Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Archived nominations/February 2012

February 2012

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 GrahamColm 09:05, 26 February 2012 [1].

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George Went Hensley

Nominators: Mark Arsten & Astynax

George Went Hensley is one of the more quixotic figures of Appalachian Christianity, whose windmills eventually proved to be his undoing. As the lead says, he "emphasized strict personal holiness and frequent contact with poisonous snakes". He wasn't always very good with the first part, but he kept up the snake handling until he died, of snakebite. The article has been reviewed by MathewTownsend and Allens and I think that this is a neutral and comprehensive treatment of Hensley's life, several scholarly biographies were consulted and I don't think there are any major sources missing. I've had a few people look at the prose, but there may be some small issues that slipped by. Mark Arsten (talk) 23:18, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Comments – Just a few quick ones from a brief glance at the article...

• Minor, but in the last sentence of the lead the semi-colon should be just a regular old comma.
• Ministry in Tennessee: Why is Nontrinitarianism capitalized? It doesn't seem to be in our article on the subject, at least when it's not starting a sentence.
• Before the citations are nit-picked by others, let me note that ref 24 should have a pp. instead of p., since it's a multiple-page cite. Giants2008 (Talk) 00:40, 4 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Good eye, I think I've fixed them. BTW, nervous about this weekend? I'm expecting a close one... Mark Arsten (talk) 00:46, 4 February 2012 (UTC)
    • Yes, but if the Giants don't win I'll always have Super Bowl XLII to remember fondly, as you can tell. :-) Giants2008 (Talk) 22:05, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
      • Well, it looks like you have to change your username to Giants2012 now :) Mark Arsten (talk) 04:13, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

Comment, prose, 1a: prose issue in the lead, I stopped there:

• Hensley continued to minister and established churches, ...

... change in tense, confusing, cumbersome. Finding this in the lead suggests the prose throughout will need a close look. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:42, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

• • Alright, 1a sure isn't easy. Astynax and I will try to take another swing through the article and check the prose again. Mark Arsten (talk) 19:15, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

Comments. I'm not sure that criteria 1b, 1c are met. A quick lit search turned up a few sources that haven't been used in the article. Sasata (talk) 17:01, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

Title: George Went Hensley: A biographical note

Authors: Burton T; Speer E

Source: Appalachian Journal Volume: 30 Issue: 4 Pages: 346-348 Published: SUM 2003

Title: They Shall Take up Serpents: Psychology of the Southern Snake-Handling Cult

Author: LaBarre, W

Publisher: New York: Shocken Books. 1969

Title: Differential Maintenance and Growth of Religious Organizations Based upon High-Cost Behaviors: Serpent Handling within the Church of God

Author: W. Paul Williamson, Ralph W. Hood, Jr.

Source: Review of Religious Research Vol. 46, No. 2 (Dec., 2004), pp. 150-168. JSTOR 3512230

Title: They Don't Have to Live by the Old Traditions": Saintly Men, Sinner Women, and an Appalachian Pentecostal Revival

Author: Shaunna L. Scott

Source: American Ethnologist Vol. 21, No. 2 (May, 1994), pp. 227-244. JSTOR 645887

• Thanks for taking a look, here are my thoughts on the sources: the American Ethnologist only contains a couple brief mentions, nothing new there. Almost all of the information in the Review of Religious Research research was incorporated into the later book by Williamson & Hood that I used in the article, I added a couple small details from the article though. I don't have access to the three page note by Burton/Speer at the moment, but I know where I can grab a copy and will be able to look it over in the next few days. I had noticed the Labarre book but chose not to use it in the article. Williamson & Hood discuss Labarre (who published a few decades before the main sources I used) a bit in their book and criticize the factual accuracy of some of his claims [2] and the quality of his research [3]. Based on their comments about his scholarship I doubted whether he qualified as a high quality reliable source and left him out for that reason. Mark Arsten (talk) 19:40, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

• Ok, fair enough. These two reviews (JSTOR 3510088, JSTOR 538543), however, appear to be favorable (the latter in particular commends the scholarship), though they are older, and will not take into account later findings. For balance, I checked some reviews of other books used as sources. This JSTOR 1466122 review finds some issues with Burton 1993. This review JSTOR 40583423 praises Kimbrough 1995 (you're using the 2002 edition), but also reveals there's another unused source: "Salvation on Sand Mountain: Snake Handling and Redemption in Southern Appalachia" (1996). This JSTOR 659613 detailed review has certain reservations about Hood & Williamson 2008. I myself have no opinion about the merit of these publications, I'm just presenting information. Also, a review on Kimbrough 1995 (JSTOR 2945631) mentions that there's a fictional account, Saving Grace (1995) that might be worth a mention. (p.s. let me know if you'd like any of these jstor articles emailed to you, including Burton/Speer discussed above.) Sasata (talk) 03:34, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

• Very interesting, thanks for the digging. I definitely would be interested in looking into those JSTOR book reviews, if you wouldn't mind emailing them. Salvation on Sand Mountain was actually used as a source in an older version of this article, it focuses more on snake handling in the 1980s and 1990s and just mentions Hensley a few times as background. Saving Grace probably will be worth a mention too once I see the source. On a mostly-related note Guncrazy was the first time I saw anything about snake handling, it contains a very Hensley-esque character. Mark Arsten (talk) 04:13, 6 February 2012 (UTC)
• Alright, I removed one of the claims in the article after seeing that a couple of the reviews criticized it. Otherwise, I think the article's sourcing is on pretty solid ground now. Mark Arsten (talk) 22:33, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

Comments – Wow, Mark, you weren't kidding. That was even more entertaining than Carrie Nation (you and Asyntax should work on that one next – it could really use an overhaul). I did some fussy cleanup, and I also have a few general suggestions:

• The lead is a bit too long and gets tedious with all the details of Hensley's weddings and divorces. I think it might be worthwhile to condense the references to Hensley's many failed marriages to just one or two sentences about his, erm, relationship struggles.
• Similarly, I think personal life should also be teased out of snake handling and church history and moved to a new, separate section (just looking at the section headers, it's clear the article is too top-heavy). The concluding paragraph implies an ironic juxtaposition between Hensley's public sanctimoniousness and his private failings as a husband and father, but I don't think it really comes across in the body of the article as well as it could, since it's all sort of mixed together. I'd be happy to start a little mockup in my userspace if you'd find that helpful.
• Do we really need to know the exact measurements of the lard can that housed the fatal python? :)
• Last sentence doesn't make sense – media coverage of Hensley's death by snakebite prompted churches to include snake handling in their services? There's probably a better way of phrasing it to make it sound less schadenfreude-y, though I can't think of it at the moment.

Thanks for the fun read, and good luck with the rest of the FA process! Accedie^{talk to me} 21:45, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

• • Alright, took care of the last two bullets. Some reorganizing about personal life vs career might be a good idea, I'll do some thinking about it and report back. Thanks, Mark Arsten (talk) 22:27, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Took a stab at trimming the lead down a bit. Mark Arsten (talk) 05:05, 6 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Reply: It wasn't his death which caused other congregations to adopt snake handling, but media coverage of his ministry. I've moved the last sentence you mentioned to the preceding paragraph to minimize any confusion on that point. • Astynax ^talk 09:49, 6 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Ok, I have moved some of the marriage and family details to a Personal life section. Mark Arsten (talk) 00:26, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

• Comments: Sorry I missed this earlier, but:
  • I'm doing some further copyediting; hope I'm making things better, not worse... I'm not seeing the prose issues earlier commented on, just a few minor things.
  • Was the "Pineville Church of God" actually part of the "mainline" Church of God that he had been a minister in, or the "Church of God with Signs Following"?
  • The "Final Years" subsection under "Ministry" should probably not have each paragraph introduced by talking about his marriages, but I'm not sure how else it could be put... There's also some duplication between that and the last two paragraphs of the "Personal Life" section that could use some rephrasing.
  • What's the citation for "One of their children claimed that the separation occurred after an incident in which Hensley became drunk and fought a neighbor" in the "Personal Life" section?
  • In the second paragraph of the "Personal Life" section, "Pineville with their four children" is mentioned, while he is said to have had five children by her; did he have another with her in Pineville?
  • Under "Personal Life": "In the mid-1950s, they moved to Athens, Georgia" but he died in 1955. Shouldn't this be "early-to-mid 1950s"?
  • "procuring a 5-foot (1.5 m) rattlesnake from a local zoo" under "Death" - I'm guessing this was a commercial zoo, and he bought it, or is there no data on this?
  • Under "Legacy", one (remaining?) tense problem: "Practitioners of snake handling continued to view Hensley as a great man, and his personal failings have sometimes been dismissed as slanderous fabrications" - is it "continue", or "had sometimes been dismissed"?
• I have to consider the above pretty minor, however. Allens (talk) 01:51, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Alright, thanks for the copyediting help. I think I have resolved the rest of your concerns. Mark Arsten (talk) 03:33, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
    • Quite welcome, and you indeed have. Very interesting article! Allens (talk) 03:51, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

• Comments Very interesting article. I am not quite certain that the article is prose-wise quite up to FA standards, but I'll try to point out a few things. More later, but here's what I see in the lede:

Lede:

• " and then came to believe" omit "then". Consider "; he then came to believe" I think it's more effective but it's a close call and just me.

  While I understand not that much is known, consider beginning the second paragraph with a sentence about Hensley's pre-1910 life?

  "Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee)" I am sure this is the name of the article; unless the parentheses are included in the formal name of the church, consider "[[Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee|Church of God]] of [[Cleveland, Tennessee|Cleveland]], [[Tennessee]]"

  " and inability to make a living" This is problematical because neither his alcohol abuse not his failure to bring home the bacon have been foreshadowed. Can you state these things, and then maybe "because of this (these?), his wife divorced him in 1922."

  "Soon after" Omit phrase and instead have a paragraph break here.

  I would mention the state where he was arrested in the sentence where you mention his arrest. Then you can say "state authorities" in the next sentence, assuming it is Tennessee.

  Did the snake biting or the claims take place in his last years? It's unclear. Possibly both ...

  "Nevertheless, family members recalled occasions when he seemed close to death. " Strongly suggest omitting. There is no need to put anything between the claim of being bitten without ill effect and the rather dramatic proof of the opposite.

  "His frequent travels and inability to earn a consistent income were cited as reasons for his three divorces." Cannot the two recitations of the grounds for divorce in the lede be combined into one?--Wehwalt (talk) 15:20, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

Reply: Thanks for your comments. Mark Arsten has already addressed most of your points. However, the phrase "Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee)" is the normal way to introduce this denomination in both references and in lectures/conversations. "Church of God of Cleveland Tennessee" is unnecessarily imprecise. • Astynax ^talk 18:19, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

Reply #2: Hi Wehwalt, I appreciate that you took the time to comment on this. Thanks for the lead comments, I've tried to implement the fixes you suggested--other than the style of the denomination name they all look like improvements to me. I had a bit of difficulty with the fourth bullet point though, hope my changes worked there. Mark Arsten (talk) 18:36, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

Source and images - spotchecks not done, no comment on source comprehensiveness. Nikkimaria (talk) 18:58, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

• Hill, Hood and Williamson or Hood, Hill and Williamson?
• Where is Knoxville?
• File:Snakehandling.png: according to our article on the photographer, he was not working for the US government on the date given for this image, so the licensing tag would appear to be incorrect. Nikkimaria (talk) 18:58, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

Reply: Knoxville is in Tennessee, as is implied by University of Tennessee, but for people not aware of the names of US states (quite reasonable if the person is from & in, for instance, Australia; I wouldn't recognize the names of some Australian states...), I've put in Knoxville, Tennessee in the reference. Allens (talk) 19:04, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

Reply: Actually, the article on the photographer looks to be incorrect or incomplete, according to the NARA information for this picture, which says he was working for the "Department of the Interior. Solid Fuels Administration For War. (04/19/1943 - 06/30/1947)" - click on the number in the NARA credit. (The Solid Fuels Administration would apparently be taking care of coal as a fuel for wartime.) Allens (talk) 19:12, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

Reply #3: Alright, I alphabetized that HH&W reference in the bibliography and Allens got the location (Thanks Allens), so I think that's solved. I agree with Allens on the picture's copyright, it looks like the error on Lee's bio was fixed, as well. (Thanks Matthew!) Mark Arsten (talk) 22:42, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

Comment: In advance of a fuller review (which may take a few days), can I raise two points:_

• In the lead, first paragraph: "he came to believe that the New Testament commanded all Christians to handle poisonous snakes." This sounds somewhat random; I think you should add: "on the basis of a literal interpretation of scripture, he came to believe..." etc
• In the "Ministry" section is it possible to direct the reader at this point to the wording of Mark 16:18, which appears in a window in the "Theology" section? An understanding of the content of that verse would help at this stage.
• Is there any evidence that he took literally the other parts of the verse? For instance, did he drink poisons, or practise faith-healing? The answers may be in the parts of the texts I haven't read, but at this point I would argue: if not, why not? Brianboulton (talk) 18:41, 15 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Hey, thanks for taking a look at the article. I made the first two changes that you suggested. As for the third, yes, there is evidence that he practiced Faith Healing and poison drinking, though oddly enough I had left that out of the article. I put the info into the body, but didn't change the lead at all. Mark Arsten (talk) 19:42, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

• • That looks fair enough (I see I raised three not two points). I'll come back with moe in a day or two. Brianboulton (talk) 01:43, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Closing comments - After 23 days and no support for promotion, I think this candidate would benefit from being archived and brought back later after further work has been done. Graham Colm (talk) 09:03, 26 February 2012 (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 GrahamColm 19:53, 24 February 2012 [4].

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Tammar wallaby

Nominator(s): LittleJerry (talk) 01:20, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

I am nominating this for featured article because it has expanded, been copyedited and has been source spotchecked since it received GA status. LittleJerry (talk) 01:20, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose Comment from Jim I don't think the lead satisfies MoS. It doesn't mention that there are subspecies, or give any description. I'm interested in this article, but I'd like to see the lead buffed before I comment further Jimfbleak - talk to me?

Done. LittleJerry (talk) 19:56, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Still on lead. Contrary to following comment, countries shouldn't be linked. I'm not sure what variety of English you are using, I thought Australian English used "grey". "Gene" is repeated. Linking seems arbitrary, eg "seawater" is linked, but not "genome" Jimfbleak - talk to me? 19:43, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

Cutted down on links. Better now? LittleJerry (talk) 03:17, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

• I commented on arbitrary linking, not overlinking, genome needs a link, a quick glance indicates several other technical terms that aren't linked or explained
• There are some basic errors, gray/greyer, section starting as such, with nothing to refer to. Other early naturalists, when we aren't told who identified the subspecies in this para. from two ends out of how many? No page(s) for ref 4.
• What are the small superscript numbers next to some of the refs?
• You've given imperial conversions in some places but not others, inconsistent
• You really need to go through again to check the prose/links, This looks underprepared to me, even without looking at the actual content Jimfbleak - talk to me? 09:45, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

The superscript numbers are that actual page numbers for the reference. As I stated before, some the the numbers can not be converted. LittleJerry (talk) 19:10, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Having seen Sasata's comments and the responses to him and me (How can you have a measure that can't be converted?). I believe that there is too much to do in the duration of an FAC period. I think this is an interesting article, and has the potential to eventually reach FA. I've found that people are prepared to help with access to sources (I don't have university access either, try the mammal project), and you should also get someone to copy edit the prose. Jimfbleak - talk to me? 13:06, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

• Comment I found a number of geographical names that weren't wikilinked and should have been - East Wallabi Island, South Australia and New Zealand. I've linked these but there may well be more terms needing links. Simon Burchell (talk) 13:23, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Comment - I believe this is premature. This article recently was in the GAR process where I had a chance to review it in some detail. As Jim mentioned, the lead needs work. During my GAR review, I noted that the quality of sources seems under-par for what I would expect from a mammal FA. A lot of web sites, student theses, and information pulled from only the abstracts of journal articles. I'd like to see comment on this from someone familiar with sources on mammal articles. --Laser brain (talk) 13:25, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Most of the sources are journal articles. How many websites are "too many" and what wrong with PH.D theses? they are good enough to be cited in peer-reviewed articles. Also, the article abstracts summarise the articles. LittleJerry (talk) 19:56, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Oppose, unfortunately, as this seems to be premature. Here are some specific concerns:

• As Jim points out, the lead is quite short - articles of this length usually have at least 2 paragraphs, and should summarize the article adequately
• Article needs some copy-editing - for example, in "who named it from where it was collected", "from" should be "for"
• What distinguishes the subspecies?
• WP:MOS errors: ranges should use endashes, need conversions for metric measurements, etc
• Multi-page PDFs need page numbers
• Citation formatting needs to be more consistent - for example, avoid mixing {{cite}} and {{citation}} templates. Nikkimaria (talk) 16:50, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

I wish you wouldn't jump the gun on simple things that could easily be corrected.

• 1. I'll get to it. Done
• 2. It was copyedited. You just pointed out one small mistake.
• 3. Read the article. It explains that there are skull differences.
• 4. Some of the measurements could not be converted. I converted as many as I could. Most of the ranges do have endashes, I'll check for more. All the ranges have now endashes.
• 5. That's only for books, not journals. I see what you mean now. Done.
• 6. Done.

LittleJerry (talk) 19:36, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

Okay, but in most cases those were examples only of issues. Regarding 5, that's not entirely correct - when you have a source that's 160 pages, for example (as in FN2), you do need to be more specific about where your information is coming from. Nikkimaria (talk) 20:16, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

Oppose by Sasata. This is not yet ready for FAC. Breaking it down:

• 1a Prose & MoS compliance lacks polish. Some examples (from a quick scan, not exhaustive):
• caption to John Gould picture should not have a fullstop per WP:CAPTION (same error occurs later too)
• "The tammar genome comprises 3.6 Gb, with a relatively short genetic map length of 1172 cM".[37] What is so special about this quote that it can't be paraphrased?
• why define acronyms (TSDS, FISH, TCR, Ig) that aren't used again?
• gene names (e.g. RBMX) are to be italicized
• "Tammars can't survive long" contractions are discouraged in formal writing
• "30 degrees Celsius" should give imperial convert (later too)
• "gram-positive and gram-negative" Gram is to be capitalized (should be linked too)
• choose between title case and sentence case for journal article titles

1c (well-researched):

• "The tammar wallaby was seen on West Wallabi Island in the Houtman Abrolhos off Western Australia by survivors of the 1628 Batavia shipwreck, and recorded by Francisco Pelsart in his 1629 Ongeluckige Voyagie. This represents the first recorded sighting of a macropod by Europeans,[2]" I spot-checked this reference, and found the following issues:

• page # is 53, not 58
• source does not mention "West Wallaby Island"
• article says shipwreck was in 1629, not 1628
• in the source, the guy's name is spelled "François Pelsaert"
• source does not say that this was the first recorded sighting of a macropod by Europeans

1b (comprehensive)

• why no mention of these recent articles (sampling only, as a model organism, there's a lot of literature on the subject, much of it recent; meeting criteria 1b and 1c requires the nominator to go through the body of literature, even if extensive, and ensure the article is a "thorough and representative survey of the relevant literature"):

Title: Sequencing Skippy: the genome sequence of an Australian kangaroo, Macropus eugenii

Author(s): Murchison Elizabeth P.; Adams David J.

Source: GENOME BIOLOGY Volume: 12 Issue: 8 Article Number: 123 DOI: 10.1186/gb-2011-12-8-123 Published: 2011

Title: A second-generation anchored genetic linkage map of the tammar wallaby (Macropus eugenii).

Author(s): Wang Chenwei; Webley Lee; Wei Ke-jun; et al.

Source: BMC Genetics Volume: 12 Supplement: Article No 72 Pages: 16pp. Published: 19 August 2011

Title: Reproductive and Developmental Manipulation of the Marsupial, the Tammar Wallaby Macropus eugenii

Author(s): Renfree Marilyn B.; Pask Andrew J.

Editor(s): Pelegri FJ

Source: Vertebrate Embryogenesis: Embryological, Cellular and Genetic Methods Book Series: Methods in Molecular Biology Volume: 770 Pages: 457-473 DOI: 10.1007/978-1-61779-210-6_18 Published: 2011

Title: Genetic consequences of isolation: island tammar wallaby ( Macropus eugenii) populations and the conservation of threatened species.

Author(s): Miller E. J.; Eldridge M. D. B.; Morris K. D.; et al.

Source: Conservation Genetics Volume: 12 Issue: 6 Pages: 1619-1631 DOI: 10.1007/s10592-011-0265-2 Published: 2011

• there is much more that could be said about Wallaby genetics, and I don't think 1 paragraph suffices here.
• "Biologists have used sodium fluoroacetate to control their populations.[11]" This may have been true in 1990 when the source was written, but increasing resistance to this compound has spurred the search for more effective compounds, e.g. see

Title: Effectiveness of cyanide pellets for control of dama wallabies (Macropus eugenii)

Author(s): Shapiro Lee; Ross James; Adams Pauline; et al.

Source: NEW ZEALAND JOURNAL OF ECOLOGY Volume: 35 Issue: 3 Pages: 287-290 Published: 2011

• the claims about the miracle protein AGG01 are sourced to a 2006 New Scientist publication; I can't read this article, because it's behind a paywall, but suspect that its source is primary. Have you followed this up to see if there's been anything else written about this protein in the intervening years? If there hasn't been, I suspect allocating a subsection to it goes against WP:UNDUE. Sasata (talk) 16:46, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Most of the things you posted could be easily corrected. And for the sources. You can't just do a source dump and say "what about this?" I don't have access to any of these. Also, what information do they present that is so imporant and hasn't been covered. LittleJerry (talk) 01:34, 24 February 2012 (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 GrahamColm 20:15, 24 February 2012 [5].

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Santa Maria de Ovila

Nominator(s): Binksternet (talk) 08:21, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

I have been letting this one sit for a while to see how it fits, and I think it is ready for evaluation here at FAC. The article came about when I protested a bit of text inserted at Hearst Castle, text that was more appropriate to Wyntoon. This led me to write articles about Santa Maria de Ovila and Charles Stetson Wheeler, and to greatly expand Wyntoon.

This story is a complex and tragic tale and as such proved excellent material for an article. Binksternet (talk) 08:21, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

I am an entrant in the WikiCup. Binksternet (talk) 15:06, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Image review and comments by --Sp33dyphil ©^hat_ontributions 23:05, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

• The caption of File:Haslett Warehouse (San Francisco).jpg should end with a period since it's a sentence.
• Can English captions be added to File:Ruinas ovila.jpg, File:Cartel Santa Maria de Ovila Trillo.jpg, and File:Santa Maria de Ovila actualidad.jpg? The dates of these photos are missing.
• File:Haslett Warehouse (San Francisco).jpg has its image size forced.
• The ISBN is missing from the second book under "Bibliography". Or is it not a book?
• Why isn't FN 2 moved to the "Bibliography" section?
• FN 18 and 27 are missing retrieval dates.

Sp33dyphil, I have put a full stop at the Haslett image and I changed the second bibliography entry from a book to a journal cite. Thanks for the catch!

I have put dates and English descriptions into the Commons images that were uploaded by a Spanish editor.

The Haslett warehouse is not all that important which is why I chose to force the image smaller.

Is the accessdate parameter required for the cite news template? Binksternet (talk) 00:27, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

• You should include retrieval dates if URLs are provided, unless the refs are print-based like books. --Sp33dyphil ©^hat_ontributions 03:42, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

• Okay, I added accessdate parameters as indicated and I moved the Burke reference down to Bibliography. Binksternet (talk) 15:48, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

• I haven't read the article, but a couple quick comments at a glance: in the Golden Gate Park section I see sentences beginning "In 1940, Hearst..." and "In 1999 some..." The punctuation here should probably be standardized. Also, why do you have a picture in the Bibliography section? I don't know if there is a rule about that, but it seems odd to me. Mark Arsten (talk) 18:18, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
  • I put commas in to homogenize the style.
  • I put a picture into the Bibliography only because I had an extra one and it seemed to fit there. Binksternet (talk) 01:34, 27 January 2012 (UTC)
    • Ok, well, if no one else objects to its placement I guess that's ok. Mark Arsten (talk) 02:32, 27 January 2012 (UTC)
• Also, try to be consistent with the use of the serial comma: "After the Confiscations, many of the furnishings and artistic treasures of Santa María de Óvila passed to the surrounding parish churches, especially Ruguilla, Huet, Sotoca de Tajo and Carrascosa de Tajo." vs "On the eastern side of the cloister lies the monastery, the sacristy, the priory cell, and the chapter house stripped of detail." Mark Arsten (talk) 16:32, 27 January 2012 (UTC)
  • Ah, yes, the commas. I took a couple out just now but the specific example you list is one I kept because the sacristy and priory cell are not stripped of detail, but the chapter house is. Thus, the comma helps to separate the "stripped of detail" from the preceding members of the listed items. Binksternet (talk) 17:45, 27 January 2012 (UTC)
    • Alright, your changes look good to me. Mark Arsten (talk) 18:30, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment: The article was raised to GA nearly a year ago, and not much work has been done on the text since. This means that there are numerous prose issues (and a few others) that would probably have been identified had the article had a recent peer review. I have so far only read through to the end of the "Hearst" section and have found the following:-

• Of the stones, "some are being reassembled by Trappist monks at the Abbey of New Clairvaux in Vina." Reassembled into what?
• I'm not sure the beer sponsorship is worthy of the lead
• "within", rather than "on", the grounds of a farm
• I think the lead image caption could be usefully extended, giving a date and confirming this is after the removal of stones by Hearst's agents.
• I think "canonised", rather than "sainted", is the official term, but in any event link to canonisation
• "Somewhat later, or perhaps at the same time..." I find that phrasing odd, a bit like "yes, or perhaps no". I would omit this confusing phrase
• Date for chapel rebuilding?
• "From the 15th century Santa María de Óvila began a slow decline..." Yes, but in the previous section we read of major building projects into the mid-17th century, so isn't it a little premature to date the start of the decline so early?
• Hyphenate "wine-making"
• I think the section title "Hearst" is a little too cryptic for the content, and should be amplified, even if only to "Hearst project".
• "his biggest client being" → "whose biggest client was"
• You need some sort of citation for the assertion that $97,000 in 1930 has a current value of £1.2 million (seems rather low), and "today's currency" needs to be time specific, e.g. "as of 2012".
• "Some entire walls of fine facing stones were recommended". Sentence is incomplete; "recommended" for what?
• "Antonio Gomez, the excellent local foreman praised by all who worked with him, numbered the blocks on architectural drawings and painted the number in red on the back of each stone."[4] This, particularly the unattributed description of Gomez, reads like editorial opinion. What the source actually says is "Steilberg and Byne both commented on the excellence of the Spanish workers and especially of their foreman, Antonio Gomez." I think there needs to be some rewording to better reflect the source, and to remove the appearance of an editorial voice.
• "he understood that the illegal project employed more than a hundred men..." You need to clarify that "he" is the Minister of Labor, not Byne's lawyer (which is how it reads at present).
• "failing to interest the government" → "but had failed to interest the government"

I will read through the rest after you have responded to the above. Brianboulton (talk) 18:59, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

• Replies
• The stones have been given extra context in the lead section, addressing the problem.
• The beer sponsorship is a valid part of WP:LEAD, being a one-sentence summary of article material comprising a paragraph. The beer sponsorship has been widely reported and has significantly aided in the rebuilding of the chapter house in Vina.
• Within the grounds of the farm, yes.
• Lead image caption has been amplified as suggested.
• Yes, canonized with wikilink.
• "Somewhat ...perhaps" removed.
• Chapel rebuilding date uncertain, before 1650 per Clements 1981.
• 15th century corrected to 17th century.
• Hyphen for wine-making.
• I changed the "Hearst" heading to "Removal to California". "Hearst project" was a good suggestion, too.
• Yes to "whose biggest client was".
• "fine facing stones were recommended for removal"
• Gomez praise attributed.
• Minister of Labor clarified.
• Yes to "but had failed to interest the government".
• The suggestions are very good. Thank you, really! The only one I am resisting is the bit about beer sponsorship which I think is appropriate for WP:LEAD. I have no financial or personal conflict of interest in the sponsorship, to be sure. I have, however, tasted one of the batches produced. Binksternet (talk) 08:23, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

Comments from Noleander

• "American millionaire William Randolph Hearst .." - a more descriptive/informative adjective might be "publisher" instead of millionaire. The fact he was able to buy/ship the stones already indicates he was wealthy.
• " the original ruins are within...." - The word "original" confuses me. Perhaps delete it?
• "... by Trappist monks at the Abbey of New Clairvaux in Vina...." - Need to say that is in California; it sounds like a European place name (although I see the Golden Gate Park, it still is confusing).
• "The surrounding area of Murel and ... their cattle to graze on the king's land." - Needs a citation.
• It would be great if there were a sketch/diagram of the monastery before it was disassembled ... are any available? I see the article says ".. he wrote a monograph of its history and included a site plan of the layout of buildings, written from memory." Any chance of getting a copy of the plan from that monograph?
• POV: "Because of its prosperity ..." , " the nearby villagers denied support to the monastery despite..." , etc - My understanding of the history of many Catholic properties throughout Europe and Latin America is that there are two sides to the story: On the one hand, they were legitimate enterprises, willfully created by the populace as matters of faith; on the other hand, they were oppressive institutions that took money, goods & taxes from unwilling peasants to fund comfortable lifestyles for the abbots/priests, etc. The article explicitly discusses the Confiscations, but the whole tenor of the article is very sympathetic to the abbey. I think a sentence or two needs to be included representing the "other side": why some Spaniards may have resented the abbey & supported the Confiscations. Perhaps the Confiscations article contains some balancing material.
• " The monastery's land holdings passed one by one into ..." - Do the sources say why? By force? Willingly sold off to raise $?
• " ... artistic treasures ...." - The paragraph mentions a couple of manuscripts, but the phrase " artistic treasures" implies more to me. Are there examples of art? If not, perhaps reword to "historical manuscripts" or similar.
• "Beloso sold the stones of the cloister, the chapter house ... to Arthur Byne, an art agent living in Madrid, whose biggest client was American newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst." - That paragraph is missing a key fact: Who initiated the sale in the first place? Did Hearst ask Byne to find a monastery? Had Hearst seen it on earlier travels? Or did Byne just buy it on his own initiative, based on his knowledge of Hearts's tastes?
• "Up to this time, the ...." a bit ambiguous: could mean until today; or to 1931. Reword?
• "Little remains today of the original monastery in Spain. ..." - The pictures in the article seem to indicate that a lot remains, albeit unusable. Perhaps reword to indicate that a lot of walls still stand, but it is uninhabitable.
• "Hearst had already bought a ..." - The italic "already" seems a bit unencyclopedic. I would just eliminate the italics; or change "already" -> "previously" or similar.
• "... had already bought a Spanish monastery in 1925,... " - Also should be stated up above in article where Byne is first mentioned: that earlier section should state that "Hearst from the early 1920s had an interest in acquiring stone buildings from Europe to provide materials ..."
• "drawn into direct combat in" WW II - The "direct combat" confuses me. I know what you mean, but many readers may be puzzled. I would just eliminate "direct combat in".
• " The city sued to reclaim the area in 1993, but lost the battle in court..." - I do not understand this. Arent the stones in Golden Gate park at this point? The city obviously owns the park. Or did the stones get moved to some private property? Clarification is needed.
• " to mount the grand portal of the old church. It was in March 1931 that Hearst had agreed to purchase this church portal upon Steilberg's recommendation and at Byne's price of $1,500" - Was this part of the original $97,000 purchase? Or was this a separate deal from the "big" purchase? Why wasnt the portal included in the $97K?
• " deaccessioning" - Too arcane to be used without definition or explanation.
• " partnered with the monks of New Clairvaux ..." - Need geographic context: say something like "partnered with the monks of NC in Northern California .." etc.

End Noleander comments. --Noleander (talk) 12:09, 17 February 2012 (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 Ucucha 00:37, 23 February 2012 [6].

---

The Satanic Bible

Nominator(s): – GorillaWarfare (talk) 23:17, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

I started rewriting this article in late August, and have been working on it off and on since then. It was recently was promoted to a good article, and I think it meets the criteria for a featured article as well. – GorillaWarfare (talk) 23:17, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

Oppose, 1b and 1c. Looks to be informative and a great intro to the book, however it does not seem comprehensive or representative of the literature in the field about this book. Many, many articles have been published in scholarly journals about a) the literary themes in the book and b) the cultural and religious impact of the book. Essentially, you are missing a Themes section, and the Influence section should be vastly expanded. Recommend withdrawal to commence library research using scholarly databases. --Laser brain (talk) 19:42, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

For example this article from the Journal of Contemporary Religion covers how the book affected the spread of satanism in Britain, and some of the themes therein: doi:10.1080/13537909508580747 --Laser brain (talk) 20:22, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for the suggestion! I'll try to go back and add this. – GorillaWarfare (talk) 19:12, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

Oppose per User:Laser brain and suggest withdrawal (even though the nominator doesn't seem to be interested anymore). Auree ^★★ 06:48, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

I am still interested. I refrained from withdrawing immediately because I was hoping to get more than just one opinion. Now that I have, I withdraw the nomination. – GorillaWarfare (talk) 19:12, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

I apologize for jumping to a conclusion. The article is solid, and once that info has been added this will stand a good chance. Good luck! Auree ^★★ 19:23, 19 February 2012 (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 Ucucha 00:37, 23 February 2012 [7].

---

May Revolution

Nominator(s): Cambalachero (talk) 20:37, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

I am nominating this for featured article because it is a key event in the history of Argentina, and I have worked a lot with it. I worked first with Argentine books, as those made the most comprehensive study of this topic (not surprising), but I checked some books in English as well. I have also trimmed down some parts to related articles, but trying to keep this as an article that could be understood on its own, having in mind that most readers from outside Argentina or even South America are unlikely to have even a clue on who were this people or the events described.

All the issues pointed during the previous nominations were addressed by then. This article has been promoted to A-Class by the Military History wikiproject. Cambalachero (talk) 20:37, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Source check

Almost none of the sources are available online, so this is the only one I could check:

• Source

• Text: En 1813, en tiempos del Directorio, el sistema político está en crisis. Se estaba pensando en un príncipe europeo. Después Alvear empieza a pensar en el protectorado inglés. En medio de esa crisis, se crea la Asamblea del año XIII para declarar la independencia, pero la independencia no se declara.

• (Rough) translation: In 1813, in times of (Supreme Directors?) the political system is in crisis. There were thoughts of a European principality. Later Alvear began to think of an English protectorate. In the midst of this crisis, the Assembly of (1813) was created to declare independence, but independence was not declared.

• Article

• Before the declaration of independence of 1816, the supreme directors considered other options, such as negotiating with Spain or becoming a British protectorate.

In other words, this source is accurately represented without copyvio. Another I could check online:

• Source 209

• Text: Mitre inventó una revolución de Mayo antiespañola, separatista, por el comercio libre (implícitamente pro británica) para legitimar su política de 1862. Hoy, inclusive los profesores de la línea de Halperín Donghi –como Luis A. Romero y José Carlos Chiaramonte- admiten que no comparten la versión de la Historia mitrista sobre Mayo. Chiaramonte sostiene que ya nadie da validez a la fábula de “la máscara de Fernando VII”, con la cual se intenta justificar el voto de la Primera Junta del 26 de mayo de obediencia a Fernando VII; sin embargo, el Departamento de Historia del Colegio Nacional Buenos Aires persiste en aceptarla. L. A. Romero, por su parte, afirma que Mitre “inventó” esa historia pero que debe procederse con cuidado porque es un “factor de cohesión de la nacionalidad” (Diario Clarín, 24/5/2002). Considero, por el contrario, que es un factor de colonialismo mental, legitimador de la influencia inglesa a partir de 1862.

• Too long to translate, but ...

• Article:

• Juan Bautista Alberdi and later historians such as Norberto Galasso,[198] Luis Romero and José Carlos Chiaramonte[209] doubted Mitre's interpretation and put forward different ones.

• Verified, with no copyvio. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:27, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

• Article:

• This situation would change with the final defeat of Napoleon and the return of Ferdinand VII to the throne, as he began the Absolutist Restoration and persecuted those holding the new libertarian ideas within Spain. For people in South America, the idea of remaining part of the Spanish Empire, but with a new relationship with the mother country, was no longer a feasible option: the only remaining options at this point were to return to absolutism or to adopt independentism.[209]

• Source text:

• Could the nominator please post the text from the source that verifies this text? I grew tired of looking for it :) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:26, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

Sorry for the delay, I have been out of home a pair of days for health reasons. The text that verifies this is at the end of the first question to Galasso. In English, he says more or less this: "When the Spanish democratic revolution is defeated in 1814 and Spain returns to absolutism, anulling the democratic constitution of 1812, restoring the inquisition, etc; the rupture is needed (as cited in a mail from Gervasio Posadas to San Martín). Independence, to avoid falling again into absolutism, becomes urgent, because Spain will send now two fleets to recover "her" colonies. (break) The Spanish revolution of 1808 was national (against the napoleonic invader) and became democratic during the fight, by establishing popular Juntas that trusted Ferdinand VII to be progresist (he was fighting with his father, Charles IV). The American revolutions were initially democratic (antiabsolutist) as extensions of those others, and became national, meaning independentists, when the democratic revolution was defeated in Spain. That's why there are six years between the events of May and July 9, 1816 in Tucuman, the declaration of independence of the United Provinces of South America" (Note: Im in a hurry, this is a rushed translation, and may not be correct here or there) --Cambalachero (talk) 20:23, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

Sorry for the misunderstanding: I can translate, could you please quote the exact text in Spanish? I had a hard time finding it, and the spotcheck on sources means I'll look at the original text (in Spanish) and make sure there's no close paraphrasing. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:59, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

The paragraphs in Spanish are the following:

• Cuando la revolución democrática española es derrotada en 1814 y se vuelve al absolutismo, anulando la Constitución democrática de 1812, reponiendo la Inquisición, etc., se hace necesaria la ruptura (Carta de Posadas a San Martín, del 18/7/1814). La independencia, para no recaer bajo el absolutismo, resulta entonces urgente pues ahora España mandará dos flotas para recuperar “sus” colonias.
• La revolución española de 1808 fue nacional (contra el invasor napoleónico) y se hizo democrática en la lucha, al constituir Juntas Populares que confiaron en que FernandoVII era progresista (estaba enfrentado con su padre, Carlos IV). La revoluciones americanas fueron inicialmente democráticas (antiabsolutistas) como prolongación de aquella y se hicieron luego nacionales, es decir, independentistas, cuando fracasa la revolución democrática en España. Por esta razón, hay seis años de diferencia entre los sucesos de mayo y el 9 de julio de 1816 en Tucumán, donde se declara la Independencia de las Provincias Unidas en Sudamérica. --Cambalachero (talk) 21:01, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

• OK, confused ... is "reponiendo la Inquisición" what you're using to source "persecuted those holding teh new libertarian ideas within Spain"? Where do I get, "for people in South America, the idea ... etc"? IN other words, it's obvious there is no close paraphrasing concern here, but I'm struggling to see how the text is verified, perhaps as a result of my inadequate knowledge of the history here. If we can get this part verified, then I'll move all of this over to talk and indicate that you've cleared a spotcheck on the two sources I could view. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:08, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

• The persecution of liberalism is part of the Absolutist Restauration. Galasso mentioned the restauration but not the persecution; but that's common knowledge, so I mentioned it just to place the reader into context. The restoration of the inquisition and the rejection of the liberal constitution are just specific examples of a wider policy; the text is better understood if we mention the wider context (because if I mentioned just those he said, the reader may misunderstood that those were the only problems). I don't think there was any original research or synthesis in doing that. The "for people in South America..." is basically the second paragraph, and the last sentence of the first. Have in mind that, in Argentina, "American" means "from the Americas" (the continent; in this context, Spanish colonies in the Americas as opposed to European Spain). Thus, the "South American people" is the "revoluciones americanas" bit (the several conflicts of the Spanish American Wars of Independence; the May Revolution is only one of them). But this usage of "American" is different in other countries, where it is read as "from the United States", so I can't just say "American revolutions" as Galasso. Cambalachero (talk) 23:29, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

Image review

• File:Declaration_independence.jpg is tagged as lacking source information, as is File:Red_versus_blue_swords.svg
• File:Carlota_Joaquina_por_Manuel_António_de_Castro.jpg needs a US PD tag, as do other images using the PD-old/PD-art combination
• File:Castelli_y_Cisneros.jpg needs a US PD tag and more info on the source
• File:Invitación_al_Cabildo_Abierto.jpg: the first copyright tag is incorrect
• File:Domingo_French.jpg: what is the author's date of death? Same with File:Primera_Junta,_litografía.jpg
• File:El_pueblo_quiere_saber_de_qué_se_trata.jpg: source link returns error
• File:BartolomeMitre002.JPG: date given is date of upload, should be date of creation or publication
• File:Piramide-de-Mayo-Buenos-Aires.jpg: as Argentina does not have freedom of panorama, you need to account for the copyright of this monument as well as the picture
• File:Manuelbelgrano.jpg is tagged as lacking author information
• File:Argentine_Bicentennial_Logo.svg: I would argue that this design does meet the threshold of originality, and that it would thus be subject to copyright. Nikkimaria (talk) 19:48, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

Mostly done I fixed some images and replaced others. I'm not sure about the bicentennial logo, so I open a deletion request; so far there's a keep vote, but I removed it from the navbox for the moment. Most images have US compatible licences, but that's still a topic under discussion in Commons. The WMF had promised to consider the topic and provide some guidance as soon as possible, I think the best thing to do is to stay using the current rules until they have a definitive advise. Cambalachero (talk) 02:12, 10 February 2012 (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 Ucucha 00:37, 23 February 2012 [8].

---

Murder of Joanna Yeates

Nominator(s): Paul MacDermott (talk) 18:54, 1 February 2012 (UTC), BabbaQ (talk) 11:41, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

I am nominating this for featured article because I believe it is very close to meeting the standard required for FAC. It covers the subject matter in a comprehensive and neutral style, and is well referenced from multiple reliable media sources. I took the article through peer review and GAN late last year, addressing issues and expanding where necessary, and it passed GA in December 2011. I have also consulted current FA-class British crime articles for detail and layout while working on this one. Events surrounding this case have pretty much drawn to a close, so any future changes would be minimal, and the article has been relatively stable given the amount of press coverage these events received in the United Kingdom. I will be happy to discuss and address any further issues which may arise from this discussion. Paul MacDermott (talk) 18:54, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Also no deadlinks or disambig links as of checking today. I need to add some alt text to some of the images, so please bear with me on that one. Paul MacDermott (talk) 19:32, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Brief and ref comments

• Ref 8, 9, 28, 111 and 113 were published on guardian.co.uk, not The Guardian newspaper.

• I don't understand. The website is the online counterpart to the newspaper. The convention has always been to cite the name of the newspaper. That's exactly why the {{cite news}} template has a url field to it. So we cite The Guardian for news posted at guardian.co.uk, and New York Times for news posted at www.nytimes.com. Orane (talk) 04:04, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

My understanding is 'The Guardian' refers to the newspaper; it's paper form essentially. 'Guardian Media Group' refers to the company, Observer is the sister site. Anything published 'guardian.co.uk' is its online activity: that means a rolling news service (provided by agencies) as well as to providing content in 'The Guardian' and 'Observer' newspapers since 1998. For instance, scroll down to the bottom of this article, find 'article history' and tell me where it was 'published on'. – Lemonade51 (talk) 11:14, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

• Why does Ref 90 have 'Guardian Media Group' as the work yet all the other references published by The Guardian don't? Likewise Ref 100 and 'Independent Print Limited'.
• Remove the extra year on ref 88.
• When citing 'BBC News' be sure to add the work as 'BBC' or 'British Broadcasting Corporation' depending on which you prefer. Work parameter is on some references but not all of them so correct that.
• Under Further enquiries, replace apostrophe with full stop in the sentence 'Police launched a national advertising campaign to appeal for witnesses through Facebook, '
• Don't need to repeat that the Sun offered £50,000 as a reward in the same section. – Lemonade51 (talk) 20:08, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Sorted extra year, repeat of Sun Award, and tweaked some refs. I can't seem to find the stray apostrophe, however. There are actually more refs for The Guardian than you have listed above so I've changed them to work= The Guardian|publisher= Guardian Media Group, the latter being the umbrella company that owns all Guardian publications. I hope that is ok, and you weren't specifically indicating those as guardian.co.uk articles and omitting the others because they actually appeared in The Guardian (I see some refs are cited with newspaper= though they are online). Similarly, Independent Print Limited publishes The Independent and its stablemates so I've amended those. Many newspaper refs are actually missing so I'll go through and add them over the next couple of days. Let me know if there are any other issues and I'll take a look at them.

All refs should now have work and publisher in their title. I've also made them consistent where that wasn't the case, e.g., citing from Daily Mail as opposed to Mail Online, and so on. If someone can quickly check they're ok, I'd very much appreciate that. Need a break now, but will tackle the images later. Paul MacDermott (talk) 13:22, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Alt text now added to images. Just a couple of comments to make here:

• Do we add alt text to maps? I haven't currently done this so far because I wasn't entirely sure about that.
• Images are not always very clear on my PC so I've done my best to interpret them. Paul MacDermott (talk) 22:12, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Re:apostrophe. I think you may have meant 'replace comma', as there was a comma at the end of that sentence. It's done anyway. Paul MacDermott (talk) 12:39, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

Whoops, you are right. Just one more niggle.

• Where is the source for the sentence "Jefferies told the hearing how reporters had "besieged" him after he was questioned by the police." ? –Lemonade51 (talk) 18:50, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

No worries. The besieged thing is actually from ref 115 at the end of the paragraph. But I'll stick it in after that sentence too. Paul MacDermott (talk) 19:23, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

ok, I put in an extra ref from the Telegraph to cover this, but have had to use 115 in the previous sentence since it talks about why Leveson was established, something the Telegraph article only touches on. Paul MacDermott (talk) 19:45, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

Comment, Prose, 1a: Prose issue found in the lead, so I stopped there (issues in the lead could indicate the prose needs a serious going over):

• On 20 September he appeared at Bristol Crown Court for a pre-trial hearing, attending in person having previously appeared from prison via videolink. ...

First, isn't this info a bit trivial for the lead? Second, hearing, attending is cumbersome. Third, would it not be better to phrase it as "he attended (in person is redundant) a pre-trial hearing at Bristol Crown Court after previous appearances from prison via videolink" ... or something similar? It seems very trivial for the lead, but this unwieldy sentence in the lead suggests that independent eyes may be needed on the prose throughout. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:49, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

Agreed. An individual awaiting trial can make any number of court appearances before the actual case begins so it's not strictly necessary to mention it in the lead, and you are right that it is problematic. I've therefore removed the sentence entirely. In terms of copyediting, quite a lot of work was done on that recently by someone from the Guild of Copyeditors, but should the article be unsuccessful here I'll take it back to them for another look. Paul MacDermott (talk) 18:29, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

Although there may be some there, the GOCE is not noted for being "staffed" with folks whose copyediting skills are at the FA level. I am not a fan of extended peer reviews happening at FAC. I believe when issues are found early on, and samples are given, it's better for the nominator to locate skilled collaborators and re-approach FAC once independent eyes have combed through the article. When I find significant prose errors in the lead, I'm unlikely to engage further; finding prose issues in what should be the best polished part of the article does not bode well for the remainder. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:35, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

If you do feel you're unlikely to review this any further, can you close the discussion as soon as possible so I can go in search of a skilled copyeditor? I'll bring it back after the two week sabbatical, and hopefully once they've given it the green light. Paul MacDermott (talk) 19:58, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

I'm not responding here as FAC delegate, Paul; my resignation is effective in two days. I was posting as a reviewer. If you're still sure you want to withdraw, you could ask for that, but I wasn't suggesting you needed to-- only saying how I review. Others may disagree. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:01, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

I must confess I did think you were commenting in your FAC role and hadn't realised you were about to step down, so I hope you'll accept my apologies for any misunderstanding caused. I don't actually want to withdraw the nomination but thought if the article needed more work doing to it then that was probably the best thing to do. I would like to continue and see what happens with it, and I'll go back to my original plan which is to recruit another copyeditor if it doesn't pass this time. I found some useful suggestions in this respect so should be able to find someone, and these will prove invaluable for future FACs. Thanks for getting back to me, and apologies once again. Paul MacDermott (talk) 21:29, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

Comments very interested in this article, but some technical things first:

• Is there a specific reason why certain things in the infobox are directly referenced while others aren't? For instance the fact she was a landscape architect is cited in the main body...
• I spotted [89][88] and while I don't believe there's a MOS requirement, it always seems to make sense to me to list these in numerical order.
• "Yeates's death" v "Yeates' body", be consistent throughout.
• Not sure about the use of the co-ordinate table. But if you insist, use en-dash to separate Home and 44, ensure the table is accessible using row and col scopes (see MOS:DTT)... personally I would have a look at the freely available OS maps which they are happy to release under GFDL to paint a picture of these locations.
• References...
  • You link the work sometimes, but not always, e.g. refs 4, 10 and 13 don't link The Sun but ref 12 does. This is true throughout, so check all refs for a consistent approach.
  • Ref titles should be MOS-compliant, so for instance, ref 5 has a spaced hyphen which should be a spaced en-dash per WP:DASH. See also ref 101 etc.
  • Is Sky News a publisher or a work? Check refs 23 & 24 etc for consistency.
  • Add publisher and location information wherever available for newspapers, e.g. the Daily Record ref 56 could use this sort of thing.
  • BBC or BBC News? Ref 70.
  • And be consistent with web-based content, if you wish to give accessdates, do it throughout.
  • Don't mix date formats in the refs, e.g. see ref 107.
  • Sometimes publisher is in parentheses, sometimes not, compare ref 93 with ref 94, compare ref 92 with ref 95 etc...
• I just did a Google news search on Tabak, throws up some interesting articles which are quite recent, including this one about the nature of the DNA found.

Once I have more time I'd like to review the prose, but these technical issues do also need to be resolved. The Rambling Man (talk) 09:41, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads up on these. I haven't had much of a chance to be online today, but I'll take a look at them tomorrow evening and hopefully sort out any differences. Thanks also for the ref regarding the DNA. Definitely an interesting addition to the article. Paul MacDermott (talk) 22:01, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

• Most refs now gone from infobox as they're mentioned in the main text. The only one that isn't is her height, although it is mentioned that Tabak was considerably taller than Yeates. What is the consensus regarding refs in the infobox?
  • If it's not mentioned in the text then I'd happily leave a ref in the infobox... The Rambling Man (talk) 12:26, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
• ok, cheers. Re: tables and maps, etc. I'm not quite sure how to format the table so I'll take it out. I use a screen magnifier which makes reading OS maps difficult so I'll have to leave that one too. If anyone can help with these that would be great. Paul MacDermott (talk) 12:36, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Had planned to look at new Tabak sources this evening, but had an unexpected - but very welcome - visit from relatives so will do it sometime tomorrow. Paul MacDermott (talk) 23:53, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
    • Have done some research into more recent articles and put together a couple of paragraphs of information that could go in. The DNA thing is very interesting and will add to the article so I definitely want to include that. Just need to decide how to factor it in though. Perhaps somewhere in the investigation section would be appropriate. Paul MacDermott (talk) 22:47, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

Comments from Noleander

• Lead - WP:LEAD suggests a maximum of 4 paragraphs in lead; this article has 5.
• Timeline - The chronology of events is a bit hard to follow ... maybe it is just me. Consider adding a graphical timeline. (not a FA showstopper).
• "Investigators determined that Yeates had spent the evening of 17 December 2010 ..." there is an annoying shift in narrative there. The article is stating facts event-by-event ("she went to ..." ) but then there is a "future looking" statement about the investigators. Then back to event-by-event. Recommend eliminate "Investigators determined that" ... it adds nothing (and all facts in those narrative sections are probably from the investiagtors, true?).
• Scare quotes: "... investigators wished to retain the body "for a while"" - What is the purpose of the quote marks? If a source makes a big deal about that phrase, explain the source's concerns; otherwise omit the quotes (and rephrase to more professional wording).
• More detail needed - "He subsequently won an undisclosed sum in libel damages for defamatory news articles published following his arrest." I think this is a very important part of the whole episode. More detail is needed on exactly what the landlord alleged in the libel suits, and what the juries/judges decided. Which papers were sued? What did the papers print that was libelous? Of course WP:BLP is an issue, and the article must be written to not maliciously repeat the false statements, but after the libel suit is public, certainly the allegations of libel can be repeated here safely.

Hmmm - the above material needs to be consolidated with the following: "On the same day, Jefferies accepted "substantial" damages for defamation from .." First, they need to be merged into one section about the landlord's plight. Second, it is not clear if he sued the papers, or if they just settled (paid) before a suit commenced. Merge, clarify, expand.

• Clarification needed: "The authorities declined to reveal additional details while the suspect was being interrogated due to concerns over past media coverage." - What were the concerns?
• Clarify: "Within 24 hours of news coverage about the production on 18 January, over 300 people contacted the police....". - This is a bit confusing. The prior sentences say that a TV show was produced, to be aired on 26 Jan; but then on 18 Jan 300 people called the police. Did they see the TV show? Was it shown early? If not, what prompted them to call?
• Clarify: "Tabak's guilty plea was rejected by the Crown Prosecution Service." - Why was it rejected? Be specific.
• Grammar: " .... depicted women being bound and gagged, held by the neck and choked, and controlled by men. " - Reword to clarify if the "by men" applies to all preceding activities, or just "controlled by".
• Contradiction: "Tabak pleaded guilty to manslaughter, but denied murder." -This statement is made after the prior section which says "Tabak's guilty plea was rejected by the Crown Prosecution Service." Either the guilty plea was rejected or not - need to clarify.
• Location info - " ... that Tabak had strangled Yeates, using "sufficient force" to kill her ..." - Need to explicitly state the location of the struggle/murder. I gather it was her flat? Need to state that.
• Media coverage section - This section needs an introduction before it gets into the details of specific problems. What is the common thread of all the material in this section? Write an overview. Also, consider re-titling the section, because "Media Coverage" could mean "objective media coverage" ... but in fact the section is talking about Problems with the media coverage, true?
• State the name: "On the morning of 20 January, the Avon and Somerset Constabulary arrested a 32-year-old man" - Go ahead and say the name of the person arrested. This is an encyclopedia article, not a mystery novel: there is no reason to delay the name until later in the article. The fact that the police did not reveal the name until X days later can be stated.

End Noleander comments. --Noleander (talk) 21:35, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback. Quotes removed and paragraphs in lead merged. I'll look at the stuff that needs more clarification tomorrow evening. Not sure if I entirely agree with the "Investigators determined that" as removing it makes it read awkwardly there's a sudden jump back to the night she disappeared without explanation. Maybe have to reorganise the information a little. Paul MacDermott (talk) 22:16, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

May also have to reorganise lead a little as my paragraphs edit was swiftly undone with the argument that the two paragraphs concern two different subjects. Paul MacDermott (talk) 22:24, 22 February 2012 (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 Ucucha 00:37, 23 February 2012 [9].

---

A Community of Witches

Nominator(s): Midnightblueowl (talk) 17:38, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Having been surprised at the lack of good quality articles discussing academic texts on Wikipedia, I set about working on this one back on 28 November 2011, and now I think it's about ready for FA review. The article successfully obtained B-class status on 5 December 2011, and then it went on to attain GA-status too on 27 December 2011 after a bit more work. Following a few weeks’ worth of additions and improvements, I believe that it meets all of the FA and would be honoured if someone would like to review it. (Midnightblueowl (talk) 17:38, 1 February 2012 (UTC))

• Comments from Mark Arsten.
• Looks interesting, just the kind of article to read during a bout with insomnia :) I'll try to give the prose/presentation aspects a review over the weekend. I'll suggest changes as I come to them, feel free to reject them if you think I'm incorrect.
• Lead
• You have "north-eastern United States" in the lead, our article has it Northeastern United States. Also, might want to link that.
• "Berger interprets Wicca as a religion of late modernity as opposed to postmodernity," Maybe a comma after "modernity"?

Right, I've made both of these changes. (Midnightblueowl (talk) 17:51, 4 February 2012 (UTC))

• Paganism and Wicca in the United States
• "Contemporary Paganism, which is also referred to as Neo-Paganism," Do we need the "which is" there?
• "second wave feminism" Hyphen?
• "One initiate of both the Dianic and Gardnerian traditions was a woman known as Starhawk (1951–) who went on to found her own tradition, Reclaiming Wicca, as well as publishing The Spiral Dance: a Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess (1979), a book which helped spread Wicca throughout the U.S." This is kind of along sentence, maybe break it up?
• I'm not sure about the Manual of Style rules here, but I wonder if it's right to put DOBs in text like this "Raymond Buckland (1934–)"?
• Just an opinion here, but this feels like kinda a heavy amount of background to be starting with. Might want to get another opinion though, since reviewers are always getting on my case about not having enough background in articles.

Right, I've made these changes too, but left the birth and death dates of the significant figures mentioned in the text. Personally I feel like this is an acceptable level of baclground detail; I for one might even suggest expanding it, but then I fear it really would be too lengthy for the average reader. (Midnightblueowl (talk) 17:58, 4 February 2012 (UTC))

• Academic fieldwork into Wicca
• You use "both" a couple times in the first paragraph, I think you could probably remove both.
• "The first of these had been the practicing Wiccan, journalist and political activist Margot Adler" I would suggest "was" instead of "had been".
• "the East Coast and Midwest of the United States" Maybe link these.
• "Orion's work would come to be published as" Maybe just "was" instead of "would come to be"
• "although would be heavily criticized in reviews" Missing a word? Mark Arsten (talk) 09:03, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

Right, I've gone through and made all of these corrections too. (Midnightblueowl (talk) 18:06, 4 February 2012 (UTC))

• Berger and her research
• "who were then living in the area." Maybe see if you can remove a few words there.
• "and she would go on to attend their weekly meetings" Maybe just "attended" instead of "would go on to attend"?
• "on the internet and at festivals, with the duo receiving over 2000 responses, providing Berger with one of her main sources of information." This is kind of a long sentence and includes the WP:PLUSING construction. I suggest ending sentence after festivals and then starting the next sentence with "The duo received...".
• "She conducted formal interviews with over forty practicing Pagans, with over sixty others" I think "40" and "60" would be better here.
• "north-eastern United States" again.
• "Unlike the sociologists Margot Adler and Loretta Orion," You've already mentioned their qualifications, so I don't think you need to do it here.
• "a series of books entitled 'Studies in Comparative Religion'" Are the single quotes correct? I'm not sure how the MOS handles series of books.
• I made some light copyedits to this section, hope you approve. Mark Arsten (talk) 09:30, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

Right, I've made most of the suggested changes here too. However I did keep "the sociologists" because readers may have skipped the previous section, thereby not being aware of the profession of these individuals. (Midnightblueowl (talk) 18:19, 4 February 2012 (UTC))

• Synopsis
• In one sentence you have "both... as well". Maybe just include one of them.
• "In the second chapter, entitled "The Magical Self"" and then "Chapter four, "A Circle within a Circle: The Neo-Pagan Community"," Maybe remove the "entitled" from the earlier one.
• "She then moves on to look at concepts of gender in the Wiccan community, both for men and women and also for homosexuals." Could probably remove "then". Also, I'm not sure about the last part: men, women, and homosexuals? Maybe there's a better way to put that.
• I might be a bit dense here, but I'm not sure what "emancipatory politics and life politics" are.
• "relationship between Wicca and routinization" What is routinization?

Right, I've made most of these suggested changes here. I've not gone on to explain the concepts of "emancipatory politics" and "life politics"; being sociological concepts, they probably warrant their own Wikipedia pages anyway. Similarly, I am unsure if a discussion of what routinization is warranted here; maybe it could be linked to routine ?(Midnightblueowl (talk) 17:52, 14 February 2012 (UTC))

• Wicca as a religion of late modernity
• "that elements of postmodernism can certainly be found within Wicca" Maybe remove "certainly"

Done. (Midnightblueowl (talk) 18:17, 14 February 2012 (UTC))

• Wicca as a result of globalism
• "modern westerners picking and choosing elements" I suggest you rephrase to avoid the participle here.

Done. (Midnightblueowl (talk) 18:17, 14 February 2012 (UTC))

• The future of Wicca
• "Berger disagreed, arguing that it was" Maybe remove "it was" here. Mark Arsten (talk) 21:01, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

Done. (Midnightblueowl (talk) 18:17, 14 February 2012 (UTC))

• Academic reviews
• "Praising Berger for "maintaining a high degree of theoretical sophistication while remaining accessible for the average reader", he did however have some criticisms, for instance noting that Berger had used the terms "Wiccan" and "Neo-Pagan" interchangeably, even though they have different meanings and he felt that this might confuse some of the book's readers." This is kind of a long sentence, maybe see if you can break it up a bit.
• "Foltz did however highlight some problems" Maybe think about removing "however" here.
• As SandyGeorgia pointed out, this section is a bit quote heavy.

I've responded to these criticisms, editing the aforementioned sentence down. (Midnightblueowl (talk) 18:24, 14 February 2012 (UTC))

• Awards
• Not sure that I like the idea of a one sentence subsection like this. Also, who gave the award?

I can certainly appreciate your concern here, it's something that has bothered me too. However, I really cannot find any other information other than what I have included here. (Midnightblueowl (talk) 18:17, 14 February 2012 (UTC))

• Berger's later work
• I think the first sentence here could probably be tightened up a bit.
• "both with Leigh S. Shaffer, a fellow professor of sociology at West Chester University, and also" Maybe just use "both" or "also" here.

Done. (Midnightblueowl (talk) 18:31, 14 February 2012 (UTC))

• Alright, that's all for now, this was a fun article to read. I think the prose problems are fixable, but will need a bit more work. Feel free to drop a note on my talk page if I don't return for a while. Regards, Mark Arsten (talk) 21:46, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

Wow. You've certainly given me a lot to work on Mark, but thanks a bundle for reviewing this for me! I'll try and make my way through the corrections this evening, crossing them each out as I go along, if that's okay? (Midnightblueowl (talk) 15:10, 4 February 2012 (UTC))

Sure, that's probably the best way to do it. Maybe we can collapse them when we're finished with them all? Mark Arsten (talk) 17:34, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

Ok, changes look good to me. I'll try to go through the rest by the end of the weekend. Mark Arsten (talk) 20:06, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

Templates are discouraged at FAC because they cause the archives to exceed Wikipedia:Template limits (see FAC instructions.) For a sample of how to move lengthy dicussions to article talk, and avoid clogging the main FAC page, see Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/United States v. Wong Kim Ark/archive2. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:55, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

Oh yes, Ok. Is there a rule of thumb about how much space a review can take up before moving it to the talk page? Mark Arsten (talk) 20:06, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

Not really, but the longer a review, the less likely other reviewers are to engage, since a very long review suggests that the article wasn't FAC ready, and should have been at peer review. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:09, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose, 1a prose, copyedit needed (see list above): I suggest finding an independent copyeditor to comb through the prose. The list above is lengthy enough that it approaches Peer review territory, where issues might be better worked off-FAC. In my first glance down the article, I found these prose issues (samples only):
• Throughout her 11 year period of fieldwork, Berger had to use snowball sampling to retrieve her data on the Pagan community, something that she attributed to the "secrecy of groups and practitioners".

• Missing hyphen, "retrieve" data?.

• She conducted formal interviews with over forty practicing Pagans, and over sixty others instead were informally interviewed during conversations at Pagan events, following which Berger recorded their responses in her fieldnotes.

• Why the "instead"? "Interviewed during conversations"? Following which ... in her notes ... tangled.

• Starting with a preface in which Berger explains how she first began studying the Wiccan and Pagan community of New England, Berger opens the main part of her book with a description of a Wiccaning which she attended

• Tortured: Berger ... Berger; Starting with a preface (doesn't the preface always "start" a book?).

The article also seems to overrely on quotes: I suggest that either Malleus Fatuorum (talk · contribs) or Parrot of Doom (talk · contribs) might be able to help out here. With their intervention, the prose can likely be polished to FA standards, and the nomination will have a better chance at success. I haven't looked beyond 1a, prose. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:07, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

Well, I've asked Malleus Fatuorum to have a glance over this if they have the time. Hopefully they can point out any further problems with the prose. (Midnightblueowl (talk) 20:14, 6 February 2012 (UTC))

Source review - spotchecks not done. Nikkimaria (talk) 18:46, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

• Missing bibliographic info for Adler 1979, Luhrmann 1996
• Foltz 1999 or 2000?
• Mary-Jo or Mary Jo Neitz?
• Check alphabetization of bibliography
• No citations to Greenwood 2000, Magliocco 2004, Salomonsen 2002
• Ranges should use endashes
• Where was Greenwood published?
• Be consistent in whether state names are abbreviated or not
• Be consistent in whether you provide locations for journals. Nikkimaria (talk) 18:46, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for this Nikkimaria, I've removed the superfluous Greenwood entry in the bibliography, and ensured that all the ranges used endashes. I've corrected "Mary-Jo" to "Mary Jo", and added the bibliographic information for Adler 1979 and Luhrmann 1996. I have ensured consistency in the use of state names and removed both the location of journals and the bibliographic entries for Magliocco 2004 and Salomonsen 2002. I can also confirm that Foltz is 2000, not 1999. Oh, and I put N before V in the bibliography, as it should be. (Midnightblueowl (talk) 13:56, 14 February 2012 (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 Ucucha 00:37, 23 February 2012 [10].

---

Swedish heraldry

Nominator(s): Wilhelm Meis (Quatsch!) 05:05, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

I am nominating this for featured article because I feel that this article meets the FA criteria. I think it is well-written, thorough, well-researched, non-controversial and well-referenced, with good use of images. This article is more graphically intensive than a lot of others, but it is an article about heraldry, which is a graphically intensive topic. If there is anything I can do to help further improve the article, please feel free to leave me a message here or on my talk page. Wilhelm Meis (Quatsch!) 05:05, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

Source review

1. Flags of the World may not be acceptable as a reliable source: see Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 87#Flags of the World and Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 22#Flags of the World website for previous (contradictory) discussions.
2. Ref 20: author name Jan Oskar Engene and date 13 June 1996 missing.
3. Ref 27: author name Željko Heimer missing.
4. Citations are inconsistently formatted. For example, if you're keeping the Flags of the World citations, then they should be formatted in the same way; refs 27 and 28 are not formatted the same way as refs 16 and 20. They should have authors, dates, publishers, etc.; the bare links (e.g. Refs 71, 72 and 73) should use cite templates as well, if you're keeping the cite templates elsewhere in the article.
5. Ref 12: accessdate, publisher missing.
6. Ref 30: date missing. I shall assume the self-published Bergman is reliable as he gives his sources, but see WP:SPS.
7. Heraldry of the World (refs. 42, 44, 46, 48, 51, 52, 55, 56), OK I see sources are given again, but with so many links to user-generated websites, I think you're going to have difficulty persuading people that the article uses "high-quality [my emphasis] reliable sources", which is part of FA criterion 1c. You've cited Ny Svensk Vapenbok, for example, in the References section (ref. 59), and that is the source most often cited at the user-generated websites, e.g. Granqvist (Flags of the World, ref 16) uses it. So why not use it directly rather than take citations second-hand?
8. Ref 53 is a dead link.
9. Ref 57: publisher is "oxelund.se" but other municipal sites are given as "Om Goteburg" or "Stenungsunds Kommun": formatting should be consistent.
10. Ref 63: accessdate missing.
11. Ref 64 publisher is given as "Svenskakyrkan.se" but below it refs 66 and 67 say "Svenska kyrkan": again should be consistent.
12. What makes Wadbring (ref. 79) a reliable source?
13. I think the barelinks to commons should be formatted the same way as the other commons links (as interwiki link templates) or remove them and rely on one interwiki link ("Coats of arms of Sweden") right at the end in the external links section.

Re:#6: As I recall, I think someone else added a bit of info on a royal decree granting ducal rights to all landskaps, and I think I found Bergman's paper by web searching the date in question with keywords and added it as a source for the claim, then backed it up with a passage from Nordisk Familjebok (a book published 1921) with a link directly to the appropriate page in a digitized copy (see the next ref listed). I suppose we could cut Bergman loose at this point, if the ref is no good. Wilhelm Meis (Quatsch!) 15:25, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Re:#7: I'd love to go directly to Ny Svensk Vapenbok if only I could get my hands on a copy! I have not even been able to get it through ILL since moving to Okinawa. I don't want to make assumptions based on second-hand sources, per WP:SYNTH, but I have a copy of the book on order now, and I expect to have it in hand in a month or less. Wilhelm Meis (Quatsch!) 15:25, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Re:#7: I would not consider that web site to be a very reliable source for content, but if it makes any difference, the link was from a footnote, where an image of a seal was linked (in some context) to illustrate the ambiguity of Bo Jonsson's heraldic influence in Södermanland (disagreement over the extent of such influence is the topic of the footnote). I pulled the ref tags out of the footnotes just now to put things back into context. If they need to go, I guess the article could do without the footnote. Please take another look and let me know what you think. Wilhelm Meis (Quatsch!) 15:25, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Spot checks

1. Refs 16, 20, 27, 28 (Flags of the World): OK.
2. Ref 42 (Härryda kommun): I appreciate I don't speak Swedish but the website certainly didn't look to be about the exchange of a logo with a coat of arms. I presume it's a dead link?
3. Ref 48 (Arboga): I don't see the date 1974 mentioned at the source, though I do see 1969.
4. Ref 51 (Stockholm): I don't see St Olav mentioned at the source, though I do see St Erik and the date of official grant.
5. Ref 66 (Church of Sweden): OK
6. Ref 67 (Church of Sweden): Error message, looks like another dead link

Re: Ref 42 (Härryda): The linked article states:

"2006 gav kommunfullmäktige kommunstyrelsen uppdraget att ta fram förslag till ett kommunvapen. Upprinnelsen var en motion av Pehter Hill vars motiv var att kommunen, vid det tillfället, var en av endast tre kommuner som inte hade något vapen samt att ett vapen som kunde representera kommunens samtliga delar skulle ge en bättre identitet."

In brief, Pehter Hill proposed municipal arms in 2006 because Härryda was one of only three municipalities that still had no arms, and he felt municipal arms would help present a unified identity. So no, it's not a dead link, it's still a good source. Wilhelm Meis (Quatsch!) 05:01, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

Media review

1. All images checked. No problems found apart from one minor one. File:Murkrona.svg is extracted from the deleted File:Örebro coat of arms.svg: see Commons:Deletion requests/Image:Örebro coat of arms.svg. I do doubt whether the file is copyrightable, but there is a clearly free alternative (File:Murkronan, Nordisk familjebok.png) if it is problematic. I also checked the tinctures and designs of the first 16 coat of arms depicted in the article against reliable sources. I saw no problems there either. DrKiernan (talk) 17:04, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

Ref 67 was archived and can be seen at [11]. Ref 42 has been fixed (both link and date were wrong). /Lokal_Profil 12:52, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

Ref 48. The 1974 date is the PRV registration date (1974-01-11) which can be found at this page at prv.se. /Lokal_Profil 13:27, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

Comment, prose, 1a: the prose fails to engage the reader from the very first sentences:

• Swedish heraldry encompasses the heraldic achievements in modern and historic Sweden, including royal and civic arms, noble and burgher arms, ecclesiastical heraldry, heraldic displays and Swedish heraldic descriptions. Swedish heraldic style conforms to the German-Nordic heraldic tradition, noted for its multiple helmets and crests which are treated as inseparable from the shield, its repetition of colours and charges between the shield and the crest, and its scant use of heraldic furs.[1]

Two sentences that manage never to define "heraldry" while using the word eight times. This suggests the prose throughout needs independent eyes. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:53, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

• I notice overcapitalisation: "officer of arms", "Swedish army", "Swedish navy", it should be. And related items. These are not even English-language items, but translated, too.
• The Times.
• "judges and priests... while the merchants tended"—space before the ellipsis points, too.
• First random plagiarism check: "Gotland, as a free republic loosely associated with the Swedish crown, had already borne a ram with a banner (Agnus Dei) as a well-known city seal by 1280." It's on quite a few websites. Can someone check whether they are copying WP, or is it the other way around? It's sourced to a translation from the Swedish; if this is legitimate, did WP translate it, or is that translation provided next to the Swedish-language version? I'd have thought quotation marks were in order. Tony (talk) 09:28, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Thank you, Tony, for your feedback. To answer the specific question about the Gotland arms, I added that to the article. I read it here in Swedish and wrote it into the article in English (this is, after all, English WP, though most published sources on Swedish heraldry are written in Swedish). I have tried to use English sources where possible, but few English-language heraldry sources give more than cursory information on any other than British and North American heraldry, and few Swedish/Scandinavian heraldry sources are available in English. I would have thought quotation marks should be reserved for when I am directly quoting or translating the source verbatim, though here I was summing up part of what the source stated. By the way, all I see in Google hits are WP mirror sites. If you find it in that phrasing on another site that is not a mirror, I will be happy to demonstrate that they are quoting/plagiarising WP, not the other way round. Wilhelm Meis (Quatsch!) 12:01, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

• There is lot of duplicated text here [12]. Graham Colm (talk) 09:25, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

The linked page is dated 2010-10-12. Here is a diff from 2009, a full year prior, showing that our page had that text well before the "Heraldic Times" page was written. Wilhelm Meis (Quatsch!) 13:08, 19 February 2012 (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 Ucucha 21:22, 22 February 2012 [13].

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Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars

Nominator(s): Khanassassin ☪ 14:09, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

I am nominating this for featured article because... it's a GA, and has been peer reviewed. I believe it's ready for FA. :) Khanassassin ☪ 14:09, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose - Inadequate reception. Not a comprehensive overview of the critical consensus. Lacks commentary from the release of the game. Who are "Game Over Online"? Who cares about Mr Bill? Why is the GBA version such a heavy focus? And yet, you don't include a single Playstation review? You need reliable sources contemporary with the release. This means more sources like PC Gamer. I also think you have weighted the "Director's Cut" reception very heavily as opposed to the original release, you have the same amount of reviews listed in that section as the original, even though those sources do not have as much influence now with the app generation than the specialist press did then with the game's original release.

Anyone can quickly Google what we think of Broken Sword now, we can just scan the Metacritic score. What a Wikipedia should show us, is what we thought of it then. - hahnchen 15:16, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

• Sorry, but I don't think that's a reason to fail it. It can be easily fixed. --Khanassassin ☪ 15:23, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

• I'm not saying that it can't be fixed. But an article that is not comprehensive/well-researched fails the FAC process. Here's a start - the Computer Gaming World review.[14] I also have Retro Gamer's the Making of Broken Sword article, but you'll have to email me if you need it. - hahnchen 16:05, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

• • Thanks! I could surely use the making of, please! :) --Khanassassin ☪ 16:11, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

Oppose per Hahnchen. Not comprehensive. Also, relies on some questionable sources. No indication of how Game Over Online and Mr Bill meet WP:RS. --Laser brain (talk) 15:53, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

• I'm currently removing Game Over Online and Mr. Bill, and adding sources like GameSpot etc. So please, wait --Khanassassin ☪ 16:02, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

• Note: This is a WikiCup nomination. The following nominators are WikiCup participants: Khanassassin. To the nominator: if you do not intend to submit this article at the WikiCup, feel free to remove this notice. UcuchaBot (talk) 00:01, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Reluctant oppose I peer reviewed this and the comments migrated from the PR page to Khanassassin's talk page. When I was asked if the PR was done, I replied in part The language needs work and I think the plot section could be made more concise. If you get those taken care of and want me to take a second look, please ping me then diff. To my mind this meant that the artcile was not ready for FAC (as the goal of the PR was stated to be FA), although I did not say so explicitly. No edits of any kind were made to the article after I made these comments and before it was nominated at FAC. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 19:00, 20 February 2012 (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 GrahamColm 17:10, 19 February 2012 [15].

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The Hobbit

Nominator(s): De728631 (talk) 15:34, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

I am nominating this for featured article because it has received a peer-review in January 2012 and has since been edited to a level that meets the FA criteria. Strebe supports this nomination.

As to the topic, The Hobbit is the first published part of J.R.R. Tolkien's famous Middle-earth legendarium. The book is still enormously successful with translations to dozens of languages, and since it triggered the publication of The Lord of the Rings as a sequel, it is even more important. De728631 (talk) 15:45, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

Characters

• " Gandalf, an itinerant wizard introduces Bilbo to a company of thirteen dwarves. During the journey he disappears on side errands dimly hinted at, only to appear again at key moments in the story." "he" is ambiguous or even misleading and "During the journey the wizard disappears…." Or similar is needed.
  • Good point, I'm going to add the "wizard".
• men (humans); reads oddly to me and [[Man (Middle-earth)|humans]]; would be better I think.
  • We could as well leave the humans away and write [[Man (Middle-earth)|Men]] with a capital M to point out that it's the race, not the gender.
• Elrond the sage implies he may be of the race of sages - suggest "Elrond the elven sage"
  • I don't see a problem here but I'll add "elven" for clarification.
    • He is half-elven, as revealed in LotR. His race is not stated in The Hobbit and possibly was not intended to be elven. If he were of some race of sages the article would capitalize 'sage', presumably? —Strebe

Plot

• "and his band of twelve dwarves" twelve is mentioned immediately above and redundant.
  • Sure, going to remove that.
• the Lonely Mountain contains a duplicate link as does "dragon"
  • OK
• "Bilbo gets separated" surely "Bilbo becomes separated"
  • "To get separated" is correct in my opinion.
    • I agree 'get separated' is correct. –Strebe
• "who engages him in a game of riddles for the path out of the tunnels, or his demise" seems clumsy and needs to explain the reward/forfeit aspect.
  • Going to split that into two sentences: "who engages him in a game of riddles. As a reward for solving all riddles Gollum will show him the path out of the tunnels, but if Bilbo fails, his life will be forfeit."
• "The expedition travel to the Mountain" - why capital M?
  • Because it's called the Lonely Mountain. I'm going to add the full name.

Concept and creation

• I believe "George Allen & Unwin, Ltd." with a comma before Ltd is a US convention.
  • You're right, we should use the British convention without a comma.
    • The correct form is what is given by AU themselves: without comma. –Strebe
• "paper rationing brought on by wartime conditions and not ending until 1949" reads oddly to me. Perhaps "paper rationing brought on by wartime conditions that did not end until 1949"
  • Hmm, I think you're the first one to complain about that. Even the peer-reviewer didn't mind the sentence.
• "unavailable in this period" → unavailable during this period?
  • That's better.
• "In December 1937, The Hobbit's publisher, Stanley Unwin". Surely "In December 1937, The Hobbit's English publisher, Stanley Unwin" as he already had a US one by then too.
  • Do we really need to disambiguate that? It's clear from the name of the publishing house Allen & Unwin that Stanley Unwin was associated with the UK part.
    • Also, the US publisher was by arrangement with AU, not independently. –Strebe
• "Tolkien subsequently began work on 'The New Hobbit' " I don't think the single quote marks conform to MOS.
  • You're right, this should be a working title in italics.
• "better to its sequel" does not read well.
  • How about "attempting to adjust the tone of The Hobbit to its sequel?"
• "These small edits included, for example, changing the phrase elves that are now called Gnomes.." Why the italics?
  • Good question, those should be normal quotes per MOS.
• "published with commentary on the creation" might be better as "published including commentary on the creation"
  • No, because it refers to these two specific editions with a commentary inside. "... two editions of The Hobbit have been published including commentary on the creation" might be mistaken for an arbitrary number of standalone commentaries.
• "Micheal D. C. Drout and Hilary Wynn comment the work provides a solid foundation for further criticism" is missing "that" after "comment" although I wonder about the relevance of this sentence - it seems like faint praise.
  • The only thing to fix here in my opinion is Michael Drout's given name and in fact the "that".

Illustration and design

• "Tolkien's correspondence and publisher's records show that Tolkien" → "Tolkien's correspondence and publisher's records show that he"
  • Good.
• "Satisfied with his skills, the publishers thence asked" - typo.
  • Do you mean "thence"? That's a valid word meaning "therefore".
• "The original jacket design contained several shades of several colours" better as "The original jacket design contained several shades of various colours"
  • Good one.

Genre

• "While Tolkien claimed later" - odd word order
  • Going to swap that: "While Tolkien later claimed".
• "to dislike the aspect of the narrative voice addressing the reader directly, the narrative voice contributes significantly to the success of the novel" - two "narrative voice" in one sentence
  • Going to change that to "...it contributes significantly...".
• "that is accepted into mainstream" → that has been accepted into mainstream
  • Good point.

Style

• "from the poem Völuspá from the Poetic Edda" is slightly clumsy.
  • "...of the Poetic Edda" should be better.

Critical analysis

• "The evolution and maturation of the protagonist, Bilbo Baggins, is central to the story. This journey of maturation, where Bilbo gains a clear sense of identity and confidence in the outside world, may be seen as a Bildungsroman rather than a traditional quest." This has already been referred to above and at the very least contains a duplicate link.
  • This has all been mentioned before in parts. But there is however the section where themes are analysed and thus it is vital to recall what the whole book is about. The link to "Bildungsroman" will be removed though.
• Ancrene Wisse should be italicized.
  • OK
• "...The first men to talk of 'trees and stars' saw things very differently. To them, the world was alive with mythological beings... To them the whole of creation was "myth-woven and elf-patterned".' Has a confused use of apostrophes.
  • Good catch, going to fix that.

Reception

• CS Lewis has a dup link.
  • OK

Legacy

• This tension can help introduce readers to 'readerly' and 'writerly' interpretations" & 'small folk' etc - see above re MOS
  • OK. Per MOS single words and terms may be italicized for emphasis.
• "as related by Deitch himself" what is this intended to convey?
  • That is to convey that it was Deitch who came up with this news last month and so far there has been no statement from related parties like the Tolkien Trust. I think it's important to point out that the news about his film is based on self-published claims.
• "(four total hours)" surely "(four hours in total)" or similar.
  • Going to change that.
• "Likewise, it can be seen that the game is not" is rather clumsy.
  • "Likewise, it can be seen that the game is not attempting to re-tell the story..." makes sense to me and doesn't look clumsy either.
    • Too many words to say too little. Passive. Unnecessary present progressive. Redundancies with preceding sentence. Spurious dashes. I’ll fix. Thanks. –Strebe

Please excuse these quibbles. This is good work and I think you will get there. I also have a question. I know the book itself but have not read much formal criticism of it. In my mind Bilbo was something of an autobiographical figure (a respectable, conservative hobbit) taking his children/the dwarves on a moral journey and it was mildly surprising not to see mention of the idea - but what do I know? I presume it is not mentioned (or treated as significant if mentioned) in the sources. Ben MacDui 17:46, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks a lot for your input (see my comments above for details). As to Bilbo being an autobiographical part, Tolkien has once compared himself to a Hobbit, "I am in fact a hobbit in all but size", but you're right in that this hasn't been taken too serious by a lot of sources. In fact I could only find a single book on Google scholar that jumped on it. De728631 (talk) 14:25, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

The changes explained in detail above have been implemented. Some items have however been removed by other editors as the article evolves. De728631 (talk) 19:11, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

Just a random look shows that some careful sifting is required to polish the prose throughout:

• Unsure why "English" and "UK" are linked, in the infobox.
  • Probably because we have articles on the English language and the United Kingdom which may be linked per the manual of Template:Infobox book ("Wikilinks can be used in any of the infobox fields").
    • We have articles on "the" and "a", too. But we do not link those items. Please remove the links from the inbofox.
      • Done.
• "Subsequent editions in English were published in 1951, 1966, 1978 and 1995. The novel has been reprinted frequently by many publishers.[21] In addition, The Hobbit has been translated into over forty languages, some of them more than once.[22]". Probably remove "In addition" as a needless additive connector. "them" backrefers to something unclear, although we can work out that the noun would be "translations". "into over" might be more stylish as "into more than" (if the next bit no longer requires "more than" ... BTW, were there more than two translations into any language?
  • While I didn't write the sentence it's clear to me that "them" refers to "languages". And see Translations of The Hobbit, there are three different German translations, four translations to Polish and even six to Russian.
    • The referent is unclear: it's a grammatical problem. Tony (talk) 15:43, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
      • I've changed that to "The Hobbit has been translated into over forty languages, with more than one published version for some languages." De728631 (talk) 17:36, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
• "a course that would not only change the context of the original story, but also lead to substantial changes to the character of Gollum." You could lose most of the alsos, including this one.
• "in order to " is almost always better as "to". And there are lots of ins hanging around: "In the second edition edits, in order to reflect the new concept of"
  • Ok, those can be trimmed.
• MoS says US, not USA.
  • I'm going to change that.
• "He abandoned the new revision at chapter three after he received criticism that it "just wasn't The Hobbit","
  • Ok, that can be left out.
• "After an unauthorized paperback edition of The Lord of the Rings appeared from Ace Books in 1965, Houghton Mifflin and Ballantine requested Tolkien to refresh the text of The Hobbit in order to renew USA copyright". So it's the old-fashioned BrEng zed? An edition appeared from a publisher ... is this right? They requested someone to refresh? Again, "in order to" is an urchin. US. Is it the US copyright"? (I'm unsure of the context.) Tony (talk) 11:22, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
  • It is of course "the US copyright" that was to be renewed, going to fix that. And yes, this article, like all Tolkien-related articles, uses British English with Oxford spelling (suffix -ize rather than -ise), see talk page template. And I'd say Tolkien was asked to refresh the text.

Comment Oppose

• I've only taken a quick look here and would like to do a full review, but not sure I'll have time. I'm a little worried about the sources - I'm happy to see Carpenter, Zipes, Anderson, and St. Clair, less happy to see various links to lesson plans and such, so will be taking a closer look. Do you by chance have access to any scholarly sources that are available behind paywalls? If not, let me know. I can check a few places. Thanks. Truthkeeper (talk) 20:45, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

• Sorry, but I've run into a problem. I have Jack Zipes at hand. This sentence from the article is word-for-word the same as the source, right down to the dash: However, Bilbo "Baggins is not the usual fairy tale protagonist—not the handsome eldest son or beautiful youngest daughter—but a plump, middle-aged, well-to-do Hobbit." (I've removed this from the text, by the way).
• This sentence: "Also printed here are a number of hard-to-find texts such as the 1923 version of Tolkien's poem "Iumonna Gold Galdre Bewunden" in the article is written in the source [16] as "Anderson also provides "a number of difficult-to-find texts (such as the 1923 version of Tolkiens poem Iumonna Gold Galdre Bewunden" -- which is quite close paraphrasing.
  • I have changed that to "The edition also presents a number of little-known texts such as the 1923 version of Tolkien's poem 'Iumonna Gold Galdre Bewunden". De728631 (talk) 13:39, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

• I'm sorry, but it's still too close. Truthkeeper (talk) 14:52, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

• This is enough for me to have to oppose. Truthkeeper (talk) 21:58, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
  • All those points above can be addressed and fixed so I don't see any reason to oppose the nomination, even more since you have already copyedited the article yourself. And what irks me in particular is that there has been a peer-review last month where such objections should have been raised much earlier. De728631 (talk) 13:39, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
• This book by Zipes: Zipes, Jack David (1979). Breaking the Magic Spell: Radical Theories of Folk and Fairy Tales. University Press of Kentucky. p. 173. ISBN 0813190304, is not a teaching guide but a scholarly work and probably shouldn't be characterized as a teaching guide. Truthkeeper (talk) 21:20, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
  • That source is nowhere directly characterized as a teaching guide. Teaching guides "and books of study" are treated in the paragraph above. Zipe's Breaking the Magic Spell is mentioned in connection with classroom literature though which is a valid argument when it comes to scholarly literature. De728631 (talk) 13:39, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

• In the article it mentions it as a teaching guide in this sentence: "Another approach to critique taken in the classroom has been to propose" which is cited to the book and placed in the education section. As a reader, it seems to me that we're suggesting this is how The Hobbit is taught in classroom, ie. teaching guide. Truthkeeper (talk) 14:52, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

• One more point: generally The Hobbit is considered by all children's literature scholars to be in the genre of fantasy. In my view this article isn't quite clear enough on that point. Truthkeeper (talk) 21:26, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Quote from the article: "The book is popularly called (and often marketed as) a fantasy novel, but like Peter Pan and Wendy by J. M. Barrie and The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald, both of which influenced Tolkien and contain fantasy elements, it is primarily identified as being children's literature. The two genres are not mutually exclusive, so some definitions of high fantasy include works for children by authors such as L. Frank Baum and Lloyd Alexander alongside the works of Gene Wolfe and Jonathan Swift, which are more often considered adult literature. Sullivan credits the first publication of The Hobbit as an important step in the development of high fantasy, and further credits the 1960s paperback debuts of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings as essential to the creation of a mass market for fiction of this kind as well the fantasy genre's current status.[58]" De728631 (talk) 13:39, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

• The genre section mentions fantasy in the third paragraph. Of course it depends entirely on the sources, which is why we need to be comprehensive in our sourcing, but the sources regarding children's literature I have at hand, places it in the genre of fantasy. At the least I think more sources should be surveyed and the section restructured a bit. Regarding the passage that was verbatim from the source and the close-paraphrasing: my policy is to oppose if I find such issues, and clearly to remove a verbatim section. As I had the source at hand it was easier than usual. Here's the problem - I surveyed, at random, about 5 sources. I found one that used a verbatim sentence, one that used a very close paraphrase, one that didn't quite adequately present what was in the source and for two I was unable to verify the cited material (though those were google book snippet views, always problematic.) Given these results, I think the page needs a top to bottom source check, which is time consuming. That's what my oppose is based on. Truthkeeper (talk) 13:48, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

If you have sources that classify The Hobbit as fantasy please add them to the article. De728631 (talk) 13:57, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

• I'm really not editing much these days, which is the reason I'm reviewing. The Riverside Anthology of Children's Literature places it in fantasy, and that's a fairly important text. Aside from that though, I'm not entirely convinced this page is comprehensive. A topic such as this, an important book about which much has been written, presents difficulties regarding comprehensiveness. Some works are repetitive and others derivative, but it's important that all points-of-view have been presented. To be honest, I haven't read the entire page because of the spot-check results, but I will see what I can find regarding sources and post to the article talk page. Won't happen immediately though. Truthkeeper (talk) 14:34, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

• I have edited the "Genre" section by adding more, recent sources for the "children's literature" claim, some of which also stress out that there is sometimes no disctinction between either genre ("the most popular of all twentieth-century fantasies written for children"). And for the opposite view there's now Jane Chance who says that the book is only theoretically a children's novel. The Riverside Anthology of Children's Literature is just one source though and fairly old at that (1985) so I wouldn't be too confident in that book alone. And even if they place The Hobbit into the fantasy bin, it is an anthology of children's literature first of all, judging from the title. It seems to me that the Anthology is just another case for the "ambiguous genre" sources. De728631 (talk) 15:29, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

• In this edit the following was added: "although [Tolkien] said later that the book was not specifically written for children but had rather been created out of his passion for epic legends and mythologies." The source says: "In his letters he writes that he did not know why he wrote it bu that the story was derived from his passion for epic, heroic legend, mythology and fairy stories"'. Unfortunately it's another case of close paraphrasing.

• I disagree. While it may look like paraphrasing the sentences are clearly different and it's in the nature of the terms that the phrases look similar. I chose to write it that way to avoid yet another quote in that section. However, I've now changed it to "created out of his interest in mythologies and epic legends." De728631 (talk) 16:01, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

• Post edit conflict - re genre it's important to follow what the sources say. The editors of the Riverside Anthology are respectable and well-known scholars of children's literature so a source like that is worthy of consideration and shouldn't be summarily dismissed until fully inspected, imo. As editors we can't decide; we need to let the sources lead us. Truthkeeper (talk) 15:37, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

• The question is though, why does the Anthology say that The Hobbit is a work of Fantasy if it is meant to be a collection of children's literature? I don't dismiss the source but I find it ambiguous to derive a final statement "TH is Fantasy" from it. As I said above, even they write that The Hobbit is a work of Fantasy that doesn't dismiss the fact that it was adopted into an anthology of children's literature. De728631 (talk) 16:01, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

• In the same way that Alice in Wonderland and many other works in children's lit are fantasy. Children's lit and fantasy are not mutually exclusive; what concerns me is that doesn't seem to be clear. Anyway, this discussion needs to move to the talk page. I'd be happy to help with this page when I have time, but first it needs a top to bottom source check. Truthkeeper (talk) 16:12, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
• Discussion moved to article talk page. Truthkeeper (talk) 23:25, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

• One more comment on possibly close paraphrasing: per WP:PARAPHRASE it is acceptable to closely paraphrase original text "when there are only a limited number of ways to say the same thing." This seems to apply here for some sources because those texts are already on a professional level where you can't condense the information any further, and using only quotings from any source text is also bad writing style. But I'm going to try and edit those case where something can actually be done. De728631 (talk) 18:43, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Closing comment - I think this nomination would benefit from being archived at this stage and brought back to FAC when all issues have been resolved. After 15 days, there is no consensus to promote. And there has been little activity on the article this week. Graham Colm (talk) 17:08, 19 February 2012 (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 GrahamColm 22:58, 15 February 2012 [17].

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The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

Nominator(s): SCB '92 (talk) 21:01, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

I am nominating this for featured article because...I've done so much work on it in the past 4 months to make sure it meets the criteria this time-SCB '92 (talk) 21:01, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

Comments. The toolbox gives the wrong edit count; this is the article history. - Dank (push to talk) 21:09, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

Source review - spotchecks not done. Nikkimaria (talk) 00:08, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

• FN 7: can this be split? That's a huge page range for verification pursposes
  • It's all for the system requirements
• What makes this a high-quality reliable source? This? This? This? This? This? This? This?
  • They're notable-SCB '92 (talk) 11:30, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
    • I disagree. I've never heard of any of them, and I spend even more time with video games than I do with Wikipedia (as if that were possible). That however, is a poor argument. A stronger argument is that none of those sites are built into the video game reviews template, and none have their own articles. It shouldn't be hard to find replacements from more notable sites, considering that this game was heavily, heavily covered. Sven Manguard Wha? 11:54, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
    • Also, even if they are notable that doesn't matter - notability does not equal reliability. Nikkimaria (talk) 14:19, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
      • Firing squad is a gaming site started by Dennis Fong. A rationale for its reliability is at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Midtown Madness in the collapsed section titled "Issues resolved, Ealdgyth".
        The VG project considers Square Enix Music Online is a situational source, in that only content posted by the site's staff is considered reliable. Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Final Fantasy XIII/archive2. I'd say that the reliability here depends on what the source is being used for.
        I wouldn't consider the others reliable, and also recommend that replacement sources be found or the content removed. (Guyinblack25 ^talk 14:31, 18 November 2011 (UTC))
• FN 23: formatting
  • Done-SCB '92 (talk) 11:30, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
• BethBlog or Beth Blog? Check for consistency. Nikkimaria (talk) 00:08, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
  • Done, it was actually Bethesda Blog-SCB '92 (talk) 11:30, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

• Image review - Nothing has changed since my last image review, so this is still good.
  
• Comments A few things I'd change:
  • "Seven skills are selected early in the game as major skills, with the remainder termed minor." - this statement, while correct as is, should specify that there is a difference between major and minor skills, or failing that, be removed from the lead. Consider "Seven skills are selected early in the game as major skills, which improve quickly, with the remainder termed minor." or something else along those lines.
    • Done-SCB '92 (talk) 11:30, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
  • "praised for its impressive graphics at the time" in the lead - I would consider removing "at the time", as it's automatically implied. We don't dis on Halo 1 because Halo 3 had better graphics.
    • Done-SCB '92 (talk) 16:42, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
  • "Jauffre tells the player that the only way to close the gates permanently is to find someone of the royal bloodline to retake the throne and relight the Dragonfires in the Imperial City." - it needs to me mentioned that the Amulet of Kings is used to light the Dragonfires, thus implicitly informing readers unfamiliar with the game that the amulet is more than a MacGuffin.
    • Done-SCB '92 (talk) 17:22, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
  • Same section (generally) as the above quote, consider mentioning that Jauffre is the grand master of the Blades.
    • DoneSCB '92 (talk) 17:22, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
  • "Oblivion features dynamic weather and time, shifting between snow, rain, fog, and sunny and overcast skies, along with the darkening red sky near Oblivion portals." - the second half of the quote, after 'skies' is awkward, mostly because the way it is worded, it assumes that people would have already know about that feature.
    • Removed-SCB '92 (talk) 17:30, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
  • "Wherever this was not possible, the screen displays a message stating "You cannot go that way, turn back". However, the team still built in viewable landscape several miles in." - the second half of the quote, starting with 'However' is awkwardly worded. Consider replacing "in" with "past the point in which the character can no longer proceed", or something less wordy than that but which conveys the same information.
    • Done-SCB '92 (talk) 17:40, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
  • "Soule had worked with Bethesda and Todd Howard back during the creation of Morrowind,..." - this sounds unprofessional. Consider removing the word "back"; I think that's all that's needed as the article has previously established that Morrowind came right before this game in the TES chronology.
    • Done-SCB '92 (talk) 18:21, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
  • "he soundtrack was generally positively received, with GSoundtracks awarding it 4/5 stars, calling it a "conventional but atmospheric fantasy score",[64] and Square Enix Music a 6/10, criticizing its "monotonous action tracks"." - Here we have a positive review and a mediocre review connected by an 'and'. I don't feel that structure works well. Consider using a 'however' or 'but' type connector (which will necessitate a bit of tweaking to at least the second sentence.
    • Done-SCB '92 (talk) 18:24, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
  • Most of the stuff in the "Further Reading" is either a) already entirely covered by the article, b) rendered incorrect by the article, or c) a boring stub written by someone know one's ever heard of about something no one really cares about. My recommendations: remove the 3rd, 7th, and 8th items on the list. The third is behind a freewall, and isn't worth getting an account for, and the 7th and 8th are kinda useless. Also, consider axing the whole section.
    • And done-SCB '92 (talk) 18:36, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
  • That's it. In the future, please remember that the audience hasn't necessarily played the game you're writing about, you can't make leaps of inferrance that assume that they know the game. Sven Manguard Wha? 16:35, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

Media comments: I think these issues need addressing

• 5 non-free media is a lot to me (File:Oblivion—Horse Armor.jpg seems like it offers least to the article).
  • removed-SCB '92 (talk) 19:20, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
• I think resizing them smaller would be more prudent for fair-use.
  • done-SCB '92 (talk) 19:20, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
    • By resize, I meant reduce the size of the uploaded files, rather than the displayed size in the article (Personally, I rarely adjust the size in articles because the default works best). I think 460×345 is a little too big for fair use. If you don't have the software to do this, you can tag the image with {{Non-free reduce|type=screen}} for a bot to take care of it in a week or so. (Guyinblack25 ^talk 19:48, 18 November 2011 (UTC))
      • (edit conflict) Put them back to the size they were before please. There are numerous reasons to have them in the standard thumbnail size (primarily because at the smaller size, you can see so little that the images are essentially useless). If you happen to be talking about the dimensions of the images themselves, as the person that did the resizings, I can tell you that they are the right size; they're under the limit by 43,100 pixels. Sven Manguard Wha? 20:01, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
        • Undone; so I guess guyinblack's comment "I think resizing them smaller would be more prudent for fair-use" is contradicted by Sven Manguard?-SCB '92 (talk) 20:27, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

A very technical debate over file sizes and other related file issues. Long story short, the horse armor image and the sound file were removed, and both media reviewers are grudgingly content with the comprimise. Sven Manguard Wha? 05:08, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Yes, we are in disagreement over the dimensions of the file. But in agreement on the display size within the article. The general limit I'm assuming is .1 megapixel, which is 100,000 pixels. But 460×345 is over that by 58,700 pixels. Both can be reduced further without significant loss of quality and identification. The image with the menu has a stronger argument for a larger size because of the text, but even then the text can be listed in the description of the file page like File:MarbleMadness-diagrams.jpg. (Guyinblack25 talk 21:05, 18 November 2011 (UTC)) The limit is 160,000 pixels, what you would get if you had a 400x400 square image. It's done by pixels, however, because as this image illustrates, not all files are square. If you don't believe me, use the reduce template. DASHBot will remove the template without resizing the image, because it's already of an appropriate size, (i.e. under 160,000 pixels. Then we have conflicting information. I get mine from Wikipedia:Non-free content#Image resolution. Where did you get yours from? Also, DASHBot was approved for smaller resizing. I'm not sure when or why that has changed? (Guyinblack25 talk 11:53, 19 November 2011 (UTC)) I'm not sure when it was changed, or where, but I've been doing file work on a nearly daily basis, and in that year it's always been 160,000 pixels. The 160,000 pixel guideline is the one stated at at the top of the resize category, and is the number that the manual tool used before DASHBot came into service. I've done hundreds of resizes, on one's ever brought up 400x400 as being too large. Sven Manguard Wha? 13:27, 19 November 2011 (UTC) Given the circumstances, I won't pursue this further. I still recommend reduction though. (Guyinblack25 talk 16:42, 21 November 2011 (UTC)) File:Standard inventory interface, Oblivion 2006-12-27.jpg needs an updated description to reflect the resize. Sven Manguard Wha? done (I think)-SCB '92 (talk) 19:29, 18 November 2011 (UTC) File:Reign of the Septims.ogg is a 30 second sample of a two minute song. Per Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Music samples, the sample should be 10% of the length with a maximum of 30 seconds. So this one should be around 11 seconds. The FUR is very sparse for FA too. Um... I do not... really know... what/how to do...-SCB '92 (talk) 19:29, 18 November 2011 (UTC) Typically, the file needs to be shortened in a audio/video program. If you don't have access to this or know another editor that does, you can tag the file with {{Non-free reduce|type=audio}} and someone (or a bot) will come along to take care of it. (Guyinblack25 talk 19:48, 18 November 2011 (UTC)) (edit conflict) Yes, that is in fact what the MoS says, however this is a textbook case of 'when to throw the MoS out the window'. A 10 second sample is useless, and there is no good reason to cling to the 10% rule when it makes the file so short as to remove any value from it. Sven Manguard Wha? 20:01, 18 November 2011 (UTC) DAHSBot cannot resize non-image files. There are only a small number of people that handle the sound file reductions, and I happen to be one of them, however for the reasons I discussed above, I don't intend on doing it for this case. Sven Manguard Wha? 20:06, 18 November 2011 (UTC) So what should be done then? leave it as it is or remove the audio sample altogether?-SCB '92 (talk) 20:28, 18 November 2011 (UTC) I recommend shortening the file or removal, but Sven and I are still discussing how guidelines apply. File:Kingdom Hearts - Dearly Beloved.ogg is 7 seconds and gets the job done. I think the portion from 14 to 25 seconds is a good sample (a sample by definition provides a limited amount). Applying guidelines stringently is part of the FAC process to identify Wikipedia's best. Unfortunately, it is especially difficult when dealing with non-free media. (Guyinblack25 talk 21:05, 18 November 2011 (UTC)) I certainly would be opposed to removal. The fact of the matter is that Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Music samples wasn't written by file workers or NFCC experts, as far as I can tell. It's an irrational restriction, one that's not used by any other website (iTunes has a 1:30 second preview for a 4:00 song, and I've never seen a preview less than 30 seconds). Ultimately, the 10% restriction, which is in a guideline, is more restrictive than the NFCC, which is policy. In cases where guidelines hamper the encyclopedia, IAR comes in. I feel that this is one such case. Sven Manguard Wha? 05:04, 19 November 2011 (UTC) What iTunes does with its previews is between itself and the copyright owners of the music. The site is trying to sell music, while Wikipedia is trying to educate via a free encyclopedia. To that end, Wikipedia needs to be restrictive in its use of non-free content. To try to move this forward, what do you believe is gained from the 30 sec clip as opposed to the 11 sec one I suggested, and how does that benefit the reader? (Guyinblack25 talk 11:53, 19 November 2011 (UTC)) I suppose then that it's a matter of opinion. I don't think you can get an understanding of a piece of music in ten seconds. You have the MoS on your side. I tend to view the MoS's section on files (which is outdated and was not written by people who actually work in files) as good for little more than kindling, and have already invoked IAR in this case. There is no way to proceed unless one of us drops the issue, an RfC is held, or an FA delegate make a decision him or herself tell us to cut it out. Sven Manguard Wha? 13:27, 19 November 2011 (UTC) Sven- Having worked in files myself, I have to say that the MOS is not impossible to work within. The key to working within the guideline is picking media that offers the most bang for the buck. Unfortunately, most media upload for video game articles is rather old was probably selected arbitrarily. That being said, it might be worth switching out the current file with something that is selected to provide the most information, rather than working with something that is not the most representative piece. Otherwise, a rationale should be provided as to why a 30 second sample is needed. (Guyinblack25 talk 16:42, 21 November 2011 (UTC)) Not a deal breaker, but using {{Non-free use rationale}} would nice. It's more professional looking than a simple bulleted list. (Guyinblack25 talk 17:25, 18 November 2011 (UTC)) No offense, but I've already done a media review for this article, twice actually. I've never seen an article get two media reviews in one nomination before. Sven Manguard Wha? 20:01, 18 November 2011 (UTC) I know. But the prose and citations get multiple reviews from different editors, why not media? The large number of non-free media made me take a closer look. (Guyinblack25 talk 21:05, 18 November 2011 (UTC)) Five is nothing compared to some of the things I've seen. We have a few articles with non-free images in the triple digits. Yes, it's sad, but true. Sven Manguard Wha? 13:29, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Leaning toward support—I reviewed this article during the PR and I believe that most of my concerns were addressed. It seems to be in good shape overall, and it stands up fairly well to a direct comparison with the The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind article. However, there are a few elements of the latter that should perhaps be covered in the former. For example, the Morrowind article describes how skills are improved, whereas Oblivion does not. The primary editor may want to compare the two and see how the Oblivion article may be improved. Otherwise, I think this article is FA worthy. Regards, RJH (talk) 18:46, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

Note that the GameBanshee and GamesFirst articles are transcripts of an interview; I think I saw somewhere in Wikipedia (might be a GAR) where a YouTube video (unreliable source) was used as a reference and it was okay because it was a recording of an interview-SCB '92 (talk) 20:22, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

• Article is pretty good, but I have a gripe with the reviews box in the Reception section. I assume someone mentioned this before in a previous nomination. It's a really big box. I support the usage of the template when used sparingly, when scores are only included when mentioned in the text, etc. but this box is really wide. For people with smaller screens than your typical 21", it's gonna take up half the article width (which it does for me; even though I have a large screen, I shrink the article width to a readable size). I assume that the three system scores for GameSpot are on one line so that the box isn't too long, but if the Awards were removed, then it would be a more manageable size. Gary King (talk · scripts) 20:48, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
  • So just to be clear, do you want the reviews box changed to a different template, eg the VG Reviews one?-SCB '92 (talk) 21:00, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
    • Don't remove the awards, all of the award winning articles I've seen have had the lists of awards. You can, however, add the collapse functionality (where the word "[hide]" appears) to the template, which I see as a good compromise between retaining the information and making the article as readable as possible. Sven Manguard Wha? 05:04, 19 November 2011 (UTC)
      • SCB- switching to {{Video game reviews}} would provide the hide function that Sven is talking about. (Guyinblack25 ^talk 11:53, 19 November 2011 (UTC))
        • done-SCB '92 (talk) 14:54, 19 November 2011 (UTC)
          • Thanks, looks much better, in both small- and large-width browsers. Gary King (talk · scripts) 18:11, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

I saw GameBanshee being used twice as a reference in the BioShock article, which is an FA; why shouldn't this article use it as a reference?-SCB '92 (talk) 15:13, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Not the best argument to use a reference. Standards were different, doesn't look like much of a source check was done, etc. The interview does look really useful, though. And if it's owned by UGO, then that's a plus... Gary King (talk · scripts) 18:16, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

So do you think GameBanshee should be kept as a source, along with GamesFirst, as the articles are exclusive interviews with Bethesda Softworks' producer Gavin Carter; and also, do you currently support or oppose the article to become an FA-SCB '92 (talk) 19:23, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Seems like a reasonable source to use, I guess, but WP:RS is not really my field, especially here at FAC. And you can't really pressure me to vote one way or the other; I'll do so if and when I do a thorough review. Others will do so when they feel like they're satisfied with their assessment of the article. Gary King (talk · scripts) 02:42, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Update: So I think the references to GameBanshee, Game Chronicles and GamesFirst should stay because they are exclusive interviews with Gavin Carter; there's an argument about the audio sample—though I think it's easier to remove it altogether—and there's also an argument about the size of the uploaded images; I'm also trying to find a source to replace TweakGuides.com-SCB '92 (talk) 12:34, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Continuation of the collapsed discussion above. Sven Manguard Wha? 05:08, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

You don't really need to post updates, although I don't see how it could hurt either. As for the images and the sound, at this point, you don't have to do anything. On your end, all the files are fine, and it won't effect this article's passing or not passing. When Guyinblack25 and I settle our disagreement, any changes that would me made would be made directly to the file(s), and wouldn't involve editing the article itself. Don't lose sleep over this, and don't let this distract you from any other concerns that might get raised. Sven Manguard Wha? 13:09, 20 November 2011 (UTC) I know that; I'm just wondering where to go from here, as I have basically addressed all of the issues discussed so far; I'm just waiting for more comments for suggestions to improve this article further, if needed, otherwise a consensus in its current state-SCB '92 (talk) 15:03, 20 November 2011 (UTC) Sven, I'm sorry but that is not the case. FAC is a package deal that covers the files used in the article (criteria 3 at Wikipedia:Featured article criteria). Nominators must be prepared to address concerns brought up either by defending the decision, correcting it themselves, or getting someone else to correct it. While there are plenty of other articles with more than 5 non-free media, four such files in a video game article at FAC is beyond the norm and sufficient reason should be given for inclusion. I hate to be the bad guy here, but something needs to be done to address my media concerns. Otherwise, I will have little choice but to oppose the article. Whether my concern has any merit will then be up to FAC delegate. That being said, I will help with shortening the audio file if that is the route you want to take. (Guyinblack25 talk 16:42, 21 November 2011 (UTC)) Well Sven must be too busy to reply, but it'll be good if you can help shorten the audio file so to hear the portion from 14 to 25 seconds-SCB '92 (talk) 10:59, 27 November 2011 (UTC) I wasn't too busy, I just didn't see the message from the 21st come across my watchlist. As for my comment about SCB not having to worry about anything I was saying that you and I would work something out and make any needed changes. Now I don't consider you enforcing your opinion with the threat of an oppose vote to be you being the bad guy, but I do think that making any further reductions will harm the article, and therefore I will make a counter threat. You'll oppose if reductions aren't made, and I'll oppose if reductions are made. We're stuck again. Shall we ask SandyGeorgia to settle this? Sven Manguard Wha? 13:39, 27 November 2011 (UTC) Sven- Just to clarify, that was not a threat. I'm simply doing my due diligence as a reviewer. Regardless, our discussion appeared to reach an impasse, and no conclusion would not help the article pass the nomination. If SCB would like the file reduced, you are more than welcome to oppose based on reduced media quality. However, I must say that I would not be worried about such opposition at FAC of mine because media are not required for an FA and non-free media should adhere to non-free content guidelines. If you'd like to get Sandy's input, you are also welcome to do so. But I believe that she will ask you the same questions I asked: Why does the clip need to be 30 seconds? What does the reader gain from the 30 second clip? If neither you or SCB can provide an answer, then I think that one of the following actions should be taken: Reduce the length of the clip Replace the clip with another one from a longer song that is as (or more) representative of the game's music Remove the media from the article I will help reduce the file length if that is the route chosen. (Guyinblack25 talk 15:05, 28 November 2011 (UTC)) Screw it, let's just remove the piece. I fumbled around with trying to reduce it before, and I can get no 10 second clip that's representative of the piece. I'd rather have no file than a file that's misrepresentative of the whole. As for why it's needed, I think it gives the reader a sense of the music of the game. Mind you, it's the music of the opening scene, not the background music for the real gameplay, so one the one hand it's an iconic scene, but on the other hand, its EV isn't especially high. I dislike doing this, because I do believe that the article is better off with the file, but we might as well get rid of it, if you're not going to budge on the issue. Sven Manguard Wha? 16:41, 28 November 2011 (UTC) As a short term solution, removal sounds like a good idea. But if there is a more representative piece, then I think it should be pursued. If not now, then sometime in the future. (Guyinblack25 talk 16:56, 28 November 2011 (UTC)) I also thought removing it would be a good idea; so it is decided to remove the audio file, so I'll remove it; I just need to wait for more users to review this article and discuss it-SCB '92 (talk) 18:54, 28 November 2011 (UTC) The reviews generally start to come in when the nomination hits the "Older nominations" section. Sven Manguard Wha? 03:33, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Support - contingent on no more file related changes being made. My prose concerns have been addressed. Sven Manguard Wha? 05:09, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

• • Struck support post closure due to concerns from Laser brain

• Support Comments - reading through now and will make straightforward changes as I go. Will jot queries below as I go. Casliber (talk · contribs) 00:51, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

...was released in September 2007 for Windows PCs, the Xbox 360, and the PlayStation 3, PCs is plural yet next two are singular. Best to keep all singular (unless I am missing something?)

...The game had shipped 1.7 million copies by April 2006, and sold over three million copies by January 2007 _ I think I'd change the "three" to a "3" to conform with previous number.

Overall, in pretty good shape prose and comprehensiveness-wise. Very nearly over the line. Not seeing any deal-breakers prose-wise though have a seanking suspicion some more massaging of prose would be good. I'll scour it again to see if I can see anything else actionable and will support if I don't Casliber (talk · contribs) 04:34, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Support A good read. I especially enjoyed the development section and the balanced views in the reception section. I made a few edits but other than that I think the article meets the Featured Article criteria. Tango16 (talk) 15:55, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

Comments: I'll wait to support/oppose, as I'm still reading though the article. In the meantime, here are issues that stood out to me. There are some prose issues that I think are problematic.

• Infobox
  • I recommend alphabetizing the platforms.
  • There seems to be a lot of detail in here for something that is suppose to summarize. I think the following info should be removed.
    • First person and third person views (The documentation at Template:Infobox video game states that such info is not intended to be here).
    • DVD-DL adds little here and is better explained in the development section. The layman is largely ignorant to the difference between single and dual layer DVDs.
• Lead
  • Some sentences look almost copy and pasted from content in the article. I recommend using more of a summary style while mixing in appropriate synonyms.
  • The sentences is awkward: "A PlayStation 3 (PS3) release was shipped..." I would switch out "release" with "version" or something similar. "Release" and "shipped" sound redundant. Also, I don't believe "was" is needed.
  • The fourth sentence in the second paragraph is long and the comma usage can create confusion. I recommend either splitting it up or mixing in different punctuation like parenthesis or a semicolon.
  • The second to last sentence of the fourth paragraph has a similar problem.
  • I don't think the layman will understand what "fully voiced dialog" means. Perhaps a different wording?
• Gameplay
  • This section (mostly the second paragraph) seems to go into more detail than is necessary and borders on game guide content. I suggest trimming and summarizing more.
  • This section switches between "players" and "player". I think that one should be used for consistency's sake. Also, I see "their" used with the singular "player", which I believe is frowned upon. Don't know for certain though.
  • What does "they" refer to in this sentence "Each time the player improves their major skills by a total of ten points, they level up", the player or the skills?
• Plot
  • There were a few instances of "their" used as singular pronoun. See above points.
• Development
  • I think the first paragraph would flow better if the third and fourth sentence started the paragraph.

I'll post more comments once I get further through the article. (Guyinblack25 ^talk 05:27, 25 December 2011 (UTC))

Here are more comments. I've also made some copy edits to fix some minor issues that stood out to me.

• Game world
  • I would explain the user interface some in the screenshot.
  • I think that this section requires some technical knowledge to full understand it, and I think some context and rewording would benefit the layman. Some examples are below; more are in the article though.
    • This phrase may need some context: "a shift of graphical focus from water to flora".
    • I'd wikilink Lich and Skeleton (undead).
      • done-SCB '92 (talk) 16:53, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
    • Maybe wikilink view distance to Draw distance.
      • done-SCB '92 (talk) 16:53, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
    • This phrase doesn't make sense: "Wilderness quests ... were added to fill surplus space." Perhaps "Wilderness that players can perform quests in"?
• Additional content
  • The last paragraph get repetitive with all the release dates. I recommend write some of the sentences with different structures or see if you can summarize/consolidate the information.
    • done-SCB '92 (talk) 16:53, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
• Reception
  • The review scores inconsistently specify which platform version was reviewed. I recommend using {{Video game multiple console reviews}} to make this more clear.

    I'd rather not, because a couple of the publications used (PC Gamer, Official Xbox Magazine) makes it obvious what platform they are giving scores two, and other publications have given the same score for all the platforms (1UP.com gave all A's, GameSpy gave all 4/5 stars), and it's rather annoying to change the template a second time, especially with the fact that the other template doesn't have an awards section;p GameSpot is really the only one at fault here for inconsistency, excluding the aggregators, so I could replace it with another publication-SCB '92 (talk) 16:27, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

    The template documentation doesn't specify that it can handle awards, but it uses the exact same ones the main template does. See Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time#Reception. IGN has different scores as well. Between that, GameSpot, and the aggregators, I think the information warrants a format that will present it better. I also think that the extra width will prevent the cell bloating in the awards section. (Guyinblack25 ^talk 17:09, 6 January 2012 (UTC))

    Ok, I changed it-SCB '92 (talk) 17:41, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

    But now, the review score and publication of PC Gamer US doesn't display; I'm pretty sure I encoded it correctly (PCGUS_PC)-SCB '92 (talk) 17:49, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

    You did. The template was missing the necessary code to process the parameter though. Someone must have added it to the documentation but not the template. I added it to the template and it is working now. (Guyinblack25 ^talk 04:53, 9 January 2012 (UTC))

  • This section relies a lot on full quotes. I personally prefer more summary style.
• Further reading
  • Is there a reason why the font size is smaller here? I've seen it regular size before and assumed that was the standard formatting.

The article making good progress, but I think further copy editing is needed. I'll check back in later to review the sources. (Guyinblack25 ^talk 22:30, 3 January 2012 (UTC))

Addressed most of the issues, though you have already addressed some of the issues yourself that you listed-SCB '92 (talk) 13:01, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

I did some copy editing, but anything I listed above in the second round I did not do like the multiple console review template and rewrites to the "Game world" section. I hope to post comments about the references later today. (Guyinblack25 ^talk 14:24, 5 January 2012 (UTC))

Reference comments

• Inconsistency
  • Magazines like GamesTM and PC Gamer need the publisher listed.
    • done-SCB '92 (talk) 13:12, 14 January 2012 (UTC)
  • Some publishers are wikilinked but others are not. I would remove all but the first instance to avoid overlinking
  • GameSpot UK is still GameSpot. Not a big deal though.
    • Changed-SCB '92 (talk) 13:12, 14 January 2012 (UTC)
  • "videogamer.com" should be "VideoGamer.com"
    • Changed-SCB '92 (talk) 13:12, 14 January 2012 (UTC)
  • Staff is used a few times when there is no author listed. It should be in every instance or unused.
    • Changed to unused-SCB '92 (talk) 13:12, 14 January 2012 (UTC)
• What makes the following sources reliable?
  • Game Banshee
    • It is owned by UGO Networks, a reliable source-SCB '92 (talk) 21:09, 10 January 2012 (UTC)
  • Game Chronicles
  • Game First!
    • Like I wrote back in 20 November 2011: "I think the references to GameBanshee, Game Chronicles and GamesFirst should stay because they are exclusive interviews with Gavin Carter"; even though they're possibly unreliable sources, couldn't this be an exception?-SCB '92 (talk) 21:06, 10 January 2012 (UTC)
• The VG project no longer considers MobyGames reliable. If another source cannot be found, then the content should be removed.

The article has really improved. Keep up the good work. (Guyinblack25 ^talk 16:08, 10 January 2012 (UTC))

Comments by DarthBotto

• Infobox
  • Everything seems to be in order; I especially like that this portion of the page doesn't link the Bethesda article twice. It might just be my personal prerogative and inclination, but I would rather not resort to the Development section for the technical aspects, as I prefer to see everything in a uniformed template. But, that might just be my aesthetic choice, as I was opposed to the Infobox Film template that saw to remove the sequels and prequels.
• Lead
  • I tweaked the introductory sentence, because there was an awkward adjective involved, but other than that, the writing should suffice for a Feature Article.
  • However, I detest the fact that there are no references involved in the lead, which takes away from my belief in the integrity of the page, as it's not tied down completely right there.
    • It is optional to use citations in the lead, and most of the time unnecessary in video game articles, as it summarises the main body of the article, and is mostly used if sentences are not mentioned in the main body of the article, and is better not to have citations in the lead overall (see the lead in the Perfect Dark article)-SCB '92 (talk) 13:01, 5 January 2012 (UTC)
• Gameplay
  • "Character development is a primary element of Oblivion." - This sentence seems to be hanging there and detracts from the quality of the page.
  • Having every element in parentheses seems redundant and may insult the reader.
  • Look to replace the "can's" with "may's"; it improves the sentence flow.
• Plot
  • "Oblivion is set after the events of The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, though it is not a direct sequel to it or any other game." - How, exactly?
  • Other than that, this is the smoothest section of the article.
• Development
  • I believe there should be concentration upon making the sentences flow in a cohesive manner, because they seem to be floating, if you will.
  • Game world
    • This section works perfectly for a Featured Article; it gets to the point, includes a decent accompanying image, and is substantial.
  • Additional content
    • Same story as the last one; it works very well.
• Audio
  • Can this lead be expanded with another paragraph, possibly?
  • Soundtrack
    • This seems fine, but I think an image of the album cover to accompany the track info would do well here.
• Reception
  • Much like the system requirements and the soundtrack cover, I can only suggest an aesthetic change; Could the star rating be implemented, or is that even applicable in this case?
    • I put in the star rating for GameSpy-SCB '92 (talk) 13:01, 5 January 2012 (UTC)
• Rating change
  • This part seems in order.

Verdict

Support - I've concluded that this article is just about ready. However, I would like my suggestions taken into account and see this article looked at for improvement, as it still is not perfect yet. DarthBotto _talk•cont 13:15, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

I'd like to see a spotcheck of this article's sources. Ucucha (talk) 10:59, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

Shouldn't it use {{plainlist}} instead of those <br /> separated lists in the infobox? --Locos epraix 03:11, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Notes:

• Five uses of the word "release" in as many sentences in the second paragraph of the lead-- please attempt more variety in the prose, to be more engaging.
• ... efforts to thwart a fanatical cult know as "The Mythic Dawn" that plans to open the gates to a realm called Oblivion. Why the quotes on "The Mythic Dawn", and the inconsistency in the subsequent "Oblivion". One in quotes, one not.
• "Seven skills are selected early in the game as major skills, which improve quickly, with the remainder termed minor." I do not know what this means-- skills always improve quickly, for every player? I betcha they wouldn't for me :)
• Sentence in the lead:

  In order to achieve its goals of designing "cutting-edge graphics" and creating a more believable environment, Bethesda used of an improved Havok physics engine, high dynamic range lighting, procedural content generation tools that allowed developers to quickly create detailed terrains, and the Radiant A.I. system, which allows non-player characters (NPCs) to make choices and engage in behaviors more complex than in past titles.

  1. ?? To achieve cutting-edge graphics and a believable environment ?? (redundant prose)
  2. Bethesda used of an ?? Grammatical error in the lead after months at FAC?
  3. that allowed, which allows ... change in tense?

Article needs a more indepth look at prose. Also, there is collapsed text in several sections, and punctuation review on image captions is needed (see WP:MOS#Captions). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:49, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

I've addressed your issues-SCB '92 (talk) 17:29, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Comments Support - Oh no, this nom made it all the way to the bottom of the page before I got to reviewing it! You should go ask some of the people who commented but didn't support/oppose to come back and !vote. Anyways-

• In the lead - "thwart a fanatical cult know as"
  • "known" as, how could I not notice that?-SCB '92 (talk) 21:06, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
• Do you really need a paragraph break after the first two sentences in the lead?
  • merged-SCB '92 (talk) 21:06, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
• Is the official system reqs box really necessary? It's not used in other video game FAs/GAs. This type of thing is what SandyGeorgia is referring to with "collapsed text". The other collapsed text is the album tracklist, but I think that is too long to be left uncollapsed.
  • BioShock has one, Halo: Combat Evolved has one, Halo 2 has one, need I say more? I also uncollapsed the official system reqs box-SCB '92 (talk) 21:06, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
• You don't need a period on the caption for the screenshot in "game world". There's no verb in the sentence.
  • removed-SCB '92 (talk) 21:06, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
• I moved the album infobox up a bit to prevent whitespace at the end of the section on wide monitors.
• Music- it's "Square Enix Music Online", not Square Enix Music.
  • added "Online"-SCB '92 (talk) 21:06, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
• "and apply cunning in combat (through the use of a bow or in the way of a sneak attack)" - awkward, maybe "and apply cunning in combat (through the use of a bow or with a sneak attack)"?
  • changed-SCB '92 (talk) 21:06, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
• "The game features improved artificial intelligence" - improved from what? (previous titles in the series)
  • addedSCB '92 (talk) 21:06, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
• "Content in the dungeons was more densely packed" - than what? and depending on the answer, possibly should be present tense (is)
  • done-SCB '92 (talk) 21:06, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
• Everything you say about the AI system is true, but I notice there's nothing about how they initially were hyping it up to be much more robust, but ended up cutting down the complexity as they couldn't get it to balance/be fun- ignore this if this was cut sometime during the past 5 FACs or if you couldn't find any sources on this.
  • is this really necessary?-SCB '92 (talk) 21:06, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Alright, I'm not seeing as many problems in the body as Sandy found in the lead, so clear this up and I'll come back and support. Let's not have this go to a sixth FAC, hmm? --PresN 05:04, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Alright, changed to Support. The AI thing isn't necessary, it was never a big deal, just wondering is all. --PresN 05:46, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Note: spotcheck of sources still pending, and there are numerous unresolved queries about reliability of sources in Nikkimaria's first post. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:00, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

I got rid of the sources of Gaming Nexus, TweakGuides and GSoundtracks; Firing Squad is reliable, discussed at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Midtown Madness; the Square Enix Music source used is a review from a staff member of the site, which is considered reliable accroding to Guyinblack; for Game Chronicles, the "contact us" page shows that it is also a magazine, it states that "Over two million people visit Game Chronicles each month, making it one of the top independent gaming websites in the world, and one of the most trusted sources of PC and video game information on the Internet." it also states "We are 100% independent, and our media coverage is not influenced by advertising or corporate sponsorship", the source used is a transcript of an interview with the executive producer of Oblivion, Todd Howard; the GamesFirst! source used is also a transcript of an interview with Gavin Carter, a producer for Bethesda, and in their "About" pagehere, they state that "GamesFirst! is a longstanding independent online videogame magazine"; GameBanshee is owned by UGO Networks, a reliable source; the rest of the sources used in the article, mainly IGN, GameSpot and GameSpy, are reliable-SCB '92 (talk) 13:21, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Comments. Nitpicks about prose in lead. Sasata (talk) 07:37, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

• the two consecutive sentences in the lead using emdashes as interpolators are not inconspicuous
• ""The Mythic Dawn"" (lead) or "the Mythic Dawn" (Plot)?
• suggest links: developer, procedural content generation, fully-voiced, game world
• "Developers opted for tighter pacing" I'm not quite sure I know what this means. Faster gameplay? Faster movement?
• "In order to achieve …" -> "To achieve …"
• "that allowed developers to quickly create detailed terrains, and the Radiant A.I. system, which allowed" how about changing one "allowed" to "enabled" for less repetition?

I have addressed your issues-SCB '92 (talk) 13:42, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. Sasata (talk) 15:36, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

Note - This nomination has been here a long time. Can someone please spot check the sources? And, could the nominator confirm that all remaining issues have been addressed, including the questions asked by Nikkimaria about the reliability (not notability) of the sources? Graham Colm (talk) 15:49, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

• I just discussed the reliability of the sources asked by Nikkimaria, which is just above-SCB '92 (talk) 22:57, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

Oppose based on source spot checks. These were literally the first three I checked, and all failed verification. This indicates the need for a comprehensive source review by someone new to the text.

• Ref 12:
  • Article text: "Bethesda had aimed for a late 2005 publication so that the game could be an Xbox 360 launch title."
  • Source text: Fails verification. Does not mention Bethesda.
    • Changed "Bethesda" to "2K Games"-SCB '92 (talk) 22:57, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
• Ref 35:
  • Article text: "The expansion was developed, published, and released in North America by Bethesda Softworks; in Europe, the game was co-published with Ubisoft."
  • Source text: Fails verification. Does not mention Europe or Ubisoft.
    • removed the latter sentence-SCB '92 (talk) 22:57, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
• Ref 43:
  • Article text: "The Game of the Year Edition includes the original game as well as the Shivering Isles and Knights of The Nine content packs, but not the other downloadable content."
  • Source text: Fails verification. Does not mention Game of the Year Edition at all; in fact, source seems to be a blog entry about DLC erroneously missing from regional SKUs. --Laser brain (talk) 19:06, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
    • removed the sentence and source-SCB '92 (talk) 23:02, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

• Thanks Andy, I expect to see a speedy response from the nominator, given the long time this has been here. Graham Colm (talk) 19:40, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

• I got nothing to do with this FAC, but regarding the first ref, it should just be changed to mention Take-Two (or 2K Games I guess) instead of Bethesda. The second ref is certainly a problem. For the third ref, the sentence used to cite [18] but that page is no longer available. The new ref was added here. Gary King (talk · scripts) 21:38, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

Yes there is, there are about 6 people who support the article to become an FA-SCB '92 (talk) 14:59, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

I just struck my support. Until you can get Laser brain or Nikkimaria to state that all of the sourcing is airtight, this isn't promotable. Sven Manguard Wha? 23:06, 16 February 2012 (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 GrahamColm 18:49, 13 February 2012 [19].

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Stanley Donen

Nominator(s): Deoliveirafan (talk) 19:39, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

I am nominating this for featured article because I have been working on it for several months and think that it is complete, thorough and well written. I think that Stanley Donen is an important and innovative film director for the reasons stated in the srticle and that he is relevant today due to recently renewed popularity in the musical genre, which he contributed to shaping.Deoliveirafan (talk) 19:39, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Question: What is the justification for the use of copyrighted image File:Kelly in rehearsal.jpg? I can find no reference to this image in the text, and no basis for the use rationale that it "supports critical commentary specific to this television special in article section 'Working methods and influence on filmed dance'" – a section which does not actually exist in the article. I suspect you have imported this from elsewhere, along with the rationale. Advice: get rid of it. Brianboulton (talk) 21:40, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

• I have the same concern with all of the non-free images. None of the rationales explain why the image should be in this article. It looks like rationales were written for other articles, then had a backlink to this article added. The movie posters say the movie is the subject of the article, and on of the screenshots explains why the image is needed in the Gene Kelly article. Jay32183 (talk) 21:54, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Question: Relatively few edits (about 25) are attributed to the nominator (although the nominator has taken the article through a peer review). The – already substantial – article seems to have been adopted late last year. Do you have copies of the sources? (Which, by the way, should be under a Bibliography heading, and not "Further reading". And, the books by Yudkoff, Hirschhorn, should be there too, complete with ISBNs.) Graham Colm (talk) 22:14, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Oppose in view of the above comments and these additional issues relating to sources:-

• Why are source books listed as "further reading"?
• Book titles should be italicised
• Ref 7 book lacks publication year
• Check that all page ranges have "pp." not "p."
• Check that page ranges use ndashes not hyphens
• Many online sources lack publisher information
• Ref 33: spelling "Dialouge"?
• Same ref, what does "4, #4" mean
• Ref 85 and others: separate titles from publisher
• Refs 93, 111, 120, 138 etc non-standard formats
• Ref 109 is dead for me, please check.

This is not an exhaustive sources review, but it is clear that further work is required in this and in other areas. Brianboulton (talk) 22:35, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

At the very least, could someone whose actually read the article weigh in, just to be fair?--66.212.72.44 (talk) 18:39, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

Further note> I believe a delegate should look at this article's edit history. There is no evidence that the nominator has made more than 2 edits unless he/she is using several IP identities. The article's main editor, IP 206.188.55.236 is a suspected sockpuppet of a banned user. The second main editor, IP 66.212.72.44, is Seattle Public Library. Brianboulton (talk) 00:23, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Oppose and suggest withdrawal in view of the blatant lack of preparation and Brian's significant concerns above. Auree ^★★ 17:09, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

You people are all truly ridiculous, do what you want.--66.212.72.199 (talk) 18:09, 13 February 2012 (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 Ucucha 03:38, 10 February 2012 [20].

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Genome-wide association study

Nominator(s): LasseFolkersen (talk) 15:32, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

I am nominating this for featured article because it describes a current key method in the field of genetics. Whenever newspaper-articles currently talk about "researchers finding a gene for something" 9 out of 10 times it is through the use of genome-wide association studies. Billions of dollars are being spent on this method. The article went through peer review in December, and have been extensively discussed through all of January were it was collaboration of the month for the genetics portal. LasseFolkersen (talk) 15:32, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

I found this FAC unstranscluded and transcluded it as of this time stamp. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:44, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

See WP:MEDRS-- why are reviews listed separately in citations? Is the article sourced mostly to secondary reviews, or to primary sources? I haven't seen this article come up for review at WT:MED, so if it isn't sourced correctly to secondary reviews, it may need more work. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:44, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Why should this article come up at project medicine? It is a genetics article. I have no idea what you mean by transcluded. --LasseFolkersen (talk) 12:43, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

See the FAC page for instructions-- the non-tranclusion means that you started the FAC on the article talk page, but failed to list here at WP:FAC (which I subsequently did). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:22, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

Copyscape search - No issues were revealed by Copyscape searches. Graham Colm (talk) 23:06, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Oppose There are just too many gross errors, e.g., "Finding odds ratios that are significantly different from 1 is the objective of the GWA study because this shows that a SNP is associated with disease".  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 16:16, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose for now; it is most strange that the Reviews (secondary sources compliant with WP:MEDRS) are listed separately but never cited, while most of the sources used appear to be primary studies. Unless mostly secondary sources are used, what we have here could amount to synthesis, a newly published work rather than an encyclopedic recounting of what secondary sources say (overreliance on primary sources). Had this been run by WT:MED, that would have been picked up. I'm sure the primary author can eventually correct the sourcing here, but I fear this nomination is premature. If the nominator can show that sources were used correctly, I'll be happy to revisit. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:20, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

Oppose 1a, 1b, 1c, 2c. The article should be checked thoroughly for prose and MoS issues. A small sampling:

• "Largely this type of criticism can and is overcome in more modern publications."
• "There are small variations in the individual nucleotides of the genomes (SNPs) as well as many larger variations; deletions, insertions and copy number variations." semi-colon doesn't work here
• "This approach had proven highly useful towards single gene disorders[8]" missing period
• please check usage of "which" throughout; several should be changed to "that" (which typically follows a comma)
• hyphens needed in compound words like "well-defined", "high-profile", "follow-up study"
• "However, because of this, studies must take account of the geographical and ethnical background of participants, controlling for what is called population stratification." source?
• more linking needed; examples: control, cohort, biomarker, complement system, drug development, genotyping
• the references need some attention to detail. Consistency is required regarding things like

• number of authors given before using et al.
• month and year, or just year?
• journal article titles: title case or sentence case?
• fullstop after author names or not?
• fullstops in abbreviated journal titles or not? (e.g., Annu Rev Genomics Hum Genet vs. Am. J. Hum. Genet.)?
• some web-based resources do not have author/publisher/date even when this information is available on the website

• the biggest issue is criteria 1b and 1c. Searching "Genome-wide association study" (with quotes) turns up over 1000 reviews at Pubmed. Is the article really well-researched? Does it really not neglect any major facts or details? Sasata (talk) 20:03, 4 February 2012 (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 Ucucha 03:38, 10 February 2012 [21].

---

Fellows v. Blacksmith

Nominator(s): Savidan 16:53, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

I am nominating this for featured article because I think it's a great article about an obscure U.S. Supreme Court case from the mid-19th century. It's been a "good article" for over a year, during which time it has been extremely stable (with the exception of my recent edits to conform the citations to the Bluebook). I hope others agree. Otherwise, I'll be happy to address any concerns. Savidan 16:53, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Comments on the lead

While I'm not an expert on law articles by any means, this seems like an interesting subject. However, the lead seems extremely awkward to me. It took me until the third paragraph before I learned what Fellows v. Blacksmith was actually about -- shouldn't that be explained up front? The first sentence of the lead currently compares the case to another which happened nearly thirty years prior; similar cases, perhaps, but not a good introduction -- especially for those who don't know anything, like myself. Also, why the lengthy quotes in the first two paragraphs? As far as I can tell, these quotes do not appear in the body of the article (which may violate WP:LEAD), and they do not seem inherently notable. If they are notable, perhaps more context should be given to show this? If they're simply long quotes taking up space, it would be helpful to paraphrase the main ideas rather than rely solely on them. Lastly, I see nothing about the companion cases, or even Fellows' legacy, both of which takes up a large chunk of the article.

I will be happy to read the rest of the article once the lead is reviewed/revised/expanded. Let me know if you have any questions, María (yllosubmarine) 20:11, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

You make some good points. I have reworked the intro per your suggestion. I have repeated the quotes where they are relevant in the article. I hope this makes clear their summary role. While I think both are particularly well-worded, I am open to paraphrase suggestions. Savidan 22:08, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

The lead is much improved, thanks! I hope to return shortly to review the rest of the article. María (yllosubmarine) 14:22, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Comments by CJLippert

The article is very well written. The article does summarise the case the way I understand it, and it goes into details. It does seem to be well cited with equal amounts of inline and footnote citation styles, but the actual citations listed is lacking; for a case this magnitude in US Indian Law, one would think there would be more "References" and "Further reading" than just the works currently listed. However, more importantly for a FA status, all the red links should be addressed by either making them into actual articles or de-wiki them for now; by extension, all the articles this article wiki links should be checked to ensure they don't have broken links or vandalism. Once those issues are addressed, I would most definitely support its nomination as FA! Thanks to all the past editors of this article for all the great work in bringing this to a GA status; let's get it to FA. CJLippert (talk) 16:52, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

I'm afraid I must demur on both points. First, finding sources to write this article was very much a scavenger hunt. This was not a topic where I found a lot of facts and then made an editorial decision to exclude them. For example, I did Proquest Historical and Google Books searches for the names of all the key players and followed any leads those produced. If you can suggest a specific source that I have overlooked, I will gladly check that source to see if it has anything to offer. Second, the fear of red links is very un-wiki. I have removed any unlikely red links; the only ones that remain are the names of judges or U.S. Supreme Court decisions. Red links encourage others to write articles. Creating blue links with essentially no content is therefore counterproductive—as is delinking to bow to the demands of immediatism. Nor do I think it is incumbent upon me to be accountable for every article linked from this one for the purposes of FAC. I will be glad to respond to any improvements you suggest within the four corners of this article. Savidan 17:06, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

I have also added citations to nearly all of the 39 law reviews that cite Fellows v. Blacksmith. As you can see, Fellows is usually cited once, in a single footnote, as part of a string of cases for a given point of law, usually about treaties. Savidan 18:56, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Regarding red links: Although they do look ugly, they are a valuable tool to invite readers and editors to create new, needed articles. They are not an impediment to FA status. Now, if the red-linked topic, by its very nature, is unlikely to ever meet the WP Notability requirement, then it should be de-linked. --Noleander (talk) 21:31, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

I'm sorry for the delay-- just now catching up on the redlinks discussion. WP:RED is the relevant page, and filling out all red links is not necessary or part of WP:WIAFA. What is necessary is that context is given and the article is comprehensive and intelligible in spite of the red links-- in other words, even with the absence of the notable red-linked articles, we have to be able to understand this article. As long as this article is intelligible, redlinks to notable other articles can stay red. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:59, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Check Fellows v. Denniston as it depends on Fellows v. Blacksmith. From there, you may find other "See also" or "Additional reading" works. As for the replies to my original comments, I agree with the comments; good points. Thanks. CJLippert (talk) 15:01, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Fellows v. Denniston is the lower court version of In re New York Indians. I have expanded the discussion of that case. Savidan 19:10, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

No other issues. It looks great. Thanks. CJLippert (talk) 20:07, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

Comments from Noleander

• First sentence longer: "Fellows v. Blacksmith, 60 U.S. (19 How.) 366 (1857), is a U.S. Supreme Court decision." It ends so abruptly. Consider adding short synopsis of the decision at the end of the sentence.
• Not sure there is much benefit to separating Notes from Footnotes. Such a separation is more meaningful when the citations are all Shortened Citations (WP:CITESHORT); but here many of the citations are very lengthy.
• Section name "Legacy": I think "Aftermath" would be more appropriate in this context; but I sympathize because the English language has a paucity of words for this intended meaning.
• Wording: "...not signed by the right Seneca leaders...". The word "right" seems too slangy: is a more precise word available? I see the word "appropriate" is used elsewhere.
• The "Litigants" section at the conclusion of the article is a slightly disappointing finish to an outstanding article. Perhaps enhance the concluding "The litigants" section by renaming it to "Tribal sovereignty", and including a very brief summary of post-Fellows developments?
• Wording: "The Taney court had inherited from the preceding Marshall Court voluminous pages on the status ...". The word "pages" seems wrong. Even if technically correct, readers would be better served by "cases" or "decisions", I think.
• Pictures: the pictures are lacking "alternate text" for the seeing-impaired. Use the "Alt text" link at upper right to view it. To remedy: simply add "alt=A description here" to each photo's parameters. See WP:ALT.
• Small Caps in References: I've never seen Small Caps used before like that. I suppose anything goes in footnotes, but it does look odd: both the Author name and the Book name use the same font, so it is hard to tell where one starts and the other stops. Italics (for the book name only) may be more beneficial to readers.
• Publishers: Also, refs are missing publisher (which also argues against small caps). ISBN should also be included.
• Wording: "...commenced on January 15, 1857 and were adjourned until January 17" Simpler to say started Jan 15 and were completed on Jan 17?
• Ext link broken: the Holland external link is broken. You can use the "External links" link at the top right of this page to check.
• Overall, a very nice article. Leaning towards Support.

End Noleander comments. --Noleander (talk) 21:33, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for your thorough review. I hope that you'll find that my recent edits have resolved most of your comments. As for notes vs. footnotes, the difference is that notes are content (i.e., clarification of things that may be unclear to some readers but which would break the flow of the article to include in the main text) and that footnotes are sources. I prefer to maintain this distinction. As for "the Litigants," this section is about the notable things that the parties involved and their lawyers went on to do. I do not wish to have a section on "tribal sovereignty" as I think it is a concept only tangentially relevant to this case (the tribe was not a party, the court was only adjudicating the property rights of individuals, etc.). The use of small caps is dictated by the Bluebook (you can see a very rough draft of my ideas for how to best adapt the Bluebook to Wikipedia here). While I hope to persuade by example that others writing about US legal topics should format their citations this way, I am a citation pluralist, and I think that each article should be allowed to use its own system, as long as the article is sufficiently internally consistent. I have included publishers only where the Bluebook requires them; to do otherwise would be misleading to those who understand the citation system (and is a detail that is fairly useless to nearly all readers). I have added ISBNs, but the Vose book does not have one. I have left "adjourned" as it is a term of art (it is rather uncommon, at least today, for Supreme Court oral arguments to be adjourned). I have removed the external link, as the site unfortunately appears to have been taken down. Please let me know if any of these responses are not to your satisfaction. Savidan 22:47, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Sounds good. I have no strong objection to variety in footnoting styles: I was just giving you my opinion. Ditto for Footnotes vs Notes: your approach is very commonly used throughout WP. --Noleander (talk) 22:53, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Savidan: I think a sentence may be corrupted: "... ejectment could not be obtained by against the holder ...". I'd fix it, but I'm not 100% sure what it should say. --Noleander (talk) 01:41, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

I see nothing wrong with it... Obviously, ejectment is a term of art. I'd bluelink it, but it is already linked in the previous sentence. Savidan 06:22, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

Comments from MZMcBride

I don't do this FA stuff too often, so if this is wrong or whatever, just ignore me.

Infobox needs a bit of tweaking. The "Case opinions" section doesn't make it clear what the vote was. Joined by unanimous? It should be clearer.

WikiProject SCOTUS has been trying to get the headers of articles more standardized (and the leads). There's info about this at WP:SCOTUS. It'd be nice if this article conformed to those standards.

There used to be other featured U.S. Supreme Court articles (Roe v. Wade, Lawrence v. Texas, Marbury v. Madison), but I think they're all delisted now. Some still be might decent examples to look at for improvements, though.

Also not sure what the small caps in the References and "Further reading" sections. --MZMcBride (talk) 01:23, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

I have added "joined unanimously" to the Infobox. I have encountered "joined by unanimous" before; strikes me as bizarrely agrammatical. I have standardized the == level headers. This article needs another == header for companion cases; others may not. The small caps a product of the Bluebook citation style, which this article employs. Savidan 01:35, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

That was fast. :-)

I usually do/see "joined by unanimous". When it's italicized, it doesn't read that strangely to me, but I think your wording ("joined unanimously") is better. Does the Court itself use any particular language?

I'm not sure if the MoS Nazis will care about the small caps or not. Surely one will be along at some point if there's an issue. You just never know with those people... --MZMcBride (talk) 01:41, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

The Court says "the opinion of the Court" whether there were 5 or 9 votes for it. The default is unanimity (for the lead opinion) unless otherwise noted (concurrence, dissent, recusal). I do not understand the MoS to implement a uniform citation system for all Wikipedia articles, across all subject matter; nor would it be wise to do so. Savidan 01:47, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

A thought on the Small Caps - I see that MZMcBride is also a bit puzzled by the small caps in the References section. I understand that the small caps stem from the Bluebook, which is a great standard for citing styles to use within law-related topics. But I looked at two of the more famous supreme court cases: Marbury v. Madison and Roe v. Wade, and they both use the italics style for book names. I think we can agree that all the WP articles on Supreme Court cases should aspire to the same citing conventions. What if we initiate an RfC in the WP Supreme Court project and establish consensus on the desired citation format for use within Supreme Court case articles. Then, use that convention in this article. How does that sound? --Noleander (talk) 19:23, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

I do not agree that all articles must use the same citation style, even all articles within a subject-matter. Consistency within an article is enough. I do not recall any similar RFC to decide between the MLA, AMA, APA, Chicago Manual of Style, etc.—even within disciplines like economics, history, or linguistics. I hope to persuade other authors to use the Bluebook on Wikipedia by example, not by compulsion. Any consensus that arises should arise organically from the experience of users writing those articles, not from !voting. I would refer you to Wikipedia:Citing sources#Citation style: "A consistent style should be used within any given article, but it is not necessary to maintain consistency between articles." And Wikipedia:Citing sources#Variation in citation methods: "Wikipedia does not have a single house style. Editors may choose any option they want; one article need not match what is done in other articles. However, citations within a given article should follow a consistent style. . . . If there is disagreement about which style is best, defer to the style used by the first major contributor." Savidan 19:46, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Image review

• File:WNY5.PNG claims as a basis "genesee river large.jpg"; no map by that title exists. There is File:Genesee_map_large.jpg, which seems to be the correct source, but that image lacks information on its own source(s)
• File:Samuel_Nelson_-_Brady-Handy.jpg needs a US PD tag. Same with File:Ely_S._Parker.jpg. Nikkimaria (talk) 22:02, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

File:WNY5.PNG is based on File:Genesee map large.jpg. I have corrected the description. That latter makes clear that it was created by User:Pollinator, originally uploaded to Wikipedia, then moved to Commons. I have added a PD-US tag to File:Samuel_Nelson_-_Brady-Handy.jpg and File:Ely_S._Parker.jpg. Savidan 22:17, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Yes, but what source(s) did Pollinator use to create the map? It isn't a creative/original work, but is presumably based on some pre-existing map or data set. Nikkimaria (talk) 22:23, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

I have left a note at Pollinator's talk page (and emailed). If Pollinator is unable to satisfy your concerns (or does not respond in a reasonable amount of time), I will remove the image. Savidan 22:27, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

I have replaced the map with one of the Phelps and Gorham purchase only. Savidan 07:58, 28 January 2012 (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 Ucucha 03:38, 10 February 2012 [22].

---

International Criminal Court investigation in Kenya

Nominator(s): Pi (Talk to me! ) 05:49, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

This article became a GA last summer and I have recently expanded it with more complete information about the specifics of the criminal charges. In addition the results of the confirmation of charges hearings came out the other day and so I have updated the article to reflect this. I think the article is now sufficiently comprehensive to nominate it at FAC. Pi (Talk to me! ) 05:49, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Note: This is a WikiCup nomination

• Note: This is a WikiCup nomination. The following nominators are WikiCup participants: Pi. To the nominator: if you do not intend to submit this article at the WikiCup, feel free to remove this notice. UcuchaBot (talk) 00:01, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Oppose at this time. Nikkimaria (talk) 04:36, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

• Several WP:MOS errors throughout. Footnotes should appear immediately after punctuation, with no space in between. "%" should be spelled out in article text, use endashes not hyphens for ranges, etc
• "Violence continued until a peace deal was agreed upon between Kibaki and Odinga under the mediation of former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, whereby Kibaki would remain as President and Odinga would take over the newly-created office of the Prime Minister." - source?
• "In order to force these communities to relocate, the group planned to inflict fear and destroy homes and property until the victims left the region." - source? Check for other unsourced and potentially problematic material
• Citations should be complete and include at least the minimum information required - publisher and retrieval date for web sources, page numbers for multi-page sources. Don't use bare URLs as citations. Nikkimaria (talk) 04:36, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

The source for those statements is the Decision on the Confirmation of Charges Pursuant to Article 61(7)(a) and (b) of the Rome Statute. This is the source for most of the information in the section "The prosecutor's allegation". I will go through it now and add specific page numbers. All the statements in the article are sourced but you're right, the page numbers should be there. Pi (Talk to me! ) 05:09, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

OK, so I was going through the article putting page numbers in all of the references (and ensuring that there's an inline source for each claim) when I noticed that the judgement on the confirmation of charges has mysteriously disappeared from the internet (and the link to it on the ICC website has been deleted). Since the ICC generally has all of these available I assume this is temporary and that it'll be up again shortly (I assume there may have been a mistake in the document). In the mean time I can (I think) find alternative sources. If you could bear with me I hope to get this done shortly.

Also, as for the MOS errors I noticed a few mistakes regarding spaces between punctuation and references and am fixing these Pi (Talk to me! ) 06:35, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

OK, I have improved the referencing in most of the article now. I just need to get the second judgement back online in order to finish referencing. I phoned the ICC public affairs unit who assured me it's being replaced. Pi (Talk to me! ) 10:44, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

I've gone through the whole article now adding page numbers to the citations and adding additional citations where they were missing. I have also tried to resolve the WP:MOS issues where I could find them Pi (Talk to me! ) 12:12, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

• A couple issues that jumped out to me at first glance, haven't read the article yet: there shouldn't be spaces before or between references, I fixed a couple in the lead (i.e. "...of the case.[10] [11]" & "...against Ali and Kosgey. [14][15]"). Also, I noticed that there are a lot of short sections, maybe condense some of them? Mark Arsten (talk) 07:24, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

• Thanks, I just gave the article another sweep and checked each reference, fixing those with a problem. There are some small sections (I assume you mean the "prosecutor's allegation" section) but at the moment there is one section per crime and I quite like that. I could merge the sections into one for Ruto, Kosgey and Sang with a second for Muthaura, Kenyatta and Ali if people think that would be better Pi (Talk to me! ) 10:39, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

• Ok, I don't know if there is a guideline about this, it's more of what I think would work best. I guess keep that idea in mind in case anyone else raises the issue. Mark Arsten (talk) 15:26, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Image review

• File:WilliamRuto.PNG has the same description as the parent image it was cropped from. Please update.
• Other images are OK, however more images wouldn't be missed. May I suggest adding File:Cuno Tarfusser.jpg to the 'Pre-Trial Chamber authorization' section?

—Andrew_stalk 21:42, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for the review. I have updated the description of the Ruto image and have also added the image of Tarfusser Pi (Talk to me! ) 11:16, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

Support on images —Andrew_stalk 03:11, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

Oppose, prose 1a, MOS 4 issues

1. It's hard to believe we have a redirect to here from an article called Situation in the Republic of Kenya; what happens to that article name five years down the road?
2. I found multiple instances of redundant text in the lead alone (which is typically the better polished part of an article); this suggests this article should be withdrawn and copyedited by someone unfamiliar with the text. [23]
3. WP:MSH, inappropriate capitalization in section headings.
4. Mutliple paragraphs beginning with "the prosecutor claims" or "the prosecutor alleges", repetitive text.
5. Multiple instances of lengthy, cumbersome section headings for short, stubby sections suggest that better article organization is needed.

I see no recent peer review, and suggest the article will have a better shot at Featured status if it first has one. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:06, 5 February 2012 (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 SandyGeorgia 01:31, 7 February 2012 [24].

---

Randall Flagg

Nominator(s): CyberGhostface (talk) 19:40, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

I am nominating this for featured article because other editors and I have put a lot of work getting it into shape over the last couple of years. It is in my mind very comprehensive, covers a variety of topics including the character's concept and creation as well as critical analysis and has proper citations. This has gone through noms in the past but I believe that the article has improved since then. CyberGhostface (talk) 19:40, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

Source review - spotchecks not done. Nikkimaria (talk) 05:04, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

• Be consistent in whether location is included for book sources
• Be consistent in whether ISBNs are hyphenated or not
• FN 4: formatting
• Some of the links to external sources are returning errors
• What makes this a high-quality reliable source? This?
• FN 14: italicization
• Compare formatting of FNs 17 and 18
• "pp." is for multiple pages, "p." for single
• FN 24: page?
• FN 27: site appears to have either changed names or shut down
• Are FNs 4 and 30 meant to be the same?
• FN 34: ISBN?

For an article with so (relatively) few sources, there are quite a few issues. Nikkimaria (talk) 05:04, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

I've addressed most of those issues, but are there any recommended places to go for help in things like this? I've put it up for Peer Review recently but haven't gotten many responses in that regard.--CyberGhostface (talk) 19:39, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

• Images: All check out except File:Walter o'Dim.PNG. The link given for the source is broken—need updated information on the source and copyright status. The licensing and fair use rationale don't seem to make sense either. A book cover? --Laser brain (talk) 17:29, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
  • It's basically Michael Whelan's art for The Gunslinger and was later used as the cover for a collection of Stephen King related art. There's more info here.--CyberGhostface (talk) 23:39, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

Oppose, primarily on criteria 1a, 1b, and 1c. There is a lot of great material here, but I'm afraid this has a fair way to go before being a well-written and comprehensive account of this character. My principle issues are as follows:

• I found several problems with the writing, even in the lead. For example, you have at least one shift in tense that is not suitable for writing about fiction ("Flagg made several more appearances"), and I spotted at least two misplaced modifying phrases. The narrative is unclear in order once you start the body of the article; why is Hearts in Atlantis mentioned out of chronological order?. The article will probably need attention from an editor not familiar with the text.
• You are missing any coverage of one of the central discussions of Flagg in literary circles—essentially the debate over which of King's characters are actually meant to be embodiment of Flagg. For example, you have no secondary sources establishing Walter/Marten as Flagg. I understand this notion is generally accepted within the community of King readers, but here it's WP:OR. The literary discussion of which characters may or may not be Flagg needs its own section in this article, cited to reliable secondary sources.

Much more could be said, but these are two large items that need attention before this can be considered for FA status. --Laser brain (talk) 22:05, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

Past three weeks, with no support; closing.

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 Ucucha 19:44, 4 February 2012 [25].

---

Hotel Polen fire

Nominator(s): S_peakF_ree ^(talk)_(contribs) 04:29, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

I am nominating this for featured article again because I believe it complies with the FAC after having been looked over by several experienced users. S_peakF_ree ^(talk)_(contribs) 04:29, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

Source review - spotchecks not done. Nikkimaria (talk) 14:18, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

• "In an enormous dust cloud, the entire hotel collapsed to the ground. The fire department proceeded to extinguish the smoking debris, and at 9:30 am the fire was declared under control." - source?

• Fixed: I re-read the sources and added some refs and removed some claims which are (as of yet) unsourced. S_peakF_ree ^(talk)_(contribs) 20:41, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

• FN 3: formatting
• Mixture of templated and untemplated citations is causing formatting inconsistencies. Nikkimaria (talk) 14:18, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean. If you are referring to the fire department report I don't think its' neccesary to give the full citation including the URL for each subsequent ref. Just like book citations often just mention the name of the author and page number for subsequent refs. S_peakF_ree ^(talk)_(contribs) 20:41, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

Oppose, primarily on 1a. The writing is not up to the required standard. Random examples of prose issues:

• "a multistory hotel in the centre of the city built in 1891" The modifying phrase "built in 1891" is misplaced and confuses the meaning of the clause.
• The mention of the furniture store highlights a need for clarity in the previous clauses; you should avoid discussion the "hotel" as a building and the "Hotel" as a business interchangeably.
• "Many of the hotel's tourists" reads as if they were tourists of the hotel. Or were they guests?

• Fixed: Changed it to: "Many of the tourists who stayed at the hotel"

• "At the end of the 18th century, the "Poolsche Koffiehuis" (English: Polish Coffee House) was established, which began offering guest accommodation in 1857." Another misplaced modifying phrase.
• "The Hotel Polen was once known as a fashionable place to stay." This sentence is out of place in the narrative. The cafe opened, the hotel was a fashionable place to stay, the cafe closed.

The cafe closed because the hotel became run down as the owners didn't want to spend much money on it. The cafe closed in 1974 which is mentioned on page 5 of the fire department report. S_peakF_ree ^(talk)_(contribs) 23:20, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

• "There were only 10 fire extinguishers and 11 fire hoses in the hotel." Another narrative problem. The "only" qualifier doesn't make much sense without context. We don't even know how many floors are in the building at this point. Is that number of extinguishers and hoses low for a building of that size?

The building that replaced it, the Rokin Plaza has 5,086 m2 office space (although the smaller building on the right which survived the fire was demolished to make room for it.) It was quite a large building so 2 fire extinguishers and fire hoses per floor does seem sparse. I did remove the word only. S_peakF_ree ^(talk)_(contribs) 23:20, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

• In fact, you don't mention the number of floors anywhere that I can see. Nothing should be in the infobox that's not in the article.

• Fixed

• "the hotel was also not on a direct line with the emergency centre of the fire department" What does this mean?

A direct telephone line ie like the Moscow–Washington hotline. S_peakF_ree ^(talk)_(contribs) 23:20, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

I only read through Background, but this looks to require substantive work to bring it up to FA standards. Recommend withdrawal so you can work with a copyeditor. I would also recommend additional research; the narrative after the fire is extremely sparse. --Laser brain (talk) 22:43, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

I did ask for help by several experienced copy editors who rewrote the text. It's pretty hard to come by additional sources, I only know of one study which covers the fire but is only available at university libraries and I'm not a student or lecturer so I probably can't access it. S_peakF_ree ^(talk)_(contribs) 23:20, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

I can't speak to the quality of copyedits you received before, but I think you will need someone to help you dig a bit deeper. Lots of issues were missed. I thought we had a page of volunteers who could help you access library sources, but I can't find it now. --Laser brain (talk) 23:44, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

WP:RX. - Sitush (talk) 17:30, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

Note: Templates removed, per FAC page instruction. Brianboulton (talk)

• Oppose on 1a, prose, per Laserbrain, and per this sample which was the first my eyes fell on:

  Just before 7:00 a.m. the part of the hotel which lied on the Kalverstraat collapsed.[21] The burning debris landed on the fire engine in the Kalverstraat, and the fire fighters barely escaped to safety. The nearby book store was also burned out[22] and fires broke out in several buildings on the other side of the Kalverstraat, which were quickly brought under control.[21]

  The prose needs to be reworked thoroughly, and it's unclear to me that it attains GA level. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:05, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

I reluctantly withdraw the nomination. Thanks for your input. S_peakF_ree ^(talk)_(contribs) 18:44, 4 February 2012 (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 Ucucha 19:44, 4 February 2012 [26].

---

Giraffe

Nominator(s): LittleJerry (talk) 05:01, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

I am nominating this for featured article because I feel that it gives well-written, well-sourced and fairly complete information on the animal. LittleJerry (talk) 05:01, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Question The "Relationship with humans" section does not touch upon attempts by humans to ride the animal. Has there been any? Successful? 109.214.164.25 (talk) 16:20, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

No information is available. LittleJerry (talk) 17:16, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

It makes no sense for humans to attempt to ride giraffes. The long neck would obscure forward vision. There are better animals around for riding. Axl ¤ [Talk] 19:02, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

From "Behavior and ecology", subsection "Necking", paragraph 2: "It appears that males that are successful in necking have greater reproductive success." I don't think that the first part "It appears that..." is necessary. Why not say "Males that are successful in necking have greater reproductive success"? Axl ¤ [Talk] 19:28, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

• Fixed. LittleJerry (talk) 19:37, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

From "Behavior and ecology", subsection "Mortality", paragraph 3: "Some parasites also feed on giraffes." This sentence doesn't really follow smoothly from the preceding paragraph about lions and crocodiles. Axl ¤ [Talk] 20:07, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

• Fixed. LittleJerry (talk) 20:42, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

  Thanks. How about changing the subsection title to "Mortality and disease"? Axl ¤ [Talk] 21:37, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

  Or maybe mortality and health? LittleJerry (talk) 21:57, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

  Okay. Axl ¤ [Talk] 22:06, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

From "Relationship with humans", subsection "Cultural significance", paragraph 2: "With the fall of the Roman Empire, the people of Europe were no longer able to keep and display giraffes." "No longer able"? Or just that they didn't? Axl ¤ [Talk] 20:17, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

• The source says that when the Empire fell, so did the ability to keep and house giraffes. I suppose it was referring to Rome's infrastructure. I changed it anyway. LittleJerry (talk) 20:42, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

In "Relationship with humans", subsection "Conservation status", the first paragraph is only tangentially related to "conservation status". The article "Galápagos tortoise" has separate subsections for "Historical exploitation" and "Modern conservation". However "Giraffe" does not really have enough text to justify such a split. Perhaps re-name the subsection title "Exploitation and conservation status"? Axl ¤ [Talk] 10:48, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

• Fixed. LittleJerry (talk) 15:44, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

From "Relationship with humans", subsection "Conservation status", paragraph 1: "Normally, giraffes can coexist with livestock, since they feed in the trees above their heads." Who feeds above whose heads? Axl ¤ [Talk] 10:58, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

• Fixed. LittleJerry (talk) 15:44, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

  "Normally, giraffes can coexist with livestock, since they feed in the trees above the latter's heads." This still isn't quite right. The giraffes are not in the trees. Axl ¤ [Talk] 15:23, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

• Fixed. LittleJerry (talk) 16:55, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

In "Relationship with humans", subsection "Conservation status", the photo ("Giraffe killed by tribesmen") looks quite old. From the Wikimedia Commons info, it was taken between 1906 and 1918. Perhaps change the caption to "Giraffe killed by tribesmen in the early 20th century"? Axl ¤ [Talk] 15:31, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

• Fixed. LittleJerry (talk) 16:55, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

The article is still semi-protected. I'm not sure when this was done or why. Was it subjected to repeated IP vandalism? Would it be reasonable to unprotect it now? Axl ¤ [Talk] 15:35, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

• You'll have to talk to the person who protected this. This issue doesn't have anything to do with whether the article should be FA. LittleJerry (talk) 23:03, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

• Many broad articles on animals like lions, giraffes, elephants, whales etc.which are familiar to schoolchildren are often subject to waves of vandalism, and as such, many have been semiprotected for long periods. Casliber (talk · contribs) 23:25, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Support. From the previous FAC, I still have a concern about the way that the subspecies populations are estimated. Also, I am slightly uncomfortable with the phylogenetic tree image in "Taxonomy and evolution", subsection "Subspecies". However both LittleJerry and Stfg are happy with the image, and there are no dissenting voices. The pictures are all free images from Wikimedia Commons. I have not checked the references. Axl ¤ [Talk] 16:33, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Thank you. LittleJerry (talk) 16:40, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Source review - spotchecks not done, no comment on source comprehensiveness. Nikkimaria (talk) 20:47, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

• Ranges should use endashes consistently
• Compare formatting on FNs 4 and 5
• Be consistent in whether or not you provide publisher locations for books
• Be consistent in whether ISBNs are hyphenated or not
• "p." should be used for single pages and "pp." for ranges - check usage
• Don't include both {{citation}} and the {{cite}} family of templates, as this causes formatting inconsistencies
• FN 61: formatting
• Don't duplicate cited sources in External links
• What makes this a high-quality reliable source? Nikkimaria (talk) 20:47, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

All clear. LittleJerry (talk) 22:08, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

I have some difficulty accepting the abandonment of the use of {{MSW3}} and {{IUCN2008}} templates, though. They can put things in categories, if wanted, which the straight {{cite}} templates cannot. Template MSW3 creates hyphenated ISBN, but I don't think that outweighs the value of using it (and the new cite is much less complete). I don't see what was gained by abandoning template IUCN2008 at all. --Stfg (talk) 23:17, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

I don't mind it either, but apparently I can't use both types of citing. LittleJerry (talk) 23:26, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

@Nikkimaria, is this really true? That we can't use templates MSW3 and IUCN2008 (and the other IUCN... templates) and {{cite}} in the same article? --Stfg (talk) 00:16, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Is it possible to adjust these templates so that the formatting is consistent with {{cite}}? Actually, I don't believe that any of the problems I noted involved IUCN refs. Nikkimaria (talk) 01:34, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

I thought you included {{IUCN2008}} as a {{citation}}. LittleJerry (talk) 01:56, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

No, there was an actual {{citation}} there last I checked. IUCN is fine. Nikkimaria (talk) 02:34, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Well I found it and fixed it. LittleJerry (talk) 02:59, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

@Nikkimaria, I'm not sure what we can do with {{MSW3}}, as it's very widely used. For example, probably some articles using it will hyphenate ISBNs and others not. But I'm willing to ask Ucucha's view if you like. I've put the original MSW3 citation and the current Cite-book citation side by side in User:Stfg/Sandbox1 for comparison. Please could you let me know which aspects of MSW3 (the top one) you would like changed? --Stfg (talk) 09:57, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

In addition to a non-hyphenated ISBN, it also should'nt list the publisher's locations. LittleJerry (talk) 11:49, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

I was really asking Nikkimaria which aspects are of concern, not merely what the differences are. I see you've restored the use of IUCN2008 (thanks) and made the MSW3 citation pretty much as good as the output from the template, but there's a wider issue here. I've asked Ucucha for his view. --Stfg (talk) 14:03, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

... and he has replied that he doesn't use Template:MSW3 as there are some problems with it. So what you've done looks good to me now. Thanks. --Stfg (talk) 16:05, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

• Support - I'd been meaning to return here - article looking more polished than when I last looked, and a couple of things had been added that pushed it further into "safe" ground comprehensiveness-wise. So I am happy with prose and comprehensiveness now. Casliber (talk · contribs) 13:23, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Thank you. LittleJerry (talk) 15:32, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Note: MOS issues needing attention, on a quick scan, I see a collapsed scroll box in text, I see text sandwiched between images, I see an image gallery. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:43, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

All fixed. LittleJerry (talk) 23:41, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

I think the image gallery fits recommended WP:IG use. I provided details elsewhere before I realised the removal originated here. If people prefer they can add comments about it here. –RN1970 (talk) 12:44, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

SandyGeorgia's reasoning on the talkpage means sense. Plus, the diagram already gives shapshots of the coat patterns for six subspecies, which are pretty much the only thing that distinguish them externally. LittleJerry (talk) 19:48, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

It does indeed make sense, and I too think the diagram and the commons are sufficient. --Stfg (talk) 20:39, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

There are nine subspecies (ten if you believe the recent split of angolensis is correct; MSW3 follows a review from 1971 and the three they don't recognise have all been proven valid by detailed studies after the publication of MSW3). That means 1/3 are not shown by the diagram! The latest comment on SandyGeorgia talk page includes a few incorrect comparisons: Most people are unlikely to know there are several distinctly different subspecies and people that work in biology (like myself) are often forgetful about their differences. If this had been a collection of random photos it would have been "don't we all know what giraffes look like", but it isn't. To fit it should be modified to "don't we all know what the giraffe subspecies look like" and I doubt that statement is right. The comparison to the lion article is also incorrect because the typical argument by people who added more photos to it could be summed down to "I think it is a nice image". Are there any places where the giraffe subspecies gallery does not match recommendation in the WP:IG policy, the very basis for gallery use? To my eyes the main difference compared to the WP:IG textbook example of good gallery use, 1750–1795 in fashion, is that the giraffe gallery was not directly linked to each text section describing the subspecies. That can easily be done by adding numbers and switching the subspecies text order to match the subspecies photo order. RN1970 (talk) 21:12, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Note: In two (camelopardalis, thornicrofti) of the three subspecies where some have argued the text description is sufficient, the text description of their appearance is not supported by any citation. They're right but still unsupported. RN1970 (talk) 21:24, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Okay then, all fixed. LittleJerry (talk) 22:00, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

On second thought, it's hard to tell the difference between the coat patterns in the gallery as many of the giraffes are not close enough to the camera and some have bad lighting. LittleJerry (talk) 22:52, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose on a few counts, the prose is tedious and makes it hard to read pages and page ranges are missing from one of the major sources. When there are 30+ refs tagged to one source the page ranges would be nice.--Mike - Μολὼν λαβέ 08:30, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

First off the article has gone through a billion fine tunings for prose, it is no harder to read then any of the current FAs. Second, there are no missing pages/page number for "many" of the sources. I presume you're talking about the Giraffe book by Edgar Williams. There are no pages ranges given because I'm citing the entire book not just a section. The books by Estes and Kingdon have specific sections dedicated to the giraffe, so I give the pages ranges. The entire Williams book is dedicated to the giraffe, so it is silly to give ranges, especially since I'm using different sections of the book. An inline page citation for each fact is all that is needed. LittleJerry (talk) 15:37, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Well I've been kicked in the nuts over having too broad a range on pages, so I find no page ranges unacceptable for FAC. As for the prose, I know how that happens, but try reading it again, sometimes those tweaks make it as boring as a dog's ass.--Mike - Μολὼν λαβέ 16:18, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

When page ranges are too broad or if you're using the entire book, you give inline page citations for the cites, which is what I have done and maybe you didn't. So your objection is invalid. I've read through and fixed the article hundreds of times and I'm not doing it again for some vague claim of it being "boring". LittleJerry (talk) 18:12, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

It's not boring, actually the body of the article reads well, it is the lede that comes across as tedious. As far as the page ranges, we will have to disagree on that. Like I said, I took your attitude about that once and got nutpunched later. I'm just trying to save you from headaches down the road.--Mike - Μολὼν λαβέ 18:40, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Okay I'll fix the lede and what if I give the page number for the entire book? LittleJerry (talk) 18:53, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

I did some fixes in the lede and gave the page range for the entire book. LittleJerry (talk) 19:22, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Leads can be tricky, but they are important to get as attractive as possible. It looks better now. Casliber (talk · contribs) 20:23, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Much better, sometimes it is only a word or two in the right place...after 5 years I still think i suck at it, but this is looking good now!--Mike - Μολὼν λαβέ 20:40, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Note:

• 29.^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z aa ab ac ad ae Williams, E. (2011). Giraffe. Reaktion Books. pp. 1-174.

We shouldn't be expected to look through 174 pages to find about 30 different citations. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:12, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Fixed. Give narrowed down page ranges. LittleJerry (talk) 21:07, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

This still doesn't allow readers to easily locate and verify information (over 30 citations to broad ranges of pages, totaling to around 100 pages):

• 29.^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z aa ab ac ad ae Williams, E. (2011). Giraffe. Reaktion Books. pp. 21-44, 45-71, 116-50. ISBN 1861897642.

Also, pls see WP:DASH, WP:ENDASH and WP:HYPHEN and check article throughout for correct endashes on page ranges. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:40, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

I fixed one of these myself-- please check throughout. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:10, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Whats wrong with the inline citations? LittleJerry (talk) 22:41, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

I don't understand your question; the problem is missing page numbers. We need to give readers enough that they can find and verify information-- these page ranges are too broad to be able to locate something. Each item should be inline cited to a tighter page range. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:48, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Sample

• Williams (2011), p. 34.
• Williams (2011), pp. 45–50.
• Williams (2011), pp. 120–21.

or something similar. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:50, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

As I said, when pages ranges are broad, inline pages cite are given. You know, the {{Rp}} template. Why are you guys making this more difficult then it should be. LittleJerry (talk) 22:59, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Ah, ha ... now I see what you mean. Yes, those page numbers attached to the citation in the text are acceptable (even if they are obnoxious and ugly :) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:03, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

WP:MOS#Captions punctuation review needed (full sentences in image captions should have final puncuation, sentence fragments should not). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:48, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Fixed. LittleJerry (talk) 22:59, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Image review and spotcheck for accuracy in representation of sources and close paraphrasing pending. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:06, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Endahes all clear. LittleJerry (talk) 23:10, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Made a few changes, sourcing all clear. LittleJerry (talk) 23:53, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

I don't see any more hypens in page ranges. LittleJerry (talk) 01:01, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

Source spotcheck

1. http://www.giraffeconservation.org/giraffe_facts.php?pgid=6

Source: The distinctive coat of the Nubian giraffe has large, normally 4 sided, chestnut brown spots set against a slightly off-white background. It has no markings on the inside of its legs or at all below the hocks (knees).

Article: Its coat pattern has large, four-sided spots of chestnut brown on an off-white background, with no spots on the inner sides of the legs or below the hocks.

Source: Sometimes also called the Netted giraffe, it is plain to see why with the browny-orange coat patches clearly defined by a network of thick and often extremely white lines.

Article: G. c. reticulata,[16] known as the Reticulated[16] or Somali giraffe, has a coat pattern of well-defined patches that are usually bright orange-brown.[17] These patches have sharp edges and are separated by bold, bright white lines.

Source: The Angolan giraffe is relatively light in colour (hence the name 'Smokey') with large uneven, notched, spots covering the entire leg.

Article: G. c. angolensis, the Angolan or Smoky giraffe, is relatively light in color and has large spots with some notches around the edges, extending down the entire lower leg.

Source: It is estimated that fewer than 20,000 remain in the wild. ISIS (the International Species Information System, based on zoological data information) records indicate that only about 20 individuals are kept in zoos. (note, not sourced to this article, data comes from another primary source, but text is close to this article).

Article: It is estimated that no more than 20,000 remain in the wild;[18] based on ISIS records approximately 20 are kept in zoos.[21]

Stopped there.

2. http://www.awf.org/content/wildlife/detail/giraffe

Source: The giraffe is a selective feeder and although it feeds 16 to 20 hours a day, it may consume only about 65 pounds of foliage during that time. It can maintain itself on as little as 15 pounds of foliage per day.

Article: A giraffe can eat 65 lb (29 kg) of leaves and twigs daily, but can survive on just 15 lb (6.8 kg).

Source: Although they drink water when it's available, they can survive where it is scarce.

Article: The giraffe can survive without water for extended periods. (what is "extended periods"? Not in the source.)

Source: Giraffe tails are highly prized by many African cultures. The desire for good-luck bracelets, fly whisks and thread for sewing or stringing beads have led people to kill the giraffe for its tail alone.

Article: The tails were used as good luck charms, for thread and as flyswatters.

Stopped there: I'll let others decide if paraphrasing is up to snuff, and one concern about accuracy ("Extended periods"). I'm not sure this is an extensive enough look, but hope others will do a few more. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:13, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

This is a bit complicated. Some of the very recent changes to the wikipedia article (e.g. coat descriptions) may require changes but some other parts (e.g. information based on ISIS data) were on wikipedia first. Giraffeconservation.org copied wikipedia. Not vice versa. RN1970 (talk) 02:34, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Interesting-- that's a big problem. If giraffeconservatin.org copied Wikipedia, is it really a reliable source? Doesn't seem likely; in fact, I can't find anything on their website that indicates why we are using an advocacy organization over journal publication sources for a potential featured article, which requires high-quality sourcing. At any rate, a deeper source check might be warranted. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:39, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

The problem is that some of the information they provide, notably approximate wild population counts of each subspecies, is very hard to find elsewhere. There are currently two giraffeconservation.org pages used as citations for wikipedia:

"Giraffe - The Facts: Giraffe subspecies" is a relatively new page that became a wikipedia citation less than two weeks ago. It appears to incorporate information from wikipedia or at least some of the information was on wikipedia before the same information appeared on their page. Based on the wayback machine, the first proven appearance of the Giraffe subspecies page is July 2011 (Giraffe subspecies in left bar, absent in earlier archived versions). Anything that was in the wikipedia article about that time and also appears in a near identical form on their page may be WP:CIRCULAR.

"Giraffe – The Facts: Current giraffe status?" is an older page that has not changed significantly, at least since April 2010 (Wayback machine). When information from this page first entered the wikipedia article in December 2010 it included the citation (total wild population and wild population of each subspecies all originates there). This proves it was on their page first and not CIRCULAR. RN1970 (talk) 03:35, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Yes, I know how to use Wayback. Again, that they are copying text from Wikipedia does not speak well for them being a high quality source. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:37, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

The ICUN cites it as a source. So it is a RS. LittleJerry (talk) 03:47, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

That's not how reliability of sources is determined, btw. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:59, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

They are the main conservation organisation working with giraffe in their native range. They are a high quality source for data on the wild populations and their conservation. It would be hard to find any source speaking poorly about them and their reliability in this field. A large percentage of the peer-reviewed publications about conservation of giraffe in the wild are in some way connected to them, directly or indirectly. Their reliability in other data but especially captive data (where they have little involvement) is far lower. It is perhaps unsurprising they looked elsewhere to fill in their own gaps in that field. Wikipedia isn't using them as a source for captive data anyway but our use of their "Giraffe subspecies" page for differences in the appearance of the subspecies may require a check. Cf. my last comment. RN1970 (talk) 04:23, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Removed subspecies reference. LittleJerry (talk) 04:50, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Image review

• File:Giraffe_Mikumi_National_Park.jpg: image description indicates that caption attribution is requested. Same with File:Giraffe_feeding,_Tanzania.jpg and File:Giraffe_Ithala_KZN_South_Africa_Luca_Galuzzi_2004.JPG
• File:Samotherium_skull.jpg: if author is unknown, how do we know he/she died more than 70 years ago? Also, need US PD tag
• File:GiraffaRecurrEn.svg is partially sourced to a deleted image
• File:Yongle-Giraffe1.jpg: licensing indicated in image description and actual licensing tag are contradictory. Nikkimaria (talk) 02:56, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

All fixed, expect for the first one. The photographer himself added the pictures. [27] [28] LittleJerry (talk) 04:09, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Support on prose and comprehensiveness. Two comments on lead:

• Capitalization inconsistency in classifications: "Least Concern" but "endagered"?
• "Nevertheless, giraffes are still found in numerous game reserves." – To me, the "still" here seems kind of redundant to "Nevertheless" Auree ★ 20:46, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

Fixed, but I think this has had enough nitpicks. This needs a source spotcheck. LittleJerry (talk) 02:49, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Well, for what it's worth, I'll add in my support. I read through it and think it's very well written and informative. Good luck with the rest of the nomination--hope it can get its spotcheck done soon... Auree ★ 05:21, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Thank you. LittleJerry (talk) 13:50, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Oppose based on spotchecks. Nikkimaria (talk) 15:14, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

• "Arab prophets and poets considered the giraffe the "queen of beasts" for what they saw as its delicate features and fragile form" vs "Arab prophets and poets considered the giraffe the queen of beasts, with enchantingly long eyelashes, delicate features, and fragile form."
• "Eastern sultans prized them as special pets" vs "Eastern sultans prized them as very special pets"
• "During the Middle Ages, giraffes were mostly forgotten by Europeans, except in legends from Arab travelers" vs "During the Middle Ages giraffes seem to have been nearly forgotten, except in legends and embellished tales from Arab travelers"
• "When water is available, it may drink at intervals of three days or less. Giraffes can also get water from green leaves, especially when covered in dew" vs "Giraffes may drink at intervals of three days or less when water is available, but can also fill much of their need from green leaves, especially when covered in dew."
• "In low intesity necking, the combatants gently rub their heads and necks together and lean heavily against each other, while flapping their ears and rubbing shoulders, perhaps to assess their comparative weights" vs "At low intensity, they proceed to rub heads and necks gently together, and may lean heavily against each other with ears flapping and rub shoulders or flanks – probably assessing their comparative weight"
• "In high intensity necking, the combatants aim blows at each other's rump, flanks or neck. To prepare to strike, a giraffe will straddle with its front legs, draw its neck sideways and swing upward and downward over the shoulder, attempting to hit its opponent with its horns.[20] The contestants try to avoid being hit by moving their necks at the last moment" vs "At higher intensity, the contestants aim blows at rump, flanks or neck...straddling his forelegs, then he draws his neck sideways and swings upward and backward over his shoulder to strike his opponent with the parietal horns...each does his best to avoid being hit by moving his neck away at the last moment"
• "The pelvis is shorter in the giraffe than in most other ruminants, and the ilium has more expanded upper ends" vs "The pelvis is shorter than in most ruminants, and the upper ends of the ilia are more expanded"
• "the giraffe's proportionally larger limbs have high rotational inertia that would make rapid swimming motions strenuous" vs "the giraffe's proportionally larger limbs have much higher rotational inertias...making rapid swimming motions more strenuous"

The number of very close paraphrases in this relatively small sample leads me to conclude that this article needs to be thoroughly checked and likely at least partially rewritten before attaining FA status. Nikkimaria (talk) 15:14, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose per Nikkimaria, and suggest withdrawing this FAC and having fresh eyes comb through the entire thing. And I do so wish any reviewers entering Supports on first-time nominators would do this work before the nomination languishes at FAC for so long; it's not really fair to Little Jerry or to FAC that this page sat here so long with a couple of supports, but no one looking at sources. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:37, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

What? Okay I can see a some But 4, 6, 7 are very different. LittleJerry (talk) 16:50, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

LittleJerry, I'm sorry to see you retiring. If you're still looking in, this may help you to judge better how close a paraphrase can acceptably be, and to see why 4, 6 and 7 are still too close. I hope to see you back one day. Simon. --Stfg (talk) 15:17, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose due to plagiarism concerns. Based on a quick check of another article from the nominator, coaching on avoiding plagiarism and copyvio is going to be needed. --Laser brain (talk) 16:52, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose due to plagiarism concerns. Looks like Jerry took his ball and went home, too: [29], [30].--Mike - Μολὼν λαβέ 05:48, 4 February 2012 (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 Ucucha 23:30, 2 February 2012 [31].

---

Amon of Judah

Nominator(s): Magister Scienta^talk 23:35, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

I am nominating this for featured article because, while it's certainly on the smaller side, it's a high quality article that fully covers the life of the subject. Magister Scienta^talk 23:35, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

Copyscape search: No issues were revealed by Copyscape searches. Graham Colm (talk) 00:22, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Comments:

• There's a typo in the second sentence. The past tense of "lead" is "led".
• I cite-checked the bible verses, and they are accurate.
• I'm not sure what to say about the length. I'd like to think that any article can be featured if it's comprehensive, well-sourced, and well-written, which this seems to be, but there's really not much historical information on this guy, is there? Criterion #4, on length, says "It stays focused on the main topic without going into unnecessary detail." That seems satisfied, at least. And there are FAs nearly as short -- Tropical Depression Ten (2005), for one. --Coemgenus (talk) 00:29, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment (Note that I was the GA reviewer of this article): I am certainly not opposed to short articles become featured, however, I am not convinced that this covers the topic completely comprehensively. As I said in the review, before this is ready for featured status, you'd really need to cover everything that there is to cover, and look into every source. "The historical background of the assassination of Amon, king of Judah" by Malamat is not referenced, and I assume that you have not read it. There also seems to be some textual debate of interest concerning Amon, which is discussed at length by Begg; this is not addressed in the article, and some of the primary sources mentioned by Begg are also not mentioned. Also, that image needs to go. The deletion debate on Commons was a fucking joke. J Milburn (talk) 00:56, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Hi J, I'm pretty busy right now IRL so I'll respond to the Begg stuff later. In regards to the image, you're probably right, truthfully I don't even really understand what the closing admin meant. Yet, I'm also of the feeling that if the consensus of the XfD was keep, than regardless of our opinions it can be kept. Magister Scienta^talk 04:56, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Policy is policy (and law is law) regardless of what a "discussion" containing three voices somewhere on another project "decided". For what it's worth, I've contacted the closing admin. J Milburn (talk) 14:13, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

The image has been replaced with the {{Kings of Judah}} template. Magister Scienta^talk 14:39, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

J, I found it!. Magister Scienta^talk 14:55, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Oppose - There is not enough historical or theological context, and there are stubs longer than this. Does this represent our best work? It is little more than a DYK. I know that length is not a criterion for promotion (although I disagree with this) but the article is too short to be engaging (Criterion 1A). Graham Colm (talk) 01:07, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Can you please clarify why the article didn't engage you. Thanks, Magister Scienta^talk 04:57, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Oppose. Sorry, but this doesn't seem comprehensive. A cursory search on Google Books and academic databases reveals any number of potential sources that haven't been used here. Many of them appear to contain substantive information about the subject. --Laser brain (talk) 19:36, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Comments:-

• Bearing in mind the extremely meagre nature of the text I think it important that you investigate fully the additional sources that J Milburn has identified above. I don't know these sources, but what they contain needs to be established.
• The statement that Flavius Josephus describes Amon as among the worst of the Kings of Judah bothers me, because Josephus says no such thing. The following is the entire Josephus text that relates to Amon: "The kingdom came to [Manasseh's] son Amon, whose mother's name was Meshulemeth [sic] of the city of Jotbath. This Amon imitated the works of his father which he so insolently did when he was young: so he had a conspiracy made against him by his own servants, and was slain in his own house, where he had lived twenty-four years, and of them had reigned two; but the multitude punished those that slew Amon, and buried him with his father, and gave the kingdom to his son Josiah". That's it, there's no more. I see your text is cited to Begg; are you sure you are quoting him correctly?

In his conclusion, Begg writes "In Josephus' version Jotham and Amon remain basically as they are in the Bible, two minor kings, one markedly good, the other among Judah's worst rulers." Magister Scienta^talk 20:06, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Well, there you are, a "reliable source" (Begg) misquoting what his source says. Nowhere does Josephus say Amon was "among the worst", he merely says he imitated the "insolent" behaviour of his father's youth. I recommend you correct this. Brianboulton (talk) 01:03, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sold that it should be removed. Isn't Begg just making a scholarly interpretation of Josephus' writings. Begg isn't claiming to having quoted Josephus verbatim, he's just making an observation on how Josephus chose to portray Amon. Thoughts?Magister Scienta^talk 03:42, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

My point is that Begg is misinterpreting his source. The content does not support his judgement – not enough information is given, either in the bible or Josephus. And you are compounding the problem, by ascribing Begg's unsupported view to Flavius himself! You say: "Like other textual sources, Flavius Josephus too criticizes the reign of Amon, describing him as among the worst of the Kings of Judah". He doesn't. And what are these "other textual sources" that do? Brianboulton (talk) 11:04, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

I have removed that sentence. the other textual sources are namely scripture. Magister Scienta^talk 23:52, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

• Per your template headed "Kings of Judah", please note that Athaliah was not a "king" of Judah.

I have fixed the heading of the template. Magister Scienta^talk 20:06, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Brianboulton (talk) 19:54, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Furthermore, the lead says his idolatrous practices while king led to a revolt against him. There is no information in the article about a "revolt" (a servants' conspiracy is a quite different thing), and what is the basis for saying that this "revolt", if there was one, was caused by his idolatory? Since the people rose up against the people who killed him, it seems he may have been quite a popular figure. Brianboulton (talk) 01:13, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

This and other elements of the article will be revised after I have the time to go through the Malamat article, which had eluded me for some time. Is there anyway to postpone this discussion? Thanks, Magister Scienta^talk 03:38, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

I'm happy to wait, if FAC will grant you this leeway. Brianboulton (talk) 10:22, 30 January 2012 (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 Ucucha 23:30, 2 February 2012 [32].

---

Wage reform in the Soviet Union, 1956–1962

Nominator(s): Coolug (talk) 18:32, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

I'm nominating this for featured article because I feel I've written a well referenced and clear article that is detailed enough as to provide everything a reader could wish for, but is also written in a style that is accessible to the causal reader who does not know too much about Soviet History. There aren't a huge number of sources available on this subject, but I've taken as much as possible from the available sources, all of which are very high quality sources. The article is currently at GA, and since then has had also undergone a peer review. I'd love to hear other editors comments on the article. cya! Coolug (talk) 18:32, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

• (Dealt with) Scope & Weighting question: why haven't you used Filtzer's Labor process theory in the context of wage reform? You accept that wage reform ramifies into the construction of the labor process, "The number of different wage rates and wage scales was drastically reduced." etc., is this going to be part of a broader set of articles around the Soviet Labour Process in the 1950s-1960s. Even if it is, Filtzer's conclusion about skilling, deskilling and reskilling via LPT seems like it would be relevant to the article. (Obviously I'm going to "buy into" this review a lot more, because I saw the title and got excited. Wage determination FAC? Soviet wage determination FAC? From the mid 1950s?) Fifelfoo (talk) 09:50, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Hi there. I'm happy that someone is excited about this FAC :) To be perfectly frank I do not really know anything about Labour Process Theory and how it might tie into this article. I was not planning on writing a broader set of articles at this stage in time, this is just a standalone article about one event in Soviet history. If you could point me in the direction of any additional works that would be considered a Reliable Source I'd be more than happy to read through them and see if there is more that can be added to the article. Thanks! Coolug (talk) 15:25, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

Academics get excited about wage rates because they provide the evidentiary data for large theoretical claims about Fordism and Taylorism and Labour process theory. In particular, Filtzer used the Soviet wage reform as part of an argument about Soviet labour process, and thus the political economic structure of Soviet society. It might pay to read the conclusion to Filtzer for this article. I'm going to try to see if I can't read the (potted) Google version today. Fifelfoo (talk) 20:44, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

See, for example, Filtzer p.229 and surrounding for why you need to read his conclusion for this article. Filtzer basically says here that shop floor wage bargaining incorporated skill components of socialist planning, due to the poor quality of management planning in Soviet Taylorism; and, that the only moments where this happened in the West was in areas where value didn't have to be "realised" in production. Fifelfoo (talk) 21:32, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

I've had a read of the area in the book you suggest and added something. However, one issue with this FAC is that it's going to take a hell of a long time if I need to go off to university and get myself a degree in Economics before I can add anything in more detail. The Filtzer text 'Soviet Workers and de-Stalinization' is some pretty complex stuff and there's 300 blooming pages of it. Frankly, the reason I've tried to write this article as something that is accessible to the layman is because I'm only a step or two ahead of the layman myself. For example, I don't really understand what Labour Process Theory is beyond it being a very complicated way of explaining that people do "stuff" for various "reasons". I had a read of some things last night with a couple of PhD friends of mine (admittedly they are scientists not economists, but they are people who are used to reading complicated things all day at work so I thought they might be able to make an educated guess) and they were completely flummoxed by it too (although we were consuming large quantities of Papa November's home made gin which didn't really help...)

Anyway, I shall struggle on regardless and see what more I can add, however, I'm definitely drowning here rather than waving :) Coolug (talk) 22:57, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Okay, give me a tick, I'll help you out here with this point (it can be relatively quick, Filtzer is the only theorist I can locate either). Fifelfoo (talk) 23:05, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks! BTW, I would still love to find out what this blasted Labor Process Theory actually is, the wiki article on it is a terrible example of what is wrong with some many articles about complicated things on this project. The article tells the reader who developed LPT, what it's been used for recently, but not what LPT is! Coolug (talk) 23:10, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Tried to expand Labour process theory to better indicate what it is about. Much sociological theory is in this kind of poor state, particularly the serious academic socialist sociological theory. You can see why I got excited by this FAC? :) Fifelfoo (talk) 23:31, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

• Support on (1bcde; 2abc; 3 (limited); 4): Content depth, breadth and correctness; source & cite quality; structure; neutrality & stability; media (appropriateness and captions only) Fifelfoo (talk) 23:31, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
  • I am willing to spot check this FAC, but the copyeditors need to go through before me.
  • Publisher location for this press in the bibliography: Fontana
  • Correct the colon: "Soviet Growth : Routine"
  • Title caps for Russia: ""RUSSIA: End Five-Year Plan"" Fifelfoo (talk) 23:50, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Hey, thanks for this. I have made these copyedits. If I've made any mistakes please let me know. Cya! Coolug (talk) 12:16, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

• Support Comments by Jim There's not enough excitement in my life either. Very accessible, well written, but a few niggles. Jimfbleak - talk to me? 08:46, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

• Because of the nature of Soviet industry, where materials were often in short supply and production would often be the result of "storming" practices, the ability to offer bonus payments had often been vital to the everyday running of Soviet industry, and therefore the reforms ultimately failed to create a more efficient system. — too "often"
• their individual wage payments depended upon how much work they personally completed. — Do you need both?
• stakhanovite — capitalised in its own article
• however — Please check that every use is essential
• great, great deal, greatly — greatly overused imho
• Whilst the reform did succeed in removing some of the peculiarities of the Stalinist era, overall the reforms succeeded — two successful
• Trade Union — why caps?
• couldn't — unencyclopaedic ellipsis

Thanks for this, I have made some changes based upon your suggestions. As you can probably tell I am having a very exciting christmas indeed! Coolug (talk) 19:11, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

No further issues, changed to support above.

• Media review File:Stamp of USSR 2341.jpg needs a description in English and File:Stakhanov.JPG needs {{Information}} filled out. —Andrew_stalk 23:39, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

  I've added an info box to Stakhanov.JPG and uploaded the full-res version from the source (4060×2690px after crop). I'm a little uncertain about the licensing for this one... it was almost certainly published anonymously in Russia prior to 1943-01-01, so it's OK as a PD-Russia-2008 (i.e. it's currently public domain in Russia). However, I'm not sure if it's PD in the US - for that to be the case, it either needs to have been simultaneously published in the US without a copyright notice (possible during the US-Soviet wartime collaboration?) or it must have been PD in Russia on 1996-01-01 (URAA date). Is it reasonable to assume we're OK? Papa November (talk) 11:46, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

  Also improved the description for Stamp of USSR 2341.jpg. This one's almost certainly PD-URAA. Papa November (talk) 11:55, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks Papa November! I have been sat here at work scratching my head at what I'm supposed to do with these for the past 15 minutes and was just about to give up and ask for help on here when I saw you'd already fixed it. Good work. Coolug (talk) 12:11, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

OK, looks good now. —Andrew_stalk 22:13, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Comment from nominator - Hi, I thought I'd just state on here that whilst Fifelfoo did say he would be willing to spot check this FAC, it should be noted that he is not currently editing due to an unrelated conflict on wikipedia. I am certainly not suggesting that anyone be a scab and take up his tasks, but I am asking that if anyone is thinking of closing this FAC due to lack of interest they bear in mind that there certainly is interest, it's just the interest is not expressing his interest at this exact moment in time. I still welcome any comments from other editors. Thanks! Coolug (talk) 13:34, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

Oppose. Lead is unsatisfactory:

• "were intended to move Soviet industrial workers away from the mindset of overfulfillment of quotas that had characterised"—suggest two grammatical changes: "of overfulfilling quotas, which had ...". At least I think that's the intended meaning ... that it was the overfulfullment that had characterised, yes?
• Personal pref.: "based on", not "based upon"; there's another "upon" shortly after. And you might consider "most" rather than "the majority of" (= 50%+, a bit fussy).
• Comma again (do watch this issue: subset or not a subset? It's very easy to get the meaning wrong in English): "Workers' personal production quotas were also heavily manipulated by factory managers who were keen to protect workers' wages." It works grammatically, but you're referring to a subset of factory managers; if you want to say that all f ms were thus keen, you need a comma before "who". Just checking.
• "incentivise"—could it be a simple, plain word, such as "motivate"? "Efficiently" -> "effectively".
• I'm not understanding some of the lead. Why should standardised wages (not "wage practices", which doesn't make sense) motivate workers; I'd have thought the opposite. And I wonder why the reforms made workers less dependent on overtime or bonus payments? All a mystery to me. Why would these changes reduce pay? What is "storming" (in the lead, we need to know; otherwise use an easier word or phrase here). Where is the causal logic in the "Because ..., the ability to ...". The last clause, too, needs to be a separate sentence.

Sure, the lead is hard to write; but will I expect to see better writing in the body of the article when I get to it? Tony (talk) 10:05, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

I have made some minor changes to the start of the lead so that it might read a little easier. And I've changed the "storming" bit so readers who do not wish to read the rest of the article (or perhaps search for "storming" in the main body of the article and read the explanation) will not feel left out.

However, I don't think it's a good idea to change "incentivise" to something else, "incentivise" has a very clear meaning (and I don't think it's a particularly obscure word that people reading an article on Soviet economics will fail to understand) that is different to the meaning of "motivate". Also "efficiently" has a different meaning to "effectively". The point of the reform was to give workers an incentive that would not result in so much waste. If you read the rest of the article you will discover what this was. Therefore the use of the word "efficient".

As for why the wage reform did the things it did, that is what the rest of the article is about! Coolug (talk) 12:15, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Incentivise, incentivisation, are just so ugly. I would strike it out of any text except an advertising billboard or TV commercial, where cheapness of language is a device.

Efficiently as currently worded refers to this incentivising (that is, motivating—what exactly is wrong with a plain word?). I think you mean effectively; as you say, "The point of the reform was to give workers an incentive that would not result in so much waste."—right, so that workers would work more efficiently. But the incentives were intended to effectively achieve this. And we've just had inefficiencies three lines back, where it refers to Soviet industry, which is fine. So you effective motivate the workers to be more efficient in their production. If you persist with efficiently motivate, I hope it's clear from the article what inefficient motivation would be. Right now it looks like an unfortunate repetition, aside from being the suboptimal lexical choice per se.

Your response asserts that the reader needs to read the whole article to make sense of the lead: this is not the function of a lead. It opens into the article, but should not be impenetrable as it now is on a few counts. The piece work system would have encouraged workers to turn out pieces, but not necessarily to work hard. We all know the stories of goods that fell apart soon after purchase, the generally sloppy practices that placed numbers of outputted units above basic quality. The lead doesn't even go there, but it is central to the failure of the system, both before and after the wage reform that is the topic of the article. This is why I gag on the sentence: "The wage reforms sought to remove outdated wage practices and more efficiently incentivise Soviet workers by making their wages more standardised and less dependent upon overtime or bonus payments. However, industrial managers were loathe to go ahead with actions that would effectively reduce workers' wages, and often ignored the directives, continuing to pay workers high overtime rates." I can't see the logic, and thus it fails in a lead. Tony (talk) 02:31, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment - I'm not an economist but as I understand it, "incentivise" has a very specific meaning in economics. It refers directly and explicitly to the introduction of an incentive into an economic system. "Motivate" doesn't quite work - it lacks the explicit economic context of "incentivise". I guess it would be better to be even more explicit, lose the verbal form and say something like "The wage reforms were intended to introduce a financial incentive..." Papa November (talk) 10:07, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Good idea, acted upon. Coolug (talk) 10:22, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I am happy to accept constructive comments on this article. I can see that you have now read the entire article, so if you think the lead is missing something important then please put it in.

However, I am not happy to accept rude edit summaries. Just because you do not think my writing is up to scratch it does not mean it's ok to write things like "Time to update your writing" or other sarcastic comments. Please try to be civil. Coolug (talk) 10:15, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

It's an extremely interesting topic and I'd like to see the article promoted at some stage. I'm not sure the details are sufficiently fleshed out at the moment. Tony (talk) 15:19, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for your message on my talk page. Now, regarding what the lead does not mention, you ask that the lead makes reference to "sloppy" practices and how they were central to the point of the reform. The problem is that saying this would unfortunately be original research. The sources I have used do not actually mention that the soviet economy was churning out a load of rubbish, just that the progressive piece rate system was inefficient. I suppose this may be because the sources I have used are a little on the highbrow side and so don't mention anything as 'obvious' as that. There are other sources elsewhere saying that soviet goods were badly made, but don't mention the wage reform and therefore to link the two might be original research too. I'm as frustrated as you that the article and it's lead fails to explain this, but until someone writes a high quality source saying that the wage reform had something to do with sloppy production I'm unable to do anything about it. Coolug (talk) 17:54, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

• Serious question, then: since everyone in the east and the west knew the quality of goods behind the iron curtain was pretty bad (don't mention the Trabie), and intuitively a system that imposes quantity quotas but little or no quality control is bound to lead to this outcome, why isn't more written about it in reliable sources? I can't believe western economists and the establishment in general had no interest in analysing the quality of goods, which was a major factor in the failure of that system (I didn't download it, but does the CIA source provide no leads?). Your ref list isn't all that big; I wonder whether there's more to discover. This article is important enough to expand and deepen with more evidence, since it ultimately involves an economic system that consumed (no pun) a huge proportion of the global population for many decades. Other articles, including, for example, that on East Germany (among many), could benefit from the leadership you show in this article. The treatment of the Soviet empire is not really very good on WP; and something tells me it's not good in the German or Russian WPs either. BTW, are there analogous articles in any other language WP? Tony (talk) 13:12, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
  • I'm going to claim expert: Western ideologs seriously didn't care that much about the internals of payment structures in the Soviet Union. IR worked at a different level of theoretical engagement; and labour history hasn't caught up with the 1950s in the Soviet Union (the 1920s and 1930s resolve more serious academic issues). The ref list looks about reasonable for one component of a three pronged attack on the quality problem. Fifelfoo (talk) 13:35, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Tony, just to be clear, are you opposing this nomination because the writing is rubbish? because the sources don't say as much as we'd like them to say? Or for both of these reasons? Coolug (talk) 16:53, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Support Comments. Support on everything but comprehensiveness and well-researched-ness; also have not done a source check or image check. Prose is fine if not sparkling and everything else looks good. An interesting read.

• The first sentence doesn't seem right: "Wage reform was a process that took place in the Soviet Union from 1956 through 1962". Clearly that's not what wage reform is, or was. This is a hard article to write a first sentence for, but per WP:LEADSENTENCE the title doesn't have to appear verbatim, so I think we could go with something like "From 1956 through 1962, the Soviet Union attempted to implement wage reforms in order to address ...." That's not ideal, but the current version seems quite wrong to me.
• "where materials were frequently in short supply and production would be the result of rushed production" -- I don't understand the second half of this.
• You have "for example" twice in the first paragraph of "Existing system".
• "This method of calculating and paying wages ...": I think you're too far away from the definition of the method to refer to it in this way. I'd say something like "The piece-rate approach to wages", or " Stalinist-era wage policies", or something like that. Actually I think that whole sentence could be recast: perhaps "The piece-rate approach to wages, which had been introduced in the first Five-Year Plan and had changed very little since then, was in practice highly inefficient."

I've made all of the above changes as you suggest. Coolug (talk) 20:52, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

• "... could better incentivize workers ...": I accept that "incentivize" is a real word, but I think this is not quite precise. It sounds to me as though the workers had plenty of incentive already, but the managers of the factories did not. Or is this in fact what Bulganin said, regardless of whether it reflected reality? If in fact there was a problem with worker incentives then I don't understand it at this point in the article. And if we could change "incentivize" to "motivate" or "encourage" in at least one or two places I'd like that; it's one of those words that some readers find annoying.

I have no idea of the exact wording that Bulganin used, but the source (Fearn page 13) states that he said the idea was to "provide better incentives". I think it's important to accurately reflect the source here. Coolug (talk) 20:52, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

• "The Five-Year Plan stated several key changes that would be made to Soviet workers wages": could this be simplified to "The Five-Year Plan made several key changes to Soviet workers wages"? If it didn't make the changes, but instigated or proposed them, then we could use those verbs instead, but I think "that would be made" is verbose.
• "overall the reforms succeeded more in simply creating new problems for Soviet workers": a bit clumsy; how about "overall the reforms created more new problems for Soviet workers"?
• "to attract workers into roles that had lost much of their attraction" -- can we avoid the repetition of "attract"?
• In the first paragraph of "Conclusions" you have "Filtzer stresses" and "Filtzer cited"; please make the tense consistent.
• "Storming" isn't defined till the conclusion section; if the definition is important (and I think it is) it should come much earlier, in the background section.
• "This had led to a situation where workers who could not count on a western style meritocracy would have to rely on the decisions of their managers who needed to be able to reward workers based on their own arbitrary decisions rather than sticking to a centrally directed system of wages": I don't follow this; can you explain?
• "hegemonic culture of consumerism": does "hegemonic" add anything to the explanation here? I think it can be cut.
• "Filtzer notes that Soviet workers were constantly forced into a position of exerting more skill than called for in plans or norms, a condition only seen to such an extent in the West where industries were insulated from market forces, and as such workers and managers in the Soviet Union had many reasons to collude over setting wages, norms and skill expectations, even after the wage reform": another sentence I really don't understand.

-- Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 18:22, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

I've also made changes for all of these points now. I hope this makes the article a bit clearer. By the way, thanks for your helpful copyedits too! cya Coolug (talk) 21:14, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

Looks good. I will reread tomorrow and I hope to be able to support, on prose at least. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 02:31, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

I've switched to support above. I copyedited a little more; please fix anything I broke. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 02:01, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Support (primarily prose) Comments from Noleander

• Note: I did the Peer Review of this article, and already submitted several suggestions for improvement at that time.
• Explain: "The reform's clearest effect was in reducing the proportion of Soviet industrial labour that was paid by way of piece-rate, ....". Probably should explain the other payment method that increased. Hourly wages?

Added an extra sentence to this part. I hope this helps clear things up. Coolug (talk) 09:51, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

• Russian word: "a process known as "storming" was endemic ...". It would be great if the original russian word were supplied, since it is clearly an important idiom for this practice.

I've looked this up and stuck it in. If it's not formatted properly please do go ahead and amend it. I'm going to Kiev soon so I'll have to try and use this in a sentence :) Coolug (talk) 20:22, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

• Why attribute? "Alec Nove wrote in 1966 ... that the lack of transparency ..". This attribution to Nove seems out of place. The assertion by Nove doesnt seem particularly controversial. Omit?

The earlier sentence reads "some academics believed" etc etc, which is followed by Nove writing about how these academics were missing the real reason that statistics were so rarely published. Because of this I think his name should be kept in, since his point goes against the more common perception. Coolug (talk) 09:43, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

• Clarify socialism: " The Soviet elite would not radically change the labour process by democratising it and introducing socialism,...". I thought the USSR was socialist? If so, how could socialism be introduced? Please re-cast sentence to clarify for readers that may fall victim to similar confusion.

I've written this in more understandable language. Coolug (talk) 19:01, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

• Current situation: It would be nice if the Conclusions section brought the reader up to date with a brief statement of how wages/payment evolved until the fall of the USSR. No need for a big treatise: but the article abruptly stops at 1962 ... what happened form 1962 to 1989? Did quotas remain common? Did the USSR experiment with hourly wages more? For example, see the article 1965 Soviet economic reform about a 1965 reform effort: would it be useful to readers to mention that in this article? Is the 1965 reform a logical follow-on to this article's reform?

Hey, I'd like to add something like this myself, however, there's not a huge amount of stuff out there in the world that deals with wages in the Soviet Union. I shall have a look to see if I have any sources knocking about, but I think it's doubtful I'll find anything. The 1965 Reform was basically a completely separate entity. In a nutshell it was about trying to get industrial enterprises to behave in a more 'market friendly' fashion. There were pay incentives included in the 65 reform, but they were aimed at industrial managers rather than the workers. Coolug (talk) 19:10, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

• Footnote format: FN 25 is "Central Intelligence Agency (1961), page 2"; yet when I look down in References, I do not see CIA as I scan down the bullets. When using shortened footnotes, I believe the FN must contain an identifier that corresponds to a left-most text in the associated Reference. I know the blue link takes me to the correct place, but that is not reliable. I suggest either move CIA to the left of the Reference (as the author); or put "An Evaluation of .." in the Footnote text.

Done this one. Coolug (talk) 09:43, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

• Leaning towards Support; if these items are resolved.

End Noleander comments. --Noleander (talk) 21:19, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Hey, thanks for these helpful comments. I'll go through them as I get the chance and make some changes. cya Coolug (talk) 09:36, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Opening two sentences. Logic problem.

"From 1956 through 1962, the Soviet Union attempted to implement wage reforms. The reforms took place during the Khrushchev era and were intended to move Soviet industrial workers away from overfulfillment of quotas, a mindset that had characterised the Soviet economy during the Stalinist period."

Whoever last edited this would have had a feeling it's unsatisfactory, but not known why. The problem lies in the placement of "The reforms took place during the Khrushchev era" in a sentence that otherwise explains the intention of the reforms, not the historical timing. Better, unless you can think of something better, might be:

"During the Khrushchev era, from 1956 through 1962, the Soviet Union attempted to implement wage reforms intended to move industrial workers away from the mindset of overfulfilling quotas, which had characterised the Soviet economy during the Stalinist period."

You might prefer a split, because the sentence is now rather long—either way would be OK: "... from the mindset of overfulfilling quotas; this mindset had characterised the Soviet economy during the Stalinist period."

I know I'm firm in tone when reviewing, but I didn't expect the "rubbish" comment: "Tony, just to be clear, are you opposing this nomination because the writing is rubbish? because the sources don't say as much as we'd like them to say? Or for both of these reasons?" It's for both reasons. But as I've said, I think this is an important topic, and I want to see it featured. I haven't re-read it, and will try to get time. I just want to demonstrate here that the first thing I spot-checked, the opening, is faulty. Tony (talk) 10:39, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

I've changed the opening sentence as you have suggested. I'll be the first to admit that I'm not the greatest writer in the world, and alone I'm never going to write an article where the prose is absolutely perfect. If anyone out there thinks something could be worded better please do be bold and fix it. Noleander, I shall have a look at the remaining point's you've raised when I'm at home and in front of the books. Thanks! cya Coolug (talk) 12:35, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

I think it's odd that this archived due to having "little support" - it's an article about wage reform in the soviet union - one of the most boring subjects in the universe - that four people could manage to read the whole thing through and support it without slipping into a coma is practically a miracle. Naturally something like this is never going to attract same level of attention as some family guy episode. Anyway, ce la vie. I have to say however, I have found this whole FAC quite demoralising. This is supposed to be a collaborative project and the one and only person who opposed the nomination could quite clearly see that I was never going to be able to write to his exacting standards, yet as is seen so often seen on wikipedia, those who hold this wonderful hidden knowledge of where exactly we should insert a comma and whether one should use a dash or an endash or something else entirely (presumably gained when the rest of us were reading books on soviet history) are not willing to just make a few changes to the article and fix the blasted thing. Anyway, life goes on, and I will always have that ridiculous day in october..... Coolug (talk) 09:10, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

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