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Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/2015 Milan – San Remo/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 archived by Ian Rose via FACBot (talk) 21:04, 27 May 2015 [1].

2015 Milan – San Remo

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Nominator(s): Relentlessly (talk) 17:01, 22 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

This article is about the 2015 Milan - San Remo cycling race, one of the most important one-day races in the cycling calendar. The race has had a controversial few years with several changes to the classic route, but this year's race was successful enough that future events will use the route again. I successfully took it to Good Article status a couple of weeks ago. This is my first attempt at nominating an article for Featured Article status and I'm doing so with some nervousness: I hope I've got the process right! Relentlessly (talk) 17:01, 22 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

  • Support. This is the best and most complete cycling article I've read about a race. The references are varied and pertinent. The prose is top-notch. The race is notable too: it is one of the five Cycling Monuments, the most important races on the calendar besides the Grand Tours. It deserves to be on the front page. Mattsnow81 (Talk) 16:11, 23 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: I'm not asking you to add "race" to the page title ... I consider WP:TITLE and WP:RM to be above my paygrade ... but I'm uncomfortable enough with the page title that it stopped me from copyediting and supporting on prose. - Dank (push to talk) 13:33, 3 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

  • Dank, thanks for your comment. Could you clarify your concern? The race is universally known as Milan – San Remo (or Milano–Sanremo), by the race organisers, by the cycling media, by cycling fans. It is never referred to as "Milan – San Remo race". The current title (a) matches every single cycling race article and (b) complies with WP:COMMONNAME. Relentlessly (talk) 13:58, 3 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Actually you're right. My problem isn't with the page title, it's with the first sentence. Here are the first 3 "Milan – San Remo" ghits to websites not dedicated to cycling:
  • Each of these treats "Milan – San Remo" as the proper noun, so they all support the current page title, but an adjective rather than a noun, except in headlines, which aren't expected to be grammatical. I'd like to see more research on this, but if a wide variety of sources use "Milan – San Remo" as an adjective, then it probably shouldn't be a page title, since page titles are nouns or noun phrases. [added 14:19, 6 May 2015 (UTC)]
  • Also, none of them starts off "The 2015 Milan – San Remo was the 106th edition of the Milan – San Remo one-day cycling classic", which is redundant. (I don't personally care whose rules we follow, but "avoid redundancy" is one of the rules FAC reviewers tend to follow.) Instead, one says "Milan-San Remo one-day race", and the other two say "the Milan-San Remo one-day race, the first of the season’s five 'Monument' classics". Also see WP:REDUNDANCY, which redirects to LEAD. - Dank (push to talk) 16:58, 3 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    • Thanks for clarifying. I've modified the lead to "The 2015 Milan – San Remo was a one-day cycling classic that took place in Italy on 22 March." It could be modified further to "The 2015 Milan – San Remo one-day cycling classic took place in Italy on 22 March." This seems less good to me, though I will happily concede expertise to you! Hopefully what I've done has improved it. Relentlessly (talk) 19:03, 3 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    • Dank, just wondering if you might be able to take another look? I'm really keen to get your comments on prose. Many thanks. Relentlessly (talk) 09:02, 5 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Continuing soon. - Dank (push to talk) 22:02, 5 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm in caffeine withdrawal, so I'm going to hand a few problems off to other reviewers. It would be a good idea to reduce or eliminate the use of "Milan – San Remo" as a noun, per the links I gave above.
  • "(150.2 mi))": Avoid )) per MOS.
  • " was extremely technical"?
  • "9 kilometres (5.6 mi) section": needs a fix, but VisualEditor isn't cooperating
  • " With Cavendish not in perfect form, his Etixx-Quick Step also had Zdeněk Štybar and 2014 world champion Michał Kwiatkowski able to attempt an attack in the final part of the race.": ?
  • " A group therefore came together into the finishing straight.": I don't get "therefore" here. In general, try to avoid cause-and-effect words if they're not necessary.
  • Support on prose per standard disclaimer. These are my edits. - Dank (push to talk) 14:07, 6 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    • Many thanks for you review, Dank; I'm grateful for your comments and your copyedits. I've fixed all the specific points you raise and I'll have a look through to clean up the others, the therefores and the meants, etc. I'm still not convinced about a problem with "Milan – San Remo" being used as a noun: it is universal in the specialist media and not unknown in general media (e.g. [2], [3], [4], [5]). I'm reluctant to change this one, though I won't go to the wall over it. Relentlessly (talk) 14:40, 6 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
      • The larger issue of what might be called jargon is probably the copyediting issue that causes me the most trouble, because of how Wikipedia works and because of the expectations that go with my wiki-jobs. I can't be considered neutral. Also, page titles are a whole thing unto themselves, and I haven't invested the time to learn them well. I'm willing to leave it alone for now, while noting that none of the links that either of us have given use "Milan – San Remo" in the text (headlines don't count) without first using something else as the implied noun ... race, classic, whatever. Another example: "400-meter" is used as an adjective, not a noun, in copyedited text ... you can tell from the hyphen and lack of an "s" ... but that doesn't mean that journalists don't write about the "400-meter" (as well as the "400 meters"), they do ... after they've mentioned a suitable noun phrase somewhere, so that you know what "400-meter" is supposed to modify. Standing alone doesn't stop a phrase from being adjectival. Lots of adjectives don't sit in front of the noun they modify. - Dank (push to talk) 16:22, 6 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
      • To clarify: I'm not asking you to change the page title, because there's a lot more to page titles than just good copyediting principles, but I'm hoping that you (or someone) will go through the text making sure that "race" or "classic" or something occurs either before (and nearby) or immediately after every occurrence of "Milan – San Remo" (similarly to the way this is handled in all the links you and I have cited). - Dank (push to talk) 17:58, 6 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Closing comment -- sorry but with no commentary for three weeks this nom appears to have stalled, so I'll be archiving it shortly. cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 21:04, 27 May 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.
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