Talk:Leonard Orban

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Good article Leonard Orban has been listed as one of the Social sciences and society good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can delist it, or ask for a reassessment.
Maintained The following user(s) are actively involved with this article and may be able to help with questions about verification and sources:
Michkalas (talk • contribs • email)
This in no way implies article ownership; all editors are encouraged to contribute.
This article, or a portion of it, was copyedited by the League of Copyeditors in August 2007. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the project and see a list of open tasks.
  • Copyeditor(s): Sigma 7 09:13, 10 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Proofreader: Dalobuca 22:26, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Possible improvements

Michkalas,

  • The lead should probably be expanded somewhat as described in Wikipedia:Lead_section.
  • Both the personal life and career sections should probably be expanded as well, and both need citations.

Beyond that, I'd suggest that you submit it for a peer review. Mocko13 01:26, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Thank you very much for your comments. They have really helped me a lot. I have tried to follow them and improve the article. So now there is an expanded lead section and more details on his personal life and his career. I have added also a few words on his political leanings. For the time being, I have no more English language sources that I could consult -though a better search may provide something more. The EU has announced that Orban will have his own website, but until then probable there are very few things to add from English sources. Some Romanian language sources may help for his earlier carrier. I have asked some Romanian wikipedians for possible Romanian sources, but nothing came out of it. So maybe it is now time to ask for a peer review. --Michkalas 20:54, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] GA Fail: review and fixes needed

I have unfortunately had to fail this article's good article nomination. While most of the criteria met under good article criteria are being met, there are some serious issues with the images. Specifically, item 6. (c) from the criteria: "any non-free images have a fair use rationale." This article uses several copyrighted images, and there is no rationale given for their use. Please see this link for more information on how to fix this. If these issues can be addressed, please feel free to renominate for GA again. Please note that images are not required to meet good article status, but improperly liscenced images are a problem and should be avoided. As well, please note that wikipedia's fair use policy, as spelled out in the liscencing tags applied to the images in question, both requires a fair use rationale (see link above) and also says that images that merely show what a person looks like is not enough to meet the bare minimum of fair use requirements. Keep this in mind in your changes to this article. If you have any further questions, please see me at my talk page and I will elaborate here as needed. --Jayron32|talk|contribs 03:11, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

There was a note on my talk page by Michkalas requesting some help in fixing these problems. First of all, two things should be noted about images vis a vis Good Article Status: 1) According to good article criteria, no article needs any images to be promoted to GA, and 2) any images that are present need to meet all [[WP:IUP|requirments for der free-use liscences such as GFDL or Creative Commons.

    • By default, any image which is not expressly liscenced as GFDL, Creative Commons, or part of the public domain (whether expressly or by default of being older than 1923) is assumed to be copyright by the images creator, and are not free.
  • Only in cases where no equivalent free image exists, and I cannot stress that enough, a copyright image may be used in lieu of a free image under the guise of "fair use". In order to be considered fair-use:
    • No equivalent free-image exists (in this case, there are no free images of Leonard Orban availible).
Option 1) Remove all images. The article is then a good article, since images are not necessary for promotion as a good article
Option 2) Replace all copyrighted images with free or public domain images. A list of places to look for free images can be found at: Wikipedia:Free image resources and Wikipedia:Public domain image resources.
Option 3) Place adequate fair use rationale on the image pages, and you should consider this option only if you have made a good faith effort at finding free images at option 2. See: WP:IDP#Fair use rationale for some examples.

Also, Michkalas requested an article to see how fair use is done on a politician. I did some browsing, and found that Saqib Ali does an OK job with fair use rationale. It isn't formatted exactly right, but it gets the idea. Click each picture in the article, and see the image description page where it does spell out a rationale for using a copyright image. Honestly it was hard for me to find a good article using copyright images with fair-use rationale, since most Good Articles used free images. Nearly all photographs taken by government entities are released into the public domain, so any national or international politician SHOULD have a plethora of free or public domain images availible. This is definately true in the U.S.; I have no idea on how this works in Romania or in the E.U, but I would speculate that for a politician of this level, free or public domain images exist somewhere. Good luck, and if you have any further questions, please feel free to see me at my talk page --Jayron32|talk|contribs 03:22, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Thank you very much for your detailed and useful comments on the fixes needed. I believe that the fair use rationale is now OK. I have followed your comments, but as there is not an other fully equivalent example I had to improvise a little. One point of concern is that in fact I do not know if these photos should be considered "low resolution" (probably not) and, in any case, their resolution is not reduced from the original (I have noted in the images description that this is not possible, but I am not sure if this is correct). In any case, any possible profits of the copyright holder cannot be hearted as the photos can be used for free, according to his legal notice. It seems that, according to their legal notice, the EU institutions, though they do not "release the photos in the public domain" like the US government, hold the copyright, but allow to use/publish them for free. So, when you have time, take a look and tell me if everything is OK and, since there doesn't seem to be any other problems, I would renominate it for GA.--Michkalas 13:08, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] GA Review

In reviewing the article according to the Good article criteria, I agree with the previous reviewer in the article meets the Good Article criteria in the first five categories.

  1. It is well written.-Pass
  2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.-Pass
  3. It is broad in its coverage.-Pass
  4. It follows the neutral point of view policy-Pass
  5. It is stable-Pass

Now the question comes down to whether or not the article passes the images criteria with applicable fair use rationale. After looking at the images carefully and WP:FU, I have decided to pass the article on this criteria. While I am not 100% convinced that there are not any free alternative available (the gentlemen is still alive, after all), I think the irreplaceable nature of the particular events in photgraph coupled with the "European Parliament: Legal notice" quoted into the fair use rationale is sufficient for GA status. So congrats on producing a Good Article. AgneCheese/Wine 09:10, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Remarks

Per Michkalas request some remarks:

  • I still believe the prose needs further improvement. Check for instance from the lead: "June 28, 1961) is a Romanian independent technocrat who currently serves as the European Commissioner for Multilingualism in the current European Commission, the executive body of the European Union." Repetitive. "Steering the multilingualism language policy of the EU, Orban focuses on promoting foreign language learning " "Orban gained a bachelor's degree (1981-1986) in engineering at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering" Again a sense of repetitive prose. It is not bad, but for FA status it must be "brilliant" and "compelling".
  • "Though unaffiliated to any political party, Orban adheres to liberalism." Maybe this could be further analyzes in the text, since liberalism can be interpreted in many ways.
  • Sometimes your article gets over-wikified. Check how many times you link Romania and Romanian. One is enough!
  • More information about his childhood and early years, though not a pre-condition for FA status, would make the article more vivid and interesting.
  • "From 1993, Leonard Orban served in various posts dealing with European affairs." How did it happen, and from proffessional engineer he got involved in European affairs.
  • "He has written numerous newspaper articles and analyses and has given numerous speeches on European affairs." Vague! Specify! What are these speeches and articles mainly about? Why are thy worth mentioning them?
  • "Orban has not joined a political party but is of liberal political leaning." Per above comment.
  • "Orban is responsible for the language policy of the European Union, i.e. promoting multilingualism for the citizens and the institutions of the European Union" I read somewhere (I think "Charlemagne" in the Economist) that this is actually an "empty portfolio", meaning with no actual content; because we have that many Commissionners, Orban was unlucky and took a post with no job. This is the argument! Maybe you could find something about that, for and against this argument. I will send you the article.
  • I know see that you speak about that: "The portfolio was criticized for being too "light" for such a high-rank official, that there would be an overlap of responsibilities with other Commissioners and the good functioning of the Commission would be endangered." You could expand maybe, and cite: criticized by whom?
  • "This criticism came from the Social Democratic Party (PSD), Romania's main opposition party,[19][20][21]" If you want, you can combine citations in a row in just one citation per Tourette syndrome.
  • You tell us about his "views". What about his actions from the beginning of the year until now?

After I come back from my journey, I may come back with more suggestions!--Yannismarou 20:02, 27 April 2007 (UTC)