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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 review. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was not promoted 06:03, 17 February 2007.

World War II

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Previous Comments of FAC located atWikipedia:Featured article candidates/World War II/Archive I

Re-structred the entire article and re-wrote many sections. I think this is FAC Quality. Mercenary2k 03:12, 9 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

CommentI dont see why that is a problem. Most people know facts about World War II, like Allies invaded Normandy on June 6, 1944, Germany invaded Russia on June 22, 1941 or Japanese bombed pearl harbor on december 7, 1941, etc....Mercenary2k 06:08, 10 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong Oppose "Most people know facts about World War II" is not an excuse to do a half-assed job for the citations. For crying out loud man entire sections of bookstores have been written on this subject and you have come up with... 17 citations? I came up with more than that for USS Missouri and USS Wisconsin, and that was after copying and pasting the entire DANFS entry for both ships into their respective articles here. I am not sorry to say that there is simply no way I can support this. TomStar81 (Talk) 06:29, 10 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • Comparing the citation of articles on individual warships, no matter how notable, with entire world wars is neither fair nor reasonable. This topic is for the most part well-known and uncontroversial, even if some aspects (especially casualty figures) do need well-balanced referencing to placate reference sticklers and careful editing to avoid POV. That there is an obscene amount of literature on this topic is actually a pretty good argument not to treat it like far more obscure topics. I would only be annoyed if I read this article and saw paragraphs on major battles and campaigns plastered with 3 foonotes per sentence. A lot of the facts in the article are of the magnitude of "Moscow is the capital of Russia" and should be treated accordingly. / Peter Isotalo 16:19, 11 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
      • Comment nobody wants 3 footnotes per sentence (last I checked, the standard was every third sentence? ;) but there are statements in this article that could use citation. Keep in mind I'm one of those who dislikes the trend of nervously footnoting every obvious statement and trivial deduction. For example, direct quotes, even if well known ('peace in our time') and facts and figures ('The Japanese would suffer approximately 18,000 casualties, the Soviet-Mongolian forces 9,000.'). Because so much material has been written, pointers to subtopic-specific books would be very useful to the reader, provided as a single footnote covering a whole paragraph or section with text like 'For an authoritative treatment of X, see source Y. For a popular account, see Z.' For example, I'm sure there are noted reference works specifically treating the China-Japan conflict, and a pointer to an appropriate source of further information would be useful. (I chose this example in particular because, if you are an American schoolchild, you have likely been taught that WWII began in Europe in 1939, but ideally each of the chronology sections would have a few well-chosen references.) Opabinia regalis 17:27, 11 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
        • For the record, I am not comparing warships to world wars, like apples and oranges, they are entirely differnt, sharing only broad similarities. What I am pointing out is that if I can copy and paste 90% or so of an article and still come up aproximately 15-20 citations you should be able to do much better with a well known and highly documented war. I don't see that here; which I find to be an embarressment: 17 citations for the largest war in human history to date (and God willing, forever) simply does not do WWII justice in any way shape or form. I am not going to hound you (or anyone else for that matter) into citing every single sentence in the article, that would be long and time consuming, but at the absolute minimum you could cite lines with specific dates, quotes, causulaty figures, and so forth. Isn't that what an FA star is supposed to represent? These articles should be second to none, not second to last. TomStar81 (Talk) 08:42, 12 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Regarding inline citations, I'm willing to put a few in myself. However, the first citatin is 'ibid.' There is no previous citation that denotes what ibid. is referring to. It has to be cleared up, or removed and recited, IMO. JonCatalan 17:55, 10 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support I don't think a few missing citations are anything to get into too big of a tangle about, because this is such an excellent article all-around, with heap loads of info and lots of external links. Everything this article provides is more than enough to make up for the few things it lacks. Also, since World War I is FA, it seems illogical not to make its historical follow-up one too. The historical significance and impact that the article covers is enough to make me strongly support this cause. 2Pac 00:36, 11 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose I've never been enthusiastic about nitpicking references, especially for 'overview' articles that are supported by a large number of subarticles, but this is just incredibly weak. As someone mentioned above, the first note is "ibid" - ibid what? That makes no sense as a reference. While citing the date of Pearl Harbor is probably overkill, you should be providing at least footnotes for facts and figures and appropriately placed footnotes to authoritative historical references as well as primary sources. This is not source-poor material, much of its interpretation is not uncontroversial, and this article is the subject of frequent POV bickering that may introduce inaccuracies; I see no good reason this can't uphold a high referencing standard. On another note, the nav templates at the bottom are placed in a bizarre order topic-wise; why do city bombings precede theaters of war? Although the prose is generally good not that bad in a distilled-distillation sort of way, the lead is completely inadequate, there are awkwardly placed stubby sections (Overview > Aftermath), and the media section is abbreviated past the point of saying anything important. (And, is the Saving Private Ryan poster really fair use, as it is not discussed in the text?) Opabinia regalis 05:57, 11 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose, per SandyGeorgia, with two additional comments: Firstly, I think that WP:LENGTH can be disregarded in this (exceptional) case. There are few events in world history that were so complex and influential as World War II. The other remarks of SandyGeorgie remain valid. Secondly, this page is full of errors, assumptions and non-included important facts. I have fixed several (but there are plenty more). Some examples: the USSR annexed Sakhalin AND the Kuril Islands, it was never mentioned that Truman was the U.S. president (which isn't obvious to a young reader), etc. Sijo Ripa 22:59, 11 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose While I do not support citing the blatantly obvious for the heck of it, come on; 17 citations? I also agree with Pascal.Tesson, this article really must be perfect to be FA. As unfair as that sounds, this really needs to be an article where we put our absolute best foot forward. American Patriot 1776 00:11, 15 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Object per Sandy, strongly. The thing about citations: the point isn't that these items are common knowledge. The point is that wikipedia cannot be cited in academic papers, as we are not a reliable source. On the other hand, where we SHOULD be reliable, is in summarizing information contained in reliable sources, and then pointing to those sources. By this I mean, say someone is doing a school research paper on WWII. He or she comes here, finds an awesome amount of good information, and he/she wants to put it in the paper. What does he/she put in the footnote for the paper's citations? Can't put us... needs to put what WE cite. So we need to cite, so they can. Fieari 01:33, 15 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment I think the fact that this article probably won't become featured strongly shows the inexact science of the process of making it one. Articles with many times less significance and information, such as Hollaback Girl and Flag of Lithuania, have bronze stars, and even many articles associated with the war such as the Battle of Normandy do too, while the article documenting the biggest conflict in human history does not. In my opinion, that alone makes it hugely notable to an encyclopedia. And also, most of the article is built up of reliable historical facts, not trivia, so you don't really need citations anyway. If you really think the article needs them, it is still going to take forever to get them all in, and it may never happen. So it's hard to really give out the perfect article for something like WWII, but it is still a much better article than so many other featured articles, and if you are going to measure it the same way you measure those, than sorry, it's just irrational to expect it to be fully appreciated the way it should be. Just some thoughts.
    • Core topics seem to have a much rougher time getting to FA. Then again I think they're more important to the success of an encyclopedia, so the extra difficulty is worth it. — RJH (talk) 22:03, 16 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose per above. --[|K.Z|] T • V • C 04:47, 17 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article review. No further edits should be made to this page.
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