Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Carnivàle

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

The article was promoted 21:12, 19 September 2007.

[edit] Carnivàle

Self-nom. I've worked roughly a month on this article and used Lost (TV series) and Arrested Development (TV series) (both featured) as guidelines for structure and content. The article does not have GA status (although I think it would pass those requirements easily), but I did a check for User:AndyZ/Suggestions, and the article also received a private peer review by a longtime fan of the show who didn't find major fault with it (and neither do I), so I believe it's ready for FA now. Before it comes up, I want to note that everything plot-related (including character descriptions) is extremely spoilery for this show, so I deliberately moved most of the plot to sister-/sub-pages instead (Fictional universe of Carnivàle, Characters of Carnivàle) and provided links to there when appropriate. Also, I read about 15 show reviews and not a single one addressed the mythology of the show except for "Wow/Urgh, the show is deep", so I guess it's not possible to have a sourced section discussing all the show's mythologies besides what's currently written in the "Format" section. Thanks. – sgeureka ^t•c 19:20, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Support I gave the page a couple of look overs and I didn't find any faults with it. Overall its very concise and a lot of it is about stuff outside the actual show itself, so its not too in-universe. Hopefully this will get FA status. --CyberGhostface 19:38, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

• Comment—It's a great topic and deserves a FA. But it's not yet sufficiently well-written to be promoted. I've had a go at the lead, which is good apart from the distracting overlinking and a tendency to integrate ideas into the sentences awkwardly. Please go further and find one or more copy-editors to run through the whole text. Oh, please read MOS on en dashes; see infobox. Tony 06:03, 19 August 2007 (UTC) PS I corrected "cancelling": surely it should be US spelling? Tony 06:09, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

• Thanks for the reply and the quick copy-edit; "canceling" must have slipped through my British/US spelling check; I fixed the the dash issue. I know that I can't claim professional writing skills, but I've already tried my best on this article and don't find anything else to improve. I also don't know anyone else who might be interested in copyediting this article, so I put up a request at WikiProject League of Copyeditors and hope they can help. – sgeureka ^t•c 10:28, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

• Update My outside copyedit request doesn't mean that I am unwilling to improve this article myself. Just fire away and I'll fix it (I'm already fixing minor issues whenever I notice them). It's just that at the moment I have no clue how good or terrible this article really is if no-one comments. ;-) – sgeureka ^t•c 00:59, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

• Support – With the recent improvements the article has become quite good. The only thing which I would rephrase is the following in the Plot section: "Certain that he is doing God's work, Justin expands his sphere of influence, not realising that Ben Hawkins and the carnival are slowly drawing closer to challenge him at the end of the series' run." In the beginning Justin is acting out of his belief that he's chosen by his God. But later on, more explicitly in season 2, his motives are selfish and certainly not religiously inspired. But maybe such an explanation is too spoilerish for a plot section. Anyway, this nomination gets my support.—Preceding unsigned comment added by Maester mensch (talk • contribs)

• I am unsure whether you would like to see this sentence rephrased because of (a) poor grammar, (b) incorrect plot or (c) giving away too much plot. I was intentionally vague when I added plot material that takes place after the first few Season 1 episodes, mainly because when I first came to this article, I hadn't watched anything of the show and just wanted to check out whether it was worth buying on DVD. (And I was one of those slow-witted viewers who did not get whether Brother Justin was the good or the evil guy until I watched the beginning of Season 2.) Anyway, I've rephrased this sentence now to only address the events of the first few episodes, and everything after is addressed as "two main plotlines that are slowly converging" and "Ben Hawkins and the carnival are slowly drawing closer", both too vague to know when (or even if) the confrontation between the camps will happen. I've also renamed the "Plot" section to "Plot introduction", making it clearer why it is so short and incomprehensive. Thanks for the reply. :-) – sgeureka ^t•c 23:45, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

• Comment - No fair use justification for the DVD images at the bottom. There is no critical commentary on them, so they do not satisfy the criteria. This is why there were removed for all the List of Episodes pages awhile ago. I'll have to look at the article more thoroughly, since I noticed the two articles you mentioned using as examples. As the those two articles have a lot of current issues, most notably Arrested Developments excessive non-use of sourcing.  BIGNOLE  (Contact me) 16:46, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
  • I don't know what you mean exactly. The images already have detailed fairuse rationales at the bottom, and, as both the license template and the FU rationale state, the images are used for identification. I guess(?) the current Carnivàle article has enough detail about the DVDs so that the DVD section can be compared to a wiki article about a CD with an image of the cover although the CD article just offers a track listing. (The Lost (TV series) DVD releases article, which was my boilerplate for the DVD section, had all of its DVD covers removed two days ago, which I didn't argue because I have no attachment to the DVD images beyond "this is how the DVD looks so that I/you recognize it in stores".) – sgeureka ^t•c 19:57, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
    • Fair use rationale has not effect on the article itself. I can write a fair use rationale for anything, but it has to be reflected in the article. All non-free images must have critical commentary within the article for use. If it was a season page, then a DVD cover can sometimes substitute the position of a poster, since most shows do not offer posters like a film does. If someone wants to know what the DVD coverart looks like, Amazon has images. It isn't hard to find. That section is nothing but a DVD features list, and not critical commentary about the DVD cover art. An article about a music album (when featured) has more than just a track listing. Also, i'm not too keen on having a DVD features section, as it's rather indiscriminate. The page shouldn't be out to promote a product, this just seems like advertising.  BIGNOLE  (Contact me) 20:03, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
      • Just checking: Turning the tables into prose like Lost (TV series) did would not be sufficient; critical commentary means having a section saying what reviewers thought of the video, audio, the features and the packaging. That's an interesting idea that I haven't seen in Featured articles; it shouldn't take long for me to come up with a replacement(?) section. – sgeureka ^t•c 20:40, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
        • DVD covers are touchy, in this case, since you are using it to talk about the DVD itself, I'd say that you'd need to find commentary about the cover art. Also, looking at the sources, there needs to be a consistent format used. I've seen some that are simply urls, and others that are using the citation templates. This needs to be cleaned up. You need sources for all the DVD region release dates as well.  BIGNOLE  (Contact me) 20:49, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
          • Found commentary on the packaging [1][2][3] and much much more [4] so no prob. I was reluctant to use cite templates like {{cite web}} for data base querries as there is nothing to "cite" but only to "check for yourself" (but I can see why the formats should be the same so I'll fix that). Sourcing DVD release dates is always tricky as there are usually 15 or more separate release dates for RC2 alone. Recent attempts to use ref links to amazon led to "advertisement" complaints in other articles, and since both Lost (TV series) and Lost (TV series) DVD releases also don't source the dates except for DVDs that haven't been released yet, I decided to not source the dates. I'll do so now. Thanks for the suggestions. – sgeureka ^t•c 21:38, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
          • Update. It seems the DVDs are just too darn good; I wasn't able to write a DVD reception section without sounding completely POV. My attempt in describing the packaging also appears like unnecessary fancruft to me now, so I departed from that idea and commented-out the images in the meantime. (If someone thinks DVD covers for identification still fall under fairuse, they can de-comment-out the images again; I don't care enough about them myself.) I've also removed the US-centric DVD information that didn't apply to my British DVD sets. All remaining reference formats are fixed, and references for the individual release dates are added now as well. – sgeureka ^t•c 13:51, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
• Lost suffers from a lot of none citations, their entire awards sections is missing citations..so don't look to them. If you use Amazon, you need to use the basic url for the page. I've found out that when you copy the url, a specific code is attacked. Any Region 2 from Amazon will work in a Region 2 player...so, I would assume that the earliest date would be the date. Then again, you could just cite all of them if they are different dates. Check out the DVD information for Smallville (TV series)#DVD releases for a website where you can get Region 4 release dates.  BIGNOLE  (Contact me) 21:43, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

• Oppose, serious issues with reliability of sources. Yahoo groups? Please correctly format all citations to identify all publishers; reliability is obscured because publishers aren't listed. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:53, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
  • Reply It's not Yahoo Groups, it's the creator of the show who just happened to be post regularly on a certain Yahoo Group (and AFAIK, you can't forge/spoof Yahoo accounts once one has been set up). The creator of the show is certainly reliable when it comes to inspiration and creative future of his show. If you're suggesting that some weird fan is just pretending to be him, then I'd like to point out that he must have certainly fooled Carnivàle fans for years with posts like this: [5] (mirrored at [6]), not to mention that he's a really good guesser when it comes to plot details for episodes that will only air one year later [7]. I included a forum link to the Baggage Forum as a service to those people who do not wish to sign up to that Yahoo Group to read what Knauf said, but I can remove them if those are too unreliable for wikipedia (but then you would have the please-don't-add-sources-where-you-need-to-sign-up problem). It's Daniel Knauf, no question. And as far as I can see, all publishers are clearly identified for each citation except for one that is currently only mirrored by a fan site, but that one reference is only used for why Carnivàle has exactly that name (a no-brainer, really), and as a second back-up reference for where the show was filmed (but they also said that in one audio commentary, so if you'd rather have this one source replaced with Daniel Knauf in the DVD audio commentary for the episode "The Road to Damascus" (which you can't check unless you got the DVDs), I can replace them easily). Note: I'll be on vacation for a few days and I can't reply to comments here in the meantime; sorry. – sgeureka ^t•c 07:57, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
    • Update I have compiled a list of the information that is referenced with Knauf's posts. If you want, you can have a look at it and tell me how I should precede. In my opinion, it's not really worth it to do anything about them. Because in the worst case that someone was just fooling the audience (extremely unlikely), the article as it is wouldn't really misinform the reader either. I'll still have a look whether I can back-up the information with other non-messageboard references, as it surely wouldn't hurt. – sgeureka ^t•c 01:10, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
    • Update 2 I've had a go at the forum posts in the article to reduce the perceived "dodgy"-ness of them. You can see a compilation of the results and rationales here. I removed or replaced some not-so-important forum references (they may find a new home in the Carnivàle subarticles); and except for one forum reference where I'm still trying to find a replacement, I feel all other forum posts/references need to be kept in order to not hurt the article in comprehensiveness and necessary detail. (I have also found an official comment of Knauf where he states that he is "read[ing] virtually every posting there";[8] surely he would have stepped in if someone was impersonating him.) – sgeureka ^t•c 23:54, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Second look. Sgeureka, you've put a lot of commendable work into convincing us on the sources: I can't get comfortable ever with message boards (I also opposed Spoo), so I'm not sure what to do on that issue. There are a few other things to look at:

• There's a fansite in External links (See WP:EL, WP:RS)
• There's an external jump to CarnyCon 2006 Live! in Fandom; if that site is notable, it should have it's own article and that should be a wikilink, otherwise, it should be a referenced statement, with the link in the ref. There's another external jump at "The opening title sequence itself begins with ..." in "Opening title sequence".
• In fandom, August 21 till 23, 2006 needs attention (see WP:MOSDATE, I'm never sure how to fix those date ranges).
• There is some uneven wikilinking; for example Daniel Knauf is linked repeatedly, the word carnival is linked more than once, HBO is linked repeatedly, as is Los Angeles for example. The first occurrence of relevant terms should be linked (in very technical articles, some writers link uncommon terms again in subsequent sections, but I don't think words like carnival and HBO need repeat linking). Please review all of the linking per WP:MOSLINK.
• Here's a hanging ref tag, be sure to run through the entire article looking for straggling issues like this: The carnival set itself was moved around the greater Southern California area, to movie ranches and to Lancaster, which were to replicate the states of Oklahoma, Texas and New Mexico.[8]</ref>[30]
• More importantly, there are still many rough patches in the prose. These are some samples only, from the bottom of the article only, indicating the need for another copyedit:
  • (Do you file a lawsuit "to"? I'm not sure if one "originates the idea for"? The sentence seems long.) On June 9, 2005, Los Angeles writer Jeff Bergquist filed a lawsuit to the United States district court claiming that the creators of Carnivàle did not originate the idea for the show, but rather stole it from his unpublished novel Beulah, a quirky drama set amid a traveling carnival during the Depression that Bergquist had been working on since the 1980s.
  • (Did he really say "very" successful, which is redundant? The construction of this sentence is awkward, "did not divulge any further".) Chris Albrecht stated that Carnivàle was not very successful in foreign distribution,[17] but did not divulge any further.
  • (Further extended is redundant: extended.) The DVD releases of Carnivàle further extended the availability of the show.
  • (Did Carnivale grow and mature, or did it's fanbase grow and mature? Typical for or typical of?) As Carnivàle slowly grew and matured during its first season, the series gained a respectable following of dedicated viewers, as is typical for many cult television series.
  • (Very unlikely is redundant, the first sentence is typical of some clunky prose throughtout the article. "Considering to develop"?) As of July 2007, no news have been announced about HBO reviving Carnivàle, except for a February 2006 mediavillage.com article that stated that HBO may be considering to develop a movie or miniseries that would wrap up loose plot lines to be telecast in 2007, and possibly resurrect the franchise as an ongoing series in 2008.[44] HBO never responded to these claims, and a revival of the show seems very unlikely in the near future.
• Even if the sourcing issue can be worked out, a copyedit is in order. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:49, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

• All Y Done, except for most of the the duplicate links. WP:MOSLINK says "Good places for link duplication are often the first time the term occurs in each article subsection." which is how I had already applied it before. I've also replaced "took place from August 21 till 23, 2007" with "took place on August 21–23, 2007", but I don't know if that's proper English. – sgeureka ^t•c 17:26, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

• "Knauf had plotted the story's broad strokes from early on and knew where Carnivàle would be heading, including the last scene, but he noticed he had difficulties with the length of the script: With 180 pages, it was about twice the length of an average feature film script; at the same time," No cap after colon, and no semicolon after colon. Don't like "he notice he had". I agree with Sandy that a Yahoo group is dodgy. No reference to the doco of the making of Carnivale? I have it on my computer. Tony 14:48, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
  • I only understand the gist of your detailed punctuation comments, but I've changed the wording of these sentences now and hope this issue is fixed. You're right about the Making of Carnivale documentary – I had only watched it once and had then forgotten about its existence (it never came up when I browsed google and message boards for usable information). I'll see in how some of the forum post references can be exchanged for DVD references. Thanks. – sgeureka ^t•c 10:35, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
  • I rewatched this documentary, and instead of making the message board posts superfluous, it gave some more detail why exactly Daniel Knauf chose the carnival plot setting (I could make one or two sentences from this and include it in the article - done) and some production notes about the period and the carnival setting (which may make a new stubby section together with [9] and [10], which were to crufty and unfocused to be used previously - done). I have also reread the message board posts by Knauf, and all but one are longish personal essays by him instead of in-passing references. It is surely unfortunate that Knauf chose a venue that is not highly regarded by wikipedia, but this article would suffer in a major way if his currently non-replicable posts can't be used in the article. – sgeureka ^t•c 12:27, 3 September 2007 (UTC) I have also added two more Yahoo Knauf essay posts as something like "further reading" in-line references, although the paragraphs is sufficiently sourced even without those posts. – sgeureka ^t•c 00:49, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

• Oppose for now:
  • "Certain that he is doing God's work, Brother Justin fully devotes himself to his religious duties, not realising that his ultimate nemesis Ben Hawkins and the carnival are slowly drawing closer." American English uses "realizing" and since this is an American show, AE should be used.
    • Y Done. Negligence by me.
  • "The resulting story and its treatment of freaks was strongly informed by his experiences of growing up with a father who was confined to a wheelchair and who, as Knauf felt, was perceived as either a saint or a freak, but rarely as a human being, until people got to know him." "Freaks" shouls really be in quotation marks.
    • The word freak is linked to freak show, and at the top of the article freak, it says This article describes the modern definition of "freak". For the older meaning, see freak show. Knauf himself used the term freak without any quotation marks several times, and I think (could be very wrong here) that in relation to the 1930s, it's not unapparent that "freak" refers to the old freak show meaning. I've still added the quotation marks though now, so Y Done. Edit: I confused that I had linked the word "freak" some whereelse, but didn't link it in this instance. I have still added quotation marks, and the word "freak" is linked to "freak show" two lines above this sentence.
  • "A last step involved stock footage clips being carefully compiled and digitally incorporated into the sequence." Although the use of "carefully" on Wikipedia is generally ok, in this context it simply seems to mean that it was done well, which is POV. I don't think the sentence would lose any meaning if that word was removed.
    • Y Done, although very reluctantly at first (I know from experience that compiling and rendering has to be done with extreme care to produce anything award-worthy.) But I see that the Emmy award speaks more for the quality of the opening titles than this word, so I agree that it is not really needed.
  • Although WP:FLAG is still being discussed, I think the use of flag icons in this article is ridiculous. What is the point of the flags in the "International reception and broadcasters" section?--Carabinieri 15:08, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
    • No particular reason other than WP:ILIKEIT when I created this section. Icons are removed now, so Y Done. Thanks for pointing out these things. – sgeureka ^t•c 16:13, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
• I think the cast section is supposed to prose, and not a list. The Lost and arrested dev example above were like that. Also, the plot summary sounds more like a teaser than a summary too me. Maybe because it's a "Plot introduction" instead of a normal Plot section, that's OK, I don't know. I haven't watched the show in a while, but maybe just a few more sentences illustrating that the two main guys eventually did have a confrontation, with the result being ... (I forget). If you have reasons for doing things they way they are, instead of the way I suggest, feel free to ignore comments. I don't believe that you should have to do everything people say on a FAC. - Peregrine Fisher 16:13, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

• Reply Thanks for the comment, but I think I already addressed in the FAC nomination why I didn't do so, mainly for not giving away spoilers (and the whole show is basically one big spoiler). A more detailed answer (do not read if you don't want to be spoiled): If I even expand the cast section a little, for example "Clancy Brown as Brother Justin Crowe, a Methodist minister", sooner or later editors would come by and it would say "Clancy Brown as Brother Justin Crowe (Alexi Belyakov) {stabbed and left for dead—Ben Krohn Hawkins}, a corrupt Methodist minister; son of Lucius Belyakov; younger brother of Iris Crowe; Sofie Agnesh Bojakshiya’s father; Avatar of Darkness; Usher of Destruction" (see the article two months ago before I set foot on this article). Although all of this is a pretty good summary of the character, out of 24 episodes, this spoils episode 7 ("Alexi Belyakov"), ep 13 ("corrupt"; "Usher of Destruction"), ep 18 ("son of Lucius Belyakov"), ep 20 ("Sofie Agnesh Bojakshiya’s father"), ep 24 ("stabbed and left for dead—Ben Krohn Hawkins") (there was even a whole Mediation Cabal case for this last "stupid" plot detail). The show itself also never made it clear that he is the "Avatar of Darkness" (although most non-online viewers would think he is bad). Instead, those who wish to know more about the characters can follow the see also link to Characters of Carnivàle, where they (will soon) find everything that they're looking for. A plot summary would have almost the same problems, mainly that it would give away too much and that I dont know on whom and what to focus (there are 18 main characters, and the plot is pretty intertwined). Instead, the three links at the top of the Plot introduction will give the reader (who is interested in the plot) the information he is looking for, without having to follow the necessary FA guidelines of WP:RS too strictly ("Articles should rely on reliable, third-party published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy"; but IMO, in the case of plot in fiction, there are almost always only "reliable non-independent sources" and "non-reliable third party sources", making this guideline almost inexecutable for not-hugely-popular fiction topics.) :-) – sgeureka ^t•c 17:45, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

I believe WP articles are supposed to include spoilers, see Wikipedia:Spoiler. - Peregrine Fisher 18:14, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

I know. :-) And they are there, just in other articles because the plot's complexity would do a summary big disservice. The shortest plot summary would be what's already said in the Plot introduction. A more elaborate version of the plot would be similar to this old Overview section, whose "Season 2" section will just make the average reader go "huh?" because it can't explain all the necessary characters and concepts in short. I think List of Carnivàle episodes gives a good enough (more detailed) plot summary, and the article Avatars (Carnivàle) explains the whole overarching good-versus-evil plot [concept] much better (although, if you take away the show creator's forum posts and the interpretation of the media, there's not much left other than Original Research, which is not what an FA should include). If you have (other) suggestions, just shoot. :-) – sgeureka ^t•c 18:50, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

I think you were referring to the characters now (*oops*), so I'll just add that I still think a separation of spoilers is wise in this case. And as I said before, the spoilers are/will be there, just not in the main article (also because describing 18 main characters is too much, and I personally prefer a list to LOST#Cast_and_characters's example.) – sgeureka ^t•c 18:55, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

• Further comment—Can this decision be postponed for a few days? Unconvinced that Sandy's misgivings about the sources have been resolved. And although the prose isn't bad, in terms of our requirement for professional standards, there are strage things. For example, at random, I don't want to find:
  • "postponed the filming of the second episode for fourteen further months"—Spot the redundant word: this suggests that a radar for redundancies hasn't been applied, preferably from end to start to disturb the natural environment of the copy-editor. Serious matter.
  • "to take place over three cycles or books, each one lasting two seasons"—Hmm, good examples for my redundancy exercises in this article. One word too many. (Is that an equative "or"? If so, place a comma before it.)

I'd like to return in a day or two to ensure that the bits of flab have gone and the sourcing is right; would love to see this promoted after that. Tony 01:38, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Re the sources (sorry for the length): I fully understand where you're coming from with using forum posts for sourcing, and I agree that they should never be used when other (better) sources are available. But writing an article about Carnivàle has two problems:

1. It's a rather special-interest and obscure show (e.g. it never even aired in my country, whose article says it's "a modern great power"). The media was also not that interested in it, no books have been published about/for this show, so there aren't that many good (independent) sources to begin with. I must have read at least 90% of all highly-regarded independent online sources/reviews by now (I stopped at Google page 50; reviews in print are obviously hard to get in my country), plus dozens of often fan-initiated (non-forum) interviews with the DK and cast&crew. Most of them backed up what DK said in the forums, but unfortunately not all, or I would have already used them already. I have also watched all DVD features and listened to all audio commenteries again, to no avail. (It's of course possible that I missed something, and I will replace the old sources with the better sources as soon as I notice.)
2. This show is extremely unusual in both plot and story style. (Quote Ronald D. Moore I think I can say without fear of contradiction this may be the largest and most complicated show on television., Season 1 DVD featurette). And no-one(!) other than Daniel Knauf knew what the story really was. (Quote Tracy Tormé: Everybody [of the writers] realized that Dan knew what the show was and had sort of this huge vision for what the show was. A lot of times, we would sort of take the attitude of 'We don't even fully understand it. We're only seeing sort of a small piece of a puzzle.' And we would sort of rely on Dan to step in at a certain point and say 'No, I don't want to do that,' or 'This doesn't fit.', Season 2 DVD featurette). At the same time, DK chose to reluctanty answer some of the many plot question from rabbid fans on Yahoo Groups and later on HBO forums (his comment on HBO forums) (Quote DK And that's why, though I have no problem answering nuts-and-bolts questions about story logistics (i.e. Who's the CoD, CoL, Usher), I prefer not to answer the "what does this represent" type questions. Because the only appropriate response, really, is "What do *you* think it represents?"[11]). But the media wasn't interest in fancrufty story logistics, and didn't seem to get the real plot answers they wanted out of him either (compare Mythology of Carnivàle#Interpretation by the media to the rest of that article, which was often backed up by DK's forum posts as sole available source). They also didn't have access to production costs except for where the HBO president made a rough approximation (but DK was more specific). Or they just didn't care enough to write about some Carnivàle issues. (see here for what information is currently only backed up by DK's posts.)

I do realise that it's generally standard for FA articles have extremely good sources, but that's usually because they exist for topics of general human interest. In this case, certain information is only provided by DK, who would be accepted as an authorative source if it wasnt for the channel he used. But personally, I as a reader would rather have these info pieces pointed out to me than to have them completely unmentioned because of unconventional circumstances in sourcing.
On the other hand, in my attempts to find better sources, I found some forum posts that suggest that DK commented on some of these things on the CarnyCon Live convention, which was released on a 4hour Fan DVD. But that DVD is pretty pricy at 50 bucks. I have asked around if someone who has this DVD can back up DK's claims but no-one has gotten back to me so far. I am also thinking of buying TV Zone backissues 168 and 187 but I'd be surprised to find anything new there. I wonder whether it is really advisable to try to obtain majorly obscure sources that the average wikipedian can never check when a simple forum post can do.

So, in the light of this, I see a few options options that I can implement in a short enough time for this FAC: (1) I could just delete every comment by DK, which creates apparent context holes in the article. (2) I resort to things like "The New York Times believes X, but only DK knows for sure." (3) I withdraw my nom and come back in a few months when or rather if the CarnyCon DVD or some other old TV magazines have helped in referencing. (4) I just leave the article as it is, and the FA promotion is not withheld on the ground of sourcing (see point three of "Supporting and objecting" of WP:FAC - Each objection must provide a specific rationale that can be addressed. If nothing can be done in principle to address the objection, the featured article director may ignore it.).

You can also comment here on which of the forum posts or rationales you don't agree with (never mind the Carnivàle article where I already removed the information but forgot to also remove some of the related <ref> tags). There is arguably some room for tweaking, but I'd like to believe at least most of my rationales there are pretty good.

• Never mind. See below. – sgeureka ^t•c 17:26, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

• Relevant update in sourcing So I searched all my sources again, and I also did another google search for sources that didn't come up there previously. See the positive result here (in green). As noted at the top there, I'd like you to tell me if the alternatives are acceptable, and if yes which. I'd also like to know in advance whether <ref>'s can still include an additional link to the original DK post each. Thanks for bearing with me. – sgeureka ^t•c 18:52, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
  • So I went ahead and implemented some of the alternatives. There is only one reference left where I'm possitive that I can acquire a replacement reference somewhere... I just haven't found it yet. A list of the changes is at [12] now. – sgeureka ^t•c 17:26, 15 September 2007 (UTC)
    • And I found a close-enough source for the last reference. I also found a more authorative source for the trilogy-of-two-season-each sentence (in French, but it's on a reliable website). This is the change in the article. I regard the sourcing problem as fully resolved now. Non-forum sourcing Y Done – sgeureka ^t•c 13:28, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Re copyediting: Copyediting of course remains a good reason to object but at least that can be fixed comparatively effortless with some help. I thank you both (Sandy and Tony) very much for pointing out what can still be improved, and I'll try to fix these issues as best as I can and as soon as possible. – sgeureka ^t•c 12:22, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

• Comment The article looks good at the moment. I think the text is up to FA standard. I've copy-edited today and found a few minor errors in referencing that I have corrected. My two major issues are:

1. The external link in the text in the opening title sequence section - this either needs to be in external links or cited and in the footnotes as per MOS.
2. The awards section needs references for each award/nomination.

I would also prefer prose for the list of characters as a bulleted list tells the unfamiliar reader very little about each character.--Opark 77 08:29, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

• Reply The external jumps are removed. The awards section has been given additional references although there there already was one imdb reference (I don't know if their award pages are as reliable as their actor archives). Since you're not the first to suggest prose for the cast section, I tackled this suggestion. Because of the number of actors, I still think that this move makes the cast section somewhat more confusing, but I've found a way that does not give away spoilers yet still describes the characters shortly and sufficiently. This section was written in not much time and I couldn't gather all my sources that fast, so it's likely that it requires another copyedit (by me or others), and that I will add some more sourced overview information later. Thank you very much for your copyedit and your comment. It is much appreciated. – sgeureka ^t•c 17:26, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

• Support Excellent work on the cast section in such a short space of time. All of my issues have been addressed so you have my wholehearted support. Good luck!--Opark 77 18:30, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
• Support Nice work on making all the changes. Personally, I prefer lists to prose on character sections too, but it's more important that we standardize all of our TV FAs. What would be a nice addition but doesn't effect my support is a free image, that way it can have an image on the main page. Normally this would be an unactionable suggestion, but it looks like someone took pictures at CarnyCon and put them on flickr under a license we can use. Here is the group of photos. This one might be a good one. I don't know a lot about creative commons licenses, but since we have Template:Cc-by-sa-2.0, I think these images are OK. - Peregrine Fisher 19:11, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

• I browsed Flickr for CC2.0 Carnivàle pictures several weeks ago, but no photos were marked as such at that time. And since those new photos have a maximum of two actors of the cast (and aren't that great either), I'll leave the current promo image in the article. I'm also trying to gather extra sources for a new marketing section (my current poor attempt), which specifically mentions this promo image. Although I have no plans to go live with that new section any time real soon, having the promo image somewhere in the article would be an additional bonus for the reader then. (Your Flickr note prompted me to add some of those Flickr pictures to the articles of the cast&crew though, so thanks. ;-)) – sgeureka ^t•c 22:37, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

• That flickr guy has withdrawn his license before I got commons to flickreview them, so the images are a moot point now I guess. – sgeureka ^t•c 08:36, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

• Sorry to be fussy: I've copy-edited "Conception" (was it?) to find quite a few glitches, including unclear statements and issues of logic. I still think it needs further work on the language (by yet another person—surely there are word-nerd aficionados of this topic). 45 minutes by someone good would be quite sufficient. Tony 01:00, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

• Not to sound impolite, I am sure that there are word-nerd aficionados out there - but all my attempts to "recruit" one in the past 4 weeks have been unsuccessful, with the exception of User:Opark (I don't know how he found that article). I have tried to address your new comments in the article. One logic error was the result of a recent copyedit. Also, I sometimes couldn't tell whether your invisible comments were suggestions for alternate text or whether you were unsure/confused about what the info meant, so I'll just comment here:

• Knauf had originally conceived Brother Justin as a preacher far along in his career... <!--mature/senior preacher?--> - original quote of the producers="In the original version that we shot of the pilot, Brother Justin was, I suppose, essentially the same man but probably much further along in his career." I rephrased it to "a well-established preacher" because "mature and senior preacher" doesn't feel natural to me and also doesn't get across the point that well (IMO; you're free to replace it with "mature/senior" if you disagree)
• ...as well as a recurring instead of a regular character. <!--Huh?--> - not sure what you mean. He was originally designed to be a recurring character, but then they made him a regular character (even one of the two main characters). Original quote by the producers - "I’d always thought of him as being a recurring character but not a regular character."

Comments are still welcome, but at the same time I am more and more afraid that further (major) copyedits by me induce more new errors than what my improvement attempts are worth. – sgeureka ^t•c 08:36, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.