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Load time

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By analyzing the similarly sized articles from User:Dr pda/Featured article statistics (which is old data), we can see why this article is so sluggish to load:

Clinton is very slow to load, no problem with the other three similarly sized articles. Intelligent design also has a high number of refs, but most of them don't use cite templates, so it loads right up (templates don't have to be resolved). B movie and Sound film mostly use book sources, so even though they are heavily cited articles, their sizes aren't chunked up by cite templates and they load quickly.

Even on a fast connection, I have a hard time loading this article. It's not the prose size; it's the way it's cited. Are there any definitive books or publications that could be used to cut the number of cite templates to individual news sources ? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:08, 28 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I mentioned the virtues of doing this in a comment on the FAC page already (also means less deadlink etc maintenance going forward — book cites never go bad) but didn't have a chance to yet. The two 2007 bio's that the article already leans on a lot, can be used for this too. I'll see what I can do, but it's a lot of work — the book treatments don't always line up exactly the way the current online sources do. Wasted Time R (talk) 21:04, 28 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Doing that (book sources) would make the article more accessible and a stronger, more durable article. Maybe Quirky will do this work? I rarely click on this article, because I don't want to sit and wait for it to load, and it's hard to imagine what people on dialup do -- surely they give up? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:28, 28 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
If anyone's going to do it, it should be me ... I know the article, I know the books, and my wife's a librarian ;-) For me, the article doesn't load much worse than a bunch of others, it may depend on what browser you're using and various other factors. But I agree that amount of references HTML it generates is way too much. Wasted Time R (talk) 21:33, 28 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I'm IE7; what browser do you use? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:35, 28 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Firefox 2.0.0. Wasted Time R (talk) 21:37, 28 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I've heard more than once that I should switch; maybe I'm a good gauge of those 'children in Africa' we want to reach with Wikipedia :-) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:41, 28 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Sandy, you and I disagree on many things, but we certainly agree this article takes a lot of time to load because of the templates. I propose that the problem lies with the Wikipedia software and the way these citation templates are implemented (in short, they have to take the data from each citd source and make calculations as to where/what to insert). This is inherently unstable unless a new system is implemented. In short, this is a problem with Wikipedia and its current structure, not the page itself. While I agree that steps can be taken to speed load time, I'm not sure about getting rid of reliable, readily web-accessible sources. Is there a middle ground here? — BQZip01 — talk 23:09, 28 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
That's why I raised this on talk; there's not an actionable oppose in this issue, but it would still be nice for our readers if we could find a way to get the article to load faster. Sadly, if there were a script or bot that would strip out all of the cite templates and convert them to manual citations, that would do the trick ... but there's no such beast. (If you keep preceding all your statements to me with the mantra that we disagree on many things, I might start believing it, evidence to the contrary :-)) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:15, 28 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Point taken (even if we disagree) :-) — BQZip01 — talk 23:16, 28 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Do you know of anyone with the technical expertise to create such a "beast". I'm a computer science major with not a lot of time on my hands. I'd be happy to help make the conversions through a bot or script, but I need a little help to get started. Any ideas? — BQZip01 — talk 23:19, 28 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The people who could do this, if enticed, are Rick Block, Dr pda and Gimmetrow. They need motivation, and this is the first article I know of to clearly demonstrate the need. (I wrote Tourette syndrome with manual citations, and it loads far faster than the comparable Autism and Asperger syndrome, that use cite templates.) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:37, 28 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
(ec) I'm a software engineer, I started doing a WP javascript script for this once, then realized it was going to take a lot of work to handle all the different cite variants (news, web, book, journal, paper, video, ...) and all the different cases (there's a lot of different parameters on these things, that get into different rendering possibilities). If you just tried to handle the most frequent cases you'd probably get most of the way there (80/20 rule). But in the end it was too much like real work and I didn't keep on it ... And I still believe a "cite" template is the right way to do references (it allows for uniform, changeable presentation across WP), it's just that both the public interface and the implementation of this current cite template seem to be really bad. Wasted Time R (talk) 23:40, 28 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
This isn't the first time the loading issue came up. It comes up periodically on the Barack Obama page and has been mentioned in the last few FARs for the article. I also seem to remember it coming up on the John McCain article. Wasted, just a thought, perhaps just focus on the cite web and cite news templates? Those are by far the most common cite templates and would remove all but a very small number of templates. --Bobblehead (rants) 16:24, 29 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

In the "every little bit helps" department, why give Wiki three parameters to resolve (first, last, and authorlink), when they can be combined to one (author)? [1] SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:37, 28 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I agree, but User:Pethr did it the other way when he/she went through and fixed all the first-last author usages. Wasted Time R (talk) 23:41, 28 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Why did Pethr do that? <sigh> ... wouldn't the page load faster if Wiki software has less to resolve? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:44, 28 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
There's two separate factors: how long it takes the WikiMedia software to parse the source and generate the HTML to send to your browser, and how much HTML is sent (and thus, how long it takes to load in your browser). Changing the above to your scheme would likely improve the first factor, but not make any difference in the second. Wasted Time R (talk) 23:50, 28 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Conclusion? You think it's not worth the effort, or we should get someone to do it? Why did Pethr use that method? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:55, 28 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, I missed this last question last night ... but I see you and Tina went ahead and did it ... I sure hope it makes a difference! I swear, some of these cites have been through a dozen revisions already over the life of the article ... Wasted Time R (talk) 13:09, 29 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: It would be pretty simple for the same script/bot to take a citation template and convert it to straight text, but leave some sort of marker indicating how it was converted i.e. <!--CiteBot--> and even then could leave the original citation in comments in case there are any problems. Thoughts? — BQZip01 — talk 13:41, 29 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think we want to make this a bot conversion as the change would really have to be something that is discussed on the article's talk page before the citation style was converted in order to avoid problems. The cite templates are a Good ThingTM when used sparingly, it only runs across problems when it is used hundreds of times on a single article. --Bobblehead (rants) 16:24, 29 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Absolutely (but that is already covered somewhere at WP:CITE ... that you shouldn't change citation style without consensus). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:26, 29 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Here's a useful took to analyze load time; it says better than half of the load time is coming from images. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:40, 2 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Nominator has conflict of interest

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Nominator QuirkyAndSuch has very public conflict of interest weighted in favor of the article's subject, and nomination should be weighed as such on this merit. Statements from the FAC nominator that he simply thinks this is a good and well-written article omits his inherent interest and support of this politician, and does not consider the public Internet exposure this candidate will receive from being a Featured Article on Wikipedia during one of the most important times in this candidate's fight for political nomination in the U.S.

Nominator's Wikipedia contributions include multiple deletion nominations of Barack Obama-related articles. Obama is Clinton's political rival in the Democratic primary. Furthermore, this user's MySpace at http://www.myspace.com/elmerbront shows he favors Clinton greatly. The MySpace has the same real-life name, real-life location and same photo and age shown at this user's Wikipedia page.

I believe this nom omits important reasoning factors from the nominator on why the nom was made. -- Guroadrunner (talk) 17:17, 11 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Not to put too fine a point on this, but so what? I am an Aston Villa fan, does that mean I should not have helped to bring this article up to FA? No, of course not, the fact that they support Ms Clinton is not surprising. If you can find an issue with non-neutral language, then list it. Comment on the content of the article, not on the political affiliations of its nominator. Woody (talk) 17:21, 11 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The nominator's language of "oh look I found this nice article" (paraphrase) in the nomination betrays the nominator's underlying public preference for the candidate herself. -- Guroadrunner (talk) 17:42, 11 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
That paraphrasing is utilising poetic licence in spades don't you think. Support I feel that this article has improved so much since last year that it should be featured. It already has "good article" status, but I think it's a great article. He followed instructions, he asked at the talkpage, there were no objections to listing. If you think the editor has a conflict of interest then point out where this conflict of interest has influenced the text of the article. Woody (talk) 19:04, 11 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
He also said in response to another user: Just because I voted for Dennis Kucinich doesn't mean that I'm going to nominate his article instead of the Hillary one ... I nominated this one because I felt that it was a really good article and should be featured despite my personal preference. In fact, his preference for Clinton's candidacy betrays the above statement. I believe this lack of disclosure is also reflected in the nom.Fair point that the paraphrase I used was very liberal, though. It put words into this person's mouth that are unfair. -- Guroadrunner (talk) 00:56, 12 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

<moved from Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Hillary Rodham Clinton> SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:36, 11 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

  • I was a Dennis Kucinich supporter until he dropped out of the race, but I never nominated him or anything like that because I didn't think he had a good enough article. And you may check my vote in Washington (full name Tyler Scott Young, I'm sure they have public records somewhere) but I didn't vote for Hillary because I was going for Dennis. So you have no point. Yeah I'm a big supporter of her now, because I believe in her policies, but you have no point. Why didn't I nominate Dennis when he was running? And those Obama related articles were being asked to be deleted by someone else, I just supported it. Why didn't I try to get McCains family articles deleted? Because the Obama related ones are fluff. I'm not biased, you're just trying to cover your own bias. And putting my page up is an invasion of privacy anyway, you could have mentioned it to an admin but not put it up here. QuirkyAndSuch (talk) 19:10, 11 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Also - lets be realistic. She's going to lose the nomination. It doesn't matter if you put her on the front page now until the general election, it's not mathmatically possible for her to win at this point. So it's not a conflict of interest anyway, unless Obama dies and she has to face McCain I don't see how it could possibly help her. QuirkyAndSuch (talk) 19:17, 11 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I think we should tone down the accusations here - you do have that Myspace information on your User page here, Quirky, so it's hardly an invasion of privacy - whether it is relevant is another matter. And whatever the nominator's motivation might have been, I think it is clear that there are editors who are working diligently to address the concerns of reviewers and improving the article in the process. What matters is whether it meets the FA requirements and can be expected to continue to do so - as I've said, I think so. Tvoz/talk 19:53, 11 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I don't care if he mentions the content that has to do with this nomination, I'm totally open. But I don't want my myspace linked on here. I want the link deleted and any prior pages that show it blocked from viewing for privacy concerns. I don't want random people sending me messages. QuirkyAndSuch (talk) 20:05, 11 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
That's understandable, but all I am saying is you have had it on your user page, or did when I last looked a couple of minutes ago. Tvoz/talk 21:01, 11 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • But QuirkyAndSuch, it does matter that you are a fervent HRC supporter, and it does matter that this candidate is still in the race and that a Wikipedia feature could affect the elections, especially if it falls on a day of a state primary. That's why my oppose vote largely orients to "FA should not be given until November". No other major candidate still eligible has had an FA during the elections cycle. She won't lose the nomination if, say, she picks up the remaining states and the uncommitted superdelegates look at this as a favorable momentum, meaning she is the strongest candidate to go against McCain. It would be like around the time of the Pennsylvania primaries (after the Obama pastor scandal) when it was said that Clinton was on a roll and Obama was on the back foot. As it stands, nobody has won or lost until the superdelegates make a decision.
  • As far as invasion of privacy claims, a MySpace is the same as any blog or other URL if made for public access. All I did was Google "tyler young" "clinton" and up pops your page at listing #5. I was expecting to find something from the YDWA or Clinton's local campaign office, but instead I found that public webpage. When making arguments or statements, one should find as much backing material as possible. If I am arguing that the nom is a time-sensitive political push for Clinton, I need proof. I found it on the Internet.
  • -- Guroadrunner (talk) 00:56, 12 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • I don't see Quirky's motivations as relevant. Quirky has not been a contributor to the article itself that I know of. In any case, the article's words have to stand for themselves, regardless of the motivations of any of the hundreds of editors that have worked on it over the years. And the question of whether an article like this should be made FA during a campaign exists no matter who nominated the article or with what motivation. If the nom were from a political agnostic, would you feel any different about its FAC? Wasted Time R (talk) 03:30, 12 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • WTR, yes. If this came from someone who openly disclosed their favor for Clinton, OR if the FA was made by a heavy contributor to the article (which infers a disclosure of interest or passion for the political subject being nominated), the situation would be different in my view.
You are correct that "[T]he question of whether an article like this should be made FA during a campaign exists no matter who nominated the article or with what motivation." I am of the opinion that it needs to wait until after the full election.
-- Guroadrunner (talk) 06:48, 12 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
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