Wikipedia:Featured article removal candidates/Human

Human edit

Article is no longer a featured article

The "psychology and human ethnology" section is dominated entirely by a discussion of psychoanalysis. The "spirituality, religion, mythology, and theology" section does not have any discussion of the comparative size of world religions (not even that Christianity and Islam are the largest and second largest). The "population" section says nothing about demography nor the Black Death (the biggest population drop in history), and lacks a desperately needed chart for illustration). The section on "race and ethnicity" fails to discuss ethnic groups and even fails to distinguish between races and ethnic groups. It also includes an image of the "five races" from the long-discredited Carleton Coon. The "body image" section makes an unsourced claim that "in every human culture, people adorn their bodies with tattoos, cosmetics, clothing, and jewellery" [emphasis mine]. Literature is not even mentioned in passing.

The article lacks any discussion about humans, violence, and armed conflict, and when I tried to insert even a sentence about this it was removed. Politics and government get no section. This is unacceptable for a featured article. Remove. Neutrality^talk 23:17, 23 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

P.S.: What about food? There's nothing about what humans actually eat. At least a section should be about the diet, diversity of food, most common foods (rice, wheat, corn). Neutrality^talk 03:07, 24 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

More: A politics section was added, but it focuses three sentences on semantics ("In Commonwealth English, the word "government" can also be used to refer only to the executive branch, in this context being a synonym for the word "administration" in American English (e.g. the Blair governement, the Bush Administration). In countries using the Westminster system, the governement (or party in governement) will also usually control the legislature") and doesn't mention political philosophy. A "war" section was added, but it doesn't address how humans are distinct from other animals in this regard, nor does it mention the beginnings of war. The psychology section still is completely made up of a discussion of Freudian/Jungian psychoanalysis, which is only a part of psychology. The section fails to even link behaviorism, cognitive psychology, and humanistic psychology–the other three major schools of thought in psychology. And there is nothing on communication, only aspects of communication. There is no mention of the human genome, which defines what a human is. And where is the section on human extinction? --Neutrality^talk 19:12, 24 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

What about disease? There should be some mention of the most common diseases, medicine, and sanitation. Neutrality^talk 19:18, 24 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Remove. (Even though I fear it may be too soon since its elevation to featured status to consider its removal.) The introduction has been cleaned up noticeably, but most of the other objections appear to remain valid. I'm not sure if I agree with Neutrality's specific objections above, as some of them are too specific for this article. However, I absolutely agree that the omission of warfare from the culture section is a gaping hole. War is far more integral to humanity than most of the other cultural phenomena mentioned. Also, the article's quality is generally poor as noted in the talk page section linked above. It's too scatterbrained, trying to mention too many sub-topics rather than giving a concise summaries with links to associated articles when necessary. --Yath 05:19, 24 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Addendum: the new, improved correction has been reverted to the poorer, older one. The article has degraded since its FARC nomination and really shouldn't be identified as an example of Wikipedia's best work. --Yath 19:30, 24 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Strong Keep of course, its far to soon to even consider this anyways, and the unresolved objections during the FAC process were ignored for being either non-specific, or to the articles detriment to address. Isn't there some sort of requirement that concerns be discussed on the article talk page prior to a FARC nomination? If not there certainly should be... I have included war, and addressed other concerns btw, have a look. Sam Spade 15:31, 24 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Re: Too soon after promotion: There seems to be a generally agreed upon three month threshhold for Farcs, and this, more or less, meets that threshhold. --Jeffrey O. Gustafson - Shazaam! - <*> 17:09, 25 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Keep, but positive additions should of course not be removed. Please discuss any controversial reversions on the talk page and let's help it to remain a living article. — goethean ॐ 17:13, 24 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Remove for three reasons. (1) Writing quality and content. This article is deficient in a large number of ways, with poorly-worded, unprofessional, and unhelpful writing occurring even from the very first sentence ("Human beings define themselves in biological, social, and spiritual terms."), which wrongly implies that the article is about how humanes define themselves rather than actually being about humans themselves. Many obvious facts about humans fail to be mentioned, many sections later in the article need clean-up and reorganization, and many trivial facts need to be moved to the hundreds of sub-articles Human has. (2) Citations and sources. There are very, very few inline citations in this article, and while this is certainly not a requirement for being Featured, it's highly recommended on WP:CITE for any controversial claims or statements an article makes. And an article as general and centrally important as human is obviously going to have tons of controversial statements, yet the introductory paragraphs, for example, don't cite a single source! (3) Practicality. History has proven that the best way to improve articles that need improving is to force them to go through the Featured Article process, and related processes (like WP:AID and WP:PR) that ultimately seek to get an article Featured. Thus, I see no downsides to removing a lacking article from being Featured, even though it is an impressive article with much useful information, many well-written paragraphs (though a number could use a fair amount of copyediting, trimming, clarifying, broadening, etc.); and I see a large number of potential benefits. I'm willing to possibly bruise a few talented and remarkably skilled editors' egos slightly, and perhaps get some more harsh, soul-rending criticism, by voting "Remove" here, if it means that the end product, human, will be all the better for it. And I think it does. -Silence 18:21, 24 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wary Keep. The submitter brings up some very good points for expansion, and the article certainly should mention things like demography and the distribution and proportions of religions. However, we need to keep article size in mind. I'd like to see the proposed additions included in the article; but also, wherever possible, I think the subsections should be concentrated as much as possible down to the most important information available, with links to secondary articles being placed in each. (For example: Life cycle takes up more space than I believe it deserves in context of the rest of the article, and has no secondary article link.) If we were to include in detail every facet of human existence, this article would take up half of Wikipedia's server space. The article should be expanded, yes, but not carte blanche. Cheers. !mAtt ™ 18:31, 24 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. Part of the problem with an article about Humans is that all over human history, sociology, biology, and technology could fit within the article. Obviously this is not possible and I feel that some of the items raised against the article (such as the omission of the black death) are silly considering these items have their own articles. The article can, of course, still be improved but it is worthy of being a FA.--Alabamaboy 01:36, 25 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Remove. Many problems with the writing (2a), which are deeper than the language just at the clause level, and POV (2d). Here are some examples:
'Juvenile males are called boys, adult males men, juvenile females girls, and adult females women.' Sorry, but that's not very profound, especially just after the lead.
At the top, humans are announced as seeing themselves in biological, social and spiritual terms. Apart from the dangers of imposing a culture-centric categorisation so prominently, there's no explicit treatment of the second category in the lead ('spiritual', like the other two terms, needs to appear again to clarify the structure of the lead).
again, in the lead, the self is characterised as being 'composed of co-operating and competing groups'. Sorry to be picky, but that's not good enough.
'Humans are commonly referred to ... collectively as Man (capital M)'—unsure about the upper-case M, and more importantly, let's not glorify sexist terminology by placing it first.

It's all like that, and needs a thorough rewrite. I suggest that it be removed, reinvented and resubmitted to the FAC room.

Tony 23:41, 26 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I dispute your objections as variously being non-actionable, or to the articles detriment if acted upon. Sam Spade 13:15, 27 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm afraid that a more specific defence is required. Tony 08:26, 28 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Weak remove. Repeating the FAC process will help this article, but some of the criticisms have gone too far. --Rikurzhen 19:52, 28 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Remove per nom and others. Saravask 08:34, 31 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Keep, please see the diff between when it was featured and currently. KillerChihuahua^?!? 01:42, 4 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Remove. A group of us have been working recently to improve the introduction. Our changes have since been reverted with any explanation on the talk page and we're back at square one. This article is not an example of Wikipedia's best and I fear it will be some time before it is. Hitchhiker89^talk 13:35, 4 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Remove - Does not follow good Wikipedia:Summary style (FA requirement 5) by having 'main articles' that are a fraction of the size of the section they are 'summarizing'. Compare: Human biology and Human#biology. Too much bloat here are too little development of daughter articles. --mav 22:09, 4 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
- Mav points out an unfortunate and valid criticism. I hope everyone can understand how this will be a perpetual difficulty, but I admit more could be done. Sam Spade 12:46, 5 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. This is a fine article and while bloat is some concern I'm willing in this case to accept the length. I see positive momentum and a comprehensive article on an enormously difficult subject to quantify. Most of the encyclopedia's entries could be considered a daughter article in this case. Marskell 12:55, 6 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Which is why it's so very, very important to make sure that this article is truly exceptional and extraordinarily stable, concise, and high-quality before we award it "Featured Article" status. We shouldn't go easy on the article and let it slide in a few areas just because its editors "mean well" or are "working hard", and certainly shouldn't because it's an important topic; just the opposite, it's much more important that we hold it to high standards. And, unfortunately, it doesn't come close to meeting any of those standards; it's unreferenced, disorganized, simply not comprehensive (even to a reasonable degree; noone here is asking for perfection, just for the level of quality), needs a thorough copyedit and several POV corrections, and needs both tightening (where trivial details are gone into in great length) and expansion (where important, obvious facts are completely ignored). It's come a long, long way, and has a long, long way to go before it's one of Wikipedia's best; that might let it qualify as a Good Article, but not as a Featured Article. The fact that it's such an important article makes it more important for it to be given the same clear, critical eye our other articles get. Right now, the votecount suggests that this isn't yet happening; it's being given a much less critical, objective, thorough analysis than numerous other FAs on less central topics have been given in the past, and that's unfortunate. -Silence 18:50, 6 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

- - "simply not comprehensive (even to a reasonable degree;..." Why? Marskell 09:54, 9 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Remove, per User Neutrality's remarks. This article is indeed a good article, these are major problems, and until they have been addressed, this article is not worthy of featured status. Standards must be maintained, as FA's should, as we all know, exemplify the very best of our work. --Zantastik <font color=darkgreen size=1>talk</font> 03:50, 7 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Remove per my unaddressed FAC objections. Fredrik Johansson - talk - contribs 11:27, 8 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Weak Remove indepth and wide coverage spoliled by disorganised categorisation. FWBOarticle 18:27, 8 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. The article is of featured quality. —Eternal Equinox | talk 21:10, 8 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Remove. The article is full anything but NPOV. Just look at the Psychology subsection and the Psychology article, these inconsistencies are throughout the article. dr.alf 09:32, 9 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Remove In order to appease a small group of what appear to be Christian fundamentalists the introduction has been convoluted beyond belief (no, I have nothing against Christian fundamentalists, but this is an encyclopedia, not a researh project for Bible study). Additionally, there are too many long parts in the article -- long treatises on economics, war, spirituality, psychoanalysis, food, etc. There's nothing wrong with covering those topics, but one doesn't need a few thousand words for each -- they each have their own articles. I've suggested, to no avail, that everyone look at the French and German (Featured) articles for ideas on how to proceed, but to no avail. Jim62sch 19:51, 9 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Remove, needs serious work.--nixie 01:43, 13 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]