Wikipedia:Featured article review/Millennium '73/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 removed by Dana boomer 21:26, 12 August 2012.

Review commentary

 * Notified: Example user, Example WikiProject

I am nominating this featured article for review because it is clear no one is maintaining it and it has fallen into a serious state of disrepair: there are 32 ref errors in the article staring at us in bold and 3 dead links. Note only 2 edits have been made this year, one by a bot. Wiki community needs to pay better attention to it's FAs. Amador Valley High School got to the main page a few days ago with 19, yes, 19 dead links. This is embarrassing. I will notify WP:Houston and WP:Prem Rawat, and user Momento. He's the only major editor still active. Will Beback alone accounted for over half the edits but he's been banned. He and Momento together account for over 90% of the edits. The talk page has 3-4 edits in two years, with the 2 edits this year to the article it's clear this one is not being maintained. Pumpkin Sky  talk  02:13, 24 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Hey PS. I understand your concerns, but you've skipped over the talk-page step, so I'm going to put this nom on hold for a bit. If after a week you're right and no one's watching, feel free to bring it back. Nikkimaria (talk) 04:30, 24 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Oh, ok. I see you put a note there already. We'll wait. Pumpkin Sky  talk  11:00, 24 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Relisting. While Momento did comment on the talk page of the article, he essentially said fixing it is beyond him and the article was a compromise between two warring factions, which raises a red flag to me. Not one single edit to improve it has been made. Pumpkin Sky  talk  10:48, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

What a mess. The referencing is just full of issues:



This seems exactly the state that the article in. Br&#39;er Rabbit (talk) 18:09, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

Comment - on closer look some (most?) of those reference issues can be solved, when using consistant parameters for last(author) and year. For example "Boyle, Deirdre (Fall 1985)" is apparently meant to link to "Boyle, 1985", but the Harv-template can't make the connection, when the parameters are not 100% identical. If the "date"-parameter is used and doesn't work, adding "year" aswell is worth a try. Most "no citation" bugs refer to a similar "no link" situation and can be solved with one fix (see Template:HARV for more information). I fixed "Boyle 1985" as quick example. Are those broken harv-links the only issue? GermanJoe (talk) 11:20, 2 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Fixed some more myself. However i couldn't find "Chryssides 1999" and "McKean 1996" and have yet to understand why "DUO" won't link correctly. Also some references are still written in raw text and need reformatting as citation-template or similar. GermanJoe (talk) 12:07, 2 July 2012 (UTC)
 * "Chryssides 1999" and "McKean 1996" are the last 2 links with no existing reference, the remaining few references without link can either be removed easily or moved to "External Links", depending on the information in those references. Someone more experienced with the article content and its sources should check those. (Disclaimer: some of the refs have some very awkward formatting, but atleast they work somehow.) A complete ref-cleanup would be nice, but i am not that crazy to spend several more hours on it. GermanJoe (talk) 19:32, 2 July 2012 (UTC)
 * The above mechanics seem to have been addressed. "Chryssides 1999" and "McKean 1996" are simply undefined and I've by stubbing them in the references section with full; the details are missing. FWIW, this article would benefit by shifting to using sfn, which would clear out a lot of the needless ref markup. Glancing below, it seems there are further concerns. Br&#39;er Rabbit (talk) 20:26, 5 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Last 2 sources found cross-searching other Wiki-articles. GermanJoe (talk) 13:45, 6 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Is this really FAR-worthy? The only problem seems to be a couple broken references. Ten Pound Hammer • (What did I screw up now?) 15:59, 5 July 2012 (UTC)
 * It clearly fails 2c "consistent citations", especially the "consistent" part. A few broken links should not be the end of the world, but the whole citation formatting and parameter usage is all over the place (date and page formats, parameters misused for various special content, punctuation, varying citation formats, ...).
 * 1d "without bias" seems to be a minor issue too. Example: "Organizers billed the festival as the most significant event in human history which would usher in a thousand years of peace.". It's far too prominent in the first lead para (like any other hyped promotion activity). Other phrases throughout the article are also slightly too positive, some of the events are written more from a visitor's perspective, instead of a neutral observer.
 * Criterion 4 "Length" - someone not attached to that event could certainly find a few unnecessary details.
 * All points are fixable, and only 2c is really critical as a clear fail and needs the attention of an experienced editor for citation formatting. GermanJoe (talk) 19:08, 5 July 2012 (UTC)
 * 1d and 4 are probably the result of warring factions duking it out. 2c is just plain embarrasing we can't have "wiki's best" with openly visible multiple broken links. There is more and more of that lately. Yes, the should be FAR'd unless someone is willing to put the time in to fix all three areas. So far no one stepped forward, only talk so far. Pumpkin Sky   talk  19:13, 5 July 2012 (UTC)
 * I stand corrected. Efforts have been made, mostly by GermanJoe, but significant issues remain. Pumpkin Sky  talk  21:26, 5 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Comment - It looks like quite a bit of work has been done here. Can we get some opinions on whether this can be kept without a FARC or whether it should be moved? Dana boomer (talk) 13:42, 23 July 2012 (UTC)

Move to FARC - the more i read the article, the more it fails criterion 4 (aside from the already mentioned problems): "It stays focused on the main topic without going into unnecessary detail and uses summary style." (emphasis mine). I am sure, editors added information in good faith to get the article as detailed as possible and to compromise between the different edit-warring factions. But a lot of this information is either too detailed, some reporter's "opinion" or "observation" or a quote with little relevance from some organizer or the guru. Some examples among others: Move to FARC - per GJoe; this simply wouldn't pass a modern day FAC. Pumpkin Sky  talk  20:54, 24 July 2012 (UTC)
 * "Organizers billed the festival as the most significant event in human history which would usher in a thousand years of peace." - promotional statement, not lead material (atleast not first para).
 * "...(one Berkeley newspaper had the headline "Rennie Unites Left – Against Him")..." - trivia
 * "One reporter for the Village Voice who traveled in the tour wrote that they had little press coverage and poor attendance [but showed obvious energy, and that the tour itself went remarkably smoothly with expressions of love among the members]." - second half is trivia ("expressions of love among the members" - seriously? I am a bit afraid to ask for more details here.).
 * "Fifteen hundred festival volunteers stayed at a former Coca Cola plant, renamed the "Peace Plant" for the occasion, where they slept on folded blankets over the concrete floor. Another thousand stayed at the Rainbow Inn motel." - why is that notable? It's not that uncommon for large events, that supporters sleep whereever possible (or not at all).
 * "Another noted that the workers seemed to be "model human beings, ..."" - a reporter's unqualified opinion, he just watched them for a few hours and is already able to judge their character? The same goes for the negative characterisation of the security staff. It's ok to mention 1-2 notable incidents as facts, it's not appropriate to use some observer's unfounded theories about their mental state or social conditioning.
 * Welcome statement: "[It's really fantastic and really beautiful to see you here, the Millennium program will start tomorrow and it'll really be fantastic, it'll be incredible ... ]and soon people will get together and finally understand who is God. ... There's so much trouble in the world, Watergate is not only in America, it exists everywhere." - the first part has no notable content (It's great and will start tomorrow), the second part could be paraphrased as his intentions for the event.
 * Usage of quotations and signboard messages should be re-checked. Even it they are reliable sourced, they also need to be relevant for the article topic and noteworthy in a summary style article. If that content can be paraphrased without loss of meaning, paraphrasing is preferred (WP:QUOTEFARM). I still don't see, how the signboard messages are relevant. Even if they were important, the article should establish that context and not simply list them. GermanJoe (talk) 09:08, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

FARC commentary

 * Featured article criteria mentioned as at issue in the review section include references, neutrality and length. Dana boomer (talk) 00:37, 28 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Delist per the problems uncovered by GermanJoe. Ten Pound Hammer • (What did I screw up now?) 00:05, 1 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Delist per the problems uncovered by GermanJoe. Pumpkin Sky   talk  01:09, 1 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Delist per the problems listed. I believe, the article has some good content and seems mostly well researched. But its open issues (NPOV, focus, citations) put it below todays FA standard. GermanJoe (talk) 10:44, 1 August 2012 (UTC)


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