Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Theoren Fleury/archive1

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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 SandyGeorgia 20:39, 25 January 2010 [1].

Theoren Fleury[edit]

Nominator(s): Resolute 22:23, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
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Theo Fleury is someone whom I consider to be one of the most remarkable stories in hockey history. Perhaps the smallest NHL player of his generation, he played 1000 games, won championships at all levels and was an all-star, all while hiding a history of sexual abuse along with drug and alcohol addictions that eventually caught up to him. He was one of the most popular players to ever play in Calgary, and his comeback attempt this past fall captivated this city. He has gone from underdog to hero to villain to a figure barely worthy of pity to a remarkable story of redemption. Certainly a person whom I wanted to write about for a great deal of time. As such, I present this story to the scrutiny of the masses. Resolute 22:23, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Can you explan why you made no effort to respond to the recent WP:PR at Wikipedia:Peer review/Theoren Fleury/archive1.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 00:46, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Although Resolute never responded on the peer review page, it does appear that he implemented many of the suggestions made there. Giants2008 (27 and counting) 02:06, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I did. I failed to notice Finetooth's review until the bot closed the PR. At that point, I left him a message on his talk page thanking him for his review, and implemented both his, and Steve Smith's suggestions today before nominating. I thought about replying to the PR anyway, but as with most everything else, I simply left an archived page alone. Resolute 03:26, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comments – I plan on offering a prose review tomorrow, but for now I want to cover some basics to save others time and effort. First, there are no disambiguation links to worry about. I ran the link checker quickly, and a couple small issues were revealed. Reference 19 (CBC archives) appears to be redirecting to a page that isn't the intended target. Also, it should be noted that the link to reference 132 (Globe and Mail) requires a subscription to access. Checked for alt text as well, and it is present in all pictures. The second photo gives Fluery's name, a practice that I've seen discouraged sometimes at FAC (the thinking is that a person's full name wouldn't be verifiable just by looking at an image). I'm not an alt text reviewing expert, so I didn't spot any obvious problems otherwise. 204.210.154.189 (talk) 02:18, 2 January 2010 (UTC) (P.S.: That's me) Giants2008 (27 and counting) 02:20, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think yo meant reference 22, but yeah, it looks like CBC reorganized its archive links. I've corrected. As far as the alt text goes, I've reworded, though with two people in focus, I initially thought it made sense to identify which is the article target. Looking forward to your full review. Resolute 03:33, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Rant on refs:<rant> This general-specific subsections thing. To the best of my knowledge, some numbskull used the terminology "General-specific" in his documentation for one or more of the reference templates. Then Wikipedia editors dutifully copied the phrasing in his template documentation and actually began including it in metatext of the article. Note that Wikipedia's guidelines do not permit me to Oppose here. But consider this a symbolic Oppose. I would be very happy to see these sections reformatted to the standard "Notes" and "References", with the former above the latter.</rant> • Ling.Nut 03:54, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm not exactly married to the format, so have no issues re-aligning the references, and have done so. That said, there seems to be no real standard amongst FAs on what the subsection headers are titled. Most do put the footnotes above the general references though, so I have realigned to be consistent with that. Resolute 04:10, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • The fact that there is no standard is a good news/bad news thing... It's good news because editors can use a format they're familiar with: sci people can use one well-established format, lit people can use another, etc. It's bad news because anyone can make up their own damn format, so long as it's internally consistent. Which blows goat chunks. Too put it mildly. • Ling.Nut 05:30, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • General references work well in list articles, where a general reference is often sufficient to verify a table. The terminology doesn't work as well in regular articles, though. It makes me think of the days before I knew what Wikipedia was, when FAs didn't have inlines. WP:LAYOUT gives a bunch of possible headers; the many choices confuse me more than anything. It does seem that Notes/References is the most standard system, if such a thing can be said to exist (I've seen a wide variety in articles). Giants2008 (27 and counting) 04:16, 3 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Yeah. The point is not that the "specific" things should go before the "general" things (although they do, in most cases); it's that the terminology... is strange and misguided. That is, what's a "general" reference, as opposed to a "specific" one? The usage in this case is idiosyncratic. I mean, the default or unmarked meaning of "general reference" is quite different than what this nonstandard system would have us understand. In short, it's just a huge clusterf*ck caused (albeit inadvertently and innocently) by one editor who didn't know how to write clear and appropriate documentation for a template, and then by many editors who didn't know that they shouldn't follow the misguidance of the first..• Ling.Nut 05:15, 3 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • I've been bold and changed them. Ling.Nut is right - that terminology is definitely "strange and misguided". As a researcher, I've never seen it used before. I've adopted the "Notes" and "References" titles, which is at least clear and familiar. Awadewit (talk) 19:19, 4 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Otherwise, sources look okay, links checked out with the link checker tool. Ealdgyth - Talk 17:44, 6 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • More comments – Sorry for the long absence. For me, "tomorrow" roughly equates to "five days from now". Was able to make it up to the end of Fleury's junior career, and will come back, hopefully fewer than five days from now.
    • Early life: "often accompanying his father to the arena in the pre-dawn hours." I assume this is the arena in Russell from earlier in the section? That struck me as not fully clear, unless the phrase is meant to be general; then I could see it.
    • The Andy Murray article here goes to the tennis player, who wasn't alive yet during the time in question. There appears to be an appropriate article at Andrew Murray (ice hockey).
    • Junior: "Fleury learned early that he had to play an unpredictable style of game in order to survive against players much larger than he was." The hardcore prose reviewers don't like seeing phrases like "in order to" unless they are essential. Chopping "in order" from the sentence will help to keep them happy.
    • "nearly 100 more than any other of the top 10 WHL scorers." Move "other" to before "top 10", where it seems to naturally belong.
    • "and joined the Flames IHL affiliate." Apostrophe at end of Flames? Giants2008 (27 and counting) 16:43, 7 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • I believe Andy Murray (ice hockey) is an even more likely article, as he seems to be of the appropriate age to run a hockey school, and both he and the school are from Manitoba. However, I found no mention of such a school on his own article. Schmloof (talk) 20:31, 7 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • That would be the correct target. Kinda surprised I missed that, given how common the name is. I've also addressed Giants2008's remaining points, and scanned through the article to ensure that apostrophe's are where they all belong.
  • Support – I went through the remainder of the article and cleaned up where necessary, which was not much work considering how good the page already was (most of it was non-breaking spaces and such). A well-written, well-sourced account of an interesting life. Giants2008 (27 and counting) 00:43, 19 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Query On Malcolm: It is a hundreds of pages-long biography and seemingly the only serious one on Fleury. Why did you only use a handful of pages for this article? Did you find the book useless? You used his autobiography far more heavily, which seems dangerous. Things like "This style led to many retaliatory penalties" could be Fleury's POV, and sourcing financial figures and donations of charitable organizations to the autobiography makes me uneasy. How do you know those facts were checked and he wasn't just writing from memory? Shouldn't we limit the autobiography to citing facts about himself? --Andy Walsh (talk) 19:17, 14 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Malcom's book came out in 1997, before even the Sheldon Kennedy story broke. It was written to be a "hard luck kid grows into superstar" feel-good story, and focused mainly on his playing career, which I was easier able to source via the news stories of the time. I used it mainly to source his early life. I went with Fleury's autobiography more often because I believe it is actually the more serious work. In the citation you are specifically questioning, Fleury literally stated that his style led to those penalties, which led to the arguments with coaches. I will double check these passages later tonight and specify which are Fleury's words. Thanks! Resolute 19:31, 14 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Clarified that that statement was Fleury's. I already had made it pretty clear that the contract dollars in his negotiations with the Flames was his own statement. None of my other references to his book are statements that I would consider controversial. Resolute 00:47, 15 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • BTW, I was on my way in here to tell you that Fleury's in the news regarding the criminal complaint against James, but I see it's already there. Cool deal. --Andy Walsh (talk) 02:32, 15 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Additional comments Hey this is really good. I just got around to reading the whole thing. I made some changes here and there, and listed things below that I couldn't figure out or didn't want to touch. Close to supporting, though.
    • "He missed nearly a year of contact hockey as a result." I'm not sure everyone will follow. Is there non-contact hockey that he was playing? Leagues that disallow checking? I'm not sure how anyone would avoid contact altogether.
  • He was skating and practicing, I believe, but not able to play games. I will double check the reference tonight and clarify.
    • "Although he felt like somebody was 'stabbing a knife in my gut every five minutes', Fleury had played" Shouldn't the "my" in the quotation be replaced with "[his]" since the rest of the sentence is third person?
  • fixed
    • "Fleury claims that he was offered $16 million over four years by the Flames before the trade, and countered with an offer of $25 million over five years." It seems like it might be better to say "and countered with a request for" but is that not the correct parlance?
  • I think that is less correct myself. Flames made an offer, Fleury made a counteroffer.
    • "Unhappy with how his NHL career ended, and sober for nearly four years" This caught me off guard because you don't really say anywhere when and how he got sober. We leave off with his 2003 suspension, go through senior hockey and Belfast, and then in 2009 he's been sober for four years. Are there sources about how and when he got sober? I remember reading an interview with him in THN when he was in Belfast and he said he'd "like to be sober". If that was 2005-2006, I'm not sure the math adds up.
    • Ah nevermind, I see you talk about it in "Off the ice". I don't know.. can we find some way of letting readers know in the career section that he got sober around that time so they don't have to read all the way down to find out?
  • Clarified this in his comeback section.
--Andy Walsh (talk) 05:47, 15 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the comments! Resolute 14:56, 15 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • He would definitely be a good one to do. Lotta time in the library pouring through newspapers would be required though, heh. Gotta say though, I'd have to do Lanny first. ;) Resolute 15:09, 15 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Image review – All three images in the article were self-created by the nominator, and each carries an appropriate Creative Commons license; one also has a GNU license. All clear on this front. Giants2008 (27 and counting) 04:05, 16 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Check the toolbox, there is a dead link. Dabomb87 (talk) 15:08, 16 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Nice of that link to go dead right in the middle of this FAC... Fortunately, it was archived on wayback.org, so has been fixed. Thanks! Resolute 16:09, 16 January 2010 (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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