Wikipedia:Featured article removal candidates/Julius Caesar

Article is no longer a featured article

Please note that I have absolutely no personal issues against this article or any of the editors that frequent it. But in the spirit of being bold, I've decided to nominate this article after a failed attempt on the talk page to start a discussion about this article's quality.

I have two objections against the article retaining featured status:

  1. Large sections of the article are not exactly verifiable. It is extremely long and few inline citations or sources are provided. Volumes have been written about Caesar over the centuries but yet only three sources are listed. As a consequence, doubts remain about the accuracy of certain statements within the article (please see its talk page). Also, if any of the external links provided was used as a source it should be properly referenced within the article and moved to the References section.
  2. A recent copyvio (also documented on the talk page) made the content of the article unstable through the removal of much of its information. If that information is to be rewritten, it would have to go through the standard process of editing beyond the "improvements in response to reviewers' comments".

Another fact to consider (but not an objection itself) is that the FAC nomination for this article had only two votes in 2003/4. I understand FA criteria are more strict now and maybe this alone would warrant a review of this article's featured status.

That's all. I hope I don't cause too much controversy with this nomination. -- Rune Welsh | ταλκ | Esperanza 23:39, 3 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

  • Remove I agree with what Rune Welsh says, plus there are three sections (The literary Caesar, The Military Caesar and Caesar's name) which have no content except for links to daughter articles. *Exeunt* Ganymead Dialogue? 14:40, 4 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove until it gets at least twice as many sources, at least twice as many images, the sections that are only links are given at least a paragraph or two, and the article is tightened; the first two sections are already starting to look like good candidates for getting their own articles, much as Charles Darwin has distinct articles for each stage of his life due to the sheer vast amount of information on it. Like you, I have nothing against this article; it's got a ton of strong points, and I intend to help improve it as soon as I have time. But this article has been featured since early 2004, and it's gotten fat and complacent in its status. Making it work harder to reclaim featured article status would help reinvigorate its editors and attract many new ones with a lot of new sources and information on Caesar's life. Though in the short-term we may be hesitant to "punish" an article that really doesn't have anything dramatically wrong with it, the long-term result would be nothing but a great improvement for one of the most important biographical articles on Wikipedia. Remember that the true benefit of the entire "featured article" concept is to motivate people to improve articles that are already good, but could be better. It's not purely a reward/punishment system to receive, be denied, or lose such a status. It's purely utilitarian. Also, what's good enough for one article may not be good enough for another—while you won't see a lot of people complaining about all the problems on an article like History of Arizona, because, come on, who cares about Arizona (don't look at me like that! you know it's true!), articles like Julius Caesar must be held up to vastly higher standards. -Silence 01:43, 6 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Just wanted to add that the image found at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Julius_Caesar_Italian_marble_19th_c..jpg . Is not an young Julius Caesar, but an young Augustus Caesar (Octavian). Caesar's nephew and future emperor of Rome.

  • Remove. 1) needs sorting of it's sources and addition of inline citations. 2) The chronology needs to be converted to an Easy Timeline. 3) There's several sections that only refer to a subarticle that need to be given a summary. - Mgm|(talk) 13:26, 8 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove. While this is a good article, the lack of anything more than a few references and sources worries me. (As an aside, I also like that Rune Welsh raised these issues on the article's talk page, unlike the recent Sun Yat-sen FARC, where I still feel like a user was pushing a personal agenda with having that article removed.) --Alabamaboy 01:51, 17 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    • snide comment, eh? This is entirely irrelevant here, but if I happened to be under a "personal agenda", then I would like to know what this "personal agenda" was supposed to be. I would also appreciate it if you would name me directly ("User:Jiang was pushing a personal agenda") instead of trying to put me on a guilt trip by purposely leaving me unnamed. I don't mind if you want to accuse me of things, but please make the effort to come out clean and state it outright. --Jiang 10:11, 17 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
      • Actually, it is totally relevant b/c the person who started this FARC first raisesd the issue on the article's talk page (which is good Wikipedia practice). I was using the previous FARC to illustrate poor process. I hope now that Sun Yat-sen is no longer a featured article (although, as I have stated with the admin who removed the article, I do not believe consensus was achieved on that) you will work to improve the article. Further comments about this are on your talk page.--Alabamaboy 11:52, 17 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
        • Though I stand by my actions, I am not opposed to you bringing me out to illustrate a process that was or was not followed. However, it is one thing to say that I put up the farc too soon and did not first post the objections directly on the talk page (a description of my actions), but it is another to say that I have a yet undefined "personal agenda" (a peronal attack). Yes, I plan to work on the article - enough to get it refeatured. You will see that after the initial promotion I already made some significant changes to the article that addressed a couple of my objections to the original fac.--Jiang 22:13, 17 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]