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Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/United States Academic Decathlon/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 promoted by SandyGeorgia 23:49, 9 May 2009 [1].

United States Academic Decathlon

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Nominator(s): Yohhans, NuclearWarfare (Talk)''
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I am nominating this for featured article because I feel that the article has been significantly improved to the point where it meets the FA Criteria. I first found the article as this in the beginning of March. I've worked on it since then, with the assistance of several editors, such as Bibliomaniac15, Awadewit, and Laser brain; the latter two even quite graciously copyedited the article. The work done by Titoxd, CryptoDerk, and Jesse0986 were before my time; they possibly could have been major contributors and are free to add their names to the nomination.

Just to give a bit of background for those who are unaware: The United States Academic Decathlon is one of the premier academic competitions in the United States for high school students. Since the early 1980s, it has held annual competitions that start at regional levels and culminate with a national championship in April. For those who like to counter one area of Wikipedia's biases in coverage: USAD falls under WikiProject Education's scope, an area that has only about 35 featured articles. NuclearWarfare (Talk) 04:39, 2 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comments -
  • Newspapers titles in the references should be in italics. If you're using {{cite news}}, use the work field for the title of the paper, and the publisher field for the name of the actual company that publishes the paper (I noticed Current ref 97 (PHS...) but there may be others)
  • One concern is going to be the large number of references that go to the organization itself. I'm not saying this in necessarily bad, but it can be a concern to reviewers. I'm merely noting the fact for other reviewers to consider for themselves.
    • I remember thinking that myself, but unfortunately, I have pretty much exhausted every source I could find. I went through some of the newspaper and magazine archives I have access to (Gale, mostly) and Bibliomaniac did as well (Newsbank), and we are essentially tapped out. NW (Talk) (How am I doing?) 18:13, 3 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Otherwise, sources look okay, links checked out with the link checker tool. Ealdgyth - Talk 17:46, 3 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
In my opinion, the material that is sourced to the organization (such as structure of the tournament and scoring) is uncontroversial). The controversial material, such as the cheating scandals or the criticisms of the changes in the competition, are sourced to external sources, such as newspapers. This seems to fall in line with our policy. Awadewit (talk) 20:40, 3 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Support (Disclaimer: I reviewed and copyedited this article. I also briefly participated in AD way back when I was in HS.) This article is comprehensive and well-written - it coherently explains the competition without going into excessive detail. As I mention above, I think its use of sources abides by our reliable source policy. Nice work. Awadewit (talk) 20:40, 3 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Image review - All of the free images in this article have verifiable licenses and adequate descriptions. The image of the medals, a fair use image, is one of those that I would say reasonable people could disagree about. Personally, I think it meets WP:NFCC, but I think other reviewers should weigh in on it. Awadewit (talk) 20:43, 3 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comments - I was impressed with the overall quality of this article. Here is a list of tweaks that could be made throughout the page; note that I don't normally make it through an article of this size in one shot.

  • History: "In 1981, the nationwide United States Academic Decathlon Association was formed, which held...". The "which" is awkward in this position, since it should be for the association, not "formed". Tweaking the sentence structure should be enough to fix this issue.
    • Changed in "In 1981, the newly-formed United States Academic Decathlon Association held the first national competition..."
  • "as the the material was a persuasive essay...". Grammar error.
    • Huh, I'm surprised AWB missed this. Fixed.
  • Later in this paragraph, move ref 27 outside the parentheses.
    • Done.
  • Levels of competition: "but these are largely for practice and do not determine whether a team can compete at the regional level which uses Round 2 tests." Comma before "which".
    • Done.
  • "participated in the the national competition." This is the second time a repeated "the" has shown up.
    • Fixed.
  • The table of topics is causing edit bunching.
    • Hmm, it isn't on mine. Can you tell me what size monitor you are using? I'll see if I can change to that and reformat it.
      • I'm on a large widescreen (don't know the exact size, but you'd be happy to edit the encyclopedia on it :-)), and the table is pushing three edit tabs to the left. To be honest, I don't know if the problem can be resolved without taking the table out of that section. Note that I'm talking about the yearly table, not the percentage breakdown; that table is fine. Giants2008 (17-14) 23:54, 5 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
        • Oh yes, that happens to me on mine as well. From the way the sections are set up, I don't think it is possible to fix without changing the structure of the article drastically. Honestly, since it doesn't make the edit links merge into each other on any resolution that I tried, I don't think it is a big deal. NW (Talk) (How am I doing?) 00:08, 6 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
          • Actually it's a simple matter of changing the CSS you used. I'll see what I can do. - Yohhans talk 14:31, 6 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
          • I've fixed the weird spacing issue, but if viewed on screens with resolutions of 1920x1080 or 1900x1200, bunching is caused by the "Book of the Dead of Nany" picture. This can easily be fixed by floating either the picture or table to the left (one or the other). Any preference on which to do? Another possible fix is shortening the caption for that picture, but that is more of a band-aid than a fix. - Yohhans talk 15:05, 6 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
            • Yay, you are back :) I moved the image to the left and shortened the description somewhat, but that still did not fix the problem. I then added {{clear}}, which fixed the problem, but made it look kind of odd. Can you check that out, please? NW (Talk) (How am I doing?) 18:08, 6 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
              • What problem were you having with it before you added the clear template? Removing it makes everything work fine for me. Yohhans talk 18:34, 6 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
                • Without {{clear}}, the "Objective Events" header gets bumped left over a little. I think it looks better if all the subheadings are in the same column, so I felt that clearing it and adding a tiny bit more lines wouldn't affect it that much. NW (Talk) (How am I doing?) 19:04, 6 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

(outdent) Ah, I take it you're looking at this in 1280x1024 resolution. At a higher resolution (e.g. 1680x1050), there's a rather large gap of white space when using {{clear}}. How about this... Why not just move the table to below the Themes and topics subheading; make it centered and 80% width? Either that or remove the clear div and put up with slightly misaligned headings? I've taken the liberty of changing the layout to what I think is a decent solution. Feel free to revert; a little white space never hurt anyone. However, another idea is to remove it entirely... I mean, if a person really wants that information, they can just click through to the main topics article. *shrugs* Just a thought. - Yohhans talk 19:59, 6 May 2009 (UTC) Scratch that. That looks amazingly ugly. My personal opinion is that removing {{clear}} is the best option. But, then again, a little white space never hurt anyone. - Yohhans talk 20:03, 6 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  • Scoring and winning: Take the en dash out of "near-perfect" and just use a regular hyphen.
    • Dashes confuse me. Fixed.
  • Controversies: "Three days before the 1995 Illinois state competition, Steinmetz obtained copies of the tests from the DeVry Institute of Technology where the state finals were being held." Comma before "where".
    • Done.
  • Virtual competition: Comma for 1300.
    • Done.
  • "Despite it being a virtual competition". The word "being" is somewhat awkward here. How about tryinig something like "Although it is a virtual competition"?
    • Changed to "Although it is only a virtual competition,"

After these are done, I plan on supporting. Giants2008 (17-14) 01:29, 4 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I got all of these except for the one dealing with edit bunching, to which I left a followup. Thanks for your review. NW (Talk) (How am I doing?) 01:43, 4 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support - Table is still forcing one edit button to the left, but that seems to be unavoidable due to the size of the table. Despite that, it's one of the best articles I've reviewed so far this year. It has clearly been written by someone with a passion for the subject, and it definitely looks comprehensive. Also seems pretty well-sourced; although there are a lot of primary sources, nothing looks overly contentious. All in all, fantastic work. Giants2008 (17-14) 16:35, 9 May 2009 (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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