Wikipedia:Featured article review/Microsoft/archive3

Microsoft

 * 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 delisted by at 13:00, 11 July 2014

Review commentary

 * Notified: Ryan Norton, WikiProject Microsoft, WikiProject Computing, WikiProject Technology, WikiProject Companies, WikiProject Video games

This article was promoted back in 2005 when standards for FA were much different than they are today. The article has so many problems, I am not even sure where to begin, but I will bullet out a few issues below:


 * Criteria 1c, Well-Researched: There are several well-regarded books devoted either in whole or in part to Microsoft's early years from the 1970s to the early 1990s. These include Gates: How Microsoft's Mogul Reinvented an Industry -- and Made Himself the Richest Man in America by Stephen Manes and Paul Andrews, Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire by James Wallace and Jim Erickson, Fire in the Valley: The Making of the Personal Computer by Paul Freiberger and Michael Swaine, and Accidental Empires: How the Boys of Silicon Valley Make Their Millions, Battle Foreign Competition, and Still Can't Get a Date by Robert Cringely.  None of this secondary literature is represented in this article.  Indeed, it appears there are virtually no monographs from the secondary literature on Microsoft and the personal computer industry represented at all.


 * Criteria 1b, Comprehensive: While there is a daughter history article for providing greater detail, the history section fails to provide anything approaching a big picture overview of the company's development. From reading the article, you would never know that Microsoft was the dominant high-level language company of the late 1970s and early 1980s or that nearly every important personal computer of that period shipped with Microsoft BASIC.  There is barely any mention of the company's OEM strategy with PC-compatible computer makers.  The Macintosh is not mentioned once in the article despite the key role Microsoft's partnership with Apple played in both the company's applications and OS businesses.  The landmark "look and feel" court case between Apple and Microsoft is not even mentioned.  There is no discussion of the Wintel alliance or IBM's attempts to break its influence through the PS/2 PC and OS/2 operating system.  There is no discussion of how and why Windows 1.0 and 2.0 were failed systems and why 3.0 and 3.1 ultimately proved successful.  Steve Ballmer's name does not appear in the article until he is named CEO despite his two decades of importance before that point.  Charles Simonyi, Nathan Myrvold, and other key figures in the company's rise and success are not mentioned in the article at all.  Neither is DirectX.  XBox gets a sentence, and you would never know that it was an important product line from the article.  I could go on, but suffice it to say that the entire section needs to be practically rewritten from scratch.


 * Criteria 1a, Well-Written: One line paragraphs abound in multiple sections. Little attempt is made to provide appropriate transitions between paragraphs in a section.  Many paragraphs are just strings of unconnected ideas.


 * Recentism: The "Corporate Affairs" section is mostly a series of random announcements and initiatives from the last three years. The "marketing" subsection is just three random marketing campaigns with no context or indication of importance.  The "environment" section appears entirely superfluous.

This article is nowhere near GA quality, let alone FA quality. It basically needs to be rewritten from the ground up. Indrian (talk) 04:50, 3 April 2014 (UTC)


 * Comment: In addition, Criticism needs a few more sources, especially as it covers a contentious topic. Tezero (talk) 05:18, 3 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Comment: I noticed that issues weren't raised in the talk page for the article, which is a requisite before taking an article to FAR. GamerPro64  15:29, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

Delegate note - As there was no talk page notification prior to the start of the review, I am placing the review on hold. I will make the required talk page notification, and if there is no response from editors after a reasonable period of time (at least a week), the review can be relisted. Dana boomer (talk) 11:59, 6 April 2014 (UTC)
 * The review has been relisted, as no work was completed on the article during the hold period. Any editors interested in working on the article should also check the comments made on the talk page regarding the article's quality and needed improvements. Dana boomer (talk) 14:24, 13 April 2014 (UTC)


 * Delist per momentous problems with organization, completeness, and referencing, as well as more minor issues like unformatted citations. I would place this article as upper C-class. Tezero (talk) 04:38, 14 April 2014 (UTC)
 * This isn't the point in the proceedings where you vote on delisting just yet. It has to be moved to the bottom half of the FAR list first, after people have gathered consensus on whether or not to put it up for delisting. Right now is more of the fix-up or point out problems stage. Ten Pound Hammer • (What did I screw up now?) 17:45, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

FARC commentary

 * Featured article criteria mentioned in the review section include comprehensiveness, referencing, prose and MOS compliance. Dana boomer (talk) 20:54, 29 April 2014 (UTC)


 * Delist per momentous problems with organization, completeness, and referencing, as well as more minor issues like unformatted citations. I would place this article as upper C-class. Tezero (talk) 06:57, 22 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Delist. I saw little improvements to article in the past two months but not enough to address the issues. JJ98 (Talk) 20:17, 22 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Delist. Per above. I also left a more detailed explanation on the talk page a while ago when notified about the FAR. FWIW I'm also the user who nominated the article for FAC in the first place. Ryan Norton 10:35, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

Nikkimaria (talk) 13:00, 11 July 2014 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.