Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Watchmen

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[edit] Watchmen

This is a good article. It is stable, and it describes a seminal work in comics in a clear, concise manner without sacrificing information. (This is technically a self nomination, though my contributions to this article have been minor.)--DCAnderson 00:02, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

  • Object
  1. Lead is too short
I added a bit.--DCAnderson 03:06, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
  1. Short quotes shouldn't use blockquote
  • I got rid of all the 2 line or less block quotes.--DCAnderson 02:08, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
  1. References in other works should be prose, rather than a collection of sentences about the same topic
I don't understand.--DCAnderson 02:14, 25 May 2006 (UTC) Fixed.--DCAnderson 03:11, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
  1. All fair use images need source information and fair use rationales, some of the fair use images are unnecessary as they do not add signiicantly to the article.
I've given a rationale for the use of all images.--DCAnderson 02:48, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
  1. Discussion of the art seems to be lacking
Started a section for this.--DCAnderson 03:41, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
  1. I would suggest merging the film adaptation into the merchandising section since a since these two sentences do not require a section of their own
  • Copied it over, I'll csd the stub later.--DCAnderson 02:09, 25 May 2006 (UTC) Whoops, misunderstood what you said. It should be good now.--DCAnderson 02:38, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
  1. Has there been any academic commentary on the Watchmen?
  • A Google search of .edu domains[1] seems to turn up some good stuff. I'll start integrating.--DCAnderson 01:49, 25 May 2006 (UTC) Added first of these to art section.--DCAnderson 03:41, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
  1. Ex links should follow the references according to the MoS.
Moved.--DCAnderson 02:51, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
--Peta 01:35, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

"some of the fair use images are unnecessary as they do not add signiicantly to the article."

Examples?--DCAnderson 01:56, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
Radioactive man.--Peta 02:06, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
gone--DCAnderson 02:12, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Allright Peta, I think I've taken care of most of your concerns.--DCAnderson 03:53, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

  • Support - recent additions have cleared up my questions about comprehensiveness. --Peta 22:32, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment -- do we think that someone entering "Watchmen" into our search box would be looking for a comic book? Jkelly 18:20, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
This should take care of it.[2]--DCAnderson 02:57, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
Perfect, thanks. Jkelly 22:05, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
Still not quite ready to support. I did some quick copyediting. I'm a little confused by the pirates section. I understand that the pirates section is a comic book within a comicbook, but how important is it? Jkelly 20:15, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
It's pretty important, almost a quarter of the narrative is throgh that comic.--DCAnderson 20:21, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
Allright, well now that I'm flipping through, "a quarter" might be an overestimate on my part, but it is still a pretty big part. Out of a 12 issue miniseries, the story of the Black Freighter plays a prominent role in issues 3, 5, 8, 10, and 11. So almost half the issues. There is even a four page article in issue 5 about the fictional author of the Tales of the Black Freighter. The "author" even plays a small role in the plot of Watchmen. I know it seems kind of weird, but that "story within a story" is a big part of Watchmen.--DCAnderson 20:42, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
Okay. I'll give it another read-through. Jkelly 23:21, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
Awesome, thanks :)DCAnderson 23:23, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
In the "Counterparts" section of "Characters", is that us making the comparison? I looked at the reference given, and it gives a one-to-one relationship between the Watchmen characters and the older characters, but we have this "...with elements of..." material in there. Where did that come from? Jkelly 23:31, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
A lot of it seemed to be Original Research which I've now removed. The rest can be traced to an Alan Moore interview that I added as a cite.--DCAnderson 23:42, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
Support. Thanks for being so responsive, and for the good work. Jkelly 00:37, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
I'll try to see what I can do, but from what I've been able to get from the talk page, this has been a problem in the past, as it is hard to find secondary sources who have analyzed the themes in Watchmen. So far it seems that when a themes section is created, it usually gets deleted as Original Research. I'll work on something though.--DCAnderson 16:46, 28 May 2006 (UTC)
still needs to be fleshed out: the themes should be alaborated on more, and only one pgraph on determinism? additionally, article contains some poor writing e.g. "Such graffiti occurs in the Watchmen universe upon the proposition of The Keene Act, depicting the change of public opinion towards the practice of vigilantism.". needs an outsider to copyedit whole article. plot summary should not go beyond 5 pgraphs. "keene act" section should not exist - should be merged into plot summary (without going over 5 pgraphs). headings should not be wikilinks. break artwork section into at least 2 pgraphs. why the big gap between "reception" and "criticism" sections? why is there a hardcoded colour in the infobox "creative team" of the infobox? lead should summarize the entire article. there are too many sub-sections, making the TOC daunting - try merging the many one-pgraph sections together into larger multi-pgraph sections. fairuse images do not have fairuse rationale. dont capitalize heading either ("Reception and Acclaim"). in Editions, give dates for all the releases from the 12-part comic onwards. there should be more on the process of authorship: when did alan moore start writing it, how long did it take to write, how was the writing experience, the drawing experience? finally, what about the smiley face becoming the acid house logo? other works that were inspired by watchmen? did moore ever go back to the themes explored in watchmen in later work? Zzzzz 11:00, 4 June 2006 (UTC)
Hello. I believe your issues with the themes section have been addressed as I added information on hero worship, fascism, and expanded the determinism section and mentioned the running themes throughout other books Moore has written. In addition, I believe DC has addressed the other problems with the article. Tombseye 19:06, 4 June 2006 (UTC)


  • Weak Strong Support--The article seems more extensive than a lot of other featured articles and is pretty complete and I obsessively read Watchmen and Watchmen-related stuff myself. The only criticism I can think of is that the references could be longer and more extensive. Tombseye 04:14, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
  • Allright, I've started a "Themes" section. Let's see how well it does.--DCAnderson 04:46, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
  • Object. First three paragraphs (in header) all begin with the same word. Some minor formatting issues. Also, a professional encyclopedia article would paraphrase rather than uses execcess of block quotes. Certainly better than many other Wikipedia articles, but still not quite FAC quality ready. --FuriousFreddy 06:35, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
I added some variation to the first three paragraphs. Could you be more specific as to what the "minor formatting issues" are? I'll look into paraphrasing some of the quotes.--DCAnderson 13:48, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
I've paraphrased some of the less interesting quotes. Do you think we should try to get rid of all the quotes? Are there some which you specifically think we should address?--DCAnderson 14:58, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
You should try to get rid of all of the quotes, or, at least, not use such large blocks of them so often. The "minor formatting issues" involve images being used that are positioned so that they distort or interrupt the flow of the page. Also, the chart i nthe middle of the page about who the Watchmen were based upon should be converted to prose. --FuriousFreddy 16:07, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
I think the table is probably for the best, because in prose form we would get a really repetitive "A is based on B, C is based on D, E is based on F" kind of thing. I'll check the other things.--DCAnderson 16:20, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
I've played around with the images, and they seem to look ok on my browser in a "small" window. I'll start digging into the quotes.--DCAnderson 16:38, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
There are no more blockquotes now.--DCAnderson 17:00, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
A key to good writinhg is variation; taking a paragraph with sentences that could be formatted as a "repetitive 'A is based on B, C is based on D, E is based on F'" thing ,and making it not that. I copyedited that paragraph some. Changing vote ot 'Support; although I must note that the sub-article Chapters in Watchmen is in dire need of cleanup and rewriting (in fact, it may not be needed at all). --FuriousFreddy 17:58, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
  • Weak Strong Support. This article has improved markedly in quality since the FA process started, something which makes me wonder if it's quite there yet (is it really stable, does it still have a lot it could improve rapidly?). It's just good enough now for me to support it, but with some reservations as to the structure and quality of the prose. In particular, I think some more attention needs to be given to the (new) Themes section:
  1. In places the prose is too conceptually dense and hard to comprehend (too many psychology references, not enough clear English explanations)
  2. In other places it just plain needs some careful rewriting to make it "brilliant" (I found the start of the section — As previously noted, Nite Owl asks, during a riot, "Who are we protecting them from?" to which the Comedian responds "from themselves." — to be quite clumsy, there surely must be a better way of introducing the section).
  3. I'd recommend sub-sections for each theme to break this section up into a more easily-digestible structure (e.g. Determinism, Megalomania etc as sub-sections).
Much kudos to the significant editors on this one, you have and are continuing to do a wonderful job. — Estarriol talk 22:28, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
I will fix the clumsy sentences. We tried the subsections which others didn't want so we went with how it currently stands. I'll reduce the psyche references as well. Thanks. Tombseye 22:37, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
Okay, fixed the sentence (and others I could find) and reduced psyche references and dense material as per request. The article's not unstable so much as we've (DC and I) been trying to address people's concerns about the article to make it the best featured article it can be. It has no history of instability and has not been the subject of edit wars or anything of that sort. Hope that clears things up. Thanks. Tombseye 23:02, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
  • Yet more excellent work, Tombseye. The themes section is, for relatively small cuts and changes, now much more readable — and brilliant — prose. I take your point on stability, thank you for reminding me why that is sometimes a concern, and when it is not. Strong Support now – this article isn't perfect, but perfection is not the requirement, every article can always be improved. This would make an excellent front page article on one of the most historically important and groundbreaking pieces of modern literature, from a central figure of the modern writing scene. Superb work. — Estarriol talk 09:27, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Support: This is definetly one of the most comprehensive and well written articles on wikipedia about a Graphic Novel. In my opinion, many of the previous concerns about themes, scope, and copyediting, etc, have been addressed to an acceptable level during this FA review. Good stuff.--P-Chan 23:12, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Correction: Upon making a fine-tooth inspection, I've noticed copyedit issues that still need to be addressed. (Thus, I've downgraded my rating down to Weak Support. Once these are solved, I'll switch back to support again. Sorry about the switch guys.--P-Chan 05:09, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
I did some major edits and copyediting to fix the article. Let me know if are okay. Thanks. Tombseye 06:03, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
Looks like we're good. I'll change my vote back to support.--P-Chan 07:40, 8 June 2006 (UTC)