Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Bat'leth/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 GrahamColm 10:01, 26 March 2013 (UTC) [1].

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Bat'leth

Bat'leth (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

• Featured article candidates/Bat'leth/archive1

Nominator(s): The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 16:05, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

I am nominating this for featured article because I feel that it is as comprehensive as it can be using all possible relevant and reliable sources that could be found and that it would be good to show on the main page as a FA. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 16:05, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

Oppose: I'm sorry, but while I admire your ambitions for the article, on the basis of the lead the prose looks to be well below FAC standard. For example:-

• "widely available online" - delete "online", this is not a sales pitch
• "they have also been used in crimes with debates on legality differing between countries." More punctuation needed, to clarify meaning
• "Bat'leths were designed as martial arts style swords and was created..." Were/was mismatch. The sentence then meanders on, with no punctuation up to a redundant "as well" at the end.
• The last lead sentence, "Bat'leths are also considered part of popular culture, appearing in television programmes outside of the Star Trek franchise as well as teams being set up to practice using bat'leths as part of a martial art" has several grammar issues and needs to be redrafted.
• A minor point, but you should also link "long-sword". Incidentally, I note that the wikipedia page gives the word unhyphenated.

I have not looked in detail beyond the lead, but further down, my eye caught an "it's" that should be "its", and also "The rise in popularity of the bat'leth have also led...". There are likely to be other similar errors. I can't speak beyond prose issues, but the article needs a full copyedit. I also note that File:Sword of Kahless.JPG is still in the article, despite a warning from Ruhrfisch in the peer review (29 January) that this is a likely copvio. Have you checked the status of this image? Brianboulton (talk) 20:02, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

• I have fixed the issues you have brought up and removed the Sword of Kahless picture. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 20:28, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

• Yes, but...the issues I raised were only a sample. And I'm not overimpressed by some of your fixes; for example, "they have also been used in crimes with debates on legality differing between countries" is still unpunctuated, and we have sentences such as "Martial arts teams have set up to use bat'leths in martial arts". Sadly, I have to concur with Graham's view that the article is not ready for FAC, but that does not mean all is lost; there are things you can do. The first is to get a full copyedit, from an editor familar with FAC prose standards and preferably with knowledge of the Star Trek genre. Such editors exist; there are several Star Trek-related articles listed at WP:FA. Why not approach one or more of the main editors of these, and ask them to work with you? If you are patient, this could be a positive way forward. Leaving the article to its fate here is not likely to get you very far. Brianboulton (talk) 15:03, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

• I suppose so. I think i'd better cut my losses and withdraw this. Incidentally, I was also thinking of maybe bringing 2000 UEFA Cup Final riots to FA but I am having trouble getting a review for it from the Football project. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 15:09, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Oppose and suggest withdrawal. The prose is poor, and below GA standards in my opinion. I am not going to list examples because my experience has shown that nominators often only address these. The whole article needs radical attention from top to bottom. Although I applaud the nominator for wanting to participate in our FA process, I am sorry to have to say that this is the most poorly prepared candidate I have seen this year. Graham Colm (talk) 22:48, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

Possibly under snow but is there really a need to be so dismissive? The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 08:27, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

• Note: This is a WikiCup nomination. The following nominators are WikiCup participants: The C of E. To the nominator: if you do not intend to submit this article at the WikiCup, feel free to remove this notice. UcuchaBot (talk) 00:01, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Oppose, not ready for FAC. Referencing is deeply problematic. You have several citations to IMDb; it is not considered a reliable source. I am also not convinced that reference 23/24 is reliable. Quite a bit of the article is carried on the back of primary sources; that may be unavoidable here, but is certainly not preferable. More pedantically, you do not use a consistent format for publication dates, there is a capitalization error in reference 37 (Politico.Com), and most of your retrieval dates are from May 2012 (which is pushing my personal tolerance threshold for age of retrieval dates at the FA level). Oh, and book sources are not consistent about whether publication location is included. Locations are optional for books, but they are all or nothing. Continuing on that theme, I'm virtually certain that there are more print sources that need to be considered here for comprehensiveness: Star Trek The Next Generation: The Continuing Mission by Reeves-Stevens and Reeves-Stevens (ISBN 978-0671874292) is an obvious oversight that I am certain addresses the topic, for example. Also, I will confirm that this badly wants for a copyedit in addition to its other flaws. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 17:52, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

There nothing in the FAC that says anything about retrieval dates. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 18:09, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Not as such, no. But FAC does have an expectation of high-quality sources, which includes ensuring that web-based references have not been subject to alteration or linkrot since their initial inclusion (a frequent cause of concern at FARC). Thus, I don't think there's anything unreasonable in suggesting that retrieval dates be "relatively" recent (I set my threshold of concern at ~1 year, but it's not a hard demarcation). With web references of that age (or older), I have no problem setting an expectation that the article's editors would have checked the status of the links, and, upon doing so, updated the retrieval date accordingly – or, if they haven't, that they can and should. Regardless, that's far from the most serious problem here. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 19:10, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Right, well I suppose I could always hand it to the copyedit guild and I probably think I should withdraw this. I was also thinking of bringing 2000 UEFA Cup Final riots to FA and I think that is probably better than this so I would ask that this be closed for the moment so I can bring that in instead. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 20:11, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Note on procedure - I will archive this nomination in a few minutes. Please see the FAC instruction where it says, "If a nomination is archived, the nominator(s) should take adequate time to work on resolving issues before re-nominating. None of the nominators may nominate or co-nominate any article for two weeks unless given leave to do so by a delegate." Graham Colm (talk) 20:25, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

• Closing note: This candidate has been archived, but there may be a delay in bot processing of the close. Please see WP:FAC/ar, and leave the {{featured article candidates}} template in place on the talk page until the bot goes through. Graham Colm (talk) 20:29, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

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