Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/History of the Han Dynasty/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:Gary King 16:39, 15 January 2009 [1].

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History of the Han Dynasty

Nominator(s): Pericles of Athens^Talk

WARNING! The Surgeon General of the United States has found that smoking two packs of this article a day may cause one to love Chinese history and suffer temporary loss of sight, bowl discomfort, triple lung growth, Psychokinesis, and kidney failure. In all seriousness, I've worked my tail end off since June compiling notes for this article (now completed), and four other branch articles for the Han Dynasty (i.e. society and culture, government, economy, and science and technology) which will be completed over the course of this year, hopefully by the summer.Pericles of Athens^Talk 12:55, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Comments - sources look okay, links checked out with the link checker tool. Ealdgyth - Talk 13:26, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Good to hear; I was meticulous in making sure that each link was directed to an appropriate article.--Pericles of Athens^Talk 14:16, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

She's actually checking the external links, I believe :) Gary King (talk) 16:54, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

• Comments Very nice job on a long and important article. One problem that I see, however, is that there are a ton of images on the right side. They push all the other images down (especially for larger monitors) so readers cannot tell which paragraph each image is associated with. Either stagger the images left and right per MOS:IMAGE or remove some. I'm sure you can also see that the images are pushing all the section edit links down, which can be resolved by either staggering the images or using the {{FixBunching}} template. Gary King (talk) 16:54, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm happy to announce that I believe I have fixed the problem with the pictures; in the end, only one picture (a very good one, unfortunately) had to be removed, while half the pictures in the article are now on the left-hand side.--Pericles of Athens^Talk 17:42, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Looks better, but there are still layout problems. I think the biggest issue is that there are too many images. It's nice that they are all free, but perhaps pretend that they are fair use images and then only keep the ones that you really need, because images, especially the taller ones, are still pushing down other images and edit links.

• The image in "Regency and downfall of the Lü clan" is pushing the other one down. Images are pushed down on the right side all the way up until just before "War against the Xiongnu".
• Images on the right starting from "Economic reforms" are pushed down, up until just before "Wang Mang's usurpation".
• Images are pushed down on the right starting from "Natural disaster and civil war" up to just before "Court, kinsmen, and consort clans"

There are still way more on the right that are pushed down. Gary King (talk) 18:11, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Wow, how wide is your monitor? Is it an 18 inch? Mine is 13½ inches and the images look perfectly fine (certainly not pushing images down that far, my God!). I don't mind resizing some of the images (especially the taller ones) in order to accomodate Wiki visitors and editors who have much wider screens like you seem to have, but to purge the article of good pics for this reason alone is perhaps a bit much.--Pericles of Athens^Talk 18:56, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Check on a recent edit of mine where I downsized the two pictures in the "Regency and downfall of the Lü clan" section; does that look much better on your monitor?--Pericles of Athens^Talk 19:06, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

22" monitor. The images are still getting shoved down a great deal. It also makes sense to link to a Commons page in the External links section for readers to see more images that are not in this article. Gary King (talk) 19:13, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

22 inch! Man, no wonder the article looks like hell on your screen. Lol. According to Wikipedia:Image use policy#Displayed image size, the pictures should be set at the "thumb" default anyway; if you noticed, most images in the article are 200px. I will downsize ALL the images in the article (except for the lead pic and two others) and then tell me here if you see any improvements. I hope we can make a compromise on this.--Pericles of Athens^Talk 19:19, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Ok, the downsizing is done; how does she look?--Pericles of Athens^Talk 19:29, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Still not good. The image in "Regency and downfall of the Lü clan" is pushing down the others, along with the one in "Economic reforms", and the one in "Natural disaster and civil war". And the ones in "Foreign relations and war of middle Eastern Han". Gary King (talk) 19:37, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

• 15,000 words, 85KB readable prose size. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:03, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Great, because anything over 100 KB is obviously unacceptable.--Pericles of Athens^Talk 19:12, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

• Comment. No single-editor article should ever be nominated for featured-article status the day it is created. Period. I don't care what the rules are here, it isn't proper and isn't in the spirit of Wikipedia. Gene Nygaard (talk) 20:57, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Special for the nitpickers who will insist on a rule:

• Cannot possibly meet stability criteria for the reasons stated above, in anything but a trivial (mathematics) sense.

Gene Nygaard (talk) 21:16, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Right, there's been no time allowed for edit warring, but it sounds as if you are rejecting the article on nothing more than the hypothetical (i.e. potential edit warring in the future), instead of judging it for perhaps more important criteria like prose content, NPOV, reliability of sources, etc.--Pericles of Athens^Talk 21:24, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

I don't see how this comment is actionable. Please read the FA criteria, specifically criterion 1e: "it is not subject to ongoing edit wars and its content does not change significantly from day to day, except in response to the featured article process." If you believe that the article's newness makes it deficient in some content area, please state which criteria. (prose, citations, comprehensiveness, style, etc.) Dabomb87 (talk) 00:02, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

It hasn't been there a day. We have no idea whatsoever what it does "day to day". We cannot possibly know.

It's newness alone is sufficient to preclude any serious consideration whatsoever. I've pointed out one criterion it cannot possibly meet. Gene Nygaard (talk) 02:29, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

• Object. Just to make it absolutely clear that this is a formal objection. Gene Nygaard (talk) 05:02, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

• Comment: I really would like to support this article, but I share the same concern with Gene Nygaard. It would have been nice to have more eyes go through the article. With the length of the article as it is and the lack of reviewers interested in this type of topic, it is a difficult article to evaluate in the relatively short FAC process. Although there is no obligation and it is not required in the criteria, I would request that the nominator have others take a look at the article either in a Wikiproject, PR, or GA. --RelHistBuff (talk) 11:36, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Sure thing, RelHistBuff. I wonder, though, if a Peer Review process is even warranted while the article is simultaneously in the FAC process. I'll check on that.--Pericles of Athens^Talk 11:41, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

What's the all-fired rush? Leave peer review alone for now. That isn't appropriate at this stage either. It hasn't even had the time to be called to the attention of members of various WikiProjects that might be interested. Nobody has had time to read it, let alone consider it in detail. The original author claims to have slaved away at this for the last seven months. I'd say, give everybody else equal time to check out what the various cited references or other sources have to say, to nit-pick over details, or whatever. Gene Nygaard (talk) 13:30, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

If you're so concerned with that, then please, why don't you nitpick over the details if you see a problem. Could you point out which specific statements in the article you have a problem with? Otherwise, your objection to the article has been noted. There's no need to beat up on another editor on two different pages.--Pericles of Athens^Talk 14:29, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Looks like it has been averaging about a hundred edits per day throughout its entire existence. Gene Nygaard (talk) 14:33, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Read Template:FAC-instructions: An article should not be on Featured article candidates and Peer review or Good article nominations at the same time. This nomination must be withdrawn if the Peer Review is intended to be open. Gary King (talk) 16:15, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Considering how this FAC would fail one criteria (stability) anyway, then so be it: this FAC should be withdrawn. I'd rather have a peer-review process look into any potential errors or things needing to be fixed in the article; I'm sure that I have missed a few things in running through the article.--Pericles of Athens^Talk 16:31, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Alright; good luck on a future FAC. I will withdraw this nomination now. Leave the {{FAC}} template on the article's talk page and let the bot archive it. Gary King (talk) 16:38, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks Gary.--Pericles of Athens^Talk 16:48, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

I don't understand why you pointed that out that wording to me, Gary. If it doesn't belong in either, then I don't care in the least whether it could be in both or not--that is totally irrelevant. What you've cited couldn't change my mind at all, because it doesn't deal with what I was saying. And if this has been withdrawn, isn't there some "archived discussion" template to put on it? Gene Nygaard (talk) 18:02, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Maybe I just need to be more explicit on the second point, too. Wikipedia:Peer review "is intended for high-quality articles that have already undergone extensive work". It is not for day-old articles either. Do you get it now? Gene Nygaard (talk) 18:08, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Can you please be less defensive? I was telling Pericles that this article cannot be in both processes at the same time. Gary King (talk) 18:27, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Comment. Wait a second, how in the world does this fall under the stability criterion? I don't see any edit wars. I don't see any underlying conflicts or hostility. And this is by no means a current event. If you're going to oppose it because it's only been around for a day, that's perfectly rational and valid reason. But it's flat-out misleading to tag that under the stability criterion.

Furthermore, I don't hold the article's age against it automatically. If the content was poorly written, unsourced or POV, then yeah, I'd say, "Look PericlesofAthens, why don't you let the rest of us take a whack at it before nominating it." But there's no evidence that any of those problems are present. Since I like judging the quality of the content instead of the unorthodox practices of the nominator (who has been working tirelessly on this in userspace for quite some time now and has shown himself in the past to be a fantastic article writer), I'm in favor of letting the nomination stand as-is.

Finally, I'd like to note that no article is ever nominated fully formed. In that spirit, we should not be so hesitant about taking on articles that could still have a few kinks to work out. --Hemlock Martinis (talk) 23:33, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

The requirement is stability; it is not lack of instability. Gene Nygaard (talk) 17:41, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm not seeing any evidence of instability either, except for the usual polishing that comes with the FAC process. --Hemlock Martinis (talk) 18:38, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

So what? That's not relevant to the criteria. Or, rather, while instability would show that it doesn't fit the criterion, the lack of instability in the first few hours of its existence (it was nominated here 0.0 days after it was created) isn't sufficient to show that it is stable. Don't you understand the difference? Gene Nygaard (talk) 19:41, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

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