Wikipedia:Featured article review/Georg Forster/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 Casliber via FACBot (talk) 2:21, 25 December 2015 (UTC).

Georg Forster

 * Notified: Kusma, WP Libraries, WP Germany, WP Plants, WP Journalism, WP Birds
 * URFA nom.

Review section
This is a 2006 promotion that has not been maintained to standard; it has uncited text and some MOS issues, as mentioned on talk in April 2015. Sandy Georgia (Talk) 14:47, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Maybe in the future you could ping the appropriate projects, rather than just putting a comment on the talk page and hoping someone might notice? We didn't know there was a problem until you pinged us today with news of the review. :P Will see what I can do. MeegsC (talk) 15:10, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
 * I'm thrilled to see people descending on the article for improvements, even though the talk page notice was ignored for more than two weeks, indicating that we had another older unwatched FA. Meegs, your suggestion is impractical for many reasons, which we could take up at WT:FAR (so as not to muck up this page) if you are interested.  Please keep in mind that one of the main objectives of FAR is to improve articles, and being here is not a "punishment". Also, I hope you've noted from the FAR instructions that we can KEEP without FARC, which is an outcome that delights most of us here ;)  Bst, Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 16:12, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
 * I am a bit busy IRL these days, and do not have much wikitime to dedicate to this right now, especially not without a bit more detail on what is wrong. As I haven't kept track of everything that happened at MOS: could you point me to the major issues that you see? Also, not every sentence is followed by an inline citation, but if you could tell me where you would expect additional citations I am happy to go hunting through my Forster biographies. Sadly, my current university library doesn't seem to have a copy of Saine's biography, but I'll see what I can do. —Kusma (t·c) 13:03, 9 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes-- happy to see people willing to work here! I will start a list, not yet comprehensive, and add to it as issues are addressed.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 14:55, 9 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your list. I'll try to improve the messiness. Fortunately, there actually are page numbers in most citations to Saine's biography, but they are visible only in the wikitext, not in the displayed result. I do not recall why this is the case and whether they used to be displayed when the article passed FA. On the whole, the article has been quite stable since it became a FA, but I certainly agree it no longer looks like the best we can do. —Kusma (t·c) 14:31, 10 May 2015 (UTC)

This is not a complete list, but is enough to get started. Regards, Sandy Georgia (Talk) 15:12, 9 May 2015 (UTC)
 * spaced WP:EMDASHes ... the article should use either unspaced WP:EMDASHes or spaced WP:ENDASHes.
 * What is the order of the Works section? Alpha, chrono?
 * Book sources need page nos.
 * Citations do not have a consistent style (as but one example, look at the many different ways author names are rendered)
 * Citations are incomplete or incorrently written. All sources need a publisher, all websources need an accessdate, and author and date should be supplied whenever available, also ...
 * [2], English translation at australiaonthemap.org.au (archived link, 19 July 2008) needs to be cleaned up to a correct citation.
 * Check image captions (for example, The Pinnacle of liberty, A satire by James Gillray)
 * Italics should not be used here, and I'm wondering if this can be reversed (that is, put the English version, with a footnote to the original ???) ("The freedom of the press finally reigns within these walls where the printing press was invented.) See WP:NONENG.  That is one sentence: I don't think it needs a pull quote, but  may know better.
 * There's sort of a mess everywhere in terms of WP:ITALICS in relation to words as words, translations, quotes, etc:
 * called "Freunde der Freiheit und Gleichheit" ("Friends of Freedom and Equality")
 * Avoid WP:OVERLINK on common terms known to most English speakers and not needed for understanding of this article (samples, Latin, England, philosophy, there is more) and link on first occurrence.

Comment
 * Fixed all dead links, captions and a few overlinks.
 * Improved dash-usage (opted for spaced en-dash), but this will need another look (especially in refs).
 * WP:ITALICS, "page numbers and other ref details", and "sorting of works" in a meaningful way is above my paygrade.
 * I could try to transform references into cite-templates - if nobody is objecting against that citation style. Only a minority of references use cite-templates currently. GermanJoe (talk) 06:51, 10 May 2015 (UTC)


 * Move to FARC to keep on progress. Is anyone willing/able to finish this up? There are still inconsistent citations, minor amounts of united text, italics issues (e.g. quotes), and Overlinking, at least.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 18:25, 20 May 2015 (UTC)
 * I am still giving this 100% of my wikitime, but that hasn't been much at all (travelling, work, sick kids). I hope I'll get through the citations next week. —Kusma (t·c) 06:35, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Kusma; I will be traveling for a few weeks if you don't hear back from me. Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 13:39, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
 * update on progress here? Nikkimaria (talk) 20:43, 26 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Back from the dead (marking exams and other business meaning no wikitime at all), back to normal not-enough wikitime. Will report on progress as it happens, hopefully during July. —Kusma (t·c) 14:13, 7 July 2015 (UTC)
 * I am having difficulties with the "Works" section, it is a completely random mess in my opinion. I am uncertain how to best approach it between OR and copyvio concerns. —Kusma (t·c) 14:31, 27 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Why not just remove the works section then? FunkMonk (talk) 11:25, 13 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Would anybody object if it is gone? —Kusma (t·c) 18:26, 29 August 2015 (UTC)
 * I can't believe I am saying that, but the list should stay imo. Granted, it is a bit messy and borderline-useless for most average readers, but someone interested in in-depth research about Forster may find the information useful. I trimmed a few entries with no conceivable immediate usage and sorted the list. GermanJoe (talk) 11:32, 31 August 2015 (UTC)
 * It does look a lot better (thank you!) and does not compare too poorly to some other Works section in FA-class biographies. Something like Charles Darwin bibliography, while desirable, should not be necessary here. —Kusma (t·c) 14:32, 1 September 2015 (UTC)


 * I have cleaned up some of the more obvious problems with citations, switched to "surname, given name" format, and removed the optional publisher locations. Unfortunately several of the references include non-standard information and additional remarks, where I have no real clue how to improve them - or if it's even necessary. And I lack all of the older sources to add eventually missing details. Another look on the reference progress and additional advice would be great. I hope, we can give old articles a bit of leeway :), but can clean up some more if needed. GermanJoe (talk) 00:50, 12 July 2015 (UTC)

FARC section
I have moved this here to clarify who thinks what about whether this article is kept or removed. So please comment here if you think it now meets FA criteria. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 05:25, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

Comment - The notes are still a bit of a mess, with lots of problems in formatting and consistency. I'll start going through them as I have time, and then I'll do a read-through of the prose for any other problems. I'm hoping we don't have problems with missing page numbers from inaccessible sources. -- Laser brain  (talk)  13:14, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 22:21, 25 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Keep. Seems to be within criteria now. DrKay (talk) 12:49, 25 September 2015 (UTC)
 * can you let me know your feelings on the article now? I am keeping a coordinator hat on so I can close this....Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 13:34, 15 November 2015 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.