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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 Ian Rose via FACBot (talk) 10:40, 4 April 2018 [1].

Alex Owumi

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Nominator(s): TempleM (talk) 22:34, 16 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

This article is about Nigerian basketball player Alex Owumi, who is best known for being the star player of a team owned by the family of Muammar Gaddafi on the cusp of the Libyan Civil War. He was trapped in his apartment for weeks during the conflict and struggled to keep himself alive. Owumi's story reveals the very best and very worst of being a professional basketball player outside the NBA. This is a very in-depth article on a subject that would interest all readers, not just basketball fans. Since its first nomination, which did not get enough attention, the article has gone through thorough improvements and should be able to pass FAC quite easily. TempleM (talk) 22:34, 16 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from EricEnfermero

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I found this to be a very interesting article. I am relatively inexperienced at FAC, but I thought I would leave you some feedback to try and get this article to the next level. My impression is that it's not quite ready for FA, but it looks like you are making some steady improvements.

  • It looks like ref #1 (FIBA) has a broken link and it's not archived. You might use the GA Toolbox on the article's talk page to check your other links.
  • "Owumi currently plays..." - I know it's prevalent in sports articles, but "currently" may leave the reader wondering how current things really are. See WP:WTW.
  • Per MOS:COMMA, make sure you put a comma after the state or country when you have a city/state or city/country combination. In the first instance that I noticed - Boston, Massachusetts - I think you could just go with Boston by itself because it's one of the most famous U.S. cities.
  • "Immediately after college, Owumi failed to attract any attention..." - I think you could leave out "Immediately after college". Most players are attracting said attention during college. And the reader would probably assume that the next step occurred immediately after college.
  • "accepted a lucrative offer with Al-Nasr joining the Libyan team..." - comma after Al-Nasr
  • "British Basketball League (BBL)" - The full term and the acronym both appear twice in the league, and the article is wikilinked twice.
  • In the early life section, I don't think you need the comma after wealthy because wealthy and Nigerian Catholic are different classes of adjectives.
  • Why are there quotes around Prince?
  • In the college career section, what is meant by "did not officially play the position"? Do you mean that he didn't appear in a regular-season game at the position?
  • "began attending the Community College of Rhode Island (CCRI) for the next year" - I don't think you need "for"
  • "the team did not bring one of its best defenders to the tournament" - This wording leaves the reader wondering. (Did they leave him behind in the airport terminal and not notice? Did they run out of plane tickets? :) )
  • "A two-star recruit, and the fifth-best junior college recruit in New York according to 247Sports.com, Samuel West and Jason Cable" - This is not grammatical because "recruit" refers to Owumi, not West or Cable.
  • "44–103 loss" - I think it's a little more common to list the higher score first, even referring to losses. In either case, pick one and stick to it. In the next paragraph you have a loss written with the big number first.
  • You end the college section and start the pro career section with sentences describing Owumi's hopes for an NBA career. Maybe combine those into one sentence?
  • "he worked out in Boston with the Celtics and in Orlando, Florida" - This is an odd word order if both workouts were for the Celtics; if not, specify the second team he worked out for.
  • Did he skip a practice to attend the Cannes Film Festival, or did he attend the Cannes Film Festival during the time he was benched? The wording is not 100% clear.
  • "did not have a future with the team" - Never signed with them? Signed but didn't appear in a game? Appeared a few times but didn't become a starter?
  • "... convinced him to find a new team immediately" - I am a little confused on the timeline. In the lead, I think you're saying he left at the end of the year. I'm not sure how close to the end of the year the event occurred, but maybe take out immediately?
  • "Owumi witnessed the deaths of about 200 people during the day" - maybe "deaths of about 200 people that day"?
  • "Going against his family's wishes, Owumi chose to follow his coach..." - Did Azmy go to El-Olympi? I don't think you specified that. Or by coach, do you mean this former player of Azmy's?
  • I'm confused by the sequence of events starting with the camp in Sallum. You refer to him being placed in solitary confinement, being released, sleeping outside, then escaping the camp. So he was released from solitary but still held at the camp (but outside) until he escaped? Could you clarify?
  • In this section, there are at least a couple of times where you refer to Owumi as "the Nigerian" or "the Nigerian guard" and it feels unnatural to begin referring to him that way this late in the article. I know that it can be boring to alternate between "Owumi" and "he" a thousand times, but his nationality is obvious by this point.
  • In the last paragraph of the Worcester Wolves section, I think Cheshire Phoenix needs to be linked unless I'm missing it earlier.
  • In the Surrey section, "He was strongly encouraged to join" - Did someone encourage him to play on Raftopoulos' team? Or are you just saying that he liked Raftopoulos' coaching style and decided to play for him?
  • In the personal life section, "After returning to the United States from Libya, his mother suggested" - Should be "After Owumi returned to..."; his mother did not return to the U.S. from Libya.
  • Link Daniel Paisner.

Good luck to you as you continue working on this entry! EricEnfermero (Talk) 07:09, 20 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Sources comment

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In your use of cite templates, you tend to use the "website=" field rather indiscriminately. This leads to a degree of confusion and inconsistency. For each web-based source you need to give the publisher, not the website address, and you need to use the "publisher =" field. For example, in ref 2, you need "publisher= Team Nigeria Basketball"; ref 10, "publisher= ESPN"; ref 16, "publisher= Georgetown Hoyas", etc. You should not game the system by manually de-italicising the source, as you do in, for example, ref 10; using the publisher field will avoid the need for this. For newspaper sources you seem to be getting it right, using "newspaper=". I suggest you work through and adjust your templates as required. I'll take another look when you advise me that this has been done. At a glance, there doesn't seem much else that will need attention. Brianboulton (talk) 21:37, 26 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

  • You've addressed some of the issues. However, at a quick glance, I see The Boston Globe unitalicised in ref 1 and italicised in ref 7. Ref 2 still gives the web address as the publisher; the actual publisher is Team Nigeria Basketball, as specifically stated in my note above. Same point in ref 16 - the publisher is Georgetown Hoyas - again you've ignored my comment above. I haven't checked through the whole list, but it seems there are similar glitches needing fixes, and there's a way to go yet. Brianboulton (talk) 23:24, 15 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • You have dealt with most of my remaining format concerns satisfactorily, though I fixed two or three myself rather than hassling you again. Two remaining minor issues:
  • Why, in the citations referring to Owumi's two fiction works, do you use the Amazon ASIN codes rather than normal publisher details with ISBNs?
  • Your wikilinks on the London Lions go to a disambiguation page
  • I have two concerns over reliability: ref 107 "Let's Go Lions" looks like a fansite, and I'm unsure about ref. 113 "Talkbasket". Why should these two be considered reliable sources per FA standards?
  • A couple of questions for the coordinators: are you happy with the extensive use of the autobiography which one reviewer apparently described as "a magazine article masquerading as a book"? And, is the use of team websites to this extent acceptable? I take no particular position on these issues, but not being a basketball expert I thought I'd mention them.

Brianboulton (talk) 15:44, 17 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Coord notes

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  • Sorry, but this review has been open a long time without attracting the depth of commentary necessary to determine consensus to promote, so I'll be archiving it shortly.
  • Re. Brian's query on the extensive use of the autobiography, yes I think we have to be careful since it's hardly an impartial source. It could be useful for the subject's opinion on things (if clearly stated as such), or perhaps for fleshing out non-controversial points of interest only touched on in third-party sources, but generally I'd be very wary of of statements that rely on it solely (of which there are a few).

Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 10:37, 4 April 2018 (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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