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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 promoted by Ian Rose 10:01, 31 August 2013 (UTC) [1].[reply]

Lanny McDonald

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Lanny McDonald (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

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Nominator(s): Resolute 02:16, 27 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Lanny is a local hero, a hometown star who came home to the Calgary Flames to lead them to their only Stanley Cup Championship in 1989. Hockey Hall of Famer, patron of the Special Olympics, and in my completely objective and totally non-biased opinion, the greatest moustache in sports. The article was brought to GA standard and run through peer review a little over a year ago, but I placed it on the back burner to focus on FA runs for two other topics approaching major milestones. Since hockey never really stops in Canada however, I felt the dog days of summer was a prime time to bring this article before the community. All comments and suggestions welcomed! Thanks, Resolute 02:16, 27 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Comments –

  • Toronto Maple Leafs: "The patience the Maple Leafs had shown McDonald in his first two seasons was rewarded in 1975–76 when rediscovered his offensive touch". Needs "he" after "when".
  • Calgary Flames: Contraction should be fixed in "after which McDonald remarked that he hadn't had so much fun playing the game in a long time."
  • "He watched from the bench as his teammates' unsuccessfully attempted...". Apostrophe should be removed.
  • Personal life: "for which the publisher made a donation of $10,000 to Special Olympics." Should "the" be added before Special Olympics? Giants2008 (Talk) 21:35, 30 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Done, thanks! I slightly reworded the second point since "had not had" felt sloppy. regards, Resolute 22:34, 30 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Support – The article was in good shape when I read it, and I'm confident that it meets the FA criteria. Nice job on this one. Giants2008 (Talk) 01:06, 4 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support with comments - This looks really good and was a nice read. I made a few changes, and have a few comments:
  • This is a bit unclear. Was he the all-star team's MVP, or the league MVP? "He was named to the AJHL's Second All-Star team, and voted its most valuable player."
  • Jargon: "acquired McDonald's rights"
  • I don't quite understand this: "Angered at first, he viewed the deal as an insult, that the worst team in the NHL had rejected him." You haven't established anywhere that the Rockies were the worst team in the NHL. Is that what you're suggesting?
  • "At 36 years old and approaching the end of his career, the 1989 Stanley Cup playoffs was potentially his last chance at a championship." At an NHL championship... :)
  • "and Calgary won the game 4–2 to win" I couldn't think of a way to reword this, but it's redundant.
  • "He had also previously served as a vice president of the NHLPA." This seems to be hanging out in the wrong section, chronologically. When in his career as a player did this occur? --Laser brain (talk) 19:34, 1 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Resolved comments from Rejectwater (talk) 22:45, 5 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Question/comment The tables under "Career statistics" and "Awards and honours" do not comply with MOS:DTT. However, the statistics tables do comply with the standard set at Wikipedia:WikiProject Ice Hockey/Player pages format. So the question is, can adherence to a project standard supersede the Manual of Style? Rejectwater (talk) 19:08, 4 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
It looks like that statistics table was put together in the hockey project long before the MOS:DTT was very mature. They probably just never swung back to update it. Would you consider compliance with accessibility standards to be a dealbreaker here? I'm not sure how much work is involved in fixing it. --Laser brain (talk) 19:45, 4 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Pretty much. This has never come up as an issue, and it's been a couple years since I ran a player article through FAC. Rejectwater - Looking at MOS:DTT, these tables are already captioned by the section headers, so is this an issue of the column headers not being sufficient, and a desire for the scopes to be added? Resolute 20:01, 4 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
My concerns:
  • In order to comply the caption text has to be part of the table code, as shown in the examples.
  • "wikitable" class is not set in stats tables
  • Lack of defined scope of columns and rows.
  • Column headers used to visually separate the awards table.
  • Blank column header in the awards table (references).
Dealbreaker? I would have to say yes. If this was a featured list nom I guarantee someone (not necessarily me, mind you, I learned it the hard way too :) ) would bring up MOS:DTT. Rejectwater (talk) 23:12, 4 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Most of that is easy to do, and I will... probably tomorrow though. I don't see a purpose to adding superfluous caption text when the section headers achieve exactly the same thing with no other information between it and the table to create confusion. Thanks, Resolute 00:09, 5 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
It has to do with accessibility, specifically in cases where the user cannot read the page and it is being read to them by the computer (I am way out on a limb here, but it feels right). The caption text explains what the contents of the table are, the scopes clearly state which cells are rows and which are columns. Tables in their most basic forms are almost entirely visual; MOS:DTT makes it possible to understand the contents of a table without having to see it. The prose of any given article is universally understood by anyone who understands the language, whether or not they can see it; these standards extend that to data tables. My understanding of it is that a table that doesn't use these standards comes across as a jumbled mess via a screen reader. Rejectwater (talk) 00:38, 5 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, the scopes would organize it, I believe. But if I add the header, it will read the section title, read the redundant table header, then read the table. That doesn't seem useful to either sighted users or those on screenreaders. That's my thought anyway. Hopefully someone else with knowledge will chime in! Resolute 00:43, 5 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, I've tried to add the scopes and what not, and separated the awards tables to allow better headers there. Is this sufficient? Resolute 21:41, 5 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Support. Great article, well written, comprehensive. Concur on the stache. Thank you for your hard work. Rejectwater (talk) 22:45, 5 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Support: I'm a bit later than I'd like on this one, sorry about that! I peer reviewed this article last year, and it was in excellent shape then. With further improvements and other eyes on it, I'm confident it meets the criteria, with the qualification that I am far from a hockey expert. Just a few nit-picks which do not affect my support. Incidentally, I must take issue with "the greatest moustache in sports". Search for some images of Merv Hughes... Sarastro1 (talk) 22:39, 8 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  • "McDonald finished the season with a modest improvement over his rookie campaign: 17 goals and 44 points": I don't think he finished with an improvement, rather "McDonald's [record?] at the end of the season was a modest improvement…" or similar.
  • "The Maple Leafs were viewed as being underdogs": Redundancy?
  • "…five back of Gretzky's 71": Sounds a little unencyclopedic to me.
  • 7th paragraph of the Calgary section: close repetition of "elimated/eliminating".
  • Playing style section: A little heavy on using "he was", perhaps. Maybe some of them could be reworded? Sarastro1 (talk) 22:39, 8 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Image check all OK (Flickr CC, own work). Sources and authors provided.

Delegate comments

  • Did I miss where the material in the "Regular season and playoffs" table is cited?
  • Fair few duplicate links -- you can use this tool to locate the repeats.
  • Still after a source review form someone, as listed at WT:FAC a while back -- I can see a Harv error for a start at the very top of the General references (source not cited by the look of it).
    Hi Ian, thanks for the comments. Your first and third point are related. The first reference in the general references is the cite for McDonald's career statistics. I've personally never liked adding things like "Source: [3]" to the end of a table like that. I find it ugly, so usually do it as a general ref (e.g. at Brad McCrimmon). Thanks for the pointer the duplicate links tool! I removed the links duplicated within the body of the article. Cheers! Resolute 14:20, 24 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Source review - spotchecks not done

  • FN24: don't italicize place
  • Don't mix {{citation}} and {{cite}} templates
  • Why spell out CBC? Why spell out SI on second occurrence but not first?
  • Internet Hockey Database or The Internet Hockey Database? Nikkimaria (talk) 02:37, 25 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    All fixed. And personally, I think "Canadian Broadcasting Corporation" looks better than "CBC". Especially since I often include TSN (The Sports Network) links in many of the same articles, and got into the habit of spelling it out for the sake of consistency. Cheers! Resolute 03:16, 25 August 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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