Wikipedia:Featured article candidates

For the similar process page for good articles, see Wikipedia:Good article nominations.

Page too long and unwieldy? Try adding nominations viewer to your scripts page.

This star, with one point broken, indicates that an article is a candidate on this page. Here, we determine which articles are to be featured articles (FAs). FAs exemplify Wikipedia's very best work and satisfy the FA criteria. All editors are welcome to review nominations; please see the review FAQ. Before nominating an article, nominators may wish to receive feedback by listing it at Peer review and adding the review to the FAC peer review sidebar. Editors considering their first nomination, and any subsequent nomination before their first FA promotion, are strongly advised to seek the involvement of a mentor, to assist in the preparation and processing of the nomination. Nominators must be sufficiently familiar with the subject matter and sources to deal with objections during the featured article candidates (FAC) process. Nominators who are not significant contributors to the article should consult regular editors of the article before nominating it. Nominators are expected to respond positively to constructive criticism and to make efforts to address objections promptly. An article should not be on Featured article candidates and Peer review or Good article nominations at the same time. The FAC coordinators—Ian Rose, Gog the Mild, David Fuchs and FrB.TG—determine the timing of the process for each nomination. For a nomination to be promoted to FA status, consensus must be reached that it meets the criteria. Consensus is built among reviewers and nominators; the coordinators determine whether there is consensus. A nomination will be removed from the list and archived if, in the judgment of the coordinators: actionable objections have not been resolved; consensus for promotion has not been reached; insufficient information has been provided by reviewers to judge whether the criteria have been met; or a nomination is unprepared. It is assumed that all nominations have good qualities; this is why the main thrust of the process is to generate and resolve critical comments in relation to the criteria, and why such resolution is given considerably more weight than declarations of support. Do not use graphics or complex templates on FAC nomination pages. Graphics such as  Done and  Not done slow down the page load time, and complex templates can lead to errors in the FAC archives. For technical reasons, templates that are acceptable are {{collapse top}} and {{collapse bottom}}, used to hide offtopic discussions, and templates such as {{green}} that apply colours to text and are used to highlight examples without altering fonts. Other templates such as {{done}}, {{not done}}, {{tq}}, {{tq2}}, and {{xt}}, may be removed. An editor is allowed to be the sole nominator of only one article at a time, but two nominations are allowed if the editor is a co-nominator on at least one of them. If a nomination is archived, the nominator(s) should take adequate time to work on resolving issues before re-nominating. None of the nominators may nominate or co-nominate any article for two weeks unless given leave to do so by a coordinator; if such an article is nominated without asking for leave, a coordinator will decide whether to remove it. A coordinator may exempt from this restriction an archived nomination that attracted no (or minimal) feedback. Nominations in urgent need of review are listed here. To contact the FAC coordinators, please leave a message on the FAC talk page, or use the {{@FAC}} notification template elsewhere. A bot will update the article talk page after the article is promoted or the nomination archived; the delay in bot processing can range from minutes to several days, and the {{FAC}} template should remain on the talk page until the bot updates {{Article history}}. Table of Contents – This page:

Featured content: Featured articles ← Featured lists Featured pictures Featured topics Featured article candidates (FAC) Featured article criteria Featured article log Featured article statistics Featured article review (FAR) Former featured articles Unreviewed featured articles/2020 Today's featured article (TFA): This month's queue About Today's featured article Recent TFAs and statistics Current TFA requests Potential TFA requests TFA oddities Most viewed TFAs Featured articles yet to appear as TFA Script to track TFA recent changes Featured article tools: Mentoring for FAC Nominators of featured articles promoted Recent changes to featured articles Random featured article

Nominating How to nominate an article Nomination procedure Before nominating an article, ensure that it meets all of the FA criteria and that peer reviews are closed and archived. Place {{subst:FAC}} at the top of the talk page of the nominated article and save the page. From the FAC template, click on the red "initiate the nomination" link or the blue "leave comments" link. You will see pre-loaded information; leave that text. If you are unsure how to complete a nomination, please post to the FAC talk page for assistance. Below the preloaded title, complete the nomination page, sign with ~~~~, and save the page. Copy this text: {{Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/name of nominated article/archiveNumber}} (substituting Number), and edit this page (i.e., the page you are reading at the moment), pasting the template at the top of the list of candidates. Replace "name of ..." with the name of your nomination. This will transclude the nomination into this page. In the event that the title of the nomination page differs from this format, use the page's title instead. Commenting, etc Commenting, supporting and opposing Supporting and opposing To respond to a nomination, click the "Edit" link to the right of the article nomination (not the "Edit this page" link for the whole FAC page). All editors are welcome to review nominations; see the review FAQ for an overview of the review process. To support a nomination, write *'''Support''', followed by your reason(s), which should be based on a full reading of the text. If you have been a significant contributor to the article before its nomination, please indicate this. A reviewer who specializes in certain areas of the FA criteria should indicate whether the support is applicable to all of the criteria. To oppose a nomination, write *'''Object''' or *'''Oppose''', followed by your reason(s). Each objection must provide a specific rationale that can be addressed. If nothing can be done in principle to address the objection, a coordinator may disregard it. References on style and grammar do not always agree; if a contributor cites support for a certain style in a standard reference work or other authoritative source, reviewers should consider accepting it. Reviewers who object are strongly encouraged to return after a few days to check whether their objection has been addressed. To withdraw the objection, strike it out (with <s> ... </s>) rather than removing it. Alternatively, reviewers may transfer lengthy, resolved commentary to the FAC archive talk page, leaving a link in a note on the FAC archive. To provide constructive input on a nomination without specifically supporting or objecting, write *'''Comment''' followed by your advice. For ease of editing, a reviewer who enters lengthy commentary may create a neutral fourth-level subsection, named either ==== Review by EditorX ==== or ==== Comments by EditorX ==== (do not use third-level or higher section headers). Please do not create subsections for short statements of support or opposition—for these a simple *'''Support''',*'''Oppose''', or *'''Comment''' followed by your statement of opinion, is sufficient. Please do not use a semicolon to bold a subheading; this creates accessibility problems. Specifically, a semi-colon creates an HTML description list with a description term list item. As a result, assistive technology is unable to identify the text in question as a heading and thus provide navigation to it, and screen readers will make extra list start/item/end announcements. If a nominator feels that an Oppose has been addressed, they should say so, either after the reviewer's signature, or by interspersing their responses in the list provided by the reviewer. Per talk page guidelines, nominators should not cap, alter, strike, or add graphics to comments from other editors. If a nominator finds that an opposing reviewer is not returning to the nomination page to revisit improvements, this should be noted on the nomination page, with a diff to the reviewer's talk page showing the request to reconsider.

Add new nominations on top, one section per nomination.

Nominations

Robert Mugabe

A topical subject. self-nomination. Also User:172 has had a good look at this. Wizzy 22:26, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• Object. 1) None of the pictures has source information, nor permission information. 2) The lead section should be longer, briefly summarizing the most important facts about Mugabe. 3) Some of the sections are really short. This looks ugly, and they could probably be made into subsections of a larger sections. A partition into three sections "Personal life", "Political life" and "Opposition" might be a good idea. 4) The one sentence section about the 2005 parliament election seems irrelevant and is way to short to even be a section. 5) The use of bold face for his wives' names is not standard use, I think (WP:MOS). 6) Most of the "see also" references are already mentioned and linked in the article; mentioning them again seems rather unnecessary. 7) There are only web references, which are unfortunately rather 'volatile'. Any works on him in books, magazines, pamphlets? 8) The article seems to focus on the "negative" issues during Mugabe's reign. What are the reactions of the Zimbabweans to his rule? Some "pro-Mugabe" articles are in the references, but this article hardly mentions such support. 9) The land reforms section is rather short and uninformative, given the attention this policy received in the (western) media. Jeronimo 06:22, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Peerage article series

Yep, the peerage article is featured already. I am suggesting we begin a new section on Wikipedia:Featured articles for sets of articles/wikiprojects/categories that together are really good. I also nominate the peerage article series as the first article set to go in this section in recognition of the substantial feature quality work that Emsworth has done.

• (Pre-emptive response to some possible complaints):
  • No each article in the series does not have to be of stand-alone featured standards (if so we could just list them all separately). I propose that a substantial proportion (say at least one-third?) should of featured standard and the rest should reach another minimum standard of quality (say peer reviewed level?).
  • No it is not possible to feature a set of articles on the main page. But as has been established long ago, "main page featuring" is a subset of "featured article page featuring". This idea exploits that loophole.
• Pcb21| Pete 09:15, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• While I am humbled by the nomination, I am afraid that I cannot give it my wholehearted support. I would not like to see any article that is below the appropriate standard on its own to be included under a "featured series" class. To exalt substandard articles because of other articles in the same series engages in the reverse of guilt by association. Hence, I would request that this nomination be regarded as a nomination of each individual article in the series; I shall be willing to address all objections. -- Emsworth 13:43, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • Incidentally, for the image, I suggest that the picture of a peer in his robes (see Peerage) be used on the main page for each article, especially where images will not be appropriate (as in Styles and titles of peers). When looking at the image, one does get an impression that it connects to the nobility. This suggestion would comply with Wikipedia:What is a featured article, which asserts: "An article does not have to have a picture to be featured; however, even if the subject does not have any obvious images associated with it, a suggested picture which could be used to represent it on the Main Page (it can be an abstract symbol that would be too generic for the article itself) is helpful." -- Emsworth 14:07, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• I fully agree with his lordship: I wouldn't want to see any article that was not featured article worthy be recognized as such. Exploding Boy 16:32, Jul 26, 2004 (UTC)
  • How can I make it more obvious that that isn't what I am suggesting? By creating an example in my userpage area, perhaps? Pcb21| Pete 17:06, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)

For convenience, I have treated each article as a separate nomination:

Rights and privileges of peers

• Neutral. I like your articles on peers, they are all well written, but I feel it isn't a good idea to nominate every single articles on peers. Shouldn't the nomination be for Peerage? Revth 04:58, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • Why not nominate? If they article is of Featured Article quality, what would be the downside? — Matt 05:05, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Support. James F. (talk) 05:41, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Peerage law

• Probably should not be a featured article; more like a list than an article. -- Emsworth 17:20, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Baise moi

We do not appear to have any representatives of the "seventh art" on our featured articles list yet. I think this one is close to being worthy. Suggestions on what this and other articles about films need are very welcome. Self-nom. Pcb21| Pete 15:00, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• Object. Has next to nothing on the book - how similar the plots are, whether the graphic nature of the film is similar to the style of the book. Warofdreams 16:06, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Object. Needs much wikification, and while I'd ordinarily do it myself, I'm not equipped to do this. At least, I'd like links to pages explaining the various countries' movie rating schemes. Also, I'd like a little more discussion of the thematic meaning/significance of the movie. [[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 16:29, 2004 Jul 26 (UTC)

Orca

Although I couldn't possibly keep pace with the prodigious quality and quantity of Emsworths output, I figured it was about time I put another cetacean through the gauntlet. Hopefully I have covered ideas that arose last time before the event. Self nom. Pcb21| Pete 08:59, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• (not a vote) I'll vote after reading the whole article, but I have a question: why is the name Orca capitalised throughout the article, and why are there two plural forms used (both Orcas and Orca)? Jeronimo 09:10, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• • How embarassing - the last edit I made before nominating was to change all "Orcas" to "Orca" - I wrote the article uncertain to which plural was actually correct (both are used!) and used them both. Then I tidied up and nominated. Unfortunately the edit didn't take for whatever reason. I've just made the edit again. As for the first point, species names are capitalized in Wikipedia. Pcb21| Pete 09:20, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Irish fiction

Self nomination. Bmills 08:19, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• Object. 1) The image of Beckett has no source information. The paintings should also be dated, to make sure these are in the public domain. 2) The title is incorrect, IMO. This article is only about English language fiction in Irish literature, so the article's title should reflect both the English language and the literature (there may also be Irish fiction in film, and possibly other art forms). 3) Parts of the article look more like a list of authors - do we really need al these birth/deathdates and details on the lives of these authors? This article is about Irish fiction; most of the details of their lives are not particularly relevant for that topic. To place the authors in time, listing dates for their works seems sufficient. 4) The coverage of modern day fiction authors is rather poor. Not a single book title is mentioned. 5) Although some points are mentioned throughout the article, I miss a (brief) discussion of differences between Irish fiction and fiction from other countries, and Irish fiction in the Irish language. Are there any differences at all? 6) There are no references to works or sites on Irish fiction specifically. If such works do not exist, I would like to see at least one or two references to good books on Irish literature - surely these exist. Perhaps it is also a good idea to list the discussed works again, so that readers can easily find these works in the library. 7) There doesn't appear to be a good reason to let Irish fiction start in the 18th century - or at least this isn't explained very well. The lead section of the article actually seems to give a reason why Irish fiction should begin before Swift. 8) The current lead section is actually better suited as the first part of the article. I would like to see a lead section that briefly summarises the topic, mentioning the most important specific characteristics of Irish fiction and perhaps a brief mention of some of the best known exponents of Irish fiction. Jeronimo 09:03, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Freyja

Self-nomination. One link in red but I can nail the basics of the outstanding article (Egil's saga) fairly quickly since I am rereading it at the moment. We've done Odin in the past, about time we got some gender balance in the process :) Sjc 07:30, 24 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• The article is somewhat short. Each section (aside from the lead) has just one paragraph or two short paragraphs. I oppose on the grounds of length. -- Emsworth 13:42, 24 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Length isn't the problem, writing is. It needs more editing. Exploding Boy 16:27, Jul 24, 2004 (UTC)
• Object. 1) The lead section is way to long, while the rest of the article is short and doesn't use correct sectioning. 2) The writing is rather chaotic, listing "facts" about the deity in quick pace without a good "story line". 3) The naming of the goddesses is messy. I believe Frey and Odin are the more accepted English forms, even if the Old Norse forms are different. Mentions of Óðinn link to Odin. This should be straightened out, and since this is an English language encyclopedia, I think the English forms should be used. 4) Frey(j)a is the origin of the name Friday, but this isn't even mentioned. 5) The origin of the picture is given, but there isn't any copyright information. 6) She was a goddess, but little is mentioned about how she was worshipped. Jeronimo 09:51, 25 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • So what if it's the english language Wikipedia? he's writing about it in english, i find it quite nice to read that article with all those nice letters, especially ǫ which is no longer used, it gives a sort of nordic feeling to it, support -- Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 03:19, 2004 Jul 26 (UTC)
    • Poliy on this matter is pretty straight forward - use the name by which most english speakers recognize it. If this isn't it, then it needs to be changed, period. If it's not in agreement with policy, then it can't be a featured article. →Raul654 03:24, Jul 26, 2004 (UTC)
      • Et tu Mark? it must say i didnt see it comming. -- Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 15:46, 2004 Jul 26 (UTC)
        • Oh for God's sake, don't call him Mark too. He's Raul. We have several Marks already! As for the names, Raul (cough cough) is right. That said, the old Norse names should be mentioned somewhere, as I felt they significantly enhanced the article. [[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 16:33, 2004 Jul 26 (UTC)
          • How about in the text like now? -- Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 19:03, 2004 Jul 26 (UTC)
• One suggestion: the picture says it depict's Freyja in Richard Wagner's operas; but the text does not explain in which ones she features. Der Ring des Nibelungen is indeed probably the place most people will encounter this goddess; some note of this should be made in the text. Smerdis of Tlön 17:06, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Russian language

Self-nomination. I've tried to give an overall sense of the language without veering off into politics, military history, ethnography (well, a very little)... all the stuff that really should be dealt with separately. A. Shetsen 06:24, 24 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• I'm not a linguist, but it seems fairly complete. There are a few problems with writing here and there, so this is a weak objection. If someone with knowledge of Russian and/or linguistics wanted to do a quick edit I'm sure it would be ok. Exploding Boy 16:36, Jul 24, 2004 (UTC)
  • Could you be more precise? Which sentences do you object to? Otherwise, how can this be "actionable"? A. Shetsen 17:19, 24 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • Copy-editing your own text may or may not be valid, but, at any rate, I've gone over it, eliminating as many passives as possible, breaking up some of the longer sentences, and generally trying to simplify. A. Shetsen 19:14, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Objection. This looks pretty good, but I do have some problems with this article. It looks rather messy, mostly because of the notes (there should be a good wiki-way to include footnotes, I think), and the tables. I realise the note problem is not actionable, but the table problem could be fixed. Probably removing the borders for some tables (especially those with only one row) would make it less messy already. My second problem are the examples. These have little context, and I can only why these specific excerpts where chosen. If it is only to show how the language looks, one or two examples would be enough. If it is attempted to show the evolution of the language, some more context and annotations are needed. I would also very much like a sound sample of the Russian language. Jeronimo 10:03, 25 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • Tables. Are you objecting to their visual appearance, or to their use, period? I've removed the borders. Notes. Do you mean the three or four paragraphs in small print? They define the approach taken to various technical points. If Russian were written in the Latin alphabet, some of them would not be necessary. Originally they were in ordinary print. Do you think that would look better, since the notes would then be in the main flow of the text? Examples. Any language has its cultural context, acquired by native speakers largely in childhood, whether spontaneously or in school. The examples are all schoolbook illustrations of linguistic and cultural development. I've provided notes to each of them, mostly on linguistic points. Any attempt to comment on the culture must be done very carefully, because POV and ideology are involved, both on the part of the reader, and on the part of the writer, as seen in the text. Perhaps the latter POV/ideology should just be picked out by the reader. But I don't think we should pretend there's no cultural dissonance between native speakers of English and those of Russian. Dissonance is not conflict, by the way. Spoken examples. Which ones? What do you suggest? Songs, television broadcasts, recordings of text being read? Also -- I know the Wiki language template encourages audio examples. But I wonder about their utility to someone who is reading the article for a first acquainatnce with the language, and cannot understand it.
• As for the notes, I am indeed referring to the smallprint text, labeled "Note". But Wikipedia doesn't have a footnote syntax (that I'm aware of anyway). The tables are much better this way; this is much easier for the eyes to read. The example annotations are a good addition, I think. This is sufficient for me to remove my objection. I would still like one or more sound samples, but I don't really care what they contain. Perhaps it would be good hear one of the written samples spoken out loud, but any random sentence would be fine with me. Jeronimo 20:36, 25 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Order of the Garter

Self-nomination. -- Emsworth 21:03, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• Support.... but: (1) "Ladies Companions" could use a brief explanation where it first appears, because it looks like a spelling mistake, (2) the English meaning of the motto should be given where the motto first appears (this could be fixed by removing the first appearance and simply referring to "the motto"), and (3) do "sovereign" and "government" need capitalizing? Otherwise, bravo. Exploding Boy 16:47, Jul 24, 2004 (UTC)
  • I've clarified (1), and followed suggestion (2). "Sovereign," the noun, is capitalised, but "sovereign," the adjective, is not. When referring to "the Government," one refers to the specific body of British ministers (as in the article), but when referring to "the government," one speaks about the general political institutions of the nation. -- Emsworth 17:51, 24 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Support. Lord Emsworth has been doing a ton of edits to the British Honours sytem lately - bravo! --Zerbey 03:07, 25 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Postdated support. No offense to Lord Emsworth, but I feel that right now, thanks to the thorough and energetic rewriting he's recently given it, the page is basically the work of one writer -- better to feature the article once it's reentered the wikipedia collaborative community. So I vote to wait a month or so. Doops 06:01, 25 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Clarification in response to User:A. Shetsen: Sorry, perhaps I was unclear. I realize that featuring an article doesn't set it in stone; I merely meant that it seemed to me that it would be more worthwhile to feature the article once it's receieved the benefit of collaboration. Give Lord Emsworth's improvements time to settle in before the article is thrust into the glare of public gaze. :)

Response to A. Shetsen: for my general reply to the notion that this is an "improper objection," see the discussion page. In this case, I protest that I am not objecting to featured status for the article! I'm just asking that it be postponed until other users have a chance to go over Lord Emsworth's work. This includes me -- there are a number of changes I'd like to see but haven't made yet, at first out of politeness to Lord E. (I didn't want to kill his momentum by interrupting him while he was so hard at work), and more recently because I just haven't gotten the chance to make them. But I suppose there was really no need for me to suggest a delay, since featured article nominations are supposed to have a built-in lag time of a week; and perhaps that's enough time for me, or anybody else who's interested in the article, to weigh in. So I'm sorry for bothering you all. Doops 22:10, 25 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• Support. The article is excellent. BTW, can Doops' objection possibly be in order? Even featured articles can be edited, so says the policy. Sigh. A. Shetsen 06:33, 25 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Response to Dopps. You raise a point further argument of which will definitely be off-topic, but is important. Therefore, see the new Improper Objections section under discussion for this page. But as it applies to the present article, I cannot see what specific action can be taken to fix your, to put it bluntly, objection. A. Shetsen 06:53, 25 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Treaty of Devol

This is a self-nomination, of an article I worked on while I had no internet access (that's the best way to write :)). I know it needs a picture and/or a map, and I will continue to fix the prose a bit...it is a little shorter than other FACs, but I think it is detailed enough, it's certainly more info than is available elsewhere on the internet. Adam Bishop 20:28, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• A few things are needed.

1. A pic of either of the two signatories (or beter still, both) (or, even better than that, a map of Antioch's location--preferably old).
2. The article makes reference a couple times to traditional Western distrust/dislike of the Byzantines. Can we get a little background as to why this prejudice existed and what exactly the Westerners did think of the Byzantines?
3. I'd like a definition of what's meant by "Westerners", for those of us who aren't up on the Crusades.

Thanks a lot, and I'll support once some of these issues are addressed (if no pic is available, I understand). [[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 20:39, 2004 Jul 23 (UTC)

I found a pic of Alexius I, and an old map of Asia Minor and the Crusader states...I can't find any more relevant maps, or any pics of Bohemond or Tancred. I have also expanded it a bit, hopefully clarifying the origins of the conflict between the Crusaders and Byzantines. Let me know if it needs to be more clear. Adam Bishop 19:43, 24 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• Support. Nice article. [[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 17:12, 2004 Jul 25 (UTC)

• Support. Good article. One question: Bohemond I of Antioch redirects to Bohemund I of Antioch. Which of these is the name commonly used in English language? Jeronimo 20:42, 25 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • On the internet "Bohemund" appears to be more popular (and all of our prince of Antioch articles use that spelling), while in scholarly sources "Bohemond" seems to be more usual. Adam Bishop 01:30, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• Support. Impressive! Lupo 20:55, 25 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Support, I think it's quite good. Everyking 20:58, 25 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Support. Geoff/Gsl 06:52, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Yesterday (song)

This article is quite short compared to most other featured articles, but I think it's extremely good compared to other articles on songs such as YMCA, The Sound of Silence or Hotel California. If this article was on something else and of the same length, I wouldn't support/nominate it, but for a song article, this goes into quite a bit of detail on the song's origins, etc. An excellent example of what other articles about songs should be. Johnleemk | Talk 13:54, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)

A slight self-nom as I made a couple of edits to this article a month or two ago. Johnleemk | Talk 14:10, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• Almost there. A few things, however: (from [[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 14:16, 2004 Jul 23 (UTC))
  • The other members didn't think this sounded like them--in what way? Could you be a little more specific? If I hadn't heard the song, this would be unclear.
  • Not an objection, but what two songs beat it out on the BMI list?
  • Is there any way to describe the song's sound--for example musical notes or something of that sort? I don't know enough about music to say.
• Support. I think it would be good to have a few featured articles that weren't 50 kb of text. If somebody with musical training wanted to expand the bottom section, they would be welcome, however. [[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 16:06, 2004 Jul 23 (UTC)

• Change to support. It's a really good article right now, although the synopsis of the lyrics at the end is almost so simplistic as to be condescending. I'm going to object at this point, although I do like the article.
  1. The article is really short. Most of the length of the article comes from the alternate lyrics section, which should probably be in Wikisource or something.
  2. The article does not have standard TOC formatting that is usually present on featured articles. It needs a lead in section and some divisions.

  -DropDeadGorgias (talk) 14:58, Jul 23, 2004 (UTC)

  • I've fleshed the article out, doing the best as I can (Meelar's third objection was rather hard as I have nearly no musical training; I had to take some material from Alan Pollack's analysis and rewrite it). What do you guys think now? Johnleemk | Talk 15:59, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• I think it's... ok. I hate to damn with faint praise, but I just don't think the writing is spectacular. Exploding Boy 16:12, Jul 23, 2004 (UTC)
• (not a vote). Maybe a stupid question, but would a - say - 10-second excerpt of the song fall under fair use? Jeronimo 20:22, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • Yes - probably more than that too. →Raul654 20:25, Jul 23, 2004 (UTC)
    • In that case, I object, since I think an article about a song needs a sound sample. Jeronimo 09:51, 25 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Object, needs to go into more detail in practically all areas. --[[User:OldakQuill|Oldak Quill]] 20:27, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • What do you think of it now? I've added quite a bit more — at least four paragraphs worth of material. The intro has been fleshed out, and it's more relevant now. There's more background on the song in the "Origins" section. There's also quite a bit more mention of just how much the song was played (I honestly had no idea it was that popular back then), spread out over the article. Johnleemk | Talk 07:01, 24 Jul 2004 (UTC)
    • According to User:OldakQuill, he/she will be away till 10 August. This article's nomination period ends on 7 August. How can this objection be handled further? Johnleemk | Talk 09:02, 25 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Object on grounds of the name of the article; there are plenty of other Yesterdays which will need dealing with e.g. the novel Yesterday (novel) by Maria Dermoût. Should be renamed something like Yesterday (Beatles song)
  • Moved to Yesterday (song). I don't think there are any other famous songs titled "Yesterday" — certainly, the majority of people when looking for a song named "Yesterday" will be looking for this composition, so I think where the song is as of my move is just fine. Johnleemk | Talk 07:32, 24 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • Yes, that will do fine until someone writes another song called Yesterday. Sjc 07:34, 24 Jul 2004 (UTC)
    • Um...is that veiled sarcasm or something? :p Noticed you're still objecting, though, so I presume that was sarcasm. Undoubtedly there are quite a few "Yesterday"s out there unrelated to this song, but until they're as well-known as this song, yeah, this title will do just fine. "Yesterday" probably won't be knocked off any time soon by another song of the same title any time soon, IMO. Johnleemk | Talk 07:57, 24 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Support. While a sound clip would be nice, I like the article as it stands. It's interesting and informative, and while it may be short relative to other feature articles, I think it important to remember this article is about a song, not a political movement or a historical figure. Denni☯ 19:41, 2004 Jul 25 (UTC)

Enigma machine

Excellent article. I learned a lot about the Enigma machines from it, and I was extremely surprised it hasn't achieved featured status yet. Detailed, but not so detailed that you're ultimately bored — and quite interesting too. Johnleemk | Talk 13:54, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• Support. With qualms. This article is currently under review by several regular contributors to the crypto corner. jwr made an invited non-specialist review of it (see Talk) and his comments will be implemented, Real Soon Now. I agree that it is (almost) a feature quality article, and expect that it will be still more so quite shortly. Say in the next week or so. ww 14:21, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• Support. This article is really interesting. - DropDeadGorgias (talk) 15:01, Jul 23, 2004 (UTC)

• I think it's a very good article, but I have a couple of very minor objections: 1, the writing style occasionally becomes a bit too chatty and informal in parts, and 2, there are an awful lot of brackets. I tend to use brackets a lot as well, but I found it rather distracting when reading this article. With those things cleaned up a little I'd support. Exploding Boy 16:16, Jul 23, 2004 (UTC)

• • I've tried my best to remove some brackets here and there. I'll see what I can do about the writing style tomorrow. Johnleemk | Talk 16:24, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Support. Excellent, detailed article. - Taxman 16:59, Jul 23, 2004 (UTC)
• Support. An interesting story. Smerdis of Tlön 00:54, 24 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• Weakly object for the moment. This is already a good article, but I have some relatively minor areas for improvement: (1) some of the sentences are missing segues showing how the thoughts connect (I'll try to do some copyediting in the coming days), (2) the organization of the article as a whole is adequate but sometimes unclear, and moreover technical cryptanalysis gets mixed in with military history (I think the main issue is to add a paragraph at the beginnings of sections saying what's in the section), (3) some terms and concepts aren't introduced for those who are unfamiliar, e.g. the German term for the Navy, (4) I got lost in the Operation section; since Enigma is inherently complicated, this is not a fatal flaw, but a diagram would be nice, and it would be nice to have some kind of simplified view that gives the basic idea for less mathematically inclined readers who are interested in the history and high level cryptography but not the details, (5) Most of the "Disclosure" section is somewhat POV, e.g. WRT the Luftwaffe bombing of Coventry, it says that Calvocoresssi is better than Winterbotham, but not why; needs more sources or evidence. The article is good, but ideally could be improved before being featured. Zashaw 03:25, 24 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Colonial America

Vote this for a featured article because it deserves such an atribute. It is absolutely glorious, magnificent, fabolous, marvelous, gorgeous. OK this is too much but I couldn`t pick one word. :) [[User:Avala|Avala|★]] 13:40, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• Support. Exploding Boy 16:19, Jul 23, 2004 (UTC)
• Object for now. The article is great, but the section on the Middle Colonies is ridiculously short, especially considering the truly stunning writing and detail given to the rest of the areas. [[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 16:21, 2004 Jul 23 (UTC)
• Object. 1) The title is misleading and incorrect. This is not about Colonial America as a whole, but only about the Colonial period of the North American east coast (mostly what is now the US), and specifically about those colonies that later became the "13 colonies". Apart from that, there appears to be virtually nothing about French, Dutch and Swedish settlements in these areas, it's mostly about the British who settled there. 2) The only picture is actually bigger in the article than on the image page (technical goof-up?); some more pictures would be nice. 3) The real section is rather weird. There are two section headings below each other, but there's only one sub-section anyway. It ends with a list of "acts", which seems to be placed there are random. 4) While the web-references are ok, there are no book or magazine references. Jeronimo 20:05, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Agree. The article should be moved to a better title, perhaps something like "British Colonial America" or maybe "Colonial era history of the United States" (?). Surely we can make a less ambiguous title, as the article has nothing to do with, say, New Spain and the rest of Colonial America. -- Infrogmation 16:50, 24 Jul 2004 (UTC)

El (god)

NOT a self-nom. A fascinating article. Neutrality 04:51, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• Object. Writing style seems to change, very hard to read in some sections, generally could use cleaning up. Exploding Boy 16:22, Jul 23, 2004 (UTC)
• Object. What in the world is this and what is the significance of this name? Why does one translation of the name of such a universal concept as god have a separate article? Nothing in the intro makes that clear. There are hundreds of names in different languages for the concept of God. Why is this one important or different? - Taxman 17:03, Jul 23, 2004 (UTC)
• Object. Reads like a bad school textbook rather than an encyclopedia. It needs a picture (not sure what of though). It does have some potential, however. --Zerbey 17:09, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Object. This article is interesting and has potential, but syntactic errors need cleaning up, brackets need checking, and other housekeeping matters must be attended to. More importantly, a number of sentences need rewriting for clarity; while technically correct, they are wordy and confusing. Denni☯ 19:52, 2004 Jul 25 (UTC)

Cocaine

• Well written. Fascinating, IMO. blankfaze | (беседа!) 02:22, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • I have to strongly disagree with your assessment of the quality of writing, I'm afraid. I love drug articles, being a boring, vicarious-lived type person - but this article is full of poor phrasing. A couple of examples: "In 1856 Friederich Wöhler asked Dr. Carl Scherzer, a scientist aboard the Novara, an Austrian frigate sent by Emperor Franz Joseph to circle the globe, to bring him back a large amount of coca leaves from South America." (parse that one first time 'round), He proceeded to experiment on himself and upon his return to Milan he wrote a paper in which he described the effects of coca on himself (nasty chiming), It does tend to get better near the end, and I wouldn't normally whinge I would edit. However, I got in a bit of a mess trying: [1] and I don't seem to be at the height of my powers at present. --bodnotbod 11:36, Jul 23, 2004 (UTC)
• Object. Where to begin.
  • First, the chemical formula shouldn't be given where it is, because the top of the TOC cuts off the bottoms of the numbers. Then we have to read through side effects, health issues, isolation of, and popularization of cocaine before we ever really get to what it is.
  • This sentence: "In most cases, each purchase is about two grams for one day of smoking (after treatment with ammonia)" is difficult to understand. What, or who, is treated with ammonia and why?
  • The Cocaine as an anaesthetic section is two sentences long, and doesn't really explain anything.
  • There are some problems with tense, grammar and punctuation.
  • The section that talks about Coca Cola seems to contradict the content of the Coke article.
  • Some other problems with formal writing style.
  • Part way down the page there's a sudden name switch from cocaine to coke.

I'm going to stop here; I think that's plenty to be going along with. Exploding Boy 16:34, Jul 23, 2004 (UTC)

Bicycle

Seems like a decent article. (I just did some minor copyediting.) Gzornenplatz 01:32, Jul 23, 2004 (UTC)

• Object. 1) The "Variations" section is currently a list; this could do with reworking into a wordy form, making it into an informative discussion, and not just raw information. 2) The "history" section (and possibly the "Technical aspect" section) could use some subsections to make it easier to digest. — Matt 02:46, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Object. Could be an excellent article with a little work on writing style, and the term "bicycle" needs an explanation better than "hence the name." Exploding Boy 16:39, Jul 23, 2004 (UTC)
• Object. This article is a mess and incomplete. 1) The order of the sections is strange (what makes the "speed" section so important?), and there are several sections that quite small, opposed to the long historical and technical sections; this could be balanced better, several of the smaller sections could be shared under one section. 2) The history seems to stop at 1900, but there was plenty of cycle development afterwards. 3) The technical image has no source or copyright information. 4) The use of the bold font in the technical section is non-standard, and I think also not recommended in the WP:MOS. 5) The Variations section should either be spun off to a list article, or more information should be given. Also, a sentence like "And maybe at least one reference to a sports science article that explains how cycling is the most efficient form of human powered transport." indicates this article isn't finished yet. 6) Several of the "cultural" sections are rather vague and (implicitly) US-centric or western world-centric. This should give a better global perspective. 7) There's mention of racing bikes and Lance Armstrong, but not much about bike racing. 8) The article doesn't even mention that "bike" is used as a synonym for bicycle. 9) The web references seem random and many of them are hardly useful. 10) There are no book/magazine references. Surely there are some good books about the history or bikes, or technical works? I think there might be more, but this should be enough for now...Jeronimo 20:20, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Object. The bicycle in the illustration at the top looks sad and lonely. (In fact, the whole of Category:Cycling is a mess.) Gdr 15:58, 2004 Jul 26 (UTC)
• Object. Reading this article is like reading the English instructions on a Korean applicance. Typical sentence: [quote] The ICHC no longer distinguishes between a "first true" bicycle with pedals and any precursors, and regards as the start the two-wheeler principle which requires balancing and is the basis of cycling (and motorcycling). [end quote] When I started reading the article I thought I could polish it a bit, but a few paragraphs in I realised it would be Herculean labour. It looks well-researched enough, but the writing is abominable. --213.199.128.153 16:28, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Chilli pepper

Well-written and nicely illustrated. Covers the subject from many angles (etymology, history, botany, culture, cooking, chemistry and evolutionary biology) clearly and tersely. A model article. Gdr 00:50, 2004 Jul 23 (UTC)

• Very interesting article. The writing could still use a little work here and there though. Exploding Boy 16:43, Jul 23, 2004 (UTC)
• Object. Too short, specifically there is very little coverage of it's different uses in foods. Hot chocolate was originally made by indiginous mexican peoples with chili. Mole is a very common popular use of chocolate and chili in Mexico. Roasted chili peppers have an entirely different taste than raw. Also no coverage of the endorphin rush that intensely hot food can cause. I also edited the claims of the hottest pepper to hopefully NPOV. - Taxman 18:05, Jul 23, 2004 (UTC)
  • I added a paragraph about why people eat chillies, mentioning endorphins. I agree that there needs to be more about cooking. Gdr 12:26, 2004 Jul 25 (UTC)

Black hole

I have never edited this article, but it seems quite broad, well written, NPOV and interesting. So much in fact, that I'm surprised it is not featured already. - Taxman 23:34, Jul 22, 2004 (UTC)

• Support. Fascinating read and covers the most recent discoveries. --Zerbey 17:11, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Support. I'm not qualified to say if the science was right, though I'll take Zerbey's word for it, but very well-written. [[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 16:30, 2004 Jul 24 (UTC)
• (not a vote) Can we get some pictures showing suspected locations of black holes (say, from Hubble)? Also, can someone expand the lead section? Thanks. Dan Gardner 17:35, 24 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• (not a vote) Didn't Stephen Hawking say some of his theory on the black hole was wrong? Not sure how that fits in, but here it is. [2]
• Support. And it has a nice picture too. Hawking did recently announce a modification of his view of black holes as mentioned in the article above. However its a fairly subtle point relating to how information may be released from a black hole and resolves the Black hole information paradox. It looks like User:Stw has already updated the black hole article. -- Solipsist 10:46, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)

PaX

Originally nominated by User:Bluefoxicy on July 14. It has since changed so much it is virtually a different article; commentary had gotten to the point where it was unreadable. I have moved the old objections to the talk page and started it out as a fresh nom. →Raul654 23:02, Jul 22, 2004 (UTC) Object. Many good changes. My latest objection brought back in from talk page:

• All that is good stuff. Still nothing on W^X and whether PaX offers anything that isn't in OpenBSD by default, or at least how the approach differs and advantages/disadvantages. For a patch that is not in the main kernel and no likelihood of it, you've set a high bar for what the article needs to cover in order to be featured. Good work so far though. Just try not to get frustrated at criticism of your article. It is what can make it a great article. Besides, I'm not asking for 5 paragraphs. One or two concise ones would do. - Taxman 22:34, Jul 22, 2004 (UTC)
  • Heh, gimme a break here man.  :) W^X is OpenBSD, PaX and ES are both Linux. I think trying to compare with W^X may be a little out of scope; Exec Shield could actually be viewed as a competitor of sorts, whereas W^X could no more compete with PaX than PaX could compete with Windows XP SP2's NX code. Also, W^X and Exec Shield are similar technologies; but I know even less particulars about W^X than about Exec Shield (which I gathered my data about over e-mails with Ingo Molnar). --John Moser 22:54, 22 Jul 2004 (UTC)
    • No one said you had to write it, and it may be asking a lot, but I repeat, for a patch with no likelihood of getting into the main kernel, it is asking a lot for it to be a featured article. 10 paragraphs about what I am asking for would be out of scope. One or two concise ones would not be. To compare the major features of PaX with what else is out there that covers the same/similar territory. would be important. If PaX writers have no knowledge of what the OpenBSD people are doing, then perhaps a lot of reinventing the wheel is going on. That possibility and the other major approaches to what PaX does deserves mention in this article. - Taxman 23:18, Jul 22, 2004 (UTC)
      • "If PaX writers have no knowledge of what the OpenBSD people are doing, then perhaps a lot of reinventing the wheel is going on." Who's reinventing who's wheel? Reminder: PaX first showed up in October, 2000, after the Plex86 group brought a theory stemmed from an interesting observation about the x86 CPU TLBs to the public and asked for the community to investigate it. W^X showed up in May, 2003, with the release of OpenBSD 3.3. Also, OpenBSD's W^X is, from what I hear, similar to Exec Shield in implementation. I thought I heard somewhere that W^X doesn't have a floating code segment, but this doesn't seem technically possible in view of what it does; that's probably mismemorized crud in my brain. --John Moser 02:03, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)
      • I should also point out, last I checked, W^X is not well documented (not documented at all?). I have little if any information about W^X that I'm sure of. I don't know who to go to about it, and I can't back up *anything* I say about W^X. Now if you can show me the W^X documentation (see the PaX Documentation[3]?), maybe, MAYBE this becomes plausible for me to do. That doesn't mean that it's in scope; would you like me to compare with WinXP SP2 and Longhorn as well? Should I add a comparison to FreeDOS or ReactOS when they catch up and implement these for their systems? More pertenantly, why should PaX in particular be the center of information about all these, instead of just about PaX? --John Moser 06:53, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)
        • As for scope, if SP2 adds executable and memory space protections similar to PaX, then that too, would certainly be within the scope. Longhorn, not even being released, would just be speculative. It would be another approach to what PaX is offering. Again, I never said you need to go into incredible detail on how the other approaches work, just a reasonable overview of the differences/simlarities. A few sentences. Your zeal to get PaX featured no matter what objections come up is a little disconcerting. - Taxman 12:55, Jul 23, 2004 (UTC)
          • I've been handling the other objections, and I even bent to the pressure slightly and did an Exec Shield comparison. I'm telling you now, I can't do an accurate W^X comparison without extensive research (I had to go contact the ES developer for the ES one), and it's not well documented. I would have to do a lot of digging, possibly even dig through the code. I'd be stranded on secondary sources (or worse, my own conclusions based on the code, which i probably wouldn't understand), rather than primary sources in the form of documentation made by the developers. Maybe that's appropriate for writing an article, but for doing a comparison, I don't believe that a collective of tiny bits of information from all over the place would work. Also, should I duplicate the PaX / ES comparison in Exec Shield? The comparisons would probably be best suited for NX, if anywhere. --John Moser 21:47, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)
          • As stated above, I've moved the comparison to the NX bit article. --John Moser 22:37, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Comment: Would it be best to wait a little while first? The article seems to still be worked on and refined; perhaps we should wait a week until it looks pretty stable, maybe listing on Wikipedia:Peer review in the interim? WP:FAC isn't the right venue to generate articles of Featured quality.— Matt 23:24, 22 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Vulgar Latin

Mostly a self-nomination. I am curious whether other folks can follow it, and whether there is too much detail or not enough. Smerdis of Tlön 15:26, 22 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Support, a very thorough treatment of the topic, which is far beyond my meagre Latin skills to improve upon. There could be a couple of improvements though - the diagrams showing the vowel shift are rather space-consuming and ugly at the moment, perhaps a table might be a better way of conveting this information (sadly I lack the skills to make a decent table). This article could also go into a languages category, at the moment it is only linked to Ancient Rome, which is rather misleading. Lisiate 23:47, 22 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• Now that both my pints have been actioned my support is unqualified. Congratulations to all involved for an excellent article. Lisiate 21:07, 25 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Support, it's a very good article. Could you provide more on the final transition from Vulgar Latin into proto-Romance? That seems to be the only thing lacking in an otherwise excellent general treatment.68.148.211.161 03:07, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Object. This has a rather odd structure. Basically, the info in the 'History' section and the 'What is Vulgar Latin' section should be merged. The stuff in the History section just looks like an afterthought at the moment. Morwen - Talk 17:27, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• I have merged the sections, and added a bit of information about Late Latin being a written norm. Smerdis of Tlön 18:45, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • Reads much better know. One little thing - I understand Latin didn't use the definite article, but the daughter languages did. Had this happened in vulgar latin? Morwen - Talk 20:42, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)
    • I've also added a section on the (rather obscure) invention of articles in Romance. Smerdis of Tlön 21:53, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Agreed, the history section seems out of place. The whole article is about a historical language so the history section should either be expanded to be comprehensive or merged somewhere else into the article. With that, I fully support. Detailed and interesting. - Taxman 18:13, Jul 23, 2004 (UTC)

• Object - no lead section. --mav 10:51, 24 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • I have expanded and given a brief summary in the opening paragraphs. Smerdis of Tlön 18:54, 24 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Support. This article is scholarly and well-written. -- Cabalamat 12:34, 25 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• Support. I know absolutely nothing about Latin (and only a little about linguistics), but I was able to follow this excellent article. What would be helpful would be sound clips demonstrating such things as the vowel shifts; I have to admit that SAMPA is Greek to me. :) Denni☯ 20:16, 2004 Jul 25 (UTC)

Aryan invasion theory

(Uncontested -- 22 July)

Detailed, well balanced. I love it. Burschik 09:52, 22 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Object, for now, largely because of the title, which gives no inkling it is exclusively about the Indian subcontinent. In addition to the controversial theories about Aryan invasions in India, there at least used to be controversies about Aryan invasions in Europe. Marija Gimbutas is one of the last academics I'm aware of that accepts this theory. The belief that Europe was conquered or settled by Aryan invaders who displaced earlier people has had important political impacts (see Nazism), and continues to have literary and social consequences — today mostly because of the shared fantasy that Europe was once a peaceful utopia of Goddess worshippers who were overrun by "patriarchal" invaders. The history of these beliefs needs an article of its own, but it doesn't seem to be anywhere in the Aryan complex. Smerdis of Tlön 15:25, 22 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Well, if the title is your only objection, let's change the title. Burschik 09:40, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC) And for a (brief) discussion of the proposed Aryan invasion of Europe, see Indo-European. Burschik 16:06, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• Support. Support current name: the theory is well known by that name. Exploding Boy 17:00, Jul 23, 2004 (UTC)
  • If the rest of the world, or that small subset of 'em who care, understands "India" immediately upon hearing the words "Aryan invasion theory," I will withdraw the objection. Smerdis of Tlön 18:47, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)
    • On behalf of the rest of the world, I do. Markalexander100 10:43, 25 Jul 2004 (UTC)
      • No problem; withdrawing objection. Smerdis of Tlön 02:06, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • Not an objection: I see your point, but I saw it and thought "Nazis". They've cursed the word "Aryan" like they cursed the swastika. The explanation in the intro says what it's actually about well enough for me, though - David Gerard 19:38, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)

If Smerdis withdraws his objection, is this now uncontested? - Burschik 07:16, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• It would appear so. Smerdis of Tlön
• Also not an objection, but a picture would be nice. Maybe a map? Markalexander100 03:02, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Glass

• I'm surprised this isn't on Wikipedia:Featured articles already. --Eequor 19:33, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • Very good article. A few copyedits here and there are needed, but more pressingly: The "glass flows" issue has been discussed at great length in the alt.folklore.urban newsgroup, and the consensus there (supported by citations from glass experts) is not acceptable for a Featured Article. If there is evidence against glass flow, we should cite experts themselves, not secondhand through Usenet! If this is fixed, I'll support it. DanKeshet 01:03, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• A minor objection. "History" section jumps from the Roman Empire to 12th and 14th century with nothing in between. Surely there must have been continous inventions that let Venice archieve such a success. Revth 05:06, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • I've tried to bridge this glaring gap, but I'm no expert. Still needs a good copyedit. Bmills 08:53, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • Looks great. Will try to add something myself, though it's probably going to be sometime in next week or so. I don't mind having it featured as it is. Revth 09:47, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• mmm, some dodgy parts, stylistically. Overall pretty good, but could use a bit of tweaking here and there, and some of the more obscure scientific terms (such as in the first paragraph or two) should be explained. Exploding Boy 08:36, Jul 20, 2004 (UTC)
• Re: toughened glass and laminated glass - there's no mention of a specific issue I've heard of. With large plates of toughened glass used for walls and ceilings, is there not an issue with "catastrophic failure"? A bad batch will just suddenly shatter one day, or one by one over a few days? I had heard of this as a reason for laminated glass - a form of backup. Is this nonsense or is it something that should be included - I don't know any facts bar what I've described. Zoney 14:22, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Kitchen

• How can this be improved? (Largely a self-nomination.) Lupo 14:15, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Strong support! My only slight nitpick might be a tad more focus on later sociologial impacts. How, for example, did the kitchen figure in feminist movements? Seriously, this is just quibbling; excellent article. [[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 14:51, 2004 Jul 19 (UTC)
• Neutral. Focused entirely on American and European kitchens which, while not something to oppose of, is quite lacking in depth. As far as I know, ancient Egyptians who built pyramids had well equipped kitchens that served workers. Why not start from there? Revth 16:23, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)

  Love to—got me any secondary sources? I don't have any, which is why I didn't write about it. Same goes for African or Asian kitchens: they're not mentioned because I have no information on their history and in what way they would differ from those I am familiar with, namely European and North-American kitchens. Lupo 16:56, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)

  It was on a TV show directed with a supervision by Professor Sakuji Yoshimura who studies the ancient Egypt culture. In an archeological dig, he found a village of workers who worked to make pyramids and found some evidences of kitchens that served them. His website is here.[4] and it lists dozens of sources under "Ancient Egyptian Quarries", though I'm not sure which one has informations usable for this article. For Asian kitchens, I will try writing something about them. Also, I'll list some more suggestions on discussion page because it's going to be bit long. Revth 23:57, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)

  I looked at your extlinks on the Eqyptian quarries, but I didn't see anything at all that would be useful for this article. Maybe I didn't look in the right places? If you do write something about Asian kitchens, that'd be great. Lupo 10:57, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)

  Added some info on the early history of Japanese kitchens. Will try diversify some more. Lupo 13:20, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• Support. 81.168.80.170 17:54, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Comment: The article could use full-sentence captions (see Wikipedia:Captions for ideas and background). -- ke4roh 23:35, Jul 19, 2004 (UTC)

  Changed some of the captions, but others already are good enough for me. Lupo 10:57, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• They're a little better, but the captions can do much more if they give a little bit more information and draw the reader into the article. They seem less choppy and offer more information as full sentences. Please see Wikipedia:Captions and Wikipedia_talk:Captions for the full discussion. -- ke4roh 13:02, Jul 21, 2004 (UTC)

  More caption changes done (together with Ke4roh). Lupo 13:22, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• Oppose. This is a very good article, one of our better ones. It contains a lot of good information from a few different perspectives. But ater a first reading, there are many things that jumped out at me: 1) There are a bunch of places where the language needs copyediting. "Technization" is not a word. "Worker class" is jarring. ("Working class" is more normal.) Why "waste" space for a fully equipped kitchen in a separate room if it had only cursory uses to "nuke" frozen meals? seems overly chatty. There are many sentences that are awkward gramatically. Exclamation marks reveal more about the expected reader's reaction than they do about the content. I may copyedit it, but only for the most glaring things. 2) I don't know what can be done about this, but I got lost reading it. This might be a good place for a timeline. DanKeshet 00:28, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  1. I see you changed (some of) what you perceived as "awkward" yourself. Other than that, I fear this objection is not actionable for me: English is a second language for me, and how am I to know what others might consider "awkward"? (Also changed "Technization" to "technicalization", which at least is an existing word.)
  2. I am surprised you got lost reading it. After all, the history section of the article is organized roughly in chronological order. I don't think a separate timeline is necessary. In fact, it might even be misleading because often a particluar innovation cannot be pinpointed to a precise date. Still worse, different kitchen types often coexist (sometimes for centuries). Lupo 10:57, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • • Hi Lupo, I figured English wasn't your first language, but didn't want to say it in case it offends. I understand that the objection isn't actionable by you, but me and some others can go over it and try to change the things that sound a bit awkward to a native speaker. I think that after that is done, the "getting lost" won't happen as much. It's easy to get lost when you're distracted by the language. But, again, thanks for adding it. I will continue to make some changes mostly to the language and I hope others will too. DanKeshet 21:00, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Object. Far too western. They have kitchens in other parts of the world too, some of them places with histories stretching back thousands of years. The western kitchen is only one type of kitchen (and the caption "a typical modern kitchen" sufferes from the same western point of view). Exploding Boy 03:13, Jul 20, 2004 (UTC)

  You wouldn't have any pointers to secondary sources on kitchen types and the history of the kitchen in other parts of the world, would you? BTW, the caption never said anything about "typical", just "A modern kitchen", which looks pretty inconspicious and unbiased to me. Lupo 10:57, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)

  • I agree with Exploding Boy. Perhaps the article could be moved to Kitchen (Western) or some more elegant title? Covering the history of Chinese, Egyptian and myriad other kitchens in one article seems like a tall order. Lupin 07:11, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • A same argument came up on what to do with Science fiction on television. I think the best thing to do is have a general summary on the topic and then like a history section, have a short paragraph or two on each region and have a link to articles divided by regions. That way, an article wouldn't become too long or confusing. Revth 09:29, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)

    Maybe. However, covering some of the developments in otehr regions should be possible; actually, I expect to find a lot of similarities that would ultimately allow to treat the period in relatively general way. For the time being, I've just added some facts on the early history of Japanese kitchens (a promising article that Revth has started in response to this discussion). Will try to find more. Somebody has good links about Chinese and Indian kitchen history? Lupo 13:20, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• Oppose. The lead section is too short. -- Emsworth 14:39, 22 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • Sheesh. It was longer when I nominated the article (see this revision), but DanKeshet may have shortened it too much. Lupo 20:04, 22 Jul 2004 (UTC)
    • Intro redone. Lupo 12:50, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Support. Very nicely done -- Chris 73 | Talk 07:10, 25 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Sarajevo

In the space of a few months, this has gone from an atrocious mess to, in my opinion, one that would easily be worthy of Featured Article status. Ambivalenthysteria 10:37, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• Actually I nominated this yesterday or day before but someone deleted whole nomination with votes! Anyway about the images-AsimLed deleted all images and said he will upload new ones much better very soon.--[[User:Avala|Avala|★]] 14:01, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• I can`t find out who deleted the nomination! [[User:Avala|Avala|★]] 14:09, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• This was my reaction before the nomination was deleted, the image objection is probably invalid now:
  • Object. Nearly all of the photos and images have no source information at all. Several are probably taken by the person who uploaded it, but some are likely copyright violations. I'm also confused by the info-table. Is this article about the city, or the canton (or both)? And what on earth are Općinas? The lead section is a bit overloaded with information, but could be rewritten into several paragraphs or so. Jeronimo 17:17, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • Your objections are not standing anymore. Check the article. --[[User:Avala|Avala|★]] 16:26, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)
    • Actually, most of them still stand. The pictures are dealt with, but I'm still unclear about the other issues. The table shows a map of regions (cantons?), not cities. I have still no clue wat Općinas are (neighbourhoods?). If this is something we are supposed to know, there should be an link to the article about Općinas. The lead section still needs some refactoring. As new remarks, I would like to see at least one picture (which should be coming shortly) and some book/magazine references about Sarajevo. Otherwise, this is a great article, very close to featured status. I'm confident it will be featured soon. Jeronimo 18:05, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)
      • An Općinas is the smallest level of government - basically, a municipality. (see [5]). I'll see what I can do about rewording that section, the lead and the book references. If I can deal with these, would you be prepared to overlook the lack of another picture until AsimLed gets the chance to take care of that? Ambivalenthysteria 09:19, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)
    • I notice some pictures have been added, but they appear to be copyrighted. They are "Courtesy of Mr. Ben Hays, brhphoto.com", but that doesn't tell us if these picture are released under an appropriate license or not. I'm adding this issue to my objection. Jeronimo 06:40, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • The city of Sarajevo consists of 4 Municipalities, territories that are somewhat the Bosnian equivalent of the United States’ counties or New York City’s boroughs. The Bosnian word for them is "Općina". is now in the article. Hope it is explaining everything.
• Now there's only one photo, and its source is marked. I'll support. However, that one image needs a caption; also, more images would be nice. What I'd really like, however, is for someone to assure me that this won't become the focus of ethnic edit warring. [[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 14:24, 2004 Jul 19 (UTC)
  • AsimLed promised new images very soon.[[User:Avala|Avala|★]] 14:29, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • Just for the record, Meelar - I've had this on my watchlist for several months, and I don't think I've ever seen an edit war here. It was just a neglected mess, not a disputed article. Ambivalenthysteria 09:11, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)
    • Okay. Thanks. I realize now that I could have checked the history, incidentally. Best, [[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 16:03, 2004 Jul 20 (UTC)
• Support.[[User:Avala|Avala|★]] 14:29, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Support. This article is decent, but I would like to see the intro paragraph streamlined, and some of the less central information in that introduction moved down to some of the sub-sections. - DropDeadGorgias (talk) 14:30, Jul 19, 2004 (UTC)
• Object strongly. Bosnian Serbs are depicted as "agressors" and there are numerous other POV issues (starting from the fact that the map of B&H doesn't display entities and continuing from there on). Nikola 11:14, 24 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Object. 1) The "Goverment" section gives too much detail that will date quickly (if local politics in Sarajevo is like most places in the world); I would suggest trimming this section, and only mentioning, say, the mayor as an individual person in office, and give an As of 2004 link. 2) Is it possible to acquire / make some maps depicting the various neighbourhoods and municipalities? It's hard to get a grip of the layout from the text alone. — Matt 02:59, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Pac-Man

A really nice, full and interesting article on a true cultural icon. My only contribution was to cheer up one of the sentences a little. --bodnotbod 01:41, Jul 19, 2004 (UTC)

• Good article, but the Trivia, Historical Events and Legacy sections neeed a little tweaking. There are some unclear points in all three sections: (1) Did the 8 year old boy really get a letter from Reagan?, (2) the explanation of Pac Manhattan is a little unclear, (3) the part about "somewhat reverse engineering" the Atari version of Ms. Pacman could use work. I also corrected a couple of other mistakes. Exploding Boy 01:57, Jul 19, 2004 (UTC)

OK...

Point (1), there are not many references on the web, but it did happen - supposedly - in 1982. How does one decide if these refs are enough? [6]

Point (2) - I've rewritten the paragraph, how does it look now?

point (3) - I'm out of my depth. ;o) Any takers? --bodnotbod 22:41, Jul 19, 2004 (UTC)

• Support. This article has a lot of potential, but I see some areas for improvement: 1) Are those images free for use?, 2) To many red links, they should be consildated into the main article, new articles written for them or removed altogether, 3) No technical information on the original system (I'm working on it, there's a quick note of the processor information and I'll make sure I add more tomorrow), 4) Future improvement: I'd like to see some more information on the ports to other systems. --Zerbey 23:17, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• OK...

• 1) The screenshot: I've left a message on the contributor's Talk page to ask them to confirm that the image is kosher here. The cartridge shot has notes saying it is a pic taken by the user himself.

• That looks good, it was the main picture I was concerned about but it's probably fair use --Zerbey 03:14, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Yeah, I submitted the screenshot in question. I'm not a legal expert, so I'll explain the situation for someone that is: I took a screen snap of the Pac-Man game while playing it in the MAME emulator, thus creating a pixel-perfect image of the game. I uploaded it in PNG format, if I'm not mistaken, and put that in the Pac-Man article, replacing another that was a lower-quality photograph of an arcade game screen. What I don't know for sure is, does the fact that Namco owns Pac-Man and everything associated with it thus make the shot not free to use, or does that not really matter, since it's only a screencap? Gus 03:57, 2004 Jul 23 (UTC)

• 2) The red links are primarily to game sequels. This is already quite a long article, I feel that were anyone to write about those games we would quickly get towards too long an article and they would be given their own articles soon enough.

• Withdrawn --Zerbey 03:02, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• 3) Fair point. That's beyond my abilities, anyone able to help?

• I seem to recall reading a website about it, I'll see what I can do. --Zerbey 03:02, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• OK I found it, I'll add some information tomorrow --Zerbey 03:14, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• 4) Not so sure about that. It is such a universal game that it would have to be pretty broad - but I welcome input from others. --bodnotbod 02:45, Jul 21, 2004 (UTC)

I like it! Definately support. -Seth Mahoney 03:57, Jul 22, 2004 (UTC)

• Object. I enjoyed this article, but I think it could be improved before being Featured. 1) There's plenty of scope for more images in this article; they should be easy to get hold of, and they would certainly help: ideas include: screen grabs from clones, or Pac-Man eating one of the monsters, or a still from the cartoon or the cover of the single etc. 2) One image we really could do with is a close-up of Pac-Man. 3) Sections should be larger than one paragraph; could we merge "Arcade system information" and "Implementation" into something else? — Matt 02:29, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)

XSL attack

Self-nomination. Article about an attack that may (or may not) herald an early retirement for the Advanced Encryption Standard (and not about XML stylesheets...) — Matt 21:10, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• Object on the basis that it's too hard to understand. Links are great, but you need to explain some terms right off the bat. Even the lead section is unclear to those without prior/specialized knowledge. Exploding Boy 02:11, Jul 19, 2004 (UTC)
  • Agreed, but I think it can be fixed to the point that it is approachable enough to the average, well educated reader. That is the best an article on such a techical topic can hope for. Specifically I defined some previously un-defined terms in the intro. I think we'll have to put up with a longer than usual intro for an article this technical, in order to make it readable by more people. After the intro, the article could stand to have an even more specific discussion of the method itself. An example would be devine, but I would not object for the lack of it. - Taxman 17:42, Jul 19, 2004 (UTC)
  • Let's see if we can improve it. I think this is a difficult question that pops up in a lot of technical articles; exactly how much technical know-how can you assume? For example, in semigroup, you can probably get away with presuming that your reader knows what a group (mathematics) is; otherwise, they would be unlikely to be reading the article in the first place. If you don't make at least some assumptions, then you end up with hundreds of articles all burdened with duplicated definitions (and it makes it less useful for a specialist); on the other hand, if you define too little, then it becomes incomprehensible to a non-specialist. Personally, I think it's a good idea to make the lead section especially accessible, and to bring out the general relevance of the topic in a understandable-to-all way, but it's less necessary in the nuts-and-bolts parts of the article. — Matt 20:20, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Support. This is an inherently complex topic not reducible to simplicity in any potentially feasible WP article. This property is not a bar (eg, Attack on Pearl Harbor whose complexity is political and historical, not technical, but which is on the featured list even so despite its length). This article is clearly written and sensibly structured about obscure material; this alone qualifies it as a good WP article in my opinion. As a bonus, the topic is an important (if technical) one in a field of considerable relevance to most everyone. DRM relies on such techniques and will, it appears, be ubiquitous shortly. I note that the writing is not 'sparkling' in a literary sense, but this is not, I feel, relevant for such topics and has not been required for past WP featured articles. ww 14:06, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• (Not a vote yet) Matt, maybe this sounds ridiculous, but do you think it would be possible to show how the XSL attack works by means of a simple example? Of course not with a 128-bit block cypher, but with a much smaller one? If that would seem possible, I think it would greatly improve the accessibility of the article. Jeronimo 17:58, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • I've taken a class in crypto and I still found this article a bit complex. To a layman, I can see how it could be Byzantine. I think an example would help a lot. →Raul654 20:19, Jul 25, 2004 (UTC)
    • OK, fair comment; I can try and hack together an example, but I can't remember the details, only the gist, of the attack, so I'd have to wade through the relevant papers again. That could take a while (even Bruce Schneier notes that they're "dense and hard to understand"!), so I'm happy to let the nomination fail for now. — Matt 02:12, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Monopoly (game)

Quite a nice article with plenty of background detail. Possibly ending up a bit drawn out towards the end. But mostly I think it deserves feature status because Monopoly is a well known cultural icon. You don't tend to think of it as an encyclopedia article, but I suspect many people would be drawn to it if they saw it on the main page. -- Solipsist 11:26, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Pictures

The first list is featured articles that do not have a picture and hence would be problematic to put on the main page. Please add pictures and then move to the second list. GFDL or PD preferred — avoid fair use images where possible (they may not be fair use on the main page).

Tangentially connected pictures may also be suitable for the main page, even if they wouldn't sit well with the article itself. Use your common sense.

Articles missing pictures

• Anno Domini
• Computational complexity theory
• Computer security
• Donegal fiddle tradition
• Gram Parsons
• Have I Got News For You
• History of the English penny
• Illegal prime
• Indus Valley Civilization
• Lollapalooza
• Milgram experiment
• Negligence
• Not the Nine O'Clock News
• Palm Sunday Tornado Outbreak (image of too-low quality)
• Pattern welding
• Peer review
• Social history of the piano
• Vacuous truth
• Spamming (Can of spam is trademark violation)

These now have pictures

• Ackermann function - use pic of equation
• Adoption in Rome - done by a anon user Muriel G 11:08, 13 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Application programming interface - use UML lollipop symbol for an interface.
• ASCII (a lame one)
• Christianity
• C programming language
• Copyright
• Damascus steel
• Economics
• Éire
• Free will
• Freemasonry
• Greek mythology (about halfway down: Image:Perseus_slays_medusa.jpg)
• Irish poetry
• Irish theatre
• Japan general election, 2003
• Java programming language
• Jazz (still needs free image)
• Jim Henson (still needs free image)
• Korean name - use Image:Hangul_seong.png
• Madonna (singer) (still needs free image)
• Markup language (well, sort-of; suitable for main page? James F. (talk) 15:02, 14 Jul 2004 (UTC)) (don't see why not Lupin 00:37, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC))
• Menstrual cycle
• Mitochondrial Eve
• Peloponnesian War – unfortunately the picture is a copyright violation
• Portuguese language
• Quantum computer
• Quantum mechanics- use electron orbitals
• Radar
• Race - use tangentially connected picture Image:MLKJR.jpg - was removed again - Added composite image from FBI mugshots. -- Chris 73 | Talk 09:39, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Road transport
• Roy Orbison
• Schizophrenia
• Search engine
• Split infinitive
• Telephone exchange
• Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius
• Tuberculosis
• Vampire
• World Wide Web
• Charles Ives
• Algorithm
• Action potential
• Crime fiction
• Franks (image of too-low quality) - Added image of charlemagne
• Hebrew calendar