Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Alfred North Whitehead/archive2


 * 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 archived by Sarastro1 via FACBot (talk) 19:24, 15 July 2017.

Alfred North Whitehead

 * Nominator(s): Joseph Petek (talk) 06:15, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

Greetings, all. I have to say that I am all bemused to be back here nominating this article for FA status. I completed a near-total re-write of it back in 2013, and got it to GA status pretty quickly. Although I believed then that it met all the featured article criteria, it was not promoted, seemingly due to a lack of input (admittedly, I picked a bad time, right before the holiday season in mid-December 2013). It has not seen a lot of substantive changes in the four or so years since then.

Why am I nominating it again now? Well, a funny thing happened. In the past year, this English entry has been translated for the French and Portugese Wikipedia articles on Whitehead (along with a little from the German version)... and both were promoted to FA status (the French entry in October 2016, the Portugese article just this month). I should hope this would count in the article's favor, although for all I know the English FA nomination process may tend to be more difficult. Regardless, now that two other articles have been promoted that substantially copied this one, I figured, what the heck? May as well put it up again, see if I can garner more interest this time. Hopefully it won't be closed again simply for lack of people looking at it.

About the article itself: I noted in my original FA nomination in 2013 that the number of FAs in Philosophy was "depressingly small"; it still is, which makes it more difficult to evaluate its worthiness for the FA distinction, though I do think it compares pretty favorably with the few existing philosophy FAs. I believed four year ago, and I believe now, that the article meets all of the criteria for FA status. I believe it is well-written, comprehensive, and well-researched; while there were a few questions about its neutrality in the GA review, I addressed these concerns to the reviewer's satisfaction; it is certainly stable, follows the style guidelines, includes media, and is of sufficient length.

The article's subject--Alfred North Whitehead--is one of the 20th century's most important philosophers (and for what it's worth, the article has been listed as a level-4 vital article in People, specifically under "Philosophers: Modern"). His influence is widespread (though fairly diffuse); he is most famous for originating what is now known as "process philosophy," which itself begat "process theology," a popular strain of progressive Christian theology.

I will of course be happy to address comments as they arise. Joseph Petek (talk) 06:15, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

Oppose -- Recusing from coord duties, thank you for your work on this article but it appears underprepared for FAC: several sentences at the end of paragraphs are unreferenced, and there is at least one citation needed tag; I also noticed at least one missing full stop, so I daresay some copyediting is required (I haven't had time to go through the prose properly). It's quite a leap from GAN to FAC, particularly for an article of this sort -- at this stage I'd consider withdrawing the nom and putting up for Peer Review, then having another try at FAC. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 10:26, 14 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Well, I suppose I withdraw the article from consideration, then; I guess standards for English Wikipedia are indeed a lot more tight. My understanding is that I cannot withdraw/close it myself, that one of the coordinators needs to fail the nomination and then close the review. Please proceed.
 * For whatever it's worth, I honestly did not think the article was so far away from the FAC standard that little things could not simply be corrected as part of the review. Apologies. Joseph Petek (talk) 17:08, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

Oppose: Fails on a matter of process (which is perhaps ironic for a process philosopher): Ian's closing comments in the first FAC have been completely ignored, from a quick read. There's a risk of wasting time here working on a new review, since one of the previous reviews hasn't been responded to in some way. - Dank (push to talk) 13:24, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

Sarastro1 (talk) 19:24, 15 July 2017 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.