Wikipedia:Featured article review/X Window System/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 13:16, 20 November 2007.

[edit] X Window System

[edit] Review commentary

Notificiations: Wikipedia:WikiProject Free Software, Wikipedia:WikiProject Linux, User:SallyForth123, User:David Gerard

Certainly not a bad article, but it clearly shows the signs of having been promoted back in 2005, when the rules for FA where less strict. This article would need some work, mainly with referencing (2c), but also with prose (1a) to keep it at FA status:

• Large sections are completely unreferenced:
  • The X client-server model and network transparency
  • Design principles of X
  • User interfaces
  • Implementations
  • and many other section are incompletely referenced
• Most references are just links, sometimes with a date, but no publisher/author information whatsoever
• The images in the top right hand corner actually show three window managers without further explanation of their link to the X window system. Images in the introduction of an article should be understandable from that introduction.
• It has two citation needed tags
• Prose could use some work here and there:
  • "Instead it is a user application built as an additional layer on top of whatever the host operating system is."

--Cpt. Morgan (Reinoutr) 15:52, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

This is a question of referencing style, e.g. "Design principles of X", which is straight out of the book. If not being in whatever is this week's fashionable referencing style per FAC is a defeaturing reason, then go right ahead - David Gerard 16:17, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

David is right here; these 'unreferenced sections' are actually pretty much fully referenced out of several of the more general works listed as bullet points in the References section. This article was merely written before inline referencing became in vogue. Matthew Brown (Morven) (T:C) 00:06, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Maybe the non-free Windows screenshot has to go, because there is only one confusion that it can correct, and it is well explained in the text of that and previous sections. --AVRS 18:51, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure I agree. Seeing adds a whole new level. Matthew Brown (Morven) (T:C) 00:07, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Would the nominator please make sure that relevant parties are notified as per FAR nomination instructions? Thanks. --RelHistBuff 05:51, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

What makes you think I haven't? Oh well, here they are: [1][2][3][4] --Cpt. Morgan (Reinoutr) 10:08, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

• Comment, if other editors agree that the referencing in this article is good enough, I have (obviously) no objections to this being kept as an FA into all of eternity. I was merely bringing it here to get some opinion on the subject. If that was inappropriate, my apologies :). --Cpt. Morgan (Reinoutr) 10:08, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

• Pls notify; Will the nominator pls follow the instructions at the top of WP:FAR and notify relevant WikiProjects and involved editors and leave a note at the top of this FAR of notifications done? (See other FARs for an example.) Thanks, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:27, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

The nominator did do so, but the notice used external links rather than a normal wikilink (so it couldn't be read properly). I changed the formatting. --RelHistBuff 16:15, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] FARC commentary

Suggested FA criteria concerns are references and their formatting (1c, 2c), and prose (1a). Marskell 21:57, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

• Remove Insufficient citations. Existing citations not formatted correctly. Jay32183 01:15, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
• Retain "Not formatted correctly" appears to mean that {{cite web}} was not used, or conceivably that the word "accessed" is not explicitly present. (When I finish this !vote, I will add a note to the section, in case any reader is genuinely confused.) This is deeply unimportant; cite templates are not mandatory, and are of value chiefly to those who cannot write their own footnotes.

In general, converting FA into a giant game of Gotcha does not contribute to the encyclopedia. None of the discussion here, such as it was, identified a single assertion which is both "challenged or likely to be challenged" and is not readily verifiable in the listed sources; and is therefore not actionable. Please continue to ignore footnote-counters, as our policy suggests. Reviewing articles is difficult and time-consuming, but substituting this sort of superficiality only tends to bring FA into disrepute. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 06:59, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

• Remove per 1a,1c,2c,3. The prose is not so bad but the article does need copyediting to make it easier to read (long sentences, clarification, etc.) and I don't think what is here right now is "engaging or even brilliant", you may also consider cutting down on lists. While citations are not required for every statement, they are needed for quotations and opinions, which is sometimes omitted in this article - for instance the quote of Bob Scheifler and Jim Gettys is not referenced. Even though the editors of this article seem to oppose the use of standard citation templates, the citation style should at least be consistent within the article itself and include some basic information on the sources (minimum of title/date/author). Sometimes there is an "accessdate", sometimes there is a "date", sometimes there are neither and the date formats are different for different links. Sometimes the external links are in footnotes, at other times the links are external links from within the text. Lastly, use of images is not always logical and image captions are not descriptive: "GNOME 2.20",etc in the intro are not descriptive nor do they assert relevance to a reader unfamiliar with the topic and these are not even referenced in the intro.--Sir Anon (talk) 11:08, 19 November 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.