Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Alcibiades

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[edit] Alcibiades

This is an article Dmcheatw had started to improve a few months ago. When I got in, I tried to initiate further improvements and I have now finally completed a thorough rewriting. Alcibiades is now a GA and has gone through three peer-reviews: 1 thorough peer-review (Wikipedia:Peer review/Alcibiades/archive1), 1 peer-review by the WikiProject Military history (Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Peer review/Alcibiades) and 1 peer-review by the WikiProject Biography (Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography/Peer review/Alcibiades). During this long course Robth's advice and assistance have been more than valuable. I thought it was the right time for this second nomination.--Yannismarou 08:19, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

As of 30 September 2006, this article had 49 KB of prose
  • Support; all the issues brought up in the military history peer review have been resolved. Kirill Lokshin 13:06, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
  • Support (with the caveat that I did a little bit of work on this). This is an excellent and very balanced article, which is an impressive achievement given that Alcibiades is perhaps the most controversial figure of ancient Greek history. Superb work as always. --RobthTalk 15:47, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
  • Support - very good article, I'm particularly impressed how the main contributor has been able to mantain a perfect balance, avoiding any of his personal opinions regarding Alcibiades to emerge in the article.--Aldux 16:58, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
  • Support Phenomenal article.UberCryxic 20:47, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
  • Support Kyriakos 22:58, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
  • Support. Just one question, is the "Timeline of Alcibiades' life" hidden for a special reason? -- EnemyOfTheState 23:49, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
  • You've a point. In other articles I had a timeline not-hidden by default. But I had complaints that it is wide and long. I was then told that it should be better to have it hidden. I also think that it is better like that. Somebody could be disturbed by its size while reading the notes. Now if somebody wants to see it, he can just click on "show".--Yannismarou 08:48, 30 September 2006 (UTC)
  • Support Some formatting concerns, mostly minor (Now fixed):
    • The use of Greek letters for the notes: This has been done before on featured articles, but I find the Greek letters hard to read, and would prefer that Roman letters (a,b,c) be used for notes. In some places ref marks follow in both Greek letters (notes) and numbers (citations) - could the citations be combined into the notes in those cases? (I think the only two are in "Early Years") Why is one note mark two letters? None of this is very important, but I am curious why people use Greek letters rather than Roman.
    • The timeline causes odd rendering of the notes. First, there is an extra dynamic navFrame with no content. This is what makes the timeline hidden by default, because any time there is more than one navFrame, they are all hidden. This is seemingly unnecessary, and might lead someone to use display:none in regard to actual content. Next, whether the timeline is hidden or shown, some of the subsequent notes are squeezed off to the side to make room on some browsers. This latter is a noticeable rendering defect in my opinion.
    • It's odd that the primary sources are in two columns (and not balanced at that), but the secondary sources are in a single column. Also be aware that moz-column-count:2 does not work on all common browsers, but the columns-2 class (as used in {{col-begin}}) works more commonly. One possible solution to some of these issues would be to put the citations in one column of 2-column (using class columns-2), and the timeline as the second column. See for example Rabindranath Tagore. Gimmetrow 01:11, 30 September 2006 (UTC)
  • Thank you very much for your useful, accurate and detailed remarks. It is nice to see such a good review in terms of style and layout. I tried to address your concerns as much as I could:
    • I prefer Greek letters because of my inner taste for variety (and maybe because of my origins!). But you are right that you and many other people around the world are not used to the Greek alphabet. Thus I replaced the Greek alphabet with Roman letters. You were also right about the ref marks which followed in both Greek letters (notes) and numbers (citations). It was a deficiency I corrected, incoroporating these citations in the notes they are related.
    • Now both the primary and the secondary sources are in a single column. I hope it is better like that.
    • Your remark about the noticeable rendering defect in the notes sections is also well-stated. I'm also aware of the fact that moz-column-count:2 does not work on all browsers. But I think it's better to keep it for those it works. A long series of citations without moz-column-count:2 is stylistically not so nice. I'm also aware of the layout of Rabindranath Tagore I initially used as a model. The problem is that with the layout of Tagore you have a huuuuuge column of citations and a huuuuuge timetable, when it is not hidden. When it is hidden, you have again a huuuuuge column of citations and a huuuuuge empty space! That is why I preferred to move the timetable to the "Notes" section, keep it hidden so that it does not occupy much space and divide the citations in two columns. I understand that this layout may also have some deficiencies. But making a "cost-benefit analysis" I concluded that this layout is better and with less deficiencies than the one of Rabindranath Tagore. After all, perfectionism is a nobel goal, but "perfect solutions" are in scarcity! Once again thanks for the remarks. I hope I have addressed at least some of your concerns.--Yannismarou 08:48, 30 September 2006 (UTC)
  • This article is very good work, and I thank you for changing the note symbols to Roman letters. I understand going with a solution for the timetable that works in most cases. I'm just noting that on one common browser, when the timeline is hidden note (b) is pushed to the left leaving a large block of whitespace. However, I was unable to find a simple html fix and I suspect this is actually a side-effect of something in the dynamic navbar javascript. Gimmetrow 14:56, 30 September 2006 (UTC)
  • Support, a nice article deserving a star :) -- Grafikm (AutoGRAF) 22:03, 30 September 2006 (UTC)
  • Support—Very nice. Tony 02:17, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Support. Nice job. Sandy 00:00, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Template:GoodSupport Excellent article. Tomwe 19:38, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

  • Support: I don't usually vote here, but this article deserves a huge round of support. Great work. Danny 00:49, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Support Yet another amazing article! --Konst.able 00:52, 8 October 2006 (UTC)