Wikipedia:Featured article review/Henry Fonda/archive1

The following is an archived discussion of a featured article review. Please do not modify it. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page or at Wikipedia talk:Featured article review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was removed 19:18, 4 October 2007.

[edit] Henry Fonda

[edit] Review commentary

The following wikiprojects were notified at the time of this nomination: WikiProject Academy Awards;‎ WikiProject Biography/Arts and entertainment;‎ WikiProject Biography‎ WikiProject Actors and Filmmakers‎ and WikiProject Film‎. As well as the FA nominator: User:A Link to the Past. And the article's top four contributors:‎ User:Kaisershatner‎; User:Volatile; User:Steve Eifert and‎‎ User:Rlevse.

The article was promoted to Featured status in 2005, and hasn't been reviewed in nearly two years. The article doesn't meet various featured article criteria:

• Lead section is five choppy paragraphs.
• The paragraphing in general is sloppy and needs to be tightened.
• Many things in the article are not backed up by factually verifiable sources, as only 17 in-line citations are present.
• Many paragraphs in the article don't even have citations. In general, more citations are desperately needed.
• The citations that are present are in disarray and need to be wikified.
• All images in this article are copyrighted and may not meet fair-use criteria; including the infobox image which is scheduled to be deleted on August 28.
• Article could be more comprehensive.
• Prose needs to be spruced up, and weasel words and peacock terms need to be removed.

Overall, this article does not currently exemplify Wikipedia's best. Grim-Gym 02:05, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

The user who nominated this article is currently blocked for violating the three revert rule. I gave him a copy of the article's code at his request so that he can add improvements, but please realize that he will be unable to make changes or communicate here until the end of the block. BassoProfundo 03:23, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

Please notify major editors and relevant WikiProjects as stated in the instructions for WP:FAR. Please indicate your notifications below the title of this page. Thanks. --RelHistBuff 21:16, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

Y Done.

Now we need to fix up these issues ASAP. Greg Jones II 03:24, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

Do we know when User:A Link to the Past will be unblocked from editing? Sadly, he appears to be the only person interested in preserving this article's Featured Status. Grim-Gym 21:20, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

The logs do not even indicate that he is blocked, but recent discussion on his userpage shows that he is. I will contact him via IRC and try to find out when he will become available. BassoProfundo 21:51, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

User:A Link to the Past is now unblocked. Greg Jones II 18:25, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

Now is the time for someone to take it upon themselves to start addressing these concerns, or we'll have to move on to FARC. Grim-Gym 20:13, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

It's clear nobody has any interest in working on this article. I therefore recommend that we move on to FARC. Grim-Gym 03:33, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Can we simply change it to improving the article without a review or removal? I'm pretty busy right now, so... - A Link to the Past (talk) 01:50, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Well, we're already at the review stage, so we can't really go back. We won't move on to the removal stage if the article's being actively worked on, but unfortunately that doesn't seem to be happening. Since we're already here, if you or anyone else can't work on it anytime soon, then the best I guess you can hope for is having it removed from FA and then trying to get it back at your own pace. That's a worst-case scenario though. Grim-Gym 13:10, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

This FAR will possibly never be looked at again by anyone other than me. No one is going to make an effort to fix the issues mentioned. Can we move on to FARC and remove this poor-quality article from the Featured list? Grim-Gym 00:13, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] FARC commentary

Suggested FA criteria concerns are LEAD (2a), citations and their formatting (1c and 2c), paragraph structure and prose (1a), comprehensiveness (1b). Marskell 11:30, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Remove - Per all the above-listed points—none of which were addressed. Grim-Gym 21:34, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

• Remove. The lead section still includes choppy prose, I see a problematic and inconsistent referencing, and stubby sections. I hope improvements come, so as to change my vote.--Yannismarou 11:09, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
• Retain. I have knit up three short paragraphs into adjacent ones; the others seem to, properly, give one paragraph to one subject. I do not see what Yannismarou means by stubby sections. The nomination is regrettable; citation cannot be evaluated by counting footnotes, and seventeen is a respectable number; the test is whether the reader can check the source of any statement "challenged or likely to be challenged". No examples given. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 14:34, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

• Remove.
• Anderson, you just did count them, having said they can't been evaluated by counting. What kind of gobbledygook is that? You read 1c in a very odd way ("Any edit lacking a source may be removed" ... J. Wales: "This is true of all information". ""Verifiable" in this context means that any reader should be able to check that material added to Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source.")
• The History section is full of overly small subsections (and in some cases, paragraphs).
• MOS breaches all over the place, including capitalisation and non-logical punctuation.
• Awkward writing, such as "Together, they adopted a daughter, Amy (born 1953),[12] but divorced three years later." Logical problem in "but"; twisting and turning.

It could be saved, but would require considerable effort. Who? Tony (talk) 11:44, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

• • Ignore any complaint of a "MOS breach", per WP:AAFD.
  • In short, the counting is both an appeal to a bad standard, and an unfounded complaint if I were, arguendo, to accept the standard. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:40, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
  • I see only two sections which are less than a single screen, and removed one of them. His war service, as a interruption, really has to be a section of its own, no matter how short. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:45, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
  • "Logical" punctuation does not contribute to the clarity, accuracy, verifiability, or neutrality of the article. If you can convince the article editors to switch, fine - that's consensus; but it should not be an FA requirement because a handful of opiniated editors on a different page happen to like it. 17:51, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
    • It would've been nice if this article could've gotten this much exposure when I nominated it over a month ago. It possibly could've been saved had that happened. Unfortunately, at this point, it's beyond hope. Grim 21:03, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
      • This is why I suggest, on talk, that articles which fail the initial review be put back on FAC, which would get this article the attention it needs. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:59, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
        • Well, if you think about it, there's really not much of a difference between extending the FAR process and improving it after it's been removed. Sure, the FA star will be gone for a while but the challenge is no different. This article needs improvement quite desperately, and being a "former featured article" should be incentive enough for getting it back to FA. If someone would sit down and devote some time to it, I think it could be up to FA quality soon enough. Grim 03:49, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
          • Actually, it is at FA quality (that is to say, the quality of the articles we actually promote) now; and I doubt any of the tweaks (whatever they are) demanded by the MOScruft faction will measurably improve it. Fortunately, no one is likely to waste time on doing them. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:57, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
• Remove, 1c, 2—poorly sourced and undercited, uses marginal sources for the few things that are cited. Uncited direct quotes. Numerous MOS breaches as well. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:12, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Please ignore this complaint of (unspecified) "MOS breaches" as well. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:53, 3 October 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 review. No further edits should be made to this page.