Wikipedia:Featured article review/Cheers


 * The following is an archived discussion of a featured article review. Please do not modify it. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page or at Wikipedia talk:Featured article review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was removed by YellowAssessmentMonkey 04:27, 7 April 2009.

Review commentary

 * Notified WikiProject Comedy and WikiProject Television 

Criterion 1(c) issues: 7 citations (sometimes used multiple times) to IMDb, a user-generated content site. Reference 1 is a self-published site and doesn't seem to make the necessary attribution, ref 3 is a blog, ref 14 and 20 have dubious reliability, ref 15 is a wiki-like website, and refs 23/24 are another personal website according to its FAQ and its reliability seems uncertain to me. There may be other problems with other references, but I haven't had time to check them all.

I think this needs review, possibly with a view to finding replacement citations or rewriting the text when new citations are unavailable. Not sure who to contact, as this was promoted in 2006. Will have a gander though. Fritzpoll (talk) 13:07, 10 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Agreed, besides the many bad references, there are insane amounts of completely unsourced text in the article, particularly in the second half, and what amounts to WP:OR and editor opinion analysizing character motivations, symbolism, etc. Very clearly fails 1c. I'd also say it fails 1a and 1d, as I see some fairly non-neutral language in places. Also fails 1b. The reception section is, frankly, appalling for an eleven season series. 2 paragraphs? That's it? Heck, I found more for Meerkat Manor at four seasons. Only three paragraphs of production on a series that has had at least books written about solely it and is a major portion of many other sitcom series books (of which only one of the main books is used, as a minor cast reference - seemingly a pretty glaring omission). And the section really doesn't give any actual critical reception beyond a few broad positive strokes. Its mostly ratings and sounds almost like promo material.


 * It fails criteria 2 in that is doing a poor job of following WP:MOSTV (with no discernible reason found for "breaking the mold"), failing WP:LEAD (again, without any valid reason), and the citations are clearly not consistently formatted. Some are templated, some are just a url and a title, and one is just a weird non-inline one at the top of the list. I'd also say it fails criteria 4 regarding length. Some sections are too short, while I see no actual value in the "post Cheers" section at all. The actors moved on...they have articles and people interested in their history will go to those. No need to for this indiscriminate attempt and summarizing the "good bits." Finally, it fails criteria 4. Several of the images are unnecessary, some have very sketchy FURs, like File:Cheers bar.JPG which also has no source nor real license and I suspect is probably a book scan. File:Cheers sam diane kiss.jpg seems unnecessary all together, and comes from a website instead of the actual episode so its fairly low quality. File:Cheers cast photo.jpg is an unnecessary non-free image of living actors and I'm pretty sure such images have generally been frowned on by WP:NONFREE. They don't look remarkable different in real life, so replaceable as well. Also, again, low quality. File:Cheers intro logo.jpg is too large for valid FUR and needs resizing. Long made short: it does not meet FAC at this time and a large amount of work is needed to have any hope of bringing it back up to standards. -- Collectonian  (talk · contribs) 13:47, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

BTW, it's interesting to see how little the article changed in 3 years, and how much FA standards have been raised. The article would hardly pass GA at this moment I think, even though it is probably a better article now than the original FA version. BTW, i doubt MOSTV even effectively existed 3 years ago :D --Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 13:56, 10 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Looksy, the state of MOSTV at that time in a project that was hardly alive. :D --Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 14:01, 10 March 2009 (UTC)
 * (EC) Side note: you'd be correct :) It officially became a style guide in June 2008, with the unofficial predecessor being created in 07 as a split from the project page. :-) -- Collectonian  (talk · contribs) 14:02, 10 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Comments - There are a lot of dead links in the article, as well as an over abundance of IMDb sources (I agree) that are not considered reliable in today's standards. As I "glance" at the page I noticed that it does not appear to be well organized (by that I mean the actual prose and not the headings. Everything appears broken, and almost bulleted in some sections where there aren't any bullets) (DJ, WP:MOSTV wasn't even a guideline 3 years ago, let alone effective..lol). I haven't sat down and read the article word for word, but something like this--(The first location outside the bar ever seen was Diane's apartment.)--should not be happening. I'm not sure where in the English language you would find a rule saying that you should put an entire sentence, all by itself, inside of parentheses. That's just something that caught my immediate eye. If I sit down, which I don't have the time to do this very second, I'd probably find more serious issues with the prose.   BIGNOLE     (Contact me)  14:11, 10 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Since Collectonian has already given a detailed overview for the article's many failings, I shall keep my noted issues short. The four issues that absolutely need to be addressed to have the article survive this FAR are: The "Production" section needs to be significantly expanded. The "Other recurring themes" desperately needs sources, or should be removed entirely as original research. The majority of the "Post-Cheers" section should best be removed for irrelevance. The sources should be reviewed for non-reliability and need to be properly formatted in the same style. Even fixing these issues will likely take more time and effort than this first part of the review allows. – sgeureka t•c 14:45, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

FARC commentary

 * Suggested FA criteria concerns are citations, NPOV, original research and comprehensiveness.  YellowMonkey  ( click here to vote for world cycling's #1 model! '') 00:15, 25 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Delist. No effort has been made to improve the article and the article has a lot of issues. --Maitch (talk) 18:20, 25 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Delist per original list of issues and complete lack of attention to the article. -- Collectonian  (talk · contribs) 18:31, 25 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Delist - I have not seen any real attempt to fix this article. Lots of information still unsourced. Sentence structure, basic grammar still a problem (my example above is still in the same place it was, unchanged). Lots of dead links still present.   BIGNOLE     (Contact me)  16:51, 27 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Delist, agree with concerns raised above. Referencing and other issues throughout the article. Cirt (talk) 17:54, 28 March 2009 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.