Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/2001: A Space Odyssey (film)/archive1

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 User:Maralia 15:33, 29 October 2013 [1].

2001: A Space Odyssey (film)

Nominator(s): Ug5151 (talk) 05:37, 27 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I am nominating this for featured article because this article has all of the elements to be on the main page. The article is long, but doesn't stay off of track on talking about the movie the article is based on. This article was very well written and is very interesting. The article is also very accurate about the movie itself in every way. It needs to be a featured article and i'm surprised that it has not been a featured article in the past. Ug5151 (talk) 05:37, 27 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose -- the nominator has not made a single edit to the article, or has consulted any of the article's major contributors about this FAC. --Sp33dyphil ©^hat_ontributions 05:54, 27 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Wikipedia is not about winning prizes (at least, I don't think so). 2001: A Space Odyssey (film) is undoubtedly a good article in its current form, and if anyone wants to nominate it for FA or suggest further improvements, they are free to do so.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 06:38, 27 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

@Ianmacm: I didn't say that this website is about winning prizes, if that's what you're implying.

No.

Rather, my objection was based on the assumption that the nominator has not adequately prepared the article for this FAC since he has made no effort to improve the article. From having just a brief look at the article's references, I'm inclined to oppose as per FA criterion 2c, because of the inconsistent referencing format – some of the references have not even been filled out! I doubt the article even meets GA criterion 2a.

Had Ug5151 wanted to give the nomination the best chance of promotion, he should have addressed some of the obvious referencing issues. Nothing was done, thereby suggesting that he is not "sufficiently familiar with the subject matter and sources to deal with objections during the featured article candidates (FAC) process" (WP:FAC). Ug5151 did not bother to consult the top contributors, thereby not following the guideline of, "Nominators who are not significant contributors to the article should consult regular editors of the article prior to a nomination." The oppose stays. --Sp33dyphil ©^hat_ontributions 07:49, 27 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose: I endorse what Sp33dyphil says. Before any FAC nomination the nominator is required to ensure that the featured article criteria have been observed. There is no evidence that this article has undergone any preparation before its nomination; its "good article" review, against less demanding criteria, was 18 months ago. From a quick glance the article doesn't look nearly ready for FAC at present. Specific issues:

Length: 12000 words seems inordinate for a film, even for one of this importance.
Uncited statements: there are a couple of citation tags, but I've seen a lot more cases where statements are uncited. A few examples (from many):

"Kubrick was also confronted with the fact that only a few weeks before the release of the film, the US and Russia had agreed not to put any nuclear weapons into outer space."
"Kubrick, notoriously reluctant to provide any explanation of his work, never publicly stated the intended functions of the orbiting satellites, preferring instead to let the viewer surmise what their purpose might be."

"Similarly, Geduld observes that 'the monolith ...has a very simple explanation in Clarke's novel,' though she later asserts that even the novel doesn't fully explain the ending."

"Australian broadcaster SBS television aired the film on April 1 as an April fools' joke, and again on November 17, 2008 as part of Kubrick week." – and many more in the "hoaxes" section

Unwarranted use of bullet-pointed prose
Unformatted and/or irregularly formatted references
There are numerous issues with the lead section: it has six paragraphs while MOS specifies a maximum of four; some of the lead content is trivial, e.g. several lines spend discussing the issue of whether this is a British or American film – hardly a leadworthy issue, and far too much detail in the paragraph devoted to the film's ranking by critics; editorialising, e.g. "The film's memorable soundtrack..."; some clunky prose, for example the sentence: "Produced and distributed by the American studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the film was made almost entirely in England, using both the studio facilities of MGM's subsidiary "MGM British" (among the last movies to be shot there before its closure in 1970)[4] and those of Shepperton Studios, mostly because of the availability of much larger sound stages than in the United States." (followed by a redundant "also" in the next section).

Beyond these criticisms, there looks to be some excellent and well researched stuff within this important article, and it would be a very good thing if a group of determined and knowledgeable editors were to spend the necessary time to develop it into featured standard. However, this will require a concerted effort over a period of time; it cannot be achieved by means of an obviously premature nomination. Brianboulton (talk) 13:20, 27 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose as a major contributor (helped it pass the GA review, split some content into Technologies in 2001: A Space Odyssey and the soundtrack articles), I know this still needs work. For starters, chunks are unsourced or with incomplete refs, some sections need some work (specially "Awards and honors" with its bulleted list) and the current order of sections could be rearranged. igordebraga ≠ 15:30, 29 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Closing note: This candidate has been archived, but there may be a delay in bot processing of the close. Please see WP:FAC/ar, and leave the {{featured article candidates}} template in place on the talk page until the bot goes through. Ian Rose (talk) 10:40, 30 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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