Wikipedia talk:Featured article removal candidates/Archive 3

Sun Yat-sen
Of ongoing contention is whether Sun Yat-sen qualifies as a farc. If I don't receive further objections at Wikipedia talk:Featured article removal candidates/Sun Yat-sen, then I plan to relist the article in a day or two. (This is a call for input.) --Jiang 07:22, 29 October 2005 (UTC)


 * I am the one who speedy-delisted the Farc per Farc guidlines on time of nominations; if there is even minimal support, I am willing to IAR this case and will not object to it being listed. --Jeffrey O. Gustafson - Shazaam! - <*> 07:29, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Can some of the editors who regularly take part in the FARC discussions check out this article and the discussion on the FARC page. Thanks, --Alabamaboy 14:29, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

It's inappropriate to list an article for removal so soon after it was promoted. The removal advocate should be encouraged to just go to the article and make the necessary changes directly -- s/he is apparently willing to exert substantial effort to knock down someone else's work, but not to exert similar effort to improve an acclaimed article. This is unseemly. --FOo 03:18, 1 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Suggestions have been made: check out the talk page for the nomination. I'm still uncomfortable with it's listing, although I was willing to IAR if there was sufficient support fot its inclusion, which has still not been definitively shown.  I have asked for Raul's imput as FA director, still awaiting response.  --Jeffrey O. Gustafson - Shazaam! - <*> 03:23, 1 November 2005 (UTC)


 * I tried to anticipate your concern in both the objection to the FAC and in the FARC. Again, I note that the job of rewriting this article is too immense to undertake immediately, and should require several times the effort it took to post this FARC. If you check on the page history, you should notice I have made a similar effort to improve the article, and contributed significantly early on, but the task at hand, especially due to the need to rely in lengthy print material, is too huge. As Christopher Parham stated, "I don't see why we should compound failures of the initial process by preventing our failure-addressing apparatus from working."


 * I am not "knocking down" someone else's work. I am knocking down a former nomination that apparently succeeded over my objections. I am stating that this article lacks information, not that this article has bogus information or too much information. Of course, if enough people come out and object to the existence of this FARC I can remove it, decorate the article with unsightly templates that would be a disgrace to the FA process, and come back over a month later with the same objections. --Jiang 08:37, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

It is not in the spirit of Wikipedia to threaten to do stuff like this. As I said on the FARC page, the issues you raise should be addressed. My concern (and the concern of others) if that you are doing a FARC too soon and haven't tried to raise these issues on the article itself. If a goodwill attempt was made to do this AND then it was ignored, I would vote to remove the article. Until then, I object to this abuse of the FARC process.--Alabamaboy 12:41, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

Featured article review
At Version 1.0 Editorial Team/FAs first, I am trying to set up a system to ensure that featured articles are regularly reviewed. Have a look at what I've come up with there. It's a list of featured articles with links to the revision that was current when it was promoted and a diff with the present-day version. If changes are significant, they could be placed on a sister page Featured article review to be approved (hopefully). Suggestions? Is anyone interested in working on this? Tuf-Kat 08:37, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

Proposal
I think it would become useful if it was standard practice if candidates were given a diff of the version when they became originally featured and their present state (at least the state at nomination). If that is compared with the nomination discussion I htink it can would help see what arguments were made when it became nominated and allow us a comparison. gren グレン 09:07, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Add Featured article review and raising of issues on FA article's talk page to FARC guidelines
I've really liked what I've seen at Featured article review and think that we should add a requirement that before an article comes to FARC, it should go through the FA review. This will integrate the FARC and review pages and make them complement each other. In addition, I also think there should be a guideline that any article that comes to FARC should have the issues with that article raised at least a few weeks prior to the FARC listing on that article's talk page. To me, this both gives the article's editors time to try and correct the issues leading to a FA removal and is also respectful so that the article's editors have time to respond to the issues. I also think this would streamline the FARC process b/c if the article's editors ignore any concerns raised, then there's not much they can say in the article's defense. Comments?--Alabamaboy 14:51, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
 * I had thought about the same proposal, but thought I ought to wait until FAR becomes more established, though I support this proposal. Would you want a talk page notice after the FAR process?  I've been putting a box on the talk page when an article is being reviewed, so are you saying that, following the review, the extant issues should be brought up on the talk page for a few weeks prior to listing it here?  That would make the whole process take at least a month or so, which seems like an awfully long time. Tuf-Kat 17:47, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Also, just a note: anyone who wants to help FAR out, adding links and dates of promotion to Version 1.0 Editorial Team/FAs first is an easy, though tedious, process. Any help would be appreciated. Tuf-Kat
 * Excellent point. Since the FAR process includes a notice on the article's talk page, there is no need to duplicate that step. However, I don't see why we should wait until the FAR becomes more established. It's already on the road to being established and setting a FARC guideline to first go through a FAR would bring even more attention to the FAR page.--Alabamaboy 21:27, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

KaDee Strickland
Blatant Hollywood starlet's exercise in self-promotion (or fanzine hagiography). Not sure which it is at this stage -- probably a bit of both -- but it sure isn't encyclopedic.

Who, beyond the article's prime mover, is actually willing to maintain that this was an appropriate selection for the main page? Nobody now seems to want to take responsibility for that decision, or for the vanity-press move of running the article on the actress's birthday. Presumably she was logging on eagerly at home at the stroke of midnight. See the dispute on the article's talk page and at User talk:Raul654. BYT 15:12, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Sicilian Baroque
Not sure if this is proper reason for defeaturing, but according to Featured article candidates/Sicilian Baroque it was promoted with 3 supports... and 4 objections? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 01:54, 24 December 2005 (UTC)


 * You'll have to ask Raul654 - all of the objections were about prose style. Have you read it? -- ALoan (Talk) 02:48, 24 December 2005 (UTC)
 * I am sure he will get around this part of Wiki eventually. Yes, I have read it, and the objections are not major enough for me to run screaming and put it at main FARC immediatly - so I want to know what you think. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 12:24, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

New FARC Guidelines: must go through Featured article review and raise issues on FA article's talk page
I raised this issue before and then decided to wait for the Featured article review to become more established. I now feel it is. I believe the FARC guidelines should state, "Before placing an article on FARC, editors should first either raise the issues with the article on the Featured article review page or on the article's talk page."

I feel this language is loose enough that people can still bring bad articles to the FARC but it also gets them to raise issues elsewhere (and let the article authors try to fix the article) before bring it to a FARC vote. Comments?--Alabamaboy 14:41, 1 January 2006 (UTC)
 * There don't seem to be very many stupid FARC nominations right now, so it's not too big a deal. I also think that articles with major, clear-cut issues can come straight here. -- SCZenz 15:36, 1 January 2006 (UTC)
 * You don't think that they should at least raise the issue on the article's talk page first? Seems like common decency to the article's editors do this (or, alternately, to go to the FAR page). If the editors were not responsive, the article could quickly come here. I see this guideline more as a way to more closely follow Wikipedia's be nice attitude and to give article editors a chance to correct the article before it comes here.--Alabamaboy 16:30, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

I think adding the template to the articles talk page is sufficient and decentralising the process would not be beneficial. For example I commented on deficiences in the Christmas article on the talk page at least a week before it got moved to FARC- and noone seemed to notice, FAs not being maintained by an interested party makes the suggested change rather useless. I also an't see the immediate benefit of requiring an article goes through FAR before FARC - since it would seem to duplicate the process.--nixie 16:50, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

No, this is a terrible idea on many levels. Raul654 17:58, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

History vs. former state confusion
I have set my sights on several articles from our history section that seem to indicate they are about a former state, but are in fact about history of a country. This distinction may seem superficial at the first glance, but it is not. Consider: History of Poland (1945–1989) (a FA) vs. People's Republic of Poland (a former state article), or History of Poland (1569-1795) vs. Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (a former state FA)). Other good FAs we have that are 'diminished' by several confusing articles are Indo-Greek Kingdom and all of our 'history of...' articles. Now, the articles which I think should be renamed are Congo Free State (Talk:Congo_Free_State) and Habsburg Spain (Talk:Habsburg_Spain), both which have a former state name but are in fact purely 'history of...' articles. A name change is not a valid enough subject for FARC, so as far as those two I am just letting you know about the need for their renaming, but unfortunately we have two other articles which are currently a confusing mix between a former state and history of articles, and that need not only to be renamed but rewritten to keep up with our current standards (both are old - one from 2004, other from brilliant prose days). Those two 'black sheep's are Old Swiss Confederacy (Talk:Old_Swiss_Confederacy) and Byzantine Empire (Talk:Byzantine Empire). If they are not rescued in the coming days, I'll put them on FARC for the above reasons. Comments?--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 21:41, 2 February 2006 (UTC)


 * I guess the right place for this discussion is on the relevant talk pages and/or on WP:RM: in essence, you are suggesting page moves to more accurate titles, no? -- ALoan (Talk) 11:55, 3 February 2006 (UTC)


 * I had a look at your first pair of examples (postwar Poland), and your distinction seems to me rather trivial.  People's Republic of Poland is largely a summary of the History of article, with the addition of a vestigial Politics and government section, a little piece on the history of the economy, and a bit on the changing geographical boundaries.   Surely economic history and geographical history are... history?   If you mean that an article on the Byzantine Empire should include coverage of its geography and economy, and how they changed over time, then I'm minded to agree with you, but I haven't looked at it to see whether it does.   Then again, as I recall, Congo Free State deals fairly extensively with the slave-based economy which was the reason for the state's existence, which leaves me again confused as to why you propose renaming it. Markyour words 12:08, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
 * PPR article is rather poor, but compare PLC and IGE instead. There is a difference between country and history of that country, and just as there is a different between history of a country and it's economy, the same applies to the past. Economy of Byzantine Empire is not the same as History of Byzantine Empire. Example: Education in Poland is not the same as Education in the People's Republic of Poland, nor should the latter be merged with History of People's Republic of Poland.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 14:52, 7 February 2006 (UTC)