Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Missionary position/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 16:18, 9 February 2008.

Missionary position


I'm nominating this article for featured article because it is pretty comprehensive by this point. Sarsaparilla (talk) 17:05, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Question You licensed Image:Down scaled missionary.jpg under the GFDL. I could not find any mention on the site that the contents were licensed under the GFDL. Could you explain? Nishkid64 (talk) 20:34, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Could you also replace with another source. The link is currently broken. Nishkid64 (talk) 20:36, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Done Sarsaparilla (talk) 23:00, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Graphical check mark things aren't allowed in FACs anymore.-Wafulz (talk) 23:39, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment. I think this article should've gone through a thorough copyedit before FAC. There are too many direct quotes, and I'm running into lots of minor errors like a sudden change in person, capitalization, quotations not being close properly, brackets where a comma suffices, etc.-Wafulz (talk) 23:42, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Arg, it looks like you didn't delist this article from GAC. The citations are also not templated consistently.-Wafulz (talk) 23:44, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Done Sarsaparilla (talk) 03:53, 3 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment "While many states outlaw oral sex," Oral sex is linked but provides no further information on the illegalization of it or other sex acts.--Kiyarr lls ton 00:55, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Is it supposed to include that info? Sarsaparilla (talk) 01:52, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
 * The comment is regarding the acceptance of different types of sex acts, yet the link allows for no greater examination of this comment. I believe this would be wp:overlink, as the link is not helpful. Is there no article regarding legality of sex acts or similar?--Kiyarr lls ton 14:00, 5 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Please replace Image:Missionary Sex Position1.png or can someone edit it to remove the teddy bear? Having a sexually explicit image where the girl's teddy could have the symbolic implication she's a child is not acceptable in featured content. I'm afraid I'll have to enter an objection, but will remove it contingent on that being fixed.--Docg 09:06, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Replaced. User:Zscout370 (Return Fire) 09:22, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
 * The teddy bear issue was the subject of much contention (see Talk:Missionary_position/Archive1 ), appears at WP:LAME, and consensus was never reached to remove it. Sarsaparilla (talk) 00:00, 6 February 2008 (UTC)
 * A few comments from the History section:
 * First paragraph – although the referencing in the article is pretty good, I think the last couple of sentences of this para need citations, since they're ascribing beliefs. (Not just asking for references for the sake of them - for example, I see no need to reference the 1st para of Basic Position)
 * Second paragraph – the note of "(14 or 15 years of age)" doesn't sound like "rather young girls" for the period (pre-2nd century, from the context of the sentence). Marriage ages of even younger than that, I'd have thought, were pretty common all the way into the middle ages and possibly even later than that.
 * Same bit – I don't see how the female being 14-15 years old would particularly make the missionary position less convenient, and what was it about the bed that did?
 * Third paragraph – "Although the Bible did not mention sexual positions"; it does now?  Or should it be "does not"?

That's it for now. Carre (talk) 10:17, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
 * I'd like to see a citation for the "fact" that women were commonly married off at a younger age in the old days. This is one of those assertions that gets insinuated into relevant articles as if it were as obvious as the sky being blue, but there's quite a bit of evidence to show that early marriage wasn't universal. According to author Liza Picard, although rich women were usually married off young (and of course their marriages were the ones to end up in the history books), the average age at marriage for women decreased by two months between 1400 and 1970. Yes, decreased. Poorer women worked before marriage to save up money to set up the household.  --NellieBly (talk) 12:00, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Well, found lots by a simple google search, but not particularly authoritative in the main. However, there's always Britannica – search for "early modern Europe" and you'll see "Medieval girls were very young at first marriage, barely past puberty".  Many more about ancient Greece and Rome, which is the era discussed. Carre (talk) 13:27, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Yeah ancient Greece/Rome are very different beasts from Europe from 1400-1970. However, can we get more information on citation #11 ("Sex In Ancient Greece Views Towards Sex Positions")?-Wafulz (talk) 23:35, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Citation #10 at the moment, but no publication details, which is another reason to comment. Carre (talk) 23:55, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

The age difference created a height differential. Sarsaparilla (talk) 00:06, 6 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Hmm, that is a very strange rationale. You could also say the gender difference results in a height differential.  The missionary position must be very rare indeed. Carre (talk) 08:09, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Oppose There's still a lot of work to do. Prose is still way short of the standards for featured articles. I gave the first two sections a semi-thorough read and I still found a few cases of unreferenced or nebulous assertions. The text is also bizarrely underlinked. I don't see how one can hope to fully understand the article without links to cervix, fornix, G-spot, clitoris, Doggy style. In contrast, there are wikilinks for pillow, German language, French language and Spanish language... I also think a case could be made that links to articles on ancient civilizations would make sense in the first section, though I understand there may be disagreement on that front. (How many people know about Trobrianders?) Other small points
 * Who is Artemidos?
 * Who is Nicholas Venette?
 * Who is Malinowski?
 * The bit about beds and height in Ancient Greece sounds like speculation by a single author and not some well-known truth that has been clearly established. The article should reflect that.
 * Disambiguation articles for grip, anvil, plough, etc. should probably include mentions of the sexual position.

Pichpich (talk) 20:27, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Comment The article mentions that bonobos use this position but not that among all extant primates it is unique to humans and bonobos. This was proposed by some evolutionary biologists as a synapomorphy establishing bonobos and humans as sister species. --Una Smith (talk) 04:08, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Comment will need a G rated image if ever featured on the main page--68.45.82.237 (talk) 06:58, 9 February 2008 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.