Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Funeral of Pope John Paul II/archive1

Funeral of Pope John Paul II

I am renominating this article for featured status. Previously, this article had been nominated here and here, and turned down, mostly because the even was very recent, and too many fair use pictures were used. It was also peer reviewed. In my opinion, sufficient time has passed between the funeral and now. Also, I have tried to cut down on the number of fair use pictures, and changed them with ones in the public domain. Since I have worked on this article, this nomination is a partial self-nom. Bratsche^{talk 5 pillars} 02:15, Jun 21, 2005 (UTC)

• Roughly half of the images are still {{Vatican}} "fair use"; the others are {{PD-USGov}}. If this is acceptable, I would support. -- ALoan (Talk) 14:12, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)
• Support, great article; very comprehensive. Phoenix2 18:40, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)
• I finally get some time to thoroughly review a FAC again. Unfortunately, I have to oppose this one. I agree with the above that this is a great article, but I believe it is not correctly, or sufficiently referenced. First of all the web-based references (the only references available) are not formatted according to the MoS page WP:CITE. There are no retrieval dates, and no information about the linked document aside from the title, making it difficult for readers to find essential information about the sources (authors, publication, date of publication) once the corresponding documents are no longer online or archived with a different URL. I also think the article does not cite its sources precisely enough (no footnotes). I could find a lot of examples of strong, precise, or even unusual statements that would need to have their source indicated in footnotes, to make it easier for intrigued readers to fact-check these statements. Comprehensiveness is pretty useless if readers can't make sure the details in the article come from reliable sources, especially for such a high-profile article. Consider the following sentences for examples of statements that I believe should have specific source information in footnotes: This tradition originates from ruthless cardinals looting the papal chambers upon the death of past popes., Pope John Paul II instead chose to be buried in his favorite pair of Polish-made brown leather shoes, an American size ten and a half, which he wore on his travels throughout the world. There are many more. The article also slips into conjecture (on rare occasions, but nevertheless): The funeral was perhaps the most-watched live event in the history of television., One of these would have required Cardinal Martínez Somalo to tap the head of the pope with the ceremonial silver hammer, a practice that is believed to have ended some time ago. My final criticism to this article of otherwise pleasing quality is the (also rare) use of "artsy" language in some places. Consider Centuries of sacred rituals are set in motion upon the death of a pope.; in my opinion, figures of speech like this do not have their place in an encyclopedia. Besides, such sentences are pretty useless: simply enumerating the rituals at hand is sufficient. The reader can then easily see that the funeral of a pope brings a lot of rituals with it, without being told so explicitly in a rather tourist-guidy style. We're close to FA quality here, but not quite there. Phils 20:05, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)
• Oppose Use of copyrighted images potentially not permitted by fair use. Images taken by wikipedians would be preferable even if they were of somewhat lower quality. On varrious photography forums around the net I saw dozens of teriffic pictures, is no one willing to go convince even one of them to come submit their work here? Gmaxwell 02:05, 27 Jun 2005 (UTC)