Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Venus

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[edit] Venus

This is a joint nomination by User:BillC and myself. Venus lost its FA status about a month ago, because of serious omissions and poor writing quality. Bill and I have rewritten it completely since then to address these concerns. We've got something now which we believe covers all the fascinating aspects of the brightest object in the night sky after the moon, and so here it is for your consideration for a return to FA status. Worldtraveller 07:52, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

  • I just spell checked it, fixed some errors. And now I can Support. Great work! — Wackymacs 08:01, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
  • Object – some tweaks still needed: 1. Why are .gifs used? Please convert to .png. 2. MoS for units not followed. a) The non-breaking space ( ) is not used for all units. b) Inconsistencies noticed in the use of imperial equivalents. In some places imperial units are used, and in some places they are absent. Needs to be consistent. c) subzero temps need to be prefixed with −, not a hyphen. 4. This could be also added as Venus is refered to in Vedic astrology. Q: Why is the infobox a transcluded template? =Nichalp «Talk»= 08:12, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
    I have converted Image:Phasesofvenus.jpg to svg: Image:Phases-of-Venus.svg =Nichalp «Talk»= 10:03, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
    Thanks for that; it looks good. I have tackled your points as follows: 1. There are no longer any .gifs. 2.a) Non-breaking space now used throughout for units. b)Imperial equivalents now all removed. c) Negative values prefixed with −, not a hyphen. 3. I will look into adding a para about Venus' influence on eastern and western astrology. 4. I am not sure why the infobox is a transcluded template, though it appears to be standard for all the planet articles, including the recently FA-promoted Mercury (planet). It could, of course, be subst'ed if there was a strong need to do so. --BillC 09:05, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
    Thanks for taking care of it. I didn't exactly intend to have the imperial equivalents removed. What I meant was to include them for all the missing ones. Including the equivalents would reach out to a wider audience. =Nichalp «Talk»= 06:37, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
    I did consider doing that, but with over 20 measurements imbedded in the text, and not including those in the infobox, I thought it might become a little bloated with imperial equivalents. I'll have a look around at a number of FA's on scientific topics, and if the consensus there is to provide imperial equivalents in each instance, will do so for this article. (The infobox looks out of the question if we want to avoid serious clutter.) --BillC 08:24, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
    I looked at a number of other FAs, especially Mercury (planet) and Enceladus (moon). These last two don't provide imperial equivalents, so my intention is not to do so for Venus. I'll leave it to someone else if they feel it is particularly necessary. BillC 10:22, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
    I have though now added a couple of sentences on Venus' significance to western and Vedic astrology. BillC 19:41, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Comment Where is it specified to not use gif files? What is wrong with them? If you can't find a specification to not use gifs, that is not a valid objection. Rlevse 10:14, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

    • Gifs generally have a lower quality than PNGs. — Wackymacs 10:21, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
OK, but that doesn't make it a valid objection as it's not a requirement; it should only be suggestion. Also, gif files are bigger than png and jpg, but I don't see that as a valid objection point either. Are jpg files generally better or worse quality than png? Many articles use jpg. Rlevse 10:02, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
PNG is superior to GIF and JPEG for small diagrams - GIF is limited to 256 colours while PNG is not. For photos, though, JPEG is far superior to PNG because although it's a lossy compression and therefore lower quality, file sizes are far smaller and the perceived loss of quality is negligible. Worldtraveller 10:36, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for the info. I can understand that but I still think making an objection on image type is going too far, it should just be a suggestion. Rlevse 13:29, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
My vote is valid as it is official policy. Please see this: Wikipedia:Image_use_policy#Format =Nichalp «Talk»= 06:39, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
  • ObjectSupport—2a. I believe that it's a candidate for the CD, and this is one that I want to see promoted. However, considerable work is first required to fix the prose. Here are examples.
    • Your reference to 224.7 days in the first sentence: don't you have to specify Earth days? After all, Venus has its own diurnal rhythm.
    • "As such," starting the third sentence. As what? Can't this just be removed?
    • "is often referred to as the Morning Star and Evening Star." Better as "the Morning or Evening Star".
    • "the two are very similar in size and bulk composition"—"very" means nothing without a definite comparator; better without it.
    • "The planet is covered with an opaque layer of highly reflective clouds and no surface can be viewed in visible light from Earth"—Awkward. Try this: "The planet is covered with an opaque layer of highly reflective clouds and its surface cannot be seen from Earth in visible light".
    • "The nature of Venus was therefore historically a subject of great speculation until some of its secrets were revealed by planetary science". Doesn't this flow from the previous sentence well enough to do without "therefore"? The first three words mean nothing, and should be removed. Can you add a chronological item, such as "over the past two centuries"?
    • "Venus has the most substantial atmosphere amongst the terrestial planets". What do you mean by "substantial"? Sorry to be a stickler for concision, but why "amongST"? Nowadays, "among" is the default.
    • "Venus's surface has only been mapped in detail in the last twenty years." To be precise, "only" should be more carefully located in the sentence. Please consider using numbers for 10 and above; most international journals like it that way.

Now, that's the first two paragraphs. This suggests that the whole text needs a good massage. It's potentially such a good article; well done, you two; but thus far, it fails. Tony 11:21, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments. On the first one I'm not sure - adding 'Earth-' looks a bit clunky to me, and it seems implicitly clear that Earth days are what is meant. Would quite like to get a second opinion on that one, but I've corrected the others. Actually, the way we wrote it we probably paid the least attention to the intro, so I'd suspect that problems there would not necessarily mean the rest of the text needs work. If you could give it a read through and see if that's so, we'd appreciate it. Worldtraveller 11:43, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
I looked at random and saw:
    • "The astronomical symbol for Venus is that also used in biology for the female sex".
    • "The probe arrived and was placed in a polar orbit on 11 April of the following year." What exactly does "arrived" mean? Then the subsequent sentence is a bit clumsy with those commas, finishing with just "of Venus". What does "Its" refer to straight after that?

So, yeah, it does need a word-nerd to go through it, preferably someone who's unfamiliar with the writing of the text. I look forward to reading sparkling prose after your process. Tony 15:56, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

Having left it a couple of days and done other work, I've gone back to the article and thoroughly reviewed it. It should be much clearer and hopefully more sparkling. Any further comments most welcome. Worldtraveller 10:36, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
  • Support. This article is thorough, comprehensive, organized, well-referenced, and well-displayed. A very informational and accurate piece of work. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 23:07, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
  • Support. Great article, very well written, interesting, clear and very understandable. Reflects a good level of expert knowledge. Nice! - Dreadlocke 17:04, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
  • Support meets the criterias. I made a few edits myself and have watched the page for several days now and believe the article is excellent.--MONGO 03:32, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
  • Support. Looks quite nice, helped me to get a better idea as to what to do for other articles. Tuvas 18:14, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
  • Support. Well written and comprehensive. Definitely a model for other planet articles. --Volcanopele 19:36, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
  • Support: I compared it to my encyclopedia at home and the comparison was pretty good for this article. Nice work! Tombseye 07:26, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
  • Thanks! Of course, if you can see ways in which this article can be made better than the other one, please suggest them. --BillC 08:02, 16 June 2006 (UTC)