Wikipedia:Featured article review/Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9/archive1


 * 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 kept by User:Marskell 10:38, 1 September 2008.

Review commentary
Contains numerous vague, unattributed and unreferenced claims. Some sections are not supported by sources at all. Fails criterion 1c - verifiability. Passed FA candidacy in 2005, but today it wouldn't. --Eleassar my talk 14:59, 22 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Notified Nominator, User:Urhixidur, User:Noren, WikiProject Solar System. --Eleassar my talk 15:04, 22 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Eleassar, please see the instrutions at the top of WP:FAR and sample notifications at Featured article review/Trigonometric functions. Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 03:42, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Notified WikiProject Astronomical objects. (and note that Worldtraveller no longer edits here) -- Rick Block (talk) 03:32, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Comment: At least to a cursory scan, it seems to me that most the information is verifiable in the existing citations. In many cases it is not presented with the more recently popular inline citation method, however. The acceptable style of citation standard evolved during 2006- for examples, see several discussions about inline citations in the good article criteria talk page []. In 2005 it was more common (particularly in physical science articles) to reference the end of a section or of the entire article rather than inline. This was adequate for an interested reader to explore the details and thereby verify, but was more difficult for those who wanted to quickly judge verifiability without reading through all the references. It appears to me that the problem is with the format of referencing rather than a failure of criterion 1c. I added modern style inline references to the section to which Eleassar had recently added in a reference request template. Are there other sections in which there are verifiability concerns? --Noren (talk) 17:23, 22 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks for doing so. If I understand you correctly, some of the reliable sources that the article rests on are listed in the 'external links' section. I suggest they are referenced inline. As you said, current format makes single claims difficult to verify. --Eleassar my talk 18:18, 22 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Might be savable, but the prose needs pulling apart. Here are random examples from one small portion of text.
 * In the lead, I saw "SL9 was in pieces ranging in size up to 2 kilometres in diameter, and is believed to have been pulled apart by Jupiter's tidal forces during a close encounter in July 1992." Why not "in pieces up to two kilometres in diameter"? "Is believed" is possible if there's no other wording: who believes? Based on the level of uncertainty, pick something like "is likely to have been" or "may have been". There's a spectrum of certainty-wordings.
 * Not actionable, but why "approximately" when a short, plain word is available: "about"?
 * Suddenly at the end of the lead we have imperial conversions, after several unconverted ones. If no one objects, it's quite OK in a science article not to clutter with conversions. All American school-kids are taught metrics nowadays, and adults who don't know probably don't want to visualise 37 miles per second.
 * Avoid repetition: "The prominent scars from the impacts could be seen on Jupiter for many months after the impact".

So, there's work to be done on the prose throughout. TONY  (talk)  03:22, 25 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Just got back from vacation (we left on the day of the notification!). What exactly does this article need done? Urhixidur (talk) 22:26, 5 July 2008 (UTC)


 * First, footnotes. Second, improvement of the style of writing. --Eleassar my talk 15:17, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

FARC commentary

 * Suggested FA criteria concerns are referencing (1c) and prose (1a). Marskell (talk) 15:45, 13 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Remove lack of citations, in particular wrt discussion of hypotheses and conjectures, and comparing them etc,  Blnguyen  ( bananabucket ) 03:25, 21 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Would you be more specific as to what statements are in need of better citation? If it's the "Predictions for the collision" section, if that's what you mean by discussion of hypotheses and conjectures, the document currently cited appears to me to be a reliable source that contains all of the information in that paragraph.  It's true there's just the one source, but a year wasn't enough time to generate many secondary sources on the topic of pre-impact speculation. --Noren (talk) 02:47, 26 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Keep The specific concerns raised by Eleassar and Tony were addressed during the FAR phase. I would be willing to work to address other specific areas if they are brought to my attention. --Noren (talk) 03:03, 26 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Certain sections are undercited; see the "Frequency of Impacts" and "Discovery" sections, where assertions like these lack sourcing:"Studies have estimated that comets probably crash into Jupiter once or twice per century, but the impact of comets the size of SL9 is much less common - probably no more often than once per millennium." ""The comet was thus a serendipitous discovery, but one that quickly overshadowed the results from their main observing program." I also see url links in citations not properly formatted with the use of the appropriate templates. ISBNs in parentheses (which is not what would be generated if Template:cite book) was used, and other similar problems. Nevertheless, all these issues could be fixed, and therefore I'll not vote yet for the article's removal.--Yannismarou (talk) 15:28, 31 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Hold Remove, lacking citations, unformatted citations, and Yahoo Groups as a citation? Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 08:50, 5 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Hold, work underway, pls ping me when ready for a look. Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 15:34, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Given that some work was done, I am going to hold this a little while longer. Tomorrow I will look to see if I can improve it myself. Marskell (talk) 13:12, 7 August 2008 (UTC)


 * This actually has a decent amount of scholarly sources. Unfortunately, they need to be formatted. I'm slow with this stuff but I'll pick away. Marskell (talk) 11:19, 8 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I started working a bit on formatting notes, but it is a damn boring job, and most of these sources seem specialized. I thus faced two problems: 1) Not sure I format the data correctly, 2) I am not sure I can find the full data of certain sources, such us some proceedings with no url. Somebody specialized on the issue should have a look.--Yannismarou (talk) 17:22, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Hmmm ... And indeed somebody should find something better for note 20. Yahoo groups?!--Yannismarou (talk) 17:31, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Still willing to leave this up a while. I added a couple of refs, Yanni took care of some really boring formatting, and an anon took care of Yahoo groups. (I think the happy ghost of WorldTraveller is still with us.) Marskell (talk) 17:11, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I think citations are properly formatted now. The article is definitely up to GA status; I am not sure about FA. Any content remarks about editors with specialized knowledge on the issue?--Yannismarou (talk) 13:44, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
 * He he. I like your edit summaries. I did a few ref formattings and wanted to keel over in exhaustion.
 * There's still some uncited hard data, particularly at the end of 'A Jupiter-orbiting comet.' If we can get to that I think we'll be OK here. Marskell (talk) 08:16, 25 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment while leaning towards support. More sources were added by Noren and anonymous. Though not a specialist, I also tried to help on the article's citing. I also did some MoS stuff. I think the article is close to current FA criteria, and I really like its prose. Nevertheless, I think that the following citing flaws should be taken care of:
 * "Studies have estimated that comets probably crash into Jupiter once or twice per century, but the impact of comets the size of SL9 is much less common—probably no more often than once per millennium." What studies?
 * "Studies have shown that the planet, by far the most massive in the solar system, can capture comets from solar orbit into Jovian orbit rather frequently" Same question.
 * "Before the impact, models of Jupiter's atmosphere had indicated that the break-up of the largest fragments would occur at atmospheric pressures of anywhere from 300 kilopascals to a few megapascals (from three to a few tens bar), and most astronomers expected that the impacts would penetrate a hypothesised water-rich layer underneath the clouds." Which models?
 * "While substantial water was detected spectroscopically, it was not as much as predicted beforehand, meaning that either the water layer thought to exist below the clouds was thinner than predicted, or that the cometary fragments did not penetrate deeply enough." Source?
 * "Impacts" is obviously undercited.
 * If these limited citing problems are taken care of, then IMO the article deserves its star.--Yannismarou (talk) 16:28, 25 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I reworked 'Frequency of impacts' and added a ref, which I think takes care of your first two bullets. I added fact requests for your third and fourth bullets—hopefully Noren or the anon can get to them. Yes, 'Impacts' could use more. There's some NASA timelines on-line that can be used. In any case, this has come a long way. Marskell (talk) 08:33, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Added two NASA refs to 'Impacts.' Also there's now four citation needed requests for unsourced paragraphs. If these are done, I think 1c is met. Marskell (talk) 09:26, 26 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Remove. Agree with and . There are still some significant referencing issues throughout. Cirt (talk) 21:52, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Excuse me but sources are added all the time, and what Blnguyen and Sandy believed to be "significant referencing issues" (and they indeed were at the time&mdash;one month ago!) are now "limited referencing issues", and this should be taken into consideration in forming our judgment.--Yannismarou (talk) 07:28, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
 * To be very clear, this is still being held. Cirt, even in the FARC period the question remains "are people working on the article?" Blnguyen's and Sandy's comments are essentially defunct given how much progress the page has made. Marskell (talk) 08:43, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Okay then at this point I am Neutral about this whole thing for now - but I would very much hope that all the unsourced portions and citation needed tags will certainly be addressed before the end of this review. Cirt (talk) 15:59, 27 August 2008 (UTC)


 * This looks good as soon as the wee bits of remaining citation needs are addressed. Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 23:28, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Agree with . Cirt (talk) 01:50, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
 * It looks fine to me now. Close as keep.--Yannismarou (talk) 13:35, 31 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Those wee bits have now been taken care of by the anon. Good collaboration here. Will keep it now. Marskell (talk) 10:10, 1 September 2008 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.