Wikipedia:Featured article review/Franklin B. Gowen/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 removed by YellowAssessmentMonkey 00:47, 1 September 2009.

Review commentary

 * Notified: User talk:Slambo, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Biography, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Trains, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Philadelphia, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Pennsylvania.

FA from 2005, 1c issues throughout article. WP:LEAD has a bit of an unorthodox style format with bullet points, and is larger than the requisite amount of paragraphs. Image File:Franklin B. Gowen.jpg lacks sufficient source information on the image page, same goes for File:James McParland.jpg, and the page for File:Uriah-stephens-circa-1900.gif could use some improvement as well. Cirt (talk) 18:46, 2 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Images need alt text as per WP:ALT. Eubulides (talk) 05:11, 3 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Comment This article has had one edit since it was nominated on August 2.
 * Need for alt text has not been addressed.
 * None of the citation needed tags for the uncited quotes and unsourced material have been addressed nor has the bullet list and other problems in the lead.
 * I do not understand the reference system. For example, there are citations like Schlegel, 222–22, Daggett, pp. 100–101, Wallace, p. 435, Wallace, p. 435 etc. but there is no bibliography listing books by these authors. Therefore, I'm not sure what these are in reference to.
 * Most of the article is made up of very short paragraphs, making for choppy reading, and lacks flow.
 * Some of the prose needs work. Random examples:
 * In collaboration with his close friend, George deBenneville Keim—who had bought Gowen's Pottsville home in 1864, and was subsequently appointed first president of the Coal & Iron Co.—Gowen's perhaps most crucial business bet was made upon these lands: development of the Pottsville Twin Shaft Colliery.
 * From that time, through fresh sanguine predictions for improvements in the business climate and the Reading's overall performance, which allowed him to borrow more funds on a less grand scale and to get the McCalmonts to defer interest payments due; and maneuverings such as periodically paying workers in scrip—essentially promissory notes—instead of cash, Franklin Gowen continued to run the Reading.
 * As noted above, in the 1871 legislative investigation of coal field agitations and the Reading Railroad, Gowen portrayed the WBA as having at its core a murderous, secret association. In his 1875 testimony before another investigative committee, he characterized this same core of the union as "Communists." (The citation is: Schlegel, p. 84. See Wikipedia articles on the Paris Commune and International Workingmen's Association to better understand the contemporary connotations of this charge.)
 * For instance, the shot to the head from which Gowen died was from an angle very unlikely to have been self-inflicted, ...

&mdash; mattisse (Talk) 22:08, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

FARC commentary

 * ''Suggested FA criteria concern are citations, lead, alt text. Also note the recent change to WP:WIAFA (1c) requiring "high-quality" sources. FAQ?


 * Delist Per citation and prose concerns mainly, although the image copyrights, alt text and lead would also have to be fixed to have this brought back up to FA status. Dabomb87 (talk) 03:03, 21 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Delist, per FA criteria concerns. Cirt (talk) 06:13, 26 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Delist. Citations need work, and I'd suggest introducing more images to break up the large amounts of text in the article. The bulleted structure of the lede is odd, but it might work. JKBrooks85 (talk) 05:03, 27 August 2009 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.