Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/BBC television drama

BBC television drama
Self-nomination. Something of a labour of love for me this article as it's about a strong particular interest of mine. I appreciate that the subject is quite broad and not one that necessarily stands out as a natural one-article topic, but I felt that the area could do with a decent overview piece. It's been up on peer review for the past week, attracting only one comment which I've dealt with as best I can. (The comment was that BBC children's drama wasn't addressed - I've added a small section, but that's really a topic big enough for its own article, and children's drama was almost always done by the children's rather than the drama department anyway). Angmering 21:48, 27 August 2005 (UTC)


 * Object. The images Image:Cathycomehome.JPG, Image:Quatexp01.JPG, Image:Daleksindoctorwho.JPG, Image:1968holmes.JPG, Image:Penniesfromheaven.JPG, Image:Boysfromtheblackstuff.JPG, Image:Eod02.JPG, Image:Ourfriends.JPG, Image:Spooks003.JPG are claimed as "fair use".  As such, the source and copyright holder need to be indicated, and a "fair use" rationale, as outlined in Fair use and Image description page, needs to be provided.  See Sunset Boulevard (film) for a particularly good example of the use of "fair use" images in an article.  Also, the article is a bit heavy on the fair-use images.  Wikipedia is a free content encyclopedia, so use of non-free images should be kept to a minimum.  Consider removing images from shows if the shows aren't mentioned directly in the prose. --Carnildo 07:22, 28 August 2005 (UTC)


 * Understood - I'll add source info and copyright holder. I appreciate that there are a lot of fair use images, but there's little else other than screenshots you can really use to illustrate an article of this type. Angmering 15:46, 28 August 2005 (UTC)


 * I have now added rationale and source information to the pictures. I hope this meets the requirements. Angmering 16:12, 28 August 2005 (UTC)


 * Support. I don't think fair use screenshots in a BBC Television article rule it out from being a featured article -- otherwise you may as well get rid of the whole fair use provision on wikipedia. Having said that, the fair use rationale procedure mentioned above should be gone through, along with noting the source and copyright holder. The article is informative and well-written... every bit fa material. - Motor (talk) 11:46:12, 2005-08-28 (UTC)


 * Conditional support, the lead should be bulked up somewhat to summarise the contents of the article.--nixie 05:22, 29 August 2005 (UTC)


 * I've expanded the lead section to try and summarise the article more - any better? Angmering 11:09, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
 * It's a lot better. Could you also make a propper list of the html links given in text using one of the footnoting systems or add them to the reference list, external links should be properly referenced for the reader and for future reference.--nixie 00:14, 30 August 2005 (UTC)
 * I've now done this too. Hope the format's okay. Angmering 10:07, 30 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Great, I fully support--nixie 01:16, 31 August 2005 (UTC)


 * Support (I've removed some line breaks that made the images sit oddly)--Cyberjunkie | Talk 05:59, 31 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Abstain  Erwin 
 * Why? You need to exlain why you can't/won't support so your concerns can be responded to, and if valid, remedied.--Cyberjunkie | Talk 00:46, 1 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Please don't hastle me; I happen to think that BBC Drama is shit, but I'm still gonna' abstain due 2 NPOV.  Erwin 
 * While you're of course entitled to your opinion, what you think of the subject matter of the article isn't really relevant - it's what you think of the actual article itself and its suitability or not for featured status that's important here. Angmering 11:32, 1 September 2005 (UTC)
 * FAC is a constructive process and is unlike other fora on Wikipedia. It depends upon votes of support or objection. With any objection, it is necessary to explain what it is about the article that precludes support. This allows for the article to be improved accordingly. Un-elaborated objections are inactionable. It is really quite pointless to abstain here - one must either support or object or, of course, comment. Sorry for hassling you, but I found your comments counter-productive.--Cyberjunkie | Talk 13:26, 1 September 2005 (UTC)
 * That's why I wanted to abstain. The only good recent drama was "The Alan Clark Diaries", and that's not even in the article. There's your suggestion.  Erwin 
 * You're right, mention of the Fictionlab output was missing. I've added a paragraph on their output for the digital channels to the The Modern Era section, including a mention of The Alan Clark Diaries. Angmering 11:44, 2 September 2005 (UTC)


 * Support. I still don't know enough about it to vouch for the material, but it looks well researched and it reads well. Comments. Not ready to support yet. I have specific suggestions which I'll detail, but also I don't know enough about the topic to judge if it is factually correct or NPOV. Also it has been written by primarily one contributor so it doesn't have the benefit of being discussed back and forth by people with different opinions. The language does seem pretty neutral so the article is likely not egregiously POV. Specifc suggestions/concerns: 1) A number of one and two sentence paragraphs (even in the lead) interupt the flow of the prose. They highlight areas that need to be either expanded or merged with related material. 2) How were the book references used in creating or fact checking the article? None of them are cited anywhere in the text from what I can see. Any of the most important facts in the article could stand to cite them to improve the verifiability of the article. Also the references are inconsistent (only the third list is numbered), and the web references don't contain any author, publisher or date information as a full reference listing should if that information is available. See Cite sources for how to format them. 3) The children's drama being done primarily by another department doesn't seem a good reason to give it such short coverage. Is the article about the BBC drama department or BBC television drama in general? If the latter (which I submit it should be, based on the title), the article should cover the childrens drama in relation to its importance in order to be properly balanced. - Taxman Talk 17:50, September 6, 2005 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the comments. I hadn't really thought about the issues rising from the fact that it's mostly the work of one editor, i.e. me, but of course you're quite right. Not a lot I can do about that one at the moment though, of course. I've done what I can about the references - hopefully they're now more correctly formatted. As for directly citing the books in the text, that could be problematic at the moment as I don't have the books with me where I'm living at the moment. Some of them I can access copies of at the local library, but getting the direct page notes etc for some of the others might not be possible for a while. The children's drama issue is s sticking point, I agree - but it's *so* big a subject that covering it with any justice would necessitate making an article twice as long as it already is. I thought the better idea would be to leave it until it's well enough researched to have it's own linked piece at BBC children's television drama or similar. Angmering 18:57, 6 September 2005 (UTC)
 * No you can't entirely fix that, but a number of articles get promoted that are entirely the work of one author. For me, it's just a matter of how clear it is that a lot of research has been done in order to combat the potential negatives as much as possible. After that, I still prefer collaboration, but certainly wouldn't object to a great article only for that. For the book references, more citations would be ideal for points that need it, and please do so for the books you can access. For the ones you can't I was more looking for a confirmation of how and how much you used them. The reference formatting fixes look fine. As for the childrens drama I don't know that it needs to be a major sticking point. It depends on how important it is to the whole subject. If it should be 50/50, yeah that is a major problem, but I'm thinking it is less than that. If it should be 25% of the article for proper balance of the relative importance, then write the appropriate summary of the subject and shorten some of the other sections by summarizing and moving less important details to daughter articles ala Summary style to make room without making the article too long. You'll have to decide how important the children's drama is to the overall subject, I can't really help with that. Finally still a few more too short paragraphs that could use merging or expanding as per above. - Taxman Talk 19:25, September 6, 2005 (UTC)
 * I've gone through and merged shorter paragraphs into larger ones where it seems appropriate - I've also bulked up that short paragraph at the end of the lead section, so hopefully that's better. As for the children's drama issue, it's something I'd need to research more as it's not an area I know nearly as much about as adult drama, but doubtless something can be done. Angmering 19:43, 6 September 2005 (UTC)


 * I have now expanded the children's drama section as much as I'm able to for the time being, and had a good stab at tying-in the book references to the text which was researched from them. Angmering 13:50, 7 September 2005 (UTC)


 * Support. Terrific, indeed the quality of this generally one-man effort makes me doubt the wisdom of a collaborative approach for anything more significant than formatting, indexes, layout, research and other mechanical tasks. The only potential fault is that there are a lot of assertions which are not directly tied to a reference - show X was 'incredibly popular' or a 'landmark' or 'innovative' etc - but this isn't really a problem because, in the case of this particular article, I trust the editorial voice. That's one advantage that traditional encyclopaedias and non-fiction books have over Wikipedia, although the flip side is that Wikipedia generally has to try doubly hard to be convincing, and be twice as transparent with its references, and so could potentially be doubly more impressive, because there isn't the reputation of a reputable historian or trustworthy organisation on the chopping-block. Wikipedia needs more people like this Angmering chap, and a bunch of trustworthy policemen to stop vandals from perverting this kind of quality work. -Ashley Pomeroy 18:05, 7 September 2005 (UTC)