Wikipedia:Proposed very good articles/Archive 4

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Archived requests[change source]

Curitiba[change source]

Curitiba (change · talk · history · links · watch · logs · delete)

An article with a lot of potential, very good lenghtwise, needs a few red links removing, other from that, not bad at all! Yotcmdr =talk to the commander= 18:53, 14 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Just looking at the first few sentences, I can see problems with this article: First, it is not written in Simple English. I believe that I could slap a {{complex}} tag on that article because of how complex the article sounds to me. There are quite a few words on that page that are too complex for Simple English users to understand and those would need to be changed out before I could support this becoming a VGA. Cheers, Razorflame 19:04, 14 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, agreed, but I'll be working on it. Yotcmdr =talk to the commander= 19:06, 14 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Other than that, I believe that this would be a decent addition to our VGA pages ;). Cheers, Razorflame 19:08, 14 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I did a few edits yesterday; The article needs a serious copyediting, preferably by someone who knows Portuguese well (native Portuguese; very good in English, or the other way around). In general, sentences are too long, sometimes there are "stylistic mishaps". I don't blame it on the editors, the article is 101k long, probably one of the longest we have overall. Getting this to VGA will probably need the full-time attention of a few people. --Eptalon (talk) 09:28, 15 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Reading through the lead, I can see that major simplification is necessary here. Many of the words are rather complex, as is the overall prose structure. Juliancolton (talk) 22:06, 25 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The article general has to deal with the following problems:
  • Make sentences shorter, generally to about half their length
  • Get rid of translation oddities
I tried to do a general copyedit, but was not very fast (It should be obvious where in the lead the simplification stops). Help would really be welcome. --Eptalon (talk) 22:34, 25 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hot chocolate[change source]

Hot chocolate (change · talk · history · links · watch · logs · delete)
Malinaccier (talk) (review) 23:47, 11 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I am sorry to be that late (I had little time to look at the article earlier); Anyway, here are my comments:
  • The quality of the article itself is very good
  • Personally, I think that place names and the names of people should generally be linked (first occurrence: Puerto escoondido; There are two hidden harbours in Mexico, one in Oaxaca, the other in Baja California Sur, two in Venezuela, and one in Honduras), also don't be afraid to link the different spices.
  • I added one of the studies (freely avaiable) showing that antioxidants as they are found in tea and cocoa are good against heart disease.
Other than those comments, it is of VGA quality...--Eptalon (talk) 15:45, 11 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Nudity[change source]

Nudity (change · talk · history · links · watch · logs · delete)

Controversial subject, article has many images; some of them show nude people. I think the images are tasteful, and generally non-pornographic. Spent quite some time trying to focus on the different aspects of nudity (also the issue of what constitutes nudity, how much of it is a taboo, and how little is needed to make that feeling go away). Article as of now, is 29k, after deductions 19k are left. Readability scores are available. No red-links. In my opinion, the article needs serious copyediting (by people other than me), and possibly more references. Just curious on your input. --Eptalon (talk) 19:19, 13 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comment I think this has the potential of a VGA. I think that the various aspects of nudity are well covered.

None of the images could be considered porn.

I agree that it needs a serious overwork by someone who is a native English speaker. I'm prepared to do this but it might have to wait for a while. Amandajm (talk) 01:13, 4 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Lucy Lawless[change source]

Did not go to vote. Giggy (talk) 04:39, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Lucy Lawless (change · talk · history · links · watch · logs · delete)

This is a superior article. Lawless Fan (talk) 14:50, 31 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Fra Angelico[change source]

  • Fra Angelico, self nomination. It's a complete rewrite in simple language of the article which I researched and wrote for enwiki. The original article has been completely stable for a long time (apart from occasional vandalism). It's the right sort of length, and is properly referenced and illustrated. Amandajm (talk) 09:16, 12 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Looks good to me; I added a link to Giorgio Vasari (with the idea of having another red link to fix), but strangely enough, you had thought about it, about half a year ago; fix the two remaining red-links (stubs should be alright), and I don't see much in the way of making it a VGA. Very good work you do. --Eptalon (talk) 10:21, 12 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • I've delinked all the dates. I think dmy format is used in Europe, would you like me to change it to that? (I use a script to do this, so don't worry about the time it will take me :)
  • I think you should clarify "Early Italian" in the first sentence fixed. But how do I link to a section, rather than the whole article?
  • I'm not sure how to get rid of the defaultsort warning at the bottom....
  • I'd use a simpler word than "Nowadays" (paragraph 3 of lead, but do a Ctrl+F for it) fixed
  • simplify "he was thought to be specially blessed by God" fixed
  • "It is the custom for people to take a new name..." could be simplified fixed
  • "he seems to have been trained..." - I don't like the use of "seems to", are you really that unsure...? (also, no source?)changed
  • "which unfortunately has been damaged" - NPOV fixed
  • maybe change "a great number of artists" to "a lot of artists" No, a great number is unambiguous.
  • I'm a bit wary of the describing of paintings as beautiful... ensure NPOV...fixed
  • "(it might have been Eugenius or Pope Nichoas V)" - again, are you so unsure? response no-one knows for sure.
  • "on every artists who saw it" - fix grammar (remove s on artists), or simplify if you can... fixed

Hope these help! Giggy (talk) 01:29, 16 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Giggy!
  • The term "Early Renaissance" is one of three divisions used to describe Renaissance Painting. Early, High and Mannerist.
  • Where I have expressed uncertainty.. "He seems to have been trained....", "Eugenius or Nicholas" it is because the facts are unknown. If you take a look at the intro to the article on Giotto, which I am still simplifying, you will discover just how little can be known about a very famous person. (And even when it comes to Leonardo da Vinci, there are great gaps in our knowledge. No-one knows at what point in time he moved out of his apprenticeship and opened his own workshop. There is a gap of several years where the only piece of knowledge that we have about Leo is that the night police arrested him for sodomy, and he was cleared of the charge.)
  • Re "great number". The expression "a lot of artists from whom he could learn" doesn't say it. There was not just a lot of artists living in Florence. There was a "magnitude of extraordinary artists" living in Florence. And they continued to increase in number and excellence.
Amandajm (talk) 04:44, 16 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Amandajm, you're welcome!
  • The Early Renaissance stuff is fine as worded now.
  • Yes, I was worried about the "he seems to have..." phrases because I wasn't sure how much is known. If you say there isn't much known I will take your word for it... just make sure you have a source there. (A source for there not much being known, if necessary.)
  • My concern with the "a great number" is that it doesn't use the simplest language possible... but if it's the only way to accurately say what you intend to say then that's fine with me.
Good luck when you take this to voting. Giggy (talk) 06:54, 16 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Red Hot Chili Peppers[change source]

Closed as successful, 100% support after one week. The Rambling Man (talk) 16:46, 22 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal for Red Hot Chili Peppers[change source]

Hi. I've done a fair bit of work on this one and I think it meets all VGA criteria now. See the talk page for a comparison to the criteria. Note; for my last VGA, Powderfinger, it was asked that a philanthropy section be written so it's comprehensive. I've looked and there's little of any such info that can be written about this band. Cheers, Giggy (talk) 06:31, 6 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

Expect some new red links and a couple fact tags when it comes out of "in-use". Oddly, copyediting is getting lighter as I go, heavy at top but the structure cleaned up as it went along.. tons of reference changes to templates going on as well. -- Creol(talk) 08:18, 6 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Dropped it between 1 and two grade levels (depending on which readability test you look at). Solid references through most but there were a couple things said or felt in the article that were not referenced. Only a couple of red-links and realy only two-three that need more than a very basic stub (Billboard Top 100 - most wanted forever.. realy needs an article) Every band member and producer could do with an article, but the smaller ones could be overlooked (although would be better to have them). The bigger names, Clinton and Rubin should definitely be done. -- Creol(talk) 09:23, 6 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks very much for your help. Should now be free of redlinks and fact tags. Giggy (talk) 00:30, 9 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Voting for Red Hot Chili Peppers[change source]

It's been up for comments for a while, and I think it's ready. Ryan just took a look and made some very minor changes (thanks!). I think it's now at VGA quality. Giggy (talk) 04:57, 13 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Support for Red Hot Chili Peppers
  1. Support, and your welcome, Giggy. :-) I read over the article, and I didn't see really any problems what-so-ever. I have fixed the overlinking problem, and I don't think there are any further problems than that. Looks well written to me, and it does look like it meets all the requirements. Thanks, RyanCross (talk) 06:04, 13 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Support, it's very remarkable how well-balanced this article is. It's not long-winded, and yet, not short-winded either. Additionally, it balances depth of information with ease of reading. Definitely a very good article in my humble opinion. --Gp75motorsports REV LIMITER 10:43, 16 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Support - fixed a typo which I can't believe went unnoticed for so long! --Gwib -(talk)- 16:53, 18 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Sheepish grin. Thanks! Giggy (talk) 22:58, 18 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  4. Support - Giggy, you did a great job on dealing with the comments I raised. Excellent stuff. The Rambling Man (talk) 17:52, 18 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  5. Support - This reads really well (there are some words that need a wikt: link (originally, successful, era etc..) but then other VGAs have similar problems (eg: Jessica Alba and raised is undefined); other than that I think that it passes WP:VGA. fr33kman t - c 23:23, 21 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  6. Apparently I can do this, so I Support. Giggy (talk) 01:11, 22 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose for Red Hot Chili Peppers
Comments for Red Hot Chili Peppers

Once again, my apologies for being late on these...

No worries - there's still plenty of time now.
  • "Currently..." ought to be timeframed, so "As of September 2008,..."
    • Changed (to something even simpler).
  • "their next album, Mothers Milk, was " reinforce it was the band's next album, not just Frusciante and Smith.
    • Done.
  • And I'm guessing that Mothers Milk should be Mother's Milk?
    • Gah, you're right. Done.
  • End of second para, start of third para of lead, the word "band" is used four times in four sentences. It reads poorly.
    • Added some variety.
  • "Red Hot Chili Peppers kept recording. They released another album soon afterwards" I'd merge these and say something more like "Red Hot Chili Peppers kept recording and released another album soon afterwards."
    • Done as suggested.
  • Year ranges in infobox need to use en-dash.
    • Done.
  • "vocals" is used without explanation - perhaps this isn't as simple as singer?
    • Changed to "singer".
  • "certified gold" - gold needs explanation here, it's not the primary use of the word.
    • Adjusted the wikilink so it includes the "gold", the article linked to explains it.
  • "a different setting" I know what you mean but it's an odd phrase in this context.
    • Fixed.
  • "did not leave the house for six months" really?
    • ... six? No, it was one... chances are I unwittingly wrote that, but I'll nonetheless say I don't know how that got there.
  • high does not link to the appropriate usage for this article.
    • Second paragraph; "High can mean an emotional condition. “He was high” means that he was over-excited. Being "high" is slang for how someone feels when they are taking drugs." I don't think we have a separate article for this. Should I just spell it out in the RHCP article instead?
  • "quality of his live slowly " life?
    • Yup.
  • Some of the popular defining singles should have articles in my opnion, such as Californication and Give It Away...
    • Yup. Will get on to stub creation after I've saved this.
  • " a best of compilation album " I would put "best of" in quotations or something because it reads slightly strangely at the moment.
    • Done.
  • "were the most successful in 2004" in what context?
    • Profit. Changed.
  • Release year in the table ideally should link to "year in music" links. Linking individual years is not good.
  • Refs 11 and 31 need to use en-dash in page ranges instead of the hyphen.
    • Fixed those and a few others.

The Rambling Man (talk) 07:52, 15 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks very much. Replied inline in italics. Giggy (talk) 09:06, 15 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

A few more comments

  • The intro needs more clear and specific statements, with the most important dates.
What year did a key player leave? What year did he return? What year was the best album? What year was the last album? These facts give us a clear picture of the band's history, which is then expanded with details and references.
Good suggestion. I've gone and done this in the lead, hopefully it's better now. Giggy (talk)
  • The intro uses the terms "never quit" and then "decided to quit".
"Quit" is a short English word, but is not an "easy" one.
The statement should not be made "A and B never quit". This is stating a positive as a double negative. Instead, write "Two musicians, A and B, have been with the band since the beginning."
"C decided to quit" should be written "C left the band in 19-- because of drug addiction. He was asked to return in 19--, when he was well.
Thanks for the tips, both are done. Giggy (talk) 01:21, 22 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Amandajm (talk) 14:03, 21 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Baseball uniform[change source]

Closed as successful at 100% after one week. --Matilda (talk) 03:45, 18 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Baseball uniform (change · talk · history · links · watch · logs · delete)

Proposal for Baseball uniform[change source]

Hey there, I would like to propose the article, baseball uniform, to WP:VGA status. I believe it is well written enough and meets all of VGA criteria. Any comments would be appreciated. Thanks, RyanCross (talk) 00:03, 2 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

Text-wise, it's quite small (11.3KB of text), but what I'm most concerned about is the fact that these reader ages are so high. The more recent VGA's like Ana Ivanovic or Charles Spurgeon have much lower reading ages. Try working on a bit of simplification, then I'll come back, more throughoutly read it and find you sentences which need re-working. --Gwib -(talk)- 05:31, 2 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Voting for Baseball uniform[change source]

Hey there. I've worked almost 3 months on this article, getting this article up to WP:GA status, and I think this can become a WP:VGA. I've checked the PVGA criteria, and I believe it meets all its requirements. The article is about 13k long, having 5k the lowest for VGAs. I believe it is well written, well referenced, and is capable of becoming a VGA. Simple Wikipedia's best article's are often VGAs, and I think baseball uniform is one of Simple Wikipedia's best work yet. Any comments are appreciated. If there's something that needs more work on, please point them out and I'm sure we can resolve them as a community. -- RyanCross (talk) 03:01, 10 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Support for Baseball uniform
  1. Support - I had before helped this article for GA, and unless Ryan completely destroyed it, it's a very excellent article. Ryan and others have done much work to this article and it appears very good. Many references, good structure, overall very good. -- American Eagle (talk) 04:25, 10 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Support Well written and like AE said good structure.--CPacker (talk) 05:40, 11 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Support Kennedy (talk) 08:56, 11 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  4. Support. After a lot of copyediting, I feel comfortable supporting. That said, please check my changes to make sure everything still makes sense and is correct. Also, I recommend you have someone else give it another copyedit, as there are still some areas where it could be more clear (someone who knows something about baseball (I'm Australian!) would probably be helpful). Giggy (talk) 11:54, 11 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  5. Support --Gwib -(talk)- 13:30, 11 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  6. Support. I admit I know nothing about Baseball, so the article could have factual inaccuracies. But it's simple, I understood it, and the refs I checked seemed fine. - tholly --Talk-- 15:30, 11 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  7. Support, although Baseball uniform#Shoulder patches seems a bit more work. Could you give an example of a shoulder patch? What sort of thing did the honour? Simplicity wise, looks fine. Microchip • talk 07:38, 13 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  8. Support-- Tdxiang 02:58, 15 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose for Baseball uniform

Oppose - too many problems at first glance. I wholeheartedly apologise for not being part of the review here but I cannot support with so many issues (as detailed in the comments section). I'm a little surprised that some of our more experienced editors support the article with the current number of issues. The Rambling Man (talk) 17:35, 11 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments at time of voting for Baseball uniform
  • I can't really vote on this article, because I have absolutely prior knowledge on the subject of baseball. But being so, I think you ought to add in a graphic or digram to show what the uniform looks like. It would be easier to understand the appearance of the uniform. The English article isn't very good, so I think it must be quite hard for you to make it a VGA. I think we ought to have more information on the design of the uniform; are all uniforms standard? I'm not sure what else there is to add, but I think there ought to be more than the history. Sorry, I can't really help much. Minor or Prime 08:26, 11 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The Rambling Man (talk) 17:28, 11 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your comments! I've fixed most of the problems. Though, I need clarification on a few of them mentioned. I have already pointed them out if you read my comments above. Thanks, RyanCross (talk) 04:31, 12 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
All the problems and issues you pointed out, The Rambling Man, have been resolved. Thanks! -- RyanCross (talk) 05:54, 13 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Just a note: This discussion has been running for over a week now, so if anyone would like to close this, you may. Thanks, RyanCross (talk) 03:45, 17 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Oklahoma[change source]

Closed as successful at 80% after one week. Giggy (talk) 05:08, 13 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oklahoma (change · talk · history · links · watch · logs · delete)

I've had it up for review on the proposed good page, but it meets VGA standards and I belive its ready for a vote--CPacker (talk) 07:31, 6 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Support for Oklahoma[change source]

  1. Support as nominator--CPacker (talk) 07:31, 6 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Support per my comments at WP:PGA recently. Giggy (talk) 12:26, 6 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Support Redlinks in the state informatino box doesn't bother me. Otherwise a very good article. Kennedy (talk) 13:53, 9 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  4. support oppose Support - I appreciate I am new here and also as a native speaker of English I am unable to comment on whether the article is expressed clearly enough. But in running it through the Microsoft statistics tool it says there are 23% passive sentences, the Flesch reading ease is 35.2 and the Flesch-Kincaid grade level is 13.2 - I think we should be aiming lower. There are 4.6 sentences per paragraph and the average sentence length is just over 20 words. So perhaps we could work on shortening sentences and making sure they are in the active tense. However, I found it an interesting article and worth reading. --Matilda (talk) 21:36, 8 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    I have changed to oppose as I think the readability statistics are too far off the mark. As it is an intersting article I am happy to support promotion once we have made it more readable per the statistics. We need shorter sentences and they need to be in the active tense not passive. We need to make sure any harder words are linked to simple English wiktionary or more simple words chosen.--Matilda (talk) 04:14, 9 September 2008 (UTC)     I support now - the readability issues have been addressed - it is an interesting article. Congrats to CPacker :-) --Matilda (talk) 20:14, 10 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  5. Support The red links don't really bother me either, to me it's a VGA.Yotcmdr Talk
  6. Support Very good, one of the best articles I've ever seen. Standards are getting higher. Minor or Prime 07:59, 11 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  7. Support - Looks well done to me now. Much better than before! -- RyanCross (talk) 09:01, 11 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  8. Support Looks good to me. - tholly --Talk-- 15:30, 11 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose for Oklahoma[change source]

  1. Oppose - several issues in the lead (as I've intimated above) - I'll need to review the whole article in full, and in depth, before changing my mind. I'll try to get onto it sooner rather than later. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:56, 6 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Weak Oppose, sorry but it's not VGA yet. I fixed five typos a while ago, not even reading anything. It has some glitches and needs work first. Go for GA first. But it's not a bad article, keep working on it! -- American Eagle (talk) 04:05, 10 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

*Weak Oppose Too much red links in the box with links about the state. Other than that, I'm okay with it. Try to fix those red links first. Minor or Prime 10:02, 9 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

 Done It took forever but all red links in the box are blue now.--CPacker (talk) 05:35, 11 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments for Oklahoma[change source]

During the the American Civil War several Indian tribes sided with the Confederacy because they owned slaves also. – uncited and needs expansion. Also seems extremely shallow. Slavery can't be the only reason why the natives joined the Confederacy. Surely there were other reasons like promises of land or what-not. cassandra (talk) 07:47, 6 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Well slavery was the common bond between all of the different Indian nations in Oklahoma at that time. So thats why I added that part. It is sourced #15; in fact everythig in the article is sourced. I am also adding a little more info about the Civil War and why the Indians joined.--CPacker (talk) 18:31, 6 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comments
    • en:WP:CITE which talks about where to place citations (e.g. no spaces between the citation and what's being cited)
    • " 28th most populated and 20th-largest state" - consistent hyphenation required.
    • "It has small mountain ranges.." -you need to reinforce what the "it" is you're talking about.
    • " With a heavy influence of German, Irish, British and Native American heritage, more than 25 Native American languages are spoken ..." - what does the German, Irish and British have to do with Native American languages?
    • "sign up" - needs a hyphen.
  • These are just in the lead. I'm sorry I missed the review and I've plenty more to add about the rest of the article, which I hope to do soon. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:55, 6 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, I've fixed everything except the citation thing; Im not sure what your wanting. Every source is right after what it talks about. Thanks for the comments Im ready for the other ones when you get a chance.--CPacker (talk) 22:00, 6 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
If you get a chance, check out w:WP:CITE which recommends that citations should be placed immediately after punctuation where possible. The Rambling Man (talk) 12:04, 7 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thats what I have on the page now, theres not a cite after every sentence because that would be repetitive. The cite is after several sentences but its for all that info before it.--CPacker (talk) 16:34, 7 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Readability comments
    • As per my comments above - perhaps we could work on shortening sentences and making sure they are in the active tense. As a native speaker of English I am unable to comment on whether the article is expressed clearly enough. But in running it through the Microsoft statistics tool it says there are 23% passive sentences, the Flesch reading ease is 35.2 and the Flesch-Kincaid grade level is 13.2 - I think we should be aiming lower. There are 4.6 sentences per paragraph and the average sentence length is just over 20 words. --Matilda (talk) 21:38, 8 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Just to explain - Flesch Reading Ease score = Rates text on a 100-point scale; the higher the score, the easier it is to understand the document. For most standard documents, aim for a score of approximately 60 to 70. Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level score = Rates text on a U.S. school grade level. For example, a score of 8.0 means that an eighth grader can understand the document. For most documents, aim for a score of approximately 7.0 to 8.0. Both scores look at average sentence length (the number of words divided by the number of sentences) and the average number of syllables per word (the number of syllables divided by the number of words) --Matilda (talk) 21:42, 8 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I have added some more statistics orn readability at Talk:Oklahoma. Recent edits have improved readability abd eliminated obvious spelling and grammar changes. Flesch reading ease is at 46.1 and Flesch-Kinkaid grade level at 11.2 - still not ideal but good progress.--Matilda (talk) 05:36, 10 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comments
    • Why is it called "The Sooner State"?
    • "maker of natural gas, oil " -not sure it makes these things - perhaps it extracts them from its wealth of natural resources...
    • "It has a large economic part in..." - not sure what this means I'm afraid - I think you mean perhaps that Aviation etc are big industries in the state? Needs rephrase.
    • " With a heavy influence of German, Irish, British and Native American heritage." - sentence seems to be prematurely concluded.
    • "It is located in three main American cultural regions; Long ago it was used as a path for cattle drives, a place for southern settlers, and a government-made territory for Native Americans." - first "Long ago" needn't be capitalised, nor is it particularly encyclopedic - and are your three main "cultural regions" the "path", "place for settlers" and "territory"? It's an odd way of explaining it.
    • "Oklahoma is part of the Bible Belt, there is a large belief .." - the comma is not a period so try to flow the following sentence so "...Bible Belt and there..." or "...Bible Belt so there..." or whatever reads best and makes most logical sense.
    • "only been a state for nearly 101 years" - "only been a state for just over a century" reads better...
    • "Spear points" - not simple - needs linking...
    • Spiro Mound Builders - needs explaining.
    • Coranado should be linked with an article.
    • "Lost City of Gold" - same thing.
  • I'm stopping here as I think you may get the idea - a lot more work before I can support VGA here. The Rambling Man (talk) 16:27, 9 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Done --CPacker (talk) 04:14, 10 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • I was looking at the article, and noticed that {{good}} isn't on it at the moment. I was about to add it, but first decided to look further into this. The strangest thing actually, but this article never became a Good Article. The archives show no trace of any GA !voting for this article. There I ask: Can articles not yet a GA be proposed to become a WP:VGA? I read our VGA criteria and there is no mention of it saying that PVGAs have to be GAs first. So I would like a clarification on this first before I !vote. Thanks! -- RyanCross (talk) 06:32, 11 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
There is no requirement for an article to go through the GA stage before it can be a VGA. If the article is of VGA standards, there is no need for it to be certain it is of lower standards first. Of course, that being said, many articles show up for VGA before they are even ready for GA. Some fail here and then get tested under GA when it realy should be done the other way for articles which are not up to basic VGA standards (the listed criteria with the widest interpretation of the requirements.) -- Creol(talk) 06:39, 11 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, exactly what I assumed! Thanks Creol. -- RyanCross (talk) 06:43, 11 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Further comments

  • I do not believe "voter sign-up " is simple English. I'm not sure I know what that means.
  • " near Anadarko" maybe "near the city of Anadarko" because it isn't clear what Anadarko is.
  • "Spiro Mound Building " are they all proper nouns? Mound Building links to Mound builders (which isn't capitalised) - if this is a proper noun then I'd expect a wikilink for Spiro Mound Building, not just for Mound Building - what does the Spiro mean?
  • Remove the space before ref [1] both times in the infobox.
  • "1861-1865" should use an en-dash, not a hyphen.
  • "The oil pools found " this makes me think the oil was found in big puddles - I imagine the oil was underground - the use of "pools" isn't obvious.
  • "grow very fast" grow very quickly.
  • "through the Dust Bowl" again, clarify what this is. It's not a football contest, you could say "through a period of time called the Dust Bowl".
  • "A farmer and his two sons during a dust storm in Cimarron County, 1936." caption is a sentence fragment so it doesn't need a full stop. Same for "A map showing Oklahoma's physical features." and "A tornado in central Oklahoma."
  • "McVeigh and his partner, Terry Nichols, were both convicted of the attack. " you talked about 9/11 between sentences which makes this "the attack" ambiguous.
  • You've linked convicted, I would consider linking sentenced as well since both are equally unsimple.
  • " (181,196 km²) (68,667 sq mi (177,847 km²) are land and 1,293 sq mi (3,349 km²) are water)" is a parenthesis nightmare.
  • "man made lakes " man-made.
  • "one million surface-acres" needs conversion to metric.
  • Avoid squashing text between two images as you have done with the images of Oklahoma City and Tulsa.
  • You should use non-breaking spaces between numeric values and their units so they don't split over two lines.
  • "are broken into two groups" wouldn't "divided" be more appropriate?
  • Flycatcher and Honey bee image captions need to lose their full stops.
  • "The Tulsa Revolution, playing in the American Indoor Soccer League is also in Tulsa" add a comma after League.
  • "State game bird" isn't linked - game needs something here because it's use in this case is not the obvious simple English "game".
  • You link bird and tree but not song. Any reason? I think it may have been linked earlier, but in this case it looks a little odd with pretty much everything else in the list linked.
  • Refs 1, 7, 10, 32, 38, 41 and 43 have ISO dates which should be made into more readable date formats.
  • All web references should have accessdate added.
  • Ref 4 is basically a mirror for English Wikipedia so should not be used as a reliable source.
  • Ref 42 you have publisher = PGA but it's a Forbes webpage.

The Rambling Man (talk) 12:56, 11 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

"Voter sign-up" I'm assuming was an attempt to simplify the term "voter registration". I do not know how to simplify that if you find "sign-up" to be confusing. Probably if we get a good article going we won't need to explain it. cassandra (talk) 18:50, 11 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Well in the UK there's no such thing (as far as I know) as "voter sign-up" - we have registration... but even "voter registration" is a little complex. But if it's linked to en-wiki then I see no major problem. "sign-up", unlinked or unexplained, is not good as far as I'm concerned. The Rambling Man (talk) 18:55, 11 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
 voter registration linked to the enwiki article. I note that that article explains When registering to vote, one may declare an affiliation with a political party. This declaration of affiliation does not cost any money, and it is not the same as being a dues-paying, card-carrying member in good standing of a party; for example, a party cannot prevent anybody from declaring his or her affiliation with them, but it can refuse requests for full membership. I learned something new :-) --Matilda (talk) 23:19, 11 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think it's a good idea to be using enwp for definitions. It sets a poor precedent, and the content there isn't guaranteed to be simple. Can we create an article here with a simplified translation instead, please? Giggy (talk) 13:42, 12 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]


Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom[change source]

Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom (change · talk · history · links · watch · logs · delete)

Sinbad (talk) 16:26, 23 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

United Kingdom[change source]

United States (change · talk · history · links · watch · logs · delete)

Sinbad (talk) 16:25, 23 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

  • This is currently a premature nomination. {{fact}} tags need fixing, and the article needs a number of reliable sources. Currently there is only one. Popping into the local library will give a whole section on the United Kingdom, and there are a number of good websites too (though be selective in your choice of websites).
  • Redlink to healthcare needs fixing.
  • A copyedit needs to be done, but the main issue currently is the referencing. With such a big topic, an expansion is feasible at best. I hope you find time to work on these points. Best, PeterSymonds (talk) 02:48, 28 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'll agree that the article needs significant work. As PeterSymonds said, such a large topic needs substantial information, which the article currently lacks. Sourcing, context, and a copyedit are needed, as well. Juliancolton (talk) 16:11, 30 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

United States[change source]

United States (change · talk · history · links · watch · logs · delete)

Sinbad (talk) 16:05, 23 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Get rid of the {{complex}} and {{unsourced}} tags and it would be ready to discuss. My issue is that there are several sections which seem pointless and oversimplified (example) and other sections which are far too complex for the average SEWP reader (another example). A throughout copyedit, removal or red links and simplification is in order. --Gwib -(talk)- 16:17, 23 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Agree. Thats why i think people should get involved now so that we can do this article into a very good one.More suggestions?--Sinbad (talk) 16:20, 23 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Hmm, that's good thinking, but the PVGA page is for articles that are basically ready. See WP:PR for community building. Best, PeterSymonds (talk) 16:23, 23 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]


Gothic architecture[change source]

  • Gothic architecture is also ready to go, with no red links. It is a complete rewrite of the article I wrote for enwiki. The original is stable. The language contains a great many architectural terms, which are essential to the vocab of anyone trying to learn about the subject. Hoever, the terms are all explained and most are shown on diagrams. The language is directed at junior highschool (11-14 years). With regards to the referencing, in most cases (except quotes, opinion and very specific info which are inline referenced) most of the mmaterial contained in the article is of a broad generic nature. For this reason several references are placed at the end of each section, rather than inline. This indicates that the entire section is drawn from one or two agreeing sources.Amandajm (talk) 00:55, 16 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Comments
  1. Gothic architecture is the result of an engineering challenge: how to span in stone ever-wider surfaces from ever-greater heights? ... From 1100 onward, architects experimented with innovations that, once properly combined, allowed the dissolution of the wall and a fluid arrangement of space.
  2. The increase in knowledge and skills acquired over the years, meant that stone was specifically cut so that it fitted next to other stone blocks with precision. Therefore, the large blocks of stone favoured by the Normans, were replaced by shaped stone
  3. Another major change was that the hollow walls used by the Normans were not used by later architects. Walls and pillars were solid and this allowed them to cope with much greater weights.
  4. pointed arches ... allowed a much greater weight to be carried when compared to a Norman rounded arch and allowed architects to raise vaults much higher than was possible with Romanesque architecture / the pointed arch, which has a lesser lateral thrust than the round arch and is easily adaptable to openings of various widths and heights.
  5. stone ribs to distribute the weight of the vault onto columns and piers all the way to the ground; the vault could now be made of lighter, thinner stone and the walls opened to accommodate ever-larger windows
  6. the article does note that flying buttresses help to hold the vault up but doesn't explain that they do so by spreading the weight - it isn't clear that they are not pushing the weight up. These external structures absorb the outward thrust of the vault at set intervals just under the roof, making it possible to reduce the building’s exterior masonry shell to a mere skeletal framework.
As a result of these engineering evolutions buildings could be larger and I think the article could bring this aspect out more
  • I am not sure how the subsection on the Church links to the topic. What you seem to have is a short history of the church at the period and then it is not clear whether church-related buildings were in the Gothic style because they were built at the period or for some other reason - for example, did the Church promote the style of architecture. My understanding is that the Church did promote the style. There are a couple of points that could be made:
  1. the Church increased its prosperity and wanted larger buildings (again ref to support is History learning Site)
  2. the article covers height but it should be in the lead as an important feature. The met's essay says for example: The typical elevation of a Gothic cathedral interior, with storey upon corresponding storey, draws the gaze to the highest point in the vault, in an irresistible upward pull symbolic of the Christian hope of leaving the terrestrial world for a heavenly realm. Such a transcendent experience of architecture is reinforced by the rich stained-glass windows, sometimes spanning the entire height of the edifice. As well as not emphasising height in the lead, I think we should bring in the heavenward aspect. It is mentioned in the section on Abbot Suger but it needs to be in the section on the chuirch and this possibly needs some rejuggling.
  • The Met essay also draw the important point of the influence of the architecture on other art: The stylistic language first formulated in stone on a monumental scale resonated in other media. ... Gothic vocabulary gradually permeated all forms of art throughout Europe.
A VGA is meant to be complete, show all sides of the story - my comments relate to some sides of the story that could be added to make the article more complete. It is a most enjoyable article to read otherwise. --Matilda (talk) 23:42, 19 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Response I agree with your suggestions. I'll add a section on the engineering aspects. I must apologise for my apparent rudeness in ignoring your comments. I've had a lot to occupy my time in the last few weeks and haven't been on Simple Wiki at all. Amandajm (talk) 06:28, 7 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Archived voting[change source]

Hot chocolate[change source]

Hot chocolate (change · talk · history · links · watch · logs · delete)
Malinaccier (talk) (review) 00:46, 5 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Strong support - Nicely written, no redlinks, contains helpful images, and an abundant sources to back the article. --§ Snake311 (I'm Not Okay!) 00:02, 12 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Result: Not promoted, does not meet criteria, fails to get 6 votes--BG7even 11:14, 13 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]


Fra Angelico[change source]

Fra Angelico (change · talk · history · links · watch · logs · delete)
Response
  • I don't believe that this article requires more simplification. It has been written for an average reading age of 10 to 12 years, and could be easily read by an intelligent 8 year old. Any difficulties (eg "beatification") are explained within the text (eg "this means he is on the way to becoming a saint"). We are not writing for very young kids. We are writing here for people who are likely to take a real interest in the subjects we are presenting.
  • Whilst I agree that the article is simple, there are too many ambiguous words in various sections. To give you an example, "rich patrons ... liked to show off their wealth by ordering paintings that had lots of bright colour" - show off their wealth is ambiguous, did they show it to everyone before they ordered paintings? Did they boast about it? Maybe a better wording could be "rich patrons liked to display their wealth ...."? --Gwib -(talk)- 12:50, 3 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Response "Show off" is obviously an easier term than "display". It is the term that children use. It says "show of their wealth by ordering paintings ...." This indicates that it was the ordering of such a painting that displayed their wealth. No, Gwib, it doesn't suggest that they flashed their money around before ordering. And as for boasting... they probably did just that! "Have you seen the painting I ordered for Santa Maria? I paid 200 ducats for the gold alone!"
Gwib, I wouldn't even bother to get started with your pseudo-innocent nit-picking, if I were you. It falls into the same category as your deliberately procative proposals for GAs, and your continuous repetition of the same theme at the Jesus page. If this was a different site, I would refer to some of your behaviour as trolling, but because it is wikipedia, I am supposed to give you the benefit of the doubt. You, Gwib, are merely "Glib" with a cute little speech impediment. Amandajm (talk) 00:28, 4 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support I did some copyediting on the article; very small changes here and there. I also linked some of the words. The only thing that remains a mystery to me is the Carmine Friary Angelico supposedly Joined in 1417. Taking the Italian article on him, they say that he took the vows in the convent San Domenico in Fiesole, in 1418; he joined a sub-group of the Dominicans, the Dominicani osservanti (observant Dominicans?) which follow a stricter rule than the rest. But more to the point, a lot of work has been put into the article, and I think it deserves the tag. --Eptalon (talk) 17:36, 3 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Response Thank you Eptalon. Your changes were good. I've further improved a couple of them. Will look into the Carmine thing. I think he started off in a Carmine Convent which was nearer, before joining the Dominicans. He seems to have kept himself out of the less-than-pleasant activities of the "Watch Dogs of Heaven"! Amandajm (talk) 00:50, 4 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
My comment was less about his activities, but more about the fact that Carmine should probably be linked to some religious order (the Carmelites)? - As i said, I didn't find anything on Carmine relating to a religious order or place name in the region; all I got was a tint of red. --Eptalon (talk) 15:04, 4 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Response OK! I have no idea where the Carmine quote comes from, but it is interesting, particularly as it gives a specific date. I suspect it might be the old Britannica. I now have an entirely different date for his birth, about 10 years earlier, from a very recent and reliable publication, and supported (broadly) by others. Konig gives the date of his entry into the Doinican friary as 1407 (when he must have been about 20-22) But he didn't take orders till much later. However, he did do a lot of artworks, particularly towards the end of his novitiate. Thjis makes me suspect that he may have worked far more on those illuminated manuscripts than is generally acknowledged.
The only explanation that I can see for his specifically dated presence in a Carmine friary rather than the Domincan one is that there was recurrent outbreaks of plague, and at various times the monks took refuge in Cortona and other such places that were at a higher altitute than Fiesole. There was also a suppression of the so-called "Observant" branches of the Dominicans. It could be that for either of these reasons Fra Angelico spent some brief time with the Carmini. Either way, I can't verify it, and the information is not of broad significance to his artistic career (as far as I can understand) so I have deleted it, and included instead the new referenced dates that I have found. Amandajm (talk) 07:08, 5 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
At the moment I see the warning Warning: Default sort key "Angelico, Fra" overrides earlier default sort key "Fra Angelico". One should get rid of it in any case. --Cethegus (talk) 16:57, 4 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Response I don't know what one does about that Amandajm (talk) 07:08, 5 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Result: Not promoted, does not meet criteria, fails to get 6 votes--BG7even 11:14, 13 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Nudity[change source]

Nudity (change · talk · history · links · watch · logs · delete)

 Neutral - I have mixed feelings about the article. --§ Snake311 (I'm Not Okay!) 11:36, 14 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I have removed my vote. --§ Snake311 (I'm Not Okay!) 05:41, 21 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

* Support - Good work has been done on this article and this is definitely one for the VGA ages :). Cheers, Razorflame 16:13, 14 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  • Support - but you may want to add more categories than just the two. --Gwib -(talk)- 19:00, 14 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - Now that photos flow better its good for me--CPacker (talk) 06:45, 16 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose — A lot of good work has gone into this article, but I'm afraid there are too many issues to gain my support. To start off, the lead is too short. The three short paragraphs read rather oddly. As I get further down the article, I notice that there are numerous unsourced facts, including POV such as "Many societies see this as very bad." The prose is also confusing in some areas. "Most movies try not to show this type of nudity. This is often done by putting an object somewhere. This object will hide the pubic area of the naked actor or actress. This kind of nudity can also be seen in the picture Woman Bathing above." However, the picture shows the back of a women, not the front. More minor issues include a broken image in the Western culture section, stubby sections, and unformatted references. Hope these comments help with further improvement, Juliancolton (talk) 18:22, 18 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    I tried my best to get sources where I could. Most of the article has been translated from other languages (which also do not have sources). I am not an anthropologist, so I am unlikely to know sources for these facts. I guess if the article does not pass, it will be a case similar to Berlin Wall (which also cannot be nominated because sources are lacking; problem there is that sources are not really there, since the event is too young to be of interest to historians. --Eptalon (talk) 19:04, 18 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    Well, I suggest you try to fix the prose/format issues I pointed out, and then I'll help you find some sources. :) Juliancolton (talk) 19:38, 18 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support It's improved by far, well done. I reckon this would make a good VGA (or is that a very good A?) -- plenty of pictures [and I'm amazed at how you've managed to make them all (by my standards) inoffensive ones], and lots of links. Good length, completely simple, easy to understand. A quick suggestion is to expand the first three sections of Nudity#Public nudity, as they're quite brief, but apart from that I see no glaring errors. Nudity#Nudity and health is a section that probably needs citations, and, finally, reference number 6 has a template error. Well done, definately. MC8 (talk) 21:22, 19 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Closed, result pending discussion--BG7even 15:38, 20 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Hold on one cotton-picking minute. The concerns raised by Juliancolton are still active. Please don't close the discussion until he has revisited. Thanks, PeterSymonds (talk) 15:41, 20 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
PeterSymonds: !votes last for one week. Also, note: "closed pending discussion" - i've closed new !votes, not discussion ;). Also, I need an issue re: neutral !votes clearing up first. (See User talk:Eptalon#WP:PVGA) Thanks, BG7even 15:44, 20 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
It definitely said 71% = promoted at some point, but oh well. The neutral comment can be discarded; it did not give any issues about the article, and the editor has not returned to elaborate. PeterSymonds (talk) 15:50, 20 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Ok. In that case it passes with 83.3recurring% ;) I'll wait a few hours for Juliancolton to comment on it (if he wishes to do so) and then i'll complete the promotion. Thanks, BG7even 15:56, 20 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
There are still problems with sourcing. Examples:
  • The entire Influences on people's ideas about nudity section.
  • The amount of clothing needed to take away the feeling of shame is different for each culture. With some indigenous peoples like the Yanomami, a piece of string is enough to make that feeling go away.
  • Even with people from the same culture, different people can have different feelings about nudity. Some people in Western culture (for example the United States) do not mind if a family member sees them naked in the bath. Other people from the same culture would be uncomfortable if anyone saw them naked in the bath. Some women in a Western culture are happy to wear a bikini. Other women feel naked in a bikini and always wear a one-piece swimsuit.
  • For example, if a man took his trousers off near a school, so that the children would see him, he would be charged with indecency. The reason why a person is nude, affects whether the law says that their nudity is indecent.
  • An example of this when a person at the beach changes from a wet swimsuit to their dry clothes. Often the person who is changing can use a towel so that other people do not see their nudity, and become embarrassed or angry.
  • In some cultures, such as Japan, open showers and open urinals in men's toilets are not allowed.
  • Not wearing the burqa brings shame on herself and family.
  • One such level in English is called full frontal nudity. This usually is a pose where the nude person faces the viewer. In this pose, there are no things covering parts of the body. Many societies see this as very bad.

Juliancolton (talk) 16:27, 20 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your comments on the matter Juliancolton. I think they are all valid points, and I can see that they are issues, however at the same time I don't feel comfortable going against consensus. Hmm... would you be ok with me promoting it and seeing if the issues are fixed in say a month or so. If they are not fixed we can request a demotion. Is that ok with you? Thanks, BG7even 16:48, 20 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Absolutely not. The quality of the article overrules consensus. If it's not ready, it shouldn't be promoted. We should put it on hold until the issues are fixed. The issues are major and significant enough to preclude promotion until they are fixed. PeterSymonds (talk) 18:25, 20 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
You're not going against consensus if there are blatant issues with the article. Juliancolton (talk) 18:27, 20 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Both of you raise good points, and I agree. What would be a better course of action? Close as not done or give it say 5 days pending the issues are fixed. I.e. Closed to !voting, but outcome not yet decided. Thanks, BG7even 18:37, 20 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Note: I have notified all those who voted in this discussion (except for Juliancolton since he's obviously aware of this) of the concerns that have been raised. I say throw out the "consensus" right now, let this discussion go, then have a vote at a later time once the sourcing concerns have been met. After all, "verifibility and accuracy should come above everything else." Either way (talk) 22:12, 20 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

(<-) Hello there; I see that some of these points may need sourcing, while others do not. It is not difficult to imagine that different cultures have different ideas about nudity (As an example: A person bathing naked on a beach in France, the Netherlands, or Sweden will probably be asked to move down the beach a little, to not disturb the clothed bathers; a person bathing naked on a beach in the US risks a fine or a prison term). It is also not difficult to imagine that within a given culture, people will have different ideas about what levels of nudity are acceptable. In other words, such statements probably do not need sourcing - they are obvious; Others, like the statement that a woman not wearing a burqa in Afghanistan will bring shame onto her family will probably need sourcing (Problem there: how do you source such a statement?) - Our problem here is that if we stick to the process, the article should not be promoted (it lacks sourcing). This will of course also mean that certain articles will never be promoted (Berlin Wall is another example), as the events they describe are too recent (or too controversial). To find sources for our nudity article, we'll probably need an Ethnographer, or a Sociologist (which we are unlikely to have, in our 50-odd editors). To make things short:

  • It is unclear which statements need sourcing, and which ones do not. (Alternatively. how much do we assume common knowledge, and common sense, else we need a ref tag on every sentence?)
  • At the moment, 5/6 editors support the promotion of this article to VGA status. (The Neutral vote is a Comment, not a vote); On its own, this would speak for a promotion.
  • We do not have the option to set a deadline till the errors are fixed; either we promote, and try to fix the errors (and if they aren't fixed within a deadline, we ask for demotion), or we do not promote, try to fix the errors and then re-list.

Given how difficult it is to get votes, I'd opt for promotion, fixing and demotion, rather than not promoting, fixing and re-listing; however I contributed massively to the article, so I may not exactly be neutral in that regard.

Something else to consider: Some consider nudity a controversial topic; We say ourself that WP is not censored, there is no forbidden knowledge. Now what message would a nudity VGA blurb on the front page convey? - This decision therefore may also have political implications; whoever takes it will probably get some criticism from either the editors that are for more control (our poor children..) or those that are for less control (..a hidden form of censorship). All the best. --Eptalon (talk) 22:32, 20 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

No control = censorship? How does that work? Anyways, I'd say promote-fix-depromote, but with a view to waiting to stick it on the Main Page until the issues are fixed, although I understand there's going to be a bit of argument about when it is (after all, who will say when it is fit enough to go on the Main Page? Eptalon can't, so it would probably go straight to another PVGA vote, defeating the object of passing it now. As for the censorship, G-spot went to the Main Page, why can't Nudity? MC8 (talk) 08:25, 21 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Closed; Not Promoted - Outstanding Issues/Not enough !votes--BG7even

Gothic architecture[change source]

Gothic architecture (change · talk · history · links · watch · logs · delete)
Result: Promoted to VGA --Eptalon (talk) 11:08, 10 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom[change source]

Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom (change · talk · history · links · watch · logs · delete)
Result: Not promoted, does not meet criteria, fails to get 6 votes--Eptalon (talk) 11:08, 10 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

United Kingdom[change source]

United Kingdom (change · talk · history · links · watch · logs · delete)
Result: Not promoted, does not meet criteria, fails to get 6 votes--Eptalon (talk) 11:08, 10 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

United States[change source]

United States (change · talk · history · links · watch · logs · delete)
Result: Not promoted, does not meet criteria, fails to get 6 votes--Eptalon (talk) 11:08, 10 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Sniper[change source]

Voting ends 19:47, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

I've been working on this article for some time now, and I'd like this to make VG sometime soon. I think the article is in pretty good shape, and currently meets the good article standards. ⇒SWATJester Son of the Defender 05:20, 30 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah. PVGA voting, here we come...! The Rambling Man (talk) 20:58, 9 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Support[change source]

Oppose[change source]

  • Oppose - Using these stats, I find that it has only 8kb (7.8kb) of text, which is very small for a VG article. The reader age stats also concern me. Whilst most are good, I tend to watch for 15+ years old and two reading indices are over. Some sentences are also still {{complex}} ("They can fire at extreme ranges of over a mile, but generally are too bulky, inaccurate at short ranges", "the sniper learns to adjust his aim to compensate" etc). The entire 3rd paragraph on Sniper#Sniper_rifles is complex and, albeit well written, is too detailed for our audience (using words such as caliber (unlinked), sound suppressor (unlinked) or "In contrast"). Stealth links to ENWT rather than our own SEWT, and can thus be qualified as a red link, as does .50 BMG, which links in the article but has not yet been created. Fix these issues, expand it a bit and it should pass no problem. --Gwib -(talk)- 22:41, 11 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • As a comment, only 1 of those indices is over, and the most important ones are not. Artificially contrived statistics are a poor metric for actual determination of "reader age" which either way is not a relevant point for this consideration. Similarly, something that links to ENWT rather than SEWT does not make it a red link. And as an aside, the tool that determines the amount of text vs. wikitext is broken, with large swaths of text not being properly categorized by the tool. ⇒SWATJester Son of the Defender 12:52, 12 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • As another comment, the length requirement is a minimum of 5KB readable text. If you wish to oppose on length grounds then I suggest you seek to modify the criteria as this article clearly (and easily) meets that criterion. The Rambling Man (talk) 13:23, 12 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
      • In reply to both of you: Poor or not, the article is still (IMO) unsuitable. ENWT should not be linked to in our articles, since it's obviously not for our audience. Why do you think we have SEWT? For the same reasons we also have SEWB and SEWQ, to link to simple projects rather than our cousin, EN__. 5KB is the minimum, and for an article such as Sniper, 8KB is minimalistic. As I've said time and time again, don't view criteria as goals to meet! If you overshoot the article length, that's better than just being a few thousands bytes over it. Sniper has huge potential, and could get to 9 or 10KB of text easily.
      • I'd also like to say, thanks for simplifying what I've pointed out, guys! Instead of actually taking what I've said into consideration, you're both focusing on proving me wrong. Wise attitudes, if you want this article to fail. The complex words and even red link(s) are both still there. Both violate your oh-so precious criteria. --Gwib -(talk)- 14:28, 12 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose - Under criteria #2: The article must be comprehensive. A comprehensive article is not missing any major facts and details. I believe the article is good so far, but it can be better. Gwibs suggestions below should be worked in to make it more comprehensive. Once this is done, I don't see a problem in supporting. I helped out earlier on with this article by creating some articles to remove redlinks, and would be more than happy to help out again if you need me. Synergy 00:28, 13 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose I see little reason why we should have a weapon as a very good article when there's too much violence in the world already. 24.1.4.241 (talk) 21:29, 15 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose This article doesn't stick to the main topic and for the Popular Culture Referrence, there wasn't enough cutural comparisons to be there. 24.1.4.241 (talk) 12:57, 17 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose I am really sorry guys (I found little time earlier, howebver, here are some points why I think this article is not yet ready:
    • Because snipers are very good at remaining hidden from the enemy, even enemies walking right on top of them, they are often used as scouts for the army. - On top of them has its literal meaning here?
    • scout should probably be linked (to reconnaissance, not the scouting movement); same with Famous snipers, Link (and provide a very short article) on Tsaitsev (not sure on transliteration), and Hughes
    • Can the accuracy paragraph be clarified? - Snipers are soldiers too, aren't they?
    I will try to help fix these issues, but for now I must poppose. --Eptalon (talk) 14:28, 18 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Potential Expansion[change source]

  • History of the sniper. ENWP covers this by assessing their creations and origins from WWI and II. They also include a lovely little section called Selected snipers in history, covering pre-20th century and post 20th century.
  • Suggest we create a big heading: == Types of sniper == . Within are the (already present) police snipers and to be added are snipers in the US army and British army.
  • A section on the tactics they use. Presumably they don't just set up on a building far away and shoot things?
  • A section on snipers in pop culture (movies, books, video games etc. Tom Clancy jumps to mind). --Gwib -(talk)- 17:45, 12 October 2008 (UTC)  Done Its not long, but its ok FSM Noodly? 13:06, 13 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

RAID[change source]

Vote closed as unsuccessful after a week. Giggy (talk) 05:02, 13 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
RAID (change · talk · history · links · watch · logs · delete)

Has been listed above for 3 weeks, I think we might give it a vote

Support[change source]

  1. Support - No problems I can immediately see. Kennedy (talk) 12:15, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Support - I cannot say that it is the sort of topic that I gravitate too ;-) but it is readable and I learned lots :-) . I checked the readability statistics at http://toolserver.org/~dispenser/cgi-bin/readability1.2.py?page=simple%3ARAID and I think given the stats generated it is suitable for Simple wikipedia readership notwithstanding its daunting subject matter. Congratulations on making a difficult topic into simple English. No major spelling errors that I can see. --Matilda (talk) 01:29, 12 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Support After reading it again carefully and checking out the readability link above, I think it can work as a VGA. I'd want to re-read it again after it's been promoted though, to change some of the more German MoS to English MoS. --Gwib -(talk)- 17:59, 12 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose[change source]

  1. Weak oppose - I'm willing to change to a support, but this entire section is too complex. With sentences like:
    • "Correlated failures"
    • "the error correction in RAID assumes that failures of drives are independent"
    • "In the context of a database, atomicity means that there are two points in time"
    • "Overlapped or staggered writes are more common when a single RAID processor is responsible for multiple drives"
    • "Double protection schemes such as RAID 6 try to address this issue, but they suffer from a very high write penalty"
    • "Some disk systems allow testing the battery periodically"
    • "This allows multiple spindles to increase transfer rates for linear transfers"
    • "the disk is usually accessible with a generic driver built into most operating systems"
    • "disk striping using RAID 0 shows little to no performance gain in most desktop applications"
    • "it is possible to move the RAID array members and controllers as a unit"

It's hard to oppose, because the quality and quantity are both excellent. It's just some complex issues are hard to simplify without making them redundant. --Gwib -(talk)- 15:46, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I have tried to address osme of these issues, i will however leave some notes here:
  • Certain RAID levels (those that use striping, generally) can give a performance boost with access patterns that are like linear reads (either working with large contiguous files, or many users accessing different parts of the same file); For a single user with random access patterns on small files, there is no performance improvement with RAID.
  • In statistics and linear algebra there are whole theories that assume (or deal with correlated variables. What the paragraph wants to address: When RAID was designed, errrors were assumed to not be correlated; the way it is used today though is that after one error occurs, another is more likely to occur (because disks are same age, etc).
  • In computer science design is very often a trade-off between speed and memory/storage. RAID 5 uses XORS (which can be done easily. RAID6 needs to do the full Reed-Solomon calculations, which are much more time intensive.
  • Hardware RAID controllers needs special drivers
As I said, I have done some improvements, but other things will be difficult to improve.--Eptalon (talk) 18:03, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I have tried to address one point brought up above, but that leads to one red link in the article (which can be quite important). In my opinion, RAID is a very complicated system and some things just can't be expressed in pure Simple English. Chenzw  Talk  13:04, 10 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Fixed that red link. Not that hard ot explain what a device driver is --Eptalon (talk) 13:18, 10 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Quite complex, quite difficult for me to understand it. You should really use me to check for complex articles in future; I'm a very bad reader, and I don't understand most things. Minor or Prime 10:06, 9 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments[change source]

Still about 5 red links? Kennedy (talk) 10:36, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed all the red-links I found, any left?--Eptalon (talk) 12:13, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I found one: Write Anywhere File Layout - I found it here Kennedy (talk) 12:15, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I also found a few typos, which I have sorted Kennedy (talk) 12:50, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Wrote the WAFL (vewr short stub)--Eptalon (talk) 13:45, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Your spelling is terrible! ;) Kennedy (talk) 13:49, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Speling? - What Sepling? ;) --Eptalon (talk) 14:15, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • I noted above that the lead needs expansion (to summarise the article) - could you have a go at this please? It's nearly midnight now but I'll try to do a full read through and copyedit/comment here tomorrow. Sorry I couldn't get to it sooner. Giggy (talk)
    Summary extended, also extended RAID 6 a little. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Eptalon (talk • contribs)
  • Some wikilinking/explaining needed for the non-tech folk; logical disk, flexibility, write (in the computing sense), read (same sense as write), error - that's from the lead. Giggy (talk) 23:14, 9 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Do you think we should explain how writing to a piece of paper is different from writing data to a hard disk (ie. translating the data into a stream of pos/neg polarized magetism that represent bits). I mean you edit a document on your ocmputer, when you click save that document is "translated" in some way to be written to a part of the hard disk, when you load the document again the translation is done the other way? - For writing to a CD or DVD, this is mostly the same, except the outcome is not magnetic, but rather light that is bent one way or the other.)? --Eptalon (talk) 13:39, 10 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
At least a basic overview would be good. Obviously, you're not literally writing on the hard disk/CD rom, so to avoid confusion it'd be good, IMO. Giggy (talk) 11:09, 11 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Is there no way of getting a picture of RAID stack. I have honestly no idea what it would look like? - tholly --Talk-- 15:30, 11 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    What do you mean by a RAID stack? - Software RAID is done with the harddisks in your computer, nothing special. Sometimes, the harddisks are mounted inside special drawers, so they can be changed more easily --Eptalon (talk) 14:31, 12 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Yes sorry, very vague. What I mean is, that I imagine there must be some big companies with a stack of hard disks for lots of data in RAID form. If it would be possible o find a picture of something like this, it would be good. But I don't know much about this, and it might not be used in high quantity much, making it harder. I think that nearly makes sense, or have I got completely the wrong idea...   - tholly --Talk-- 14:56, 12 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

(unindenting) The less impressive: A box containing disks, and a controller, attached with a cable. The more impressive: A 19" rack (empty wardrobe), with slots that can contain disks. See for example [One of Sun Microsystems RAID systems] or [IBM RAID offerings] - these are the actual systems holding the harddisks. Depending on how you attach the storage, how many servers want to access it, etc, these systems usually cost 5-6 digit figures (in USD); for "home grown" apps, calculate like USD 500 for a controller, plus the disks and a case (so probably like USD 1500 up, for a new system). I was at Sun Microsystems once, there they had like a "room full of wardrobes" (called "storage park", another room full of machines ("machine park") and like 2-3 diskless terminals to manage these - As stated RAID is one of the technologies used by Storage Area Networks.--Eptalon (talk) 15:57, 12 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I see, those pics explain it, thanks. But can anyone find a picture on commons (or take one)? It's just that I think the article would benefit with something like the examples above. - tholly --Talk-- 16:03, 12 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I added two images to common; they are of course not as "up market" or "high performance" as those expensive systems by Sun or IBM, but they show how a real-world RAID array could look like in a server of a small enterprise. --Eptalon (talk) 21:36, 12 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Jupiter[change source]

Jupiter (change · talk · history · links · watch · logs · delete)

I thought of putting this up for GA first but having looked at it quite a few times I really think it might make VGA first time. I appreaciate most of the writing has been done by me but I think that shouldn't count against it if it's good enough. As far as I can tell it's pretty comprehensive, definetly long enough and has no red links. It's as good as Saturn, an existing VGA. Cheers. The Flying Spaghetti Monster! 23:03, 18 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Closed by nominator, moved to WP:PGA FSM Noodly? 10:43, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Support[change source]

  1. Support - per nominator. F S M 12:46, 27 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose[change source]

  • Weak oppose - I believe this article has the potential to become a GA, but I still think it could use some expansion on some of the sections.--≈  Lights  χ  16:03, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Weak oppose - While the article does look pretty good, I'm not really fond of the 1-3 sentence paragraphs. They should be full paragraphs, particularly 4-6 sentences. Other than that, very well done. :-) Though, I can't support this at the moment. Good luck, -- RyanCross (talk) 10:39, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments[change source]

  • Going over the article (and trimming its readability index nearly an entire grade level), a couple things popped up:
    1. Two new redlinks. One for an astromoner who discovered one of the moons and one for Solar wind.  Done
    2. Too odd to be true: The article says it is so hot in the upper atmosphere that helium condenses and causes rain. Yes, it is hot. Yes, it does rain helium (with ref to prove it). But no, Heat does not cause condensation. Something there is a bit fishy.  Done - no change needed
    3. Under "Research and exploration" (from Earth) you say that Amalthea was the last of Jupiter's moons to be discovered from Earth. This is not true. You actualy go on later in the article and dispute this very fact. "Only 13 of these were first seen from Earth". Amalthea was the last visually detected from Earth (the last time someone looked through a telescope and went "oh, look. A new moon!", but 8 more were discovered using telescopic photography before the first missions in 79 found new ones.
    4. "Jupiter in the Solar System" - .. um.. that section is a little light on content.
    5. Links need to be checked to make certain they lead to the correct location. Several that I noticed, including a {{Main}} link go to redirects instead of directly to the actual pages and Core is a disambig page (Planetary core is the correct target).

-- Creol(talk) 19:09, 26 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The condensation of Helium part is correct. read condensation gas can condense at extremely high or low temperatures

The Amalthea bit  Done. I sorted it out. And as for Jupiter in the Solar System I only added that recently. When I've expanded it wil you support? F S M 21:30, 26 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Followups: (+1)
  • The section on Amalthea is still wrong. Others were found using earth-based telescopes. Amalthea was just the last to be found visually through a telescope, others were found examining photographs taken through a telescope.
  • The condensation issue is still there. While condensation can happen at high temperatures (give a high enough pressure), it is not the temperature that causes the condesation, but the pressure. As writen, "its so hot, it rains helium" (paraphrased), it says it is because of the heat.
  • Two images bring up a couple more issues. There are two images with both putting in a lot of info on the Red Spot. While the first also is about the size comparison between the Earth and Jupiter, the extra info is not needed in that section. The use of two very similar images so near each other is a bit overkill. Also, in the text for the images, in image1 it says the Red Spot is 2x the size of Earth. In the second image it says the "little white spot" is 2x the size of Earth and as there are two white spots (and a bunch of grey ones), the littler of the white spots by comparison is about 1/25th of the Red Spot (5x wider and higher) then Earth would be 1/50th the size of the Red Spot. Even the larger of the two white storms, at 1/5 the size of the Red (little under 1/2 the width/height/diameter), would be under 1/2 as big as the Earth given the first image. (side note: if the scale is correct on the first image, the Red Spot is 1.38x larger than the Earth making little white 1/20th Earth) -- Creol(talk) 19:30, 27 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
First image is innacurate, I am going to change it to an animation of Voyager 1's approach to Jupiter. I fixed the Amalthea bit now, I think, and I added the high pressure to the condesing helium sentence. F S M 19:39, 27 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    1. "The very high temperatures and pressures mean scientists cannot tell what materials would be like there." - ???
    2. Half of the the uses of Jupiter are "Jupiter" and the other half 'It" - consistency. Perhaps, start of paragraphs should be "Jupiter" and new sentences should be "It" or "this planet" - maybe.
    3. Compile some good "Other websites." - perhaps?  Done
    4. "Jupiter in the Solar System" is blank.  Done
    5. "Image:En-us-Jupiter.ogg" could be added.  Done
    6. All web references should use the [[tl|Cite web}} template. (reference cleanup)

— AE (talk) 21:38, 26 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

  • We can't use Jupiter every time, it would sound odd. Half and half is good.

Cheers, F S M 21:42, 26 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

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