Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Sheffield

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[edit] Sheffield

Self nom. This is a well referenced article. It has had most of its sections broken off and reduced in size in recent months. It now contains short and concise sections supported with more in depth articles. josh (talk) 17:48, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

  • Support. A very good article, well written and well referenced. I was going to nominate it myself at some point. - ulayiti (talk) 18:23, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Support Clear and concise. Zzzzz 18:37, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Support. Fits the FA criteria, and my objections have been addressed. Object. This happens to be where I come from and I want to support this article but there are several short sections/subsections that need to be expanded. 'Media and film' and 'Universities' sections are very disappointing - What about a picture of the university buildings? The 'Shopping' section should have a picture of The Moor or the T J Hughes store or Meadowhall. The 'Transport' subsections 'Train and rail', 'Air' and 'Cycling' are all too short - any section should ideally be two or more paragraphs. 'Twin cities' section needs to be converted into prose and merged into the lead or another section. There are also lots of short sentences and orphan words (the article could do with a good copy-edit). The article doesn't seem to talk about the residential side of the city and different areas such as Crookes, Crosspool and Walkey. An 'Education' section would be good mentioning the major schools and education institutions (Norton College, Tapton school, King Edward VII school, etc). There are also lots of red links which makes the article look bad. — Wackymacs 20:48, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
I've dealt with most of your complaints. The rest are a bit more difficult. There is a Districts section (under geography). I have added a mention of Hillsborough (our most famous suburb) but we can't start listing suburbs as there is about 100 of them. Expanded the Universities section into a more general Education section. I've also improved the Twin cities (now international links) section but i'm not sure about merging it as there is no other relevent section and it doesn't suit the intro. The transport section is too big to be left as a single section. Although in general I sections need to be 2 paragraphs or more, I don't think it needs to apply to every section. josh (talk)

07:47, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

  • Support Tells me what I want to know/find in an easy yet comprehensive way. Smerk 12:44, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Object. Fails Criterion 2(a): poorly written. I've copy-edited the lead; please find someone to go over the rest in detail. Tony 13:06, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Support - well-written; good information. (Ibaranoff24 22:59, 27 December 2005 (UTC))
  • Object; nice work, but there are a few problems that I can see. There are too many subsections in the transport section—if you want a subsection to be just one paragraph, try to make the paragraph fairly long, and don't string 6 short ones together. I don't think that there will be too much information there to merge all six under one heading. The "history" section should be expanded somewhat, and it needs at least one inline citation. The "estimated total of over 2 million trees" statistic and the following geographical data should have a citation. I'd move the information from the "location" section into the "lead" of the Geography section, and eliminate that subsection. Other sections, such as Sport, Music and Education would benefit from an inline citation or two. --Spangineeres (háblame) 00:06, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
Comment - the 'transport' section has now been rewritten. I have also expanded and added citations to the history section. JeremyA 05:05, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
Excellent work. I'd still like to see more consistency in the use of inline citations, because ideally, every fact in the article would be tied to a reference. I understand that this is difficult for an article that is built from so many different sources, but there's room for improvement here. I don't see too many outstanding prose problems, so I'm switching to weak support until sections like 'transport', 'education' and the last third of 'history' are properly cited. Sorry to be so picky. Also, I agree with JoaoRicardo regarding the incorporation of the "negative" side of the city—if there are any problems worth mentioning, it'd be good to include them. --Spangineeres (háblame) 06:23, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Object. Many weasel terms ("Sheffield is generally recognised as England's greenest city", "By the 14th century Sheffield was noted for the production of knives", "Sheffield has an international reputation for metallurgy and steel-making"), local bias (it mentions "the M1" without explaining what it is), too many short sections and subsections (do we really need a shopping section?). Generally speaking, the article paints Sheffield as the perfect place to live. I'm sure it has some problems, be it violence, pollution, unemployment, whatever. The "bad" things should be mentioned as well. JoaoRicardotalk 01:01, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
Some comments: "By the 14th century Sheffield was noted for the production of knives"--this is a reference to Chaucer (I have added the citation). "Sheffield has an international reputation for metallurgy and steel-making"--I don't know how this sentence could be changed. A 'reputation' is a fairly difficult thing to prove. However, I have added references to the OED and Encyclopaedia Britannica, both of which state that Sheffield is famous for cutlery and steel manufacture. 'M1' is linked to the article M1 motorway (England), which explains it pretty well. I agree with you on the 'Shopping' section and so I have merged it into 'Industry and economy' JeremyA 02:59, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
Jeremy, I see you and others have made some good improvements on the article. It looks better now. My reference to the M1 was on the sentence "The city lies directly next to Rotherham, with the M1 motorway designating much of the border between them.". In the version I had seen, M1 was not wikilinked and it wasn't described as "the M1 motorway", but simply as "the M1". The weasel words I had mentioned have been removed, and there are now references to the pollution (with a quote from George Orwell, very good!) and other problems. The rearranging of the subsections was also nicely done. I still would like to see more reference to city problems, but considering the wealthy of related articles (like Economy of Sheffield) which can discuss these issues in more detail, I believe the article is very good as it stands now. I'm changing to a support vote. Keep up the good work! JoaoRicardotalk 16:57, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Support. I do not agree with Tony1 about the writing. I like the article and think it's well done. Rlevse 03:41, 29 December 2005 (UTC) Response. You don't agree that the writing is not 'compelling, even brilliant', as required? OK, here's an example taken at random (it's the opening of the History section).

The explosive growth of the settlements in the area that became the City of Sheffield in the 19th century was a product of the industrial revolution. However, the area has been occupied since at least the last ice age,[9] and the settlements that grew to form Sheffield are Anglo-Saxon and Danish in origin.[10] At this time the Sheffield area was at the borders of the kingdoms of Mercia and Northumbria,...
    • It's unclear at the start whether the reference is to settlements or the area that became the City of Sheffield.
    • 'However' is a real problem: first, it doesn't contradict the previous sentence; second, is the second clause (after ref 9) also covered by 'however'? It's unclear.
    • Slight confusion between 'the City of Sheffield' and 'Sheffield'—I presume they're the same.
    • 'At this time'—at what time? It could be referring to several points in time.
    • 'at the borders of'—'at' is unidiomatic; and does it mean that Sheffield straddled the entire 'borders' of these two kingdoms?

See what I mean? It's a minefield, and not worthy of FA status unless intensively edited. Tony 12:30, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

  • Support, appears to meet all criteria; the paragraph Tony takes issue with above has been changed. Christopher Parham (talk) 06:27, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
  • It's getting better, but hey, guys, don't stop—one of the first sentences my eyes strayed onto was:
Sheffield is also a major retail centre, although it compares unfavourably with other major cities, it is home to many High Street and department stores as well as designer boutiques.

And there are little gems such as:

£250 million pounds

And:

It has spent most of its history

would be much better as:

Most of its history has been spent

So some further fine tooth combing is now required if the text is to meet the requirement of 'compelling, even brilliant'. A good hour's work, picking up sloppy little things and ways of ironing out the language. Over to you. Tony 07:48, 31 December 2005 (UTC)