Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Demosthenes

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[edit] Demosthenes

I started the rewriting of this article a few months ago. The article, which is now a GA, has already gone through four peer-reviews: 2 thorough peer-reviews (Wikipedia:Peer review/Demosthenes/archive2 and Wikipedia:Peer review/Demosthenes/archive1), 1 peer-review by the WikiProject Military history (Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Peer review/Demosthenes) and 1 peer-review by the WikiProject Biography (Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography/Peer review/Demosthenes). I'm grateful to users Peirigill, Robth and Chaleyer61 who were eager to copy-edit the text, and to Konstable who offered me a helpful review of the article. I thought it was the right time for this nomination.--Yannismarou 14:41, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

  • Support: far meeting of the featured article criteria. - Tutmosis 15:13, 9 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Support—Nice encyclopedic article on a classically encyclopedic topic. Williamborg (Bill) 23:58, 9 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Support of course. I see it has only improved from the already high standard!--Konst.able 11:29, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Demosthenes, son of Demosthenes, said the following:... Support. :) -- Grafikm (AutoGRAF) 12:26, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Strong Support - I've constantly admired how Yannis has brought an originally mediocre article to such standards of excellence to make it one of my favourite articles in wikipedia.--Aldux 13:12, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Support - Excellent article. --ScienceApologist 19:41, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Support Great article Kyriakos 07:41, 11 October 2006 (UTC) (forgot to put my name)
  • Support. Superbly researched, informative, and a great read. --RobthTalk 05:52, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Oppose. There is no need to retell the whole story in the lead. --Ghirla -трёп- 12:55, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
    Response to Ghirla: I'm grateful you had the eagerness to go through the article and express your opinion; every comment is useful. Nonetheless, your point of of view may be interesting, but goes against Wikipedia's poilicies and instructions. According to WP:LEAD:
    The article "should contain several paragraphs, depending on the length of the article, and should provide an overview of the main points the article will make". This is a long article and, therefore, three paragrpahs are reasonable.
    "The lead should be capable of standing alone as a concise overview of the article". That is why I have to retell the whole story in the lead in a summary style. And that is exactly what this article does. This article follows to the letter Wikipedia's instructions about the lead as I just explained. Therefore, your objection is of course inactionable.--Yannismarou 17:31, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
    There should be no instructions creep. The guideline you cite certainly needs to be modified. No encyclopaedia follows this pattern; what's the point of reading the article when you have a spoiler in the lead? Having checked recent Main Page articles (such as Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima), I advise you to reduce the lead to two concise passages. Then I will change my vote. --Ghirla -трёп- 07:19, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Further response to Ghirla: The problem is not whether you'll change or not your vote. The problem is what Wikipedia suggests. And in WP:LEAD it is suggested that "The lead should be capable of standing alone as a concise overview of the article". We like it or not, this is the current instruction. Therefore, your objection is based on some "personal opinion" of you and not the concrete Wikipedia instructions. This is the current Wikipedia instruction and you also admit it. That is why your objection is inactionable.
The article you mention became FA 8 months ago. If you want to see the current trends in Wikipedia about the lead, just check Alcibiades, Theramenes or Third Servile War. Articles that recently became FAs and have to do with antiquity. The article you mention is a terribly wrong example for one more reason. It is less than 30Kb, while Demosthenes is muuuuch longer, 86 kb! How can you compare a short with a long article? This is obviously wrong! According to your own argument, I should triple the lead of Demosthenes (because Demosthenes is 3 time bigger than the article you mention), in order to have a nice lead! But then I should expand Demosthenes' lead; not shrink it!! This is irrational!
You are obviously away from FACs for a long time. If you want to check the new trends in FAC as far as the lead is concerned just check the nomination page of the Third Servile War (here). In this review I also participated and I criticized Vedexent, the nominator, (I did not object as you did-I just commented) about his long lead. Just notice that the lead of this article is twice as big as the lead of Demosthenes! Nevertheless, Vedexent gave me a persuasive and effective answer. I quote: "Leads - in my opinion - should be a brief summary of the entire article; leads should be "mini-articles" in themselves. Now, that isn't a universally held view of how Wikipedia articles should be. You might not agree. But I made a conscious choice to structure the lead and the article that way." And this argument was accepted and the article easily became a FA. Just notice that in the Third Servile War the lead was the 15% of the whole article and it was fine. In Demosthenes the lead is probably less than 10% of the whole article!
In addition to all these, did you notice that Demosthenes is selected for the Version 0.5 release of Wikipedia (similar to 1.0)? Hm?? Did you notice in WP:LEAD that "For the planned Wikipedia 1.0 (a static version of Wikipedia distributed on CD, DVD, or paper) one recommendation is that the articles will consist of just the lead section of the web version". This means that the lead must stand alone. This means (and I repeat it once again!) that we have to retell the story in a summary way. That is what Wikipedia asks for us for its projects. I'll not be tired to repeat that.
I also ask you to read Wikipedia:Lead section#Length. According to this Wikipedia recommendation, an article of more than 30.000 characters should consist of 3-4 paragraphs. But isn't that exactly what I did? The article you decided to review is of about 50.000 characters of prose. I could even have 4 paragrpahs! According to WP:LEAD this is not a long lead, but a relatively short one. Then, where is your objection based, when the lead has the right size and the right content??
For all these reasons, your objection is in opposition to WP:LEAD and, in general, to all the guidelines of Wikipedia. Your arguments are based on your personal taste and not on what we are asked to do, when we write a FAC. Therefore, the objection is inactionable.--Yannismarou 13:22, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
It's pretty actionable, actually—it's just that it would be a pretty bad idea to go along with it. The lead is meant to stand on its own as a summary of the article, so the objection to having a "spoiler" (what does that term mean in this context, anyways?) in the lead isn't a particularly meaningful one. Kirill Lokshin 04:43, 13 October 2006 (UTC)
Well, the conclusion remains the main. It is a pretty bad idea to go along with this objection!--Yannismarou 06:59, 13 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Thanks for the suggestions. I hyperlinked the terms you mentioned as well as a few more throughout the article. I just don't want to overdo it. The article is already full of links and I don't want to get it overwikified. For instance, since I link the technical terms oration, oratory and orator, linking speech is not absolutely necessary. In any case I added all the technical links I found.--Yannismarou 05:45, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Strong Support A fantastic article, as usual.UberCryxic 00:17, 14 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Support Good article Periklis* 20:56, 14 October 2006 (UTC)