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Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Stephen Hawking/archive1

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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was not promoted by Ucucha 16:09, 28 March 2012 [1].

Stephen Hawking

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Stephen Hawking (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

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Nominator(s): Fayedizard (talk) 11:56, 29 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I am nominating this for featured article because I believe it meets the criteria as I understand them. Until very recently it was one of those wonderful articles that had arisen through many thousands of editors making one or two changes. Since then I nominated it for GA, which it passed following review from Binksternet, and has also had a peer review from Finetooth (with continuing useful comments from Binksternet)- both these processes have improved the article immensely. I'd like to shepherd it thought the next stage towards FA. :) Fayedizard (talk) 11:56, 29 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comment: I don't know much about FAR, but for what it's worth: the second paragraph in the speech synthesizer section sounds a bit like OR. Would it be possible to cite sources which talk about his public appearances? The TED video has maybe one usable line. Hope that helps, SPat talk 00:34, 2 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Hmm, good catch - that one has appeared to slip though the net, sources added and content tweaked :) How does it look now? Fayedizard (talk) 08:09, 2 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Source review - spotchecks not done. Nikkimaria (talk) 04:42, 3 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

  • Be consistent in whether you provide locations for books
I've replaced all book refs (with one exception) with references generated by [2] - this should have addressed the above recommendation as a side effect :) Fayedizard (talk) 17:49, 4 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Yep, though a couple (ex. ref 32) appears to have lost their page number(s). Nikkimaria (talk) 20:17, 5 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Be consistent in whether authors are listed first or last name first
Books where going the opposite way to everything else - have fixed this now. Fayedizard (talk) 23:19, 4 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • FN 22, 28, 39, 69, 74, 75: publisher?
So I'm a little unsure of myself for this one - I had to make my best guess for publisher of some of these, and I suspect you might have some follow up recommendations... Fayedizard (talk) 18:19, 4 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
For 28, the publisher appears to be "Charlie Rose LLC", otherwise alright. Nikkimaria (talk) 20:17, 5 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Fixed :) Fayedizard (talk) 08:07, 7 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Check for consistency in italicization
I've fixed a few problems with this (mostly the guardian) - I ran into a little bit of a problem with this recommendation - my understanding is that italicization depends mostly on if the text appears as a 'work' or a 'publisher' in the template, so I'd generally be inclined to move all the sources to use 'work' whereever they can, even if it's a bit of a judgement call (for example, BBC news might not necessarily be a 'work', and the BBC documentary listings are even less so). On the other hand, moving everything over to use 'work' instead of 'publisher' conflicts a little with your previous suggestion so I've clearly confused myself a little - can you go into a bit more detail on this recommendation?
Basically, if you're using a publication name it should be italicized, if you're using a URL it can either be italicized or not (but should be consistent - either all are italicized or all aren't), anything else shouldn't be italicized. Nikkimaria (talk) 20:17, 5 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Okay - this should have mostly been sorted out by the other changes, but I'll keep looking Fayedizard (talk) 08:07, 7 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Be consistent in how online news sources are notated
I've made some changes that I think you were thinking of - but I've got a nagging feeling I've missed some - have I missed something obvious?
Well, you've got some that look different still - compare 31 and 75, or 30 and 71, or 55 and 57, or 69 with pretty much anything. Nikkimaria (talk) 20:17, 5 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Made a bunch of changes :) Fayedizard (talk) 08:07, 7 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Replaced Famousscientists (and in the process, improved the year) - dropped the O'brian content, and sourced the discover channel mention - thank you for finding the simpsons reference! :) Fayedizard (talk) 17:49, 4 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Don't repeat cited sources in External links (and that section could stand to be trimmed)
It's been cut down - some repeated links have gone (such as IMDB) because the source has disappeared - It appears logical to keep his homepage even though some info is sourced to it - can we talk about this some more? Fayedizard (talk) 17:49, 4 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, the homepage is an exception to the redundancy rule of redundancy - feel free to keep it. Nikkimaria (talk) 20:17, 5 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I've replaced all book refs (with one exception) with references generated by [3] - this should have addressed the above recommendation as a side effect :) Fayedizard (talk) 17:49, 4 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Awesome, thank you for checking - these all look very sensible and should be quite quick to deal with - although I've been called away unexpectedly so, assuming it's okay by you, I'll work these (and hopefully other changes suggested by more reviewers) in tomorrow evening :) Fayedizard (talk) 07:24, 3 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]


Support. Nice work taking the initiative to carry this through GA and the FA process, especially in light of it being an article that was gradually built up by a variety of editors over time. Polishing articles like these takes a lot of effort. With the changes you've made here I think this very important article meets the FA standards. Lemurbaby (talk) 05:25, 8 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

'Support from Cryptic C62, provided that the concerns from Binksternet are addressed. My big concern is that much of the language is not written in an encyclopedic manner, and that there are far too many instances of irrelevant trivia. The first paragraph of Illness is not really about Hawking so much as it is a collection of tidbits. Phrases like "Worried that he would lose his genius" should be rewritten in a more formal tone, and then there are things like "Hawking married his personal care assistant, Elaine Mason (who was previously married to David Mason, the designer of the first version of Hawking's talking computer)". Blagh! I encourage the authors to ask themselves "Does this actually help the reader understand the subject?" whenever they are tempted to pepper the prose with such factoids. Here are some other nitpicks:

I've dropped the tabloidish bits about David Mason and Mensa, and also I've been quite harsh with the opening paragraph of illness.
Definitely looking better, though there is still some polishing to be done. I will continue to keep an eye out for trivia, and I hope that you will do the same. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 13:37, 19 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • The first paragraph of the lead should make more of an effort to explain why he has been bestowed so many others rather than simply enumerating those honors. I would say that much of the information in the third paragraph should be moved to the first, and even that would not be enough to fully explain how influential this man has been.
So... I've moved quite a bit of the lead around now - very sensible to put the honours after the things he did to earn them! It's now three paragraphs of roughly 'Scentist-honours-celebreity' - I'm happy to take direction on parts you might want expanding... Fayedizard (talk) 08:07, 15 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Try to avoid extremely short paragraphs, particularly the two-sentence nugget in the lead. Such paragraphs should be expanded, merged, or deleted.
So the lead should have been addressed per the above - I've done some more merging and dropping of various parts today - is it looking a little bit better? Fayedizard (talk) 08:07, 15 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • The Illness section seems to assume that the reader is already familiar with the fact that Hawking has an illness. This section is also written out of chronological order, which is confusing.
made some revisions today that I think should have dealt with this....Fayedizard (talk) 08:07, 15 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • "During a TED Conference talk, it took him seven minutes to answer a question." A much more revealing statistic would be one which states how many words or sentences he produced in those seven minutes. As it is currently written, this sentence doesn't give the reader any indication of how difficult speech synthesis is. I have been asked questions which have taken far longer than seven minutes to answer and I can speak perfectly well.
Hmm I'd like to open a bit of a dialog on this... as you know from the AAC article you reviewed, this is a difficult thing to measure - sticking to the sources I've got one that says 15 words a minute http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/09/stephen-hawking-voice_n_1193692.html - but also much less - also very much depends on what he's talking about and so on - how would you feel about "it took him seven minutes before he started answering a question", which I think addresses the ambiguity and makes the point slightly better? Fayedizard (talk) 08:07, 15 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • I am not a fan of the list format for the Publications section. If these publications are notable enough to be mentioned here, shouldn't their significance be described in some way? Some of his books and papers are arguably among the most influential scientific writings ever produced, and yet here they are presented with equal weight given to his children's books.
I've dropped the technical list as a start - on the grounds that his influential science stuff has been talked about in the influential science section. This makes the section much more about his popular writing, which I think is an improvement. I'd be quite happy to drop all of the lists to be honest but I thought this was a natural step to see how people felt.... Fayedizard (talk) 08:07, 15 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
On second thought, it appears that the list format is fairly standard for subjects with a large number of publications. Struck. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 13:37, 19 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • There are some discrepancies between the infobox and the body. The infobox claims that Hawking worked in the field of "Applied mathematics", and that he is known for "Quantum gravity", yet neither of these two terms appear anywhere else in the article. The first is not necessarily an issue, since this may be referring to the singularity theorems, though the broad term "applied mathematics" might be a bit misleading if this is what it refers to. The second is definitely an issue that needs to be addressed, either by adding content related to quantum gravity, or by removing the claim from the infobox if it is not factually accurate.
Whoops - bit of a relic from the peer review - I'd updated the text but not the inforbox - done. Fayedizard (talk) 20:28, 19 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Hawking was passing, but his unimpressive study habits resulted in a final examination score on the borderline between first and second class honours" I'm assuming that both first and second class honours require passing grades, yes? If that's the case, why does the sentence start with "Hawking was passing"? If he was on the borderline between first and second honours, he must necessarily have been passing. This construction might mislead some readers into thinking that he nearly failed the course.
DoneFayedizard (talk) 20:28, 19 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • It isn't clear to me why the Extraterrestrial life subsection is placed in the Career section. The information presented therein does not seem to be career-related, and would be better suited for a Personal beliefs section or something similar.
So my reasoning here is that it follows very nicely from the zero-g flight, and I think it would look best with those two sections together - I can see, for example moving the pair of them into a section called, say, 'Space' but I might want someone to suggest a much better name first... :s Fayedizard (talk) 20:28, 19 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Why not just use the Personal life section? Extraterrestrial life is fairly similar to Religious views, ironically enough. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 16:58, 21 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Moved - looks okay in personal life... :) Fayedizard (talk) 19:23, 21 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • "According to Hawking, a German V-2 missile struck only a few streets away." Relevance?
Dropped as trivial (also another reviewer has commented on same sentence) Fayedizard (talk) 19:15, 21 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Regardless of the outcome of this FAC, I wish to thank Fayedizard and his cohorts for the work they have done thus far. I would be happy to conduct a more thorough review if it is deemed necessary. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 15:31, 14 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you so much for your review! Very sensible and well-thought out stuff - I'm going to do my best to argue you down to 'weak oppose' 'weak support' but there's no doubt that the article will be the better for the process :) Fayedizard (talk) 08:07, 15 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Images are unproblematic, captions are fine. Nikkimaria (talk) 02:55, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Binksternet comments
  • The V-2 "few streets away" sentence is a little vague. Context places it in London but right now it's puzzling rather than smoothly flowing. Do we know if the nearby V-2 strike occurred before the Hawkings left London? Was it the catalyst for the move, or was it later, and more like proof of the wisdom of the move? Or is the bit unnecessary?
Dropped as unnecessary (also another reviewer has commented on same sentence) Fayedizard (talk) 19:15, 21 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • There is ambiguity in this sentence: "Inspired by his mathematics teacher, he originally wanted to study the subject..." The previous sentence is about the interest in science, so the reader may mistakenly think the maths prof inspired young Hawking to enter the field of science, but we find later that the inspiration was for maths.
Reworded Fayedizard (talk) 19:15, 21 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Can we say "maths" in place of "the subject"? Binksternet (talk) 00:13, 22 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

*Regarding University College, when referring to this body do we say "it" or "they"? In the US it's usually "it" but the British way is usually "they", right? (Forgive me my parochial Californianity.) The relevant phrase is "it would not accept applications".

Reworded Fayedizard (talk) 19:15, 21 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Good point - I've asked over at Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style#Query_from_FAC to get a solid answer...
They agree that realised should stay as is. Binksternet (talk) 21:39, 26 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • At the beginning of the "Career" section, the first sentence should include the surname Hawking swapped for one of the instances of "he".
DoneFayedizard (talk) 19:59, 21 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Do we have any sources commenting on the assessment of Hawking's chance to live, stated at the time of first diagnosis? Did Hawking have a period of significant depression—did he initially give up? Or did he charge forward with his life despite the disease?
  • In the highest sorts of literary sources, the sentence starting "Hawking was elected as one of the youngest Fellows" would be trimmed to "Hawking was elected one of the youngest Fellows".
DoneFayedizard (talk) 19:59, 21 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Is the word "namely" needed?
DroppedFayedizard (talk) 19:59, 21 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • This bit is really passive: "discussions with Neil Turok led to the realisation that the no-boundary proposal is also consistent with a universe which is not closed". Can we get a glimpse into Hawking's involvement with this adjustment to the proposal? If the development did not involve Hawking it could be elided.
  • Regarding the Thorne–Hawking–Preskill bet, the article says there was a subscription to Penthouse involved. Of course, Hawking's biography article cannot carry all the details of the related articles, but this seems to be a significant lack which could be mentioned quickly along with the other conditions of the bet. Alternatively, to keep this biography streamlined, the encyclopedia can be presented as only one of the wager loss conditions, not the whole thing.
  • The phrase "announced his plan to take a zero-gravity flight in 2007" should probably replace 2007 with "later that year" as the year was already named.
DoneFayedizard (talk) 19:59, 21 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • In the next sentence, "for the latter" makes no sense to me. (What was the former item?)
Rewritten the surrounding textFayedizard (talk) 19:59, 21 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Hyperbole: "This was the first time in 40 years that he moved freely, without his wheelchair." You know, there was not much difference between Hawking weightless and Hawking floating in bathwater. The point is that Hawking was not suddenly able to bound off of walls or anything really amazing.
DroppedFayedizard (talk) 19:59, 21 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Unnecessary: "The fee is normally US$3,750 for 10 to 15 plunges, but Hawking was not required to pay the fee." This whole sentence is not needed, since we already know Branson paid.
Rewritten so that it is clear that Branson promised to pay for the virgin bit, rather than the vomit comet bit.
Can we provide a synonym for one of the instances of the word "fee" in the sentence? Perhaps "The cost is normally"... Binksternet (talk) 00:13, 22 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Have dropped one of them :) Fayedizard (talk) 14:09, 26 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
DoneFayedizard (talk) 19:59, 21 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Is the 20 April 2009 hospitalisation important enough for this FA? The brief crisis resulted in no lasting damage, no difference in long-term prognosis.
Dropped (and now the paragraph finnishes much more pleasingly… Fayedizard (talk) 23:00, 25 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • If the 20 April 2009 hospitalisation stays in the article, its current placement is awkward. It does not flow from the previous idea. Or maybe just its wording is awkward. Perhaps the paragraph would flow better if we say Hawking continues with his luck, or that the "gloom and doom" prediction was dodged again in April 2009 when a chest infection was swiftly overcome.
  • A firmer word is needed: "Asked why he has still kept the same voice after so many years, Hawking mentioned"... This "mentioned" is actually "answered", isn't it? Or "replied", "responded".
I went with 'stated' Fayedizard (talk) 23:00, 25 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • (On a side note, I am curious to find out how many text-to-speech synthesizers of his preferred model are in his possession. Certainly there would be more than one, and a consideration of how many different places in his house Hawking would want to communicate while not in his wheelchair brings to mind the bath and the bed, at the very least. How many wheelchairs are there—the best back-up one would need its own box. And how many boxes are on the shelf waiting to be called to duty; how many on the workbench waiting to be fixed?)
It's an interesting angle and certainly something we can have a chat about - but most of my information is ancedotal and it's a fairly undersourced area with quite a lot of conflicting information :( Fayedizard (talk) 23:00, 25 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Who? "...interview with Hawking's technician indicates that he is still using"... I bet it is Hawking that is still using rather than the technician. Or recast the troublesome part as "Hawking's technician indicates that an older synthesiser is still being used with circuitry dating from the 1980s"…
I replaced 'he' with Hawking…Fayedizard (talk) 23:00, 25 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Statues: was the 2007 Cambridge statue of Hawking moved to Cape Town in 2008? Or is the Cape Town statue a second casting from the same mould?
I dropped the mention entirely - looks like something has slipped by - I couldn't find any evidence of the statue at all… Fayedizard (talk) 23:00, 25 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Stephen Hawking Building in Cambridge opened on 17 April 2007." I think this needs to start with "The".
Done Fayedizard (talk) 23:00, 25 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Hawking has stated that he did not see much point in obtaining a doctorate if he were to die soon." This needs more context, such as when he said this or at least what period of his life he was referring to (his 20s, of course). Establishing the time frame is especially necessary because the next sentence starts with "Hawking later".
have reworded somewhat…Fayedizard (talk) 00:47, 26 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • The spelling of "led" in "US-led" is American. British style is "lead", pronounced the same. Perhaps the wording can be changed to avoid the led or lead construction. In the same sentence, the two quotes must be cited. This Associated Press article (cited here in the article) says that one of the quoted phrases is other than what is in our biography: we have "based on lies" which is AP's paraphrasing, but Hawking is quoted directly as saying "The war was based on two lies. The first was we were in danger of weapons of mass destruction and the second was that Iraq was somehow to blame for September 11th." Another point with this quote is that we are not seeing Hawking speak out before the war started which is one impression the reader might take away; we are seeing Hawking's disgust with the war after 1.5 years of it. His public disgust was targeting the US 2004 presidential race in an attempt to reduce the votes for incumbent president Bush who strongly pushed for that war. When the Trafalgar Square demonstration is mentioned in the next sentence, it seems as if it an extension of Hawking's earlier anti-war stance, but the sources establish Hawking's anti-war comments as occurring at the demonstration. If there is an earlier anti-war stance established by Hawking it needs its own cite.

    I don't recommend devoting more space to this theme but we should either summarize Hawking accurately or get the quote right.

I've reworded and reduced slightly - could you take another look? I'm not entirely sure I've got this right… Fayedizard (talk) 00:47, 26 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Two clunky instances of "name"-root words in the same sentence: "When asked to name a teacher who had inspired him, Hawking named..." This is followed shortly by a third. How about "sponsored one of the four"?
Reworded. Fayedizard (talk) 00:47, 26 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • "He has visited it"... Visited what? The subject is not clear.
Changed. Fayedizard (talk) 00:47, 26 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I've reduced this Fayedizard (talk) 00:47, 26 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Stronger word needed: "he presented a mathematical basis for his assumptions"... This bit has Hawking making assumptions about alien life but he is not assuming as much as he is theorising or projecting.
Dropped the segment, was never a massive fan… Fayedizard (talk) 14
02, 26 March 2012 (UTC)
  • Not descriptive enough; inaccurate: "Hawking theorised on the existence of extraterrestrial life..." I think Hawking differentiated between possible types of extraterrestrial life.
It's now 'Hawking discussed the existence of' Fayedizard (talk) 14:02, 26 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Interviews with a documentary? "His 2010 book The Grand Design and interviews with the Telegraph and the Channel 4 documentary Genius of Britain..." How about this: "In the Channel 4 documentary Genius of Britain, in his 2010 book The Grand Design, and in interviews with the Telegraph, Hawking has clarified…"
I like it. Done. Fayedizard (talk) 14:02, 26 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • "His ex-wife, Jane, has stated he was an atheist." What period of time did she mean? The sentence uses past tense, so we are left wondering what is the time frame of Hawking's atheism. The next sentence also uses "has stated" which is clunky writing. Further clunkiness is evident with one more "stating" in the paragraph.
reworded, only one stat* left...
DoneFayedizard (talk) 14:02, 26 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • British "lead" or US "led" again? "led him to write".
  • Is this intentional? "accessible to an wider audience"
  • In general, I think references should go at the end of a sentence unless there is a compelling reason to put the reference after a certain fact or interior quote. I believe that refs inside sentences do not aid in reading flow. The most egregious example of this is the ref following "which didn't turn out well for the Native Americans" followed by "he said." There may be others.
  • That's my in-depth run through the prose. Binksternet (talk) 02:28, 22 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think it is a poor choice, the deletion of several sources saying Hawking is an atheist. The information is important, in my opinion. If consensus here overrules me, then the category about being an atheist is orphaned. I would rather see his atheism mentioned in the article. Binksternet (talk) 21:39, 26 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment, while several reviewers have focused on prose, citation consistency, and MOS issues (1a, 2, and 3), I have serious concerns about focus, comprehensiveness and sourcing (1b, 1c, 4), which I don't think this article can overcome during the tenure of a FAC. I'll be typing up my review over the next few days, but can't get to it today. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:55, 25 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose by User:SandyGeorgia, and suggest withdrawal. Concerns over tone, comprehensiveness, sourcing, and structure/organization of this article. While I appreciate that several good reviewers have combed over the prose and the citations for consistency, I don't believe the more important matters of 1b, 1c, and the structure of the article can be addressed within the timeframe of a FAC. The tone of this article-- containing much poorly organized trivia while never really addressing the scientist or the person in depth-- seems more fitting for a pop celebrity (if even that). Organizationally, the article bounces all over the place, reading like a collection of trivia developed piecemeal over time by a collection of writers personally fascinated with Hawking the "celebrity", but never comprehensively addressing the man, his career, his personal life, or his significance as a scientist. It is so easy to find information about Hawking on the internet, that for a featured article, one expects an indepth look at an important scientist-- not a collection of trivia. In fact, while the New York Times bio on Hawking tells us in the first line who he is and why he's important as a scientist, this article's first sentence presents Hawking as a "celebrity", and that tone and focus persists throughout the article. We never get the same clear sense of why Hawking is important that we get from one paragraph of the NYT. This bio gives a sense of why he's significant, and we can also compare with this one.

I suggest serious review is needed by members of the Math and Physics WikiProjects, to better account for the significance of his work as a scientist over the focus on celebrity.

Organization: it's all over the map, and not easily fixable. For starters, "Career"-- which we expect to be a large part of the article and well-developed-- is but a fraction of the article, which bounces around (Early life isn't-- it covers through college, Lists are interspersed in what seems a random fashion, later we come back to Personal life, which is short on discussion of the man, long on trivia, "Career" begins with a discussion of his illness, which is covered again in another section, etc.) I don't understand why there's an entire section devoted to his speech synthesizer or to the bet. Or to each of the choppy sections in Personal life-- none of those sections contains more than a paragraph.

By the way, prose, "Hawking is said to be looking for a replacement since ... " Why "said to be"? By whom? Why leave the reader guessing about why the sentence is phrased that way?

Prose again, "His ex-wife, Jane, has stated he was an atheist.[63] Hawking has stated that he is ... " Was or is? Why the switch frm past to present tense? Did something change, or is this just a grammatical problem?

1c, thorough survey of relevant literature: The Larson biography is hardly used, the Ferguson biography and the White and Gribbin biography are not used, and the Jane Hawkins memoir is mentioned, but not used as a source. We get almost no information about the man in this article, yet there are four biographies that are scarely used. It looks like there's an emphasis on easily accessible information from the Internet and lesser quality sources like newspaper articles. This lack of a serious literature review and reliance on easily digestible newspaper sources seems to have resulted in a piecemeal article that gives undue weight to certain tidbits such as the zero gravity flight, his views on extraterrestrials, discussion of his voice synthesizer, interviews given to students, but short discussion of the significance of the man as a scientist or his work, and no critical evaluation of his contributions.

Uncited text, samples: "He left Oxford for Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where he engaged in the study of theoretical astronomy and cosmology." and "Hawking's daughter, Lucy, is a novelist." and "He has visited the school to deliver a lecture of his own and has also granted a lengthy interview to pupils working on the school magazine, The Albanian." (why do we care????)

Source check, not supported by source, samples only:

  • Article: Hawking was elected one of the youngest Fellows of the Royal Society in 1974, and in the same year he accepted the Sherman Fairchild Distinguished Scholar visiting professorship at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) to work with his friend, Kip Thorne, who was a faculty member there
    • Source: [4] 1974 Stephen was inducted into the prestigious Royal Society on May 2. The family spend the year in Pasadena, California, where Stephen held the Sherman Fairchild Distinguished Scholar visiting professorship at the Caltech;
      • no mention of being the youngest ever Fellow or of Kip Thorne
  • Article: He supplied a mathematical proof, along with Brandon Carter, Werner Israel and D. Robinson, of John Wheeler's no-hair theorem – that any black hole is fully described by the three properties of mass, angular momentum, and electric charge.
  • Article: Subsequently, he became research director at the university's Centre for Theoretical Cosmology. He is also a fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, and a distinguished research chair at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario
  • Article: A Cambridge scientist built a speech generating device that enabled Hawking to write onto a computer with small movements of his body, and then have a voice synthesiser speak what he typed
    • Source: http://www.hawking.org.uk/living-with-als.html
      • The source credits a Californian scientist for developing the computer software and "David Mason, of Cambridge Adaptive Communication" for creating a hardware solution that was portable.
  • Article: Hawking's belief that the lay person should have access to his work led him to write a series of popular science books in addition to his academic work. The first of these, A Brief History of Time, was published on 1 April 1988 by Hawking, his family and friends, and some leading physicists. It stayed on the British Sunday Times best-sellers list for a record-breaking 237 weeks
  • Article: The DECtalk DTC01 voice synthesiser he once used, which has an American English accent, is no longer being produced. Asked why he has still kept the same voice after so many years, Hawking mentioned that he has not heard a voice he likes better and that he identifies with it. Hawking is said to be looking for a replacement since, aside from being obsolete, the synthesiser is both large and fragile by current standards. Although a mid-2009 corporate press release said that he had chosen NeoSpeech's VoiceText speech synthesiser as his new voice
    • Source: http://www.gizmag.com/go/2708/ - a press release
      • No mention of a Dectalk voice, of its accent, or that it is discontinued. No mention why he had kept the same voice or that the synthesiser was large and fragile.

Infobox: Ending with some easy things that shouldn't be happening at this stage, the infobox has numerous items that are cited nowhere in the article. Even if some of this information was cited, it wouldn't belong in the article anyway. There is a long list of "Doctoral students" in the infobox, none of whom are mentioned or cited in the article, several of whom are not red-linked and may not meet notability, and even if they did, why do we care? Unless there is something worth writing about them specifically because they were his doctoral students, why are they mentioned at all? And if they're worth mentioning in an infobox, they're worth mentioning in the article. The infobox also states that Einstein influenced Hawking, but this is mentioned nowhere in the article.

Why is Introduction to quantum mechanics in See also? Why aren't those items worked in to the text? If they're worth mentioning in a featured article, there should be text.

Summarizing, in spite of several people combing through the prose, the article falls short on significant issues of sourcing, comprehensiveness, and a thorough survey of the relevent literature; for a featured article, we should know much more of the significance of Hawking's work and life than that he spent a few seconds of it weightless and that he wasn't charged a fee for that. These are samples only: I suggest withdrawal, reorganization, better sourcing, a more comprehensive look at the man and his work, less emphasis on trivia reported by the media, and review by math and physics WProjects. I just read above that Lemurbaby said "especially in light of it being an article that was gradually built up by a variety of editors over time" and the nominator said "articles that had arisen through many thousands of editors making one or two changes"; that's exactly how it reads, that is the problem, and that is not easily fixed in the timeframe of a FAC. I also wonder if some of the sourcing problems are due to the number of hands in the pot over time. At any rate, it will take some time to replace the inferior newsy sources with the number of biographies that have not been tapped. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:19, 26 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Sandy, thank you so much for the detailed review - you clearly put a lot of work into it and it's also excellent to get a review from someone who is quite so experienced in FA :) I'm going to put a lot of work into this this week - I'd like to get to a place where your position was 'Oppose, but not necessarily withdraw'. Looking through the detail of the review there are very few places where I think the issues are undeserved, many of them I was 50-50 about myself and left them in on the basis that I didn't want to start an edit war with an interested party (I'd particularly agree that the many editors over time is the basis for things like sources getting detached from the right bit of text...). Also, once again, thank you for raising the issue on the relevant wikiprojects - I suspect you will get a much better response than I did.Fayedizard (talk) 09:43, 26 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. Thank you, Sandy, for your spot-on review, you have clearly expressed what I was thinking. I am probably going to provide a review later on. In the mean time, I am hoping for substantial reorganizations of the article, filled with substance and background on his scientific achievements, though I am deeply skeptical. For now, this is a straight "oppose" from my side. Nageh (talk) 21:23, 27 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
PS: Did WP:WikiProject Physics and WP:WikiProject Mathematics get notified and invited for review, as suggested by Sandy? Nageh (talk) 21:28, 27 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Nageh, great to hear from you :) I'm really looking forward to your review - I've made a number of changes based on SG's review and I'm just now waiting to find out if they would be happy with inline replies so I can talk a bit about the steps I've taken to address issues. As it happens, the article has been up at Physics for almost a month - I'm really hoping that Sandy's badgering might encourage more reviewers than mine did... might try maths as well but as I'd posted to Bio, disability, and physics I was worrying about spamming...Fayedizard (talk) 21:41, 27 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, I didn't realize you were waiting for a response from me. I don't think you can get there from here, with or without inlines. It is unfortunate that so many other reviewers spent time on polishing the prose, when the piecemeal article does not fulfill the basics of 1c, a thorough survey of the relevant literature. You can't just fix what I've listed by resourcing a few items from the laypress to the available bios; the article needs a complete overhaul, and that is best done off FAC. I suggest withdrawal and a complete rewrite after consulting the serious literature and the WProjects Math and Physics. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:09, 27 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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