Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/List of Mesopotamian deities/archive1


 * The following is an archived discussion of a featured list nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured list candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The list was promoted by PresN via FACBot (talk) 00:32, 31 May 2018 (UTC).

List of Mesopotamian deities

 * Nominator(s): Katolophyromai (talk) 03:54, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

I have completely rewritten this article from scratch over the course of the past month. I would have nominated it for "Good List" status, but there does not seem to be one, so my only option for advancing the article's status seems to be to go straight for featured. This is the first time I have ever nominated anything for "Featured" status, but I have, as of right now, single-handedly brought fourteen articles up to "Good Article" status on my own, and I have significantly assisted in promoting several others, so I think I have a pretty good idea of what I am doing.

This article obviously does not hope to cover every single Mesopotamian deity, but it does cover all the ones I could find entries for in reference works on the subject, as well as a few others. As you can see, all information is fastidiously cited to reliable sources. The only problems I imagine that it might face will be ones perhaps dealing with the image licensing, since, even though I am not aware of any issues in that regard, I have repeatedly found that whole process confusing, and perhaps also confusion over where the cities mentioned are located, since I doubt the modern reader is likely to know much about the geography of ancient Mesopotamia. I did try to find a map to put in the article, but I could not find one that shows all the cities and I do not think it will be that big of a deal, since all the names of the cities are wikilinked and I tried to give explanations of their locations where necessary. --Katolophyromai (talk) 03:54, 17 April 2018 (UTC)


 * Support very interesting topic, very different list from the usual run-of-the-mill stuff that goes on here. It's well put together, and this kind of work should be encouraged by reviewers at FLC. Great work, and ping me up if you need some future feedback on similar subjects like to this one. Nergaal (talk) 05:34, 9 May 2018 (UTC)

Support. , this is an impressive and challenging undertaking. My first impression: where are the attestations? But after reading above, I understand why the list is structured as it is. This list doesn't raise any red flags for me, and looks solid. I'll give it a more thorough lookover and get back to you if I see any issue. &#58;bloodofox: (talk) 20:42, 8 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Comments by bloodofox

I can't find any immediate fault with the list contents. However...
 * Comments by Squeamish Ossifrage
 * You're throwing several reference template errors.
 * I would be more than happy to fix the reference template errors, but, unfortunately, I cannot see them at all, nor do I know of any means of detecting them. Something similar to this happened months ago at Talk:Pythagoras/GA1, where an editor said there were "lots and lots" of reference errors, but I could not see anything, so the other editor ended up having to list all the sfns with the errors in them. I am guessing there is probably some tool somewhere for detecting them? --Katolophyromai (talk) 21:38, 9 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I don't remember, I may have a script installed to warn me of these. In any case... all reference numbers as of this version, for sanity in bookkeeping. One is an easy fix. Ref 52 (McEvilly 2002) lacks a target; in the bibliography, McEvilley 2002 shows as unused. I'm not sure whether the author's name is correct with or without that extra e, but that's no problem otherwise. Ref 45 (Kramer 1983) lacks a target; I imagine that Kramer ref is intended to either point to Kramer 1963 or Wolkenstein & Kramer 1983, but you'll need to double-check which. The other errors are all references that do not have a corresponding bilbiography target at all: ref 24 (Falkenstein 1965), ref 129 (Richter 2004), and ref 239 (Dever 2003b). Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 21:47, 9 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I have now fixed all of the errors you have listed here. If you find any others, let me know. --Katolophyromai (talk) 23:02, 9 May 2018 (UTC)


 * I'm pretty dubious that the "Vv.Aa."-authored reference is at all referenced correctly. That's a journal publication, for one thing, and so the actual work cited should have a title, weirdness of the claimed author notwithstanding. I poked around a little bit but couldn't conclusively determine what this is supposed to be.
 * That citation happens to be one of a handful that were added by a particularly helpful IP user while I was in the midst of rewriting the list. I do not know what the source is exactly, since the title of the article is not given. I do know that "Vv.Aa." is an abbreviation for "various authors," though. The article is only cited once in the entire article, so it probably will not be too difficult to find a replacement for it, I imagine. I will see what else I can find. --Katolophyromai (talk) 21:38, 9 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I have removed the improperly-formatted and unidentifiable source, along with the tiny snippet of information that was cited to it. There seems to be extensive discussion of this subject in really old, outdated sources, such as J. Norman Lockyer's 1893 The Dawn of Astronomy, but I have not found a single newer source that even mentions it. The unidentifiable source that was previously cited there is from 1951. --Katolophyromai (talk) 19:36, 14 May 2018 (UTC)


 * You're allowed to use whatever citation format you so desire, but you have to be consistent. There's a mix of and  templates in use here, and that's not okay.
 * Done. I have changed all the sources in the bibliography to say "citation." The ones that said "cite book" were a mistake. --Katolophyromai (talk) 21:38, 9 May 2018 (UTC)


 * It's not technically a requirement, but it should be. You have a mix of ISBN-10s and ISBN-13s, some of which are hyphenated properly, and some which are not. Hit up an ISBN converter (like this or this).
 * Web sources (like Brisch) probably need a retrieval date (the APA has dropped that requirement, but it's still best practice here).
 * I have added today's date, since none of the articles have changed since I last visited them as far as I can tell. I hate giving accessdates because, then, every time I reuse the same source I have to update the date. --Katolophyromai (talk) 21:38, 9 May 2018 (UTC)


 * For book-format sources, publisher locations are optional, but they're all-or-nothing. I didn't audit closely, but on quick review, Wright lacks one. I'm reaaaallly not fond of the location laundry-lists like in the George reference, but I can't find anything in the MOS expressly prohibiting it.
 * Fixed. I also managed to find a few others that were missing publisher locations. I believe I have now corrected all of them. --Katolophyromai (talk) 21:38, 9 May 2018 (UTC)

In any case, conditional support on the reference issues getting addressed before promotion. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 18:33, 9 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Actually, I hate to mention it, because it's an immense amount of work, but... images need WP:ALT text... Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 18:36, 9 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Done. --Katolophyromai (talk) 21:38, 9 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Not exactly. ALT text is different from a caption. It's intended as an accessibility aid (for screen readers), and is one of those things no one ever even hears about until they hit FAC/FLC, where suddenly it's an expectation. Where a caption tells you what the image is, ALT text is a brief snippet of text telling you what the image looks like. WP:ALT has some examples. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 21:53, 9 May 2018 (UTC)

While I think the alt-text could be a bit more descriptive, I don't think it's a blocking issue. What is, however, is that the tables don't meet WP:ACCESS requirements- you need colscopes and rowscopes. E.g. '! Name' should be '!scope="col" | Name', etc., and the first line of each row, e.g. '| An', should be '!scope="row" | An'. -- Pres N  02:11, 29 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I have now added colscopes and rowscopes to every single column and row respectively. That was an unbelievably monotonous task, but now it is over with. Do I have your approval? Moreover, now that they have been added, is there any particular reason why the colscopes and rowscopes are necessary, other than the obvious purpose of driving me insane? They do not seem to change very much. --Katolophyromai (talk) 05:30, 29 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Yeah, it's quite boring to add after the fact if your table isn't set up nicely for a quick find-replace call. And yes, it doesn't change much visually); what it does its make the table parseable by screen-reading software or text-only browsers, and therefore accessible to blind or visually-impaired readers.
 * Speaking of monotonous: source review revealed no problems, except that the bibliography was using a mixture of unformatted, formatted, and semi-formatted ISBN-10 and ISBN-13s. I've gone ahead and converted them all to formatted ISBN-13s. With that, source review passed, and promoting. -- Pres N  16:26, 29 May 2018 (UTC)


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