Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Dow Jones Industrial Average/archive1


 * 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 SandyGeorgia 17:26, 10 January 2010.

Dow Jones Industrial Average

 * Nominator(s): Fabledd (talk) 23:01, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

I am nominating this for featured article because... its quite informative and gramatically correct. Fabledd (talk) 23:01, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Oppose, suggest withdraw by an odd name—thanks for joining Wikipedia (and welcome!), but I don't think this is up to the criteria. More comments pertaining to the lead and first section alone, although I still oppose and think the whole page needs more work than the 59-page FAC backlog allows (added on 05:12, 8 January 2010 (UTC)): If you still want the Dow to be featured, I suggest you go to the talk pages of the top editors in the "major editors" link, and (if they haven't "retired" or gone on "wikibreak") talk with them about how to improve it. If they aren't available, you can request peer review for more detailed suggestions (I listed a few problems, but there may be many more). Good luck. --an odd name 02:20, 7 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Have you consulted major editors of the article, or checked if they are inactive? See the candidates page: "Nominators who are not significant contributors to the article should consult regular editors of the article prior to nomination."  Maybe they still need to find more sources, or have some other reason not to feature.
 * "History" needs lots of attention:
 * There's lots of what I and others here call "proseline"—sentences and paragraphs that are just "On date, event." The criteria demand "engaging, even brilliant" prose "of a professional standard", and I bet a lot of the events can be tightened into flowing prose.  Point-by-point lists are boring, and people coming here from the Main Page want to be educated, not sedated.
 * What can't be tightened can probably be divided into more sections with headings so readers can get to the main historical ideas.
 * Recently, alternate text has become a requirement for images in featured articles. If the graphs don't load, or readers can't see the image for other reasons, "alt text" gives an idea of the missing visuals.  There's none for the graphs here; they may need some.
 * The first lead paragraph was huge. I tried to rearrange the lead in general, but I think it needs more word-trimming and a third eye.
 * "From a starting point of under 50 in the late 1890s to a high reached above 14,000 in the late 2000s, the Dow rises periodically through the decades with corrections along the way eventually settling in the mid-10,000 range."—Split into more sentences, and replace "correction". Past tense might be better.
 * What makes the graphs' sources reliable?
 * Explain what the Dow is in the body before the company chart. (I would've just moved History if it wasn't bloated.)  Pretend that the lead doesn't exist (that's just a short form of the whole article).
 * The index doesn't consist of the companies (the Dow is not a conglomerate itself). It tracks their stock prices.  Correct this throughout.

Hi, I've made numerous contributions to this page, and I would say I think the article is a fairly good contender for being featured. I understand what your saying as far as "tightening" certain parts within the History Section; but its not what it seems. Basically, the subject matter may appear to be oversaturated and perhaps dull when mentioning certain timelines and specific dollar closing prices, but thats really just the nature of the subject matter. Alot of people find those additions to the article, interesting. If the Dow closes at a 5-Year low and then within 3 months it goes up 40%, its something that many readers find important and informative to compare the exact pricing and how financially relevant that may be. And as far as summaries within the History Section go; its really something that has to do with readily available information. The section of the 1930s or the 1950s is far smaller than the 1990s and 2000s sections. Basically, we certainly know more and have more verifiable and accurate financial information in the last 10 years than we had 50 years ago. We could just delete alot of the details throughout the 90s and 00s, but it would lessen the integrity of the important information we have documented. The bottom line is, its well written, its informative, the quality of the article is alot higher than others and its really not boring to read about price corrections just like it isn't when you read the wall street journal. I don't think the article should be disqualified for differing points of view surrounding the History Section. Oh and by the way, those graphs are in a constant state of being updated. They are large and take time to formulate. I'm interested in hearing all opinions. RT6543 3:04, 8 January 2010 (UTC)
 * There's certainly no shortage of information on the DJIA from 50 or even 75 years ago. Newspapers have been tracking it religiously for decades.  The sections on recent decades are longer people editors have been using this section of the article for play-by-play updates.  Every time there is a significant move in the index someone will add a bullet.  With the traffic this article gets, this is not unexpected.  The editors need to be doing a better job of summarizing the data that is no longer new.  For example, the Feb-2007 correction may have seemed like a big deal at the time, but it didn't turn out to be that big a deal compared to corrections that would come later (or compared to dozens of corrections that preceded it) yet it still is represented by a sizable bullet point.DavidRF (talk) 03:40, 8 January 2010 (UTC)


 * RESPONSE I noticed that it is a major problem. Everytime the Dow goes up 220 points or goes down 301 points; we don't need a user to add a daily price bullet update. There's enough examples in the page already. If certain updates look ridiculous, then its justified to delete them. Perhaps you are correct with the information from 50 years ago. However, there are 2 problems with it. Number one, they hard to get a hold of and not necessarily available through on-line sources over the internet. You'd have to go to a public library and dig up a photocopy of a 45-year old newspaper edition to get every fact on a related financial story or political event that influenced the Dow's movement on that day. Problem number 2; the page would be way too long if every decade summary is the same length like the 2000s decade. I think then, we'd be over-doing it. RT6543 5:07, 8 January 2010 (UTC)
 * My point was we were definitely overdoing it with recent eras, not that we should expand previous eras. I disagree that previous eras would be hard to find, though.  Of course, we wouldn't want the daily play-by-play, but see Template:US recessions and see that there's a dip in the DJIA just before at or just before almost every single one of those.  On a macro-level, details of bear/bull markets are pretty easy to find.  There should be plenty of economics history books out there.  But I agree those details are not necessary here.  Details should be left for the articles such as those in Template:US recessions.  That said, the play-by-play of previous decades in the DJIA article oddly focuses on stuff that had relatively little effect on the market (e.g bay of pigs, columbian war, civil rights movement, etc) and doesn't focus enough on the state of the economy.  A ton of obscure wars are mentioned, but the Panic of 1907 isn't mentioned at all.  Its the history of the market and not the history of the century.  Something we could improve.DavidRF (talk) 05:44, 8 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Comment. Please add alt text to images; see WP:ALT. Eubulides (talk) 08:40, 7 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Answer. Ok, I did my best to correct that issue with WP:ALT. RT6543 3:06, 8 January 2010 (UTC)
 * A little too much commentary in the alt-text now, in my opinion. I understand its a tough problem, though.  Mainly these plots are just historical traces of the index.  The graphs for 1987 and 2001 are zoomed in pretty tight.  Hard to say too much else besides "index dropped X%".  Then, the 100+ year graph has so much information in it... entire articles are written on each dip in the index.  You can't really claim that its "settled" now any more than it was "settled" in the late-60s and 70s.  Captions shouldn't be controversial.  What do people expect for alt-text captions on images like this?DavidRF (talk) 03:29, 8 January 2010 (UTC)


 * ADDITIONAL RESPONSE Haha Ha.....Well, I think you summed it up best when you said "A little too much commentary". I understand what you mean on the 100-year pic. Its pretty much impossible to sum up every microscopic detail in a 3 1/2 line paragraph. I tried my best. As far as settling in the 10,000 range; I meant to somehow sum it up within the closing segment of the yearly chart. In the last 12 or so years, we've been around the 10,000 area. But it is also true that perhaps for a 12-year span, between the late 1960s and early 1980s, the Dow settled in the 1,000 range. I just meant were it settled at in recent times. Anyhow, as a whole, I think those segments are much improved from before. For the most part, its fairly concise in describing the movement of those graphs to wiki users who can't see it.  RT6543 4:56, 8 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Oh, I understand the difficulty, but we might want to pare some of the conclusions back a bit and I ask the mods here what they'd reasonably expect to see as alt-text for some of those. Commentary is really best left for the accompanying text.  Half of the charts are just "check out the bear market" or "look, market dropped sharply here".  There's not much more to be said about them.  What the exact values at the top and bottom are usually not the point of the graph.DavidRF (talk) 05:44, 8 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, the alt text should be relatively brief (see WP:ALT) and should focus on the gists of the graphs rather than unimportant details (see WP:ALT; in particular WP:ALT). The previous comments seem to be saying that alt text has been added, but this is incorrect: none of the images currently have alt text. Please see WP:ALT for what alt text is, and how to add it; and please click on the "alt text" button in the toolbox at the upper right of this review page to check the alt text once it's added. Eubulides (talk) 08:13, 8 January 2010 (UTC)
 * They expanded captions instead of adding alt attributes. I moved some text to new alts, but they need work. --an odd name 08:46, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

Strong oppose: This article has potential, but FAC should not used as an article development resource. There are other means for this, either talkpage discussion or, specifically, Peer Review. It is the nominator's responsibility to check that an article accords with FA criteria before bringing it here; saying "its quite informative and gramatically correct" is an inadequate reason for nominating. The article should be withdrawn without delay. Should it come to peer review I would highlight two particular areas for attention:
 * Prose: Ambiguous/misleading sentences, e.g. from the lead "It is an index that shows how certain large, publicly-owned companies based in the United States have traded during a standard trading session in the stock market"; jargonistic, e.g. "Within the equities world, asset manager SSgA State Street Global Advisors, offers a family of ETFs the SPDRs...etc"; generally inaccessible prose (too many examples to list)
 * Citations: whole areas of the article are uncited. The Investing section is full of unformatted bare links but no citations at all; the Criticism section has no citations beyond its first short paragraph; elsewhere citations are thin on the ground.

I will be pleased to provide detailed comments and suggestions at Peer Review, should the article be sent there. Brianboulton (talk) 11:22, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

Strong Oppose - most of the article is uncited, there are large sections that are just bulleted lists, not prose, bare links in what references there are, lack of independent sources (most of the few references are to Dow Jones itself), and unreliable sources. Ealdgyth - Talk 15:19, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

Response - Look, were trying to work out all the issues. There are some citations missing, and we've consolidated alot of info. But it still has potential. The article deserves a shot. Let's not discount it because of some small problems. I hope the article makes its way to Peer Review. The subject matter is fairly notable. RT6543 1:07, 11 January 2010 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.