Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Stephen Colbert at the 2006 White House Correspondents' Association Dinner/archive3


 * 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 promoted by Ian Rose 08:06, 17 December 2012.

Stephen Colbert at the 2006 White House Correspondents' Association Dinner

 * Nominator(s): Hawkeye7 (talk) 02:54, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

I have here an article with a long and distinguished history. First nominated for FAC in 2006, it survived two AfDs before it was demoted after a FAR in May 2010. I repaired the article, addressing the concerns raised at the FAR, and it passed a GA assessment in July 2012. It was Today's Featured Article on 21 November 2006, so if restored to Featured status it will not be eligible to appear again. Although I already have an article at FAC, I have a fiat for a second nomination here. There are a couple of things things about this article that may be of broader interest to the community: With all the links repaired, myself and a couple of other editors have gone over the article to polish the prose again. This allowed the article to be promoted to Good Article status for the first time, and, with all the issues addressed, I hope it can be restored to Featured. Hawkeye7 (talk) 02:54, 8 November 2012 (UTC)
 * 1) Once an topic is notable, it stays notable. Back in 2006, there was concern that an article sourced from news coverage would not stay notable, but the argument that history stays history carried the day. Six years later, the truth of this is evident. I came across multiple references to this important event in 2011 while researching US civil-military relations  article on President Truman's relief of General Douglas MacArthur, and was pleasantly surprised to find such a fine Wikipedia article. Over time, the event has attracted considerable coverage in offline reliable sources.
 * 2) Dead links are better than no links at all. There was concern that as an article's links decayed over time, an article relying on internet sources would become unverifiable, and the article would become unsourced. Some suggested removing dead links. However, the dead links proved to be far superior to no links at all. In many cases, the references sources had merely been moved or archived, and the dead links allowed us to rapidly locate the sources again. In these cases, the dead links were replaced with the living ones. In a small number of cases, the material could still be seen on mirror sites that could not be used for copyright reasons, but you could still read them. This allowed them to be replaced with references to other reliable sources. So it is important that, when maintaining articles, you don't remove links that are dead without replacement.


 * Note to Delegates: This is a former FA that has been on the Main Page, please see the note on my Talk Page regarding closing Graham Colm (talk) 22:22, 8 November 2012 (UTC)


 * OPPOSE. I actually have equal concerns as to whether this article should exist; it seems to merely reflects 'recentism' of the time. Admittedly, I'm not American and have little idea as to what would have made this a 'legendary event', as is asserted in the article. But AfD has pronounced and so be it. I would note that when I run my cleanup scripts to 'audit' candidates that are ready or have passed, I get a null output. In this case, they picked up a large number of inconsistencies which would suggest that the article is still a long way off FA status if we were only to consider matters of style. The article was überlinked (with multiple chained links viz:"Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer"), and remains so – words such as "irony", "photo op", "elitist", "Google", "Yahoo!" and "approval rating" have no business being linked, pipes notwithstanding. I am also unimpressed by what seems to be a potentially misleading/NPOV-violating easter egg with " media " --  Ohconfucius  ping / poke 02:44, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Recentism is refuted by the way I found the article - through academic journals. I have pruned the links, but kept "Google" and "Yahoo!". Hawkeye7 (talk) 22:40, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

Source review - spotchecks not done Nikkimaria (talk) 22:19, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Several newspapers and magazines are missing italicization
 * Think I've got them all. Hawkeye7 (talk) 11:12, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
 * FN8: doubled quote marks
 * Replaced double quotes in title with single quotes
 * What makes this a high-quality reliable source? This? This?
 * (1) I love WikiNews! Written 70+ articles there myself! Replaced with a book reference. (2) This is an official Yahoo site, which is used to cite a statistic on Yahoo traffic, which I think is quite reasonable. (3) Newshounds is a volunteer organization that watches the Fox so you don't have to. Cited by 32 articles. Used here only to report the fact that CNN and Fox had video up. Supported by links on the Newshounds site but while its still the the CNN and Fox videos are now gone. Hawkeye7 (talk) 11:12, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
 * FN51: formatting
 * Fixed. Hawkeye7 (talk) 11:12, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Be consistent in what is wikilinked when.
 * Tried to be. Hawkeye7 (talk) 11:12, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your review Nikki! Hawkeye7 (talk) 11:12, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

Comments My knowledge of US politics isn't great, but it's too terrible for someone living in Australia. While comments from specialists in US politics are probably necessary, I have the following comments:
 * The order of the sentences in the 'Performance at the dinner' section should be reversed (and can more be said about why he was invited?). This section should also provide background on these dinners, including the tradition of humorous speeches (including from the president).
 * Added a bit about this. Hawkeye7 (talk) 10:29, 24 November 2012 (UTC)
 * "Cable channel C-SPAN broadcast the White House Correspondents Dinner live on Saturday, April 29, 2006" - given the date is already stated, you could cut everything after 'live'
 * Done. Hawkeye7 (talk) 10:29, 24 November 2012 (UTC)
 * "The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune covered the dinner, but neither contained coverage of Colbert's remarks" - this wording is a bit awkward
 * Re-worded. Hawkeye7 (talk) 10:29, 24 November 2012 (UTC)
 * "The wire services Reuters and the Associated Press both used three paragraphs to discuss Colbert's routine in their coverage of the event" - seems a bit wordy (and implies that these were the same paras)
 * Re-worded. Hawkeye7 (talk) 10:29, 24 November 2012 (UTC)
 * "a clip of Colbert at the dinner was an overnight sensation, becoming a viral video that appeared on numerous web sites in several forms. Sites offering the video experienced massive increases in traffic." - was this one clip hosted on a single website, or multiple copies of the the clip on different websites?
 * Multiple versions. Corrected. Hawkeye7 (talk) 10:29, 24 November 2012 (UTC)
 * "Searches for Colbert on Yahoo! were up 5,625 percent" - is this a meaningful statistic? (eg, was the pre-speech number of searches significant?)
 * I think so. Yahoo only releases percentage, not actually figures, but his wikipedia stats varied from 5,000 to 15,000 (with an average of over 6.000) per diem over November 2012, so the numbers involved were probably very large indeed. Hawkeye7 (talk) 10:29, 24 November 2012 (UTC)
 * "The New York Times published five letters to the editor on Colbert's performance in its May 3 and 4 editions—all of which were strongly supportive of Colbert, and some of which were critical of The New York Times for reporting only critical reactions" - the article already has a much better overall discussion of the response by NY Times readers and the paper so this seems unnecessary. Nick-D (talk) 07:07, 24 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Deleted. Hawkeye7 (talk) 10:29, 24 November 2012 (UTC)
 * This is still in the article Nick-D (talk) 03:36, 25 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Tried again. Hawkeye7 (talk) 03:59, 25 November 2012 (UTC)
 * That was my fault. I saw a large chunk of deleted text and thought that it was a negative. I didn't realize that there was some duplication. Sorry. Boomshadow talk contribs 18:39, 26 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your review! Hawkeye7 (talk) 10:29, 24 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Support My comments have now been addressed Nick-D (talk) 04:24, 25 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Support. I've read the article and have no particular complaints.  Spot-checked a source or two at random.  Seems solid.  If there are lots of bluelinks, it's only because the article by necessity name-drops like crazy for attendants, reactions, media sources, etc. SnowFire (talk) 21:16, 2 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Comments Generally favorable and minded to support, but first a few things:
 * Lede
 * "U.S. President" Franken is a "US Senator". Please check consistency here.
 * Set to "U.S." Hawkeye7 (talk) 20:22, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Was freedom fries still around in 2006?
 * Apparently. It is from a contemporary quote. I remember it from a media campaign in 2003. Hawkeye7 (talk) 20:22, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
 * "intentional cover-up". Suggest first word redundant.
 * Agreed. Removed. Hawkeye7 (talk) 20:22, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Performance
 * Something should be said about what Colbert was expected to do. Did the previous comedians at the WHCA dinner comment on politics? It's really not clear what Colbert was expected to do, other than what he actually did.
 * Added a few words of explanation. Hawkeye7 (talk) 21:56, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
 * "implicitly criticizing the way Bush positions himself as an anti-intellectual" First, the past tense is probably needed here.  Second, unless Bill O'Reilly would agree that this is how Bush positioned himself (you get the idea), I'd cite inline.
 * There is an inline cite. Hawkeye7 (talk)
 * "photo ops aboard the …" I think "photo ops" is POV. Colbert can call them that, you should probably find a more neutral term.  Any word on how Bush reacted during the routine?  I see the "after".
 * Changed to "appearances". Hawkeye7 (talk) 20:22, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I would pipe WMD to the specific controversy about WMDs (not) in Iraq.
 * Linked to Iraq and weapons of mass destruction. Hawkeye7 (talk) 20:22, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Can anything be said about why one control said "Gannon"? Also, for those who are not political junkies, I would identify Helen Thomas as a reporter or correspondent.
 * Done. Hawkeye7 (talk) 20:22, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
 * "Heavily distributed online". Sounds like iTunes.  Perhaps "widely available" or "widely viewed"?  My point is, "distributed" doesn't really seem to fit what happened.
 * "Widely available" sounds good. Hawkeye7 (talk) 20:22, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
 * "although a few in the audience, such as Scalia, laughed heartily as Colbert teased him". The subject is "a few", thus the sentence should end with "them".  Suggest mild rephrasing.
 * Done. Hawkeye7 (talk) 20:22, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
 * "Much of the initial coverage of the event highlighted this difference." I would expect you to follow this with a description of said coverage, but you really don't.
 * Internet sensation
 * " clips of Colbert at the dinner were an overnight sensation, becoming a viral video that appeared on numerous web sites in several forms." "A viral video" seems uncomfortably in singular form.
 * Deleted indefinite article. Hawkeye7 (talk) 20:22, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Nos. 1, 2, and 3 spots" The Nos. feels awkward. Can it be avoided?
 * Removed. Hawkeye7 (talk) 20:22, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Allegations
 * Is there no way to avoid the repeated rendition of The New York Times, five times in the final paragraph?
 * Trimmed back to two. Hawkeye7 (talk) 20:38, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Appraisal
 * I scent some POV with "—both groups having been targets of Colbert's satire" You tear down the detractors of the video.  You did not say anything detracting from those who praised it, like Franken, from whose description the word "Democrat" is conspicuously missing.  While I understand that an article about a subject cannot be utterly dismissal of the subject, I get a feeling that the article is saying saying that the detractors were way off base, and those who believed in the cover-up were correct.  The fact that you sandwich the paragraph in which the detractors speak between two praising or defending Colbert should be looked at too.
 * Moved the paragraphs around, so they go: bad, defensive, good. Hawkeye7 (talk) 20:38, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Your use of Washington Post without the The looks odd after the mantra of The New York Times and considering you've referred to it in full throughout.
 * Only once in the whole article. Corrected. Hawkeye7 (talk) 20:38, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
 * "felt that Colbert had gone too far, telly the newspaper" Some fixing needed.
 * Well spotted. Corrected. Hawkeye7 (talk) 20:38, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Please leave word on my talk when you are ready for me to take another look. Thanks.--Wehwalt (talk) 12:56, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
 * All points addressed. Hawkeye7 (talk) 22:06, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

"A concept closely related to truthiness is "wikiality," which is, "A reality where, if enough people agree with a notion, it becomes the truth" (Colbert Report July 31, 2006). In other words, if something is truthy, it is bound to become a part of wikiality. Colbert particularly uses this concept to refer to the constructed state of reality formed by online polls and open source collections of information on the Internet like Wikipedia. To demonstrate his capacity to influence wikiality, he joked on the show that the world population of elephants was no longer in need of protection because it had tripled in the last decade. Within minutes, the Wikipedia entry for elephant had been changed to highlight this "fact.""
 * Support Well done, glad to see another FFA gonna come back I hope.--Wehwalt (talk) 20:12, 15 December 2012 (UTC)


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