Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Lion

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

The article was promoted 17:10, 24 September 2007.

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Lions

Hey, I am nominating this article which has been coordinated by me but loads of others have chipped in. I believe it is comprehensive, has a lead summarising the article in 3 paras, is comprehensively referenced and the licencing for images is in order. The prose has been massaged by a few experienced copyeditors and is succinct (which it needs to be given the size of the article!). Drop my and let me know how I can improve it.cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 09:24, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Regarding the length, I'm thinking that we could consider spinning "captivity" and "behaviour/biology" into subarticles. Those are the two main sections whose lengths make subarticles workable. Some stuff from "Cultural depictions" might be movable to the subarticle too. It's a very busy section. I'll try to review an convert the untemplated references at some point. Circeus 04:36, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

This is tricky; luckily there is already a Cultural depictions of lions daughter article, though both sections you mention are already in a summary style as succinctily as I could make 'em. I'm wondering what could be trimmed without losing info. As a contrast for length, schizophrenia was a recently kept Featured Article, and Jerusalem a recent successful candidate, which are a little longer.cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 06:36, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

PS: My candidates for reduction would be the hybrid and man-eater sections.cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 06:38, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

PPS: I did think the images did a good job of breaking up the prose and making it a more enjoyable read (3 featured pix in one article - woo hoo!) cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 06:49, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Summary style is when you have or create a subarticle and shorten the section in the original article, such as when treatment of schizophrenia, or diagnosis of Asperger syndrome were split to separate articles. Circeus 14:45, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Been watching this article come together for some time now. Exhaustive...170+ refs...I checked about 2/3rds of them the other day and they appear to support the section cited. I'm not great at copyediting, but the prose looks fine to me. I see no reason to not support the promotion of this article. Nice work!--MONGO 06:40, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

• 'The article looks good, but I do have a few comments, mainly regarding prose:
  • "Today only eight subspecies are usually accepted..but one of these..is probably invalid" - yet the section "recent" chooses to include only seven. You should be clear about whether there are 7 or 8 accepted subspecies. (Hopefully cleared that up - officially it is still 8, though the Cape lion is doubtful - I have returned it to that bit)
  • "are genetically different only minimally.., but are markedly different from.." - this is difficult to read, I would rephrase this sentence (ok, done - could have made it "genetically much more closely related" but i don't think the shorter way I've done it is any more ambiguous, however change if you feel differently)
  • "Besides these subspecies there are also some prehistoric ones." - so there still are a few prehistoric lions? Better rephrase this one to something like "Several subspecies of the lion have been know to exist in prehistoric times". (done)
  • "the couple frequently copulate twenty to forty times a day" - frequently is redundant with "twenty to forty times a day" and copulate must be copulates (done)
  • "Widely seen in captivity,[116][117][118]" - three references for such a obvious statement seems a bit excessive (done)
  • "They are considered an ambassador species" - the term "ambassador species" needs explanation (all it means is a key exhibit, I'll think of a good way to reword it)
  • more might follow later --Cpt. Morgan (Reinoutr) 09:38, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
    • That sure were quick fixes, well done. I'll have another close look at the article in a few days, but it looks very promising. --Cpt. Morgan (Reinoutr) 10:51, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, all input appreciated. It turned out to be a pretty long article (see note above), so I'm not surprised if folks need a bit of time to digest it :) cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 10:55, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

• Support. I made some additions here and there, mostly relating to captivity, but I can't fault anything with the rest of the article. Circeus 18:41, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
• Support - I'm not sure if I am impartial enough to comment here, but I really feel that this deserves featured status. -- Anonymous Dissident^Talk 01:56, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
• Oppose→Support - Great scot Cas, you've done a brilliant job! However, as per most times, there's a few things which need to be cleared up... 1) There are a few short paragraphs which should either be deleted, merged or expanded. They are in the "Naming and etymology", "Mane" and "In captivity" sections. 2) The picture "Lion pair2.jpg" is in the wrong place and hangs down over the following subheading - It should be moved to the top of the "Reproduction" section. 3) The paragraph at the bottom of the "Man-eaters" section - "The "All-Africa" record of man-eating generally is considered to be not Tsavo, but the lesser-known incidents in the late 1930s through the late 1940s in what was then Tanganyika (now Tanzania). George Rushby, game warden and professional hunter, eventually dispatched the pride, which over three generations is thought to have killed and eaten 1,500 to 2,000 in what is now Njombe district." - is unsourced and since it makes a fairly significant statement in regard to the section, it needs to be sourced. 4) I'd like to see the "Notes" section renamed to "Footnotes", since this seems to be more common, but please correct me if I'm wrong. So yeah, once these are cleared, I should be able to support. Cheers, Spawn Man 04:19, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

(OK, tweaked all - hope maneless para is long enough now - but have to run. Will find Rushby ref a bit later)cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 04:50, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Changed to support above↑ - I changed the notes thing, so that means everything has been completed! You truly have done an excellent job Cas - Personally, I never thought you could get it as great as you've gotten it. Anyway, I can now give me full support. Wonderful job Cas; you're really racking on the FAs now eh? Spawn Man 08:16, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

• Support, although I still would like to see an explanation of the sentence ""They are considered an ambassador species", as it does not define what they are an ambassodor for (Africa? Wildlife?). --Cpt. Morgan (Reinoutr) 12:25, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
• Support obviously! It's only fitting that the King of the Beasts should be the King of the Animal FAs. (A word of caution: I'd encourage FAC not to mandate this level of comprehensiveness on all animals!) Casliber, I dare you to try tigers next. A stream of IP addresses have been warring over what species of tiger weighs the most for months, if not years. --JayHenry 17:21, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
• comments
  • Can this sentence be stated in a clearer way? It also switches between lion/pantera leo. "The oldest fossil record of a cat closely resembling a lion is known from Laetoli in Tanzania and is perhaps 3.5 million years old; some scientists have identified the material as Panthera leo. "
  • What is "zoon material"? (I didn't put that in - I figure its a typo for zoo and have left a note for Circeus well I'll be..you learn something new every day. This might come in handy playing scrabble one day ;) )
    • It was both a typo and an actual word,for the record. Circeus 21:56, 22 September 2007 (UTC)
  • "The male lions reach maturity at about 3 years of age and are capable of taking over another pride at 4–5 years old." - What about females? (good point. now entered, though if you can see a better place please move. Tricky as it is a bit isolated)
    • Hrm I see that whole paragraph is pretty much about males. I think the sentence is ok where it is.
  • "Females form a social unit in a pride and will not tolerate outside females." If males aren't allowed in and females aren't allowed in, how do prides form? (dunno how the first one formed way back when...see below)
  • Maybe a better question: How do prides form? Are females stolen from other prides? Are females"captured" or do they willingly form prides with lone males? (female membership is matrilineal - hope the extra sentence helps. I can elaborate more)
    • The sentence you added now excludes males taking over a pride :) I think taking a look at all the pride related sentences and consolidating into a paragraph might be the way to go. I think it's a unique and important part of Lion-ness that it should be well described. Also the pride sentence in he intro has different material than the body.
  • Are there any freely available lion sounds or video? (I haven't looked into this before on WP for any article but sounds like a good idea)
  • Is there any speculation about why the population declined after 10,000 YA? (There is speculation it was because of loss of megafauna. I have put it in)
  • Man eating lions should probably be a sub-article and shortened up a bit (sounds of much squirming) am considering that - is it a deal-breaker for you? I can cope with brutal honesty..)
    • Ok keep it, culture is much longer, and the article is under 100k.
  • Stray sentence - "The word aslan is Turkish for lion." ...(yeah, does stick out a bit - moved to subarticle)
  • The Barbary lion project seems to be dead Barbary_Lion#The_Barbary_Lion_Project. Is it still worth mentioning? Is it worth listing out the still existing lions? (Tricky. I feel that although the project looks dead for the time being it's still noteworthy that some of this subspecies may have survived in captivity. Would be great to get a reference for current status and I'm looking as we speak.)
  • Overall it looks pretty dang good. I'll probably re-read tomorrow and look for more stuff to tweak.
• support great job Casliber and everyone else. I've been around seeing the last few weeks of edits and I think it's in great shape. --Cody Pope 03:25, 22 September 2007 (UTC)
• Support as good as the jaguar and cougar articles. igordebraga ≠ 22:48, 22 September 2007 (UTC)
• Support. I have Professor David McDonald's The Encyclopedia of Mammals, and the Lion entry is terrific, but nowhere near as comprehensive as Wikipedia's article (it's 8 pages compared to the roughly 24 pages on Lion; McDonald has no section on hybrids or etymology, but has a longer section on vocalizations). There appear to be no errors, and I went over the grammar myself. Great job, Circeus, AnonDis, Casliber, Claoquot, Altaileopard, and all others involved. Firsfron of Ronchester 00:07, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.