Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Brabham

Brabham

Self nomination Current Good Article on a former Formula One team and racing car manufacturer with an interesting history. I've been working this one up over the last 6 months or so, on and off. It is comprehensive - more so that most webpages on the topic, which tend only to cover the team's F1 involvement. It's also pretty thoroughly referenced mainly from hardcopy sources (although no doubt someone will immediately spot something I've missed :)). It was peer reviewed here - all the issues raised were dealt with to the satisfaction of the peer reviewers. Finally, I think I've pegged all the relevant bits from WP:MoS. I believe it is now up to FA standard, but await your views. Thanks in advance. <ducks and hides under desk> 4u1e 00:40, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Support Don't be like that 4u1e, Brabham is a great article and it's rating as a GA, in my opinion, is an understatement. Great job!. --Skully Collins ^Edits 07:20, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment Oh, I'm not that worried! In fact, since my concern for the article is that I'm too close to it, I'll be quite happy if/when someone points out a problem with it. Thanks for the support :D 4u1e 08:09, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Neutral Very close, just one thing that concerns me, the image used in the infobox is also used later on in the article (with the caption "The Brabham BT52 was the first turbocharged car to win the F1 drivers' championship"). Also the copyright notice of the image seems a bit dodgy to me, and I couldn't find anything on the source website to confirm it. Suggest that a logo be used in the infobox and if possible proof of the the BT52's copyright status be found (or the image replaced). I will support when this is done. Alexj2002 09:24, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

I'll check out the BT52 picture copyright notice, it's not one of the ones I loaded (there's a pic of a BT49 around somewhere if this one's not OK). Regarding logos, I agree, but have a small concern. I originally had the BRO logo at the top of the page. Because BRO only represents a small part of the team's history, I was going to go with the team's most recent logo (the scorpion/snake thing). I have a gif of this one, but didn't record the site I got it from and cannot now find it on the web anywhere. This means I can't fulfil the requirement to give the source of the image. Any advice? 4u1e 09:56, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

You're right. Very dodgy licensing, and the pic has gone from that website as far as I can see. I've replaced it with a cc-by licensed image of a BT49 from flickr.com in the text and the BRO logo at the top of the page. 4u1e 10:18, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Try [1] for the snake/scorpion logo. Alexj2002 10:20, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

That's the one. Apparently it's referred to as Hissing Sid. Don't know why it didn't come up on search. I'll fix that one tonight. Cheers. 4u1e 10:23, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Done. Thanks for finding that. I'd be grateful if you could check I've gotten the fair use rationale right. 4u1e 20:49, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Support Objections resolved. Alexj2002 21:08, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

• Comments.
  • Please remove Amazon.com links from references.
    • First of all - many thanks for such a comprehensive assessment of the structure. Happy to remove the Amazon links, although I find them more useful than the ISBN ones for the kind of sources we're talking about here. Out of curiosity, is there a specific policy on this, or is it a preference?
      • It's a commercial site - and raises the argument of why Amazon, and not B&N. We aren't a bookseller :-) Sandy (Talk) 18:55, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
        • Done. 4u1e 21:08, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
  • I fixed one of your references to include the webpage title: in the event links go dead, future readers need to know the exact bibliographic info in order to attempt to re-locate the info. Please doublecheck all your web links, and make sure last access dates are provided. When a page links to static results, consider linking to the internet archive for a stable version.
    • What I really wanted was a link to a general 'results archive' page. Unfortunately the F1 site isn't structured like that, you have to link to a specific year. I didn't want the reference to look like it was just to a single year's results, so left that part of the title out. However, you're probably right, it's misleading to do so. Excellent point re archived versions of the page. I will investigate.
      • Sadly, I don't think the internet archive will work here. The way the f1 site is structured, each year's results have a different page. Each year has 16 or so races, again each with a separate page, and the results can be viewed by driver, team or season summary. If I understand correctly, the links from each archived page go to the current version of the linked page, not the archived version. Without giving individual links to archived versions of each of the relevant pages (perhaps 30 x 16 = 318 pages!) I can't see how this can be made to work.4u1e 22:26, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Is there an ISBN for Pinder?
    • No, and I think I may drop him as a source. I hadn't noticed at first, but the coincidence of his name and the publisher's indicate that it is probably a vanity book. While I think it remains a useful and reliable source on Repco, and there is nothing in the book which contradicts other sources, it's probably cleaner just to use Henry instead.
      • Pinder removed, substituted Lawrence, which gives more info than Henry on Brabham's technical involvement in the project, if anyone ever actually reads the reference text! 4u1e 19:05, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Wiki is a dynamic environment, and future editors could insert new text - I can't support an article carrying this statement: "Facts which are not otherwise footnoted have been taken from the following sources:" Facts which need to be footnoted, should be footnoted.
    • Again, your point is fair. I suggest that the article's readability will suffer if I footnote all race results, so how about I remove the general reference to Alan Henry's 1999 Motorsport article and leave the race results under the heading 'All race and championship results taken from'?
      • Use your best judgment: you know the territory better than I do. Sandy (Talk) 18:55, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
        • Done (to my best judgement ;-)) 4u1e 21:23, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Why do you include page numbers in References? The point of References is to list sources, with specific page numbers provided in the Footnotes.
    • The ones with page numbers are articles in newspapers or magazines, so the referenced source is a particular article, not to the magazine in general. In newspapers, which are not generally indexed, the articles will be harder to find without a page number. The page number is given in the footnote, though, so I can live with losing them from the references.
      • Sorry, I see that now. Sandy (Talk) 18:55, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
        • I did consider seperating out the books and the newspaper/magazine references, but decided that would be overly complicated! 4u1e 21:23, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Some bluelinks in some footnotes need to be expanded to include full bibliographic info - if the sources go dead, future readers need to be able to find the article, example, www.sfo.gov.uk is not sufficient info.
    • Good point. Will fix.
      • I've made some tentative changes, but haven't finalised an approach yet. Can I confirm that www.sfo.gov.uk wasn't actually a problem? It has the website, the name of the document the info came from and the title of the case study within that document. I've added the 'click path' to the title as well, but don't see what else can be done with this one. I assume www.f3history.co.uk, www.grandprix.com and www.indy500.com/stats are the issue? I've tried something with the first two (see references section). Better? 4u1e 07:13, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
        • Have added more detail on each ref, and re-written some of the article to use hardcopy references instead of on-line (Online now in 'External links' section). 4u1e 22:45, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Why are these bolded ? devised a hydropneumatic suspension system, Murray started using lightweight carbon fibre composite panels, The Brabham BT46B of 1978, also known as the Fan car, to introduce full width rear wings for downforce and increased grip, etc ?
  • Why is this italicized? downforce created by aerodynamic ground effect.
    • It wasn't me that did it, but I believe the intent was to highlight technical terms, an approach I've seen recommended somewhere in one of the style guides (I'll check that out in more detail). I'm happy for it to go if it's distracting.
      • OK. The guidance I was thinking of is Technical terms and definitions. Having read that again, I've settled for italics for technical terms which I believe many people won't have encountered before. Thus I have italicised monocoque, but not wind tunnel because I think most people will have a vague idea of what it is. I've italicised at the first appearance, and at the first appearance in the 'Technical innovation' section, since this is where most of the description is done. Better? 4u1e 18:57, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Re-arranging images in Racing history - other formulae will help avoid chunks of white space - images don't *have* to be right next to the text they refer to, when doing so results in chunky white space.
    • Will give that a go, on a variety of screen settings. It looks OK on the three different set ups that I normally use, but I guess that's not really representative of the world at large.
      • I've tried a couple of different screen resolutions, a load of different window sizes and IE as well as Firefox (Netscape now uses the IE and Mozilla rendering engines, so I haven't bothered with that). I can't see any 'chunky white space' on any window or screen sizes, other than right at the top of the article on my maximum resolution settings. I have re-arranged the pictures anyway to make the page less uniform. Any better? If not, could you be more specific about what the problem looks like, perhaps with screen resolution settings and browser details? A screen cap would be good, if you can do it. 4u1e 18:00, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

I haven't read the text yet; I'll do that after structural things are addressed. Sandy (Talk) 17:22, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Response to comment: I think I have addressed all of the points raised above. Do you agree? 4u1e 22:45, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

Responded on talk. Sandy (Talk) 01:47, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

• Support Excellent article.--Diniz 13:46, 9 December 2006 (UTC)