Wikipedia:Featured article review/History of American football/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 DrKay via FACBot (talk) 7:43, 24 January 2016 (UTC).

History of American football

 * Notified: MisterCake, Jayron32, WikiProject American football

I am nominating this featured article for review because its quality is no longer exemplary following its split into Early history of American football and Modern history of American football. ParkH.Davis (talk) 19:08, 7 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Hi ParkH.Davis, could you please notify major contributors and relevant WikiProjects? See instructions at the top of this page. Nikkimaria (talk) 19:46, 7 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Done. ParkH.Davis (talk) 20:07, 7 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Can you itemize which aspects of the article need to be fixed to bring it back to featured status per WP:WIAFA? -- Jayron 32 01:42, 8 November 2015 (UTC)
 * The article no longer meets the 'length' criteria, as previously discussed in the talk page and does not adhere to summary style as it covers ground which already are now covered in other articles. ParkH.Davis (talk) 05:42, 8 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Keeping in mind that summary style does allow for main articles to summarize material covered in more detail elsewhere, right? Nikkimaria (talk) 14:31, 8 November 2015 (UTC)
 * The problem is that this article is word for word the same as much of the two articles it was split into, as opposed to simply summarizing the information in a far shorter means. I would like to severally reduce the size of this article (by 50% or more), but its status as an FA article seems to be a roadblock for this to happen.   It also seems to be confusing for some editors as to add their content into the orignal article or one of the two new articles.   ParkH.Davis (talk) 17:33, 8 November 2015 (UTC)
 * So long as we follow WP:SS, there is no roadblock to doing that. As long as sufficient summary style is maintained, this article's featured status would not be in jeopardy.  There are hundreds of featured articles which also have other articles that go into more detail on their information.  It is not a barrier to featured status.  Also, this article has not yet been pared down to summary style.  After that is done, we could assess the status.  But putting the cart before the horse here, by expecting that either FA status was a barrier to good editing, or that good editing would somehow invalidate FA status are both in error.  Do a good job of it, and we can have 3 featured articles where there was once one.  -- Jayron 32 00:53, 9 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Would it be okay for me to remove content incrementally (as opposed to doing it all at once), so should I preserve at least least some of each section (just an abridged version of how each section is now)?  Would it be okay to remove, all at once, any content which is more detailed than it should be?  It is even necesary for this article to be preserved at all in its current form and instead for it to be completely re-written and have its FA status reevaluted following it being rewritten?  I say this as the content which was given FA status is being preserved through the two new articles.  It is coear that this article's excessive legnth precludes it from being an FA article any longer.  ParkH.Davis (talk) 01:07, 9 November 2015 (UTC)


 * Comment – Before looking at the article in detail, I just wanted to emphasize a point made by Jayron above, which the nominator commented on. Even if an article is at FA status, that doesn't mean that it is incapable of being improved. Articles at FA status are edited all the time, and many of those changes are improvements, even if there are a few bad edits in there from time to time. If you feel that some content can be moved to more detailed articles, that can be a valid action even if the summary article is featured. What I wouldn't expect to see is this, which looks like vandalism to a reader not tracking the article's talk page discussion. Surely a better summary-style article could be written than that initial effort. For now, I recommend that one of the FAR coordinators postpone this FAR, because none of the discussions on the talk page specifically addressed a future FAR, unless I missed something; that is a required step at FAR, and I don't want to see a trend in favor of ignoring the instructions. A delay will give the nominator time to move some of the content and see how the new-look article is. If it is deficient after the changes, then start another talk page discussion mentioning the weaknesses and saying that FAR will be necessary if they are not addressed. Oh, and I hope the nominator does the best job they can. We don't have many of these types of articles coming to FAC any more, and I'm (clearly) very interested in the topic. Please leave something more than a three-paragraph article when you're done. Giants2008  ( Talk ) 02:19, 9 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Thank you for the response. I was under the impression that the FA status of this article was prohibiting any removal of content from it.  I will probably begin by experimenting with the abridgment of content which goes into far too much detail for a summary article, especially when it is already being covered in the same amount of detail in other articles.  For example, the sections discussing the careers of specific coaches is far too large in this article, as are the sections discussing the expansion of the game into different regions.  The "prehistory" and early history sections could also be significantly abridged.    ParkH.Davis (talk) 03:43, 9 November 2015 (UTC)


 * Comment I second Giants2008's recommendation to postpone this FAR. Discussion of concerns on the article talk page should run its course first. Additionally, I'd hate to see the recent splitting of the article—undertaken to improve the article—proving instead to be counterproductive and actually degrading the article's quality.—Bagumba (talk) 04:55, 9 November 2015 (UTC)

Coord note - per the above commentary I am putting this review on hold to allow for talk-page discussion. Nikkimaria (talk) 20:32, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

There doesn't appear to have been much talk since the 9th of November. Could we please have some comments on whether this review should be closed without further review or moved to the next phase ("!voting" on whether the article meets the featured article criteria)? Thanks. DrKay (talk) 10:41, 15 January 2016 (UTC)
 * I recommend to close, as this point in WP:FAR has still not been met: "Before nomination, raise issues at talk page of the article. Attempt to directly resolve issues with the existing community of article editors, and to informally improve the article." Procedurally, I'm disappointed that prior to the FAR being opened, content from this article was copied by the nominator to Early history of American football and Modern history of American football, but neither article seems to have been done as a summary style split. So now we presumably have duplicate content which does not lend itself to be easily summarized in this FA.  Instead of delisting the FA, an alternative option would be to align the splits to the current article's structure e.g. History of college football and History of pro football.—Bagumba (talk) 11:21, 15 January 2016 (UTC)
 * I'm with Bagumba. I think there was a process started to split the article into a more summary-based style (the college/pro split is a good start) but before that process was ever undertaken or complete (except some abortive attempts as noted) someone started this FAR, which seems out of process for dealing with an article which was temporarily in flux while we worked out the best way to split it up.  This should have been closed as a premature discussion back when it opened.  -- Jayron 32 13:17, 15 January 2016 (UTC)
 * While I'm not in love with the article as is, I agree with the editors above that a proper notification still has not been done, and that talk page discussion would likely be a better avenue for hashing out the structure of the article than FAR. Giants2008  ( Talk ) 19:09, 16 January 2016 (UTC)

DrKay (talk) 17:43, 24 January 2016 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.