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Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/1930 FIFA World Cup/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 20:04, 12 December 2009 [1].

1930 FIFA World Cup edit

Nominator(s): Oldelpaso (talk) 17:29, 16 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
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With the 2010 World Cup just around the corner, this is my attempt to give the very first edition of the most prestigious tournament in football (or soccer if you prefer) the article it deserves. While today the World Cup is a media extravaganza rivalled only by the Olympics, its origins were far more humble. Ignored completely by much of Europe, crowds were a mere few hundred at the start of the tournament. By the final, they had grown to 93,000, and the rest is history. The boring part: the article is a current GA, and has had two peer reviews. The images are free, and since I've taken it as far as I can, its time for the FAC microscope. Oldelpaso (talk) 17:29, 16 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Awadewit image clearance moved to talk. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:23, 27 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. Interesting article. Could the single "See also" link be incorporated somewhere in the prose? It also seems a little confused - if Uruguay were chosen as hosts partly because they offered to refund the expenses of the participants, why did European countries consider the trip too expensive? And then why did things change after the Uruguayan government agreed to pay travel expenses? (Or was the first offer to cover non-travel expenses, and then later it was extended to travel for European countries?) Trebor (talk) 18:06, 16 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
If I had been writing an essay or blog post, I'd have expanded on this more, but I'm wary of synthesis. Professionalism was in its infancy - the first professional league outside Britain was not formed until 1924 (in Vienna), and in 1930 professionalism in continental Europe was mainly limited to Central Europe and Spain. So in many cases the players were amateurs. Since this was the time of the Great Depression, taking a lengthy period off work would no doubt represent a big risk for players. The colonial attitudes of Old Europe played a part too. I'll try to add a little, but I shall have to be careful not to advance beyond what is explicitly stated in the sources. Oldelpaso (talk) 14:06, 17 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Technical comments

  • Ref 38 is broken, both in availability and formatting. Use {{cite web}} with the format parameter instead, and don't worry about the size. Otherwise, external links all work, and no dab links.
  • The infobox needs alt text and may need changes to its template for that purpose.

--an odd name 18:21, 16 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  • I have fixed {{Infobox International Football Competition}} to support alt text; please use its new |alt= parameter to describe that (very cool) lead image. Also, the alt text for File:Red card.svg currently says "Sent off in the 54th minute", which isn't right: the visual appearance is merely that of a red card, so the alt text should say just "Red card". The rest of the alt text looks very good; thanks! Eubulides (talk) 19:50, 16 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Ref fixed and alt text added for the lead image. I'm struggling to work out how to do so for the red card as a template is involved. Oldelpaso (talk) 08:02, 18 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I fixed that red card template. The alt text all looks very good now; thanks. Eubulides (talk) 08:31, 18 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comments -
  • Decide if you're going to refer to the FIFA site as "FIFA official website" "FIFA" or "FIFA.com" Also whether it's going to be italicised or not. All references to that need to be consistent.
  • Current ref 13 (Lara...) is in Spanish? Needs to note that in the reference.
  • Please spell out abbreviations in the notes. Yes, they are linked, but you don't want your readers to leave your article, they might never return. I noted RSSSF particularly.
  • : Otherwise, sources look okay, links checked out with the link checker tool. Ealdgyth - Talk 16:01, 19 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, all done, assuming I've interpreted your comment about abbreviations correctly. Oldelpaso (talk) 16:00, 8 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comments – A pleasing read overall, but I am a little concerned about the third comment below. I'll probably check some more for this before any offer of support

  • Origins: I see nothing in the source given (reference 2) about soccer's lack of popularity in the U.S. Also, baseball was the number one sport in the country at the time, not American football. In fact, the National Football League had a very limited fan base in 1932, though the college game was popular at the time.
  • The "Not only...but" sentence structure is long and awkward in most cases, and it appears to be here. See if this can be re-worded.
  • Major problem in Summary: "The USA were seeded on account of the professional soccer league in the USA at the time" is pretty much identical to what is in the source. I hope this isn't a trend elsewhere.
  • Is the anecdote at the end of Group 2 covered in the following reference (26)?
  • Group 3: "when Placido Galindo of Peru was dismissed against Romania. Romania...". Notice the repetition at the end? That's something to fix.
  • Final: "and Uruguay thus added the title World Cup winners to their mantle of Olympic Champions." Should Champions be capitalized like this?
  • Commas before and after Buenos Aires? Giants2008 (27 and counting) 23:43, 19 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Mention of football's popularity or otherwise in the US removed. I've also removed the plagiarised sentence, which didn't add much anyway. I've tracked it down to this edit, which using the edit count tool appears to be that user's only edit to the article.
I'm sure the colours anecdote is in one of my books but I can't find it at the moment. I've commented it out pending a cite. All other points addressed. Oldelpaso (talk) 12:36, 22 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Few more comments after looking at a few of the FIFA sources:
  • Reference 1 doesn't cover either of the facts it's supposed to be citing. The information is on different pages, which should be cited instead.
  • One of those pages (this one) sheds new light on why the European teams didn't participate; according to the source the Europeans' "clubs would have to renounce their best players for two months." That certainly seems useful for the appropriate section.
  • Reference 33 says that Bert Patenaude had the first hat-trick, but has none of the article's details on the reattributed goal. Giants2008 (27 and counting) 22:25, 1 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Done. I've only added the briefest mention of the lengthy absences for European players; though they were away for two months, those months fell in the off-season. Oldelpaso (talk) 10:46, 3 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from WFCforLife

  • I'm generally in favour of images and icons that add to articles. But are the Olympic style medals in the infobox accurate? I.e. did the winners receive gold medals, the runners up silver, third place bronze and fourth place nothing? If that is the case, fair enough, but if not they should probably be removed.
  • There's no need to create any of the redlinked articles. Indeed I would discourage you from doing so, unless you are motivated to take them beyond stubs. Seeing a redlink on a prominent wikipedia page was what encouraged me to join in the first place, and that article is now quite good. I digress. I'm just wondering whether Almeida Rego and Juan Scasso should be linked at all? I've got no idea what the criteria are for architects, and I can't tell whether the European referees have articles because of systemic bias, or because their involvement in the final/other competitions makes them notable. If Rego is notable, he should also be redlinked in the matches he refereed, as the other referees are bluelinked.
  • Might be worth expanding upon tournament attendance, maybe in the venues section? The attendance statistics in the infobox may be technically accurate, but it's not a true reflection of the situation.

Hope those help for the time being, WFCforLife (talk) 09:07, 27 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  • The medal colours in the infobox are an artifact of the infobox itself. I agree that it isn't really appropriate, and have boldly amended the infobox template to remove them.
  • Searching Scasso's name on Spanish Wikipedia comes up with a number of major buildings in Montevideo, so I'd say he's notable enough to be linked. For the referees, it could probably go either way. Judging by the number of articles about for referees, and that this tournament is the highest level, redlinks may be appropriate, but I would have thought that sources are few for some of them.
  • I would be interested in doing so, but unfortunately the only matches for which sources tend to go into any depth about attendances are the exceptionally low ones, and the final. In each case this is already mentioned elsewhere. Other than to say that Uruguay drew more spectators as they were the home team, which is hardly the biggest insight, I'm not sure what else I could add. Oldelpaso (talk) 09:14, 28 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support I found this to be an interesting read, I hadn't appreciated how different the World Cup was that far back. It's comprehensive without too much extraneous detail, and I couldn't see any glaring prose or technical errors Jimfbleak - talk to me? 07:46, 29 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

*Oppose at the moment. I've left some notes on the talk page of the article, hopefully some of them are useful. The Rambling Man (talk) 16:03, 4 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  • Support thanks for taking the care and attention to address my specific concerns. Good work. The Rambling Man (talk) 16:18, 10 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Generally addressed with one exception, specific responses on article talk. Oldelpaso (talk) 15:41, 6 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support it was a nice read. I have added an image of Rimet since he is probably the most important figure for starting the WC (feel free to rewrite the caption). Personally I would strongly prefer having an image of the trophy also (since it was designed for this event initially) and some image of the final/winning squad. Also, I would merge the four group articles into one "WC1930 - group stage" and I would trim down some stuff from the results section with formats used in more recent events such as in 2008–09_UEFA_Champions_League. Nergaal (talk) 18:53, 7 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I have removed the Rimet image due to Fasach Nua's concerns below. I have, however, added an image of (the surviving replica of) the trophy – I'd completely forgotten about the picture I took of it, which was taken during the same museum trip as the ball images. I know of no free image of that Uruguay team. On result formats, I agree that for longer tournaments the format you linked to is better, but by modern standards this was a short tournament, so my personal preference is for the detailed format, the length of which is not problematic when used here. Oldelpaso (talk) 15:58, 8 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]


  • Rimet image removed, see response to Nergaal above.
  • Are thumbs of detailed images not acceptable? I can't find anything about it in the MOS. Since we're not supposed to force image size, I don't see how any world map can avoid needing a clickthrough in this way.
  • I only have the information in the image page itself (which was kindly translated from Russian by User:Conscious). Would any of the other images in commons:Category:Estadio Centenario be more appropriate?
  • In the Manual of Style, the restriction against forced image sizes was lifted earlier this year. If you want to make the image larger for improved readability on the page, that is a situation the change covers. Giants2008 (27 and counting) 22:11, 8 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, right. Image and key enlarged. Oldelpaso (talk) 10:41, 10 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Commons:Template:PD-Uruguay would be appropriate, assuming the existing tag is correct, ideally images should be free in the country of origin Fasach Nua (talk) 00:19, 12 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]


  • dates - The use of dates should be consistent, either use dd-mmm-yy format or dd-mmm format, the two should not be mixed
1930s removed where the narrative makes it obvious. Should now be full date on first reference in a section, with the year omitted on subsequent dates in the same year.
  • FIFA was not the world governing body it is now, it may be useful to show a map with the members on, there were notable non-members, such as the home nations who did not attend for reasons other than the journey Fasach Nua (talk) 22:33, 7 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Of the major footballing nations of the period, the Home Nations were the only FIFA holdouts. I get the feeling that this would be rather veering off-topic if covered in too much detail. I have edited the sentence about the FA to mention the Home Nations as none-FIFA members. Oldelpaso (talk) 15:58, 8 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Done. Oldelpaso (talk) 10:23, 10 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support – My comments were resolved a while ago. As I said above, I enjoyed reading this, and I think the criteria are all met. Giants2008 (27 and counting) 21:07, 10 December 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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