Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Oxford English Dictionary/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 Ian Rose (talk) 14:15, 10 June 2014 (diff).

Oxford English Dictionary

 * Nominator(s): DavidPKendal (talk) 11:38, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

Article was previously (imo) of Good Article status though it had not been tagged as such. I've spent a few days adding more information, standardizing the style, and researching to add more citations, bringing it up to featured-article standard in my opinion. DavidPKendal (talk) 11:38, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

Note - Hi, and thanks for engaging in our FA process. Sadly, the prospects of promotion are not good at this stage; there a too many uncited facts. At FA level, every fact should be cited to a reliable source and we expect to see a least one citation at the end of each paragraph, as a minimum. Expect to see opposition because of this, unless you can act quickly. Graham Colm (talk) 20:18, 8 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Hi. I believe every claim is cited, though in some cases the citation may not be directly attached to the claim (may come a sentence or two later). Could you sprinkle s in the places you expect to see references so I can add them? DavidPKendal (talk) 08:24, 9 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I don't have the time. Graham Colm (talk) 09:59, 9 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Okay, I've made some improvements to the referencing and will continue to do so. DavidPKendal (talk) 11:35, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

Note - This article is Start-Class. Even though it's not necessarily required, I'd strongly suggest you get it to Good Article status before considering nominating it again. D ARTH B OTTO talk•cont 20:37, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

Comment There are prose problems, too. You might want to run this by the Guild of Copy Editors. - Dank (push to talk) 22:09, 8 June 2014 (UTC)
 * I'll take a look. Are there any particular areas of the article that have these problems? DavidPKendal (talk) 08:24, 9 June 2014 (UTC)


 * "the Oxford University Press": I've always heard it without the "the", but check this.
 * "descriptive": descriptive
 * "As well as describing English usage in its many variations throughout the world, it traces the historical development of the English language, providing an authoritative resource to scholars and academic researchers.": It never covered all varieties of English. The OED was "authoritative" for some purposes in the 20th century, but at FAC, we're rarely comfortable with claiming that anything is the "authority" on a very broad ... anything.
 * "replaced the name ... to": ... with
 * " In 1933, it fully replaced the name in all occurrences to The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) in its reprinting as twelve volumes with a one volume supplement and more supplements came over the years until in 1989 when the second edition was published.": Bit of a run-on sentence. "in all occurrences" raises the question of what kind of occurrences there might be; "In 1933, it became The Oxford English Dictionary" might be better.
 * "until in 1989 when": not idiomatic.
 * That's all in the first paragraph, and I see "2007,then" in the first section. Hope that helps. - Dank (push to talk) 10:53, 9 June 2014 (UTC)


 * the Oxford University Press: This Google Ngram query doesn't work, sadly, so here's a few manual searches: at, by, from, with, to. It seems that when used in the dative case, there's a significant minority who still use the 'the' in 'the Oxford University Press' (perhaps further investigation could turn up precise situations in which a majority still use 'the'). It sounds stilted to me without it, so I've left it.
 * authoritative: A tricky one. I've changed it to 'comprehensive', which I think captures the intention of the use of 'authoritative' here without the problems of that word.
 * I've corrected your other concerns and one or two others I spotted. I'll keep an eye out for similar problems. DavidPKendal (talk) 11:35, 9 June 2014 (UTC)


 * Oppose. Thanks for your diligence, but there's more here than I'm going to be able to comfortably cover during one FAC. PR would be a good way to go from here. - Dank (push to talk) 00:27, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

Oppose for the moment: The article is graded Start-class, not because that's its actual standard but because it has never been reviewed. It is  informative and interesting,  probably worth a B as it stands, but alas at present nowhere near a FA. It is badly in need of some close review treatment from editors who know their way around FAC and can help to bring it to that standard.

A few basic problems, gleaned from a very quick look-over:
 * Organisationally, it's not a good idea to begin with a section that essentially records trivia.
 * The first sentence of that section is somewhat garbled: "According to the publishers, it would take a single person 120 years to "key in" text to convert it to machine readable form which consists of a total of 59 million words of the OED second edition, 60 years to proofread it, and 540 megabytes to store it electronically."
 * There's an overtendency, particularly later in the article, to write in very short single-sentence paragraphs rather than in fluent prose.
 * The article looks unbalanced, with 95% of its content dealing with history and production, a very short section on "Criticisms" and nothing at all on cultural impact, significance etc
 * A significant number of statements throughout the article are currently lacking citations

I don't think these issues can be adequately addressed in the timeframe of this FAC, so I'm opposing at present, but I'd still like to encourage the article's development. If it is withdrawn from here and taken to peer review, I'll be happy to give it a closer look there. Brianboulton (talk) 22:51, 9 June 2014 (UTC)


 * Opening section: Yes, on reflection I agree. Perhaps a new section as you suggest on cultural impact, significance, etc. could be inserted there.
 * Copy concerns: I'll look at those.
 * Criticisms: Honestly … it's hard to find serious criticism of the OED, especially on matters that haven't been addressed by the editors in the third edition. There is some less serious criticism that could be mentioned (though that particular case is, imo, frivolous and irrelevant to the article), as well as perhaps the tendency of the general public to overreact upon news of the addition of 'WTF' or 'LOL' or whatever happens to have reached the dictionary's pages in the most recent update (though quite often this is a case of mistaken reporting, and it is the ODE not the OED which has received these additions).
 * Cultural impact, significance: could you suggest something that might be a citable source for cultural impact? The section on the second edition already mentions the accolades it received upon its publication, mentioning its significance, etc.
 * Peer review: Sorry, I'm fairly new to all this. What do you mean by 'taking it to peer review'? DavidPKendal (talk) 23:38, 9 June 2014 (UTC)
 * See WP:PR. - Dank (push to talk) 00:25, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

Closing comment -- Thank you for participating in FAC, David. Reviewing the comments above, however, and taking a quick look at the article myself, I think the nomination is premature so I'll be archiving it shortly. I agree that Peer Review is the best avenue for getting this article up to scratch before another nomination at FAC, which you can undertake a minimum of two weeks after the archive goes through. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 14:14, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

Ian Rose (talk) 14:15, 10 June 2014 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.