Talk:Pope John Paul II/to do/Archive 1

Change the photo. It's a scandal that every Pope has official portrait on wikipedia, except John Paul II. It shows how biased wikipedia is.
The article is virtually unreferenced except for the Pope's declining health and final days; although they are not, many sections appear highly unsystematic, perhaps because of their sheer length
image tags and rationales, only a few fair use ones
Changes he made at the Vatican and criticisms of him.
too few inline citations for such an important article.
the prose isn't exactly brilliant, there are very few paragraphs over 2-3 sentences, much of the article reads like bullet points without the bullets
the focus on death, too little focus on S. America, etc. These are major changes and will take some time to fix, depending on how busy I am (feel free to help!). Thus, I plan to take this article to peer review after I'm done fixing all the objections and then re-submitting it as a FAC.

Update: All minor objections (such as fixing confusing uses of John Paul to John Paul II and the "Health" section) have been taken care of. Thanks to everybody for their comments and suggestions. I will be taking a look at the rest of the comments/suggestions over the next few days, and will get to them soon! Thanks! Flcelloguy 02:52, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Could do a better job of using references to back up its statements, and may focus too much on his recent death and the possibility of beatification.
tightening up the intro a bit.
Conditional Support (now Full Support, see Above. JDG). Bring the Health section back into this article and blow away the sub-article. Wikipedia is becoming a click fest. The current activism in favor of short core-topic articles with many sub-articles is very misguided. When you sit down to read a major topic article you don't want to be chasing down scores of sublinks and subsublinks-- you want all the relevant info in that article. This is what Enc. Brit and almost all serious ref. works do, and it's for a reason. You put all or most of the detailed stuff in far-flung sub-articles that far fewer readers visit and you've succeeded in what: reverse-dissemination of information.
Most Wikipedians support sub-articles, and the idea that we shouldn't shove a huge amount of text down the reader's throat at once, though. So I don't think that's a fair thing to ask.
I'm only asking for the restoration of a single section. I'm not sure where you get "most Wikipedians". Has there been a vote? I'm not sure if Flcelloguy is actually pushing for this article such that he's making changes in line with comments here. If he is and he wants my particular support, he'll restore Health. I won't oppose if he fails to, though.
Health needs to be expanded into a subsection. Sub-article should remain, though.
Abiding by Summary style is an FA requirement and bringing all the content at Health of Pope John Paul II would imbalance the article toward the later part of his life even more than the article already is. --
This is really a requirement for FA? The first sentence of the link you give says "In order to make Wikipedia maximally useful to a diverse readership some people believe that articles should be written in summary style." That certainly doesn't sound like something that has risen to policy status. I really think it's time for a major vote on article length. I think a 32kb limit would be extremely detrimental and I'm sure many agree.
See item 6 at Wikipedia:What is a featured article. Summary style does not require articles to abide by the 32KB limit, it just says that once an article reaches that length of prose it may be getting too long. As is, this article has less than 34KB of prose and since it covers a very important topic it should be easy to justify even more prose than there is already. So long as it is written well and stays tightly on-topic. --mav 20:44, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I have now written a few paragraphs for the "Health" section, though it still links to the "Main" article on his health.
its organization, and the lengthy treatment of the relevant sections, make it seem as though the most important aspects of his papacy were his death and its aftermath. I also think the discussion of his ecclesiastical career in Poland needs a bit more development (and context), that his positions on social and economic justice need more exposition, and that the discussion of his political influence needs a bit more development and structure.

When you say you think the emphasis is on his death and aftermath, are you proposing that we cut down on the death/funeral sections? Most of those are already two or three short paragraphs and have another "sub" article of their own. Second, could you please tell me which sections of the articles you feel need improvement? That would be a great help. Thanks very much! Flcelloguy Cello today? Give me a note! d.c. al fine?

I wouldn't agree with moving the whole health article back into the main piece, but a small summary would be better than a heading and a link. Other than that, a worthy FA page.
Lead section is too short for an article this size on such an important topic. Condensing the ==Overview== section (which is the purpose of a lead section, btw) and merging the current lead section will accomplish that.
I've now expanded lead section, and I'll take a look at the "Overview" section soon. Thanks! Flcelloguy 02:39, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)
TOC is overwhelming.
Red links
Cut Trivia section
Having a heading with the only content under it being a link is appalling. Add a paragraph or two about his declining health to the death subsection and rename that to reflect the change.Then make the link to Health of Pope John Paul II inline instead of it being a main article link.
Confusing use of 'John Paul' instead of 'John Paul II' in some parts of the article.
Organization: Having ==Biography== and ==Life's work== are odd as the major level 2 sections. One's life work *is* a very large part of their biography. Nixing these level 2s and finding a better way to organize would help. As is, the article does not seem to have a cohesive structure (moving this material out of its current level 2 section would likely fix this).
I hope you are not advocating abandoning of lv 2 sections? I added them to this article some time ago - although they have been much changed by later editors. I generally find 2nd level sectioning very helpful. Perhaps sth should be moved from one lv1 section to another, but leveling the sections would do more harm then good, I am afraid.
Over-concentration on declining health, death and funeral in the ==Biography== section. As is, those aspects take up half of that section (this could be fixed by reorganization under a different level 2 heading or by condensing).
Object Very little focus on Latin America, though this region is home to the world's largest Catholic population. (Maybe I went through this article way too fast, but is Liberation Theology even mentioned?) Also, the section on "criticism" should be woven in with the rest of his text. History actually contains far more many shades of grade than the picture presented by those who seem to imagine there to be only two perspectives on the past ("supporters" and "critics"). 172 06:14, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Object. The organization needs work. The contentless health subsection needs to be expanded or turned into a simple see also. The image gallery also looks as though it is missing two pictures. Good articles really shouldn't have an other section and the factoids listed there should be merged into the prose.
Hmm... I've tried fixing the gallery, but it's not working.
Object, I agree with the criticisms about the balance given to different portions of his life, too little in some aresa too much in others. Also, what is up with the 31 external links to obituaries?
I, too, personally felt a bit overwhelmed at the large number of external links when I first read the article. However, should we delete some of those? I'm a bit hesistant because now that we have so many links, how do we choose which ones to keep and which ones to delete? Thanks, Flcelloguy Cello today? Give me a note! d.c. al fine? Desk 02:31, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)
the lead is a bit long.
too many short paras - merge.
too many subsections, TOC is a monster.
The lead of this article may be too long, or may contain too many paragraphs. Please follow guidelines at WP:LEAD; be aware that the lead should adequately summarize the article.
The lead is for summarizing the rest of the article, and should not introduce new topics not discussed in the rest of the article, as per WP:LEAD. Please ensure that the lead adequately summarizes the article.
Per WP:CONTEXT and WP:MOSDATE, months and days of the week generally should not be linked. Years, decades, and centuries can be linked if they provide context for the article.
Per WP:MOS, avoid using words/phrases that indicate time periods relative to the current day. For example, last year might be terms that should be replaced with specific dates/times.
Per WP:WIAFA, Images should have concise captions.
Per WP:MOSNUM, there should be a non-breaking space - between a number and the unit of measurement. For example, instead of 18mm, use 18 mm, which when you are editing the page, should look like: 18 mm.
Per WP:MOSNUM, when doing conversions, please use standard abbreviations: for example, miles -> mi, kilometers squared -> km2, and pounds -> lb.
Per WP:MOSNUM, please spell out source units of measurements in text; for example, "the Moon is 380,000 kilometres (240,000 mi) from Earth.
Per WP:CONTEXT and WP:BTW, years with full dates should be linked; for example, link 15 January 2006, but do not link January 2006.
As per WP:MOSDATE, dates shouldn't use th; for example, instead of using January 30th was a great day, use 30 January was a great day.
Per WP:MOS#Headings, headings generally do not start with the word "The". For example, ==The Biography== would be changed to ==Biography==.
Per WP:MOS#Headings, headings generally should not repeat the title of the article. For example, if the article was Ferdinand Magellan, instead of using the heading ==Magellan's journey==, use ==Journey==.
Please alphabetize the interlanguage links.
Per WP:WIAFA, this article's table of contents (ToC) maybe too long- consider shrinking it down by merging short sections or using a proper system of daughter pages as per WP:SS.
This article may need to undergo summary style, where a series of appropriate subpages are used. For example, if the article is United States, than an appropriate subpage would be History of the United States, such that a summary of the subpage exists on the mother article, while the subpage goes into more detail.
There are a few occurrences of weasel words in this article- please observe WP:AWT. Certain phrases should specify exactly who supports, considers, believes, etc., such a view. For example,

         o it has been
         o allege
         o correctly
         o apparently
         o might be weasel words, and should be provided with proper citations (if they already do, or are not weasel terms, please strike this comment).

Watch for redundancies that make the article too wordy instead of being crisp and concise. (You may wish to try Tony1's redundancy exercises.)

While additive terms like “also”, “in addition”, “additionally”, “moreover”, and “furthermore” may sometimes be useful, overusing them when they aren't necessary can instead detract from the brilliancy of the article. This article has 45 additive terms, a bit too much. Vague terms of size often are unnecessary and redundant - “some”, “a variety/number/majority of”, “several”, “a few”, “many”, “any”, and “all”. For example, “All pigs are pink, so we thought of a number of ways to turn them green.” As is done in WP:FOOTNOTE, for footnotes, the footnote should be located right after the punctuation mark, such that there is no space inbetween. For example, change blah blah [2]. to blah blah.[2] Please ensure that the article has gone through a thorough copyediting so that the it exemplifies some of Wikipedia's best work. See also User:Tony1/How to satisfy Criterion 2a.

In multiple places, this article references a claim that he may have created more saints than all previous Popes combined, but there is no sourcing. This claim should be removed until it has a source ... not necessarily a count of saints, but a link to someone making that claim (...which is not really a very notable claim. His enthusiasm for creating saints is already amply discussed with other, sourced facts). Just a point on language: canonization does not create a saint, rather it acknowledges the sainthood of someone formally. Agreed, that is the official doctrine. I have replaced the unsourced "more than all others combined" claim in the introduction with the shorter and supportable claim of "a great many"; the body of the article has a similar claim with a source, but only with respect to the most recent 5 centuries. The relevant point is that there were a lot of canonizations; and one suspects one does not want to bother with figuring out how to tally the actions of the Avignon Popes anyway. rewinn 03:34, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Most of the in-line references are to online news articles. If anyone is serious about making this a FA, get some references to books in there. There's tons of published info about this guy. 00:40, 4 March 2007 (UTC)