Wikipedia:Featured article review/Cool (Gwen Stefani song)/archive1

Cool (Gwen Stefani song)
Not well-referenced per WP:V, displays tabloid-style writing with many unverified claims. Sources used are questionable. Also attained FA status via legerdemain and fraud (see Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents and Kelly Martin's CheckUser sock check for background info). Specifically: Notwithstanding intractable problems with tabloid-style writing and sourcing, this article needs to undergo a fresh FAC sans the documented vote-stacking, sockpuppetry, and bad-faith behavior of the original nominator. Remove. &mdash; Saravask 16:58, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
 * 1) Lacks references of sufficient substance or respectability (2c). Instead, there is a linkfarm at the bottom containing a mish-mash of piffling pop ephemera, press releases, and unsourced music reviews. There is only one source originating from a respectable news source &mdash; all others (except "about.com") are from internet fancruft sites I've never heard of before.
 * 2) This article is not neutral, by way of the above over-reliance on unctuous, advertisement-laden, and questionable sources such as "LAUNCHcast.com", "allmusic.com" ("Love.Angel.Music.Baby"), "PlayLouder.com", "PopMatters.com", "about.com", "drawerb.com" ad nauseum et infinitum. Most of the sources consist entirely of an extended exercise in pathologically inane prattle and gossip crafted to sell albums for website advertisers rather that offer sufficient incisive and impartial analysis. I don't thinkthis, or this qualify as impartial and acceptable sources. AFAIK, such measured and dispassionate pronouncements therein as "No contest, no doubt, and not a feeble move in sight: welcome to the hottest, coolest, best-dressed pop album of the year" question the neutrality of this article and most of its sources (criterion 2d). Such flim-flam referencing makes a mockery of FA status. Do we want to designate Cool (song) as being of the same caliber as Blues (which has 46 inline citations, mostly to print references) and Dmitri Shostakovich (31 citations, mostly to print sources)?
 * 3) There were two valid and unaddressed object votes (here and here).
 * 4) Too many fair-use images.
 * 5) User:Winnermario sock DrippingInk cast a support vote on an article that Winnermario nominated.
 * 6) Another support vote was cast by IP User:201.137.188.56 (the only edit that user ever made).
 * 7) Another support vote from User:64.231.70.46 (grand total of seven edits in user's history). Notably, User:64.231.70.46 also edited The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, which another confirmed User:Winnermario sock (User:Hollow Wilerding) later edited and nominated for FAC.
 * Keep due to skepticism about reasons. This was featured on the main page. Everyking 19:06, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
 * I don't understand this. Jkelly 19:07, 4 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Comment. Isn't it the lack of objections rather than the number of support votes that means a promotion?  Am I missing something?  Jkelly 19:07, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
 * No. As pointed out at Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents, sockpuppetry for votestacking purposes is virtually a useless activity, as Raul654 goes by the weight and validity of remaining objections (has consensus been achieved?), not the raw vote tallies. Thus, there could be 100 sock votes voting support (without reasoning) and it wouldn't matter. Likewise, there could be 100 object votes based on irrelevant/invalid/trivial rationale (red wikilinks, "wrong" citation style, non-use of, "inappropriate" subject matter (as opposed to the actual substance of the article), etc.), and it wouldn't matter. Thus the weight, not the number, of remaining objections is what is key. Notwithstanding this issue, there are still the concerns about the shoddy sourcing used in this article, as spelled out above. Saravask 19:14, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Withdraw for now. I'm going to withdraw this and leave this inactive for at least two weeks (probably more like a month), so that User:Hollow Wilerding gets a chance to fix up the article and find more solid sourcing. This isn't the worst FA out there, and the writing is not that bad. Thanks. Saravask 23:18, 4 January 2006 (UTC)


 * User:Hollow_Wilerding has been blocked indefinitely and cannot edit this article. I've felt for a long time that this article never should have achieved FA status because of what you mentioned; it fails to cite credible sources and contains much original research. These actionable objections were raised in the FAC nomination and never addressed. The blatant sockpuppetry of Hollow made it seem like there as a consensus of FA status. Even after two months of discussion on the talk page these issues were never addressed. To further complicate matters, Hollow surreptitiously archived the talk page with no discussion and after her first attempt was reverted. There was a FARC for The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask. The end result was to summarily demote it. My feeling is the same should be done for this article. Notwithstanding the tainting of the FAC process by sockpuppetry, the original ignored objections in the original FAC alone should be reason enough to demote it. --malber 13:38, 7 January 2006 (UTC)