Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Satellite Instructional Television Experiment/archive1

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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 02:34, 13 December 2007.

[edit] Satellite Instructional Television Experiment

I've been working on Satellite Instructional Television Experiment for over an year now. I feel that this is a very interesting and important subject in the history of the Indian space programme. The article covers all the points listed at Wikipedia:Featured article criteria. The article is as comprehensive as it can get. I have plenty of more information about SITE, but it is all mundane information like the complete TV schedules, the names of all films featured during SITE, the format for all feedback forms used, etc. Adding those details would not justify point 4 - "staying focused on the main topic without going into unnecessary detail". The article covers all the important points of SITE and does not neglect any major fact. The article is well referenced. A UN report on the project has been my main reference for the article. The article is a bit on the shorter side (21k). I do not feel that length is a criteria for FA though. Indian Standard Time was featured at 16k. The only point where I feel the article is lacking is on the image front. But I cannot help it as there are no free images available. There is an image which could be used - [1]. The owner of the image has agreed to let wikipedia use the image. When I contacted her to release the image under a free license, I did not get a reply. That image will be added whenever it is released under GFDL or an appropriate CC license. Aksi_great (talk) 09:12, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

comment The size of the article does not matter in this case. The topic seems to cover just the very required issues and is generally well presented. More images would be nice, but not mandatory. A basic image of an dish antenna would look nice, does not have to be a chickenmesh dish (which normally get filled with sparrows nests).

  • In the lead, you may want to change the phrase "unfriendly democracies" into something more diplomatic.
  • Throwing in a few more citations wont hurt.
  • Brazil, The People's Republic of China and India – which were geographically and socially suitable for such a project. A little detail (a line or two) describing why they were geographically suitable will be helpful. This may have to do with the type of orbit chosen and such.
  • Usage of the terms "Uplink" and "Downlink" is helpful and clarifying to a reader in the

"Technical details" section.

  • The statement According to the 1971 census, the most backward states in India were Orissa, Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal and Karnataka. Is this accurate? Could you be refering to backward districts? Do your sources discuss this in slightly more detail?
  • In the section "Village selection" , the first and second paragraphs have some repeat info on states. The two para's should be interchaged and cpedited to avoid repetition of state names. thanksDineshkannambadi (talk) 02:51, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
The article has been heavily copyedited by Blnguyen and ImpuMozhi. I have explained why Brazil, India and China were geographically suitable. Also clarified the point about backwardness. The states with the most backward districts were chosen, not the most backward states. The "unfriendly democracies" sentence has been removed from the lead for now. I will try and add 1-2 sentences to the lead as it looks a bit short right now. The village selection section has been fixed in the copyedits. - Aksi_great (talk) 10:20, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Oppose Not ready for FA:
  • One reference per paragraph is GA standard referencing, not FA standard referencing. Some paragraphs have no references at all.
  • The lead section is too short.
  • Some sentences are POV or not in formal encyclopediac tone. For example:
    • "The program was highly successful in that it was a tale of technological cooperation between unfriendly democracies."
    • "There were demands from villagers and journalists to continue the revolutionary experiment. Even Arthur C. Clarke, who had been presented with a SITE television set in Sri Lanka, pleaded with NASA to continue the experiment. But in the end, the SITE program came to an end in July 1976."
    • "The impact of the SITE transmissions was tremendous. For the entire year, thousands of villagers gathered around the TV set and watched the shows."
    • "The phenomenal success of the Satellite Instructional Television Experiment followed by similar experiments conducted elsewhere in the Appalachian Region, Rocky Mountains, Alaska, Canada, China and Latin America in the mid seventies and early eighties, clearly established the tremendous potential of using satellite TV for educational purposes."
  • The prose does not flow well. Don't start sentences with "but". Don't use "also" and "even" so many times.
  • The article has a few English mistakes. For example:
    • What is "The fist stage"? A stage where people fight with fists?
    • "aims of the experiment for the study the potential of TV as a medium for development" I think one word is missing.
    • Why a space in between "general objectives and specific objectives" and the full stop? Why put reference 7 between two full stops?
  • Improve the article and try GA first. --Kaypoh (talk) 09:13, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
Comment I believe the above recommendations by Kaypoh are minor and can be implemented right here. No need to remove from FAC.thanksDineshkannambadi (talk) 13:03, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment - I will start working on all the points that both of you have mentioned. But one point that I would like to make is that I don't understand the point of references. References should not be counted as "1 per paragraph" or "some paragraphs have no references". I have referenced absolutely everything in the article. For example, there is only 1 reference after the objectives section because the entire section is referenced from one source. Please give me examples of something which you would like to see referenced and I can work on that. But just a vague objection like not enough references is not something I can help with. - Aksi_great (talk) 18:34, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

comment I agree that there is no set rule how often a citation should occur, which is why I casually mentioned that adding a few more refs wont hurt. This way, future readers will not hastily tag the article and cause inconvinience to you. This is only from my previous experiences. As such, in a technical article such as this, there is hardly room for POV.thanksDineshkannambadi (talk) 19:51, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Footnote counting and citation density aren't valid opposes. A footnote should cover everything up to the next footnote, and if everything in a paragraph is covered by the same note, one note will suffice. However. In an article that is heavy with hard data (as opposed to straightforward, fairly uncontroversial prose), specific data should be cited. I wouldn't worry about counting citations here, but would cite the hard data. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 05:55, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
Note for Kaypoh - The article has been heavily copyedited in the last 2 days by Blnguyen and ImpuMozhi. I think most of your points regarding english usage are taken care of. I have also toned down the POV adjectives. The only point left to address is the lead. I am working on the problem right now, but this being a short article, the lead will probably be on the shorter side too. I still am not sure about the references though. See my comments above. - Aksi_great (talk) 10:45, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Support. An excellent article, both informative and well-written. I have just made some changes, uncontroversial ones (I can only hope). Some further points:
  1. "The television signal had two audio channels with different dialects." I suppose "dialects" is a specific, professional term here? Can it be explained better?
  2. "However, it did not provide for small towns where the existing TV set density was fairly high but not as extensive as in a city." I find "high density but not extensive" somewhat self-contradictory. I don't get the meaning, could it be reworded?
  3. "The UNDP.....helped set up the Centre for Educational Technology." If possible, we should have 2-3 words on what the CET did.
  4. "...(evaluated) the change brought by TV in rural structures." Rural society, perhaps? I would do this myself, but I am not sure of the scope of the actual study. Please check and amend if necessary.
On the whole, an excellent article, deserving of FA status. Regards, ImpuMozhi (talk) 03:01, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
I have explained the point about audio channels and about the town TV density. The sentence about CET has been removed by me. On a re-read of the UN report, I got the feeling that it wasn't related to SITE but was just mentioned as a project UNDP would be involved with in the months after SITE. I couldn't find out much about the purpose of CET too as it seems that it has been merged into another organisation now. Rural structures has been changed to society. - Aksi_great (talk) 10:45, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
Great. Two other points: (1) The districts of Raipur, Bilaspur and Durg now lie in Chhatisgarh (2) Karnataka was known as "Mysore" before 1973. Regards, ImpuMozhi (talk) 16:12, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
Good point about the districts. I have put a note below the table. Karnataka is not a problem as the experiment started in 1975, an Karnataka was already Karnataka by that time. - Aksi_great (talk) 08:10, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

comment I will take one more look at the article before supporting it.thanks.Dineshkannambadi (talk) 14:57, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

  • Support A well written FAC on a new topic. Will hopefully inspire other development/technology related FAC's pertaining to India and other developing countires.Dineshkannambadi (talk) 01:28, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Support well written and comprehensively covers the topic. -- Naveen (talk) 01:53, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Oppose for now. I think this is something that could pass the FAC criteria (specifically, criterion 1a) after a thorough copyedit. I haven't looked through the entire article, but judging from my copyedit of the lead, I could only presume the rest of the article has prose issues. Also, I request more citations be added to the article. The "International collaboration" has only one source, and "Technical details" has three sources for three paragraphs of text. Nishkid64 (talk) 04:45, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
    Reply to Nishkid - I expanded the lead after Blnguyen, Dinesh and Impumozhi copyedited the article as you can see from the history. That may be the reason why the lead had problems. As for the references, I still do not understand why the number of references is so important. The article is quite a short article and all the facts and figures are sourced. I've had a look at the article twice now but I couldn't find anything more to source. The paragraphs have one source as they are all sourced from a single UN report which is the best and only good source about this experiment on the internet and probably elsewhere too. (I've searched both Google scholar and books, but couldn't find anything better). If you have a problem with something which you feel is not sourced adequately, then please tell me. Just counting the no. of refs/paragraph without going through the article is a bit unfair. - Aksi_great (talk) 05:13, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
    If you are using one source, could you please use reference IDs and duplicate the reference every few lines? It's just a personal preference. Also, I'm only referring to the number of references, because I'm a bit short on time to point out specific issues. I could add {{fact}} tags a dozen or so times, due to the current referencing state. I can help out with referencing. My university library has some materials on SITE available. Nishkid64 (talk) 05:30, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment -
    • This resulted in a lot of interaction between film-makers and folk-artists. Shyam Benegal went on to include many of these artists in his children's feature film Charandas Chor (1975). - These sentences are irrelevant to the article's subject matter
    • failure in electricity supply - This contradicts an earlier statement, that specially designed solar powered TV sets were used in the experiment
    • It is not very clear from this article as to how India got into this experiment. The article talks of a core ministerial group which sat together to discuss possible uses of a synchronous communications satellite for India and recommended ATS-6. Was this recommendation more of a coincidence? How did India come to know of SITE? Did NASA send any feelers to India, that it was looking at a collaboration? From the last paragraph, it appears that NASA was twiddling its thumbs waiting for India to make a first move. How was this deadlock broken? This is important.
    • Impact on the rural population was highest in the fields of agriculture and family planning - This needs objective citation
    • For the entire year, thousands of villagers gathered around the TV set and watched the shows. - This is a very generic statement and can be removed since actual viewership numbers are provided in the next few sentences.
    • Was there an agreement that the SITE program would last for only an year. This needs to be mentioned because the closure of the SITE program appears abruptly in the article and confuses the user on why such a successful program was closed.
    • This was done firstly using a spacecraft simulator from NASA, then using the Indian Ocean INTELSAT satellite and finally using the ATS-6 satellite before SITE was launched. The last part of the sentence is confusing...
    • I agree with User:Nishkid64, that the article needs citations. Will try to find some myself
    • Section 7 and 8 contradict each other. While 7 says that thorough testing of all stages were undertaken to ensure objective evaluation, 8 says that viewership dropped because of faulty hardware and television sets. A consistent picture needs to be presented.
    • MoS issues related to Emdash and Endash needs to be checked and corrected.
Was the article formally peer-reviewed? That would have helped solve many of the issues -- ¿Amar៛Talk to me/My edits

Reply to Amar

  • I find the information about Benegal quite interesting and relevant as it demonstrates the unforeseen effect that SITE had on a notable film-maker of India.
  • OK. A clarification that the programmes produced by Shyam Benegal for SITE, were folk-based would improve readability. Currently, the "folk-artists" just drop into the article without any prior statement on how they are relevant to the article. -- ¿Amar៛Talk to me/My edits 10:44, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
  • I have clarified that only 150 villages were provided with the solar powered and battery operated sets. All others ran on electricity.
  • I am trying to read more about how NASA and ISRO got together for SITE. Will make that point clear soon.
  • I don't have objective citations for the "impact on rural population" statement. But a planning commission report says that, and I have provided with proper citation at the end of the paragraph.
  • Well, it would ideal to provide objective measures for impact because that would add credibility to the statement. Moreover, it is mentioned that the evaluation of SITE was done very thoroughly and hence some data should be available to corroborate it. -- ¿Amar៛Talk to me/My edits 10:47, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
  • Yes, the agreement was for 1 year. I have added that info to the beginning of the sentence to make it sound less abrupt.
  • The sentence has been modified. I hope its meaning is more clear now. The testing was done in 3 stages before SITE - simulator, INTELSAT and finally using the ATS-6.
  • User:Priyanath has sent me a paper on SITE from JSTOR. I will try to cite more stuff from that. But at first glance, most of the information in the paper is the same as in the UN report.
  • 7 and 8 don't contradict to me. 7 says that all necessary testing was done prior to SITE while 8 says that some faults were developed during SITE which can happen to any electrical equipment.
  • OK. If Section 7 deals with evaluation done prior to SITE, the sections are OK. I have striked off my comment above -- ¿Amar៛Talk to me/My edits 10:47, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
  • I am going through the article once again for the MOS issues, though SandyGeorgia has taken care of most of the dash issues.
  • Finally, I will also take a look at the auto-pr suggestions. - Aksi_great (talk) 14:47, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
  • AutoPR
Per discussion below, the review comments of AutoPR are moved to the article's talk page here -- ¿Amar៛Talk to me/My edits 04:50, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
Amar, would you mind adding the peer review scripts to the article talk pages instead? The automated script can be helpful, but its feedback isn't always accurate to each article; while it's useful at peer review, it could be misleading at FAC. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 04:44, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
Done. Ideally, it should have been in a peer-review page of the article. Since I could not find it, I added it here. While I agree, that the script may contain some inaccurate feedbacks, it does highlight some points worth taking note of. Thanks -- ¿Amar៛Talk to me/My edits 04:50, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Support I like this article very much. Very unique topic. K a r n a (talk) 13:55, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
Comment I notice in passing (won't affect my support) that it is mentioned that the U. S. "maintained only" diplomatic relations with Communist China - if you are talking about the 1960s, this is not true. Diplomatic ties were established only in 1979. Also, the first section reads a little un-professional, like someone narrating a story. K a r n a (talk) 13:58, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Update - I'm sorry I haven't been responding for the last 2 days. I've been busy due to some RL issues. I'll start working on the comments immediately. I'm hoping that Priyanath can send me another paper written about SITE so that I can provide a few more citations. - Aksi_great (talk) 04:58, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
  • Oppose Not yet ready for FA, citations are very less and please change the list into prose in the Objective section. Amartyabag TALK2ME 09:38, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
  • Support Nicely written! Could be improved in terms of having more sub-headings and references/citations and context, but FA quality.--Keerllston 21:31, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
  • Object. 1a. Redundant wording and assumptions of knowledge or facts that haven't been announced earlier in the text. Repeated patterns of these two issues.
    • "The project was supported by various international agencies such as"—Subset terms are doubled up. Remove "various" and keep "such as". Then "SITE was followed by similar experiments in various countries"—Just "other" countries; why stress their variousness? Audit the whole article for this "various" word. It's in the first para too.
    • What is "also" doing in the first para?
    • Does the logic—the causality resting on "as"—hold up here? "The experiment was successful, as it played a major role in helping develop India's own satellite programme". The assumptions implicit in "as" haven't yet been unpacked so close to the top of the article.
    • "NASA sought to field test the direct broadcast of television programs to terrestrial receivers via satellite and shortlisted India, Brazil and the People's Republic of China as potential sites to stage the test. The country which would receive these broadcasts would have to be large enough and also close to the equator for testing a direct-broadcast satellite." Remove the last four words in the first sentence. See why? Again, knowledge is unreasonably assumed in the wording; this time, it's "the country to receive these broadcasts ..." (Note my tweaks). It's a sudden jerk for the reader that only one country would be chosen.
    • Yet another sudden jerk: "While the communist regime of China was not recognised at the time by the U.S., Brazil was also ruled out as ..." But you haven't said that China was ruled out. Then we have to reverse-realise that the fact that the US doesn't "recognise" China = it wasn't chosen. Hmmmm .... The sentence "As a consequence,... " makes the reader work too hard.
    • MOS recommends against spaced em dashes. If you want to space interrupters, use en dashes.
    • "At the same time, India was trying to launch its national space program ..."—Gives what I'm sure is the wrong impression, that India was huffing and puffing without much success. I think "planning to launch" is what you mean.
    • "... U.S. prevented the U.S. ..."-Ungainly repetition. (Love those you dot es dot periods: quaint! Not actionable, though.).

I appreciate the hard work, and would like to see this resubmitted after thorough, careful copy-editing by someone who's unfamiliar with the text. Tony (talk) 11:32, 11 December 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.