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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 User:Ian Rose 08:33, 22 August 2013 [1].

Perseus (constellation)

[edit]
Nominator(s): StringTheory11 (t • c) 18:52, 23 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I am nominating this for featured article because I believe that it meets the FA criteria. From the peer review that was just archived, people seem to think that it is ready for an FAC. StringTheory11 (t • c) 18:52, 23 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comment - while I do believe that this article is generally good and could become a featured article, there are some sections of prose that need to be fixed:
    • Second paragraph of lede begins with "Its brightest star", which doesn't look too good. Please replace with something like "The brightest star in Perseus is..."
    • the annual Perseids meteor shower, one of the most prominent should become simply the prominent annual Perseids meteor shower.
      • I disagree with this change. While there is nothing specifically wrong with the proposed replacement, we lose the information that the Perseids is one of the most prominent meteor showers in the sky, not just your run-of-the-mill meteor shower. I've reworded it slightly to fix the word-sense ambiguity present, however. StringTheory11 (t • c) 22:57, 24 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • T'ien-tchouen, translated as the "Celestial Boat", was the third paranatellon of the third house of the White Tiger of the West. It represented the boats that Chinese people were reminded to build in case of a catastrophic flood season. Tsi-choui, translated as the "Swollen Waters", was the fourth paranatellon of the third house of the White Tiger of the West. It represented the potential of unusually high floods during the beginning of the flood season, which commenced at the end of August and beginning of September. Ta-ling, translated as the "Great Trench", was the fifth paranatellon of the third house of the White Tiger of the West. It represented the trenches where criminals executed en masse in August were interred. The pile of corpses prior to their interment was represented by Tsi-chi (Algol), the sixth paranatellon of the third house of the White Tiger.[3] This section is pretty choppy; some sections should be combined and there is no need to keep repeating the "third house of the White Tiger of the West."
    • The Double Cluster, h and χ Persei, had special significance in Chinese astronomy. Please add "also" before "had special significance."
    • The section heading "Characteristics" could be replaced with something stronger.
    • The "Notable features" section does not, by my reckoning, appear to need any major change.Wer900 • talk 20:22, 24 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support upon completion of image review.

Image review

  • Captions that aren't complete sentences shouldn't end in periods
  • File:Perseusurania.jpg: attributed author is an en-wiki user, but they are only the uploader, not the original author, and the upload date is not the date of creation/publication. (Both details are in the description link, just need to be changed in the template)

Note also that there are some HarvErrors that should be fixed before a source review. Nikkimaria (talk) 13:14, 25 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  • Support (morally or otherwise as sometime tinkerer of the article) - I've done some editing on this over time and watched it improve. Only thing remaining is that it might be better to list when the September Perseid were discovered rather than just use "recently" - otherwise looking good on comprehensiveness and prose. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 04:44, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Support: Thank you for addressing my concerns. The article appears to satisfy the FA criteria so I'm providing my support for promotion. Good work. Praemonitus (talk) 20:57, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: It's a decent article and close to FA. I made a few edits and have some concerns that I'd like to see addressed:

Otherwise I'm ready to support. Thank you. Praemonitus (talk) 16:32, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Source review by Sasata (talk) 18:50, 17 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  • ref#1: author, accessdate?
  • titles are not consistently in title or sentence case
  • ref#6: "et al" should be "et al.", but more importantly, the author given (Dinwiddie) does not match that given by WorldCat (Rees). If only a chapter in this book was used, it should be formatted as such (i.e. fill out the "title", "chapter", "editor-last" parameters). Also, this book is written for a "juvenile audience"; does it qualify as a high-quality reliable source?
  • ref#9: page #?
I did a Google Books search and it appears the cited information is on pages 60–61. Sasata (talk) 19:13, 19 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Done. StringTheory11 (t • c) 20:36, 19 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
ref#27 gives page 1254, when the actual page range is 1254–1257; ref#31 gives page 349, when it's actually 349–376; see also refs#39, 41, 42, etc. Sasata (talk) 19:09, 19 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I think I've done all of them now. StringTheory11 (t • c) 20:36, 19 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • ref#24: fix "comparaison"; issue# ?; it's redundant to give both the doi and the bibcode if they lead to the same place (check throughout article for other instances)
  • ref#29: et al. not italicized (unlike previous instance)
  • ref#33: missing a grapheme in the name Krtička and an a-acute in Kubát. (Similar issues with "Mikołajewska", ref#39 and Jørgensen, ref #57). Why does this article not have a volume, issue and page#'s?
Hmmm, I can't find this info either, so nevermind. Sasata (talk) 19:09, 19 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I tweaked a few more; the reference like fine now. Here's a few nitpicky comments from a quick readthrough of the article:

Oppose - the prose is not to FA standard. Here are some examples:

*Ref 62 is missing a page number(s)

    • Again, I do not have access to this book, as it only has a snippet view on Google Books and this reference was in the article before I started work on it. Any help is appreciated. StringTheory11 (t • c) 23:09, 19 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I spotted these after a cursory reading. I think a thorough copyedit is needed. Graham Colm (talk) 21:55, 19 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I've requested a copyedit at the GOCE. StringTheory11 (t • c) 23:11, 19 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Further comments

Comments - Hi, I'm working on the requested copyedit and have a couple thoughts you may want to consider. The History and Mythology section is a little thin, I would love to see more detail of the Andromeda myth and, if possible, the Babylonian associations. I think this paper or this paper would be good resources to check out. Also, Ian Ridpath gives details of which stars were in each of the Chinese constellations in Star Tales. I might not have time to SOFIXIT this weekend (conference), but if you want me to add some of that I'd be happy to. :) Great work here! Keilana|Parlez ici 18:55, 20 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry it's taken awhile to do this; I just saw it and I'll get to it tomorrow. StringTheory11 (t • c) 06:10, 28 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I think the Greek section is good now, but I have literally no knowledge of Chinese or Babylonian mythology, so it might be better if somebody else does that. StringTheory11 (t • c) 19:21, 28 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Apparently someone said that bibcodes shouldn't be present on this article. I don't know what the logic behind that rationale is, but it can't be very well thought out. Bibcodes are the most useful astronomical identifiers, and give links to the ADSABS database. Omitting them from the article introduces a big flaw, and greatly reduces the value of the references given. Bibcodes need to stay, otherwise this article does not meet the standards for FAs.Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 23:19, 24 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • I've removed the DOIs and inserted the bibcodes instead. The problem was that there was the preference that each reference should only have one external link to the article, and we had both the bibcode and DOI, so I removed the bibcodes, but I'll reinsert them and remove the DOIs instead. StringTheory11 (t • c) 18:55, 28 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      • Hmm, on closer examination, it appears that the bibcodes take us to a different place (although still the same article) than the DOIs. Therefore, I'm leaving both in the article unless somebody says otherwise. StringTheory11 (t • c) 18:58, 28 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from hamiltonstone

[edit]

Oppose at present, just on the issue of the section on chinese astronomy. I have done some further hunting on this. The current sole source for these paras is classed as "juvenile non-fiction". I used google scholar to find a couple of serious texts on chinese astronomy, and hit upon Astronomy and Mathematics in Ancient China: The 'Zhou Bi Suan Jing' By Christopher Cullen, and The Chinese Sky During the Han: Constellating Stars and Society edited by Xiaochun Sun, Jacob Kistemaker. I tried to do word searches of both of these on the various constellation names (both chinese and in English) that are referred to in the article text, and came up with nothing. This is on top of fiinding no obvious correlation between the constellations / legends reported in this article, and the contellation names etc in the articles that are cited in the WP article on chinese astronomy. This paragraph needs to be redone based on some reputable sources. I am happy to support if this can be fixed - the rest looks OK. hamiltonstone (talk) 01:31, 12 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I currently don't have access to a library to look for book sources on this, but if you want, I can look for some in early September, when I should next have library access. I'll hunt around on Google and Google Scholar a bit too; I'll hopefully find some stuff within the next week. StringTheory11 (t • c) 18:15, 17 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Prose issues (since resolved):

  • "East (the cardinal direction)..." what is the point here? Other directions are not cardinal? I didn't understand this.
  • "In the sky, Perseus is near Andromeda, Cepheus, Andromeda's mother Cassiopeia, Cetus, and Pegasus." Sounds clumsy. Also, are these things all constellations? Are any of them stars? Can't tell.
  • "Four Chinese constellations existed in the area of the sky now assigned to Perseus". Nobody owns the sky: on what basis does it say that the Chinese constellations no longer exist? "assigned" sounds a little strange too.
  • Given that there is no article on paranatellons, the term is going to have to be explained briefly.
    • Isn't that the purpose of redlinks; to point to articles that need to be started? I don't see the issue here. StringTheory11 (t • c) 20:31, 8 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      • Yes, but the reader still needs to be able to understand this article. Without a brief concept of what a paranatellon is, this passage isn't readily comprehended. That would actually still be true even if there was an article on p's. Suggest a phrase be added to give the reader something to work with. hamiltonstone (talk) 01:30, 9 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      • Actually, I had a look at the chinese astronomy article, two of the sources cited for it, and googled it, and I'm now not happy with this paragraph. None of the sources I read used "paranatellon" at all, they referred to mansions or lunar lodges / lodges; and the names / characters etc assoicated with the constellations did not appear to be those referred to in the current article. I am now not confident that the Staal source is high quality. Suggest editors do a bit of reading and re-frame this para. hamiltonstone (talk) 05:31, 9 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
        • Pinging @Keilana:, who seems to know a lot about chinese astronomy and has added most of the section. StringTheory11 (t • c) 15:31, 9 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
          • Hi. I'm at Wikimania and therefore don't have access to my Chinese sources (yes, I realize that's funny as I am in Hong Kong) but paranatellons are the same as lunar mansions, as far as I know. As for the reliability of Staal, most of what he says is corroborated in other sources and I find him to be fairly reliable. If there's a specific statement sourced there that you have issues with, I have access to plenty of alternative sources we could try. What statements are you concerned about? Keilana|Parlez ici 01:29, 10 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Mirfak has a luminosity of 5,000 times the sun and diameter of 42 times that of our sun" needs rephrasing.

Maybe "Mirfak has 5,000 times the luminosity and 42 times the diameter of the sun"?

  • "of another moving group of bright blue-white giant and supergiant stars" Moving group???
  • "Once thought to be a member,[26] Omicron Persei..." A member of what?
  • "They are so close to each other that they are distorted into egg shapes." Would probably delete this factoid. If you don't want to delete it, then the para needs a copyedit to avoid the repetition of the phrase "each other" in consecutive sentences.
  • "...the system is thought to lie too far to belong to the Zeta Persei group". This needs reworking. I sort of understand, but the "too far" needs a subject. Too far from what? Presumably from the star/s that definitely form the Zeta Persei group, but it isn't well expressed.
  • The whole thing about GK Persei is a bit odd. There seems too much detail for events that occurred over a century ago. The passage concludes "It faded to 13th magnitude around 30 years after its peak brightness". That would have been circa 1930. What is its magnitude now? At such incredible faintness, this would make it one of thousands of stars within the field of the constellation. Should it really be singled out? I'm not sure.
  • There is some variation in the expression of magnitudes, sometimes with no decimal places, sometimes one decimal place and sometimes two. I don't know if this is an issue or not. The one place I found it odd was in describing the magnitude of a galaxy to two decimal places, which as a lay person I found slightly counterintuitive - a high level of precision for something that is an object made up of many light sources.

I think that's about it. hamiltonstone (talk) 00:40, 8 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Delegate comment -- This has been open almost two months and I need to know where we're at re. the outstanding oppose. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 01:43, 17 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  • Oppose Not happy with the quality of the prose, sorry, as I can see String has made a great effort to promote this, especially on such a tricky subject. I think it has a lot of short sentences and random statements which lacks the polish of an FA, especially on such a scientific topic. I think it still needs a copyedit to rid of a lot of the snappy sentences and to improve the flow.♦ Dr. Blofeld 20:08, 20 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that these articles are extremely tricky to get right...and the bigger ones are the worst...Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 11:16, 21 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
It does look a very difficult article to write, largely because it is an account of observation through a lens unlike worldly topics. I was initially uncertain as to whether or not it was scientifically as comprehensive as it could be but in fairness given its extreme size and how very little man really knows about it, it's likely fine. I'd like to see the article flow better though before I'm ready to support for FA.♦ Dr. Blofeld 13:45, 21 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Well, we're certainly no closer to consensus to promote than when last I checked here, so I'm going to archive this and ask that further work take place outside FAC. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk)
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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