Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Minnesota Golden Gophers men's basketball/archive1

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

The article was not promoted by User:SandyGeorgia 22:28, 10 January 2009 [1].

Minnesota Golden Gophers men's basketball[edit]

Nominator(s): matt91486 (talk)

I'm nominating this article for featured article because I've achieved the GA criteria, and I'm hoping to improve it further. I'm not overly familiar with the improvement process, so it may well not be ready, but it looks to me at least as though it meets the criteria. If it's not, though, I thank you for any help you can provide in getting it there. matt91486 (talk) 20:44, 4 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  • Dabs; please check the disambiguation links identified in the toolbox. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:52, 5 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I thought I had fixed those earlier today when I saw them in the tool; I'll check them again, or it might just be delayed. matt91486 (talk) 04:40, 5 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Two dabs are still showing up on the tool. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:48, 6 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, I looked at the lag time on change over, and it said over 4000 minutes, but I think they will eventually switch over. matt91486 (talk) 03:17, 6 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Hmm, I'll look into if Minnesota has a similar policy with regard to it's logo and get back to you. If not, there is a separate men's basketball logo that has at least sometimes historically been used, which I believe would meet the requirement. matt91486 (talk) 17:21, 5 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Images need to be re-arranged to conform with WP:ACCESS (no left-aligned images under third-level headings) and WP:MOS#Images. Inconsistency in page numbers in citations: some use pg. and some use pp. Inconsistent dates: some use ISO dates and some use Month day, year. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:48, 6 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comments -

  • You've mixed using the Template:Citation with the templates that start with Cite such as Template:Cite journal or Template:Cite news. They shouldn't be mixed per WP:CITE#Citation templates.
  • Per the MOS, link titles in the references shouldn't be in all capitals, even when they are in the original.
  • Current ref 48 (NCAA major infractions...) is just a bare link, should be formatted with a title, publisher, and last access date.
Otherwise, sources look okay, links checked out with the link checker tool. Ealdgyth - Talk 15:21, 6 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose - I always like to see a new article type at FAC; unfortunately, pages without a good model are the most difficult to get promoted. Questionable organization and rough edges are easily found, leading me to oppose.

  • I don't like how the first few sections are organized. I would place the team history section first; this method is used commonly in sports team FAs, such as Arsenal F.C. and Nashville Sounds. The coach and player sections can be placed after the history.
  • The yearly standings don't need to be here at all; they really clog up the bottom of the page. I recommend splitting them off into a new article, namely Minnesota Golden Gophers men's basketball seasons. If you play your cards right, you could get a featured list out of the deal.
  • A number of newspaper references without links lack page numbers, which should be included for verifiability purposes.
  • Peeking into the Clem Haskins era: "Besides lying about the $3,000 payment, he'd also told several of his players to lie to the NCAA." Contractions like "he'd" should be fixed. See if there are any more hiding in the article.
  • Facilities: To quote our Manual of Style: "Em dashes should not be spaced." They can either be made unspaced or turned into en dashes. I would go for the former option.
  • Rivals: "The greatest rival in the early years of the program were the Minnesota Aggies." Watch for tense issues ; here we have "rival" (singular) and "were" (plural). To fix this, change "were" to "was".
  • Unspaced hyphens need to be fixed, see my comment on dashes above.
  • "A one sided rivalry is with Ohio State." This comes off more than a little POV without any stats (like head-to-head record) to back it up.
  • Peeking at the history section: "The team finished fourth or better in the conference seven times in Cowles eleven seasons as Gophers head coach." Apostrophe needed for Cowles.

The comments on the writing are only examples of problems throughout. This needs a good copy-editor who is new to the article; that person can help you smooth out the rough patches. Giants2008 (17-14) 17:49, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, I definitely think you're right with the copyediting - I've been too involved with it for too long to catch all the mistakes. With regard to the newspaper articles, I'm not precisely sure how to source them. Oftentimes they have been accessed from research databases available at universities, but not to the regular public, so it's impossible for me to get a valid checkable link. At the same time, though, page numbers aren't always available. I'll do what I can to investigate further. matt91486 (talk) 01:12, 9 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I have fixed the grammatical errors you've pointed out. It will take me a bit to figure out exactly what to do with the dashes, I'm not very good at telling the difference, but I'll try to get it cleaned up. matt91486 (talk) 01:12, 9 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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