Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Christiaan Huygens/archive1

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 Gog the Mild via FACBot (talk) 16 February 2022 [1].

Christiaan Huygens

Nominator(s): Guillermind81 (talk) 05:32, 15 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

This article is about the little well-known, 17th-century Dutch scientist Christiaan Huygens, who was arguably second only to Newton during that century. The article follows all FA criteria, including being well-written, comprehensive, and substantiated with appropriate references. It also follows Wikipedia's manual of style and has relevant images throughout.--Guillermind81 (talk) 05:32, 15 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose by Buidhe

I commend your work on this important article, but I think there are some improvements needed to make this a featured article.

Inconsistent lead citing, some lead material is not repeated in the body (i.e. "one of the founders of modern mathematical physics")
Bulleted lists of material with unclear relevance, which I removed
The works section could be its own bibliography article
Inconsistent reference formatting. For example, some ISBNs are omitted
Lack of page numbers in citations, eg. "Elzinga, A. (1972). On a research program in early modern physics. Akademiförlaget."
"Howard, N. C. (2003). Christiaan Huygens: The construction of texts and audiences (Master's thesis). Indiana University." — cited several times, without page numbers and unlikely to be a high-quality reliable source. Another master's thesis "Christiaan Huygens – A family affair, by Bram Stoffele, pg 80" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 12 August 2017. Retrieved 16 February 2013. is also cited (the citation is also poorly formatted)
Shafer, G. (2018). Pascal's and Huygens's game-theoretic foundations for probability. [2] Archived 5 December 2020 at the Wayback Machine what makes this preprint a high-quality RS, especially when it barely mentions the subject?

Therefore, oppose and recommend withdrawal (t · c) buidhe 08:30, 15 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure I'd recommend withdrawal. Those are all things that could be fixed with a bit of elbow grease. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 15:15, 15 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I appreciate your comments. The issues listed may be significant but are not insurmountable. I ask for the opportunity to fix these before considering withdrawal.Guillermind81 (talk) 18:28, 15 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I partially disagree with this removal. Recording things named after scientists is something we do. Perhaps it could be a separate page, but it doesn't seem out of place here; perhaps it could be more prosified, but a list is not terrible for the purpose. I replaced the citations to Shafer (2018). The citation to Stoffele's thesis appears to be redundant with the footnote to Aldersey-Williams's book immediately preceding and could probably be removed entirely. The other issues mentioned above look like straightforward, though perhaps somewhat tedious, fixes. I wouldn't recommend withdrawal at this point. XOR'easter (talk) 22:45, 15 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Recording things named after scientists can be encyclopedic, but I see no evidence it's WP:DUE in this article, certainly that all the cases are. It would be more likely to be seen as DUE if it were covered in a source about Huygens specifically rather than universeguide.com or a NASA website about something else entirely.

These examples are only those that I came across in a cursory search. The article has systematic deficits and would need substantial improvement before it could meet the FA criteria. Here are some other examples; just examples, as this is hardly a comprehensive list:

"In optics Huygens is remembered especially for his wave theory of light, which he first communicated in 1678 to the Académie des sciences in Paris." —WP:OR since the only source is one of Huygens' own publications
Repeatedly citing Huygens' own publications instead of secondary source coverage; an indication that the article is not well-researched
Some of the sources are from the nineteenth or early twentieth century and are unlikely to be considered HQRS
Repetitive citations with a variety of formats and lacking identifiers. For example, a full citation for "Huygens: The Man Behind the Principle" is repeated eight times in footnotes and the book is again (incorrectly) listed in further reading. There are various valid ways of doing citations, but that is not one of them; either {{rp}} or {{sfn}} should be used. This is a problem with several other books including " A History of Probability and Statistics and Their Applications before 1750" and "Science and Social Status: The Members of the "Académie Des Sciences", 1666–1750."
Incorrect use of web archive links (Google Books does not archive)
Issues highlighted in my original comment have not been resolved
Most of these issues are not something that reviewers should have to point out, they are expected to be correct at the time of nomination. The FAC process should not be used for peer reviewing an article that is not well-prepared or would require substantial improvement to meet the FA criteria.

In short, the article was not sufficiently prepared prior to FAC nomination and should be withdrawn at once. (t · c) buidhe 10:46, 16 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

In that case, I agree to have it withdrawn while I work on these issues. It seems I was too hasty and forgiving of prior editors' work. I promise to reach out to one of the FAC mentors for help before re-submitting my nomination. Thank you all for your feedback. Guillermind81 (talk) 13:59, 16 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@FAC coordinators: The nominator has "withdrawn" the nomination in this edit. – Kavyansh.Singh (talk) 16:42, 16 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Withdrawn per nominator's request. Note that the usual two week pause on further nominations will apply. Gog the Mild (talk) 18:05, 16 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Closing note: This candidate has been withdrawn, but there may be a delay in bot processing of the close. Please see WP:FAC/ar, and leave the {{featured article candidates}} template in place on the talk page until the bot goes through.

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.