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Wikipedia:Featured article review/Isaac Newton/archive1

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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 Joelr31 01:03, 14 March 2009 [1].

Isaac Newton edit

Review commentary edit

Article is full of [citation needed], [clarification needed] or various cleanup tags. The article is not bad, but if it were to undergo FAC right now, it would spectacularly fail. Hence, FAR.Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 19:16, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You are absolutely right. There are places where citations are desperately needed. We need a speedy remove in FAR, to handle such articles passed long back in 2005 or so and currently do not meet the present FA status.--Redtigerxyz Talk 15:23, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The intent of this page (FAR) is to review, improve, and bring articles back to FA standard not to delist them. Speedy removals contradict this objective. Joelito (talk) 19:01, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Notified User:Borisblue (FA nominator), WikiProject Physics, History of Science, Astronomy. --Redtigerxyz Talk 15:30, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Speedy remove would be a good idea in theory. However, I just think we need to improve the existing FAR so, you know, it doesn't take 48 weeks to delist anything that is clearly below FA class. Ten Pound Hammer and his otters • (Broken clamshells • Otter chirps • HELP) 21:04, 10 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
So how long did it take to fail to remove Kingdom of Mysore? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:33, 27 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

FARC commentary edit

Suggested FA criteria concerns are citations and style.Joelito (talk) 14:53, 24 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
OK, there are no tags left now. By the way, quite a few people have edited the article since this FAR started: it is not true that no-one is working on it. PaddyLeahy (talk) 21:23, 2 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
56 citations in a relatively short article is "largely uncited"? Citations are supposed to be for facts likely to be challenged, IIRC. This article has been on FAR for 2 months or so but no-one has challenged any specific items over and above the fact tags present at the beginning...which have all been dealt with now. (Well, I requested a cite for something added yesterday). PaddyLeahy (talk) 22:18, 6 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I've added numerous several fact tags. More could easily be added. --Peter Andersen (talk) 07:56, 7 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
(numerous = 6). Here's the deal: I have access to a good university library and I'm quite prepared to spend an(other) evening there adding cites that are agreed to be missing. But I don't have time to do that repeatedly, nor to re-write the article significantly. FAR is supposed to be about reviewing FAs with the object of improving them but in this case the "review" just consists of a bunch of people wishing they could speedily delist. If people here want to make the process work then please help by adding {fact} or specific suggestions on the talk page—I'm not up to speed on current FA citing requirements. For instance:
  • Query to FAR(C) regulars: as well as some good calls, Peter Andersen added two {fact} tags in the middle of a paragraph on the Chaloner episode, which ends with a citation to five pages of Westfall's definitive Newton biography. I don't have the book to hand now but I'd assume the paragraph is a summary of those pages. Do we really need cites in the middle of such a paragraph? This certainly used to be deprecated.
PaddyLeahy (talk) 17:08, 8 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, I think I have added references for all the remaining new {fact} tags - the Chaloner episode; influence on the Enlightenment; "shoulders of ye Giants" quote regarded as an attack on Hooke. Do we need to go round this block again ? Gandalf61 (talk) 11:31, 12 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Why is one of the categories listed "People with Bipolar Disorder" when there is nothing in the article to back that up? It seems like a pretty strong statement to leave unfounded, especially about a man who lived in a time before the disorder was ever diagnosed.71.56.216.30 (talk) 12:16, 9 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I've removed that category. DrKiernan (talk) 10:38, 10 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove Even the infobox is problematic. The "residence", "citizenship" and "nationality" fields are repetitive. The source given for his "academic advisors" says it was not Barrow but Pulleyn. Are Cotes and Whiston his students or co-workers? Their articles seem to favour the latter. The "influences", which should be singular, is rather restrictive. The influenced are not mentioned anywhere in the article. The "religious stance" is not confirmed. The notes are extraneous. DrKiernan (talk) 13:33, 11 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • I am surprised to see DrKiernan questioning the "religious stance" (a summary of another article, sourced to Westfall's biography. Surely this has been well-known since John Maynard Keynes' "Newton the Man"? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 00:06, 24 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
      Struck. DrKiernan (talk) 15:11, 24 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • Benjamin Pulleyn was Regius Professor of Greek, not a mathematician. In fact, one of the few mentions of him says that Newton, as an freshman, knew more about Robert Sanderson's Logic than Pulleyn did, and had a low opinion of him. Newton studied with Barrow outside the structure of the university (one source says that handing on your pupils for specialized studies was customary), and ODNB calls Newton Barrow's protégé.
    • Similarly, Whiston was Newton's student, but informally, after graduation; Cotes, forty years younger, was Whiston's student. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:02, 24 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Revisiting. Still not happy. Even just a very brief skim through reveals wierd claims sourced to barely reliable websites (e.g. "Mercury poisoning could explain Newton's eccentricity in late life." Well, he was eccentric his whole life, so that makes no logical sense. The source, "Eric Weisstein's World of Biography", describes itself as "assembled ... by [an] internet encyclopedist with assistance from the internet community.") and large amounts of trivia (e.g. there are five paragraphs on the apple). DrKiernan (talk) 13:16, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delist There are still a number of entirely uncited paragraphs throughout the article. In addition, please rename the "Fame" section to something like "Legacy" and flesh it out a bit. Nishkid64 (Make articles, not wikidrama) 23:51, 12 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Hold your horses, I've just added them. Most of them I'm pretty sure are taken from the books which are already reference, the reference is simply not given explicitly. PaddyLeahy could comment on whether or not this is actually the case.Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 17:50, 20 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove The discussion above has mostly focused on references. In my opinion that wasn't even the main problem, and in any case there is only a single cn tag remaining. The real problem is that the article focuses almost entirely on the wrong things. It's true that Newton devoted a huge part of his life to theology, alchemy, and running the mint. However, those activities had essentially no lasting impact. The main things he's remembered for are the invention of the calculus, the laws of motion, and his solution of the problem of planetary motion. The article has very little material on those things -- far too little in proportion to the material on religion -- and changing that isn't going to be a quick fix.--Fashionslide (talk) 20:53, 28 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for doing the referencing. I don't have reservations about keeping the article now. However, I think the the planetary motion thing, and newton's law thing are or satisfactory length, even if the planetary motion thing could be a bit longuer. Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 21:04, 28 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove, unless some serious works gets underway soon. This has been at FAR for a very long time, and yet there is still an external link farm, extensive problems in the section headings with WP:MSH, and WP:MOS cleanup needs (dashes, etc.), WP:ACCESSibility issues throughout with images (PLEASE, someone, read accessibility as to the order of items within sections and in the lead), and a See also farm as well (see WP:LAYOUT on See also and external links. We shouldn't be keeping articles at FAR this long unless work is really happening. If the article is to be kept, it needs extensive cleanup, and that's without looking at the prose. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:29, 9 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • The entire bottom of the article (Appendices) needs to be pruned and reorganized to confrom with WP:LAYOUT. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:40, 10 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • There is still uncited text (sample only):
  • Locke and Voltaire applied concepts of Natural Law to political systems advocating intrinsic rights; the physiocrats and Adam Smith applied Natural conceptions of psychology and self-interest to economic systems and the sociologists criticised the current social order for trying to fit history into Natural models of progress. Monboddo and Samuel Clarke resisted elements of Newton's work, but eventually rationalised it to conform with their strong religious views of nature.
It doesn't appear that this article is followed closely enough or maintained well enough to be ranked among Wiki's best article. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:43, 10 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • There are also mixed citation styles, some inline, others using cite.php. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:51, 10 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Regretful delist. A wonderful article and an important article, one that ought to be featured. But the sourcing issues are not minor. Note, for example, how neither of these statements regarding a central controversy about Newton's reputation is directly cited: Newton's Royal Society proclaimed in a study that it was Newton who was the true discoverer and labeled Leibniz a fraud. This study was cast into doubt when it was later found that Newton himself wrote the study's concluding remarks on Leibniz. To anyone who speaks German (and I do), the priority of Newton v. Leibniz in the development of calculus is a very serious matter. Neither of those statements carry an individual citation, and although a subsequent sentence in the paragraph is cited the source dates from 1908. Not necessarily representative of modern scholarship. The people who wrote this article did a fine job, and perhaps Wikipedia's best work by the standards of 2005. But I checked this page's traffic: over 300,000 page views last month.[2] The most important part of that readership is students, most of whom are not allowed to cite Wikipedia as a source on their term papers. When we cannot point them to modern scholarship on important disputes, we really cannot call this our best work. I would proudly re-promote this to FA when such matters are addressed. Until then, this doesn't put our best foot forward. DurovaCharge! 23:59, 11 March 2009 (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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