Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Peter Canavan/archive1

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

The article was not promoted 17:53, 31 August 2007.

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Peter Canavan

This article has gone through a pretty thorough Good Article review. I'm not sure it's featured status yet, but feedback would be most welcome. Thanks--Macca7174_talk 23:32, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Biography of Irish sports (Gaelic football) star, who retired in 2005. Considered among one of the best in the country for most of his career, and is one of the most decorated players of the game. --Macca7174_talk 13:11, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

• Oppose—But correct 14-19 in the notes, please. Lots of little glitches, such as the following samples:
  • MOS breach in hyphens (should be en dashes) in the infoblot. Done
  • "Canavan was the tenth of eleven children,[2] including his older brother, Pascal, who played with him on the Tyrone panel for most of the 1990s." Very odd. As though the eleven children wouldn't include an elder brother.
  • Clash of person ("he" vs "I"): "stating that he knew, subconsciously "I was going to be playing".
  • Why does the referencing start with [6]?
  • Paragraph stub end of "Under-age career".
  • "He was the top-scorer in Ulster"—why the hyphen? Done
  • A certain informality that is awkward in this register, e.g., "Tyrone made it to the All-Ireland semi-final". Done
  • Further MOS breaches in the hyphen in sports scores.
  • "Despite being used as an 'impact substitute' for most of the season"—Read MOS on "words as words".
  • "albeit necessary—-move"—dash chaos.
  • "he was receiving treatment to his ankle, including having pain-killing injections"—Spot the redundant word. Done
  • MOS breach in comma before closing quote marks. Done

Needs a thorough massage. Tony 14:58, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

• firstly thanks for the feedback. I will start working on most of the things you mentioned, but there are a few I need to challenge.--Macca7174_talk 20:05, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
  • "Canavan was the tenth of eleven children,[2] including his older brother, Pascal, who played with him on the Tyrone panel for most of the 1990s." Very odd. As though the eleven children wouldn't include an elder brother.
    • I'm not sure what you mean here, unless my wording is ambiguous. The point I was trying to make was that his older brother was also on the same team as him.
  • Clash of person ("he" vs "I"): "stating that he knew, subconsciously "I was going to be playing".
    • I was unsure about how to word this as I was typing it. Would stating that he knew, subconsciously "[he] was going to be playing" be better?
  • Why does the referencing start with [6]?
    • This is because there are references in the infobox. If the infobox was not placed at the top of the raw text, it would break up the copy.
  • Paragraph stub end of "Under-age career".
    • what does this mean?
  • Further MOS breaches in the hyphen in sports scores.
    • I assume you mean a score such as 1-8. This is the way that gaelic football scores are written, and it is said as "one eight." It signifies he scored one goal, and eight points (a total of eleven points). See Gaelic football#Scoring
  • "albeit necessary—-move"—dash chaos.
    • What is this?

--Macca7174_talk 20:05, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

No, MOS specifically says to use an en dash for such sports scores. En dashes separate related, but contrasting items. Tony 12:44, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Comment: En dashes have been inserted in scores and em dashes used where appropriate. Pascal (his brother) has been cleaned up. Per Tony's comments. Good luck ww2censor 13:18, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

• Still oppose. Thanks for the fixes, and please don't strike through reviewers' comments. I'm still not happy to find things like this in the lead— a huge snake, MOS breach in illogical punctuation at end of quote, and generally poor wording:

"His high scoring rate in his earlier years, when he would often be Tyrone's highest scorer[10] (particularly in the 1995 All-Ireland final when he scored eleven of Tyrone's twelve points),[11] led to claims that Tyrone was a "one-man show,"[12] but the continued emergence of skilled players like Brian Dooher and Stephen O'Neill means that burden has been lifted off Canavan."

Break it up thus:

"His early high scoring-rate, when he would often be Tyrone's best performer[10] (particularly in the 1995 All-Ireland final when he scored eleven of Tyrone's twelve points),[11] led to claims that Tyrone was a "one-man show";[12] however, the continued emergence of skilled players such as Brian Dooher and Stephen O'Neill has lifted that burden from Canavan."

Then: "scoring record, scoring"

And "Canavan's career is dotted with examples of indiscipline,[13] as he would often get into on-pitch scuffles with other players."—"dotted" is too informal; "as" is not good, so why not make the causality explicit: ",[13] including many on-pitch ...".

The first sentence under the lead I happened on was "In order to play for an inter-county GAA team, Canavan had to work around a Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) bylaw in order to represent his county, due to a dispute in his parish of Errigal Ciarán." Repetition, and avoid "in order"—"to" is usually good enough. It's circular and hard to understand, overall.

If those scores really are a particular Gaelic thing (goals and points), explain this on first occurence; otherwise, most readers will think they're the contrasting scores of opponents.

It needs a good copy-edit by someone else. Tony 06:45, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

Sorry for the strikeouts, they have now been removed. I'm not sure if the done templates are also offensive so I left them in. Thanks for the further comments. I have addressed what you mentioned, but as for the extensive copy edit, is there a project or workgroup or anything that does this?--Macca7174_talk 13:08, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

Try Wikipedia:WikiProject League of Copyeditors/proofreading, in the FAC/FAR section. There's a backlog, mind you. J.Winklethorpe ^talk 10:16, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

I went to that page. They stated that until the copy edit is the only disputed point of the the FAC, the article should not be submitted under the FAC category they have. I don't think we're anywhere near that point yet.--Macca7174_talk 19:54, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

Comments by Ilse@

lead

• What does "native Tyrone" mean? If it refers to the county, the club should not be wikilinked. Rephrase.

Yeh, this sentence does need to be reworded, cheers. Done--Macca7174_talk 19:54, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

• Remove the three words "its reintroduction in" from the lead, it is not directly related to Peter Canavan, so has no place in this summary of the article. Done
• Make sentences with a verb of all elements of the second paragraph, an example for the first element: "He played from 19xx to 200x in the senior inter-country scene.".

I'm not sure what you mean there.--Macca7174_talk 19:54, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

• Avoid the use of words like "prestigious". Done
• Are "under-age and club championship medals" worth mentioning here? If they are not important in his career they should be removed.

I would argue that they are. They were listed in match programs under his list of achievements, although if your point is that the article does not pay enough attention to them to justify their inclusion in the lead let me know.--Macca7174_talk 19:54, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

• Put elements of lead in chronological order.

I have to challenge this sentiment. Would it not be preferable o mention his greatest feats first? His underage success (or international representation) occured before his first senior All-Ireland win. A senior All-Ireland is this pinnacle of the sport.--Macca7174_talk 19:54, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

• Avoid words like "known primarily" or "hugely prolific"; change the sentence about his scoring record into something like "His scoring record of 218 points was the second highest tally of all time in the Ulster Senior Football Championship.". Done
• What is "tally"? Wikilink or rephrase. Done
• Remove "Oisin McConville" from the lead, the article is not about him. Done
• Remove the text between brackets, if it is not important, it should not be in the lead.
• Why is "one-man show" between quotation marks? I prefer unambiguous language in this case.

it is a direct quote from the referenced sources.--Macca7174_talk 19:54, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

• Remove the speculative statement about the "burden".

should i remove the entire statement, or just the perception of NPOV?--Macca7174_talk 19:54, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

I intend to give comments on other sections later. – Ilse@ 13:19, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

thanks for the feedback. It is much appreciated.--Macca7174_talk 19:54, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

• Oppose, inconsistent and incomplete formatting of citations, no consistent biblio style. Pls see WP:CITE/ES or use cite templates if you're not sure how to format citations. All sources need a publisher, websources need a last access date, and author and publication date should be listed when available. Also, pls read WP:DASH and fix throughout. This article has been at FAC for over a month; there should not still have been a MOS breach in a noticeable section heading. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:55, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. 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.