Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Belarus

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

The article was promoted 03:55, 27 December 2007.

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Belarus

Check external links

previous FAC (00:52, 10 December 2007)

Despite the long and confusing FAC last time around, I have made the following changes. First, I sought help of the League of Copyeditors and they fixed everything that some of yall seem to have problems with. I still have those Manual of Style issues stuck to the back of my mind, but I believe those were fixed too. Second, while not a major issue brought up, I removed all red links that were in the article. I expanded a little but more sections and added about 5-10 more sources to the article. I know someone said to use book sources and I added a few today. I am not sure if a further reading section is needed, but if one is asked for, I can make a list of one or two books I found useful. All links should be working this time, image issues sorted out during the copyedits. Hopefully, this effort was needed to make the article hopefully up to the standards Wikipedia begs its users to strive for. User:Zscout370 ^{(Return Fire)} 07:12, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

• Support. An excellently written, comprehensive article. This is the bar all FAs should strive for. --krimpet✽ 07:17, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
• Support It is an article that is professionally written, well sourced, and long. (An expectation of country articles) I'd give a thumbs as it passes all the criteria. (SUDUSER)₈₅ 13:21, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
• Comment. Why is there no mention of Belarus being the last European dictatorship? Sarsaparilla (talk) 16:30, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
  • Because other users felt it was a major POV issue. I did include quotes by Lukashenko saying he is an authoritative leader and showed what Western Governments and NGO's said about his ruling style. The link is somewhere in the history, and I do remember it was written by the BBC. User:Zscout370 ^{(Return Fire)} 16:34, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
    • Surely, it's not a POV issue to say that US and EU consider it the last European dictatorship, while the CIS and especially Russia refute these accusations? —Nightstallion 21:47, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
      • I know what you are getting at; lemme dig in the history and add it in the article text. User:Zscout370 ^{(Return Fire)} 02:51, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
        • • Nightstallion and Sarsaparilla, it's in, along with how the government feels about the accusers. They come from the same BBC report. I hope this is fair. User:Zscout370 ^{(Return Fire)} 03:01, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
            • Yep, that's precisely what I had in mind. Thanks! —Nightstallion 09:05, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
• Note to Sandy: I began to edit the external links after you provided that link. I switched at least one, removed one, and thinking about the others (especially a PDF file from the foreign ministry). User:Zscout370 ^{(Return Fire)} 16:41, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
  • There's still one blacklisted link. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:40, 22 December 2007 (UTC)
    • That is a Google cache link. Working on that still. User:Zscout370 ^{(Return Fire)} 19:05, 22 December 2007 (UTC)
      • From looking at it, the cache also died. I just removed it. User:Zscout370 ^{(Return Fire)} 19:11, 22 December 2007 (UTC)
• (Comments moved to the talk page that were not relevant to the FAC). User:Zscout370 ^{(Return Fire)} 03:27, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
• Support Passes all criteria in WIAFA with flying colors, and it's a hell of a lot better than the FAs I've written. east.718 at 03:01, December 21, 2007
• Support, clearly. —Nightstallion 09:05, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
• Support, naturally very well written article... :) --Brískelly

• Support The article is well-written and appears comprehensive and Zscout370 has been very prompt in fixing all of the MOS issues I noticed. Karanacs (talk) 18:30, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
• Oppose for now. It is definitely well-written and comprehensive but there are some WP:MOS violations that need to be taken care of.
  • full dates need to be wikilinked so that date preferences will work.
  • Need a non-breaking space between a number and its unit or qualifier (use {{nowrap}} or &nbsp ;); for example 9.85 million could be {{nowrap|9.85 million}}
  • There should not be external links embedded in the body of the article. There is currently one in the history section
  • You can probably combine the two-sentence paragraph on life expectancy with the paragraph before it.
  • You probably ought to specify whether dinner is the midday or evening meal. In the US, many southerners refer to the midday meal as dinner (with the evening meal being supper), and in the northern part of the US the evening meal is dinner.
  • the template on Belarus topics should be at the bottom of the article and not in a See Also section
  • Not all of your references are formatted properly. Some do not have publisher names (22-24, 28, 32, 33, etc)

Karanacs (talk) 19:44, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

• • I moved the template already, and I use &nbsp for the nonbreaking spaces already, so I will just use that in where you told me. User:Zscout370 ^{(Return Fire)} 19:15, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
    • Sorry about the sig issue, what happened is there was a typo for "nowiki" at the end tag. I'm working on the dates now, I fixed the link, I think I got all of the non-breaking spaces, paragraph merged, working on the citation issue now. User:Zscout370 ^{(Return Fire)} 21:14, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
• I think snagged them all, except for the dinner bit (which I explained on your talk page). I am going to format all of the citations now that are not in the template format. User:Zscout370 ^{(Return Fire)} 00:42, 22 December 2007 (UTC)
  • I got everything, but I left a note at your talkpage showing I did stuff. No response from user yet. User:Zscout370 ^{(Return Fire)} 05:12, 24 December 2007 (UTC)
  • The discussion is at User_talk:Karanacs#Belarus_FAC. User:Zscout370 ^{(Return Fire)} 05:22, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Sorry about the delay in my response, I was out of town for the holidays and forgot to leave a message on my talk page saying so. I saw the message that your sources don't specify which dinner it is, and that's fine. Karanacs (talk) 18:30, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Support - A few very minor things.

• "is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe[1] that borders Russia to the north and east" - You need some form of punctuation under the ref, as is done elsewhere in the article (comma, period, etc.)
• I think ref 8 should go before the sound sample
• There is half a section tucked under the second image on the "Demographics" section, which looks odd (for me)...perhaps move the image up a bit

— Dihydrogen Monoxide _(Review) 07:15, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

• • I fixed the first two issues, but due to the database locks, I will need to fix the last one later. User:Zscout370 ^{(Return Fire)} 07:26, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Comment Update the demography graph, it only goes up to 2003.--Miyokan (talk) 01:00, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

• About that, I checked the website that has the data for demography and I could not find updated numbers. I also wish to know what program was used when making that chart. Once I find out what program was used, I can update the chart. User:Zscout370 ^{(Return Fire)} 06:56, 23 December 2007 (UTC)
  • I was notified that the source information requires a login and a password in order to access it. I am going to remove the chart for now. User:Zscout370 ^{(Return Fire)} 05:17, 24 December 2007 (UTC)
• Support. Great article. —dima/talk/ 05:03, 24 December 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 candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.