Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Ubuntu/archive1

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 User:SandyGeorgia 02:31, 8 July 2008 [1].

Ubuntu[edit]

Nominator(s): ff m

Former featured article, FAR, has been on main page.

I'm nominating this article for featured article because it has been expanded greatly since its prior WP:FAR (in 2006, btw) and it exemplifies some of our best work. ff m 03:13, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

Oh boy, this is one of the most interesting FACs that I have seen in months! Now all we need is Mac OS X at FA then I will be happy.
"It has consistently been rated among the most popular of the many Linux distributions." → "It has consistently been considered one of the most popular Linux distributions."
It appears that all, or almost all, of the references do not have a publisher. Please enter one. Same goes for those in the " References" section.
Is that required by the MOS? ff m 14:21, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

See WP:CITE/ES. Gary King (talk) 17:23, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

MOS issues, such as the placement of footnotes; "redesign[86]," → "redesign,[86]" – this happens several dozen times in the article, especially in the "Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron)" section for some reason.
Fixed. ff m 14:00, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
"however — it contains" – spaced dash here, but an unspaced em dash is used in the first section. Pick one and stick with it.
"Some proprietary software that does not" – I think "some" makes this a plural, so the verbs should be changed accordingly
What to? ff m 14:21, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

"Some proprietary software that do not" Gary King (talk) 17:23, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Overall, I think I'm a bit disappointed in the MOS issues, and the prose is "okay". It could all definitely be better.

Gary King (talk) 03:31, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose I kind of wish you had contacted someone over at LOCE, because this article has several prose issues. And, major work needs to be done.

Intro - comma after "April 24, 2008,"

Third paragraph in "History and development process" - "There are plans" should be "Plans are underway". FYI, many occurrences of "There are". You need to change the sentence syntax from this pattern if this is going to be an FA. Usage of "there are plans" kind of OR and speculation because of hardly any sources linking to this and kind of verges on crystal.

Merge last sentence with the fourth paragraph in this section. Kind of stand alone sentences, which are not fitting the MOS criteria with FA.

Second paragraph in "Features": "the internet browser Firefox", "the instant messenger Pidgin" - some other way to word these because it's repetitive and not creative.

Live CD section - first sentence has a redundant usage of it at the end of the sentence. No reflective noun is needed.

Why isn't Microsoft Windows hyperlinked? Watch out for overlinking in this article, because I see excessive overlinking in the version releases

Last sentence should belong in first paragraph of section

"Alt. Installation" - few refs in this section

1st sentence of paragraph should not stand alone

"Package classification and support"

Do we really need a table to explain the differences in licensing? Why not use prose?

In the "System Requirements" table, "with" should not be capitalized.

Your citations don't follow CITE. I was very lenient on this, because of this article being a GA nom. Since Ubuntu is currently a FA nom, the article should exemplify Wikipedia's best work. You need to put the name of the source, the author (if applicable) and publishing date. Many citations fail on these. I am not even sure if many are reliable sources (i.e. wikis, blogs, etc.). Improve on these points, please. miranda 05:16, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'd just like to mention that WP:LOCE is dead, and peer reviews at WP:PR should be recommended instead – something which this article needs. Gary King (talk) 05:26, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Agree. miranda 05:41, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose.

In brief: poorly written, with major MOS issues; poor scope of content; poor content depth; provides unnecessary in-depth information which should be relegated to sub-article (regarding the versions/releases); and, from a mildly-familiar technical perspective, very unsatisfying.

By WP:FACR:

1: Fails 1.a (prose), 1.b (comprehensive), and 1.c (accuracy).
2: Fails 2.a (lead--verbose, confusing, poorly written.), 2.b (scope--related to comprehensive. Without the "releases" section the article is Start--B class at best. There is little substantive information here.), and 2.c (citations--per above)
3: Fails 3 (images--the images are not illustrative of anything other than the desktop, which is trivial.)

This article needs major work in content and an extreme makeover for the prose. Lwnf360 (talk) 00:15, 6 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comment All the version images stacked next to each other look like crap and take up too much space relative to their descriptive prose. Plus, they all look 90% the same. 00:31, 6 July 2008 (UTC)
Some great work has been done, but agree with the above; it's not quite ready. Take it to peer review and beg, plead, or bribe as many people as possible to help with it. And of course, the suggestions given here. —Giggy 08:35, 6 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, do the gods of FAC want to close this? I withdraw the nomination (although PR hasn't been all that helpful in the past). ff m 03:18, 7 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If you ask around for reviews then I'm sure some will be willing to help out :) I think you should start by bugging Giggy for a review :p Gary King (talk) 03:44, 7 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

A number of your website references lack publisher and/or last access dates, which are the bare minimum needed for WP:V. Books need publisher, author, and page number on top of title.
At least one link is showing up as dead with the link checker tool.
You've mixed using the Template:Citation with the templates that start with Cite such as Template:Cite journal or Template:Cite news. They shouldn't be mixed per WP:CITE#Citation templates.

I didn't evaluate the sources because quite honestly when they are missing so much information, I'd rather wait until that part is fixed. Ealdgyth - Talk 12:44, 7 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Note; withdrawn by nominator, please leave the {{fac}} template in place on the talk page until the bot runs, per WP:FAC/ar. You can find excellent tips on how to locate editors to help in a peer review at WP:FCDW/March 17, 2008. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:33, 8 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

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