Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/List of NASA Administrators

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

The list was promoted by User:The Rambling Man 06:54, 14 July 2008 [1].

List of NASA Administrators[edit]

Meets all of the criteria. Tables are sortable, and illustrated with freely available images (all public domain). Duplicated images were necessary due to the limitations of sortable tables. There are no red links. There is a single, reliable reference that lists all of the information in this table, so I don't think that more references are needed. Note that the list is very newly formed from the merger of two articles, but I don't think that is a problem as it wasn't a controversial merger. Mike Peel (talk) 23:31, 4 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comment Why doesn't this list explain the reasons for an administrator's termination? Why doesn't it list some basic background info about each administrator, as well? I believe these bits of information are vital to help the reader's understanding of the subject. Nishkid64 (Make articles, not wikidrama) 23:57, 4 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I felt that the list should be fairly short and snappy, rather than containing prose (it's worked well for other lists I've worked on). Further information about the administrators, including their reasons for termination if they are known/notable, should then be in the articles (although I haven't checked this). Another reason for not putting in text is that having multiple rows for each item breaks the sortability. Mike Peel (talk) 07:06, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Done. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 07:06, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment
    • Add a period at the end of note four.
    • Why are there gaps between some terms?
    • When you mention various offices at the end of the lead, would it be possible to link to articles if they exist?--Dem393 (talk) 05:31, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Period is fixed. I would assume that the gaps between the terms were when there was no Administrator and/or Deputy Administrator as the successor to the previous one was being decided upon. I can't find any articles for the various offices, hence why they aren't linked. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 07:06, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

  • Get rid of "This is a list of Administrators of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration." A FL should be engaging, and this doesn't engage the reader. Articles don't begin with "This is an article about <subject>", and neither should lists
  • WP:LS. Only use bold text in the opening sentence, not the second and third paragraphs
  • As well as saying who the current administrator and deputy are in the lead, you should provide an overview of the rest of the list. Who had the shortest term? Why? Who had the longest term? Who made/oversaw the biggest or major changes to NASA, and what were they? Etc

Matthewedwards (talk • contribs • email) 09:13, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

How's that? Mike Peel (talk) 10:47, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I've just realised that "How's that?" is a bit cryptic. I should probably have said: I've rewritten the introduction, is that better? Mike Peel (talk) 09:55, 6 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support, given that my colleagues' issues are being addressed. It's a good page. TONY (talk) 13:11, 11 July 2008 (UTC) Yes, much better. Otherwise it's pretty stale at the opening for our readers. Now, the autoformatting: MOSNUM no longer encourages date autoformatting and now prescribes rules for the raw formatting); please also see MOSLINK and CONTEXT. I note your comment that you can't cope with US formatting—but that's what almost all of your readers cope with, all over the world, no matter what the most common date formatting in their variety. Conservatively, that's 99.9% of readers, since the misconceived autoformatting program works only in-house, for logged-in, preferenced Wikipedians. Removing the bright-blue splashes show us what our readers see, and allows your high-value links to breathe. It's not hard to get used to at all. Try it. Americans seem to have no problem with the British/Australian format, which appears in their country-related articles and, BTW, after everyone's signature. TONY (talk) 02:30, 10 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
That very same page has a nice section on date autoformatting, which (guess what) encourages date autoformatting. I also note that the section you link to states that dates in the format DD Month YYYY are in the "International format", whilst Month DD, YYYY are the "American format". Personally, I'd advocate setting autoformatting preferences to the International Format for all IP addresses that are based outside America (or alternatively, for all IP addresses in countries that use the International Format), in which case having the autoformatting enabled would be of use to a large chunk of the planet. But I acknowledge that we don't do that at present.
I agree that having them as bright blue links is mostly unnecessary, but there is currently no alternative if they are to be autoformatted. Not autoformatting them is an unnecessary step backwards. Instead of arguing for the links to be removed, why aren't you arguing for the autoformatting to be improved? Mike Peel (talk) 07:24, 10 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Been down that pathway, I can assure you. And no, MOSNUM says: "Careful consideration of the disadvantages and advantages of the autoformatting mechanism should be made before applying it: the mechanism does not work for the vast majority of readers, such as unregistered users and registered users who have not made a setting, and can affect readability and appearance if there are already numerous high-value links in the text." Doesn't sound very encouraging to me. Further discussion on Mike Peel's talk page. TONY (talk) 09:17, 10 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • I've suggested to Tony1 that he takes the issue of date formatting to the community for general discussion. In the face of general developer apathy, I'll live with the funny US date formatting in this article for now... Mike Peel (talk) 17:32, 10 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comments
    • Consider {{double image}} for your lead images which, in my world, leak into the next section.
    • "Acting Administrator in between,[10]" - presumably should be a period?
    • I guess being uber-picky, I'd prefer Photograph rather than Photo in the table.
    • Should numbers like 2792 be 2,792?
    • I'm not sure there's any point in a column called Ref(s) which exclusively refers to one general reference.
    • Can you format both tables so the same cols are the same width?
    • Deputy Admins template doesn't Mulville was acting, the table does...

The Rambling Man (talk) 17:09, 10 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

  • Thanks for your comments. Do you have a suggestion for an alternative way of doing the Ref(s) column? I've always found that to be the neatest way, even if there's only one ref (bear in mind that more might be added in the future). I'm also not sure how to have the columns in the two tables the same size, without either switching to a fixed width (bad) or using a percentage of the width, which might be too small on some people's screens (also bad); any suggestions? The rest of your points should be sorted. Mike Peel (talk) 17:28, 10 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Further to this, I've added fixed widths to the tables. They won't work well if the text is enlarged by the user, though... Mike Peel (talk) 19:54, 10 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Comments
  • Could you make the column widths of the corresponding columns of the two tables the same so that it becomes neater? (Eg: Width of the "Term end" columns of the two tables should be the same)
  • Is the Ref column necessary? Couldn't the refs just be moved next to the Admin's name?
  • You should crop Seaman's pic from that photograph to make him more visible.
  • "senior space science" needs hyphenation to avoid ambiguity.
  • I believe titles like Dr. are discouraged per MOS (I'm not sure though, please double-check) indopug (talk) 19:19, 10 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • See above for the first two. I've put a new image of Seaman on the page. I'm not sure I see the ambiguity in "senior space science adviser", unless you mean that it should be "senior space-science adviser". Please provide me with a link to the appropriate part of the MOS for the last point. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 19:54, 10 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Yes I meant "senior space-science adviser" and here. Why not move that ref to the table header itself? (like say, alongside Name; thereby having the need to include it only once) indopug (talk) 20:18, 10 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • I agree with the comments made above regarding the reference column. Under ==Notes and references== (which could be titled simply "References" as there are no notes), do ";Specific" and put reference 11 there, then under ";General", put "<references/>" which will list the other references the same way {{reflist}} does, but as normal sized text. There's no need for them to be small with so few. Matthewedwards (talk • contribs • email) 19:24, 13 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm wary of doing this because this might not be the only reference in the future, plus it makes the table look a lot less referenced/reliable. "Notes and references" has been renamed to "References" (it was named like that due to a note which I've since removed), and it now uses <references/>. Mike Peel (talk) 22:00, 13 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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