Today's FA (2 Apr 2008)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neilston

More than usually dull I thought, or am I missing something

Every FA gets its turn on the main page, no exceptions. I remember some drama a while back when it was a babylon 5 episode or something like that.

Whoa let's step back here. Why is it an FA? An FA is an article that is deemed good and interesting enough to be featured.

Actually, I'm pretty sure it's just "good enough" - I don't think "interesting-ness" is part of the criteria.

So I feared.

The problem is that people have different opinions on what's interesting - the criteria for quality are actually quite flawed, but they're at least something everyone can look at and agree whether the article qualifies.

Yes, 'interesting' is a hard one.

If I have a criticism of it, it is that it features pseudo-encyclopedic language (which to be fair, I am sure I've made the same mistake myself):

e.g. "Regular but generally light precipitation occurs throughout the year." What did that mean?

"Neilston forms part of the Western water and sewerage regions of Scotland." I think they mean, it is in those regions.

"The Neilston Agricultural Show is a cattle show, sheepdog trial and sports and arts festival held close to the village on the first Saturday of every May with a tradition stretching back to the early nineteenth century." There is something uncomfortable in that sentence construction.

"In a similar semi-legendary popular etymology," erm, is that trying to say "Locals say"?

As a comprehensive description of Neilston, ok, it could do with a good copy-editor, but OK. However, there is no selectivity of information, there is not a proper editorial control of the article. The section on Governance is just a series of lists. There is no story: so the section is a "so what?"

It therefore begs the question of by what criteria did this achieve FA status. Large collection of information yes. Elegant prose? No. Interesting presentation? No.

I flipped to the talk page which has the GA comments and the reviewer is quite telling: it comes across as an American, looking for American style information. This is a small town/suburb of Glasgow. The GA reviewer compliments the prose, which to me, as I said, is not "excellent" but stereotypical and stilted. Most of all though, it is a GA done by someone who clearly does not know what the place is like and ticks it off because it is "well cited" without any means of verifying. Picking an example: the first cite in the history section is "Rambles Round Glasgow" for 1910, so the good cite appears to be an old book of walks - quoted as "local historians". I was interested to see that there are a lot of primary sources (a pet argument of mine, as I see Slim claiming they should never be used). All in all, over 60 cites, but not of itself demonstrating that the information is reliable.

That being said, this is what Wikipedia is good at. Local people writing about what they know and recording what they have found. This stuff often sits in dusty files in the Local History section of the local library and it should be exposed somewhere like this. The article is good enough, just don't tell me that this is the best that Wikipedia can do, because it is nowhere near, and if this is FA quality, then the bar is low.

It's not a question of the bar being low, exactly...

Kelly Martin has commented at length elsewhere on a systemic problem - one which I agree is present - in the FA criteria: inline citations. The requirement[1] for every single phrase[2] to be accompanied[3] with an inline citation[4] is destroying[5] the quality of the prose[6] of featured article candidates[7]. It becomes a collection of disconnected facts rather than a coherent whole.

I mean just look at it.

* Neilston is a dormitory village comprising a resident population of just over 5,000 people.'
* It mentions that it has a B-listed building in the intro
* 'The annual Neilston Agricultural Show is an important trading and cultural event for farmers from southwest Scotland each spring.' starting to sound like Monty Python
* 'Although heavy industry died out during the latter half of the twentieth century, as part of Scotland's densely populated Central Belt, Neilston has continued to grow as a commuter village'. The first bit sort of engages with the global economics-story-of-post-modernism bit, but then it settles back to what we feared, it is in fact a dull commuter village.
* Expansion continues due to several new housing developments. This is code for some nasty cheap concrete structure designed for chavs which will be a burnt-out crack den within 5 years. Now that would be quite interesting but I bet that will never get into the article.
* The 'governance' section, which is all about the town council, is eye-wateringly dull.
* The only interesting bit of the geography section is the information that it is built on an extinct volcano. If this suddenly blew up and vapourised the inhabitants of this dull place, that might be interesting.

And how about this for dullness:



This actually tells you that it has 'few features calling for special remark' i.e. it is a spectacularly dull and boring place. What does the last sentence mean - "The territory of Neilston is not contiguous with any other settlement"? The 'settlement' bit makes it sound like there are aboriginous tribes all around who are constantly coming in for raids to drag off the females of Neilston or scalp them or eat them alive or something. Like it was South Dakota in the 1870's, which it obviously is not.

Anyway enough of that boring place. Why can't they make 'fisting' into an FA?

[edit] sorry this crossed with dogbiscuits post. Hear hear.



Much worse[1][2][3] for the highly edit-warred[4][5][6][7][8] articles[9][10][11].

It's not just that, it is the obesity of the article: where it seems to have been driven to gather detail that is not necessary or useful. The writer has not asked the question "Why am I telling the reader this?" That is a Wikipedia failing too: when should detail be set aside?

Never. It is the sum of all human knowledge, not just interesting stuff. (Which makes you wonder why they delete so many articles.)

OK, then, to pick on this article, it has a poor structure which fails to observe summary style. The intro section is not a good balanced summary of the complete content, so I would expect to have a readable version in summary style and more detail (quite possibly within the same page, but different sections).