Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/London/archive1

London

A Great article for a Great City. Worthy of FA status. Mercenary2k 08:24, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Comment It clearly needs more citations - 3 just in the opening text. -86.132.122.240 16:53, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Object Needs many more in-line citations (and just removing the tags is not sufficient). Also, many of the existing citations have insufficient information (e.g. publisher, date accessed, date information published, author, etc.) --Paul 02:16, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

Ref #38 "Football (from London), Encyclopædia Britannica" should be replaced if possible. References from tertiary sources are not desirable.--Paul 19:54, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Pictures could use a bit of work:

• Buckingham Palace is unrecognizable in the nighttime image covered with the projected flag,
• Picture of London skyline from the South Bank is a poor picture & surely something better can be found to illustrate "Districts"?
• The Millenium Dome and an artists rendering of a future skyline are the best pictures to illustrate the "built environment?" How about St. Paul's and the Lloyd's building?
• Perhaps the Millenium Dome picture can move down and replace the London Eye one?
• What is St. Paul's Cathedral (not a very good pix) doing in Demographics?

--Paul 17:16, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Are all of these "See also" entries really necessary? Can't some of them be incorporated into the text as wikilinks & others consolidated?

• 2012 Summer Olympics wikilink
• 7 July 2005 London bombings wikilink
• Agriculture in London is this a joke??
• Greater London wikilink
• Hotels in London wikitravel
• Infrastructure in London wikilink
• List of churches and cathedrals of London
• List of heads of London government
• List of films set in London need a London in popular culture list/article
• List of places in London
• List of songs about London need a London in popular culture list/article
• List of television shows set in London need a London in popular culture list/article
• London in fiction need a London in popular culture list/article
• London markets
• London postal districts
• London slang
• Mayor of London wikilink
• Parks in London
• Photographs of London seems like an unneccessary article altogher (Wiki is not Flikr)
• Subterranean London wikilink
• Tall buildings in London
• Tourism in London wikitravel
• Transport in London
• Walking in London (move to Tourism in London)
• Large Cities Climate Leadership Group This is about London?

--Paul 21:45, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Article is also in need of copyediting to get closer to "brilliant prose." Example:

Today, "London" usually refers to the London region of England, which is co-terminous with Greater London. At the heart of the conurbation is the small, ancient City of London which was historically the entirety of the city.

Usually? "co-terminous"? "conurbation"? "historically the entirety of the city."? This is stilted and padded and needs editing, & as pointed out elsewhere, this entire "whither London?" section needs to be incorporated into Geography or Demographics. --Paul 18:25, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Support Stuffed with great images, and informative, concise prose. Get's my vote every time. Kingfisherswift 09:55, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

Also Supporting This is a much more in depth article than other "nominees". It doesn't matter about the citations as much as other people are making out it does. Especially on an article about a city. I will support this all the way.

Object. I agree that citations are wholly inadequate. There are also some other issues I have with its format.

• "Defining London" is unencyclopedic. Merge this with Geography or Government somehow.
• History goes awfully fast from 1097 to 1600s, and could use older drawings or pictures rather than modern photos.
• Poor grammar in places. I counted a few sentence fragments, and the last para in the lead is a run on sentence.
• Personally I think the "twinnings" and "film and literature" section are essentially trivia and could be removed. I understand others will likely disagree, but at the least they should be reduced somehow.
• No information about cost of living, crime rates, or relative population of minority groups. " more than 300 languages spoken and 50 non-indigenous communities with a population of more than 10,000 living in London" is essentially taken verbatim from the source. I would like more information on where immigrants come from.
• Why is there a photo of Buckingham Palace in the "Geography and Climate" section?
• Nothing on the punk scene? LIke it or not, it's an important cultural contribution that London made to the world.--DaveOinSF 18:36, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

Object. Much of this reads like a superficial tourist guide, with rather little about London's economy, standard of living, problems of overcrowding, pollution, shortage of affordable housing &c&c. Some of the sections that have been hived off into subarticles feel to have left weak points. I agree with others about inadequate citations. Some specific points:

• The history section feels very superficial, and I agree with DaveOinSF that it could do with some period illustrations. There's a dilemma here because it already takes up a substantial fraction of the whole article, and to be honest, it might be better just to delete the section and refer to the specific article.
• An obvious omission is one or more maps.
• The photos concentrate on a few famous buildings/streets rather than give a sense of what it's like to live or work in the city. There are also a plethora of photos of the Houses of Parliament; it appears significantly in at least four. The picture of Bond Street is rather poor and certainly does little to illustrate how busy London can be as a shopping centre.
• I disagree with DaveOinSF about the film and literature section, which I think needs expansion, not contraction. The section on literature/film might also be broadened to include well-known representations of London in art and music.
• There's very little on architecture; some more of the prominent modern buildings should be mentioned.
• The Proms should be mentioned somewhere.
• Could do with a copy edit & proofread. The first sentence of Built environment section is cut off. There are several instances of missing full stops, eg end of National government section. The figure legends randomly have full stops at the end/not. Espresso Addict 00:14, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Comment I agree with DaveOinSF regarding film and literature. These kinds of sections can readily degenerate into trivia and seldom add any true understanding of the subject. Does it help us to understand Half Dome to know that Ansel Adams took a famous photograph of it? Is our understanding of San Francisco advanced by knowing that the Presidio is mentioned in one of the Star Trek films as the location of the Star Fleet Academy? Is the London article well served by having "London's theatre district is here" be the sum total of the discussion of the extremely influential West End theater and drama district, while we take up space to learn that "The 1933 novel Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell describes life in poverty in both cities." (not the strongest sentence or observation)? And to suggest that the History section be removed from the article while the depiction in Film and Literature section is expanded, is beyond misguided.

I think the London article is quite good, and along with NYC it should be a FA. However, though people are willing to nominate it, no one seems willing to do the work to bring it up to standard.--Paul 16:42, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Reply. Just because a section can deteriorate into trivia doesn't mean it is trivial. A poorly written section can be rewritten as well as deleted. I feel strongly that one thing that differentiates London from many other more recently established cities is the weight of centuries of authors writing in it and about it &c.

Agree that the West End theatre district should be expanded.

As to the history section, I think there's a tension with the History of London article. The current section in this article is very superficial but expanding it to a non-Noddy level would take up a large fraction of the article, which presumably is why the History of London article was hived off in the first place. I don't have an easy answer. Espresso Addict 17:07, 19 September 2006 (UTC)