Wikipedia:Featured article review/Free will/archive3


 * 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 Nikkimaria 14:41, 12 May 2012.

Review commentary

 * Notified: Edhubbard, LoveMonkey, Peterdjones, Lacatosias, WP Philosophy, WP Neuroscience, WP Religion

Unfortunately, the quality of this article has deteriorated over the years, to the point where a FAR is needed. Some specific thoughts: The referencing (or lack thereof) is currently the biggest issue. An examination of the layout, coverage and prose will be easier to undertake once the referencing work is completed, since content sometimes changes significantly when major referencing work is done. Dana boomer (talk) 22:12, 6 February 2012 (UTC)
 * The biggest issue is the lack of referencing. There are two citation needed tags, but these do no illustrate the whole of the issue. In the In Eastern philosophy section, for example, the last two paragraphs of the In Hindu philosophy section are unreferenced and the end of the first paragraph and all of the last two paragraphs of the In Buddhist philosophy section are unreferenced. This is repeated throughout the article.
 * Expand tag on the Hard determinism section.
 * Numerous book references lacking page numbers.
 * Clarification needed tag in Compatibilism section.
 * Prose needs some work. First and second person language (we, our, etc.) is used throughout the article when third person should be employed instead. Contractions (doesn't, won't) are used in the body of the article outside of quotes. A mix of British and American English is used (I saw both behavior and behaviour, for instance).
 * The See also section is quite long and could use a trim.
 * Why is it "In western philosophy" and then "In Eastern philosophy" (capitalization)?

FARC commentary

 * Issues raised in the review section include sourcing, comprehensiveness, and prose. Nikkimaria (talk) 14:33, 29 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Weak keep. I've made a few easy fixes to the article, and despite some rot added in over time, it's still a basically featured-quality article.  I removed the uncited Buddhist / Hinduism paragraphs as those sections ended up a bit overlong anyway, but didn't do a more exhaustive search for uncited additions that may have crept in since the featuring.  I also removed the expand tag on Hard Determinism; the article is pretty long already, and there's a main article link to Hard determinism for those who want to know more.  I corrected the fact that lowercase Western somehow creeped in.  I also gave both See also & External links a trim.

As for the other comments... well, I didn't write this article, but the person who did has since mostly departed Wikipedia, so I doubt page numbers will be coming any time soon. However, the person who wrote the article was one of the bona-fide experts who occasionally stops by Wikipedia, and one willing to source all their work, and page numbers weren't required at the time, so I'd be in favor of WP:AGFing the references. As for prose, the article probably could use a careful polish just from the slow accumulation of edits, but I'll point out that in philosophy (just like mathematics), it is in fact the style to refer to "you," the royal "we," and so on when appropriate. These first and second person phrasings occur in the books & papers from actual philosophers, so pretty sure Wikipedia can mirror that practice safely.

I don't think I have the time nor inclination to fix the article up further, so please don't wait on me to do so. I hope someone else does, though, as I believe the article is borderline at the moment (albeit borderline-keep side for me), and could probably pushed back into the safety zone with a bit more work. SnowFire (talk) 01:18, 16 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Delist - While I applaud SnowFire's work and think it has helped the article's quality considerably, I still believe that this article is below the quality standards required by FA guidelines. Expert or not, page numbers are required in order to meet verifiability guidelines. This is still a minor issue, though, when compared to the remaining unreferenced spots (see most of the Metaphysical libertarianism section, much of the Two-stage models section and various other paragraphs scattered throughout the article). I'm also concerned with the reliability/verifibility of several of the references, most notably #112-114 - what makes "unpublished raw data" a high-quality reliable source, or really even verifiable? There has also been an upswing in edit warring on the article over the past week or so, which makes me wonder about its stability. Dana boomer (talk) 17:15, 29 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Delist too many problems as presented by Dana Boomer. "Unpublished" sources really need to be booted. Ten Pound Hammer • (What did I screw up now?) 05:29, 20 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Delist Lots of unsourced material, and the footnotes (while many in number) are a mess: inconsistent formatting, articles without links/dois, books without page numbers, and questionable sources (wtf is infidels.org?). Only one source used to summarize Buddhism, and only two sources for Neurology. That's simply not enough. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 02:05, 9 May 2012 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.