Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Białystok/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 SandyGeorgia 02:43, 3 August 2011 [1].

Białystok[edit]

Featured article candidates/Białystok/archive1

Nominator(s): Ajh1492 (talk) 21:00, 1 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I am nominating the Białystok article for FAC. Białystok is the largest city in northeastern Poland and is the capital of the Podlaskie Voivodeship, and has seen a significant number of political boundary changes over the last 500 years. The article is currently a good article which has gone through a rather extensive review during the GA process and with WikiProject Poland at B-Class review. I think this article is at or near the featured article standard. Ajh1492 (talk) 21:00, 1 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose - I appreciate the work that's been done on this article, but don't feel it currently meets the FA criteria. Here are some specific concerns:

Manual of Style issues, including hyphens/dashes and overlinking
Some instances of unclear and awkward prose. The article may benefit from being read by an experienced copy-editor
Given the length of the article, the lead should be at least 3 paragraphs long
Don't sandwich text between images and don't stack images
File:Bialystok_seal.png: don't use Wikipedia as a source, especially since that particular page has been deleted
File:POL_Białystok_COA.svg: source?
Maintain a neutral and encyclopedic tone at all times
There are a number of bulleted lists that should be written as prose
Citations should be complete: all web citations need publishers, all book sources need page numbers, etc
Citation formatting needs to be much more consistent

Suggest withdrawal to allow time for the article's issues to be addressed. Nikkimaria (talk) 22:18, 1 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

- Quick comments/question in regard to lede length. The lede IS 3 paragraphs long. I'm also wondering what you're basing this criteria on. I have looked through a number of FAs (granted, they were Military Hist FAs) and the relationship between article length and article lede is very weak [2]. The "average" relationship is given by: length of lede = 1560+.016*length of article net of lede. Since the article length, net of lede, is 25721 characters, this would mean that this article's lede, were it to fit the "average" exactly, would have a lede of 1971 characters. It's lede is 2547 characters, so if anything, the lede is longer than average for an FA.Volunteer Marek (talk) 02:58, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  - The third paragraph was just added by the nominator. In response to your questions at my talk: the first image originally listed a Wikipedia page as a source, and the second image listed no source. Both issues have since been addressed by the nominator. Nikkimaria (talk) 03:19, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose. Just like my voting predecessor, I also suggest quick withdrawal, and a slower, more meticulous pace of some very basic but badly needed improvements. The article is nowhere near the standard city FA in English. I already told the nominator once, get the "osiedla" and twin cities out of the infobox (check out the Help:Infobox and read some FAs for guidance, like Cleveland and Washington, D.C.). Anyhow, the History and the Economy are the worst. The barrage of bullets, stubby paras, one-lines, gaps and substandard prose are totally unacceptable at this level. — Raczko (talk) 04:19, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

So where is the definition of Standard City FA in the MOS? The twin cities inclusion in the infobox is a valid field entry in the settlement template. I see no appreciable difference between the article and say, Lock Haven, Pennsylvania. Ajh1492 (talk) 11:17, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

What are you trying to say Ajh1492? The infobox of Lock Haven, Pennsylvania doesn't show its smallest neighborhoods comparable with "osiedla", and the superfluous twin cities. The History section is well written and properly subdivided. The article doesn't have gaps, stubby sentences, one-line paras, tons of bullets in place of comprehensive prose, entire blocks of refs without publisher, etc. No need for an FA definition to see some of the most glaring inadequacies here. — Raczko (talk) 14:07, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) There is no definition of "Standard City FA" in the MoS. However, looking at other city FAs can give an idea of the standard required, and there are significant appreciable differences between this article and the one you mention. Nikkimaria (talk) 14:09, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose. This article needs a lot of work on the prose alone, in fact I don't even think it meets the GA criteria. A few examples:

"Białystok has traditionally been one of the leading center of academic, cultural and artistic life ..."
"Białystok has been a destination for internal and foreign immigration".
"Archaeological discoveries show that the first people settled on the territory of present-day Białystok already in the Stone Age".
"... built Branicki Palace on the foundations of former defensive castle of the Wiesiołowski family".
"After the war the city became part of newly independent Second Polish Republic".
"In the nineteenth century Białystok was an important center for light industry and was the reason for the substantial growth of the city's population."

Malleus Fatuorum 15:26, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Suggest withdrawal - I concede I was too lenient/sloppy with the GA review and there is a lot of work needs doing. It will take at least a few days to sort this out. To the nominator, treat this as a mini-peer review as there is a lot of work listed in a few posts, and come back to FAC with a clean slate in two weeks. Casliber (talk · contribs) 21:35, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

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