Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Paul McCartney/archive2

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 not promoted by GrahamColm 11:03, 5 May 2012 [1].

Paul McCartney[edit]

Nominator(s): — GabeMc (talk) 02:42, 29 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I am nominating this for featured article because this long neglected important article deserves our full attention. — GabeMc (talk) 02:42, 29 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. I removed the spaces around the em-dash in the lead; otherwise, I couldn't find anything to fix in the lead. Well done. - Dank (push to talk) 03:46, 29 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Sources comments: These comments relate to the first two columns of citations, though some of the points raised are more generally applicable.

Non-print sources, e.g. BBC, IMDB.com etc, should not be italicised. Use the publisher rather than the "work" fiels in the citation template
Why are citations 30 and 31 formatted differently?
Something wrong with citation 47?
Cit. 49: Surely a citation to an online source should have a link?
What is the format of the source in cit. 57?
Cit. 68 page no. missing
Cit. 81 links to a default page
Cit. 84: What makes http://www.jpgr.co.uk/p3113001.html a reliable source?
Cit. 86: The web address is not "mccartney.net". This looks like a tribute site rather than a high quality encyclopedic source.
Cit. 91: What information is being cited to theis online biography? Is this really the best biographical source for McCartney?
Cit. 110: Page ref?
Cit. 119: There is nothing in the source to indicate where this undated interview transcript has come from or to link it to the original. It's a typed transcipt - how do we know it's accurate (compare with 121 below)?
Cit. 122: Page ref?
Cit. 126: page no. missing

I will check out the others shortly. Brianboulton (talk) 15:41, 2 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your sourcing comments Brian, I believe I have fixed everything you mentioned above, through cite 126, with the exception of the 1984 playboy interview cites. I have an original copy of the magazine issue on order that should arrive any day now, and I'll double-check the text, and improve the sourcing when it arrives. Thanks again, I look forward to your further suggestions when time allows. — GabeMc (talk) 01:40, 3 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose from Cryptic C62. I strongly suggest that the author withdraw the nomination, as there are way too many problems in this article.

For starters, I'm disappointed to find that the lead doesn't seem to summarize the article at all, but is instead a collection of superlative trivia designed to convince the reader that McCartney is the coolest person in the universe:

"...most successful musician and composer in popular music history"
"...most influential and successful songwriting partnerships in the history of popular music"
"...greatest composer of the millennium"
"...more than any other song in the history of recorded music"
"...most successful songwriter in UK singles chart history"
"...one of the UK's wealthiest people"

Seriously, we get the point already. The lead should, ideally, contain some information from each of the main-level sections of the body; Childhood and Contact with fellow ex-Beatles are not represented in the lead.

What's worse, the body of the article itself is also riddled with single-sentence paragraphs, unsourced statements, and meaningless trivia (often all three at the same time):

"He is a keen football fan, supporting both Everton and Liverpool football clubs." meaningless trivia
"On 2 June 2010, McCartney was honoured by Barack Obama with the Gershwin Prize for his contributions to popular music in a live show for the White House with performances by Stevie Wonder, Lang Lang and many others." single-sentence paragraph
"In an interview in 2004 he stated that he no longer smoked marijuana; he also admitted to taking heroin, LSD and cocaine but said his drug use was never excessive." single-sentence paragraph
"In 2008, he donated a song to Aid Still Required's CD to assist with the restoration of the devastation done to Southeast Asia from the 2004 Tsunami." single-sentence paragraph, citation needed
"The day McCartney flew into the former Soviet country, he celebrated his 62nd birthday, and after the concert, according to RIA Novosti news agency, he received a phone call from a fan; then-President Vladimir Putin, who telephoned him after the concert to wish him a happy birthday." the trifecta of uselessness
"The minor planet 4148, discovered in 1983, was named "McCartney" in his honour." Single-sentence paragraph
"McCartney received his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on 9 February 2012, the last one of the Fab Four to receive the honor." Single-sentence paragraph, only instance of "Fab Four" in the article
"McCartney received the MusiCares Person of the Year honour on 10 February 2012." Single-sentence paragraph, meaningless trivia.

I also find it rather odd that Discography and Tours don't even contain summaries of the contents of the daughter articles. Perhaps this is standard practice for larger articles, but it just looks sloppy. I think that after the bushels of meaningless trivia are scooped out of this article, there will be plenty of space to put summaries in these sections (which, ironically, are among the few that the reader might actually care about).

There are also some problems with the sourcing:

What makes contactmusic.com (currently Ref 197) a reliable source? Also, this ref is incomplete.
What makes everyHit.com (currently Ref 209) a reliable source?
Why is the sidebar of this catalog page used as a source (currently Ref 51)? If she's notable enough to be mentioned in the article, surely she must be notable enough to be described in a non-self-promotional piece of writing somewhere, right?
"Sir Paul McCartney's agent was Hubert Chesshyre, LVO, Clarenceux King of Arms" Unless I'm missing something obvious, this statement is not supported by the source (currently Ref 247):
From the outset the most important Heralds were called Kings of Arms. The rank still exists today and on our visit Hubert Chesshyre, Clarenceux King of Arms, was our guide. He explained the history and showed us archives dating back 600 years. We saw example of arms ranging from ancient knights of old to more recent ‘clients’ such as Sir Paul McCartney.

Chesshyre was a guide for some tour, and one example that he showed the group was the coat of arms created for McCartney. This does not in any way imply that Chesshyre was McCartney's agent. Even if that were true, there would have to be a better source for it than this non-scholarly non-peer-reviewed non-authoritative newsletter for some completely obscure guild.

And I'm sure there were plenty of others that I missed. I reiterate my advice: Withdraw the nomination. The article is simply not ready. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 02:57, 3 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your comments and suggestoins. I think I've fixed your specific concerns above. On "too much trivia", I'll trim what I can but I would like to hear others weigh-in on that issue, on, "you need summaries for "tours" and "discographies" I respectfully disagree, the info belongs there, and a redundancy is not needed in this case IMO. — GabeMc (talk) 04:01, 3 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I hadn't looked at the prose when I started to review the sources. But when I read "In 1999, BBC News Online readers voted him the 'greatest composer of the millennium' I immediately thought: "Oh dear!" That kind of meaningless accolade might be worth a wry aside in the body of the article, but to parade it in the lead as though it was a considered judgement is a different matter. How did a self-selecting online poll of web page readers measure McCartney's greatness as a composer against that of every other composer who has lived in the last 1000 years, and determine that he is the tops? The statement is frankly laughable. Don't get me wrong, I think McCartney is great, but his greatness doesn't need to be puffed, in an an encyclopedia article, by this kind of absurd hyperbole. The article should focus on his achievements, rather than reflecting the over-enthusiasm of his fan clubs. Brianboulton (talk) 10:31, 3 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I agree, I trimmed that part out of the lede. — GabeMc (talk) 10:38, 3 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Quick comment: looks like there are a number of repeated wikilinks in the body (WP:REPEATLINK) and there's one dab (Steve Miller) Mark Arsten (talk) 02:19, 5 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your comments, I'll go on an overlink patrol tonight, and fix the dab. — GabeMc (talk) 02:26, 5 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Does, "Avoid linking the names of major geographic features and locations" include cites, towns, neighborhoods, etcetera? — GabeMc (talk) 02:58, 5 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Cities, towns, and neighborhoods are fine to link, countries and continents shouldn't be. Not sure about states, I've seen it both ways. Mark Arsten (talk) 19:31, 5 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose. The article is fundamentally flawed in terms of WP:WEIGHT and WP:Summary style. The amount of material given to things like drugs and football is quite excessive compared to the amount of material given to his actual musical career. This is an article that goes into considerable detail about this or that FA Cup yet never mentions "Hey Jude". (Many other of McCartney's best and most famous songs are never mentioned either, including "Eleanor Rigby", "Long and Winding Road", "Live and Let Die", "Maybe I'm Amazed", etc, and others like "Let It Be" and "Band on the Run" are only mentioned in passing when describing later performances.) It talks about his LSD trips but never mentions that he was a highly inventive and influential bass player. It talks about his ups and downs with John but never describes what it was about their songwriting that was so acclaimed and important. It talks about an asteroid named after him but never mentions Beatlemania or Paul's persona as the 'cute' one during that era. His 30-year partnership with Linda is given the same space as his first girlfriend and less space than a long quote about Everton FC. To be honest this article looks like the pieces of an article left over after the important parts were shipped off to other articles. But that's not how summary style works, you still have to summarize the important parts and the summary sections still have to be in proper balance with the rest of the article. You cannot assume that readers will look at subarticles, because in fact, they won't. Last month Paul McCartney got 267,000 views while Paul McCartney's musical career got less than 2,000 (figures for other months are comparable). What kind of understanding of McCartney did the 99% of readers who didn't click the subarticle get? Not a very good one. This article has to tell the most important things about McCartney, and right now it too often tells the least important things. If you look at the George Harrison article, it while not perfect, has a considerably better weighting. Wasted Time R (talk) 04:32, 5 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose, re Wasted Time R. I agree with everything s/he said, and thought the exact same thing when looking at the article. Thank you for working on the page, it certainly is important, but some attention needs to be paid to the content and layout. Far more focus needs to be given to his musical career and importance, and far less given to other aspects of his life (I like personal life info, but this is a bit excessive). --Lobo (talk) 09:13, 5 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose. I am entirely in agreement with User:Wasted Time R's posting (above) -- Gareth Griffith-Jones (talk) 09:19, 5 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

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