Wikipedia:Featured article removal candidates/Old Swiss Confederacy

Old Swiss Confederacy

 * Article is still a featured article.

The current title of this article (Old Swiss Confederacy) suggest it is about a former state, but the structure is essentialy 'history of' (or rather two specific sections on territorial (which seems to include political among others) and social developments (economy, summary of politics)). At best, the title is confusing, suggesting it is a comprehensive overview of a former country (for good FA examples of this, see Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Indo-Greek Kingdom or Byzantine Empire). Therefore if the article is to remain in it's present state and be a former state article, sections on politics and economy have to be expanded (currently take take about 10% of article's lenght, with history being 90%) and sections on culture, administrative division and such should be added. Alternatively, a solution to address this FARC is for the article to be renamed to History of Swiss Confederacy or History of Swiss (1291–1516), as is our naming convention for history articles (FAs: History of Poland (1945–1989), History of post-Soviet Russia, History of the Netherlands, History of Russia, History of Scotland). Even if this is done, the article is below our standards: from the fact that it needs a copyedit (the section titled 'Territorial development' takes 90% of the article and should probably be renamed history), to the fact that the article has not a single inline citation and it's reference section numbers just two positions. In the current state, it is simply not up to our current standards. See also old FAC discussion from Oct'04 and my comments about the importance of differentiation between 'former state' and 'history of...' articles.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 17:09, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Even without knowing much about Swiss history, Strong remove for absolutely no inline citation and next to no references. Staxringold 03:46, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Strong keep. Doesn't need inline refs: it's a summary-style overview written as a summary of the two references given, which are comprehensive treatments of the subject. See the talk page. Furthermore, this part of the history of Switzerland is not controversial, so there's no need to inline ref every sentence fragment. Controversial issues are the veracity of the Federal Charter of 1291 and of the legends of William Tell and Arnold Winkelried; all three are discussed and sourced in their own articles. Now, Piotrus' other argument is somewhat better, but it seems he's just opposing on structural grounds, proposing a reorganization of the whole series. That's not a reason for removal; that'd be a reason for moving it to some other name (Forming of the Old Swiss Confederacy or some such) and then write a new article at the old title that would give a very brief overview of the federation of small independent states commonly called the "Old Swiss Confederacy" from 1291 to 1797. That would actually be a good idea. I would strongly advice against renaming "territorial development" to "history"; that's an awefully narrow view of "history". I would also advice against using hard-coded years in the article title (such as Piotrus' proposal "History of Swiss (1291–1516)"); the end date isn't that clear. Lupo 07:50, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Reply Controversy isn't the only possible prerequisite for citation, it's whether something is common knowledge or not. "Two similar federations sprung up in neighboring areas in the Alps in the 14th century: in the Grisons, the federation of the Three Leagues (Drei Bünde) was founded, and in the Valais, the Seven Tenths (Sieben Zenden) were formed as a result of the conflicts with the Dukes of Savoy. Neither federation was part of the medieval Eidgenossenschaft but both maintained very close connections with it." That could be made up gibberish for all I, or plenty of people, know. It needs citation. "When Rudolph I of Habsburg was elected "King of the Germans" in 1273, he also became the direct liege lord of these reichsfrei regions. He instituted a strict rule and raised the taxes to finance wars and further territorial acquisitions. When he died in 1291, his son Albert I got involved in a power struggle with Adolf of Nassau for the German throne, and the Habsburg rule over the alpine territories weakened temporarily. Anti-Habsburg insurgences sprung up in Swabia and Austria, but were quenched quickly by Albert in 1292. Zürich had participated in this uprising. Albert besieged the city, which had to accept him as its patron." Says... who? Staxringold 11:55, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Say the references given, and pretty much every other text book. It is common knowledge. Lupo 13:29, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Both of them? For every single fact? On every page? It may be common knowledge for Swiss, but it is not for 99% of the world population (and I doubt Swiss actually know their history any better than people of other nationality, meaning most it probably is not common knowledge to anybody but history fans). There is a reason why Inline citations are now a FA requirement, and a good FA should have every single fact referenced, be it common knowledge to somebody or not. In my recent FA, the Katyn massacre, I referenced quite a few facts that are 'common knowledge' in Poland - but proved to be unknown and/or controversial on the international forum. As Staxringold pointed out, the same maybe true for 'uncontroversia' and 'common knowledge' Swiss history. If all of those facts are from those two book - that's fine, than just put Harvard style page numbers in text and the objection is addressed.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 13:50, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
 * And If the references actually provide that information, there should be inline citation linking the fact to the source. Otherwise it may just as easily have been made up yesterday. Not trying to be difficult, but that's what inline citation exists for. Staxringold 14:01, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
 * No, sorry. If an article is based on a few main sources, these are given in the "references" section and implicitly act as a reference for any statement not having an explicit inline reference. Otherwise, one ends up with a ref-feast like Katyn massacre. If I had written that, I would have given Fischer as a "main source" (probably also refs numbers 2 to 4), and omitted all explicit inline refs to them. The abundance of references actually distracts from reading the text. Oh, and last time I looked, inline citations were not a FA requirement. The last time I looked was just a minute ago :-) Lupo 21:41, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
 * They may not be the official FA requirement yet, but no article has passed FA in the past few months without inlince cits. Fighting against them is as pointless as fighting about references when people first started to require them: pointless. We have to make Wikipedia the most authoritative source of information in the world.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 21:48, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Red herring. I'm not fighting against them; take a look at other featured articles I wrote, and you'll see that I do use them where appropriate. My point is that here, they are not appropriate as the two references given back up the article. (In fact, I just noticed that a few isolated facts came from a few extlinks; these are given as inline cites now.) Sprinkling hundreds of inline cites that all would go to the two reference books used to write the article makes no sense to me. Feel free to do it yourself, though: just replace any full stop by ".(Schwabe 2004, Im Hof 2001)". It won't improve the article, though. Lupo 07:32, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
 * It would if the creator(s) bothered to include page numbers, as proper inlince cits should have.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 16:45, 28 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Keep. While I agree inline cites would be better, I don't believe in removing all current featured articles that are referenced, but don't have inline citations. There's not much value in dropping down to 250 or 300 FA's. - Taxman Talk 13:22, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Please note that inline citations are only a second, and perhaps less important of the arguments I make in the case for removing the article (bad structure, bad name, not comprehensive for current name...).--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 17:08, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
 * While I grant the issue you've brought up about the naming more properly fitting the content is a decent one, I just don't think this is poor enough to warrant de-featuring it. The naming issue can be resolved with some consensus, not FARC. - Taxman Talk 17:38, 6 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Keep: per Taxman . If you don't like it - fix it up! Giano | talk 16:53, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
 * You are joking? No? Ok, let's nominate various substandard articles for FAC and tell people that instead of objecting, they should fix it.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 16:58, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Well, when I'm as a knowledgable as you on a certain subject as you seem to be on this, I have been known to do that too. Try it sometime, it's very rewarding. Giano | talk 18:06, 6 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Since the processes started we've been accepting different standards for getting articles featured and de-featured. Instead of nominating an overall very good article, why not a) work on improving it, which yes I know is not easy, but is better, or 2) nominate some of the articles with no references and poor structure. - Taxman Talk 17:38, 6 April 2006 (UTC)