My first FAC; after working on this over on my namespace, I believe that after tightening the references, improving the prose and considerably reducing the bloat of the article, it is worthy of featured article status. A lot of the source material of the article was good, however, I felt that at one stage it had unnecessary sections and too much detail. I would appreciate any comments! Thanks! —JennKR | ☎19:06, 29 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Comments from Wikipedian Penguin
Just returning the favor with a prose review.
Lede
"Knowles co-wrote and produced the entire project..."—remove "entire" since it is redundant.
"Knowles' fans influenced her to name the album 4 for the number's prevalence in her life and career..."—linking "fans" to BeyHive is somewhat easter eggy. I would suggest unlinking. Anyway, the BeyHive article defines the term as "fanatical devotees", which seems to be more than just "fans".
"...although more than 10 studios were used during the course of recording."—"during the course of recording" seems redundant and "recording" is used twice in this sentence. I'd suggest removing the phrase and if you want, say something like "although sessions were held in more than 10 studios."
"...Knowles decided to take a career hiatus in 2010..."—avoid state-of-mind expressions (ie. decided to). Just say "Knowles took a career hiatus in 2010".
"During which, Knowles 'killed' Sasha Fierce, the alter-ego of her previous album, as she felt she could now merge her two personalities."&mdas; seeing a relative pronoun expression like "during which" open a sentence seems a bit awkward sounding. Perhaps "During then"?
"She also severed professional ties with father and manager Mathew Knowles..."—remove the unneeded "also".
"...musically Knowles said musicians Fela Kuti, The Stylistics, Lauryn Hill, Stevie Wonder, and Michael Jackson had greatly influenced the project."—IMO, "musically" would be better moved to after "project".
"Knowles added that she was influenced to use hip-hop for a broader sound and looked to bring soul singing back stating..."—remove hyphen in hip hop. Also, not sure what is meant by "broader sound" and perhaps a comma after "back".
"Knowles was pleased with his work ethic, and he would become involved with the rest of the album."—use past tense "he became involved" since this isn't conditional.
"although a total of over ten studios were used over the course of the album."—"a total of" is redundant and "over the course of the album" is awkward.
"'Best Thing I Never Had' is a midtempo pop and R&B ballad with "cascading piano work" which addresses the end of a relationship between Knowles and her lover; a situation that suits both of them."—misuse of "which". Should be "that".
The structure in this section is a bit too repetitive as it employs the (x is a y song). Maybe vary the sentence structures creatively? Even something like connecting short sentences together (eg. X is a Y song that Z, while A is a B song that C) helps.
Another thing is I really like what you say in the lede regarding the album's theme ("Lyrically, the album concerns the enjoyments and struggles in monogamous relationships.") Could we have this stated in this section as well, and perhaps discuss more of the general theme of the album and what ties the individual tracks together? —WP:PENGUIN·[ TALK ]09:35, 2 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
"In 2013, it was reported by NME that Sony Music were suing a 47-year-old man from Gothenburg for $ 233,000 concerning the leak of 4."—"it was reported by NME" should be "NME reported". Also why the spacing after "$", and what currency is this? US dollars?
"...were more than the combined sales of its three nearest challengers, being Adele's 19 (2008) and 21 (2011) and Lady Gaga's Born This Way (2011)."—it's more concise to replace "[comma] being" with a colon.
"This gave Knowles her fourth consecutive solo debut at the top of the chart and makes her the second female artist and third artist overall, to have her first four studio albums debut atop the Billboard 200."—the inconsistent tenses here are awkward. Maybe use past tense for both?
"However, Keith Caulfield of Billboard magazine commented that the album was not released during the festive season and that Knowles was so far lacking a hit single, which could help explain the album's softer entry."—I don't find "however" useful here.
"It marks the third-largest sales week of the year, after the [number one] bows of Lady Gaga's Born This Way and Adele's 21."—why the brackets? This isn't a quotation.
"4 became the ninth solely-numerical titles (including roman numerals) to have reigned since the chart launched as a weekly survey the week of March 24, 1956."—awkward grammar. 4 because the ninth solely-numerical titles...?
Jenn, it seems there is more work to be done here with regards to prose quality. This is definitely GAN material, but needs the tightened fit and finish of FA standards. Did you work with a strong copy editor before nominating? I hope you understand. Cheers, and more to come. —WP:PENGUIN·[ TALK ]13:27, 3 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I didn't work with anyone, which may be why the prose is padded out in places. With one prose section to go, do you think article would need much more work on this? Thank you for taking the time out to go through that! —JennKR | ☎14:03, 3 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
"Michael Cragg of The Observer called it her 'most accomplished album yet.'"—best to say "Knowles'" here instead of "her", since the pronoun is ambiguous.
Support—on prose and media. I haven't looked at sources, but the formatting seems good at a quick glance. BTW, you might want to have refs 105 and 108 looked at. Great work. —WP:PENGUIN·[ TALK ]18:29, 3 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
If it's alright Jenn, I'd like to temporarily withhold my support until the updating as per below is complete, as I see this as a major concern. Thanks. —WP:PENGUIN·[ TALK ]20:37, 4 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
A specific non-free use rationale for this article "4" is completely missing. Each article usage needs a separate non-free use rationale with a separate, specific purpose of use per WP:NFCC.
ref #9 doesn't cover the caption's information, especially the "bass line" part and "End of time" as specific song. Needs another source to avoid WP:OR.
Information from the caption should also be present in the article text itself.
File:Beyonce_4_Promo.jpg - not OK. (Replaced) A simple description of the image is not sufficient for fair-use, the article would have to contain some more detailed discussion of the photo (f.e.: did the outfit cause some media uproar? was it praised or criticised and why? did it influence fashion in general?), and the reader would need to see the image to understand that section (WP:NFCC). GermanJoe (talk) 12:08, 2 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose—a good article, but not one of Wikipedia's best in my opinion.
The prose needs work. Consider, for example, the overuse of semicolon in the introduction; one is even used incorrectly (i.e the first sentence in the second paragraph). Or consider this one that jumped out at me: "'Best Thing I Never Had'" is a midtempo pop and R&B ballad with "cascading piano work" that addresses the end of a relationship between Knowles and her lover; a situation that suits both of them"
The article lacks a slant. Every article must have an underlying conclusion or idea. As major fans of Beyonce, both you and I know the statement that she attempted to make with this album. We've watched the interviews, we've read the news stories. We saw her documentary. This album for her was about artistry, rather than chart success. About pushing her musical boundary, about making timeless music. It was about womanhood, family, her child. Finding her voice. What did critics say about this? Did she achieve her goal? To be honest, each of these twoarticles gave me more information about the album than your entire article.
The article lacks depth. It doesn't even have a single quotation from the singer herself about the processes when constructing the album. I was watching an interview where she discussed the approach she took when recording the vocals for many of the songs. Not only did she sing differently, but she also used a different compresser/recorder, which emphasized her "live" sound (Knowles herself said she got the idea from reading all the youtube comments that suggested her sounded better live than on her record).
The "music and lyrics" section is repetitive and underdeveloped and no one reading the article can get a sense of what the music sounds like. The discussion of the individual songs, for example, needs a lot of work: "Miss You" isn't just a power ballad. There's so much more to that song thematically, musically (ambient keyboard, percussion, her restrained singing).
Thank you for taking the time to write this, I definitely agree that the article only touches on Knowles' creative vision for 4. Your comments will go along way in improving some of the underdeveloped parts of the article and I will look at two sources in particular—Year of 4 and Life is But a Dream—to expand upon her creative process. —JennKR | ☎12:59, 4 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
@Journalist: Hello, I've made some improvements in relation to Knowles' artistic vision for the album (in the Development and Composition sections) and re-wrote the Music and lyrics section. I would appreciate any further comments or improvements. —JennKR | ☎21:44, 5 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I love what you've done with the article. The quotations that were included and the expansion of the composition and music section greatly improved it. Just a matter of personal taste, but would it be possible to include a sample of "Countdown", just to show the musical experimentalism? Despite the wealth of information there, there are still a few issues: The prose could still use a some work. Keep working at copyediting, and I'll provide some specific examples soon. Also, resist the urge to include critical commentary in the music section. For example, you wrote that a song was described as "saccharine". That's not necessary: all you need to include is what critics said about the sound (instruments, lyrics), regardless of their appraisal. Leave the actual reviews to the critical reception section. "Composition and recording" could use some fleshing out; half of that section is just a list of studios at which the album was recorded. I don't mean to get as technical as "DJ Swivel: Recording Beyoncé's 4", but try to salvage more from various sources for that section.
Here are a couple articles that could provide a few examples of what I'm talking about. The first two, The Way I See It and Aaliyah (album), are FAs and written excellently. Another, 21 (Adele album), needs a lot of work with prose, but the ideas there are fully fleshed out, regarding the actual recording of the songs. Hope that helps. Will be back soon! Orane(talk)03:42, 6 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
So, I've struck out my oppose, but at this time I still cannot support it, because of deficiencies in the prose. Here are a couple examples:
"She desired 4 to contribute to changing that status commenting". "Desired" being used as a verb is awkward.
Incorrect colons are rampant throughout. When introducing a quotation, use a comma. For example "In an interview with Billboard magazine, Knowles stated, "I worked hard on the album."
I googled the expression "During then", and could not find any article that contains that phrase. I make no case for its grammatical correctness.
"She stated she felt influenced to use hip hop for a "broader sound" and looked to bring soul singing back, stating:" "Stated/stating" used twice in the same sentence...followed by incorrect use of a colon.
There's still a lack of narrative in the "Composition and recording" section—not like the examples I gave (i.e the featured articles). I just find it a bit choppy and get no sense of how each song came into existence. This archived version (information-wise) is closer to what I'm talking about. I don't mean stretching the article to the point where it's overly detailed, but I just want a more comprehensive outline of the production process. For me, for a featured article about an album, the production/recording and the music sections take precedence over everything else, including chart performance and "release and artwork etc". Maybe it's just me. What are your thoughts?Orane(talk)02:43, 14 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
@Journalist: I've rewrote that section with the intention of giving it a lot more structure than it previously had. One thing I noticed the Aaliyah article does well is discussing the making of songs, although I don't think that's achievable here. Firstly because I don't think the sources exist, but also because this is an international project. Looking over the credits, almost all songs are recorded in two or three studios, and so I don't think we can write about songs coherently without veering into repeating the credits. With Aaliyah and The Way I See It—both using 3 studios—there is a sense that the recording/production had an atmosphere that people wanted to talk about. However, with 4, the production is on a larger, drawn-out scale; with some tracks, the vocals are recorded in one studio, its produced in another and mastered in another. Saying that, how the instruments, vocals and songwriting were carried out should help the reader build a picture of the recording process. Thoughts? —JennKR | ☎20:10, 15 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I think you've done an amazing job with the suggestions I've given. Simply amazing. I haven't reviewed the prose yet, but I love how the section is coming together. I do agree that the vastness of the album's production poses many problems in providing a cohesive narrative. But here is an example of the ways in which you could approach this: Be specific. You said, "with some tracks, the vocals are recorded in one studio, its produced in another and mastered in another". Well, mention that in the article: which songs and what studio? Not a long explanation, but that information needs to be explicit. Other examples: "For 4, Knowles emphasized the use of live instrumentation..." (which songs specifically can you mention that would indicate this?). A general sentence like that could turn into "For 4, Knowles emphasized the use of live instrumentation, as explored on such songs as "End of Time", "Love on Top" and "I Care"." Or, She also requested Frank Ocean to write for 4, saying to the same publication, "[Jay-Z] had a CD playing in the car one Sunday when we were driving to Brooklyn. I noticed his tone, his arrangements, and his storytelling. I immediately reached out to him—literally the next morning. I asked him to fly to New York and work on my record. How about specifically mentioning the song they worked on ("I Miss You") and/or the specific studio. In the United Kingdom, they worked at Peter Gabriel's Real World Studios in Wiltshire—particularly utilising Gabriel's multi-instrument room—and at Metropolis Studios in London. To compose what song(s)? And with whom? Not a long list, but just work in the details somewhere. I've always found Discogs (see the credits as well as the notes section at the bottom of the page) to be a great source for this bit of information. Saying all this, there isn't a lot of improvement that's needed (information-wise). That section for me is 85-90% there. It just needs a bit more specificity to give the reader a sense of what was done, where it happened, and who Knowles did it with. Hope I'm not asking too much. As is, that section rocks. My suggestions are just to put it over the edge. Orane(talk)01:33, 17 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
@Journalist: Using the Discogs credits was a great idea in combination with the more technical sources, and I've made some additions which should indicate how the songs were conceived. Any thoughts? —JennKR | ☎20:14, 17 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Great work. That's exactly what I was looking for. Reading this section, I really do get a sense of the grand scale of the project, but was still able to follow how each song was conceived. Now that the information is all there, prose is the next thing you need to tackle. It's good, but could use improvement in places, mostly because you've been so involved/familiar with the material that you may overlook some of the more awkward areas. These include words and phrases that seem minor, but in general tend to detract from the overall quality of the article. Examples (from that section only):
"Knowles also requested Frank Ocean to record and write 'I Miss You'"— to be clear, it's "to write and record", not "record and write".
"Young began to formulate beats using their recordings and those from Fela"-- did you mean their own recordings, and those from Fela?
"MSR Studios was the final New York City-based studio used, and where most of the album was recorded—only "Party and "I Was Here" were recorded elsewhere"--Unclear. They were recorded at another city, or another studio?
"including drums, keyboards and guitar and bass work".
"After hearing songs, Knowles would often request the use of specific instruments"-- After listening to the recordings, she would request the addition or the use of these instruments?
"Jay-Z assisted Knowles again when songwriter Diane Warren called him and played "I Was Here" down the phone"
Split infinitives: "The production team strategically placed Knowles' microphones", "The album was mostly mixed at MixStar Studios"
This is just one section. I'd say take a day or so to detach yourself from the article, read out loud and try to do a thorough copy-edit. You'll get there. Orane(talk)01:13, 18 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Done Thank-you for spending the time to write out these improvements! I'll go over the prose thoroughly over the next few days and iron it out. —JennKR | ☎01:36, 18 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
If I may, I think part of where the prose fell short was that it seemed a little too robotic and stiff. I'm doing edits in varying places, but here are some examples of what I mean:
"The album is distinguished from her previous releases for its mellower tone and attempt to contend artistic credibility."—"contend artistic credibility" is rather inaccessible and difficult. Is there a far more simpler way to say this?
Done—Is "contention of artistic credibility" better? Or are you looking for it to be rephrased?
Done—Made a similar point, but with reference to the music.
This article should comply with AmEng. I see "finalised" and "homogenised" but "emphasized".
Partly Done—I'm British so these usually slip in, so I'll keep an eye out for them. "Homogenised" is within a quote from a British publication (The Guardian), so I think this should stay the same?
Avoid "the majority of" when this can be said as "most" or "most of".
Done
"leaving her production team to bring cohesion to the sounds."—again, odd way of wording. Perhaps "leaving her production team to make the sounds cohesive."
Done
Try to reduce your use of passive voice. I see it quite a bit in the Composition and recording section and it's just nicer-sounding to have it from front to back, in active voice.
Done—I've made some edits that should reduce this, but if you have any specific examples that stick out then put them up here. I'll go over the prose again and see if there is any I can see.
Never use the word "utilise". Always try to simplify the prose to make it more accessible to a wider range of readers. Instead, "use" is plainer and more elegant.
Done
Since you end the Composition and recording section with how Columbia was overwhelmed with the number of recordings presented, perhaps begin the next section with something like "The final cut of the album comprises x tracks", with x being a number. Something along those lines would "bring cohesion" to the article IMO; link one section to the next, to create unity. Focus on the overall narrative.
Done
"leading them to combining it with elements of electronic music and synthesisers."—"combine", no need for two participles in such close proximity.
Support, incredibly meticulously sourced, balanced by a nice concise and easily readable lead intro section. This is not an easy feat, and it's quite impressive. Nice job, overall, — Cirt (talk) 03:36, 5 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Comment Although I won't oppose, I'm still not completely satisfied with the prose. Here are a few examples:
Awkward sentence structure at the beginning: "One song was recorded—"Party"—as Knowles wanted to see what working relationship would develop with engineer Jordan Young." The dash (break in the sentence) should come immediately after the object it attempts to specify (i.e. "One song—'Party'—was recorded").
"Party" was somehow mentioned in at least 4 or 5 different areas throughout "Composition and recording". Seems just a bit repetitive and/or disorganized.
Not Done— I disagree, the alternative would be to include all the "Party" information at the beginning, which I think would disrupt the flow of reading about the recording process.
"Jay-Z assisted Knowles again when songwriter Diane Warren telephoned him and played "I Was Here"." Sentence is stiff and awkward.
Not Done— I don't think there is anything wrong with this sentence, it's factual and to the point.
"After hearing songs, Knowles would often..." Try "After listening to each song". "Listening" conveys a more active, conscious and analytic process, whereas "hearing" does not.
"The album consists mostly of mid-tempo R&B songs....The other half was seen as more eclectic, exploring a variety of..." So... was it half and half or not?
"The Guardian saw the album's music as different from the "layering Euro-synths on pop-step woomphs to create homogenised commercial R&B" that Knowles' contemporaries had used."— the italicized portion is awkward/repetitive.
"Start Over"—which features dramatic vocals—is a song set against a dramatic and futuristic beat". — the italicized portion is awkward/repetitive
""Run the World (Girls)" was seen as the "red-herring""..."A female empowerment anthem, it was seen to be reminiscent". — the italicized portion is awkward/repetitive
"The theme is demonstrated through the production of "Dance for You", which is formulated to allude to Knowles' sexuality through breathy vocals and electric guitars"--So many things wrong with this one: what theme? Theme of female empowerment? And are you saying that the song's production is "formulated to allude to Knowles' sexuality through breathy vocals and electric guitars"? Can this be said more clearly ("the production alludes to"..) And the sentence that follows reads, "It also sees Knowles forgo her typical empowerment lyrics"...You just said the female empowerment theme is demonstrated through the song, but the sentence that follows says it also forgoes it. How?
"'Countdown' was seen to be..." "The chorus of "Countdown" sees the protagonist".— the italicized portion is awkward/repetitive
"The tracks "Countdown" and "End of Time" were noted for their musical and lyrical experimentalism." "Other tracks were noted for their retro stylization"— the italicized portion is awkward/repetitive
This protagonist chooses to express her love for her partner by singing she needs him more than life itself. "Party" achieves this through minimalistic production." Achieves what? And through minimalist production? How?
Addendum: I just wanted to get your thoughts on a previous version of the music and lyrics section. This is a version of the article from about a year ago. Compare it with the section as it is now and see if you could salvage or merge the two. I'm asking because while the article at present may be shorter and more concise, it omits a lot. Songs are described as "dramatic" or subtle and intense, but what does that mean, especially in a section that is supposed to talk about music or lyrics? In the present version, all that is said of "Party" is that it achieves this (whatever "this" is) through "minimalist" production and heavy synthesizers. The previous version states "'Party' is a midtempo R&B song that exhibits elements of funk and soul music... [and] according to David Amidon of PopMatters ...uses "scooping, gliding multi-tracked" 1990 girl-ground harmonies, a 808-retro beat, a 1980s style smooth groove ... and bubbly 1980s keyboard tones." The current version describes "Rather Die Young" as "a throwback to 1960s doo-wop", while the article previously writes, "'Rather Die Young' is an R&B and soul power ballad, that refracts a dramatic Philadelphia soul ballad through gauzy modern production... Thomas Conner of Chicago Sun-Times noted that the heavy programmed drums used in the song were inspired by the material of American band Earth, Wind & Fire". Nothing was said of "Miss You" from a musical standpoint ("sang to exhibit subtle tension" isn't musical-- and by the way, it should be "sung"). Previous version: "'I Miss You' is a midtempo R&B ballad with some influences of pop music. Built on a metronomic beat, its instrumentation consists of layers of atmospheric keyboards, synthesizers and 808 drums" (amazing and insightful description of the song's musical foundation).
Which version do you think better explains the songs/album from a musical standpoint? I realize that the reintroduction of material would stretch the article, but you have room...if you were to remove the table from the accolade section, since you don't need a table illustration where prose would suffice. Thoughts? Orane(talk)00:26, 15 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for taking the time to make to take note of those prose errors, I know they're important to the FAC. Although this is just two sections, it is likely to be where most of the errors are as I wrote them completely from scratch and they haven't been reviewed by anyone. I think the previous music and lyrics section could be provide some more specific information about the music/lyrics of some songs, but as it stands, I don't want to expand this section much greater than it is currently. Looking at some other album FAs such as Kala (album) or Love. Angel. Music. Baby., their music/lyrics sections are equally weighted (or thereabouts) with other sections of the article, and although I agree that this section is undoubtedly one of the most important, the level of detail that this section previously held or may hold if expanded, I think is too much. It is also the case that some songs are discussed more than others: "Countdown", "End of Time" are afforded a section, whereas "I Miss You" is described within a sentence. I think this is because they were seen as some of the more provocative songs on the album, and the five/six sources I used for the section referred to them more (which is different to the previous version that used a lot of sources based around each song). In short, I'll see if I can pull out some more specific and interesting description of certain songs, but I don't think this section needs any serious tailoring. —JennKR | ☎01:18, 15 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Don't get me wrong: I'm not necessarily suggesting that you "expand" the section— I'm saying that the description of the songs need more musical specificity. And if you need to add a sentence or two to the descriptions to achieve this, then it's something worth considering. Personally, five/six sources for that section is inadequate, but if you choose to use only these, then you need to really make use of them. The other FAs that you selected are well written, but you should understand that they are either a bit outdated (LAMB was written about 8 or 9 years ago) or the article's slant is different: this article in particular is making a case of the singer exploring genres and expanding her repertoire and trying to think outside of the box. And the descriptions of the songs must at least attest to this. Rather than being understated, the first thing that hits you about "I Miss You" is the ticking beat and the ambient keyboard. Rather than just exploring 1960s do-wop, you hear the Philly soul sound and the Earth Wind and Fire influence on "Rather Die Young". Don't be afraid to make these connections. Don't expand per se—be concise, but try also to be comprehensive. I know I'm asking a lot, but just see what you can do, please. Orane(talk)04:39, 15 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. I just realized, the "Release and artwork" section doesn't give any release dates at all. not even for the US. It tells when the released dates were confirmed, but never the dates themselves. Is this intentional? Orane(talk)01:22, 16 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I think it was intentional to not include the various release dates in that section, but unintentional to not include the US dates. I've added the US release date to clarify the sentence about it being confirmed. —JennKR | ☎02:00, 17 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The section has definitely improved. The musical specificity that it lacked has been sufficiently addressed. I do think, however, that another copy edit is needed for flow and clarity. To solve this, I think you should ask for a bit of help, or read the article aloud to hear the potential disharmony in the prose. An example is just a couple phrases repeated throughout the section, which becomes increasingly jarring as I read along: "The balladry of the first half of the album demonstrates much of Knowles' vocal ability and the use of live instrumentation. "1+1" demonstrates her vocal-flexing". Or Start Over" is set against a futuristic beat; "I Was Here" [set] against simple backing music; "Best Thing I Never Had" [sung] against a soft rock beat; "Run the World (Girls)" is set against a military drumbeat; "Countdown" is set against a brass arrangement.
Or awkward phrasing
"Elements of Prince's style were found on "Schoolin' Life", which musically is 1980s pop, as Knowles encourages the listener to live life to the fullest, albeit reminding them the consequences of doing so too much".
She first performed "Run the World (Girls)" live for the first time on May 17, 2011.
Punctuation errors:"'Love on Top' was sung at the 2011 MTV Video Music Awards on August 28, Knowles finished the performance unbuttoning her blazer and rubbing her stomach to confirm her pregnancy". Comma slpice— there should be a period/full stop after August 28. Or "According to the Official Charts Company data, was more than the combined sales of its three nearest challengers; Adele's 19 (2008) and 21 (2011) and Lady Gaga's Born This Way." You need a colon after "challengers". Semi-colon cannot be used to introduce listed items.
These are just examples. Read throughout and a couple more pop up. I don't mean to nag, but while the article passes comprehensiveness, it lacks in the prose department. Keep at it, though. You're almost there. Orane(talk)01:25, 25 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
This is one of The X-Files more unusual episodes, featuring an baseball-loving alien. It, however, is also one of the series' more poignant episodes. I am nominating this for featured article because I feel it is ready for FA. It was promoted to GA in the late part of 2011, then promoted to A-class in the later part of 2012. It has been edited multiple times since then, and has been copy-edited twice, once by Baffle_gab1978 and once by JudyCS, both within the last year or so. All of the references are of the highest quality, its format is similar to other X-Files episodes that have been promoted to FA, and the prose is neutral, informative, and of good quality. I feel it is ready. Any comments would of course be appreciated.--Gen. Quon(Talk)03:41, 20 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: Being a contributor with an article at FAC just now, it was suggested to me that I consider reviewing another article or two. This seems like a fun one, so here I am. I have a few separate comments, so I'll use bullet points to make them easier to read.
Plot
First sentence: Any indication of date at this stage? 1947 is mentioned later as "back in 1947", but this isn't initially framed as such.
Worth repeating who Arthur Dales is here in the second paragraph, for readability, even though it's mentioned in the intro.
"Dales warns Exley that he is now wanted and Exley goes into hiding." Wanted by whom? The Alien Bounty Hunter? If so, how does Dales know this?
Two minor things here in the fifth paragraph:
First, re: "The narrative returns to the start of the episode." I'd suggest "...returns to the events at the start of the episode" for clarity.
Second, in the final sentence, I'd suggest "Back in 1999..." instead of "Back in the present..."
Production#Conception and writing—In the first paragraph, I'm not sure we need this much detail about other episodes Duchovny was involved in writing, especially the episodes after this one, which don't help frame the paragraph that follows.
Production#Casting
In the first paragraph, for clarity, I'd suggest indicating who the "lead guest role" is. It's presumably Exley, but could conceivably be Dales.
There's a typo in the third paragraph: "Dana Scully name" should be "Dana Scully's name."
Production#Filming and post-production—As with Duchovny's writing credits, I feel like the mention of episodes that Duchovny later directed isn't relevant here.
Themes
At the beginning of the second paragraph the sentence that reads "Sara Gwenllian-Jones in her book Cult Television argues that, throughout the entry, "the blacks are equated with aliens,"..." seems odd. Surely "entry" should be "episode", correct?
I'd suggest replacing the semi-colon in the last sentence with a period and breaking it into two sentences.
Broadcast and reception#Ratings
I'd suggest keeping discussion of the US and UK together—so, air date in US, then view figures for US, then air date in the UK, then figures out viewership in the UK.
Also, at the beginning of the third paragraph, "In the U.S., The episode was viewed by 16.88 million viewers..." should read "In the U.S., the episode was viewed by 16.88 million viewers…"
Overall, though, very solid article. The details in Filming and post-production were especially interesting. I hope these comments are helpful, let me know if you have any questions. Cheers, WWB Too (Talk · COI) 00:23, 8 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you very much for your comments. I have implemented most of them. The only one I didn't change is the info about Duchvony's writing and directing. Considering he is one of the two leads, I feel that info on his directing and writing is especially important, and since this is both his writing and directoral debut, I felt it was appropriate to quickly summarize what he had and would accomplish on the show. But again, thank you for your comments!!--Gen. Quon(Talk)00:37, 8 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
You're very welcome, Quon. If you don't mind, I'd like to explain about the later episode material a bit further. Details about specific subsequent episodes written (or partially contributed to) by Duchovny seem more appropriate to articles about the series and Duchovny himself. I think it's perfectly fine to note that this was his first writing effort for the series under Conception and writing, and directing effort for the series under Filming and post-production, however subsequent episodes seem to me beyond the scope of the topic of this particular episode. On a related note, I dislike the "X would later Y" construction, which strikes me as somewhat affected in a way that clashes with Wikipedia's straightforward tone—although that could be addressed on its own. Best, WWB Too (Talk · COI) 12:47, 8 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I cut down the first bit quite a lot and merged it into the second paragraph. I cut info about "Hollywood AD" and "William" in the directing info. I still think it is OK to leave a small bit about his previous writing contributions, just so people know this isn't his first bit of writing. How's it look now?--Gen. Quon(Talk)16:06, 8 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
A Comment and a Request: It's a nicely comprehensive article about someone who's accomplished some good things. Ali Hewson is notable in her own right, which is why she gets her own article, of course. Given her own importance, I find it slightly odd that the second paragraph of the lead-in starts off by talking about her meeting her future husband. It might focus the article more on her if we moved the "how she met Bono" information down a couple of paragraphs. I also have a request, which I ask purely for clarity and having regard for your choice of user-name: could you confirm that there are no potential conflict of interest issues, please? I don't actually see any problem with the article, and your reply won't change this opinion, but if there is a potential conflict of interest in proposing this article for "featured" status we'd be better to deal with it now, rather than accidentally incur adverse headlines later. Thanks. RomanSpa (talk) 01:12, 1 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The ordering in the lead is because Ali became Bono's wife first and accomplished important things after that. The second might well have not happened but for the first. As for Miss Bono, she has no connection with anyone in this article other than her username. (And there isn't any real person called "Miss Bono" - in the press Ali sometimes gets called "Mrs Bono", while their daughters might be called "Miss Hewson".) Wasted Time R (talk) 01:26, 1 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks Wasted Time R. RomanSpa, I have no conection with Bono, Ali or anyone in the article. I choose the username because, the first I picked was Ali Hewson and it is was a violation of Wikipedia's rules. Hewson is called Mrs. Bono by the press - though she has make clear that she hates being called like that - So, I am confirming that there are no potential COI issues. I am not Ali, Eve Hewson or Jordan Hewson. Miss Bono [hello, hello!]12:32, 1 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Drive by comment I agree with RomanSpa's comment in regards to the ordering of the lead. The effect of this ordering is that this woman is being defined upfront in terms of who her husband is, and not who she is and the reason for her notability (being married to rock star generally isn't enough to pass WP:BIO). This can be easily avoided by tweaking the lead (details of notable personal relationships and families generally go towards the end of the lead) Nick-D (talk) 11:54, 1 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry Miss Bono I reverted your edit because it no made no sense...
Alison "Ali" Hewson (née Stewart; born 23 March 1961) is an Irish activist and businesswoman. Raised in Raheny, she was awarded a degree in politics and sociology from University College Dublin in 1989. The couple have four children together and live at residences in Ireland, France, and the United States. She has inspired several U2 songs, most famously "Sweetest Thing".
It mentions "the couple" before explaining who they are?
My approach to BLP leads is to have a short first paragraph that identifies who somebody is. And here I give her as an activist and businessperson first, wife of Bono second. The remaining paragraphs give a roughly chronological, summarized account of their life. And the relationship with Bono and the band clearly came before her other activities. That doesn't mean her other activities are in any way cheapened or less important, but it is the way it happened. A good comparison point is the Morleigh Steinberg article, written around the same time. She was an established dancer before she ever began a relationship with The Edge, and a number of the sources used predate that relationship, so in that lead, the first paragraph is similar but the following paragraphs discuss career first and relationship/marriage/band second. Wasted Time R (talk) 12:28, 2 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: Here's how I would re-cast the first few paragraphs:
"Alison "Ali" Hewson (née Stewart; born 23 March 1961) is an Irish activist and businesswoman. She is particularly prominent in anti-nuclear activism and the development of "ethical" businesses.
Raised in Raheny, and educated at University College Dublin, Hewson became involved in anti-nuclear activism in the 1990s. She narrated Black Wind, White Land, a 1993 Irish documentary about the lasting effects of the Chernobyl disaster, and has worked closely with activist Adi Roche. She has been a patron of Chernobyl Children's Project International since 1994 and has participated in a number of aid missions to the high-radiation exclusion zones of Belarus. She has also campaigned against Sellafield, the northern English nuclear facility. In 2002 she helped lead an effort which sent more than a million postcards, urging the site be closed, to Prime Minister Tony Blair and others. Hewson has repeatedly been discussed by tabloid newspapers as a possible candidate for political offices, including President of Ireland. None of these suggestions have come to fruition.
Hewson is the co-founder of two ethical businesses, the Edun fashion line and Nude Skincare products. The former, intended to promote fair trade with Africa, has struggled to become a viable business. French conglomerate LVMH has made substantial investments into both companies.
She is the wife of singer and musician Paul Hewson, known as Bono, from the rock group U2. The couple met whilst still at secondary school, and married in 1982."
I would put the rest of the information - the particular school, her university career, the couple's children and homes, etc. - into the main body of the article. I don't think the lead is the appropriate place to list people's homes and children, unless this is a vital part of "who they are". I tend to feel that the "above the fold" part of an article should tell our readers exactly what they need to know to be well-informed about something or someone, and this is generally stuff related to what it is that makes them notable.
Your approach would be fine if we were talking about someone like Beyoncé, who established herself as well-known first and later married someone famous. But that's not the case here. Ali Hewson did not become active in third-world issues until U2 played Live Aid and she and her husband traveled to Africa; her activity in anti-nuclear causes began at the same time the band was protesting against Sellafield; she might not have met Adi Roche and gone to Belarus if she hadn't been Bono's wife. Both of the ethical business she is involved in were founded with her husband's money. Pretty much every source used by this article frames its depiction of her in terms of being Bono's wife. In sum, she has used her position as a famous rock star's wife to gain access and publicity and resources for the causes she believes in. Nothing wrong with that, and it does not in any way diminish what she has done. Plenty of celebrity spouses have either not become involved in causes or have made fools of themselves doing so. But to mention her marriage to Bono only at the end of the lead, as your proposal does, is to me ahistorical. As for mentioning her homes and children, I think if you asked her if her domestic life and four children are a vital part of who she is, she would say of course they are. Wasted Time R (talk) 12:30, 3 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Reply. I agree that she's taken advantage of her situation, but (as you yourself observe) it is the use to which she has put her situation that makes her notable. Let me draw a parallel with people who attended (say) Cambridge University: most are not notable, and generally those who achieve notability do so for reasons other than attending this or that college. However, for many (e.g. the various graduates of the Cambridge Footlights) their situation gave them an advantage in becoming notable. Despite this, we don't generally mention the situation (being at a great university) that gave them their opportunities: we focus on the use they made of the opportunities open to them. I see the point you're making, I think, but I somehow feel that making her simply a sort of footnote to her husband is doing her a dis-service. RomanSpa (talk) 20:34, 4 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I get what you are saying, but I think there is a difference in kind between people who attend elite universities, who must number in the hundreds of thousands around the world, and people who are married to A-level pop culture stars, of whom there are only maybe a hundred. I also can't see how this lead section is making her a footnote to her husband; of the 270 words in it, 206 are devoted to her alone, and of those, 188 to her activism and business career. Wasted Time R (talk) 12:26, 5 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I think we both see each other's points. It's largely a question of how we say what we want to say, and the best way to phrase it. I'm very happy to wait for other editors' input; I suspect that with a few more comments from different people we'll see a consensus evolve, and I'll be happy to abide by whatever emerges. Have a good weekend! RomanSpa (talk) 21:01, 5 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
(COI notice: I copyedited the article): I largely agree with Wasted Time R, having spent about 30 days, on and off, with them constantly being right ;p. Reading the article at the moment I don't get the impression that her successes are a footnote to her husband's, more that one enabled the other and vice-versa; she is responsible for Bono being in a position to succeed, and his success created a platform that allowed her to explore her interests and try and make an improvement in the world. It would certainly be possible to strip out more material in relation to her relationship with Bono, but to do so would reduce the connection between that relationship and her other work - and there is that connection. Ironholds (talk) 16:33, 9 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I have to add something to what Wasted Time said about her domestic life:
''Jordan and Ali get up to go shopping. "We fight sometimes, don't we?" Ali says to her daughter. "But it's the age-old story: parents are stupid. And we weren't prepared for what has happened to us," says the woman who deliberately lists her occupation on her passport as "mother."
That's an interview named "Sit Back and Relax? Bono's Wife Can't" by Liz Jones from Evening Standart (2 March, 2005)
Oppose on sourcing. Talking of BLP, what makes the Daily Mail and the Daily Mirror (five references each) good sources for a BLP? WP:BLPSOURCES instructs to avoid using such sources on BLPs, let alone featured articles. --John (talk) 16:54, 2 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
It would be nice to let the person who researched and wrote almost all of the article (me, in this case) respond to comments like this before ripping stuff out. First, your method of treating 'duplicates' is faulty, because in those cases part of the sentence is due to one source and part due to another. Second, we can certainly use tabloid newspapers to source what tabloid newspapers do, such as saying that tabloids published speculation on a political career for someone. Third, WP:RSN has concluded that the Daily Mirror can be used as a reliable source - see Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 19#Daily Mirror, which I haven't seen negated in later discussions. WP:RSN is a little murkier regarding the Daily Mail - see Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive 106#Time to axe the Daily Mail for example, which did not reach any firm conclusion that I could discern. With these and all sources, you have to handle with care - any one of them can make a mistake. But I did that in writing this article and all others. Wasted Time R (talk) 00:07, 3 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Wasted Time R, I'm a bit unsure what your status is in this review - should you add yourself to the nominators and make this a joint nomination? It would help keep things tidy if you're the main contributor the article. Nick-D (talk) 10:57, 3 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I am the main contributor, and I put up the successful GA nomination for it, which fulfilled my own ambitions for the article. Miss Bono has been interested in taking it further, which is fine. She put it up for peer review, and I assisted her in some of the responses to that. I intend to do the same here, particularly on structural issues like the lead or the quality of sourcing. Wasted Time R (talk) 12:30, 3 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I appreciate the efforts Theroadislong has made to remove poor sources on this article. Wasted Time R, if you're a main contributor to this article and you maintain that these sources are fit for a FA on a living person, then we are indeed wasting our time and we can fail this and move on. Is this your position? --John (talk) 16:44, 3 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
My position is this:
Yes, these two papers suffer from the usual British tabloid faults of lurid cover stories, excessive attention to celebs and footballers, and political agenda-pushing. But not every story they publish is rubbish; some are quite mundane and fair-minded and accurate, such as for example this one about the Hewson-McCartney perfume lawsuit or this one about Hewson getting an honorary degree. So can these be used or not? These kinds of discussions have come up several times in WP:RSN and, as I read them, the general guideline is that 'reliability depends upon context' and the general verdict was probably yes for Daily Mirror and leaning no for Daily Mail. If you know of some other guideline somewhere that contains a blanket edict against these or all British tabloids, for BLPs or for articles in general, please point me to it and I will happily abide by it.
In any case, per the discussion in WP:NEWSORG and WP:BIASED and elsewhere, we've always been able to use editorializing or opinion sources to document those particular editorials or opinions. So if this article is saying "... tabloid newspapers speculated that the Labour Party wanted to put Hewson up for the Irish presidential election of 2004", we can certainly use as one of the cites those tabloid newspaper stories being referred to. Several of the uses in this article fall into this category.
Notwithstanding the above, there's at least one use I shouldn't have done: this Daily Mail piece is too much a rant and I shouldn't have used it for a factual cite on the couple's New York property. And there's one or two others that may be of borderline quality and I will reexamine them. Wasted Time R (talk) 01:06, 4 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Update - I've made some more revisions, including removing or restoring with other sources material due to what Theroadislong did earlier. Now, there is one each source from each paper for the 'tabloid reports for president' material, each named in-text as such. And there are the two innocuous Daily Mirror pieces pointed to above, one used to supplement a primary source and one used to supplement an Asian press service report, so neither is stand-alone. All other uses of these two papers are now gone. Wasted Time R (talk) 15:35, 5 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I am nominating this for featured article because, first, it appears to have a chance to grade out against standards of FAs. Second, the elements and reasons which comprise the subject's notability separate him from many of his peers, and thus, grading the quality of the article against the standards of FA help highlight that the magnitude of these achievements from an oratory and informational standpoint which is otherwise not as fully explainable through the countless and ubiquitous statistics kept in the sport of baseball. Third, the subject is a prominent figure within the St. Louis Cardinals organization, and as such, is primed to make an even more significant mark on the franchise and MLB before his playing career is through.Elcid.ruderico (talk) 08:20, 6 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Quick comment – I had been intending to give this article a full review, but I've been very busy both on Wikipedia and in real life, and am not sure I will be able to at this point. One thing I noticed immediately, however, was the references with large quotes. There is nothing wrong with providing some quotes to controversial material, but we need to be careful not to quote too much from articles for copyright reasons. For example, ref 28 has five sentences quoted, but it appears that the second sentence is the only one that is needed to support the article. It might be worth checking the other quotes to see if there is anything that can be chopped without reducing verifiability. Giants2008 (Talk) 00:12, 19 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. You've put a lot of work into this article, which is great to see. However, I think a nomination at FAC was premature, and WP:GAN would have been a better route to take. Here's what I noticed just on a skim read:
As Giants noted above, the quotes used in the references are way too long, and there's nothing controversial enough in the article or any significant deadlinks where the quotes would be needed.
Ref 43 (Cardinalsbestnews.blogspot.com) is not a reliable source
The language used in some parts of his playing career is a but too sportswriting-esque for me rather than encyclopedic. There are a lot of statements such as, "In 2005, Molina's defense did not disappoint", which should ideally be scrapped. The use of statistics, news sources, and the like should be able to tell his story well enough without the language being overly pushy in that regard (this is usually the hardest part of the baseball jump to FA).
The health issues section does not seem necessary, since it notes that he hasn't missed significant time due to injury.
The WBC section in general reads a little bit rough. Also, do we only have that sentence to use for 2006? I know 2013 will be larger since he was starting there, but 06 and 09 could be fine-tuned.
There is quite a bit of advanced stat usage, such as BABIP and the like. I do not mind it personally, but lay readers could be put off, and I'm not sure if going beyond main stats is necessary.
Again, this is certainly a nice article, but if I'm finding this much as a baseball guy, I have to imagine the non-baseball guys are going to find a lot more that needs clarification or fine-tuning. Wizardman18:43, 24 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
This is an extremely infamous episode of The X-Files, noted for its extreme violence and horror. I am nominating this for featured article because I feel it is ready for FA. It was promoted to GA in the early part of 2012, then promoted to A-class in the later part of 2012. Bruce Campbell submitted it for FA consideration, but at the time, it was not considered. Since then, it has undergone extensive editing and copy-editing, courtesy of Bruce Campbell, myself, Sarastro1, and JudyCS. All of the references are of the highest quality, its format is similar to other X-Files episodes that have been promoted to FA, and the prose is neutral, informative, and of good quality. I feel it is ready. Any comments would of course be appreciated. As a note, I am co-nominating this in Bruce Campbell's name. She contributed the most to this article, but isn't very active anymore.--Gen. Quon(Talk)03:46, 20 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Some comments from Ruby2010
I remember a co-worker telling me about this episode years ago (in particular, the deformed mother under the bed), and it's always been an image that's stuck with me when I think of the series! This article is typical of the high quality work I've seen from Gen.Quon (and Bruce Campbell), and I've only found minor issues here. I see nothing barring my support after these have been addressed.
Why no wikilinks for Duchovny and Anderson in the plot section? Especially as you have wikilinks for the other actors
What made the Ward family "unusual"? Other than living on a farm with low levels of literacy, I'm not sure I see anything that abnormal (I assume they did other odd deeds?)
...states that the episode "presents of dual nature" of Scully's "modern desire for motherhood,"... -- something about this sentence doesn't quite work. It might be the "presents of dual nature" part that needs fixing.
I'm not way keen on the spoilers about Scully's later pregnancy in the themes section. I understand that Wikipedia does not avoid spoilers, but I'm not sure how relevant it is to the plot of this particular episode. Thoughts?
Well, I think the sources are trying to say this is the starting point for a lot of the motherhood stuff that comes up later in the series. I feel uncomfortable removing it.--Gen. Quon(Talk)20:03, 23 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I think the later reception would have more meaning if you added in the years of the reviews.
For the William B. Davis book reference, first I think the "B." should follow William, not Davis. Also, why wikilink ECW Press? (Especially when the similarly-published book above it lacks such a wikilink?). There should be some consistency with publisher wikilinks (for another example, you link the publisher in the Peterson book but not the Waddell work).
Support on comprehensiveness and prose. I read this on my android yesterday and enjoyed same. No prose-clangers jumped out at me and it is pretty detailed. Nice read. Cas Liber (talk·contribs) 13:02, 4 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Comments –
I noticed a few unnecessary links in the lead. Incest, globalization, and motherhood don't seem to require links since they are such general terms.
Writing: "the actor who played the series main antagonist The Smoking Man." Apostrophe at end of "series"?
Themes: "According to Sonia Saraiya of The A.V. Club writes that..." This surely needs a modification.
Comma after Blue-Collar Pop Culture?
Initial ratings and reception: "translating to roughly 11.9 percent of all television-equipped households, and 21 percent of households watching television, were tuned in to the episode." This reads oddly to me. Would putting "that" before "were" help?
In the bibliography, The Nitpicker's Guide to the X-Files has an apostrophe, but the one here doesn't.
"Shahbag" is a demoted featured article, and can easily be tweaked to become one again. With community review and feedback (and, of course, affirmative action based on them) this looks promising to become an FA.Aditya(talk • contribs)20:02, 22 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I've removed the non-free image from the protests section; you may want to look at the free images currently in use on the article about the protest to replace it. J Milburn (talk) 20:11, 22 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose and urge withdrawal. It's certainly possible that this could become a FA-level article, but it's far from there now, and this really isn't a venue for this sort of article improvement. I'm not confident of the reliability of all the sources. There's deeply inconsistent formatting (are newspapers italicized, for example). Notes 24 and 59 are bare links, 58 and 60 are little better. The actual References section is a mess; many of these references aren't (as far as i can tell) cited anywhere in the article. At least a couple don't resemble any sort of reliable source ("Old files and documents preserved at Ahsan Manzil Museum and Nawab State's Office", "Ahsanullah, Nawab, Personal Diary (Urdu) preserved at Ahsan Manzil."), and many others lack any sort of bibliographical information whatsoever. All the book sources need identification numbers of one sort of another; I'd personally prefer WorldCat's OCLC numbers over Amazon's ASINs for obvious reasons, but that at least is probably editorial discretion. I haven't looked at anything beyond the references, but I'd oppose promotion on those grounds alone. Nothing referenced like this, in my opinion, is ready for FAC. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 03:36, 23 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Not to pile on the objections, but the prose isn't any better. Sp33dyphil highlighted some problems below, but there's also a lead that isn't compliant with WP:LEAD, bolding that shouldn't be there in one section, issues with undue weight, issues with promotional content, and no shortage at all of uncited claims (even against the poor state of the references). There are issues with comprehensiveness as well: one of the reasons this is a defined area is that it represents a police precinct, but the article barely touches on that aspect (not even telling us when that was established). Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 14:13, 23 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Arthur's death had a major impact on English history, and his article was a mess. I've edited it throughout the last week and now I am nominating this for featured article because I believe it meets FA criteria. Alex (talk) 21:48, 12 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the notification. I think this FAC should be formally withdrawn by the nominator. Then I can close it as "withdrawn" rather than "archived".Graham Colm (talk) 10:45, 16 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
All other things being equal Graham, I'd be inclined to treat this nom as a reasonable exception and let it stand (with a reminder to the nominator to seek leave per the instructions next time) because the other FAC does seem well on the way to promotion at this stage (I think the early oppose is probably moot). Similar to this instance. WDYT? Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 03:35, 17 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Drive by comment The final section on "popular culture" needs to be referenced, and would work better as prose. While I've got no idea what the availability of references is like here, it's generally preferred for such sections to provide a thematic discussion of how the person is portrayed in popular culture at FA level, rather than simply listing works in which they've appeared. Nick-D (talk) 06:07, 13 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Great topic, worthy of FA, and I commend your efforts on the article. I think this would do better going through the good article process before FAC, as there are a few issues that could do with being ironed out.
The first sentence of the lead is a little unwieldy, and the second sentence strikes me as odd; "Arthur was viewed by contemporaries as the great hope of the Tudor dynasty, as his birth was a symbol of the end of the Wars of the Roses, during which his grand-uncle, Richard III, had died in battle." There wasn't really a "Tudor dynasty" at the time of his birth, as a Tudor had been on the throne for less than a year. "Great uncle" is more standard English than "grand uncle". I'm also unconvinced that everyone was agreed at the time of his birth that the Wars of the Roses were over; from our perspective, we can coherently claim that they weren't (Warbeck, Simnel and the rest). This point is unsourced, as it's not mentioned outside of the lead.
"and Henry's quest for a male heir, which ended with six marriages." It wasn't only his quest for a male heir that led to six marriages. It also strikes me as odd that you talk so much about Henry (junior) in the lead. Arthur's deeply interesting in his own right!
" Henry VII had royal genealogists trace his lineage back to the ancient British rulers, decided on naming his son after the legendary King Arthur;" This doesn't make sense
"packed off" is a little informal (that's also a very long sentence)
"Arthur's birth was greeted by French and Italian humanists" Unclear what is meant by "greeted" in this sense, and a link to Renaissance humanism would be helpful.
"Although Arthur's birth came only eight months after his parents' marriage, Sir Francis Bacon wrote that the Prince was born prematurely in the eighth month, but was "strong and able."" Why "Although"?
Why do you mention the fact he was Duke of Cornwall after talking about his becoming Prince of Wales, when he was, seemingly, Duke of Cornwall before Prince of Wales?
Presumably he didn't share a nursery with both Margaret and Henry? How about "with the latter of whom he shared a nursery"?
"Henry VII's former physician." How about "formerly Henry VII's physician"?
According to our articles, Thucydides and Terence are preferred spellings.
In the main article, you mention the popular belief in Arthur's ill health as being a present belief, but in the lead, it is implied that this was a contemporary belief.
"and handsome" I think this is inherently subjective, and I suspect every prince is going to be described as handsome; who said this?
""delicate lad."" The full stop should be outside the quote marks, surely?
"In October 1492, he was named Keeper of England and King's Lieutenant during Henry VII's trip to France." How about "In October 1492, when his father travelled to France, he was named..."? Also, you don't need to link to our article on France.
The second paragraph has a lot of technical terms which are unexplained/unlinked
"as "my dearest spouse," wrote" Again, comma should be outside the quotes, surely?
"be "a true and loving husband," the" Again
To be "struck down" by an illness would probably mean to be killed by it.
News of the death reached Henry while Arthur was still alive?
""Grief-stricken and emotional," he" Again!
"and "had ever preserved him," adding" Again
Why are you preserving archaic spelling when this was something said, rather than written? Perhaps you could say something like "[Whoever] recorded that Elizabeth said..."
Could we have more about Leviticus? This is the thing which ties the issue of Henry's divorce to Arthur.
"was "thirsty work," these" Comma
"dismissed by modern historians" What do you mean by "modern historians"? Surely what's important is that these were dismissed by Henry/Henry's people
I completely agree with the above comment about the popular culture section.
I have hopefully fixed the "unwieldy" sentence. I've altered the second sentence and I've sourced the points that aren't mentioned in the article.
I don't talk about Henry too much, the three-line paragraph is there only to explain how Arthur's death affected the course of history. As far as I'm aware, Henry merely wanted to assure the continuation of the dynasty by marrying six times, except for his last wife.
Fixed.
I've split the sentence in two and I'v changed "packed off" to "sent".
Changed.
I've rewritten the sentence, hope it's alright now.
I wasn't specifically referring to Arthur as Prince of Wales, I was simply stating a time window with "after he was appointed PoW".
Marshall states that Arthur was brought up in the royal nurseries with both Margaret and Henry.
Changed.
Changed.
I've altered the lead, I hope it's alright now.
Gunn and Monckton write that Catherine was excited at the prospect of marrying such a handsome prince, so I suspect, from the context, that it was Catherine herself who described Arthur as such.
Changed.
Changed.
Hopefully, all terms are now explained.
Changed.
Changed.
I've changed it to "afflicted".
That was an error in writing, which is now fixed.
Changed.
Changed.
Changed.
I've added a note which explains Leviticus.
Changed.
I've re-read the sources and I've changed the sentence accordingly; the claims were indeed dismissed during Henry's divorce. Alex (talk) 21:05, 17 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Source review - spotchecks not done
Agree that IPC content must be sourced or removed
Be consistent in whether you abbreviate page ranges and if so, how
FN66: page formatting
As AuthorHouse is a self-publishing company, what makes Lehman a high-quality reliable source?
Comment
The text needs some work. A few Americanisms struck a jarring note at first read-through, and there is a fair bit of WP:OVERLINK. I'll look at the page again tomorrow and make such emendations or suggestions as I can. Tim riley (talk) 16:58, 20 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Comments from Quadell
I note overlinking problems. Several names are linked twice (e.g. Margaret Tudor, Henry VIII, Margaret Beaufort, Mary I). Also, when you say "Arthur's education covered grammar, poetry, rhetoric and ethics and focused on history", it doesn't help the reader to link to grammar, poetry, etc., since they are common terms widely understood. Also, Virgil is linked as "Virgilian" and simply as "Virgil" in the same section. (Most other links look appropriate.)
The lead sources statements in the first paragraph (and just the first paragraph). According to MOS:LEAD, a lead should summarize all sections of the article without containing material not present in the body. As such, it is rarely necessary to city statements in the lead. Unless there are direct quotes or particularly contentious statements in the lead, it's best to source the statement only where it appears in the body, rather than in the lead itself. In this case, it looks rather awkward to have the first paragraph given references for uncontroversial statements, while the rest of the lead has none.
The last sentence of the lead is a little unwieldy. I think it would be clearer if it were broken up.
The "Early life and education" section quotes the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography to describe... well, honestly, I'm not sure what it's describing. Since it's not a primary document, I think it would be more appropriate (and hopefully clearer!) to rephrase the statement in your own words.
In the same section, two sentences in a row use semicolons. It would be more fluid if one were reworded to avoid this. This happens again in the first two sentences of "legacy". Later down, there's a sentence in "legacy" with two semicolons! (And is "–;" correct in English grammar?) I've nothing against semicolons, but it can be a distraction when they are overused.
Follow-up: I have attempted to reword all these. Feel free to improve my wording, if you can think of a better way to put it. – Quadell(talk)17:48, 23 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The last sentence of "Later life" is quite long and a bit confusing. The phrase "the latter of whom" (at word 52 of the 70-word sentence) is a bit awkward, and it isn't clear that you mean Gruffydd rather than Thomas. And besides, doesn't "latter" refer to the later of two? That sentence mentions three servants.
Since the phrase "canonical age" isn't in common use (at least not in my neighborhood), it would be good to link to Canonical age.
The source claims that 200,000 crowns is around 5 million pounds, not 5 million dollars.
The phrasing "Although [he said X], [he discovered Y]" implies that X and Y are in opposition in some way. But it's not clear how using different pronunciations of Latin is opposed to being "a true and loving husband".
I don't have access to the Weir 2008b source, but it supports the claim that "This is the only public bedding of a royal couple recorded in the 16th century." Are we sure there were no records of royal coupling of the Zhu (Ming leaders) in China, Ottoman Caliphs, Mughal dynasts, or other royals around the globe in the 16th century? Or does that statement just refer to Europe, or perhaps only to Britain? Without seeing the source, I can't be sure.
The first sentence of "popular culture" is very long, with nine commas, and it would be smoother if broken up.
I have made a number of minor rewordings for grammar or smoothness. If you disagree with any of my changes, feel free to revert and discuss.
I would like to withdraw the nomination. It's obvious that the article has many issues, and I'd like to get it past GA first.
I am nominating this for featured article because I am sure that although this is currently listed a good article, the article deserves a better nomination. I feel that it is at FA standards, as it is comprehensive and well cited. Epicgenius(give him tirade • check out damage)23:05, 20 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose and suggest withdrawal.
The article lacks background information in the body. The lead mentions that it was originally proposed to support NY's 2012 Olympics bid, and to serve as a stadium for the New York Jets. If it was indeed proposed to support NY's Olympics bid, and that the host city of an Olympic event is announced seven years before hand, shouldn't there be sources about the extension dating back to at least 2005? Yet these facts are not elaborated upon in the article, and instead it starts off by talking about the awarding of the project in October 2007.
Why is a quarter of the lead a quote from the "2013 Construction Project of the Year" award?
The article is not structured properly -- why is the mention of Bloomberg's December 12, 2006, speech placed in the fourth paragraph, instead of at the start?
Source review
FN 6: Wouldn't AOL be Huffington Post's publisher? And why did you decide to use a publisher for this FN and not, for example, FN 4?
Compare the number of newspaper in FN 7 and FN 29. Make sure all the references follow a consistent layout.
FN 13 and 31 are dead.
FN 43 to 47 are missing retrieval dates.
"New York City Economic Development Commission" is the author in FN 38 yet in FN 31 it is the publisher.
FN 51 does not follow a consistent layout as compared to the rest of the article.
According to the Highlight duplicate links tool, "Michael Bloomberg", "Chris Christie" and "MTA" have duplicate links.
Isn't it premature to nominate the article for FA status since the article I presume will encounter stability issues in June 2014, when the extension work is scheduled to be completed?
Oppose, and strongly urge withdrawal. I don't want to sound unduly critical, but this does not even approach readiness for FAC (or, in my personal opinion, for GA). The lead is not a summary of the article, includes material not addressed in the body, and does not follow WP:MOSLEAD. The article does not include full coverage of the topic. Absence of the Olympic information in the body notwithstanding, where are discussions of the proposal period, the reasons for construction, reactions to the construction and the new line, reactions to the cancellation of proposed extensions, economic impact? Actually, the lack of retrospective information is understandable as this project is apparently still underway; for the same reasons as the recent iPhone FAC, I'd thus also fail on stability grounds. Nor is the referencing adequate for FAC. Reference formatting is deeply inconsistent, but that aside, substantial amounts of the article are referenced to primary sources, and some other sources are not reliable (Second Avenue Stories is a WordPress blog, in particular). Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 14:00, 21 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I am nominating this for featured article because the article has improved substantially since the last FA. Issues have been added, and the reviews seem to be concrete now. The only thing that will be added in the future will be sales numbers. There's probably some minor grammatical and referencing issues that I've missed, although I've looked over them. Zach Vega (talk to me) 22:14, 18 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose and suggest closure The consensus in the previous review (closed less than two weeks ago) seemed to be that a few months should pass before this topic is capable of meeting the FA criteria. Disappointing, the article still doesn't seem to have been fully updated since the last nomination as the "commercial reception" section is still focused on the first few weeks of sales and there's no mention of the news reports this week which have compared what seem to be disappointing sales of the 5C (though it's really too early to judge this) with strong sales of the 5S. Nick-D (talk) 23:04, 18 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Then what does "While commentators viewed the iPhone 5C as a flop because of supply chain cuts signifying a decline in demand, the iPhone 5S was viewed as a massive success" mean? Also, what would be contributed to waiting a "few months"? Zach Vega (talk to me) 23:21, 18 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose and likewise urge closure, without even having clicked through to the article itself. One of the FA criteria is stability. A quick trip to Google News reveals stories from CNN to Bloomberg to the LA Times within the last 24 hours regarding sales information and changes in production trends for the iPhone 5C and 5S. More than sales numbers will change here. We'll get comparisons to other same-generation products, and, eventually, retrospectives. There may be issues that emerge some time after release, as there have been with previous products. This product was not even released two months ago; there is simply no way that I can be convinced an article about it can be deemed "stable" now. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 23:12, 18 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
All that needs to be done is to add a sentence or two once new sales info or production trends come out. It's not going to require a fundamental restructuring of the article. Zach Vega (talk to me) 23:21, 18 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose: Due to the constantly changing sale numbers and reception, I agree with the notion that this article cannot be considered stable enough at this time. ViperSnake151 Talk 23:14, 18 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I am nominating this for featured article because I believe this is a solid, well-referenced, comprehensive article. It passed GA some time ago, and I believe that it has only improved since. As I am fairly inexperienced with the FA process, please don't come down too hard on me. Thanks, --Jakob (Scream aboutthe things I've broken) 00:43, 18 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. These element category articles are tough targets, and I've been hard on them at FAC before. Unfortunately, I have to do that here. There are a lot of problems; I'm not going to try to be comprehensive here. The lead is choppy, and arguably not a properly balanced summary of the article. There are quite a few claims that are either unreferenced or whose referencing is not clear. The overall structure, dominated by short paragraphs, is not compelling prose. As noted, the reference formatting needs considerable work. But the biggest problem, in my eyes, is that a substantial amount of the content isn't about the topic of chalcogens as a whole, but about the specific chalcogens individually -- and often somewhat random bits of information about the specific elements, at that -- forking aspects of those articles more than addressing this one. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 04:21, 18 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. The points on overall structure are highlighted very well above. Looking at factual accuracy the section on chemistry is woefully inadequate. What we have is a partial description of some compounds, and there are errors. Group trends have not been discussed. I made a detailed list of comments in September and suggested a better approach, but nothing has happened. Once again this article is being rushed through an assessment process. Axiosaurus (talk) 07:31, 18 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose This is an article on the elements of group 16 of the periodic table. The fact that the comparative chemistry of the elements in this group is completely missing is a glaring omission of basic subject matter. Petergans (talk) 09:06, 18 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Closing comment -- Jakob, I hope you'll take the above as constructive criticism and not be discouraged. This nomination does seem premature, so I'll be archiving it shortly. I realise it's frustrating to put the article up for Peer Review and come away with relatively few comments, but hopefully the above will give you some pointers for improvements, after which I'd recommend another attempt at Peer Review before renominating at FAC (pls note the instructions require nominators of archived FACs to refrain from nominating any article here for at least two weeks). Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 15:30, 18 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I am nominating this for featured article because I believe that it meets the criteria or, if not, want to bring it up to that standard. Terfili (talk) 13:21, 16 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. A lot of work has been put in here, but I don't think this is really ready for FAC. There's a considerable amount of uncited content, for one thing, and the prose could stand to be tightened throughout. In those respects, this article would benefit from a pass through the GA process and/or a skilled copyedit. There are quite a few reference formatting quibbles, too, but that's sort of a secondary concern at this point. More on point, I don't believe this represents a comprehensive survey of the literature (despite its length). The Year's Work in Modern Language Studies, beginning in 1978, has periodically included bibliographies under the title of "Romansch studies" or "Rheto-romance studies"; the articles cited therein include (among other things) evaluations of syntax, vocabulary, use, and development. But there's a lot out there beyond the primarily German-language books used as sources at current. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 14:20, 16 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose I can only agree with the comments above. I think that this article has the potential to be a great FA, but I think there is too much that needs to be fixed for it to be done at FAC. Jimfbleak - talk to me?09:19, 18 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Closing comment -- This nomination does indeed seem premature and I hope, Terfili, that you'll take on board the comments above as a starting point for improvements. In the meantime I'll be archiving it so further work can be done away from the FAC process. I can see that the article had a peer review in 2012, but I'd recommend another being undertaken once improvements have been made. After that (and a minimum of two weeks following the archiving, per FAC instructions) it can be renominated here. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 15:18, 18 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The lead is just right. The infobox and categories are fine. The prose is generally lively and engaging, and effectively draws upon multiple sources while producing a coherant narrative. Quite impressive. The article seems both complete and balanced. There are a few deficiencies, as detailed below.
Initial checks
Image check: Although I'm sure it's free, I don't believe File:William W. McMillan, Jr. and James E. Hill after Olympics Wins, 1960.jpg is validly released under a Creative Commons license. All other images are legitimately free and tagged correctly, with all necessary information provided. (I move the local images to the Commons and categorized them there.) Images are all relevant and used appropriately. Captions are all good.
Spotchecks. For cites 3, 4, 9, 28, 39, 49, and 75, I found the statements fully supported by the source, with no issues of close paraphrasing. But I do not find support for the statement "he also served as president of the 2nd Marine Division Association" on page 22 of Banning (cite 46).
Related to the above, I was not able to read page 33 of Jablon to verify reference 25, so I wanted to ask you to doublecheck this for me. This reference sources nearly an entire paragraph, from the pistol and rifle team winning a competition in around 1934, to observations of Japanese troops, to Shoup's lengthy illness, to his promotion to major in 1941. Is this all covered on that single page of Jablon? I just want to double check, since it seems like a lot of information.
Finally, you don't need two references to [25] in a row.
Organizational problems
I have trouble following the chronology of the "Commandant of the Marine Corps" section. The first paragraph describes Eisenhower's nomination, and mentions Shoup serving under other presidents. The second paragraph describes Shoup under Kennedy. There are dates to help me understand the timeline. So then in the subsequent "Leadership Overhaul" section, I assume we're describing something under Kennedy in 1963. The passive voice is used (Shoup "was chosen" while others "were considered") but it doesn't say who chose or considered, so I assume Kennedy. There are no dates. But then the second paragraph is back at Eisenhower, and I realize I've been misunderstand what's been going on. I would recommend moving everything in "Commandant of the Marine Corps" (above "Leadership overhaul") into their respective sections where the info is relevant. If not, you'll have to find a way to make it clear that this is all an overview, with "Leadership overhaul" going back in time to the beginning of his time as Commandant. But as I said, I think the info would be better incorporated into sections and arranged chronologically.
The "Later life and opposition to the Vietnam War" section is by far the longest, including eleven short (three sentence) paragraphs, and it feels like a list. Could it be divided into sections and/or re-paragraphed into a more flowing style?
Minor grammar and MOS issues
Overlinking: WP:OVERLINK advises against wikilinking "everyday words understood by most readers in context" and "the names of major geographic features and locations; languages; religions; [and] common occupations". The wikilinks are not useful in "maintaining high marks in French, English, physics and history", for example. It is unrealistic to think that a reader might read in this article that Shoup majored in mathematics and desire a link to the mathematics article to learn what math is. Please check throughout the article for wikilinks that are not useful.
Over- and underlinking: Cities are linked in the references, which I personally don't think is useful. But I'm certain it's not useful to link New York City three times, for instance. It would, on the other hand, be more useful to link to authors Edwin H. Simmons, James W. Douglass, and Spencer C. Tucker.
The English language gives us a lot of leeway in comma usage, and many usage guides will differ in when commas are appropriate in complex sentences. But most style guides would agree that commas are not needed (and are not recommended) after the following phrases in the article: "spread to include the military industrial complex", "but moved to Covington", "met Zola De Haven in his freshman year", "contracted a severe case of pneumonia", "had never previously considered a military career", "gave him command of the regiment", "he was struck by shrapnel in the legs", "was then assigned to the upcoming invasion of the Marianas", "returned to the United States in October 1944", "resistance from Marine leaders", "Commandant of the Marine Corps by President Dwight D. Eisenhower", "but Shoup declined", "a reputation as being extremely demanding", "Shoup transferred many senior officers", "and the election of Kennedy", "he had gained Kennedy's confidence", and "aggressive measure causing civilian casualties".
Some sentences in this article use a serial comma, and others do not. Since this is about an American figure, I would recommend consistently using the serial comma, but either using or omitting it is fine so long as your are consistent throughout the article.
The serial comma is omitted in the first sentence of the lead.
It's used in "overhauling fiscal affairs, logistics, and recruit training"
Omitted in "in French, English, physics and history"
Used in the sentence beginning "He drew up initial plans..." (but see the next main bullet point, below)
Used in "government, business, and military leadership"
Used in the sentence beginning "By December 1967, he had..."
Consider this sentence: "He drew up initial plans, was tasked with designating the landing beaches on Betio for the 2nd Marines, and oversaw some rehearsals at Efate." This is a list of three items, but the first and third are in active voice while the middle is passive. It would be better as "He drew up initial plans, designated the landing beaches on Betio for the 2nd Marines, and oversaw some rehearsals at Efate" or as "He was tasked with drawing up initial plans, designating the landing beaches on Betio for the 2nd Marines, and overseeing some rehearsals at Efate."
I don't know a lot about military ranking terminology, but is this sentence grammatical? "In August 1947, Shoup became Commanding Officer, Service Command, Fleet Marine Force, Pacific." Aren't some "the"s and "of"s necessary here? And how about the phrases "in the Office of the Fiscal Director, Headquarters Marine Corps" and "as Chief of Staff, Headquarters Marine Corps"? (I honestly don't know, but they look ungrammatical to me.)
The sentence beginning "Shoup was ordered by" would be smoother if it were broken up, with one sentence ending with "...of Hill's authority", and the next beginning "Shoup and Hill clashed..." (A semicolon would also work here, if you prefer.)
Regarding the Ribbon Creek incident, the paragraph uses "the incident" twice in one sentence. Rewording could make this a smoother read.
Consider this sentence: "He would later serve under the administration of John F. Kennedy from 1961 to 1963, and the administration of Lyndon B. Johnson." It would feel smoother if the years for his service under Johnson (just 1963, right?) were mentioned. (The sentence could also probably be improved through minor rewording, if you keep it... but with the recommendation in "Organizational problems" above, you may choose not to.)
The clause "Shoup was most called upon by Kennedy" is unclear. Was called upon most often?
This sentence should be reworded for clarity: "Shoup was chosen to replace Pate because of a view among Gates and other officials that the Corps was fraught with internal squabbling, alienated from the other services, and had a bad reputation gained from the Ribbon Creek incident."
This sentence has problems. "The 1960 Presidential Election and the election of Kennedy, saw a major change in military strategy with the adoption of the "Flexible Response" strategy, which saw a return to conventional military forces as a deterrent to nuclear war." First off, the 1960 election is the election of Kennedy. Second, no comma should be before the first "saw". Third, the election didn't really see a change (though it may have effected a change). Fourth, it feels akward to say something "saw" a change which "saw" a return, like there are multiple tiers of seeing.
Reword "Shoup testified before Congress, reiterating his 1966 speech, saying he felt..." Two clauses started with -ing words feels odd here.
Reword the multiple "met with" wording in "Shoup's opposition to the war was met with resentment from many of the other officers in the Marine Corps, and was met with criticism..."
Closing comment -- Not sure where Ed is as far as this nom goes but without responses it's certainly not moving forward, so will be archiving shortly. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 10:45, 18 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This is a WikiCup nomination. The following nominators are WikiCup participants: Piotrus. To the nominator: if you do not intend to submit this article at the WikiCup, feel free to remove this notice. UcuchaBot (talk) 00:01, 15 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Procedural note -- Per FAC instructions, a nominator shouldn't be putting up any article for FAC for two weeks after they've had a nom archived without seeking leave to do so; did I miss one of my colleagues agreeing to this one? Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 07:54, 15 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, I keep forgetting how bureaucraticized FACs are those days. No, I don't even know who your colleagues are, or where to ask, I'd have thought this nom would not need bureaucratic justification (one article is done, I have time to look over FA-level concerns over the other). --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here08:18, 15 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
FAC has no more rules these days than it's had for the past few years, since before Graham Colm and I joined Ucucha as delegates over 18 months ago. Incidentally, you can find all our names in the instructions at the top of WP:FAC as always, along with the rule about requiring leave for any nominations less than two weeks after an article's been archived. Nothing new there, and it's the same for everyone unless an exception's justified -- I'm not sure that there is in this case, but Graham as the closing delegate for your previous nom may feel differently. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 12:15, 15 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I am nominating this for featured article because I believe it meets FA criteria--well-written, properly sourced, reasonably illustrated (with appropriate rationale), and as comprehensive as possible of the article's topic. Dan56 (talk) 18:10, 25 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
1 quick comment about refs: Full ref "Giddins (2000)" is apparently not used for citations. If not used, it should be removed or moved to "Further reading". GermanJoe (talk) 11:18, 30 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
"It was well received by music critics, who found the music expressive and praised Coleman's harmolodic approach."—remove the first instance of "music"; redundant and repetitive.
"By the mid 1970s, Ornette Coleman had stopped recording free jazz with acoustic ensembles and sought to recruit electric instrumentalists for music based in a creative theory he developed called harmolodics."—a comma after "music" would be great.
"...first recorded with Prime Time in 1975 on the album Body Meta..."—"on" should be "for". You record for an album.
"However, it was ultimately rejected because of mechanical problems with the recording apparatus."—"however" is unneeded IMO.
"...and the other guitarist and drummer were entirely committed to a composition's rhythm."—"entirely" is redundant.
There is some musical jargon in Composition that makes it hard to understand some parts (eg. melody contingent, variants, transfigured). Could this be clarified somehow?
"The album featured shorter and more differentiated compositions than Dancing in Your Head"—"features"
"'What Is the Name to This Song?' was titled as a sly reference to two of his older compositions, 'Love Eyes" and "Forgotten Songs'..."—not sure I get it. Reference to the lyrics in the two songs?
"The latter theme, originally from Coleman's 1972 album Skies of America, was used as a refrain."—not sure what "latter" refers to here.
Changes made; "contingent", "variants", and "transfigured" arent musical terms/jargon. The reference to "Love Eyes" and "Forgotten Songs" is explained in "...whose themes were played concurrently and transfigured by Prime Time." (hence 'what is the name to this song', as the source explained) Dan56 (talk) 12:49, 3 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
"The album's clean mix and relatively short tracks were interpreted as an attempt for radio airplay by Mandel, who described..."—I'd write this in active voice and replace "who described" with "describing".
"Robert Christgau, writing in The Village Voice, gave it an 'A+' and claimed that it offers listeners enough release from tension to confound 'mind-body dualism'."—this needs immediate inline citation because it incorporates quotations.
"According to Joshua Klein of The A.V. Club, Of Human Feelings is the best starting point for listeners to explore Coleman's theory of harmolodics."—"starting point" sounds rather colloquial. —WP:PENGUIN·[ TALK ]20:34, 4 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
IMHO, the active voice would seem repetitive since the preceding sentence uses it. And wouldn't "describing" be a present participle? Dan56 (talk) 00:16, 5 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, I meant MOS:QUOTE. If you're not writing out the sentence in active voice, you can ignore the "describing" thing since that would refer to the subject of the article. —WP:PENGUIN·[ TALK ]22:30, 5 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
They're not for "viewed that", though. "[Person] viewed that he" or "[Person] viewed that she" do not occur in the 450-million-word Corpus of Contemporary American English, or the British National Corpus, for instance. Use 'suggested' / 'indicated' / 'observed' / or similar to make it more natural. EddieHugh (talk) 09:53, 16 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The structure 'wanted the music to be [adjective] rather than [X]' sets the reader to expect X to be another adjective. In its current form, the reader expects a contrast between "successful" and another descriptor of the music; the form I propose establishes a contrast between "the music" and "himself", leaving the descriptor for the end. EddieHugh (talk) 14:15, 17 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
"They included guitarists". 'Included' clashes with 'quartet', as the list contains four names, which implies that all of them are stated. PT had various numbers at various times, so drop 'quartet' or justify listing these four?
"Ellerbee applied linear counterpoint with an accent". I'm not afraid to say that I don't know what that means. Maybe it's "an" that does it: doesn't "an accent" imply that only one note was accented?
Thanks for the link. "with a Hendrixian accent" indicates that "accent" is like 'style' or 'dialect' (of Hendrix), instead of being musical accentuation. Cutting "with an accent" is simplest. EddieHugh (talk) 09:53, 16 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The alternative is hard to imagine: what would 'counterpoint with Hendrixian accented notes' be? It would need an explanation if kept here. EddieHugh (talk) 14:15, 17 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
"neither extremely loud or soft". More conventionally, "neither extremely loud nor extremely soft"?
"live concerts". Aren't concerts always live?
"whose themes were played concurrently and transfigured by Prime Time. The theme from "Forgotten Songs" [...] was used as a refrain." So the two themes were concurrent for a time and then only FS continued into the refrain?
"The atonal "Times Square" has futuristic dance themes, "Jump Street" is a blues piece with a bridge, and "Air Ship". Using same sequence as in sentence 2 of the para would aid reading.
I mean '"Air Ship" comprises a six-bar riff, the atonal "Times Square" has futuristic dance themes, and "Jump Street" is a blues piece with a bridge.' That keeps the Air Ship Times Square sequence from the earlier sentence. It's less mental jumping for the reader to do. EddieHugh (talk) 09:53, 16 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Is nothing available on "Him and Her" or "Job Mob"?
"with the televised NHK Symphony Orchestra". What does "televised" mean here? They had been televised at some point/they were for this performance (but Coleman wasn't)?
(When did he write that?) Just stating that Davis' comment was about the album/that time in OC's career would clarify, as it's not mentioned in that opening sentence, which contains "imminent" but no indicator of time. EddieHugh (talk) 09:53, 16 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see how that's relevant or what exactly needs clarifying; if anything, writing something like "according to jazz writer Francis Davis in 1986" makes for an awkward/tacky read; the preceding section ended with "Of Human Feelings was released in 1982 on Island's jazz subsidiary label Antilles Records." The entire article's narrative is chronological. Dan56 (talk) 02:01, 17 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
"his glossy style of avant-garde jazz". "avant-garde" appears nowhere else, so a source for this is advisable, especially as it clashes with the jazz-funk drift of the rest.
"it made the most sense out of Coleman's harmolodic theory". I can't access the original, so just want to check that that is what is stated, rather than 'it made the most sense out of any recordings based on Coleman's harmolodic theory', or something similar.
Basically did all the other corrections (pardon me for missing others b4, been online infrequently), but the "accent" one; I don't think it suggests only one note was played. The observation may be that there is an accented note in the instrumentalist's playing. Dan56 (talk) 02:31, 18 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
No problem; thanks for your work. I see your point on "accent". Would "applied accented linear counterpoint" work? This is my only comment this time. EddieHugh (talk) 09:30, 18 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. It pains me to oppose, since this article is complete, well organized, and admirably balanced. But it has systemic issues with close paraphrasing. Here are some examples that I was able to find.
2: "[The essence of Harmolotics] is that all the players in a group can contribute independent melodies, even in different keys, and still make their parts cohere into an organic whole" vs. "all the players are able to contribute independent melodies in any key, but still make their parts cohere as a whole"
2: "the compositions were shorter and more differentiated" vs. "The album features shorter and more differentiated compositions"
4: "Tacuma was recruited by Coleman while still in high school" vs. "Tacuma, who had been recruited by Coleman while still in high school"
4: "[Tacuma created] a glossy version of the avant-garde. [... He] was widely regarded as one of the most distinctive bassists to arrive in jazz since Jaco Pastorus" vs. "After showcasing his glossy style of avant-garde jazz on the album, Tacuma became widely regarded as one of the most unique bassists since Jaco Pastorius."
4: "With his own band [...] he retained the complex verticle structures of Prime Time but framed them within commercially accessible melodies with engaging hooks" vs. "He subsequently formed his own band and recorded albums that used Prime Time's complex, vacillating structures, but composed them with commercially accessible melodies and hooks"
8: "This session went off without any technical difficulties" vs. "Of Human Feelings was recorded without any technical difficulties"
13: "Of Human Feelings which explored 'funk-jazz', a development dating from about 1970 features of which incl. a repetitive bass line, a hint of Latin rhythms, and complex rhythmic relationships" vs. "Of Human Feelings explores jazz-funk, a musical development that originated in 1970 and is characterized by repetitive bass lines, elements of Latin rhythms, and complex rhythmic relationships."
15: "albeit regrouped around a funky backbeat" vs. "albeit reappropriated around a funky backbeat"
21: "suspicions of negotiating with the white music establishment" vs. "suspicions of negotiating with a predominantly White music establishment"
I believe there are probably many other such instances, but I don't have access to any of the print sources so I can't be 100% sure. I want to stress that I don't think anyone was acting maliciously or in bad faith. I am sympathetic to the difficulties of accurately providing information from a source while still changing the wording enough, especially when it comes to discussions of musical styles... but I still think some of the examples I found are too close to be acceptable in a featured article. I'm more concerned about the examples I didn't find, due to my lack of access to written sources. Someone with access to all the written sources (the nominator, presumably) should go through each statement and ensure that the wording in the article borrows as little wording from the sources as possible, while still accurately providing the source's information. If that's done, I'd be glad to reassess. – Quadell(talk)22:34, 28 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Revised the above. All sources were accessed online; the more difficult-to-access and stingy sources required Google search engine trickery. I don't have physical access to any of the sources or any specialized permission such as for sources behind a paywall; all can be found one way or another online and if needed, I can transcribe a requested source/page to verify by playing around with the search engine once more. Dan56 (talk) 00:42, 29 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
More than half of the sources, I was unable to check online. Either Amazon and Google had no preview available (e.g. Larkin), or the snippet view did not cover the given pages (e.g. Giddins p. 241), and a search did not reveal enough information for me to verify that the statement was backed up by the source without plagiarism. I appreciate the improvements you've made to the article avoid close paraphrasing in the cases I found. I just can't be sure that the issue is truly resolved until someone goes through with adequate access to the sources. – Quadell(talk)14:13, 3 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Could you (Quadell) list which ones you have not been able to check? It's very fiddly, but a lot can be accessed – here's the Larkin, for instance. Some people may have access to hard copies, so if you could give the list, a collective effort should be able to check everything by listing any parts that are similar to the article's phrasing, as you did above. EddieHugh (talk) 14:45, 3 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The list is, literally, all of them in the article. There are 15 sources in the bibliography, used in 48 footnotes, and I was able to find actionable problems in 9 of them. That's enough to indicate a systemic problem. (There were additionally roughly 9 statements that I was able to confirm were supported by the sources without plagiarism -- but I don't remember which ones. Sorry.)
Close-paraphrasing issues are very difficult to check and resolve, and they often go undetected in articles for years. It's a serious problem that could do damage to Wikipedia's reputation and possibly lead to liability concerns. (In my opinion, it's way more of a serious concern than dash issues or source alphabetization or other things people usually check for in FACs.) When systemic issues are present (as in the present candidate) I personally will not be satisfied that the problem has been resolved until someone checks every statement where close paraphrasing might be present. – Quadell(talk)16:19, 3 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Nine out of forty-eight is "systematic"? A few of which you're nitpicking, since some musical phrases and terms are unique enough to just use. Perhaps you can request the citations for the material that isnt related to music theory terms or phrases? All the sources are accessible online; if you're having a problem finding something in particular, perhaps you can tell me which ones? I found it online once before, I can do it again if you'd like. I definitely don't recall there being many that were even difficult to access. Dan56 (talk) 01:44, 6 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I am nominating this for featured article because I think it is a fairly important topic to be covered correctly, and is at the very least close to FA standard. It is of course a complicated and politically charged topic, so it is more difficult to cover comprehensively than some topics, but I think it does a good job now. It has been through a couple of peer reviews, and a thorough copy editing thanks to the guild of copy editors. There are a few dead links, but they are not retrievable so far as I know (they are protected by bots). Otherwise, it is technically in fine condition. Peregrine981 (talk) 14:34, 5 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Comments by Squeamish Ossifrage
Looking mostly at references / reference formatting at the moment. Reference numbers and such based off this version.
Many online sources lack retrieval dates.
Done
Some sources have more citation information available than is presented in the notes. For example, the source used in Note 32 is by Betina Märcher Dalgas, which is not indicated in the article. I have not taken the time to make a thorough review of all the online sources for missing author credits or publication dates, but that should be done.
Done
Dead-link sources are troubling at the FAC level, even if they might not strictly be deal-breakers. Are the Politiken dead links available in hardcopy, or were they online only? Also, more links are dead than indicated. Note 94, for example. I haven't checked them all, but they all need checked.
Done
I don't have the time right now to go through and check the live-link status of everything, so I'm leaving this entry here for the time being to remind myself to do that. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 00:53, 20 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Multiple authors are not always formatted the same way. Ref 2 has Last1, First1; First2 Last2. Ref 49 is Last1, First1; Last2, First2. This should be consistent throughout.
Done
The italicization of print newspapers publishing online is not consistent. That's most obvious when The New York Times is italicized in Note 54, but not in Note 53. Similar problems affect the Washington Post. This needs to be audited throughout the references. As a related issue, the same sources are sometimes cited in different manners. Times Online versus Times Online (London). BBC versus BBC News. And so forth.
Done
I think there's still some inconsistency here. You italicize pravda.ru, for example, but not DR.dk. Perhaps I'm just not understanding the standard being applied here? Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 00:53, 20 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I've labelled anything that is a newspaper as such, and they italicize. Broadcast organisations are not italicizing. Pravda is a newspaper as far as I know, where as DR is the Danish public broadcaster. Peregrine981 (talk) 18:10, 22 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Sometimes you link publishers (Note 91, 95). Mostly you don't. Again, consistency (without overlinking).
Note 12: Missing space after last period and before the language designator.
Done
Note 13: This isn't formatted at all.
Done
(For ease of tracking, this is the "Profetens ansigt" source): Not done. The reference entry here still doesn't even indicate what this is or where it appeared. Was this is a newspaper; if so, which one? With the section number, I assume so. But you don't say. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 00:53, 20 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Note 38: There's a period after the question mark that appears spurious.
note - this is a result of the template
I'm not so picky that I'd oppose solely on this, but you may wish to hit the template talk page or ask around; there are workarounds for at least some of this sort of templating shenanigans. I don't know if that's true here or not. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 00:53, 20 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Note 39: The website is styled DR.dk here, but dr.dk elsewhere. Not sure which is correct (if either), but this should be consistent.
Note 97/98: Why are you referencing a machine translation? Why aren't you giving the source language for the original document?
removed
You've removed the separate citation to Google Translate, but you're still citing the Ekstra Bladet article; that's fine, but it still needs a language noted, as it isn't in English. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 00:53, 20 September 2013 (UTC) Done[reply]
...and I'm stopping here. I've probably overlooked problems along the way, but the referencing problems are so pervasive at this point that I'm actually going to have to oppose. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 17:07, 16 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'll try to get another batch up sometime this weekend, ideally including some examination of the actual prose, since I'm sure you're about sick of fixing technical template issues. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 00:53, 20 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Moving to look at the article content:
Eh, okay, one more reference formatting quibble in here: the actual References section is almost, but not quite, in alphabetical order. The Modood source seems to have wandered down a couple places.
Done
There's some overlinking (duplicate location). Arabic language (in Response to protests and reprintings), Flemming Rose (Later developments), Roj TV (Danish journalistic tradition).
comment: The problem with this is that the "spin-off" articles aren't very good, and don't have a 1:1 relationship with the sections on the main page. So the extra info links will necessarily have to be a bit redundant for the moment. I have already tried to put a bit of order into them, and have merged a couple into the main article. But it is a whole other level of work to put real order into them. For the moment, I don't see any way around the current redirects.Peregrine981 (talk) 20:36, 22 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know what to think about the Comparable incidents section, but I don't think a bullet-point list makes for compelling prose. Also, the list isn't in any sort of discernible order.
I'm not certain this is comprehensive. Blasphemy Day and the censorship of Cartoon Wars Part II were direct responses to the controversy; the former is relegated to a See Also link, and the latter not mentioned at all. There's no mention of the Iranian government-sponsored anti-Holocaust cartoon contest launched as a reaction. And so forth.
comment: Considering the length of the article, I'm not sure we need much on Blasphemy Day, as it is only tangentially related to the actual incident. Cartoon Wars is maybe worth a brief mention, but again considering the length of the article, not sure we can mention all of the artistic works that have commented on the incident. The holocaust cartoon contest is mentioned in the "Jyllands-Posten" section. Peregrine981 (talk) 20:36, 22 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Likewise, I think the sourcing critically under-represents scholarly analysis of the situation. I haven't taken the time to go through the journal articles in detail to determine what they can each specifically offer, but a few (and there are many more) of the scholarly sources considering this topic, but not cited, are:
Berkowitz, Dan; Eko, Lyombe (2007). "Blashphemy as Sacred Rite/Right: "The Mohammed cartoons affair" and maintenance of journalistic ideology". Journalism Studies. 8 (5): 779–797. doi:10.1080/14616700701504757.
Hansen, Lene (2011). "Theorizing the image for Security Studies: Visual securitization and the Muhammad Cartoon Crisis". European Journal of International Relations. 17 (1): 51–74. doi:10.1177/1354066110388593.
Lægaard, Sune (2007). "The Cartoon Controversy: Offence, Identity, Oppression?". Political Studies. 55 (3): 481–498. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9248.2007.00685.x.
Müller, Marion G.; Özcan, Esra (2007). "The Political Iconography of Muhammad Cartoons: Understanding Cultural Conflict and Political Action". PS: Political Science and Politics. 40 (2): 287–291. doi:10.1017/S104909650707045X.
Müller, Marion G.; Özcan, Esra; Seizov, Ognyan (2009). "Dangerous Depictions: A Visual Case Study of Contemporary Cartoon Controversies". Popular Communication: The International Journal of Media and Culture. 7 (1): 28–39. doi:10.1080/15405700802598361.
Olesen, Thomas (2007). "The Porous Public and the Transnational Dialectic: The Muhammed Cartoons Conflict". Acta Sociologica. 50 (3): 295–308. doi:10.1177/0001699307080935.
THanks for your patience thus far. I appreciate very much the helpful comments. I am trying to take them into account as best I can, given the time available. I've taken care, I think, of most of the more technical problems, and will focus on the more substantive issues you an Sp33dyphil have pointed out in the coming days. Peregrine981 (talk) 20:36, 22 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Comments by Sp33dyphil
Comment This a long article. I've only got some points for now.
The "Timeline" portion has around 3,500 words, while the "Background, opinions and issues" has more than 3,400. Yet in the lead three of the four paragraphs are about the events of the controversy, with only one paragraph dedicated to the background of the event. I suggest you mention, in the lead, the condemnation of aniconism in Islam (something Christianity does not prohibit). This might explain the level of anger the Muslims have displayed, since not only did Jyllands-Posten make drawings of Muhammad, it portrayed him in an unfavourable light.
Done
I appreciate the lengths you have gone to present as much background information of the controversy as possible. There is so much information that it can be argued that criterion of 4 of the FA criteria is being challenged. For example, I find the mention of the PKK and pornography under "Danish journalistic tradition" superfluous.
Done, although I left a shorter reference to the occasional complaints of foreign governments. I think they are relevant to mention at least. Peregrine981 (talk) 14:23, 6 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
An Islamic state is a country ruled by the sharia. A Muslim country has a Muslim-majority population. It is more correct to say "Muslim countries" because many of the "Islamic countries" you are talking about do not implement the sharia.
Done
"Islamist" is a neologism that has come to refer to person who advocates for the integration of Islam with the social and political spheres (establishing an Islamic state via the Sharia). These are simply an extension of the Islamic faith, and so there is no such thing as Islamism -- it is just a meaningless word. Anyway, let's say that Islamist is not neologism -- I believe it would be more correct to refer to "Islamist" in the article as "Muslims", because nowhere does it talk about Muslims calling for the establishment of an Islamic state.
Comment: Islamist/islamism seem to be quite widely used in the relevant articles cited. Major news publications, such as the NYT do use the term. As such, I don't really see a problem with using the term in this article, to mean essentially people who believe that Islam should be the most important guiding principle in politics, as per the wikipedia article on the subject - Islamism. Peregrine981 (talk) 14:34, 6 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Pig-squealing caption is missing closing quote mark
Check grammar of banner caption - this isn't still "being" posted
Captions that aren't complete sentences shouldn't end in periods
File:Allah-green.svg is tagged as lacking author info, and what artwork was it copied from?
File:Supportdenmark1.jpg: source link is dead and uploader wasn't author - check licensing
File:Pig_person.jpg: PDF link is dead, and an expanded FUR (particularly purpose of use) would go a long way towards demonstrating a need for the use of the non-free image - I get it, but we should have more. Nikkimaria (talk) 02:19, 27 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This is a WikiCup nomination. The following nominators are WikiCup participants: Piotrus. To the nominator: if you do not intend to submit this article at the WikiCup, feel free to remove this notice. UcuchaBot (talk) 00:01, 4 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Most not done, actually - be sure References and Bibliography are both fixed. Ordering is now fine, but formatting is still off: one has publisher, one has publisher and location, one has neither. Nikkimaria (talk) 01:38, 19 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Retrieval dates now fixed. FN97 is an example of variable date formatting. FN36 needs endash and might need spacing, depending on which formatting you choose. Kite reverses order of publisher and location, while Pula includes no location and Niestsiarchuk includes neither location nor publisher. Nikkimaria (talk) 16:38, 19 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, if by variable date formatting you meant comma missing, this is now fixed there and in another ref I saw it. – added to FN36, I don't see the need for spacing? Kite, Pula fixed. I cannot help with Niestsiarchuk, it was not added by me, nor is it in a language I can help with (@User:Gwillhickers - can you help here?). --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here04:51, 21 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Support I've sorted the "Other sources" and "Further reading" into alphabetic order for you. I can read the Cyrillic. Disclaimer: I reviewed the article at GA. Hawkeye7 (talk) 08:56, 14 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Support....Ran some automated tools including citation bot and all looks pretty good. Would like a couple days to read through article a few times before I post further comments.--MONGO16:22, 21 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I have read through the article several times now. Aside from what I would consider to be a slight over use of commas the article is comprehensive, generally neutral and well sourced. I've done a few edits myself but these were very minor tweaks as that was about all I could find.--MONGO15:26, 22 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Delegate comment -- Based on a very quick scan, the article needs someone to go through the prose. In the lead alone, for instance, Thomas Jefferson is three times referred to as the subject's friend; once should be enough. Further on I noticed "In late 1775, considered joining the Saxon army"; easily fixed but this sort of error should not show up in an article with five supports for promotion to FA. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 07:07, 24 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I took it one step further. Jefferson's name still appeared four times in the lede so I condensed one of the passages in question as the associated details (e.g. criticism of Jefferson, etc) are well covered in the body of the text. This is the Kościuszko biography, not Jefferson's, who is now only mentioned by name twice in the lede. -- Gwillhickers09:51, 24 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
New content covering events just before Kościuszko made out his last will, with citation, has been added to the Last will section, putting the event in better context, so reviewers might want to give that a peek also. (first paragraph) -- Gwillhickers00:24, 26 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I've just reworded parts of the lead, based on this I can only assume the rest of the article would still benefit from further copyediting. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 08:00, 31 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
First thing I notice: the "Name" section is too short for a proper section. You should make it into a note.
Done.
This sentence in "European travels": "He also had to deal with a legal dispute involving a brother." If you're not going to do more with it, it's best to leave it out. Right now, it just suggests a story that it never tells.
Done.
"...he considered joining the Saxon army but was turned down..." Did he attempt to join, or just think about it?
I think that "was turned down" makes it clear that he attempted to join?
OK, then it should say "attempted to join". "Considered" looks like he just thought about it.
Done.
In "American Revolutionary War": is there some significance to the fact that the ship he sailed on was owned by "Hortalez & Co."? If so, explain; if not, it's just a distraction to the reader.
Done.
The two sentences about Agrippa Hull and the polonaise seem really out of place. Is there some way to work them into the narrative?
I merged and reorderem them, they should be a little less out of place now.
I don't think you need the {{clear}} in that section. I removed it. If this causes problems, fee free to revert me.
You probably ought to use a conversion template when you mention measurements in miles, etc.
Done.
Many believe James Island to be the last battle of the war -- why don't they all believe it? Is there another battle later? Is there a scholarly consensus on the matter?
Hmmm, good catch, this was an old claim from the unreferenced times of the article. I've found a ref and reworded the text to make the source clear.
"In late May 1783, Kościuszko decided to collect his back pay, as in his seven years of faithful, uninterrupted service to the American cause he had never collected any pay." Kind of cumbersome. How about "Having not been paid in his seven years of service, in late May 1783, Kościuszko decided to collect the salary owed to him."?
Done.
"Kościuszko's funeral was held on October 19, 1817 at a former Jesuit church." Where? In Solothurn?
"His body was embalmed and placed in a crypt at Solothurn's Jesuit Church." I thought it was a former Jesuit church?
Should be, fixed.
In the note about his will, I don't understand the line about Taney. Judgments were (and still are) sometimes written without an author (per curiam).
The whole will section is odd, with the first part jumping back to events decades earlier. Is that part even necessary? It seems enough to say that he made a will in America and how he wanted his money used, etc. The mention of the ACW is also odd.
"Kościuszko's bequest to Jefferson remained legally blocked by his relatives..." By whose relatives? Active voice would make it clearer: "[X]'s relatives legally blocked Kościuszko's bequest..."
I'm not sure it's necessary to mention Annette Gordon-Reed's race (or to mention her at all). The whole thing about what Jefferson did is more about Jefferson than Kościuszko. That whole last paragraph in "Last will" seems tacked on, and distracts from the subject of the article.
I'll ping the author User:Gwillhickers to answer questions about this section. (I still think we may be better of splitting this into a new article and just summarizing key points in TK bio).
Ah, didn't realize it was a different author. That explains it, because it reads very differently than the rest of your writing.
The "See also" section: is there any way to work these things into the article? The monument, surely, could fit in "Tributes and memorials". List of Poles seems unnecessary. And Pulaski, if he had interactions with Kościuszko should be wroked into the main article.
Last will section. While an important topic I don't think there's enough material there to warrant making it a separate article, as Piotrus suggested to me earlier. The section is of average length and is by no means near the largest. We would still have to represent this topic in the article regardless and it seems, given its notoriety, we have already done so adequately. We can always scale down some text if there is pressing concern by FA reviewers that the section is too long, which imo has not reached this point, the section being roughly a half a page long (+ - depending on your browser settings). There is historical commentary from two sources (Hodges and Reed) as to why Jefferson declined the will. Reed's race, African American, is mentioned (introduced by another editor) as there is a growing attitude in much of so called 'modern academia' that any "defense" of Jefferson regarding his dealing with slavery issues is racially motivated. Even so, I don't see any specific reason why we should not mention Ms Reed's race, given the racial connotations often associated with the topic. -- Gwillhickers10:00, 13 September 2013 (UTC).[reply]
Caution
We presently have about five editors actively making numerous changes to this Good Article, so we need to proceed carefully. Already I have had to restore a number of items, and while sometimes it's good to scale down some of the text, it is not 'automatically' a good thing, especially when the truncated text starts to read like a police report or an entry in a dictionary. If there is concern that the overall page is too long (currently only at 75 k) please be reminded that there are many FA rated articles that are much longer (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 ... ) and are so because they are well written, ofter plenty of details and depth of coverage -- all FA requirements. -- Gwillhickers10:30, 13 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I wouldn't call it an "active edit dispute", so let's not hype matters here. The idea regarding a separate page for the Last will section was suggested and all that was done was to point out the section length is average and that we must cover this topic anyways, which has been done in summary, while an opinion was offered regarding mentioning Reed's race, which I am not dead set on including. While the section does involve Jefferson, it also involves Kościuszko's family, Kościuszko's sentiments about slavery, his wishes etc. I would suggest to keep as much coverage as possible. We can trim the Hodges/Reed commentary as this is directed at Jefferson. As a FA we don't want to pass off the topic with just average coverage imo. -- Gwillhickers12:58, 13 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed. As I said, we can get rid of the commentary but I would recommend we give the topic good coverage per FA standards. What else would you suggest? -- Gwillhickers13:16, 13 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
My comments are above. The section doesn't fit in with the rest of the article, it's mostly about Jefferson, not Kościuszko, and it jumps around chronologically. It's coatracky and duplicative. Piotrus already covered the material perfectly in the "Later life" section when he wrote "Before leaving, he wrote a last will which allocated substantial of his resources to the manumission of American black slaves." The rest of the article's great; this part stands out like a sore thumb. --Coemgenus (talk) 13:24, 13 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The topic of the last will is covered with one sentence in the Later life section: Before leaving, he wrote a last will which allocated substantial of his resources to the manumission of American black slaves. This hardly covers the topic. The section, though smaller, was part of the article when it passed GA. While the section may mention Jefferson more than it should, it is still mostly about Kościuszko, how he was secretly smuggled out of the county with Jefferson's help, the will, Kościuszko's family, etc. The idea to remove the section entirely is excessive, as are your opinions of it. We can trim the section accordingly but there is no call for introducing excessive and hyper opinionated language into the discussion, as this will indeed make the dialog "hotly disputed", something only you are doing. Why don't we let Piotrus make the call? -- Gwillhickers13:49, 13 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, that seems to be the way to go. As I said, his last will involves much more than just leaving some money to his family, it involves much else. i.e.Kościuszko's relationship and trust for Jefferson, his strong feelings about slavery, etc. It gives us one of the best, among others, insights into Kościuszko the man. I don't know if the topic would make for much of a stand alone article, not unless you wanted to expand on all the legal and family involvements of the will, but we can certainly trim the section down if that's what the consensus is, but let's remember, the will is one of the things Kościuszko is famous for, and given its contents, rightly so. I'll get to work on it. -- Gwillhickers19:53, 13 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, the section has been reduced by about half. Jefferson is mentioned for his involvement and trust for getting Kościuszko secretly out of the country and as to why he turned down the will, which gives context to the ultimate fate of the Kościuszko's will. We don't just want to say, 'Jefferson refused to act on the will -- period'. Mention is also given to what eventually became of Kościuszko's funds. -- Gwillhickers20:13, 13 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
(od) It seems that every time I return here there's something new in the lead that catches my eye. This time it's "After he attempted to elope with his employer's daughter and was mercilessly thrashed by the magnate's retainers, he returned to France. (Kościuszko never married.)". First of all, "mercilessly thrashed" is highly emotive for an encyclopedic article, especially in the lead. "Thrashed" alone would surely suffice to get the point across. Secondly, the bald statement "(Kościuszko never married.)" seems out of place here and for me raises more questions than it answers, e.g. did he never marry because of the thrashing? Suggest just dropping it from the lead entirely. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 17:09, 14 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Links in lede : There seems to be quite a few links in the lede which I think would be better if they occurred in the body of the text, esp common knowledge links, such as Poland, Belarus, Lithuania, and the United States. If there is a consensus to reduce this number a bit we should, as it would be less distracting as the lede goes for any reader coming to the page to learn about Kosciuszko. It would seem that topics should only be linked here if they are key topics to the article's subject, and only when they are not common knowledge topics. The lede is not the place to invite the reader to tens of other subjects. Interest or curiosity for a topic/link usually occurs when that topic is used in context in the body of the text, imo. Currently there are some 33 links in the lede. I removed a few. i.e. Poland was linked twice. -- Gwillhickers19:45, 14 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I've already removed a few, as you may know. -- IMO, there should be few (if any) links or ref's in the lede, as the subject's lede should be something totally devoted to that subject/page. -- Gwillhickers07:30, 15 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Poland postage stamp : Kosciuszko, standing at far left, next to Thomas Paine and George Washington, w/ cavalry saber in hand, issued 1938
US Postage stamp : Engraving of Kosciuszko statue; Issued in 1933 on the 150th anniversary of Kosciusko's naturalization as an American citizen
Image proposal:
Replace the Mount Kosciuszko, Australia image in the Memorials and tributes section with this double image of Polish and American postage stamps honoring Kosciuszko. The Mount Kosciuszko image is okay but it looks like it could be a photo of any of a thousand other hills. -- Gwillhickers10:19, 15 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
We have space for it, and licensing seems fine. But you don't have to post such proposals here, you can just edit the article. That said, it would be nice if we could finish editing, if we keep messing with minor things like this this review may be failed due to article's lack of stability. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here13:02, 15 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Normally I would 'be bold' but at this point the page would be 'more' unstable if I just went ahead and removed and then added another image without a 'howdy-do', esp if someone objected. However, on that note, i.e.stability, I will wait for the article to pass FA and in the mean time we can get feed back. -- Speaking of stability, I think the text is fine at this point so we would do well from making any more numerous (and mostly unneeded) changes in one session, esp when the bulk of these edits only involve a personal preference for wording and nothing more. -- Gwillhickers18:33, 15 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
If it's not going to cause any 'article instability' issues I don't have any objections to including the stamp images in either section. -- Gwillhickers16:33, 23 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
New : Waiting to add the stamp images was something I opted for thinking that the page would soon be undergoing an active review again, but since reviewers seem to be very busy and the page has sat idle for the last several days I'll go ahead and add the images soon if there are no issues of any consequence with anyone. -- Gwillhickers15:12, 24 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I think it would be best to place the image in the section in which it is most appropriate so I'll try to do that without cramping text. If anyone thinks there are too many images in this section then I would suggest that we simply link to the image of Mt. Kosciuszko, as there is already another image of a hill, albeit man made, in the section. Add : Have just added the image, along with some content, w/ citation. Rearranged some text that best allows placement of images. I've also cropped the image of Mount Kosciuszko, as the original image was mostly committed to the foreground. -- Gwillhickers17:22, 25 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I am in no hurry to add the postage stamp image, and would prefer to wait. I have made what I hope will be my last edit for now. (added needed citation and also mentioned Kosciuszko's architect teacher, Perronet, in Paris, covered by the same citation, with footnote about Kosciuszko's surviving drawings in Polish museums). -- I think the article is good to go. -- Gwillhickers11:33, 16 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Outside opinion regarding closure: While I have not fully reviewed this article, I can say that it seems to have stabilized in the last few days, and the "Last will" section doesn't seem problematic to me in any way. I don't think it needs another image, though I don't think an additional stamp image would hurt the article either. With lots of "support" comments, I personally don't see any outstanding issues. – Quadell(talk)16:53, 17 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
New issues
Comments Support from Hamiltonstone. Excellent article. Some points:
"...but never finished due to family financial straits..." This to me is an unfamiliar syntax or use of the expression. I would have expected something like "...but never finished due to his family's dire financial straits..." If however the expression is normal to US English or something, then leave it be.
Consistency issue. In the lede his employer on return to Poland is described as a "magnate", but in the body text the term is not initially used, favouring instead the description "the province governor and hetman Józef Sylwester Sosnowski". I find the word "magnate" a little odd, whereas "province governor" is quite clear and "hetman", while it means nothing to me, is wikilinked so i can recognise it as a foreign term that i can learn about should i wish. Suggest revision of the lede.
The term Magnate is used several times throughout the article and is linked the first time it appears in the body of text. (It occurs in the lede but we're trying to keep links in the lede to a minimum as there were very many, and there are still quite a few there. Best to link such items when they are first used in body of text.) -- Gwillhickers16:35, 28 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, but i think my point has been missed. The person in question is not referred to as a magnate at all in the relevant passage - he is described as a governor, and a hetman, not a magnate. Furthermore, the term "magnate" is not used in the body text until much later. Indeed, when it is, it is linked to Magnate, whereas a better link would be Magnates of Poland and Lithuania. Really, there is a simple solution, to change the lede reference to "province governor".
It would be much simpler if we kept things consistent and just refer to the person in question as a Magnate in the relevant passage and simply link it to the more appropriate page as you pointed out. Also, sometimes links don't occur until "much later". Previously there were some 33 links in the lede. We really don't need to be dragging more links back into it. -- Gwillhickers06:07, 29 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Governor (wojewoda) of a province (województwo), and hetman, are very specific offices. "Magnate" is not an office or official rank; it simply means a very wealthy and influential person. Nobody said Poland or Lithuania was a województwo (province). If you have doubts about these matters, ask a Polish editor of English Wikipedia. Nihil novi (talk) 08:25, 29 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I appreciate you have had past concerns about links in the lede, but "magnate" has a specific meaning in this context, and if you favour that term in the lede and text (as is currently used, which is OK from a consistency point of view), then it must be linked in the lede as well. It should not be capitalised in either occurrence (as it is at present). hamiltonstone (talk) 10:34, 29 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Capitalization is not a problem, but the lede is not the place to be calling the reader's attention to a myriad of lesser topics when he/she hasn't even digested the basic premise of the subject in the lede yet, imo. If a reader is that interested or curious about a given term they can always check on it the old fashioned way. If we follow strict linking policy with an academic mentality then the lede is going to look mostly blue. (blur) That is why we have this policy. There are a number of topics more important in the lede that are also not linked. -- Gwillhickers16:11, 29 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yesterday I re-read the lead and for the first time had no concerns with it, but "magnate province-governor" sounds exceedingly odd and long-winded to me, suggest either "magnate" or "province governor" but not both. Furthermore there are several statements in the article that are not cited, one in Later life (second para) and a few in Memorials and tributes -- I realise the latter may seem self-evident, but other FAs usually manage to cite such things. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 23:01, 29 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
@User:Ian Rose: citations added. While the latter were from a content added by new editor, the earlier citations were removed by someone. I am not going to waste time tracking the culprit, but I assume they did so because they were annoyed by the same cite repeated in every sentence. Then someone split the para, and voila, unref para appears. Sigh. This is why I keep saying that most sentences should be cited - perfect example for the problem I describe there. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here02:49, 30 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I am the "culprit" here. As they were deleted back in February and after many 100s of edits since then I had forgotten about them. Just a note: -- It is a common practice to cite two or more consecutive sentences with one cite if they get their information from one source/page. Don't know off hand if this is policy or not, but that's what is usually done. Can't think of any article where each and every sentence is cited using the same citations, though I imagine there must be a couple out there, somewhere. -- Gwillhickers17:32, 30 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
"On learning of the American Revolution, Kościuszko, himself a revolutionary..." Well, no, not yet. So far K had studied, travelled, failed to get into a military academy, studied further, tutored, failed to elope with a girl, and failed to get into the Saxon army. He is about to be a revolutionary, but he certainly is not yet one.
Well, I think one can be a revolutionary without actually having to pick up a gun and take to battle, but i stipulated ..a man of revolutionary aspirations, sympathetic to the American cause.. -- Gwillhickers16:22, 28 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
"presented a memorial to the United States Congress," To me, a memorial is a large piece of stone with something written on it. Is that actually what he presented? From whom? What did it say? Very strange...
OK, I got confused. Early in the article, we have this phrase: "a difficult choice between the rebels and his sponsors — the King and the Czartoryskis, who favored a gradualist approach to shedding Russian domination —..." When I read this, I assumed the King and the Czartoryskis were both his sponsors and on the opposing side of the conflict from the "rebels". However, part way through the article, when K returns to Poland, we have this: "Due to the ongoing conflict between his patrons, the Czartoryskis, and King Stanisław August Poniatowski,..." My first thought was: did i mis-read the first passage? My second thought was: I can't have, but in that case, what "ongoing" conflict are we talking about? The WP article refers to "the" ongoing conflict, which suggests we have been told about it. Did I miss that? Maybe at least drop the "the"?
"While officially subordinate to Prince Józef Poniatowski, recognizing Kościuszko's superior experience, Poniatowski made him his second-in-command" But second-in-command is subordinate. So what's with the "While officially"?
"the King betrayed the army..." Whoa. This was a monarchy, and that expression suggests serious POV. It is the King's army. He can't "betray" it. In contrast, the subsequent expression "The King's capitulation was a hard blow for Kościuszko..." is an appropriate way to describe a situation.
"...but was dissuaded by the King's nephew, Prince Józef Poniatowski." This is odd, because the Prince has been referred to repeatedly up to this point, as K's commander etc. It should not be after so many appearances that we are told for the first time that he is the King's nephew.
I was with you until this sentence, which is completely opaque to the reader: "This was a shock to the Targowica Confederates, who had seen themselves as defenders of centuries-old privileges of the magnates, but who were now regarded by most Poles as traitors". The who? I'm not talking about the need for a wikilink - it is there - but rather the lack of any contextualisation of how this fits in to the discussion, or why it is relevant. And why would you not expect "most Poles" (ie. the peasants) to see defenders of rich people as "traitors". The notion therefore that it was a "shock" to them is counterintuitive. Rich people who defend rich people are seldom shocked when poor people hold them in low esteem. I'm sorry, but this did not fit in the narrative at all. Would anything be lost from a bio of K if you just deleted this sentence?
I've modified the sentence to: "This came as a shock to the Targowica Confederates, who had seen themselves as defenders of centuries-old privileges of the magnates, but had hardly expected that their appeal for help to the Tsarina of Russia would further reduce and weaken their country." I hope this clarifies the sentence. Nihil novi (talk) 06:33, 29 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
OK, on the plus side, the sentence is now completely clear. But I am not sure how it relates to the actions of K, who is the subject of this biography. I don't understand the subject well enough to express a view, except to say that, as a lay person, it is not clear to me how the omission of the sentence would adversely affect the bio. But I'm pleased it has at least been made clear :-) hamiltonstone (talk) 10:44, 29 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
"Jefferson said he wanted to educate blacks before they were freed, which was formally against Virginia law." Suggest you rewrite to make clear whether it was educating blacks, or freeing them, which was against the law".
"An opera, Kościuszko nad Sekwaną (Kościuszko at the Seine),... and works by Maria Konopnicka." no citations at all? There's also a cite needed tag on the preceding sentence, regarding the numerous editions of a work.
The cite needed tag was recently added. The contributing editor was notified and has responded but for some reason has not added the cite. Something to do with the expectations of cites being obnoxious if the item linked to is sourced on the other page. Comments were made about adding the cite on the Kosciuszko talk page but nothing has materialized yet. We might have to strike the statement in question. -- Gwillhickers17:00, 28 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Now supporting on assumption that, whatever the final solution is to the discussion about magnates etc above, lede and body text use same term, and the wikilinks are to the specialised polish/ lithuanian magnate article. hamiltonstone (talk) 10:48, 29 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Current status
I have added (in the Memorials and tributes section) what I hope are the last few citations needed in the Kosciuszko article. For the last two months we have covered, fixed, reworded and tweaked this article in more detail than most as FA nominations go -- and it had major support before the latest round of 'adjustments' a few days ago. Are there any last items standing in the way of moving forward with the nomination? -- Gwillhickers19:26, 3 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I object to the sentence in the Last Will section that currently reads "Jefferson said he wanted to educate blacks before they were freed, but manumission was formally against Virginia law." The supporting reference (no. 5) is given as Nash and Hodges, p. 232. (Nash, Gary; Hodges, Graham Russell Gao (2012). Friends of Liberty: Thomas Jefferson, Tadeusz Kosciuszko, and Agrippa Hull. New York, NY: Basic Books. p. 328. ISBN978-0-465-03148-1.) I can't see this in Google Books, but an authorized reprint of a part of the book by History News Network, here [19], doesn't mention this. It reads "Why did Jefferson, while throwing himself energetically into the creation of the University of Virginia, plead that he was too old and tired to carry out Kosciuszko’s will and betray the trust of his Polish compatriot? One of the key reasons was Jefferson’s allegiance to the Old Dominion aristocracy and his devotion to sustaining the economic and cultural leverage of the white South in national politics. He also feared offending friends, especially slaveowners..." There is no mention of Virginia law in this excerpt. If Nash & Hodges do mention Virginia law on page 232, could the editor who can see that Nash & Hodges book page give us a verbatim, quoted couple of sentences here. Those would show up in a Google search, a way of verifying.
Why not say something like "Jefferson's executorship of the will remains the subject of debate." As easily-verifiable references for that sentence, you could use the Slate article [20] and the Atlantic article [21] The will is clearly, as Piotr says, worthy of its own WP article (I'm aware that it'd be subject to the same POV-weight problems as all the other Jefferson articles, just proposing a sentence and references along these lines for this article). Novickas (talk) 20:34, 3 October 2013 (UTC) Objection resolved. Novickas (talk) 20:46, 7 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The reasons for Jefferson not taking on the will are perfectly understandable, and the reasons given are sourced and we have already resolved the issue regarding scaling down the section to its current size. No one says you can't devote a dedicated article to this subject. The will is one of the major topics associated with Kosciuszko and deserves at least a section in this article. If you are unable to view certain books on line then I'd suggest going to the public library or buying them and see if you can come up with something concrete to base any objections you still might have after you have read them. Taking on the University project late in his life was one of Jefferson's loves and didn't involve all the conflict and legal batters that were associated with the will, and it didn't upset any particular political party or interest group as the issue of freeing slaves would have had. Nor was it against Virginia law. The article deals with the facts, not any moral implications either way, nor does it contain any conjecture as to why Jefferson 'didn't do this -- but did that', as the Slate and other speculative articles typically do. -- Gwillhickers00:31, 4 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Let me try again - maybe I didn't express myself clearly enough. The article currently states ...but manumission was formally against Virginia law. You agreed it wasn't illegal when you wrote just above "Nor was it against Virginia law". So would you object to removing that clause? I certainly agree with you that the will deserves a section (I added some material about it myself, back in 2009.[22]). It's just that it seems to me that even without the inaccurate it-was-against-the-law clause in that sentence, its first part, "Jefferson said he wanted to educate blacks before they were freed", even without that clause, is starting down the slippery slope of interpreting Jefferson's actions and I think we do agree that this article should avoid interpretation, in the vein of either blame or empathy, and stick to the undisputed parts. But I do think it's important to mention the controversy in one way or another here and that's why I suggested including one sentence to the effect that J's decision has been much discussed with a couple of links to reliable sources about it. I'm open to suggestions about how this should be done. Novickas (talk) 11:15, 4 October 2013 (UTC) Resolved. Novickas (talk) 20:46, 7 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
OK, I have the Nash & Hodges book in front of me, and am looking at page 232. It mentions that the New York Daily Advertiser wrote "but the laws of Virginia have prevented the will of Kosciusko from being carried out" and that Richmond's Enquirer "reported that the nation's third president was blocked by Virginia's laws that 'created difficulties...". These are just newspaper quotes - someone, somewhere along the line, must have edited this article so as to attribute them to Nash & Hodges. It's quite clear that N&H are only quoting newspapers and don't support those newspapers' interpretations - their History Network piece contains the words "Jefferson's broken promise" and the book's subtitle contains the words 'A Tragic Betrayal of Freedom". I see the complications-with-Virginia-law material also made it into the lead. I will now be bold and edit both sections. I'm willing to let go of the request that the historical and ongoing controversy be mentioned here, really it would best be treated in a dedicated article. Novickas (talk) 21:48, 4 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for the analysis. The will and its legacy (sic) are clearly notable, and it is often a good idea to split potentially controversial content from an otherwise stable article into a dedicate subarticle. We can surely make a good DYK out of that topic, and with the level of interest, sources and discussion I see about this, perhaps make the will article into its own GA, at least. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here03:47, 5 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I restored the section to its prior version. Manumission was indeed against Virgina law and greatly factored into Jefferson's decision to decline acting on the will. I also restored the brief historical context leading up to the will, as we are trying to build a Featured Articled and such details, context and depth of coverage are required. Mention of Jefferson getting Kosciuszko secretly out of the country is an important part of the biography, last will, or no last will. This item just so happens to be better placed in this section as again, this is what led up to the will. We just don't want to give a brief truncated account that reads like a police report. Also, I changed the name of the section back to the version when (almost) everyone here gave their support for the article as it was. Some of Novickas' comments here are interesting but at this point we need to discuss major changes before they occur. -- Gwillhickers04:22, 5 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I have copied the will to Last will and testament of Tadeusz Kościuszko. Can we please agree to move any controversial information to that article? It's an important subject, but it can safely be covered in the article with two - three sentences. I am not opposed to a dedicated section is a compromise version can be worked out, but if not, I will remove most of the content of this section from the article; as interesting as it is it is not a topic of core importance to the article beyond a brief mention. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here06:54, 5 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for discussing before making any changes. The topic is controversial only when we start making conjectured claims about Jefferson's decision as to why he declined the will. If we just state the facts per reliable sources, then there's nothing to contest. It's a fact that Jefferson plead an inability because of age and surrounding circumstances. If the article should say, it was understandable that Jefferson declined.., then we're asserting moralistic opinion and that's where the controversy and disagreements begin. Also, Jefferson's help in getting Kosciuszko secretly out of the country is a key item to the biography, whether it involved the will or not. The will says a lot about Kosciuszko the man so I guess I disagree about treating this topic with just a dictionary like entry. It's one of the topics Kosciuszko is famous for. If we just stick to the facts per reliable sources there shouldn't be any disagreement or controversy. We've already scaled down the size of this section considerably. We shouldn't let the quality of an article be determined by the possibility that someone, somewhere, is going to have something to say about this detail or that. After all, this is Wikipedia, and many disagree with things simply because they appear under their nose. It seems enough people have given this article, with the section, the 'okay', so we should address any last comments anyone may have to say about the section and move on. A dedicated article is a good idea, but that I suspect will involve legal and family issues in great part, none of which the section here lends itself to. What item(s) do you see as potentially problematic? -- Gwillhickers07:48, 5 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Really, manumission was not illegal in Virginia at the time. "In 1782 Virginia passed a law allowing manumitted slaves to stay in the state. Until the legislature amended it in 1896, this law allowed a master to free healthy adult slaves without any restrictions...After 1806, masters could still free their slaves, but the former slaves had to leave the state within twelve months...Thousands of Jefferson's fellow Virginians took advantage of the 1782 law, the openness of neighboring jurisdictions, or the American Colonization Society to free their slaves." [23]; "Since 1782 Virginia law had allowed individual manumission by deed or will." [24] It was not banned in Virginia til 1851. [25] The statement in the will section "Jefferson said he wanted to educate blacks before they were freed, but manumission was formally against Virginia law." is...untrue.
Insert : Shouldn't '1896' above read '1796'? The sentence as it presently reads says manumission was legal in Virginia long after the Civil War when slavery was already abolished. -- Gwillhickers16:50, 5 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Another sentence in that section, "There were also political considerations by this time, and Jefferson recommended his friend John Hartwell Cocke, who also opposed slavery, as executor, but for similar reasons Cocke refused to execute the bequest" is also verging into interpretive territory. Suggest rewriting as just "Jefferson recommended his friend John Hartwell Cocke as executor, but Cocke also refused." Novickas (talk) 12:01, 5 October 2013 (UTC) Resolved. Novickas (talk) 20:46, 7 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
If that law sentence is removed, and the interpretive material is taken out of the Cocke sentence, I would be OK with the section. I'm uncomfortable with the use of 'last will' since he wrote up three later ones, and suggest it be just "a will" in the lead and Disposition of American estate in the section heading, but no big deal. Novickas (talk) 12:16, 5 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
If there is a factual error regarding the time frame when manumission was against Virgina law by all means let's correct that. Good work! My apologies for not catching that one. -- Gwillhickers16:43, 5 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I think its best we keep this issue brief...its basically a tangent that deserves a daughter article, but not much expansion here. I'd keep the section on the will as NPOV as possible...stick with the will(s), that he wanted to have his estate sold to free and educate slaves, including Jefferson's slaves, state that the will(s) were not satisfied and that the money was eventually returned to his heirs at X date. The daughter article can detail the reasons why Jefferson didn't want to be heavily involved in the will(s) and the other aspects of this issue. However, as the section stands right now, its not anything that prevents me from still supporting the article for FA.--MONGO04:50, 6 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Mongo, we've discussed this. The paragraph of getting Kosciuszko secretly out of the country with Jefferson's helps marks an important point in the biography, with or without the will and was restored to the section. As was requested, please discuss these things before making major changes. Many articles share and have overlaping information to some extent. This is good and connects the articles contextually. This is esp true with biographies of famous people in history. Kosciuszko's will is an important topic in the biography, and needs to have more than a dictionary like reference to the affair. FA's require that topics be well covered. As was also mentioned, the section contains only facts, no opinionated conjecture along moral and ethical lines. Again, at this point we need to discuss major changes so we don't have to go back with this. -- Gwillhickers17:19, 6 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The paragraph,
"In March 1798 Kościuszko received a bundle of letters from Europe. The news in one of them came as a shock, causing him, in his crippled condition, to spring from his couch and limp unassisted to the middle of the room and exclaim to General Anthony Walton White, "I must return at once to Europe!" Kościuszko immediately consulted Thomas Jefferson, who procured a passport for him under a false name and arranged for his secret departure for France. Kościuszko left no word for either his former comrade-in-arms and fellow St. Petersburg prisoner Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz[1] or for his servant, only leaving some money for them.[2][3]"
belongs chronologically, and just plain logically, in the "Later life" section and should be restored to it. A decision was earlier made to set up a separate section on Kościuszko's "Last will", farther down the article, discussing his American will which he drew up as he was leaving the United States in 1798. But discussing detailed circumstances of that departure belongs in the context of his American stay, not clumsily lumped in with the discussion of the will, following "Funerals", 19 years after he actually left America. Nihil novi (talk) 20:18, 6 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The paragraph chronologically fits well in its original placement, as it is covers what prompted Kosciuszko to make out a will and leave the country. Btw, as I pointed out, the 'Funerals' section should follow the 'Last will' section, as it now does. Again, the article, with the 'Last will' section in its current placement, got the 'okay' from about half a dozen editors. The article has been picked and pecked at more than enough at this point, so let's try to move on. The nomination has been hanging for more than two months now. Numerous 'support' was submitted more than a month ago. Any issues that need addressing at this point should be critical and non opinionated or we're going to be here forever. -- Gwillhickers05:09, 7 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Undiscussed changes
Since no one bothered to say so in edit history or discuss this with anyone, I didn't realize that the first paragraph in the 'Last will' section had been moved to 'Later life'. Please discuss major changes with fellow editors. If the article keeps changing at the whim of any given editor without a discussion the article is not going to pass. The paragraph in question is much better placed in the 'Last will' section as it directly lead into the text covering Kosciuszko writing out his will. This was discussed with others several times, so that's where it will be returned shortly. If there is a consensus to move the paragraph to 'Later life' section then we can move it there then. Please cooperate with fellow editors here. -- Gwillhickers17:32, 6 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The editors of this article had the exact same verbatim paragraph in both sections. That's just plain sloppy and indicates you should solicit an excellent cooyeditor to proofread this. To make what should be an obvious correction doesn't require a lengthy discussion on a talkpage. I am leaning towards advising that this FAC be withdrawn until some issues are worked out.--MONGO16:49, 10 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
As there is evidently no objections or reasons not to, I placed the 'Funerals' section after the 'Last will' section, per chronology of section placement. -- Gwillhickers03:40, 7 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I suggest withdrawal.
There seems to be a lot of issues with the Last will section. The rest of the article is great, but it might be best to withdraw, fix the problems, and resubmit. --Coemgenus (talk) 21:09, 6 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Every article that is nominated for FA usually has a lot of issues. The section had a couple of minor issues. There are no problems here that warrant withdrawing the nomination. There was a little disagreement as to some wording and the placement of the section, but that was all. We got through it with no BS and editor egos getting in the way of rationality. Further stigmatizing the section as a 'problem' that is impossible to deal with is uncalled for. The article has improved since it got numerous 'support' votes back in mid August. The Kosciuszko article is more than good to go. -- Gwillhickers03:22, 7 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I think the article is relatively stable. I think the last will is fine with just one paragraph; NN's edit seems reasonable. The will is now mentioned chronologically, and has a short, dedicated session summarizing the topic - an elegant solution, methinks. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here06:48, 7 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
In the later life section there is now was a time/event gap between these two paragraphs:
In March 1798 Kościuszko received a bundle of letters ...
He arrived in Bayonne, France, on June 28, 1798. ...
So as the 'Later life' section read, Kosciuszko recieved a bundle of letters and (leap!) went to France with no mention of the will until we jump back in time to the next section and talk about it. To fix this, I placed the 'Last will' section in between the two paragraphs and added a section/name 'Return to France' in the following paragraph. So now the 'Last will' section still has the one paragraph, but it is chronologically placed in between the events that were outlined in the 'Later life' section. Now the events follow one into the other, and so do the sections.-- Gwillhickers16:02, 7 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The article's editors, including me, seem to be stalemated about the organization of the last few sections, reverting each other yesterday and today. I don't care all that much and will stop changing it. Novickas (talk) 17:21, 7 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
We've all had to make compromises. You've done some great work otherwise, just wish you'd be more 'talkative' when it comes to making major changes. Also, I'm not sure who added the quote about Napoleon being Poland's undertaker. Whoever added that hopefully will know from what source it came. -- Gwillhickers17:35, 7 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I took the liberty of removing the first paragraph in Last Will since it was already written verbatim in the Later Life section...I may not have placed it in the best location but it simply didn't fit in the Last Will section IMHO. When I did my review in late August this issue wasn't an issue. I'm going to reread the article in the next day or two and if I see similar problems I may have to reassess my support. I don't want to do that as I would really like to see this article promoted.--MONGO03:42, 8 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The article has gone through a lot of rewording, much of it occurring with no edit summaries or discussions, and imo, some of it not needed. Overall however, the article has improved greatly since everyone gave their support back in mid August. As the Later life, Last will and Return to Europe sections go, they are in their proper order and look fine now imo. Reminder (to everyone) : When there are several editors actively making changes at the same time it's crucial to leave edit summaries and discuss significant or major changes first. Better to have disagreements on the talk page than an edit war, even if it doesn't exceed 3RR by one particular editor. -- Gwillhickers16:43, 8 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Now leaning to oppose....50 edits in last three days and some ongoing issues regarding one of two sections indicates the article is still in flux and not stable. I will review again in 5 days.--MONGO16:40, 10 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Forced image size
Why were all the image sizes recently forced so small? I've seen larger images in a dictionary. I returned the lede image to its default size. The other images should be fixed as well. The reader should not have to be forced to break away from the text to adequately view an image as he/she reads along. Images should not be forced small unless there is a good reason to do so. e.g.Image is very large in default size, etc. All the forced sizes may cause FA issues. Perhaps Coemgenus is right and the article be withdrawn from nomination until we can sort all these (new) issues out and a couple contributing editors learn how to cooperate with others editors. When several editors are actively working on a page, the normal, logical and considerate thing to do is discuss major changes. The images should be returned to their default and/or practical sizes. -- Gwillhickers16:43, 7 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Note - as already mentioned several times, please do not use level 3 headers or higher. See the guidelines on top of WP:FAC for all nominators and reviewers. Higher level headers split the main FA-listing at WP:FAC and are disruptive for others (the nomination itself is only a level 3 section). If you have any question on such conventions, please feel free to ask one of the coordinators or on FAC-talk. Thank you. GermanJoe (talk) 17:38, 7 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The default size of images is set by your preferences, but these are not respected by the Visual Editor, which will use the global 220px default. Wikimedia initially said that everyone should hard-code image sizes, then accepted that this was a bug in the Visual Editor. It hasn't been fixed yet however, so this part of the MOS is currently in abeyance. Hawkeye7 (talk) 20:21, 7 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Most readers that come to Wikipedia from an internet search are not registered users and don't even know about Preferences. Often times the default setting simply doesn't cut it. -- Gwillhickers16:57, 8 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, but many of them are on mobile devices, where large images are inconvenient. The mobile version has its own preferences. Hawkeye7 (talk) 18:59, 8 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Well, it would seem that an image would have to be quite some size to be an inconvenience. In any case, I'll adjust the image sizes to default settings (220px) and any image that is too small or large I'll adjust so it's the same basic size as all the others. As it is, many of the images are forced to tiny sizes. Will wait for any comments first. -- Gwillhickers02:33, 9 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Have adjusted image sizes to default and practical sizes. The default setting for one image is on the large side, but not too large imo, esp since it's a portrait of Kosciuszko wearing medals of honor, etc. -- Gwillhickers17:22, 9 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Kosciuszko baptized Catholic
Removing info about the names (Andrzej and Tadeusz) given to Kosciuszko at baptism is a mistake. This is basic biographical information and it was sourced with more than a reference to the ambassador's speech, but also by Gardner, 1942 (for Kosciuszko being a Catholic). US Ambassador Krol's speech is now a matter of public record, so it would seem this is more than a reliable source for simple information like baptism. Krol has a Bachelor's degree in History from Harvard University and a Master's degrees in Philosophy and Politics if there is any doubt about his academic capacity. There is also another source for the baptism, Kajencki, 1998, p.54, so we should return this important item using any or all of the three sources mentioned. -- Gwillhickers12:17, 12 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Closing comment — This nomination has been running for an exceptionally long time but issues are still ongoing, which are giving rise to stability problems. I know edits to FACs are common and are expected but we have gone beyond prose tweaking. I will be archiving this in a few minutes. Please wait until two weeks after the bot has run before renominating, during which time I hope the remaining issues can be resolved. Graham Colm (talk) 17:51, 12 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. You're nominating an article that is currently rated at start class, and that you have only made three edits to, for FA status. This is a naive and premature nomination. I think you need to familiarise yourself with the FA criteria and pick up more experience at article writing before even considering nominating an article for FA status. Mattythewhite (talk) 18:01, 7 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Suggest withdrawal – The nominator hasn't edited the article much, and on top of that I see a short lead, some punctuation-related issues in the Biography section, and a few items that appear uncited. I don't think this meets the FA criteria yet. Giants2008 (Talk) 00:04, 8 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - Not sure why. Maybe just natural but naïve enthusiasm, but this editor has been nominating various articles where he has made few edits and then just picking up on some of the comments highlighting some basic problems with articles rather than preparing articles using the known standards and requirements and then nominating. As above, think a bit of education needed here. Still he did manage to get West Ham United F.C. to GA status with a lowish number of edits :).--Egghead06 (talk) 04:59, 8 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose and suggest withdrawal. As someone who watched Joe Cole play with the West Ham youth team I feel his Wiki article should be better for a player who was once one of England's young starlets and who has won several major trophies. It fails almost immediately with the lack of referencing and then degenerates into the match-day reporting style seen so often in footballers' articles. I don't feel inclined to provide any changes at the moment as I did with the West Ham United article as I feel it would be best for the nominator to pick this up and go with it if they wish to.--Egghead06 (talk) 18:49, 8 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Closing note: This candidate has been archived, but there may be a delay in bot processing of the close. Please see WP:FAC/ar, and leave the {{featured article candidates}} template in place on the talk page until the bot goes through.
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
I am nominating this for featured article because I believe it meets and exceeds the FA criteria: it is well-written, comprehensive, well-researched and neutral. While edits of a copy-editing nature are made occasionally, there has been no substantial disagreement about the article's content for a very long time, and vandalism is likewise very low. I believe readers will find that it follows Wikipedia's style guidelines very closely, including a well-considered structure and extremely careful sourcing throughout. It includes numerous freely-licensed images, and its length reflects the breadth and depth of information about C-SPAN available in third-party sources over its thirty-plus years in existence.
It is also important to mention here that, as the primary contributor to this article, I am also a consultant to C-SPAN. I have been involved with this article for a couple of years, however I have made no direct edits since late 2011; these days I refrain from all direct edits to the mainspace when I have a financial COI, following Jimbo's advisory to COI editors, as explained in his Paid Advocacy FAQ. I realize that this may introduce added complexity to this process; when editors ask that changes be made, I feel I should not be the one to implement them. For this reason, I would like to suggest that reviewing editors be willing to make changes that are agreed upon. However, I also can find additional assistance to implement changes if necessary. Thanks, and I'm looking forward to the process. WWB Too (Talk · COI) 16:41, 19 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Comments from Laser brain
Comment as I don't think you've made it exactly clear: Although you haven't made "direct edits since late 2011", you are indeed responsible for the content in the article today, per User:WWB Too/C-SPAN (2013 revision). Am I correct? The reason I want to underscore this is because normally editors ought not nominate articles at FAC when they haven't been substantially involved, and I don't want anyone to think that's the case here. Additionally, I really don't think anyone will have a problem with your making superficial edits to the article in response to FAC comments. If substantive changes are needed, maybe you should find a co-nominator who's willing to take responsibility. --Laser brain(talk)19:04, 19 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Reply Sorry, Laser brain, I should have been more clear. Although I have not made direct edits to the article since that time, I am still responsible for nearly all of the current article. My process included writing drafts in my userspace (this one in 2011 when I was going for GA, and this one in 2013 while planning for FA). I then submitted these for review at Talk:C-SPAN, whereupon the arrival of consensus, volunteer editors made the direct changes. I really have not made a single direct edit to a client article since the end of 2011, because of Jimbo's advisory, so I'd probably want to see if his thinking is the same or different here. I'm open to asking the question, though I expect he'd say "no, you're a paid advocate, you should stick to Talk pages". I realize that's not quite what WP:COI says, but I always want to be as careful as I can, because there are very widely diverging views on COI at Wikipedia. Does that help clarify? WWB Too (Talk · COI) 21:26, 19 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Also it occurs to me that I could, again, edit a version of the article in my userspace before it is moved back to the mainspace upon final approval. I think that's what we did when I was involved in FAC on Cracker Barrel Old Country Store, which was a little over a year ago now. WWB Too (Talk · COI) 13:55, 20 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Comments from KConWiki
Question: Regarding this statement and citation, the article cited is from 2004, so how could it be used as a citation for what happened through 2011? Thanks KConWiki (talk) 00:53, 3 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Between 1979 and May 2011, the network televised more than 24,246 hours of floor action.[4]
Reply: Good catch. I looked at the source, which is behind Nexis' paywall, and it looks like the date in the Wikipedia article is simply wrong. The text in The Washington Post article reads as follows:
24,246 —The number of hours of floor action the channel has broadcast from the House of Representatives since 1979.
C-SPAN has occasionally produced spinoff programs from Booknotes focusing on specific topics. In 1994, Booknotes collaborated with Lincoln scholar Harold Holzer to produce a re-creation of the seven Lincoln–Douglas debates.[72]
I don't think I have access to the full article used as a citation, so I can't be sure what it says. However, it had previously been established at The Lincoln–Douglas Debates (1994 reenactments)#Background that the seven individual cities in Illinois that hosted the debates produced the debates with their own resources, and that C-SPAN helped facilitate this and aired the results (with help and guidance from Holzer and others). So, I can rewrite that sentence if appropriate, but I want to throw it out there to see if anyone else has suggested verbiage. Also, it wasn't really Booknotes that would have collaborated, but C-SPAN as a whole. Thanks KConWiki (talk) 02:14, 3 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Reply: I have also been unable to locate the full article and, as it is not on Nexis, which I often use, I'm fairly confident that this isn't something I contributed in the first place. I see that The Lincoln–Douglas Debates (1994 reenactments) article is something you created so you're probably the most knowledgeable about this topic. I'm perfectly OK with you rewriting this information as you see fit. Do you have a good clear source in mind that explains the origins of the Lincoln-Douglas debates? Cheers, WWB Too (Talk · COI) 21:01, 4 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: I will work on editing the above-noted excerpts, as well as a few other things I noted (i.e., potentially excessive use of the word "initiated") over the course of the next few days. KConWiki (talk) 03:43, 5 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Reply: I assume you're referring to the image of the C-SPAN Digital Bus? The other image captions either appear to me to be full sentences or do not end with a period, however please correct me if I'm wrong. If you would be willing to make this change I'd really appreciate it. As my disclosure above explains, I'd like to avoid all direct edits to the article, even for simple edits like this. Cheers, WWB Too (Talk · COI) 18:01, 9 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, Nikkimaria. I've just answered the same question on your user Talk, but I'll copy it here for others' benefit: the way I've handled more substantial updates so far is to edit a version of the article in my userspace and keep it current to the existing article, with changes. Then, I've found volunteer editors to review, approve and move over the latest version from my userspace, once there is consensus. I admit, it's a clunky process, but I'm not sure how to stay on the right side of Jimbo's advice otherwise. Best, WWB Too (Talk · COI) 13:25, 10 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Comments from Awardgive
Comments - I'll be looking at sources, mainly where they are needed, how they are used, and if they are reliable. (Note: I am not doing spotchecks)
Lead: First off, the "Citation needed" needs to be resolved right away. Generally, footnotes aren't included in the lead unless info not presented anywhere else in the article is present. If this is the case, then they can stay, but can footnote 3 be moved to the end of the sentence, because, as far as I've seen, footnotes aren't usually located in the middle of a sentence.
The "Citation needed" tag can simply be removed. This was very recently added by an editor and is not needed. This same information is presented in the Audience section where it is supported by a source. I have followed up with the editor who made this change (see here) and am waiting on his reply. If someone else feels comfortable removing it that would be great.
As for footnote 3, this could also be removed since this same information is covered and cited in the Organization and operations section. This would resolve the problem of the mid-sentence citation.
The only citation in the introduction that is currently necessary is the one at the end of the first paragraph. This information is not repeated in the body of the article, but could be added to the Radio broadcasts section and the citation moved there. Making this change would then leave the introduction without any citations. WWB Too (Talk · COI) 17:20, 27 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Awardgive has removed the "Citation needed" tag and the unneeded reference. There is still one remaining footnote in the introduction, though Ruhrfisch has pointed this out in their feedback below. I'll also follow up with that editor about this. WWB Too (Talk · COI) 18:51, 30 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Development: Paragraph 1: Again, footnotes generally are placed after a comma or period, so for the last sentence, can the footnotes be moved. Also, is the last part of that sentence sourced to footnotes 5 or 10, or does it need to be sourced? Paragraph 2: Can footnote 16 be moved to the end of the sentence? Otherwise, this paragraph is fine. Paragraphs 3&4: Both of these are fine, sourcing-wise.
Paragraph 1: I see no reason why the references cannot be moved to the end of the sentence. As for the end of that sentence that currently appears to be unsupported. The Columbia College Today source includes the following:
No one was interested. Except Rosencrans. He wrote the first check ($25,000), and then rallied the cable industry for support… The idea was met with resistance by broadcast and local channels, which held tremendous influence in Congress and the FCC, but meetings with the House leadership, including legendary Speaker Tip O’Neill (D-Mass.), at which Rosencrans and Lamb pledged that the new network would be non-political, paved the way for its inception.
and
A self-described political junkie, Rosencrans serves on the network’s board as chairman emeritus.
I feel that this supports the statement that "other cable-television executives followed suit", but doesn't seem to specifically support the statement about the board of directors so it would perhaps be best to trim the final clause of the sentence.
Hi again, I've looked around at the current sources and haven't found one that addresses the unsupported information you pointed out. However, I've looked at the C-SPAN website and I think I've located a good source to use. If you look at the Viewer FAQs page of the C-SPAN website you'll see that the answer to the first question verifies the unsupported information. The page says:
When the House and Senate are out of session, we carry LIVE or taped events on our networks ranging from Press Briefings to Congressional Hearings to Speeches and News Conferences related to public affairs.
I've prepped a reference that matches the style used throughout the article:
Sorry about taking so long. I've been overwhelmed by schoolwork, but I now have some time. Review continuing:
Programming: Most of this section looks good. I made a small tweak in "Senate and House of Representatives", hope that's okay. My one concern in the entire section comes in third paragraph of the "Public affairs" section, where four sources are used to source one statement. I don't know about other people, but I would consider this citation overkill. Is there a way to fix this.
Hi Awardgive, as soon I read this comment I knew exactly the sentence you meant, and I agree that four citations in a row is usually not a great sign. This was the compromise result based on feedback I received during the Peer review process. Previously, the section (see this older version for the full section) read as follows:
After the deaths of Ronald Reagan in 2004, Rosa Parks in 2005 and Gerald Ford in 2006, C-SPAN featured live, uninterrupted coverage of the visitors who came to the Capitol Rotunda to pay their final respects and the funeral services.[41] The network also broadcast Lady Bird Johnson's funeral in Stonewall, Texas.[42]
To prevent this section from growing too list-y, as C-SPAN will undoubtedly cover similar events in the future, and to avoid arbitrary decisions about whom to list or not, I agreed to rewrite it as it appears now.
In revising this I kept the two original sources, this Iowa State Daily source and this San Diego Union-Tribune (Nexis link) source. However, when looking closely at these two sources a few months ago I noticed that neither one mentioned Rosa Parks or Gerald Ford. For that reason I added in this Spokesman-Review source that discusses Nixon's funeral proceedings and this Fishbowl DC source about Ford's funeral. My thinking was that to justify the use of "former presidents" (plural) we would need sources that mention C-SPAN covering more than one former president's funeral proceedings and I wasn't easily able to find this in one source. Unfortunately, I was never able to find the source where the information about Rosa Parks originally came from, however you'll see that the section does also mention "other notable individuals", again plural. Do you think this is OK, though we just have the source about Lady Bird?
Apologies for the lengthy explanation, though I hope that helps. What do you think should be done? Also, I see you mentioned making an edit to the Senate and House of Representatives section. By all means feel free to make edits here, however I don't see this edit in the revision history, perhaps it didn't get saved? Cheers, WWB Too (Talk · COI) 18:12, 5 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Ruhrfisch comments I have reviewed parts of this article and made some edits to it on WWB's behalf. As requested, I will review it here.
Lead - my understanding of the article lead is that it can either 1) have almost no citations (except for direct quotes and per haps extraordinary claims) since it is a summary and everything in it will also appear in and be cited in the body of the article OR 2) it can be cited just like anything else. The current lead has one ref, and does not fall into either camp. I also note that the ref in the lead is not cited anywhere else in the article, which seems to imply the lead is not a summary. I will come back to the lead after reading the rest of the article carefully - it seems to me that the lead could use a little copyediting, but I want to make sure.
Good catch, and you're right—I don't think it is repeated in the body of the article (though I believe everything else is). Actually, Awardgive brought up this same issue above and I suggested that this information could be added to the Radio broadcasts section and the citation moved there. Do you agree? Would you be willing to make this change?
I moved the ref to the Radio section and added the apps for BlackBerry and Android devices there. I think everything else in the sentence that used the ref in the lead is in the Radio section now. I will check the lead last (once I've read all the article carefully). Ruhrfisch><>°°11:23, 4 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Development - I would briefly identify who John D. Evans is in Lamb shared his idea with John D. Evans in 1977... (Telecom executive?)
You know, this is not material that I added, so I'd like to take a closer look at it. I feel like "who with a number of others helped to co-found the network" is somewhat vague. I'll follow up on this one soon. WWB Too (Talk · COI) 19:55, 30 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Anniversaries - is "facilitated" the best word here The 15th anniversary was commemorated in a more unusual manner; the network facilitated a series of re-enactments of the seven historic Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858..." Would sponsored or commissioned or produced be better / more accurate?
This sentence was recently changed from "initiated" to "facilitated" by User:KConWiki, who is very knowledgeable about C-SPAN. You can see the diff here. He has addressed this issue up above on this page (see the second top-level bullet point under KConWiki's feedback). I'm inclined to defer to his knowledge on this matter, but let me know what you think. WWB Too (Talk · COI) 19:55, 30 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Hello all - I went through the article and got rid of some of the uses of the word "initiated", of which there were several instances. In this case though, the C-SPANners have gone to trouble to point out that the debate reenactments were organized and run by the local communities. This is one of the links used as a citation at The Lincoln–Douglas Debates (1994 reenactments). Here is an excerpt: "Spurred on by its own 15th anniversary, C-Span officials approached the mayors of all seven cities last year. Re-create your debates, they said, using local talent and local money, and we'll come in and broadcast them, as though we'd been there in 1858. All seven mayors agreed, the state of Illinois chipped in $20,000 for each site and C-Span spent $300,000 to $500,000 promoting the debates, providing staff people to coordinate the coverage and putting together educational materials. The Lincoln-Douglas debates were on their way back to center stage." So, that's why I wanted to move away from initiated. (Even though they planted the seed of the idea of the debates in the minds of the individual cities, and that could be considered "initiating", I think that "facilitated" works better.) Any thoughts on this? KConWiki (talk) 01:49, 1 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
That reasoning makes sense to me; I think "facilitated" is most appropriate in this situation. KConWiki, were you planning on adding this source into the C-SPAN article? WWB Too (Talk · COI) 18:16, 1 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Scope and limitations of coverage - should there be a link to the Affordable Care Act in In December 2009, Lamb wrote to leaders in the House and Senate, requesting that negotiations for health care reform be televised by C-SPAN.[25]
In the same section, I looked at all the refs cited and none mention the Supreme Court, so a ref is needed for that part of C-SPAN continues to expand its coverage of government proceedings, with a history of requests to government officials for greater access, especially to the U.S. Supreme Court.Ruhrfisch><>°°11:42, 4 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Ruhrfisch, thanks for your comment on my Talk page. You're right, I did overlook this comment, sorry about that.
I've done some looking around and I found this short Los Angeles Times article that supports the statement that C-SPAN has repeatedly sought permission to air the Supreme Court's proceedings.
Here is a formatted reference for the source as well. <ref name=Savage>{{cite news |title=C-SPAN seeks to air Supreme Court healthcare arguments |author=David G. Savage |url=http://articles.latimes.com/2011/nov/15/news/la-pn-cspan-healthcare-20111115 |newspaper=[[Los Angeles Times]] |date=November 15, 2011 |accessdate=October 7, 2013}}</ref>
As for the portion about "requests to government officials", I've also looked around for sources, but haven't found one that I feel directly supports "requests to government officials". I assume that this was originally added to serve as an introduction to the paragraph, but without a source mentioning "government officials" maybe it would be best to simply shorten the sentence to "with a history of requests for greater access, espicially to the U.S. Supreme Court." What do you think? WWB Too (Talk · COI) 23:35, 7 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I added the Supreme Court ref. Since the paragraph is now all about requests to government officials (SCOTS, Speakers of the House), I am OK with keeping that phrase in (as part of a topic sentence for the paragraph). Ruhrfisch><>°°11:29, 9 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Expansion and technology - since this is the first mention of "Washington Journal", should there be a brief description of the program here?
I saw your edits to the Senate and House of Representatives section and they all look good to me, however I just noticed—and this isn't the result of your changes—that the section links to the article on the United States House of Representatives, but not to the United States Senate article. What do you think about adding in this wikilink? WWB Too (Talk · COI) 23:35, 7 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Public affairs - should the parliaments be linked in Occasionally, proceedings of the Parliament of Australia, Parliament of Canada, Parliament of the United Kingdom ...
I renamed the "Other C-SPAN services" to just "Other services" per WP:HEADER
This needs a ref "C-SPAN has also equipped three Local Content Vehicles (LCVs) to travel the country and record unique political and historical stories, with each vehicle containing production and web-based technologies to produce on-the-spot content."
I have a couple of recent sources that discuss the Local Content Vehicles program. There is this one from Business Fleet and this one from FishbowlDC. I've prepped references for both of these sources if you want to add one or both of them in.
<ref name=Rothstein13>{{cite web |url=http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowldc/c-span-second-fleet-local-content-vehicles_b98692 |title=C-SPAN Rolls Out Second Fleet of Tricked Out Vehicles |author=Betsy Rothstein |date=March 12, 2013 |work=mediabistro.com |publisher=Mediabistro.com |accessdate=October 7, 2013}}</ref>
That sentence should also be updated to note that there are now six vehicles in the program, which is covered in both of these sources. Lastly, the LCV program is covered within the C-SPAN Bus program article: C-SPAN_Bus_program#Local_Content_Vehicles. What do you think about linking to this? WWB Too (Talk · COI) 23:35, 7 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Ruhrfisch, thanks for your continued help here. I really appreciate all the time you've put into this and your feedback and edits throughout have been very helpful. Let me know if you have any comments about my replies above. Cheers, WWB Too (Talk · COI) 23:35, 7 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
This article was raised to GA a while ago, I've made some improvements to attempt to meet the FA guidelines. I raised it for peer review but received no response. Thanks and I look forward to any feedback. 87Fan (talk) 20:10, 21 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, 1a.
What are the Glass Spider Tour Press Conferences? I can find the records on Discogs but there isn't much information. Just Bowie talking? And there are multiple versions of it?
They're a series of press shows he gave - Q&A with journalists and fans, supplemented with short live musical performances. They are widely bootlegged, all with a variety of names. I referenced the copy I happen to have. Most are also available on YouTube (here's one).
The statement in the lead that the album "was considered a return to rock 'n roll for Bowie" is a bit odd considering it seems to be him who said that. Also, the term is generally standardized as "rock and roll" or "rock 'n' roll".
Fixed to be more clear that he's the one who was saying it - I agree that the passive voice was a strange construction. And I have adopted "rock 'n' roll" as the standard used in the article (thanks for the tip).
Need parallel structure between "creation" and "retiring": "leading to his creation of the band Tin Machine in 1989 and retiring his back catalog from live performances"
Fixed.
I've read this clunker a few times and still don't understand it: "Bowie had felt disconnected from his newfound audience that he had gained from Let's Dance"
Fixed.
Awkward: "For the first time since 1980's Scary Monsters album, Bowie played instruments on the record instead of just singing." Why not just "played instruments on the record in addition to singing"?
Much better, fixed.
Your use of quotations is not ideal. You are using a lot of Bowie quotations that don't seem particularly moving or profound. This creates the appearance that you're trying to avoid figuring out ways to paraphrase. They should be written in your own words.
Good feedback - I will take some time to re-write some sections appropriately and will update here when that's done.
I've taken a stab at this. In the top few sections I've removed straight quotes and instead written things in my own words. There are a few cases where I've intentionally left direct quotes: a few times when all we have is one or two quotes and so it's hard to synthesize anything beyond what he's stated, and in the 'legacy' section, where I would argue that his quotes are interesting because they show the way his feelings for the album descended over time and the power of those statements would be lost if we just summarized them in a sentence or two.87Fan (talk) 17:44, 23 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
"Bowie intentionally wrote the album Never Let Me Down to be performed on stage." What is the word "intentionally" doing? As opposed to unintentionally writing it for stage?
Thanks for the feedback. I've taken a stab at addressing most of your concerns already in an attempt to improve the prose. I am still working on the feedback about over-use of quotes however. I'll post here when I've done that. Thank you! 87Fan (talk) 16:59, 22 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I've struck my opposition for now because I haven't had time to review your changes and I don't want to hold up the nomination. If I get time, I'll come back and have a second look. BTW, you don't want to strike other people's comments at FAC, as it is a sign that the reviewer (rather than the nominator) considers the matter addressed. --Laser brain(talk)13:58, 5 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you. I've reached out to a few other folks who can continue to help with the nomination process. I wasn't sure how the whole strike-through thing worked, thank you for letting me know. I've unstruck what I struck. Thanks again! 87Fan (talk) 17:01, 5 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Not doing a vote here, but where the fuck are the sources for the peak positions of the Canadian Single Charts?!!!!!!!! Citing every single bits of info in your article, with an exception of plot summaries for games and film articles, is a requirement for this to become featured. 和DITOREtails23:28, 22 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
As I noted in a recent edit to the article, I looked but couldn't find a source for the Canadian charts, so I marked them as citation-needed, as I figured that was better than having no citation marks at all. Thanks for the pointer to the charts article, I will use that to augment the charts - or remove the countries for which no source can be found. 87Fan (talk) 15:51, 23 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
And why the hell are you using tsort.info to list international chart positions?!!!! That violates WP:BADCHARTS! You seriously need to check harder if the aritcle entirely meets 1(c) and 2(c) before nominating. 和DITOREtails23:34, 22 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I wasn't aware of this list. I'll fix the list to use acceptable sources, and delete the ones for which no source can be found. 87Fan (talk) 15:51, 23 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I found acceptable sources to replace all the tsort.info references. A few peak positions had to be removed (I couldn't find any reliable source, for, say the Polish charts, but a few new ones were added too). 87Fan (talk) 16:41, 23 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I apologize for what I said earlier. I would like to mention that the colname "positon" in the weekly charts table should be renamed to "Peak position" to indicate that number in each chart is the peak position to make it clear. 和DITOREtails21:48, 23 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Apology accepted; clearly you're passionate about this and I cannot fault you for that. I have changed the label as you suggested. 87Fan (talk) 22:13, 23 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I've done a few passes to reduce the amount of straight quotes and replaced them with prose. I think I've struck a decent balance between quotations and paraphrasing. I'm interested if anyone has other feedback about what else may have to change about the article to achieve FA status. Thank you! 87Fan (talk) 16:41, 27 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Despite its commercial success, this album was considered a critical disappointment, and in later years fans and critics have regarded the mid- to late 1980s period as a low point of creativity and musical integrity for Bowie. - middle segment redundant. I'd reword to something like,Despite its commercial success, this album was poorly received by fans and critics, who have regarded the mid- to late 1980s period as a low point of creativity and musical integrity for Bowie." (tempted to take the fans out here as it conflicts with the album selling well (???))
he was looking to make this album differently. - umm, "this album" doesn't exist at this point - I'd say "his next album"
Yeah, I wasn't sure how to handle this when I was writing - I was afraid if I said "next album" it wouldn't be clear that I meant "this" album (as opposed to the album after NLMD). I have changed the text as you've suggested. 87Fan (talk) 16:23, 11 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Despite growing criticism in the press, Bowie said .... - ok, how can there be growing criticism if it hasn't been released? Can this be explained or expanded upon? Sounds interesting....
The basis for this sentence were Bowie's comments were made during his Australian press tour for the supporting tour, which were held in October 1987 (a few months after the album's release). So he had already been touring for 5 months in support of the album, but at the press tour talking about the album as if it had just come out... make sense? There was in fact growing criticism that he was defending the album against. I think we could move the statement to the 'critical reception' section - in that context the statement as written could make more sense. Let me know what you think is best. 87Fan (talk) 16:23, 11 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Been thinking about this - I moved it to the critical reception section as it's much more in context there. Let me know if that's satisfactory. Not sure if it needs to be expanded upon there. 87Fan (talk) 16:30, 12 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Cautious/tentative support on prose and comprehensiveness as nothing else is really jumping out at me, and the prose is easy and comfortable enough to read that I lapse into "reading" mode without trying to correct it. I suspect there wouldn't be a huge deal of material on this album not already in the article. If anything, it would be nice to de-quote a couple more quotes but the ones I can see remaining are quite amusing and capture the essence of what their writers were trying to say well and in an engaging manner, so I'm a bit torn about this. This support is really dependent on some other supports here too as I might have missed things. Cas Liber (talk·contribs) 21:33, 13 September 2013 (UTC) holding off on supporting - not familiar with material on Bowie and if indopug is highlighting comprehensiveness deficiencies I will defer to him. Happy to revisit once the book is consulted...or another editor who has the book adds content to the article (sorry). Cas Liber (talk·contribs) 15:15, 5 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the feedback. What's the best way to get more people to take a look at this article? I already tracked down a few people (like yourself) to help out. I'd hate for this article to fail because of lack of interest from editors. 87Fan (talk) 19:11, 25 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Image review
File:BowieRaR87-stage.jpg: the author link leads to a non-existent article on de.wiki - is this a user on de or someone else? If the latter, how do we know the licensing? Nikkimaria (talk) 23:41, 26 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Good question... I don't know the origins of this file and always assumed it was something some wikipedian had uploaded that they'd taken themselves. I have no way of verifying however. 87Fan (talk) 02:27, 27 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Leaning towards oppose unfortunately, owing to failure to meet criterion 1a. From the lead:
"Written and recorded in Switzerland, Bowie considered the album to be a return to rock 'n' roll music, and he conceived the album as a vehicle for a theatrical world tour."—dangling modifier in the start of the sentence, and the use of "vehicle" here is strange. Not the best start.
"One of Bowie's better-selling albums to date, Never Let Me Down was certified Gold by RIAA in early July 1987...and it charted in the top 10 in several European countries"—the RIAA, and remove "it" here.
"...who have regarded the mid- to late 1980s period as a low point of creativity and musical integrity for Bowie."—more redundancy (no use of "period" here).
"Bowie himself later distanced himself from the album, but despite this, he admitted a fondness for many of the songs on the album..."—pronoun reference works better here since it's less repetitve (last sentence ends with "Bowie"). There is further fluff in this sentence: "Bowie himself later distanced himself from the album, but despite this, he admitted a fondness for many of the songs on the album [it]..."
"In support of this album, Bowie embarked on the Glass Spider Tour, a world tour that was at that point the biggest, most theatrical and most elaborate tour he had undertaken at that point in his career."—repetitive "at that point...at that point".
Lists? I hadn't heard - Done. Again, thank you - I've been dying for feedback and I appreciate you taking the time to check this. I hope the rest of the article is less problematic! 87Fan (talk) 17:09, 30 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
"...Bowie said he would return to a small rock group like he had begun his career with..."—awkward phrasing.
I think I found a better way to say this.
Two sentences in a row beginning with "As a result".
Fixed (removed the second instance, by then the point had been made).
Avoid mentioning seasons ("summer of 1986" because summer means a different time of the year for people in the Southern Hemisphere. Perhaps "mid", "late", etc.
Good point, fixed.
"Bowie wrote the album Never Let Me Down to be performed on stage."—again, very awkwardly worded.
I fight and fight with this sentence. I've given it another go.
"For the first time since his Scary Monsters album..."
When beginning a paragraph, it's more coherent to not use pronoun reference right off the bat, like in the third paragraph in Album development. Use "Bowie".
Understood, fixed.
I don't have much time these days to do exhaustive reviews, but as you can see, there are problems throughout. I highly recommend another look from top to bottom for issues such as repetition, strange phrasing, lack of cohesion and redundancy. The prose does not flow as well as I would like (from a reader's perspective) and would benefit from a copy edit. PS: per MOS, do not list number of weeks in chart tables. Good luck! TheWikipedianPenguin22:08, 30 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'll keep going through. Thank you again for your feedback. I had asked for peer feedback prior to the FAR process but nobody helped :( And, I've struck the # of weeks from the charts table. 87Fan (talk) 19:38, 2 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose lacks a narrative and not all major sources have been used—specifically, the Buckley book (which forms the backbone of the David Bowie FA). I urge you to look at the Be Here Now, Loveless and In Utero to get an idea of how FA-quality album articles are structured and written.—indopug (talk) 12:21, 5 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Ok I understand this feedback. I don't think I have the time to do this (nor do I own any of the books that could be used for reference) and I doubt anyone else will take the time to edit this article either. I appreciate everyone's feedback and the article is definitely better now than when this process started. Feel free to formally fail the FA review. 87Fan (talk) 23:26, 6 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I believe the article on Joseph Smith meets the nomination criteria. A recent peer review failed to generate even a single comment; I'm not sure if that meant that no one reviewed it, or that no one could find any problems with it. Regardless, this article is very well-written, stable (disputes have died down to a basically consensus level, despite his being a very controversial figure), and is about a very important figure in Western U.S. religious history. -Trevdna (talk) 20:29, 20 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Comments
Overlinking throughout—both of common English words (breastplate, militia, bureaucrat...) and repeated linking (install this script to catch them).
*Extensive time has been spent on fixing this. Some repeated linking has been left on purpose when a topic comes up more than once in different contexts. Trevdna (talk) 22:31, 3 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
This is the most densely cited article I've ever seen. While I understand this is a controversial subject, and that citations are a Good Thing, having so many of them packed together like this hampers readability. It seems especially excessive when adjacent cites refer to the same things (refs 373 and 374, for eg). I also wonder for the need to extensively quote the cited material every time.
Good point. However, most (if not all) of this citation is necessary to prevent POV warriors (from both sides) from coming in and mucking things up for the article. Smith just inspired (and inspires) so much controversy that the article needs much of this to keep it from people who "know better." This article used to be a merry-go-round of edit wars, POV warriors, sloppy editing and vandalism. The only reason I believe it's settled out so much is because of all these citations, as cumbersome as they might be. It appears that all this citation is the work of some very dedicated heroes who put in very long hours to make sure they were dead on.
That said, is there anywhere in specific that you see that you think we could do without a citation, perhaps condense a few, etc., without giving room for a POV fight?Trevdna (talk) 19:30, 21 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, the overcite is a result of the POV wars.. Those have died down significantly, and I'd be happy to start combining references, and trimming the ones from inside sentences. ~Adjwilley (talk)01:51, 23 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Could the infobox be trimmed? It's really only meant for important stuff that can be conveyed at a glance. I'd thus remove the names of successors (the dispute article link suffices) and the wikiportals. The two "part of a series" templates, too, appear excessive. Aren't all those links repeated in the "main article" links and the boxes at the bottom?
Cleaned up. Since Smith really is part of the series on the Book of Mormon, that infobox has been retained, but moved down the page for asthetics. Trevdna (talk) 22:31, 3 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
It's certainly well-referenced! But I have concerns about the prose, ranging from extreme nitpicking to big-view misgivings about neutrality and comprehensiveness.
I have NPOV concerns about the way supernatural aspects of Smith's life story are presented. Sometimes, the article credits these elements to the voice of the speakers of claim them ("Smith said he attempted to remove the plates the next morning but was unsuccessful because the angel prevented him."), but this doesn't appear to be universal; largely, the article reads as though many aspects of the religious story should be taken at face value as factual. Examples include:
The last sentence of the short paragraph about Smith's use of seer stones for treasure hunting (in "Early years (1805–27)").
Most discussion of the golden plates after "Early years (1805–27)". While the first few references to the plates are written in a manner that does not lend encyclopedic voice to their authenticity, as early as the "Founding a church (1827–30)" section, we have: "Smith transcribed some of the characters (what he called "reformed Egyptian") engraved on the plates and then dictated a translation to his wife." Similarly, "Translation was completed around July 1, 1829."
Similar issues affect parts of the "Revelations" and "Distinctive views and teachings" sections. To some extent, there's no NPOV problem when discussing his religious beliefs and teachings in their own terms. The fundamental problem is that it is difficult or impossible to see where the article distinguishes between describing these beliefs and describing historical fact.
This is certainly improved, but I'm not sure there's not more distance to cover. In the Book of Mormon section, for example, there's a paragraph that begins "Smith never said how he produced the Book of Mormon,...." Surely, there's got to be a reliable source somewhere to cite the possibility that he didn't translate the text from anything? Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 15:20, 11 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, that's in the previous paragraph where it says, "...non-Mormon academics have called it [the Book of Mormon] a response to pressing cultural and environmental issues of Smith's times, or sometimes autobiographical.[184] Critics hypothesize that Smith drew from scraps of information available to him, calling the work fiction." Perhaps the material can be re-arranged so this is more clear? ~Adjwilley (talk)16:23, 11 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I think shuffling things around might make that more clear. Perhaps move the "Critics hypothesize that Smith drew from scraps of information available to him, calling the work fiction." line to the end of the paragraph following its current position. It feels out of place where it is right now, anyway. In doing so, it may benefit from some more explicit attribution; I'd ideally like to see it become "Critics, such as Foo and Bar,...". I think two examples there is about the right weighting and shouldn't be too hard to scrape up from reliable material. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 16:51, 11 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Calling the Council of Fifty a shadow government would be entirely appropriate. Calling it a shadow world government seems unnecessarily grandiose, seeing that it only functionally controlled tiny Nauvoo, Illinois.
I think it's still a little awkward for a reader not familiar with the background here. The jump between a secret society organization in a fairly small town and "a first step toward creating a global" anything is unclear from the article text, and sounds hyperbolic. It's not, of course, and once again, the context is buried in the reference text. There's obviously no need to duplicate the Council of Fifty article here, but as Smith was president of the thing, I don't think there would be a problem with undue weight if there was another sentence or so of explanation here. The fact that the Council actually appointed foreign ambassadors seems relevant to the "global" description, for example. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 15:20, 11 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The sentence in "Theology of family" that begins "To fully enter the Covenant,..." is confusing. How many steps are there in this process? Specifically, is the sealing a separate step from the first annointing? The phrasing suggests that the Holy Spirit of Promise sealing is the same as the second annointing, so I assume so, but combining appositive phrases with a comma-separated list is a recipe for confusion.
Something here still makes no sense to me, and I think it's where the quotes are placed in the parenthetical. My reading of this is that there are three steps -- if that's not the case, more is wrong -- but the way the parenthetical is worded, an entity called the "Holy Spirit of Promise" (which has no gloss) also refers to it as sealing. I suspect that the idea behind the alternative description for this process is that the "Holy Spirit of Promise" is the actor, doing the sealing. Moving the opening quote mark before "sealing" probably solves this problem and allows you to cut the explanatory text from the reference (which is itself a laudable goal; there's almost a whole extra article of text down there!). Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 15:20, 11 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The lead told us that "detractors view him as a cunning fraud." But I don't see much coverage of that at all. We hear about people who faulted his banking practices, people who found his actions treasonous, people who objected to polygamy, but there's very little mention of the idea that he was simply a confidence artist, save perhaps parts of two paragraphs in "Impact". Especially combined with the way that religious elements are blended into the historical narrative, this cements my concerns about the article's overall neutrality.
This has been worked on considerably, to the point that I believe it is fixed. However, you may evaluate it differently than I do. Please discuss. Trevdna (talk) 22:31, 3 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
This is something I've been thinking about quite a bit. The "cunning fraud" sentence in the Lead is actually a very recent addition (shortly before this review started) and I've had mixed feelings about it. Part of this is because I think it's an overstatement: it's stronger language than I've seen used in any of the sources, and it doesn't really do the man justice. Sure, it's easy, and it could be said of any religious figure who claims visions/revelations/authority/contact with the divine or supernatural (Jesus, Muhammad, Moses, Bahaullah, Buddah). Frauds and con artists are born every day, but they don't leave lasting religions behind them. You could call Smith deluded, or say he lied about his visions, or fabricated the Book of Mormon, or deceived others, and that's fine. But there's more than that. Richard Bushman, arguably the best source on Smith, says that Smith himself believed his revelations as much as anybody else. Dan Vogel, one of the leading non-Mormon (well, ex-Mormon) biographers, says that Smith lied about his visions and revelations in an effort to get people to repent (he called Smith a "pious deceiver"). For Fawn Brodie (another very prominent biographer) it was a young poor boy trying to scrape together a living (by selling Books of Mormon) who got so entangled in the resulting religion that he couldn't back out. All of these are, well, more than just "cunning fraud". ~Adjwilley (talk)16:23, 11 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
No, I agree on that point. Religious-themed articles are always a bear to approach from the NPOV perspective. I'm not married to the "cunning fraud" phrase so much as broadening some of the viewpoints depicted. I'm not sure that I can point to anywhere in the article where those above opinions by Vogel and Brodie are meaningfully discussed, for example. I mean, yes, Vogel's clearly quoted in that busy little paragraph in Impact, but there's due weight to consider here. Frankly, in general, I think the article's still a little light on non-Mormon and especially anti-Mormon viewpoints, including period anti-Mormon sentiment. Looking elsewhere in the article for the moment, the Nauvoo Expositor is described as "calling for reform within the church," citing Bushman, Brodie, and Quinn. But, of course, the Expositordid raise "explosive allegations", including the claim that Smith was using the cover of religion to attract innocent women to Nauvoo to build a harem! (See: Oaks, Dallin H.; Hill, Marvin S. (1979), Carthage Conspiracy: The Trial of the Accused Assassins of Joseph Smith, Chicago: University of Illinois Press, ISBN978-0252007620. p. 14, or plenty of other sources.) Is that functionally anti-Mormon propaganda? Probably. Does that mean it's unimportant in the historical context? No. Do we see it given due representation in the article? I don't think so. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 17:43, 11 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Wikilinking of publishers is done very inconsistently. Likewise, the Howe source links the publication location, and I believe is unique in doing so.
There are two objections here, both regarding the References section. First, there doesn't seem to be a pattern to when you wikilink the publisher. Compare Bergara (Signature Books is not linked) with Bloom (Simon & Schuster is). There's no right answer here as long as you're consistent, but you're not. The second problem is that, on the Howe reference, you link the publisher's location, which I don't think you do anywhere else. I suppose this is also editorial discretion, but these aren't generally linked, and unlinking the location in the Howe reference is probably the easiest option. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 15:20, 11 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
There are other location problems, too. The University of Illinois Press in the Newell reference lacks a location. And you are inconsistent in whether Salt Lake City gets its state specified (compare Bergera and Smith 2008). With how much is here, I've likely missed some. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 17:43, 11 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Please do not strike my (or other editors' comments). It is my prerogative to determine whether my objections have been satisfied. Also, as I read through this another time, there are pervasive formatting issues in the Notes. This list should not be considered comprehensive:
The placement of parentheses for short-form references is inconsistent. Compare Notes 117 and 118, among others. Likewise, whether parentheses are used to set of explanatory notes or not is seemingly random. Compare Notes 193 and 195.
Unmatched parentheses are frequent. See Note 46, 157, and others; I'm not going to take the time to compile a list. They all need to be checked.
There are sources that are cited in the Notes but not the References. They're only used once, and so that's not normally a problem (many articles do this), but with the volumes of explanatory text in these notes, it's very easy to overlook them, so it may be worth considering having everything cited added to the reference section and short-form referencing only throughout the Notes. See Note 1 and 56; in either case, these need to be audited for formatting. Note 312 is especially broken.
There's a pipe character in Note 154 that surely doesn't belong.
Finally, while it would clearly be a Herculian task, spot-checking of references is probably required before this can be considered for promotion. In looking at whether the reference in Note 311 was properly cited and/or reliable, I discovered a different problem: it makes a claim not directly supported by the source. The Note claims that Smith's 1842 son was stillborn, but the source merely states he died before receiving a name; these are not necessarily the same thing. I do not have the time to determine if similar issues exist with any other sources. I continue to oppose promotion at this time. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 15:20, 11 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Comments from PumpkinSky
Ditto on the massive refs. I will let others worry about if it's ok or not. My concern there is that many of the harv/sfn refs are broken. Use this script "importScript('User:Ucucha/HarvErrors.js');" to catch them. I have it in my monobook.js. PumpkinSkytalk21:29, 25 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, @PumpkinSky:, for the cool script. I fixed about a third of the broken ones today, and I'll continue work on that as I have time tomorrow and the next day. I'm also working on the overcitation problem. ~Adjwilley (talk)23:21, 25 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
File:The_Hill_Cumorah_by_C.C.A._Christensen.jpeg: source link is dead
Partially fixed: found working archive of the page which demonstrates that the page previously existed; Is this enough? The site was completely rebuilt and I haven't yet been able to find the URL for the source currently on the new one. -- 208.81.184.4 (talk) 00:09, 19 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Updated file description page based on the 2 difs listed above. Since User:John Foxe is not the actual author, and the true original author is anon, does this file require an OTRS ticket to verify that the author information is acceptable? -- 208.81.184.4 (talk) 17:27, 24 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
File:Joseph_smith_statue_temple_square.jpg : as the US does not have freedom of panorama for sculptures, need to include licensing for the statue itself as well as the photo; same with File:Christus_statue_temple_square_salt_lake_city.jpg. Nikkimaria (talk) 04:28, 6 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Unanswered issues in numerous locations, such as where did Smith obtain a pistol when he was jailed in Navoo? There is no mention of the individuals shot by Smith.
Ditto on issues in Missouri. The comments about the "Extermination" order are separated from Rigdon's prior speech on extermination, nor is there much coverage of the statements by Smith about taking the land from its non-Mormon owners.
Comments
I'm still in the process of reviewing this article, but I wanted to start by asking about your research process. I've noticed that there are lots of references to one or two biographies. There are obviously many biographies of Smith. Why did you choose to use these? Wadewitz (talk) 19:27, 24 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
A huge number of the references are to Richard Bushman's 2005 book, primarily because it is the best biography out there, period. In second place would be Fawn Brodie's book, from back in 1971-ish. Hers, from what I've read, was the first "good" biography of Joseph Smith, in the sense that it wasn't a hagiography. There are a couple of others I know of: Dan Vogel wrote a pretty good one (I'd say it's in third place, perhaps competing with Brodie for second) but it only covers Smith's life up until about 1831 if I remember correctly. Remini also wrote a short one that has come in handy from time to time. There are other books about the beginning of Mormonism too, not specifically about Smith, that are useful, but I personally haven't used them as much. For me, I basically use Bushman by default because it's easy and I have it both in print and on Google Books. (I own the others too, but only in print.) In the past I've tried to weight things roughly by how much time the authors spend talking about stuff in the books. I'm sure there are lots of other biographies but I haven't researched or read any of them because I wanted to try and use the best available - ones that were respected in the academic community - and stay away from apologetic/polemic books. Hope this answers your question, though I can't speak for the other editors of the article who have written much more of it than I. ~Adjwilley (talk)06:49, 25 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I am nominating this for feature
d article because the article has been through extensive work in a short amount of time. I'm not entirely sure what FA completely entails, so I want to see what standard the article has to be held up to in order to obtain this status. Zach Vega (talk to me)23:39, 28 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Comment Given that the phone has only been commercially available for a couple of weeks this nomination seems rather premature - it's not likely that the article will be stable in its current state. For instance, the 'Commercial reception' section only covers the first few days of sales, which is a not-very-meaningful measure, and new reviews of the device are becoming available. Historically, problems with the iPhones (in terms of technology, software and/or Apple's ability to meet demand) have also generally emerged a few weeks after the phone's release. Nick-D (talk) 00:11, 29 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. FA candidates should be stable; it's hard to see how this can be true for a new product (see preceding comment). It's also hard to see how we can have collected enough reliable assessments of this product - considered opinion takes time to develop - so I think there are reliability concerns too. RomanSpa (talk) 01:22, 29 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Zach, I think there's a difference between "reviews" and "considered opinion". For example, both Madame Butterfly and the Rite of Spring both experienced dreadful early reviews, whereas more considered assessments of these works have tended to be very positive. Hugh Walpole was generally well-reviewed in his early career, but the balance of considered opinion would now probably not rate him particularly highly. For ephemera like mobile phones, the time taken to form "considered opinion" is probably not as long as for important artistic works, of course, but I don't think that a few weeks is enough. There needs to be time for the initial enthusiasm (or reactive spasm of distaste) to abate. RomanSpa (talk) 22:53, 29 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose—giving this article some time to stabilize would bring more information such as commercial performance, long term reception and perhaps information on iOS 7 updates. Right now, the article only covers a "recentist" post-release analysis of the smartphone. Indeed as it is, it is a very strong article but only covers details on the phone's performance just shortly after release. With time, it will flourish into a more complete contribution with an overall conclusion/afterthought, which it lacks at the moment. TheWikipedianPenguin13:13, 29 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I do not think the biggest problem is stability, but that the article falls short of the featured article criterion 1b: "comprehensive: it neglects no major facts or details and places the subject in context". It isn't like it is highly unlikely that there will be any more information on the iPhone 5S; in fact, it is too probable that there will soon enough be more to cover on this device to initiate a FAC nomination at this point. The article feels too incomplete right now. Give it at least a month (two would be even better), by which it should be more well-rounded.
In the meantime, the refs could be more consistent (Apple vs Apple Inc, italicization of magazines, websites, etc.) and some sources are questionable (eg. Bloomberg, invasivecode, Facebook, Appleinsider). TheWikipedianPenguin17:15, 29 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Comments
Since you've asked whether it is suitable for FA status apart from its stability:
You have a photographer of somebody who reviewed it for a newspaper, but not the guy who designed it.
"The iPhone 5S, stylized iPhone 5s"--I don't get this. The phone's name is the former, but Apple consistently writes it as the latter? Then how do you know that the name isn't the latter?
Woah that is a long infobox. That connectivity tab is especially detailed and unreadable, although the tabs before it rather long too. Remember this is just a general encyclopedia article about the phone, we don't want every last tech spec here.
The writing on the whole: try not to be too detailed. Avoid long list of items like "The iPhone 5S can play music, movies, television shows, ebooks, audiobooks, and podcasts and can sort its media library by songs, artists, albums, videos, playlists, genres, composers, podcasts, audiobooks, and compilations."--besides, every iPhone (and smartphone?) ever could do those things. I really don't thing it's worth mentioning any more.—indopug (talk) 19:41, 29 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Concur with The Wikipedian Penguin, the impact of a product can't be ascertained in a short time period after its release, so the article is inherently incomplete, IRWolfie- (talk) 10:13, 1 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Leaning oppose based on " the most major update" Never mind the puffery, the grammar's a real issue there. I probably have a COI as I just bought one and had to do a follow-up visit to the Apple Store :( and two hours online with a tech and still haven't gotten everything straightened out. Also struck, on a quick glance, the "weekend of release" stat with the 5c. Surely although the two phones were announced together, the 5c came out a week earlier?--Wehwalt (talk) 12:54, 4 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
"The most major update" is what David Pogue and other commentators said. The iPhone 5S and 5C were released on the same day. Could you give examples of grammatical errors? Zach Vega (talk to me)13:42, 4 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Since last time I have expanded the History section, which allowed me to spin it off as a separate article, which makes the main article shorter and more palatable. All the issues were addressed by myself in the last nomination, but sadly the article received neither any Opposes or Supports. Farrtj (talk) 15:59, 26 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Comments by Markus.Edenhauser
Oppose Although I can see there is a motivation to get all the reference issues fixed, I am not satisfied with the details at all. Despite the fact you mentioned a few points of criticism, there are a lot more considerarble topics. Many things are not as they seem! There are a lot of contributions which are focusing on this issues. Especially I would like to focus the topics: * animal protection * healty attitdes *working condition. If you consider these in your articel I would support you.
Perhaps, but surely one can only give an overview of criticisms of the company on the main page. All the controversies and criticisms deserve their own spin off page, such as the History section of the main article received with History of KFC. Farrtj (talk) 16:50, 4 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Comments by Squeamish Ossifrage
Oppose at this time. I see this article has been a frequent guest of the FAC process, but there's still a surprisingly large amount of obvious issues here, including a nontrivial amount of problems with reference formatting. Reference numbers [in the original comments, anyway] are based on this version, in case they get moved about in editing:
Reference 14 and 16 are to the same source, one page different. I'm not sure there's any policy or practice that forbids you from doing this, but it bugs me, when you could just make the page number field in the template read |pages=98–99 and get both of them. I'm not going to list them all, but there are several other times this sort of thing occurs.
There are several options, including short-form referencing for subsequent uses. That said, I'm not sure whether anything in the MOS dictates dealing with this in any particular method (or even, as you have, not at all), so this may or may not be actionable, and I'll let others weigh in on the topic. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 21:46, 26 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Reference 40 has you site the publishing website by its url, not by the actual site's name (wstribune.com versus Wall Street Tribune). Some sites actually do present themselves with that sort of name, but most or all of these (I stopped checking at some point) do not.
Nope. I still see enquirer.com, WSJ.com, thepoultrysite.com. Probably more, I stopped hitting find. Search the references for ".com", and that should hit on most, if not all of them. Including that gemcapital.com.au source, which I'd overlooked before. It's a real problem: it's an almost-certainly copyright-infringing posting of a Dow Jones personal-use-only e-copy of a (legitimate) Wall Street Journal article. The ultimate source (the WSJ) is fine, but the reference needs cleaned up badly! Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 16:34, 27 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Ok! Sorted out all those issues. Replaced gemcapital source with original, switched poultry site to its more reputable source, replaced enquirer tabloid source with book source.Farrtj (talk) 17:30, 27 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Reference 114 doesn't match the other formatting for this sort of thing at all.
Ok I found a link to the Associated Press archive and listed it in the reference, so you can check it out for yourself. And I believe Associated Press to be a reputable source. Farrtj (talk) 17:41, 27 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I haven't checked all the web sources for missing referencing information, but there's at least some of it. I chose reference 127 more or less at random; that article has an author byline (Kim Bhasin) and publication date (October 25, 2012) not represented in the reference. Also, I rather suspect that the retrieval date there isn't correct (as it is the publication date, and well before most of the retrieval dates in this article), but that's not actionable, and I struggle to care. In any case, everything needs checked for missing information. I spot checked reference 169, also at random, and it was also missing information from the byline (the author here is Anne DiNardo). This is a pervasive problem, and probably extends to the non-web-available sources also.
Reference 129 isn't formatted, either.
Reference 153 links the publisher, which you do not otherwise do. It's also not formatted the same way as other book sources in general, and lacks a page number citation.
In general, you have a lot of primary sources (including, I believe, BUCKET), press releases (none of which appear to be labeled as such as they should be: consider Template:cite press release), and a lot of references to marketing magazines, some of which (but not all, admittedly) are pay-to-play for big business clients or even just silent republishers of press releases with a shiny coat of paint. I'm not familiar enough with the industry's editorial standards to single any of those out, but someone else here may. Quite a few of them lack Wikipedia articles, which isn't damning in and of itself, but is at least a little cause for concern. Regardless, much of this material seems to be the sort that could be sourced to higher-quality third-party publications. While a cultural/business topic, there's more than a few scholarly journal articles on aspects of this operation, too, and more reliable books that aren't considered.
Replaced BUCKET references to independent ones. Which sources are press releases? A lot of marketing magazines are very good and have a proudly independent history, ie the ones I use: Marketing Magazine, ADWEEK and Ad Age: which are the ones you object to?
Adweek is fine (although it, and Brandweek should be styled in normal capitals per the MOS). On the other hand:
I'm not sure what the editorial policy of the Wall Street Tribune is, as I couldn't find one easily on their site. Regardless, the article cited from there is actually republished from a stock analyst's site. Might be worth checking WP:RS/N, but I'm not really convinced of their neutrality.
The Warc [formerly World Advertising Research Center] site is not cooperating with me at the moment, and so I cannot access either Warc source. Although they claim to be independent, their editorial policy "combines its own content with that of respected industry partners". These need checked out by someone that can make their site cooperate. The World Advertising Research Center's article here was A7'ed years ago, so I'm not sure they're a particularly important voice on their merits, either.
I can't find access to that PR Newswire source, but PR Newswire is fundamentally a distribution system for corporate press releases.
PETA's "Kentucky Fried Cruelty" site is clearly not going to work as a reliable source. With that said, that has been covered in about a dozen books, one of which is in fact included. More and better sources is the answer here.
All three Greenpeace sources are problematic, but the first two especially so. The 2006 source is explicitly a press release (it even says so, refreshingly), and the 2012 source is a transparent attack page. Again, there are third-party sources that address this situation.
And, of course, you've got a lot of primary material in here. Stuff sourced to various KFC websites, KFC publications, Yum! products, and so forth, some of which aren't always obvious as being KFC from just looking at the reference list (like the QSR Brands' website). Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 17:41, 27 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
As far as non-reference issues go, there are also concerns:
The lead is heavily cited. While there'll be people who will quibble whether that's acceptable or not (my take: yes, but not ideal), it's an indication that the lead isn't serving as a summary. And, indeed, it's not. There's considerable sections of article text not summarized in the lead, and the lead indicates that the KFC "bucket" is iconic, but that's never really addressed in the article.
Honestly, while that technically fixes the problem I addressed, the real issue here is that the bucket is an iconic representation of the brand, and there's no shortage of reliable third-party sources that will say that for you. This was a lead/body mismatch that needed expansion more than culling. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 14:43, 27 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Actually I looked for somewhere that said something along these lines, and I couldn't find a reliable source that actually stated it.Farrtj (talk) 15:42, 27 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Dottie, Enrico (June 21, 1986). "Chicken chains fight, feathers fly". USA Today. p. 01.B. Calls the bucket a "longtime icon".
Calonius, Eric (2011). Ten Steps Ahead: What Separates Successful Business Visionaries from the Rest of Us. Portfolio Hardover. p. 12. ISBN978-1591843764. Calls the bucket "iconic" and discusses its origin (the first buckets were surplus popcorn buckets).
Right, well I did some research into this source. I've read the Dave Thomas autobiography that he's clearly referencing, and this book is loaded with factual errors in just a few paragraphs, as self-help books normally are. Pete Harman invented the KFC bucket, not Dave Thomas. And Thomas doesn't claim to have invented it either. So this source is junk. Farrtj (talk) 17:00, 27 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Eh, that's what I get for trying to make fast turnaround recommendations. I saw that was a Penguin imprint, and assumed it was at least marginally conversant with reality. My apologies. USA Today is a fairly "soft" source, of course, but I'm not sure that it's unsuitable for this purpose. Alternatively, perhaps this source (focused on KFC in Arabia, but still clearly relevant), which also calls the bucket "iconic", intended for academic use: Balakrishnan, Melodena Stephes (2013). "Americana Group: KFC in Mecca (or Makkah)". In Balakrishnan, Melodena Stephens; Michael, Ian; Moonesar, Immanuel Azzad (eds.). East Meets West. Actions and Insights - Middle East North Africa. Emerald Group Publishing. pp. 125–138. ISBN978-1781904138. That source also mentions the social media aspect of KFC advertising. I mention that because I'm a little concerned about the use of Interbrand to "laud" KFC's use of social media (Interbrand's Best Global Brands report is probably notable enough to be okay, but their opinions about brand management are not independent; they are a public image/brand management company, and KFC is one of their clients. Also, the Balakrishnan source mentions KFC's sponshorship of FC Barcelona; it hadn't occurred to me previously, but the sponsorship coverage in the article is inadequate, confined to one unsourced line at the end of the Advertising section. In particular, the Cricket Australia sponshorship generated an unanticipated amount of drama in the press. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 17:36, 27 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
There's a lot of wording that's far from brilliant prose. Just in the lead, there's a particularly awkward gloss that caught my eye ("chicken fillet burgers (chicken sandwiches [US])"). There's a pretty tormented sentence in Products, too ("An own brand dessert is the soft serve ice cream product known as "Avalanche", which contains chocolate bits."), and quite frankly a lot of issues throughout; I haven't examined prose in detail because I think there are enough problems that I'm disinclined to spend the time to do so.
Although those two are better, not striking this point, as I'll need to try to give a more comprehensive prose audit; frankly, a solid copy-editing by someone skilled at such things would have been of benefit along the way. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 14:43, 27 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
You give pretty considerable space to the Chinese hormone scandal twice. It's a big deal, but is this undue weight?
The author parameters in some of the references are not consistently formatted. Most of the article follows the "last, first" format, except for FN 30, 82, and 88. For the last two, I recommend using |last1=, |first1=, |last2=, |first2= parameters.
"Outlets are either company owned, operated using joint ventures with local partners" I feel like this sentence should be merged with the next -- "Eleven percent of outlets are company owned and operated through joint ventures with local partners, with the rest owned and operated by franchisees; company ownership allows for"
"Some locations were also opened as combinations of KFC, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut, but this experiment has been described as a "failure". Yum! Brands CEO David Novak blames franchisees not having their hearts in the venture as the reason for its failure." I cannot find the word "failure" in the BusinessWeek article. I suggest rephrasing it to , "Some locations were also opened as combinations of KFC, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut, but this experiment was a failure due to the lack of commitment from all three parties."
"In October 2006, KFC said that, in the United States, it would begin frying its chicken in trans fat-free oil. This would also apply to their potato wedges and other fried foods, however, the biscuits" → " In October 2006, KFC said that, in the United States, it would begin preparing, potato wedes and other fried foods using trans fat-free oil; however, the biscuits"
"Annual sales in the UK amount to 60,000 metric tonnes of chicken. 60 per cent of chicken " → "Annual sales in the UK amount to 60,000 metric tonnes of chicken, 60 per cent of which"
"The chain has grown to hold an estimated 32 per cent market share, and product items include spaghetti, wraps and chicken porridge." What is a product item? I suggest rewriting this whole section as, "as of December 2012. The chain controlls an estimated 32 per cent market share, and offers products such as spaghetti, wraps and chicken porridge.
"The first outlet opened in Jakarta in 1979. Salim Group, Indonesia's largest conglomerate, became a major shareholder in 1990, providing the company with funds for major expansion. Its master franchisee, PT Fastfood Indonesia, was publicly listed on the Indonesian Stock Exchange in 1993."
I am nominating this for featured article because the content seems similar in quality and documentation to that of many current FAs. Peer review was conducted a while back, and the changes made as a result are documented, along with rationales for any changes that were declined. The page is immensely stable, having never attracted any edit wars. Given the difficulty of finding any free-use images of the subject — from his youth he was member of a prominent retailing family and thus every photo of him I have yet found, even those of SM as a child, are protected by copyright, and his participation in government doesn't seem to have yielded usable images — the images used have had to be confined to those of places associated with him and one book-jacket, placed in the section of the article that discusses the book. The article's content seems to be that of an FA, although there might ways of dividing it that might yield a more substantive TOC for navigating the text. Lawikitejana (talk) 21:27, 27 September 2013 (UTC) Addendum: After looking through other nominations, I see they generally also discuss the notability of the subject. Stanley Marcus was a major figure in fashion retailing and a major contributor to the world-recognized brand of Neiman-Marcus. He appears in Harvard Business School's list of "20th Century Great American Business Leaders" and in the Houston Chronicle list of 100 influential Texans, as well as the Advertising Hall of Fame and the Retailing Hall of Fame. Lawikitejana (talk) 21:35, 27 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Comment it is perfectly valid per WP:NFCC to have a non-free (copyrighted) infobox image of a deceased person, given no free alternatives. On the other hand, the book cover will have to go, as the cover itself isn't being discussed.—indopug (talk) 01:58, 28 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose for the moment. This article has not been formally reviewed since it was made a GA five years ago, and the edit history doesn't indicate that there has been a concentrated effort to prepare it for this FAC, which suggests that the nomination may be premature. I have not had time to read more than the lead at present, plus a quick scan through the rest and some reference spotchecking:
Lead does not seem to be a summary of the whole article. There are sections in the TOC which aren't mentioned in the lead – including "Presidential connections" which I should imagine is pretty notable.
As noted above, you may use an image of Marcus in the lead, on a fair use rationale basis, for the purpose of identification. There are several Google images from which to choose. As it is, the infobox looks pretty inadequate. The book cover later in the article has to go, however.
What is the purpose of citing Marcus's name to the Dallas Morning News?
I'm not sure why so much information is cited in the lead. If the lead is doing its job of summarising the article, this information ought to be in the main text and cited there. If the information is not in the main article, then the lead is not doing its job.
However, if you use a direct quotation in the lead ("There is never a good sale for Neiman Marcus unless it's a good buy for the customer.") that does need to be cited.
Inappropriate capitalisation in "American Business Leaders"
Outside the lead there are uncited statements: "Personal life" paragraph 2, and "Early years" paragraph 1
There are better, neater, more up-to-date ways of enclosing quotations than using giant ornamental quote marks; I've not seen these in a FAC for years.
In the references, no. 29 is unformatted
It would be much more convenient for readers if the publication details of multi-cited sources, e.g. Minding the Store, and Biderman, were listed separately, under "Sources" or "Bibliography". As it is, someone wanting to check, say, ref. 46 has to search through the references section to find details of the book.
References to newspapers or journals where no online link is given should have page references. This is done in some cases but not others.
I have not checked out the referencing in detail, but ref 63 source appears to have no relevant information. Nor does 73. I suspect that these, and possible other cases, are due to the age of the article and lack of updating—I note that many of the retrieval dates are for 2007 or 2008, and of course websites and their contents can change considerably over time. I think you need to check out all your online references.
I think your best course of action might be to withdraw this nomination to give yourself time for some serious updating of content and refs. Although the article obviously has merits – it looks comprehensive and well-researched – it looks in need of modernisation and is not, at this time, ready for FA promotion. Brianboulton (talk) 10:38, 28 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
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