Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/Romania in the Eurovision Song Contest/archive1

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

The list was promoted by PresN via FACBot (talk) 18:21:56 31 May 2019 (UTC) [1].

Romania in the Eurovision Song Contest[edit]

Romania in the Eurovision Song Contest (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

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Nominator(s): Cartoon network freak (talk) 07:16, 14 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I am nominating this for featured list because I think it is in a very good shape at the moment, it is well-written and sourced. I wanted to have it as a GA nomination, but it turned out it had too many tables for that. I'm very apperciative of comments. Thank you! Cartoon network freak (talk) 07:16, 14 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Support from Lirim.Z[edit]

Resolved comments from Lirim Talk
* The lead is too short. It has about 1217 characters, not even enough for a DYK.
    • The total prose in the article is over 4000 characters, more than enough for a DYK. DYK requirements are based on the total prose in the article, not just the lead, so that argument is not really appropriate -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 19:06, 14 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • The lead needs references
  • Symbols like a † or a ‡ should be used in the legend and in the table, so colorblind people can identify the colored cells
  • remove "style="width:100%"" in the table, looks awful on big monitors
  • —Lirim

Comments from Chris the Dude[edit]

Resolved comments from ChrisTheDude (talk)
**"Romania has participated in the Eurovision Song Contest 19 times after making its debut in the 1994 contest and has since placed six times within the top ten." => "Romania has participated in the Eurovision Song Contest 19 times since making its debut in the 1994 contest and has placed in the top ten six times."
    • "In 2019, for the first time, a seven-piece international jury" => " In 2019, for the first time, a seven-person international jury"
    • I would centre-align all the number columns in the table
    • "Photogallery" is not one word in English. It should either be "Photo gallery" or just "Gallery"
    • That's all I spotted on a first pass, other than Lirim's points above -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 18:35, 14 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@ChrisTheDude: Everything fixed so far! Thank you for your comments ... Cartoon network freak (talk) 20:31, 14 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Support from Eddie891[edit]

Comments from A Thousand Doors[edit]

Resolved comments from A Thousand Doors (talk | contribs) 15:11, 27 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Comments Looks good overall. These are my edits; please revert if you disagree with them.
  • Per MOS:TITLEABSENTBOLD, "Romania" doesn't need to be in bold in the opening sentence.
  • Could the Year column be centralised in the two tables?
  • Could you maybe write a couple of sentences to introduce the Commentators and spokespersons and section? Maybe just say what the purposes of the roles of commentator/dual commentator/spokesperson are, and who has normally done them.
  • Rather than having empty cells in the tables, consider using Template:TBA.
  • Per MOS:OVERLINK, common languages (such as the ones in the Contestants table) don't need to be wikilinked.
  • Alina Sorescu is sorting incorrectly in the table.
  • I may have more comments coming.

Incidentally, my current open FLC is Radio Times's Most Powerful People. If you've got the time, I welcome any comments on it. Thanks, A Thousand Doors (talk | contribs) 10:13, 23 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@A Thousand Doors: Hi and thank you for your (first) comments. I believe I have adressed everything, but please check out the text I wrote for that section since I'm not sure it's alright. I'll also look over your FLC tomorrow. Greets; Cartoon network freak (talk) 20:41, 23 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Looks better, but I do still have more comments. This article is probably going to be promoted to FL, and, since it'd the first list of this type to get the bronze star, it'll set the precedent for similar lists to follow, so I'd like us to get it right. I've made some more changes here; again, please revert if you disagree with them.

  • Rereading the article, it's a bit repetitive at times. For such a short amount of prose, you say three times that Romania unsuccessfully tried to qualify in 1993, that the 2010 entry placed third (Romania's best result alongside 2005), and that they were disqualified in 2016 due to non-payment of debts. I'd suggest shortening the image caption (get rid of everything after "Playing with Fire") and remove the repeated facts from either the Contest History or the Contestants section.
I've done the caption and the removal of the 2016 repetition. Yet, the 2010 case is only mentioned twice (lead and section), which I think is alright, and the 1993 case needs to also be mentioned in "Contestants" since there was a similar case not mentioned before an the reader would need some context (provided by the 1993 case). Does that make sense lol? I packed everything from the "Contestants" section in "Contest history". I think everything is better now and there is more logic. Cartoon network freak (talk) 22:45, 4 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • All the images need alt text.
  • Some of the sentences in the Selection process section have a lot of citations – the final sentence, for example, has six, which makes it look cluttered. The third sentence is only nine words long, yet has four citations. Can these be reduced in any way?
I tried to sort things out a bit
  • If televoting wasn't introduced until 1998, how did the 1100 households select the entrant in 1993?
Some people probably went door-by-door to collect the people's opinions, wrote it down, and handed it to TVR. That's the only method I can imagine.
  • "In 1994 and 1996, regional jury panels were introduced." This confused me – how can something be introduced twice? Also, do we know what form these regional juries took? How many were there, how many people sat on them, and over what region did they cover?
No information is giving on the juries and this methodology. I replaced "introduced" with "hired".
  • "The following lists Romania's entries for the Eurovision Song Contest along with their result." -> This entire sentence can be deleted. The table is self-explanatory enough without the prose needing to point out what's going on too.
  • Do we know why Romania didn't participate in 1995, 1997, 1999 and 2001?
No information on this, probably just lack of budget or interest.
  • Also, is there any reason that we don't know who the commentators were from 2002 to 2009?
There are no sources on the internet to (at least reliably) support the claims that were made on the previous version of this article.

@A Thousand Doors: Thanks again for comments... I have responded to some of them, otherwise everything has been done I believe. Greets; Cartoon network freak (talk) 18:41, 4 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  • There are several references that seem to cite to the Eurovision Song Contest as an actual event, rather than as a television broadcast (e.g. citations 34 to 44). I don't think I've ever seen events cited to in this way before, and I don't see how a reader would be able to verify what the article says based on these references. Pinging FLC's sourcing expert User:PresN for their opinion. A Thousand Doors (talk | contribs) 15:11, 27 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • It's not appropriate to cite the event directly. A citation should be to something that (at least theoretically) can be verified- tracking down a recording of a tv broadcast may not be trivial, but could theoretically be done; tracking down the actual historical event is impossible without a time machine. The distinction is subtle, but real. --PresN 20:20, 27 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm a bit confused. Can you teach me how to cite this then? I'm new to this kind of citation... Cartoon network freak (talk) 18:41, 4 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • The overriding guideline here is "Say where you read it". Wherever it was that you found this information, cite that. Happy to help if needed. A Thousand Doors (talk | contribs) 21:18, 17 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Everything I can do is to link to a video of the full show, allowing the reader to check by themselves; I did that now. Hope it's fine. Cartoon network freak (talk) 12:36, 19 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

This article has improved significantly over the last couple of weeks, and I'm quite close to supporting its promotion, but I would like it to be spot-on first.

Done. Cartoon network freak (talk) 12:36, 19 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • "strong reactions against the decision". From whom? It may be worth adding a sentence or two here to elaborate on who the strong reactions were from, and what they said. It may then be worth splitting that paragaph into two at the "In 2008, Nico and Vlad..." sentence. A Thousand Doors (talk | contribs) 21:18, 17 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Done. The reactions were from fans of Eurovision, thus I added "observers". Cartoon network freak (talk) 12:36, 19 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@A Thousand Doors: I answered to your comments. Cartoon network freak (talk) 12:36, 19 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Speaking of the 2016 disqualification, did Romania successfully go through the pre-selection process, only to be disqualified before the Grand Final? If so, were they then replaced by another country? Were any other countries also disqualified for this reason? What was Ovidiu Anton's reaction to all this?
They had chose their entry and assigned a semi-final to possibly qualify for the Grand Final eventually, yet they were removed from the show due to the reasons mentioned. There was no country that took their place, they were simply just removed; one country less in 2016 simply. I don't think Anton's reaction is relevant here, but I included something about the overall reaction.
The reason I ask this is that the article says that Romania qualified for every ESC Grand Final "except for 2018 and 2019". This implies that they did qualify for the Grand Final in 2016, but your comment seems to be saying that they didn't. A Thousand Doors (talk | contribs) 21:18, 17 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I'm afraid we'll have to let this as it stands right now, since saying the coutry didn't qualify in 2016 would be technically wrong. Also, a sentence about their 2016 exclusion follows directly after "except for 2018 and 2019", so the reader shouldn't be confused.Cartoon network freak (talk) 12:36, 19 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
"saying the coutry didn't qualify in 2016 would be technically wrong". Why? You said earlier that they were were assigned a place in a semi-final, but they were then removed before it went ahead. Unless I'm missing something, it sounds to me like the country didn't qualify in 2016. A Thousand Doors (talk | contribs) 16:08, 26 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@A Thousand Doors: If you're a Eurovision fan, you normally use "didn't qualify" when saying that a country did not receive enough votes from the public and juries in the semi-final to pass into the Grand Final. However, this didn't happen to Romania since they didn't even participate in the voting phase in the semi-final. Thus, saying "didn't qualify in 2016" would confuse readers. Also, until 2016, the Eurovision site reported that Romania had a "100% qualification rate" to the Grand Final when they, according to you, "didn't qualify" in 2016. So, clearly the Eurovision site also doesn't see the 2016 as a non-qualification, rather as a forced withdrawal. Cartoon network freak (talk) 20:54, 27 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from The Rambling Man[edit]

I know this may sound like a pain, but given we'll be seeing Romania in, at least, qualifying in a matter of days for this year's event, I'm going to delay my review until after the dust settles on that, so ping me once the article has been updated post-contest if you would be so kind? The Rambling Man (talk) 11:22, 11 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@The Rambling Man: Romania did, again, not qualify with a masterpiece of a song :( .... Anyway, you can start commenting on the article if you wish. Greets; Cartoon network freak (talk) 12:36, 19 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe that's better than qualifying and finishing rock bottom... I will do my best to get to it later, having a somewhat busy day today. The Rambling Man (talk) 13:17, 19 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose from 169.231.45.113[edit]

  • The main table on the page features redundant symbols and leaves important information, such as Romania's status in 1995. More importantly, the table does not match other country's related pages, such as Greece in the Eurovision Song Contest. The page should be formatted in such as way to include crucial information and keep a uniform among the other many related pages. Furthermore, it should not have its formatting changed and information left out simply to try to get featured. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 169.231.45.113 (talk • contribs)
The table is meant to have those symbols and the formatting is unlike the page given, since this one is a FLC. Cartoon network freak (talk) 22:32, 16 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Source review[edit]

Resolved comments from Giants2008 (Talk)
*To add to the point earlier about the events themselves not being valid sources, if the YouTube video links aren't from an official site of some kind and are bootleg recordings, they are probably copyright violations for our purposes and we shouldn't have links here. In that case, you'll want to remove the links entirely, although the cites to the broadcasts can remain.
  • Are refs 20 to 25 all from an official National Finals site, or are they from somebody's personal website? The GeoCities lineage makes it harder to tell for those of us not familiar with the subject, as most pages from that site aren't reliable. If unofficial, these are unreliable and you'll need to find replacements.
  • What makes ESC-History (ref 3) a reliable source?
  • Ref 4, a cite to a printed book, is missing a page number. That should be provided for verifiability.
  • The link-checker tool is showing that the second external link in the infobox, which is the same address as ref 1, might be dead, so that's worth checking. If it is dead, I recommend removing it from the infobox and switching to the archived version in ref 1 by filling out the deadurl parameter of the cite template. Giants2008 (Talk) 21:18, 23 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Giants2008: Hi there again! I removed the section "Selection process" and combined it (a shortened version) in "Contest history", since I couldn't find enough sources on the internet to back the "unreiable" ones. Please tell me what you think of that move. Also, I replaced that book citation with a ref. (The infobox link is working). Best regards; Cartoon network freak (talk) 19:49, 24 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

All of the changes look good to me. I'd say the source review has been passed. Giants2008 (Talk) 01:12, 26 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Closing statement: I'm discounting the oppose from the ip address; the inconsistency of formatting from non-FLs is a reason to adjust the other lists, not to oppose this one, and I don't think 1995 needs to be in the table for the reasons stated in the prose- it's not required that every year, even those where they did not compete, be listed. As to A Thousand Doors' concerns, I'm convinced that "did not qualify" is a term of art in this area, meaning that they competed but did not qualify to the finals, and is distinct from being disqualified as a nation prior to competition. As such, and with the source review passing, I'm promoting. --PresN 18:21, 31 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  • Closing note: This candidate has been promoted, but there may be a delay in bot processing of the close. Please see WP:FLC/ar, and leave the {{featured list candidates}} template in place on the talk page until the bot goes through.
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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