Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Ferris Bueller's Day Off/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 archived by Ian Rose via FACBot (talk) 21:28, 12 March 2015 (UTC) [1].

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Ferris Bueller's Day Off

Nominator(s): The lorax (talk) 02:15, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

Life moves pretty fast, and thus I am submitting Ferris Bueller's Day Off, one of the most iconic movies of the 80s, for your appraisal, believing it meets all the featured article criteria. The article has grown quite a bit since it was awarded Good Article status several years ago. It is extremely comprehensive, with extensive notes about casting, production, reception and containing photos of the filming locations and "the car." It is so choice, if you have the means, I highly recommend you feature this article.--The lorax (talk) 02:15, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

Oppose, regretfully. Dearly love this movie, and the article was really interesting, but I don't think it's ready for FA yet. There are prose niggles throughout (I've listed a few examples), and I'm concerned that there's too much trivia and too many quotes. That makes it feel more like a fan article than an encyclopedia article.

• There's no critical commentary of the poster - doesn't that violate the fair use guidelines?
• Plot -> There are some minor prose issues here.
  • " Ferris was also nearly spotted at a Chicago Cubs game at Wrigley Field (where they are almost spotted on TV by Rooney)," if he's only almost spotted by Rooney, then we don't need to mention it twice
  • "Also looking for Ferris, Jeanie returns home, and she mistakes Rooney for an intruder." is awkward
  • This implies that Jeanie did not see Ferris on the way home, but she did and tries to race him home

✔Revised plot, excised redundancies.--The lorax (talk) 00:59, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

• I enjoy the information in the casting and filming and car sections, but so much of it is quotes. Is that the right balance between quotes and paraphrasing the important bits?
• The paragraph on Ruck's analysis of Hughes' film treatment of teens seems out of place here, at least in this section.

✔Revised the plots addressing these concerns.--The lorax (talk) 00:10, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

• There's no citation for a lot of the film locations (2nd paragraph of filming). Where did that info come from?

✔Filming locations cited.--The lorax (talk) 00:10, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

• I'm not sure that the Grace the secretary section really belongs. Feels like trivia. The economic lecture stuff, as well, probably ought to be pared down to a sentence inserted elswhere.

✔Removed Grace section, but I thought the economic lecture part was important as its one of the scenes most memorable about the film i.e. "Anyone? Bueller?"--The lorax (talk) 00:10, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

• The list of art is too detailed - that's definitely trivia. I'd rewrite the first paragraph without the quotes and put it with the locations paragraph.

✔Removed list of artwork. Moved section to locations paragraph.--The lorax (talk) 00:15, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

• I think the fan club soundtrack section is also trivia

Isn't it unusual for a film not to release an official soundtrack, especially for one as high profile as this one? I thought that was worth noting.--The lorax (talk) 00:10, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

• Can we really call Ben Stein a "co-star"?

✔ Removed.--The lorax (talk) 00:58, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

• "The film opened in 1,330 theaters in the United States and had a total weekend gross of $6,275,647, opening at #2." - repetitive. There are also two sentences in this four-sentence paragraph that say the movie was a big success.
• The information on which notable people call this their favorite movie is trivia and doesn't need to be here.
• I'd move the info about Twist and Shout recharting down to the Music subsection of Cultural impact

✔Moved info to Music subsection.--The lorax (talk) 00:10, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

• "Scholars have identified different aspects of how the film depicts or does not depict teachers and the role of these depictions in popular culture" - This is an awkward sentence that doesn't say much of anything

✔Reworded this.

Karanacs (talk) 19:41, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

Oppose for now, unfortunately. I agree with all Karanacs' points, especially regarding the trivia. There's quite a lot of really unnecessary information here. Some sections could use more citations, and there are even a few direct quotes without inline citations, which is a big problem. The prose also needs a lot of work; in addition to what Karanacs has already noted, slang terms and unencyclopedic language are used throughout. For example, "Ferrari-crashing-through-the-garage-window sequence" is really not acceptable wording. I also like the film and it's evident that you've put a lot of work into the article, but it just doesn't meet the standards presently, in my opinion.-RHM22 (talk) 23:17, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

Comments by Squeamish Ossifrage

Currently looking exclusively at references and reference formatting:

• All web sources should have retrieval dates.
• The AMC Movie Blog source (@ ref#2), which does appear to meet RS despite the titling, has a publication date (it's at the bottom of the article, on the right).
• The Rolling Stone source (@ ref#3) is not at all formatted correctly.
• The Gora book title should have a colon afer Tried instead of a period.
• ISBNs should ideally be presented as correctly-hyphenated ISBN-13s. This converter is your new best friend. Additionally, there are book sources missing ISBNs entirely.
• Book titles should be in title case (see: the McGrath source @ ref#6).
• The left single quote within the title of the Barrett source is improperly rendered using a grave accent/backquote.

Skimming ahead at this point...

• Not all authors are formatted in the same way: you mostly use Last, First but there are some First Last occurances throughout.
• You are mostly using yyyy-mm-dd dates (which is my personal preference), but there's at least one (ref#41) with another date format; I didn't audit for these carefully.
• Reference 52 should be citing the original website, rather than naming archive.org as if it were the publisher.
• The Bush commencement address reference is not properly formatted.
• Reference 58 is throwing a formatting error.
• You need to audit for missing bibliographical data in general. I noted the missing date on ref#2, and spotchecked one of the other websources with no author credit listed, more or less at random (AdWeek, @ ref#60). That one's by Tim Nudd. Strongly suggest you go through all the web references carefully to see if there's more information to provide.

There's a lot of work to be done down in the reference section. This was not a comprehensive review by any means. While many of the problems there are comparatively quick fixes, in light of above reviewers also raising concerns about prose quality, I must regretfully oppose promotion at this time. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 16:32, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

Closing comment

The comments above suggest the article is under-prepared for FAC, so I'd like to see the improvements take place away from the this process. I gather this would be the nominator's first potential FA, so we'd also need a spotcheck of sources for accuracy and avoidance of close paraphrasing even after the above concerns were addressed. You're free to re-nominate here after the issues are addressed (in a minimum of two weeks, per FAC instructions). Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 21:27, 12 March 2015 (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. Ian Rose (talk) 21:28, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

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