Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/NeXT/archive4

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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 Buidhe via FACBot (talk) 2 March 2022 [1].

NeXT[edit]

Nominator(s): Wingwatchers (talk) 04:14, 25 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

This article is about an "American technology company that specialized in computer workstations intended for higher-education and business use." Wingwatchers (talk) 04:14, 25 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from Ajpolino[edit]

Hi there, I don't have any particular knowledge about NeXT or computing, but I'll take a look from a lay perspective. Comments/suggestions below:

Lead
  • "computer workstations intended for..."
  • The second sentence, "Based in Redwood... in 1990.", is quite long. I was still able to follow, but you may consider splitting it into its constituent ideas.
  • ...with only about 50,000 units shipped in total"
  • Second paragraph - I don't exactly know what's meant by "application layer" or "implementation". If you'd like to keep the computer-challenged with you here, perhaps you could make it clearer through context or wikilinks?
  • Similarly, consider wikilinking ported.
History
  • "They were commercial... by February 1984." doesn't seem essential to my understanding of this topic. I'd suggest cutting it.
  • Regarding lunch with Paul Berg - (1) where does the "luncheon to honor the French president" bit come from? I don't see it in either of the cited sources. (2) The Stross book takes a gently skeptical view of Jobs' telling of this encounter, and even has an alternative telling by Berg. Perhaps you could add some text to communicate the nuance, or remove some text to less-fully embrace Jobs' version?
  • "Jobs's division... Macintosh Office software." reads a bit odd now. Any context you can add? Why the delay?
  • "The board of directors... Soviet Union on behalf of Apple." The two clauses in this sentence seem unrelated.
  • "after several months of"
  • "...taking several Apple employees from the SuperMicro division with him, but he also promised that his new company would not compete with Apple and might even consider licensing their license designs to them under the Macintosh brand"
  • "nicknamed as "the cube""
  • The box quote about curing cancer comes across as fawning over Jobs to me. If it were up to me, I'd cut it.
  • The paragraphs on Perot and Adobe/Display PostScript feel abrupt when I read through. Imagine how smooth the section would flow if the paragraph ending "...designed by Hartmut Esslinger and his team at Frog Design Inc." was followed by the paragraph starting "The original design team anticipated to complete the computer in early 1987..." I don't have a bold idea for how else to organize things, but just flagging the idea here in case you have an idea.
  • "The original design team anticipated to completing the computer in early 1987 and launching it for US$3,000 by mid-year."
  • Sometimes you use "$" and sometimes "US$". I'd suggest using just "$" throughout; it's obvious from context which dollar you mean.
  • "On October 12, 1988... Hall in San Francisco, California." it's not clear why this event is significant. Consider cutting or contextualizing? Ditto for the rest of the paragraph.
  • Any idea why the early 1987 planned release became a late 1988 reveal, 1989 limited-release, and 1999 release?
  • "The first NeXT Computers were experimented in 1989" I think a different verb is in order? I'm not used to seeing "experimented" this way.
  • "Computer targeted the United States"
  • "(CPU)" - no need to define abbreviations you won't use later.
  • "(MO)" is defined twice.
  • "Jobs negotiated Canon's initial price of $150 per blank MO disk so that they could sell at retail for only $50." I'm not sure I understand what this sentence is trying to get across.
  • "In June 1991, Perot resigned from the board of directors to concentrate more time in his company, Perot Systems, a Plano, Texas–based software system integrator" also feels a bit out of place. Maybe enough source material exists to make a section on corporate structure and financing? Take a look at other company articles and see what they've done.
  • "Jobs ensured that NeXT staffers... "pizza box" ...already had that nickname." doesn't feel particularly relevant? Maybe it's worth including at NeXTstation but I'm not sure I needed to know that here.
  • "Color graphics were...than their predecessors." reads a bit weird. I didn't know what the "NeXTstation Color" was (a color version of the NeXTstation?). Maybe you could clarify?
  • "then super-secret National Reconnaissance Office" - Is "super-secret" a term of art? Otherwise sounds a bit silly.
  • Do we know anything about why NeXT withdrew from the hardware industry? It feels sudden in the article.
  • My personal opinion is the box quote "We went for... worry about." is not very helpful and could be removed.

Phew, that's what I get from my first pass through. In general, I'd say the prose is a bit choppy and could use the attention of someone experienced at writing/editing high-quality prose (i.e. not me). My gentle advice would be to withdraw this for now, and ask one of the FAC mentors if they'd be willing to take a look and share their thoughts. That may be the quickest/easiest path to FA-quality prose. Thanks for the interesting read! Best, Ajpolino (talk) 03:41, 28 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

HF - oppose[edit]

Unfortunately, I don't think the sourcing has improved enough since the FAR delisting for this to be an FA again.

  • "NeXT and Adobe collaborated on Display PostScript (DPS), a 2D graphics engine that was released in 1987. NeXT engineers wrote an alternative windowing engine edition to take full advantage of NeXTSTEP. NeXT engineers used Display PostScript to draw on-screen graphic designs such as title-bar and scroller for NeXTSTEP's user-space windowing system library" - why are we citing this to a command/usage manual?
  • " Steve Jobs building NeXT on YouTube" - is there any indication that this isn't a WP:COPYLINK problem?
  • "It was the first computer to ship with a general-purpose DSP chip (Motorola 56001) on the motherboard. This supported sophisticated music and sound processing, including the Music Kit software" - Again, why are we citing these claims to a hardware manual?
  • "Ford, Kevin. "Canon object.station 41". The Best of NeXT Computers. Archived from the original on January 14, 2012. Retrieved September 18, 2011." - this appears to be largely Ford's personally website. What makes it RS?
  • Formatting issues abound - books missing page numbers
  • "NeXTSTEP's processor-independent capabilities were retained in Mac OS X, leading to both PowerPC and Intel-x86 versions (although only PowerPC versions were publicly available before 2006). Apple moved to Intel processors by August 2006" - not entirely supported by source. Besides some of the details not being supported, the source is from 2005, which is a big problem when you're citing it for stuff that happened in 2006
  • ""Serial Archive Listings for NeXTWORLD". The Online Books Page. Archived from the original on June 12, 2008. Retrieved June 13, 2008." - this is almost certainly not RS
  • " Roads and Crossroads of Internet History Archived February 6, 2015, at the Wayback Machine Chapter 4: Birth of the Web" - this ref is problematic. Either it's a non-RS being cited, or it's a non-RS hosting a (probably) copyrighted work.

I'm not giving this one much more attention, as it's clearly unprepared. If an article gets delisted at FAR for sourcing issues, you need to fix those issues before you resubmit to FAC. Pinging @FAC coordinators: . Hog Farm Talk 18:53, 2 March 2022 (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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