Wikipedia:Featured article review/Planetary nebula/archive2


 * 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 16:05, December 16, 2014 (UTC)

Review commentary

 * Notified: Ruslik0, Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Astronomy, Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Physics

I am nominating this featured article for review because there are many problems with referencing, and the current evidence and knowledge and planetary nebulae or the related stellar evolution of this object are not well reflected in the Article text. This article has been a featured article since 2008 and was featured on the main page. However, 5 years later I do not feel as if this article now meets the current criteria. A review seems more appropriate and useful to improve it. Arianewiki1 (talk) 14:45, 7 June 2014 (UTC)


 * Comment – To give a specific example, the origins section is almost entirely based on one source from 20 years ago. There have been a number of publications since then discussing PNe origins, and though I don't have time to look through them personally, I would assume they contain information which should be in the article. i.e.  Sam Walton (talk) 10:17, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

FARC commentary

 * Concerns raised in the review section mostly focused on referencing and currency. Nikkimaria (talk) 14:50, 2 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Delist – I'm seeing a multitude of unsourced statements in the article that aren't of the WP:BLUE variety. That along with the multitude of other problems brought up by Ariane and Sam makes me !vote to delist, unfortunately. StringTheory11 (t • c) 00:55, 12 July 2014 (UTC)


 * Keep – I don't see any major problem with the sourcing. The references appear to be reliable, as far as Wikipedia standards go. They might be outdated, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the article contains false information. If the content needs to be updated, it can be done without losing the FA status.--Retrohead (talk) 22:44, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

Delegate comment: Sam Walton, your thoughts on this? Retrohead, someone would actually need to do that updating - no one appears to have come forward to do that yet, unless you are volunteering? Nikkimaria (talk) 15:16, 25 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Nikkimaria, what needs to be updated?--Retrohead (talk) 21:35, 25 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Retrohead: Origins certainly, Morphology likely, possibly other sections also. Generally for topics where our knowledge of the subject changes over time, as is true of many scientific articles, we would want to keep the referencing and the associated text fairly current. Nikkimaria (talk) 17:34, 8 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Appreciate the invitation, but I'm not knowledgeable in this area. I assumed that the major contributor could do the update, but if he is inactive, then I'll withdraw my vote.--Retrohead (talk) 09:59, 9 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Leaning delist if no-one wants to put in gruntwork. I am strapped for time and would have to do a fair bit of reading to really do it justice. Outstanding issues include but are not limited to:


 * The origins section really needs an overhaul - knowledge of stellar evolution and in particular events leading to PN formation has progressed alot since 1994.


 * Ditto Lifetime section - no mention of some central stars being Wolf-Rayet stars.


 * I'd have a short section on the most notable examples with a seealso link to List of planetary nebulae incorporated into the body of the article.


 * There really needs to be some discussion of Protoplanetary nebula in the body of the article


 * I am sure more could be written on funny-shaped PNs that are a result of binary star systems.

The article only has 16kb of readable prose, and I reckon that it fails on comprehensiveness, with the follow-on effect that the sources and copyediting has to be overhauled. It'd be a good article to keep if someone found time to do this, but if not then I think we should delist and it can be revisited later. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 00:31, 10 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Comment the following needs inline citations:
 * "His observations of stars showed that their spectra consisted of a continuum of radiation with many dark lines superimposed on them. He later found that many nebulous objects such as the Andromeda Nebula (as it was then known) had spectra that were quite similar. These nebulae were later shown to be galaxies."
 * "Hence, all single intermediate to low-mass stars on the main sequence can last for tens of millions to billions of years." (not sure about the use of "hence" here)
 * "For the more massive asymptotic giant branch stars that form planetary nebulae, whose progenitors exceed about 3M⊙, their cores will continue to contract. When temperatures reach about 100 million K, the available helium nuclei fuse into carbon and oxygen, so that the star again resumes to radiate energy, temporarily stopping the core's contraction. This new helium burning phase (fusion of helium nuclei) forms a growing inner core of inert carbon and oxygen. Above it is a thin helium-burning shell, surrounded in turn by a hydrogen-burning shell. However, this new phase lasts only 20,000 years or so, a short period compared to the entire lifetime of the star."


 * Not sure if this meets comprehensiveness, but sourcing should be fixable without difficulty.  Snuggums ( talk  /  edits ) 01:07, 10 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Delist. Obviously, this is still a strong article with some super images, but the valid comments raised above remain unresolved. In addition, there are parts where the prose can be improved, for example "At first Herschel thought the objects were stars surrounded by material that was condensing into planets rather than what is known to be evidence of dead stars that have incinerated any orbiting planets" can be misread (initially by a layperson) as meaning that Herschel at first thought they were planet factories but later realized that they were remnants of dying stars. DrKiernan (talk) 17:17, 7 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Delist, per all of the already mentioned, and there are obvious citation issues. This FA was promoted ten years ago, the main authors shepharding it are long gone, the article went through FAR once already, and Ruslik0 tried to save it, but without Ruslik0 on board, there is no value in prolonging the inevitable.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 04:56, 15 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Closing note: This removal candidate has been delisted, but there may be a delay in bot processing of the close.  Please leave the  template in place on the talk page until the bot goes through. Nikkimaria (talk) 16:02, 16 December 2014 (UTC)