Wikipedia:Featured article review/Barack Obama/archive11

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

The article was delisted by Nikkimaria via FACBot (talk) 2:29, 4 December 2021 (UTC) [1].

Barack Obama[edit]

Notified: Gråbergs Gråa Sång ([2]), WikiProject Biography ([3]), WikiProject Biography ([4]), WikiProject Chicago ([5]), WikiProject African diaspora ([6]), WikiProject United States ([7]), WikiProject Politics ([8])
Tvoz should have been notified of this FAR; since they weren’t, I will go do that now. See this discussion; when proper notifications are not done, FARs can get stalled. And by adding notifications to more pages, we are more likely to draw in not only that editor, but editors who follow that editor’s talk, who may be willing or able to make improvements. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:41, 31 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Review section[edit]

I am nominating this featured article for review because... the post-presidency section is too bloated and could use a spin-off article. This article suffers from bloat in that section and no longer meets the featured article criteria. I brought this up back in May 2021 [9] but unfortunately nothing has been done about it. Therapyisgood (talk) 01:00, 20 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  • That's it? You're nominating this to be reviewed because a single section (perhaps the least important section) is too big? Not only this, but your "FAR" talk page comment was a single message, that was merely a reply to an earlier thread. I don't really understand how this is acceptable and I imagine that if a substantial effort were given to alert editors to this (rather minor issue, in the grand scheme) on the talk page, it could easily be resolved. Aza24 (talk) 01:08, 20 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    • It is what it is. I made a talk-page comment, no one did anything. Hopefully this FAR will get someone to create the sub article. Therapyisgood (talk) 01:14, 20 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • I took a quick skim of the article, and I don't think it should lose its FA status. However, there are still things that can be fixed: The Post-Presidency section is bloated, there's parts of the article with stubby paragraphs that I would like to see merged or deleted, and I want to try to incorporate the sources in "Further reading" as references. @Therapyisgood: do you want to create the spin-out article for Obama's post-presidency and copy-paste the information from this article (after checking for citations)? Once this is complete we can work together to cut down the bloating and do some general clean-up of the article. Z1720 (talk) 01:36, 20 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    • Unfortunately I'm not able to do anything here. Therapyisgood (talk) 01:54, 20 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
      • I did a first pass at copyediting the Post-presidency section, and left some notes/questions on the talk page. I want to take it slow as this is a high-traffic and politically charged page, but I'm hopeful that there will be discussion about what can be removed from this section. Z1720 (talk) 03:01, 20 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment - The ref " Howley, Kathleen (September 1, 2019). "Barack And Michelle Obama Are Buying Martha's Vineyard Estate From Boston Celtics Owner". Forbes." looks like a WP:FORBESCON issue, as does "Thompson, Loren. "Obama Backs Biggest Nuclear Arms Buildup Since Cold War". Forbes.". " "Wawancara Eksklusif RCTI dengan Barack Obama (Part 2)". YouTube. March 2010. Retrieved February 12, 2018." fails WP:COPYLINK unless the original broadcast was freely licensed. " "Barack Obama: Calvert Homeschooler?—Calvert Education Blog". calverteducation.com. January 25, 2014. Retrieved November 25, 2015." is poor sourcing for a statement involving Obama and the Calvert school. Hog Farm Talk 02:33, 20 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment I have no problem with a separate "Post-presidency" article. Basically a WP:CWW and publish. It's likely to increase. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 10:18, 20 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • I realize it's a massive topic to cover but I think the current article should be made more concise in order to comply with the length requirement. The post-presidency section is the one that suffers most obviously from bloat, although other sections could also use a hard look at what info is really due and what should be moved to sub-articles. It would also be great if the lead could be cut down somewhat to comply with WP:LEAD. This is the longest lead I've ever seen on an article rated "featured" and is longer than other leads of US president articles. Overall length of the article has ballooned from 8,000 words to 14,000 words since 2012, the last time it was reviewed. (t · c) buidhe 11:36, 20 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: I am working on a complete copyedit of the article to remove unnecessary information (like proposals and intentions) and combining smaller paragraphs and sections. The images also need MOS:ALT; if someone could do that it would be great. The lede will be the last thing I check because I want to get a sense of what is in the article (and remove information that is not cited in the body). Z1720 (talk) 16:54, 24 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Comments:

This amount of over-politicized off-topic content in the lead does not give me a good feeling about what I might find in the rest of the article:

  • Obama nominated three justices to the Supreme Court: Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan were confirmed as justices, while Merrick Garland faced partisan obstruction from the Republican-majority Senate led by Mitch McConnell, which never held hearings or a vote on the nomination.
    That amount of detail in the lead is unnecessary. Something shorter would work:
  • Obama nominated three justices to the Supreme Court: Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan were confirmed as justices, while Merrick Garland was denied hearings or a vote from the Republican-majority Senate.
    Done, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:24, 30 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • “Interference in the 2016 U.S. elections” is stated as fact in the lead in Wikipedia’s voice, when numerous sources have had to back off on that claim, and indictments about those involved in the hoax have been issued.
    I was mistaken, see note below, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:24, 30 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • There is not a single mention in the lead of anything other than success; Britannica.com might provide some helpful hints on controversial topics that might be briefly covered (or we may found them entirely left out— I hope not).
  • https://www.britannica.com/biography/Barack-Obama/Spring-scandals-and-summer-challenges

Criticism can be found even in a successful presidency.

At FA Ronald Reagan, we find the Iran-Contra affair in the lead, FA Hillary Clinton has the Benghazi affair, and the lead of Bill Clinton has his Lewinsky and other scandals, for example.
It is not clear why this book by Zelizer is not used, which leads to concern that the article has not been updated to reflect recent scholarship (this is a VERY old FA, which has never had an adequate review because so many of the previous FARs involved high levels of disruption— a much closer look at sourcing, POV and comprehensiveness should be taken.

The article appears unbalanced (POV), at least from reading only the LEAD. I haven’t gone farther, as this is not a promising start. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:18, 28 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@SandyGeorgia: The article on Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections still says that Russia did interfere in the election, so Obama's article saying that Russia interfered is entirely appropriate. I did fix the Supreme Court sentence in the lede, added basic information about how Obama's Nobel Peace Prize was received, and added info about Obama ending a ban on offshore oil and gas drilling prior to the oil spill, which in mentioned in the Britannica article as well. I do agree that sources and information from more recent scholarship should be added to the article. If there is anything else that can be done to make the lede and the rest of the article more balanced, then please let me know. X-Editor (talk) 01:46, 30 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
My apologies for a mistake made due to being rushed. I missed that the Steele dossier (a subset of the Russian interference issue) is a separate article, and have struck my point. Just as a note for future reference though; if it had been an issue here, we should not refer back to a different Wikipedia article to justify what we write in this article, rather make sure that everything in this article is sourced and cited here.
I have now taken more time to examine more of the article, so will detail issues next. I will mention upfront that I never support articles that are more than 10,000 words of readable prose, because they are so hard to get through and so hard to maintain. Neither would I oppose an article for being at 12,000 words of prose, but there is clearly a lot of bloat here, and it looks to be an issue related to how this article has been built over time. Because the article is so long, the comments I will post will be based on only very cursory spotchecks so far. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:24, 30 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Overdue for a rigorous Featured article review
This article passed FAC in 2004 with less than 1,600 words of readable prose. I gave the sourcing and formatting a thorough once over in the 2007 FAR, before Obama was even running for President, and when the article was 4,500 words of readable prose. The January 2007 FAR did not have high participation, and now at over 12,000 words of readable prose, most of the content in this article has not been reviewed against WP:WIAFA, as most of the FARs since January 2007 were closed because they were malformed, spurious, using FAR as dispute resolution, or POINTy nominations shortly before elections. We no longer have a problem of ongoing disputes due to elections; we have, in the spirit of URFA, an extremely old FA whose content has not been seriously reviewed for over a decade. Because of the out-of-process way many of those previous FARs were presented, issues raised have not necessarily been addressed over the years.
And problems are evident throughout. We need a rigorous review at FAR because the issues here are not of the type that can be addressed via copyediting, citation formatting, MOS corrections, and the like. The large problems result from how the article has grown over time (reflecting some PROSELINE), mostly relying on current news reports, not using any newer scholarly sources, and containing large amounts of text that are not placed in a historical or scholarly context. Getting through 12,000 words of prose in an article that needs some rewriting is a daunting task, and whether it can be successful will depend on how many editors have access to higher quality sources and know how to rebuild this to current FA standards.
Besides those larger problems, it is concerning that Z1720 found so many issues in only one section (some of which are suggestive of the same PROSELINE without context problem), and that Hog Farm also found a number of issues that would not pass FAC today.
Because this is likely to become a lengthy FAR, in the interest of space, at some point I will move commentary to the talk page of this FAR, but here is a very preliminary list:
  • This scholarly 2018 book (Julian Zelizer, The Presidency of Barack Obama) has not been used at all. Worse, when checking Google scholar and Google books, one can easily find a number of scholarly sources that have not been used (some of which I read through last night but without saving my notes). Another is Leadership and Legacy: The Presidency of Barack Obama, Lansford, 2021-- there are many more, although some of them are clearly hagiography and may not be very useful. This fails 1c. It is up to those wanting to salvage this star to do a "thorough and representative survey of the relevant literature" to identify which books and scholarly articles should be used, and bring the article to WP:WIAFA sourcing standards. Hog Farm found text that failed verification, and in only a precursory check of the Russian text referenced above, I found unacceptable sourcing:
    • Obama's Russia policy was widely seen as a failure.[10] Yes, it was, but that kind of text cannot be sourced in a Featured article to one opinion piece (now five years old) in the New York Times. There are recent scholarly sources that discuss topics like this. If I found that in the one section I happened to be looking at, how much more deficient sourcing, or opinions lacking attribution, are to be found here? I found several more while reading just a few paragraphs last night. This article has 522 citations; checking them is not a worthwhile effort, because the article lacks historical context, and should be rewritten now to less NEWSY and higher quality scholarly sources.
  • In terms of bloated text and extraneous detail lacking in any historical context, I offer as but one example the section Barack Obama#War in Iraq. Pure PROSELINE apparently constructed from NEWSy sources, with almost nothing salvageable, and does nothing to address how history views Obama vis-a-vis Iraq. Almost all of the detail there is about things like numbers of troops, number of sorties, etc. Zero content relevant to Obama's bio and how history views his treatment of Iraq. This is what I found everywhere I looked, and has led me to the opinion that rewriting this article to FA standard will require a huge undertaking.
  • In contrast to the lack of attribution found above to the Friedman opinion in the NYT (which should have been attributed, but isn't an optimal source anyway), we find also the reverse problem:
    • George Robertson, a former UK defense secretary and NATO secretary-general, said Obama had "allowed Putin to jump back on the world stage and test the resolve of the West", adding that the legacy of this disaster would last.[11] Scholarly sources are broadly in agreement about Obama's legacy wrt Russia, and writing this statement as if it is an opinion held by only one individual is misleading. Even worse, the source used is very critical of Obama's handling of Putin, and yet this article has only one opinion attributed to one former UK defense secretary. This article is POV; even the source used (albeit outdated and not scholarly) is not adequately represented in the text here, and there are better sources that say similar. Writing this article correctly, five years after Obama's presidency, means replacing these old newsy sources with a balanced historical representation, with issues placed in proper context. That is likely to mean that the article will need to be restructured, because the sections now are more in accordance with how we organize political candidate articles, rather than how we place a past President in context, summarizing the most important aspects of that presidency.
  • Another issue is that this is Obama's bio, and that is Obama's presidency. A good deal of the unnecessary bloat here can be reduced by remembering that this article is not intended to be all about the Presidency. His life, legacy, personal info, leadup to and time after the Presidency all have a place.
  • How dated the article has become can be seen by looking at the dates in Further reading; this is an article in need of a thorough update and rewrite.
  • Similar bloat, dated sources, and failure to represent sources adequately can be seen in the economic policy section. A whole lot of "he did this, he did that" and numbers, but almost no then-current or historical context for what those numbers mean. This problem is also seen in the Legacy section,
    • Many commentators credit Obama with averting a threatened depression and pulling the economy back from the Great Recession.[12] The source is a link to an ABC news panel with three commentators; not a scholarly source as we would expect this many years later.
    • According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Obama administration created 11.3 million jobs from the month after his first inauguration to the end of his term.[13] It should not be necessary in 2021 to be using then-current news sources to write the Legacy section. Worse more POV, please read the context provided by the source given. In spite of being sourced to CNN, the text says that jobs gained under Obama were not as strong as under prior presidents. So POV again, and a failure to hew to what the source says.
  • Some of the sections covering current events may need to use appropriate news sources. I believe it is customary for the presidential library to be mentioned in pres articles, eg Barack Obama#Presidential library. But, as an example of how the article lacks balance, criticism of what Obama’s library has caused in Chicago is never mentioned. From perusing the talk page and talk archives, it is easy to see that there has been pretty extensive exclusion of criticism over the years. A POV or unbalanced tag might be warranted based on the number of issues I have found even with limited looking.
I saw much much more as I read through last night, but detailing it all would not be productive. Considering that I checked very few sections for this writeup, I am concerned about how much more of same there is, and the idea of checking over 500 citations is ... ugh. The article needs a solid, top-to-bottom rewrite after a thorough survey of better sources. The work will be daunting; I am not confident it can be accomplished in the course of a FAR. The prose is generally competent, but the article has serious structural problems, both in organization (as it doesn't reflect issues in historical context) and in faulty sourcing.
I will stop for now, but there is more; this is only a brief writeup of similar issues throughout. I advocated in almost every past FAR that the FARs were spurious or out-of-process or should be closed, and the last serious FAR (now almost 9 years ago) was rightly closed by Nikkimaria because it looked pointy during an election. That is not the case now; in the spirit of WP:URFA/2020, a rigorous review should continue here. These are samples only: I don't intend to continue reviewing/striking in a piecemeal approach to bringing this article to standard until a major rewrite is undertaken. Just adding newer sources will not address the problem that the article does not put issues and sections in context: per WP:WIAFA, it is time for a "thorough and representative survey of the relevant literature", and a rewrite to scholarly sources. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:27, 30 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Because of the number of serious issues found everywhere I look (now original research, too), I fear this will become an extremely large FAR, and have started adding my commentary at the talk page to keep this page from exploding.
I don’t see how this article can retain its star; the problems are pervasive, relating to poor sourcing and imbalance, and rewriting 12,000 words will be a huge undertaking. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:51, 31 October 2021 (UTC) Moved commentary back to here, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:42, 23 November 2021 (UTC) [reply]

Original research and sourcing problems

Seeing that the article never mentions Obama’s huge negative gaps in “right track/wrong track” polling, I took a look at the Cultural and political image section where some polling is mentioned. This is yet another section that appears to have developed piecemeal, over time, and has not been rewritten to reflect scholarly articles or to place any of these numbers in context. This article does similar throughout: chock full of stats, data, and statements with no context. There is also original research and faulty sourcing in the polling content. (Aside: whether Obama’s huge gaps in “direction of the country”, “right track/wrong track” polling should appear hinges upon whether that “survey of sources” to upgrade the article to better sources reveals something useful, but “direction of the country” polling shows that Obama’s large negative gaps were only reached after his term once the pandemic set in (although Biden is now trending towards Obama’s lows.)
The article says:
  • According to the Gallup Organization, Obama began his presidency with a 68 percent approval rating [14] Improper use of a primary source, and no recent or higher quality or scholarly source used to place this number in context (those are easily found).
  • … a trend similar to Ronald Reagan's and Bill Clinton's first years in office.[15]. That is a dead link, and what makes “talkingpointsmemo” a reliable source, much less a high quality one? This statement can surely be sourced to a scholarly source by now.
  • His approval ratings rebounded around the same time as his reelection in 2012, with polls showing an average job approval of 52 percent shortly after his second inauguration.[16]. This is original research— using a primary source to draw a conclusion not stated by the source.
  • Despite approval ratings dropping to 39 percent in late-2013 due to the ACA roll-out, they climbed to 50 percent in January 2015 according to Gallup.[17]. This is more original research— using primary source data to reach a conclusion not drawn by the source.

So … again, I was only attempting to track down one issue (direction of the country polling) and in looking at only one paragraph, found four sourcing issues. This article fails 1c. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:48, 31 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Further, at this point, the entire “Cultural and political image” section is poorly placed, and most of that text is not warranted. We should not even have blow-by-blow, PROSELINE polling numbers; we should have statements placed in the Legacy section summarizing his popularity/image/polling numbers based on high-quality, scholarly sources. The entire content about polling is yet another example of bloat that could probably be reduced to several sentences if better sources were used. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:38, 1 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Lead

Parts of the lead have the same issue as the rest of the article: long lists but no context for anything. It appears as if this article has avoided saying anything unfavorable about Obama by avoiding actually saying anything at all … just lists, numbers, no context, academic analysis, or historical perspective.
This sentence in the lead is much too long:

In foreign policy, he ordered military interventions in Iraq and Syria in response to gains made by ISIL after the 2011 withdrawal from Iraq, promoted discussions that led to the 2015 Paris Agreement on global climate change, oversaw and ultimately apologized for the deadly Kunduz hospital airstrike, continued the process of ending U.S. combat operations in Afghanistan in 2016, initiated sanctions against Russia following the invasion in Ukraine and again after interference in the 2016 U.S. elections, brokered the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action nuclear deal with Iran, and normalized U.S. relations with Cuba.

One big long list with no idea of how history views any of that. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:49, 1 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]


  • Comments (HF)

Agree with Sandy that there seems to be some imbalance here. This is quite probably the most glowingly positive bio of a political figure I've seen on wikipedia. Will give this a start at looking at this, but this is gonna need a very close look-through. Hog Farm Talk 08:05, 30 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  • "she was mostly of English descent,[11] with some German, Irish, Scottish,[12] Swiss, and Welsh ancestry.[13] " - and this is necessary detail because?
  • "Obama's parents met in 1960 in a Russian language class at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, where his father was a foreign student on a scholarship.[22][23]" His parent's "How I Met Your Mother" story is probably WP:UNDUE detail here
  • "At the age of six, Obama and his mother had moved to Indonesia to join his step-father." - duplication of material in previous paragraph
  • " supplemented by English-language Calvert School homeschooling by his mother." - Like I mentioned, above, we really should not be using the Calvert School's own blog for this.

The first part of that sources is "Calvert Education Services — once known as the the Calvert School’s “Home Instruction Division” — is proud to claim many accomplished, well-educated alumni such as William F. Buckley and Pearl S. Buck, but none more prominent than President Barack Obama!" Let's cite this to a source that isn't actively promoting the Calvert School

  • ""Wawancara Eksklusif RCTI dengan Barack Obama (Part 2)". YouTube. March 2010. Retrieved February 12, 2018." - probably fails WP:COPYLINK
  • "Zimmer, Benjamin (2009). "Obama's Indonesian Redux". Language Log. Archived from the original on March 3, 2009. Retrieved March 12, 2009." - Wordpress blog. Yeah, it's apparently run off a server in a college building, but do the writers have actual credentials here?
  • "During his time in Indonesia, Obama's stepfather taught him to be resilient and gave him "a pretty hardheaded assessment of how the world works."" - direct quote needs attributed
  • "graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1983 and a 3.7 GPA" - checked the sources didn't see where the GPA is (may have missed it). And is his GPA really a relevant detail, anyway?
  • "Obama's mother was survived by her Kansas-born mother, Madelyn Dunham,[60] until her death on November 2, 2008,[61] two days before his election to the Presidency. Obama also has roots in Ireland; he met with his Irish cousins in Moneygall in May 2011.[62] In Dreams from My Father, Obama ties his mother's family history to possible Native American ancestors and distant relatives of Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War. He also shares distant ancestors in common with George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, among others.[63][64][65]" - I'm thinking this is all undue detail, and the first two sentences are almost certainly so
  • "When they moved to Washington, D.C., in January 2009, the girls started at the Sidwell Friends School" - is what school their kids went to really that relevant? Carter's decision to put his daughter in public school still gets wide attention, but I don't think this is an automatic significant feature
  • "Per his 2012 financial disclosure, Obama may be worth as much as $10 million.[91]" - Hopelessly outdated; update or remove
  • "On his 2010 income of $1.7 million, he gave 14 percent to non-profit organizations, including $131,000 to Fisher House Foundation, a charity assisting wounded veterans' families, allowing them to reside near where the veteran is receiving medical treatments" - more undue detail; we don't need to know his tax details from 11 years ago
  • The whole section of tax detail from his first term just seems odd to include in a FA about a president
  • Should Barack Obama religion conspiracy theories be linked somewhere?
  • Am I the only one who thinks that the family life and religion material are stuck in a very odd place? They feel like they're just slapped in the middle of the chronological narrative
  • What does that external video involving Prof. Bell have to do with anything? It doesn't seem relevant to what is included in the body
  • I'm seeing little details sprinkled throughout here that I think are likely unnecessary. Why do we need to know that Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland had 13 attorneys, for instance?
  • I've tagged an instance of failed verification in the section about his legal career. Between this and the GPA issue above, this likely needs some serious spot checks for source-text integrity
  • "In 1994, he was listed as one of the lawyers in Buycks-Roberson v. Citibank Fed. Sav. Bank, 94 C 4094 (N.D. Ill.).[120] This class action lawsuit was filed in 1994 with Selma Buycks-Roberson as lead plaintiff and alleged that Citibank Federal Savings Bank had engaged in practices forbidden under the Equal Credit Opportunity Act and the Fair Housing Act.[121] The case was settled out of court.[122] Final judgment was issued on May 13, 1998, with Citibank Federal Savings Bank agreeing to pay attorney fees.[123]" - ummm, why so much detail about a fairly random court case that 1) makes no indication that Obama did anything truly significant here and 2) is sourced entirely to court docs

Ready for the material about his legislative campaign. This background material contains a ton of bloat and undue detail. Hog Farm Talk 08:05, 30 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

On "Should Barack Obama religion conspiracy theories be linked somewhere?"
Like
it's linked in the template at the bottom of the article. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 15:56, 30 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I mean in the text. It also occurred to me that in the section discussing religion, should the public perception of religion, e.i., that many on the right thought he was Muslim, be mentioned? Significant matters should be worked into the text for completeness, not relegated to see also links. Hog Farm Talk 16:00, 30 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Like the the other articles I linked, I don't think so, the template-link is proper "coverage" for this article, and there was more noise about citizenship than religion. They're on Barack_Obama_2008_presidential_primary_campaign (maybe not the "litigation" specifically) and somewhat on Barack_Obama_2008_presidential_campaign. They are due there, but not significant here. I'm not sure many on the right thought he was Muslim, but several of them had great fun writing it. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 16:16, 30 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • JJE
No comments on the size of the page as I have a conflict of interest on the subject of page sizes. I can't help but notice that most of the article is sourced to news articles - often very recent news after the event discussed -, and that any kind of academic literature or biographies is omitted. I am inclined to say that this violates the comprehensiveness rules, and that assembling a NPOV-compliant article from news sources is going to be troublesome if not impossible - they almost never give a proper overview and thus you can't "gauge" what is due weight with them. And going by Sandy's sample, there is also some cherrypicking going on. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 12:02, 1 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Something to be improved upon, sure, but that is how these articles are made on WP, isn't it? George W. Bush ("only" GA, but still) is also often sourced to news articles. After the subjects leave office, the bulk of editors move on to the next president. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 10:25, 2 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I know, but that does not mean that it is a good idea to write an article in this fashion, let alone to try to get it to FA in this form. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 10:49, 2 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Bush is not an FA, and WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS is not a helpful argument or excusing factor at FAR. Obama is at FAR, and whether these issues will or can be addressed here is the focus of this page and our effort. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:16, 2 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
John McCain then, or Hillary Clinton. I'm not saying sources shouldn't be improved when possible, and there's probably some decent Obama-precidency books etc out by now. But he is still a fairly recent person, and "news" is a big part of it. FA:s about living people will have "news." as sources. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 15:18, 2 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
But they shouldn't be almost completely reliant on news sources. I haven't looked at the McCain and Clinton ones, but this one is almost completely sourced to news sources. By now, there have been several scholarly retrospectives on Obama (Sandy has pointed out a couple above). If scholarly sources are completely or largely neglected and news sources are relied on this heavily, then WP:FACR #1c is not met, as a "thorough and representative survey of the relevant literature" is not present. Hog Farm Talk 15:34, 2 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
McCain and Clinton are mainly sourced to news media but there are also some biographies cited. It does also not assuage my concern that you can't have a NPOV biography from news sources for methodological/procedural reasons. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 15:50, 2 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I can guess that Clinton is as deficient relative to WP:WIAFA as this article is, for similar reasons. I can’t guess about McCain; one would hope it is better, since he has been deceased for a number of years. Nonetheless, this FAR is about Obama, not McCain or Clinton, and OTHERSTUFFEXISTS arguments won’t help us address the issues in this article. Those issues go beyond the faulty sourcing, and have already been documented (samples only— there is more). The focus of this page should be on those issues and this article. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:07, 2 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Arrived here via a circuitous route from COP26. The environmental policy section of this article strikes me as woefully inadequate for an FA. The subsection is dominated by a single incident, and also includes brief mentions of other specific actions; there's no overview of his activities in this area. The lead mentions the Paris agreement, which isn't covered in the body at all; and I'm fairly certain sources do not support the current phrasing, which almost implies Obama was responsible for the agreement in its entirety. I do not have the time to review the rest of this article at the moment. Vanamonde (Talk) 00:02, 11 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Is there a specific reason Obama's invoking executive privilege over Operation Fast and Furious isn't mentioned? It really seems like the article tries to avoid anything that could be considered negative or a controversy. Hog Farm Talk 06:17, 11 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
HF round 2

Some other comments here, as well

  • "The countries' respective "interests sections" in one another's capitals were upgraded to embassies on July 20 and August 13, 2015, respectively" - Bad sourcing. We can't use a source from July 20 2015 to support that something happened on August 13 2015. Also, why is the accessdate for a source published on 7/20 given as 7/19?
  • "Polls showed strong support for Obama in other countries both before and during his presidency." - sourced to mainly two polls. And this doesn't even represent the second piece well, which states "And even in nations where ratings for Obama and the U.S. have been strong, there have been some signs of disappointment in the American president.". This is cherry-picked.
  • I'm generally skeptical of the use of polling stuff in the cultural and public image section. There was enough written about his image in general that we shouldn't be picking and choosing individual polls to discuss. You can get a poll to say anything you want to, there's much better sources for a president's public image than stray data points
  • "The family currently rents a house in Kalorama, Washington, D.C" - source is from during the Obama administration, got anything more recent to support this? It's been 5 years
  • Why are we calling out various Facebook posts in the post-presidency section? That whole paragraph just feels like a disjointed mess, referencing his beliefs on fairly random topics without presenting any sort of unifying theme
  • "The Obama administration asked Congress to allocate money toward funding the Iron Dome program" - the only reference to Iron Dome in the source seems to be a quote from Obama stating that they helped fund Iron Dome, without mentioning an allocation request

And that's just from a brief further look. This needs significant improvements. Hog Farm Talk 06:41, 11 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Pinging @Z1720: and @X-Editor: to see how far they've come in addressing these issues, and if they want to participate any further. They seem to be the page's most editors by edit count. Therapyisgood (talk) 13:31, 11 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Move to FARC seems like plenty to justify a move to FARC. Therapyisgood (talk) 13:31, 11 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Diff of edits since October 30, when most FAR commentary was entered. Basically, nothing; no change, no talk discussion, no attempt to remedy issues. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:48, 11 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Move to FARC, as there are no indications that the amount of effort required to restore this article to Featured status will be undertaken, or that the massive effort required would not be better suited to a new FAC should the issues be addressed. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:47, 12 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Move to FARC - my comments about poor sources from October 20 have not been addressed, nor my first larger batch of general comments on October 30. Hog Farm Talk 14:35, 11 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: I am very behind on my wiki-tasks because of real-life commitments. I was conducting a copyedit of this article, but I am hesitant to continue if the article has extensive sourcing problems, as that could cause the prose to change drastically. This article is now a lower priority on my to-do list, but I will give more effort to this if someone steps up and finds better sources. I think lots of the POV and bloating concerns will be addressed when the prose is organised and summarised. Z1720 (talk) 14:47, 11 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I've done a little bit, but nowhere near enough to fix the issues with this article. X-Editor (talk) 04:01, 12 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

FARC section[edit]

Issues raised in the review section include sourcing, neutrality and organization. 04:15, 14 November 2021 (UTC)
  • Delist there have been some improvements during the FAR but progress seems to have stalled. It would probably need a fundamental rewrite to meet the FA criteria in my opinion. (t · c) buidhe 22:50, 16 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delist per above, little to nothing appears to be being done to the article at the moment. Therapyisgood (talk) 15:08, 21 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delist It seems like most of the issues regarding source usage have gone unaddressed. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 16:41, 21 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delist unless someone steps forward who is willing to address the sourcing concerns, which will be a considerable amount of effort. Z1720 (talk) 19:18, 21 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delist per Buidhe. I agree that this would require a re-write to meet FA criteria. – Kavyansh.Singh (talk) 08:30, 22 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delist sourcing and bloating concerns have not been addressed. Hog Farm Talk 20:27, 22 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delist. This article is not at FA standards, and should be tagged POV as well (per at minimum the exclusion of recent scholarship that provides a more neutral view of Obama's legacy, rather than just a list of alleged accomplishments, with no critique of them). In all its previous FARs, I noted that it was in decent shape, and Tvoz seemed to have a steady influence, but they have not edited the article for a year, and no one has made any attempt to address the issues raised in this FAR (diff since move to FARC). Besides the considerable problems with prose, neutrality/balance, original research, organization, and cherry picking already documented on this page (and much more could be written), there are also citations missing publishers, and some indications of talk page gatekeepers:
  • See this discussion of content deemed "not significant enough" and represented as "only [covered] in right wing sources" from October 2021. Yet, the same section where that content would fit (post-Presidential) has a sentence about a rental house (oddly in a paragraph where it doesn’t fit) and goes in to (cherry picked) detail with several sentences about something Trump said while neglecting to a) add the balancing response from the same source used, the BBC), or mention Obamagate, (as the Forbes source used does) to address what Trump meant. Just odd content, hanging out there unbalanced with no rationale for its inclusion: not FA standard.
  • Scrolling back through talk page archives, similar issues are found. There is not a systematic pattern representing WP:OWNERSHIP, rather a persistent reluctance to write a neutral biography representing both the good and the bad of Obama.
    • May 2021 Talk:Barack_Obama/Archive_83#Obama_Childhood, an odd exclusion of something that could be covered in one sentence.
    • For years, the lead contained politically charged hyperbole (corrected during this FAR), and yet ACA is listed as an achievement of Obama's, without ever mentioning that it was partisan legislation, passed without a single Republican vote. What is good for the goose is not good for the gander here. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:15, 26 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Closing note: This removal candidate has been delisted, but there may be a delay in bot processing of the close. Please leave the {{featured article review}} template in place on the talk page until the bot goes through. Nikkimaria (talk) 02:29, 4 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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