Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Archived nominations/Index/July 2004

This is an archive of discussions about contested featured article candidates that were nominated in July 2004. Warning: not in perfect chronological order.

July 2004

13 colonies

(Contested - Jul 5)

Great article. anthony (see warning) 19:15, 5 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• Do you plan to work to repair objections? - David Gerard 22:04, 5Jul 2004 (UTC)
• This is not peer review or request for expansion. As soon as you have seen this notice, please withdraw the nomination and go back a couple of steps. [[User:Sverdrup|❝Sverdrup❞]] 19:21, 5 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • I'm not sure what that is supposed to mean. anthony (see warning)
    • It means that you haven't found the right spot to list your article. There are a couple of steps left before listing it here. It also means that you should absolutely not try to provoke a discussion and/or policy change in-process; this is disruptive. Keep it to the meta pages. [[User:Sverdrup|❝Sverdrup❞]] 19:44, 5 Jul 2004 (UTC)
      • Are you saying the policy has changed to require listing on peer review before here? If so, it seems that policy change is what needs to be discussed first. But it says at the top that "anyone can nominate any article." It doesn't say anything about steps. So I don't see what the problem is. anthony (see warning)
• Needs significant lengthening - it is barely more than a stub at the moment. Things I can think off of the top of my head to write about include - What did these 13 colonies have in common that made them rebel? Why not any of the others? It doesn't give dates of founding, any geographical or population information about the Colonies at the time etc etc etc. Morwen - Talk 19:58, 5 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Object. It's a bare-bones article at the moment. Worthwhile subject; needs more depth in all areas. 81.168.80.170 20:29, 5 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Capsicum

Well-written and nicely illustrated. Covers the subject from many angles (etymology, history, botany, culture, cooking, chemistry and evolutionary biology) clearly and tersely. A model article. Gdr 00:50, 2004 Jul 23 (UTC)

• Very interesting article. The writing could still use a little work here and there though. Exploding Boy 16:43, Jul 23, 2004 (UTC)
• Object. Too short, specifically there is very little coverage of it's different uses in foods. Hot chocolate was originally made by indiginous mexican peoples with chili. Mole is a very common popular use of chocolate and chili in Mexico. Roasted chili peppers have an entirely different taste than raw. Also no coverage of the endorphin rush that intensely hot food can cause. I also edited the claims of the hottest pepper to hopefully NPOV. - Taxman 18:05, Jul 23, 2004 (UTC)
  • I added a paragraph about why people eat chillies, mentioning endorphins. I agree that there needs to be more about cooking. Gdr 12:26, 2004 Jul 25 (UTC)
• As mentioned on the talk page, the unilateral merge into capsicum was a little inappropriate without discussion. Now the article is wholly inconsistent in the terms it uses. Why would the article be at capsicum if the article refers to them as chiles? Also as mentioned on the talk page, the name now violates the naming convention of using the most common name. Finally, I didn't parse the whole merge, but at least some information was not kept in the merge, nor moved to the talk page. Because of these radical changes, I suggest a move from FAC to peer review to settle the article into something feature worthy. - Taxman 15:00, Jul 27, 2004 (UTC)

Bicycle

Seems like a decent article. (I just did some minor copyediting.) Gzornenplatz 01:32, Jul 23, 2004 (UTC)

• Object. 1) The "Variations" section is currently a list; this could do with reworking into a wordy form, making it into an informative discussion, and not just raw information. 2) The "history" section (and possibly the "Technical aspect" section) could use some subsections to make it easier to digest. — Matt 02:46, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Object. Could be an excellent article with a little work on writing style, and the term "bicycle" needs an explanation better than "hence the name." Exploding Boy 16:39, Jul 23, 2004 (UTC)
• Object. This article is a mess and incomplete. 1) The order of the sections is strange (what makes the "speed" section so important?), and there are several sections that quite small, opposed to the long historical and technical sections; this could be balanced better, several of the smaller sections could be shared under one section. 2) The history seems to stop at 1900, but there was plenty of cycle development afterwards. 3) The technical image has no source or copyright information. 4) The use of the bold font in the technical section is non-standard, and I think also not recommended in the WP:MOS. 5) The Variations section should either be spun off to a list article, or more information should be given. Also, a sentence like "And maybe at least one reference to a sports science article that explains how cycling is the most efficient form of human powered transport." indicates this article isn't finished yet. 6) Several of the "cultural" sections are rather vague and (implicitly) US-centric or western world-centric. This should give a better global perspective. 7) There's mention of racing bikes and Lance Armstrong, but not much about bike racing. 8) The article doesn't even mention that "bike" is used as a synonym for bicycle. 9) The web references seem random and many of them are hardly useful. 10) There are no book/magazine references. Surely there are some good books about the history or bikes, or technical works? I think there might be more, but this should be enough for now...Jeronimo 20:20, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Object. The bicycle in the illustration at the top looks sad and lonely. (In fact, the whole of Category:Cycling is a mess.) Gdr 15:58, 2004 Jul 26 (UTC)
• Object. Reading this article is like reading the English instructions on a Korean applicance. Typical sentence: [quote] The ICHC no longer distinguishes between a "first true" bicycle with pedals and any precursors, and regards as the start the two-wheeler principle which requires balancing and is the basis of cycling (and motorcycling). [end quote] When I started reading the article I thought I could polish it a bit, but a few paragraphs in I realised it would be Herculean labour. It looks well-researched enough, but the writing is abominable. --213.199.128.153 16:28, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Object. (and agree with ALL above objections) I filled in the 20th century gap, improved the goofy introduction, and plan to move the overlong history section to its own page. Maybe I can then figure out how to renominate this page. Sfahey 01:38, 1 Oct 2004 (UTC)

El (god)

NOT a self-nom. A fascinating article. Neutrality 04:51, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• Object. Writing style seems to change, very hard to read in some sections, generally could use cleaning up. Exploding Boy 16:22, Jul 23, 2004 (UTC)
• Object. What in the world is this and what is the significance of this name? Why does one translation of the name of such a universal concept as god have a separate article? Nothing in the intro makes that clear. There are hundreds of names in different languages for the concept of God. Why is this one important or different? - Taxman 17:03, Jul 23, 2004 (UTC)
• Object. Reads like a bad school textbook rather than an encyclopedia. It needs a picture (not sure what of though). It does have some potential, however. --Zerbey 17:09, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Object. This article is interesting and has potential, but syntactic errors need cleaning up, brackets need checking, and other housekeeping matters must be attended to. More importantly, a number of sentences need rewriting for clarity; while technically correct, they are wordy and confusing. Denni☯ 19:52, 2004 Jul 25 (UTC)
• Object. As noted, this article is nearly impenetrable to the layman. -Sean Curtin 07:25, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Colonial America

Vote this for a featured article because it deserves such an atribute. It is absolutely glorious, magnificent, fabolous, marvelous, gorgeous. OK this is too much but I couldn`t pick one word. :) [[User:Avala|Avala|★]] 13:40, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• Support. Exploding Boy 16:19, Jul 23, 2004 (UTC)
• Object for now. The article is great, but the section on the Middle Colonies is ridiculously short, especially considering the truly stunning writing and detail given to the rest of the areas. [[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 16:21, 2004 Jul 23 (UTC)
• Object. 1) The title is misleading and incorrect. This is not about Colonial America as a whole, but only about the Colonial period of the North American east coast (mostly what is now the US), and specifically about those colonies that later became the "13 colonies". Apart from that, there appears to be virtually nothing about French, Dutch and Swedish settlements in these areas, it's mostly about the British who settled there. 2) The only picture is actually bigger in the article than on the image page (technical goof-up?); some more pictures would be nice. 3) The real section is rather weird. There are two section headings below each other, but there's only one sub-section anyway. It ends with a list of "acts", which seems to be placed there are random. 4) While the web-references are ok, there are no book or magazine references. Jeronimo 20:05, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Agree. The article should be moved to a better title, perhaps something like "British Colonial America" or maybe "Colonial era history of the United States" (?). Surely we can make a less ambiguous title, as the article has nothing to do with, say, New Spain and the rest of Colonial America. -- Infrogmation 16:50, 24 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Cocaine

• Well written. Fascinating, IMO. blankfaze | (беседа!) 02:22, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • I have to strongly disagree with your assessment of the quality of writing, I'm afraid. I love drug articles, being a boring, vicarious-lived type person - but this article is full of poor phrasing. A couple of examples: "In 1856 Friederich Wöhler asked Dr. Carl Scherzer, a scientist aboard the Novara, an Austrian frigate sent by Emperor Franz Joseph to circle the globe, to bring him back a large amount of coca leaves from South America." (parse that one first time 'round), He proceeded to experiment on himself and upon his return to Milan he wrote a paper in which he described the effects of coca on himself (nasty chiming), It does tend to get better near the end, and I wouldn't normally whinge I would edit. However, I got in a bit of a mess trying: [1] and I don't seem to be at the height of my powers at present. --bodnotbod 11:36, Jul 23, 2004 (UTC)
• Object. Where to begin.
  • First, the chemical formula shouldn't be given where it is, because the top of the TOC cuts off the bottoms of the numbers. Then we have to read through side effects, health issues, isolation of, and popularization of cocaine before we ever really get to what it is.
  • This sentence: "In most cases, each purchase is about two grams for one day of smoking (after treatment with ammonia)" is difficult to understand. What, or who, is treated with ammonia and why?
  • The Cocaine as an anaesthetic section is two sentences long, and doesn't really explain anything.
  • There are some problems with tense, grammar and punctuation.
  • The section that talks about Coca Cola seems to contradict the content of the Coke article.
  • Some other problems with formal writing style.
  • Part way down the page there's a sudden name switch from cocaine to coke.

I'm going to stop here; I think that's plenty to be going along with. Exploding Boy 16:34, Jul 23, 2004 (UTC)

This article has greatly improved since it was listed here

Debian

(Contested -- Jul 1)

I'd like to nominate this article since it contains a fair amount of detail and information on the subject -- certainly more than I would have expected. -- pne 11:26, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• Agree. Is a screenshot possible? --Merovingian✍Talk 11:29, Jul 1, 2004 (UTC)
• Object. While not wishing to plunge the article into a holy war, 1) I'd like to see some comparison of Debian in relation to other distributions (carefully NPOV, of course). Currently we mention Debian's features, but don't give a context as to how this compares to other distributions. For example, the large number of platforms is described, but it's not mentioned that other major distributions typically support only one or two platforms. APT is mentioned, but it's not compared to other (commonly perceived to be...) inferior packaging systems, e.g RPM. Similarly for the free-software philosophy and the nature of the Debian Project. 2) Also, there's no discussion of the (commonly perceived...) weaknesses of the distribution; it's common to hear people criticise the user-friendliness of Debian (e.g. no pretty installation / configuration tools). -- Matt 14:39, 3 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Not focused (is GNU/FreeBSD really deserving of a mention in the intro for more than the sheer novelty factor?) and the writing is not compelling. Both are fixable. Try news style for the intro? - David Gerard 18:13, 3 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Melbourne

(Contested -- Jul 1)

I think this article is up to standard - a long and detailed article about an interesting city. Ambivalenthysteria 13:20, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• We certainly need a locator map showing Melbourne's location within Australia. Morwen - Talk 13:24, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • And further to that, we need info about the City of Melbourne and how it differs from Melbourne. Does Melbourne have any government for the whole of it? Morwen - Talk 13:25, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)
    • No, it has a bunch of local councils - there's no equivalent of the Greater London Authority. City Of Melbourne is one of the councils. The Melbourne metro area ones are generally called "City Of" - David Gerard 14:16, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Object. Expand 'Culture' section. Marlowe 20:28, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Object. Needs a proper lead section. --mav
• Object. One of the pictures has no copyright and source info, the other two claim they are public domain images, but do not state a source either. Jeronimo 07:06, 2 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• somewhat Object somewhat Support-written is great, but there are still lot of things to add , such as future projects in the city, everything about suburbs and neighbourhoods etc. Avala 15:31, 5 Jul 2004 (UTC)

James Clerk Maxwell

(Contested -- Jul 4)

Good article with a good deal of information on his life and discoveries.--Alsocal 20:11, 4 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• No vote, but the image needs source/licensing information (probably PD as he died before 1923). anthony (see warning)
  • It's a photo. No way it's not PD - David Gerard 21:36, 4 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • I've marked the photo PD (can't not be) and have added several more - David Gerard 22:03, 4 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • There are many ways this could not be PD, but whatever. anthony (see warning)
• Can I second this having worked on it? If so, second. - David Gerard 21:36, 4 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• I oppose this nomination: 1. It would appear from the title "Later years and afterwards" that the section would relate not only to the last years of Mr Maxwell's life, but also to his lasting legacy and events occurring after his death. Nevertheless, a mere sentence relating to his literary works concerning him appears. Thus, the "Later years and afterwards" section warrants expansion. 2. In the "Early Years" section, the following sentence appears: "The family name Maxwell was adopted by the terms of a legal requirement made upon his father to inherit an estate." The sentence's structure is awkward; furthermore, it does not mention whose estate is to be inherited (an individual from Clerk's maternal family, perhaps?). I would suggest something such as: "When Clerk inherited the estate of name (his relation), he adopted the latter's surname, as was required by the will," or words to the same effect. 3. The article uses single quotation marks instead of double quotation marks. 4. The article contains many unexplained names and terms, such as "elastic solids," "oscillating electric charge," "the progressive condensation of a purely gaseous nebula," "temporary double refraction produced in viscous liquids by shearing stress," and so on. Such phrases are unintelligible to those not well-educated in science. At a minimum, links to articles on such topics should be placed, if not a minor explanation. 5. Unlinked names, including "Herapth, Joule, and particularly Clausius," "Faraday," and several others, appear. Not only should links be provided, but also should one use full names for first references. 6. Several passages appear opinionated (possibly being from the 1911 Britannica): for instance, "valuable papers," "original and powerful essay," "a man whose knowledge was co-extensive with his ingenuity," "most profound admiration and attention," "the ideas of that master," "great treatise," "admirable generalized co-ordinate system," "munificent founder," "distinguished alumni," "excellent elementary treatise" and "great contributions." I do not ask that all of these be changed, but the level of subjectivity now present must definitely be reduced. -- Emsworth 01:48, Jul 5, 2004 (UTC)

Politics of Taiwan

(Contested -- Jul 5)

nice article about not so wide subject-politics of one small islandAvala 15:44, 5 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• Object. Towards the end it is just a copy and paste from the CIA World Factbook. This needs rewriting and putting in prose. Morwen - Talk 16:22, 5 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • We should get it put in a table like at People's Liberation Army. Can't this be automated? --Jiang 06:03, 10 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Object. Lead does not provide sufficient context - seems like article is probably meant to be read as an expansion of Taiwan and does not completely make sense on its own. (Probably could be fixed with a quick sentence or two noting what Taiwan is, and the particular aspects of its history.) Article needs to better explain the relationship between Taiwan and China. Article needs to be reordered somewhat - the current political situation section does not make sense coming before the section that explains the historical dominance of one party. Also, article needs a picture. Snowspinner 17:56, Jul 5, 2004 (UTC)

Kylie Minogue

(Contested -- Jul 5)

this was nominated a couple of months ago, the only objections then (I think) related to possible copyright violations of images that have since been removed. partially self nomination because I've worked on it, but the recent reworking by User:68.36.175.254 has given it the cohesive structure it previously lacked. In my opinion one of the most comprehensive, logically structured and up to date celebrity bios. Rossrs 01:09, 5 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Previous nominations: Wikipedia:Featured_article_candidates/Archived_nominations#Kylie_Minogue and Wikipedia:Featured_article_candidates/Archived_nominations#Kylie_Minogue_.28Contested_.26mdash.3B_24_Jun.29

• I support of course! Let's hope third time's the charm :) Earl Andrew 02:15, 5 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Support as well. I nominated it recently so yeah, third time is time to go I hope.  :) CyclopsScott 03:16, 5 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Support. Looks great. Ambivalenthysteria 06:30, 5 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Object. The "Single Discography" presents the information quite poorly; it'd be OK in a list if it was purely the single name and year, but including the position on various countries' charts probably warrants a table. — Matt 23:45, 28 Jun 2004 (UTC) (copied from previous nomination).
  • I agree with you in theory and considered creating a table, but then decided against it for aesthetic reasons. I think a table would be big, clunky and ugly, and to see a perfect example of how ugly tables can be, have a look at ABBA. The chart positions are not essential, however I think they demonstrate a valid point - ie there are a large number of artists that could release 41 singles over a 17 year period, but very few who could land 26 of them in the British Top 10, and the majority of them in the Top 5. That's what I was trying to illustrate, and the reason I chose the format I chose when I added the info, was to deliberately avoid creating a table. A table is going to be about twice the size of the (in my opinion) unwieldy ABBA table. I disagree that the information is presented quite poorly. It's not difficult to read, and certainly easier than the alternative. Rossrs 08:51, 5 Jul 2004 (UTC)
    • Hmm... The ABBA table (which is indeed a bit unwieldy!) includes a numbering column, exact dates and weeks in the chart and info on four (not three) countries; more information than we have at Kylie. For this case, a table would not be much larger than the list, except that the information would be aligned in columns looking neater and easier to read. (Just one example, if you came to the article asking, "How many top ten hits has Kylie had in the UK?", currently your eyes have to dart all over the place.) — Matt 09:22, 5 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Object - it reads like a musical hagiography. Wikipedia is not a fanzine - David Gerard 12:12, 5 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • I agree: at least some mention of criticisms of her 'music' and 'acting' should be here. Bmills 12:32, 5 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Object. For the same reason as before. None of the images has source information. One of them contends to be fair use; the other has no such indication, and appears to be copyrighted. Jeronimo 17:53, 5 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Punctuation

(Contested -- July 3)

This page is comprehensive and international, looking at the different usages of various punctuation marks. From it may be learnt the 'real' names of many punctuation marks, and the links are comprehensive too. It does not just cover 'Western' punctuation, but 'East Asian' as well. EuropracBHIT 08:07, 3 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• Object. This article doesn't tell anything about the history of punctuation. When did it first appear - concurrently with the arrival of the script, or later? How did it evolve afterwards? I'm sure many of the article on individual punctuation marks explain a lot, but a bit more information on commonly used punctuation marks (comma, period) would be nice. Do new punctutation marks still appear? Do they disappear? Also, are there other punctuation systems than the Wester and East Asian ones? If so, there should be something about them here. Jeronimo 11:28, 3 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Object. It's just a stub with lists. Nowhere near something that could be considered for Featured Article status. Tannin 11:39, 3 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Interrobang is not a commonly-used punctuation mark. Morwen - Talk 12:18, 3 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • but it is punctuation mark and if we want this to be featured article then we need all info
    • Yes. Certainly it needs mentioning. However, it shouldn't be included an example of a commonly-used one, because it plainly isn't. Morwen - Talk 10:58, 5 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Support Avala 19:35, 4 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Oppose. Punctuation has a long history; this article is pathetically devoid of any such. I also object to feature article staus for an article which is mostly links to other articles. While it is an interesting article, it is (for me, anyway) a very unsatisfying read, and leaves more questions than answers. Back to the drawing board. Denni☯ 22:51, 2004 Jul 11 (UTC)

Science fiction on television

(Contested -- July 3)

Self-nomination. This article did exist before I came to it, but in a pretty sparse and loosely-written form. A couple of months ago I added a substantial history of British science-fiction television, which is my area of interest, and re-structured the whole article. I assumed that somebody else would add greater detail to the section on US television science-fiction, which I know much less about, but after a while nobody had. So after an attempt to get someone with greater knowledge of that area to contribute on the Requests for Expansion page failed, I decided to research US TV sci-fi myself and add to it. I feel that the now-complete article is a very good general history of international television science-fiction, and it even has a picture, albeit perhaps a little over-literal one. Angmering 19:40, 3 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• For such a long article, the TOC is pretty skimpy. Could you improve that with more section headings - not too many, but a few more would be a definite improvement. →Raul654 02:42, Jul 4, 2004 (UTC)
• If this article ever makes it to the Main Page section, you *must* mention Doctor Who, Raul. ;-) - Mark 03:12, 4 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Object:
  • First of all, the article is mostly about the US and the UK. I'm pretty sure there are science fiction series in other countries, especially the non-English ones. Japan must have loads of such series. This is only briefly mentioned, which is absurd. Also, it seems like US and UK SF didn't influence each other at all. Is that correct, or is it just missing from the article?
    • For various cultural and financial reasons, it's fair to say that US and UK TV SF have had surprisingly little influence on each other -- they have very different traditions, particularly in the early years. -- Arwel 17:00, 4 Jul 2004 (UTC)
    • I'll do a little research on my own and try to write something about SF in Japan. Anyway, I oppose for now. The article is too long and tedious. It should be rewritten so you don't have to read the entire article to find something. Revth 10:09, 5 Jul 2004 (UTC)
      • Added information on Japan would be great, but that was just an example I mentioned. It should include the whole world. Of course, this should be measured in importance against the US/UK series. It may also be a good idea to write a brief history on the US and UK, and move the large texts to sub-articles as "SF on TV in the US/UK". Jeronimo 06:55, 8 Jul 2004 (UTC)
      • I agree to moving texts to sub-articles. I'll just keep writing on the Japan part and when US and UK sections are moved, I'll follow suit. Revth 04:45, 9 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • The article is a boring read (I didn't even read all of it), just being an expanded list. Being a general article about SF on TV, it should be far more condensed. A discussion about the major trends, most important series should suffice, with the details in the articles on the series themselves.
  • The section general is absurd. It's not general at all, it just list some SF series producers/creators.
  • Surely there must be more images. The TV showing Dr. Who-image is a bit lame, too.
    • You have to be careful with TV image copyright as the producers tend to be litigious b******s -- taking a photo off your own TV is probably the safest way to cover yourself! -- Arwel 17:00, 4 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • Jeronimo 08:14, 4 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Object - The British and U.S. science fiction sections should be spun off into their own articles and good-sized summaries left in their places. As it is, the U.S. and British stuff overwhelms the article and makes for a rather long read (43KB). Basic expansion of the stub sub-sections in the Japanese section and Other sections is also needed (again, too much Anglo/American emphasis). Many more images also needed. --mav 09:58, 10 Jul 2004 (UTC)

History of the Jews in the United States (Colonial Era-1906)

(Contested -- July 4)

Awesome entry. Neutrality 05:26, 4 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• Object. No lead section. No images. Does this belong in a series of multiple articles? It should say so. Not part of the objection: the TOC takes up more than the first page of the article. This is extremely ugly. Jeronimo 07:40, 4 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Object. This article is too long and goes into too much deep detail for the casual reader. As someone with no more than a passing interest in this topic, this gigantic article is intimidating and far too much for me to read. It needs to be split into subarticles and keep only a summary of the important points in the main entry. I notice this article was copied from the Jewish Encyclopedia, the same source as the Dreyfus affair, which had the same problem. Some of it is out of date (The total number of Jews in the state at the present time (1905)is estimated at 2,500.) This topic can and should have images. There are not enough links to other articles. --Shibboleth 22:19, 4 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Support. When did an article's being long become an issue? Bmills 14:57, 5 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Info: the article is currently 98k long. See also: Wikipedia:Page size, and Wikipedia_talk:Featured_article_candidates/archive3#Length.2C_arbitrary_size_of_30k (discussion of page sizes for Featured articles). — Matt 15:10, 5 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Oppose, needs an intro and a picture, starts with a TOC currently. --AEvar Arnfjoerd- Bjarmason 15:25, 2004 Jul 5 (UTC)

Mad scientist

(Contested -- Jul 3)

This page seems very complete, with an unexpectedly large amount of detail (e.g. "Untouched fields"). Brilliant picture (which is already a featured picture) with hilarious caption. -- Shibboleth 07:16, 3 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• Support. Neutrality 03:57, 4 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• (No vote). Can we have some specific licence info for the cartoon? Markalexander100 08:06, 3 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• This picture was made by the same user, User:J.J. at about the same time (July 2003) as the one for villain, which was GFDLed in May 2004, I think when he was asked about it in the context of the featured picture candidacy. He didn't bother to do the same for mad scientist, but presumably he's willing to release it under the same license. He'd have to be asked directly for something explicit, though. --Shibboleth 13:08, 3 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• Object. 1) I'm not sure that we need the lists of "Fields of research" and "Untouched fields"; maybe this could be removed, or condensed down into a short narrative paragraph? 2) I have some concerns about the section "Real life prototypes": how can we be sure that all these people actually contributed to the stereotype, rather than coincided with it? Is this section verifiable? — Matt 16:23, 3 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • Exactly what I was thinking. Markalexander100 03:22, 4 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• Object. The mad scientist is really an extreme caricature of scientists in general, and this continuum should be explored more. Also the article seems poorly organised. 81.168.80.170 22:26, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Are mad scientists always male? Why? Are there any female ones? Exploding Boy 16:00, Jul 5, 2004 (UTC)

Air India

(Contested -- July 3)

Self-nomination. I have tried my best to bring to surface this wonderful airline which is often overlooked by many. The article existed before my revision. I have tried my best in organising the article to appropriate standards. The factual figures represented in the article have backing which can be easily verified either on the internet or on the printed literature. Drbalaji md

• Support: I think this article deserves to be featured. I appreciate the prompt modifications of the content by the author Drbalaji_md, based on the suggestions made. I do not find any other airline's page that is as readable and well presented as this one. I must also appreciate the author for high-lighting the role of women pilots, so scarcely represented in the world media. The airline's unique cuisine deserves recognition too.--ganesh 02:30, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Object:
  • The Tragedies-section is literally copied from a website, which is even mentioned in the article with copyright. This is very obvious copyright violation. I'm consid
    • Thanks. I will take necessary action
  • One of the three logo/mascot images has no source, and the others come from the company's website, where there are no indications these pictures may be used. Perhaps they fall under fair use, but then the images should note this.
    • I thought this is quite obvious.
      • Even if it is obvious, it should be noted. Jeronimo 07:43, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • The article looks a bit messy. F.e., both Bombay and Mumbai are used in the article; this is the same city.
    • messy? I do not think so. Bombay and Mumbai are two names for the same city and they are widely in use throughout India. Anyway, the official name for Bombay now is Mumbai. I will change it.
  • Is this nomation so important that it has to be mentioned in the lead section?
    • Yes it is. I hate to say but this POV of yours is scornable! An honest effort to contribute to a world encyclopedia should never be under estimated. By this same measure, I can call every one of your contribution as 'unimportant'!
      • I was unclear here: I was referring to the OAS nomination, which is in the first sentence. This indicates this nomination is - for some reason - very important, but I don't see the importance. There wasn't even a prize. This should be moved to the "Awards and recognition" section, or it should be made more clear why this fact is mentioned in the very first sentence. Jeronimo 07:43, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • Much of this article reads like a company advertisement to invest. It's nice to read passenger figures and revenues for last year, but an encyclopedia article should either not include those, or give a historical overview of such figures.
    • Again. Your POVs are pointless. Encyclopedia represents facts. And that is what is represented there. Which fact should be included and which should not - kindly enlighten me, the intelligent one. --Drbalaji md 21:53, 6 Jul 2004 (UTC)
      • If you're not willing to listen to reasonable objections, please say so, otherwise please stop patronizing me. Encyclopedia's represent facts yes. But they should be in context, and complete. So we should not only give last year's figures, but also from other years. Maybe just a few years, but a graph would be fantastic (but not required). This will give a picture of how the company has developed over the years. Also some numbers that place this into context would be nice. How does this airline do in comparison with other major airlines? And compared to other Indian airliners. Jeronimo 07:43, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • Jeronimo 08:02, 4 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • Object. Not very well written or laid out. Seems incomplete (the tragedies section at least is missing information -- the so-called Air India Trial is ongoing). Exploding Boy 07:20, Jul 6, 2004 (UTC)
    • A vague and useless commentary. --Drbalaji md 21:53, 6 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • Object : A number of facts in the article are INCORRECT and appear to be lifted directly from Air India's own website (which is also inaccurate on some issues and outdated on others such as the current fleet). Citing questionable subjective sources such as Skytrax immediately erodes the article's credibility. The article also has very poor structure and composition and is weak on actual data. It would be far more appropriate to cover actual services and history of the airline rather than inconsequential propoganda about Inflight Duty Free Sales and obscure awards from 1994. While you have undoubtedly put a lot of effort into this piece, the end result is very poor and needs a lot of work before it should be considered for a featured article.
    • It would be nice if the writer of the above prose who has taken so much effort to produce a poor end result :), kindly shows up his signature. INCORRECT in bold does not make correct things incorrect - neither it is considered etiquette. Obscure awards? Is the Guinness book obscure? I suggest you research as much as I did and substantiate your INCORRECT statement's credibility :) Skytrax is a renowned internet review magazine. Kindly review their site (link is in Air India article). We are not organising a flight schedule service for the airline - I thought keeping dumb links for all the places the airline goes is equally dumb :) There is a substantial amount of information regarding the history of the airline. But, history alone is not encyclopedia. By the way, all the above reviews helped me to edit Air India so that it represents facts. I do not need to invite anyone to change the content Air India - it is an open article in a open domain. You are free to do whatever you want. I like the quote "It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness!" --Drbalaji md 22:50, 6 Jul 2004 (UTC)
      • I do not think there is a better source of information for Air India than its own official website. Are all articles written only by the people who possess the original sources? Are the featured articles not written by assembling facts taken from the websites? --ganesh 02:30, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • It should of course be one of the sources, but you should keep in mind that it is a company's website. Issues that are "bad" for the company may not be discussed NPOV, such as for example the accidents an airliner has had. Jeronimo 07:48, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Russian humour

(Contested -- July 7)

funny and informative Avala 20:10, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• Oppose. Seems to mostly be a list of Russian jokes. Should be about Russian humor, with examples as needed - not just a list of jokes. For a broad and potentially subjective topic like this, also, some citation and verifiability would be nice - surely there are some scholarly or popular surveys of Russian humor that could be cited. Also, for the current title, should deal with more than simple jokes. Snowspinner 20:41, Jul 7, 2004 (UTC)
• Oppose, for the reasons Snowspinner pointed out, as well as formatting issues. Ambivalenthysteria 09:46, 8 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Francis P. Fleming

(Contested - July 12)

A rather obscure 19th-century Florida governor. This is the most the most information from one source anyone can get on the Internet. Neutrality 05:29, 13 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• Oppose. There's no lead section so I wouldn't know why he deserves an article until the fourth paragraph. It's a nice short article otherwise, but not detailed enough for featured status. If there's not enough information on the internet, I'm sure there should be plenty in print for those dedicated enough... --Jiang 07:57, 13 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • Expanded lead section. Neutrality 22:44, 14 Jul 2004 (UTC)
    • While a 2 sentence introduction is an improvement from 0, it is still too short. →Raul654 02:37, Jul 15, 2004 (UTC)
      • it's not too short given the size of the article; it's the article itself that's too short. --Jiang 02:52, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Agree with Jiang. Too short, not detailed enough for FA. blankfaze | (беседа!) 10:38, 13 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Oppose, uses non-free image image without clear copyright status information. anthony (see warning)

  I'm confused by the image's copyright status. If it's from the government website, isn't it public domain? Anthony, since you have done more research on this area, can you clarify this image's status? - DropDeadGorgias (talk) 14:50, Jul 13, 2004 (UTC)

  No. It's from a state government web site, and U.S. states do not all put their publications in the public domain. California does, AFAIK, but Florida doesn't. I've updated the image description page to give the source and a pointer to the applicable copyright statement. Using the image in this article may be fair use, but the image is certainly not PD. Lupo 15:11, 13 Jul 2004 (UTC)

  Wow, thanks. Is there a wikipedia topic with all of the various government websites and their copyright status? - DropDeadGorgias (talk) 16:33, Jul 13, 2004 (UTC)

  This is all irrelevant, because it's not a work of the state of Florida, it's a work of the artist who drew it (and therefore it has passed in the public domain). Neutrality 23:37, 13 Jul 2004 (UTC)

  And how do you know that the painter didn't transfer his rights to the state of Florida? Might be a possibility, especially for an "official portrait", don't you think? Lupo 14:21, 14 Jul 2004 (UTC)

  Wikipedia:Avoid copyright paranoia. Do you have any evidence that this is routinely the case? - David Gerard 14:37, 14 Jul 2004 (UTC)

  Your reference to copyright "paranoia" is unwarranted. I'm only trying to point out that this image may not be in the public domain. A prudent assumption, given that it is published on a Florida state government website which does claim copyright. Lupo 14:45, 14 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• Object; the article is likely too short, as evidenced by the list "Other notable events during Fleming's term include"; surely these notable events should be expanded? — Matt 21:25, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Jesus

(Contested - July 13)

I'm not really his biggest fan, but this seems like a worthy article. blankfaze | (беседа!) 12:08, 13 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Update: On second thought, you all might have some points. Oh well, it seemed like a good idea at the time! blankfaze | (беседа!)

Info: previous nominations were Wikipedia:Featured_article_candidates/Archived_nominations#Jesus_Christ and Wikipedia:Featured_article_candidates/Archived_nominations#November_2003 — Matt 23:07, 13 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• Factual nit: Do most Christians really "accept as a basis for their faith the divine authority of the Bible"? Also, do we have an article covering the divine authority of the Bible? Seems like something we'd already have and could link to. anthony (see warning)
  • I'm not sure if the answer is most but certainly many do, especially fundamentalist Christian groups. Maybe even the Roman Catholics. The wikipedia article about the concept is biblical inerrancy, and similar is biblical canon. The dates of birth and death could use an emphasis that c. means approximate. Either a link from c. to circa, writing the word out, or a link to the wiktionary entry which is where circa should be. - Taxman 14:31, Jul 13, 2004 (UTC)
    • Thanks. I added a link and changed the text a bit. If anyone has a problem with my changes we can discuss it on the talk page. anthony (see warning)
• Object. Where are the references? Also, the section before the table of contents is too long and unattractively laid out. And how about some more pictures? Is that the only kind of representation? Exploding Boy 14:59, Jul 13, 2004 (UTC)
  • There's a passel of pictures at Images of Jesus. Smerdis of Tloen 15:37, 13 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Object. A little more on those who question the historical existence of Jesus would not go astray. For instance, can we substantiate the 'Most scholars believe...' claim?Bmills 15:13, 13 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Object. (a) The article should really be called Jesus Christ, as the Jesus alone is a male given name in some culture, and its use by itself for Logos tends to be a hallmark of certain evangelical sects. (b) The term Christian as used throughout the article is difficult, because the various sects have different interpretations of Christology. (c) The Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, and Evangelical interpretations should be labelled as such. (d) In the Western tradition, Catharism, Gnosticism. (e) Nestorianism (f) Wiccan, pagan, etc. references: satanism, perhaps? (g) Alleged relics of Jesus -- 'alleged' is already POV (I'm agnostic, BTW), and in any case the article must be filled in, it's red as I write it. (h) Resurrection must be filled in. (i) On the scholarly side, could do with more detail on the various critical movements. One last comment: it's a pretty good article as it stands, especially on POV in general. But it needs a lot of work: to be featured, this topic

must be really, really well done. General WIKI comment, not merely about the article, and not part of the objection: too many articles spend too much time saying "many historians (scientists, etc.)" instead of specifying the names of the people or movements, possibly with subarticles. A. Shetsen 16:28, 13 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• Object. Current content is good, but prose isn't brilliant; important subarticles don't exist; layout and sectioning is eccentric; intro is long & stilted; needs much more content. Pines for heavy editing; many deep naming, context, and narrative issues need to be resolved. See also A.Shetsen's comments above. - Sj
• Object. One sentence sections such as Jesus#Alleged_relics_of_Jesus should not exist. Most others, such as Jesus#Islamic_perspectives_on_Jesus and Jesus#The_resurrection, are short as well. The article needs a massive reorganization so we are not left with huge broad sections such as Jesus#Jesus'_life_and_teaching and then small sections as named above. Consider merging smaller sections. I'm also puzzled by the particular ordering of the sections - why #3 is not grouped with #7-9 and the difference between #1 and #6. #4 and #5 also look like they belong together. --Jiang 08:19, 3 May 2004 (UTC)

You have two cows

(Contested - July 12)

Excellent piece. I copyedited some of it, but otherwise not a self-nom. Neutrality 02:30, Jul 13, 2004 (UTC)

• Object. Article is mostly a list, and a sourcetext list at that. Snowspinner 02:33, Jul 13, 2004 (UTC)

• Object. The list doesn't belong here. Should give only a couple of examples, examining them in detail. The non-list material is good, however. 195.167.169.36 09:10, 13 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• Object. This is an encyclopaedia, not a (very unfunny) joke book. Bmills 09:46, 13 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• Agree. If anything it demonstrates the strengths and power of referentiality of Wikipedia. Besides which some Wikipedians have a sense of humour. Nothing wrong with making the public aware of the fact. Sjc 12:53, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)

The Scream

(Contested - July 11)

A very nice article about an important painting. We are not very strong on fine arts, and this may give us some momentum. Danny 19:58, 11 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• Oppose for the moment. The "alien" section is a concern to me; it comes out of nowhere and has no context. Since this is quite a short article, such a peculiar reference must either be extremely important in the overall story, or should not be there at all. Denni☯ 21:04, 2004 Jul 11 (UTC)
  • This paragraph has been removed after discussion on the talkpage. The article has also grown substantially. -Antwelm 13:08, 2004 Sep 6 (UTC)
• Oppose. I hate to impose a length requirement, but this is awfully short for a featured article. maybe add a section on artists who influenced The Scream, or were influenced by it? [[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 22:00, 11 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Oppose. Very short, and the alien section is a little strange. I'm not sure if this can be fleshed out into a good feature article. I agree there should be more fine arts features, but not sure about this one. Satori 23:07, Jul 11, 2004 (UTC)
• Needs more stuff on the painting's iconic nature in popular culture. I used to have an inflatable 'Scream' on my monitor - David Gerard 23:40, 11 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • Has been added. -Antwelm 13:08, 2004 Sep 6 (UTC)
• Oppose. This is a good non-feature article, but lacks breadth. Should be expanded with discussion of the painting's influence on later art, its physical form, explanation of how the painting expresses the "infinite scream", ownership history, more complete analysis of the "grey alien" theory, comparison with other paintings. 195.167.169.36 11:19, 12 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • Article now features most of these suggestions. -Antwelm 13:08, 2004 Sep 6 (UTC)
• On the pop culture bit: one specific thing to mention is that the painting was the inspiration for "Ghostface" the baddy in the Scream film trilogy. I would add this myself but I have a feeling that a more complete pop culture overview is coming! Pcb21| Pete 11:23, 12 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • Added. -Antwelm 13:08, 2004 Sep 6 (UTC)

ISO 8859

(Contested -- July 9)

A very comprehensive and detailed article on this very important family of character encodings. Anarion 12:27, 8 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• Nice, but it would be good to say a bit more about the state of transition from ISO-8859 to Unicode. Why, for example, does it seem to me that I don't have to worry about the "Character Coding" setting of my Mozilla browser, while this was not the case only one or two years ago? Simon A. 15:28, 8 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • Good point, but alas users still use archaic browsers (MSIE, Netscape etc. -- and Netscape is based on old Mozillas). Anarion 08:21, 9 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • I don't think an explanation of the behavior of particular web browsers is appropriate for this article, unless the discussion is specific to the ISO 8859. I've updated the section you're talking about, though, to better explain the current state of things. - mjb 21:51, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• The central big table of all characters would need serious checking or regeneration from authorative sources. It would be very emberassing if some error is overlooked. Some days ago I just found a small error with Greek. Pjacobi 10:03, 9 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• Object. The table of characters definitely needs to be checked. See also this outstanding request for peer review. Furthermore, this article links to separate articles for each part, i.e. ISO 8859-1, ISO 8859-2, etc., most of which are fairly new and none of which have been checked for consistency nor fully updated to match the ISO 8859 article's recent clarifications w.r.t. precise terminology, the fact that it's a single standard with 15 published parts, how "ISO 8859" is (now) an informal citation for "ISO/IEC 8859", and most importantly, the ISO-8859-x character map discussion. All of the articles should also have a history section showing each published version of each part of the standard, if not also summarizing the differences between them (e.g., ISO 8859-1:1987 vs ISO/IEC 8859-1:1998). The description of Unicode in the Alternatives section is unnecessary and should be pared down. (After renaming the Alternatives

section, I decided to rewrite and lengthen it... doh.) The paragraph about ISO 8859-17 and the related stub page should be removed entirely. The section title "Character Sets" is inaccurate and should be changed. (done and done.) The 8859-1 article, and perhaps the 8859 article as well, should make careful mention of the historical significance of 8859-1 in HTTP/0.9-1.1 and pre-4.0 HTML. Need I go on? - mjb 10:49, 9 Jul 2004 (UTC) (updated 16 Jul 2004)

• • That link: this outstanding request for peer review?
    • Yes, sorry. Fixed.

• Object. 1) The lead section needs expanding to summarise the entire article. 2) "Development status" is an entire section with a single paragraph; we should probably absorb this somewhere or else expand the section. 3) Could you clarify the "ISO 8859-n standard is not the same as the well-known ISO-8859-n standard"; I read this paragraph a couple of times, and I'm still not clear on why there's a difference / why two different standards have names that differ only by a hyphen. 4) History; there's no history of the standards before Unicode; we should probably have the dates of when various standards and parts of standards were introduced. 5) Adoption: who adopted these standards, and when? Everyone? The main players? Significant exceptions? — Matt 18:25, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Nikola Tesla

(Contested -- July 9)

very nice article about famous serbian scientist [[User:Avala|Avala|★]] 19:32, 9 Jul 2004 (UTC) 10:56, 9 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• Support. Detailed and extensive, not leaving anything out I can remember right now (even something about Tesla Coils, but not Tesla Troopers ;-)) Anarion 11:00, 9 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• One concern that springs to mind is that there's been some controversy over the article recently (specifically Tesla's ethnic origin, with lots of groups wanting to grab credit for him) - see the talk page. If the ethnic edit warring is stable for a week, call this support See article box objection below - David Gerard 11:36, 9 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • The problem was -Tesla born in Croatia in Serbian family. In that part of Croatia people had very funny and different family names-example-Guzina meaning Bigass. So some people stated that he doesnot have slavic last name. But it is all about one of this region's special characteristics. [[User:Avala|Avala★Talk]] 11:55, 9 Jul 2004 (UTC)
    • I'm not expressing an opinion either way - I'm saying that a workable compromise needs to be reached before it can be called stable enough to be a FA - David Gerard 00:23, 11 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• I am with David. If the ethnic edit war can stay calm for a week, support. [[User:DO'Neil|DO'Иeil]] 12:34, Jul 9, 2004 (UTC)
• Oppose. The box of Tesla related articles should go at the bottom, in the see also section. Furthermore, the see also section needs to be dramatically trimmed. Perhaps some categorization is in order? Snowspinner 17:06, Jul 9, 2004 (UTC)
  • nope about that box! it is top box or whatever it is called! it is placed in the top of the article. see also is never organized, if we have that much see also's than that is becuase we need to. This was just because of Armstrong.[[User:Avala|Avala★Talk]] 18:08, 9 Jul 2004 (UTC)
    • Article series boxes are generally to be avoided, and that see also list is excessive. This has nothing to do with Armstrong, and I would appreciate if you stop accusing me of retalliation. I object to your nominations because they have, for the most part, all needed improvement. Snowspinner 19:31, Jul 9, 2004 (UTC)
      • I think we are done with the box, We agreed that see also should be smaller and it is smaller. The box is just overview of the long article.[[User:Avala|Avala|★]] 19:36, 9 Jul 2004 (UTC)
        • I still think the box is jarring up there, and redundant with Category:Nikola Tesla. This would ordinarily not bother me, but the box is the first thing you see in the article. Snowspinner 19:45, Jul 9, 2004 (UTC)
  • I second the article box objection. I tried shuffling that box and the image around before, and now someone's shifted it back except they've caused a collision. It adds nothing and detracts from the article. I dislike article series boxes in general, but this one is particularly obnoxious and clunky and keeps colliding with the picture. Make it considerably less obtrusive or, better yet, lose it altogether - it's redundant with Category:Nikola Tesla If the box stays gone, I'll be happy - David Gerard 00:23, 11 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Support. --Yath 19:34, 9 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Object - overwheling TOC. Also fails to follow manual of style re: picture placement. →Raul654 19:43, Jul 9, 2004 (UTC)
  • Objections have been fixed now, although (as the user below says) the see-also section is still too large. →Raul654 08:53, Jul 10, 2004 (UTC)
• Object: "see also" is really overwhelmingly large, and contains some totally spurious links (Government Warehouse?!). Also: "An ongoing lawsuit regarding this was finally resolved in his favor after his death." - whose does "his" refer to? Tesla? -Sean Curtin 09:40, 10 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • Neutral. List of articles related to Nikola Tesla is still quite padded. -Sean Curtin 22:10, 14 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Support -- JDR 08:37, 10 Jul 2004 (UTC) [scratch this if I can't vote]
• Object - 54 KB makes for a rather long read (not to mention page size warning). Not everybody is interested in going through so much detail (esp for the absurdly long 'middle years' section). I suggest summarizing mention of most of his inventions in this article and move the detailed text to Nikola Tesla's inventions to serve as the body text. Then move the prose from Tesla patents to serve as the lead and overview. Finally move the very long annotated list of patents to List of Tesla patents and link it from the inventions article. --mav 09:23, 10 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • That would be a good slution to the problem of clutter in the article. -Sean Curtin 09:40, 10 Jul 2004
• Object. 1. We need information on certain images, namely: Image:Stesla.jpg, Image:Tesla2.jpg, Image:Serbia100Dinara.jpg, Image:Colorado GeoMag Map.png. 2. Some changes need to be made to the sectional divisions. The "Middle Years" section is rather extensive. Furthermore, the page misuses "quote"—I believe the appropriate word in this context is "quotation." Also, is "Namings" really an appropriate word in this context, or, for that matter, in any context? 3. The navigation box should replace Tesla's image atop the page, and the image sent elsewhere. Navigation boxes belong at the top—they look rather unfortunate in other places. 4. Why is it necessary to indicate in paranthetical format that the Institution of Electrical Engineers is a British body? Similar indications are not made for other bodies. Just the title would suffice. -- Emsworth 02:48, Jul 11, 2004 (UTC)
  • The series box should not replace the image! For god's sake never push real content down for a navigation box! If anything it should be demoted to a footer or category. --mav 05:10, 11 Jul 2004 (UTC)
    • Mav is *exactly* right and I believe the MoS backs him up on this. →Raul654 05:20, Jul 11, 2004 (UTC)
    • The category does in fact exactly replace the article series box, but the Tesla fans appear to be in love with the article box regardless The box appears gone again. Support if it stays that way - David Gerard 13:00, 11 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Neutral if box and see also section are as in the version at July 11, 2004 at 15:33 UTC by Snowspinner. Oppose otherwise. Snowspinner 15:36, Jul 11, 2004 (UTC)
• Support -- I could stand removing the box if that is prerequisite for having this article featured. But I really don't understand why are you people against it, or boxes in particular. What is wrong with the box in, say, this revision? The box is under picture of Tesla, has same width as the picture, even happened to have same height as the TOC. It doesn't eat up any article space (as it is right of the TOC where there is no text), isn't the first thing that people see, and offers useful overview of the most important Tesla-related articles (Tesla's category would likely have more articles than the box). It could be made nice pink to match TOC and image border if that is what bothers you. Nikola 05:29, 13 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Object. Overwikified (only wikify a term once or twice in an article, not each time), persistently if politely POV, and oddly narrated with numerous gaps in grammar and continuity. The article should cover each theme of his life in a coherent paragraph; a single paragraph should not switch from discussions of his financial state to discussions of the state of a legal battle to a note about where he moved that year and what notes he was taking at that time. Needs deep work by someone who cares about the subject and has time to copyedit the entire text for continuity and flow. +sj+ 22:50, 13 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Object. 1) Some sections and subsections are only one paragraph long; these should be merged into longer sections. 2) The quotes section should be removed; the WikiQuote entry suffices. 3) I suspect the "External links" section is too long: Wikipedia is not a link repository and I suspect that many (e.g. the H2G2 entry) are not necessary. — Matt 14:57, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Che Guevara

(Contested - July 11)

This article has abviously been the subject of some significant argument over time (Talk:Che Guevara), but I do think that it is now a remarkably well-written biography, decently NPOV, and showing the work of numerous authors. (Not self-nom, I've never edited this page) Palnu 01:35, 12 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• Support. jengod 04:35, Jul 12, 2004 (UTC)
• Support. Pretty comprehensive. 195.167.169.36 12:03, 12 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Support. Johnleemk | Talk 14:20, 12 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Support. Object. I think the article is great and has a great use of pictures, but I have some concerns about the non-standard elements of the article. First of all, I don't see why the infobox is used. I thought that was only for taxonomy and the like. Are we planning on using that in all biographies? Also, all of the quotes should be moved to Wikiquote. Promoting this article to FA in this stage would encourage non-standard formatting of other articles. Please correct me if I'm wrong and if any of these elements are standard, in which case I will reverse my vote. I have reversed my vote, but I think that the CheIcon.jpg should be the main picture. It really catches the eye, and, in my opinion, Che is much more relevant as an icon than as an actual historical figure. - DropDeadGorgias (talk) 15:32, Jul 12, 2004 (UTC)

Che is much more relevant as an icon than as an actual historical figure? Maybe to Americans, but certainly not to Cubans. 172 03:32, 13 Jul 2004 (UTC)

To Wikipedia's audience (the world). - DropDeadGorgias (talk) 16:04, Jul 14, 2004 (UTC)

• Object. I agree with DropDeadGorgias on the infobox. Also, the image in that infobox claims the picture is in the public domain because it is of a historic figure, which seems dubious to me. Another picture has no source stated. Jeronimo 16:55, 12 Jul 2004 (UTC)

To clarify, these images are problem areas for me:

Image:Che guevara black and white bust photograph.jpg "When originally uploaded this photograph was listed as being public domain, however I have been unable to corroborate this. However the photo is well-known photo of a historically significant individual, so the case for fair use within Wikipedia is pretty overwhelming." - why?

Image:Felix Ismael Rodriguez.jpg "This image may not have information on its source."

Jeronimo 11:02, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• As this is a non self-nom with mild objections, I've taken it myself to try to resolve these objections (although I don't really know enough about the kid to write about him). The infobox has been removed, with a notice why on the talk page. I have updated one of the images which claimed to be PD but probably wasn't. This image - Image:Felix_Ismael_Rodriguez.jpg continues to lack source information. Could some kind fellow/fellowess figure what to put on that page. The final objection is to do with quotes - the suggestion was to remove them all - this seems wrong - it is standard practice to keep a few quotes. If there are too many, then we can delete from here and add an external link to wikiquote. Unfortunately I cannot judge which are the most significant quotes and are thus worth keeping. Pcb21| Pete 18:13, 12 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Support. Good article. Was actually one of the first Wikipedia articles I ever read, when I was doing a little research, and helped attract me to the Wiki community. Satori 19:13, Jul 12, 2004 (UTC)
• Object. Support. Definitely agree about moving quotes to Wikiquote. Sections like "Hero cult" and "Movies and Plays" seem awkward, and could probably stand to be rearranged or combined. And that iconic image could stand to be MUCH more prominent, especially if this makes the Main Page; many people know Che solely from that image, and placing it a little higher up could stand to draw them into the rest of the article. Although I realize that Main Page status is not determined here, if/when this article makes it there I think we should use the iconic image. We can argue about that later, though. - jredmond 19:28, 12 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • As this is not a self-nom it would be *great* if you could fix some of this up as you see fit yourself. THanks! Pcb21| Pete 19:58, 12 Jul 2004 (UTC)
    • I'm working on it now, although I may have to switch back to Actual Work™ at any moment. Thanks for the reminder, though. - jredmond 20:18, 12 Jul 2004 (UTC)
    • As I nominated it, I figured I could do something vaguely useful. I have reduced the number of quotes to five, based on those that appealed to me rather than any kind of historical significance, and added link to a very comprehensive page at Wikiquote. Palnu 21:56, 12 Jul 2004 (UTC)
      • Good call on those quotes; I like what's left. I've also combined the "Hero cult" and "Movies and plays" sections into "Che's enduring reputation". Am not sure how to deal with Image:Cheicon.jpg, though — it works so nicely in that section that I'm currently hesitant to move it. With the right caption, though, we could move it higher. - jredmond 22:10, 12 Jul 2004 (UTC)
        • Thanks for the clean up guys, tis appreciated. I did a little tinkering with the sources and further reading area, but haven't touched the important bit, the prose. That bit seems to read rather well to this layman. Pcb21| Pete 00:23, 13 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • The drawing power of the iconic image isn't enough to justify moving it up the article, IMO. The current arrangement of images, with a conventional portrait at the top, is exactly right for the article. I note there's a separate article about the image, Che Guevara (photo), which already has good depth in its analysis of the imagery and could in time be a featured article itself. 81.168.80.170 22:26, 12 Jul 2004 (UTC)
    • Even if the iconic image isn't the one toward the top (and it should not be-- the top photo should be a portrait), the iconic image placed in the hero cult section can be the one featured on the main page. BTW, neutral on feature status. 172 23:33, 12 Jul 2004 (UTC)
      • • After reviewing a few things and considering my earlier post, I agree with both the anon-user and 172 here - keep the iconic image where it is in the article. If/when we put this up front, though... - jredmond 19:23, 14 Jul 2004 (UTC)
      • That image's copyright information is incorrect. The images page states that it's used by permission, citing a statement by the photographer that he's "not averse to its reproduction by those who wish to propagate his memory and the cause of social justice throughout the world". I don't think that's Wikipedia policy. The photographer has asserted copyright; we don't have permission to use it; and while there may be a fair use argument for using it on Che Guevara (photo), I don't see one for using it here. Markalexander100 07:51, 13 Jul 2004 (UTC)
        • Support. I'm sure the artist wouldn't mind using it for an encyclopedia. 10:39, 13 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Object. The "iconic image" is a copyvio. Markalexander100 00:48, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • The image has now been removed. [2] 172 03:27, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Support. Markalexander100 06:47, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Support. Comprehensive and informative article. ato 06:39, 13 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Support. After the recent rewrite, this is now an outstanding profile of one of the 20th C's most famous cultural icons -- Viajero 07:49, 13 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Support. Niiice article. blankfaze | (беседа!) 10:36, 13 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Object. Uses non-free image, Image:Che guevara black and white bust photograph.jpg and image without source info, Image:Felix Ismael Rodriguez.jpg. anthony (see warning)
  • As it's obvious that fair use is being claimed, IMHO, this objection is a load of bunk. Ambivalenthysteria 09:16, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Object. 1) It needs the "iconic" image included, presumably under fair use. 2) The lead section could perhaps do with being a little larger, and in particular should mention his iconic status and link to the Chek Guevara (photo) article. 3) Could we also find a category or two to fit him into? — Matt 21:19, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • Number 3 is done. Number 2 I would agree with, and I think is a better alternative than including a copyrighted image just because we'd like to use it. A prominent link to an article where the image is fair use is enough. Markalexander100 03:10, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)
    • The article uses other copyrighted images under fair use; why is this one different? To many people, the "iconic" aspect — particularly that image — has the most relevance to them; it would seem an obvious omission to have it on a different page entirely. — Matt 23:54, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)
      • It's on a different page entirely because it's so important. Markalexander100 03:01, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)
        • It's great that the topic has an entirely different page; however, that doesn't mean that this page can completely wash its hands of it; this page should cover it to a small extent in summary; say a paragraph and the image (see Wikipedia:Summary style). — Matt 23:04, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Object. Not NPOV. 172 15:58, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Comment: A larger than life portrait on the wall of the Ministry of the Interior in Havana, Cuba <- eh? -- Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 12:19, 2004 Oct 27 (UTC)

Book of Kells

(Contested -- July 8)

Self-nomination Dsmdgold 23:38, 8 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• Support, but I'd like a sentence in the opening explaining why it's a particularly cool Bible. Snowspinner 00:26, Jul 9, 2004 (UTC)
  • Have added sentence to opening stating the importance of the book. Dsmdgold
    • Beautiful. Support strongly. Snowspinner 19:35, Jul 9, 2004 (UTC)
• Neutral, would like more history, the names of individuals involved with its discovery, restoration, reproduction -- as far back as such names are known. Beautiful images and subject. +sj+ 01:04, 9 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Support. Covers as much of the known history as might be considered uncontested and useful. Good work Dsmdgold. Bmills 09:47, 9 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Support. Nice work. blankfaze | (беседа!) 21:54, 9 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Neutral - great work! Concise, informative and lively. I'll change to my vote to support if this one minor gripe is fixed: Bibliography is used in a non-Wikipedia standard way. Is that supposed to be a references list or a further reading list? Please specify. --mav 09:33, 10 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • Changed this to Further reading. Bmills 10:15, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Object. Great work, and will support this, but not until my objections, listed below, have been addressed. Jeronimo 10:41, 10 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • The lead section reads: "(...) is considered by many scholars to be one of the most important works in the history of art." This is rather vague. Why was it so important? What was its influence on other artists/writers, both at the time of writing, and later? Where any previously unused techniques adapted in producing the work?
    • It is so important mainly because it's so beautiful. Look at just about any art history text that covers the middle ages and it will cover the Book of Kells. Hell, if someone does a survey and picks just one piece of art to represent the middle ages, it stands a good chance of being Kells. (This despite the fact that Kells doesn't actually look like most medieval art.). I have modofied the offending sentance to indicate that Kells is valued for its "technical brillance and great beauty) Dsmdgold
      • I hate to be a nag, but that still explains little. Beautiful and technically brilliant doesn't imply importance. Your average supermodel may be beautiful, and some scientists may be technically brilliant, but that doesn't automatically mean such persons are also important. The same goes for the book IMO. The book would be important, (for example,) if (many) (mediaeval) artists had been influenced by it, or if groundbreaking techniques were used. If such things are the case, well, name it important and explain why. If that isn't the case, as sentence such as "Many scholars consider the Book of Kells is to be one of the most beautiful and technically brilliant mediaeval art works ..." would be more appropriate. Jeronimo 06:56, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)
        • I find your criterea for impotance of art works to be a bit odd. Why is the Mona Lisa important? There are no new techniques. It can't be said to have had great impact on other artists, except in the fact that after it achieved icon status twentieth century artist used it as reference. (But this says nothing as to its importance, it was already acknowledged as important.) It is merely a very good portrait of an unknown lady. Thousands of portraits exist that of unknown ladies done in exactly the same technique. Why is THIS one important? Because it is well done and beautiful and because generations of Art Historians have said it is. (Which is essentially what I have said about Kells.) The Book of Kells had almost no influence on other medieval artists. It after all was a work stored in a small town on the edge of the world, far from the cultural centers of Rome, Paris and Constantinople. But the fact remains that EVERY historian of medieval art recognizes this as a major work. To give one example, in the 34 volume Grove Dictionary of Art, the Book of Kells is one of the only illuminated manuscripts to rate an individual article. It is one of the most famous works of medieval art. (IMO opinion the only medieval works of art that aproach its fame are some of the Gothic cathedrals such as Notre Dame de Paris.) Why, exactly, do you believe that the importance of art works derives from its groundbreaking technique or impact rather than its beauty? Dsmdgold 21:52, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • The first paragraph of the history section is a bit vague. I understand little is known about the book's early history, but that's the reason I would like some more specifics. Examples:
    • "this tradition is false based on paleographic grounds" -- On what grounds exactly?
    • "he book likely began in a monastery on the island of Iona" -- Why do scholars think that? Is there any evidence to support that? Or this is link only made because St. Columba (traditionally linked with the book) built a monastery there? Please elaborate.
• support - David Gerard 21:01, 12 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Object. 1) The image in the lead section is somewhat poor compared to the later ones; could it be replaced (I'd move one of the later images up, but they are illustrating points in the text)? 2) Would it be worthwhile including a page containing predominantly text, to balance the more decorated pages? 3) "Kells has been called the oldest surviving fully illuminated manuscript." — can we improve this sentence? Is it indeed the oldest? If it is disputed, what rivals it, and who advocates what theory? 4) "some decorations can only be fully appreciated with magnifying glasses, although glasses of the required power were not available until hundreds of years after the book's completion." — just checking; is this really the case? This seems quite extraordinary; some discussion would be worthwile on how can such intricate artwork could have been created, and why, if it could not have been appreciated at the time. 5) In fact, more generally, could we have a mention of what techniques were used to create the manuscript? — Matt 19:04, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Are these issues resolved? →Raul654 17:00, Jul 21, 2004 (UTC)
  • The issues raised in my objection are still current. — Matt 23:35, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Steel

(contested - July 15)

Lots of solid information. 81.168.80.170 20:05, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• Support. Good article. Satori 21:00, Jul 15, 2004 (UTC)

• Object - could use some information on the current state of the steel industry and an economic view. For example tariff battles and the rise of the efficiency of micro mills which has revolutionized the industry. Though finding information on that may take a better googler than I. Also, the intro refers to non-carbon steel that is never again mentioned in the article. Inquiring minds want to know. - Taxman 21:44, Jul 15, 2004 (UTC)
• Object. History section seems to stop at 1900 - was this originally a EB 1911 article? No recent history at all. There should at least be mention of the European Coal and Steel Community, and certainly of "steel wars" between Europe and the US in recent years. The history is section should also be split in to several sections, and the lists at the bottom are quite useless, since most information is already embedded in the article. The "main steel producers" should only be a link, or it should provide more information than just four names. There are no references at all, neither web or book, which should be fixed. I also miss a good overview of present uses of steel (in construction) and some famous steel constructions (bridges). All in all, this needs a lot more information than it currently has. Jeronimo 11:06, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)

1964 New York World's Fair

(July 15)

Stumbled upon this--seems quite comprehensive. jengod 23:59, Jul 15, 2004 (UTC)

• Support. 81.168.80.170 10:00, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Object. Image has no source information. Furthermore, the image is hardly informative: it shows buildings and highways, and these could be anywhere, really. Jeronimo 10:51, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Intro too long. Article could do with a bit of a polish. But it's feature material - David Gerard 11:07, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Object - the lead section is too long and needs to serve as a concise summary of the whole article. See Wikipedia:lead section. --mav 20:17, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Object (for now). its a good article, but more references would be better. If this is corrected, change my vote to support, since its a very well written article. --Fixman^{Praise me} 19:30, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

Joseph Stalin

(contested - 18 July)

Seemingly well-written and thorough article; well-illustrated IMO. I'm not involved with it, other than a few image fixes I've done. blankfaze | (беседа!) 22:56, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)

*Support. A. Shetsen 02:46, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC) Widthdrawing support because of recent edits. The article I supported was neutral and left conclusions to the reader. I am NOT registering an objection, just keeping out of the ideologically-motivated bullshit. A. Shetsen 02:16, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Rather than changing your vote, why not revert the recent changes? 172 04:06, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Because if it is a matter of less than ten words, surely some formula can be found which is unobjectionable to both sides, rather than inserting, erasing, inserting, erasing... You guys are the ones warring -- why not settle on something? 'Sides, reviewers should be careful not to enter into an edit war on what they're reviewing! A. Shetsen 04:58, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)

That's easy for you to say. It's easy to make criticisms on FAC, but not to reason with these users making these hasty and emotional contributions in articles about controversial subjects. 172 05:02, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)

OK have it your way... That millions died in the camps is known. The issue is twofold:

• Stalin was loved at the time. Some Russians today are ashamed of this, others proud. Both these camps being in the minority, BTW. (In any case, purges and genocide are scarcely unique to the other side, but this last bit is a comment more on the edit war mentality than on the period 1924-1953 in the USSR.) +
• The reason he was loved (and is still by some) is that he was strong. (Again: nothing unique to the other side here, but...) He did push industrialisation... which carried the country through what with every justification (i.e., blood) is called the Great Patriotic War. Yes, collectivisation, purges, etc. ... but history is grey. +

So under the circumstances, the correct thing to do may be, if I may make a suggestion, to make some kind of equivocation in the intro and more equivocations, with gory figures attached, both ways, of course, later on. Don't be afraid to equivocate... As it stands, the edit war is silly absolutes attempting Mutually Assured Destruction. A. Shetsen 05:14, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• I've now introduced the changes. Let's see if they too are erased. A. Shetsen 06:01, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• Support. [[User:Avala|Avala|★]] 12:01, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Oppose. Could be better organized. (Science and deportations could be self-standing articles; the section on social services should be expanded (think carrot and stick), with an emphasis on the role they played in his consolidation of power (compare to the coverage of this subject in Saddam Hussein) 172 17:23, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Oppose. Propaganda magnet. RickK 22:36, Jul 18, 2004 (UTC)
  • With all due respect to Rickk (I think he does a great job keeping the vandals at bay), he's letting that cloud his judgement here. His objection is inactionable and therefore invalid. →Raul654 22:40, Jul 18, 2004 (UTC)
  • That GNU/Linux naming controversy survived shows the power of the Wiki way to heal damage. Now, if George W. Bush or Michael Moore were nominated ... - David Gerard 23:25, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)
    • OK, I was trying to avoid trying to say this, but I'll just come out and say it. The Joseph Stalin article is one of the articles that User:172 likes to edit in his never-ending quest to whitewash the history of all leftist dictators everywhere. RickK 23:28, Jul 18, 2004 (UTC)
      • Featured articles are NPOV and factually accurate - objecting on these grounds is a legitamate complaint. Ad-hominem objections aside, can you find anything in the article itself that would lead you to believe this this article is either factually disputable or POV? →Raul654 00:02, Jul 19, 2004 (UTC)
        • Besides the fact that 172 keeps deleting that millions of people died under his rule? RickK 04:18, Jul 19, 2004 (UTC)
      • A nonsensical personal attack. Consider the source. 172 23:56, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• There seems to be an edit war in progress at this very moment. Something to consider. VV 00:27, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• From reading the above comments and reading the page history, I think it's obvious that this page is currently the subject of on-goings edit wars. This disqualifies it from FAC consideration. Come back when these issues have been resolved amicably. →Raul654 05:08, Jul 19, 2004 (UTC)

SpaceShipOne flight 15P

(contested - July 17)

Self-nomination: I created and wrote almost all of this article. I think it's a good example of Wikipedia coverage of current events. The article is a bit short compared to typical featured articles, but this is attributable to the rather narrow focus. The only thing I think is seriously lacking is images: there are lots of images available of the flight and ensuing celebration, but none on Wikipedia yet. 81.168.80.170 19:51, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• Support. Nice work. But this really begs for an image. Are there any available under free licences? [[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 06:37, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • I've added a note to Wikipedia:Requested pictures. Of the 11,000 people that went to Mojave to watch it, surely there must have been a few Wikipedians. Might also be worth asking for permission to use some of the images on the extlinked page of images - I'd rather leave such diplomacy to a more experienced Wikipedian. 81.168.80.170 11:43, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• Object. This really needs an image. There are some images at SpaceShipOne, but these are not taken from the flight itself. The article itself mostly lists facts, especially the "flight profile" section. Many of these could be conveniently listed in a table of some sort. There should also be a better introduction to the article, linking it tightly with the earlier mentioned article about the ship (one might even consider merging, but I think there's enough information for a separate entry). Finally, the lead section introduces the Ansari X Prize, which cannot be considered common knowledge. A brief explanation in the lead section seems appropriate. Some minor concerns: it would be nice to give the sources of the reactions; the units used should be linked (miles, meters, etc.) Jeronimo 17:42, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • I've reworked the lead section to explain the X Prize, though I think that can be improved further, and linked the units. What do you mean by "linking it tightly with the ... article about the ship"? Re listing facts: the flight profile is by its nature a dry sequence of facts, but it is not amenable to tabulation -- it's a narrative, and there's very little meaningful comparison to be made between the various numbers presented. 81.168.80.170 18:53, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • Also (I missed it out earlier): the sources of the reaction quotations are in the external links list. Is more required than that? 81.168.80.170 20:58, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• What I meant by linking the article tightly with the ship article: It is very likely that either a) the reader enters this article through the SpaceShipOne article or b) the reader switches to the SpaceShipOne article after or while reading the lead section of this article. Right now, I think there's not enough information about the ship for this link. Also, the Tier One programme seems important, but that article is just a (ridiculous) stub. As for the dry list of facts, I think a table or a list would do great for some of the info. It enables the reader to skip this information, which is mostly unnecessary for understanding the article. If you take a look at the sub-articles of the Apollo program, you'll see the information is presented in both tables and lists, which reads a lot easier. As for the links: it may be better to link the sources directly from the text, but frankly don't know what the WP:MOS says about that. Jeronimo 06:25, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • I still don't understand what you're saying about linking. What kind of additional information do you want where? 195.167.169.36 16:41, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • Comparison with Apollo program: SS1 flights are not yet sufficiently standard to summarise in an infobox. I expect such an infobox to evolve after a few more flights. Until we know what kind of structure is required, attempting to impose a structure would be misleading and counterproductive. 195.167.169.36 16:41, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)

James Dole

I think its an impressive yet concise article on James Dole, the founder of the Hawaiian Pineapple Company that later became Dole Food Company. Its rare to find an article like this with great historical pictures. --James Easton 17:35, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• Support. Satori 23:13, Jul 16, 2004 (UTC)
• See, here's where we run into trouble again with this whole Featured articles/Featured articles business. I think this article is fine for featuring on the main page, but I don't think it deserves particular recognition for outstanding writing. Exploding Boy 01:46, Jul 17, 2004 (UTC)
  • The writing could do with a polish, but it's not bad. Support - David Gerard 10:50, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Object - article on the whole is short and most of the wikipedia:lead section is about the company not the man. This needs to be fixed. --mav 20:21, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Object; in addition to the lead section, it could do with some references and external links about James Dole, not just various companies started by Dole. — Matt 02:20, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Oceanic Whitetip Shark

(Contested - July 13)

• Object. Needs a picture, at least. Compare Humpback Whale to see how good an article on a sea creature can be. — Matt 02:40, 14 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • I agree that a picture can speak a thousand words in this type of article, and we should add one here if at all possible. However a quick comment: the nice thing about writing about Humpbacks is that they are one of the most studied sea animals around, meaning there is a lot of information available on them. This is not the case for other cetacean species - the answer to many questions is simply "unknown". I suspect the same will be true all but the most headline-grabbing shark species. I would be happy to see this article get featured status. I like the slightly chatty style, but others have been concerned about this style in the past. Pcb21| Pete 13:04, 14 Jul 2004 (UTC)
    • Sure, I concede that if there's not much known, then that's fine — Wikipedia compiles human knowledge, and can't do anything if that knowledge is lacking. A photo or diagram is really requisite, though. — Matt 20:38, 14 Jul 2004 (UTC)
      • I now think there is more knowledge that we can document; see the comment below. — Matt 01:37, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• I should clarify: This is a self-nomination. Sorry for omitting that.

There are no public domain photos (or drawings) of this species online. I contacted a photographer for permission to use an excellent underwater shot. One reason I (self-)nominated the article is that it makes a fairly easy, but genuine contribution to our knowledge about sharks. The Oceanic Whitetip is the most dangerous shark in the world, with the most human fatalities, yet since it lives in the open water, that data doesn't connect with typical shark-attack indices. It's simply not credited. This is the only article for a general readership (that I've ever seen) that connects the dots. The Oceanic Whitetip is also, according to marine biologists, probably the most common large animal in the world. I think that rises beyond trivia and makes this a species of far more importance than it's usually given. And to concur with Pcb21, it's true that far more is known about Humpback Whales than about sharks, and far less about the Whitetip than about other, more famous species of shark. -Auto Movil

• alright, a cryptoanalyst thinks articles on sea creatures should have photos. there's no photo available. i disagree on that assessment, but dowanna argue; it's withdrawn.
  • I agree with Exploding Boy below: "don't be too hasty". Feel free to argue. Articles that have objections can still be promoted. There just has to be a consensus to promote. It's perfectly valid for any non-specialist — even a cryptanalyst (there's no "o") — to have an opinion on the quality of an article; ideally there should be both specialist and non-specialist vetting on this page. — Matt 17:47, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Don't be too hasty. Support. Exploding Boy 07:09, Jul 15, 2004 (UTC)
• Object. 1. The sections (perhaps even the whole article) are too short. 2. There are no references; if the External Links are used as such, they should be properly formatted, for example in (not necessarily in) the APA Style. 3. Some measurements provide Imperial equivalents, while others do not. Either all measurements, or none of the measurements, should provide Imperial equivalents. 4. Capitalisation varies in the article. It uses "Oceanic Whitetip" as well as "Oceanic whitetip." Which is correct? 5. Several sections require wiki-links. -- Emsworth 18:23, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Object - way too short for featured. No lead section, stub sections, no info on evolution. Much more needed. --mav 01:17, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Support. After searching for about an hour and a half - I found a PD image on a Hawaiian US govt. site. I have created a map of distribution. Created naming section - and added information to Habitat and Distribution. As well as references. --[[User:OldakQuill|Oldak Quill]] 18:07, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Object, but an easy one to fix. If that is all the known material thats fine (to me), but it needs a summary of the important material in the intro section. One or two paragraphs is fine. - Taxman 01:19, Jul 20, 2004 (UTC)
• Object. Thanks to OldakQuill for the images, they really help. 1) As mentioned by Taxman, the lead section needs a lot of work. 2) I don't know much about sharks, but a little Googling turned up some sites which suggest there's information about that we don't have in our article; [3] in particular has loads of info. — Matt 01:37, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• I have adapted all the remaining information from the link provided by Matt, as well as several other websites - filling up the Anatomy section. I have created a rough lead section. More references. Several other additions to other sections. --[[User:OldakQuill|Oldak Quill]] 12:06, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Object. 1) "and the feeding frenzy is the equivalent of a midnight clearance sale at Macy's." — I'd reword this, but I've no idea what it means ;-) 2) "the species being especially high-strung and goal-directed when not pokily plying the open ocean" could do with fixing, too. 3) Only noteworthy authors should be linked in the references section, otherwise you get an ugly set of red links that will never have articles written; the Richard Ellis link needs either removing or disambiguating. 4) Possible to Wikify the "Importance to humans" section? 5) [4] — apparently, this species can sniff surface air bubbles, "This would give the Oceanic Whitetip a major competitive advantage over other sharks in the otherwise featureless expanse of the open sea." — could we mention this? 6) There seem to be a lot of them: [5] quotes them as "the most numerous large animal on earth". 'Encycl. Britannic online has "The whitetip shark (C. longimanus) frequents all oceanic tropical waters, in which it is probably the most commonly occurring large shark."; could we discuss how numerous they are in more depth? — Matt 23:57, 22 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Nicholas II of Russia

Very good article. I think it deserves to be featured.--[[User:Avala|Avala|★]] 12:07, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• I objected the last time this was nominated, but my objections have yet to be addressed. They are: 1. The family background section needs expansion. 2. The vague term "this" is often used: "prevented this" or "previous to this." Some phrases from the article seem more appropriate: "this advice" or "this time." 3. More needs to be said about Rasputin's influence on the monarchy, and about the various hardships facing Russia. 4. The section on Nicholas' removal from power ("Revolution") is much, much too brief. 5. More information is needed on Nicholas II's execution. Why did the government feel that it was necessary to end his life? Were there any in the government who felt that execution was not necessary? Why was the execution concealed? When was the execution made public? What was the reaction of the Russian people? 6. The section on sainthood is insufficient. It needs to indicate if he was indeed viewed as a martyr prior to the sainthood. Furthermore, the first sentence lacks agreement ("were canonized as a saint"). 7. Nicholas II's style was, I believe, "Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias," rather than "Emperor and Autocrat of All Russia." I am not, however, confident as to this point. So, generally, I feel that many sections are not comprehensive enough. -- Emsworth 14:28, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • "All the Russias" was the traditional English translation, but my understanding is that this is a poor translation, and "All Russia" is better. I'll take a look at the article and see what I can do. john k 14:50, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)
    • Actually, the correct translation would be "All of Rus'", not Russia or Russias. Ausir 20:58, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)
      • You mean Царь всея Руси? By the twentieth century, this titlе had been modernized. The full Russian text is as follows:

Божиею поспешествующею милостию, Мы, ... , Император и Самодержец Всероссийский, Московский, Киевский, Владимирский, Новгородский; Царь Казанский, Царь Астраханский, Царь Польский, Царь Сибирский, Царь Херсониса Таврического, Царь Грузинский, Государь Псковский, и Великий Князь Смоленский, Литовский, Волынский, Подольский и Финляндский; Князь Эстляндский, Лифляндский, Курляндский и Семигальский, Самогитский, Белостокский, Корельский, Тверской, Югорский, Пермский, Вятский, Болгарский и иных; Государь и Великий Князь Новагорода Низовския земли, Черниговский, Рязанский, Полотский, Ростовский, Ярославский, Белозерский, Удорский, Обдорский, Кондийский, Витебский, Мстиславский, и всея Северныя страны Повелитель; и Государь Иверския, Карталинския и Кабардинския земли и области Арменския; Черкесских и Горских Князей и иных Наследный Государь и Обладатель; Государь Туркестанский; Наследник Норвежский, Герцог Шлезвиг-Голстинский, Стормарнский, Дитмарсенский и Ольденбургский, и прочая, и прочая, и прочая."

The opening in English is therefore "Emperor and Autocrat of all Russia". Всероссийский is an adjective that could in principle mean either "of all Russia" or "of all the Russias", but note that the acient formula "Всея Великия, Малыя, Белыя и Червонныя Руси" ("of All the Great, Small, White, and Scarlet Rus") had been eliminated. Besides (on a totally different topic), I'm afraid "Rus" will probably provoke an endless descussion with the Ukrainians, which is scarcely to the point here. A. Shetsen 23:24, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• • Am I correct in presuming: "Great Russia" = Today's Russia; "Small Russia" = The Ukraine; "White Russia" = Belorussia and "Red Russia" = Galicia? -- Emsworth 15:30, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Oppose. The execution section being about as long as the rest of the entry put together is emblematic of the lack of coverage in just about every other section. 172 17:27, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Object. My objections are roughly identical to those listed above by Lord Emsworth. I can add two things: 1) The painting needs source information (even if it is in the PD) and 2) The lead section is way too confusing now. IMO, it should contain only the Gregorian dates, while the Julian dates belong somewhere in the article, along with a brief explanation why these are relevant to the article. The full names can also be moved into the article. Instead, it should briefly explain why Nicholas II was relevant in history. Jeronimo 17:30, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• I've added some more detail on the earlier stuff...but it still has problems, I think. I'd say this still isn't a feature-worthy article. john k 15:11, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Paul Is Dead

An excellent article. Neutrality 18:57, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Object. To tell you the truth, I've seen the same content on other websites, organized in a much cleaner fashion. Here is just a sample one, that organizes them cleanly by album, http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/3674/pid.html. Also, there are tons of pictures that could be used here (like the cover of Sgt. Peppers, Abbey Road, etc). - DropDeadGorgias (talk) 19:09, Jul 18, 2004 (UTC)

• Strongly object. It's an interesting article, but hardly an excellent one. There are several big problems with style, the writing is just not very good at all, and in at least one place the writer refers to John Lennon in the present tense. There have to be better articles than this to nominate. As it stands, this one needs a lot of work. Exploding Boy 08:46, Jul 20, 2004 (UTC)

Chinese language

Fascinating, clear article about a complicated topic. (Partly self-nom, I clarified a diagram). Lupin 13:57, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• Object. The second language map is copyrighted. It even has a (c) mark in the image! Some other (superficial) remarks: the lead section seems overly long. Why is the Zhongwen image in the table? What does it illustrate? Jeronimo 17:22, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • image replaced with PD one. --Jiang 17:42, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • caption added to zhongwen image Lupin 18:25, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • lead shortened. Lupin 18:42, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Support. James F. (talk) 18:35, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Object.

1. GENERAL/STYLE:

• Although the article makes an early reference to the different Categories used by Chinese and Western scholars, it does not make a clear distinction between the Chinese and the Western outlooks throughout the rest of the text. [ADDED: The distinctions that are introduced appear mostly political, and despite the historical statements on nationalism, etc. in their support, represent a single point of view (NO OBJECTION) regarding a perceived difference in outlook between China and the West. I suggest it would be more in tune with the "Chinese language" title of the article to treat the divergent linguistic analyses, if any, between China and the West (re nature of written/spoken language, its development, etc.). If it is really the case that all of the differences in outlook are political/sociological rather than linguistic, I suggest this be stated explicitly. 68.148.211.161 04:24, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC), i.e. A. Shetsen.]
• Since the whole matter of the "Chinese language" is so manifold, and this article is evidently the wrapper/introduction, very careful attention should be paid throughout the article to a logically strong, multi-level structure. As it stands now, there is too much text to wade through in order to find a sub-topic of particular interest.

The two objections above apply to every section. In addition:

2. SPOKEN CHINESE section:

• The article should tie in better with the individual treatments given to the various dialects/languages.
• General features of spoken Chinese that cut across all dialects/languages should be enumerated. Vocal pitch/tones? Homophones and the various way they are (as I understand it) resolved to provide speech context? The fundamental monosyllabism of the language? [ADDED: This is treated as an aspect of the written language. Is it immaterial for the spoken? Then that should be stated!] Lack of inflection and the devices used to deal with it, or rather, the synatctic devices that make inflection unnecessary? Etc. etc. etc?

3. WRITTEN CHINESE

Needs better structure and at least a brief mention of the pictographic to semantophonetic development. Though the various controversies regarding its details are better left to the main article, the fact that the linguistic graphical structure of the oracle-bone and bronze-vessel inscriptions is not equivalent to that of modern Chinese should be dealt with.

4. DEVELOPMENT OF CHINESE section:

• The historical treatment ("Development of Chinese") should be given with more dates so that the reader knows immediately when everything happened. The diagram in particular should be a timeline, but more careful attention to chronology should be paid throughout the text.
• Karlgren et al theorized that Chinese was originally inflected. Scholarship in China has, I am told, concentrated more on typology/classification. Both topics are not very well treated (some details, please!). Are there others missing?

5. MISSING SECTION: CHINESE SCHOLARSHIP

• Would such a section be made important not least because of the well-known Chinese scholarly tradition itself? Karlgren is mentioned by name, but there were many other scholars. From the West: Boltz; Boodberg; Creel are classics. From China itself (I place the list second for greater emphasis): Xu Shen an other classics; Chen Mengjia, Qiu Xigui, and many other moderns; all the periods in between. The basic question is, how (if at all) did the Chinese way of looking at their native language evolve during the long, long history of China?

These are only a sampling of topics. Others can be found as well. To repeat: I should saythat there is a lot of wonderful material in the article already. However, since the Chinese Language article is a wrapper/guide, it should deal, though briefly, with as many of such topics as possible, and, most important of all, it should be provided with an excellent outline structure to which more topics can be added later. A. Shetsen 20:29, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• Object - wikipedia:lead section needs condensing. --mav 05:45, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Finland

This article looks like it's about ready to me. Sarge Baldy 10:03, Jul 19, 2004 (UTC)

• Object. Not bad, but IMO there are a lot of thinks that need fixing before this becomes featured. (I fixed some of these myself) In random order:
  • The lead section doesn't even mention the continent where Finland is located. Some more (very general) info in the lead section about the country would also be nice, to "attract the reader".
  • The country table has a few alignment issues; perhaps it could be widened, or edited to fix this (I could take a look myself). Also, the footnote about the euro is totally useless. There's no reason to put this kind of stuff in the table; the table should present the present, not the past.
  • The geography section mentions there are a lot of lakes and islands, but doesn't name any of these. What are the most important/largest ones? Rivers, perhaps? The cities are dealt with in the "demographics" section, but I'd think they fit better here.
  • It is noted that the majority of population seems to be concentrated in the south, why is that? (I know this may be obvious, but still since there's a map devoted to the topic, it could get a brief explanation.)
  • The population density image has a vague source and permission: "population density in Finland, governmental image, copyrighted, fair use". This needs more explanation.
  • The culture section is only a bullet list. This should be made into text.
  • The link to the non-existing Government Agencies in Finland in "misc topics" is useless. (I'll remove this myself later)
  • The "International rankings" seems rather random and biased (Finland is 1st in nearly all of them). Why are these rankings taken? Why are they so important? Are they at all authorative? Most of the facts presented by these rankings are interesting though, and I think that they should be in the article in another way. For example: "Finland has a lot of women in the parliament" could go into "Politics", while the "Global competiveness" is useful in the "Economics" section. And of course, the links could be use at that position to create a context and give a reference.
  • The economy section should be more up to date (this was taken from the CIA factbook), and be more specific. Name some famous Finnish companies (Nokia!). What is the GDP exactly? Etc.
  • There are no book/magazine references at all. This is needed to point the reader to more in-dept (English language) material; web links are not sufficient for this.
  • I really miss a photo or two of Finland. Something very generic such as a lake or a picture of Helsinki would already improve the article greatly.
  • Jeronimo 15:22, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)

San Jose State University

(Contested-- 21 July)

This is a self-nomination. This artilce has grown over the last few months, and I just spent a few minutes to bring it to compliance with the WikiProject Universities table. I looked at the other university articles listed there, and this one seem much more complete. Gentgeen 22:05, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• Object. There is no compelling historical feature, controversy or other interesting thing that really stands out about San Jose State University from this article. It reads like a below-average to average brochure that these schools mail out on cheap postcards. I'll reconsider if someone can pull off beefing up the history section with something compelling... I'm quite sure you can find some stuff out there. --James Easton 23:43, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • ok, I've added some less than less than complimentary items into the Students, History, and Sports sections. Gentgeen
• Object. Yikes, I hate to say it, but I'd have to agree. There's just simply nothing remarkable in the article. Specifically it certainly needs some coverage of specific academic achievements, more than authorship of a book. Are there any remarkable accomplishments of students or faculty or something else remarkable about the school? - Taxman 23:27, Jul 22, 2004 (UTC)

Elvis Presley

• I think that this really should be a featured article. He is "The King of Rock and Roll" after all. Marcus2 21:42, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Object, needs quite a bit more detail. Everyking 21:49, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • For one specific bit - no coverage is mentioned of his often wacky antics. He is famous to those that knew him for doing whatever interested him and struck his fancy at the moment, including shooting various objects, especially those floated in his pool. Many interviews of people who spent time with him document these. - Taxman 00:10, Jul 20, 2004 (UTC)
• Comment. FA status is to recognize good writing, not what is noteworthy. The fact that he is "King of Rock and Roll" is irrelevant. - DropDeadGorgias (talk) 22:04, Jul 19, 2004 (UTC)
• Object. Agree with DropDeadGorgias. Also: 1) Lead section? 2) Too many short sections; "Gospel music" doesn't even wrap a single line in my browser. 3) Little treatment of the "Elvis did not die" theories. — Matt 03:06, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• And yet another contributor who's confused about what a featured article is (that is, not an article featured on the main page, but an article recognized for its exceptionally good writing, balance and completeness). Object on the grounds already mentioned, and add problems with style and overall not very good writing. This one has a long way to go. Exploding Boy 08:30, Jul 20, 2004 (UTC)
• Oppose. Sections are too short where I know for a fact they can be substantially expanded and improved upon. --James Easton 23:48, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Edward R. Murrow

• I admit to beginning the article myself, but it has been greatly improved upon and it feels worthy of nomination. --Modemac 16:20, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • Object. Should have a section on his influence on later broadcasters. 81.168.80.170 18:03, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Luis Muñoz Marín

A great article dealing with one of the most influential political figures in the Americas during the 20th Century. Also, the first democratically elected Governor of Puerto Rico. User: Coburnpharr04 16:13, ET, July 18

• Object. Without even going into detail: The first line isn't a complete sentence and violates Wikpedia standards for opening sentences. The article repeatedly calls him "Luis Muñoz Marín" - wouldn't "Muñoz Marín" every once in a while be appropriate? I realize these are nitpicks, but until such stuff gets fixed, this article is definitely not featured article worthy. OK, having given it another quick look: WHO considers him one of the most important leaders of the Americas in the 20th century? That bald statement in the first sentence needs work. There should be an article on the Liberal Party of Puerto Rico instead of just a link to Liberal. There are a lot of bad grammatical and spelling errors that need to be corrected. RickK 21:21, Jul 18, 2004 (UTC)
  • I have corrected the opening sentence and chagend the many many references to the complete name of Munoz. Also, Munoz Marin is considered by many Organizations to be one the most influential persons in the Americas. Prove of this is the fact the he was TWICE featured in TIME Magazine's cover; May 1949 and June 1958. In both articles he was called "one of the most influential politicans in recent times, whose works will be remembered for years to come." He was also awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his works. Here are the links for the covers of the two TIME Magazines in which Munoz was the CENTRAL article.User: coburnpharr04 July 18, 18:35 ET
  • May 1949 Cover
  • June, 1958 Cover
    • So paraphrase those comments in the article, with links (though not INLINE links). And now the link is to Liberal Party, which is still not a link to a Puerto Rican Liberal Party. Still many spelling and grammatical errors. RickK 22:34, Jul 18, 2004 (UTC)
      • Added comments of TIME Magazine and fixed as many spelling errors as I could find. Also explained better the circumstances of his death. Removed link of Liberal Party. User: Coburnpharr04 July 18, 20:23 ET

• Approve. Approve!!, Approve! lol I originated the Article, and Munoz Marin is larger than life in Puerto Rico and some other Latin American areas. The article has a photo, and in-depth looks at his personal life and government.

"Antonio Jumping over the Bridge Martin"

• Object. A quick glance and it seems to have a few problems; suggest a spell on Wikipedia:Peer Review first? 1) The table is far too wide for low resolutions; on my browser window at 1024*768, the lead section turns into a tiny column of unreadable text. 2) I don't have time right now to read the article in depth or copyedit, but I immediately noticed various minor niggles, such as an "Also See" section, and spaces required between punctuation and letters in places, and the capitalisation of headings is not MoS-correct. — Matt 01:39, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Jimi Hendrix

Just recently (and nicely) sectioned; this is now among the best of the rock music bios and, I think, a model for biographies of any sort. Jgm 00:07, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• Object. The image has no copyright or source information. The sectioning was also non-standard, but I've already fixed that. Jeronimo 08:59, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• Support. 195.167.169.36 13:31, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• Support. Agreed, it deserves to be featured. --Zerbey 03:16, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• Object. A decent article, but I think there's room for improvement. Particular problems: 1) Could do with some more illustration, e.g., album covers? 2) The section "Posthumous releases" could probably do with some wikification (I've added a few links elsewhere in the article). 3) References and Bibliography; surely there must be some decent books written about Hendrix? 4) The lead section needs to be longer, probably a couple of extra paragraphs, summarising the entire article. 5) What about the headband drugs-in-headband-and-cut rumour? 6) On the subject of rumours, we should report them critically and attribute them, if possible; the article notes them, but would do well to cite sources: "apparently under the influence of drugs", "apparently 43 takes", "he reportedly made guitarist Dave Mason do over 20 takes", "It has been alleged", "It has also believed that" — who alleges / reports / believes these things? 7) A discography would be useful. — Matt 01:29, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Kitchen

• How can this be improved? (Largely a self-nomination.) Lupo 14:15, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Strong support! My only slight nitpick might be a tad more focus on later sociologial impacts. How, for example, did the kitchen figure in feminist movements? Seriously, this is just quibbling; excellent article. [[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 14:51, 2004 Jul 19 (UTC)
• Neutral. Focused entirely on American and European kitchens which, while not something to oppose of, is quite lacking in depth. As far as I know, ancient Egyptians who built pyramids had well equipped kitchens that served workers. Why not start from there? Revth 16:23, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)

  Love to—got me any secondary sources? I don't have any, which is why I didn't write about it. Same goes for African or Asian kitchens: they're not mentioned because I have no information on their history and in what way they would differ from those I am familiar with, namely European and North-American kitchens. Lupo 16:56, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)

  It was on a TV show directed with a supervision by Professor Sakuji Yoshimura who studies the ancient Egypt culture. In an archeological dig, he found a village of workers who worked to make pyramids and found some evidences of kitchens that served them. His website is here.[6] and it lists dozens of sources under "Ancient Egyptian Quarries", though I'm not sure which one has informations usable for this article. For Asian kitchens, I will try writing something about them. Also, I'll list some more suggestions on discussion page because it's going to be bit long. Revth 23:57, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)

  I looked at your extlinks on the Eqyptian quarries, but I didn't see anything at all that would be useful for this article. Maybe I didn't look in the right places? If you do write something about Asian kitchens, that'd be great. Lupo 10:57, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)

  Added some info on the early history of Japanese kitchens. Will try diversify some more. Lupo 13:20, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• Support. 81.168.80.170 17:54, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Comment: The article could use full-sentence captions (see Wikipedia:Captions for ideas and background). -- ke4roh 23:35, Jul 19, 2004 (UTC)

  Changed some of the captions, but others already are good enough for me. Lupo 10:57, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• They're a little better, but the captions can do much more if they give a little bit more information and draw the reader into the article. They seem less choppy and offer more information as full sentences. Please see Wikipedia:Captions and Wikipedia_talk:Captions for the full discussion. -- ke4roh 13:02, Jul 21, 2004 (UTC)

  More caption changes done (together with Ke4roh). Lupo 13:22, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• Oppose. This is a very good article, one of our better ones. It contains a lot of good information from a few different perspectives. But ater a first reading, there are many things that jumped out at me: 1) There are a bunch of places where the language needs copyediting. "Technization" is not a word. "Worker class" is jarring. ("Working class" is more normal.) Why "waste" space for a fully equipped kitchen in a separate room if it had only cursory uses to "nuke" frozen meals? seems overly chatty. There are many sentences that are awkward gramatically. Exclamation marks reveal more about the expected reader's reaction than they do about the content. I may copyedit it, but only for the most glaring things. 2) I don't know what can be done about this, but I got lost reading it. This might be a good place for a timeline. DanKeshet 00:28, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  1. I see you changed (some of) what you perceived as "awkward" yourself. Other than that, I fear this objection is not actionable for me: English is a second language for me, and how am I to know what others might consider "awkward"? (Also changed "Technization" to "technicalization", which at least is an existing word.)
  2. I am surprised you got lost reading it. After all, the history section of the article is organized roughly in chronological order. I don't think a separate timeline is necessary. In fact, it might even be misleading because often a particluar innovation cannot be pinpointed to a precise date. Still worse, different kitchen types often coexist (sometimes for centuries). Lupo 10:57, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • • Hi Lupo, I figured English wasn't your first language, but didn't want to say it in case it offends. I understand that the objection isn't actionable by you, but me and some others can go over it and try to change the things that sound a bit awkward to a native speaker. I think that after that is done, the "getting lost" won't happen as much. It's easy to get lost when you're distracted by the language. But, again, thanks for adding it. I will continue to make some changes mostly to the language and I hope others will too. DanKeshet 21:00, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Object. Far too western. They have kitchens in other parts of the world too, some of them places with histories stretching back thousands of years. The western kitchen is only one type of kitchen (and the caption "a typical modern kitchen" sufferes from the same western point of view). Exploding Boy 03:13, Jul 20, 2004 (UTC)

  You wouldn't have any pointers to secondary sources on kitchen types and the history of the kitchen in other parts of the world, would you? BTW, the caption never said anything about "typical", just "A modern kitchen", which looks pretty inconspicious and unbiased to me. Lupo 10:57, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)

  • I agree with Exploding Boy. Perhaps the article could be moved to Kitchen (Western) or some more elegant title? Covering the history of Chinese, Egyptian and myriad other kitchens in one article seems like a tall order. Lupin 07:11, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • A same argument came up on what to do with Science fiction on television. I think the best thing to do is have a general summary on the topic and then like a history section, have a short paragraph or two on each region and have a link to articles divided by regions. That way, an article wouldn't become too long or confusing. Revth 09:29, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)

    Maybe. However, covering some of the developments in otehr regions should be possible; actually, I expect to find a lot of similarities that would ultimately allow to treat the period in relatively general way. For the time being, I've just added some facts on the early history of Japanese kitchens (a promising article that Revth has started in response to this discussion). Will try to find more. Somebody has good links about Chinese and Indian kitchen history? Lupo 13:20, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• Oppose. The lead section is too short. -- Emsworth 14:39, 22 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • Sheesh. It was longer when I nominated the article (see this revision), but DanKeshet may have shortened it too much. Lupo 20:04, 22 Jul 2004 (UTC)
    • Intro redone. Lupo 12:50, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Support. Very nicely done -- Chris 73 | Talk 07:10, 25 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Object. This is a very good article, but, as has been noted already, it needs moving to Kitchen (western), or else working over to avoid statements like "Modern kitchens often include a dishwasher". For example, I don't know how many modern kitchens in most places in Africa contain a dishwasher, but I'm guessing that it's very atypical, because anyone rich enough to be able to import a dishwasher would already have a small army of servants to do the chores. — Matt 19:34, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Sarajevo

In the space of a few months, this has gone from an atrocious mess to, in my opinion, one that would easily be worthy of Featured Article status. Ambivalenthysteria 10:37, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• Actually I nominated this yesterday or day before but someone deleted whole nomination with votes! Anyway about the images-AsimLed deleted all images and said he will upload new ones much better very soon.--[[User:Avala|Avala|★]] 14:01, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• I can`t find out who deleted the nomination! [[User:Avala|Avala|★]] 14:09, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• This was my reaction before the nomination was deleted, the image objection is probably invalid now:
  • Object. Nearly all of the photos and images have no source information at all. Several are probably taken by the person who uploaded it, but some are likely copyright violations. I'm also confused by the info-table. Is this article about the city, or the canton (or both)? And what on earth are Općinas? The lead section is a bit overloaded with information, but could be rewritten into several paragraphs or so. Jeronimo 17:17, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • Your objections are not standing anymore. Check the article. --[[User:Avala|Avala|★]] 16:26, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)
    • Actually, most of them still stand. The pictures are dealt with, but I'm still unclear about the other issues. The table shows a map of regions (cantons?), not cities. I have still no clue wat Općinas are (neighbourhoods?). If this is something we are supposed to know, there should be an link to the article about Općinas. The lead section still needs some refactoring. As new remarks, I would like to see at least one picture (which should be coming shortly) and some book/magazine references about Sarajevo. Otherwise, this is a great article, very close to featured status. I'm confident it will be featured soon. Jeronimo 18:05, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)
      • An Općinas is the smallest level of government - basically, a municipality. (see [7]). I'll see what I can do about rewording that section, the lead and the book references. If I can deal with these, would you be prepared to overlook the lack of another picture until AsimLed gets the chance to take care of that? Ambivalenthysteria 09:19, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)
    • I notice some pictures have been added, but they appear to be copyrighted. They are "Courtesy of Mr. Ben Hays, brhphoto.com", but that doesn't tell us if these picture are released under an appropriate license or not. I'm adding this issue to my objection. Jeronimo 06:40, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • The city of Sarajevo consists of 4 Municipalities, territories that are somewhat the Bosnian equivalent of the United States’ counties or New York City’s boroughs. The Bosnian word for them is "Općina". is now in the article. Hope it is explaining everything.
• Now there's only one photo, and its source is marked. I'll support. However, that one image needs a caption; also, more images would be nice. What I'd really like, however, is for someone to assure me that this won't become the focus of ethnic edit warring. [[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 14:24, 2004 Jul 19 (UTC)
  • AsimLed promised new images very soon.[[User:Avala|Avala|★]] 14:29, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • Just for the record, Meelar - I've had this on my watchlist for several months, and I don't think I've ever seen an edit war here. It was just a neglected mess, not a disputed article. Ambivalenthysteria 09:11, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)
    • Okay. Thanks. I realize now that I could have checked the history, incidentally. Best, [[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 16:03, 2004 Jul 20 (UTC)
• Support.[[User:Avala|Avala|★]] 14:29, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Support. This article is decent, but I would like to see the intro paragraph streamlined, and some of the less central information in that introduction moved down to some of the sub-sections. - DropDeadGorgias (talk) 14:30, Jul 19, 2004 (UTC)
• Object strongly. Bosnian Serbs are depicted as "agressors" and there are numerous other POV issues (starting from the fact that the map of B&H doesn't display entities and continuing from there on). Nikola 11:14, 24 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • The Serbs besieged Sarajevo. That much is generally accepted. The article doesn't say much beyond that, and only mentions it in a few sentences. Fact is not POV. The one sentence that is borderline is the one saying aggressors targeted key economic structures. So that could use a citation. But it would be hard to say a besieger is not an aggressor in the specific discussion of the siege, and targeting key economic structures is nearly standard warfare is it not?

On a general note, I have to agree with Matt, that the Government section needs to be trimmed down a bit. With that and a citation on the targeting of key economic structures, I support. - Taxman 13:07, Jul 27, 2004 (UTC)

• Object. 1) The "Goverment" section gives too much detail that will date quickly (if local politics in Sarajevo is like most places in the world); I would suggest trimming this section, and only mentioning, say, the mayor as an individual person in office, and give an As of 2004 link. 2) Is it possible to acquire / make some maps depicting the various neighbourhoods and municipalities? It's hard to get a grip of the layout from the text alone. — Matt 02:59, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)

XSL attack

Self-nomination. Article about an attack that may (or may not) herald an early retirement for the Advanced Encryption Standard (and not about XML stylesheets...) — Matt 21:10, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• Object on the basis that it's too hard to understand. Links are great, but you need to explain some terms right off the bat. Even the lead section is unclear to those without prior/specialized knowledge. Exploding Boy 02:11, Jul 19, 2004 (UTC)
  • Agreed, but I think it can be fixed to the point that it is approachable enough to the average, well educated reader. That is the best an article on such a techical topic can hope for. Specifically I defined some previously un-defined terms in the intro. I think we'll have to put up with a longer than usual intro for an article this technical, in order to make it readable by more people. After the intro, the article could stand to have an even more specific discussion of the method itself. An example would be devine, but I would not object for the lack of it. - Taxman 17:42, Jul 19, 2004 (UTC)
  • Let's see if we can improve it. I think this is a difficult question that pops up in a lot of technical articles; exactly how much technical know-how can you assume? For example, in semigroup, you can probably get away with presuming that your reader knows what a group (mathematics) is; otherwise, they would be unlikely to be reading the article in the first place. If you don't make at least some assumptions, then you end up with hundreds of articles all burdened with duplicated definitions (and it makes it less useful for a specialist); on the other hand, if you define too little, then it becomes incomprehensible to a non-specialist. Personally, I think it's a good idea to make the lead section especially accessible, and to bring out the general relevance of the topic in a understandable-to-all way, but it's less necessary in the nuts-and-bolts parts of the article. — Matt 20:20, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Support. This is an inherently complex topic not reducible to simplicity in any potentially feasible WP article. This property is not a bar (eg, Attack on Pearl Harbor whose complexity is political and historical, not technical, but which is on the featured list even so despite its length). This article is clearly written and sensibly structured about obscure material; this alone qualifies it as a good WP article in my opinion. As a bonus, the topic is an important (if technical) one in a field of considerable relevance to most everyone. DRM relies on such techniques and will, it appears, be ubiquitous shortly. I note that the writing is not 'sparkling' in a literary sense, but this is not, I feel, relevant for such topics and has not been required for past WP featured articles. ww 14:06, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• (Not a vote yet) Matt, maybe this sounds ridiculous, but do you think it would be possible to show how the XSL attack works by means of a simple example? Of course not with a 128-bit block cypher, but with a much smaller one? If that would seem possible, I think it would greatly improve the accessibility of the article. Jeronimo 17:58, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • I've taken a class in crypto and I still found this article a bit complex. To a layman, I can see how it could be Byzantine. I think an example would help a lot. →Raul654 20:19, Jul 25, 2004 (UTC)
    • OK, fair comment; I can try and hack together an example, but I can't remember the details, only the gist, of the attack, so I'd have to wade through the relevant papers again. That could take a while (even Bruce Schneier notes that they're "dense and hard to understand"!), so I'm happy to let the nomination fail for now. — Matt 02:12, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)

PaX

Originally nominated by User:Bluefoxicy on July 14. It has since changed so much it is virtually a different article; commentary had gotten to the point where it was unreadable. I have moved the old objections to the talk page and started it out as a fresh nom. →Raul654 23:02, Jul 22, 2004 (UTC) Object. Many good changes. My latest objection brought back in from talk page:

• All that is good stuff. Still nothing on W^X and whether PaX offers anything that isn't in OpenBSD by default, or at least how the approach differs and advantages/disadvantages. For a patch that is not in the main kernel and no likelihood of it, you've set a high bar for what the article needs to cover in order to be featured. Good work so far though. Just try not to get frustrated at criticism of your article. It is what can make it a great article. Besides, I'm not asking for 5 paragraphs. One or two concise ones would do. - Taxman 22:34, Jul 22, 2004 (UTC)
  • Heh, gimme a break here man.  :) W^X is OpenBSD, PaX and ES are both Linux. I think trying to compare with W^X may be a little out of scope; Exec Shield could actually be viewed as a competitor of sorts, whereas W^X could no more compete with PaX than PaX could compete with Windows XP SP2's NX code. Also, W^X and Exec Shield are similar technologies; but I know even less particulars about W^X than about Exec Shield (which I gathered my data about over e-mails with Ingo Molnar). --John Moser 22:54, 22 Jul 2004 (UTC)
    • No one said you had to write it, and it may be asking a lot, but I repeat, for a patch with no likelihood of getting into the main kernel, it is asking a lot for it to be a featured article. 10 paragraphs about what I am asking for would be out of scope. One or two concise ones would not be. To compare the major features of PaX with what else is out there that covers the same/similar territory. would be important. If PaX writers have no knowledge of what the OpenBSD people are doing, then perhaps a lot of reinventing the wheel is going on. That possibility and the other major approaches to what PaX does deserves mention in this article. - Taxman 23:18, Jul 22, 2004 (UTC)
      • "If PaX writers have no knowledge of what the OpenBSD people are doing, then perhaps a lot of reinventing the wheel is going on." Who's reinventing who's wheel? Reminder: PaX first showed up in October, 2000, after the Plex86 group brought a theory stemmed from an interesting observation about the x86 CPU TLBs to the public and asked for the community to investigate it. W^X showed up in May, 2003, with the release of OpenBSD 3.3. Also, OpenBSD's W^X is, from what I hear, similar to Exec Shield in implementation. I thought I heard somewhere that W^X doesn't have a floating code segment, but this doesn't seem technically possible in view of what it does; that's probably mismemorized crud in my brain. --John Moser 02:03, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)
      • I should also point out, last I checked, W^X is not well documented (not documented at all?). I have little if any information about W^X that I'm sure of. I don't know who to go to about it, and I can't back up *anything* I say about W^X. Now if you can show me the W^X documentation (see the PaX Documentation[8]?), maybe, MAYBE this becomes plausible for me to do. That doesn't mean that it's in scope; would you like me to compare with WinXP SP2 and Longhorn as well? Should I add a comparison to FreeDOS or ReactOS when they catch up and implement these for their systems? More pertenantly, why should PaX in particular be the center of information about all these, instead of just about PaX? --John Moser 06:53, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)
        • As for scope, if SP2 adds executable and memory space protections similar to PaX, then that too, would certainly be within the scope. Longhorn, not even being released, would just be speculative. It would be another approach to what PaX is offering. Again, I never said you need to go into incredible detail on how the other approaches work, just a reasonable overview of the differences/simlarities. A few sentences. Your zeal to get PaX featured no matter what objections come up is a little disconcerting. - Taxman 12:55, Jul 23, 2004 (UTC)
          • I've been handling the other objections, and I even bent to the pressure slightly and did an Exec Shield comparison. I'm telling you now, I can't do an accurate W^X comparison without extensive research (I had to go contact the ES developer for the ES one), and it's not well documented. I would have to do a lot of digging, possibly even dig through the code. I'd be stranded on secondary sources (or worse, my own conclusions based on the code, which i probably wouldn't understand), rather than primary sources in the form of documentation made by the developers. Maybe that's appropriate for writing an article, but for doing a comparison, I don't believe that a collective of tiny bits of information from all over the place would work. Also, should I duplicate the PaX / ES comparison in Exec Shield? The comparisons would probably be best suited for NX, if anywhere. --John Moser 21:47, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)
          • As stated above, I've moved the comparison to the NX bit article. --John Moser 22:37, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Comment: Would it be best to wait a little while first? The article seems to still be worked on and refined; perhaps we should wait a week until it looks pretty stable, maybe listing on Wikipedia:Peer review in the interim? WP:FAC isn't the right venue to generate articles of Featured quality.— Matt 23:24, 22 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Freyja

Self-nomination. One link in red but I can nail the basics of the outstanding article (Egil's saga) fairly quickly since I am rereading it at the moment. We've done Odin in the past, about time we got some gender balance in the process :) Sjc 07:30, 24 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• The article is somewhat short. Each section (aside from the lead) has just one paragraph or two short paragraphs. I oppose on the grounds of length. -- Emsworth 13:42, 24 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Length isn't the problem, writing is. It needs more editing. Exploding Boy 16:27, Jul 24, 2004 (UTC)
• Object. 1) The lead section is way to long, while the rest of the article is short and doesn't use correct sectioning. 2) The writing is rather chaotic, listing "facts" about the deity in quick pace without a good "story line". 3) The naming of the goddesses is messy. I believe Frey and Odin are the more accepted English forms, even if the Old Norse forms are different. Mentions of Óðinn link to Odin. This should be straightened out, and since this is an English language encyclopedia, I think the English forms should be used. 4) Frey(j)a is the origin of the name Friday, but this isn't even mentioned. 5) The origin of the picture is given, but there isn't any copyright information. 6) She was a goddess, but little is mentioned about how she was worshipped. Jeronimo 09:51, 25 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • So what if it's the english language Wikipedia? he's writing about it in english, i find it quite nice to read that article with all those nice letters, especially ǫ which is no longer used, it gives a sort of nordic feeling to it, support -- Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 03:19, 2004 Jul 26 (UTC)
    • Poliy on this matter is pretty straight forward - use the name by which most english speakers recognize it. If this isn't it, then it needs to be changed, period. If it's not in agreement with policy, then it can't be a featured article. →Raul654 03:24, Jul 26, 2004 (UTC)
      • Et tu Mark? it must say i didnt see it comming. -- Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 15:46, 2004 Jul 26 (UTC)
        • Oh for God's sake, don't call him Mark too. He's Raul. We have several Marks already! As for the names, Raul (cough cough) is right. That said, the old Norse names should be mentioned somewhere, as I felt they significantly enhanced the article. [[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 16:33, 2004 Jul 26 (UTC)
          • How about in the text like now? -- Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 19:03, 2004 Jul 26 (UTC)
• One suggestion: the picture says it depict's Freyja in Richard Wagner's operas; but the text does not explain in which ones she features. Der Ring des Nibelungen is indeed probably the place most people will encounter this goddess; some note of this should be made in the text. Smerdis of Tlön 17:06, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Object unless English names are preferred. Norse gods were worshipped in Britain too, and this is an English encyclopaedia. — Chameleon Main/Talk/Images 13:51, 29 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Object. English Wikipedia should use English names, although I have no problem with also listing the Norse form of a name the first time the name is mentioned. The sections are too short, and the actual myths surrounding her are summed up far too shortly. -Sean Curtin 07:36, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • Yes, of course. Old Norse names should also be given in parentheses after the first mention of each name. It may also be informative to have the names in other modern Germanic languages, where they differ. — Chameleon Main/Talk/Images 07:55, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Pac-Man

A really nice, full and interesting article on a true cultural icon. My only contribution was to cheer up one of the sentences a little. --bodnotbod 01:41, Jul 19, 2004 (UTC)

• Good article, but the Trivia, Historical Events and Legacy sections neeed a little tweaking. There are some unclear points in all three sections: (1) Did the 8 year old boy really get a letter from Reagan?, (2) the explanation of Pac Manhattan is a little unclear, (3) the part about "somewhat reverse engineering" the Atari version of Ms. Pacman could use work. I also corrected a couple of other mistakes. Exploding Boy 01:57, Jul 19, 2004 (UTC)
  • OK...
  • Point (1), there are not many references on the web, but it did happen - supposedly - in 1982. How does one decide if these refs are enough? [9]
  • Point (2) - I've rewritten the paragraph, how does it look now?
  • point (3) - I'm out of my depth. ;o) Any takers? --bodnotbod 22:41, Jul 19, 2004 (UTC)
• Support. This article has a lot of potential, but I see some areas for improvement: 1) Are those images free for use?, 2) To many red links, they should be consildated into the main article, new articles written for them or removed altogether, 3) No technical information on the original system (I'm working on it, there's a quick note of the processor information and I'll make sure I add more tomorrow), 4) Future improvement: I'd like to see some more information on the ports to other systems. --Zerbey 23:17, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • OK...
• 1) The screenshot: I've left a message on the contributor's Talk page to ask them to confirm that the image is kosher here. The cartridge shot has notes saying it is a pic taken by the user himself.

• That looks good, it was the main picture I was concerned about but it's probably fair use --Zerbey 03:14, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Yeah, I submitted the screenshot in question. I'm not a legal expert, so I'll explain the situation for someone that is: I took a screen snap of the Pac-Man game while playing it in the MAME emulator, thus creating a pixel-perfect image of the game. I uploaded it in PNG format, if I'm not mistaken, and put that in the Pac-Man article, replacing another that was a lower-quality photograph of an arcade game screen. What I don't know for sure is, does the fact that Namco owns Pac-Man and everything associated with it thus make the shot not free to use, or does that not really matter, since it's only a screencap? Gus 03:57, 2004 Jul 23 (UTC)

• 2) The red links are primarily to game sequels. This is already quite a long article, I feel that were anyone to write about those games we would quickly get towards too long an article and they would be given their own articles soon enough.

• Withdrawn --Zerbey 03:02, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• 3) Fair point. That's beyond my abilities, anyone able to help?

• I seem to recall reading a website about it, I'll see what I can do. --Zerbey 03:02, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• OK I found it, I'll add some information tomorrow --Zerbey 03:14, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• 4) Not so sure about that. It is such a universal game that it would have to be pretty broad - but I welcome input from others. --bodnotbod 02:45, Jul 21, 2004 (UTC)

• I like it! Definately support. -Seth Mahoney 03:57, Jul 22, 2004 (UTC)
• Object. I enjoyed this article, but I think it could be improved before being Featured. 1) There's plenty of scope for more images in this article; they should be easy to get hold of, and they would certainly help: ideas include: screen grabs from clones, or Pac-Man eating one of the monsters, or a still from the cartoon or the cover of the single etc. 2) One image we really could do with is a close-up of Pac-Man. 3) Sections should be larger than one paragraph; could we merge "Arcade system information" and "Implementation" into something else? — Matt 02:29, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• Support after the changes suggested by Matt Crypto are done. Definetly the close-up image must be present! --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 21:01, 31 Jul 2004 (UTC)

2004

History of post-Soviet Russia

Self-nom. Listed on peer review earlier, but no one seems to be pay attention to it there. [10] 172 06:22, 31 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• "This page is 49 kilobytes long. Please consider condensing the page and moving the detail to another article so it is not approaching or in excess of 32KB." Until then, I object. --mav 06:26, 31 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • This is naturally going to be a large article (like Russian language, a recently featured article reaching 81 K—as well it should) if it is going to be sufficiently developed. Please find a real objection. 172 06:33, 31 Jul 2004 (UTC)
    • Example: First Chechen War is a stub, yet that section in this article is large even thoughFirst Chechen War is the "Main article" of the section. The main article should have a detailed treatment while the survey article should have a summary. I do like the summary length vs main article length for the ==The 1993 constitutional crisis== section / Russian constitutional crisis of 1993. A similar set-up for other sections would be nice - not everybody is interested in so much detail. ==The 1996 presidential election== seems to take a lot of space and really should have its own article and more of a summary in this article. As for languages - I've given up on evaluating those since I have have no idea how to logically split them up. --mav 06:44, 31 Jul 2004 (UTC)
      • You seem to be objecting to the poor state of the other articles on post-Soviet Russia. First Chechen War needs to be expanded, of course, but I can only do so much. The articles on post-Soviet Russia are very underdeveloped overall; that's why I've been working on this article-- to give editors a survey so that others can eventually touch on all the subtopics. 172 06:53, 31 Jul 2004 (UTC)
        • People will see the longer summary and add to that and let the stub languish. An infusion of content along with creating a more concise summary at the survey article will be more useful all around.--mav
          • That's not a problem. First Chechen War, along with some of these other stubs, is already linked to more articles than History of post-Soviet Russia. Since the HOPSR is already structured according to summary style, it is designed to eventually deal with the problem of the summary length versus main article length. The solution to this problem is bringing First Chechen War, e.g., up to the length of RCCO1993. (Indeed, the reason I'm nominating this article is to bring the poor overall state of the articles on postcommunist Russia to light.) 172 07:10, 31 Jul 2004 (UTC)
            • First Chechen War has just been expanded. 172 08:59, 31 Jul 2004 (UTC)
        • Nice job on fleshing out that stub! Now if the longish summaries under ==The 1996 presidential election== and ==The crises of 1998== can be condensed down to several good-sized paragraphs each and the current text moved to Russian presidential election, 1996 and 1998 Russian financial crisis, then that would be wonderful. --mav 08:26, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
          • There is now a main article on the Russian presidential election, 1996 corresponding with the format of Russian presidential election, 2000 and Russian presidential election, 2004 linked to History of post-Soviet Russia#The 1996 presidential election. The section on the economic and political crises of 1998 has been linked to 1998 world financial crisis, a related topic. (The Asian financial crisis article needs a lot of work-- it does not even cover Russia. But this is a separate issue from the HOPSR article. BTW, another user has expressed an interested in working on the 1998 financial crisis [11].) 172 20:57, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)
      • A comment: Russian language had a lengthy session on Russian grammar, but Russian grammar is a stub. Also, I question the validity of the 30-40K limit. 1911 Britannica has some articles hundreds of K long. Long, coherent, logically ordered overviews of big topics are extremely helpful, often (though not always) much more so than the same information split up among several articles. Dan Gardner 13:15, 31 Jul 2004 (UTC)
        • Needless to say that EB 1911 was not a hyperlinked encyclopedia. It is trivially easy here to skip from a summary at a survey article to an article devoted to the sub-topic covered in the summary. The same is not true for a dead tree encyclopedia. From your comments, you seem to be the type of reader that likes detail while other types of readers want the most important facts in a condensed format. Since Wikipedia is not divided into a megapedia and a micropedia like EB is, we must serve both user types in the same encyclopedia. Thus the reason why summary style is useful. The example you mention in the Russian language article is also a flaw that needs to be fixed. --mav 08:26, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
          • I understand that hyperlinks change things, but maintain that high level articles are very important as more than summaries of more specialized articles. A good high level article is not merely a concatenation of summaries of more specialized articles. It can explain relationships between different facts and ideas in a way that is impossible in more specialized articles. To do so successfully it needs to contain substantial content on the more specialized topics in order to explain them to someone who does not know about them, so that the comparisons the article makes will make sense. One of the great weaknesses of our coverage of mathematics, where I have mostly worked, is the lack of good high level articles, and the preponderence of articles (some of them started by me) that are little more than definitions. Good overviews are very difficult to write, as they require knowledge of the details of many different subfields. Forcing a linear order on a large body of knowledge is very helpful to someone learning the subject, although of course doing so excessively is harmful and leads not to understanding of the subject but only to familiarity with one particular guided tour through it. On the macropedia/micropedia split, see what was done with Isaac Newton and Isaac Newton (in depth) Dan Gardner 20:15, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
          • An explanation of the relationships can and should be in a section. Anything more than several paragraphs or a few small subsections should be covered in a separate article and a summary left at the survey level. Not everybody has the time to read through such long articles. But some do. Thus we need to have both summaries and more detailed treatments. The Newton example is not a good one. Isaac Newton should in fact be expanded with a bio in subsections; each subsection would have a 'Main article' link to a real article that covers that section (the 1, 2, 3 series are not real articles but just one article divided into parts). --mav 09:26, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)
            • I agree that we should not have distinct long and short articles such as "Isaac Newton" and "Isaac Newton (in depth)". Nonetheless, the 30KB limit is absolutely artificial. As I have indicated in previous discussions, I do not feel that the objection is appropriate. An article could be shorter than 30KB, yet too long for the topic, or longer than 30KB, yet just right. I say that we should ignore the message about page length. If one feels that an article is too long—regarldess of the message—one should point to specific sections, and suggest that they may be too long-winded. But to say "This page is XKB long. I object until it is brought down to YKB" does not seem reasonable. -- Emsworth 14:04, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • The whole length issue is entirely personal preference - that is, if the article is coherent and orderly despite its length - and warrants the length. In this specific instance, I feel that the article would be helped by shortening some sections - but as a general policy "the article is too long" is not valid. Zoney 23:00, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)
    • • Anything more than 15 printed pages is simply too much material to go through for a micropedia (the attention span of people on the net is actually shorter than that). Yes Wikipedia is also a macropedia but it should do that through having summaries which have links to stand-alone articles that treat the subtopic in more detail. Having that set-up also gives us more options with print versions. --mav 04:23, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)
• Support - the article is very interesting and comprehensive. I think perhaps some sections could be shortened a bit - but even so - the structure is good. Zoney 23:00, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)
• Objection/Qualified support. (a) The article describes political/economic history in considerable detail (good!), but omits cultural history altogether, in which real changes have also taken place. (b) Recent history is in fact a collection of conflicting points of view: the article should mention as many of them as possible. In particular, the attitude of Russians to the breakup seems somewhat simplified: can one quote from Putin be proof of what "the Russian people" think? A. Shetsen 23:22, 1 Aug 2004 (UTC)

  Thanks for the advice. I added a section on culture toward the end of the article. Feedback on the new section will be helpful. 172 20:09, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

• Although I have no objections whatever to the rest of the sections (economic/poli. hist. quite well done, and others have pointed out the quibbles), I'm afraid I have strong objections to the cultural section. I've not made any edits, but instead will put extensive comments in the discussion page. If post-soviet culture is ironed out, I'll change objection to support. A. Shetsen 02:33, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)

• After discussion with User:172 and some input into the article, any objections I had are replaced by full support. A. Shetsen 04:53, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

• Support. A very good and detailed article. The sections on Putin era need some expansion: Second Chechen War, Putin's power consolidation, etc.. (I can try to help with that in a few days.) Andris 11:06, Aug 2, 2004 (UTC)
  • Thanks. I just expanded First Chechen War, but Second Chechen War still needs a lot of work. I'll also try to help expand the content on Putin and add a section on social history, which A. Shetsen is recommending. 172 11:47, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
• I have some minor objections: (1) source info is needed for the images; (2) I have some questions about the use of the word "technocrat" throughout the article, but this may be standard terminology; (3) the caption on the picture in "Economic depression and social decay" strikes me as POV, particularly in the use of the word "ordinary"; (4) in the fourth paragraph of "Shock therapy" it is mentioned that liberalization created winners and losers, and the losers are identified. The winners should also be identified. (5) in the fifth paragraph in "Shock therapy," perhaps the term "austerity regime" should be explained, or an article created for it, although its general meaning is easy to pick up from the context; (6) in the fourth paragraph of "Obstacles to capitalist development in Russia", the first sentance should be reworded. Perhaps "partially related" should become "partially because of". (7) in the fifth paragraph of "Obstacles to capitalist development in Russia", the "former USSR" is mentioned, but Russia would not have inherited anything from the former USSR, but from the USSR. (8) in the sixth paragraph of "Obstacles to capitalist development in Russia", a citation for educational attainment in the USSR would be nice. (9) In the fifth paragraph of "The 1993 constitutional crisis", "other estimates" were higher. Who made those estimates? (10) in the sixth paragraph of The "loans for shares" scheme and the rise of the "oligarchs", prices were sometimes as low as 1% of values. What was a more typical figure? (11) in the sixth paragraph of "Campaigns", it is stated that the six leading Russian financiers and media barons were all oligarchs. What determines if one is an oligarch? Are there leading Russian financiers and media barons who are not oligarchs? (12) in the third paragraph of "Elections", could the decree that cancelled "almost all these promises" be mentioned by name, or its text linked to or cited (ideally in English translation, but in Russian if that is unavailable). (13) in the fourth paragraph of "Elections", is the use of the word "cabal" NPOV? Perhaps the group of advisors could be described without resorting to such terminology. (14) in the fifth paragraph of "The Putin administration" it is stated that "Most Russians today have come to regret the dissolution of the Soviet Union". Can a study or other source be cited to support this? (also, I would be interested to know how demographics relate to this sentiment.) (15) in the fifth paragraph of "Economic depression and social decay" it is mentioned that average income has risen to more than $100. Is this per month? It should be clarified. Dan Gardner 19:54, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Excellent list! I went through the article and made the needed corrections. I didn't make any changes regarding 11 and 12. I think that they're already addressed by the link to the Oligarchs article and the external links embedded in the text, respectively. I'm still working on #1. 172 13:56, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Clarification of (9): I meant to ask who made the other estimates. Media sources, human rights groups, participants in the protests... Dan Gardner 04:11, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Images now have source info. The problems regarding points 9 and 14 have been circumvented by changes in the text. Thanks again. 172 04:31, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Great. Support; excellent work. Dan Gardner 14:33, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)

• Oppose, poor prose, awkward integration of links, etc... Sam [Spade] 18:59, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)
• Still oppose. This article was good to begin with and has improved a great deal since it was first listed, but it has only grown since I mentioned the size issue. As is, this is just too much material to go through for what is supposed to be a survey article in a micropedia. More consensing and spinning off of daughter articles is needed to make this article accessible to readers who want a more consensed treatment. Until then I don't think this article represents one of Wikipedia's best articles. Specifically, the ==Dismantling socialism== section could be an entire article in itself and a more condensed treatment left at History of post-Soviet Russia.

This section is linked to the relevant section in Economy of Russia, which offers a greater level detail. 172 00:50, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The current "Main article" link in that section is also confusing since it links to a section in a 66KB article. That material (which concentrates on economic issues) and the material in this article could be used to create a third article about the dismantling of socialism in the former USSR. That way the summary at History of post-Soviet Russia could concentrate on the socio/political aspects while the summary at Economy of Russia could concentrate on economic aspects and the new third article could expand on all those topics.

The section of economic reform is certainly relevant to the history of post-Soviet Russia. I disagree fundamentally with this distinction you're drawing between economic, political, and social history. The point of this article is to explore the interconnection of economic, political, and social change, not to relegate the details on the economic changes underpinning the transition to a separate article. 172 00:50, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

This will be much more useful to readers (who will have a choice between the summary at the survey article and the more detailed treatment at the new third article). --mav 00:07, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

• Funny. The users who've actually read the article aren't complaining about the size or the structure (Dan Gardner, Zoney, A. Shetsen, Andris, and Emsworth). Creating additional articles is still a long way out of the way, so nomination withdrawn. 172 00:38, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

• • Yes, I have read the whole thing. It takes some to do so, so I only did that twice. --mav 03:41, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I would suggest that the condensed version mav is looking for could go at History of Russia. The current lack of a good summary there is not a valid objection to this article. I don't think that the nomination needs to be withdrawn, as there are currently 4 supporting and 2 opposed. I would like to know what Sam thinks is poorly written in this article. Before reading the article I knew very little about the subject, and now that I have read it I think I have a reasonably good general picture of the topic. I think that this is exactly what featured articles should be able to do. The content is much more important that formatting or arbitrary size restrictions. Dan Gardner 01:45, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

• User_talk:Sam_Spade/_-_archive_August_2004#post-Soviet_Russia This is a discussion w 172 about what I see as poor prose and awkward links. It should also be noted that I tried to make some repairs, only to be reverted. Sam [Spade] 06:26, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The vote has to be unanimous, and those two objections aren't going to go away. It's a shame, though. Featuring the article would've been a good chance to attract more writers into the fold on recent Russian history, considering the general lack of attention articles not pertaining to the English-speaking world attract on the English Wiki. People interested in Russia would've seen the article on the main page, started editing the article, and started working on all related articles linked to the page that are still languishing as stubs. (Even the Putin and Yeltsin articles need a lot of work.) Nevertheless, the article has improved dramatically after all the work you, Andris, and A. Shetsen have put into it. The recent work has made all the difference. 172 07:14, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Having to read 20 pages of text to get a good idea about the topic is hardly arbitrary. Any summary at History of Russia can and should consist of just a few to several paragraphs. While perfectly appropriate for that article, it is not adequate to serve as a survey article for this sub-topic of Russian history. An article that is 10 printed pages would be much better, anything more than 15 pages is getting too long (esp for the Internet where attention spans are very short). Any additional detail should be placed in separate daughter articles. That way all user types are served. And as I already noted the ==Dismantling communism== section is getting too long for the purposes of this article and should be summarized and the more detailed text spun off. --mav 03:41, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Certainly 20 pages is arbitrary. I could just as well say "Having to read 10 pages of text to get a good idea about the topic is hardly arbitrary." 20 pages may be too long for some, but then so is 10 pages. As for short attention spans on the Internet - we aim to be not only a web site, but to have DVD and printed versions, right? If we have a genuine educational mission, then we should be trying to lengthen those atrophied attention spans. Dan Gardner 16:29, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

• The size objections are difficult. If there is a real technical reason that article size must be kept to a maximum, it should be explained in stronger and clearer terms than it is now, and then actual min/max size limits must be defined (I suspect that will prove impossible to achieve by consensus). As regards structure and navigation within a long article: that is what the TOC presumably exists for, yet all attempts to give more than two levels of TOC seem, to my eyes, to produce immediate "overwhelming TOC" objections. I strongly believe content determines everything, especially in light of Wiki's stated "mission" eventually to act as a full repository of human knowledge or something of that sort. That mission, by the way, appears to mandate (with full respect to the programmers) that the mediaWiki software be developed better to generate actual "viewable with any browser" HTML for long articles. A. Shetsen 20:26, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Just split and leave summaries. It solves technical and readability size issues all in one. See Wikipedia:Summary style. --mav 06:16, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)

mav, you wrote Wikipedia:Summary style. It is not hard policy. Summary style is useful in some cases, but it's not a panacea. Consider, for example the article Science. Currently it is not very good, IMO. Would it be better if it included summaries of Biology, Chemistry, Physics, and so on? Of course not. It needs to give a more unified treatment. Summary style assumes that the article can be split into sections on independent topics. Sometimes this is the case. More often the sectioning is more ambiguous, and while the subtobics can be treated separately, they are more profitably treated together, up to a certain level of detail. It should be no surprise that that level of detail will vary with the subject of the article. Dan Gardner 20:18, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)

You misunderstand. ==Biology==, ==Chemistry==, ==Physics== would not be proper sections to have in the Science article - as you correctly state. ==Scientific models, theories and laws== is a good section and scientific method, theory and physical law are good places to expand on that subtopic (alternatively a middleman article titled something like the structure of science could expand on the topic or each of those articles could be a Main article link under its respective subsection heading at science). If you can think of a good thing to cover in a section, then that item can also be covered in greater detail in a daughter article. --mav 06:54, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Still dubious, but the matter of shortening is now under discussion in the talk page. A. Shetsen 06:02, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)

It's a shame that this has been withdrawn, as I'd have supported it. It's a fantastic article, though some of the sections could do with being summarised (and leaving more of the detail to the already-linked articles). Ambi 06:45, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Robert Mugabe

A topical subject. self-nomination. Also User:172 has had a good look at this. Wizzy 22:26, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• Object. 1) None of the pictures has source information, nor permission information. 2) The lead section should be longer, briefly summarizing the most important facts about Mugabe. 3) Some of the sections are really short. This looks ugly, and they could probably be made into subsections of a larger sections. A partition into three sections "Personal life", "Political life" and "Opposition" might be a good idea. 4) The one sentence section about the 2005 parliament election seems irrelevant and is way to short to even be a section. 5) The use of bold face for his wives' names is not standard use, I think (WP:MOS). 6) Most of the "see also" references are already mentioned and linked in the article; mentioning them again seems rather unnecessary. 7) There are only web references, which are unfortunately rather 'volatile'. Any works on him in books, magazines, pamphlets? 8) The article seems to focus on the "negative" issues during Mugabe's reign. What are the reactions of the Zimbabweans to his rule? Some "pro-Mugabe" articles are in the references, but this article hardly mentions such support. 9) The land reforms section is rather short and uninformative, given the attention this policy received in the (western) media. Jeronimo 06:22, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• Object. I don't see mentions of opposition opression (beatings, killings), the rigging of elections is just tentatively suggested, and there is little connection between Mugabe land reforms and the economic collapse of the country (and spreading poverty and hunger). Till this is cleary stressed, I have to object. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 21:28, 31 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Peerage article series

Yep, the peerage article is featured already. I am suggesting we begin a new section on Wikipedia:Featured articles for sets of articles/wikiprojects/categories that together are really good. I also nominate the peerage article series as the first article set to go in this section in recognition of the substantial feature quality work that Emsworth has done.

• (Pre-emptive response to some possible complaints):
  • No each article in the series does not have to be of stand-alone featured standards (if so we could just list them all separately). I propose that a substantial proportion (say at least one-third?) should of featured standard and the rest should reach another minimum standard of quality (say peer reviewed level?).
  • No it is not possible to feature a set of articles on the main page. But as has been established long ago, "main page featuring" is a subset of "featured article page featuring". This idea exploits that loophole.
• Pcb21| Pete 09:15, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• While I am humbled by the nomination, I am afraid that I cannot give it my wholehearted support. I would not like to see any article that is below the appropriate standard on its own to be included under a "featured series" class. To exalt substandard articles because of other articles in the same series engages in the reverse of guilt by association. Hence, I would request that this nomination be regarded as a nomination of each individual article in the series; I shall be willing to address all objections. -- Emsworth 13:43, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • Incidentally, for the image, I suggest that the picture of a peer in his robes (see Peerage) be used on the main page for each article, especially where images will not be appropriate (as in Styles and titles of peers). When looking at the image, one does get an impression that it connects to the nobility. This suggestion would comply with Wikipedia:What is a featured article, which asserts: "An article does not have to have a picture to be featured; however, even if the subject does not have any obvious images associated with it, a suggested picture which could be used to represent it on the Main Page (it can be an abstract symbol that would be too generic for the article itself) is helpful." -- Emsworth 14:07, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• I fully agree with his lordship: I wouldn't want to see any article that was not featured article worthy be recognized as such. Exploding Boy 16:32, Jul 26, 2004 (UTC)
  • How can I make it more obvious that that isn't what I am suggesting? By creating an example in my userpage area, perhaps? Pcb21| Pete 17:06, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)
    • I misunderstood as well when you said "no each article in the series does not have to be of stand-alone featured standards". Perhaps you could elaborate? — Matt 18:17, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)

For convenience, I have treated each article as a separate nomination:

Peerage law

• Probably should not be a featured article; more like a list than an article. -- Emsworth 17:20, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Orca

Although I couldn't possibly keep pace with the prodigious quality and quantity of Emsworths output, I figured it was about time I put another cetacean through the gauntlet. Hopefully I have covered ideas that arose last time before the event. Self nom. Pcb21| Pete 08:59, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• (not a vote) I'll vote after reading the whole article, but I have a question: why is the name Orca capitalised throughout the article, and why are there two plural forms used (both Orcas and Orca)? Jeronimo 09:10, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• • How embarassing - the last edit I made before nominating was to change all "Orcas" to "Orca" - I wrote the article uncertain to which plural was actually correct (both are used!) and used them both. Then I tidied up and nominated. Unfortunately the edit didn't take for whatever reason. I've just made the edit again. As for the first point, species names are capitalized in Wikipedia. Pcb21| Pete 09:20, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Irish fiction

Self nomination. Bmills 08:19, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• Object. 1) The image of Beckett has no source information. The paintings should also be dated, to make sure these are in the public domain. 2) The title is incorrect, IMO. This article is only about English language fiction in Irish literature, so the article's title should reflect both the English language and the literature (there may also be Irish fiction in film, and possibly other art forms). 3) Parts of the article look more like a list of authors - do we really need al these birth/deathdates and details on the lives of these authors? This article is about Irish fiction; most of the details of their lives are not particularly relevant for that topic. To place the authors in time, listing dates for their works seems sufficient. 4) The coverage of modern day fiction authors is rather poor. Not a single book title is mentioned. 5) Although some points are mentioned throughout the article, I miss a (brief) discussion of differences between Irish fiction and fiction from other countries, and Irish fiction in the Irish language. Are there any differences at all? 6) There are no references to works or sites on Irish fiction specifically. If such works do not exist, I would like to see at least one or two references to good books on Irish literature - surely these exist. Perhaps it is also a good idea to list the discussed works again, so that readers can easily find these works in the library. 7) There doesn't appear to be a good reason to let Irish fiction start in the 18th century - or at least this isn't explained very well. The lead section of the article actually seems to give a reason why Irish fiction should begin before Swift. 8) The current lead section is actually better suited as the first part of the article. I would like to see a lead section that briefly summarises the topic, mentioning the most important specific characteristics of Irish fiction and perhaps a brief mention of some of the best known exponents of Irish fiction. Jeronimo 09:03, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Yesterday (song)

This article is quite short compared to most other featured articles, but I think it's extremely good compared to other articles on songs such as YMCA, The Sound of Silence or Hotel California. If this article was on something else and of the same length, I wouldn't support/nominate it, but for a song article, this goes into quite a bit of detail on the song's origins, etc. An excellent example of what other articles about songs should be. Johnleemk | Talk 13:54, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)

A slight self-nom as I made a couple of edits to this article a month or two ago. Johnleemk | Talk 14:10, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• Almost there. A few things, however: (from [[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 14:16, 2004 Jul 23 (UTC))
  • The other members didn't think this sounded like them--in what way? Could you be a little more specific? If I hadn't heard the song, this would be unclear.
  • Not an objection, but what two songs beat it out on the BMI list?
  • Is there any way to describe the song's sound--for example musical notes or something of that sort? I don't know enough about music to say.
• Support. I think it would be good to have a few featured articles that weren't 50 kb of text. If somebody with musical training wanted to expand the bottom section, they would be welcome, however. [[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 16:06, 2004 Jul 23 (UTC)

• Change to support. It's a really good article right now, although the synopsis of the lyrics at the end is almost so simplistic as to be condescending. I'm going to object at this point, although I do like the article.
  1. The article is really short. Most of the length of the article comes from the alternate lyrics section, which should probably be in Wikisource or something.
  2. The article does not have standard TOC formatting that is usually present on featured articles. It needs a lead in section and some divisions.

  -DropDeadGorgias (talk) 14:58, Jul 23, 2004 (UTC)

  • I've fleshed the article out, doing the best as I can (Meelar's third objection was rather hard as I have nearly no musical training; I had to take some material from Alan Pollack's analysis and rewrite it). What do you guys think now? Johnleemk | Talk 15:59, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• I think it's... ok. I hate to damn with faint praise, but I just don't think the writing is spectacular. Exploding Boy 16:12, Jul 23, 2004 (UTC)
• (not a vote). Maybe a stupid question, but would a - say - 10-second excerpt of the song fall under fair use? Jeronimo 20:22, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • Yes - probably more than that too. →Raul654 20:25, Jul 23, 2004 (UTC)
    • In that case, I object, since I think an article about a song needs a sound sample. Jeronimo 09:51, 25 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Object, needs to go into more detail in practically all areas. --[[User:OldakQuill|Oldak Quill]] 20:27, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • What do you think of it now? I've added quite a bit more — at least four paragraphs worth of material. The intro has been fleshed out, and it's more relevant now. There's more background on the song in the "Origins" section. There's also quite a bit more mention of just how much the song was played (I honestly had no idea it was that popular back then), spread out over the article. Johnleemk | Talk 07:01, 24 Jul 2004 (UTC)
    • According to User:OldakQuill, he/she will be away till 10 August. This article's nomination period ends on 7 August. How can this objection be handled further? Johnleemk | Talk 09:02, 25 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Object on grounds of the name of the article; there are plenty of other Yesterdays which will need dealing with e.g. the novel Yesterday (novel) by Maria Dermoût. Should be renamed something like Yesterday (Beatles song)
  • Moved to Yesterday (song). I don't think there are any other famous songs titled "Yesterday" — certainly, the majority of people when looking for a song named "Yesterday" will be looking for this composition, so I think where the song is as of my move is just fine. Johnleemk | Talk 07:32, 24 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • Yes, that will do fine until someone writes another song called Yesterday. Sjc 07:34, 02 Aug 2004 (UTC)
    • Um...is that veiled sarcasm or something? :p Noticed you're still objecting, though, so I presume that was sarcasm. Undoubtedly there are quite a few "Yesterday"s out there unrelated to this song, but until they're as well-known as this song, yeah, this title will do just fine. "Yesterday" probably won't be knocked off any time soon by another song of the same title any time soon, IMO. Johnleemk | Talk 07:57, 24 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Support. While a sound clip would be nice, I like the article as it stands. It's interesting and informative, and while it may be short relative to other feature articles, I think it important to remember this article is about a song, not a political movement or a historical figure. Denni☯ 19:41, 2004 Jul 25 (UTC)
• Support. Object. 1) Writing is poor: 2) Some source material would be nice and not hard to find: i.e. quotes from McCartney about the song; 3) More on the recording of the song (will try to add that myself).Marlowe 19:24, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • I've rewritten much of the article from scratch (a wee bit imperfect in a few areas, though). I've added a quote by McCartney and another from Bob Dylan. I've added a little about the song's recording. What do you think? Johnleemk | Talk 11:41, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)
    • I think the article still needs tightening up in a few places - some parts of it aren't very well written. Someone also needs to add a paragraph on Lennon's vitriolic reaction to the song, especially in his own composition 'How Do You Sleep?' - ChicXulub | Talk 22:53, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)
      • It would be helpful if you indicated which parts...anyway, I cleaned up some places where the wording looked fishy, and I've added anecdotes about "How Do You Sleep?" and the original lyrics ("Scrambled Eggs"). Johnleemk | Talk 10:54, 29 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Support. (See below) I went over the article, which is excellent, and made a few minor tweaks to sentences. Honestly, if anyone else says "writing needs work" or something similarly vague, please point out where? I had to march slowly through the article picking out tiny issues. But honestly I don't think there's any grounds for further objection. :-) Jwrosenzweig 16:40, 29 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• I looked at this article earlier today (before your supposed edit) and I just looked at it again, and frankly it still has problems with writing that should be evident even to a casual reader, let alone someone who's "marched slowly through the article." Granted, it's an interesting topic for an article, but -- how can I put this delicately -- the writing just isn't very good. Add to the fact that it's not well written the fact that clarity is sometimes a problem, as are grammar and elements of style (for example, there are contractions where there shouldn't be contractions), and the only conclusion is this is simply not an article that is deserving of recognition for outstanding writing. Please register this as an objection, and consider re-nominating the article if it is substantially improved -- for a few examples of what constitutes excellent writing, consider taking a look at Order of the Garter or Order of the Thistle. Exploding Boy 16:54, Jul 29, 2004 (UTC)
  • Well, I noticed an edit to the article after I was done with it that caught a couple of glaring errors I missed, so obviously I am either not very awake this morning or wasn't proceeding as carefully as I'd thought -- my apologies. I do think the article is fairly good at covering an interesting topic, but upon reflection the writing does still need work, and I'd forgotten to consider the brilliance of the prose when evaluating -- I learned quite a bit about the song from the article (and I'd thought I knew it moderately well), and forgot that all our articles are supposed to instruct, but only a select few can be featured. I withdraw my support, while still professing to like the article. Jwrosenzweig 17:10, 29 Jul 2004 (UTC)
    • I've rewritten the article yet again, focusing on what seemed most awkward/unclear to me. I understand if you don't think it's featured level yet, but I think it's quite far from the monstrocity it was after my very first rewrite (in which I used an abundance of semicolons to join sentences). Johnleemk | Talk 14:18, 1 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Japanese grammar

This is an exceptionally complex article, but it is also exceptionally well written, well organized, and well elucidated. It is an excellent example of the kind of great work Wikipedia can generate. Exploding Boy 14:29, Jul 28, 2004 (UTC)

• object. please see the Manual of Style. Headings should start at h2, not h1 and three line sections (esp at the h2 level) should not exist. "Introduction" is not a valid heading. --Jiang 17:30, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • I've fixed that. — Chameleon Main/Talk/Images 17:48, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)
    • all headings under Japanese_grammar#Particles should be removed. the TOC is too massive. --Jiang 19:16, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Support! A. Shetsen 18:53, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Object. The beginning of the intro clusmy and fails to follow MoS standards (such as bolding). The TOC is overwhelming. I like the diagrams, but they distort the windows size unecessarily. →Raul654 19:00, Jul 28, 2004 (UTC)
• Object. I must admit I haven't read the whole article, but the lead section doesn't conform with WP:MOS. Also, there are several tables incomplete, such as "(To do: complete this list)", which is really not something for a featured article. Jeronimo 19:13, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Seems reasonably thorough. Someone will say it wants a picture. Perhaps some Japanese calligraphy? Smerdis of Tlön 19:33, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Object. I would suggest moving a lot of the content into seperate articles. That would help to clean up the TOC clutter and keep the page from being so... overwhelming. If some solution to that is found (either moving or otherwise) and some of the stylistic issues are dealt with, I'll change to support. Gregb 19:41, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• It does not follow Wikipedia:Manual of Style for Japan-related articles. Fg2 02:52, Aug 2, 2004 (UTC)
• Object, but so reluctantly... This is an absolutely great article, full of facts in a well organized presentation. I wish I knew enough to have written it. Superb work! My objection is two fold. First, it's a little fuzzy around the edges (eg, there are mispelllings here and there in the English text -- I'm taking on faith that the Japanese is correctly spelled and that the transliterations are accurate) and so on. A little touch up here and there would do for that. The second is a little more troublesome. The article appears at first to be professionally linguistic with lots of technical terms (few of which are either linked to explanatory articles or explained for the benefit of the non linguistic -- either would help), but this orientation is not uniform throughout. I am left with a feeling of sometimes fish, sometimes fowl. Either would be acceptable, but both (here and there) is confusing and disconcerting. I am rather less concerned than some others about conformance with MoS issues; I don't think those issues are a bar to featured status. At present, a great (and featureable) article after a bit more polishing. ww 19:19, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Comet Rendezvous Asteroid Flyby

Based on mostly NASA PD material, it is still a historical curiosity that is not that well documented even on Google. The Image is also in NASA?s Public Domain. GeneralPatton 09:22, 29 Jul 2004 (UTC)

The "--" hacks need to be turned to &mdash;. — Chameleon Main/Talk/Images 13:18, 29 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Done, but for any changes that minor please just make the change if you notice it is needed. - Taxman 14:56, Jul 29, 2004 (UTC)

• Oppose for now. The writing needs looking at, and I would do it myself, but I'm not sure how to proceed. My main problem is with the tense--it's very confusing the way the article talks about how the mission "would have done X", while other things "are X", etc. [[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 15:27, 2004 Jul 29 (UTC)
• Object. Not bad, but: 1) The picture has no source information. 2) As Meelar noted, the writing has some issues with tense. Even if this is al grammatically correct, surely there are some alternatives/synonyms to writing "would" all the time. 3) There are some minor issues, such as a sentence saying "It August 1995, but as of February 1991" and a copyright notice for a reference which is certainly not required. 4) (not part of my objection) It would be nice if there was a schematic overview of the craft, and its planned mission. Jeronimo 17:24, 29 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Carnatic music

Been working on this for a while; I've done some severe organization since I discovered the article,which, back then, was just a few paragraphs long. Self-nomination (almost: many other people have made contributions to this page, and I do not intend to discredit them, but I did the organization.--Siva 15:51, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• Object. I haven't read all the way through yet, but I have seen enough to say there are way too many parentheses in this article (three sets of parentheses (some double nested) [not to mention brakets] in the first sentence alone(!) ) -- Solipsist 16:57, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • I'll be happy to fix that.--Siva 18:20, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC)
    • That's a helps, but there are still many more parentheses throughout the rest of the article. Some of them look appropriate, for example the connections to western musical scales in the Solfage Description section. Many others should probably be subclauses. But the trickiest part is that some of them should be moved to seperate articles. For example in the section on 'The tala system' we are told "These patterns are called talas (sing. tala(m))." I don't think we need to know the syntax for the singular form here. It interupts the flow of the writing and we have just past a link to tala where the syntax could be better explained. That link by the way, would be better being disambiguated as [[tala (music)|tala]].
  • Done.--Siva 02:02, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)
    • Similarly, I would be tempted to say that in the previous paragraph, the parenthetical explanation of what abugidas is should be left to the abugidas article (which contains the same explanation). Now the tricky bit, is that most of the western readership is not likely to be familiar with these terms, so if all of the parenthetical explanations are moved to their sub-topics it might impove the flow of the writing but make the article largely unintelligible.
  • Done--Siva 02:02, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)
    • I guess the problem is similar in any article with a specialised language. If a physics article on black holes (recently featured) had to stop and explain what a photon was each time it cropped up, the article would be unreadable. So it has to be written at a level that expects the user to know many of the terms, or at least be willing to dip into all the linked articles to find out. -- Solipsist 10:08, 31 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• Object. A good start, but I have a few objections. 1) This article defintely needs at least one, but preferably many more sound samples. Short sound samples are normally fair use, so it should be relatively easy to find a few illustrating many of the concepts discussed in this article. It is hard for the reader to get a good picture of carnatic music otherwise. 2) A picture of musicians performing would be nice, but is not a requirement IMO. 3) The article hardly introduces many (Indian) terms, even though they are usually linked. Sometimes sentences also presume a certain knowledge which I think it too much for the average reader. E.g.: "Beacause Carnatic music is very rarely performed by people from North India, the alphabets given here are primarily those of Dravidian languages." This may be logical to a linguist or an Indian, but makes no sense at all to me, even if I can deduce some information from it. Jeronimo 18:12, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Speed of light

A highly informative article on the phenomena which should be featured already:) -- Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 13:51, 2004 Jul 30 (UTC)

• Support -- Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 13:51, 2004 Jul 30 (UTC)
• Object. The article states all kinds of interesting phenomena (e.g. that it's constant for all observers), but doesn't explain why (it gives that equation, but no justification or explanation for the actual reasons this is so). Also no mention of lightspeed travel and science fictional attempts to have travel faster than light; these should be mentioned and linked to, though I don't expect much in the actual article. Also, should there be some mention of the effects on perception of time and mass of objects at lightspeed? [[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 14:07, 2004 Jul 30 (UTC)
• Object, for now. Meelar raises some good points. While it is a very tall order to integrate the subtle intricacies of, say, quantum electrodynamics into an article hoping to appeal to the general public, I think this one can and should do just that. Being a physicist myself, I'll tinker with it in the near future. --Timbo 04:53, 1 Aug 2004 (UTC)
• Support - I've had a go at adding faster-than-light and tachyon, plus general tinkering. I'm not sure that perception of time and mass of objects approaching the speed of light should be here rather than in special relativity. -- ALoan (Talk) 17:24, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)
• I'm afraid I must still object. My issue is specifically with the section entitled "Constant in all frames of reference", under "Physics". It gives no real explanation as to why this is true. There must be some sort of thought experiment that could illustrate this concept. [[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 18:46, 2004 Aug 5 (UTC)
• Object. A very good article, but Meelar is right. The article says that the constant speed follows from speical relativity, but that is almost begging the question. There is a really simple-minded version of why it must follow from the relativity principle: the speed of light is derivable from Maxwell's equations; the laws of physics aren't supposed to be different in different unaccelerated frames; therefore, all observers in such frames should observe the same speed of light. I'm not physicist enough to write this up clearly and correctly for the article, but surely someone is? If this (or something better) goes in, I'll strike my objection. Dandrake 00:01, Aug 7, 2004 (UTC)

Train station

Self-nomination really. It's been around for some time. I did not write the original article, but I did take it, rip out ugly lists, rearrange some bits into coherent sections and find nicer images to suit the sections. I haven't suggested anything to FAC before, so I don't know whether this falls short of the standard needed or not. It may need moved to a neutral page title like Rail station or Station (rail) (Non-US term is Railway station). Comments please! Zoney 11:16, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• Object. Not bad, but it needs some work. 1) I miss a history of the development of stations. When did the first stations develop? Is there a known "first railway station" ever? 2) I'd like to see some famous stations discussed here. The world's largest station are already mentioned, but some really famous ones (e.g. London, Paris) could be mentioned. 3) What are the major differences (if any?) with similar facilities such as subway stations? 4) One some points, the article is a bit too generic: "Many train stations date from the 19th century", which true, but this depends very much on the country in question. Where I'm from (Netherlands), most stations are actually quite new. On the other hand, examples like "(e.g. Wizzle in Netherlands)" are unnecessary. 5) This sentence is rather weird: "Basic station facilities, some of which are only present in larger or manned stations". 6) I would like to see some references to books or sites about railway stations. Jeronimo 13:31, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • Responses on Talk:Train station Zoney 23:08, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • I've written something to cover 1). Warofdreams 12:53, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Not a vote. Heading in the right direction, but I was also going to say that we should mention the first railway station (presumably on the Stockton and Darlington Railway or perhaps they just used steps to get on the train) and the oldest surviving station (possibly Liverpool St Manchester though it is no longer active). Also worth mentioning underground railway stations (oldest may be Baker Street tube station, although this not mentioned in our article I think there is a plaque to this effect at the station). Do the car-train terminals on Eurotunnel count as stations? And there must be similar cargo terminals at dockyards. It may also be worth including connections to tram stops and airports. -- Solipsist 14:03, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • Responses on Talk:Train station Zoney 23:08, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• Some of the issues raised above are unlikely to be resolved soon (particularly, missing content). Where can this article be listed and actually attract more contributors? Does anyone use Peer review? It doesn't just want "reviewed", it needs contributions! Is the "bring an article up to featured standard" idea still running? Zoney 23:08, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • Yeah, I'm not sure that Wikipedia:Peer review attracts much attention at the moment. It sometimes prompts me to read an article, but I've only made the occaisional small edit. Train station could be a good candidate to get on to Wikipedia:Article of the week (not that I know that that attracts attention either).
    • Uh, no. The article of the week is specifically for a stub or a nonexistent article. And so far it has brought pretty good focus to a number of articles. Zoney, as for attracting more contributors to an article, you may not be able to. You may just have to research the content yourself and work to answer the objections here then re-nominate. - Taxman 00:27, Aug 4, 2004 (UTC)
      • Hmmm... I'm aware of that - I'll get round to researching and adding to it some time (I might take a look at de: and fr: see if I can glean anything from there), but I've only so much time to spend on Wikipedia really! I have invested some time in the article already! In any case, this can be removed from FAC when time runs out. Zoney 11:49, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)
      • Nuts. More like fr: and de: can be expanded from en:!!! (Though de: has nice pictures!) Dutch and Russian look minimal too! Zoney 11:55, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Ebola

I just stumbled across this article while scanning for vandalism. It seems very well written and documented to me. I only made a few minor wikilink tweaks. It also has a strong international draw going for it. Ocon | Talk 06:28, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• An interesting artice, but not Feature-worthy yet. Some problems include numbers (some are written in full form, as ninety, while others are written in digits, as 90) and clarity. In general the writing could be improved. Exploding Boy 11:30, Jul 28, 2004 (UTC)
  • Thanks for the comment. I'm not sure I understand your meaning regarding the numbers, though. The Wikipedia Manual of Style states "Whole numbers between zero and ten should be spelt in full. Numbers higher than ten may be represented by numerals, except where they appear as the first word in a sentence, in which case they should be written out in full." I went in and made two changes to comply with this. Are you thinking that all numbers in an article should either be spelt out or written as numbers, but not mixed? Ocon | Talk 18:00, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)
    • No, numbers between zero and ten should not be written as numbers (exceptions include scores, measurements and percentages). It is not inappropriate to write "11" and "ten" in the same article. -- Emsworth 16:43, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Support. — Chameleon Main/Talk/Images 12:17, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Nazism

Came across this article while reading about WWII. Seems pretty extensive. 81.168.80.170 20:31, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• Object. Needs a longer lead section. Article is also getting a bit long (40 KB). --mav
• Object strongly. This is a mess. 1) This article doesn't seem to know whether it is about nazism, Nazi Germany, fascim or Hitler. 2) Some topics are dealt with exhaustively, others are hardly discussed. Some sections are nothing more than bullet lists, and some issues are mentioned several time throughout the article. 3) There is no mention of national socialist movements outside of Germany (often inspired by the NSDAP), and a more detailed comparison with Mussolini's fascism seem desirable. 4) Neo-Nazism is only mentioned in passing. 5) There is an extensive use of "", mostly in inappropriate places, e.g. "Nazism is an abbreviation for "National Socialism" " or "Hitler developed his political theories after "carefully observing" the policies of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.". This makes it look like the author isn't quoting facts, and/or is ridiculing the topic. 6) Nearly all of the references are about Hitler rather than nazism. Jeronimo 11:56, 31 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Object, and agree a Jeronimo. Sam [Spade] 05:12, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Ridge Route

Seems to have been inadvertently removed from nomination. Re-nominating. - Lucky 6.9 21:05, 31 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• Object. Though this has the potential to be a very good article, it lacks content and requires some good ol' editorial polishing. There is certainly plenty to provoke interest here. Denni☯ 02:25, 2004 Aug 1 (UTC)

*Added some more content that I gleaned from ridgeroute.com, and I have another user trying to find some old photos of his own. Having one helluva time finding fair use material. - Lucky 6.9 06:48, 1 Aug 2004 (UTC)

• The Driving the Ridge Route section suddenly gets really chatty, as if the writer is talking directly to the reader. Also some problems with contractions ("it is" not "it's"). Exploding Boy 11:32, Jul 28, 2004 (UTC)
• Object. 1) This article really needs a map. 2) The "vintage" post card isn't dated, so it's unclear if this is in the public domain. 3) "one of the largest and most daunting feats of road engineering ever attempted". Why was it so daunting? This isn't clear at all 4) I agree with Exploding Boy that the last section is a bit "chatty". It is also unclear why the Tumble Inn and the Sandberg's Summit Hotel are so special to deserve attention in this article. Jeronimo 13:19, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Ah, welcome back. I've taken your advise and covered all of your your objections. Other users added the postcard and colloquialisms and I've adjusted the text accordingly. I'm still having trouble finding fair use visual material, but some may be forthcoming from Harrison Scott, the author mentioned in the article. In the meantime, how does the text look now? - Lucky 6.9 07:26, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
• I am leaving this site for good. If anyone wishes to leave this up for nomination, have fun. - Lucky 6.9 06:42, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)