Wikipedia:Featured article review/New York City/archive1

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

The article was removed by YellowAssessmentMonkey 23:40, 18 May 2010 [1].

New York City

Review commentary

Featured article review/New York City/archive1

Notified: Jleon, WikiProject New York City, WikiProject New York, WikiProject Cities

I looked up this article because I wanted an example for an excellent article for a large city, and was truly disappointed. The article is a complete mess:

Large portions of the article are unreferenced, particularly under "geography", "sports" and "demographics". There are numerous citation needed tags.
References are located within its own scroll-bar and contain incorrectly formatted entries.
Three dead links
Disambig link to Baldwin, New York
There are diminutive sections such as "Nicknames"
Overall, the article has a lot of very short paragraphs. Numerous places, these are single-sentence or single-line.
The article is littered with irrelevant trivia.
Large sections contain simple bulleted lists, some places using three periods (...) instead of a colon to introduce the list. Particularly "Culture and contemporary life" is deadful reading in this respect.
Images are scattered around, some have forced size, some are not, and these use what seems like random sizes. Other places, images sandwich each other.
At least three of the "see also" links are trivial and not self-explanatory.
There are numerous MOS violations.
The list of largest businesses is not accessible (color-coding only for information).
A lot of conversions have the wrong number of significant digits.

Arsenikk ^(talk) 12:18, 7 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'd been pondering bringing this to FAR myself, as it's changed a lot in the nearly three years since it was promoted. In particular, the intro is larger than most articles, and the boxes around each borough are unique on Wikipedia, and that's probably for a reason. The Manhattanhenge see-also is my fault, it was an attempt at a compromise with adding a large section about that extremely non-notable issue. A one sentence mention in cityscape *maybe* but otherwise I just don't know where to put it. The other two you refer to, I agree, those are trivial and non-self-explanatory. Remove. --Golbez (talk) 15:47, 7 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You don't vote remove just yet, but now is the time to focus on improving over a (several) week period. Arsenikk I'd compare the current with the version as it was promoted and have a look at what has changed. Once you do this, you find all sorts of interesting things have happened to these high traffic articles. It is a good place to start to see if any good material has been removed, rewritten badly or expanded with material of dubious significance. I will take a look later but I have an ever-growing queue of stuff to trawl through ATM... :/ Casliber (talk · contribs) 21:19, 7 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Diff of changes from promotion in 2007 to now. Here's the permalink. Dabomb87 (talk) 21:37, 7 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Over the past few months I've been debating nominating this article for a FAR. The page is littered with unsourced statements. The demographics and geography sections have changed radically for the worst in the past few months alone. There a too many pictures in the article, and its too long overall. I hope a review will spur improvement. Astuishin ^(talk) 06:35, 14 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

FARC commentary

Featured article criterion of concern are citations, length/focus, structure, MOS YellowMonkey (vote in the Southern Stars and White Ferns supermodel photo poll) 23:56, 20 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Delist None of the problems brought up in the FAR have been addressed. Ten Pound Hammer, his otters and a clue-bat • ^{(Many otters • One bat • One hammer)} 01:04, 21 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Note, I do not comprehend the current sloppiness at FAR, and the rush to delist. Why has no one considered reverting to the version that passed FAC? If that had been done early on in the process, the article's star would probably have been saved; I don't see anything controversial in that version that needs citation. Did anyone consider this? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:09, 3 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Looking at the eariler vision of the article, I believe that its a better version than what it is now. Probably with a few more references and such to it, I would say that it would keep its FA status. GamerPro64 (talk) 22:30, 3 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Delist, significant issues remain to be addressed, and agree with above concerns that are valid, as have been raised by Arsenikk (talk · contribs), Golbez (talk · contribs), and Astuishin (talk · contribs). -- Cirt (talk) 16:46, 5 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Did you evaluate the version that previously passed FAR? Why has a revert not even been considered? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:48, 5 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - I just looked at the previous version of the article (when it passed FAC) compared to now. Although the older version has less cruft, the newer version has many more references (over 50, if you include refs used multiple times). I think that the major problem with both versions of the article is the lack of high quality sources, a requirement that went into effect after the article passed FAC and for which it was never updated. There are extensive popular press, general and outdated sources being used, despite the fact that there are many books spanning several decades that have been written about New York City, and dozens more that have been written about New York as a state, in which NYC plays a decidedly large role. I honestly don't think that reverting to an older version would get this article much closer to FA status, due to the major effort that would need to happen to resource the article to high quality, reliable references. That's just my opinion, however :) Dana boomer (talk) 17:48, 5 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Delist - Based on my comment above and the lack of work that has gone into the article over the past few weeks. Although a revert might help with the cruft, it won't help with the source quality issues, which is a major hurdle to the article remaining a FA. Dana boomer (talk) 18:01, 14 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

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