Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Michelle Obama/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 not promoted by SandyGeorgia 00:26, 9 April 2010.

Michelle Obama

 * Nominator(s): TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 21:41, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

I am nominating this for featured article because it was previously nominated two and a half months after she assumed the role of First Lady of the United States. There were issues with recentism and what her long term role is. Now that she has established her legacy objective and undertaken a role in running an administrationwide initiative, I think it is time to reconsider whether this article is among the finest at summarizing the bio of this living person.TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 21:41, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Note: This is a WikiCup nomination. To the nominator: if you do not intend to submit this article at the WikiCup, feel free to remove this notice. Ucucha 00:47, 7 April 2010 (UTC)
 * The eligibility of this article is not clear for the cup. If it passes, we will request clarification.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 06:12, 7 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Comments. A dab link to protocol and link to Melvinia Shields, which redirects back to the article.
 * Fixed.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 06:21, 7 April 2010 (UTC)
 * External link to http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-michelle_obama_first_ladynov09,0,7595775.story is said to be an expiring news link; perhaps make a WebCite archive.
 * I don't believe it is really expiring. Tribune article either expire in a couple of months or stay around. If it goes dead, we can fix it.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 06:24, 7 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Links to http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/uselection2008/2118953/Fox-News-presenter-taken-off-air-after-Barack-Obama-%27terrorist-fist-jab%27-remark.html and http://www.siouxcityjournal.com/articles/2007/05/22/news/iowa/819e27c77eaa19fc862572e30012e0d4.txt are dead.
 * Lead seems rather short for an article this size. Ucucha 00:52, 7 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I have on numerous occasions beefed up the WP:LEAD to this article. However, this is a very contentious article and content is refined by numerous eyes.  I am fairly certain that any attempt to inflate the current LEAD would in a matter of a week or ten days be reverted back to approximately the current version.


 * Comments: The books under "Further reading" are not formatted properly; an author's surname is always first, and I'm not aware of any standard style (MLA, APA, Chicago, etc.) that lists the month of publication as well as the year -- correct me if I'm wrong on the last point, however. Publication cities are also missing in all three instances.  In addition, is there a reason why the books listed are not used as references for the article?  From what I can tell after a quick skimming, most of the references are news reports and articles, which is great if that's all there is, but my belief is that if there are reputable, published works available, why not use them? María ( habla  con migo ) 12:44, 7 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I can reformat the citations. However, if you are telling me that I have to read a couple of novels to advance this FAC, it is not going to happen.  On many subjects there are far more references than are used in creating the article.  Does this article appear to be lacking breadth, depth or WP:RS for the material that exists?--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 14:21, 7 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm not telling you to do anything, Tony. But now that you mention it, what's so wrong about reading books for the sake of a gold star? ;) The question is, does this article -- which relies solely on online news sources when there are seemingly reliable, published works available -- truly present a "representative survey of the relevant literature on the topic"?  I obviously haven't read the books, or even the article in its entirety, but past FACs have been hit with such queries in the past.  Because this is such an important article, and one that will continue to be scrutinized by many readers, the references should obviously be of the highest quality currently available.  If the books in question are not worth the paper they're printed on, okay; but they should at least be assessed to find whether or not they can be of use. María ( habla  con migo ) 14:36, 7 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I have several times done research such as that to get a gold star. My WP is much less than it use to be.  In most cases, for architecture articles I have read books that had 4 or 5 pages on a building or structure that I was researching.  I was able to add a few books in a few hours.  In this case, we are talking about entire books devoted to the subject.  Compared to some of my recent FAs such as Jay Pritzker Pavilion, Cloud Gate, Crown Fountain, or Trump International Hotel and Tower (Chicago) where I was able to improve the perceived quality of the WP article by looking at a few passages in architecture books, this would take an industrious effort that I am not up to.  I could not imagine it would take me less than 50 hours to read the references that you mention.  I do not have that much time for WP anymore.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 15:51, 7 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Question: Has a delegate approved this nom, bearing in mind the 15-day rule and that this nominator's 2008–09 Michigan Wolverines men's basketball team was archived only on 6 April? Brianboulton (talk) 21:18, 8 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I confess to not really reading the constantly revised rules with each nomination. If this nomination is suppose to be closed that is fine.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 21:36, 8 April 2010 (UTC)
 * With no opinion on the merits of the article (which I haven't read in any detail), I'd say this is a clear candidate for WP:IAR. That rule is intended to prevent FAC from being clogged by mass nominations of poor quality articles into FAC by people who don't really understand what's required; Tony clearly doesn't fall into that category. – iride  scent  00:17, 9 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Actually, that rule was put into place to stop editors from using FAC as a source of serial peer reviews, putting up a second nomination as soon as their previous nom was archived, clogging FAC and treating it as peer review, and regularly bringing back articles with little change as soon as the last nomination was archived. In fact, yes, this review needs to be closed, as the rule was put into place precisely for this purpose.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 00:23, 9 April 2010 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.