Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/The Day the Violence Died/archive1

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 not promoted by SandyGeorgia 14:26, 31 January 2009 [1].

The Day the Violence Died[edit]

Nominator(s): Gary King (talk)

Did you know that the Simpsons episode "The Day the Violence Died" features Kirk Douglas and Suzanne Somers as guest stars? And that Lester and Eliza, older versions of Bart and Lisa Simpson, appear at the end of the episode?

Images: One screenshot showing the two main characters of the episode, Bart and a newly introduced character, Chester J. Lampwick. Another screenshot shows Eliza and Lester, a different version of Lisa and Bart. The remaining two images are free.
Sources: The references are straightforward, except perhaps a few that are only used for reviews of the episode—nothing controversial. These are: DVD Movie Guide, DVD Verdict, and DVD Times.

I have been working on this article for a few months now. It is my first television episode article, but nevertheless I think that all the bumps have been ironed out. Gary King (talk) 02:31, 25 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comments - sources look okay, links checked out with the link checker tool. Ealdgyth - Talk 02:35, 25 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - Could you crop that Kirk Douglas pic to remove the "KIRK DOUGLAS" banner? Its just looks very odd, since that pic is only used to identify Douglas. indopug (talk) 10:41, 25 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Done Gary King (talk) 17:04, 25 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose Featured articles are supposed to be examples of Wikipedia's best writing. This is all written in yada yada yada style—the eighteenth episode of the seventh season, Itchy and Scratchy show, the critics generally like it, so what? I won't change this to a support unless the article focuses on what is special about the episode, and finds something special enough to make the article interesting to the general reader. Looie496 (talk) 19:14, 25 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The article also talks about Kirk Douglas's involvement in the episode, which I consider to be pretty significant. Gary King (talk) 19:20, 25 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

"Yada yada yada" isn't mentioned in WP:WIAFA. –Juliancolton ^Tropical ^Cyclone 21:12, 25 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

(To Looie) On the contrary, the article should not *focus* on what makes the subject special. That would be providing undue weight. Now, should an article mention those things, and describe them without going into excessive detail? Definitely. I don't see what the problem is here, though. Dabomb87 (talk) 22:35, 25 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not interested in Simpsons episode articles at all, but I believe that the reason for Looie496's oppose is not backed up by the Featured Article criteria which does not require that an article has to focus on things which are "special". --Novil Ariandis (talk) 18:36, 27 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose I have to agree with Looie here and I'm puzzled by his critics. I'm not sure that yadayada is the best way to put it but let's face it: the content is very very thin. I don't particularly fault the authors: there's probably too little material out there to construct an article with any real depth. Most of the meta-commentary is about the controversial nature of the episode but it rests on pretty much nothing. Yes, one guy from the DVD Times labelled it as "controversial" but the rest of the article seems to take that bait and discuss that controversy as if it existed. But let's pause for a moment and ask: "what exactly is this controversy?" Two critics disagreed on how good the episode was? One critic said "yeah I liked some of it but not all of it"? That's not controversy, that's what happens everyday with critics and a film is not controversial because it got a thumbs up from Ebert and a thumbs down from Roeper. Then we have

"In one of its jokes, Bart asks Homer for a large sum of money and Homer immediately pulls out his wallet. Oakley described the scene as "very controversial" among the show's producers; Matt Groening, the creator of The Simpsons, in particular did not like it."

Now why exactly is that scene controversial? It seems like a pretty harmless gag and the controversy being referred to here seems to be that Groening didn't like it. Note that this controversy is between the show's producers and has nothing to do with the so-called controversy between the critics. The section on the episode's reception is based on a handful of reviews seemingly picked at random and this again shows that there's just not enough in-depth commentary out there to build an article that's not a collage of factoids. The last sentence of the article is a great example of this problem. Scholarly discussion of the episode probably took place during that class at Columbia but the only trace we have of that is the student's favourite quote. Until we have access to non-superficial coverage of the episode, I can't see how this can be considered as exemplifying Wiki's best.

PS: I just took a quick look at some of the other FA Simpsons episodes. I suppose people will argue that this candidate is just as good as the other FAs. I'm not sure I want to debate that because frankly some of these should go to FAR... Nevertheless, the best of them definitely have scholarly analysis and commentary about the episode. For instance, see the "Themes" sections in The Joy of Sect or Lisa the Skeptic. Pichpich (talk) 02:24, 29 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

There is indeed very little out there to work with for this episode's article, but we tried our best. A "Themes" section is always nice, but when there isn't enough information for one, it cannot be created; I'd say that most recently promoted episode FAs don't have one, such as "The Other Woman". Regarding the controversial stuff, there only seems to be a few mentions of controversy in the article, which seems to be the parts of the article that you are mostly focusing on. After reading your comment, I get the feeling that it is essentially just saying that the article can never become an FA because there isn't enough information? I can remove the university statement, if that helps; I think the article has enough reviews as it is. That information was originally included before I found other reviews that I could use for the article. Gary King (talk) 02:47, 29 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

A Google Books search reveals slim pickings. Dabomb87 (talk) 03:06, 29 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

When put it quotes, it only returns 24 results, all of which I had already gone through before when writing this article. Gary King (talk) 03:12, 29 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, I think I am saying that the article can't become an FA for now. I'm not asking for information to be created, I'm just asking for a calm realization that this information doesn't exist. This plagues the article in many ways: there's the yadayada symptom and there's the "let's say the episode is controversial" symptom. The first is the result of scarcity of content with any depth, the second is the result of trying too hard to mask that scarcity. Some subjects simply shouldn't be featured articles and standards of content depth should be maintained. And lest I be thought of as a pop culture snob, just compare this article with the FA Homer Simpson: it's not in the same league. Compare, say, the quality of the references. In The Day the Violence Died, the opinion of critic Colin Jacobson (reference 12) is used thrice. How deep is that opinion? On my browser it takes five lines. The one sentence quote of critic Jennifer Malkowski (reference 14) is actually the sole sentence she ever wrote about the episode [2]. Speaking of which, who's Jennifer Malkowski? You can see her profile here. Note this funny little detail: everyone contributing on DVDverdict is facetiously referred to as a "judge" [3] but the references in the article attribute the work to "Judge Malkowski". Ditto with reference 16: the two line quote of Dave Foster actually constitutes Mr Foster's entire take on the episode. Moreover (I just found out) he does not say that he considers the episode as controversial. He says that his singling out of this episode as subpar is likely to be controversial. And correct me if I'm wrong but this Dave Foster is not one of the better known David Fosters. I'm not even sure why dvdmg, dvdverdict or dvdtimes should be considered as more authoritative sources than say your basic Simpsons fan site. So I'm sorry for being blunt but no, there's no way for me to envision this being a featured article any time soon. Pichpich (talk) 03:32, 31 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Are you opposing because there is not enough available information, or because the reference quality is subpar? Dabomb87 (talk) 04:56, 31 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'm getting to the point where I'm not even sure people read what I write. Let me try this again. The article is way below FA standards. It is short on content. A quarter of the article is a plot summary. Much of the discussion not related to the plot is based on a dubious notion of controversy. Many of the references hardly qualify as reliable. At least one name in the references is incorrect. The article misrepresents a quote to fit the "controversy" axis. The article has no depth, in part because a whole section is based on references with no depth. The article includes a photo of Kirk Douglas which was taken 50 years prior to production. Pichpich (talk) 06:56, 31 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

"Short on content" isn't really helpful. Is the article not comprehensive, per the 1b criterion? The plot summary only takes up 18% of the article's prose. The controversy stuff is only the first paragraph of the Production section. Ealdgyth already checked out the references in this article. I fixed the name, the quote, and the image to one of 1978, so we're inching a bit closer to the present (all three quite trivial things to use as a reason to oppose). Gary King (talk) 16:01, 31 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Image review - Fair use images meet WP:NFCC and the other two images have verifiable licenses and adequate descriptions. Awadewit (talk) 02:36, 29 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comments — File:Kirk Douglas.png: there is no doubt the movie (and hence its screenshots) is in the public domain; however, is it appropriate to refer to a 1952 image of the actor (36 years old then), when it is his 80-year-old self (whose appearance differs from his younger screen persona) who provided the guest voice in this cartoon episode? Jappalang (talk) 04:32, 29 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

There are other images available of Kirk, but I think this is the best one. For example, File:Kirk Douglas 1978.jpg is good, but it is really small. I have added a "seen here in 1952" note in the image caption just in case. Gary King (talk) 15:51, 29 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I think the addition to the caption should be okay. Jappalang (talk) 22:57, 29 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose. I'll make no bones that I'm not a fan of Simpsons FAs. Not because of how many there are; instead, because they rarely meet the criteria. Pagesize.js gives the size of this article at 18.5KB. My baseline for comprehensiveness of episode articles is $s_{min}=14\times \ln l-23\,$ , where l is the length of the episode in minutes, and s is the size of the article. This article is currently 1.5KB below my baseline. The Simpsons is one of the most influential television programmes in history. It must be possible to write more than is currently here for this episode. Sceptre ^(talk) 04:47, 31 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
That's kind of an arbitrary requirement, but okay, I'll bite; which line are you using? "Wiki text: 18 kB"? Gary King (talk) 16:05, 31 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.