Wikipedia:Featured article review/archive/December 2005

This is the archive of Featured Article Removal Candidates for mid-to-late December 2005. For the active archive and list of previous archives, click here.

Kept status

Iowa class battleship

Article is still a featured article

This article is badly written. It's full of unexplained military and nautical jargon "wet forward", "narrowness forward", "scuttles", "mothballed battleship"; grammatical errors "because a reserve … are in storage"; and other problems: why is "fast" quoted? why does participating in the US Navy make a battleship unique? And why begin the article with a sentence explaining how many were built? Better a simple descriptive "the Iowa class battleships are …" -lethe ^talk 17:55, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

• Keep. For things that minor, fix them yourself instead of listing them here. For that matter, you never even bothered to leave a mention on the talk page pointing out errors you see. I'm sure the articles authors could explain the jargon pretty easily and quickly. This appears to meet all other important criteria and easily fixable. That's not a good FARC candidate. - Taxman ^Talk 18:20, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
• I agree 100% with Taxman. Raul654 19:08, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

• Keep as per Taxman. Kuzaar 19:10, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
• Keep "wet forward" explained now, "narrowness forward" I think obvious and understandable TestPilot 04:36, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

"scuttles" & "mothballed battleship" links now to articles that explane them, "because a reserve" corrected way long ago(and that was a very minor edit), article never stated that Iowa is uniq becose it belong to US navy, article begins with "Iowa class is" as sugested... As per Tsavage, it sounds more like common phrases for me. IMHO. TestPilot 15:38, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

• Keep I agree with Taxman as well. The issues cited are relatively minor and easily fixed. ---B- 20:19, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
• Keep 100% agree with taxman. TomStar81 22:17, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
  • For the record and for your information: A)"wet foward": the Iowa clas s ships had a tendence to accumualte seawater forward of the no. 1 turret, which made that part of the ship wet. B)"scuttles": this refers to the demolish of a ship either by high explosives set inside the ship or its use as a target in a live fire exercise. C)"mothballed battleship": mothball is a reference to ships in a reserve fleet, in this case the United States Navy reserve fleets. D) "because a reserve ... are in storage" I don’t know how much clearer that statement could be. E)"fast": During World War II battleships usually did not steam as fast as their carrier cousins, the top speed for a battleship was about 25-28 knots; carriers could do about 32. "Fast" battleships were therefore concieved to keep up with aircraft carriers. The term has since stuck. TomStar81 22:32, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

• Remove as per TSavage below. Let's live up to the FA standards, or WP will devolve into a second-rate resource, a wasted chance to democratise knowledge on the Internet, but I'll change to Keep when the following matters are addressed:
  • Delink all trivial chronological links, as per WP policy. Retain only if date and month are included.
  • Go through all measures to check for consistency with respect to (1) imperial/metric order (does imperial come first always?); (2) abbreviations (in vs inch); (3) hyphen between value and unit when the unit is abbreviated and it's a double attributive, e.g., '16-inch diameter', but '41 mm diameter'); and (4) non-breaking hyphens, which should be inserted in all cases where the unit is abbreviated.
  • Spell out numbers less than 10, although perhaps not for measurements. This is a matter of style, but '4 decks', '5 decks' and '8 Armored Box Launchers' are pretty unkewl.
  • Do we really need Iowa etc, in italic?

Tony 01:44, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

• • Please allow me to strike out my text; I've remove the strike-line. Tony 02:42, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

• Please clarify "trivial chronological links"; I ca not fix that until I know what that is. As for the measures, thats going to take me a little while to check, so have some patients with me. Lastly, ship names and a ship’s class name are commonly itallicised in other publications such as the Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, and have appeared itallicised in news reports and online news sites. I do not see any reason to change this. TomStar81 02:30, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

Sure, italic is fine in that case; the trivial chronological links are the years without dates (e.g., 1981), and periods such as 1980s and 20th century. Tony 08:27, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

• All "trivial chronological links" have been removed. TomStar81 08:49, 1 January 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. I read this article yesterday when it was on the main page and it is an excellent example of a FA. Yes, the jargon can be explained better but that should have been raised on the article's talk page.--Alabamaboy 14:35, 1 January 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. A Wikipedian who may be in the USN or was in the USN will clear up any confusion. "Scuttles" means to destroy one's ship to keep it out of enemy hands in wartime. Martial Law 22:05, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

Technically to "scuttle" means to open holes in the hull of a boat or ship -- sinking is a common, but not required, result. In usage "scuttle" means to sink one's own ship -- though not necessarily to keep it out of enemy hands (though that was frequently the reason for it)---B- 06:16, 2 January 2006 (UTC).

• • We do have members who fill that niche, althou I only know two of them: User:Bschorr, who is a volenteer crew member aboard USS Missouri, and User:Husnock, who is actually in the USN. TomStar81 22:20, 1 January 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. The quality of the article is superb, and the technical language issues are easy to solve in any case. I'd like to see many articles that currently have featured status as complete and informative as this one. Phaedriel 22:52, 1 January 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. Needs some minor corrections (see the Talk page), but one of the best BB articles I've ever seen in 25yrs' reading on the subj. Trekphiler 11:49, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
• Comment Shoddy writing, inconsistent formatting, poor proofing seem to be acceptable in FAs, as if organizing a bunch of facts on a page is most of the battle won. That's just not so. Having terms without explanation or context doesn't seem such a big deal either. Seeing poor work on the front page of WP time and again really kills me. It's kind of hypocritical to point to the high-flying FA criteria, and in practice, let substandard stuff represent everyone, and then make excuses for it afterward. Try getting a grade by convincing the teacher that someone will come along and explain the terms and correct the spelling...later. This is FEATURED ARTICLE, the best of the best, not REMOVAL FROM WIKIPEDIA. (I'm not voting because I don't have time at this moment to through this thoroughly enough to fairly comment, but I did read it once quickly, and at the very least, it obvioiusly needed a good copyediting before going on the front...or not gone at all...) --Tsavage 04:51, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
• Keep I searched in vain for "shoddy writing" and other such wikisins, but there is one serious issue that does need to be addressed viz. references. They stop abruptly in the middle of the article and hence much of the information is unverifiable. Mikkerpikker 02:01, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. I'm a bit peeved by the short first two sections, but they can easily be merged. The references should be converted to the new format, but again, a minor peeve. And once we're objecting because of a couple bits of jargon, or overlinking of chronological dates, it seems clear there are no major errors that can be found. While this might (and even so, only might) hold up an FAC, this isn't good enough for an FARC. These complaints are easily fixed. So, again, keep. Johnleemk | Talk 05:16, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

Platypus

There is no consensus. Article is still a featured article.

Article is not very well referenced - the last section does not comply with the manual of style. Also, the article does not use footnotes (has in-line html citations instead). It was nominated in 2004 without any voting under Wikipedia:Archive/Refreshing_brilliant_prose_-_Science. It doesn't really demonstrate our best work. Image:Oz20cent.jpg is missing a source. I doubt this would pass today. — Wackymacs 02:24, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

• Keep. Footnotes are not a requirement, and the naming of the References section is trivial. It's not a spectacular article, but it still looks pretty good to me. Mark¹ 18:55, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
• Remove', I've been slowly restructuring the article- but there are lots of gaps (not comprehensive) and frankly it is not clear that the references in the list were actually used to write the article since they were added when taxman made a list of FA's without refs, so they are probably token refs rather than supporting the text of the article.--nixie 01:44, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
• Remove. FA standards have toughened significantly since this article originally came up, and we should not "grandfather" articles in to dodge valid issues. Featured Articles do generally require inline citations, as mentioned here: Wikipedia:Inline Citation. -Rebelguys2 21:38, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
  • The nominator was complaining that it does have inline citations, not that it doesn't. Mark¹ 21:49, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
    • I apologize for being unclear and implying that your "footnotes" were synonymous with all forms of "inline citations," as it doesn't matter what form they are in - as long as they are there and preferably somehow inline. I did mean to imply, however, my agreement with the first part of the nominator's complaint about references, per nixie's argument, in that we shouldn't allow previous acceptance of such minimal use of any type of inline citation and unorganized references and links to in any way grandfather this article in. I have no complaint with whatever kind of inline citation is used - only that it's still there and supporting the article as a whole, and not simply a few sentences in the conclusion. Thanks for the catch. -Rebelguys2 00:04, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
• Remove as per Wackymacs. Tony 03:56, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
• Remove. Would change my vote to keep if references inserted.--Alabamaboy 14:46, 1 January 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. The references look good to me. The sentence structure and word economy could be better. But otherwise I see no reason to remove this article from featured status. -- Hurricane Ericarchive -- my dropsonde 03:18, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
• Ultra-weak keep. Separate the references from the external links, and convert those inline HTML links to footnotes or something. This is rather minor, and those book references are enough. IIRC, inline citations are not a must for FAs, although they are encouraged. Wikipedia:Cite sources/example style doesn't even mention them as examples (last time I checked). Might be time to change this, though, seeing as we now have native support for footnotes in MediaWiki. Johnleemk | Talk 05:21, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

KaDee Strickland

Article is still a featured article

Blatant Hollywood starlet exercise in self-promotion (or fanzine hagiography). Not sure which it is at this stage -- probably a bit of both -- but it sure isn't encyclopedic.

Who, beyond the article's prime mover, is actually willing to maintain that this was an appropriate selection for the main page? Nobody now seems to want to take responsibility for that decision, or for the vanity-press move of running the article on the actress's birthday. Presumably she was logging on eagerly at home at the stroke of midnight. See the dispute on the article's talk page and at User talk:Raul654. BYT 15:12, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

I'm a bit amused that a (to me) totally unknown actress is causing this ruckus - makes it more enjoyable than if it had been Jennifer Aniston or Brad Pitt or any other annoyingly *over*exposed celebrity - but in the main I'm rather shocked at the total pointlessness of this babe, and embarrassed for Wikipedia. Hope a healthy discussion about avoiding self-promoters ensues in the Wiki community. 70.137.167.170 21:46, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

• Week Keep. I don't think this should be here, but really it's too early to have nominated this. From the Featured article removal candidates main page: Do not list articles that have recently been promoted—such complaints should have been brought up during the candidate period. --MisterHand 22:03, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

• Keep. As the user who wrote the bulk of this article, I can say that the state of the article when it appeared on the Main Page yesterday was almost exactly the same as it was when it passed through peer review (see Wikipedia:Peer review/KaDee Strickland/archive1) and FAC (see Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/KaDee Strickland) last August and September (the diff, for anybody who's interested). There were no concerns raised about the article's length, level of detail or NPOV at the time. I tried to make the article about as comprehensive as Sharon Tate (another FA), and I believe that I was successful. I can understand why it may seem like a "fanzine hagiography" on the subject, but as the press generally seem to rate Strickland quite highly (this is from all of the articles I have read), I tried to reflect this in the article. I wrote the article in compliance with WP:NPOV#A_simple_formulation, i.e. by using quotes about Strickland from the media (in other words, attributing points of view to sources). Also, I think the article is quite similar to Henry Fonda (another FA), and I tried to have everything about that article (and other featured articles about celebrities, such as the Sharon Tate article, Julia Stiles, Kylie Minogue etc.) influence my work on this article. I'd also appreciate if the nominator were to stop suggesting that I am associated with Strickland in some way, and refrain from using inflammatory edit summaries (see, for example, [1]). Extraordinary Machine 22:28, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

• Okay, the quotes are now all individually sourced, which removes my primary cause for suspicion. I will not imply that you have some connection to Strickland any more, and I apologize for doing that.
• At the same time, I encourage you to create article content that could not possibly be confused with press agent blather. Wikipedia is not a propaganda machine or an advertising medium.
• If the article was "neutral" when it passed through the FA process (a contention I find laughable), I'd like to ask what, exactly, it is now. Now that we've incorporated the real-world critical drubbings she's received, which were all carefully airbrushed out of the version that landed on the mainpage, and now that we've excised the shrine-to-KaDee stuff like her high-school extracurricular activities ... is this current version closer to what we should have been shooting for all along, or further from the mark?
• There remains the question of whether an actress of this stature even deserves more than a paragraph of WP's attention. I firmly believe she does not, and that the article is still wildly off scale, and I maintain we should remove. BYT 13:11, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

I apologise if I caused you distress, irritated or offended you in any way during our debate on the article's talk page. I'd like you to consider this from my point of view (if you already have done, then I thank you for doing so). I wrote the bulk of this article and created it in June. I developed it over the following weeks, and eventually requested a peer review in August. One concern was raised (related to the number of references in the article), which I responded to. Then, I submitted the article for FAC, and it drew nine support votes (and no objections), with nobody complaining about the article's POV or comprehensiveness (in fact it was complimented in relation to those things). It was promoted to featured status in early September, and months later, I decided to request for it to appear on the Main Page on Strickland's birthday, as I felt that is the date that was most suitable for the article. It has drawn criticism due to the subject's lack of notability, and some users cited problems regarding the article's POV. Now, you might be able to understand if I didn't really take this seriously, as the article had received a positive response during the FAC process, and it had changed very little since then. Even on the day that the article was featured, there were comments both on the article's talk page and my user talk page from users who believed that it is a very good article, and user:Raul654 himself has said "the Kadee Strickland article is, in fact, neutral."

Also, the information on her high school extracurricular activities may be considered excessive detail, but I do not think it should be considered POV. If Strickland had done very badly in school, I would have covered it in as comprehensively as I did with the facts that were there. I still maintain that the majority the articles and reviews I came across while researching Strickland that referred to her specifically spoke of her positively, and I tried to reflect this in the article. I welcome the negative quotes in the article as well, as they show to the reader the reasons why some critics may not like her. Regarding the Strickland article, user:Rlevse wrote: "...you can not resolve both objections when they are diametrically opposed. For example, if objector A likes layout A, and objector B likes layout B, you can not resolve both objections and one will remain unsolved. I could cite more examples dealing with style preferences, etc too. There should be more standardization in the FAC process." I think that he is exactly right, but I hope that my recent edits to the article (which I hope did not destroy, but improve upon, your work on this article, BYT) have created a "compromise" of sorts, between the previous version of the article that a lot of people liked, and your series of edits that a few users liked as well. Thanks. Extraordinary Machine 21:40, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

• With all respect to both you and Raul654, he probably felt that he had' to say it was neutral, because he had let it through. But he was wrong. It wasn't neutral. At that point, it was an embarrassment to WP. And you'll notice that he has chosen not to respond to a half-dozen or so specific questions about article content that I posed on his talk page.
• I realize you mean well, but you keep repeating this business about the article sailing through the FA process. That's irrelevant. People missed huge problems with this article -- like the inclusion of high school extracurricular activities and, frankly, they missed some basic writing and punctuation problems. The article would have benefited from some pain in the ass like me looking it over before the vote concluded. But everybody loved KaDee, apparently, so the ship sailed on. The question of how to fix the FA process is separate from the question we're discussing here, namely, where we go from here. For me, your continued insistence that the original piece, the one that landed on the mainpage, was somehow a sterling example of NPOV writing -- that insistence is a major obstacle to a meaningful discussion about what we do next.
• She has recieved brutally negative reviews for her appearances in mediocre or terrible film projects. Your opening paragraph, though, warbled obediently, and without anything remotely resembling qualification, about "acclaim" from movie critics for her work. My "offense," insofar as there is any, arises from your unwillingness to admit that failing to quote these negative reviews, in the version that landed on the homepage, was a huge breach of editorial responsibility. BYT 13:00, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

I think that's a rather bold assumption to make about Raul654's thoughts when he made that comment. Everybody at peer review and FAC didn't "love KaDee", and some voters said that they had never heard of her. I hope you're not implying that the editors who were in support of the article are unable to comment fairly on Wikipedia articles; regardless, it is not "irrelevant" that the article "sailed" through the FA process as it's impossible to remedy "huge problems" that I am unaware of if nobody else thinks that they are there either. As I said, most of the articles and reviews that mentioned Strickland specifically spoke of her positively, so I tried to reflect this in the article per WP:NPOV#A_simple_formulation. I don't see how not quoting negative reviews when they are (as far as I could see) significantly outnumbered by positive ones is "a huge breach of editorial responsibility"; in fact, I'd argue that my submitting the article for peer review shows that I was trying to uphold editorial responsibility and Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Yes, you had problems with the version of the article that appeared on the Main Page, but now there are quotes from negative reviews as well (although I still maintain that Strickland's press has been mainly positive), the prose has been altered, and some things trimmed here and there. Extraordinary Machine 15:58, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

• Re: 'I don't see how not quoting negative reviews when they are (as far as I could see) significantly outnumbered by positive ones is "a huge breach of editorial responsibility"
• You don't? After opening your article with all that business about "acclaim," you really can't see any obligation to provide evidence that there might possibly be an alternate viewpoint, and that that alternate viewpoint required the same level of detail as the one you favored? Can I suggest that you review WP:NPOV?
• I note, for the record, that we've moved from (presumably overwhelming) "acclaim" (in the mainpage draft) to the current notion that negative reviews have been "significantly outnumbered by positive ones." This progression is disturbing to me, and it undercuts your credibility, especially in light of the fact you have carefully deleted a review I inserted that described the entire cast of the film -- including Strickland -- as awful. I am not inclined to accept your assessments of this woman's talents or the critical response to them. And Wikipedia is not a @#$%^& fanzine. BYT 17:33, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Per WP:NPOV#Undue_weight, "Articles that compare views need not give minority views as much or as detailed a description as more popular views, and may not include tiny-minority views at all...To give undue weight to a significant-minority view, or to include a tiny-minority view, might be misleading as to the shape of the dispute. If we are to represent the dispute fairly, we should present competing views in proportion to their representation among experts on the subject, or among the concerned parties." I wrote "critical acclaim" in the article's lead section as most of the articles and reviews I read that mentioned Strickland specifically spoke of her positively; I did not, however, write "universal critical acclaim" or "unanimous critical acclaim". I replaced the critical quote you inserted into the Anacondas paragraph with another negative one that specifically referred to Strickland's performance as "unintentional comedy", as I think it's better to use quotes that refer to Strickland directly than ones that comment on the entire cast. Extraordinary Machine 23:21, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Okay, but the problem is, you're the only person who has made this assessment that most of the references to her acting have been positive. I've been looking all week, and what I've tracked down falls into three categories, roughly evenly distributed: a) no mention of KaDee whatsoever b) negative, sometimes sharply negative reviews, as for Anacondas, and c) positive assessments of her comic turn in Fever Pitch. Mentions to the effect that her career is on the upswing are irrelevant to her ability as an actress -- we're talking about critical "acclaim". So I do think we have an obligation to show the critical downside in more detail than you did in the version that landed on the mainpage. BYT 13:24, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

I am being completely honest when I say that most of the articles and reviews I read that refer to Strickland specifically discuss her positively; however, I do not have any reason to believe that you are lying when you say that the articles and reviews about Anacondas you have read are mostly negative, either. Since I believe (based on my research) that the reception of Strickland's performance in Anacondas has been more positive than negative, and you believe (based on your research) that it has been more negative than positive, how about we combine both of these statements and say that reception to her performance was mixed (although the current ratio of positive to negative quotes implies that to the reader by itself). Extraordinary Machine 21:01, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

• Keep. The article was promoted in late August, so I'm not sure that is recent enough to stop a FARC. That said, this seems like a good article about someone I did not previously know much about. A FA doesn't have to be about someone or something famous, just cover the subject in FA level detail, which this one does.--Alabamaboy 23:31, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

• Keep. Small topics have just the same right to be here (and get attention) as broad ones. Unless there is some major flaw in the article that doesn't meet the FA criteria (I can't think of any), I see no reason whatsoever to remove it. Jon Harald Søby \ ^{no na} 00:41, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

• Remove. I was originally not decided, giving this article the benefit of the doubt, untill I reread it and noticed such lines as "Strickland's career began with a brief appearance as a ghost in The Sixth Sense in 1999, a two-line part (snip) The supernatural thriller, which starred Bruce Willis, was well received by critics and audiences alike." I mean come on... she was an extra with two lines in that movie, it doesn't matter how well it was recieved because she had nothing to do with that. The article has been improved SINCE it was featured, but at the time it was featured it was abysmal and the fact that it was featured on this broad's birthday makes BYT's claim that it being featured was a set up slightly more believable than the article itself. Robrecht 00:29, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Some more negative quotes from critics have been added, and the sentence concerning the reception of The Sixth Sense has been removed. Extraordinary Machine 21:40, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
    • Which is very nice, but it doesn't take away the fact that at the point when it was a FA it wasn't deserving of that status. Hence to let it retain that status would suggest that anyone can just get any article they want featured and then change it to be up to the FA standards if someone complains. Robrecht 12:07, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
      • Well I thought that if the article wasn't deserving of FA status, then somebody — anybody — would have expressed this opinion during the peer review process, and most certainly at FAC. Anyway, I thought the article is supposed to be judged on its current state, which is somewhat different from when it was the FA of the day. Extraordinary Machine 15:58, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
• Keep. Excellent article that will not be removed. —Hollow Wilerding 02:10, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Remove. In the past twenty-four hours, this article has greatly declined. Unfortunately, I no longer approve of its FA status. Therefore, I now vote remove. —Hollow Wilerding 21:43, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
    • Keep. —Hollow Wilerding . . . (talk) 22:03, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
    • I have made some edits that I think have created a "compromise" of sorts, between the previous version of the article that a lot of people (including you yourself) liked, and user:BrandonYusufToropov's series of edits that a few users liked as well. Extraordinary Machine 15:58, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

• Weak Remove. I'm very surprised at those asking for the removal of this article from FA status because of it's seemingly trivial content or that fact that it was featured on KaDee Strickland's birthday. Of course only a fan of hers would devote time to writing this article - that's not the point. However, there still exist many grounds that should have been noted during this article's FAC and peer review:

NPOV: Resolved. Per Robrecht's comments. Commenting on the success of The Sixth Sense seems like nothing but a publicity student for KaDee Strickland. It is completely unbalanced and hardly neutral. For example, the section on "Fever Pitch" works - the article analyzes critical response to KaDee's performance. Everything in that section is talking about the actress's performance, unlike the neutrality violation earlier.

Style and Grammar: Resolved. There are two blatant mistakes in the single sentence, "She also appeared briefly in the direct-to-cable independent film Knots, and in the ill-fated Nicole Kidman vehicle The Stepford Wives." "The Stepford Wives" should follow the style of the rest of the article, and be italicized, as here it is most likely referring to the movie adaptation. In addition, the insertion of a comma is simply poor grammar: comma splicing. It continues here: "That same year, she served as an extra in the unreleased independent film The Sterling Chase, and won a slightly larger part in James Mangold's Girl, Interrupted." Almost every instance of a sentence describing a sequence of works is spliced and mutilated. FAs look for brilliant prose.

References: Resolved. While overall citation is well and good, if you look closely, the numbers are not always lined up. For example, clicking on in-line citation 15 takes you to the correct reference, but it's located at 17 in the list. Everything needs to be rechecked and lined up.

Red links and unliked links: Resolved. More a comment than a real complaint, but for a featured article on the main page usually, it's usually best that there not be such a high number of red links. In addition, linking years is always a pain for any article - finding the first instance of every year and making sure it hasn't been linked to yet. You'll want to recheck the article for this; at first glance, I noticed that 1999 was not linked to until the "Filmography" section. -Rebelguys2 02:32, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Some more negative quotes from critics have been added, and the sentence concerning the reception of The Sixth Sense has been removed. I've also tweaked the prose to reduce the amount of commas (mostly by splitting sentences into two), and added the italics around the film titles (they were there earlier this week, but disappeared for some reason). Also, I've reduced the number of year wikilinks in the Filmography section, and the article now only has two redlinks (to the titles of upcoming films Strickland is in). Extraordinary Machine 21:40, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, and nice work; I'll change my vote to Keep. Nevertheless, I'm still left a little bothered by many of the arguments here. It's a well-written, largely neutral article about an admittedly not A-list, but still somewhat notable, female actor. What, honestly, is left to debate, besides the opinion that Wikipedia shouldn't be a repository for topics straying from traditional encyclopedias? Nothing. -Rebelguys2 09:27, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

• Remove. POV and poorly written. In particular, there are no quotes from any negative reviews to balance the copious puffery and the use of commas is poor all through. Filiocht | The kettle's on 08:16, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Some more negative quotes from critics have been added, and the sentence concerning the reception of The Sixth Sense has been removed. I've also tweaked the prose to reduce the amount of commas (mostly by splitting sentences into two). Extraordinary Machine 21:40, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
• Keep for two reasons: 1)The article was recently nominated and there was no indication whatsoever that there were problems with the article. That implies that any problems are with the FA process, not the article itself. 2)The tone of the person who nominated this for a FAR, with words like 'starlet' and 'babe' imply that the problem s/he has with the article is as much about who the article is about as the style of the article itself. I was considering a weak remove but I don't like the tone of the proposal. Mithridates 11:33, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

The "babe" thing wasn't mine, but rather that of an anonymous editor. But I take your point. I still beleve we should delete. Er, remove. There are probably heads of state who don't get this kind of obsessive detail. BYT 12:54, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Ah, got it. Well, we'll see how the rest of the voting turns out. Mithridates 14:27, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

• Keep. I would have voted "remove" just over 24 hours ago, but, ironically, BYT's edits to the article have greatly improved it. — BrianSmithson 18:24, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

I'm flattered, but must note with alarm that EM is even now patiently reinserting material I edited out. So for all I know, we may be back to square one before too long. BYT 21:00, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

• Remove. Should never have been used as a Featured Article. This is not an inspiration to other actor articles. If every sinlge celebrity article follow this one's example and level of extraneous, pointless detail, Julia Roberts' would have to be split into 20 separate pages, each one covering two years in her life.Vulturell 19:23, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
  • As I said to you on the article's talk page, I tried to emulate the style and comprehensiveness of featured articles such as Sharon Tate, which I feel covers its subject in a similar level of detail to the Strickland article. Extraordinary Machine 21:40, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
    • That's great. Unfortunately, Strickland is no Sharon Tate, and the Sharon Tate article is intself longer than it needs to be. As I said, and as I will keep saying, the Strickland article should by no means be considered a model actor article. We aren't writing a book on these people. We're presenting the important and relevant details of their lives and careers. And almost nothing in the Strickland article is as relevant as it's made out to be. Vulturell 22:32, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
      • Well then maybe you should suggest on Talk:Sharon Tate that the Tate article be trimmed also. I think that if the Strickland article were to be cut down to the size of an article such as Johnny Messner, it would fail the "comprehensive" FA criterion. Extraordinary Machine 15:58, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

• Remove.Wikipedia is a collaborative free encyclopaedia, not a platform for 'fanboy' hagiography. It's a shame that EM is taking so much flak, as he has obviously devoted plenty of effort to this article (not least the presumed effort entailed in actually digging up any information on this lady, whom I myself and I believe almost every other contributor to this debate has never even heard of). That does not change the fact that it is very disappointing that this article was ever granted FA status, and it is VERY disappointing that the timing was designed to deliberately coincide with her birthday. (An abuse of wikipedia). As well as the more explicit POV and slavering statements (now thankfully minimised and balanced to some extent) the whole article is implicitly POV in that it attributes excessive space and importance to irrelevant minutiae in the life of an irrelevant individual. Much of the article consists (even now, and it is MUCH better now) of totally extraneous detail that does not in any way further our understanding of this individual or her work. The comparison to Sharon Tate is completely redundant; Tate is an internationally known historical figure, because of her relationship with Polanski and of course her untimely death- NOT because she was a b-movie actress. (And at any rate, I would suggest that the Tate article should be shortened by at least a third). The Strickland article seems to my reading to violate (at the very least) articles 1, 2d and 5 of the Wikipedia:What is a featured article guidelines, and as such should not have been considered. I would suggest that these should be amended so as to demand an enhanced standard of notability and potential interest (as defined by feedback during the FA selection process). I agree however with Mithridates that the status of this article flags important failings in the peer-review (Strickland garnered one single comment in PR, which was not acted upon anyway) and FA nomination (numerous comments, none of which addressed the points that have been raised in the furore over this article's FA status)processes themselves, and that (especially in light of recent events) these should be sorted out urgently. I also note that the article was self-nominated and had editorial input from only a single wikipedian (EM) when it was chosen as FA. One might consider whether this is correct given the danger of POV 'sneaking' in and the simple fact that wiki is supposed to be collaborative. In a week when wiki has been making the national news (at least in my country) the first experience that many new users had of this encyclopaedia was Kadee Strickland [[[2]]]. Is that what we want? Mistakes happen in any process, and this was one and it shouldn't have happened. Remove remove remove. Sorry EM.86.142.232.45 00:37, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Thanks for complimenting my efforts on this article. Are you saying that the comprehensiveness of the Strickland article, in and of itself, is POV? Yes, Sharon Tate is probably better known for being the wife of Roman Polanski (and also for the circumstances surrounding her murder). But if you'll notice, the Tate article covers her career as a "b-movie actress" in quite a lot of detail, and I tried to emulate this with the Strickland article. As I said at the time, I couldn't address the comment on peer review as it would have been in violation of Wikipedia's verifiability policy. There's no policy against self-nominations on WP:FAC, or articles only being edited significantly by one person. I agree that "wiki is supposed to be collaborative", but nobody else at all seemed to be touching the article (apart from minor edits here and there)...and anyway, I made an attempt to attract input from other editors on peer review (and then FAC). Extraordinary Machine 15:58, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
    • The comprehensiveness of the article is not in itself POV. The importance attributed to irelevant detail is POV. As has been noted previously, this level of inclusiveness would probably be somewhat out of place even in the biography of a world-statesperson or similar international figure. Material that does not further our understanding of her work (i.e. that is unrelated to her career) should automatically be stricken. As for the Tate article- I myself mentioned that it could stand to lose a third or more, and much of this would be culled from her career summary. Having said that, I feel that even Tate's career eclipsed Strickland's (can you get C-movie actors? Perhaps we could efine a new category...). Part of the beauty of wikipedia is that there are no space limitations- but waffling serves no purpose except to obfuscate the focus of an article. Much of the Strickland piece is, I'm afraid, waffle, and it was even worse when I first saw it. I would suggest that the reason no-one edited the article was because nobody cares about this woman, and hence I wonder whether notability and wider interest should now be included as FA criteria. Notwithstanding that, I feel KDS does not even satisfy the EXISTING requirements for FA status, as I outlined above. I do not mean to denigrate you or your effort EM, you went about things the right way and you seem to be at least somewhat pliable when it comes to revisions. This debacle does however outline MAJOR failings of process that now MUST be addressed if wikipedia is to be taken seriously as an encyclopaedia and ever move towards a stable version. I feel it's really unfortunate that it is likely that the first (and perhaps only) experience of wikipedia for many people this week was this article. It does not showcase the best of what we have here. 86.139.28.9 18:46, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
      • In hindsight, I think that while the article may have been a little too detailed when it appeared on the Main Page, in my opinion this issue has improved. It's more succinct now (but still comprehensive), and I think it makes for a more interesting read. You make some very valid points about the FAC process, and maybe you could leave a post at Wikipedia talk:Featured articles and Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates expressing your concerns. I disagree, however, that a notability criterion should be added, as I just love the diversity of Wikipedia's featured articles (and all of its articles). Extraordinary Machine 23:21, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
• As far as I can tell, the discussion on the talk page is being addressed promptly, and the particulars discussed in the nomination statement here seem uncompelling -- the article was run on the main page because it is a featured article, and articles are regularly featured on days of special significance (my article on Blaise Pascal was on the main page on the anniversary of his death.) Frankly, this is a nice little FA, demonstrating the sort of coverage that WP can give to subjects that wouldn't even get a mention in traditional general encyclopedias. Keep. Christopher Parham (talk) 06:56, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, but Blaise Pascal is both notable and dead. KaDee Strickland is utterly obscure and very much alive. (And, as an aspiring actress, no doubt eager for good PR.) Turning our mainpage into a birthday present for her, or appearing to do so, smacks of fan-driven bias, even though her people didn't create the article for pay. BYT 13:23, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

BYT, may I ask what date you suggest the article should have been featured on? I thought that Strickland's birthday was the most suitable date to represent the article (in fact, it pretty much seemed like the only date directly linked to the article's subject at all). Extraordinary Machine 15:58, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Any date that wasn't her birthday (or the opening date of a new film, I guess). It's not like the article was about something special that happened on that date, unless of course we count her coming into the world as some kind of turning point in civilization. I suppose I should be glad you didn't lobby to have the article coincide with the release date of some new film she's putting out. Would that have been acceptable, in your view? BYT 18:38, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

I would not have lobbied for it to be featured on the release date of one of her new films, and might have protested any proposal to do so, as a) it would be only distantly related to the subject of the article and b) I'm not trying to promote her career. Extraordinary Machine 23:21, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

• Keep. Once you get past niggling details like quotations only being covered in footnotes and not individually attributed, or not mentioning enough negative reviews for her films which may not even criticize her directly...it seems that the primary problem people have with this article is the subject's alleged "insignificance." That is part of the joy of Wikipedia, for me and presumably for thousands of others...finding well-written, authoritative articles about people, places, events, and subjects that were previously totally unknown to me. Finding a story where one never would have expected to find one. Maybe it's not to your liking, but that's a matter of taste. If we claim that press agents are infiltrating Wikipedia to promote their up-and-coming clients (which sounds a bit ridiculous to me, to be honest), where do we draw the line? Perhaps articles on relatively forgotten people from history are only placed here to promote some historian's upcoming book, perhaps articles on places or monuments are only planted by some tourism board or chamber of commerce...et cetera, et cetera, ad nauseum. There's no way to ferret out the "real reason" behind an article, and it's irrelevant anyway. Is it truthful, is it well-written, is it documented; that's really all we ought to consider, in my opinion. Sleeper99999 10:45, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

I appreciate what you're saying, but you're putting words in my mouth. What bothers me is not her insignificance, though I would have written a shorter article. What bothers me is that the article that made it through the FA process was so totally awestruck by her life story that the mainpage looked, for all the world, like it had been bought and paid for. A week's worth of patient questioning has determined that that was not in fact what happened, but even so, this was a manifest failure of the editorial neutrality WP is supposed to produce. BYT 13:28, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

As I said, most of the articles and reviews that mentioned Strickland specifically spoke of her positively, so I tried to reflect this in the article per WP:NPOV#A_simple_formulation. Also, no complaints concerning the article's POV were raised during the peer review and FAC processes (in fact some editors complimented it on that aspect at the time), and the article changed little between then and when it appeared on the Main Page. Extraordinary Machine 15:58, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

I may be repeating myself, but I consider the peer review and the FAC processes on this article to have been woefully deficient, ignoring as they did massive neutrality problems, and only slightly less massive problems with style, punctuation, and sourcing. I'd appreciate it if you responded to the content of what I'm saying, rather than repeating the fact that the article was peer reviewed and selected as a featured article. I know that. I'm introducing additional topics to the conversation, BYT 18:43, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Maybe the problem is that both sides to this are talking over each other, complaining about generalities without discussing specifics. I don't think we can resolve this by just making the sweeping charge that it's all POV - if we tackle specific passages, maybe we can come to some kind of middle ground. Which sentences are the most guilty of demonstrating POV, in your opinion? Sleeper99999 10:06, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

I still have a problem with the very end of the article, which advises us about what new KaDee projects to keep an eye out for, and offers the details of a dropped pilot. If you applied this same level of analysis to the career of, say, Drew Barrymore, the article would extend to War and Peace dimensions.

We mention twice that she has been panned for a lousy Southern accent, but tactfully avoid mentioning what an extraordinary accomplishment this is for an actress born in Georgia.

I also think the following is totally extraneous, and have tried twice, in vain, to delete it:

"Strickland is also an advocate of the arts. Prior to the release of Anacondas, she hosted the art debut of fellow actress Heidi Jayne Netzley at the Edgemar Center for the Arts in Santa Monica, California.

Again -- are we going to cover everything in this woman's life? Why not talk about what party she went to last night? It's not a blog, after all, it's an encyclopedia. BYT 13:35, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

I reinserted the paragraph about Strickland's art advocacy because I believe that it's worth mentioning her activities outside of her acting career, and the Julia Stiles and Ian McKellen featured articles (as well as non-featured ones) do this as well. I reinserted the bit about her next film because I've seen articles on actors, actresses and singers that contain information about their forthcoming projects and nobody has ever objected to it. I also put back in the sentences about the recently cancelled television series she was going to be in, as it would have been only her second leading role after Anacondas and it received quite a bit of coverage in more recent articles and interviews about Strickland that I have read. I have, however, added a note after the negative quotes about her accent in Anacondas about her coming from the American South. Extraordinary Machine 21:01, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Keep - She's notable enough for wikipedia. Yep, the front page was the first I had ever heard of her. But so what? I don't like too much trivial information in an article, and would probably edit it out or talkpage about it if the article was too long. But this one isn't, it's a short yet comprehensive article on the actress' life and works. - Hahnchen 05:15, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

• Keep. She is obviously notable, and the article is really good, comprehensive and well-sourced. There is no evidence of self-promotion. Carioca 19:57, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Keep. Issues have been addressed. For good or bad, wikipedia will always have comprehensive articles on pop culture - because that is what some volunteers care about. If the person is notable that is all that matters - if we wish that the article on a significant historical figure were better - then all we can do is work on it - we shouldn't denigrate the efforts of those that write good articles because we don't like the subject matter they write on. Trödel•talk 15:15, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Keep. Maybe a bit too comprehensive. But keep.

• Remove. This article is an embarassing display of fannish obsession, extensively sourced from dubious sources which mostly provide favorable comments about whatver they cover and repackage publicity materials. The opening section is mostly name-dropping, and the comment about "gained prominence and critical attention" is grossly overstated. Monicasdude 23:47, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

• Keep uncertain what particular bits are unencylopedic. This appears to be an argument about the subject, not the content, however. In which case, I don't think it's a valid FARC. - Ta bu shi da yu 01:59, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

• Remove My first vote on here. Anyway, I thought she was a strange choice. The article is ok but I think that notability is part of featured article status, is it not? I had no idea who she was and I'm still not sure how it became a FA. --Woohookitty^{(cat scratches)} 12:24, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Notability is definately not part of featured article status :). WhiteNight ^{T | @ | C} 19:26, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

• Keep Ohhhh boy. This is an article I remember back from FAC... for starters, the version on FAC was terrible in the sense that it was so unbelievably glowing of her. I was a bit miffed at all the support... I wanted to object myself but whenever I object I want to try to explain my reasoning - especially in this sense since pop culture articles on wikipedia are really tough to pass FAC and you inevitably get a lot of people coming out of nowhere to oppose it on the silliest of grounds. That all said, the current version is sooo much better and passes my tests, so I think it should stay as a FA WhiteNight ^{T | @ | C} 19:26, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Removed status

Behistun Inscription

Article is no longer a featured article

Not a bad article, but I don't think it lives up to today's FA standards. The most serious problem is that it is not comprehensive. Reading through it left me with a barrage of unanswered questions.

• The article says that Ctesias and Tacitus mention the inscription. That sounds very interesting to me and I'd like to know much more. What exactly do they say about it?
• The history of scholarship on the inscription seems to end with Rawlinson in the 19th Century. What's happened more recently? Surely there has been a lot of research?
• The inscription is a long text but the article tells us almost nothing about what it says. A decent summary would be appropriate.
• I realize that some of this should to some extent be treated in other articles but it would be interesting to know how reliable an account the inscription is believed to represent. What other sources corraborate or refute the information in it?
• I feel that more context is needed in understanding the importance of this inscription within Old Persian literature. Are there any other Persian inscriptions from the same period?
• I would like to know much more about the actual decoding of the text. What were the major hurdles? What were the major breakthroughs? Were there false starts? Was comparison with other languages important? And how does this text fit into the framework of Indo-European comparative linguistics?
• The article is just far too short for such an amazing topic. It prints on less than three pages. By comparison Hrafnkels saga, an article on another ancient text but one probably much less important, prints on seven pages (and I feel it could use two or three more as I outline on that talk page).
• From what I can understand of the article the inscription is a spectacular thing to behold. Black-and-white scans from 19th century books can't possibly do it justice. A free photograph may be hard to find but this is a featured article so I feel we can make high demands.
• The style of the writing is a bit flippant with parenthetical remarks like "oddly enough". This is no big deal, though, just my personal taste.
• The references section seems completely inadequate. Surely there is a lot of literature on this. What are the standard works? Where should I go for authoritative information on the subject?
• Again, this is a good article. I hope I haven't hurt any feelings by outlining what I think it lacks. I hope that the article is improved because this topic certainly deserves a featured article. - Haukur Þorgeirsson 20:22, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Remove. Definitely not up to current standards. Everyking 20:29, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Remove. This wouldn't be accepted as a featured article candidate today, there is a lot of room for improvement. — Wackymacs 21:31, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

• Keep - as recent events have shown, I am probably completely out of step with community consensus on the requirements for a featured article (one of the reasons I have not nominated one for ages, perhaps) but I like this article. It says just enough and not too much, although I have added a few bits more. Haukur Þorgeirsson gives some excellent suggestions for areas where the article could be improved even further, but I think it is good enough. The main black spot for me was the lack of references. One of the external links was good enough to be a reference - [3] - and I also found this which repeats two other original references verbatim. Happy? -- ALoan (Talk) 21:39, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

• I'm not happy :P, I just don't think this would be accepted today by the voters at FAC, I would Object to it for one. — Wackymacs 21:43, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

• Oh, well, if the test of a featured article is whether it would pass FAC today, then about 90% of them should be demoted. -- ALoan (Talk) 22:20, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

• Thank you. You've made a very good start towards fixing the problems I perceive with the article. Now I think the biggest gap to plug is to talk more about the contents of the text itself, summarize it a bit, maybe quote a part or two to give the reader a feel for it. If we could have some of that and a better picture I would be willing to give this a pass. I personally feel that rising standards are a good thing and that we should strive for true excellence in our featured articles. I would work on this myself except that I know almost nothing about it. I do Old Norse, not Old Persian :) - Haukur Þorgeirsson 21:55, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

• Well, thanks for your thanks - don't do Old Persian or Old Norse, but I can read and summarise. In response to your specific points:

• I have added a little about Ctesias and Tacitus from the references, but someone more knowledgeable than I will have to look at the original texts.

• Definitely better than nothing, good job. According to the talk page the status of the Tacitus information is in doubt. Maybe that should be addressed in the article. - Haukur

• I have added a little about scholarship since Rawlinson.

• Again, thank you. Though more would be nice, especially something from a recent linguistic work. - Haukur

• There links to the full text. As the article says, "[Darius] arranged for the inscription of a long tale of his accession in the face of the usurper Smerdis of Persia (and Darius' subsequent successful wars and suppressions of rebellion) to be inscribed into a cliff near the modern town of Bisistun". That is it really - "I am the king, these people tried to rebel, I won."

• LOL! :) But still a sample would be nice, the article should stand on its own and not have to rely on external links. - Haukur

• Actually, it is rather the other way around: the text is quite close to, and was seen as confirming, passages by Herodotus (and as the article says, the parallel between the text and Herodotus made the first translation easier). But clearly it is Darius propaganda. I have no idea how you would test whether sources from two and half millennia ago are accurate - we are lucky enough to have them at all!
• The external links refer to many other inscriptions in Persian cities, palaces, etc, and there are heaps of cuneiform tablets, inscribed pottery, etc., etc. The difficulty is working out what they mean, and this text was the key.

• Okay, that's important context which should be briefly mentioned. - Haukur

• Sorry - I will have to pass on comparative linguistics. As the article says, Rawlinson was helped in that other scholars had already deciphered around a third of the cuneiform symbols.
• Rather succinct than flabby. Are you saying that Hrafnkels saga is not comprehensive too? Are you going to nominate that here too?

• Neah, it's decent enough. Though I do think it's a problem that it says nothing about English translations of the work. I hope to remedy that eventually. - Haukur

• Please, anyone, be my guest and take a photo when next you are in Iran!

• I appreciate that this is not a trivially solved problem but still. "I'm not going to Iran anytime soon so we'll have to settle for a b/w scan from a 19th century book" is exactly the kind of thinking I think we should try to avoid with our featured articles. - Haukur

• If the style irritates you, please copyedit.
• I have created a proper References section, and used the sources therein to check and augment the contents of the article.

Phew. -- ALoan (Talk) 22:20, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

You've done lots of good work. That's exactly what I was hoping would happen when I nominated the article here. - Haukur Þorgeirsson 22:59, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Thanks. Lets leave this here for a while and see if any further improvements are made, but would you reconsider your removal nomination if it stayed exactly the same? -- ALoan (Talk) 09:27, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

I just read it all again to get a fresh perspective. It's definitely improved though some of the same things are still bothering me. I think I've found a better way to sum that up. The Behistun Inscription can be treated from at least three perspective - a historical perspective, a linguistic perspective and an archaeological perspective. It seems to me that the article is overly fixated on the archaeological facts. I'll admit my bias up front - I'm a linguist and I'd like to see more about the linguistics here. But you can also look at the Rosetta Stone article for comparison. It's actually a worse article but it has a better balance between history, linguistics and archaeology. I'd be willing to give the crummy image a pass if the text was comprehensive but I still don't feel it is.

Any discussion about removing the featured status of an article is based on what we perceive the FAs as being so I think I'll explain my point of view briefly. By selecting this relative handful of articles for promotion I feel like we're saying: "Okay, we know that a lot of Wikipedia is not that good but we're willing to swear by these articles." There's talk now and then about printing the FAs and when I feel that it would be a bit embarrassing to see a particular FA in print then I think it should be brought up here for consideration.

I'll try to help and edit the article a bit but my knowledge is very limited and I'd rather do less than do something that might be incorrect. - Haukur Þorgeirsson 21:24, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

• I see that a picture was just added. It's not spectacular - one would like much higher resolution and perhaps something to establish the scale - but it's still quite an improvement. If we expand the prose a bit this might pass muster. I still haven't got around to doing anything myself. - Haukur Þorgeirsson 18:08, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

• Remove as per nominator; in addition, it needs a copyedit. Tony 01:55, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
• Despite the valiant efforts above, it still does not meet the criteria. Remove --Jeffrey O. Gustafson - Shazaam! - <*> 08:28, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.

Article is no longer a featured article

This article was submitted for removal in April, but the status was kept. I think, however, that it is in a terrible condition, and by no means does it live it to todays FA standards, in my opinion. Jon Harald Søby \ ^{no na} 11:59, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

This nomination is also in a terrible condition. You've not made a single edit to the article page, talk page nor specified a single specific problem with the article on this page. Pcb21 Pete 15:06, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

Sorry about that. "Terrible condition" (from me, on the article) might have been strong words. The main issue I have with this article, is that it is way too short. It only has three real sections, the remaining sections being "See also", "Referenecs" and "External links". If you compare it to other featured articles about persons, you will see that they all are much longer than this one is. Also, it only has one picture, which is said to be fair use, but no source is given for the image. (I don't know if the image thing is a requirement for FA here on en:; on no: it is.) Jon Harald Søby \ ^{no na} 12:26, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

• Remove - I don't think that the article is long enough in the slightest. I've read through it, and it doesn't seem to offer any in depth information about him at all. Just a general overview of some important events. And his personal life section is just a collection of trivia. - Hahnchen 17:51, 2 December 2005 (UTC)
• Remove, for a black legislator who spent 25 years in Congress at the height of the civil rights struggle, you'd think there'd be a lot more to add; this is basically just an overview. There are gaps in the article (Vietnam, for example, was a very divisive issue for Democrats in the last few years of Powell's career, but there's no mention of his stance on the war). The "Personal" selection is a sequence of mostly unrelated one-sentence paragraphs. Our standards have gotten much higher since this article was approved. Andrew Levine 22:00, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
• Oh lord, please remove! How disappointing that this ever got featured in the first place. Hydriotaphia 19:01, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
• Remove. It's way too short and does not stand up to the other political biographies which are featured. David | Talk 21:04, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
• Remove, this is pathetic. If there are two books written about this guy, there should be alot more to say than this. --Spangineer^es (háblame) 21:31, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Roy Orbison

Article is no longer a featured article

This article may have once been "brilliant prose" (it is a holdover), but it isn't now. Now it's a mishmash of uncited and probably apocryphal stories, miscellaneous trivia, and poorly sectioned and poorly written prose. For most of its recent life the lead was blatant copyvio. It contains two fair use pictures, neither one of which has a stated fair use rationale and one of which didn't even have its caption displayed until I added it. The article is junk, definitely not featured quality. It's on the Main page right now, and it's embarassing; it makes Wikipedia look as amateurish as its critics deride it as. Specifically, in regards to the FA criteria it fails to meet: 1. the prose is not brilliant or even grammatically correct in some places, 2. there is a total of one reference, one citation (not specific), to an article which looks to be chock full of things needing to be cited (stories about entertainers are almost always false in my experience), 3. it is full of peacock phrases and other non-neutral lauding, and there is a dearth of encyclopedic analysis, 4. the lead section (what remains of it) is not adequate, the heading system is underdeveloped, 5. images are not of a good copyright status nor are they very good, 6. it is not written in an adequately encyclopedic style (it included many instances of addressing the subject as "Roy" until I changed them). Not featured quality in the least. --Fastfission 00:42, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

• Strong remove, in agreement with nom. This article is unfortunately one of the shoddiest I've seen on the main page. Featured article candidates are now being held under much, much higher scrutinity than what this exhibits.—jiy (talk) 01:01, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

• There is a sycophantic quality to this article, particularly in the assessment of Orbison's music; rather than viewing his contribution to popular culture in a critical light, the reader is met with hyperbolic, uninformed fawning. The writing is fan-club rhetoric, at best. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.68.240.41 (talk • contribs) 01:08, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

• Remove, only two pics. It's a shame it was selected today to be presented on the Main Page. DaGizza ^{Chat (c)} 02:46, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
• Remove - I agree with all of the points in the nomination. My main criticism is that the article does not meet FAC criterion 2(b) "comprehensive" means that an article covers the topic in its entirety, and does not neglect any major facts or details. Specifically (this is from my recent post on Talk:Roy Orbison), I'm concerned at the lack of coverage of Orbison's musical craft. For instance, the article states:

he is revered for his song writing abilities. Master record producer and Orbison fan Don Was, commenting on Orbison's writing skills, said: "he defied the rules of modern composition." Songwriter Bernie Taupin (composer of many lyrics for Elton John) and others, referred to Orbison as far ahead of the times, creating lyrics and music in a manner that broke with all traditions.

However, there is no explanation of why he was so revolutionary and ahead of his time, of how he defied the rules of composition, only, perhaps, reference to his "operatic" voice and singing range. What exactly was special about his vocal abilities? How was his guitar playing? How did he approach songwriting? In short, "how did he approach music-making?" is not answered. Related is the absence of any clear discussion of his use of falsetto. The term is not even mentioned ("operatic" just doesn't do it), yet falsetto is part of his signature sound. --Tsavage 04:01, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Comment: While I cannot track down a source, I vividly remember seeing something on TV once where someone noted that those high notes Orbison hit were real - not falsetto. As the article notes (unsourced, natch), Orbison had a three octave range, and he used it seemlessly. --Jeffrey O. Gustafson - Shazaam! - <*> 08:51, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Comment: You may be right! I recently listened to a lecture on the role of falsetto in Western contemporary popular music, and Orbison was used as an example (along with Jimmie Rodgers, Marvin Gaye, the Bee Gees, many others). The technical issue of vocal harmonics versus regular high notes and verging on that "falsetto sound" is beyond me as a discussion topic (although in his case, it does sound like falsetto). Either way, Orbison is widely noted in connection with falsetto (for example, Google:Roy+Orbison+falsetto), so this to me is a significant hole in the coverage, which is why I specifically mentioned it here. (From the official Orbison site, in a page-long quote from kd lang as published in Rolling Stone: He also loved to express his voice in this upper range, in falsetto.[4] So, technically, maybe "false falsetto", but effectively, falsetto.) Editor's note: I'm just in a mode now, which I suspect can't last, where I believe FAC/FARC objections and supports should be fully...supported. --Tsavage 16:36, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

• Remove as per above. Saravask 04:32, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
• Remove per nom. Jkelly 04:52, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
• Remove per nom, also, it'd serve us well to get a picture from before he was dead. gren グレン 07:51, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
• Remove per Fastfission and the anon, as it really is lacking a great deal (an FA on a musician with no sound clips?). Too bad this wasn't initiated before it was main page'd. --Jeffrey O. Gustafson - Shazaam! - <*> 08:51, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Funny how an article can remain featured for such a long time, and it only appears here because it goes to the Main Page. For what it is worth, I suggested it on WP:TFA and did read it first. I must admit that I didn't (and still don't) think it is that bad - there are plenty of worse articles out there; on the other hand, it would rightly face an uphill struggle on WP:FAC as it stands today. Presumably Raul654 didn't think it was desperately bad either, otherwise he would not have accepted the suggestion. I wonder how many other featured articles (particularly the ones of this vintage) would receive a similar reception here?

Clearly our standards have improved somewhat in the 18+ months since this became a featured article. For example, in those days, references were not required, and there has been repeated debates over whether that requirement should become retrospective. I seem to remember that someone (Taxman?) has a list of poorly referenced or unreferenced featured articles somewhere. Has the time has come to remove featured status from all featured articles without references? -- ALoan (Talk) 11:32, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

I was thinking of User:Taxman/Featured_articles_with_possible_references_problems. Anything promoted from FAC since this list was compiled should have adequate references. -- ALoan (Talk) 17:11, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

re: remove featured status from all featured articles without references? That could be an approach. I'd be completely against in any way sanctioning regular articles based on references, however, if FAC (therefore, TFA, as well) is to proceed in a most useful fashion, making sure the pool of existing FAs is "reasonably good" is important. Some research, perhaps? Isn't there a database query procedure available, where clever search criteria could at least produce (near real-time, on demand) an approximate picture of how well-referenced FAs really are? Is FAs with possible reference problems up to date?

Another, complementary approach (which I haven't thought through), is to establish informal FA guidelines for obvious problem subject areas (like many types of pop culture topic), and manually investigate. (I'm sure all of this has been discussed elsewhere; hunting down previous discussions is quite the task on its own.) --Tsavage 17:39, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Oh sorry, I hadn't had a chance to check the status of this page in a while. No that page hasn't been checked through since July 2005. That page was assembled from manually checking every featured article at the time to see if they had a reference section. It really took quite a while and a database query would be a much better way to go about it. Since references/citations are called many things, it wouldn't be perfect, but could probably be a reasonable start and reduce the manual checking needed. There may even be a couple FA's that snuck through after the list was initially compiled. - Taxman ^Talk 01:20, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

• Keep. For this article after it's been fixed up a bit, I'm inclined to vote keep. I'm coming to reallize the problem with FARC is that there are a lot more people willing to vote remove than there are people willing to dig in and do the work to improve them, so hat's off to Aloan for that. - Taxman ^Talk 01:20, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
• Remove: I discovered this was here when I went to it's talk page to nominate it myself. Its need to be removed for all the reasons given above. It's just not up to the standard expected today. I think ALoan has a point about unreferenced articles being automatically removed. Giano | talk 16:26, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
• Remove, per all above comments. A lot of the language ("astounding success", "powerful rendition" etc.) is written almost in the style of a hagiography or a fansite biography rather than an encyclopedia article. Unfortunately, this is the same problem that many other articles about musicians here have, and to one with such noticeable POV problems featured on the main page is rather disappointing. I think that, more than ever, this emphasises the importance of Wikipedia:Featured article review. Extraordinary Machine 17:28, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

• WP:FAR... Yikes. I barely ever knew and had entirely forgetten about that. So it's WP:FAC, WP:FAR, WP:FARC, WP:TFA, plus Peer Review, and the current FAs—is that all of it...?! --Tsavage 17:39, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Let's not forget WP:FAD :). Extraordinary Machine 19:19, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Gosh - I wasn't aware of that one... also known as WP:FAHD (bit Arabian, that shortcut). -- ALoan (Talk) 19:50, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

• Remove per WP:CITE and WP:NPOV. Also, non-free images are not supposed to go on the main page. This is not so good. Chick Bowen 21:53, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
• Remove per all of the above. Peacock words are throughout; too many to outline here. The "Early career" section goes off on a tangent about international success up to the artist's death. The trivia is barely relevant to the subject (Example: "It is widely believed that he was the physical basis for the Marvel Comics character, Doctor Octopus." Widely believed by whom? Is this even important to anyone researching Roy Orbison?). This could be a good article. There is a wealth of published information to reference about him. I was excited when I saw this on the Main Page and disappointed halfway through reading it. --malber 23:43, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Oh dear. Is anyone interested in collaborating to salvage its featured article status? -- ALoan (Talk) 10:51, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

No? Oh well, I've chopped it about a bit and added some extra information cleaned from online biographies that I have added as references. Not being an expert, someone else will have to help me out with musical analysis. -- ALoan (Talk) 14:33, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Coment: I speedy demoted this, but ALoan asked me to reconsider. While I have not yet taken it off WP:FFA, I will do so if the article improves by the end of the two weeks. And ALoan has a point above - no article is unsalvagable, and anyone above who knows anything about Orbison can help the article. While I feel that the article could use a rewrite from scratch and go through WP:FAC, if all objections have been met in two weeks, I will relist it on WP:FA. --Jeffrey O. Gustafson - Shazaam! - <*> 20:58, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

• Remove This does not represent Wikipedia's best work. --Wikiacc (talk) 01:36, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
• Remove if only in protest of its style problems.

Put together by musical director T-Bone Burnett, Orbison was accompanied at a recording at the Cocoanut Grove in the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles by a who's who supporting cast, all fans and all volunteers who lobbied to participate.

Orbison himself was put together by T-Bone? Ouch. And the sentence disintegrates from there. There are also citation problems. In the next paragraph, we say the concert was critically acclaimed, but offer no specifics on which critics did the acclaiming. BYT 14:33, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Academia

Article is no longer a featured article

Except for the sections on the ancient world and the medieval period, this article is very U.S.-centric, partly by showing a lack of awareness of other perspectives (see section "Recent_economic_changes"), partly by using U.S. examples, where, say, Italian, French or German examples would be more appropriate (as in the section "Rise_of_academic_societies"). Where it is not entirely U.S.-centric, international perspectives are mostly limited to England. The section "Eighteenth_and_nineteenth_centuries" is all about the U.S., despite America still being a backwater at the time. With all due respect for the University of Pennsylvania and Ben Franklin, in an 18th century history of academia, one would expect the University of Göttingen, the University of Leiden and a host of other European universities (and other institutions) to be more important to mention. And whatever happened to the renaissance, humanism, in fact the entire period from the end of the middle ages until the mid-18th century? Is the foundation of the Royal Society really the only thing worth mentioning from that period? (Note that there may also be non-Western institutions which should be mentioned. I am just focusing on the things I personally find most obvious.)

The article is not badly written, but a clear systemic bias, significant omissions, and a lack of proper referencing, makes it inappropriate for featured status. u p p l a n d 16:27, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

• Sad. One of the few featured WP:COTWs. -- ALoan (Talk) 17:46, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

• Remove. Apart from anything else, the article has one reference, and no indication what parts of the article are referenced by it. Jkelly 19:33, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
• Remove: the nomination says it all, really. There is more to the world than the English-speaking part of it. Filiocht | The kettle's on 08:21, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
• Remove per nominator. Bishonen | talk 15:41, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

• Remove per nominator. - Mgm|^(talk) 09:30, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

Charles Graner

Article is no longer a featured article

This is my first FARC, I was thinking of putting this on the FAR, but decided against it, because I really don't think this article is of featured standard. Firstly, spotted around 2 months ago by User:Cafe Nervosa, the article claims in 2 different places that he married 2 different people in June 1990. Reading through it, other things just don't flow, the first I read of his children is when it talks about his weekly custody exchange with them and how that clashes with his overtime. At that point, I didn't even know he had kids, as they are introduced later. To me, the thing just doesn't read well, tiny paragraphs pepper the article, the "Life after Trial" section is 2 sentences. And I don't like the small font used for quotes either, I'm using firefox and text size is at normal, I can read it fine, but I need to put some extra effort in. Extra effort should not be required when reading a FA. - Hahnchen 02:40, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

• Comment: apart from the problems cited by the nominator, there are also other issues, like some of the pictures (e.g. the courtroom sketches) being claimed as fair use without any stated rationale. — Haeleth Talk 19:26, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

Newark, New Jersey

Article is no longer a featured article

This article has been featured for a long time, and I resisted listing it in the hopes that it would be improved, but sadly it has not been. It is basically one giant history section with almost nothing else. It hardly conforms to the standards set by other city featured articles for content. User:PZFUN/signature 08:24, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

• Remove. Due emphasis between sections and sub-sections is off. Too many one sentence paragraphs have crept in. Pictures are poorly spaced and reduce readability. Marskell 10:19, 19 November 2005 (UTC)
• Remove. Close, but not good enough for the mentioned reasons. And lead is inadequate as well.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus ^Talk 04:10, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
• Comment. I don't know how this article became featured. There are no records of the article's having gone through FAC. Pentawing 05:55, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
  • I went in and cleaned up the article as much as I could. However, the fact that there is still no record of the article's going through FAC concerns me. Can anyone enlighten me on that? Pentawing 07:15, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
    • Truly odd. It was tagged Feature in March, 2004 by User:Maveric149 who is still active. The log for that month and the two previous show no record of it however. I will contact him. Marskell 13:04, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
    • Scratch that. It was User:Dinopup. Maveric simply formatted it. I will contact the former as well as Raul I suppose. Marskell 13:50, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
      • Some articles just featured when there was no FAC system. Lots of articles have no record. See, some of them were considered good articles at the time so it became featured on a list with others. I believe if anyone objected to those then the article would not be featured. The rules weren't so strict then. 12.220.47.145 01:43, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
• Please Wait. It has been a while since I pruned this article, but I still think that Newark compares favorably with other City FAs. If there is no record of voting on Newark, that is because it was made an FA before we had that voting process. I did not self-nominate Newark to be an FA or unilaterally add Newark to the FA list (I would not even know how to do that).

I will expand the sections on Newark's neighborhoods and culture, though you cannot expect me to say as much about Newark's sports life and economy as is said about the sports life and economy of larger cities.

I just found out about Newark being an FARC and will work on the article immediately.Dinopup 19:34, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

• I just did a lot of expansion and editing It's now thirty minutes later and I've addressed a few concerns that you had. I've expanded the geography and neighorhoods sections and removed disharmonious language and paragraphing.Dinopup 20:14, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
• Keep. Looks like a good cleanup effort has taken place, and while the lead could use another few lines to make it two paragraphs, this is now acceptable in my eyes. Harro5 09:28, 26 November 2005 (UTC)
• Remove. Yikes, the article lacks any basic balance in coverage. It should be in Wikipedia:Summary style, covering each topic in relation to their importance. As such, the history needs to be massively shortened, and other sections need expansion. Teh one sentence sections in the neighborhoods should just be made into a couple good prose paragraphs. As it is they are very choppy. Sorry, but I don't think it's all that close to the quality of some of the recently promoted city articles. If you are able to fix some of this, let me know, I'll reconsider my vote, but if you can't do it in time, see if you can't fix the article up anyway and renominate it for FAC under the new higher standards. - Taxman ^Talk 23:40, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
• NeighborhoodsI realize that the neighborhood section is short, but there are actually excellent articles written on almost all the major neighborhoods. See Ironbound, Forest Hill, Newark, New Jersey, Seventh Avenue, Newark, New Jersey, Broadway, Newark, New Jersey, Roseville, Newark, New Jersey. These neighborhoods are all in the article's sublist, if you just had followed the link you would have discovered this top notch content. The Newark neighborhood articles are better than most neighborhood articles you'll find on wiki and are better than what teh City of Newark has written. Dinopup 00:43, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

Paradox

Article is no longer a featured article

This article is most likely a holdover from the Brilliant Prose days, but God knows why. The article doesn't seem to have any prose at all outside of the lead section, only has one picture, which isn't terribly topically relevant. Should be on featured lists. RyanGerbil10 01:42, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

• Remove; this is mostly a list, and an unreferenced one at that. —Kirill Lokshin 01:52, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
• Remove - could be a candidate for featured lists, but it's not a FA.--nixie 04:24, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
• Comment - it made the transfer from Brilliant Prose to Featured Article with a one to four vote here Wikipedia:Archive/Refreshing brilliant prose - Science#Paradox. --maclean25 04:32, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
• Remove. As per Kirill Lokshin and nixie (Petaholmes). -Rebelguys2 09:29, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
• Remove It's not a bad list, as lists go, but that doesn't mean it's an article (in any sense except that the MediaWiki software treats it as such). Sigh. Funnily enough, this is where I first found omnipotence paradox, which after several rounds of cleanup and expansion eventually made FA. Anville 12:05, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
• Speedy Remove - This certainly isn't up to Featured Article status anymore. --Cyde Weys _vote^talk 20:32, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

Christianity

Article is no longer a featured article

I must admit that I have not read through this article completely, but my first impression is that it is very messy. It has no images except a chart at the beginning, it uses bullet points in the middle of a paragraph (#Beliefs), and most of it consists of a table "Christianity By Country", which could well be moved over to an article of its own. It just doesn't look featured. And the page documenting its featurification (that's not a word, is it?) is practically non-existant. I would very much like to see a featured article on Christianity, but it better be good. Jon Harald Søby \ ^{no na} 14:26, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

• I like this article and find it to be finely written. I posit my vote to keep it as a featured article. -JudgeX (User's only edit)

• Remove. Fails Criterion 2(a) (poorly written throughout). Here's an example of clumsy writing, taken at random, from the start of the history section:

'The history of Christianity is difficult to extricate from that of the European West (and several other culture-regions) in general. By way of summary, we may note ...

Fails Criterion 2(c) miserably ('the supporting of facts with specific evidence and external citations')—take, for example, the numerical estimates that are trotted out in the lead: who says?

Fails Criterion 2(b) ('does not neglect any major facts or details'). The history section is one para long.

BTW, the lead might mention that it's one of the great 'revealed' religions.

Tony 04:41, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

• Remove I side with the nominator and Tony on this. The lead is a mishmash, the table "Christianity by Country" is overbearing, and the prose is a long shot from "compelling". It could use a copy edit for starters, and a fact check to boot. To pick a random example, the article treats the story about Hypatia getting murdered by a mob as, if you'll forgive the phrase, gospel. It's a great story, but the last time I read any scholarly work on her, it wasn't proven, and the details are still up for grabs. Anville 22:10, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
• Keep, FAs can be cleaned up. Good article. --Terence Ong ^|Talk 03:24, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
• Remove Also in agreement with Tony. The balance of the article is wrong and the prose is in many places wanting, such as this: Again, while some churches take exception to some of these articles, to the extent that they do so, this usually represents a conscious departure from the Christian mainstream. Some Christian traditions, such as those of the Baptists and the Churches of Christ, would accept these beliefs, but not the creed itself, since all creeds are regarded as unnecessary and even counter-productive in these circles. Also the list by country is unnecessary in the main article, and including the entire Nicene creed is offputting, given the summary nature of most of the article. The text should be referenced to the main article on the Nicene Council. Also, missing is any pertinent overview of early Christian conciliarism and fracture (obliquely offered up in this convolution: Obviously, not all Christians have accepted all of these articles of faith, or else such a creed would never have been written. The Creed's lines frequently target certain opposing beliefs of other early Christians, which the council regarded as heretical. Examples would include Ebionite groups which denied Jesus's divinity, a well as Docetist groups which denied that Christ was a human being, or Arians, who disputed that the Father and the Son were "of one being". Other early heresies included Simonianism, Marcionism, Gnosticism and Montanism.). This article is really, in its implicit function, a clearing-house for the numerous sub-articles on the different aspects of Christianity and should thus provide much more synthesis in a way that interested readers can be directed to more detailed articles. Eusebeus 10:41, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
• Comment After seeing some of the issues brought up with this article, I went in and repaired several major problems, including moving the "Christianity by country" table to a sub-article. Nevertheless, there are several problems with prose that I am still trying to resolve (notably in the "history" section), and would appreciate someone helping out on this. Pentawing 01:53, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
• Remove Agree with critiques; this article simply does not deserve featured status at this time. --Zantastik 10:33, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
• Comment This article dates back to the old "brilliant prose" days; the vote which raised it to FA can be found here. Also, does anyone see a way to make Note #3 an encyclopedic statement? "Many Christians identify themselves as such not by the adherance to a set of religious rules or rites but instead by their personal relationship to Jesus Christ" sounds like the sort of statement which desperately needs elaboration, rephrasing or something. The footnote in question is actually attached to a section title ("Worship and practices"), which is an unbelievably gauche practice. This statement may reflect the views of modern-day evangelical Protestants, for example, but how does it square with the strife between Homousians and Homoiusians, between those who crossed themselves with two fingers and those who crossed with three? Anville 12:02, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
• I am amazed this is a featured article. I recall saying on IRC not too long ago how surprisingly short and uncomprehensive this article was. Little did I know it was a featured article. Definite and strong remove. Johnleemk | Talk 20:15, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
• Strong Remove - This is a travesty of an article about a major subject, let alone a travesty of a featured article. - Cuivienen 04:02, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
• Remove another article that is not ready yet. Like Johnleemk I also think that the article is too uncomprehensive and also long to be a FA. --a.n.o.n.y.m ^t 18:48, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

• Remove -- contains a couple of stunners, one of which really took my breath away:

If Christians largely agree on the content of the Bible, no such consensus is forthcoming on the crucial matter of its interpretation...

Christians "largely agree" on the Bible's content? This sentence blithely passes over the literally thousands of disputed/variant readings in the texts, not to mention the fierce partisan disputes that have played out for five hundred years or so concerning how (and, not infrequently, whether) to print translations of the Bible in local languages. Christians do not largely agree on the content of the Bible, and I invite anyone who thinks they do to explain why no two contemporary authorities seem to be able to agree on what to translate -- or even, in many cases, where to put what has been translated. For instance, the placement of the story of the woman caught in adultery, or the end of Mark's gospel. These are not minor issues. Protestants and Catholics can't even agree on how many books there are! Right now we've got (in English) Catholics who swear by Challoner-Rheims (derived, not from Greek, but from the Latin Vulgate) and fundamentalist Christians who swear by KJV (derived from Greek sources consulted by Jacobean scholars whose work is now hopelessly archaic and out of date). If you think those two versions "largely agree" with each other, you haven't read them. Major problems here. BYT 22:32, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

• Remove. - Mailer Diablo 08:41, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

• Remove could be a lot better, will read through it more carefully after Christmas to say why I think so. - Ta bu shi da yu 08:17, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

• Remove. CG 22:33, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

• Remove - I side with the other people who are saying Remove in this debate. The article has many poorly written sentences, the organization is terrible, and the article pretty much lacks sources except for The Bible, which it takes as the inerrant truth. Maybe this is going to "offend" some people but just because it's written in a single book doesn't make it a verifiable fact. See the above example about Hypatia, for instance. --Cyde Weys _vote^talk 04:26, 26 December 2005 (UTC)