Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Mini

Mini

Self-Nomination. I (and several more experienced Wikipedians) believe this article is now worthy of FA status. Several editors have been working hard on this article for a couple of months now and I think we all agree that it's done (at least as far as a Wikipedia article is every done!). We have checked all of the FA criteria - including actually measuring the link-to-text ratio and all of that stuff - if you check the talk page, you'll see just how careful we've been in verifying those things. The article has been through peer review with no significant problems - and no new comments have been posted there for two weeks now. It has also been listed as a Good Article for quite a while. I have had some real experts on this vehicle go through the article with a fine-toothed comb and we can find no factual errors or significan omissions. Finally, there have only ever been a couple of car articles make it to FA status - and I think it's time for another one.

Many thanks in advance for any further help you can offer on improving the article.

SteveBaker 19:16, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

• Ugh, could we not have footnotes in section headers? They look terribly ugly in Firefox. Johnleemk | Talk 19:23, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
  • I confess I wondered about that when I put them in - but was unable to find anything in WP:MOS to say whether they were deprecated or not. One question though - if I have book references that talk in general about all of the same things that this section talks about - what is the alternative way to convey that to the reader? I'm very happy to bow to the expertise of others here! Just tell me what is "the right thing" - and it'll be done. SteveBaker 19:34, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
    • You put the footnotes after the information they corroborate. If the same note corroborates more than one unique chunk of information, there is a particular format for going about this -- see WP:FN. Johnleemk | Talk 19:39, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
      • I understand that - but the article looks so messy with a "[x]" after every single sentence. The books I'm citing cover the facts stated over several paragraphs - or even the entire section. Well, perhaps I should just move the ref tags to the end of the section instead. I'm just not clear on what is required of me here. SteveBaker 19:55, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
        • You could put them in a "General references" section (like Glacier retreat#General references. Although I have not seen it done on Wikipedia, I would like to see annotated references for these kinds of references (that are not specific to one citation but are specific to one or more sections as a general source). One of the reasons references are listed is so that researchers (students) can follow up on the subjects so annotation would better help them pick the right book to track down. --maclean25 03:29, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
          • I understand the formal reason for references (they say: "...if you don't believe me - read this book") - but in practice for a non-academic/non-scientific article like this, I'd be suprised if anyone ever actually did that. The practical reason for wanting references in this kind of article is to say to readers "...if you want to know more about this - read this book.". However, formal reasons matter too and the idea that you could (theoretically) verify every fact in Wikipedia through outside sources is a powerful one. But if this was simply a matter of providing fact-checking then two or three carefully chosen books would have covered all the bases for this article. However, for someone who actually wants to know more about one of the specific varients of this car, there are several recommended specialist books - and I wanted to make sure they were referenced. I guess you could argue for a 'Further reading' section - but each book tends to be 'attached' to a particular section of the article - so there are books on the Mk I Mini that aren't useful reading for Mini Clubman enthusiasts. This is why the 'reference' format (where books are tagged against the section headings) is useful. SteveBaker 15:06, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
      • OK - references are gone from the section headings and attached to the sentence they best support. I agree it looks much nicer now. SteveBaker 20:08, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
  • Support now that the footnotes in section headings are gone. Johnleemk | Talk 09:40, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
• Support & Comment: I agree with Johnleemk, the footnotes in the section headers is not very visually appealing. The large spaces throughout the article aren't either. Also some picture captions are detailed, while others are not. I also noticed some mistakes in them. Otherwise this is a very well written article and would make a good feature article. Good work! Underneath-it-All 19:31, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
  • White-space. Man - this is hard to deal with. I have deliberately set my screen width down to 800x600 and in stages up to 1600x1200 and set my browser window (I use Firefox) to a range of different font sizes and screen widths - and I can't make any large voids show up with the 'Monobook' skin. I could get some ugly gaps with (I believe) the Cologne Blue skin. But it truly is impossible to test every possible browser combination. The WP:MOS section on images tells us that if there are problems, to "add more text" or "remove photographs" - but adding more text than covers what needs to be said just to get the layout right for every possible bizarre combination of settings is ridiculous. We could toss out some photographs - but that doesn't help unless you allow the photos to become detached from the text that they refer to. While we are talking about Mk I Mini's - we want the photo of a Mk I next to the text...but if we need to attach a photo to a short section - then it tends to run into the next one and cause a gap. We experimented (briefly) with alternating left/right images - but that looked worse because on some browser settings you got this ridiculously narrow 'corridor' of text jammed between two photographs. So - once again, I'd be THRILLED to fix this - but I've worked very hard on it and I don't see how to get better. What is truly needed is a standard range of browser settings - laid out in the WP:MOS over which authors should test their layout - but trust me, there will always be combinations of page size, screen resolution, font type and skin preferences that will break any layout you can come up with! SteveBaker 19:55, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
  • You mentioned 'mistakes' in the captions - could you elaborate so I can nail them please! SteveBaker 19:55, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

In the section 'Minis in the United States' the caption has a spacing error and I also think the captions should end with periods. But other then that there are no problems. Underneath-it-All 20:43, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Mini-thanks! All fixed now!

• Support Great work, perfect example of a FA --PopUpPirate 22:00, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
  • Thanks for your kind comment. But I have to confess a problem...in the course of fixing the problems the previous reviewers came up with, I somehow managed to just nudge it over the 32k barrier...Damn! I probably need to find about four words to delete before we're back inside the threshold! :-) SteveBaker 00:38, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
    • Pchaw, the 32k is only a guideline, not a requirement - it'll be reet! --PopUpPirate 01:09, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
• Comment—Please check through the inline reference numbers; some have spaces before, others don't. There are dots before and after at least one. Tony 09:55, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
  • Wow! You guys are good at this copyedit stuff - I could have sworn the thing was OK - but you found a BUNCH of things! I'm seriously impressed! Anyway - what is the approved style for references at the end of sentences? Should the ref tag go before or after the period? I've moved them all to be consistently before the period - which I think is OK because it ensures that the reference belongs to the end of that sentence - and not to the start of the next one. SteveBaker 15:18, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
• Comment One of the recent changes was to change year ranges from "1959-1976" to "1959-76" - but what about our section headings that say "1959 to 1976" - should those also be changed to "1959-76" or perhaps to "1959 to 76"? SteveBaker 15:18, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
• Comment, I was wondering why a bunch of the above entries are labeled as "Comments" when they really are objections until fixed, since they are fixible issues (perhaps easily fixable?) and are a detriment to the article as a whole. That said, I have a similar comment, but I'm really not sure it's enough of a detriment to count as an "objection" per se. The article layout, from a purely aesthetic standpoint, is a bit ugly, related to the whitespace issue mentioned above. One idea for fixing it might be to have some of those images left aligned instead of right aligned. With all the images to the right, it bunches up the text to the left, and gives things a cramped appearance. Varying the image placement might help aleviate this problem. Fieari 02:49, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
  • Steve's put a point earlier about how it looks ugly with the pics justified "randomly" and I very much agree with that pov, I think it looks great as it is, with everything on the right :) --PopUpPirate 02:58, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
  • My 'comment' is a comment because (as self nominator) I have already expressed my opinion in that I believe it should be FA. My comment was more of a question to the expert audience here. There are some points of style that are being made here that are nowhere mentioned in WP:MOS or anyplace else that I could find. If these things have a bearing on FA status then I need to ask some questions about them. SteveBaker 03:22, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
  • The whitespace issue is one of how Wiki renders things - having investigated this VERY carefully (see the Talk:Mini page) I have concluded that if the ratio of images to text reaches some value for some span of the article then there is quite literally no way to avoid "ugly whitespace" for SOME browser setups. When I view the article on my home PC, my work PC and my (relatively low res) laptop, I see no ugly whitespace at all. However, if I deliberately pick some wild font sizes, override Wiki's default fonts, dink with the screen resolution and the window size - if I choose a different browser or a different Wiki 'skin' - then everything moves around. Whitespace appears and disappears. Alternating the images left and right WAS tried for this article (check the history) and the only one of the editors who thought it was an improvement was the guy who did it - and even he admitted it wasn't a vast improvement and he was ambivelant about alternation. If you alternate images then you can get a situation where all of the text funnels down the middle of the page with just two or three words on each line...if you think extra whitespace is a problem - then trust me - it's nothing compared to the uglyness you get with alternating images ON SOME BROWSER SETTINGS. The true solution to this is nothing to do with this article - it'll come up whenever an article has a text-to-images ratio that's unsuitable for SOME browser/screen-res/font-size/window-size/skin combination...which is always. I don't think there is a single thing you could do to this article to 'fix' this problem for every combination. You could pad the article with a lot of irrelevent verbiage to space the images out - or you could cut pictures that actually tell an important part of the story...neither is "The Right Thing", IMHO:
    • Choice of alternation versus all-on-the-right versus all-on-the-left (versus no images versus all images in a gallery at the bottom...) should be a Wiki preferences thing that the user can select - not something that's a feature of the article itself.
    • Wikipedia should come right out and say (on the front page) "To see Wikipedia articles at their best, your browser screen width should be X pixels" (where X would depend on preference and 'skin' choices).
    • The WP:MOS should REQUIRE editors to check that their pages look good over some range of resolutions/font-sizes/etc. That 'canonical browser range' would be something we could all check our articles against.
  • But right now, I have NO WAY to know what set of settings must look good. Pick *ANY* FA with more than a couple of photos in it - and I utterly guarantee you that I can come up with a combination of settings that makes it look ugly as all hell.
  • So I simply cannot fix this "problem" to everyone's satisfaction. It's provably impossible. SteveBaker 03:22, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

• Support - I can't think of anything substantive to add, and it looks generally fine to me. A couple nits: please add links for units (cc, metre, kilogram, mph, etc) and more helpful and wikilinked image captions. I'll copyedit when I have time. -- ALoan (Talk) 17:50, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
  • WP:MOS-L cautions us about overlinking and use of 'low value' links. It's hard to imagine that links to these really common units are 'high value' in an article about cars. I'll read through the image captions and see if I can insert some more links there. Thanks for your comments. SteveBaker 02:34, 14 March 2006 (UTC)
    • Thanks. Yes, but as another part of the MOS also says in relation to units, Wikipedia articles are intended for people anywhere in the world. Some of them may not know what a "cc" or an "m" or a "kg" or an "mph" is. At the least, the first use of a unit should be linked. Wikipedia:Captions explains that a caption should provide context and add depth to an image, so a little explanatory text is always helpful. -- ALoan (Talk) 11:26, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
      • OK - I'll go and add links to units.Links to units have been added. Thanks for your explanation. SteveBaker 16:13, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

• Support Yes, this is a good article, I beleive it is good enough to be featured. --Karrmann
• Comment Why is the section on the new MINI so small when the main article has a considerable amount of information? Joelito 00:33, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
  • The information on the new MINI is split off into a separate article (which I'm also working on). There is a delicate 'political' balance here because some classic Mini enthusiasts are opposed (often violently opposed) to the new MINI being in any way associated with the classic car - whilst others (myself included) love them both. In the interests of compromise, the present section on the modern MINI is a balance between asserting a strong relationship between the two cars and completely separating all discussion of the BMW cuckoo. If you look back through the article's history and Talk page, you'll see the comings and goings of text in that section. Anyone who really wants to know about the new car will find at least three or four links to it in the article - plus a photograph - that ought to be enough. SteveBaker 16:50, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
    • Thank you for clearing that up. Joelito 16:56, 19 March 2006 (UTC)