Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Archived nominations/April 2005

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 not promoted.

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—Preceding unsigned comment added by Dabbydabby (talk • contribs) 19:13, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Fuck

To those who say this treatment is too "fucking" long, "fuck you". Just kidding. :-) The fact is that this topic is quite important, given the prominence of "fuck" in English vernacular, and owing to the many and well-covered false etymologies. This work is an encyclopedia. It should contain information that one can find nowhere else, and does. The more controversial interpretations have been substantiated via legitimate references. I can't see anything in the article that is overdone, overblown or superfluous. Since Alan Ginsberg wrote Howl, and Country Joe McDonald let out his "fish cheer" at Woodstock, "fuck" has become one of the most important words in the language.11:30 pm, 3 Oct 2007; User: Doktorschley —Preceding unsigned comment added by Doktorschley (talk • contribs) 05:30, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Ok. My apologies if this is a sensitive or controversial topic for anyone. I believe the subject is appropriate for a featured article, but will certainly understand if others disagree. I find this article to be entertaining, informative, and thorough. It meets all the featured article criteria handily with the possible exception of stability. I believe the article has reached the point where major changes are no longer made on a regular basis, but it will be impossible to halt the vandalism from immature individuals that are naturally drawn to articles on vulgarisms. However, wikipedians are generally good at reverting vandalism promptly, and I do not think that should be a bar to featuring such an outstanding article. Indrian 05:51, Apr 21, 2005 (UTC)

• It's pretty fucking long. Some subarticles wouldn't hurt. It also has the feeling of being very repetitive. But that may be because I'm fucking stupid. Everyking 06:00, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Fuck no. Bloat is not brilliance. And I would never support any article that featured the childish picture that adorns this one. F*ck! that.Grace Note 07:07, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Oppose. The article is all right by itself but I don't think it qualifies for a featured article. — JIP | Talk 07:18, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Object: too much list, not enough prose. Filiocht | Blarneyman 07:30, Apr 21, 2005 (UTC)
• Object: too many lists, not enough proses. The structure should probably be rearranged - Acronyms section should be further down. Modern use and status could include some of the material from the Popular subsection. Some of the material in that subsection could be left out anyway ("fuck" is rather common in "pop culture"; why does Shaun of the Dead deserve special mention?). Also, I don't object articles because of pictures (unless they are not tagged/grossly inappropriate) but that "Middle Finger" picture is of rather poor quality. Phils 11:13, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • The first picture seems kinda silly to me, since it's just text in image form. Everyking 18:24, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Oppose. As much as I love the word fuck, this article just isn't ready. We must give wikipedia a better fucking article, with more quality and less quantity of text. Edit: Fuck. AngryParsley 22:56, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Abstain. I do fucking like this fucking article, but I'm not fucking sure that it should appear on the Main Page, because I'm afraid that there would fucking be a lot of fucking fuckers out there who would fuck with it. Oh, and you may fucking want to send it to Peer Fucking Review (WP:PR). Just my fucking $.02. →mathx314^{(talk)(email)} 23:36, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • Edit: I've noticed that it has gone through WP:PR. Dunno what to tell you then. →mathx314^{(talk)(email)} 23:40, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Oppose. This article needs some trimming. It is overlong, to the point of repetition in places. For such a ubiquitous word, I question the value of the "pop culture" section. I am not too sure we need all those acronyms either, the more widely used should be merged into the popular section and the rest disposed of. The foreign languages section strikes me as a little gratuitous too. Rje 01:31, Apr 23, 2005 (UTC)
• Comment - Fuck, fuckity, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck -- Eric Cartman 02:48, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Oppose. It's too fucking long. Probably because there's so many meanings. Is it really necessary to give an example of every possible usage? Some of the examples aren't very believeable. ("Fucking fucker's fucking fucked!")?? It's too much fun to edit this page so it just keeps growing every time some fuck gets a new idea. "Fuck" deserves an article but people have gotten a little carried away with this one. So, fuck it.--LStrong2K 02:27, Apr 27, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Johann Sebastian Bach

This is a great article on a very important musician. -- Tony Jin | (talk) 00:00, Apr 19, 2005 (UTC)

• Personally, I don't think it's comprehensive enough to be featured. But don't count that as an object. Everyking 00:13, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Object. Decent biography, nearly nothing about his music. - Fredrik | talk 00:26, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Object. Needs a discussion of his music in its historical context (i.e., Baroque is only mentioned in the lead and in the category listing). --DanielNuyu 03:43, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Object. No references. This should be a featured article, but it will take time to get it to that level. Mark¹ 07:10, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Object. An article about such a significant musician should have a lead section longer than two sentences. Discussion of Bach's work and its critical reception should be more extensive than that presented in the Legacy section. The Further Reading section should be renamed to References if all of these were used to write or check the article. Otherwise, move the ones that were used to a References section. Specific anecdotes should be referenced directly. Phils 10:02, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Object. Lead is too short, no references (see Wikipedia:Cite sources), remove external links from main body (see Wikipedia:Footnotes).--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 10:08, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Object. Far from comprehensive. Tobyox 17:23, Apr 23, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Van Halen

It's well written and factual, with a good overview of the band. And fits all the criteria and more. I didn't personally add much to it, although I did verify the facts using references and added a picture, so Im not sure if it's a self nomination or not. --Richy 17:56, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• • I'm re-submitting this article. The writing is of a high quality, and it is quite interesting.

• Object 1) the lead section is way too short; it should summarize the major points in the article 2) not enough images for an article of this length; don't we have other images of band members and album covers already uploaded that could be used here? slambo 18:27, Apr 18, 2005 (UTC)

• • I added a lead in section, photographs and annotated the photos with as much copyright info. as I could find/rationalize. --Chevan 20:02, August 25, 2005 (UTC)

• Object. 1) The lead section needs to be two or three paragraphs, not a single sentence. 2) References need to be cleaned up a little bit. 3) The heading titles are pretty messy. 4) As above, more pictures are needed and that group picture should be shown at a bigger size. plattopus^{is this thing on?} 18:36, Apr 18, 2005 (UTC)

• • Alright, I understand your comments and will fix those problems shortly, but other than that, what comments do people have? --Richy 00:34, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• • I've tried to address these concerns. --Chevan 23:03, August 24, 2005 (UTC)

• Object 1) I'm going to call copyvio on some of the material; it's obviously identical to material from elsewhere. (hint: look for sections of typical rock journalist "gushing" and cut and paste to your favourite search engine) 2) it could do with light copy editing. 3) you could do with more references and there should be a way to link specific bits of the text to the references they came from / are supported by. Mozzerati 06:51, 2005 Apr 19 (UTC)

• Object There is no lead section, and the entire article consists almost only of the History, which mixes the band's history with musical commentary, and anecdotes. I feel discussion of influence (the article needs more of that, too) and musical style, etc. belongs in separate sections. (See FA candidate Dream Theater for a good example of a structured article). The writing is also on the limit of POV. Statements like Nothing like it had ever been heard on record and "Eruption" granted Eddie Van Halen immediate guitar god status among players worldwide. and It was soon regarded as one of rock's most extraordinary albums. could easily be replaced with (sourced) quotes from critics or journalists. "Show, do not tell". Finally, and this is something I've seen User:Mozzerati request a few times for other candidates, and which strikes me as common sense, specific claims (sales figures, for example) should be directly referenced, with page/section/paragraph number. In other words, indicate which part of the references you used. This looks like a lot, but in fact I think the article is rather good, although it feels 'unfinished'. I started reading it with the yet-another-boring-rock-article mindset and was surprised to notice the writing is actually more than decent. All in all, good work, but not yet featured material. Phils 09:50, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• Object (but not strongly) 1) I did some "light copy editing," and attempted to make the first three sections less "gushy," more neutral. 2) Perhaps the headings should be changed to "With David Lee Roth," "with Sammy Hagar," etc. 3) I don't believe that any of this article has been plagarized. 4) I agree that there should be more photos--two or three more. 5) Perhaps a fleshing out of the "differing reports" behind the band's original break-up? With minor work, it'd be a good featured article; it's actually an interesting read.

• • I think the objections have been met. Unfortunately this was an anonymous post so I cannot solicit this user's feedback to remove the objection. Would appreciate someone else's point of view. --Chevan 20:05, August 25, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] E. E. Cummings

Self-nomination. I've put a lot of work into this article, probably moreso than any other before, and it in all likelihood exemplifies my best work here. I've taken the article from little more than a blurb to what I think is a fine, expansive, polished article. I think I've done a passable job of maintaining a neutral point-of-view and balancing out praises of Cummings with criticisms. This article is also well-illustrated in my estimation, with seven images (six of which are PD-US, btw). That said, I am open to any and all suggestions. There's always room for improvement. BLANKFAZE | (что??) 19:18, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• Object for the moment, most of the images uploaded by Blankfaze seem to lack proper attribution and tagging, must therefore be presumed to be copyvios. Fawcett5 20:00, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC) Also, there is virtually no narrative for almost 1/3 of Cummings life, the period from 1932-1952. Fawcett5 21:17, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• • Hmm, all images are tagged... I don't get it. BLANKFAZE | (что??) 20:12, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)
    • Well, its true that you slapped a PD tag on them, but every image has since been notated {{incomplete license}} by others. You didn't indicate WHERE they came from online, the photographer, or the date of publication, so we're left to take your word that they are PD. By the way, copyright doesn't date from the moment the photo was snapped, but from when it was published, so just because the image is from before a certain date is no guarantee that it is PD. Moreover, you didn't indicate a rationale for your fair use claim for the one photo not on commons. Fawcett5 20:40, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)
      • Let me elaborate on the images: the six images on commons are {{PD-US}}, that is, they are in the public domain in the United States, but not necessarily elsewhere. There are issues at commons as to whether they belong on commons or not because it's not 100% certain that they are 100% free in all countries. And, by the way, I'm well aware of the copyright law you mentioned. BLANKFAZE | (что??)
        • It should be no problem then for you to provide a source for the images. I do agree that they should be PD, just give us a bit more. Fawcett5 21:17, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• Support. I tried very hard to find some reason to object, but I just couldn't :p. I've done a quick bit of copyediting, hopefully eliminated the last few typos. (Note to blankfaze: as a "strong supporter of British English" on the wiki, you should start applying your own policies. :D I left all American spellings I found alone; I'll leave it to you to change them). Also the above objection is invalid, as it is based on an incorrect assumption. Phils 20:20, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • Oh, are there some? I'm not responsible for all of the content, so I may have missed something. Also, my personal writing style is somewhat of a mish-mash (probably about 85% BE, 15% AE), so feel free to go through it yourself... :-P BLANKFAZE | (что??) 20:26, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• support seems like a good article Mozzerati 21:00, 2005 Apr 17 (UTC)
• We don't need to put his name in lowercase as he used to write it? Everyking 21:35, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • Read the article, my friend. His name should not be spelled in miniscules. That was a publishing design that got carried away. BLANKFAZE | (что??) 21:48, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)
    • OK then, I was wrong about that. Everyking 21:53, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Support; good work. I remember, as you mentioned, visiting this one in its more stubbish days, and I am impressed with the progress. One comment (sort of in Everyking's vein): while I understand the notion that the lowercase use of his name was not endorsed by Cummings, it is something that many people associate with him or know about him, and thus I think it should be mentioned (if not bolded) in the lead section. --DanielNuyu 03:38, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • I understand your idea about the lead though I'm not quite sure how I'd implement it; you're welcome to try your hand. BLANKFAZE | (что??) 05:06, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)
    • See it now. And one more suggestion: while I like the links to the poetry, I think including within the article one short poem, in my preference "a leaf falls..," would make it even stronger. --DanielNuyu 06:23, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)
      • I like the idea as well — the problem: most of Cummings' poems, including the one you prefer, are copyrighted works. BLANKFAZE | (что??) 21:23, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Object. To much on the life and not enough on the work, apart from a short comment on his development as a writer, and what their is is oddly slanted towards the plays and not the poetry. And yet, strangely, not enough on his relationship with Schofield Thayer, EEC's first real publisher as a writer and patron as a painter, whose name isn't even wikified. Not enough on who the influences on him were (Pound and Stein just mentioned in passing). The accusations of anti-Semitism need to be place in a wider modernist context (Pound, Woolf, Eliot, H.D. and others also exhibit this vice). Nothing at all on his legacy. Who, if anyone, did he influence, and how? I just feel it needs a lot more. Filiocht | Blarneyman 08:47, Apr 18, 2005 (UTC)

• Object. I agree with Filiocht. The Criticism section is aso extremely small and without any kind of attribution. POV: frequent use of "probably" and phrases such as "Cummings understood the importance of presentation" (the issue being an assumption that presentation is important). His writing style does not have any example that I see. 119 21:32, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• Object, I am afraid - I think the biography section is fine, but, in commong with Filiocht and 119, the sections on his works are just stubs, really, and need significant expansion - they should to be as comprehensive as the biography section. -- ALoan (Talk) 10:44, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Portuguese Communist Party

This is a self-nomination, altough it may seem political propaganda, and I admit that it may seem, I propose the nomination for the extensive history of the Party section and the detailed info about electoral results, the party's media and the pictures gallery. - Afonso Silva 16:12, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• Object: A) Seems somewhat slanted towards a pro-POV, and B) the writing is not very good (I just went through and fixed a whole bunch of minor things, like capitalizing "portuguese" and using past tense for past events). Everyking 17:28, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Object: As noted above, the prose isn't up to the standard of featured articles. Phils 18:36, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• Comment: All right, but it would be better if someone pointed objective problems in the article, Everyking writes about the NPOV question, I assume that it might be a valid problem, but I'd like to know where are such non-NPOV parts, that would be a much better feed-back action and only that will lead to a concrete correction of the problem. The other question about the prose is the most important, but if I am the writer of the article I think that at a certain point it will become difficult to spot my own mistakes, because they have origin in something I don't know about. The sub-point related to the past events being reported with some little present tenses is a tricky question, mainly in the context in which it ocurrs, the history, that is a narrative part of the article and so, I don't find the contradiction. -Afonso Silva 22:20, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• This is one of the most egregiously POV articles I have seen nominated on this page. I tried to make some fairly minor changes in order to get rid of the bias, but the user who nominated the article for featured status quickly reverted them without explanation. With due respect, I strongly object. Hydriotaphia 21:31, Apr 20, 2005 (UTC)

• Comment: I agree with all the work you've done, it is a bit difficult for me, being a Party's supporter, to build a strictly NPOV article, with the exception of two changes that you made, which I reverted:

The one about the readers of Bandeira Vermelha, (you said that it was popular among those who were sympathetic to the Party's aims... Before the foundation of the Party itself...). The second one was the correction you made about the Colonial war, I think my correction is NPOV, you may read it, if you want. Both edits are commented, try to check the article history:

---> 18:01, 19 Apr 2005 Afonso Silva (→Outlawing of the Party and the long anti-fascist struggle - new prose about the colonial war, hope it is NPOV);

---> 17:46, 19 Apr 2005 Afonso Silva (how could that be before the foundation of the PCP?)

The other main change to your edit was made by Soman, and refers to the objective conditions to support the Agrarian Reform, which were not pro-POV, it was just a report about the objective conditions that the Party had to support it, maybe you don't understand the European political relations, there are more than only two parties here... Back to the edit talk, check what I've said, please. Afonso Silva 16:49, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Red Arrows

This is a self nomination, I think it is intersting and meets all criteria, I hope you agree! thanks - Bluemoose 15:33, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• Support:Perhaps a little short, but I can't think what other there is to say, great photography. Well written. Giano | Talk 18:38, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Generally good article, object however, that a) their motto isn't covered although it's visible on the badge and b) it's difficult to work out which reference covers which part of the article, which makes it difficult to verify. Please improve the referencing system so that it's possible to know where different facts came from. For example, you could use invisible references or footnotes to help with this.Mozzerati 20:55, 2005 Apr 17 (UTC)
  • Is it ok if i reference more main facts how i have already in the last 2 paragraphs of "The Red Arrows arrive"?, and badge covered now - thanks Bluemoose 22:39, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)
    • direct numbered external links aren't my preference. They are recommended against in the style guides because they are difficult to correct later if the break. I've tried to improve the references generally. Could you continue like that? Mozzerati 07:08, 2005 Apr 18 (UTC)
• Support good article covering all the key things I would want to know and easy to verify. Mozzerati 05:49, 2005 Apr 19 (UTC)
• Sorry, object - the content is pretty good, but it doesn't seem to flow all that logically for me. Wouldn't it make sense to deal with the last section (history) first, and then deal with pilots, planes, etc? Also, the left-right images at the top make the lead look a bit cluttered. Some of the writing patchy - for example, "The Pilots" includes a single-sentence paragraph: "During a routine, Red Arrows pilots regularly experience forces up to five times that of gravity (see g-force), when performing the Vixen Break forces up to 7g can be reached, the limit of the aircraft is 8g." which could easily be broken up and explained properly - what is the Vixen Break, for example? You could also describe some of their formations/routines, perhaps with some diagrams.-- ALoan (Talk) 13:08, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I dont think formation/routine descriptions would be a good addition, as it would require so much text as to dominate the article. This article is neither about flight routines or the physics of motion in a gravitational field, so doesnt need anymore explaining, not that I think it could not be improved (as i have just done). I can see the logic of putting history first, but it just doesnt look right, and I think flows better is the present order. Thanks for constructive criticism - Bluemoose 16:16, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

suggestion you might red-link the manoeuvers (maybe as sections of a not yet written article [[aerobatics manoeuvre#vixen break|vixen break]].) since they will be common for all aerobatics articles, but aren't yet written. Mozzerati 19:16, 2005 Apr 19 (UTC)

On your suggestion I linked to aerobatic maneuver, however i didnt red-link vixen break as a)it looks messy b)no guarrantee it will ever be created. Given enough time I will add more maneuvers to that page though, including vixen break. - thanks Bluemoose 20:58, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Comment on objections (after closing of FAC - so too late) - a) red-links are pretty much standard; don't worry, policy is to leave them in if you think an article should be creaetd b) I think that the ordering should be most likely to be valuable to reader to least; in the case of the Red Arrows, their history is only important because they are famous. Saying why they are famous should come first. Mozzerati 19:49, 2005 Apr 22 (UTC)

[edit] Alan Moore

A great article, easily a candidate for FA status! Gkhan 17:42, Apr 16, 2005 (UTC)

• object a) no photo of Alan (if available) b) no references section and c) not possible to tell which reference would cover which area of facts so not verifiable d) within the limits of fair use, or even better, with specific permission it would be good to show a development of his style in drawings, not just cover art. e) parts are a bit over-wikified for my taste, might be better to reduce some of the less directly relevant / instersting links such as anarchist f) there are some single sentence paragraphs which could easily be joined to other paragraphs to make easier reading. Mozzerati 19:53, 2005 Apr 16 (UTC)
• Object. Good article, needs references though. BLANKFAZE | (что??) 03:21, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Blade Runner

This page meets all standards for a Featured Article. Not only that, its topic is extremely prominent -- "The film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry in 1993." Finally, the topic of the film is perhaps the most important moral question of all: What is human?

No need to bore you with a hasty review -- please see the article yourself, and judge it on its merits. — Xiong熊talk 08:43, 2005 Apr 16 (UTC)

Object. This page does not meet the standards for FA, I am afraid. 1) No references. If external links were used, format according to Wikipedia:Cite sources. 2) Too meny bullet points. Try converting into normal paragraphs. 3) Trivia section, especially in bullet form, is generally looked down upon, although I can understand it may have some room in the film articles. 4) move external links from the main body to external link section, use Wikipedia:Footnotes if you want to have main body linked directly to the source 5) the entire 'Further reading on this controversy' section needs to be rewritten/gone since it is essentially a bullet list of external links. 6) the article is NOT comprehensive - I see no mention of the fame of this film, of its gigantic influence on later science-fiction films (from Ghost In The Shell to Matrix and A.I., to name just a few) or its awards [1]. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 10:47, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Actually, there are couple of references -- look down at the bottom for the mention of Future Noir, which is one of the 2 books listed. (And which is also a very good book on Blade Runner.) However, this merely supports your other criticism of this article -- that it needs better organization or structure. If these references could be tied back into the article with footnotes, I believe that would help in part to address these two points. -- llywrch 23:13, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• Object. Although I was pleasantly surprised by the way the article evolved since last time I read it (Dec 2004), I'm afraid I agree with Piotrus on all points. Phils 12:17, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Not really an objection, but I note that this has no comparison between the book and the movie. Morwen - Talk 17:26, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • Comment only: It kind of can't be compared to the book, as the movie isn't really based on one Dick work, but two. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep is only related to the movie in the vaguest of ways, so it may well be apropriate to discuss the film as a sui generis work that is only inspired by Dick's work, rather than based upon or adapted from it. Not meaning to be quarelsome, but that movie, in particular, seems so far away from its sources as to not really be considered in comparison at all. Geogre 02:35, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)
    • That para could probably be added to the article. Still, I object. Too many red links. And I mean that literally. The writers' names are linked at least three times, and they should be blue links to make this a featured-quality article. I also strongly object to inline external links. Put them in the External Links and References sections, that's what they're for. RickK 08:33, Apr 17, 2005 (UTC)
    • Agree with RickK - this therefore requires inclusion in the movie. Additionally, there seems to be no synopsis of the movie, or explanation of the plot - there are enough fragments scattered throughout the article so you could make a pretty good guess, but 90% of the analysis of the movie requires having actually seen it to make sense. Morwen - Talk 19:54, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Object. I have been contributing specially to the debate over deckard is human or a replicant, and I agree with Piotrus. I would add that there is, for me, too much unreferenced analysis from a single author (RoyBoy), and that doesn't make it a good article, but some kind of original work about Blade Runner and not a real wikipedia article. vaceituno 00:00 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Khazars

[edit] Science fiction on television

I found this a few weeks ago and it impressed me with its lenght and coverage. Now I think I brought it up to our FAC standards (lead, references, etc.). There seem to be no further comments on peer review for almost 2 weeks, so I would like to hear what you have to say about it. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 10:55, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• Comment I see subheadings in the section on Japanese productions, but no subheadings under the much longer American, and even longer yet British production sections. slambo 11:17, Apr 15, 2005 (UTC)

• Mild Object until the article has been NPOV'd (most importantly in the lead section). plattopus^{is this thing on?} 14:03, Apr 15, 2005 (UTC)

• Object - content coverage not balanced (detail-wise). Please create UK television science fiction, move the ==British television science fiction== section there and leave a 8-12 paragraph summary of that here. Subsectioning is also needed per slambo's comment (not too many though). --mav 14:18, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• Object - needs many more subheadings. The "US television science fiction" section is too large considering that there is a main article for that aspect and should be further summarised. Needs NPOV (example: "As of 2005, there seems to be some degree of optimism for the future of the genre in the UK, with good reason"). Some comments need backing up with references (example: "The most significant US science fiction television series of the early 1980s..."). There are also many repeated links – I lost count on the number of times Doctor Who was wiki'd. violet/riga (t) 21:09, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] S2 programming language

Self-re-nomination. I have nominated this at some point last year. The only objection it received at the time was that "we shouldn't dilute our list of featured articles with such obscure topics" (paraphrase from memory). Since the rules now state that "each objection must provide a specific rationale that can be addressed" (FAC-instructions) and this objection is not something I can address, I am re-nominating. — Timwi 15:30, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• Object for now. Needs expansion (particularly the final two sections), and (a minor point) certain parts of it seem to be written for someone who is familiar with LiveJournal. plattopus^{is this thing on?} 16:25, Apr 14, 2005 (UTC)
• Object. No reference sections (or references are improperly formatted as external links). The lead section is ok, but the rest of the article is lacking. Just a few from many, many problems I see with this article: 1) Not a single code excerpt or example is provided is provided. 2) I'm not quite sure the concept of "layers" is properly explained (I certainly couldn't understand simply from the text in the article). What are layers concretely? Source files, class libraries? 3) Sections 2 and 3 are way too short. 4) Section mentions a web interface, which isn't mention anywhere else. 5) How does S2 compare to other scripting languages/stylesheet languages (CSS, JS, PHP)? Could we see a list of major projects using S2 (is it proprietary to LiveJournal?) Phils 16:38, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Object 1) as stated above cite your sources 2) I'd like to see some examples of the code (i.e. how would one program Hello World in this language?). slambo 16:45, Apr 14, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] The Lion King

Although I have played a part in writing this article, it is primarily by other people, so it's hardly a self-nomination. Please criticise :-) — Timwi 10:44, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• The plot section looks kinda stubbish and weak. Everyking 12:39, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Object Cite your sources. slambo 12:46, Apr 14, 2005 (UTC)
• Comment. Apart from the article not having sources, for some reason I can't quite put my finger on, this article just isn't as good as I expect a featured article to be. I can't pretend it isn't comprehensive, but somehow I'd expect there is more to say about this rather well known film (the two largest sections are essentially lists). Phils 13:36, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Darn - I was going to support until the lack of references was noted. I like the short - I would prefer to say succinct - plot section: do we really neeed a blow-by-blow description of each scene? -- ALoan (Talk) 14:36, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • Oh dear - given the entirely justified criticisms below, clearly my standards are not high enough :( -- ALoan (Talk) 12:52, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Object. No sources, article does not name supervising animators for the characters or identify particular voice actors/singing ghosts with their characters. No discussion of the making of the film as well. This article would need to be expanded significantly. BTW, ALoan, I think the plot section is just fine the way it is; what needs to be discussed is the making of the film and the musical. --FuriousFreddy 19:45, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• A few comments: I'm not sure the word "canon" is properly used in the first sentence, which is also grammatically borderline. The list of voice actors in the lead is tedious; these should be merged into the characters section (along with lead animators). The implied claim that this was the first Disney animated feature to use well-known actors for voices is dubious; see the credits for Aladdin (Robin Williams), Beauty and the Beast (Angela Lansbury, Robbie Benson), Rescuers (George C. Scott, John Candy, Bob Newhart), for example -- hell, The Jungle Book in the '60s had Terry-Thomas and Sebastian Cabot, well-known actors in the day. The first paragraph under "about the film" strikes me as desperately trying to put a very fine point on an essentially trivial distinction -- what are these if not anthropomorphic animals? The musical, which was ground-breaking and notable in many ways not covered, is under-represented in the article (actually it probably deserves a seperate article). The credits for the Soundtrack are muddled between performers and writers (a song isn't necessarily by the person who sings it); the wording of the entire soundtrack section is awkward. The reference to Ataturk seems random and shaky and doesn't add to understanding of the topic. Several places in the article use the nebulous assertions "it is said" and "could be". Not a bad start, but I'm afraid I agree that this would need significant improvement to make it to FA quality. Jgm 03:43, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • The word "canon" is properly used in the first sentence, as there is an official canon of Disney animated films (see List of Disney animated features). The article doesn't say it was the first to use well-known voice actors; it was the first where most of the voice actors were well-known actors. Let me see if I can copyedit that. --FuriousFreddy 13:47, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Object. There are structural problems that may speak to Phils' "for some reason I can't quite put my finger on" unease registered above: the short introductory section "About the film" is misplaced IMO; is unhelpfully titled (the whole article is about the film, right?); and is extremely unfocused: each of its three paragraphs has value in itself, but they're quite disconnected, they don't add up to anything, and so the impression is of a catch-all where the left-over bits were put, in other words of a trivia section—right at the start of the article. :-(. Something's wanted in this position—a general introduction—but this ain't it. I'm also not happy about the "Controversies" section, which is stretched to contain both criticism (in the negative sense, as in criticism of gender stereotypes in the film) and trivia like voice actors being fired. How about a separate section on criticism (in the general sense, i. e. how was the film received, both positive and negative aspects)? A short one, I agree with ALoan that succinct is good. Note that the wikiquote collection doesn't perform the function of a criticism section, as it consists of dialogue quotes from the film itself. It's clear that many hands have done excellent work on this article, but I do think that some bold overall restructuring of the fine input is wanted, as well as a little more material on the critical reception.--Bishonen|talk 08:32, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Object. The reference to Kemal Ataturk makes no sense. And there should be some mention of the parallels between Lion King 1 1/2 and Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead. RickK 08:43, Apr 17, 2005 (UTC)
• Comment Right now a large portion of the article is unreadable if you don't want the spoiler. Can it be reorged a bit, or it is it too tricky? Fawcett5 16:09, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Hubbert peak

Another great-looking article that I just stumbled upon after a Pump question on when the oil will finally run out. Nothing to do with me - well done everyone. -- ALoan (Talk) 11:47, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• Comments. Close to supporting. I made a lot of copyedits, hopefully all good. There are a couple things left that I couldn't resolve quickly and wanted to discuss. 1) The Non OPEC, Non FSU graph seems to be horribly POV. It has great data, but after the vertical line where their data is actually, the severe downturn is pure prediction. That is possible, but certainly not indisputable. The data up to that line show little to no actual overall decline. It shows lots of individual declines, but overal increase primarily. That is worrisome POV. If a graph were available adding in OPEC and the former Soviet countries, then that could possibly balance the POV properly. Or maybe a graph showing much later prediction for the peak point or a slower decline, or even a graph of past predictions that did not come to pass. 2) The structure works really well for the table fo contents, but when reading through the fact that alternatives to oil is one of the major possible implications of a world peak is entirely missed until you get to that section. I think what is needed is a short section in the implications section stating more clearly that increased use of alternatives is a serious and even highly likely scenario. 3) Putting "Catastrophe" as the first implication of peak oil seems to be stating that as a fact instead of one potential option. Maybe title the section potential implications or something to balance that out. - Taxman 14:25, Apr 13, 2005 (UTC)

• Comment: Need to look at tenses. A number of things are suggested as happening in the future but have already passed - for example "In 2004, world consumption of crude oil is expected to surpass 82 million barrels per day". There's a similar problem in the summary, which says that the peak year will only be known once it has passed and then has 2007 as one of the suggestions. --194.73.130.132 14:43, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• Object for now - Seems to be oversectioned (one paragraph stub sections are hardly ever appropriate) and as a result the TOC is overwhelming. Consider either combining sections and/or make the 'Implications of a world peak' section into its own article and leave a 6 to 10 paragraph summary of that here. Dividing like that will allow for further expansion of the stub sections at the new article. --mav 16:43, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• Negative. This article needs extreme editing. It's bloated with off-topic information, speculation, and opinion. Less is more. We don't get paid by the word, people. Mirror Vax 22:40, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Structure of the British Army

I'd like to nominate this page as a featured article. It's informative, lucid and well-structured. --Khendon 06:30, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• Object No references. Moreover, this article is essentially a collection of lists and tables (including some broken ones). While it does have a nice nested structure, lack of explanations and many subsections with next to no content makes this very hard to follow for anyone not familiar with the subject. Phils 09:39, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Object - this is very informative, but I agree with Phils: it is essentially a collection of lists. -- ALoan (Talk) 11:47, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Object - Precious little in the way of explicative narrative here. Fawcett5 13:38, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Gowanus Canal

Self-nomination. Hoping to get featured status or at least some peer-review. --Howrealisreal 03:07, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• Support, looks pretty good, length seems adequate for an article on a local geographical feature Everyking 03:31, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Object, sorry, but there ought to be a map.Dinopup 03:56, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I know it's not the greatest specimen, but I added a map to the top of the article. Good idea. --Howrealisreal 04:19, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• Is that map free? I've uploaded another at Image:Gowanusmap2.PNG. Can't give it much for art, but it is free.--Pharos 04:33, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Okay. Thanks for the map. I added it instead. --Howrealisreal 04:38, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• Support, but I'd like to see landmarks and more/clearer labeling on the map to provide orientation for people unfamiliar with the region. A North indicator could help, but not necessary. - RoyBoy ⁸⁰⁰ 18:26, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • OK, I think I've improved the map. If you don't see the new map in the article, click on the image description page. I didn't include a north indicator, it's north-oriented anyway and it didn't seem necessary. I do hope the neighborhood boundaries will stand scrutiny.--Pharos 06:45, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)
    • Looking good, I'd request one more label... a green one telling me what the entire region is. - RoyBoy ⁸⁰⁰ 18:17, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)
      • I've now labeled the region Brooklyn, but in a way that seemed a little better to me. (I'm not sure if it's really necessary, though; this could just be noted more clearly in the caption).--Pharos 18:33, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Comment - needs a copyedit. There's some strange capitalisation in places - the names of elements are unnecessarily capitalised, and I wasn't sure whether The Flushing Tunnel and The Flushing Pump are actually proper names that should be capitalised. Also, the prose in places veers uncomfortably towards the purple especially in the section headed "Canal Problems":

"pungently overwhelm the olfactories"

"The murky depths of the canal conceal much more than the remains of vanished mobsters"

"an ever-evolving Brooklyn postindustrial cityscape"

I'm also far from sure about the use of a slang term like "snafus". --194.73.130.132 08:43, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Yeah some of those word choices could be troublesome for the large English-speaking wikipedia audience. I admit that I try to get creative with diction, but I think the things you went through and changed are appropriate. --Howrealisreal 14:30, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• Lots of great additions to the article recently and I'm most grateful. I think we should ease on the pictures though so we don't overload it. I like Pharos' map without the box, and a caption seems redundant since it explains what neighborhoods border the canal right in the first paragraph. Otherwise it looks amazing. --Howrealisreal 00:21, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Support - looks great to me. – Quadell ^{(talk) (sleuth)} 12:32, Apr 12, 2005 (UTC)
• Neutral. Those are fixed, but I'll have to get a chance to review the whole thing before suporting. Object. Looks good, but some sketchy language and at least two pieces of apparent speculation: 1) "vanished mobsters" (Is that known and proven?), 2) " For the long stretch of economic depression, the waters of the Gowanus Canal lay stagnant.", 3) "it looks as though a new wave of economic boom might be in store for the canal area.". The first very well could be true but would need some substantiation, the second I can't figure out what is being said, and the third is pure speculation, which doesn't qualify as encyclopedic unless someone important or influential said it. Those are just the ones I saw, but were obvious enough that I am worried there are more. - Taxman 20:25, Apr 19, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for your comment. I went through and changed the three examples you listed above. I tried to remove as much ambiguous language as possible to keep within the criteria of "being encyclopedic". I haven't noticed anything else that needs attention but please feel free to notify me if you come up with anything else. --Howrealisreal 22:38, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Dakota, Minnesota and Eastern Railroad

After a time on peer review, and searching for additional details to add, it's time to nominate this article for featured status. slambo 14:46, Apr 2, 2005 (UTC)

• Object. The lead section doesn't reflect the article; the first paragraph I think is fine, but the second is more of a "future plans". It should instead make mention of the most significant points of the whole article. 119 06:21, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

That's an interesting comment since the largest section in the article deals with the railroad's construction into the Powder River Basin. I'll reword it later today to reflect the work that the railroad has done in order to build the extension. slambo 13:23, Apr 3, 2005 (UTC)

I've updated the lead to include more details about the PRB project and events that have already occurred. slambo 22:31, Apr 3, 2005 (UTC)

• Object you have a fair number of sources, but it's not clear what each one is giving to the article. Please show what areas they cover. One way would be to use a footnote system. Mozzerati

comment above was unsigned, page history shows that it's from 13:57, Apr 3, 2005 Mozzerati.

This hasn't been an issue on previous nominations that I've seen on FAC, but I'll go through and footnote as appropriate. slambo 21:49, Apr 3, 2005 (UTC)

I've gone through with footnoting as described on the page you linked to. slambo 22:20, Apr 3, 2005 (UTC)

• Neutral towards support with comments (I could turn to support if at least some of these can be answered). There have been protests and possibly lawsuits against the coal transport by the railroad. It would be good for NPOV to mention these a bit more clearly. Some of the language is a little unencyclopedic, ( "not the fate that he had in mind") but probably more easy reading for it. One thing which is not made clear on this article (or related ones) are what the benefits of becoming a "Class 1" railroad would be. Mozzerati 19:30, 2005 Apr 4 (UTC) P.S.sorry for not signing last time..

Thanks for the review. I mentioned a few of the complaints in the section about the expansion (blocked grade crossings, especially), but I'll see if I can dig up some more. The sentence that you mention is leading into the next section, but it can easily be changed. The AAR Class grading has to do primarily with the railroad's annual revenues; I'll put some notes together on what Class I vs. Class II means for the railroad. slambo 20:25, Apr 4, 2005 (UTC)

I finally got a chance to take a look at the two links you mentioned. I was hoping to get to it over the weekend, but family matters got in the way. I'll integrate the material in the next day or two. slambo 13:12, Apr 11, 2005 (UTC)

I've added information from the two articles that you've cited to the DM&E article. I think it still could be improved, but I'm a bit pressed for time right now. I'll probably revisit this later when things calm down again. slambo 11:05, Apr 15, 2005 (UTC)

• Support. 119 17:25, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Support. JYolkowski 21:52, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Genghis Khan

Self nomination, clean, stable and good article.

• Object; some of the English is clearly non-native. For example, this sentence Traders, clergyman, and envoys were provided with security and guidance under Mongol Empire, in which, for example, some of them reached China including traveller Giovanni da Pian del Carpini under Ogedei Khan's rule and Italian traveller Marco Polo to Beijing under Kubilai Khan's rule, whom each of them wrote books on their travels. Filiocht | King of Regulars 07:54, Apr 11, 2005 (UTC)
• Object The concerns I raised about the structure when this was last nominated are mostly addressed, but the article is still in dire need of copyediting by a person with stronger English skills. Phils 10:04, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Object. I concur that this needs copy editing. Since Genghis is an absolutely pivotal figure of world history that WP should have a really good article on, I'll do some work on it and see what I can do to improve it. Edeans 16:21, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• I've since done a truly massive copyedit, but I'm sure there's still stuff in there that needs fixing. Could someone else please look at it? I'm a little burned out on the topic right now. Meelar (talk) 19:16, Apr 11, 2005 (UTC)
• Object. The intro gives his birth as "1155/1162/1167" and then the Early life section gives only the 1162 date. Some explanation should be given for the different dates and why one may be prefered over the others. --Allen3 ^talk 19:44, Apr 12, 2005 (UTC)
• Comment- I'm curious as to why this article says the Mongol Empire was the largest ever, while the British Empire says that one is. Can someone clarify this in the article? --Dmcdevit 01:58, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • The Mongol Empire was the largest contiguous empire. Whereas the British Empire was the largest when you add all the territory areas together. CheekyMonkey 12:42, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)
    • Yes, I knew that. I guess it was more of a pointed question. I should say: I wonder if one of the Genghis Khan editors could confirm this and amend the article's inaccuracy accordingly. --Dmcdevit 01:44, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] I am cuba

-SelfNomination, but a lot of work has been donw since I was there last. Maybe it needs something more on the plot (it doesn´t even have a spoiler warning ! :) ) --Alexandre Van de Sande 20:31, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• Object. No references, extremely short sections (as mentionned, virtually no information on the story). No offence, but this is nearer to a stub than it is to a featured article. Except for the History section, your typical WP:DYK article is about that size. Phils 21:09, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Object. Not even close to a featured article; I'd love to see a good article on this, though, it's an amazing movie. -- Jmabel | Talk 21:10, Apr 10, 2005 (UTC)
• Object. Too short. Gerrit MUTE 10:31, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Object. Featured articles are supposed to be comprehensive, this in no way, shape, or form fits that description. Put it on PR.  ALKIVAR™ 20:06, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Helen Gandy

Self-nomination. This article is about Helen W. Gandy, who was J. Edgar Hoover's secretary at the FBI for 54 years. The article, which is longer than Hoover's, includes information on her background and career and a detailed account of her role in the destruction of Hoover's famed files. There is also a bibliography. The article, which was proposed for deletion in February, was earlier this month on WP:PR here. PedanticallySpeaking 16:05, Apr 11, 2005 (UTC)

• Comment. Good research work, however the sectionning strikes me as being a bit odd. The lead and 'Background' are too short compared to the other sections. Maybe using subheadings would be a good idea. Also, why not add a picture? Phils 16:51, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Afraid I don't have a picture to add. I'll look at sectioning, however. PedanticallySpeaking 17:06, Apr 11, 2005 (UTC)

• Comment, the article has improved heaps, however it says nothing about her life after she left the FBI and how she died, I assume you have the obituaries since you listed them in the reference section, what happened?, its like an unfinished story as is--nixie 05:12, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The obits I cited were very brief. The Orlando Sentinel was a one sentence death notice. The Washington Post and New York Times obits were probably under 100 words and have nothing more than what is in the article. Cause of death was a heart attack, as it says in this article. PedanticallySpeaking 14:45, Apr 14, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Turing test

A most interesting, thought-provoking topic.

• Object. Not enough explanations, and insufficiently sourced. Citing the paper as reference simply isn't enough, since the article makes a assertion about the redaction of the paper (did Turing himself say it was inspired by the imitation party game? when did he state that he proposed the test in order to replace the 'can computers think?' question). If those answers are all in the paper, then please quote it and indicate which section(s) was quoted. This applies particularly to the 'Objections' section. Some of the items listed there need more explanation (how does originality relate to 'Lady Lovelace'?). The 'Discussion of relevance' section is a perfect example of wishy-washy writing ('it has been argued', etc.) Except for the first item, there is no mention of who raised these objections, and the prose gets a little too casual for my taste (frequent use of we, numerous unverifiable/dubious assertions: 'many humans would probably fail this test', 'machines passing the test would probably most vehemently disagree'). Also, in my opinion, the contents of the 'Terminology' section might just as well be integrated into the lead section. Phils 10:50, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• Object. Sorry, very plain to read... could do with sections re-ordering and an obligatory pic --PopUpPirate 00:00, Apr 12, 2005 (UTC)
  • As a note, pictures are not obligatory. They are only obligatory for articles on the front page. A diagram or somthing in this instance would be nice though. BrokenSegue 00:33, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• Object. I agree that the sections could be re-ordered, and that a diagram could be useful. I added two references, with brief amounts of material drawn from both and inserted into the appropriate places. One could definitely do more using Kurzweil's The Age of Intelligent Machines, which seems to be the last useful book he wrote on the subject. Also, someone should find a copy of HAL's Legacy, a compendium of essays by various authors, which I recall speaks meaningfully on the Turing test and related topics. (I wrote an SF novel on the subject in tenth grade, but I wouldn't recommend that anybody read that. Ooh, heavens no.) Anville 20:23, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Cyberpunk

Influential genre of fiction, and a good example of an article that has grown, and continues to grow, through collaboration and discussion. --Paul Soth 04:17, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• Object too many lists, not enough actual paragraphical writing. rewrite it then send it to peer review.  ALKIVAR™ 06:46, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Object. I agree with Alkivar. Also, the article doesn't have a seperate references section. Mgm|^(talk) 12:50, Apr 12, 2005 (UTC)
• Object Alkivar is right on. The lists don't explain why the items included are important. So when you list Megacorporations as a common element in the cyberpunk genre, give a 2-3 sentence explanation/exploration. Lists of movies aren't really helpful to the reader unless the reader already knows most of them—change sections like that into a discussion of the major or epochal movies that developed the genre over time. Do the same with the list of authors and novels. It won't kill the article to only mention the big ones (only the notable stories/authors/movies), and let the readers discover the other novels by reading articles that this one links to. —thames 14:06, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Object Agreed. Only readers of the books / viewers of the movies know anything about them. Common themes are only hinted at. Influences are scattered. Also notice a strong seepage of anime themes into this article, some of which are not necessarily related, per se. Politely disagree about only mentioning the big ones (books, especially, though a fair amount of movies can be removed) wouldn't kill the article. Zenorbital 05:32, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Strong Object. This article is simply not there yet. Overall, it shows a strong tendency to claim any famous SF as either cyberpunk or a precursor thereto. It does not sufficiently address the criticisms raised against canonical cyberpunk works. Its organization is confused and overgrown. The lists are, by and large, worse than useless. Better to talk deeply about the smaller number of works which are definitively part of the genre than to include bullet points for all the movies, books and bands "which could possibly be considered cyberpunk". Anville 17:36, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Rock carvings at Alta

I'm not sure if it's entirely proper to list this article in its current situation since the original article has been marked as a copyvio and my rewrite currently resides at Rock carvings at Alta/Temp, but that is not a permanent situation and I guess it will be resolved by the time the FAC procedure has been completed (if nobody objects, I'll just go ahead and delete the copyvio article - the original article contained no information that is not present in my rewrite). I tried to create a comprehensive overview of the site's location, history and background - the article certainly still needs some expansion, fact-checking and improvement in phrasing, but I'm confident we can get it up to Featured Article status. -- Ferkelparade π 22:12, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• Refer to peer review. Well, no, I don't think it's entirely proper to nominate it right now. I don't have any problem with the copyvio situation, but you yourself describe your article as a typically appropriate peer review posting—"still needs some expansion, fact-checking and improvement in phrasing"—rather than an appropriate FAC nomination. I like the article, and I don't mean to be difficult, but peer review exists precisely "for nearly Featured-standard articles that need the final checking by peers before being nominated as Featured article candidates"[2], so why not use it? Bishonen|Talk 02:01, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • Alright, I will place the article on PR now. Sorry, I wasn't quite aware of the proper peer review procedure before coming here, but I see your point. -- Ferkelparade π 09:58, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] SAT

I nominate this article for Featured Article status because I believe it is good and reprsentative of what is good about Wikipedia in general. It has been peer reviewed and I have worked to address all of the reviewers complaints. I hope you agree. Note: This is a self-nomination. I have worked extensively on this article and have restructured much of it.--User:naryathegreat | (talk) 04:11, Apr 6, 2005 (UTC)

Object - totally inadequate lead section and no references section. Please read Wikipedia:What is a featured article. --mav 12:31, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I don't really understand what you don't like about the lead section. I've read Wikipedia:What is a featured article thank you, why do you people automatically assume that I haven't? Anyway, what references are there for the SAT? None. People don't write books about the test, period. It has links to websites that comment about it at the bottom under Links (wow, imagine that) and inline reference markers.--User:naryathegreat | (talk) 12:49, Apr 6, 2005 (UTC)

People don't write books about the test, period. Actually, yes they do. (People write books about *everything*.) One I've read and that you might find useful is None of the Above, by David Owen. (Revised version: ISBN 0847695077.) Alas, I neither own it nor remember its content in detail. There are many more; you just have to be able to weed them out from all the study guides when searching. Mindspillage (spill yours?) 14:30, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

What I should have said was that the test has changed and that the books all concern the old SAT, from which the new one differs dramatically (a whole section has been added). I don't really want to go on and on about the old test; it's not really important anymore.--User:naryathegreat | (talk) 21:21, Apr 6, 2005 (UTC)

Object - I don't think the lead is that awful, but the article is still not at a level deserving featured status. For example, this is a subject matter that generates a lot of numbers, score distributions, performance differences, etc.. The discussion should be backed up with this data, and it should be illustrated using graphs. Furthermore, there should be example questions.. Lots of room for improvement. Gmaxwell 14:47, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Well the problem is that the test just changed, if you'll notice, so no numbers are available yet. As for sample questions, they are copyrighted and that's a little different than using a logo. I'm not sure if it qualifies as fair use. I'd personally thought of adding my own that are similar, but I didn't want to uselessly lengthen the article.--User:naryathegreat | (talk) 21:08, Apr 6, 2005 (UTC)

That couldn't be more untrue. Without substantial statistical information schools would be unable to use the test to make decisions. For the GRE (which is also now a fairly new revision) there is a usage guide with all the statistical breakdowns, I haven't seen the corresponding paper for the SAT but I'm sure it exists. Also, the 'old' test has been taken by millions of people and is still of substantial interest, as are the changes from the old to the new (and every other instance of change throught the tests history). For example, during the 2000 election Bush was faulted for having an SAT score that was somewhat poor by post 1994(?) standards but his scores were much better when considered fairly. We should include information that would help people compare old scores and new (as much as they are comparable) and discuss how the changes are thought to make the test more fair. As far as questions go, I wasn't trying to suggest that you plagerize actual questions, but it would be useful to include a few example new questions of substantially simmlar style (as is used in many of the study guides). It's not pointless... We should give the reader a good idea of what it is like to take the SAT.Gmaxwell 23:49, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

That's just it, schools don't have statistical information and they aren't ready to make decisions about it. I've talked to several that say they want to "watch and wait" about the results. Statistical information for the new test is just not available. For the old test, common score ranges are already in the article. Also, for the same reason the schools are uncertain there is no real way to compare scores on the old and new tests, especially because the changes are so drastic. Entire types of questions have been dropped, which dispite the College Board's strenuous denails, likely have changed the way people earn their score. I'm not an expert, per se, but I do understand the basics behind these things. As for the questions, I'd be happy to add some.--User:naryathegreat | (talk) 22:18, Apr 7, 2005 (UTC)

Object Marginally adequate info. (who invented it? what's it cost? how many now take it? who criticised it, and how?) Sub-FAC writing quality. Sfahey 05:00, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Object and suggest further peer review. Far, far from comprehensive. The History section, especially, needs much more information -- on revisions to the test's form and subject matter, and changes in its adoption and use in academia. Criticism section also needs to be more thorough and neutral. Style needs a lot of improvement -- it doesn't read smoothly and large sections look like random gatherings of trivia. I concur that the lead section is inadequate. I've just now added a real References section with some books that I think (off the top of my head) will help provide more depth if anyone feels like investigating and using them to improve this article. -- Rbellin|Talk 05:36, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Funeral of Pope John Paul II

In about a month's time (mid May 2005), Around the time of the papal election, I believe that this will make a great featured article. It's a very well written article, that is both current, is very detailed and highly relevant to this time. Furthermore, at that point in the future, after the Papal election, 2005 it will provide a much needed retrospective on this historic event and will be a great example of the style of Wikipedia in regard to current world events. 59.167.120.200 01:51, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• Uh, there's a copyright issue because of the pictures. →Raul654 02:05, Apr 9, 2005 (UTC)
• Well, why not wait until mid-May, then? Everyking 02:06, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Object, like the other JPII articles at the moment, it is too unstable. --Oldak Quill 02:37, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Object because of the copyright and it being unstable. Also, articles aren't featured because of a significant date. That's what "selected anniversaries" and "in the news" are for. Mgm|^(talk) 16:26, Apr 9, 2005 (UTC)
• Support: This was undeniably a world event. I think the page is quite comprehensive and well written and topical. If a little macabre. I'm unsure why the Bush family (looking so pious) are singled out as the only members of that vast congregation to be photographed in the article. However, so long as all the photographs are legally here, and there is no other copyviolation, I don't see why it can't be featured. Giano | Talk 09:42, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • Unfortunately I don't think most of those photographs are legally there - the notice which has been added to the photos since last week appears to take gross liberties with the Associated Press' copyrights, so regretfully object. -- Arwel 11:31, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Magnetic resonance imaging

This is a well-written article that I happened across when hypertexting from other articles. I think it deserves to be listed because it's thorough, well-documented, and informative. Joshuaschroeder 07:17, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

• Object. References are one of the basic requirements of an article. This article doesn't have any. Jeronimo 07:45, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

• True. I've worked on this article some, and will try soon to add references to the books I use. Xiggelee 10:30, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC) P.S. While I'm happy to see this article nominated, I still feel like there's a lot of work to be done on it before it's featured.

• Please do. Also can you please elucidate what you feel needs to be done and place that on the talk page, here, or both? It would help both the commentors here and the future article. Agree with the others. Object until well referenced. - Taxman 22:38, Apr 12, 2005 (UTC)

• Object. With references, though, it's a must. GREAT images. --PopUpPirate 00:04, Apr 12, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Lodz Ghetto

An interesting article about the last Jewish Ghetto to survive. Well written and well illustrated. Ausir 23:14, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• Object. No references, at the least. 119 23:18, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • Well, some references are given in the "further reading" section... Ausir 23:33, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)
    • Further reading are not references - see Wikipedia:References. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 10:29, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Support. Fascinating article, very well written, superlative accompanying pictures. Googie Man 9 Apr 2005 Googie man 01:56, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Qualified Objection, I agree that the article is really interesting, but I wonder if the article is fully comprehensive. Youth movements are mentioned once at the end of the article in the context of resistance, but there isn't much about them before that. Many readers will not really understand what the youth movements were. Perhaps there should be more about ghetto cultural life in general. Also, what can be said about Catholic Poles and the ghetto? I think the article only needs some small additions though, I can imagine myself changing my vote. Dinopup 04:06, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Object Needs longer lead section; the lead should provide a better summary of the article. For example, there is no mention of the ghetto being an important production facility for the Reich. Also, two references seems a bit shallow for an important article like this. How about referencing Werner Rings', as well as providing a reference for the "diarist's" quote (section 6). That would be a good start. Moreover, I'd like to see all those figures about deaths and deportations directly referenced per footnotes (with page and paragraph numbers). Phils 09:32, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Object. Lead is to short. No references. Seems fairly comprehensive to me - although I'd of course never object to any expantion. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 10:29, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Iron Maiden (band)

Partial self-nom - a LOT of hard work had gone into this article before I added several major edits towards the end. Several minor tweaks later by several parties and the piece is, we feel, ready to go. POV in particular has been greatly edited. Perhaps a bit off-beat to nominate a metal band, but hey aint that why Wikipedia is great? Thanks for reading. --PopUpPirate 23:27, Apr 5, 2005 (UTC)

• object needs to go through peer review, needs spelling corrections and a copyedit desperately. lines like: "To wait for cash to be sent from England was taking forever, and the band entrusted $50 to their manager Rod Smallwood, who promptly set of to the casino and returned with $300 every night for 6 nights." do not make me feel good about this article right now.  ALKIVAR™ 23:55, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Object concur that this piece should visit peer review.. plenty of non-encylopedic writing: "Harris and Murray went through a ridiculous number of band members throughout the 1970s", etc. Fawcett5 01:06, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The article has been through Peer Review and the POV issues have been addressed. I've checked the official Iron Maiden family tree, and inserted the correct amount of band members (in place of "ridiculous number" !) and I'd agree that the casino tale is not necessary for the article and it has been removed. Thx. --PopUpPirate 22:43, Apr 7, 2005 (UTC)

Made a few edits yesterday that hopefully improved readability and made it sound a bit more encyclopedic. --MordredKLB 21:01, Apr 8, 2005 (UTC)

• support I wrote an roiginal part of the article, some of it still reamisn after the great edit it went through. This article is extremely profesional, compared to any other article about metal bands. User: Coburnpharr04 April 7, 2004 6:30 ET

No offense but if your spelling here is any indication of your editing on the Iron Maiden article, I definately definitely wont won't be removing my objection til until someone comes through and spellchecks/copyedits it. :)  ALKIVAR™ 23:38, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Fawcett: LOL ... ok so I don't spell good either, I still say it needs a spellcheck/copyedit :)  ALKIVAR™ 17:44, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I want through and spell-checked the entire document and hopefully brought it up to snuff. --MordredKLB 21:01, Apr 8, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Winston Churchill

This article is one of the best historical/biographical articles on Wikipedia. Deserves to be featured.--Mb1000 18:22, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• Object. It is POV, asserting things such as that he was an excellent writer and his state of mind at certain times. Trivia section should have its contents selectively merged or deleted. Quotes section is for Wikiquotes. Question, not necessarily an objection: was only one biography and one general history of the period used for this article? 119 18:45, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Object - Same reasons as 119 (except I see no reason not to have a selected quotes section). Lead is also completely inadequate. --mav 09:20, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Object - Same reasons as 119 and Mav. Plus remove external links from main body, I see at least one. Although I am pleasantly suprised the article does have 2 paras about Churchill-Poland issue in the late IIWW, but it may be further improved (both facts/links/pics and perhaps NPOVing) by using the material from Wladyslaw Sikorski FArticle. In addition I believe that Churchill pro Poland stance during Polish-Soviet War deserves a mention, as well as his after-IIWW policies that allowed communists to gain control over Poland. I will attempt to add this by myself when I have time. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 19:05, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia

Nominating with the presumption that this is not suitable for the Main Page. Two peer reviews which drew only a few comments: January 2005, March 2005. I think there are likely valid objections that have not been raised by peer review, but that the article is close enough that they can be resolved now. Self-nomination. 119 08:17, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

• Oppose. History section is inadequate, references section is really a notes section, and lead is too long. --mav 15:20, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • The lead and History sections have been reworked. The References section lists works cited in an format which allows verifiability (and is commonly used); this objection is thus a style issue, and I do not think it is valid when neither Wikipedia nor FA criteria specifies a style. 119 20:24, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)
    • The history section is still too a bit too small. I also don't feel any of us are objective enough on this topic to judge whether or not the article that covers it is FA quality. It also seems a bit unseemly to make this an FA. --mav
      • While acknowledging there may be conflict of interest for some users, I don't think everyone is incapable of judging the article nor that it is unseemly to ensure the article on Wikipedia is of featured quality. Can you please comment on references, above? In what areas do you think the history section is lacking? 119 04:22, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)
• Oppose for now. Comments follow. -- Jmabel | Talk 17:36, Mar 28, 2005 (UTC)
  1. The transition from the rather abstract statements by Andrea Ciffolilli and Larry Sanger to the concrete fact that "Tech author Jon Udell created a movie..." is a bit jarring, someone should find a different way to put this or different placement for that last sentence.

     Reworked. 119 20:24, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

  2. The section titled "authors" talks more about administrative matters than authorship. Also, it gives no discussion at all of the demographics of the authors (e.g. what evidence is there that any are expert), nor does it discuss what percentage of edits are made by, say, the 200 most active people (not that that fact in particular is needed, but some indication of the degree to which a core group exists.

     Demographics are not available. Statistics on what percentage of edits are done by users are not available so far as I know. For the English Wikipedia only, statistics could perhaps come from top contributors lists, I will look further. That there are "very active" Wikipedians is now mentioned. 119 20:24, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

     • I'm sure we can do better here. There should be academic studies of Wikipedia we can cite on some of this. Also, issues of authorship and of administration should certainly be separate sections. Admins and bureaucrats have no special privileges as authors. -- Jmabel | Talk 04:36, Mar 29, 2005 (UTC)
       • Authors and Administration are now two sections. There are no studies on Wikipedia's demographics that I am aware of; I have looked through the Wikipedia in... pages and asked on the Reference Desk. I have made this omission explicit, and noted a statistic on anon views. Lack of formal qualifications has been expanded on a bit in the heading above Authors, and more in Evaluations. 119 08:30, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)
         • I did some further cleanup on this: bots are clearly authoring rather than admin; so is the issue of IPs for anons. -- Jmabel | Talk 20:48, Mar 31, 2005 (UTC)

  3. "...Wikipedians use "talk" pages to discuss changes to articles rather than the articles themselves": unclear wording.

     Reworked. 119 20:24, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

  4. I think the policy against original research deserves more than a sentence. The borders around what constitutes original research vary with the subject matter domain.

     Clarified. 119 20:24, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

     • I think it's still unclear. This gives little indication of what latitude is allowed. Both this and the discussion of NPOV could benefit from examples. -- Jmabel | Talk 05:00, Mar 29, 2005 (UTC)
       • I think examples would be more "how-to" than encyclopedia, especially when considering the long view. No original research has been expanded. 119 08:30, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)
         • Plenty of our articles give examples in areas that may be unfamiliar to the reader. I still think it would be useful to discuss what is meant by "original research": even a lot of our editors have trouble with the concept. Still, I'll withdraw the objection. -- Jmabel | Talk 20:48, Mar 31, 2005 (UTC)

  5. "...after most participants of the Spanish Wikipedia were dissatisfied with Wikipedia" deserves to be fleshed out to indicate the nature of the dispute. Not a lengthy discussion, just a sentence or so.

     I have not been able to find references. 119 20:24, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

     • I don't have references, but it should be possible to find someone who does. I think it was concern at one time about the possibility of Wikipedia commercializing itself. -- Jmabel | Talk 05:00, Mar 29, 2005 (UTC)
       • I copied the explanation for their action found in the 18 December 2002 revision of Wikipedia. 119 07:26, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

  6. The chart on "language editions" has a legend that is way to small to read. There is no good reason for that, there is plenty of space at its upper left.

     The image was created by Wikipedia's statistics application. I think the objection is extremely minor (the text is fine to me--obviously it would not be visible as a thumbnail, if you mean that) and it is not worth trying to make the image "perfect", whatever that is, when it is "good enough". 119 20:24, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

     • I believe I've dealt with this one successfully myself. Unfortunately, a caching problem is preventing me from seeing the result of my own work! Let me know what you think. -- Jmabel | Talk 04:06, Mar 29, 2005 (UTC)
       • Okay with me. 119 08:30, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

  7. Number of articles in each language edition should have an "as of".

     Dated. 119 20:24, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

  8. Perhaps mention that most major language editions do have an established way to request translations of articles from other languages?

     Do most of the "major language editions" have translation pages? This would require substantiation. What would we consider a major language edition? 119 20:24, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

     I'm not certain about "most". The interwikis from Wikipedia:Translation into English list:

     de:Wikipedia:Übersetzungen

     el:Βικιπαίδεια:Μεταφράσεις

     fr:Wikipédia:Traductions_en_cours

     is:Wikipedia:Þýðingar

     it:Wikipedia:Traduzioni

     ja:Wikipedia:翻訳依頼

     ro:Wikipedia:Articole de tradus

     zh:Wikipedia:待翻译文章

     That certainly covers a lot of the biggies. Oddly, Spanish, Dutch, Polish, and Swedish are not listed. Not sure if they may have such pages and just not link them there. So it's at least half of the really major ones. -- Jmabel | Talk 03:47, Mar 29, 2005 (UTC)

     • Spanish has es:Wikipedia:Traducciones solicitadas; I will add the interwikis. (That's one very good side effect of this!) -- Jmabel | Talk 03:51, Mar 29, 2005 (UTC)
       • Okay, see Language editions. 119 04:22, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

  9. Because the status of Wikipedia as an accepted reference may be in flux, the Philip Bradley and Ted Pappas quotes should probably indicate a date. Not that Pappas is likely ever to say differently, but Bradley might. Also (same paragraph) "Boyd": why no first name?

     Dated. Dana Boyd. 119 20:24, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

  10. Perhaps mention (or crib from) Wikipedia:Researching with Wikipedia, which, besides discussing the usual criticisms of Wikipedia for serious research, mentions some unusual strengths (e.g., ability to query authors, ask for additional citations). Also perhaps the related IRC channels and the Reference Desk deserve mention? Partly dealt with, partly superseded by the one below beginning "Sorry to add one belatedly..."

      I don't think the IRC channels are notable. Reference Desk is English-centric/non-notable unless an equivalent can be shown to exist on many other languages. Researching's points now noted. 119 20:24, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

      • Reference Desk exists at least in Spanish, Hindi, Hebrew, Chinese, Japanese, all interwiki-linked from English. Polish is also linked, but the page seems to be gone. I wouldn't be surprised if there are others that no one has linked, but these easily add up to the majority of the world's literate population (not that Hebrew makes a big contribution to that number). -- Jmabel | Talk 04:42, Mar 29, 2005 (UTC)
        • Reference desks noted. 119 08:30, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

  11. History section is, indeed, meagre. -- Jmabel | Talk 17:36, Mar 28, 2005 (UTC)

      Expanded. 119 20:24, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

      • I still see this as a weak point. I think the history should extend past Wikipedia proper. I'd want to see some indication of how this fits in the history of encyclopedism, when came the key decisions that resulted in the shape it has (notability, no dicdefs), etc. I know I'm asking for a lot here, but I think that to be a featured article, this is appropriate. -- Jmabel | Talk 05:00, Mar 29, 2005 (UTC)
        • Generally expanded, its fit in history noted, NPOV's implementation is noted. I don't think criteria of notability or the exclusion of dictionary definitions are sufficiently notable for the summary on Wikipedia, as they are not core principles. 119 09:39, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)
          • This is improving, but it still gives no clue why Wikipedia was started: what particular void in the world was intended to be filled, what were the initial expectations, how has reality compared (so far) to those expectations, why did these particular people want to start something like this. It's now to the point that I no longer have an active objection on this front, but I certainly won't support until this is stronger. -- Jmabel | Talk 17:33, Mar 30, 2005 (UTC)

  12. Sorry to add one belatedly, but shouldn't there be some discussion of the extent to which Wikipedia has been cited in the press, in academic papers, etc.? -- Jmabel | Talk 21:12, Mar 31, 2005 (UTC)
      • Have you seen the last paragraph under Free content? 119 21:29, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)
        • OK. I think I probably saw that when I looked at it a few days ago, but missed it on my recent re-skim. -- Jmabel | Talk 22:32, Mar 31, 2005 (UTC)

Is this worth continuing? While I think the article has improved during this process, and my specific objections have largely been met, it still seems not to have garnered any actual support to be a featured article. -- Jmabel | Talk 21:24, Mar 31, 2005 (UTC)

I'm still confident any actionable objections can be met, so I think it's unfortunate this has received such little attention over five days. 119 04:29, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• support as not normally suitable for front page (10th anniversary?) well enough written / reasonably comprehensive / well referenced / makes resonable effort in NPOV direction. Mozzerati 17:08, 2005 Apr 3 (UTC)
• Support this good collaborative effort. Sfahey 03:01, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia

I'm recycling this nomination because the last nom recieved very little attention, and what objections were raised were dealt with satisfactorily. →Raul654 02:18, Apr 5, 2005 (UTC)

• Sarcastic Object no self references. And based on the comments below, this isnt ready.  ALKIVAR™ 18:48, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Object - History section still inadequate (it is the size the lead section at History of Wikipedia should eventually be). Also, a quick glance detected a glaring error: "Wikipedia's first sister project was launched simultaneously with Wikimedia, creating Wikiquotes." If something this obviously wrong is in there, then I don't have much confidence for the rest of the article (the first sister project was the Sep11wiki ; the first sister project we are not embarrassed of and thus pretend does not exist is Wiktionary). --mav 23:16, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • Are you sure Sep11 came before Wikiquote? Can you give dates to prove that?  ALKIVAR™ 23:41, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)
    • Uh, Mav was definitely here then and would remember it ;) →Raul654 00:02, Apr 6, 2005 (UTC)
      • I wasnt debating that Raul. Merely wanted verification.  ALKIVAR™ 18:29, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • Sep11wiki was started in October 2002, Wiktionary on 12 Dec 2002, Wikiquote on 10 Jul 2003. --mav 02:18, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • "History section still inadequate" gives no clue as to in what way it is inadequate. You made this objection last week, and struck it out before elaborating. Please be specific this time, I cannot act if you do not specify in what way you feel it is inadequate. That Wikiquote was not Wikipedia's first sister project has been corrected, as has the date on which Wikiquote actually launched. The innuendo that because of this one error, the entire article cannot be trusted is insulting and not actionable: please find specific errors. 119 02:06, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)
    • That error was a very obvious one. The fact that it was not caught until I mentioned it is telling. Three paragraphs is simply not long enough due to the fact that that is the size of lead sections. More history is needed and the ==Wiki== section seems to be overloaded. Consider summarizing the main points and moving the detail to a daughter article. --mav 02:18, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Object There should be some reference to competitor products - ie other online encyclopaedias that accept submissions from the general public, jguk 22:09, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • Added the context of Wikipedia regarding traditional encyclopedias and other collaborative projects. 119 07:39, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Comment: Since "Wikipedia" is a title of an encyclopedia, should it not be in italics in the body of the article?
  • Wikipedia is not paper, it's not a book, hence not an encyclopedia in that sense. 131.247.234.229
    • I italicized it since Wikipedia calls itself an encyclopedia. 119 07:39, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Papal conclave, 2005

I am nominating this article. I know that as a currently being edited article it isn't stable but notwithstanding that I think it is a credit to wikipedia. It deals with an immediate issue of worldwide concern in a deeply factual, objective manner. It conveys context and history in a form that few other net sources on the conclave does. I think it is worth highlighting this article as an example of just what wikipedia can do, and of the calibre of all the people who had contributed. Indeed I would say a lot of media sources and members of the public would benefit greatly from seeing this article. This is the sort of 'up to the minute' deep analysis that shows just how good wikipedia can be and everyone who has contributed to it has added to its quality. Take a bow, wikipedia, and let the world know that the best and most comprehensive internet analysis of the forthcoming conclave can be found on wikipedia. FearÉIREANN 21:24, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• Object - one of the criteria is that the article is "Stable: a featured article should be mostly static, and not change rapidly from day to day". Evil Monkey∴Hello 23:15, Apr 4, 2005 (UTC)
  • Yes. Mostly static. There are no edit wars, no disputes on content. The only change taking place is that when someone else finds additional information (eg, today's in pectore information) it is added in. In fact, given that it is a live subject just 48 hours old it is astonishing static - work on it is all about information, not POV, edit wars, rows over content, etc. Most of the information it needs to cover is in there now. It is likely to remain largely as it is now, with minor tweaks on information. Many articles take weeks to achieve its stability and consensus. FearÉIREANN 23:34, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)
    • Just look at the page diff between yesterday and today. You'd be hard pressed to find a more unstable article on all of wikipedia. →Raul654 02:14, Apr 5, 2005 (UTC)

• Also, stability issues aside, since the conclave hasn't yet happened, the article itself is mostly speculation. Remember, Wikipedia is not original research, and Wikipedia is not a crystal ball. →Raul654 04:43, Apr 5, 2005 (UTC)

• Object. Instability: articles with {{current}} tags are inherently not stable. No references. 119 00:46, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Object. The only way this article could remain stable over the next few weeks is thorugh undesirable neglect. -- Jmabel | Talk 05:13, Apr 5, 2005 (UTC)
• Object. Heavily fails stability test. -- Shauri 05:28, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• Object. Instabilty (which {current} by definition implies) and lack of refs are the least of its problems. The intro is too short and the discrepancy between the general article being titled papal "election", and this being titled papal "conclave" has to be corrected one way or the other (preferably, IMHO), or it at least has to be clearly addressed before the reader gets to the first "Main article" link. Also, the whole article needs a major copyedit by someone assuming the reader has zero knowledge of Catholicism--I learned more about the relationship between the terms "conclave" and "papal election" from the Talk page than I did the article; "Curialist" isn't defined and the article it links to doesn't provide much insight; "One should keep in mind how historically rare non-Italian popes are..."--if I don't know that, actual numbers would be a big help; "A selection of a pope from the United States or France would be seen as too controversial"--why?; that sort of thing... Niteowlneils 05:48, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• Object This is an article about an event that will start in the next fortnight and be over in the next 4 to 6 weeks! It'd be quite perverse to make it a FA now - try again in 2 months' time, jguk 18:12, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Object—I'm flexible about this kind of thing, I supported the Dec. 2004 tsunami article, but making it FA before the conclave has even happened just takes it too far. I'd be happy to support it if it maintains a high level of quality in covering future events. Everyking 20:23, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• Support I was going to nominate this article if it hadn't already been nominated. I realize that it's an article on a current event, but the article's quality is so high and it covers its subject so comprehensively that I think it should be considered as a featured article regardless. This article is exactly the sort of writing we should be encouraging on Wikipedia; if stability is the only issue, then perhaps we should feature it after the conclave. --Marnen Laibow-Koser (talk) 20:38, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Object. Article is currently subject to massive change without notice, and is mostly speculation. Try again in six months to a year. --Carnildo 20:54, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Object. 1. The article is not stable. However, I will withdraw this objection after the next Pope takes office. 2. The title, "Papal conclave, 2005," is redundant. There is no such thing as a non-papal conclave; all conclaves are for Popes. The adjective "papal," therefore, is superfluous. The title should include either just "conclave," or "papal election," but not "papal conclave." -- Emsworth 00:29, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• Object: Simply put, there is nothing to write about, as it does not yet exist. After the conclave meets, then it will be suitable for In-the-News. A featured article should assess its topic, contextualize it, and have references. All of these things are impossible with future events and almost impossible with recent events. Geogre 02:54, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • Mmmm, no, it's as easy with future and recent events as with anything, if you ask me. So while I don't think this should be featured yet, I'm basing that on the lack of stability, which is a valid objection, while this isn't. Everyking 00:53, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• Object inherently unsuitable, at least until the dust settles. Fawcett5 15:08, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Comment I don't disagree with the argument against the feature nomination. But I would just like to say that this is a fantastic article, and a way should be found to showcase it, probably under "In the News." --BlueMoonlet 15:31, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • I'm sure it'll go "In the News" on many days throughout the conclave itself and shortly thereafter, since, whilst it's ongoing, it'll always be one of the top 4 stories in the world, jguk 17:35, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Special Air Service

This is a well written and informative article about the legendary SAS. Pictures, history and other details are all included.

• object - generally a good and interesting article - 1) the use of numbered external links is considered bad style; please consider replacing with footnotes. 2) there should be some more references 3) it's not clear what sources are used for what, again, using footnotes would help this. 4) some more criticism should be included for balance, e.g. of "shoot to kill" policies as applied in Gibraltar 5) the list of operations would be better in chronological order. an alphabetical list would be better done using a category. Mozzerati 16:19, 2005 Apr 3 (UTC)
• Comment: I agree with what User:Mozzerati said. Furthermore, I'm not sure about that picture at the end of the article; I think its evident it doesn't belong there, but it doesn't have source information, nor is it tagged or anything.. Phils 17:56, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Support, A good article, more picture of the SAS in action might be an idea. --Electricmoose 17:53, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Object for now, currently the target of an edit war between User:b1link82 and the rest of the contributors. Decidedly POV at times, needs a copyedit. It also has never run through peer review, something it needs. After its been through PR i'll support, but definately not til then.  ALKIVAR™ 19:18, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Cheers for advice guys, pics of SAS in combat are almost impossoble to get. - B1LINK82
• Yeah good luck getting one try Google's "top secret image search"

[edit] E-mail spam

Okay, I'm not an expert on FAC, but this article really impressed me (I have never worked on it). It has quite a compilation of references. It has some pictures. It appears comprehensive to the best of my knowledge. The article is 44 kB, which is a bit long I suppose, but not too bad. All in all, a good example of Wikipedia's best. --Dmcdevit 05:32, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• Support: It's pretty darned comprehensive, although I think that some of the technical matter could be explained for neophytes. E.g. an article in Technology Review estimated that 94% of all spam targeting comes from web crawling. A single sentence could explain to folks that this is the "contact me" link on a web page and the directory at a company's web page. Also, there are print sources that could be useful. One that taught me a lot, when I was in charge of a system that had an open relay and needed to stop the spammers who were trying to work around my closing of the relay, was Steal This Computer Book, which teaches, alas, folks how to be black hats. Geogre 15:25, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Support, complete and interesting. Could use a minor copyedit, though. Mgm|^(talk) 17:41, Apr 3, 2005 (UTC)
• Oppose for now. I've worked extensively on this article -- the sections Gathering of e-mail addresses, Using other people's computers, Spam-support services, and Related vocabulary are largely my work, as well as the image in the Using other people's computers section. However, I do not think it is ready to be a featured article. Notably:
  • The Miscellaneous facts about spam email section is both disorganized and out of date, and is composed largely of anecdotes and pseudostatistics;
  • The Current events section mixes important facts with press-release material, and is in any event not particularly current -- which is not to say that an encyclopedia article should have a "current events" section.
  • There are throughout the text (including in my contributions, I'll admit) time-dependent words such as "recent" and "increasingly" which render the article automatically dated.
  • There are still a number of passages which read as "how-to" material rather than encyclopedia article material.
  • All in all, I think the article needs to be peer-reviewed by more editors who are familiar with:
    • large-scale email system administration;
    • spam and computer-crime law, especially outside the U.S. -- and with a focus on law as it is actually used to sue or prosecute spammers, not just urban legends about laws such as CAN-SPAM;
    • actual statistical analysis of spam message corpuses -- not just guesswork or hearsay -- regarding obfuscation and other features of spam messages. --FOo 17:50, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Oppose repeatedly uses direct links from text (Wikipedia is not a repository of links) and bare numbered links which are very bad style style. Ideally use footnotes instead.
  • Wikipedia:Footnote3 is a style proposal, not a policy or even a real part of the Manual of Style. Wikipedia:Footnote describes Current guidelines which state, "If the purpose of the footnote is to direct the reader to an outside source, simply put the link to the source in single brackets." As footnote style is presently an unsettled matter it is not appropriate to bring up here. --FOo 21:16, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)
    • The very page you quote directly states clearly that it is a "New Proposed Footnote format" which has now become old and recommends reading Footnote3, but that aside, I do not object to any system of footnotes, including "invisible footnotes" "template based" footnotes (as Wikipedia:Footnote3) or even the ugly (IMHO) author/name footnotes. However, Wikipedia:Cite your sources has depreciated numbered links for a long time and the manual of style has been clear that they are not a good idea. For a normal article, this might be acceptable, but a featured article should live up to a higher standard. Failure to resolve this should clearly be a blocking objection. Mozzerati 20:00, 2005 Apr 4 (UTC)
      • No, no, no, no, no. Footnotes are *not* a requirement to be a FAC - the style guide pretty much lets this up to the writer. Objecting because it doesn't follow your particular choice of style is not valid. →Raul654 02:43, Apr 5, 2005 (UTC)
        • Hi; the objection is specific (if material at the end of the link changes we won't be able to tell) actionable (three separate suggestions for addressing this have been discussed on the talk page, not including my own footnoting suggestion) and does not cover my "particular choice" (any of the other three is fine by me). I can accept being overrulled by a massive consensus that the article is FA standard even so, but declaring my opinion invalid because you don't agree with it isn't okay. Mozzerati 06:59, 2005 Apr 6 (UTC)
          • This article uses a format that the manual of style says is OK. The featured article criteria says that it needs to fulfill standards set by the relavant wikiproject and the manual of style, which it does. Objecting to it because it doesn't use the format you prefer is inherently an invalid objection - your preferences do not trump the manual of style. →Raul654 14:06, Apr 6, 2005 (UTC)
            • I am not objecting to it because it doesn't use the format I prefer. Mozzerati 18:44, 2005 Apr 6 (UTC)
• Oppose - Needs a much longer and better lead section. An article this size needs three rather hefty paragraphs for that. Could use some summarizing in the future per Wikipedia:Summary style, but is OK for now (if a bit long). --mav 01:46, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Oppose - nothing on MLM schemes, or multi-tiered spamming operations. - 203.35.154.254 02:36, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

  What's a multi-tiered spamming operation? Is that like DHS Club? --FOo 02:56, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Additional comments

It's a shame this article failed as a FAC. The entire time I was reading it I was thinking that it was extremely well-written, and worthy of being a featured article. I guess consensus wasn't able to be obtained, but I wonder if anyone has considered a more recent push for making this article a FAC again. Thoughts? Justin 17:38, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

• I've written a book on the subject. It's a subject riddled in technicality so bear with me sounding picky but there are many small errors in that add up to the wrong picture. This article would be better titled "Unsolicted bulk email" rather than spam and if the difference is not known then the article has not educated effectively. It's lobsided toward fraud spam and essentially ignores all other kinds of spam which is a disservice to the education goal.

From the get go, spammers are defined as anyone who sends an identical email to a list of recipients. Readers would infer that anyone who sends identical messages to lists are spammers. It goes on about fraud and thus infers the act of sending identical email to a list of recipients is wrong. In the vocabulary area, it says UBE is a synonym for spam. No, UBE is a permission status and not a synomym for spam.

There is no mention there that perfectly legit companies send legit email the exact (bulk to lists) same way. Newsletters for instance. They are not spam and not even in the realm of the Can Spam law. In commercial email, if the senders follow the rules and the recipient wants it (whether or not they opt in for it), then they are not spam. Most email sent via the biggest email service providers are monitored, sent to millions of recipients hourly and generate zip in complaint rates. The definition therefore breaks down right away and has inconsistencies later which I tried to change.

The intro second paragraph is outdated. Forget the word "unsolicted" when thinking of spam - permission is not the issue. It is correlated but not a cause nor conclusion. When asked if email should be opt in and if unsolicted is a problem, a major ISP spam director said, "People can send whatever they want, just don't get complaints." That is a supreme test for spam in the colloquial context.

While most people instantly think of bank scam emails or Nigerian royalty emails correctly as spam, heavily weighting the article about fraud spam is not balanced or an accurate depiction of what spam is.

Spam is a huge topic that has evolved in definition and emails have endured a myriad of absurd tests that simply don't work in defining/catching spam. There was an incorrect explanation in the article that opt in emails could render a commercial email as not spam. That is not accurate. Spam is any email that is unwelcome regardless of opt in status. It can be legit senders or scam senders. It can be from individuals or businesses.

In the U.S. the Can Spam law has regulations for all commercial email and it is legal to spam contrary to what the article wrote. I made a couple modifications to explain that (it said it was a crime to spam). It is a crime to spam without complying with the law .

The exploits section was good and a cause for the egregius spam as I updated to explain.

Sorry so long. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.184.7.227 (talk) 23:40, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Article originally went through FAC 00:00, 5 April 2005

[edit] Académie française

Self-nomination. -- Emsworth 00:45, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• Object. Comprehensiveness: How has the Academy been perceived? Also, "Current members" is redundant to the List of page and won't age well. 119 03:11, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • I beg to contradict this objection. The page does note that the body has been perceived as excessively conservative. Furthermore, the listing of current members of a body (if the list is not too long) is customary. The list will be regularly updated. -- Emsworth 15:16, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)
    • The only coverage of perceptions of the Académie are a brief mention of allegations of conservatism and that some government officials have ignored its advice. But why was the Académie formalised by Richelieu? Why was it abolished during the French Revolution? How much weight does it have with normal usage within the public? Are there popular opinions on the Académie? The members list should also note at what time it was last updated. 119 19:26, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Comment. Looks good as far as I can tell, but I'm not sure the rather large picture of Richelieu at the top of the article really belongs. Surely we can find a more appropriate one. Phils 17:49, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Object, I endorse 119's objection about how the Academy has been perceived. A much fuller discussion is needed than the sentence you cite in response. I have a problem altogether with the article's proportions. It seems to me there's not nearly enough about the function, criticism, and perception of the Academy, and proportionately too much about trivia like the special green habits. The sentence on function, "The Académie is France's official authority on the usages, vocabulary, and grammar of the French language, although its recommendations carry no legal power" needs some background and explanation, it's mystifying. How—in what sense—is the academy "France's official authority"? Who recognizes that authority, and what does it mean to recognize it? What is the force of the word "official" and of the word "authority"? The second part of the sentence states that the force is not what common sense suggests, so what is it? This is a big question-mark to leave.

It seems to me necessary to discuss some background to the Academy's place in French history, with some attention paid to its cultural relation to the Enlightenment, the Encyclopedists, the French Revolution (not just the bare technical facts of discontinuites around 1800, though those are of course wanted too). Some sense of its ideology over time, and the history of mutating perceptions and criticisms of it, needs to be supplied. (Not of course in the editorial voice, but by acknowledging and attributing the ongoing French discussions of these subjects.) The sentence "The body, however, has sometimes been criticised for behaving in an excessively conservative fashion" is inadequate as the sole hint at such matters. It is too innocent of history, and the section "History", in its turn, is too innocent of ideology. I'm afraid I see this article as too superficial a treatment of its important subject, as yet, to be an FA. The three references show why: two of them are from around the year 1900 (one of them the Catholic Encyclopedia), the third is the homepage of the Academy itself. You urgently need to use some modern authority (other than the Academy's admiring self-description) or, preferably, authorities.

Btw, although the corresponding article in fr wiki is quite short, it's more specific about some things that would be useful here, especially about the original mission of the academy. This was to fix the French language, to stop it developing. Language change was in the 17th century seen as degeneration, and the unchanged language was seen as a valuable cultural "patrimony" for future generations. This is interesting stuff, which until recently colored the self-perception of the Academy and the criticisms against it—perhaps even still does to some extent, though the official mission statement has changed. (Again, some modern discussion of such matters needs to be consulted and referenced.) --Bishonen|Talk 20:07, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Google Gulp

Article on Google's recent April Fools Day joke. Plus nice graphics!--Mb1000 04:21, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• Object. Featured article criteria suggests that articles which are utterly short "should in most cases be merged into another article." I think a mention of this instance in the Google article would be appropriate in this case. Or, even if we believe it deserves its own article, I wouldn't label this Wikipedia's best work. --DanielNuyu 08:43, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Needs considerable expansion; if this is really all there is to say, a merge should perhaps be considered. Everyking 13:10, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Object - Cite your sources. slambo 14:52, Apr 2, 2005 (UTC)
• Object. No sources, really isn't deep enough, and the "notes" section at the end should be incorporated into the prose. – flamurai (t) 15:04, Apr 2, 2005 (UTC)
• I'd prefer to see a substantive article on Google's hoaxes. A re-phrasing, albeit with extra commentary, of a single press release isn't enough to be an FA in my opinion. Pcb21| Pete 15:48, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • Concur on the Google's hoaxes idea. --DanielNuyu 01:15, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)
    • The article is up for deletion, and several people (including myself) think that's the best solution. Dave (talk) 17:20, Apr 4, 2005 (UTC)
  • Also concur on the Google's hoaxes idea, however, some of what were considered to be hoaxes, like their Infinity+1 storage, and their predictive searches (now known as Google Suggest), are coming into the realm of possibility. Sure, Infinity+1 may be "impossible" but they didn't say how soon it would come into place, and with their Gmail space counter rising like it does, it lends some potential to the idea of Infinity+1. So, certainly not FAC material, but possibly the content should be moved to a page summarizing Google Hoaxes, as there will likely be others in future. Will also post this to the VFD page. --Kyrin\^talk 21:24, 2005 Apr 5 (UTC)
• Object. Not anything like featured article quality in length, detail or analysis. Perhaps nominator was trying for some sort of record for length of time from scratch to featured status

Dbiv 19:04, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• Object. While I like the article so far, it is by no means ready for FAC for the reasons above.
• Object It is even a VFD at the moment and lacks information. Just plain bad. Squash 03:57, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Object - use of plain numbered links is bad style. Mozzerati 17:16, 2005 Apr 3 (UTC)
• Object. Should be deleted, not canonized. RickK 22:57, Apr 5, 2005 (UTC)
• Object. This is just a transformation of the Google Gulp page itself, heavily paraphrased, with fatuous explanations of the obvious. The only sources cited are the Google Gulp article itself, and a bogus eBay auction. Featured articles should be the result of reasonably serious research, using a number of reasonably good sources. I don't believe more than a couple of work-hours went into the making of this article. Is this FAC nomination an attempt to prove some point?. Dpbsmith (talk) 13:28, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Curtis Sittenfeld

Self nom. Profile of a writer from Cincinnati who has gotten good very notices for her first novel. It has photos (thank you, User:Niteowlneils) and a bibliography. Was previously on WP:PR here. PedanticallySpeaking 18:41, Apr 1, 2005 (UTC)

• mild Object 1) there is no differentiation between the lead section and the article body; it needs section headers 2) I'd like to see more about her earlier works as well as their critical responses, both praise and criticism 3) this is really a minor item, but to keep to common WP style, in the External links and References sections, the titles should be the links. slambo 19:44, Apr 1, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments. I've sectioned and rearranged the article. This is her first novel. Everything else of hers I've seen has been non-fiction articles and essays. So I don't know that there is critical assessments of it. PedanticallySpeaking 16:18, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Okay, looks much better with the sectioning, and I've updated the references and links to take care of the third point in my list. I did a little Googling today to see if I could find more info to take care of point number 2, but didn't find anything substantial beyond what you've already listed. So, at this point, my vote is upgraded to Neutral, but it could easily be pushed into a support if we can find more data to add to further describe the earlier works. For example, the earlier work is listed, but we don't know what she was writing about; were they all foreshadowing her book or were they on other subjects? slambo 20:00, Apr 2, 2005 (UTC)

• Object. The subject has barely done enough to deserve any wikipedia article, much less a featured one. Almost looks like promo. Also contains trivial filler. It's relatively short, and I don't see how it can be expanded without the addition of more filler. -R. fiend 21:41, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• The length is not a criteria for articles. The criteria does say an article should be "Comprehensive", that it "Covers the topic in its entirety; does not omit any major facts or details" and I covered all the relevant information. Second, yes, she is new, but we get articles on people in the news all the time. Write-ups in The Washington Post, The New York Times, and other places say there's a need for an article on her. PedanticallySpeaking 18:41, Apr 4, 2005 (UTC)

• Oppose Can't believe this is everything interesting that can be written about her. Article doesn't even have her birthday. Does she have a middle name? Her full name should be given at the start of the article. jguk 19:00, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)The picci looks like it's been stolen from her website - is this fair use? Is she married? Does she have children? The main thing she appears to have done is this book, Prep. What's it about? The article says it's semi-autobiographical - so there must be some more info about her in the book! Sales? International acclaim? What's she writing now? etc. etc. jguk 18:38, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

"Curtis" is her middle name, as the article states. The picture, as its file states, is a promotional one taken from her web-site and which has been used in the press, e.g. with the NY Times review. I've yet to read the novel, there being a big waiting list at the library for it, so I can't speak to its contents beyond what I read in the cited articles. However, the article states it is about a girl at a boarding school and Sittenfeld going to Groton is noted as well. Don't know if it's been published abroad. Sales have been good, it was on the NYT bestseller list. I'll look for some specific numbers. None of the articles I've seen have said anything about a husband or children, but I have the impression she has neither. PedanticallySpeaking 18:45, Apr 7, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Yield curve

Second try for this nomination. I believe all the concerns that were expressed the last time around have been fairly addressed. Its a central concept in finance, clearly expounded, with valuable references for those who would like to study the matter further. I've contributed to it some (although the bulk of the credit goes to others) so I guess I should call this a self nomination. --Christofurio 17:02, Mar 31, 2005 (UTC)

• Object. The article is very confusing and flows poorly. Some initial suggestions:

1. 1. Use the normal yield curve as the top picture, and show the inverted one later (you wouldn't show a picture of a three legged dog in dog in the top section and then caption it "most dogs have four legs").
   2. Work in technical jargon slowly, and define, define, define. Why is it called a yield curve? What is yield? How is that relevant to the cost of money?
   3. The article needs to be reorganized -- maybe laid out to first establish a basic understanding of existing theory, then an example, then history. It's very confusing to introduce examples or history of development before the reader is made to understand the basic concepts.
   4. Consistency -- for example, on the table showing construction of the yield curve, it switches from % rate to (1 - % rate).

It's market convention to quote futures prices as 100-100*rate, so the article is correct in this respect. Pcb21| Pete 23:32, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

1. 1. Could use a thorough copy edit for spelling, grammar, and sentence structure too.

That should be enough to work on for now. - Bantman 19:08, Mar 31, 2005 (UTC)

• object although there are some references, it's not clear which reference to use to check which material and there could be more. You could, for example, use a footnoting system such as Wikipedia:Footnote3 or one of the other ones to make this clear. Mozzerati 09:41, 2005 Apr 2 (UTC)
  • The article is appropriately referenced - it is a synthesis of material in those five books. You use footnotes to provide a cite for specific facts that otherwise the reader may not have confidence in. Which facts fall into this category? P.s. is five books really too few for an FA these days? Pcb21| Pete 09:49, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)
    • five books is approximately a basic minimum (though it's impossible to be absolute; sometimes there just aren't that many sources). There are many many facts which I have no reason to be sure about in the article. The nomenclature "curve" is used rather than "yield function" because when plotted on a graph, the function is a curve. - maybe this is true; maybe it isn't. A good reference telling me which of those five books to look at and preferably which page to look on would really make it much more practical to check. This theory perfectly explains perfectly? Really? Please at least give a reference for that. "Liquidity preference theory...is also the most accepted theory of the three" seems total common sense, but again, what are the proportions of people accepting them? or do you mean economists? etc. I don't want to pick too many nits, since I don't think the "perfect" article is what we are asking for. Just a level which stands out above other normal articles. 10 most interesting/important/surprising points would be great.
      • Excuse me, but these do seem to be rather small nits you're hunting. The explanation of the term "curve" will seem quite familiar to anyone with any background in economics, not to say finance -- even a single undergraduate course using Samuelson's textbook will render this familiar. I don't believe specific references of the sort you seem to want are necessary or appropriate where a point is notorious within the pertinent field, available virtually anywhere. --Christofurio 00:38, Apr 5, 2005 (UTC)
      • From a mathematical perspective, a curve is the result of plotting the graph of a function. I don't see the need for any more explanation of why the "yield curve" is called a curve. --Carnildo 21:15, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)
        • Sorry, but it's exactly this kind of misunderstanding which needs to be cleared up. A curve is not just any function, it must be a continuous function. There is no obvious (to me) reason why the yield curve cannot be discontinous. For example, maybe there is a known night in the future when it is advantagous to have cash. Yields just before that day may be higher and those just after may be lower. Another point: Samuelson isn't in the reference list. Finally, if this really needs an undergraduate course to understand then it qualifies as too technical. As I mentioned, these are specific minor symptoms of the difficulty of following the references. If you rested more on your sources then less would have to be done in the article.. Mozzerati 19:45, 2005 Apr 7 (UTC)

• • • • • • "no obvious (to me) reason"... I'll lend you $1m for 1+delta years at 6% and you lend me $1m for (1-delta) years at 5%, for any delta of your choosing less than 1 second. You'll learn pretty quick :) Pcb21| Pete 10:25, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• Comment - the terms USD and GBP are used in the figures without definition. While I assume that they are US dollar and GB pound, this isn't immediately apparent to the reader. Assuming that they are, could you are least link your captions to the appropriate articles? Guettarda 14:48, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • I changed the terms to US dollar and British pound in the image captions. - Marcika 22:58, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] New York City Subway nomenclature

Self-nomination. This has gotten a total of zero comments in five days on peer review. I'd really like at least some comments on how to improve this, if not praise. --SPUI (talk) 02:08, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

• Comment. Can't this article be called the simpler New York City Subway nomenclature? Also, the lead section is insufficient in comprehensiveness and should have a bolded title. 119 02:12, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)
• Comment--the naming suggestion from 119 is a good one. Also, there's lots of acronyms, which are often used without explanation (e.g. MTA, IND, etc.). Although these are wikilinked, they should probably be expanded on first use. Meelar (talk) 02:31, Mar 28, 2005 (UTC)
  • I have expanded the lead and moved the page, as well as expanding the acronyms. --SPUI (talk) 02:55, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)
• Oppose. The lead section is still inadequate, I think. It is more of a brief introduction than a small, standalone version of the main text.119 03:11, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• oppose .. more comment ; a) you should show a photo of the signs in use on a train. b) please make more careful references; have a look at Cite your sources and consider using a footnoting system to make your references precise and easy to find. Mozzerati 17:13, 2005 Apr 3 (UTC)
  • Would you happen to be in the area, and could get a photo? As for foornotes, I'd rather hold off until we have a better system, in which the numbers and references at the bottom are automatically generated. --SPUI (talk) 19:04, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)
    • Hi, sorry, I'm far from that area but there must be someone, I was going to suggest Requested pictures but I see you've been there ;-) As far as footnotes go, the time when you write the article is probably the only time you have a hope to remember most of your sources. It's even harder for others to find them later. Two alternative suggestions. There's a the new system at Wikipedia:Footnote3 provides automatic numbering with some limitations. It will probably be possible to use that system to generate footnotes using any future internal wikimedia feature. If you still object to that system for some reason, you can do what PedanticallySpeaking has done in Julia Stiles which explains which information was taken from each reference so that later verification can be done.. Mozzerati 22:03, 2005 Apr 4 (UTC)

[edit] Democratic Republic of Afghanistan

I find it well-written and exceptionally well politically balanced. The only missing criterion is pictures, but they are not so important IMO for this type of article, and may easily be added. Mikkalai 23:42, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

• Object. No lead section, nearly twice the recommended article size, does not follow WikiProject Countries standards, badly needs subsectioning (but given the size, that would create an overwhelming TOC). In general a more condensed treatment is needed for those who don't have the time to read all this. --mav 04:32, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • lead section. Sorry. My overlook at nomination.
  • size. A ridiculous, discriminating objection.
  • I don't see how countries standards apply. This is an article about a period of history, not "Afganistan" article.
    • Then I believe it should be made a bit clearer. I did expect to see a country, not an history page. Circeus 23:57, Mar 30, 2005 (UTC)
  • Subsectioning without reason? 15 sections not enough?
  • condensed. Agreed. Some sections may be summarized and made subarticles from them. Mikkalai 17:01, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • Overal. I agree. My nomination was premature. I was impressed by the text, and overlooked the structure. Mikkalai 17:01, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)
    • Objecting based on size is a perfectly valid. This is an encyclopedia and people very often have limited time to get the information they need about a topic. Having a treatment that is both comprehensive and can be read within the average adult’s attention span (~20 minutes) is very useful to the reader. The reason is due to limited time the reader may have and the fact that the writer has already done the work of prioritizing the more important parts for the reader. This makes the article much more useful as a jumping off point to more detailed treatments on sub-topics (which might be tied together with a series box). That can be done with sections that have links to daughter articles that go into detail on the topic summarized in that section. See USSR for an example of a country article about a dead nation. I was talking about subsectioning - many of the sections are rather long and therefore could use some structure (not too much since that can stifle further development of that section) --mav 17:51, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Mav, just a week back you vehemently objected to my summary on the Singapore article after I had added the main points. It still conformed to the directions you later gave me.  =Nichalp (talk · contribs)= 19:43, Mar 30, 2005 (UTC)

• Add an intro and split some content into subarticles. Everyking 10:58, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)
• Once there's an introduction, I'll probably support this article. Hydriotaphia 21:47, Mar 31, 2005 (UTC)

I take that back. There need to be sources. Hydriotaphia 21:50, Mar 31, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Buckingham Palace

Well, since 1755 Lisbon earthquake seems so well-received, I'll try another renomination. This looks good to me, and all objections in the previous nomination (here) seem to be addressed. This is very little to do with me - mostly User:Giano. -- ALoan (Talk) 10:32, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

• Support Well put together and informative article. Filiocht | Talk 11:10, Mar 30, 2005 (UTC)
• Object - Inadequate wikipedia:lead section for an article this size. Please expand. --mav 13:36, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)
• Object. Still full of weasel words: "it is perhaps surprising"; "thought to have been designed"; "This may indicate". Also not NPOV: there appears to be no mention of the view, held by anyone with taste, that it is the ugliest building in London. Mark¹ 06:21, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Polish-Soviet War

Self-nom. A fairly unknow war that determined the fate or our civilisation. I believe this is one of my best works so far - a detailed and (hopefully) NPOV coverage of an entire war, with lead up to and the aftermath. No significant objections have been raised during the recent Peer Review and I believe the article is now ready for the final trial, the FAC comments. A note: this article has one serious flow I am well aware of: there is no map of the war itself (only a map of the country after the war in the aftermath section). I am no good with graphical editors, so I cannot make a nice map :( I would be happy to help anybody willing to make one by translating terms from this great Polish map [3]. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 17:44, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

• Oppose Very good treatment ineed, but nearly three times the recommended page size. Article size is very important given that the average attention span of people is 20 minutes and it takes the average person about that amount of time to read 30 to 35 KB of prose. So a person who needs a good primer on this topic would not likely finish reading this article. Nothing wrong with having a great deal of coverage on a topic, but having so much in one article is not optimal since it only serves the most dedicated readers. See Wikipedia:Summary style on how to fix this (involves summarizing some sections and moving the more detailed text to daughter articles). --mav 20:58, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • I am happy to adress most objections, but size is something I don't agree on. First, we have other FA which are also quite lenghty, for example Origins of the American Civil War (87kb), History of Russia (70kb), History of post-Soviet Russia (64kb). They were FAed (quite recently in case of Histories...), despite their lenght. Second, Wikipedia:Article size states that: there is presently no firm policy dictating any precise limit on article length. Third, this is of course MHO, but I don't believe that article size and people attention span is that important to Wiki articles. Our primary purpose is to inform, not attract, this is Wikipedia, not MTV. Some visitors will lead the lead only and don't care about the rest, be it 1kb or 100kb. Those who want a detailed treatment will read the rest - perhaps in one sitting, perhaps in a few. Consider, please, that if attention span was everything, nobody would read books :) Now, if you have an idea how to move some of the material into a subsections, I'd be happy to hear this, however, as a person who researched the topic and wrote the article (of course this means I am somewhat biased...) I think that such an action would lessen the overall value of the article - I did think what could be moved off, but I can't think what can be sacrificed and cut out of the present article and still leave it throughout. Fourth, note that there are already subsetions - i.e. the individual battle articles, which will eventually contain much more info then the war article itself (see Battle of Warsaw (1920) for a good example of this). Finally, I'll stress again: please tell me what can be moved off - or do it yourself :) I am all for improving this article, I just can't see any *specific* way of doing it now. Perhaps, as a creator, I just can't bear the though of destroying something I made. Please help me out with concrete suggestions. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 12:23, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)
    • And there were many articles that went through FAC without references before that was a criteria - including several that I objected to on that basis. That policy did not exist before, but now it does. I'd like to work toward a similar policy on article size in light of attention span (see Wikipedia:Summary style). We need to serve those people who want to read about an entire topic without getting exhausted. The comparison to books is specious given that this is not Wikibooks. As I said, there is no reason why Wikipedia can't have lots and lots of detail on a topic so long as it is organized in such a way that it serves a diverse readerbase. Readers need the ability to 'zoom in' on the amount of detail they need. So far this article does not allow for readers to zoom out to get a more general and less specific view of the entire topic (articles branching off from sections in this article can go into detail on the topic covered in that section). --mav 15:32, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)
    • Piotrus -- it's not just for people who have inadequate attention spans...some people are just looking for a high-level summary of a topic, not an in-depth treatment. That's one of the features of an encyclopedia — even though entire books could be written on a topic, an encyclopedia article allows you to go and quickly get the major facts. Certainly, please don't destroy any of the excellent work in this article, but I've seen some very cunning schemes for partitioning topics before. As the author and resident expert, you're in the best position to know what would make a good breakdown of this topic. However, as critical readers, we can tell you with a reasonable amount of confidence that the article , at 80k, is too long as it stands. — Matt Crypto 15:46, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)
      • I can't help agreeing with Matt fully. You don't have to have to have an attentions span problem to get overwhelmed by 80 k. I know there are no strict rules or guidelines, but I feel that around 30 k is the ideal length if not shorter. Good summaries is what wiki should be all about. There's always room for more specific articles to handle the excess text... Peter Isotalo 18:57, Mar 28, 2005 (UTC)
        • Well, the voice of the majority has spoken. I created subs for causes and aftermaths, and moved the list of battles to a list article as well. Hopefully I have managed not to butcher the shortened sections (the article is smaller by 10kb now (70kb total), which let me stress is less then at least two FA I mention above). Please take a look at the new sections to make sure I have not left out anything you found interesting previously. I will try to shorten the main body now, but atm I have no idea how. More suggestions appreciated. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 20:16, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)
          • Nice start but more summarizing and spinning off of detail is needed. --mav 22:08, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)
            • Do tell me what would you like me to summarize now? Causes and aftermath were fairly simple, but what remains now is only the main part - campaign details - and it already has several subarticles (battle articles). I don't really see how I can shorten this further without losing vital info. At 70k I think it is not too big, really, there are several other FAs bigger then that. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 10:43, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)
              • Not that I want to seem lazy and overly critical, but that's very hard to do without quite intimate knowledge of the subject. The only concrete suggestion I can give you right now is to make the sub-sections into paragraphs. I'm going to give the article a proper examination this weekend and see if I can help out. Peter Isotalo 12:54, Apr 2, 2005 (UTC)

• Oppose Agree with mav. Peter Isotalo 01:35, Mar 28, 2005 (UTC)
  • I've gone through most of the much shortened version (44k) and copy-edited quite a lot of it, though there's a handful of sentences that I simply can't unravel and was forced to leave with a comment. I hadn't really noticed it before, but the article is pretty obviously slanted in favor of the Poles. I wouldn't go so far as calling it nationalistic, but for example, there are too many Polish paintings of war scenes. At least one more Russian propaganda poster would be nice for balance (eventhough it clearly was a big embarassment for the Bolsheviks). Peter Isotalo 20:23, Apr 3, 2005 (UTC)
• Two points:
  • 1. Yes, I think it's too long at 80KB; I'm not a stickler for 32K, but I do think 50KB is a reasonable maximum in almost all cases. So I would too prefer splitting stuff out. But please, please don't lose any info in the process. I'd like to see as many FAs on the war as can be written.
    2. But didn't we promote The Cantos? And it was the same length, actually a little longer, right? I didn't oppose there, although I was tempted to, so I won't here. But I have to ask, what's the difference? I think this topic is easily more important. Everyking 09:01, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)
    • I know I certainly wouldn't have supported it :-), but this is my first attempt at judging an FAC candidate. This article looks great, though, and it could only get better if it were shortened properly. Right now it's just a chore to plow through. Peter Isotalo 14:57, Mar 28, 2005
• Can someone fix the mangled sentence, "In the coming months, Denikin would pay dearly for t"? — Matt Crypto 10:29, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • Tnx for the note, fixed "...Denikin would pay dearly for his refusal to compromise on this issue."--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 12:23, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • Also, as with Wladyslaw Sikorski, I've come across several spelling mistakes in the article. Before nominating an article, it's a good idea to do some basic checks on the article, such as passing it through a spell checker. — Matt Crypto 10:36, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)
• Oppose, agree with mav and Peter; trying to read this article in its entirety is exhausting. The thorough treatment is great, but I think some of it would be better off moved to separate articles. — Matt Crypto 10:42, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)
• Support. I think the objections to the size are badly misguided. It's important for such an essential article to be comprehensive. If people are worried about readers getting bored, perhaps a short Overview section of the article, summarizing the article as a whole, would be a good thing to include. Otherwise, I very much support this article for featured status and think Everyking's point is well taken. Wikipedia is not paper. One more thing. Objections to size seem suddenly to be ubiquitous on this page. I think there ought to be a discussion about whether size is really something we should count as a valid objection. Hydriotaphia 01:32, Mar 29, 2005 (UTC)
  • Of course it is a valid objection given all the points already expressed about readability. A summary can be comprehensive without being too long. It just takes skill to weed out the most essential information that should be included at this level vs what would be better to have in a daughter article that covers a sub-topic in more detail. Doing that work is a great service to the reader. As has already been stated, an encyclopedia needs to mention the most important aspects of a topic. Since Wikipedia is not divided into different types of encyclopedia (ones that go into great detail, others that go into a moderate level of detail, and those that only offer concise articles), we must be all three in one. This can be done through Wikipedia:Summary style. --mav 03:26, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

It isn't that I think your position isn't arguably correct. It's that you're assuming it's right, and that it is (or at least should be) accepted by everybody. Readability is certainly an important value, I agree with you there. But you are assuming that what you consider to be an excessively long article is somehow objectively unreadable. Unreadability is not a brute fact. You are defining unreadability by the "average attention span of 20 minutes" (I don't know where you get this factoid from), and then taking the further analytical step of saying that this average attention span should define what is unreadable for the purposes of Wikipedia featured articles. It's not obvious that these leaps are sound ones; it is, let me again emphasize, something to be discussed.

Let me summarize and restate: you are stating one arguably correct position about what Wikipedia should be like; your position, while reasonable, is neither obviously true nor an official requirement for featured articles (see Wikipedia:What is a featured article); therefore it should not yet be considered a cognizable ground for criticism. In the near future, when I have time, I shall try to set up a page where this topic can be discussed. Until then, however, I hope we can agree that your objection is not yet recognized as a valid one. Hydriotaphia 05:05, Mar 29, 2005 (UTC)

I'm afraid you can't simply declare someone's objection to be invalid just because you disagree with it. — Matt Crypto 10:46, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

That's really unfair; that's exactly what I'm not saying. I'm saying—perhaps erroneously—that unless something is an officially accepted criterion for a featured article, it shouldn't be recognized as a valid ground for objection. Perhaps I'm wrong; Piotr's comment below has made me unsure whether I'm right. However, I'll share with you something that Taxman has added at a relevant talk page:

"[T]he criteria are all an editor has to go on in writing a featured quality article. They are there to show the agreed upon standards. People can have lots of opinions about what they would want FA's to be, but an editor cannot know what they are or meet them if they are not in the criteria. - Taxman 14:54, Mar 29, 2005 (UTC)"

Good point, again. Now you have me thinking if I was right to disagree with you in the first place. I knew about the *recommmended* size, but note the difference between *recommended* and *objectionable*. And on a further note, everybody has the right to object, but not every objections is valid. If the size is only a recommendation, can one object during FAC based solely on a fact that article does not follow all recommendations, although it meets all of the obligatory criteria? Perhaps a vote on the size issue would be best to clear this once and for all? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 21:45, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Recommendations tend to be there for a reason and there's been good argumentation in favour of following those recommendation. Why not just try to reach consensus instead? Peter Isotalo 22:00, Mar 29, 2005 (UTC)

I'm sorry to have misrepresented what you're saying. I still disagree with you, though, about the "official criteria" — as far as I'm aware, the only restriction on objections is that they must be somehow "actionable". (Further discussion on this should probably go on the FAC talk page or the WIAFA talk page). — Matt Crypto 16:14, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

No worries. Best, Hydriotaphia 16:40, Mar 29, 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for putting that better then I could, Hydriotaphia. However I have - unfortunately - to disagree with you on one issue. Mav and the rest don't have to withdraw their object, nor can it be considered invalid solely on the grounds that it is not a formal category for FA. If they, after having read the entire article, still feel it needs to be shorten, they have a valid objection (not that we have to agree with it - but we have to recognize their rights to it). However, since they read it, I'd greatly appreciate pointers as to what *exactly* should be cut out now? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 10:43, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Pointers would be good. I'll work on that later now that you seem open to the idea. :) --mav 20:35, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

• Support. Piotrus, Logologist and others did a great job on this article. It's not only readable and comprehensive, but it's also a great piece of prose. Both the style and the choice of facts mentioned are worth support for FA. The only thing that article lacks IMO are more photos and perhaps also maps. Halibutt 08:39, Apr 1, 2005 (UTC)
• Gently oppose If the article is simply split according to current section breaks and the current introduction becomes a single article this will improve readability. There are a number of reasons why shorter articles are better.
  • We can have an article and series on "turning points in invasions of europe". The battle of Warsaw then logically shares a place defeats of Ghengis Khan and Leonidas' great fight against the Persians etc. Sure that would make you happy :-)
    • But there already *is* an article on Battle of Warsaw (1920), close to 30kb. What else are you suggesting? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 12:12, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • Sometimes an article is just a small link in another article, e.g. the article on "agriculture in the Ukraine" could mention that farming was reduced by the Polish / Soviet war. Someone researching agricultural productivity and who has never heard of this can probably spare two minutes to read a brief summary. Even twenty minutes is too much to ask.
    • This is just a personal opionion, and a rather strange example. And besides, lead is the summary. Article is, well, an article. I strongly opposed to the idea that we should dumb down our article by cutting out vital information, so that some people are not *bored*. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 12:12, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • Wikipedia is not paper. In a paper encyclopedia, splitting up articles makes it difficult to find one from another. By using navigation boxes for a series, we can actually make it very easy.
    • I agree, although there is quite a strong following that would oppose this (the people who supported deletion of navigational templates, mostly). While a box may be a good addition to the current subarticles, it does not solve the main problem, which is: what else do you suggest we cut out from the main article? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 12:12, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)
    • see below.
  • If an article is small it encourages future expansion.
    • Excuse me? Short articles are good cause they encourage expantion, but when they are expanded they are bad??? Or is this an April Fools Day comment? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 12:12, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)
      • nope, when they are expanded, then they need to be split up :-) Seriously, the level of detail we might want in the end is quite high. Making more short to the point articles (15k-20k) leaves some space for expansion. Articles should be split when they get to about 25->40k excluding markup. Mozzerati 14:22, 2005 Apr 2 (UTC)

  as far as the articles you've listed which are too long, my suggestion would be that they should be listed for removal as featured articles until they are also split up. Possibly, for reasons of tact and intellectual honesty, some of the people objecting to the length of this article should do that rather than Piotrus. Mozzerati 11:34, 2005 Apr 2 (UTC)

What to split? Some examples

• there's a whole bunch of stuff about Weygand and so on which could be summarised with "France provided a little military aid to Poland, but, despite myths to the contrary it made almost no difference".
• make a completely separate time oriented military campaign page, keep outside politics out of that except where it directly changed a campaign choice, and even in that case, give a link.
• on the main page, do not name any military officer commanding less than approx 100k men (or equivalent importance for other reason).

Mozzerati 14:22, 2005 Apr 2 (UTC)

• support just; it's now almost reduced in size by a half and expansion should be done in more specific articles; well illustrated; good references. Still needs a navigation template, but I might do one myself if nobody else does. Mozzerati 17:43, 2005 Apr 3 (UTC)

• Piotrus, thanks for your work on trimming this article down, but it is still too long, in my opinion (it's 70k at present). You've asked me "Please tell me EXACTLY what sections/parts/etc. you find unimportant enough to be moved to a subarticle?". Try not to think about it in terms of "importance", but rather in terms of "resolution", or "level of detail". It's all important, and it all should be included in the encyclopedia. The question is simply that of how do we structure its presentation to be of most use to as many readers as possible? Well, Piotrus is the expert, but my suggestion, based on the divisions in the TOC, is this: how about creating a Polish-Soviet War, campaign (1919) and Polish-Soviet War, campaign (1920) articles, since these are major sections in this article. They can be replaced by brief summaries that overview the campaign during these years. — Matt Crypto 13:12, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • PS. A navigation box would be good listing the "sub-articles" (Aftermath of the Polish-Soviet War and Causes of the Polish-Soviet War etc). — Matt Crypto 13:13, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• Thanks for your work on this Piotrus, and I appreciate that it can be a real PITA to go and radically alter articles that are a product of much hard work. After your sub-articling, I think the article is much more manageable (although if you can squeeze that navbox into the main article as well, it would be great). But, having said that (and aware that you'll hate me) I still think some sections are too long. If you're using summary style, and you have a "Main article: Polish-Soviet War in 1920" notice, you should be aiming for the summary in the main article to not exceed 3-4 paragraphs. Currently, in particular the "1920" section is too big (31 paragraphs!!). I would suggest that you trim this down, and the reader can get the full story in the sub-article, if they've got time. I would hate to fuel your frustration, but this is my honest opinion (and I could be wrong, of course). Again, thanks for your hard work on this and willingness to listen to others. — Matt Crypto 21:09, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• • Matt - a 3 paragraph long summary should act as the lead section at Polish-Soviet War in 1920. This article needs more than that (at least 6 paragraphs - if not 10). But I agree that 31 is a bit much. Oh, and could you strike out your 'Oppose' vote above? --mav 01:39, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)
    • OK, I can go along with that. I'm happy to remove my opposition (and I'd support outright if the 1920 section was smaller) (Just had an edit conflict, and I'd struck out the "Oppose" right before you asked!). — Matt Crypto 01:44, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Support - Very good job! :) The article is much more manageable now. Matt has some good points, but I don't agree with the scale of cutting that could further improve the article (FAs do not have to be perfect at promotion but feedback on further improvement is always good). In fact I think the 1920 section should have 3 to 4 subsections that are each a bit smaller than the current size of the 6 longish ones. Cutting it to 3 to 4 paragraphs would be too much since that is the size range that the lead section at Polish-Soviet War of 1920 should be and there is just too much detail to cover. --mav 01:36, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Schutzstaffel

Self nomination of this article. Extensive historical research has gone into covering every branch of the SS including a history of the group's existence. References are cited and links are provided to several other SS related article -Husnock 22:09, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

• Object, despite readability the article is not exactly aesthetically sublime. I think we could do better than one picture for the entire subject. —Oldak Quill 23:37, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

• Neutral. Very good coverage of controversial albeit magnetic topic, although as mentioned above it needs more pictures - tanks, perhaps, or people running with guns, or Derren Nesbitt from 'Where Eagles Dare'. There is however a picture of Himmler in the article on Gestapo. There doesn't seem to be anything about the SS tank divisions, which were extraordinary for a larger version of the Metropolitan Police; it's glaring, because the comics I used to read were full of "crack SS Panzer divisions", and this is still a cliche today.[4] I remember reading somewhere that the SS were forced by circumstance to progressively shelve their ideal of racial purity as casualities mounted, lowering their imaginary 'bar' in order to keep up the numbers; I don't know if this is true or not, but the article only mentions the increased use of non-German conscripts. I find it ironic that a generation of anti-Nazi education has ensured that some of the best articles on Wikipedia are on Nazi topics.-Ashley Pomeroy 21:30, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Ashley, I dunno whether the general SS article should contain so much detailed information about one of its organizations i.e. the Waffen-SS. Andries 14:50, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

• Neutral for the moment

Points Pro FA

1. Well resesearched and detailed (thanks Husnock)

Points Contra FA

1. Article contains some unattributed statements, like the SS is held responsible in the intro (by whom? by the IMT?) I think this is important because I believe there are quite a lot of ex-Waffen SS men who were stigmatized though they had nothing to do with the RSHA, war crimes or Holocaust. (can be fixed quickly)
2. The subject is very large and diverse (yes, even the SS was large and diverse) and as a result the article has become slightly difficult to understand quickly. I think the German version has a better organization of the topics
3. At least one more pic would be nice (can be fixed quickly)
4. May be the SS magazine Das schwarze Korps should be mentioned. (can be fixec quickly)
5. May be we should also mention that the SS had non-members who could contribute financially at a certain period
6. Didn't the SS members swear loyalty to the person of Adolf Hitler, not to Germany or the Nazi-party but to Hitler as a person? If so, this should be mentioned (quit scary and cult like)
7. The court system of the SS re-introduced duels for insults, I read. May be this should be mentioned too.

• Some sentences that I find doubtful that may be due to my ignorance

• The SS fighting units, called the Waffen-SS, were to prove highly distinguished and in many cases more distinguished than the German army, the Wehrmacht

(I thought that there a few excellent divisions but also a few below Wehrmacht standards)

• The most powerful men in the SS were the SS and Police Leaders,

(I though the SS heads of the Amter were more powerful and that the SSHPF were Himmler’s strategy against the growing power of the heads of the Amter)

• Since the SS was, by its very nature, a criminal organization

( the SS men believed that they were dealing with enemies of the Reich)

• SS Judges have themselves admitted that the mass murder of Jews and the shooting of women and children was against German law.

(this is something I was not aware of. I always thought that the SS men followed the law)

Andries 14:23, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Andries, actually, the SS gave little regard for German Law. With their own courts and police and no media investigative reporters (my speculation), they had little reason to. For example, German laws regarding cremation stipulated that each body to be cremated needed paperwork identifying the cause of death, signed by a physician. Each form had a unique number on it, which was also on a ceramic disc to go into the oven with the body and into the urn with the ashes. At first the SS forged all the certificates and randomly filled urns with mixed ashes and random id discs, but eventually they didn't bother. In my opinion, the "final solution" was in no way compatible with German law, but rather with the (barbaric) whims and (murderous) fancies of the SS. (the cremation law stuff I got from a special exhibit at the Jüdisches Museum in Berlin--the exhibit was about a little company called "Topf & Söhnen" that made ovens...)(http://www.topfundsoehne.de/) jethrotull4321 30. Sept 2006

• object
  • Several Waffen SS units turned out to be a fighting disaster, not all were a success.
  • The term "Freikorps" is not expanded on and is crucial for understanding the SS in the beginning and in particular Hitler's feelings for many of the SS men.
  • "some say" needs to be made more specific.
  • there needs to be a statement of the limitations of the effective powers of the SS in Germany. They were not all powerful and failed in a large number of their goals.
  • it is not true to say that the order police was fully integrated into the SS; they maintained a separate chain of command long into the war (Browning p7)
  • many other things I don't have immediate time to check. Please consider expanding your referencences and referencing each fact. You could use a footnoting system such as Wikipedia:Footnote3 or other equivalent system to show these matches.

Mozzerati 10:17, 2005 Apr 2 (UTC)

[edit] Jello Biafra

Self nomination. I've revised the article to meet all previous objections to it, plus added more information to expand apon the subject. -- LGagnon 21:12, Mar 26, 2005 (UTC)

• Object - very doubtful that at least two of the photos are fair use or public domain. One claims public domain but is a screenshot from a music video, the other claims fair use justified by the fact that the same photo appears on a DK website, which is highly dubious to say the least. Fawcett5 22:31, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • It appears that screenshots are considered fair use, so that one should be tagged {{Screenshot}} and returned. The other is still probably no good. When I get a chance I'll look over the remainder of the article.Fawcett5 15:04, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • Ok, I've removed them for the time being, and won't put them back unless there's any varification to if we can use them or not. -- LGagnon 22:59, Mar 26, 2005 (UTC)
• Support: There's always room for Jello, even if he did act like a jerk to me back in '85. (The only problem I see is the repetition of the political beliefs in the lead and the Beliefs section. The phrasing needs to be different.) Geogre 00:31, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • I've shortened the intro a little bit, so it shouldn't be that redundant now. -- LGagnon 01:32, Mar 27, 2005 (UTC)
• All it really says about his music is that it's punk, comedic, and often political, and names the bands he's been in. There must be more to say about the music of such a prominent singer. I have to abstain until the article does. Samaritan 21:08, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • I've added a new section to give info on his music. Let me know if it needs more work. -- LGagnon 22:54, Mar 29, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Collapse of the World Trade Center

Self-nom (mostly), resubmitted from some months ago. Added schematic and improved text should settle minor objections from last time. JDG 07:07, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

• The introduction could use some polishing. The introduction talks about the collapse and how it prompted discussion, but doesn't give any hint as to what the article actually says. →Raul654 07:28, Mar 24, 2005 (UTC)
  • Added a sentence. Does that help? JDG
    • It's an improvement, but a single sentence is insuffecient. I suggest you read Wikipedia:Lead section. →Raul654 20:27, Mar 24, 2005 (UTC)
      • Just overhauled it. JDG
        • The introduction looks good now. The article is also in need of some wikification as well. I did some, but I think it could use more. →Raul654 17:17, Mar 25, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks Raul. I was a slight bit annoyed when you objected to the short intro because I felt expanding it much would lead to redundancy for anyone who went on to read the full article. Now I see that it is indeed better if the intro acts as a sort of "executive summary" for articles of this length and longer. I'd say Collapse is right on the edge in this respect-- a shorter article would get quite redundant with a detailed intro... I'll be looking to wikify more too. JDG

• A few comments added to the talk page. Tempshill 22:11, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)
• Oppose No references. --mav 22:54, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • I added the two main references. (One was already in the "external links", the other is a TV documentary.) - Marcika 00:24, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)
• Support; not too short, not too long. Wins points for including "... the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)" rather than just "FEMA", and even more points for mentioning a conspiracy theory without giving the impression that the writer either secretly believes in it, or has an axe to grind against it - which would make the axe sharper. Perhaps I need to think of a better metaphor. Perhaps if the diagram included an outline of a 767, as I once saw on television, that might be better.-Ashley Pomeroy 13:01, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)
• Oppose; detailed comments on the talk page. Jgm 03:26, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

...Well, it looks like time is up and we have 2 supports to 1 objection. How does that play out? JDG 23:47, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

It's not consensus - this nom is going to fail. →Raul654 16:32, Apr 2, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] David Helvarg

Self-nomination. --Theo (Talk) 23:51, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• Object--this seems awfully short for a featured article. It also reads a bit like a CV. The section on his books, for example, could conceivably be expanded--was there any political reaction to them, did they bring new questions to light, etc. In short, there's just not enough meat here. Meelar (talk) 23:58, Apr 11, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Katie Holmes

Obviously not going to pass, so I'm withdrawing the nomination. PedanticallySpeaking 14:46, Apr 19, 2005 (UTC) Self nom. A life of the Buckeye actress (Dawson's Creek) with illustrations, bibliography, external links. Was previously on peer review here. PedanticallySpeaking 19:01, Apr 13, 2005 (UTC)

• Well, OK, somebody can draw well, but it sure would be nice to have a real picture of her, at least at the top. Everyking 19:10, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Object. Not expansive enough for a featured article, and needs a photo. --Tothebarricades.tk 19:27, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• It's about as long as Julia Stiles, which was voted in as featured a couple weeks back. PedanticallySpeaking 16:58, Apr 14, 2005 (UTC)

• Object.
  • The image is horrible for an FA, a photograph is far more appropriate (with the drawing further down).
  • The Dawson's Creek title image could use a caption.
  • The headings should have only one uppercased word (unless proper noun, which none are).
  • Sentences like "At 5'9" (some sources say 5'7"), the tall brunette enchanted the press" scream POV.
  • (Minor) It reads like a teen magazine article, and should have less inline quotes and informal writing style.
  • plattopus^{is this thing on?} 19:32, Apr 13, 2005 (UTC)
• Object. I agree with plattopus. Phils 20:00, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Object: I think the drawing is quite good, very talented. Good reference section, but with 20 references there must be more to write on her than this, for instance the section Lesser success on the silver screen seems to be more a list, a more detailed appraisal of what she was actually doing right or wrong in these films could perhaps be written. The written style sould be a little more serious. Giano | Talk 08:52, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Reply by the nominator:

1. The drawing I neither composed nor posted. I listed this on requested photos and this is what someone posted. If someone can do better, please do so.

• Once an appropriate photo has been added I will withdraw that objection, but I'm not the one trying to get the article featured. :P plattopus^{is this thing on?} 16:19, Apr 14, 2005 (UTC)

• As I've said before, I do not have the ability to add photos. PedanticallySpeaking 16:56, Apr 14, 2005 (UTC)

• Do you mean you can't find a promotional image of her? A quick Google Image Search should produce some results, and promotional pictures have their own image tag since they should be fair use. plattopus^{is this thing on?} 17:24, Apr 14, 2005 (UTC)

• I work at the public library and do not have the ability to download and upload pictures. PedanticallySpeaking 17:39, Apr 14, 2005 (UTC)

• Ah. I'll dig around for something then. plattopus^{is this thing on?} 17:42, Apr 14, 2005 (UTC)

• Done. plattopus^{is this thing on?} 17:59, Apr 14, 2005 (UTC)

1. Someone has changed the capitalization in the headers per the comment above.
2. A caption has been added to the title card image.
3. The sentence cited for POV summarizes the direct quotes which follow.

• It is still an example of the POV throughout the article. plattopus^{is this thing on?} 16:19, Apr 14, 2005 (UTC)

--PedanticallySpeaking 14:59, Apr 14, 2005 (UTC)

• Object for the moment. I'm actually OK with the tone which is fitting for an essentially light subject; not everything in Wikipedia has to be grey goo, and all the praise seems to be well-referenced from reputable sources. That first sentence is a bit much, though -- I think "hoydenish girl" is actually redundant (aren't all hoydens girls)? The "movies" section is a bit of a muddle of random tidbits; if this were reworked effectively I'd move to support. Jgm 03:54, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Weak object. Nice pictures. I just think that the text could be POV-cleaned up some and maybe expanded a bit. For example, I too dislike the "hoyden" bit. Thanks, PedanticallySpeaking, for giving me a chance to comment on this FAC. --Merovingian (t) (c) 19:36, Apr 18, 2005 (UTC)

• Object I have to agree with Giano's comments above. While it isn't a bad article, it just doesn't have that Midas touch that makes it "pop" out that it is a FA. I also share the same opinions as Merovingian (above). Either way, if the article is improved, I'd be happy to reconsider as I have respect for you built up. --Lan56 05:16, Apr 19, 2005 (UTC)

• Object - (but I'm close to supporting). The lead paragraph - "hoydenish etc" I agree is out of place, and I also think "titular waterway" looks odd. I'd rather see straight forward language that is either encyclopedic or conversational, but these examples are neither. The section about "enchanting the press" - I would leave the section as it is because if you are quoting critics, as we are encouraged to do, and they are all positive (are there no negative comments to be found?), then you should not be accused of demonstrating POV. However the section header is another story. It's clearly POV, firstly because it's not taken directly from a quote, but even if it was, using it in a heading is placing a spotlight on it, and the decision to place that particular spotlight is POV. Once again, I'd rather see a heading that is straight to the point, even at the risk of being bland. The section about her film career is very well presented - however I'm not crazy about the title. Once again the inclusion of the word "lesser" implies POV. It implies that everything that follows is of lesser importance than everything that preceded it. Please note, I'm objecting to the headings and not the body of the text which I think is fine, apart from the lead paragraph. I admire your intention in trying to elevate "fansite" articles into something more intelligent and substantial and I think this one is almost there. Rossrs 10:06, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)