Wikipedia

Wikipedia:Featured article review/2012 tour of She Has a Name/archive1

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

The article was delisted by DrKiernan via FACBot (talk) 10:18, 14 February 2015 (UTC) [1].[reply]

2012 tour of She Has a Name

edit
Notified: Cirt, WikiProject Canada, WikiProject Theatre; article creator and nominator Neelix has retired
There has been no talk page discussion per se, but I believe the AFD stands in lieu of that step of a conventional FAR nomination.

Review section

edit

This ... is likely to be contentious, I fear. As regards the FA criteria, I have concerns based on 1b, 1c, 4. And more broadly, WP:CFORK. First, some background. This article was created as a result of the first FA candidacy for the parent article She Has a Name. There, amid suggestions that the article was overlong in some aspects, Cirt suggested, and the article's primary editor, Neelix implemented, a split of some material into two daughter articles: the one currently under discussion here, and Critical response to She Has a Name. All of these articles have had a long history with the curated content processes, and several trips apiece to FAC, but only the 2012 tour article has the bronze star. Both daughter articles were recently subject to AFD discussions, largely on undue weight grounds; the AFD for this article was closed no consensus by Drmies, who essentially suggested that FAR was the proper first venue. His closure of the Critical response AFD redirected it to the parent article. Both AFDs were complicated by participation by unclean hands accounts evidently involved in harassing Neelix, coordinated offsite; perhaps as a consequence of those actions, Neelix has retired from the project. I consider that detestable, and I hope he is able to return to editing at some point ... but I nevertheless do have concerns about this articles fitness with respect to the FA criteria.

  • 1b: Part of the "comprehensiveness" criterion is that the article "places the subject in context". But that's not true here. Simply put, there was nothing special about the 2012 performances of this play. The overwhelming bulk of the references for this article are the same as the references for the parent article. And the two, by and large, say about the same things. That's because there's not a separate topic to be had here. That's the principle (at least in part) behind WP:NOTINHERITED. This is part of the undue weight issue at hand: by taking the 2012 performances out of context, it provides the impression that this tour is somehow distinctly notable, rather than just a natural aspect of the play itself. I do think it's possible for a theatrical tour, or even an individual performance, to be notable—but those should clearly be the exception rather than the rule, and this just isn't it. While I'm aware of the inherent weakness of WP:OTHERSTUFFDOESNTEXIST, sometimes it's important to analyze the reason for that non-existence. Context is a big part of it.
  • 1c: Criterion 1d is the sourcing criterion. Now, obviously, this article is exhaustively sourced. But the FA criteria demand "high-quality" sources (emphasis mine). I objected on these grounds in the parent article's second AFD, and those objections are still true here. Why are free community paper London Community News or family-published Christian paper Country Sunrise News high-quality sources? Or the Mennonite Brethren Herald (which doesn't even seem to have an About Us or editorial policy page available) which added an About Us page since 2013? One of the few references that directly discusses differences between the 2012 tour performances and the 2011 showings of the play is the Maranatha News; I'm not certain that constitutes a reliable source, much less a high-quality one.
  • 4: The length criterion requires that coverage not be overly deep nor overly shallow. This is simply too much detail, and the net effect is to make the play in general—and the 2012 tour in particular—appear more important and more renowned that the sources warrant.

Ultimately, this is an acceptably well-written and exhaustively researched content fork, but that doesn't mean its not a content fork. We don't (and probably shouldn't) have unique articles for every production of Cats, nor for every time a film is re-released to the theaters, nor do we source theatrical articles to every small-town micropress to comment on them. Or at least, if we do, we shouldn't expect the result to be awarded the bronze star. I continue to believe that the correct course of action is to rebuild the parent article with a selective subset of the sources, giving the 2012 performances no more—and no less—weight than they deserve. But what I don't believe is that there is any way that this article can be altered to meet the FA standards. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 22:03, 21 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

  • We certainly hold different opinions about this article with regard to the FA criteria. However, I am not "quite upset"; please don't make insinuations about my motivations here. If nothing else, the number of editors with substantial contribution records who advocated deletion at the AFD would warrant a status review here, even absent the AFD closer's suggestion that doing so might be prudent. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 22:33, 21 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Please review FAR instructions: Keep and delist are not declared in the FAR phase, which is for identifying and hopefully resolving issues. Keep or delist are declared in the FARC phase, should the article progress to that. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:45, 21 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Merge to She Has a Name. In all fairness to the article creator, this is a WP:CONTENTFORK I believe, as are the other side articles about this play. All of the side articles are overly detailed, overly prolix, and probably repetitive of each other. It seems the article creator does not yet know how to be concise, how to summarize, how to recognize relevant detail versus unnecessary detail, and how to avoid redundancy and repetition. I think the article creator is an excellent writer and researcher, and simply needs guidance and mentorship in those areas I mentioned. (That is, if they return to Wikipedia; I have heard that the editor has been hounded off of WP by a group of trolling types.) Softlavender (talk) 22:48, 21 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Notwithstanding the fact that the AFD closer suggested bringing it here, this honestly feels like an WP:IDONTLIKEIT-based fishing expedition. Seems some people didn't get the result they wanted at AFD, so now we're switching forums. That said, onto the concerns. I don't buy CFORK if a WP:SPLIT was suggested due to length reasons. Comprehensiveness: The opinion that "there was nothing special about the 2012 performances of this play." is irrelevant to the featured article process. The remainder of the 1b argument is a rehash of the failed AFD. The 1c argument is effectively only casting aspersions against various publications. The argument regarding point 4 of the FA criteria is again an irrelevant argument about the subjective "importance" of the article subject. I might agree that this is a very well written article about a very trivial thing, but the argument presented here largely fails to present actionable deficiencies. Resolute 00:15, 22 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Just because a split on length was proposed, does not mean it was warranted, and I believe that unnecessary forking is absolutely an actionable deficiency as FAC/FAR understands it (if the delegates feel otherwise, I'd be happy to stand corrected on that point). WP:SPLIT is not intended to be the Banach–Tarski paradox for articles, capable of making two where one would suffice. As for the sourcing, given their own self-descriptions, if you're going to convince me that Country Sunrise News and Maranatha News especially are reliable sources, it will take more than suggesting that I'm forum shopping and "casting aspersions". Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 01:16, 22 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • If you can't get a consensus that this article should not exist, then I am not willing to pull the featured status on the basis of disagreeing with the article's existence. The only question with any validity here is the media cites, and I don't see them as self-evident fails. Certainly not if they went through the FAC process, of which regular reviewers are often highly focused on those same sources. Resolute 02:19, 22 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. I agree with Drmies and Squeamish Ossifrage that FAR was and is in order for this article. The fact is, the AfD was in obvious bad faith, and the proper proposal would have been a Merge proposal, not an AfD. Reso, if you say "I might agree that this is a very well written article about a very trivial thing," "but the argument presented here largely fails to present actionable deficiencies", the deficiencies are that it is a (vastly in my opinion) overly detailed and unnecessary content fork. The actionability is to Merge or to open a Merge proposal. That's how I see it. Softlavender (talk) 10:09, 22 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Again, if you cannot get a consensus that this article should not exist, then I am not willing to pull the featured status on the basis that it should not exist. Merge requests do not require FAR. Resolute 16:06, 22 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Agree that whoever requested the FAR should probably eventually propose a Merge Request. However, I don't personally believe this FAR was submitted in bad faith. Nearly everyone here so far agrees that this is an (overly) large article about a very trivial thing; which in itself should cause some head-scratching, drastic gutting of extraneous bloat, and eventually questioning of the FA status as to whether it actually warrants FA or not. I think the FAR was and is a possibly necessary step before a Merge Request, given that the FA status can have too much of a halo effect in those discussions (just like it did for me personally in the AfD). Softlavender (talk) 00:39, 24 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment The article, as currently written, contains a lot of problematic wording. I'll just document what I found in the first two paragraphs of the lede:
  1. "Despite the fact that She Has a Name is set in Southeast Asia, the producers deliberately cast mostly actors who were not of Asian descent to avoid the impression that human trafficking happens only in Asia." -- this wording implies through the passive voice that the producer's choice is somehow noble when the action is prima facie racist. At the very least, it should be acknowledged that race in the theater is something that has been seriously interrogated (e.g. [2]). If there is no independent notice of the racism of this tour, then such discussion deserves removal.
  2. "Panel discussions were held after the Saturday matinées during the tour to raise awareness about human trafficking that takes place in Canada and elsewhere." -- This is not an encyclopedic phrasing for the lede of an article. The assumption here is that "raising awareness" took place as a sui generis attribute of a panel discussion. This evaluative claim is probably what the tour producers wanted, but it is hardly a dispassionate coverage of the fact.
  3. "while She Has a Name toured across Canada to raise awareness about human trafficking, ABW raised money to help women and children who had been trafficked in Thailand as part of the country's prostitution industry." Compound coatracked claims here. The proper way to write about this tour is that it was intended to raise awareness. There is an implication that this actually occurred while there is no evidence of this. The claim as well is that the money raised "helped women and children". Again an arguable claim. If the money went directly into their pockets, that may have helped them, but it didn't according to the article. It is essentially a political claim that the charitable money raised "helped women and children". It's also not clear that the money actually helped any "trafficked women and children" since there isn't any sources in the article that I can see which document how the money was spent precisely. Finally, there is a compound claim that the Thailand's regulated "prostitution industry" has, as a part of it, "human trafficking". This is like saying that Pakistan's regulated poppy cultivation industry has a part of "drug trafficking". A case can be made, but it is not neutral to simply posit that this is necessarily the case when there are legal strictures in place in Thailand that specifically prohibit human trafficking as part of the regulated prostitution in the country.
So it seems there is a lot to do to clean up this article to bring it into line with what an encyclopedic article should look like. As it stands, this is not a very good reflection of the quality control features of Wikipedia.
jps (talk) 00:33, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Merge to She Has a Name. I agree with the comments from DGG (and others similar) at the separate but related AFD at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Critical response to She Has a Name, and believe those comments apply equally here. There is too much duplication of content, and the separation of articles almost appears more for the purpose of generating a featured topic than for any useful reason. The article passed FAC with minimal support, with one reviewer (Nick-D) expressing reservations.

A (successful) merge request on the article would likely result in a delisting of this Featured Article, which is the course of action I support here and the reason a merge request for a Featured article happens at FAR. See Wikipedia:Featured article review/Meteorological history of Tropical Storm Allison/archive1 for a similar merge FAR resulting in the demotion of an unnecessary content fork, which I believe to be the same case here. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 05:22, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion of other possible FA content forks
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
  • At the risk of being a bit off-topic, mostly, no. I scanned the FA list, looking for either sets of multiple articles on the same general subject or single articles on extremely specific subtopics. In no particular order:
  • Saffron is part of a set of 3 FAs, and while I can quibble a bit about where the divisions were made (and some cleanup wouldn't hurt), there really is a lot of material on one of the world's most famous and valuable spices.
  • Australian cricket team in England in 1948 is a GA, but individual articles for each player on that team are FAs (such as Ernie Toshack with the Australian cricket team in England in 1948). There's fairly little textual overlap, and since this was evidently one of the most significant bit of cricket-playing in the world, perhaps the detail is understandable.
  • Leningrad première of Shostakovich's Symphony No. 7 is an example of when an article on a specific performance is warranted, and stands starkly in contrast to the one under discussion here.
  • Ricketts Glen State Park / Waterfalls in Ricketts Glen State Park. A full merger would be impossible for space concerns. The subtopic leans a bit heavier on the 2004 Brown source than I'd really prefer, but strangely enough, this actually seems like an ultra-narrow topic that exists with cause.
  • Rongorongo / Decipherment of rongorongo. A full merger would unquestionably have space concerns. I have objections about the subtopic article's organization and lack of a cohesive synthesis by third parties. I suspect this does not meet the modern FA standard (but it's also an unreviewed 2008 promotion, so that's not entirely surprising).
So, in general, no, I don't think this is indicative of a wider problem. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 19:09, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
What about video games and movies?
E.g.) Final Fantasy · Final Fantasy Tactics · Final Fantasy VI · Final Fantasy VIII · Final Fantasy IX · Final Fantasy X · Final Fantasy X-2 · Final Fantasy XI · Final Fantasy XII · Final Fantasy XIII · Final Fantasy XIII-2
Or Star Trek: First Contact · Star Trek: The Motion Picture · Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan · Star Trek III: The Search for Spock · Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home · Star Trek V: The Final Frontier · Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
jps (talk) 21:47, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I'd be happy to engage in this analysis in greater depth, although that discussion should probably happen somewhere else. That said, I think that the individual entries in a series of video games or films are clearly separate topics, and so not at all what's going on with article in this FAR, nor the idea of excessive subtopic splitting in general. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 22:02, 29 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Regarding the Ernie Toshack and other cricketers in 1948 articles, at least they seem to be backed up by research from scholarly books, rather than to local newspapers.—indopug (talk) 14:44, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I am unware of others like this. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:31, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Move to FARC for further commentary; nine days in, concerns persist. @FAR coordinators: , Nikkimaria supported the FAC, so is a likely recusal. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:05, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

FARC section

edit
Concerns over prose, sourcing and unnecessary level of detail. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 20:01, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Featured_article_review/2012_tour_of_She_Has_a_Name/archive1&oldid=1077421507"