Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Northwest Airlines Flight 253/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 Karanacs 13:24, 6 April 2010.

Northwest Airlines Flight 253

 * Nominator(s):  fetch  comms  ☛ 16:40, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

This article just finished a peer review and I think it satisfies the criteria for becoming an FA. It's well referenced, covers the subject comprehensively, has been stable, and reads well.  fetch  comms  ☛ 16:40, 18 March 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 16:43, 18 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Comments. Fixed a bad link; alt text good. Dead link to http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090331/ap_on_bi_ge/delta_northwest_1 is appropriately marked; have you tried to find an archived version? About eleven similar link with the same issue.
 * I think the article is too long; it loads slowly. Consider using the family of templates to reduce loading time and perhaps split content into subarticles. Ucucha 17:03, 18 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Agreed, it is quite unmanageable. It takes longer to load for me than Elvis and Catholic Church combined. -- Andy Walsh  (talk)  18:21, 18 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Personally, it doesn't take too long to load, but I agree that it is long. However, I don't know if it's possible to split the article up even more. I could probably cut down on the "Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab" and "Ties to Anwar al-Awlaki" sections, but I don't think it would be appropriate to have a stand-alone article called "Reactions and investigations to the attempted attack on Northwest Airlines Flight 253" or something like that. Many of the dead links are from Yahoo! News, who unfortunately does not keep articles very long. As many of these were added long ago, Google no longer has a cached version and I have no idea what to search for to see if there are duplicates elsewhere--which I suspect there may be. I have never used the vcite news templates, but after a quick look at the doc, it seems like it has the same paramters--is this correct, can I do a simple find/replace of to, or are there any larger differences?  fetch  comms  ☛  19:44, 18 March 2010 (UTC)
 * There are some differences, see Template:Vcite news, but they may not even be applicable to this article.
 * I do think there is some potential for daughter articles there. There are many for 9/11, and here you can perhaps have articles on reactions, investigations, and the general aftermath of the attempt. Ucucha 21:01, 18 March 2010 (UTC)
 * OK, I'll try to get these two bits sorted out.  fetch  comms  ☛ 21:32, 18 March 2010 (UTC)
 * The template switch was a big improvement. The size of the HTML from the references was reduced from 238 kB to 122 kB, and the page loads much faster. Ucucha 21:47, 18 March 2010 (UTC)
 * And for the dead links, have you tried http://www.archive.org? Ucucha 22:19, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

← I have created Reactions to the Northwest Airlines Flight 253 attack, but I think a bit more can still be cut out of the main article. I tried the web archive, but none were found, unfortunately.  fetch  comms  ☛ 03:56, 19 March 2010 (UTC)


 * first read thru, its heavy going theres a lot of duplicated and unnecessary information in the lead try cutting it back to 3 paragraphs,
 * first paragraph of lead a Delta Air Lines liveried Airbus A330-323E operated by Northwest Airlines, was on its final descent, 20 minutes before landing, with 289 other people on board. The plane made an emergency landing in Detroit without any fatalities. try maybe  a Delta Air Lines liveried Airbus A330-323E operated by Northwest Airlines, was on its final descent, 20 minutes before landing, with 289 other people on board while on final descet. The plane made an emergency landing in Detroit without any fatalities. 


 * second para of lead The suspected bomber in the incident was Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a 23-year-old Muslim Nigerian passenger who had studied engineering in England and came from a wealthy family. The plastic explosives Abdulmutallab concealed in his underwear failed to detonate properly, resulting only in flames and popping sounds. try The suspected bomber in the incident was Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a 23-year-old Muslim Nigerian passenger who had studied engineering  in England and came from a wealthy family. The plastic explosives Abdulmutallab concealed in his underwear failed to detonate properly, resulting only in flames and popping sounds. then throw away the Dec 26 info, that information is covered in the article proper. Keep from On Dec 28... until the last sentence starting If convicted... and delete that agains its not critical information to the article and is addressed in the article proper.


 * third para of lead -- throw the whole thing its background information thats covered in the article and isnt directly relevent to establishing the articles context.


 * fourth para of lead -- drop the first sentence then remove also from the start of the second keep the rest.

Voila one condensed lead, now for the rest of the article I'll await your response to these suggestions. Overall its got a lot information and is well written its just there is redundancy within the prose. Gnangarra 11:31, 19 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I think you're right about the redundancy, I've removed the suggested bits from the lede, are there any other glaring spots? If not, I'll try to go through each section and remove unneeded material as well.  fetch  comms  ☛ 16:38, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Image Check: Passed - 9 images; 8 free, 1 fair use. Free images are all PD-self or PD-USGOV, and are at commons. Fair-use image is the one of the plane, and is not reproducible. -- Pres N  22:29, 22 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Comment Dead links on page. Please check all. &bull; Ling.Nut 15:47, 23 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Tagged a couple and replaced one.  fetch  comms  ☛ 20:59, 23 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Leaning Oppose Just based on headache I got from the frenzied glare of the little blue bracketed numbers behind every other sentence. There is sometimes a legitimate reason to add more than one or at most two references to a sentence – when the sentence is particularly controversial, and you want to have the word of more than one acknowledged expert to back it up. But that is not the case here. Please go through and find the clearest and most reputable for every cite, and use only one (unless it is controversial). &bull; Ling.Nut 15:53, 23 March 2010 (UTC)
 * OK, I'll remove some unneeded references, which should also help reduce the page size and loading time.  fetch  comms  ☛ 20:59, 23 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Comments -
 * What makes the following reliable sources?
 * http://www.lewrockwell.com/pr/haskell-truth-flight253.html (this is double cited, so best course would be to eliminate this citation)
 * http://flightwise.com/track/38590003
 * http://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/index.ssf/2010/02/report_flight_253_hero_jasper.html
 * Your citations need to be consistent with placement of the publisher/newspaper etc. Most are: Author, title of article, Newspaper, retrieval date, but some have the publisher/newspaper AFTER the date, and not italicised in the cases of newspapers. I noted current refs 13 and 14 at first, but there are lots of others.
 * 11 deadlinks in the refs (current ref 19, 71, 77, 83, 93, 108, 120, 144, 157, 183, 184)
 * Current ref 22 (Roberts, Soryay) lacks a publisher
 * Current ref 40 (Heldenrol...) needs a last acess date
 * Current ref 73 (Devlin..) lacks a publisher
 * Current ref 137 lacks a publisher (it's currently run into the link title)
 * Same with current ref 138
 * Current ref 142 ("Christmas bombing Try...) lacks a publisher
 * Current ref 144 (Bin Laden...) lacks a publisher
 * Current ref 153 (Aftonbladet) needs a last access date... also more information on this would be helpful to satisfy WP:V
 * Current ref 161 (Wilders...) lacks a publisher
 * Current ref 173 (Hughes..) lacks a publisher
 * Current ref 174 (Mack) lacks a publisher
 * Agree with Ling Nut about over referencing, it is very severely overreferenced.
 * Otherwise, sources look okay, links checked out with the link checker tool. Ealdgyth - Talk 15:52, 25 March 2010 (UTC)
 * The first source is quoting Kurt Haskell. I'll probably get rid of it as you said. The second is a flight tracking website and could be removed as well as a duplicate. The last is a news website, I believe. I'm dreading getting all the citations consistent and together, but I'll get it done as soon as I can, as well as adding all the ref info.  fetch  comms  ☛ 02:13, 26 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Support, pending the resolution of the issues identified above. I've looked at this article from the perspectives of sourcing, reliability and comprehensiveness (aren't these the most important issues?), and think it easily passes those standards as they are reflected in the FA criteria. I agree the multiple references can be shedded, but the existence of multiple references is indicative of how well sourced the article is. Every statement I checked was very well supported by the sources cited. --Mkativerata (talk) 20:09, 29 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Oppose. This article has entire sections completely without summarisation in the lede, a blatant violation. Not to mention the the article title is still totally deficient, and is now not even clarified in the lede either. See the talk archives for the past attempts to fix both those issues, which appear to have been stealthily rolled back when I left the article. In addition, it has a no-free image in the lede which offers nothing over and above the free images already in it. I cannot imagine how that got past the free content supporters. MickMacNee (talk) 17:34, 1 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I was told above to shorten the lede because it was too long... now it's too short? How exactly is the title deficient? I thought the standardized title of airplane incidents was just the flight name? The image is in the article because there is no free image taken of the incident. Apparently, whoever checked the images above thought it was OK.  fetch  comms  ☛ 21:02, 1 April 2010 (UTC)
 * If I am not mistaken, a requested move you filed, as well as another requested move filed by someone else shortly after, both did not succeed. Large incidents like United Airlines Flight 93 would not be moved to 9/11 attack in Pennsylvania or something, I don't see the need for this to be retitled either.  fetch  comms  ☛ 21:11, 1 April 2010 (UTC)
 * The airline naming convention is a nonsense and goes against all other policies, but what is worse is that it is doubly wrong for this specific article. See the talk archives for the reasons, I'm not going over this for the billionth time. And in my experience, use of that non-free image will be challenged at some point, so if someone above has said they think it would pass, they should take it to PUI right now. MickMacNee (talk) 22:07, 1 April 2010 (UTC)
 * And by the by, Flight 93 is the proper name for that article by all policies, not just the not fit for purpose aircraft incident naming convention. MickMacNee (talk) 22:08, 1 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm not going argue over the naming convention, as that's something for consensus to determine what's "nonsense" and such. I don't quite understand: how is it doubly wrong if two requested moves have both failed? Obviously, there is not a lot of support of the page to be moved--if you want, go ahead an request another one, but I'm not sure why this affects the article's status. About the image, there's no way to take a free version of the plane now, this says its registration has expired.  fetch  comms  ☛ 23:04, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

oppose - File:NWA_Flight_253_landed.jpg conveys no information beyond what is already contained in the caption, therefore failing wp:nfcc Fasach Nua (talk) 23:26, 5 April 2010 (UTC)
 * As I mentioned above, this shows that the plane's registration has expired and it would therefore not be possible to take a free photo of it now. That said, do you intend to keep an oppose over such a seemingly small item? If you wish, take the image to PUF or FFD, but I'm not sure why that affects the article as a whole, as I feel that it does fall under the non-free criteria. This is also one of the only images taken of the event, and the only free one--should we delete the video of the 9/11 attacks too, as it is there was no free equivalent of that?  fetch  comms  ☛ 03:12, 6 April 2010 (UTC)


 * I do not find the mission trivial, and while the article continues to fails FAC, I will continue to oppose. Fasach Nua (talk) 04:08, 6 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.