Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Ian Thorpe

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[edit] Ian Thorpe

Self-nomination'. This is my first attempt at the FA process. I feel that this article which I wrote is a comprehensive account of Thorpe, and well sourced (166) and is NPOV. Thanks, Blnguyen (bananabucket) 08:43, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

  • Comment - I think the lead should be 2-3 paras - possibly a bit long for the article. The language is concise and the article looks comprehensive. Certainly topical. cheers Cas Liber 09:06, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
After looking again, I should add that paras 2 and 3 of the intro sould be shorter and more summary-like. Also, I am not sure para 4 should be there. Cas Liber 09:08, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Support - looks nice to me. Yao Ziyuan 10:33, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Support. Exceptional. Great job BL. michael talk 11:01, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment

::*Need a better picture of Ian Thorpe as his face is covered with water. ::*Lots of results of his performances are written in text instead of organized into a table. This makes it hard to visualize.I suggest you create a small table to show his performances. ::*There is only one picture of him. This article is quite wordy which is ok but it needs pictures to add a visual aesthetic element to it. ::*Ian Thorpe Also appeared on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno. I think it should be mentioned, and if possible get a picture of that. ::Other than that, this article is wonderfully cited and deserves to be FA if these things are addressed. Mercenary2k 16:59, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Ok Changes have been made so I support Mercenary2k 19:23, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment - The Leno thing has been included. I have found two pics on flickr, but one is poor. If you want I can split the medal tables so that there is one for each meet, instead of combined. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 08:43, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment - I think I've addressed these issues with some FU pics. Also, I have put in result tables for each of the major international meets. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 05:16, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Object. I think it is doubtful that the images uploaded by WikiMax are correctly tagged. Can someone make a new effort to establish their provenance? Haukur 17:04, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
    • Comment - probably a pro copyvio from that range, can be replaced. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 08:43, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
      • Comment - has been replaced with free image and 5 fair use images with rationale. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 05:16, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
        • Great! Haukur 09:44, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment A good comprehensive article on the subject. However, it can be further improved:
  • It needs more pictures to break up the monotony
  • This article still needs a good copyedit for tone. Some of the sentences may be improved. For e.g.
Theoretically competing for a position on the Australian team for the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, he finished 23rd in the 400 m freestyle and 36th in the 200 m backstroke. Theoretically???
In June, two months before the Pan Pacific Championships, Thorpe required an appendix operation, causing him to miss two weeks of training. Which year?
horpe was began 2002 with the Australian Championships in Brisbane in March syntax.
He also competed in the 100 m backstroke, an experimental event, coming second in a time of 55.74 s to earn himself a Commonwealth spot in the event - experimantal??
  • The lead is good. What is in the article should be mentioned in lead and vice versa, which it does. However, IMO there is no need to provide inline citations in the lead. They can be given in the body of the article where appropriate.
  • All red links should be either removed or stubs created for them.
  • At 92kb, I think the article is a bit too long for a bio. Can it be trimmed?
Good luck - Parthi talk/contribs 21:41, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
  • and created some stubs. I'd rather not trim it if at all possible. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 05:36, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Sorry, that is not correct on the redlinks. Redlinks are there to encourage article creation, but a FA stands on it's own. Now there shouldn't be a redlinked topic that doesn't deserve to be an article, but it's not the burden of a FA author to create stubs for every potential article it links to. - Taxman Talk 22:06, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Nice work, much improved from when you first asked me to look at it. Last thing is to improve the flow of the prose partly through eliminating the one and two sentence paragraphs. Either expand them into a full idea, merge them with related material or remove them. Also, in general The rest of the prose is choppy in places, work on improving the flow by adding and improving transitions. I do agree the citations in the lead aren't needed if it properly summarized cited information in the rest of the article. But to me it's not a problem to leave it cited. - Taxman Talk 22:06, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
    • Comment - hopefully smoothed. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 08:43, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
      • Yeah, better, could always use improvement like anything else, but this is clearly among Wikipedia's best work. Keep them coming, want to do Phelps next? - Taxman Talk 01:17, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
        • Can you put a support here? Hmm, the Phelps bio isn't in the libraries in my home town...Perhaps cricket articles are better since ALoan can help me with my prose....Blnguyen (bananabucket) 01:39, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Object—1a. Here are random examples of why the whole text needs thorough copy-editing.
    • "an Australian former freestyle swimmer"—Awkward syntax; reverse the second and third words. And "the youngest male to ever represent Australia"—Reverse "to ever".
    • " He has won five Olympic Games gold medals, the most of any Australian and is the only person to have won win six gold medals in one world championships at the 2001 World Championships,[1] and has won eleven World Championship golds in total, the most won by any swimmer.[2]" This winding snake needs chopping up. So does this one: "However, he was struck down by glandular fever, forcing him to withdraw. Subsequent training camps in the United States were similarly hampered, and he announced his retirement from competition on 21 November 2006 at the age of 24, indicating that he was moving into the next phase of his life, citing waning motivation.[10]"
    • "Aside from 13 individual long-course world records,[9] Thorpe has also"—You can't have both "aside from" and "also". Second para, last two sentences each have a redundant "also". Every sentence in the text is an also, so it's much smoother not to use the word.
    • MoS is silent on this matter, but I think most house styles demand spaces either side of the times symbol: " 4×100".

The first thing to do is to chop up the huge sentences throughout. Then find fresh eyes to audit the prose. Tony 09:40, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

I've made further attempts to fix up the prose by dividing sentences and removing some redundancies. I will change the x spacing soon. Is it an improvement? Blnguyen (bananabucket) 08:45, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Object per Tony. Also, please don't use ibid in the dynamic environment that is Wiki, as future editors could insert new references, messing up the ibid. The lead includes a lot of detail, rather than a compelling summary: once you've had a thorough copyedit, the lead may need particular attention. Images need attention: looks like a lot of Fair Use images. Sandy (Talk) 16:29, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
    • I have fixed the ibid thing. I have tweaked the lead somewhat. As for the fair use images, I feel that they convey important historic events in Thorpe's career and cannot be replaced by re-enactments and such. Is there a limit to FU images used in the prose? Blnguyen (bananabucket) 08:45, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Further comments. It's better, but there are still problems in the prose, and there must be no shortage of fresh eyes to look at this one from a copy-editing viewpoint. There are issues concerning the smooth integration of ideas into sentences, such as:
    • "Thorpe was a large baby, weighing 4.1 kg and measuring 57.5 cm in length at birth and grew up in a family of sporting pedigree in the working-class Sydney suburb of Milperra." (and ... and; the two statements aren't closely enough connected to be joined by the second "and", which, in any case, needs to be separated from the first "and" by a comma). Try a semicolon: "at birth; he grew up ...", or just two separate sentences. Or—
    • "Thorpe was initially sidelined as a young child due to a chlorine allergy,[7] and swam in his first race at a school carnival aged seven with his head out of the water." OK, you have to think for a half a second to put together that the head out of the water was to avoid the chlorine; this should be neatly spelt out. "Thorpe was initially sidelined as a young child due to a chlorine allergy.[7] Because of this allergy, he swam his first race at a school carnival aged seven with his head out of the water." See how much easier it is to read?
    • There are awkward wordings, such as: "Thorpe did not seem to inherit the ball his parent's ball skills, instead following his elder sister Christina into swimming lessons at Padstow swimming pool when he was 5 [five] years old. This came through [opportunity arose by] chance after Christina was given medical advice that swimming would strengthen a broken wrist attained in [from] a backyard accident." And:
    • "He managed to win despite the ungainly technique, primarily due to his significant size advantage." By juxtaposing "the ungainly technique" and "primarily due", the reader will momentarily wonder whether it was the ungainly technique that was caused by his size. Makes the reader work harder to make sense of it, which should not be the case in good writing.

I took these examples from one small window in the article that I selected at random. This suggests that the whole text requires careful work. Do you know how to locate one or more good copy-editors? Research the edit histories of Australian- and sports-related articles (perhaps FAs), and identify those who performed linguistic, as opposed to procedural edits. Ask them nicely. Tony 11:28, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Ok, they have been fized along with the spacing after the times. Thanks, Blnguyen (bananabucket) 03:13, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Support - A very good and comprehensive article. - Parthi talk/contribs 21:59, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
  • More problems in the prose, selected at random from a single paragraph:
    • "His winning times were on average two seconds per hundred metres faster than the silver medalist"—False contrast: insert "those of" before "the silver".
    • "Frost knew that Thorpe had no realistic chance of gaining Olympic selection at only 13 years and 6 months, but sent him to Sydney in order to gain racing experience at senior national level."—Add "of age", remove "in order", add "the" before "senior".
    • "but swam slower in the final to miss selection"—Nope, "more slowly". But shouldn't it be "too slowly ... to be selected"? That's a blooper. Tony 01:39, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
      • Yes, by now it appears that I am either simply not skillful enough or simply not in a relaxed enough state to pick up these subtleties. I have fixed them and asked ALoan, who is active in sports to have a look at them, but he appears to be busy. You are an Australian Tony, perhaps you may help me please, so that I could pick up more examples for future use. Kind regards, Blnguyen (bananabucket) 03:13, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Support. We need more FAs on sports people. --Ghirla -трёп- 09:53, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Support Everything looks good now. I'm surprised that Blnguyen hasn't had an FA before. Makes me feel like I'm the only admin who hasn't had one. JoshuaZ 03:48, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
      • Errmmm, looking at my RfA nominations, and I tend to preference those with a healthy chunk of writing, the number of FAs I see is 0, 0.5, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1 featured portal, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0, 10 + 6 partials for Rama's Arrow and 0.5. So I would probably think that only 10-15% have an FA. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 00:00, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
    • Ok, one minor issue. It would be good to track down with a citation who the relative who had cancer was. The comment <>s seems to be unlikely given age issues. JoshuaZ 03:55, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
      • That was my fault - I put "relation" in there while checking with Blnguyen about what the relationship was. Yomanganitalk 18:53, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Support (Disclaimer: I've done some copy-editing on it during FAC) Despite the length it's a good read. Comprehensive and interesting. Yomanganitalk 18:53, 30 November 2006 (UTC)