Wikipedia:Featured article review/Sunset Boulevard (film)/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 23:26, 19 January 2012.

Review commentary

 * Notified: Top four editors by edit count: Coder Dan, Ian Rose, Gwen Gale and Rossrs. Projects: Film and United States.

Article was promoted in 2005 and has suffered from deterioration and trivia additions. Talk page notice was given in December 2010. It is no longer up to the current FA criteria.
 * 1a Other than some weasel words in the lede all looks well.
 * 1c There are multiple citation needed and dead link tags. There are also multiple paragraphs without citations. The unreferenced "Television" section is all trivia. Direct quotes need citations.
 * 2a The lede needs more detail and filling out. Article length would warrant three good sized paragraphs.
 * 2b Structure needs revisiting. There are a lot of sections and or subsections that should be eliminated.
 * 2c The most pressing problem here is the lack of page numbers from the sources.
 * 3 Will review if and when serious work begins. Brad (talk) 05:48, 19 November 2011 (UTC)


 * This article is ghastly. One longish section is only partially sourced, and the relevant footnote reads Based on liner notes to Boulevard! demo recording CD release, by Richard Stapley, Tim J Hutton and Steven M Warner. Is this a commercially released CD of a demo, or a demo CD, or what? If it's the former, how was it released? And who wrote the notes? Etc etc. And that's just one section. &para; OTOH some of the objections seem lamebrained too. Consider this: According to The New York Times, published on March 14, 2010, Norma Talmadge was "the obvious if unacknowledged source of Norma Desmond, the grotesque, predatory silent movie queen of [...] 'Sunset Boulevard'", further describing it as a malignant misrepresentation of Talmadge.[citation needed] Er, hello? Citation already (if incompletely) provided ("The New York Times, published on March 14, 2010"). -- Hoary (talk) 06:29, 19 November 2011 (UTC)
 * That the article is ghastly does not warrant unthinking additions of yet more warning flags. Consider this edit: the claim that the film is widely regarded as a classic does not need sourcing in the lead when it's already amply backed up in a section below titled "Stature". Yes, splatter the article with as many warning flags as are merited, but no more. -- Hoary (talk) 06:47, 19 November 2011 (UTC)
 * The tags I placed were not requesting citations but pointing out weasel wording. The stature section itself does an excellent job but the lede needs work. Brad (talk) 09:39, 19 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't know what else is necessary to back up the claim that It is widely accepted as a classic. Anyone who thinks that this should instead be reworded is of course free to reword it. -- Hoary (talk) 11:07, 19 November 2011 (UTC)


 * I may have been one of the "top four contributors" to the article once upon a time but my last halfway meaningful contribution there was over three years ago and truth be told, though I think back in those days it might have been on the fleeting edge of FA, no more. Since then, I've only ever watched it for vandalism and rot has come to roost in a big way. Not FA. Gwen Gale (talk) 07:39, 19 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't think I've ever been a contributor. The obvious fate of this article would be to have its FA status removed and for it to rest comfortably amid WP mediocrity. However, this seems a pity, given that the film is excellent and that by contrast such so many FA subjects are forgettable pap. I'm not going to restore the article to featurable status but I'm willing to be one among a team that does this. -- Hoary (talk) 11:07, 19 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Hoary, this is one of my favourite films ever - I'd be willing to help you improve the article. It does seem to have a lot of problems right now though... --Lobo512 (talk) 11:23, 20 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Progress report 1: The article is almost as much of a mess as it was when the objections above were (rightly) raised three days ago or so, but at least it no longer seems to have any dead links. (And I didn't simply remove the links; I fixed them.) -- Hoary (talk) 00:24, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

FARC commentary

 * Featured article criteria of concern mentioned in the review section include sourcing, prose and MOS compliance. Dana boomer (talk) 16:14, 9 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Delist 1c and 2c are problematic with lack of citations and no page numbers from sources and unsourced trivia. 2a and 2b are less serious but still need work. Hoary did a lot of good cleanup and the article is much more presentable than it was when nominated. Brad (talk) 19:48, 16 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Delist based on the sourcing issues and the cleanup tags in the article.  Imzadi 1979  →   18:03, 12 January 2012 (UTC)


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