Wikipedia:Featured article review/New England Patriots/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 00:02, 20 March 2008.

Review commentary
Promoted January 2006. Since then, a lot of the content has been split off and covered in more detail in other articles, leaving this as a shell. There are only five paragraphs of text about the team, followed by several lists and then a few lines about cheerleaders, celebrations and radio/tv coverage. In my opinion the article no longer represents Wikipedia's best work. While I'm not suggesting all history should be merged back in here, a better summary is needed plus more coverage of other aspects of the team if it is to stay a FA. FA criteria at issue: 1a,b 4. AlexJ (talk) 20:25, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Oh My Gosh. Don't even know where to start.  Is this a list of lists or an article?  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 20:32, 8 February 2008 (UTC)


 * This was my first FA back when I was a newbie, and since then, it has devolved significantly (and it wasn't even an amazing FA to begin with). The 40+ references have been scattered. I'm pretty much retired, so I won't have anywhere near the amount of time (or motivation) to do even a fraction of the immense amount of work needed. &mdash; Deckiller 20:37, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
 * That'll teach me to say Oh My Gosh without checking who the author was :-) Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 21:01, 9 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Well, most of the current version isn't my work, and my reference formatting WAS very "old school" back then (and annotated, as sad as that is), but you don't see those either :) &mdash; Deckiller 21:14, 9 February 2008 (UTC)


 * The promoted version had considerably more text; at the first FAC it had even more text and wasn't promoted. Most of that text is now in History of the New England Patriots and Logos and uniforms of the New England Patriots. (I guess the prohibition on fair use galleries only pertains to music articles.) Maybe we could have New England Patriots staffology for the tables? Gimmetrow 23:00, 10 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Usage of Image:NewEnglandPatriots.png needs to be fixed, and Image:NewEnglandPatriotsOld.png needs fair use rationale(s). Gimmetrow 01:07, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
 * This is tricky. In my opinion the information contained in these lists is actually likely to be the information that people searching for this article are hoping to find.  I note that the various football clubs that are Featured Articles are relatively heavy in lists.  Is there a consensus structure for American Football team articles at the WikiProject?  If so, it ought to be fairly formulaic to bring the articles up to this standard. --JayHenry (talk) 00:14, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Even if we revert to the original version I wrote 26 months ago, we'll still have a lot of work to do to get it to standards, especially with respect to referencing and broadness. &mdash; Deckiller 02:38, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
 * This edit seems to be the issue here. Buc (talk) 18:56, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
 * hmmm. I don't understand that.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 01:40, 24 February 2008 (UTC)


 * If you feel that the text should be returned to the article, go ahead and do that. If following the manual of style and especially summary style is against the FA criteria, then go ahead, violate WP:SUMMARY and put the text back.  It should have been established already how terrible an editor I am, and you should all have already learned to rollback any edits I make without question... Go ahead and put it back.  Remember, long confusing and redundant is far better than short, consise and easy to follow... --Jayron32. talk . contribs  18:43, 24 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Ok now I'm really confused. Buc (talk) 21:38, 1 March 2008 (UTC)


 * I was being facetious. The issue with the article is not that material has been moved to sub articles, its that it is overbloated with tables and lists.  Removing material that was redundant with the "History" article was not the problem.  Making the prose arbitrarily longer, only to "mask" the overabundance of tables and lists, does not fix the problem, it only masks it.  If you want to improve the article, then take out some of the crap.  Discretion is the better part of valor, and sometimes addition by subtraction actually works.  Lets try reworking the article so that, instead of returning the overbloated history section, we instead remove a bunch of the unneccessary tables.  Lets bring it back into balance THAT way... --Jayron32. talk . contribs  13:29, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

To address some of the comments since my nomination - IMO just re-entering the history section isn't enough to keep the FA status, it would not meet the well written or concise requirements. Perhaps the best option would be to work on the (mostly prose) history page and try and bring that back to FA level, while deciding what direction the main article is to take. AlexJ (talk) 18:45, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

FARC commentary

 * ''Suggested FA criteria concerns are prose (1a) and focus (4). Marskell (talk) 18:47, 3 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Rest in peace for now, my beloved first FA :) Seriously, if this stays up through Spring Break (next week), I might have a chance to bring it back to standards. Also, don't criticize Jayron; his changes were actually better than what the previous situation was. It just showed that the entire page needs a return to form. &mdash; Deckiller 17:07, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I see one problem image has been deleted, but Image:NewEnglandPatriots.png is still used in one article without a corresponding fair use rationale. Gimmetrow 08:54, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Are we/is anyone prepared to work on this? I'm not sure what the friction above is about, but from what I've observed of the American football articles that come through FAC, there isn't a cohesive group of editors who work together on these articles (amazingly, at one point, there were three American football articles listed at the same time at FAC, and the editors didn't help each other at all).  I'll pitch in to work on this article if others are helping.  Where do things stand ? Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 15:09, 6 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Notes: why does the infobox have all that random bolding? Why is New England Patriots strategy split out (there seems to be little summary)?  Do we have more info somewhere on finances, marketing, ownership, attendance, stadium, facilities, etc?  There's no summary of List of New England Patriots first-round draft picks and should the navigational template go at the bottom?  Cheerleaders needs content or merging.  There's not a lot to work with here.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 15:27, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Remove. Too much work to be done; too far from FA quality. Doesn't need stitches here and there, but rather is in critical condition and needs major reconstructive surgery. - Chardish (talk) 18:04, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.