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Wikipedia:Featured article review/Francis Petre/archive1

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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article review. Please do not modify it. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page or at Wikipedia talk:Featured article review. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was removed by Nikkimaria 14:30, 29 February 2012 [1].

Francis Petre

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Review commentary

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Notified: Top three editors by edit count; Peter Entwisle, Grutness, GiacomoReturned, Projects: Biography, New Zealand, Architecture.

Talk page notice was issued during April 2011 that descended into drama. I find the following criteria are not up to 2011 standards:

  • 1a Prose in general reads ok but the "works" section is a long list of bullets that should be in prose.
  • 1c The obvious problem is the overall lack of citations throughout the article. The lack of citations leaves "well researched" and "high-quality and reliable" sources questionable.
  • 2a Lead section lacks a lot of points raised later in the article body.
  • 2c Lack of citations leaves this criteria open to later question.
  • 3 File:Frank Petre.jpg, File:StJosephsDunedin2.jpg, File:Sacred Heart Cathedral.jpg, File:Sacred Heart Interior.jpg and File:Blessed Sacrament Christchurch.gif all have various problems such as missing source and author information. Files with no author information are using the life +70 tag which obviously can't be determined when the author information is missing. All of the files need US copyright tags as required at commons.
  • MoS Various issues here with MOS:LINK and MOS:IMAGES. Brad (talk) 08:25, 14 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

FARC commentary

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Featured article criteria mentioned in the review section include prose, referencing, images and MOS compliance. Dana boomer (talk) 12:57, 3 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Then do something about it Dana - fix the page up if you feel it so bad! I don't agree it all looks fine to me, and no else seems to agree with you, it has languished for weeks since you encouraged it to be reviewed on FAR. You and Brad seem to be the person with the problem, why not act yourself? Or is that beneath you to actually write something? The writing editors are not your servants at your beck and call, I'm sorry if that is a shock for you, but that's the way it is. There are millions of terrible articles for you to concern yourself with - why spend your life knitpicking other peoples hard work. No doubt others will now leap on the bandwagon, but I have watched it for weeks on FAR without gaining one single comment, so you had better go and belatedly stir some of your cronies up! Giacomo Returned 18:07, 3 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Giano, my comment was a summary of the issues mentioned in the review section, not my own assessment. As you see, it says "criteria mentioned in the review section" as needing work, not "I think that these criteria are at issue". You should really do some research before writing - I may not have written as many FAs as you, but I've been involved in a fair few, so no, I don't consider writing something to be beneath me. As for "cronies"...really?!? The hyperbole at least made for a good chuckle at the end of my working day. If you wanted this review to not progress, there were plenty of opportunities for you to comment - when the notes stating the article needed work were placed on the article talk page, when I placed a note on the FAR page saying that "work needed" notifications has already been made on the article talk page, and during the over two weeks that this article was in the review section. The fact that you chose not to do so is not my problem. Dana boomer (talk) 21:36, 4 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Query to Dana: does really a single post by a single user deserve the highfalutin appellation "review section", as in your "Giano, my comment was a summary of the issues mentioned in the review section"? In other words, is it appropriate to proceed to list the article as a "Featured article removal candidate" purely on the basis of a nomination on FAR, when the community has shown zilch interest in either agreeing or disagreeing with Brad's concerns, or coming up with any comments of their own, since September? Also, I'm not sure about those "notes stating the article needed work ... placed on the article talk page" of which you speak. I don't see them, unless you're going with Brad's reference above to a talkpage notice given by User:Ultraexactzz in April, which according to him "descended into drama". Here it is; life must be pretty sheltered here on FAR if you call that "drama". It's barely relevant at all to the concerns raised by Brad, obviously, and in any case stale. For Brad to refer to that in lieu of giving notice of his plans, and his concerns, within a reasonable timespan before he nominates the article for Featured Article Review is, well, just lazy in my opinion. The concerns mentioned by Ultra were only "citation needed tags throughout", a charge he immediately withdrew when Giano challenged it ("Oh hell, I don't know - I just wanted to clear out the category"), and "some image formatting issues.. in that I see a minor bit of sandwiching - though that might be my screen's fault". Ultra is extremely laid back about the inline citations issue, even stating that "it's a non-issue, as far as I'm concerned". Most of Brad's concerns enumerated in his nomination aren't even glanced at on that talkpage. Did you take a look at the supposed drama, Dana? Do you think it's acceptable to refer back to that as Step One of the three "requisite" steps named at the top of this page. when FAR'ing the article in October? To sum up the point I want to make: But is it surprising that Giano is pissed off by this supposed review (putatively, for the purpose of improvement), with two out of the three supposed stages more or less shrunken and mummified, and only the "Removal" step full-size and lively? I don't follow FAR much, so I don't know if this happens a lot. I hope not. Surely it can't have been what the regulars had in mind when they (I presume collaboratively) hammered out the description of the "three requisite stages" at the top of the page ?
That said, the article may well fail to comply with current citation practice. I'll go take a closer look to see if I consider it adequately referenced by the FAC criteria (rather than by the pepperpot practice some editors insist on) as soon as I have time, before I come back to !vote. Sorry for the rush. Bishonen | talk 01:16, 5 December 2011 (UTC).[reply]
Thank you for your comments, Bishonen, and I'm glad that you are taking a look at the article - I look forward to seeing your comments. As to the bulk of your statement: There are always two sections in a featured article review: the review commentary section and the FARC commentary section. The latter always begins with a summary by the delegates of the issues brought up in the former. Yes, in this case, there was only one editor commenting the review section, but that does occasionally occur. FAR is unfortunately not as busy as FAC, and what editors we do have tend to only chip in on the review section when there appear to be editors interesting in improving the article or they see other major issues that the initiating editor didn't address. In this case, Brad posted his comments as to why he believed the article no longer met FA criteria, no-one said anything in defense of the article in the over two weeks it was in the review section, and so it was moved to FARC. The FARC was not going to go through without more editors commenting, so it wasn't as if Brad could delist the article by himself. If other editors (you, Giano, whoever) had posted to the review section either resolving or rebutting Brad's points, then it is likely that the article would not have moved to FARC. Ultra's comments on the talk page were valid (and were not rectified until Brad initiated this FAR), and the fact that he backed off rather than argue with Giano says more about his lack of interest in conflict than his believing that he was wrong, in my opinion. I would also like to point out that Giano's comments both here in the FARC section and on the talk page were filled with hyperbole and insults - classic commenting on the editors instead of the article. A reasoned rebuttal of the issues in question, in either place, would probably have gotten him a lot further. Dana boomer (talk) 21:32, 5 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
After almost 3 months of process nothing has been done to address the issues. The article has a total of 7 inline citations and a long bullet list that should be in prose. I'm at a loss as to why more editors have not seen those two obvious problems and asked for a delisting. This article should have been delisted out of common sense over a month ago. Brad (talk) 15:16, 6 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep, with the proviso that I am not up to date on current citation practices and the degree of urgency with which we wish to update previously written FAs to this standard. The long bullet list does not bother me in the slightest - insofar as an exhaustive list of works is encyclopedic, it would be much less legible in prose than as a list. Bottom line: does this article remain one of those of which we should be particularly proud? To me seems that clearly yes. Martinp (talk) 15:48, 6 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • OK Brad, the fact that you and Ms Boomer have had to leave this here for four months and still can't quite grasp that no one is that bothered about the dreadfulness of this page speaks volumes. However, seeing as you both wish to play these games: the bulleted list, that offends you so, which most people find quite useful has been removed to List of buildings by Francis Petre. I have rearranged the pretty pictures. I'm afraid there are still a few testing words with more than two syllables, but they can soon go too. Now, how many words would you and Ms Boomer like removing so that we have adequate footnotes per ten words and not test the attention span of you and our readers too far? Giacomo Returned 20:15, 6 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep, or else keep on hold while Giano adds more citations, as I suppose he intends, from his latest comment. (Nice new list of Petre's works, Giacomo, but do you have to keep stirring people up so?) I agree that the article needs more specific citations; I suggest a minimum of one at the end of each paragraph (when it's all from one source), plus at the end of any direct quote. Isn't that a sort of standard today? Mind you, it's not my own preference. In my academic field, we footnote the first sentence of a paragraph, making sure it's clear in one way or another that the rest of it comes from the same source and page. That seems more reader-friendly to me. But that's by the way: it's not the house standard on wikipedia. I like the lively, light style, but some of the opinions need sourcing. Bishonen | talk 01:06, 7 December 2011 (UTC).[reply]

I have no intention of adding more citations. I wrote this page, a series of 'New Zealand architecture' pages years ago, when there were very few Kiwis on the site – I thought it was a way of evening the balance. Since I wrote these pages, they have all been edited by Peter Entwisle editing at User talk:Peter Entwisle. I have absolutely no intention of setting myself above a recognised national expert,so you must do with the page as you, the very far removed experts, see fit. Books, I found to assist in the writing of the page, were all returned to libraries years ago, and I am not going to go trudging about trying to find them again just to satisfy the self appointed custodians of Wikipedia's reliability. Ms Boomer and Brad can either verify the facts themselves or demote the page – we must all gain our job satisafaction where we can - mine is in writing not humouring. Giacomo Returned 19:46, 11 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  • Keep - Agree with the concerns by GiacomoReturned and Bishonen, this is a featured article and is very informative. I believe it satisfies all of the criteria. Darth Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 01:42, 22 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delist - per 1(c). A 30Kb article with 7 inline citations. Unfortunately, the major contributor of the article (Giacomo) has made it clear that he/she has "no intention of adding more citations."--Artoasis (talk) 10:14, 4 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Clarification, since I've been brought back into this review. This article was one of only a few listed at Wikipedia:Unreviewed featured articles, and I posted a notice on the talk page indicating that fact and highlighting the most critical issue I saw - the issue with citations. I had no previous interest in the subject or in the article itself; as I said, I only saw that the article had not been reviewed. The talk page notice is a requirement to bring the article to FAR, as you are all aware. The response I got was a fairly angry note questioning the quality of the articles I've created (none of them even close to GA, none of them recent, and few in number besides). I chose not to push the matter further, partially because I was not in the mood for drama or personal attacks, partially because I really don't care one bit whether this is or is not a Featured Article, and partially because I thought other editors might add citations to prevent a Featured Article Review. The concern was there, and perhaps it would stir some progress - which is precisely why such notice is required in the first place. I did not withdraw the concern about citations - that problem was still present, and did not magically go away merely because GiacomoReturned pissed me off. Between my comment and the start of this review, there were all of 7 edits to the article. Two added categories, three were wikiformatting, and two were the deletion (and its reversion) of a section of the article. Until the day this review was filed, no citations were added and no movement made. On the merits, I don't think the article in its present form meets the Featured Article Criteria, but there's enough recent progress to suggest that it can easily be brought up to standard - and I agree that it is a fine article even without the citations. But that's not what gets reviewed here. UltraExactZZ Said ~ Did 14:50, 5 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Minor correction: there were 11 edits between your comment and the start of this review, including 4 by me in the morning before the review started (adding two inline citations). --Avenue (talk) 04:30, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    • I guess a question worth considering is this - would it pass as a FAC today? I'd like to think so, but I don't know. UltraExactZZ Said ~ Did 14:51, 5 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Hold - this shouldn't be hard to sort out really. I'd always planned to go to Dunedin as I had ancestors there. Will see what I can do about inlining in next few days. Casliber (talk · contribs) 19:42, 8 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Still holding; nothing happening. Brad (talk) 16:49, 17 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delegate note - as Giano seems to have retired, is anyone else willing to step in and address remaining issues here? Cas, you up for it? Nikkimaria (talk) 14:09, 15 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • As it appears no one has been able to respond, unfortunately this article has been delisted.


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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