Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates/John McCain/archive1

Closing notes

Because this FAC offered a potpourri of issues and no clear consensus, I'm going to add my closing rationale.

Regarding the stability issue, pls see this thread at WT:FAC, specifically:

As already pointed out on the John McCain FAC, and in this past talk page thread, the stability criterion is:

1 (e) "Stable" means that the article is not the subject of ongoing edit wars and that its content does not change significantly from day to day, except for edits made in response to the featured article process.

I saw no evidence of instability and in my opinion, none of the Opposers declaring 1e, instability, established that this article was unstable. Being a candidate does not preclude a candidate article from becoming featured, and I did not consider those opposes.

Setting those aside, there were six opposes, raising issues encompassing 1a (prose), 1d (neutrality), 2 (MOS), 2c (citations), and 4 (size). Most significantly, the principle editor did not feel that the article had been prepared for FAC, and with the exception of the size, the other issues were not being addressed.

There were four supports, but one of the supporters agreed the article was too long. There were three "weak" or "moral" supports, which I discounted, as these editors' declarations ranged from ambivalence to mention of deficiencies.

This article was nominated by someone who had never edited the article, the article had not been through any other content review process (good article or peer review), and there is talk page precedent at WT:FAC that an article can be withdrawn if the significantly principle editor agrees it's not ready. The main considerations for closing rather than restarting the stalled nomination were that 1) the significantly principle editor opposed and agreed it wasn't ready, 2) the valid opposes raised numerous issues that hadn't been addressed between January 21 and March 5, and 3) support was not strong, rather ambivalent. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:37, 5 March 2008 (UTC)