried to cleanup a little bit. Parutakupiu talk || contribs 18:32, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
    • "By combining existing world-class facilities such as Madison Square Garden, Yankee Stadium, Central Park and the National Tennis Center, with new venues like the Brooklyn Arena, Greenbelt Olympic Equestrian Park, and Olympic Regatta Center, the city hoped to show that it was worthy of holding an event of such magnitude." Who says MSG is world-class? Can you provide wikilinks to these other proposed facilities? If not, can you reference them? Can you really consider Central Park a "facility?" Rework the rest of this section to remove fluff and stick to official terms. Don't just call the plan "X." Get more refs.
    • "Moscow's River Plan called for every single competition to be staged within city limits, making this one of the most compact proposals ever." Again the word compact I find weird in this context. The proposal wasn't compact, but the layout was, right?
    • "Despite the high support from the entire nation and invaluable experience..." This phrase in the Moscow section irks me. It sounds like more fluff from Moscow's concession speech.
    • "Similar allegations were repeated by several members of the Paris 2012 delegation." This needs a citation. In general with a section as controversial as this one, you need lots and lots of references that clearly point to verification of the claim. Right now there are scattered citations that have been used throughout the article and are probably general sources. Try to find the specific stories here and source them.
      • Removed that unsourced sentence and added every possible reference to each statement. Parutakupiu talk || contribs 19:52, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
    • "Probably the most controversial move by London 2012 was its initiative to offer incentive packages for participating athletes (including free flights, economical accommodations, food and vouchers for long distance calling) and immediately after announcing it, London 2012 withdrew it. This U-turn was probably a result of President Jacques Rogge raising concerns because it could have started a "bidding war" if not withdrawn." Needs a citation.
    • "Paris 2012 also claimed that the lobbying by Tony Blair would have broken IOC rules." Needs a citation.
    • "This was strongly denied by Downing Street." Needs a citation.
    • Shape up the whole last section just in general. I like the referencing you have done so far, but there are some one-sentence paragraphs in there and it's overall clumsy. Get someone to copyedit it once you've finished. Just one last note: perhaps you should have responded in the peer review before bringing it here and this list might have been shorter ;-). JHMM13 01:32, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
      • I joined paragraphs, copyedited the prose and unlinked some words to make it more readable (check on this please). Parutakupiu talk || contribs 19:52, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment. This article is getting really close. I've copyedited the entire thing twice now and the main editor and I have coordinated on getting some of the facts straight. I'd like to see a few other people sweep through it before I support it, but right now I would say it's 90% of the way to a FA with my efforts exhausted through copyediting and other stuff. My reccomendation to anyone thinking about flat-out objecting this article is this: this user really has put forth a tremendous effort on an article that is not only very visually pleasing, but also very informative and well-sourced. English is not his first language, so try to give him the benefit of the doubt. If you find any mistakes here and there, try to reword it a little better and we'll all get this thing up to FA status. JHMM13 05:53, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment Ref #42 is broken.--Rmky87 01:19, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
    • Fixed reference. Thank you for pointing it out. So many refs to put can lead to this. Parutakupiu talk || contribs 01:34, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment—It's quite well written, but please fix such things as:
    • "hotly-contested—no hyphens after "-ly".
    • "3rd"—spell out single digit numbers.
    • "Paris's plan also"—ungainly possessive, plus remove redundant "also". Need to reduce or eliminate possessive apostrophes for cities, e.g., "Paris's and London's delegations"—yuck.
    • Tony Blurr is linked twice; once is certainly enough.
    • "Prior to the election,"—what's wrong with "before"?
    • "tensions had started growing between"—This is WP's very own disease, which I call startitis. "tensions were growing".
      • Fixed all examples, except the Blair links (the same happens with "Jacques Rogge"). The first instances are on the lead, but the second ones are on a subsection almost at the bottom of the article. I don't think it is that unnecessary or useless to have these names wikilinked two times, as per WP:MOS-L. Anyway, thanks for catching with some bugs that escaped previous copy-edits by English speakers. Parutakupiu talk || contribs 01:46, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
  • That's from a cursory look; more attention is required throughout. In terms of content, I find it lop-sided (Criterion 1b) that there's no mention in the "Controversies" section of the clearly documented corruption that goes on with Olympic city competitions. Tony 00:38, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
    • You're talking about corruption during THIS bidding process or in general? I don't know if this article is the adequate for the latter option. Parutakupiu talk || contribs 01:46, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
      • I have added two more topics to the Controversies section (one I don't even know how I could overlook!). I'll ask for copy-editing on these new additions. Parutakupiu talk || contribs 03:37, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Well, the big green ticks are one thing, but I can't change my Oppose until the whole article is spruced up. Tony 03:20, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
    • I don't think I can do better than this, as far as writing style and prose is concerned. Although I believe I have a good English vocabulary, I'm no native English speaker. Therefore, I can only rely on those users who are. The article has been copy-edited twice by User:JHMM13 but I've already requested help from other users. Parutakupiu talk || contribs 03:43, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
Thanks. Please let me know when it's ready for another look. Tony 22:24, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment It's too hard to read this thing with all this color-coding and green marks; would it be possible to get rid of them? It seems to be a convention taking hold this week, and it would be really good to stop it. They don't mean anything; reviewers strike objections when they consider something done. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:24, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
    • So sorry! I've removed them all now. I apologize for the disturbance. Parutakupiu talk || contribs 02:48, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment/Appraisal Let me start off by first saying I find this article an interesting read? I didn't think zo much controversy would go on for the 2012 Summer Olympicz. The titles "Tony Blair's Olympic pitch", "Ivan Slavkov corruption scandal", "French recriminations following vote", and "Mistaken voting controversy" wre intriguing to me. I'll break it down like this.
    • Pros-article is interesting and a great overvew of what has happened. You wrote sections on the Bidding process (Evaluation of applicant cities, Evaluation of candidate cities, Final selection process). It was solid but more kinks could have been added. It sort of sounds too formal. Instead of "it begins", it could it started or what not. The Final selection process was explain well and brief. I like/approve of the short tables to save space for the 52kb article. The canduidate cities sections were explaine accurately and brief to fit the article.
    • Cons-Not much, article is very accurately sourced and arranged. Just for the Bidding Process and the Ivan Slakov scandal add more links or shorten up. And add more links to the article in general.
      • Overall, very good article, overview and is worth a look.Showmanship is the key 00:59, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
        • Thank you for your review and comments, Supershow. You say it needs more links overall — you mean wikilinks? I'll see what I can find out that deserves to be linked, though I sense I've already linked pretty much what deserved to be linked; don't want to overlink. Parutakupiu talk || contribs 02:12, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Support. I am now convinced that this article is worthy of FA status. JHMM13 03:19, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment. The captions of the logos up to the section titled "Candidate city overview" contain the critical commentary in part necessary to establish a solid claim at fair use. The logos included after that do not. They appear decorative to me. I recommend that they be removed and viewed if and when the reader clicks the "Main article" link? --Iamunknown 08:21, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
    • I respectfully disagree. I think they do add a nice sectioned quality to that part of the article, and further shows that that candidate has a logo which is representing it. └Jared┘┌talk┐  11:19, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
      • We don't entirely disagree, then. They do have a nice sectioning quality, but that is a decorative, uninformative quality, which is an inappropriate use of non-free content per Wikipedia:Non-free content. --Iamunknown 11:26, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
        • Despite considering that they look nice there, this isn't a proper motif to keep them, according to the non-free content policy item #8. Besides, the photos for each city section also have an example of the bid logo, so there's actually no need to have the complete logo again. I shall remove them, to comply with the free content rules. Parutakupiu talk || contribs 15:57, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
          • The other images are appropriately used, my concerns are now addressed and, I should say, the article is excellent. --Iamunknown 18:36, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Weak oppose I'd love to support this article, but I'm currently concerned about the use of the logos within this article - there is no need for the candidate city logos unless you are discussing the use or design of the logo. Laïka 13:29, 25 April 2007 (UTC) Support; the copyright issue has been addressed, and this is now an excellent article. Laïka 16:00, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Object - Non-free images lack article-specific fair use rationale, per Wikipedia:Non-free content criteria#10. Pagrashtak 22:02, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
    • To all above, I agree now that they were an unnecessary fair use vio, and so I'm perfectly fine with the removal. To the above editor, I would encourage you to review your objection accordingly. └Jared┘┌talk┐  22:16, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
      • I will review when either the images have been removed or article-specific fair use rationale has been added. Pagrashtak 00:43, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
    • I didn't consider that, Pagrashtak, but I agree that the fair use rationales are considerably lacking. I would recommend scrapping the fair use template and directly addressing the points detailed at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline. --Iamunknown 00:10, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
    • I've added article-specific fair use rationales for the non-free logos. For the London bid, I even replaced the SVG version (inadequate for copyrighted logos) for a smaller resolved PNG version. As for the photo on the Moscow section, I've replaced it for one with a proper license (CC-BY) that I found on Flickr. Can anyone check if everything is solved now? Parutakupiu talk || contribs 20:58, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
      • Objection struck. Thanks for your work. Pagrashtak 05:37, 27 April 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 candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.