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Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Alex Owumi/archive1

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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 archived by Ian Rose via FACBot (talk) 05:33, 31 January 2018 [1].

Alex Owumi

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Nominator(s): TempleM (talk) 01:41, 2 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

This article is about a professional basketball player best known for his unique experience playing basketball for Muammar Gaddafi shortly before the outbreak of the Libyan Civil War in 2011. Originally from Nigeria, Owumi played basketball with a number of community colleges before joining Alcorn State. Before Libya, his career spanned both Europe and North America. It took a wrong turn when Owumi signed with Lirija in Macedonia, where he endured poor facilities, racism, and occasional violence at games. In a search for a new team, he took a lucrative offer in Libya with Al-Nasr, a team he later realized was owned and funded by Gaddafi's family. One day, when violence from the budding war finally broke out, Owumi found himself trapped in Mutassim Gaddafi's apartment and witnessing horrors in the streets below. He stayed in the building for weeks, struggling to survive. Eventually, he would escape to Egypt with a teammate and was held under harsh conditions at a refugee camp, before winning a championship with a team in Alexandria. For the last many years, Owumi has been playing with teams in the British Basketball League (BBL) and has been suffering from PTSD.

I believe this article should be considered for featured article status because it is comprehensive, including as much relevant information as possible. It also took extensive efforts to get this article where it is, and it was very recently promoted to GA. If it is featured, many more people will know what in my opinion is a fascinating story. If there are any issues you have with parts of the article, feel free to state them below. TempleM (talk) 01:41, 2 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Brief general comment

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Thanks for your work on this article, and well done in bringing it to its present standard. I get a little worried, however, when an article is nominated here one day after its promotion to GA. The standard required for FA is significantly higher, particularly in terms of prose and sourcing, and it is generally wise to spend a little time considering what needs to be done to scale this extra height.

  • Although I haven't carried out a detailed review, I found the prose in places problematic: rather choppy, not flowing well, and with some slightly odd formulations, e.g. "His parents and siblings were chiefs of his village, located just outside Lagos, and he was a prince"; "Owumi joined Monroe Community College in Rochester, New York, driven there by head coach Jerry Burns..." – "driven" in what sense? You sometimes adopt sports journalese, for example when you say he "grabbed" eight rebounds, or confuse readers with sentences such as "The team eventually defeated the Quebec Kebs, behind 13 points and five rebounds..." – what does "behind" indicate here? There are various ambiguities in the prose, and a tendency to overuse cliché phrases such as "due to". I've quoted just a few examples of prose issues; what I feel the article needs is a very thorough copyedit, bearing in mind that the FA criteria require the prose to be of a professional standard.
  • @Brianboulton: True, the choppy prose has been an issue in my previous basketball biographies that were promoted to FA as well. Would you suggest anyone to help copyedit the article? And about the sources, I assume one of your concerns is that I rely on Owumi's book for a lot of information. Would that raise any problems? TempleM (talk) 22:05, 2 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Comments – I was asked by the nominator to have a look at the article and perform copy-edits. While I was able to make a few positive changes to the lead, I didn't make it much farther yet. However, I have some general thoughts based on what I've seen so far.

  • The bit about him being a prince is fascinating, and I wonder if more can be said about it. Maybe adding some detail would help fix the prose issue that Brian mentioned above.
  • The "driven there by head coach Jerry Burns and his staff" part is confusing to read, for the same reason Brian mentioned. It's unclear whether it means that they physically drove him there, or if they just pushed for him to enroll. Unfortunately, I can't really fix this one since it's sourced to the book.
  • Speaking of the book, I highly recommend that you add page numbers to your book cites, since Brian will ask for them anyway. Might as well get it out of the way now. The book is heavily used with almost 40 cites to it, but I haven't analyzed its usage too much, as I figure Brian will do so in his source review.
  • I won't do a full source review as one has already been promised, but you should go ahead and replace the Daily Express (ref 61) now, as that is a highly unreliable source. It's considered even less reliable than the Daily Mail, which had its usage strongly discouraged in an RFC earlier this year.
  • As for the writing, the main issue I see later in the article is proseline. There are a ton of sentences that start "In XXXX" or similar, and a bunch starting with "He". More than anything else, fixing a bunch of these sentences will make the prose seem more professional. Giants2008 (Talk) 22:51, 7 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Giants2008: I have added more information about him being a prince and I have fixed the Jerry Burns part. I have also deleted the sentences that cite the Daily Express, as they are not overly significant. By the way, you can see a large majority of the book online so that you can check for accuracy. For the writing, would you be able to fix those sentences or do you want someone else to do that? And how exactly do you cite page numbers to the book citations? Do I add all the page numbers on the original citation? TempleM (talk) 23:27, 7 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • All right, I've finished running through the article. I'm not the world's greatest copy-editor, but managed to clean up some of the issues affecting the article. I fixed a few of the sentence beginnings, but not all of them; just moving words around does more good than one might think. While editing, I became confused by the second sentence cited to ref 81. Is this a reader review? If so, I can't see a scenario where it would be significant enough to include, not to mention that the source wouldn't be considered sufficiently high-quality to use in this context. If there are no reviews from reliable sources available, don't feel compelled to use a weak source; in that case, just mentioning that he wrote the book would be good enough. As for the book cites, the typical method is to place the full book cite in its own section (Bibliography and Sources are usual section titles), and use short cites in-text. One common format for this is Author last name(s) (year), p. xx. (pp. for multi-page cites). Giants2008 (Talk) 22:13, 14 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from Ceranthor

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Hoping to provide comments for this later today. ceranthor 15:31, 28 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

  • "Originally from Lagos, Owumi moved to Boston, Massachusetts as a child. He played football and basketball from an early age and at college level." - missing a "the" before college
  • "Owumi played his final two seasons at Alcorn State." - since Alcorn State isn't well known, I'd add "in in Lorman, Mississippi"
  • "He moved to France and played his rookie season with fr:AL Roche-la-Molière where he was named most valuable player of the league." - Can you re-format to hide that it's a French wiki article? Or just remove the link?
  • "After a brief spell in the Premier Basketball League (PBL) with the Manchester Millrats, " - Should probably clarify what this is
  • "After a brief spell in the Premier Basketball League (PBL) with the Manchester Millrats, he signed with KK Lirija in Macedonia. He left the team at the end of the season" - when did all this take place timewise?
  • "He then moved to England and began playing in the British Basketball League (BBL) joining the Worcester Wolves, with whom he won a league title, the London Lions, and then the Surrey Scorchers." - the "with whom..." bit might be better as a parenthetical
  • "As an author, he has written three books, including an autobiography focusing on his time in Libya." - as an author is redundant
  • "He shot hoops" - seems a bit informal
  • "They then settled in Boston after his father joined the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.[10]" - in what capacity? faculty?
  • "A two-star recruit," - which means what?
  • "However, Owumi was unable to attract enough interest from the team, which drafted J. R. Giddens instead." - why instead? why couldn't they have drafted both? please clarify
  • " Premier Basketball League (PBL) for the preseason.[47] " - clarify what it is here too
  • "After then considering a path into the NBA Development League," - same note as above
  • "Owumi signed with the French club fr:AL Roche-la-MolièreMolière of the Nationale Masculine 1 (NM1) for the 2009–10 season,[45][49][50] " - formatting errors
  • "During the season, he was benched without pay for a number of games for missing practice.[52]" - any knowledge of why he missed?
  • "In the fall of 2010, he tried out for the Georgia Gwizzlies of the American Basketball Association (ABA), but did not have a future with the team.[45]" - any idea why not? super vague
  • "in the top Libyan league, and arrived in the country.[61] " - last bit is clunky; reword
  • "He also saw people, including his teammates, gathering ammunition and weapons to prepare for the revolution.[66]" - clarify what you mean with 'the revolution'
  • ' he wrote his autobiography Qaddafi's Point Guard: The Incredible Story of a Professional Basketball Player Trapped in Libya's Civil War with Daniel Paisner, a New York Times bestselling author who had written for Whoopi Goldberg and Denzel Washington[61][115] [72]" - punctuation?

These are my notes from a first pass. Sorry for the delay! This article, while well-written, doesn't seem quite ready for FA yet, imo. ceranthor 04:39, 31 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

  • @Ceranthor: I have addressed the issues you brought up. Only exception is with the Georgia Gwizzlies part, because there is no additional information available about his time with that team. "Two-star recruit" indicates how highly a player was rated by recruiting websites, so I do not feel like that needs editing. TempleM (talk) 21:58, 31 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
TempleM, hoping to read through again today. ceranthor 14:03, 5 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • With regard to the star comment I made previously, it might be worthwhile to clarify what exactly a two-star recruit indicates
  • "Originally from Lagos," - I know it's obvious, but probably worth adding "from Lagos, Nigeria"
  • " National Junior College Athletic Association" - needs a WP:NBSP
  • "He moved to France and played his rookie season with fr:AL Roche-la-Molière where he was named most valuable player of the league." - needs a transition at the start; shifts too abruptly from previous sentence
  • "He then moved to England and began playing in the British Basketball League (BBL) joining the Worcester Wolves" - either need a comma after (BBL) or should add an "and" before joining
  • "Owumi has written three books, including an autobiography focusing on his time in Libya." - At least worth mentioning the title of the autobiography, if not all three
  • "The two first met while attending college in the Boston area. " - first is redundant
  • " because of the success of National Basketball Association " - needs a WP:NBSP
  • "Owumi often followed the NBA" - don't think you need "often" here
  • "In sixth grade, he enrolled at the local Tobin School.[11] " - it's obvious from context, but I'd use Owumi here instead of "he"
  • " Owumi was also a part of the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) basketball team, Boston Amateur Athletic Club" - any idea when (which years)?
  • "Encouraged by their fairly successful basketball program and facilities, Owumi began attending the Community College of Rhode Island (CCRI) for his next year." - the next year, not "his"
  • "when he posted 15 points and six rebounds against the Mississippi Valley State Delta Devils." - Mississippi Valley State Delta Devils needs a WP:NBSP
  • "After then considering a path into the NBA Development League, " - after then reads awkwardly
  • " instead attending the Cannes Film Festival.[52]" - Cannes Film Festival needs an NBSP
  • "He played 22 games with Manchester, averaging 14.9 points" - "Owumi" instead of "he" here better I think
  • Note throughout: references in a row like [10][67] should go in ascending order instead of [67][10]
  • Sherrad Prezzie-Blue needs a NBSP
  • James said, "[Owumi] distributes the ball well and will give us multiple options both on offense and defense." - formatting here needs to be fixed; it skips a line for me
  • 34 points needs an NBSP
  • 1.2 steals needs an NBSP
  • two rebounds - NBSP
  • 1.1 steals per game. - NBSP
  • "along with five steals" - NBSP
  • "In September 2016, Owumi wrote the fictional, thriller The Fire Raven: Volume 1 about a female assassin trying to discover her past" - why the comma after fictional?

This looks like it's in decent shape. ceranthor 19:01, 5 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Ceranthor I fixed most of these, but I'm not sure how to do the NBSP (could you give an example?). TempleM (talk) 00:38, 12 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
No worries. I can provide a sample in a bit! ceranthor 15:15, 12 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Just went through and fixed them. You can see what I did (nowrap and NBSPs) from this diff. Otherwise, I support on the prose. ceranthor 16:41, 12 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Coord note -- this nom has been open almost three months without achieving sufficient commentary and support for promotion so I'm going to archive it; per FAC instructions you can renominate after two weeks. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 05:32, 31 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

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