Wikipedia:Featured article review/San Francisco, California

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[edit] San Francisco, California

I do not believe this article meet the current Featured Article criteria. The prose is generally good but could use some polishing (eg. "The gay rights contributions and leadership the city has shown since the 1970s has resulted in the powerful presence gays and lesbians have in civic life."; explanation of what the NFL is and/or what sport the 49ers play). Much of the article is unreferenced (including almost all of the Transportation section). As far as style guidelines, I believe the lead should capture more of the article and the images should not be placed under level 2 headings--"Do not place left-aligned images directly below second-level (===) headings, as this disconnects the heading from the text it precedes. Instead, either right-align the image, remove it, or move it to another relevant location."--in addition, several could use better captions, and now that I'm looking at it, there is an image of a rainbow flag, but the significance of the flag is not mentioned in the article). Several references lack essential information, and consistent reference formatting is needed. GaryColemanFan (talk) 15:37, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

If you don't like that one sentence (I don't either) please fix it.
The NFL is linked. If you don't know what NFL is, following the link will tell you. If articles defined all potentially unfamiliar terms, they would be 3x as long, extremely tedious, and no one would read them.
On the contrary, very little of the article is unreferenced. It has 107 footnotes, cited 114 times. There are 7072 words in the article, for a ratio of one cite for every 62 words. The policy of WP:Verifiability states that attribution is required for direct quotes and for material that is challenged or likely to be challenged. Please be more specific about unreferenced statements in the article that are direct quotes or material which is likely to be challenged.
Please be more specific about references that "lack essential information" or which are inconsistently formatted.
The Rainbow Flag is linked. See my comment above about NFL.
Standards for featured article are:
1) well-written, comprehensive, factually accurate, neutral, stable. (CHECK)
2a) it has a concise lead summarizing the topic (CHECK)
2b) it has a structure of hierarchical headings (CHECK)
2c) it has consistent citations (CHECK) (please give specifics where you don't believe this is true)
3) it has images where appropriate with succinct captions (CHECK) (note use of "succinct")
4) it stays focused on the main topic without going into unnecessary detail (CHECK) (c.f. NFL and Rainbow Flag)
I think your concerns about the Featured Article status of San Francisco article, fall under the "if you can update or improve it, please do" policy rather than raising any substantive WP:FACR issues. --Paul (talk) 19:39, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

You seem to be taking my comments as a personal attack, which is not how they were intended. I do believe, however, that the aricle does not meet the current standards for a Featured Article. In response to your comments:

  1. The sentence was given as an example of prose that could use some work. A Featured Article should be well-written, and a sentence like that indicates that copyediting may be necessary.
  2. As for the NFL, all that needs to be fixed is adding the full title: "...National Football League (NFL)..." Telling people to click on wikilinks if they want to understand the article is not Wikipedia policy, as articles should be clear to all readers.
Fixed. --Sfmammamia (talk) 18:29, 8 June 2008 (UTC)
  1. As for the references, the article simply isn't up to standards. Entire sections are unreferenced. The number of references isn't important; what matters is whether or not all of the information is backed up with a source. At present, it's not close.
  2. I'm not going to list all references that need more information or better formatting, but I recommend checking out Wikipedia:Citing sources for the {{cite web}} template. All web references need at least a title, publisher, url, and accessdate. If a date of publication or author name is available, this information should be included as well. Reference 32 is an example of a reference without a publisher. I urge you also to take a look at how the access dates are listed for references 36-38. 36 uses "Accessed on", 37 uses "Accessed", and 38 uses "Retrieved on". 36 also uses a formatted date (2006-12-03), while 37 uses a long form (September 5, 2006).
Access dates have been made consistent. --Sfmammamia (talk) 18:29, 8 June 2008 (UTC)
  1. I agree that "rainbow flag" is linked, but it doesn't illustrate anything from the article, as the article doesn not mention rainbow flags.
  2. Image captions are too "succinct" in some places. "Chinatown" is insufficient as a caption, as it says nothing about the image or why it is included. Likewise for "Baker Beach". The caption for Alcatraz is a good example of what a caption should look like: "Alcatraz receives 1.5 million visitors per year" says something about the image, in contrast to "A map from 1888", which doesn't even clarify what the image shows.
The specific captions mentioned above have been fixed.--Sfmammamia (talk) 19:02, 8 June 2008 (UTC)
  1. Not a reply to anything you said, but looking back, why is it important to mention that prospectors had "sourdough bread in tow"? This is not made clear in the article. I understand that you want to avoid unnecessary detail, but giving pieces of information with no indication of why they are relevant to the article makes for a lot of confusion.
Agreed. I deleted the phrase. --Sfmammamia (talk) 19:27, 8 June 2008 (UTC)
Sourdough bread is an iconic San Francisco artifact. It has been a part of SF since 1849 and probably before. It's use in this sentence is to provide a link to sourdough bread and to document the historical connection between sourdough becoming a SF icon, and the 49er prospectors. I've added a reference tying the bread to the prospectors.--Paul (talk) 00:19, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
You do a great job of explaining the link here. It would help readers of the article if a phrase was inserted in that sentence like "which later became an iconic San Francisco artifact. GaryColemanFan (talk) 01:35, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Please don't take my comments personally. I would love to see this keep its Featured Article status. Please note that I waited 8 days to initiate this process after mentioning my concerns to the relevant WikiProjects. I feel, however, that substantial work needs to be done, and I hope that the relevant projects will help get this article back to FA quality. GaryColemanFan (talk) 20:28, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

Response "The number of references isn't important; what matters is whether or not all of the information is backed up with a source. At present, it's not close." This isn't what the policy requires. Policy requires that "attribution is required for direct quotes and for material that is challenged or likely to be challenged." For example, do you think these sentences need a citation? "Public transit solely within the city of San Francisco is provided predominantly by the San Francisco Municipal Railway (Muni). The city-owned system operates both a combined light rail/subway system (the Muni Metro) and a bus network that includes trolleybuses, standard diesel motorcoaches and diesel hybrid buses."--Paul (talk) 00:17, 8 June 2008 (UTC)
Comment I have over 1,000 edits on the San Francisco article. You have none. Unfortunately, I no longer have the time nor the interest to work on this article. The article has not changed substantially since its promotion in September 2006. If you think it needs some work, I think you should work on it.--Paul (talk) 23:22, 7 June 2008 (UTC)
Reply I am aware that you have over 1,000 edits on this article. That is the reason that I notified you directly about the Featured Article review. Please note that Featured Article standards have changed substantially since 2006. Unfortunately, this article has not kept up with these changes and does not currently meet the standards. One of my current projects on Wikipedia is to ensure that Featured Articles meet the criteria. In cases like Wayne Gretzky, it is sometimes necessary to initiate a Featured Article review to get the changes made. I am not picking on you personally or on this article, as this is not the first review I have initiated (after giving the relevant projects ample time to start making the required changes), and it will not be the last. I am certainly willing to do some work toward fixing the article, but only if the relevant projects (those with knowledge of the subject matter and the guidelines of their projects) are willing to help. I can certainly understand that you might not have time or interest to work on the article, and I hope you don't take any of my comments to mean that I expect you (or any other specific editor) to help. With that said, the most important matter is improving the article. As this conversation is accomplishing nothing toward that goal, I will no longer engage in such a debate. I am quite willing to offer opinions and/or answer questions about the concerns I have identified, as it is my sincere hope that the outcome is to keep this as a Featured Article. Best wishes, GaryColemanFan (talk) 23:57, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

Request Please complete the nomination by following the instructions at the top of WP:FAR to notify significant contributors and relevant WikiProjects, and post the notifications back to the top of this FAR. Thank you. --Regents Park (roll amongst the roses) 20:23, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

My apologies. I notified them right away, but I wasn't aware that I had to list them here. I'll get that done right away. GaryColemanFan (talk) 20:28, 7 June 2008 (UTC)
Done. GaryColemanFan (talk) 20:35, 7 June 2008 (UTC)
  • Comments Unfortunately, I concur with GaryColemanFan that this is not up to FA standards, at least as they exist today. As Paul suggested, minor fixes should just be make on the spot, but I think this article needs substantial work. Issues per FA criteria:
    • 1c (sources): There are many unsourced sections. Inline citations are needed to so we at least have a general idea what sources the material is based on.
    • 2a (lead): The lead is quite weak for a broad article of this depth. It does not accurately represent the article per WP:LEAD. Someone familiar with the subject matter needs to work on it.
    • 3 (images): The article is an image farm and, as GCF pointed out, the captions are weak. Someone needs to trim them up, fix the captions, and then visit MOS:IMAGES and get them arranged properly. There are all manner of placement problems. --Laser brain (talk) 04:15, 8 June 2008 (UTC)
Regarding the images. I have moved several images from the left margin to the right margin to keep them from disturbing the text layout at the beginning of sections and subsections. However, I would like to point out that WP:FACR does not even mention MOS:IMAGES. It lists only three requirements:

3. Images. It has images and other media where they are appropriate, with succinct captions and acceptable copyright status. Non-free images or media must satisfy the criteria for the inclusion of non-free content and be labeled accordingly.

Thus, any concern about the layout of images is more properly the subject of a TALK page discussion or a few minutes time of judicious editing, not a basis for an FAR.
As for the article being an "image farm," that is a bit of an exaggeration. The editors of this article have deleted scores of vanity images. All of the images left in the article appropriately illustrate accompanying text. However, there are two images added in the last year which might be argued border on excess: the night cityscape panorama, and the satellite image of the San Francisco peninsula.--Paul (talk) 00:19, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
I think it's safe to say that Manual of Style compliance is assumed to be part of the Featured Article criteria. GaryColemanFan (talk) 01:35, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
While more citations are preferable, it would be quite strange to say that mere descriptions of fact that are unchallenged will need citations, if I may point out the public transportation section as an example. Of course, some images are unneeded, and they will be weeded out momentarily. However, I do have two questions:
  1. First and foremost, can you elaborate on your concerns a bit? It's hard to improve an article, let alone trying to understand abstractions and guess what you are talking about.
  2. Why was this issue not taken up to the talk page first? Perhaps via informal channels this problem would have been solved, and we won't have to go through this process. It might catch people's eyes, but it's still quite rude to the main authors of this article for this to suddenly come up (which may partly explain Paul's response).
Until then, I will try to improve the article to the best of my ability. —Kurykh 05:25, 8 June 2008 (UTC)
About the rainbow flag, I think it's the Castro (which the rainbow flag is representing) that is being emphasized, and not the rainbow flag itself. —Kurykh 05:31, 8 June 2008 (UTC)
I'm not sure how to elaborate any more than I already have. The biggest problem is with the citations. The article is insufficiently referenced, and the citations are not properly formatted. Currently, much of the article appears to be original research. To verify that the information has come from a reliable source, citations are needed. If that could be fixed, the majority of the work would be complete. As for your question about the talk page, you are correct. That would have been a good idea. I wasn't trying to spring this out of nowhere, though, and I notified all of the relevant Wikiprojects (Cities, San Francisco Bay Area, and California) and then waited eight days before starting the review. I will make sure to mention it on the talk page as well next time, though. Thanks for the advice, GaryColemanFan (talk) 05:54, 8 June 2008 (UTC)
Likewise, I thought I did a pretty good job outlining issues. There are no quick fixes here to delineate. Also, I'm a little annoyed that someone following the established procedure to review an article to see if it still meets featured article criteria is called rude. --Laser brain (talk) 07:13, 8 June 2008 (UTC)
I apologize if I inadvertently attacked anyone as rude (my intention was to highlight the perception of the action); however, I thought it was common knowledge that informal processes (talk page discussion) are often initiated before established procedures (this). —Kurykh 19:27, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

Given that we need to rework the article a bit, is it possible that we fix the article to conform to WP:USCITY guidelines, or is this article an exception because it became a featured article before the guideline was even drawn up? —Kurykh 19:38, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

The article already substantially follows the guidelines which can be seen by comparing the two index structures. Given that WP:USCITY states: The order of sections is also completely optional, and sections may be moved around to a different order based on the needs of their city.... While it is just a guideline and there are no requirements to follow it in editing.... I'd say it is not necessary to change the existing structure of the article. Also, WP:USCITY unfortunately "suggests" trivia sections for "Notable natives and residents" as well as "Sister cities" both of which were removed during the FAC process.--Paul (talk) 20:33, 8 June 2008 (UTC)
I was a significant contributor to those guidelines but I think that individual city articles should tailor the layout and content according to each city's unique characteristics and sources. --maclean 01:50, 9 June 2008 (UTC)