Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Sri Lanka/archive2

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

The article was not promoted by Karanacs 15:13, 5 January 2010 [1].

Sri Lanka

Nominator(s): Supreme Unmanifest (talk) 15:45, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I am nominating this for featured article because this article seems to substantially conform to the requirements of Featured Articles and was nominated more than two years back which failed. It has been improved substantially and I feel that after a few edits it may reach the status this time. Supreme Unmanifest (talk) 15:45, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Note The nominator does not seem to be a primary contributor. Dabomb87 (talk) 21:58, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Acknowledged Supreme Unmanifest (talk) 06:40, 3 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose -

Half a dozen fact tags, some from over two years ago, plus huge swaths of the article with no citations at all that aren't fact tagged. (Main problem in my view)
Many existing references improperly formatted - web references missing titles, publishers and access dates, book references missing page numbers.
Excessive bolding throughout the article needs to be removed.
External links in body of article should be turned into references or moved to seperate section.
Images lacking WP:ALT text.
Text sandwiched between images.

The reference issues are the biggest thing at this point, and they are issues that will probably take some time to correct. I didn't look at the references for reliability or quality, and so there may be more issues with the existing references then those I have listed above. I would suggest withdrawing the nomination and working on the article outside the pressures at FAC. Peer review may be a better place to start, and also consider a good article nomination, although neither of these two is required for an article to become a featured article. Dana boomer (talk) 23:38, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I accept your auggestions. I don't mind if the article is withdrawn from the current process. Supreme Unmanifest (talk) 06:54, 3 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose—not meant to "pile on" but I see the problems above and more.

There are some dab links and other article links that simply "loopback" to the article. There are some dead external links as well, mainly to gov.lk.
In section "Administrative divisions", remove the map's red links (they are supposed to show flag images that are now deleted) or add free flags.
Avoid choppy prose: Where there are single-sentence paragraphs (in section "Sports", for example), explain their ideas further or merge them to larger paragraphs. Move similar sentences together to improve flow.
(in the lead) "It is home to around twenty million people, about 14% of whom live on less than US$ 1.25 per day"—several problems here:
- The figure is never mentioned in the article body. The lead should summarize what's already below it.
- How is "US$ 1.25 per day" economically or psychologically important? Why use that currency in particular (instead of e.g. euros), and without a translation to the local currency? If it is the poverty line, mention that or link there.
- "14%" doesn't seem too striking. How does it compare to major countries, or others with similar economies? (added on 00:13, 4 January 2010 (UTC))

Address Dana boomer's points (and mine) and get others to copyedit and look it over for a later nomination. --an odd name 00:09, 4 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

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