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Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Peter Prevc/archive1

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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 archived by Sarastro1 via FACBot (talk) 21:59, 17 February 2017 [1].

Peter Prevc

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Nominator(s): Tone 16:53, 28 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

This article is about a prominent sportsperson. It has been recently passed as a GA and I believe it meets the FA criteria. The article is stable, apart from the fact that the current winter sport season is ongoing so there will be occasional updates. Tone 16:53, 28 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

  • Oppose: The level of NPOV in this article could be improved, and the structure of the article needs some thought. Conditional support: a couple more minor issues that I will fix myself, and the article will need to be kept current for this season and future ones. As this is also my first featured article review, I would like for another editor to review this article as well.
  • Second sentence, "most successful" could probably be rephrased to something less POV, even if it is supported by a track record of international success. Others may agree or disagree, but I think anyone could support changing the wording to something more objective, like stating that he has won several international awards, including...
  • The titles of the subsections in the "Professional career" section seem a bit too... glamorous? i.e. "early successes", "runner up", "the record-breaking season". I don't think that's NPOV enough. Perhaps take those parts out and label by their objective name.
  • I think they are NPOV. I changed the early successes to early seasons. The other two are factual, he was the runner-up and the fact that he broke several records is well-supported by various sources. I could remove the titles but that would make it look boring. --Tone 14:33, 8 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • 2015/16: the record-breaking season: "Prevc dominated" should be changed to less intense synonym or perhaps cut out altogether. Again, just too POV.
  • Moving beyond NPOV issues: Some sentence positioning choices in the fourth paragraph of the 2015/16 section: By placing the fact that Prevc slid ("slided" in the article?) in the first sentence, the reader assumes that the competition on 14 February is notable solely for that fact that he slid, and not that he won (which is probably the more notable of the two). Maybe move that fact to the second sentence or further in the paragraph.
  • The statement that the family is closely connected to ski jumping is of course intuitive but constitutes original research. We the editors do not judge whether having immediate family as referees and competitors forms a close connection. Maybe that is obvious, but the sources should be the ones that come up with that, not us.
  • Is it in the scope of the article to put that Prevc's sister is training in skiing as well? I personally don't think so, other editors may have different opinions. Since the apparent purpose of that fact is to back up the (as-of-now OR) statement that his family has close connections to skiing, I think it would be best to omit the sentence.
  • Last sentence of the second paragraph of Personal life section shouldn't be there. Even if there are sources for the statement, it's really a conclusion to be left for the reader. Imagine if on the Winston Churchill article, someone put that he did everything he did for the sake of his country and that he had a charismatic, learned personality. Now, that may be true, but it's certainly not the only viewpoint with due weight, and it's not a conclusion for an encyclopedia article either way. Even though Prevc does not have the same name recognition as Churchill, the standards for biographical articles ought to be universal regardless of accomplishments or fame.
  • Last sentence of Personal life section seems like something out of a local newspaper on their international ski star. It's great that he enjoys football and supports a Slovenian club, but that seems overly detailed and/or not part of the notability of this person.
  • In general, I don't think the layout of this article renders a comprehensive outlook on Prevc (criterion 1). The lead is good, but the article begins with his professional accomplishments (which do appear to be comprehensive) and shoves the Personal life section at the end in two and a half paragraphs, which makes that information unuseful. A common strategy in featured biography articles is to start out with the personal life (or perhaps the sequence of life events) that eventually climaxed in the notability of the subject, and then detail the subject's ski exploits. A lot of personal information often wouldn't be notable enough for an article by itself (like the Personal life section at the end) but needs to be present in order to satisfy the Comprehensive criterion, so it makes sense to use that personal life information to establish notability, if it has to be there. This article meets the GA criterion of broad coverage, but I don't think that the structure of the article is conducive to comprehensiveness. Icebob99 (talk) 17:44, 5 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • The personal life section has been renamed biography, moved to the top, trimmed from redundant details and expanded to present a brief overview (as suggested). @Icebob99:, I believe this is ready for a second look. Thanks! --Tone 14:33, 8 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Structure looks much better. I'm renaming the Biography section to Early life, since the word "biography" implies that that section contains every important life event (which it doesn't). In addition, I'm renaming the World Cup section to Performance in the World Cup. :*Quick question: in the table in the Individual starts section, on row 2012/13 and column 5, what is the value q? Is that a typo? In addition, what do the different highlights in the table mean? There should be some kind of key explaining that.
Comment: Regarding the colours, they are suppose to show the positions (gold background = win, silver = 2nd place etc.), but the table looks kinda messy with all that colours, so I would suggest that only the gold background for wins is kept, and other colours removed. 86.58.36.145 (talk) 18:00, 8 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Icebob99: Ok, I believe all should be fixed now. I would assume that the colours are obvious for the first three places. It does not look messy to me and is a great way to show how strong the last season was. This could be discussed, of course. --Tone 18:57, 9 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Tone: I'm fine with the presence of colors in the table since I agree with their informative purpose, but I think there should be some information regarding colors in the Key section directly below. When the laypeople (whose numbers include me) read that table, they would appreciate a good faith color code in the Key, since it's information that is not necessarily clear at first glance. Icebob99 (talk) 21:41, 9 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • I also changed the refstyle of three refs to match the overall style of the article, that is, using the cite web or cite book templates.

Comments. As always, feel free to revert my copyediting. - Dank (push to talk)

Comments from Syek88

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  • I'm nervous about promoting to Featured Article an article about a current athlete, knowing that a leap of faith will need to be taken that the article remains up-to-date and in acceptable shape.
  • In this case I'm doubly nervous because there are key recent events which the article does not mention. The body of the article abruptly stops at the end of the 2015/16 season and does not mention in its text sections a large number of results from the 2016/17 seasons, available at [2].
  • I am made triply nervous by the fact that there are active contributors to the article who are clearly far-from-fluent English speakers, and whose ungrammatical edits are not being corrected quickly or at all. See the example immediately below.
  • Illustrating all three of the above points, the US Academy Athlete of the Year results are out [3] but are not yet reflected in the main body of the article, after nine days. There is a reference early in the article to "finished in the third place in Athlete of the Year category". The sentence is ungrammatical, having been added recently by a non-fluent English speaking editor. The sentencedoes not mention the critical detail of the year for which he finished in third place.
  • [4] mentions that Prevc is a policeman. That sounds significant enough to mention if true, and is partially verified by [5] and [6].

At this stage I will leave those points as comments, rather than an oppose, because I would be happy to be proven misguided, but an oppose is where I am leaning. In summary: the article as of today is not up-to-date with results from recent months and is at significant risk of decay in the future. Syek88 (talk) 18:02, 3 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I understand your concerns. Let's see what I can say.
  • Prevc has had a rather uneven season this year so far. He started with a podium, then had a sharp decline in results, then improved, took a break from competition, and made some good results recently. I was thinking about writing a summary of the season so far but since it is not clear where it is going, I am waiting until the season draws towards conclusion when a more balanced summary can be written. If this is an issue, I can provide a summary.
  • The main body of the article (Early life and Career, up to 2016) should be stable enough. As for non-fluent English speakers, I can only say that I will be keeping an eye on the language, probably some native speakers as well. If it becomes a FA, I am sure there will be more eyes to watch it, at least.
  • Fixing that awkward phrasing straight away.
  • Well, he is not really a policeman. He's employed as one, as many professional sportspeople in Slovenia are (for social security purposes). It was the same with Tina Maze. Essentially, a couple of PR-related activities come with that but no police work.
I hope that eases your concers a bit. --Tone 19:49, 3 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I can fully understand your first point. If I were writing the article, I too would prefer to do it a season at a time. It's a better way of writing. The difficulty is that for the one person who writes the article there are hundreds, thousands, or more, who read it and for whom the omission of a text section for 2016/17 will stand out. It is a difficult writer/reader conflict to resolve but I'm inclined to think that it should be resolved in favour of the reader. On the policeman point, for the reasons you give I agree it is better to avoid mentioning it. I will also place the article on my watch list to help guard against the introduction of substandard English. Syek88 (talk) 21:42, 3 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Appreciated. I'll try to get something together about the current season. Ski flying is on this weekend and Prevc is know to be superb on flying hills. After this weekend, I think it will be clear where the season is heading. --Tone 22:10, 3 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@Syek88: A short summary of the season up to date written. That should do for now, I suppose. Ten events left till the end of the season, as well as the World Championships. --Tone 17:45, 8 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from Victoria

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Not many articles about winter Olympians make it to FAC so I'm happy to see this here. Comments as follows:

Lead
  • I realize it's chronological but his Olympic medal is the most notable event. Have you thought about moving that forward and saying straight out that he's an Olympic medal holder. The FIS events, though important, occur annually, and garnering an Olympic medal is certainly much more important than winning in Garmish (though, also important). Perhaps some rearrangment in the lead along the lines of: "Peter Prevc (Slovene: [ˈpéːtəɾ ˈpɾéːwt͡s]; born 20 September 1992) is a Slovenian ski jumper, and silver and bronze medalist at the 2014 Winter Olympics." I might also suggest moving the list of FIS (and other) wins/standings down to the bottom to avoid giving the reader a long list to start with. The second most interesting thing is the record he set; I'd suggest moving that to the first paragraph. In other words, try ordering his accomplishments by importance and presenting the larger accomplishments earlier.
  • We also need at least a sentence or two in the lead about his life - since this is a biography.
Early life
  • How old was he when he left Kranj? Did his family move or was it for training; it mentions he's back in Kranj for grammar school, so this needs sorting.
  • Link Grammar school please. What in Europe is called elementary school is often called grammar school in the US (i.e grades 1-6).
  • The second para in "Early life" is a repeat of the lead and a repeat of the paragraphs below. It would be best maybe to try to find some information about his early training, about his family's background, about his father's involvement in the sport (was he a jumper before becoming a referee? what does he do for employment?), etc, and remove the para. What you want is to tell a story of a young man who started jumping at age 9, where he lived and went to school, information about his family and then, instead of moving from training at age nine straight to 2009, move the World Cup debut to the next section.
2009 etc.
  • First sentence is repetitive.
  • That he went to the Olympics in Vancouver during his second season, and that he placed quite well, is worth more info, imo. Also worth mentioning in the lead imo. How was he chosen? Particularly with a rather poor showing at 2009/10 World Cup?
  • Link World Cup - lots of people are clueless
  • Second para, first sentence: both links go to the same article (and the prose is repetitive because 2011 is mentioned twice in one sentence). One of the links should be removed.
  • Link ski flying
  • I see a fair amount of overlinking, i,e some names that are linked more than once such as Robert Kranjec, or places such as Planica. Please review WP:Overlinking and also make sure each item that needs linking is only linked once in the lead and once in the article body.

I've scanned the rest of the article. My impression is that it needs some tidying, i.,e linking issues (overlinking, underlinking, easter-eggs), some issues with MOS:NUM (there are a lot of numbers!), etc., that need to be sorted and my advice would be to do it slowly, outside of FAC. The largest issue is that this the article is written as a list of Prevc accomplishments and we tend to lose him (the subject of the article) in the way it's presented. I watched the jumping at Sochi and was impressed, but there are matters of style and technique that make a good jumper, which perhaps are mentioned in the sources. There are matters of conditions that affect the outcome, that are sometimes mentioned in the sources. These are small details that add to the story of a jumper, rather than reporting his standings, if that makes sense? At this point I'm inclined to oppose because I think there's a story here, one that's worthy of FAC, but it's best to take the time to get it right. Victoriaearle (tk) 01:47, 14 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for a detailed review. Give me a couple of days to go through. I see your main issue is the absence of information not related to sports. There used to be a section "Personal life" but it got removed since a reviewer above pointed out that it contained trivial information, including about his family and his hobbies. You see my conflict? I'll see if I can add something else. @Sportomanokin: you are aware of this nomination, aren't you? --Tone 16:36, 14 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Not I'm not aware of the nomination, I don't know what kind of nomination are you all talking about? And I agree with the reviewer that his personal life contained trivial information. He is not a Hollywood actor, top football player or some global star and we bassicaly know nothing about his private life and I don't see the importance. Sportomanokin (talk) 20:26, 14 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Tone and Sportomanokin, no, I didn't read the earlier review that asked for personal info to be removed. On thinking about it, given Prevc's youth, I'm inclined to agree and to agree with Sportomanokin's remark above. But that leaves little of substance except the results, which are reported in the infobox, the lead, the first section and again in the other sections, and in the tables. Take a look at Louis Leblanc (in the FAC queue a bit above yours), to get a sense of how to structure the prose sections for Featured article quality. If the information about Prevc doesn't exist in the sources, or for whatever other reason, and it's not possible to supply a little more info, then I think it would be better to have as a featured list instead of a featured article. Victoriaearle (tk) 19:14, 17 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Closing note: There are a few little issues here now. This has been open since December and we have only a prose support and a conditional support and two leaning opposes. There may be a few concerns about stability, raised by Syek88, given ongoing events in the current season which were raised above. Additionally, it appears that the primary contributor was unaware of this nomination, which is technically out of process (and thanks to Victoriaearle for spotting that). All in all, this might be better worked on outside of FAC and then brought back here when these issues have been addressed. Sarastro1 (talk) 21:58, 17 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Sarastro1: I beg to differ, there is one conditional oppose that I was planning to address during the weekend (I think it can be sorted), the other two I saw as supports. While Sportomanokin was mostly contributing to the charts, I was the main contributor to the prose, so I don't think this is as issue per se. Can you give me some time to fix the last round of issues so that I don't have to renominate it straight away? --Tone 22:02, 17 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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