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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 not promoted by GrahamColm 21:52, 4 April 2013 (UTC) [1].[reply]

Blue's Clues

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Blue's Clues (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

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Nominator(s): Christine (Figureskatingfan) (talk) 13:41, 15 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I am nominating this for featured article because it deserves it. Perhaps you're thinking, "A FA about this?!" That's correct, Blue's Clues is a ground-breaking and revolutionary children's educational TV program, second only to Sesame Street. It has had profound influence on the TV industry, our culture, and the lives of scores of young children. This includes my own, especially my son; Blue's Clues is his favorite thing in the universe. I feel that this article is well-researched, well-sourced, and well-written. And remember, you can do anything that you wanna do. Christine (Figureskatingfan) (talk) 13:41, 15 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

And think, think, think! Everyone should know that Casliber is reviewing this article, despite the fact that we're in a head-to-head race as part of the same pool (F) in the Wikicup. Cas, your generosity has no bounds!
As of 2002, over 2 million people had attended over 1,000 performances. - hmm, reads oddly as if this were written soon afterwards (but is now a long time ago) - we either need to say perfomrances concluded in 2002 or get more updated figures somehow...just looks odd.... (holds both for lead and body of text near bottom)
I just re-searched, but again was unable to find any source that states that the live show ended or didn't end. Well, that's not true; I found some ads for the show that were more recent--the latest being last year, 2012, and some press releases and other non-reliable sources. And there certainly wasn't anything about how many performances there has been up to now. I've gone over how to not imply what you say, but I've always been a loss as to how to solve it. Do you have any suggestions? Would "by 2002" work better than "as of 2002", do you think?
I think "By 2002" and the use of "had seen" (i.e. pluperfect tense) we cover it as best we can...Casliber (talk · contribs) 13:12, 21 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
because Nickelodeon was already producing a show about a cat - which show was that?
No source names the show, just that they were producing it. Is that information necessary?
I think/thought it'd be an interesting add/juxtaposition. However if we don't know, we don't know....Casliber (talk · contribs) 13:10, 21 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
In the next para, beginning, "Blue's Clues premiered in the U.S..." - can you rephrase all quoted bits? None of them are memorable enough to require a verbatim phrasing....
Done.
Might be tricky but explain who Daniel Anderson is and what he does on first mention, not later?
Um, the first mention of Anderson is in the 2nd paragraph in the "Format" section, and he's identified as "Nickelodeon researcher Daniel Anderson".
also, isn't a terribly long article - maybe more on other characters (magenta etc.) and Joe's use of other coloured tops unlike Steve's green?
I've avoided character lists, since at one point, that was the bulk of this article. There really isn't any reliable sources out there discussing characters other than Blue, Steve, and Joe. There is an article [2] written at the time of the host switch that discusses this very thing; it states the reason they had Joe wear different shirts was so that kids would want to change their clothes everyday. I dunno, I thought that was kind of silly, so I didn't include it. There were other things that should've gone in, and I went ahead and added them. And I think that I've pretty much exhausted all the available sources. Although the show's important and was on for ten years (an eternity in comparison to most kids' shows, Sesame Street notwithstanding), there really hasn't been much written about it. The Tracy book, which has provided this article with comprehensiveness, is the reason this article was able to be expanded to its current length. This article surprised me in that way; you'd think that even in the mainstream media, there'd be more, especially at the time of the host switch, but other than announcements that it occurred and other promotional stuff, there's wasn't. I also assumed the fact that it premiered relatively recently would mean more sources, but that's not true, either. Remember that when it premiered (1996), the internet wasn't around. The media has pretty much ignored BC through the years, so it hasn't had nearly as much written about it in comparison to Sesame Street. (SS surprised me for the opposite reason; the sources available for it are overwhelming.)

Overall, writing is good - does come over as a little glowing in parts but understandable given the great topic matter...are there any criticisms/controversies out there written in reliable sources? Back later, Casliber (talk · contribs) 23:50, 19 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I can answer that by saying unequivocally, "No"--another surprise. I included what I was able to find: the response to the host switch, the rumors about Steve. And believe me, I looked for them. [3] Christine (Figureskatingfan) (talk) 22:19, 20 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Comments by Squeamish Ossifrage

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First, a few quibbles with the reference formats:

  • I hate little horizontal lines. But I'm pretty sure those are all em dashes in the page ranges throughout the references, and they should be en dashes. Sorry.
I hate 'em, too, especially since I was under the mistaken impression that em dashes are used for page ranges. Ah well, they should all be fixed now.
  • You have web sources with 2006 and 2007 retrieval dates! Every one of those needs to be checked, and retargeted if necessary, so that its retrieval date can be refreshed. In at least several cases, the original article is either no longer online or no longer at the targeted link, so either new urls or archive links are going to be required. My personal rule of thumb is to request dates be refreshed if they're over a year old coming into FAC.
Ah, I thought that I knew everything about the FAC process by now. Of course, I usually don't submit older articles here, so live and learn, doncha know.
  • Some of your newspaper titles aren't italicized, and they should be. See Citations 21, 64, 68. I may have missed others.
  • In Citation 13, the magazine is properly styled Time.
  • In Citation 28, I believe the periodical in question is properly Spin, not Spin Magazine.
All the above fixed now. Christine (Figureskatingfan) (talk) 18:44, 23 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • You're using a format where the first author appears last, first and other authors appear first last. That's fine, and you're consistent, which is what matters. However, both multiple-author entries in the Bibliography have a comma separation the first author and the rest of the list, and in this format, that needs to be a semicolon. The multiple-author works in the Citations section have it right, though...
  • This is better, but there are still issues. Check citation 29 and the Anderson bibliography, which both have mixed commas and semicolons in the author list, versus the Ryan bibliography, which is all semicolons. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 02:41, 25 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Fixed, thanks for the catch. Christine (Figureskatingfan) (talk) 20:56, 25 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • In general, the Citations use citation style 1 and the Bibliography isn't templated. Some of the problems below might be resolved (or at least easier to catch) by templating them. For example, all of these references have a period between the author list and the parenthetical publication year, but the standard set in the previous section doesn't include them.
  • The Anderson source in the bibliography is a scholarly article, but it's not formatted like one. The volume and issue number need to come out of the title and be displayed correctly for the type of reference (Citation 79 does it correctly, above). Also, this is missing its doi (10.1207/S1532785XMEP0202_4).
  • The Ryan source isn't really formatted correctly at all. If you do convert all these to citation style 1, there's a Template:cite conference to help with this sort of thing.
This is an older article in my editing history, and it reflects that. When I expanded this article the first time way back in 2007, the cite format was what I was using at the time. Since then, my favored format has changed, but when I re-vamped this article a year ago, I decided to stay with the old format for consistency. I've come to hate the cite templates because I found that I ran into issues like this over and over again. They make things clunky, hard to navigate, and difficult to read in edit mode. This is an example of the citation format I currently use: Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now. It looks like, to keep consistency, I need to convert the format here, since doing so would solve all the above problems. I'll take care of that shortly. Christine (Figureskatingfan) (talk) 18:57, 23 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

With that aside, I'm also a little concerned about comprehensiveness. This really is an important piece of children's educational television, and there's been a lot written about it! I don't have access to journals in this field right offhand, but I found a number of potential sources that aren't addressed (and, sorry, these aren't quite formatted the same way as you're doing formatting; my preferred style's a hard habit to deviate from, but this should help you find them to see if they're useful):

  • Troseth GL, Saylor MM, Archer, AH (2006). "Young Children's Use of Video as a Source of Socially Relevant Information". Child Development. 77 (3): 786–799. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8624.2006.00903.x.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  • Anderson DR (1998). "Educational Television is not an Oxymoron". The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. 557 (1): 24–38. doi:10.1177/0002716298557000003.
  • Crawley AM, Anderson DR, Santomero A, Wilder A, Williams M, Evans MK, Bryant J (2002). "Do Children Learn How to Watch Television' The Impact of Extensive Experience With Blue's Clues on Preschool Children's Television Viewing Behavior". Journal of Communication. 52 (2): 264–280. doi:10.1111/j.1460-2466.2002.tb02544.x.

There's at least one excellent book source not touched on, as well:

  • Comstock G, Scharrer E (2007). Media and the American Child. Academic Press. ISBN 978-0123725424.

I'm sure there's more information out there. I haven't really done a thorough read through the prose, because referencing issues and comprehensive sourcing are typically my first concerns. At the moment, I'm inclined to oppose. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 00:16, 21 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, SO. I'll take the next few days and look at the articles you list to see if they have anything valuable. I have access to a university library, so I did search in databases. For example, the Anderson source in the bibliography here summarizes several previous research articles, so the ones you found may be already included. I'll still check them out, though. Please give me a few days. Christine (Figureskatingfan) (talk) 18:49, 24 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
No worries! When I can, I like to peek at the journal refs myself before just tossing them out for the FA sponsor to pick through, but my offline time is pretty rough right now, so spitting out possible references is about the best I can do. I hope they help! Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 02:41, 25 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Image review

  • Captions that are complete sentences should end in periods
  • File:Blues_Clues_logo.svg: should explicitly identify copyright holder, and replace "organization" in FUR with "show"
  • File:BluePeriwinkle.jpg needs to explicitly identify copyright holder. I'm also not sure using products rather than screenshots is the best editorial choice - can you explain?
  • File:Steve_Burns.jpg: image description grants us use of the image "under the terms of fair use", which is compatible with neither the given licensing tag nor our policies regarding non-commercial copyrights and images of living people. This situation needs to be clarified. Nikkimaria (talk) 23:48, 21 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I've come to the conclusion that this article needs more research, as per Squeamish Ossifrage's comments above. I would like to withdraw this nomination for now, so I can have more time to do the necessary work and will re-submit it at a later time. Thanks, and my apologies for wasting anyone's time. Christine (Figureskatingfan) (talk) 15:53, 27 March 2013 (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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