Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Archived nominations/January 2009

January 2009

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

The article was not promoted by User:SandyGeorgia 21:51, 3 January 2009 [1].

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Forbidden City

Nominator(s): PalaceGuard008 (Talk)

This article went through a peer review a while ago, and I believe most of the issues have been addressed. The article has been improved by various editors since, and this version has been largely stable for a few months now. This is an important topic for readers interested in Chinese history and culture, and I hope that it will be deemed - or improved to - FA quality. PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 05:59, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

• Oppose:
  • Non-English sources of Wikipedia:Verifiability, says "Because this is the English Wikipedia, for the convenience of our readers, editors should use English-language sources in preference to sources in other languages, assuming the availability of an English-language source of equal quality, so that readers can easily verify that the source material has been used correctly." Forbidden City being such a famous structure, there must be plenty of references in English. There are around 25 Chinese references.
  • The text is being sandwiched between Images, reorganization of images needed.
  • Bullet-point lists in "Influence" and "Symbolism" should be converted to paras.
  • Overlinking: bronze, Britain, France, Switzerland, the United States, Japan. Hall of Supreme Harmony is linked atleast 3 times.
  • "A Starbucks store,^[26] which opened in 2000,^[27] sparked objections^[28] and eventually closed on July 13, 2007." Why are references placed not at the end of a period? A little distracting.--Redtigerxyz ^Talk 16:16, 25 December 2008 (UTC)
  • Images: All images not checked
    • File:Verbotene-Stadt1500.jpg lacks explicit date, proof for PD claim
    • File:Forbiddencity notopen06.JPG lacks explicit information of date, Source, Author
  • Prose:
    • "The Hall of Supreme Harmony ("G") is the largest, and rises some 30 metres (98 ft) above the level of the surrounding square." "It weighs some 200 tonnes and is the largest such carving in China." "According to the results of a 1925 audit,[64] some 1.17 million items were stored in the Forbidden City." " includes some 30,000 pieces." Vagueness: exact figures can be included, also "approximate" will be more suitable
    • "Interestingly, this axis is not exactly aligned north-south, but is tilted by slightly more than two degrees." Interestingly may be seen as one of the Words that editorialize.
  • There are places where there is a lack between ref tag and period. (he was evicted after a coup in 1924. [16] ,as the core of the National Palace Museum in Taipei. [20] ) Please fix them
  • References needed:
    • "Paintings": and many of these were subsequently lost or destroyed.
    • "The Forbidden City is the world's largest surviving palace complex"
    • "(Hall of Supreme Harmony is) and the largest surviving wooden structure in China"
    • "the imperial libraries housed one of the country's largest collections of ancient books"
    • "The personal interest of Emperors such as Qianlong meant that almost all surviving paintings from the Yuan Dynasty and before were held by the palace." WP:OR?
    • "Emperor Gia Long of Vietnam built a palace and fortress that was intended to be a smaller copy of the Chinese Forbidden City in the 1800s"
  • References: What are
    • "The Palace Museum. "Collection highlights - Ceramics" (in Chinese)"? A book? no date, author.
    • The 5th Avenue Theater. "Our Historic Theater - 5th Avenue Theater".
    • The Palace Museum. "太和殿 (Hall of Supreme Harmony)" (in Chinese).
  • The reference style: "p 253, Yu (1984)": Shouldn't it be "Yu (1984), p 253" see Wikipedia:Citing sources--Redtigerxyz ^Talk 05:57, 26 December 2008 (UTC)
    • THanks for those ocmments Redtigerxyz. "Some" is a term of expression that means "approximately and/or at least". The reference issues you mentioned seems to be a cite template that has malfunctioned since it was added to the article. I'll see if the template is being repaired or whether an alternative template can be found. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 12:44, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

• Use {{citebook}}, {{citeweb}} for consistency. --Redtigerxyz ^Talk 14:40, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

• Specific citation methods are not prescribed by either WP:CITE or WP:WIAFA; citation templates are not obligatory. Consistently formatted citations are required by WP:WIAFA, whatever the method. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:57, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

• Though I see a lot of work has gone into this article, my concerns about the Chinese references may be not be fully satisfied in the short period of the FAC. I also see a need for a section devoted to the restoration of the Forbidden city. A section about the construction and materials used in much more detail. (Read comprehensiveness concerns) Both of these were detailed in much detail in a programme on National Geographic, yesterday. So i am opposing the article in the current form. --Redtigerxyz ^Talk 15:06, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

• Comments This article is gonna take a long time to examine, and I'm not gonna have any time at all... just off the top of my head, the Symbolism section is way too list-like and way too sketchy. Not much discussion of numerology etc. I'll try to add more comments, but I'm gonna go catch a flight in about 2 hours or less.
• I hope you can find a better word for "pierced" to describe the entrances. And yuk, the Influences section is looking a lot like a "Forbidden city in popular culture" section. Yuk. Yuk. Why on earth is it notable that some theater in Seattle looks kinda like the Forbidden City? I know a Chinese restaurant in [city omitted] named "Forbidden City"; should we include that too? This looks an awful lot like boosterism. Anybody from Seattle involved in writing this? As for Kingdom hearts, I don't think it's notable that a scenario takes place in the Forbidden City. I mean, if the game were titled "Kingdom Hearts in the Forbidden City" I could... extremely reluctantly.. close my eyes, grit my teeth and let it pass. But it isn't. So I won't. Ling.Nut ^{(talk—WP:3IAR)} 09:41, 26 December 2008 (UTC)
  • Thanks for all of those comments. I'll work on those over the next few days and report back when ready. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 12:44, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Comments -

• In the Notes, it should be Author name, year, THEN page number, not page number first.
• Current ref 5 (Gugong...) is using a wiki article as a reference. (you'll need a reference for this statement)
• Books that are in Chinese need to be so noted.
• What is "National Palace Museum - Tradition & Continuity"? Book? Magazine article?
• Newspaper titles should be in italics
• What is "The Palace Museum "Yin, Yang and the Five... "? A book? Magazine article?
• LIkewise, the Palace Museum "Hall of Supreme Harmony", "Hall of Central Harmony" and "Hall of Preserving Memory"?
• What is current ref 58 ("Working People's Curltureal Palace" china.org.cn?) Looks like a website but not link provided.
• Likewise current ref 59 (Zhongshan Park China.org.cn)?
• What are current refs 66, 67, 68, 69, 71, 72? (Palace Museum "Collection Highlights...)?
• What is current ref 73 ("The 5th Avenue Theater" "Our Historic...)
• Current ref 70 Laufer, Berthold needs a page number
• Current ref 74 is lacking a publisher

Otherwise, sources look okay, links checked out with the link checker tool. Ealdgyth - Talk 16:17, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

All books which are in Chinese are noted as such.

The cite web template seems to be malfunctioning. I'm not sure why the URLs are not showing up as links. This will need to be fixed. Hold on. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 08:51, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

• Dabs; please check the disambiguation links identified in the toolbox. And, lots of text squeeze between images, see WP:MOS#Images. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:26, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

• Re: use of "some" - Regarding the use of the word "some" commented on above by User:Redtigerxyz, see MoS:Subset terms for an explanation as to why not to use vague terms like "some". Wikipedia:Words to avoid might help also. —Mattisse (Talk) 01:07, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Comments - Just from glancing through the article, so I may have more to add.

• There are many scholarly books in English on Chinese architecture that include in depth analysis of the architectural elements of the Forbidden City and how they evolved. Suggest that you include information from these books for a more in depth description of the Chinese aspects of the architecture, rather than a tourist guide view. You could also include more of the distinctively Chinese style that for thousands of years has distinguished it from Western architecture.
• Suggest that you expand the "Religion" section and include a more in depth description of the interweaving of religious and architectural elements so important to Chinese architecture.
• Suggest you remove tangential sections, such as "Surroundings" which, again, is more like a travel guide approach.
• Suggest that the "Symbolism" section be written in prose (the bullet points removed) and expanded, as this is a very important element of the Forbidden City, not just a side note.
• The "Influence" section could be expanded to reveal more of the significance of the Forbidden City to the Chinese.
• Also, "Depiction in art, film and literature" and "As performance venue" seem tangential and could be removed entirely.
• Perhaps the "Collections" section should be spun off into another article, much as the History of the Forbidden City has been (which seems more important than "Collections") as "Collections" takes up a large percentage of the article.
• Seems like there are too many images relative to the text, but this may be a personal preference. (I don't think images from the "Collentions" are necessary unless they illustrate a point pertinent to the city's architecture or history.

—Mattisse (Talk) 01:46, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

• • Thanks for those comments Matisse. Much appreciated. As to the issue of collections, my understanding is that this article deals currently with the Forbidden City as an architectural complex *and* as a museum, hence a description of its collections. There is already a main article on the museum collections, which is linked from the Collections section, at Collections of the Palace Museum. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 08:51, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

• The cite web template is not working properly in the article, which is why a lot of the references are not displaying correctly. This may take some time to clear up. Should this be withdrawn until that's fixed? --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 08:53, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

• That's interesting, and potentially important to other articles. Can you list three or four examples, please? Ling.Nut ^{(talk—WP:3IAR)} 20:41, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

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

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

The article was not promoted by User:SandyGeorgia 21:51, 3 January 2009 [2].

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Luan Da

Nominator(s): Nousernamesleft

previous FAC (15:53, 29 August 2008)

Finally, Luan Da, the mystic and conman who became the second most powerful man in the sixth largest ancient empire simply by telling tall tales (and a little magnetic trick with chess pieces), is back at FAC. He's been through two previous FACs - premature, of course - since when he's undergone the rigors of a peer review (which unfortunately didn't get a lot of love, though Rjwilmsi helpfully fixed up some MOS trinkets for me). The article still is fairly short, though not as short as before; a brief description of the changes since the previous FAC can be found in the peer review. Nousernamesleft (talk) 22:44, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Restart, old nom. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:40, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Support, as before. Mike Christie (talk) 14:51, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Not quite yet English sources are preferred to Chinese when available. Here they clearly are (for example, the magnetic statues are in Needham, and most of the story of Luan must be in Sima; the customs of Early Han China must be available hundreds of places), and I encourage the efforts to replace one with the other, and look forward to supporting when this is done. (I should also like to see Sima Qian cited by chapter, as well as page number, which would make the references independent of edition.) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:54, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

English sources are preferred to Chinese when available No. English sources are only preferred to foreign ones when they are of equal quality. --Novil Ariandis (talk) 20:49, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

And sources of equal quality to a publisher's website and China's 30 Most Controversial Historical Figures should not be hard to come by. The rest of the sources aren't popularizations; why should we put up with worse soources which will be of limited use to our readership? We should not assume that the users of this English WP read Chinese. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:09, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

The bit about magnetic statues is now sourced to Needham. I'll see how much of Luan's life I can source to the English sources I'm using. I'm not sure what you're talking about in regards to "the customs of Early Han China must be available hundreds of places," since that's entirely sourced to Lewis, a very recent scholarly work in English. I added the chapter for Sima Qian as well. Nousernamesleft (talk) 21:35, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

The one use of Xuhui (for use of personal names and epithets in histories under the Han). Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:01, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

I feel this article is in a somewhat catch-22 situation. On one hand, there is a complaint that the article is too short, so additional information is brought out. These sources are not found in English sources as most Western works go for a general summarized approach that drops the details between various historical accounts and Sima Qian's works (this is described by Nienhauser in his prefaces of his The Grand Scribe's Records). Chinese sources are used to verify additional information (they are linked to websites, but the contents are lifted from the books). However, now the contention is that these sources are supposedly "not as good" as English sources (which do not cover the details). So should this article take out the Chinese sources and the information they source, and be left with a shorter article, or should it keep looking for likely non-existent English sources to back up those details?

Regarding the use of Xuhui's reference, there are English sources that tell of how ancient figures are named in historical accounts (e.g. see "Family Names and Given Names" of Endymion Porter Wilkinson's Chinese History).[3] However, there are none found so far that specifically name Luan Da as an example. It still boils down to the fact that Xuhui's is the only book found so far that specifically analyzes "Luan Da". Jappalang (talk) 01:26, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Then cite both; Wilkinson for the custom, Xuhui for the application. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:57, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

• Comments: The Beginnings of Alchemy journal Isis, Vol. 38, No. 1/2 (Nov., 1947), p. 74, Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science Society [4] I found some things that are not mentioned in this article, but need to be mentioned (doubts about comprehensive). The half page para in the journal speaks about
  • Another name of Luan Da: "Tai^da", i do not know why a superscript is used in the journal
  • "alchemical gold" (no mention of alchemy, gold is mentioned)
  • Luan Da being intially a slave of King Kang of Jia-Dung (may be the same as "Liu Ji, the Prince of Jiao Dong" mentioned in the article) --Redtigerxyz ^Talk 04:45, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

    Alchemy is mentioned in the current article via the "[[alchemy|create gold]]" piped link in "Rise to power". King Kang was Liu Ji's posthumous title, they are one and the same. As for "slave", this was discussed in the previous FAC. Jappalang (talk) 08:36, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

    Note: To avoid confusion, by "previous FAC", Jappalang means the FAC before the restart, not FAC 2. Nousernamesleft (talk) 15:27, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

    The FAC before restart is visible here. Looking at the discussion of "slave" there strongly suggests that Nousername has been presented with English sources for much of this, and has misunderstood what they are. In particular Isis is a journal; George Sarton was its founding editor. The article is available, through JSTOR: H. Dubs, Beginnings of Alchemy, Isis, Vol 38, 1/2 p.62-86 (1947). Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:57, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

    The particular article should not be considered as a source for the article, however, as it deals with entirely different subject matter and only mentions Luan Da trivially, with redundant information. Nousernamesleft (talk) 16:41, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

    Then make my voixce Oppose until it uses English sources, of which Dubs' article is one, for materials sourceable both in English and Chinese. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:25, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

    Oh, I can and will replace most of Luan's life and perhaps the naming customs above with English sources - however, I refuse point-blank to use a source like Dubs. Nousernamesleft (talk) 18:01, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

    Please write me when you have.Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:38, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

    (outdent) I re-sourced a significant amount of material to the new Qian translation and other works. How does that look? Nousernamesleft (talk) 21:23, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

    Better, certainly. The remnant appears to be Xuhui's assertion about historians not using surnames for the common people which is surely findable elsewhere, and several digs about Luan's corruption. If these are consensus (aren't some of them in Sima himself?) they can be sourced elsewhere; although even if they are, we may not need them. If they are only in Zhang, why do we need them at all? (I'll do some research myself after Christmastime.) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 14:57, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Oppose—1a. Sorry, but it's not well-enough written. It's hard to summarise the technical deficiencies, but they're there. You need to bring on-board one or more good copy-editors. You know how to find them for this type of topic? The lead provides ample evidence of the problems.

• Does MOSNUM really say to put a ? for the birth-date when it's unknown? Maybe it does.
• "Possessing the gift of gab and adept at confidence tricks, Luan Da gained the favour of Emperor Wu of Han, also known as Han Wudi. In the space of a few months, he rose from"—"the gift of gab" is not English ("the gab"), and is rather too informal, especially at the top. Is this a phrase you've seen in one of the sources and simply moved across? The last "he" refers to which man?
• "In the space of a few months, he rose from a commoner to great influence, holding titles and land, and marrying one of the emperor's daughters. However, he could not fulfill his promise to Emperor Wu, failing to produce a means to immortality." The "However" doesn't work well, because it refers to something we should already have been told about—the promise. Clunky effect.
• "He gradually lost the emperor's favour and went on a purported visit to immortals; however, he was ..."—Who did the purporting? He, presumably, but we shouldn't have to wonder. Nor should we have to click on the link to "immortals" to find out what on earth it all means. Very odd. Another "however", in the very next sentence.
• Another back-to-front sentence: "His death was a sign of the trade's fall from favour; laws were passed to restrict the practice of mediumship, even penalising those who married its practitioners." The trade? What trade? Ah, we reach it later—mediumship, whatever that is.

The whole article is at issue; I've just pointed out examples of the larger problem. Tony (talk) 14:03, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

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

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

The article was not promoted by User:SandyGeorgia 21:51, 3 January 2009 [5].

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Lingbao School

Nominator(s): Zeus1234 (talk)

I'm nominating this article for featured article because I believe it meets all the criteria set forth. Zeus1234 (talk) 10:12, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

Comments - sources look okay, links checked out with the link checker tool. Ealdgyth - Talk 15:24, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

Comments: I can't comment on the content as I lack any knowledge. Instead I'll suggest a few small improvements that might be adopted.

• In the first para of the Rebirth section the word "Buddhist" or "Buddhism" is over-repeated (five mentions in all). A spot of rewording should deal with that.
• "the adept's body..." An adept is a person with some particular skill or proficiency, and I'm not quite sure how this meaning suits your phrase.
• "Sinicization" should be linked
• "kalpa" should be linked at first rather than second mention.
• It may be worth looking out for other specialist terms that should be either linked or explained. However, I believe the links on "sun", "moon" and "planets" are unnecessary overlinking.
• Books in the list of references should have ISBNs

It looks an interesting and informative article. Brianboulton (talk) 18:08, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

I have made the fixes you suggested. Thanks for the help!Zeus1234 (talk) 08:10, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Support — Language is fine, and the article performs well as an introductory guide to Lingbao School (origins, beliefs, and legacy). Whatever jargon (deity names and spiritual terms) are much easier to identify than before. I think this qualifies as a Featured Article. Jappalang (talk) 05:00, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Resolved issues. Jappalang (talk) 05:00, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Comments — generally the language is fine, but I removed redundancies and changed several sentences to avoid repetition and bad forms. Content-wise, however, this article might be confusing...

• Language

• First off, the article should be consistent. Is it US English or British English? "-ize, -or" are US English. "-ise, -our" are British English. Currently, the article is a mix, with "visualize" and "colour" as examples.

• History

• "Ge Chaofu did not claim to have had the scriptures revealed to him directly from the spirits, but rather from a line of transmission going back to Ge Hong's great-uncle, Ge Xuan (164-244)."

Are scriptures supposed to be by default revealed by spirits? This sentence seems to imply so. It is a surprise out of the blue, and it is rather pointless if it is not the default rule (which it is not). Hence, simply stating that the Lingbao scriptures were passed on generation to generation by word-of-mouth (or handed down) would be sufficient.

• "Under the Tang Dynasty, the Shangqing School, better integrated with the aristocracy, was more influential in court. The Shangqing School, however, borrowed many Lingbao practices, thus further integrating the two schools."

Here, an unknown school is introduced, then revealed as a successor of the Lingbao School. The order is reversed. I also suspect that the "further integrating" should not be used in that manner. It would have been better to phrase, "Over the centuries, various teachings formed as offshoots of the Lingbao School. One of them, the Shangqing School, prospered in the Tang Dynasty. Borrowing many Lingbao practices, it was well accepted by the aristocracy and established an influence in court."

• Rebirth

• "These were reborn into earth prisons, as a hungry ghost, as an animal, as a man or as a celestial being."

"These" refer to what?

• Cosmology

• "kalpa cycles"

The what?! There is the article, kalpa (time unit), but for all I know, kalpa cycle might be talking about another thing.

• "Deviating from Buddhist beliefs was that the heavens rotated around a huge mountain known as the Jade Capital, which was the residence of the Celestial Worthy."

I would suggest "Lingbao cosmology deviated from Buddhist beliefs by proposing that the heavens [...] Worthy.", and who is the Celestial Worthy?

• "traditionally Daoist ideas"

I would hazard it is supposed to be "traditional Daoist ideas"

• Please explain what is the Single Breath.
• "is subdivided into three breaths that corresponds to three deities, the lords of the Celestial Treasure, of the Sacred Treasure and of the Divine Treasure."

Better punctuation is recommended here, I recommend a dash or colon between "three deities" and "the lords". Furthermore, first it was divided, then the breath was subdivided? This is getting confusing.

• "During the subsequent three cosmic eras in the three Daoist heavens, these three lords introduced the teachings of the Dadong (Great Grotto), the Dongxuan (Mysterious Grotto) and of the Dongshen (Divine Grotto). These three teachings form the basis for the later classification of texts in the Daozang."

Lots of "three"s and an expectation of the reader to know of the cosmic eras in Daoist heavens. What are they?

• "the emperor of the colour that was associated with that era would descend onto earth"

Most people would think of an emperor as a mortal. Who is this "emperor" who came from the heavens? He deserves clarification.

• "the Nine Breaths of the universe"

Nine? I thought the Single Breath was divided into two, three, or was it six?

• "ten thousand emperors"

Where did they (no mention of there being 10,000 before) come from? Are there supposed to be 10,000 colours as well?

• Immortality techniques
• "their essence coagulating and entering the body."

Bad form of "noun-plus-ing". See User:Tony1/Advanced editing exercises#A common problem—noun plus -ing.

Rituals

• "These practitioners were not professional priests, but rather 'students of the Dao'."

Do you mean "Early practitioners" rather than "These practitioners"?

• "meaning that it was carried on at several different levels simultaneously." and "In addition, rituals always involved three levels: heaven, earth and man."

These sentences can be merged.

• "and in addition to preventing bad weather, also ensures salvation."

Suggestion: ", ensuring salvation and preventing bad weather."

The article seems to presume the reader has some insight into Daoist teachings (especially the Cosmology section), which makes it inaccessible to those who do not have an inkling to the teaching's gods and hierarchy. (update: I will re-read later to verify if this still stands.) Finally, the article fails to talk about the relevance of Lingbao School in the modern days. We are only vaguely told that it survives in some form, and those descriptions are scattered across the article. Jappalang (talk) 23:09, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

I have taken many of your suggestions to heart, and have tried to simplify much of the content, by standardizing terms and clarifying the language. I added a new legacy section at the bottom to synthesize the parts of the Lingbao School that are still relevant today. I am Canadian, and follow Canadian spelling, which is a combination of British and American spelling. I don't believe this to be too much of an issue. If you have any further suggestions, please let me know! Zeus1234 (talk) 08:09, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

The lede needs to be fixed to summarize the changed article (right now, it states the Single Breath, which is no longer stated in the text; furthermore, the present day situation of Linbao School needs to be accounted for in the lede). Jappalang (talk) 13:12, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

I just completed to two fixes to the lede that you suggested. Thank you for the suggestions.Zeus1234 (talk) 02:13, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Actually a preference for -ize is fully compatible with a preference for -our even before we considering Canada, thanks to "en-GB-oed". That little matter aside, the spelling of the article seems to be in accordance with an emerging quasi-standard for Canadian spelling of English as I infer it from this explanation. Morenoodles (talk) 09:29, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

As long as there is a standard, then it would not be an issue. Jappalang (talk) 09:52, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

• Dabs; please check the disambiguation links identified in the toolbox. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 04:21, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Done. Morenoodles (talk) 09:44, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Image review — as follows:

• File:Ge Xuan.jpg — Source given, but it is not the page the picture exists. Please provide the link to the page where the picture is shown by this site (not the direct url of the picture). Furthermore, date of the picture must be provided by sources to prove public domain. Jappalang (talk) 22:15, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

I located the image here but it is of smaller resolution. The page list four sources (I doubt it could be from the Records of the Three Kingdoms—Wu, so it might be from the other three), so it should be looked into from which book it came from. Jappalang (talk) 09:43, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Removed. Jappalang (talk) 01:44, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

• File:TaoistCharm.JPG — As above. Jappalang (talk) 22:15, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Removed. Jappalang (talk) 01:44, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

• File:Baopuzi.JPG — As above. Jappalang (talk) 22:15, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

I have corrected File:Baopuzi.JPG to conform to what is needed. Please take a look and do likewise for the other two images. Jappalang (talk) 09:43, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

I could not adequately source the other two images, so they have therefore been replaced with images that I was able to provide adequate sources for.Zeus1234 (talk) 11:50, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

• File:Lingbao Talisman.gif — checks out fine. Jappalang (talk) 01:44, 23 December 2008 (UTC)
• I have replaced File:Laozi.PNG with File:Lao Tzu - Project Gutenberg eText 15250.jpg. The PNG is uploaded by an editor with a dubuous record. The Gutenberg source is absolutely reliable (definitely expired PD). Hence the Gutenberg image checks out fine. Jappalang (talk) 01:44, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

As of this revision, images check out fine. Jappalang (talk) 01:44, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Further comments — looking into the sources, several items are cited to The Encyclopedia of Taoism, which is a tertiary source. Can references to it be reduced? Wikipedia is aiming to be a tertiary source, and it is desirable for most (if not all) of its sources to be secondary per WP:PSTS. Jappalang (talk) 02:02, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

I managed to get rid of all references to the encyclopedia except for 12 and 27. These are probably present in sources I don't have access to, as I've looked in all sources available to me for any other reference.Zeus1234 (talk) 09:06, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Two references is not that major (requirements are for minimal use), so this is pretty fine. Jappalang (talk) 05:00, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

I understand that this objection has been addressed and struck out, but I think it deserves a comment all the same. It strikes me as an extremely strict application, or even a misapplication, of "WP:PSTS". The "tertiary source" cited in this article is not a general-purpose work of reference that must ruthlessly or hurriedly crush knowledge and educated theory into a short space for casual or quick consumption. Instead, it's a special-purpose encyclopedia for which (or for half of which) the publisher charges $300, with signed articles; and the article cited here is written by somebody who's written other pieces that this article cites and who seems to know what he's talking about. Citing it seems perfectly proper to me. Morenoodles (talk) 09:10, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

Quick-fail—1a: My head is spinning. Poorly organised ideas; repetitiveness. Here are examples just in the lead. The whole text needs a good massage. I think this should be withdrawn and put through a major clean-up.

• "The Lingbao School is a synthesis of religious ideas that is based on Shangqing texts, the rituals of the Celestial Masters, and Buddhist practices." Somehow a little wordy. What about "The Lingbao School is a synthesis of religious ideas based on Shangqing texts, the rituals of the Celestial Masters, and Buddhist practices."? Or "The Lingbao School is a synthesis of the religious meanings in Shangqing texts, the rituals of the Celestial Masters, and Buddhist practices." Unsure.
• "The beliefs of the Lingbao school were based on the Buddhist concept of reincarnation. The school's cosmology was also influenced by Buddhism, but still maintained many Daoist beliefs, including the idea that the world emerged from a type of qi called yuanqi, and that an apocalypse would occur that only a limited few could avoid through faith." Also? These sentences seem to contain repetitiveness/circularity. I'm confused.
• "Laozi. Alongside Laozi," So reorganise the sentence boundaries to overcome this rep., and the noun+ing urchin, and the clumsy order of the phrases and groups: "One of its most important gods was the deified form of Laozi, alongside which were minor gods, some in charge of preparing spirits for reincarnation." That also solves the "important" but then "minor" (other minor gods) description of Laozi. Very confusing.
• "Although reincarnation was an important concept in the Lingbao School, the earlier Daoist belief in attaining immortality remained." The logic of "although" will escape non-experts. "Likewise, Lingbao ritual was initially very similar to individual Celestial Master ritual, but went through a transformation that put more emphasis on collective rites." Why "Likewise"? I can't see the connection. Why "but"? Can a transformation put more emphasis on something, or lead to more emphasis? What a mess. Tony (talk) 15:35, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

• "Shanqing" is linked twice in a few seconds. More to the point, its very appearance twice at the top of the lead seems repetitive or redundant. The relationship between the first and second paras needs to be more logical and cogent.

• • I've looked over the lead, and have edited it as per your suggestions. I kept the sentence "Although reincarnation was an important concept in the Lingbao School, the earlier Daoist belief in attaining immortality remained." There is an although because reincarnation seems to be diametrically opposed to the idea of immortality. If you have the ability to reincarnate, why would you seek immortality? I hope that clarifies things.
  • As for the rest of the article, I looked it over and gave it an edit. However, it has been looked at by other editors already, so if you have any significant problems with the rest of the article, if would be very helpful if you tell me where so I can fix them. Zeus1234 (talk) 01:10, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

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

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

The article was not promoted by User:SandyGeorgia 21:35, 3 January 2009 [6].

---

Quark

Nominator(s): User:Anonymous Dissident

previous FAC (00:50, 7 October 2008)

I'm here to try again. Myself and others have continued to do work towards the improving of this article; concerns cited last time mainly revolved around perceived problems with clarity and tone. Now that the article is slightly longer and more detailed, with a longer lead and clearer explanation, I'd hope that these problems would be fixed. While some of the omissions in content noted at the last FAC have been remedied, we have still taken care to give a comprehensive but not overly scientific coverage; this is, after all, an encyclopedia, and we wouldn't want a book length analysis of a topic that could become easily convoluted with too much advanced scientific and/or theoretical exploration. I'm perfectly happy to act upon any concerns mentioned. I just hope that this article will be deemed simple enough but detailed enough now; last time, we had one camp saying that the article wasn't written simply enough, while another was calling for greater technical expansion. It's my belief we have a better mix of both now. —Anonymous Dissident^Talk 09:51, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Resolved issues

• Comment Lead is much better now. So is the overall prose. I would support the FAC nomination, but for one omission that I failed to spot last time. As noted on the talk page. The article does not mention the CKM matrix for the quark masses/ quark mixing. It is one of the most striking differences between quarks and leptons in the standard model. (in the SM the leptons have no generation mixing) Hopefully this can be corrected during this FAC round, because I feel overall the article is very strong. (TimothyRias (talk) 11:02, 12 December 2008 (UTC))

• • I must confess I don't know bout that particular concept. I'll read some material on it today and tomorrow, and insert some information on it into the article then. I wouldn't want to add some ill-informed stuff right now. —Anonymous Dissident^Talk 12:05, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

• Comment Well now, let's have a look. The lead needs some work to make it crisper, and the logic could be tightened. Avoid elegant variation (called, known as, named). Be consistent in style (serial comma or no serial comma?). Try this alternative (references omitted):

In physics, a[See discussion below] A quark (pronounced /kwɔrk/ or /kwɑrk/) is a type of subatomic particle. Because of color confinement, most quarks only occur bound together in hadrons: composite particles such as protons and neutrons, the components of atomic nuclei.

Quarks are of six different types, or flavors: up (symbol:
u
), down (
d
), charm (
c
), strange (
s
), top (
t
), and bottom (
b
). The up and down quarks are the lightest and most stable; as the constituents of protons and neutrons, they are primary and most abundant building blocks of matter. The unstable charm, strange, top, and bottom quarks decay rapidly, after formation in particle accelerators, cosmic rays, or similar high energy environments. For every quark flavor there is a corresponding antiquark: an antiparticle differing only in that some of its properties have the opposite sign. The properties of most quarks must be deduced from experiments on the hadrons they compose; but the top quark, decaying too rapidly to hadronize, is observed by identifying the particles it decays into. Some Big Bang theories postulate a quark-gluon plasma with single unbound quarks (including "free" top quarks), in the extremely hot early universe.

The quark model was proposed independently by physicists Murray Gell-Mann and George Zweig in 1964. Confirmation came in 1968, when electron–proton scattering experiments revealed three "sphere-like" regions in the substructure of the proton. In 1995 the last of the six, the top flavor, was observed at Fermilab.

I might say more when I've read through the rest. Interesting!–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 11:58, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Such a concise style can become hard to read when it is full of technical terms. Phrase such as known as signal a reader that it is not expected that he has known of the term. I definately prefer the more gentle style of the current lead. Note that elegant variation refers to using different words for the same thing, not to using different phrases with a similar meaning in different contexts. (Imagine a text that describes complex reasoning that only used the word thus and never any of its synonyms consequently, so or therefore because they would constitute (in)elegant variation.) (TimothyRias (talk) 14:02, 12 December 2008 (UTC))

Timothy, I agree that conciseness can be taken too far. I offer a much tighter version as a basis; anything that is then added might require specific justification. As for elegant variation, I disagree. It can apply to any wording, not just nouns (as your reference to "things" suggests). Perhaps this in unclear in our article; but it is plainly stated in its primary source, which begins like this: "We include under this head all substitutions of one word for another for the sake of variety,...". Fowler addresses nouns mainly, but gives a few examples like this: "I must ask the reader to use the same twofold procedure that I before requested him to employ in considering...—H. Sidgwick." Anyway, the contexts here are not different, as you seem to imply; and the varied words are quite near each other. –_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 20:16, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Timothy; we should give a definition of quark as soon as possible^[1], but it cannot be made specific enough without using technical terms, and the In technical terms tells the reader "don't worry if you don't understand this now".

[1] Not everyone would agree to call that a "definition", as it would also apply to gluinos, but given that the hypothesis of the existences of gluinos (and supersymmetric partners in general) is (IMO) largely speculative with very little or no empirical evidence, and that Wikipedia is not a crystal ball, better not worry about that. -- Army1987 – Deeds, not words. 15:42, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Army, it ought to be blindingly obvious that the terms are technical. Would anyone think they are the common terms of everyday life? Because they are likely to be unfamiliar, they are clearly linked. We should not patronise readers; we help them best by writing lucidly what they need to know.–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 20:16, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

• Comment - is "In physics" absolutely needed? I think the next clause, "A quark is a type of subatomic particle." encompasses that sentence perfectly (cf [7]) Sceptre ^(talk) 14:06, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Maybe, be wouldn't that conflict with the also true statement that "A quark is the sound a duck makes"? Now, of course, I don't think anybidy would be confused by this. But it is a wikipedia best practice to establish the right context in the opening sentence. (TimothyRias (talk) 14:12, 12 December 2008 (UTC))

There are other meanings, more serious that the cry of a gull (see Quark (disambiguation)); besides that, starting article with "In topic, subject is" is de-facto standard in Wikipedia, and it doesn't harm. It's obvious that we're not talking about a cheese here, but see WP:State the obvious. -- Army1987 – Deeds, not words. 15:42, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

I'd think the context is there without "in physics". I normally see In topic opening clauses as poor writing and can be easily replaced with {{about}}. Sceptre ^(talk) 15:44, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

I agree, Sceptre, even though I retained in physics in my concise draft above. I was tempted to drop it; there is a pointer to a disambiguation page at the top, after all. –_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 20:16, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Another comment: is the first citation necessary? Seeing as quarks being subatomic particles is pretty much the first thing you learn in A-Level Physics... I don't think you really need to cite that. Especially in the lead section. Sceptre ^(talk) 22:55, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

• Comment. I'm not convinced of the way information about hadrons and strong interaction is scattered in several sections in different places in the article, but as soon as I figure out a better way to do that I'll fix the problem. -- Army1987 – Deeds, not words. 15:42, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

• :This is turning out to be far less trivial than I believed... -- Army1987 – Deeds, not words. 23:00, 12 December 2008 (UTC) [Done, see below -- Army1987 – Deeds, not words. 00:14, 13 December 2008 (UTC)]

• Comment: Like Tim above, I also would mention the CKM matrix. And that color coded table still is an eyesore. I'll make a thourough review in the next few days, but it looks pretty solid.Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 19:27, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

• Question - What exactly is Murray Gell-Mann holding in his hand? A lump of coal? A Ding Dong? It's hard to tell. Kaldari (talk) 21:11, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

• To me, it looks like a remote control or a laser pointer, though a rather large one. But I'm not sure. -- Army1987 – Deeds, not words. 21:56, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

• Further comments:

• Lead : Quarks are the only particles to experience all four interactions. This is mentioned in the "classification" section, but IMO this should also be in the lead.
• Is it accurate to describe Zweig as a co-proposer rather than an independent proposer or something to that effect? Co-proposer seem to imply that Zweig and Gell-Man collaborated on this.
• "However, this notion has been recently challenged in quantum chromodynamics by theories that include vacuum polarization and the coupling of quark hadrons to strange quarks in the vacuum.[41]" The reference given is from 1993. That's 15 years ago...
• "Current quark mass". I feel the term should be a bit clarified. "Current" could be interpreted to mean "the quarks of 2008's mass" instead of "flow".
• And I just have to reiterated that I really hate those nigh pointless colors in that table...
• In the color confinement section, more could be said about how the top quark's "non-hadronization leads to direct measurements of the mass. It says it's an exception, but stops there. I feel this leaves the reader wanting for more.
• Assymptotic freedom --> Mentionning that this got Wilczek et al. a nobel prize here would be fitting here I think.
• I think the note about the number of generations should be merged in the text.
• Should the image about the decay include "rarer" arrows from t to d and b to u?

Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 23:16, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

• I've done most of what you've requested. I removed the 15 year old material. It didn't seem very relevant and was representative of just one of the many fringe views on the topic. i think the colours are fine. I also didn't mention Wilczek; I don't necessarily object to a mention, but I couldn't see how that would fit well into the section, as we were right into the throes of a deep explanation when the freedom was mentioned, and noting that a Nobel Prize was won would kind of distract from that. I also don't really know what more information you want about top quark non-hadronization; there isn't much more to say, from what I know. —Anonymous Dissident^Talk 01:45, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

And here are mine:

• I have attempted, and might have succeeded, in re-organizing the material about strong interaction. But since Murphy's law predicts a very high probability that I screwed something up, I saved my new version to User:Army1987/Quark. Might someone take a look at it? If there is nothing seriously wrong with it, it can be incorporated into the article.

• Hmm, I'm not sure. Could you outline exactly what you've done? I don't have the time to read through it all now, and I certainly don't have the time to actually compare the two side by side. From a quick glance, you've elected to place the material about hadronization first, and the "other" properties last. I don't think that's entirely sensical, myself, and, at least in that regard, I prefer the way the current article is structured. —Anonymous Dissident^Talk 02:00, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

• The point is keeping all the information about the same topic together. All those "below" links about gluons and sea quarks are not very reader-friendly. As it currently stands, the article introduces some of the concepts of QCD, then it discusses completely unrelated things such as spin, electric charge, etc., and then goes back to QCD to end explaining the concept which were introduced. Doesn't sound like a good structure to me. -- Army1987 – Deeds, not words. 02:49, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

• I've been thinking of a way of mentioning the CKM matrix, without stating either falsehoods or things that will be totally incomprehensible to the average encyclopedia reader. I failed. Any ideas, anyone?
• (This is one of the very few times I'm nationalistic.) But surely Nicola Cabibbo should be mentioned somewhere in the History section, shouldn't he?

Army1987 – Deeds, not words. 00:17, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

Comments: mostly copy-and-paste from my opposition at this article's last FAC, slightly updated.

• Curious omission: not even a hint of the group theory basis of the quark model? Doesn't need to be much, but if it isn't mentioned at all, this article is not comprehensive.

• Curious omission: Yang-Mills theories and, more generally, non-Abelian gauge theories not mentioned at all. Doesn't need to be much, but if it isn't mentioned at all, this article is not comprehensive.

• Major omission: quark gluon plasma is in the lead, but not in the main article (big no-no in itself). This is a central aspect of modern research on quarks.
• Description of the parton model: could use some words on what it means that "the proton had substructure".

• Given. —Anonymous Dissident^Talk 12:18, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

• I did some tweaking. A sphere would be something else; for definiteness, I took the formulation used in the article that is cited as a reference. Markus Poessel (talk) 17:35, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

• History section: CP violation should have a one-sentence-explanation or text will not be accessible for your average interested reader

• Mentioned. —Anonymous Dissident^Talk 12:21, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

• "The system of attraction and repulsion between quarks charged with any of the three colors (...) is as follows: a quark charged with one color value will be attracted to an antiquark carrying with the corresponding anticolor, while three quarks all charged with differing colors will similarly be forced together. In any other case, a force of repulsion will come into effect." - that makes it sound more simple than it is. If, say, you have three quarks, each with a different color, and take the symmetric combination, you'll end up with a repulsive force. Also, for a symmetric state with two quarks with two different colors, you get an attractive force.

• "Composed of one d and two u quarks, the proton has an overall mass of approximately 938 MeV/c2, of which the three quarks contribute around 10 MeV/c2, the remainder is from the energy of the gluons." - 10 MeV/c^2 sounds very low. I remember coming across higher numbers (quark rest mass plus kinetic energy contributions - which one is meant here? quark rest mass only?). Also, at least one of the sources cited (Veltman p. 46) doesn't say anything about this - why is it cited here? Possibly a different page?

• From "Review of Particle Physics:Quarks of 2008 this mass is 12 Mev (3*2+5). Ruslik (talk) 10:50, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

• But those are the quarks' rest mass contributions only, then. In that case, the sentence, as it stands, is wrong: The quarks contribute not only their rest mass, but also the mass associated with their kinetic energy. If I remember correctly, the latter contribution is significantly larger than the former. Markus Poessel (talk) 14:28, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

• Kinetic energy contribution may be difficult to estimate, and impossible to separate from contributions from gluon field. I changed that sentence to reflect this fact. Ruslik (talk) 09:45, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

• "Gluons are constantly exchanged between quarks through an emission and reception process. These gluon exchange events between quarks are extremely frequent, occurring approximately 1024 times every second." - I'm very skeptical about the number given. After all - and that should be stated here! - the exchange picture is perturbation theory; whatever happens inside a hadron is highly non-perturbative.

Markus Poessel (talk) 09:56, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

I agree with most of your points, but I'm afraid it'd be very difficult to mention group theory and Yang-Mills theories in a way that would be comprehensible to the average reader. IMO such details belong to more technical articles such as Quantum chromodynamics, quark model, etc., which are linked by this article, and the reader can follow the links for more information. I'll try to address the other points. -- Army1987 – Deeds, not words. 11:55, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

I don't think you need to mention it in a way that the average reader understands completely – but, in the appropriate place, a single sentence that says "In mathematical language, ..., and quarks are in the ... representation of that group." would be something that a) makes the article more comprehensive, b) contains wikilinks to important terms that are intimately connected with the way quarks are described in physics, and should definitely be wikilinked from this lemma, and c) can be made brief enough to show the average reader that there is more, but not something that he or she need understand in detail at this point. Markus Poessel (talk) 13:47, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

I've made a paragraphical mention of qgp. —Anonymous Dissident^Talk 05:14, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. Unfortunately, I think the paragraph is a bit off. QGP is certainly not a theory; if you want to stress the speculative nature, "conjectured new state of matter" or similar would probably be appropriate. Sourcing with a textbook from 2000 is unfortunate; there were major new results from RHIC in 2005. In this lemma, there's probably not enough room to mention specific experiments (if you mention CERN, you must mention RHIC, and outside the time-frame mentioned the LHC), but there should be a mention of cosmological implications – after all, that's one reason this has generated so much interest. Would you mind if I gave it a try? Markus Poessel (talk) 09:24, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Not at all; please do. If you could possibly lend your expertise in the other areas that you mentioned were in omission, I'd also be hugely appreciative. I'm no expert, and am frankly overwhelmed by some of your requests. I'd offer that since you were the person to bring some of the matters up, you might know some information on each of the respective omitted topics? If you can't, I completely understand; it'd just make the improvement of the article easier and the overall product better. —Anonymous Dissident^Talk 14:49, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

[Continuing from my earlier comments:] An interesting and important article with some sophisticated technical content, apparently aimed at explaining quarks to the naive reader. I would like to see it succeed; but I cannot give it my vote in its present state. Generally, I regard the writing as not up to standard. There is uncertainty of tone and of technical level. Here are some specific points, some of which are connected to observations I make above:

• • In the lead, the reader is pampered with such comforts as "in technical terms", "because of a phenomenon known as", "they are found in two of the primary building blocks of matter – protons and neutrons". But there is little point mixing such pabulum with hard-core assertions like this: "This color confinement is propagated by the quarks' engagement in the strong interaction due to their color charge." In fact, it is better to omit the soft stuff and rely on the links to do the work. Evenness of tone; and a consistent level of difficulty.
    • I have eliminated the color confinement mention; it wasn't necessary there at any rate. I don't understand what you mean when you say that the reader is "pampered" by some kind of perceived "softness" in sentence construction. Different concepts ad elements of the text require a varying level and complexity of articulation, and there is a difference between this and unevenness of tone. Anyhow, I have fixed and attended to both of the instances you have pointed out; if you could point out further instances of the issue, please do so. —Anonymous Dissident^Talk 12:01, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

• • Also manifest in the lead, and throughout the article, is uncertainty with the serial comma. And a spaced en dash is used, though all other sentence-punctuating dashes are unspaced em dashes (see WP:DASH). WP:MOS stresses early on the need for consistency of style. Also on punctuation, note 8 needs a space between . and ". Generally the notes seem pretty clean, though – apart from the redlinked names of publishers. Is it policy to include those? I'd prefer to see them unlinked.
    • "Uncertainty" rectified. If you could point to where the offending space is located, I'd be happy to remove it. Note 8 fixed. —Anonymous Dissident^Talk 11:47, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

No, not offending space: offending spaced en dashes. Actually, I prefer them, myself. (Read WP:DASH.) But we have to be consistent, so the sentence-punctuating dashes in this article should all be unspaced em dashes. Substitute them, in "...three flavors of quarks – up, down, and strange – to which..."Fixed.–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 12:22, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Fixed. —Anonymous Dissident^Talk 23:38, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Alas, no. AD, I invited you to read WP:DASH. Forgive me, but it appears that you have not done so. You have now put in unspaced en dashes, where I and WP:DASH and all publishers allow only spaced en dashes (which you had at the outset) in this role, or em dashes (which are in fact required for consistency in this article: unspaced, in fact). WP:DASH (part of WP:MOS) and I repeat our recommendation: now replace your text quarks–up, down and strange–to which with quarks—up, down and strange–to which. Only trying to help. :)Fixed. –_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 04:40, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Eh. Fixed now. —Anonymous Dissident^Talk 13:33, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

• • Classification section: "In this context, flavor is an arbitrarily chosen term referring to different kinds of particles, and has nothing to do with the everyday experience of flavor." Really? And this soon before the dizzying abstruseness of "meaning that their spin quantum number (a property related to their intrinsic angular momentum) is half-integer". Surely such explanations are aimed at different readerships! And more of the same in the rest. Other things: Is the "u with bar" well executed? Surely there is a more suitable character than this, in which the bar looks like a mere artefact on the screen. In "antiquarks have the same mass, lifetime and spin of their respective quarks" there should be a serial comma for consistency (or none elsewhere), and as should replace of. Such matters contribute to an overall looseness in the prose.

• • • I disagree about the readership notion; spin is explained quite simply, with links to relevant articles. I don't see a problem with this, really, and it was you after all who suggested that we let the links do the work in your first point. The u bar notation is based in a template that houses the scientific notations for all particles, and its use is standard and required in all articles on particle physics. Fixed the of --> as and the missing serial comma. We now have no serials in the article. I think. —Anonymous Dissident^Talk 12:20, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Two serial commas that I can see: "...strange (s), top (t), and bottom (b)", and "...three flavors of quarks – up, down, and strange – to which...". I don't know why you have just now settled on a no-serial-commas policy. I'm a strong advocate of them, myself. But if you have that policy, apply it to the two cases I have just shown.Fixed.–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 12:22, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Removed. —Anonymous Dissident^Talk 14:16, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

• • History section: Are readers supposed to think that several and numerous carry different weight, in "several leptons and numerous hadrons"? If so, how might they tease this out? Again, elegant variation theatens to distract readers. Consider this: "The Gell-Mann–Zweig model predicted three quarks, which they named up, down and strange. At the time, the pair of physicists ascribed various properties and values to the three new proposed particles, such as electric charge and spin." (What, for the naive reader, is the difference between a property and a value, here?) Why not simply this instead: "Gell-Mann and Zweig postulated just three flavors of quarks – up, down, and strange – to which they at first ascribed such properties as spin and electric charge." Why do I propose this? Study it! Two points: Dropping "model" (which turns up soon enough) lets the remainder of the sentence use "they". Similarly, we don't need it repeated that there are "three new proposed particles". Three? Yes, we got that. New? Well, newly discovered – we got that too. Proposed? Of course. Particles? Sure, what else could they be? Later whilst turns up: the ugly "formalising" variant of natural English while, used throughout the rest of the article. Not pleasant. Now this: "Following a decade without empirical evidence supporting the flavor's existence, it was created and observed..." Created? What, the flavor? How so?

• • • Fixed; I've replaced the old sentence with the one you proposed. I also fixed the problem with leptons and hadrons in the least awkward manner I could think of. I don't understand what you're asking in your final sentence. —Anonymous Dissident^Talk 12:12, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

In that sentence I was wondering what the text means: "...it was created and observed". I understood observed: a quantum, and therefore the flavor of a quantum, can be observed; a quantum can be "created" in a sense (but it's better to say produced). But quantum does not occur in that sentence! A flavor per se (as a category of quantaquarks that have been theorised about, but not yet observed) is not created – except perhaps for revisionist mystics like Paul Davies, who would have God creating the whole box and dice. I suggest you have this instead: "Following a decade without empirical evidence supporting their existence, charm quantaquarks were finally produced and observed...". See? I genuinely couldn't see what you meant, till I thought again at length. Fixed.–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 12:22, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Replaced with a sentence nearly identical in structure to yours ('quanta' was replaced by 'quarks'). —Anonymous Dissident^Talk 14:08, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Good, AD. What was I dreaming about, with "quanta"? Fixed in above discussion, now. It was way past my bedtime, here in Australia. More soon.–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 22:26, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

• • • As for "several leptons and numerous hadrons", there are six leptons, and dozens (maybe hundreds) of baryons. And not all of them were known in 1964. So "several leptons and numerous hadrons" was much better than "a multitude of leptons and hadrons". I don't want to go around researching when exactly the muon was reclassified from a meson to a lepton, or when the tau lepton, the muon neutrino, and the tau neutrino were discovered in order to replace that with the exact number, and anyway that number would be highly irrelevant in that context. -- Army1987 – Deeds, not words. 13:24, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

• • Etymology: More he, less Gell-Mann, I think. "George Zweig, an independent proposer of the theory,...". Yes, we know that by now. Too much repetition and wordiness.
    • Both fixed. —Anonymous Dissident^Talk 12:15, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

OK AD. That's better. I'll have another look later, and I'll say some more.–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 12:22, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Great; I thank you. Cheers, —Anonymous Dissident^Talk 14:16, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

I am ready to offer more comments once these points have been addressed; and I look forward to being able to support promotion of the article, eventually. No, no more to say.

–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 10:58, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

• I've read the lead and the first section after that. I agree with Anonymous Dissident that the article strikes an appropriate balance between scientific rigor and accessibility to readers. I may support if I finish reading it later. Crystal whacker (talk) 16:48, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

• • I finished reading the article and support its promotion to featured status.
  • One point to consider: In the last section it is written: "The area of physics that studies strong interactions is called the quantum chromodynamics or QCD.[51]" However, QCD is mentioned earlier in the article. Is there a way to introduce QCD earlier or resolve this redundancy, or should it be introduced in two separate parts of the article as it is now? Crystal whacker (talk) 01:21, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

• • • I moved this definition forward. There is no redundancy now. Ruslik (talk) 10:00, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

I reread every argument made and these needs to be address before I give my support:

• A mention of the CKM matrix and quark mixing needs to be there. Preferably a section devoted to it. Took care of it.
• Why in the world is that table full of colors?

• The colors do mean something symbolically. Every element of the table with one colour is related to every other element of the same colour. —Anonymous Dissident^Talk 00:38, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

• Table has been re-tablified.Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 00:53, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

• The current in 'current quark mass needs to be clarified in some way (wikilink?).

• I think the italics around the phrase make it clear that it's a technical term and there wouldn't be much room for confusion with "quark mass as of now." If you can think of a link, I'd be happy to add it, but I honestly don't think we;'ll have any confusion. —Anonymous Dissident^Talk 00:55, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

• Alright, good enough.Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 00:53, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

• The term hadronize (and variations) could be de-jargonified into "form hadrons" or something similar.

• Will do. —Anonymous Dissident^Talk 00:55, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

• At first usage, I have explained what the term means and said that the process will be "hereon referred to as hadronization." I think that should be enough. —Anonymous Dissident^Talk 12:17, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

• Should the image about the decay include "rarer" arrows from t to d and b to u? (The labs will take care of this eventually)

• Probably, I just have no way of doing it as I don't have an application to edit images. Hmm. I'll see if I can contact the uploader. —Anonymous Dissident^Talk 12:17, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

I've contacted the graphics labs.Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 00:53, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

• I agree with Amry1987 above. There's a place for Cabibbo et al. in the history section (might be a good place to add Wilzcek et al. too).

Section is now present.Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 00:53, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

• Flavour quantum numbers deserves a section of its own, similar to spin and electric charge. Should the Gell-Man-Nishijima formula be mentionned somewhere? List of baryons has something on it that could prove usefull.

• Done by Markus (I think; may have been someone else). —Anonymous Dissident^Talk 12:31, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

• I feel the hadron section could use a short meson section and a short baryon section, with main article links.

Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 01:57, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

• I'm not sure. I think we've given good coverage to them and mentioning more of the basics (that's all we'd need because this is an article on quarks) throughout the article, so a dedicated section might not be needed. We already discuss how they're formed in color charge and confinement/gluons. It'd just be redundant. —Anonymous Dissident^Talk 12:31, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

• Alright, good enough.Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 00:53, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Some more issues I know I said I was going to support, but I've recently notice potential issues about factual accuracy and completeness of coverage.

• Charm quark says they (charm quarks) were theorized by Glashow, Illious, and Maini in 1970. This article (quark) says they were theorized by Glashow and Bjorken in 1964. One of the two articles has to be wrong. Which is it?

• Multiple sources of mine indicate that this article is correct. I'll fix charm quark now. —Anonymous Dissident^Talk 06:42, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

• The down quark and up quark pages said they were discovered in 1967, not 1968 as quark says (I changed the down quark based on the quark article, so it now says 1968). However the articles used as refs to back the claim of 1968 are from 1969. So which way is it?

• This article is definitely right, my sources are reliable. I'll now fix up and down quark articles. —Anonymous Dissident^Talk 09:40, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

• Yuval Ne'eman proposed a SU(3) scheme to classify hadrons in 1961/62, similar to/the same as Gell-Man's SU(2) in 1962. Both event take place before 1964, which is the "birth" of the quark model/eightfold way/aces. What is Ne'eman's role in the quark thing? How is the 1961/62 version of things from Ne'eman and Gell-Man different from the Eightfold way?

• From my understanding, Ne'eman has little to with quarks. He independtly proposed the Eightfold way from Gell-Mann in the same year. The Eightfold way eventually led to the postulation of quarks. I don't really understand what your question is; you seem to be implying that there is something historically wrong with the eightfold way being proposed before quarks, but the eightfold way concerns octets of mesons and baryons, so I don't see where the problem is. In regard to your last question: from what I know, the two proposed a notion that was almost identical. —Anonymous Dissident^Talk 09:53, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

• I think I've confused the color SU(3) with the approximate flavour SU(3). Seems consistent with the content of the "color" section.Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 02:31, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 13:12, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

• Dabs; please check the disambiguation links identified in the toolbox. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 05:14, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Done, except for triplet and degree of freedom for which I'm not very sure about the best link target. -- Army1987 – Deeds, not words. 17:13, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Fixed the remaining disambiguation links. Wronkiew (talk) 18:42, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

---

Oppose for now, in light of the comments I made above. Markus Poessel (talk) 14:28, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Support: No other reviewers seem prepared to !vote on this. Writing as an "outsider" (I am a microbiologist and perhaps therefore an average reader); I find this article fascinating, engaging and very well-written. It has taught me very much. It seems to me that the discussions above pertain to criterion 4, mainly wrt summary style, and this is so difficult to get right. This is a damn good article. Period. I would be pleased to see this on the Main Page. There is room for improvement in all articles, including those that are featured. No doubt, such improvements will be made to this one—but I see no reasons, based on the Featured Article Criteria, to withhold the bronze star. Graham Colm ^Talk 22:52, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

• Support I supported this article two months ago, and I should admit that it has become much better since then. I copy-edited it slightly. There is, of course, a room for improvement, but think the article is very close to FA level. Ruslik (talk) 10:41, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

• Oppose.Neutral. [Changed because some specific concerns have been addressed. Only neutral, I'm afraid, because I do not think the article quite meets the high standard of writing demanded in a featured article, and therefore does not succeed in delivering its content as efficiently as it might. I will not, however, oppose its promotion on that ground. I'll have no more to say here.–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 20:24, 19 December 2008 (UTC)]

Support All my concerns have been addressed, so "support".Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 02:31, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

Oppose until the referencing issues are addressed, and until the Gell-Man and Ne'eman thing in 1961 is clarified.Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 11:28, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

This is the third time in this review that I've come across a reference that doesn't contain the information it's meant to provide, which I think is very, very worrying. I'm going to make spot-checks on some of the other references, but for now I'm going back to Oppose - this indicates serious problems with the way references have been added to this lemma. Markus Poessel (talk) 14:41, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

---

Image review: I'm commenting on the licensing of the images only. I am unable to comment on the accuracy of the self-made images.

• I have a question about File:Charmed-dia-w.png. I am confused because it is marked as PD US Gov, and I read the permissions exchange linked in the Source. It acknowledges the image is PD, but asks for no proprietary use for the image. I am unclear why someone would ask such a thing of a public domain image. I have asked for further clarification on that image in particular.
• All other images appear to be fine. --Moni3 (talk) 15:18, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

• "These partons were later identified as up and down quarks when the other flavors were beginning to surface.[23]" where the reference is L.M. Lederman, D. Teresi (2006). The God Particle. Mariner Books. p. 208. ISBN 0618711686. The book is online at Google Books, and there is nothing on p. 208 to support this particular sentence, as far as I can see. Markus Poessel (talk) 12:01, 25 December 2008 (UTC)
  • That is weird. I'm going to remove this reference; I'm not sure who added it - it may well have been me - but, you're right, it isn't pertinent. —Anonymous Dissident^Talk 15:40, 25 December 2008 (UTC)
• "Various theories have been offered to explain this very large mass. The Standard Model posits that elementary particles derive their masses from the Higgs mechanism, related to the unobserved Higgs boson. Physicists hope that, in the next years, the detection of the Higgs boson in particle accelerators—such as the Large Hadron Collider—and the study of the top quark's interaction with the Higgs field might help answer the question.[28]" where 28 is this press release. As far as I can see, the press release says nothing about the LHC, and about explaining the interaction of Higgs and top quark. It's all about the upper limit on the Higgs mass from measurements of the top quark mass.
  • You haven't read it, then. Please see "Physics: The mass of the top quark (pp638-642; N&V)", the second section. It does mention the LHC, and how the Higgs boson may be related to the top quark mass. —Anonymous Dissident^Talk 15:40, 25 December 2008 (UTC)
    • I've most certainly read that section. Where does it say anything about answering the question of why the top quark mass is so large? As I wrote above: It's all about the upper limit on the higgs mass from measurements of the top quark mass, as far as I can see. Here is a nice little summary on how top quark mass and higgs mass are related. Markus Poessel (talk) 20:50, 25 December 2008 (UTC)
      • "For example, the mass of the top quark is related to the mass of the long-hypothesized but still undetected Higgs boson. Properties of the (equally hypothetical) field associated with this particle would help explain why matter is, not to put too fine a point on it, 'massive.' In principle, the top quark is point-like and should have no mass; yet, through its interactions with the Higgs field, the physical mass of the top quark appears to be about that of a gold nucleus." - that is a valid and appropriate reference to "Various theories have been offered to explain this very large mass. The Standard Model posits that elementary particles derive their masses from the Higgs mechanism, related to the unobserved Higgs boson. Physicists hope that, in the next years, the detection of the Higgs boson in particle accelerators—such as the Large Hadron Collider—and the study of the top quark's interaction with the Higgs field might help answer the question.[28]" —Anonymous Dissident^Talk 00:30, 26 December 2008 (UTC)
        • No. What you quote simply describes the Higgs mechanism, which is how all quarks get their mass. It does not tell us anything about why the top quark mass is so much heavier than expected – it does not "answer the question" of why the mass has the value it does have, as the statement claims. Also, what is the "study of the top quark's interaction with the Higgs field" the statement is talking about? Is it anything other than measuring the top quark's mass more precisely than before? If yes, then the article basically says that measuring the top quark's mass more precisely might help answer the question of why the top quark's mass is so large. How is that supposed to work? Markus Poessel (talk) 14:59, 26 December 2008 (UTC)
          • Who said the ref has to provide an answer? All that needs to be referenced is that elementary particles are affected by the Higgs mechanism, and, as you yourself stated, it does. This was the statement, and the source backs up and parallels the statement. That's what a reference is. —Anonymous Dissident^Talk 15:19, 26 December 2008 (UTC)
            • The reference is meant to provide support for the assertion that "Physicists hope that, in the next years, the detection of the Higgs boson in particle accelerators—such as the Large Hadron Collider—and the study of the top quark's interaction with the Higgs field might help answer the question." - the question being, as stated earlier, why the top quark is so heavy. The reference given does not say anything about physicists hoping to answer, by detecting the Higgs boson and studying the top quark's interaction with the Higgs field, the question of why the top quark is so heavy. That's not what a reference is supposed to be. Markus Poessel (talk) 17:20, 26 December 2008 (UTC)
              • The reference says ".In principle, the top quark is point-like and should have no mass; yet, through its interactions with the Higgs field, the physical mass of the top quark appears to be about that of a gold nucleus." then followed by "Further improvements in precision are to be expected from the Tevatron at Fermilab, and from the Large Hadron Collider at CERN (the European nuclear research laboratory at Geneva) when it becomes operational after 2007." I don't know what more you could ask for as a ref for the statement that the interaction of the top quark with the higgs fields is the proposed reason why the top quark is so heavy, and that physicist are looking forward to the LHC experiments to probe the interaction of the top and the higgs so they can understand it.Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 05:38, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

More on references.

• The current ref. 1 is "Fundamental Particles". Oxford Physics. http://www.physics.ox.ac.uk/documents/pUS/dIS/fundam.htm. Retrieved on 2008-06-29. "Oxford Physics" is a bit grand - if you look at the author information, it was written by an undergraduate and a sixth-form student. Yes, it was written for the public webpages of the Oxford Physics Department, and they probably looked some or all of it over, but it's still an inappropriate source. If this statement needs a reference at all, it should be one of the text-books used elsewhere in the article.
  • Removed. —Anonymous Dissident^Talk 07:17, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

• Current ref. 4 is to HyperPhysics - why, when there is the online Review of Particle Properties, which has the same information, much more authoritative?

It's a simple ref right at the beginning that goes straight to the point. Quarks are fundamental fermions that compose baryons (groups of 3), such as protons and neutrons, and mesons (groups of q-antiq), and talks about confinment. And it covers their names.Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 09:23, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

• Current ref. 8 apparently gives the same information as ref 4. (six flavors). Better to have both point to the same reference, and the natural choice is the Review of Particle Properties.

Used the hyperphysics refs.Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 09:23, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

• Current ref. 3 is meant to support the statements 1) top and bottom sometimes known as truth and beauty, and 2) Color confinement; all we know from quarks is from studying hadrons. The page reference is to page 169, which does mention in passing truth/topness and beauty/bottomness, but nothing about color confinement or the necessary of inferring quark properties from hadrons.

Fixed. Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 09:45, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

• Current ref 5. is an article from an institutional newsletter/journal ("Beamline"). The article itself is about the top quark discovery. Seeing how much literature is out there on the history of physics, this is not a very suitable reference for the quark model being proposed by Gell-Mann and Zweig in 1964.

It's suitable enough to establish that Gell-Man and Zweig proposed it. Nevertheless I've placed the original articles from Gell-Man and Zweig next to it.Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 09:49, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

• A page or section number would be helpful for the current ref 10, J. Barrow (1997) [1994]. "The Singularity and Other Problems". The Origin of the Universe (Reprint ed.). Basic Books. ISBN 978-0465053148 - it's not very helpful if readers have to search the whole book to find the information they're after.

  —This is part of a comment by Markus Poessel (of 17:20, 26 December 2008 (UTC)), which was interrupted by the following:

  "The Singularity and Other Problems" is a (relatively short) chapter, the book being The Origin of the Universe. I only have the Italian translation of the book. The TOC of the book is available online for preview on (IIRC) Amazon and it is where I took the English title of the chapter (which, incidentally, had been translated verbatim in Italian), but that chapter wasn't on preview, so I couldn't add page numbers. (If someone has either the original language edition of that book or another source which says the same thing, please add page numbers and/or the other source.) -- Army1987 – Deeds, not words. 17:58, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

• Current ref. 12, P. Rowlands (2008). Zero to Infinity. World Scientific. p. 406. ISBN 9812709142: Reference for statement that antiparticles have the same mass, life-time, spin. That particular page is part of the limited preview on Google Books, and has no statements about antiparticles whatsoever, as far as I can see.

Switched it to Introductionary Nuclear Physics by Samuel Wong. There's a paragraph directly on that.Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 06:19, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

• Current ref. 17: A. Pickering (1984). Constructing Quarks. University of Chicago Press. p. 84. ISBN 0226667995. Reference is to p. 84, but should probably better be to section 4.4, where the question is discussed of the reality is discussed in more detail

• Current ref. 18: B.J. Bjorken, S.L. Glashow (1964). "Elementary Particles and SU(4)". Physics Letters 11 (3): 255. doi:10.1016/0031-9163(64)90433-0 is the reference for a fourth flavour of quark being proposed. I might have overlooked it, but I don't find the word "quark" in the article. My impression is that Bjorken and Glashow at that time did not think the constituent quarks were all that relevant. It's all about the symmetry groups, not about partons.

The publication predicted what became known as the charm quark, even thought it might not have been proposed as a quark. Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 09:45, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

• Current ref 23, here, is just a text-only timeline, no indication of any publication, apparently part of lecture notes by an astronomer. Surely, there must be a reliable alternative source. Also, I see no indication that the text on that page supports the statement for which it is listed as a reference: "These partons were later identified as up and down quarks when the other flavors were beginning to surface. Their discovery also validated the existence of the strange quark, because it was necessary to the model Gell-Mann and Zweig had proposed." It doesn't use the word parton, it just lists the Stanford experiment without pointing to later identification of the particles observed, and it certainly doesn't say anything about the strange quark being indirectly validated.

The 1968 section matches with "There partons were later identified as as up and down quarks" and the "without mentioning the name quark" means they were using the name "parton". If you really want to be picky about it, I suppose it is a bit of a strech, but the five refs of this paragraphs do cover all the paragraph, even if they aren't rigoursly aligned statement by statement.Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 09:49, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

• Current ref. 26, M. Kobayashi, T. Maskawa (1973). "CP-Violation in the Renormalizable Theory of Weak Interaction". Progress of Theoretical Physics 49 (2): 652–657. doi:10.1143/PTP.49.652. http://ptp.ipap.jp/link?PTP/49/652/pdf, doesn't appear to say anything about naming the two additional quarks top and bottom.

Moved ref to relevant part, and placed a tag for the names.

• "The building blocks of the atomic nucleus—the proton and the neutron—are baryons" - I agree it's a small step from "proton and neutron are made of three quarks", which is what the reference says, to "... are baryons", but still: if there's a reference for such a straightforward sentence at all, why not one that actually talks about baryons (this reference doesn't mention the word)?

I've added the Hyperphysics ref so the word baryon is explicit.Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 10:00, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

• Current reference 33, E.V. Shuryak (2004). The QCD Vacuum, Hadrons and Superdense Matter. World Scientific. pp. 59. ISBN 9812385746, does mention pentaquarks, but not tetraquarks, as far as I can see.

I've added the 2008 PDG review on tetraquarks.Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 06:19, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

• Current reference 34 (Povh et al.) should have a page or a section number. Otherwise it's not very helpful.

• Ref. 37 (Demtröder): The limited review available on Google books has p. 39-40 all about the mass of the electron, not about atomic nuclei, protons and neutrons.

• Current ref 38: F. Close (2006). The New Cosmic Onion. CRC Press. p. 82. ISBN 1584887982. Cited in support of the spin of quarks, and the fact they are fermions. Page cited is about quark spins combining to form hadron spins. Quark spin itself is one page earlier; I don't see anything about fermions.

"Half-integer spin" and "fermions" are synonyms. I've changed the page to 81 though.Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 06:19, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

• Current ref. 40, "Quarks". Antonine Education. http://www.antonine-education.co.uk/Physics_AS/Module_1/Topic_5/quarks.htm. Retrieved on 2008-07-10 - how is this a reliable source? What is worse, it's given as a reference to how quark spins combine to give hadron spins. I found no such information on the page. In fact, I didn't find a single mention of "spin".

Wow that is a horrible ref. I've removed it.Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 10:00, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

• Current ref 52, M. Veltman (2003). Facts and Mysteries in Elementary Particle Physics. World Scientific. p. 46. ISBN 981238149X. - again going by the preview available on Google Books: On the page cited, nothing I can see about the different contribution to hadron mass, which accounts for two of three uses of this reference. The third use is close, although on Google, the color changes are on p. 47.

I've fixed the Velman refs, the pages now fit the statements.Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 06:47, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

• Current ref. 62 , Papenfuss/Luest/Schleich, is a collection of contributions by many authors. Quoting it in support of a very specific statement without giving a page or section number is rather pointless.

• "Therefore, although the color of each quark is always changing, a bound hadron will constantly retain a set of colors that will preserve the force of attraction, therefore forever disallowing quarks to exist in isolation" - current ref. 67, S. Webb (2004). Out of this World. Springer. p. 91. ISBN 0387029303. As far as I can see, nothing about confinement or about the statement about bound hadrons retaining a set of colors on that particular page.

• Ref. 69, J.T.V. Tran (1996). '96 Electroweak Interactions and Unified Theories. Atlantica Séguier Frontières. p. 60. ISBN 2863322052. is not cited properly. This is a contribution by Michael Doser, titled "Status of Glueballs", in the proceedings. Tran isn't the author of the contribution, he/she's the editor of the proceedings.

Fixed.Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 06:47, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

• Ref. 72: National Research Council (U.S.). Elementary-Particle Physics Panel (1986). Elementary-particle Physics. National Academies Press. p. 62. ISBN 0309035767. Reference doesn't say anything about colloquial usage. Also, "the sea" is not a quote from there (although "a neutral sea of gluons" and "a sea of low-energy virtual quark-antiquark pairs" does occur on that page).

"A neutral sea of gluons" and the like is good enough I say.Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 06:47, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

• Ref. 73 (Perkins) doesn't say anything about CERN experiments. Any reference for the quark stars etc. in the second part of the paragraph?

Some other statements I came across while checking on references:

• "Gell-Mann and Zweig postulated just three flavors of quarks—up, down and strange—to which they at first ascribed such properties as spin and electric charge." - why only "at first"? Surely quarks still have these properties?

I think it's because later physicists added more properties such as weak isospin, etc... Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 10:00, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

• Section "Weak interaction": The second paragraph doesn't make clear the connection to the first paragraph. We're talking about W bosons in both cases, after all.

Markus Poessel (talk) 17:20, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

• Query: I've never understood why this article can't begin with a clear definition of a quark, such as here or here. Two subsequent sentences in the lead start with "because", and this article still lacks a clear and cohesive lead. Quarks are not rocket science: an older person who studied physics before quarks were observed should be able to read the lead and understand what changed when they were discovered and why it mattered. The lead isn't doing it; perhaps the authors don't remember how exciting the discoveries in the mid-90s were, or understand the context that should be established in the lead for older readers. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 04:47, 29 December 2008 (UTC)
  • Headbomb and I have tried to address this. I think that the third sentence is way too soon to mention such technical terms as "color confinement", considering that most people reading the lead word-by-word are likely to have never heard of quarks before. (People who already know what a quark is are likely to just skim the lead through and go to the TOC.) Now, such people would know almost exactly what the heck we're talking about by the end of the third sentence, provided they know what "subatomic particle", "matter", "proton", "neutron", and "atomic nucleus" mean. I think that the second sentence ("In technical terms, quarks ...") could be moved below, too, but I'm not sure about where to place it. -- Army1987 – Deeds, not words. 12:39, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

• Comment, leaning Support Sandy beat me to it, dammit. I've been meaning to return to this article for three or four days. My main reservations two days ago (left unposted) were first that I didn't walk away from the lede knowing what a quark really was in relation to other subatomic particles and second that I wanted to see closure on all the objections by Markus to the refs. Ling.Nut ^{(talk—WP:3IAR)} 20:25, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

• Comment. The fractional electric charge is one of the most peculiar features of quarks, do you people think it might be mentioned in the lead somehow? -- Army1987 – Deeds, not words. 11:03, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

I've mentionned it.Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 13:04, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

• Comment from nominator - I have been meaning to set to work on some of the concerns mentioned, but I have been extremely busy, and unable to even edit let alone attend to the FAC. I hope to be back in a few days; until then, I hope you all understand and can bear with me. —Anonymous Dissident^Talk 12:36, 30 December 2008 (UTC)
• Comment—The mathematical notation and wording in the "Cabibbo angle and CKM matrix" section seems much too technical for the large majority of readers. I'm not clear what value this provides to an overview article. This by itself is sufficient to prevent me from supporting the article, without re-reading the remainder. Please see Wikipedia:Make technical articles accessible.—RJH (talk) 23:28, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

There is practically unanimous consensus that the CKM matrix should be mentioned, but I didn't do that in the first place, because I tried to find a way to state what it is without using terms which only readers fluent in linear algebra and its application to QM can understand, such as "eigenstate", and without lying, but I failed. Is there a channeler around here who can ask Dick how he would explain that? -- Army1987 – Deeds, not words. 22:04, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

I don't think even Feynman could explain the CKM matrix in less than three or four paragraphs. I mean you can simply say something like "The CKM matrix is a way to keep track of how often the quarks decays into other quarks" (and it is said), but then you'd still haven't covered a thing about the CKM matrix and its importance. I would find it rather frustrating that this article fails its FAC because it is complete in coverage. There is no FAC criteria saying that articles should be dumbed down to the point that it becomes pablum. Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 22:52, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

Well sorry we have to disagree on this, but my answer is no. Wikipedia:Make technical articles accessible is a MoS criteria. I also think the notation fails WP:Explain jargon. Removing (or explaining) mathematics that only makes sense to a university upperclassman in physics is hardly dumbing it down. Your argument is hyperbole, and my objection remains unresolved. If you are going to include mathematics of that nature in the article, then you must make an effort to render it comprehensible to the majority of readers. "If you can't explain something to a first year student, then you haven't really understood it." ;-) —RJH (talk) 18:04, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

"I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics." (Yes, that guy managed to explain how the principle of stationary action is a consequence of interference between wave functions in a way that even my mother would likely understand, so maybe he did understand it to some extent.) Well, we might start drawing a pair of Cartesian axes, labeled |d> and |s>, and another pair rotated by 13°, labeled |d'> and |s'>, showing that |d'> equals 0.974 times |d> plus 0.226 times |s>... Maybe I'm getting somewhere. But I don't know how far WP:NOR allows me to go with an intuitive explanation like that. -- Army1987 – Deeds, not words. 18:46, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

In google books I seem to be able to find a number of works that explain the Cabibbo angle in a clearer manner. For example, just by writing the equation this way: $|\mathrm {d} ^{\prime }\rangle =|\mathrm {d} \rangle \cos \theta _{\mathrm {C} }+|\mathrm {s} \rangle \sin \theta _{\mathrm {C} }$, the math already seemed clearer, at least to me.—RJH (talk) 00:06, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

I really don't see how that clarifies anything. $|\mathrm {d} ^{\prime }\rangle =|\mathrm {d} \rangle \cos \theta _{\mathrm {C} }+|\mathrm {s} \rangle \sin \theta _{\mathrm {C} }$ or $|\mathrm {d} ^{\prime }\rangle =\cos \theta _{\mathrm {C} }|\mathrm {d} \rangle +\sin \theta _{\mathrm {C} }|\mathrm {s} \rangle$ is exactly the same thing, with the later having the advanage of being the conventional way of writing things. As for google books, got links?.Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 00:56, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

Oppose—I was ready to support, but started to find too great a density of issues in the prose to do so. It requires another copy-edit by someone fresh to the text.

• "Quarks (and antiquarks) are the only known particles whose electric charge is a fractional multiple of the elementary charge, although this can never be directly observed, as hadrons all have integer charge." The "as" causality has lost me, and it's still the lead. Can you be a little kinder to non-experts just here? Why does hadron integer charge preclude the observation of the elementary charge of a quark? (In addition, consider removing "all"; does "this" refer to "elementary charge" or "fractional multiple of the elementary charge"?
  • Because quarks are only found in hadrons, as the previous sentence says. -- Army1987 – Deeds, not words. 12:05, 31 December 2008 (UTC) (Headbomb moved the sentence higher, now it's clearer. -- Army1987 – Deeds, not words. 14:24, 31 December 2008 (UTC))
• Remove "the" from the last sentence in the lead.
• This is clunky: "plus the unobserved (as of 2008) Higgs boson"; why not "plus the Higgs boson (unobserved as of 2008)"?
  • Fixed by Headbomb. -- Army1987 – Deeds, not words. 14:24, 31 December 2008 (UTC)
• The flavour names are italicised in the first section, but roman in the lead. And are you going to use the symbols introduced in the lead?
  • You italicize words when you introduce them for the first time (that's what the <dfn> tag does in HTML), no point to always italicize them. -- Army1987 – Deeds, not words. 12:05, 31 December 2008 (UTC)
  • As for using the symbols, there is little point in using them in prose, but in places such as uud and in the indices of matrix entries they're useful. -- Army1987 – Deeds, not words. 14:24, 31 December 2008 (UTC)
• "All quarks of the same flavor are identical particles, meaning that all of their properties are the same." "Identical particles" links to a definition that does not specifically mention properties. Here, properties are elevated to the definitional. Why not "All quarks of the same flavor are identical particles with the same properties." Perhaps I'm not getting something here.
  • Going to clarify that. -- Army1987 – Deeds, not words. 14:24, 31 December 2008 (UTC)
• "they are subject to the Pauli exclusion principle, stating that no two fermions of the same flavor can ever simultaneously occupy the same state."—"..., which states that ...". What about three fermions? Why not remove "two"? Do you need "ever" as an amplifier?
• Fragmented sentence structure: "This contrasts with particles that mediate forces: such particles are bosons, meaning that they have integer spin; the Pauli exclusion principle does not apply to them." Again, the ", meaning that ..." formula is used, possibly misleading us.
  • Given that "integer spin" is sometimes used as a definition of "boson", it's not misleading. But sometimes "symmetrical wave function" is used as a definition, so it isn't misleading even if the reader interprets "meaning" as "implying". Given that the two definitions are equivalent, there's no point in discussing which one is the right one. -- Army1987 – Deeds, not words. 14:24, 31 December 2008 (UTC)
• " This interaction is the reason why quarks attract each other to form hadrons". Do we need both "reason" and "why"?
  • http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22reason+why%22 gives over 33 million hits. It's a quite common idiom in English. -- Army1987 – Deeds, not words. 12:05, 31 December 2008 (UTC) (Fixed by Headbomb. -- Army1987 – Deeds, not words. 14:24, 31 December 2008 (UTC))
    • Ah, yes. Because the majority of the population writes poorly, so should we. As a writing teacher, I am saddened by that argument. Awadewit (talk) 14:08, 31 December 2008 (UTC)
      • I can see nothing poorer in "the reason why" than in "the person who", or "the place where". -- Army1987 – Deeds, not words. 14:31, 31 December 2008 (UTC)
        • They introduce redundancies and can be eliminated in favor of stronger, crisper writing. "This interaction is the reason why quarks attract each other to form hadrons" or "This interaction is the reason why quarks attract each other to form hadrons". ("France is the place where he went." "The person who won the election was Obama" -> "Obama won the election", etc.). BuddingJournalist 15:49, 31 December 2008 (UTC)
• "In the same way that the electric force is responsible for atoms attracting each other to form molecules, the strong interaction is responsible for protons and neutrons attracting each other to form atomic nuclei." The old noun + ing urchin, twice. "for the atomic attraction that brings atoms together to form molecules"? etc.
  • Do you really want to invent names such as "atomic attraction" even if almost no-one uses that name? (2,380 ghits for "atomic attraction", and many of the ones in the first page mean different things.) -- Army1987 – Deeds, not words. 14:24, 31 December 2008 (UTC)
• "Elementary fermions are grouped into three generations, each one comprising two leptons and two quarks." Spot the redundant word. Tony (talk) 06:56, 31 December 2008 (UTC)
  • I don't like using "bare" adjectives as pronouns very much, but if our goal is to use as few words as possible, I'm removing that one. -- Army1987 – Deeds, not words. 14:24, 31 December 2008 (UTC) (It was already removed. -- Army1987 – Deeds, not words. 14:27, 31 December 2008 (UTC))

All that jazz about words and stuff is nice, but could we get to the real problems of this articles. Aka, the two tags, clarifying the contradiction between Gell-Man and Ne'eman in 1964 vs. Gell-Man and Zweig in 1964, writing in non-klingon, and addressing the ref issues? Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 16:01, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

I too am very keen on seeing Markus' concerns about the refs fully addressed. You know, Wikipedia is an imperfect process, and even at the FA level we field articles that probably could still be improved in some manner or other. And that's OK. But in general, in academic writing, the refs are sacrosanct, at least IMO. If they don't match the content, or if the content is not fully reflected in the refs, then the article cannot be FA. Ling.Nut ^{(talk—WP:3IAR)} 21:28, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

• Notice of withdrawal - I'm sorry to do this, but it's the right thing to do. I will be extremely busy until February because of personal commitments related to my schooling situation. I will literally be unable to edit any day until January 29. I therefore think it only right that I withdraw from this nomination, but it is certainly my intent to fix the problems and concerns brought up here as soon as I am able. I hope everyone understands. —Anonymous Dissident^Talk 01:42, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

• Comment HB said: "I don't think even Feynman could explain the CKM matrix in less than three or four paragraphs. I mean you can simply say something like 'The CKM matrix is a way to keep track of how often the quarks decays into other quarks' (and it is said), but then you'd still haven't covered a thing about the CKM matrix and its importance."
• Hey. People. I greatly fear my voice will be pooh-poohed here. In fact. I would bet on it. But it shouldn't. To paraphrase Feynman (if I followed the logic of the threads correctly): "I think I can safely say that this article doesn't need CKM in it." If it takes three or four paragraphs, then it needs its own article. End of story. Please see Wikipedia:Summary style, esp. the part that says: "The idea is to summarize and distribute information across related articles in a way that can serve readers who want varying amounts of detail." IF CKM isn't an example of a section where readers would want varying amounts of detail, then I don't know what is... So I repeat: This article does not need it or want it and should not have it. End of story. You can put in a few sentences about the importance of CKM and give its definition an oversimplified miss. It is safe and fair to give it a miss, since it needs its own article. Crap, you can even redlink CKM (I haven't looked to see if the article exists yet) and I would Support. Some person might Oppose based on 1b (Comprehensive), but that would be.. what's the word for "following rules in a single-minded manner, to the detriment of any meaningful measure of reality"? So. try to find a few sentences about the importance of CKM. Put in a definition like the one above about "a way to keep track of how often the quarks decays into other quarks" and state explicitly that this is an oversimplification. Fix the references of this article (absolutely required) then PASS it FA then work on the CKM article. I hope I can make you see the light with respect to the fact that any topic which requires so much explication does not belong in this article. It belongs in its own article. Ling.Nut ^{(talk—WP:3IAR)} 01:23, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

Have you noticed what is between the section header and the sentence "In 1963, Nicola Cabibbo ..."? -- Army1987 – Deeds, not words. 01:52, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

Or for what matters what comes after? It was very jargon-y before, but things have been reworded to be more accessible to everyone. If you have a way to improve the section, go ahead I'm all ears, but it's completely unacceptable not to have a section on the CKM matrix, its signicance, its accounting of CP violation, and its prediction of the third generation of quarks. Not having it would be like not speaking of speciation on in the evolution article. By comparison, this section is IMO far more accessible to the layfolk than the Enzymatic function section in the Exosome complex article, riddle with unexplained jargon such as "These are all 3'-5' exoribonuclease domains, meaning the enzymes degrade RNA molecules from their 3' end." yet that one got featured too. Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 05:28, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

If I were the author of this article, I would not include CKM subsection too. It introduces too much technical information, which is not interesting for a casual reader, who only wants to know what quark is. Ruslik (talk) 08:41, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

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

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

The article was not promoted by User:SandyGeorgia 20:14, 3 January 2009 [8].

---

Chernobyl disaster

Nominator(s): Rj1020 (talk)

I'm nominating this article for featured article because... I think this article has a very healthy amount of information, and is organized. I think this is an important historical event that many are uneducated about. Promoting this article to featured status will help get the education of this event out to people born from years 1984 to 2008. Rj1020 (talk) 04:08, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

• Comments The article uses the two most oft cited books on the disaster so I am fine with references. The pictures and prose are terrific and I like how the article is organized. I felt the lead was excellently done. I can not support at this time but hope to do so if a few small but important items are addressed:
• Large sections of article text are uncited and they seem to be easy enough to cite to the two books used as references.
• Some areas go into too much technical detail. This article is going to be read by people who are not interested in the minute and boring technicalities of the disaster and I felt the article could be trimmed with some of the explanations for the disaster summarized a little more. However, this is my personal opinion, not an FA criteria so there may be other reviewers who like your style and I would be fine with this article passing FA if others feel differently about this issue.
• The sections "Comparisons with other disasters", "In the public consciousness", "Representation in games" and "Commemoration" are unnecessary and do not add anything of value to the article. I suggest that they be completely deleted. The "Commemoration" section might be OK to keep if you had a picture to put with the section otherwise I would reduce it to a sentence and include it in the last section of the article.

NancyHeise ^talk 06:19, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

• Suggestion : Some of the text have lists which can be converted into a paragraph of continuous prose.
• Oppose (1c) until all tags are resolved. - Mailer Diablo 09:10, 31 December 2008 (UTC)
• Query "The DSSS is a yellow steel object which has been placed next to the wrecked reactor; it is 63 metres (207 ft) tall and has a series of cantilevers which extend through the western buttress wall, and intended to stabilise the sarcophagus." This needs either is if the DSSS "is intended to stabilise the sarcophagus." or are if the cantilevers "are intended to stabilise the sarcophagus." ϢereSpielChequers 13:05, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

Oppose -

• You've mixed using the Template:Citation with the templates that start with Cite such as Template:Cite journal or Template:Cite news. They shouldn't be mixed per WP:CITE#Citation templates.
• Citation needed tags throughout.
• Unreferenced sections throughout.
• Bare urls in the references, as well as websites without publishers.

Basically, the references are a mess and with the large sections that are unreferenced, I must oppose on sourcing issues. Ealdgyth - Talk 15:06, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

Oppose

• Format references per WP:CITE/ES to include publisher and access dates
• "Further reading" goes after "References" per WP:LAYOUT
• For "Commemoration of the disaster", is the subsection "Chernobyl 20" necessary when it's the only one in that section?

Gary King (talk) 16:11, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

• Oppose per the and other cleanup tags. –Juliancolton ^{Tropical Cyclone} 17:07, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

• Comment Looks like a drive-by nom. BuddingJournalist 22:53, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

• Oppose: This is a very interesting article which has clearly been well-researched so it is unfortunate that so many important, and possibly controversial sections lack citations. The article is not ready to be considered for promotion, but I enjoyed reading it. I would be pleased to see a fully prepared version back at FAC in the future. Graham Colm ^Talk 16:12, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

• Comment I would suggest that the editors of this article read this dispatch on non-free images, as many of the images in this article are non-free. Each fair use rationale must include a very specific purpose of use (most of the images I looked at only had a vague statement that was entirely inadequate). Moreover, the idea is to use a limited number of fair use images in each article - it is important to remember than any printed or distributed version of Wikipedia will not include any fair use images. The use of fair use images in this article needs to be carefully assessed image by image by the editors and free equivalents need to be sought out. Awadewit (talk) 15:31, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

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

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

The article was not promoted by User:SandyGeorgia 20:14, 3 January 2009 [9].

---

Barney Gumble

Nominator(s): Tj terrorible1 (talk)

I'm nominating this article for featured article.Tj terrorible1 (talk) 23:17, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

• Strong Opppose
  • The lead is too short and doesn't properly summarize the article
  • The Role in The Simpsons section is overdetailing of minor things, and it only mentions a single post-season 11 episode. It's more of a glorified detailing of what he's done rather than actually being about his role in the show.
  • On that note, it isn't very well-written. There are too many short sentences and not many transitions.
  • The sections don't have proper introductions, for example, the "voice" section starts out "It is not easy for Dan Castellaneta ... " without any kind of introduction. On that note, there should be some more about Castellaneta.
  • The reception section is too small, I'm sure there has to be more out there about him.
  • In the "Merchandise" section, there are only statements backed up by NoHomers.net, which is a fan site. Is FilmCritic.com a RS either?
  • No personality section.
  • The article should follow mentioned titles with (season #, year) as in the FAs Homer Simpson and Bart Simpson
  • Image:Barneyfirst.png doesn't have a fair use rationale.
• The nominator has ownership issues refuses to discuss things with other users and has reverted many attempts to clean up the page. For example, I got Risker, an excellent and experienced copyeditor to give the page a once-over and he has largely reverted back to "his" version. -- Scorpion⁰⁴²² 23:28, 29 December 2008 (UTC)
• Oppose - Image:Barneyfirst.png is entirely replaceable by the line of text: "the original character had yellow hair," so NFCC #1 doesn't apply there. (ESkog)^(Talk) 23:46, 29 December 2008 (UTC)
• Comment I submitted this article for peer review about a week ago (a peer review which is now closed), and had the following impartial reviewer comment:

...upon review of the criteria at WP:FA? IMHO your article is 98% of the way there. In my book 98% is an A. So congratulations you have an article that needs a bit of work but is class A none the less. --Hfarmer (talk) 08:09, 22 December 2008 (UTC) He does not seem to have a problem with the prose. And another reviewer stated that the article had "greatly" improved. Please also note that Scorpion is a biased reviewer, so take none of what he says into consideration.Tj terrorible1 (talk) 23:51, 29 December 2008 (UTC)Tj terrorible1 (talk) 23:57, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

"so take none of what he says into consideration" And that's why this is going to fail. You're dismissing my comments outright without consideration. It's not like I said "opposing due to a lack of pictures of monkeys" or something ridiculous. All of my comments are either policy based, or based on other FAs that I have worked on. -- Scorpion⁰⁴²² 23:58, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

• Comment The Role section describes Barney's major appearances. He's had none since "Days of Wine and D'oh'ses", which is why there is no post-season 11 mentions. I don't believe that the Reception section is too small seeing how Barney is a peripheral character. (It's about as big as McClure's.) The same "supposed" NoHomers.net website you are referring to is one that is used in "A Streetcar Named Marge", which is a featured article. And does every character really need a personality section? IMO, there is no further content to be added.Tj terrorible1 (talk) 00:25, 30 December 2008 (UTC)
  • Responses Actually, Troy's is twice the size (and to be fair, TM isn't really up to current standards, even the nominator admits this). And, it's not really a "role" section, it's basically just an appearances section. Who cares if NoHomers is being used in another FA (and I have removed it)? That's not the article being discussed here. Yes, every FA should have personality section (yes, many character pages don't, but that's because they were promoted a while back... And they aren't FAs). Many character FAs have a personality or characteristics section: Padmé Amidala, Jabba the Hutt (although they call it "characterization"), Jason Voorhees, Martin Keamy, Nikki and Paulo, Palpatine, Khan Noonien Singh (although they call it "analysis"). -- Scorpion⁰⁴²² 00:42, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

• Response Troy McClure does not have a Personality section and yet it's a featured article. Maybe I should get that article to be un-nominated.Tj terrorible1 (talk) 00:49, 30
  • True, but two more recent (and dare I say better) Simpsons FAs, Bart Simpson and Homer Simpson, DO have personality sections. As for your threat of getting Troy delisted, you could go for it, but may I point you towards WP:POINT. -- Scorpion⁰⁴²² 00:55, 30 December 2008 (UTC)
    • For the record: I don't see any chance of TM getting a personality section, all of his personality info is included in the role section. If you want to request its FARC, then please go for it, but that article is not relevant to this discussion. Gran² 10:13, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

• Oppose per Scorpion0422. ^Tezkag₇₂ 03:45, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

• Oppose - My biggest problem with the article is the lack of reception. I'm sure you can find some analysis in Google Books, try this link. You need too fix the stuff Scorpion0422 pointed out as well. —TheLeftorium 08:37, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

Comments -

• Current ref 19 (McCann...) is lacking a page number
• What makes http://www.figures.nohomers.net/ a reliable source?

Otherwise, sources look okay, couldn't check links, the toolserver's down. Ealdgyth - Talk 15:01, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

Went back and checked links with the link checker tool, and they all work. Ealdgyth - Talk 15:33, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

• Response 1) When I see the criteria for an FA, IMO, this article meets all of them (although, I will admit that the lead can be expanded): It is well-written, comprehensive, factually accurate (sources are verifiable and reliable), neutral, stable, structured appropriately, and with consistent citations. 2) Is the NoHomers website any less (or any more) accurate than the other one used, "Simpsons Collectors", which, by the way, doesn't even work any more. 3) I have tried finding Analysis on Barney (at GoogleBooks, by the way) and the most I could come up with is a single mention in a book about Irish stereotypes and a mere reference to the character in a book about TV town drunks.Tj terrorible1 (talk) 15:18, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

I'm not seeing "Simpsons Collectors" used in the article as a reference. To determine the reliablity of the site, we need to know what sort of fact checking they do. You can establish this by showing news articles that say the site is reliable/noteworthy/etc. or you can show a page on the site that gives their rules for submissions/etc. or you can show they are backed by a media company/university/institute, or you can show that the website gives its sources and methods, or there are some other ways that would work too. It's their reputation for reliabilty that needs to be demonstrated. Please see Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2008-06-26/Dispatches for further detailed information. May I also suggest that the nominator not get defensive about comments made, but rather respond to them and attempt to work with the commentators to improve the article. Ealdgyth - Talk 15:21, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

• The website that I use in this article, "Simpsons Action Figure Information Station", is one, as I pointed out earlier, that was used in "A Streetcar Named Marge", which is an FA, until Scorpion tried to cover up his tracks by deleting it. The website was used as a source in the article the day it became featured. See for yourself.Tj terrorible1 (talk) 15:26, 30 December 2008 (UTC)
  • "Cover up his tracks", no I was agreeing with you.

Use in other FAs doesn't necessarily mean it's a reliable source. That FA was promoted in September 2007, sourcing wasn't necessarily checked back then. Ealdgyth - Talk 15:41, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

• In response to the claim that it's well-written, I disagree. There are a lot of short setences in there, which disrupts the flow of the article. Also, a lot of the sections don't have proper introductions, they just jump into the middle of it. -- Scorpion⁰⁴²² 17:21, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

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