Wikipedia:Featured article review/Sudoku/archive1

Sudoku

 * Article is no longer a featured article

Review commentary

 * Messages left at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Japan and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Board and table games. Marskell 15:41, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

This article certainly does not exemplify the high standards of featured articles on Wikipedia.

With regards to 1a, stubby paragraphs abound, certainly not an FA characteristic. Stubby "paragraphs" include:
 * The attraction of the puzzle is that the rules are simple, yet the line of reasoning required to solve the puzzle may be complex. The level of difficulty can be selected to suit the audience. The puzzles are often available free from published sources and may be custom-made using software.
 * Later in 2005, the BBC launched SUDO-Q, a game show combining Sudoku (albeit only the 4×4 and 6×6 variants) with a general knowledge quiz.
 * During February 7th's episode of The Daily Show, correspondent Jason Jones suggested that to ease the conflict over the Jyllands-Posten Muhammed caricatures, newspapers should be stripped down to only featuring Sudoku puzzles.

However, most offensively, the article does not cite a single source until halfway through (1c). The first ref or external link does not occur until the Construction section. Even then, some of the more technical sections, such as how computer solutions are completed, do not have any references whatsoever. This article is not a good representation of the work that is featured article quality on Wikipedia. In addition, this article had a very poor traffic on its FAC and did not really look all that good when it was promoted in the first place. &mdash; Scm83x hook 'em 01:34, 6 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Commnent: The entire "Solution Methods" section needs to be justified, as Wikipedia is not a how-to. Given that, it needs citations throughout. The output grid in the "Mathematics of Sudoku" section is not source code, so there doesn't seem to be any reason why it should be in (ugly) verbatim formatting. Similarly, SVG diagrams would be somewhat preferable to the GIFs and PNGs currently in use. One of those images, Cross-hatching.gif, is using an obsolete fair use tag, which is a matter for some concern. Looks like it's a version of Sudoku-by-L2G-20050714.gif, which seems legit, though. Note that I went ahead and created an SVG version at Sudoku-by-L2G-20050714.svg‎. Don't have time to do the final touches now, though. -Stellmach 21:13, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Never mind my comment about the formatting in the "Mathematics of Sudoku" section, as that algorithm is pretty obviously original research in the first place and has been removed. - Stellmach 01:54, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Question: Come to look at it, is the liscencing statement on the image Sudoku-nrc.png in order? It seems to be basically a copy of a layout from a Dutch newspaper, so what right does the uploader have to duplicate it? I find this suspicious. -Stellmach 14:34, 13 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Comment Now has some cites, still has some stubbiness. Sandy 21:45, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

FARC commentary

 * Suggested FA criteria concerns are citations (1c), and structure and stub paragraphs (2). Marskell 18:22, 21 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Remove per above issues, as they are completely unresolved. &mdash; Scm83x hook 'em 03:16, 25 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Remove. The article is still undercited, and the prose is not compelling.  Here is a sample paragraph from History:
 * In 1997, retired Hong Kong judge Wayne Gould, 59, a New Zealander, saw a partly completed puzzle in a Japanese bookshop. Over six years he developed a computer program to produce puzzles quickly.[20] Knowing that British newspapers have a long history of publishing crosswords and other puzzles, he promoted Sudoku to The Times in Britain, which launched it on 12 November 2004 (calling it Su Doku). It was rapidly introduced by The Daily Telegraph, the Daily Mail and The Independent. By April and May 2005 the puzzle became a national phenomenon and was introduced to several other national British newspapers including The Guardian, The Sun (where it was labelled Sun Doku), and The Daily Mirror.[citation needed] Sandy 14:42, 3 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Remove—as per Sandy. "Various other grid sizes have also been enumerated" is a gem of an example that I saw at random. Why are both hyphens and en dashes used for ranges (should be en dashes: 1–9, not 1-9). Insert spaces—ideally small ones, but normal are OK—around the "times" symbols, for which ex is used, regrettably (3 × 3, not 3x3). Tony 15:36, 5 October 2006 (UTC)