Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/David Falk/archive1

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 01:38, 29 September 2007.

[edit] David Falk

This article has recently been passed as an A-class article by WikiProject Biography, and I feel it now meets all the requirements of a featured article. The only possible problems I can see are:

• Three of the images claim "fair use." Two of these (the Nike logo and the Space Jam picture) are not crucial to the article, and can be removed without too much fuss if their rationales are deemed too weak. The third, however, is the photo of Falk himself in the page's infobox. This is the only photo of the subject of the article on the page, and its removal will significantly hurt its chances of being promoted to FA-class.

• In the A-class review, a number of people noted that the article actually seemed over-referenced in places. Specifically, there are six places where four references are used in a block,^[1][2][3][4] and some thought that too many references made the article a little unwieldy. This problem has been toned down significantly since the A-class review; there had been a few places where as many as 8 references appeared in a row.

Otherwise the article is well-written, comprehensive, factually accurate, neutral, and stable. In my opinion, it is FA-Class material. Joseph Petek 18:53, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

• Comments So far, the prose seems relatively good, especially compared to most other basketball articles. One thing I did notice right away is that the article uses the word "represent" (or a form of it) three times within the first three sentences of the article. Is there a good synonym we could throw in there? Also, I don't think it's necessary to mention his daughters in the lead, since there's only one sentence about them in the entire body of the article.

I'll read through the rest to see what I can find. Zagalejo 19:24, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

I took one of the "represents" out (changed to "works with NBA players"). I was having trouble coming up with any other good synonyms. As for mentioning Falk's daughters, my inclincation would be either to blow away that entire last sentence from the lead or leave it as it is, since I don't think his place of residence and wife's name are any more or less important than his daughters' names and ages. Joseph Petek 19:34, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, I think you should remove the entire sentence. Zagalejo 19:38, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Done. Joseph Petek 01:02, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

Additional comments (I'll keep adding things as I find them):

• Do we have an article on Bob Woolf the sports agent? He's mentioned in "ProServ and the signing of Michael Jordan".

Unfortunately, there's no Wikipedia article on Woolf, but he is mentioned in Halberstam's book and a number of other places among the references. Falk always mentioned him as one of the two people he tried to make contact with before Dell. Joseph Petek 19:47, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

• Was Kareem's shoe deal with Converse? The article isn't entirely clear on that point. Also, words like "behemoth" are a bit flowery for an encyclopedia article. Zagalejo 19:38, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

The information about Kareem's shoe deal came from David Halberstam's book (ref 19), and I never bothered to find out who exactly had signed him to it, as that seemed very peripheral information for this article. I can make an effort to look for it if you think it's important.

As for "behemoth," that was David Halberstam's word, but I'd be happy to change it if you can think of a better way to say it. Joseph Petek 19:47, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

A quick look on Google and it looks like Kareem's big shoe deal was with Adidas: [1] I've added that info and removed "behemoth" from the sentence. Joseph Petek 20:03, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

OK, well, now the sentence seems to contradict itself. If Converse " virtually owned the market on basketball shoes", then how did Adidas work out such a large deal with Kareem? Get what I'm saying? And in general, if you're using another writer's words, be sure to make that clear (e.g., use quotation marks). Zagalejo 21:24, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

I get what you're saying, but a shoe company can still "virtually own the market" while other companies have a grip by signing one solitary star. The fact is that Converse had been the only major player in basketball shoes until about 1970 (with the Chuck Taylor All-Stars), and still was largely dominant into the 1980s. It was like Microsoft vs. Apple... Adidas may have had Kareem, but Converse still had most everybody else. If you think the way I've said it is problematic, can you come up with a better way? I'm trying to say it all succinctly, because this information is only needed as set-up for the events the article is talking about. It's all peripheral to what the article is really about, and not a lot of space should be devoted to it.

And yes, I'm very well aware that I should be giving credit where credit is due when using another author's words (hence why people complained of over-citation), but if I put quotes around everything where I only borrowed a single word, the article would look pretty hideous. You'll notice that I used quotation marks in many places where appropriate. Joseph Petek 22:20, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

I've changed the sentence around a little bit. Hopefully it's more informative now. Joseph Petek 22:39, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Your response above concerns me somewhat. If you borrow a colorful phrase from another writer, even if it's very short, you should make it very clear that the words are not your own. If you want to eliminate quotation marks, it's best to just put things into your own words. (I'm not worried about mundane words and phrases that you could have come up with independently, but something like "behemoth" is colorful enough to deserve attribution.)

Getting back on topic, I do think the sentence is clearer, but it is still somewhat awkward to read. I'll try to think of a better way to write it. Is "small player" your phrase, or Halberstam's? Zagalejo 23:09, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

As far as I remember, "small player" is my phrase, but I cannot tell you for sure. I checked out the book from my University's library, but I am currently in another state.

With regard to your concerns, I can only say that I have tried my very best to always give credit where credit is due. And if there are cases where "colorful words," as you put it, are not always put in quotation marks, the references I leave always lead back to my original source. Considering that Wikipedia is a free resource, and that none of its authors make revenues or take any personal credit for writing them, I have to say that I think that simply leaving the reference in the case where I use a solitary word is attribution enough. That's what references are for: to point the reader to the source of a statement's information. I understand that copyright infringement is the most major of concerns in any piece of writing (an old English teacher of mine used to say "plagarism is worse than cannibalism"), but I think you are making a great deal of a single word. Note other places where I make the sort of attribution you describe: "fragmenting" in the Marketing section, "trashing his own clients" in the 1995 lockout section, and "the rare person who could make a writer root for a sports owner" in the 1998 lockout section. Such things are always a judgment call, and I'm sorry if you thought the word "behemoth" was so important as to warrant quotation marks, but it has been removed anyway. Joseph Petek 23:40, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

• Falk decided to campaign Jordan aggressively to shoe companies... This phrase strikes me as odd. Are we using "campaign" correctly? Zagalejo 21:24, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

I changed the sentence around and added a block quote to give context. Joseph Petek 22:55, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

• Falk soon proved himself to be a remarkable agent with a lot of innovative ideas. He allowed Nike to establish Jordan's primary image, then began "fragmenting" it among other advertisers... The first sentence contains peacock terms. We should avoid "a lot," as well. I'm not sure what "fragmenting" means in the second sentence. Zagalejo 23:23, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

With regard to "fragmenting," the term was already discussed in the GA review. This is pasted below:

• "fragmenting" is an ambiguous term; replace it with something with clearer meaning.

The word is a quote from a Marantz article (ref 6). But beyond that, I'm not sure what's unclear about it: "fragmenting" means "splitting up into smaller pieces" (via Dictionary.com, it's "To break or separate (something) into fragments"). If you'd like to use "splitting up," then that would be okay I suppose, but I think "fragmenting" says it more succinctly and less awkwardly. I've kept this the same; change it if you feel strongly about it. Joseph Petek 00:06, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

I have changed it to "splitting it up," although to me this sounds more awkward without really explaing the concept any better.

I have also replaced "remarkable" with "capable," and "a lot" with "many." Joseph Petek 23:51, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

It's still not clear what it means to "fragment" or "split up" an image. "Remarkable" is still iffy, and even "capable" might be considered a peacock term. Just let the facts speak for themselves. Zagalejo 22:38, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

• The more I look at the article, the more I'm leaning towards Oppose. There are more prose problems than I thought, and I'm worried about the way outside sources are incorporated into the article. I'd like to help you get this to FA, but I'd prefer to spend more time with it than I'll get in this discussion. You've done some nice work so far, and I commend you for starting an article on a long-overlooked topic, but we still have some things to iron out.Zagalejo 23:32, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

A pity. If you could voice these other concerns, I would be happy to change them. I'm biased, of course, but I tend to think the prose is at least as good as that found in the recently FA-approved Tim Duncan article. And if you could give me a bit more guidance on exactly what your expectations are with regard to putting words in quotation marks, I would be happy to fix things. As I said above, I have left no statement unreferenced; adding quotation marks is the secondary and easier task.Joseph Petek 23:53, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Well, I also opposed the Duncan article. I did support Bill Russell and Michael Jordan, but I've come to regret those votes, as well. I'm not saying your prose is bad. It's definitely above-average; it just needs some polishing.

My biggest general complaint with the prose is that you sometimes try to pack too much into a single sentence. Like this: After James Worthy signed an 8-year, $1.2 million endorsement deal with New Balance in 1982 (also negotiated by Falk),[20] Falk decided to make heavy demands to shoe companies for Jordan's services, including his own shoe line and a percentage of the revenues. I would probably split that into two sentences. One talking about Worthy, and the next talking about Jordan. Another general complaint is the use of words like "quickly," "soon," etc. Try to avoid these for more precise terms: "a month later," "on January 25, – stuff like that. I realize that your sources may not contain such precise information, but see what you can find.

You really don't have to use as many direct quotes as you do. Look at the last paragraph in "Split with ProServ". You could have paraphrased that, no? Even if you were to keep it as it was, you'd still need to indicate (in the text itself, and not just in a footnote) where you got that sentence from. That's standard scholarship; you can't just drop a quote into your text without properly introducing it.

I hope I don't come across as pushy or snarky. In real life, I'm the meekest little dweeb you could ever imagine. :) I'll be happy to provide more specifics, as I'd love to see this article on the front page someday. However, I'd prefer to do that outside of an FAC discussion, so I can take my time and read everything multiple times. Zagalejo 22:38, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

Fair enough. More than fair. If you seemed snarky to me a day ago, I seem snarkier to myself now. And most of my churlishness had to do with things in my life entirely unrelated to Wikipedia. It's been that kind of week for me.

I'll be looking at the article again soon, hopefully in the next day or two. I'll try to focus on shortening sentences and introducing quotes. I'll talk to you again. Joseph Petek 06:13, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Weak support. Looking at WP:WIAFA, I don't see any major issues. Prose is better than in Tim Duncan (A-class review), it is factually pretty bulletproof, stable and has images. The things that concern me are illegit date linkings; standalone years are usually frowned upon e.g. "Falk has two daughters, Daina (born 1983) and Jocelyn (born 1988)" => leave out the wikilinks. On the other hand, when it concerns basketball or films, topic-specific wikilinked years should be applied in the style "Michael Jordan make $33 million for the 1998 season alone" => "1998 season alone" or "The ensuing film, Space Jam, was executive produced by Falk and released in 1996" => "in 1996". Hope I made myself clear, this is more a formal thing than a KO factor, I would have no tummy ache seeing this article as a FA soon. —Onomatopoeia 07:58, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Well, I went through and removed the stand-alone year wiki-links, and then went through with a fine-toothed comb and did a whole bunch of new wiki-linking. I'd like to think it's now about as well wiki-linked as it's going to be at this point. Joseph Petek 08:33, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

• Oppose The prose needs work it's not up to the standards of Michael Jordan (at least what the prose in Jordan was when it passed, I haven't looked at it recently). Also, the article is overly positive and seems a little promotional. I've read before that Falk's job was much like the Maytag repairman when it came to promoting Jordan. I've even remember many quips about this but none of that is mentioned. Aaron Bowen 15:39, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

If you could provide some examples of where the prose is weak, I'd be glad to work on it. And I'd be interested to look at the articles about Falk you're talking about and see where I can work that stuff in.

I'm sorry if you thought the article too promotional... I did try to stay balanced, and reported as much negativity as I could. Falk gets slammed in the 1995 and 1998 lockout sections, and the article acknowledges that he was "not well-liked around the league." Is there other criticism of Falk that you would like to see? Joseph Petek 06:58, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Oppose

• • MOS breach: no final period in captions that are not real sentences.
  • MOS breach: use 'logical' punctuation at the end of quotes.
  • MOS breach: "He represented only 7 players in 2007"—prefer "seven", esp. when bumped up against other numerals. There are others, too.
  • MOS breach: "Michael Jordan"—Read about "Words as words">
  • MOS breach: "179-5"—see en dashes.
  • Quote just above "Legacy"—double hyphen? Cap after colon? Check whether in the original. Tony 16:53, 15 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.