Wikipedia:Featured article review/Gunpowder Plot/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 nomination was procedurally closed, see FAR instructions.

Gunpowder Plot

 * Notified: User:Parrot of Doom, WikiProjects Christianity, Politics, Scotland and England

I am nominating this featured article for review because it fails criterion 1b (comprehensive). As I noted here, the article fails to discuss Gunpowder plot cultural influences; the existing article (Gunpowder Plot in popular culture) is linked as see also in the aftermath section which at this point is certainly not an adequate summary (as it mentions only two aspects and none of the modern 20th and 21st century influences). A few sources: The Early Poetry of the Gunpowder Plot: Myth in the Making, Milton, the Gunpowder Plot, and the Mythography of Terror, JESUITS AND PHILOSOPHASTERS: ROBERT BURTON’S RESPONSE TO THE GUNPOWDER PLOT, "This Sermon . . . upon the Gun-Powder Day": The Book of Homilies of 1547 and Donne's Sermon in Commemoration of Guy Fawkes' Day, 1622, a more recent pop culture influence, and many more. Until such a point where a comprehensive section on GP cultural influences (of which popular culture is a part, but not everything) is added to the article, I am afraid it is simply not comprehensive enough to be Featured. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 16:40, 6 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Procedural close - no fault to Piotrus, as he may be unaware of this, but FAR rules state that "Nominators...should not nominate articles that are featured on the main page (or have been featured there in the previous three days)". This article was TFA yesterday. Nikkimaria (talk) 16:45, 6 November 2010 (UTC)
 * What's the rationale for this bizarre bureaucratic rule? I can understand for "on the day of the featuring", due to obvious instability, but that day has passed. I strongly suggest changing that rule from three days to day of the nomination. Feel free to ignore this nomination for two days, but I would be rather annoyed if I had to redo the nomination in two days, given that the issues are not addressed now and most likely will not be in two days. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 16:51, 6 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Nor will they ever be. I suggest that instead of using Google, you get some decent source material on the subject, written by experts.  I did, a long time ago.  None of them show the slightest bit of interest in trivia. Parrot of Doom 16:54, 6 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Culture is not trivia, and your argument makes little sense otherwise. I'll remind you again that there is plenty of scholarly research on culture (see culture studies for start). Anyway, go ahead and nominate culture articles for AfD, feel free to start with Gunpowder Plot in popular culture, and claim that they are all "trivia". Let's see what happens... :) --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 17:47, 6 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I second what Parrot Doom says. No reputable scholarly source on the Gunpowder Plot that I've yet seen discusses "pop. cultural influences" like the second-rate film V for Vendetta, Scientology demonstrations or Internet memes. If a consensus emerges here that this article fails criterion 1b as a result of not covering that kind of trivia either then so be it. Better that than it looking like it was written by a teenager with the historical span of a gnat. Malleus Fatuorum 17:01, 6 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Sigh. James R. Keller, V for vendetta as cultural pastiche: a critical study of the graphic novel and film, McFarland, 2008, ISBN 0786434678. From p.17 - "To identify the importance of the 1605 Gunpowder Plot in the construction of James McTeigure's film V for Vendeta (2005) seems at first..." is just the first relevant source that pops up. Not sure how this fits the reliability criteria, but it could be useful, too (thesis on Heroism or terrorism : a study of media-imposed labels focusing upon the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 and the graphic novel/film V For Vendetta). And didn't I list a bunch of scholarly articles in the op? This should be enough to show that yes, GP has a major cultural influence aspect (again, not limited to popculture), and the article is missing major chunks of it. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 17:47, 6 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Sigh all you like, it won't make a blind bit of difference. The point you are signally failing to realise is that Keller's book, for instance, is examining the construction of V for Vendetta, and should therefore quite properly be considered in the writing of that article. Is it? It tells us absolutely nothing about the Gunpowder Plot. Zero. Zilch. Nada. Malleus Fatuorum 17:52, 6 November 2010 (UTC)
 * It tells us that GP had cultural influences. And the cultural influences of GP should be discussed in the GP article. Historical events rarely just end, they continue and influence the future... and that influence often deserves its own section in an encyclopedic article aiming to be a comprehensive discussion of the subject. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 17:56, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

Removing from FAR-- please see the long-standing WP:FAR instructions, and take it up on the article talk page. Sandy Georgia (Talk) 16:56, 6 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Long-standing doesn't make it correct. I am sad about the importance we give to the rules those days; anyway, I proposed a change to that rule here. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 17:47, 6 November 2010 (UTC)
 * And I responded to it. GamerPro64 (talk) 17:49, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

I think the current article need not summarize the contents of Gunpowder Plot in popular culture any further. In fact, I think the creation of a separate article was a highly appropriate step. I enjoyed V for Vendetta as much as anyone, but if one considers the situation dispassionately for a moment, it becomes clear that the film adds little to one's knowledge of the plot. Some may be interested in a list of every appearance of a Guy Fawkes mask in film, TV, and comic books, but the information need not appear in the main article. Savidan 18:20, 6 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Why are we still commenting here? The FAR is closed. Shouldn't this be moved to the talk page at least? GamerPro64 (talk) 18:23, 6 November 2010 (UTC)


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