Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Autism/archive1

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[edit] Autism

OK, it's finally time to submit this to FAC. This is a fantastic article that has clearly seen contributions from several professionals in the field and parents of autistic children, and is most likely one of the definitive articles on the subject on the internet. Its kind of big, about 10k less than the George W. Bush article, but not too big IMHO. This is due to the fact that even an overview of the subject is huge (there are at least 3 main daughter articles) and you have to be extra careful because of the controversy.

Anyway, other people obviously did quite a bit before I came on the scene, and I did quite a bit too (NPOV everything, translated everything to layman-speak, got rid of dubious unreferenced text, translated all references to wikipedia style, etc. etc.).

It's been through two peer reviews, and you can see them both Here.

--RN 06:34, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

  • Well done everyone. The content is great, and I'd like to support, but I have a few comments on format.
1. I really don't like {{TOCright}}. What is wrong with the basic TOC? Position of the TOC should be choice for the reader through CSS settings (or whatever) not forced by the editor through templates.
  • It was added by someone without explanation. I didn't really care that much about it. Changed back --Ryan Norton 11:35, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
2. The TOC is somewhat overwhelming, largely because (almost) every paragraph in some sections has its own heading ("5 Models", the end of "7 Remediation", "8 Sociology", and "9 Other neurological conditions"). This is not necessary: either the headings could be removed, possibly combined with the movement of some material to a subpage and better summarisation, or made simply bold ( ''' xxx ''' rather than === xxx === ), or the definition style could be used ( ; ''' xxx ''' : yyy ).
  • Condensed as suggested --Ryan Norton 11:35, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
3. The "See also" section does not need to include links to articles that are already linked, e.g. Asperger's syndrome.
  • Condensed as suggested --Ryan Norton 11:35, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
4. Please separate references (used to back up claims in the article) from further reading (not used as an explicit reference, but simply as somewhere else to look).
5. There must be around 50 external links - do we need "Discussion and Chat" and "Personal Pages"?
  • Both sections removed --Ryan Norton 11:35, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
6. I am surprised that none of the sections refer to a separate "main articles" that expands upon the summary here. -- ALoan (Talk) 11:01, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
  • There are 3 - culture, community and increase in diagnoses of autism. If you think the article is too long PLEASE suggest something specific to move .... thanks!--Ryan Norton 11:35, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
    • Support. Thanks for the prompt reponse. -- ALoan (Talk) 11:51, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
  • Support. I like the way the article deals with a new and to some extent controversial diagnosis and does it in a thorough NPOV way while remaining relatively easy to read. David | Talk 15:55, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
  • Comment. I liked the article, but I think it could use some more pictures, especially one big picture in the right of the intro part, it makes the article more attractive. CG 19:40, August 4, 2005 (UTC)
  • Yea, I searched through google though and finding pictures is hard for this subject - plus they are all generally copyrighted --Ryan Norton T | @ | C 21:32, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
  • I'm not sure what to do about these. I've searched the net and there are no public domain versions of these, and I can't read german so I don't know the copyright for it. However, these two are also on Aspergers syndrome which is already a featured article --Ryan Norton T | @ | C 21:32, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
If you can't read German, ask someone on Wikipedia:Babel to translate for you. --Carnildo 00:01, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
There is no copyright info on the images on that site - so for now I'm just claiming it as fair use (they could be public domain) and crediting the site --Ryan Norton T | @ | C 02:16, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
OK, I made an attribution style as you outlined below --Ryan Norton T | @ | C 05:19, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
    1. The image Image:Autism genome screen.jpg has no copyright information, and it looks like the only license we'll be able to get it under is the unacceptable "used with permission".
  • Not much I can do about that - it was uploaded nearly a year ago by someone else and there isn't really a viable alternative to it. This one I could just remove, but its quite useful --Ryan Norton T | @ | C 21:32, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
If you think you can justify fair use, do so. Otherwise, it needs to be removed from the article. --Carnildo 00:01, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
Removed --Ryan Norton T | @ | C 02:16, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
    1. The image Image:Grandin.jpg is claimed as "fair use". Wikipedia is not just an encyclopedia, it is a free content encyclopedia, and as such, images under "fair use" and other non-free licenses should be avoided if at all possible. If a fair use image must be used, the image description page must list the source or current copyright holder for the image, and an explanation of why the image can be used under fair use must be provided for each page the image is used on.
  • Good grief. There's a link on the image to a discussion about it - basically one admin told me it should be ok --Ryan Norton T | @ | C 21:32, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
In order to use something as "fair use", the image source and the rationale for why it can be used under "fair use" on the Autism article must be provided on the image description page. See Sunset Boulevard (film) for a particularly good example of how this can be done. --Carnildo 00:01, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
I honestly couldn't tell the difference looking at the wikilink there, so I just credited the site in the article as I did with the other two images --Ryan Norton T | @ | C 02:16, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
See Image:SunsetBoulevardfinaleGloriaSwanson.jpg for an example from one of the images. --Carnildo 04:51, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
For this image I found an alternative that just requires a simple acknowledgement (copyrighted, took many many hours) --Ryan Norton T | @ | C 05:19, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
  • Looks good. Thanks for taking care of the problems with the images. --Carnildo 06:13, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
  • Oppose, links to external websites that have been used as sources should not be embedded in the text, they should be listed using {{ref}}, {{note}}, a consistent referencing system needs to be applied throughout the article. I think there are still too many sections, culture for example doesn't need to be broken up into those very small sections. What are the items listed in further reading, were they used to write the article? Id so they should be listed as references, if not what are they doing there? The link farm at the end of the article is overwhelming, please only include high quality external links.--nixie 00:47, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
  • 1)Referencing is consistant - websites are listed inline while others are referenced at the bottom, just like most articles here.
  • 2)Nearly every article here has a further reading list... but for the sake of speeding this up I moved it to the talk page
  • 3)I also disagree with the link farm assessment but I, with great regret, condensed it down to 5 links or so
  • 4)I got rid of the subsections in the culture section - if there are others please be specific (or you can edit it yourself too)
Thanks --Ryan Norton T | @ | C 02:02, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
  • Thanks for addressing the points so quickly, but I strongly disagree with you on the referencing. The html links should be listed in the reference list, firstly so that people know where they are going if they click on a link and secondly so there is some record of where the information came from if the site goes down. I can't think of many (or any) recently promoted featured article that have html links in the text.--nixie 03:05, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
OK, done. Anything else that needs to be done? Thanks --Ryan Norton T | @ | C 04:08, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
Also, I just ordered the footnotes correctly and moved them into a seperate section like I've seen on some pages and numbered them. Ordering in the article was helped tremendously by one of those automated perl scripts --Ryan Norton T | @ |

C 16:21, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

Support, thanks.--nixie 01:29, 10 August 2005 (UTC)
  • Support - all looks very good to me. violet/riga (t) 11:25, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
  • Support I feel very much better informed than I did before. And I kind of think that's the whole point. Denni☯ 02:19, 2005 August 6 (UTC)
  • Support I feel it is a very good informative article on the subject of autism. Thorn 05:52, 8 August 2005 (UTC)
  • Support: I understand the reluctance, as this subject is a moving target, but the authors have a good net around it, generally, and remain active in editing it. Geogre 16:18, 8 August 2005 (UTC)
  • support: Hats off to RN for Herculean effort and for moving the article along in a positive direction. Ombudsman 14:57, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
  • comment: Please also note Wikipedia:Notice board for autism-related topics, the widening chasm between two versions of the Andrew Wakefield article, and that Vaccine has been nominated for Wikipedia:Medicine Collaboration of the Week. Ombudsman 15:37, 9 August 2005 (UTC)