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KaDee Strickland

[edit]
Article is still a featured article

Blatant Hollywood starlet exercise in self-promotion (or fanzine hagiography). Not sure which it is at this stage -- probably a bit of both -- but it sure isn't encyclopedic.

Who, beyond the article's prime mover, is actually willing to maintain that this was an appropriate selection for the main page? Nobody now seems to want to take responsibility for that decision, or for the vanity-press move of running the article on the actress's birthday. Presumably she was logging on eagerly at home at the stroke of midnight. See the dispute on the article's talk page and at User talk:Raul654. BYT 15:12, 15 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I'm a bit amused that a (to me) totally unknown actress is causing this ruckus - makes it more enjoyable than if it had been Jennifer Aniston or Brad Pitt or any other annoyingly *over*exposed celebrity - but in the main I'm rather shocked at the total pointlessness of this babe, and embarrassed for Wikipedia. Hope a healthy discussion about avoiding self-promoters ensues in the Wiki community. 70.137.167.170 21:46, 15 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

  • Week Keep. I don't think this should be here, but really it's too early to have nominated this. From the Featured article removal candidates main page: Do not list articles that have recently been promoted—such complaints should have been brought up during the candidate period. --MisterHand 22:03, 15 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. As the user who wrote the bulk of this article, I can say that the state of the article when it appeared on the Main Page yesterday was almost exactly the same as it was when it passed through peer review (see Wikipedia:Peer review/KaDee Strickland/archive1) and FAC (see Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/KaDee Strickland) last August and September (the diff, for anybody who's interested). There were no concerns raised about the article's length, level of detail or NPOV at the time. I tried to make the article about as comprehensive as Sharon Tate (another FA), and I believe that I was successful. I can understand why it may seem like a "fanzine hagiography" on the subject, but as the press generally seem to rate Strickland quite highly (this is from all of the articles I have read), I tried to reflect this in the article. I wrote the article in compliance with WP:NPOV#A_simple_formulation, i.e. by using quotes about Strickland from the media (in other words, attributing points of view to sources). Also, I think the article is quite similar to Henry Fonda (another FA), and I tried to have everything about that article (and other featured articles about celebrities, such as the Sharon Tate article, Julia Stiles, Kylie Minogue etc.) influence my work on this article. I'd also appreciate if the nominator were to stop suggesting that I am associated with Strickland in some way, and refrain from using inflammatory edit summaries (see, for example, [1]). Extraordinary Machine 22:28, 15 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Okay, the quotes are now all individually sourced, which removes my primary cause for suspicion. I will not imply that you have some connection to Strickland any more, and I apologize for doing that.
  • At the same time, I encourage you to create article content that could not possibly be confused with press agent blather. Wikipedia is not a propaganda machine or an advertising medium.
  • If the article was "neutral" when it passed through the FA process (a contention I find laughable), I'd like to ask what, exactly, it is now. Now that we've incorporated the real-world critical drubbings she's received, which were all carefully airbrushed out of the version that landed on the mainpage, and now that we've excised the shrine-to-KaDee stuff like her high-school extracurricular activities ... is this current version closer to what we should have been shooting for all along, or further from the mark?
  • There remains the question of whether an actress of this stature even deserves more than a paragraph of WP's attention. I firmly believe she does not, and that the article is still wildly off scale, and I maintain we should remove. BYT 13:11, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I apologise if I caused you distress, irritated or offended you in any way during our debate on the article's talk page. I'd like you to consider this from my point of view (if you already have done, then I thank you for doing so). I wrote the bulk of this article and created it in June. I developed it over the following weeks, and eventually requested a peer review in August. One concern was raised (related to the number of references in the article), which I responded to. Then, I submitted the article for FAC, and it drew nine support votes (and no objections), with nobody complaining about the article's POV or comprehensiveness (in fact it was complimented in relation to those things). It was promoted to featured status in early September, and months later, I decided to request for it to appear on the Main Page on Strickland's birthday, as I felt that is the date that was most suitable for the article. It has drawn criticism due to the subject's lack of notability, and some users cited problems regarding the article's POV. Now, you might be able to understand if I didn't really take this seriously, as the article had received a positive response during the FAC process, and it had changed very little since then. Even on the day that the article was featured, there were comments both on the article's talk page and my user talk page from users who believed that it is a very good article, and user:Raul654 himself has said "the Kadee Strickland article is, in fact, neutral."
Also, the information on her high school extracurricular activities may be considered excessive detail, but I do not think it should be considered POV. If Strickland had done very badly in school, I would have covered it in as comprehensively as I did with the facts that were there. I still maintain that the majority the articles and reviews I came across while researching Strickland that referred to her specifically spoke of her positively, and I tried to reflect this in the article. I welcome the negative quotes in the article as well, as they show to the reader the reasons why some critics may not like her. Regarding the Strickland article, user:Rlevse wrote: "...you can not resolve both objections when they are diametrically opposed. For example, if objector A likes layout A, and objector B likes layout B, you can not resolve both objections and one will remain unsolved. I could cite more examples dealing with style preferences, etc too. There should be more standardization in the FAC process." I think that he is exactly right, but I hope that my recent edits to the article (which I hope did not destroy, but improve upon, your work on this article, BYT) have created a "compromise" of sorts, between the previous version of the article that a lot of people liked, and your series of edits that a few users liked as well. Thanks. Extraordinary Machine 21:40, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • With all respect to both you and Raul654, he probably felt that he had' to say it was neutral, because he had let it through. But he was wrong. It wasn't neutral. At that point, it was an embarrassment to WP. And you'll notice that he has chosen not to respond to a half-dozen or so specific questions about article content that I posed on his talk page.
  • I realize you mean well, but you keep repeating this business about the article sailing through the FA process. That's irrelevant. People missed huge problems with this article -- like the inclusion of high school extracurricular activities and, frankly, they missed some basic writing and punctuation problems. The article would have benefited from some pain in the ass like me looking it over before the vote concluded. But everybody loved KaDee, apparently, so the ship sailed on. The question of how to fix the FA process is separate from the question we're discussing here, namely, where we go from here. For me, your continued insistence that the original piece, the one that landed on the mainpage, was somehow a sterling example of NPOV writing -- that insistence is a major obstacle to a meaningful discussion about what we do next.
  • She has recieved brutally negative reviews for her appearances in mediocre or terrible film projects. Your opening paragraph, though, warbled obediently, and without anything remotely resembling qualification, about "acclaim" from movie critics for her work. My "offense," insofar as there is any, arises from your unwillingness to admit that failing to quote these negative reviews, in the version that landed on the homepage, was a huge breach of editorial responsibility. BYT 13:00, 17 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I think that's a rather bold assumption to make about Raul654's thoughts when he made that comment. Everybody at peer review and FAC didn't "love KaDee", and some voters said that they had never heard of her. I hope you're not implying that the editors who were in support of the article are unable to comment fairly on Wikipedia articles; regardless, it is not "irrelevant" that the article "sailed" through the FA process as it's impossible to remedy "huge problems" that I am unaware of if nobody else thinks that they are there either. As I said, most of the articles and reviews that mentioned Strickland specifically spoke of her positively, so I tried to reflect this in the article per WP:NPOV#A_simple_formulation. I don't see how not quoting negative reviews when they are (as far as I could see) significantly outnumbered by positive ones is "a huge breach of editorial responsibility"; in fact, I'd argue that my submitting the article for peer review shows that I was trying to uphold editorial responsibility and Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Yes, you had problems with the version of the article that appeared on the Main Page, but now there are quotes from negative reviews as well (although I still maintain that Strickland's press has been mainly positive), the prose has been altered, and some things trimmed here and there. Extraordinary Machine 15:58, 17 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Re: 'I don't see how not quoting negative reviews when they are (as far as I could see) significantly outnumbered by positive ones is "a huge breach of editorial responsibility"
  • You don't? After opening your article with all that business about "acclaim," you really can't see any obligation to provide evidence that there might possibly be an alternate viewpoint, and that that alternate viewpoint required the same level of detail as the one you favored? Can I suggest that you review WP:NPOV?
  • I note, for the record, that we've moved from (presumably overwhelming) "acclaim" (in the mainpage draft) to the current notion that negative reviews have been "significantly outnumbered by positive ones." This progression is disturbing to me, and it undercuts your credibility, especially in light of the fact you have carefully deleted a review I inserted that described the entire cast of the film -- including Strickland -- as awful. I am not inclined to accept your assessments of this woman's talents or the critical response to them. And Wikipedia is not a @#$%^& fanzine. BYT 17:33, 17 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Per WP:NPOV#Undue_weight, "Articles that compare views need not give minority views as much or as detailed a description as more popular views, and may not include tiny-minority views at all...To give undue weight to a significant-minority view, or to include a tiny-minority view, might be misleading as to the shape of the dispute. If we are to represent the dispute fairly, we should present competing views in proportion to their representation among experts on the subject, or among the concerned parties." I wrote "critical acclaim" in the article's lead section as most of the articles and reviews I read that mentioned Strickland specifically spoke of her positively; I did not, however, write "universal critical acclaim" or "unanimous critical acclaim". I replaced the critical quote you inserted into the Anacondas paragraph with another negative one that specifically referred to Strickland's performance as "unintentional comedy", as I think it's better to use quotes that refer to Strickland directly than ones that comment on the entire cast. Extraordinary Machine 23:21, 17 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, but the problem is, you're the only person who has made this assessment that most of the references to her acting have been positive. I've been looking all week, and what I've tracked down falls into three categories, roughly evenly distributed: a) no mention of KaDee whatsoever b) negative, sometimes sharply negative reviews, as for Anacondas, and c) positive assessments of her comic turn in Fever Pitch. Mentions to the effect that her career is on the upswing are irrelevant to her ability as an actress -- we're talking about critical "acclaim". So I do think we have an obligation to show the critical downside in more detail than you did in the version that landed on the mainpage. BYT 13:24, 18 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I am being completely honest when I say that most of the articles and reviews I read that refer to Strickland specifically discuss her positively; however, I do not have any reason to believe that you are lying when you say that the articles and reviews about Anacondas you have read are mostly negative, either. Since I believe (based on my research) that the reception of Strickland's performance in Anacondas has been more positive than negative, and you believe (based on your research) that it has been more negative than positive, how about we combine both of these statements and say that reception to her performance was mixed (although the current ratio of positive to negative quotes implies that to the reader by itself). Extraordinary Machine 21:01, 19 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. The article was promoted in late August, so I'm not sure that is recent enough to stop a FARC. That said, this seems like a good article about someone I did not previously know much about. A FA doesn't have to be about someone or something famous, just cover the subject in FA level detail, which this one does.--Alabamaboy 23:31, 15 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. Small topics have just the same right to be here (and get attention) as broad ones. Unless there is some major flaw in the article that doesn't meet the FA criteria (I can't think of any), I see no reason whatsoever to remove it. Jon Harald Søby \ no na 00:41, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove. I was originally not decided, giving this article the benefit of the doubt, untill I reread it and noticed such lines as "Strickland's career began with a brief appearance as a ghost in The Sixth Sense in 1999, a two-line part (snip) The supernatural thriller, which starred Bruce Willis, was well received by critics and audiences alike." I mean come on... she was an extra with two lines in that movie, it doesn't matter how well it was recieved because she had nothing to do with that. The article has been improved SINCE it was featured, but at the time it was featured it was abysmal and the fact that it was featured on this broad's birthday makes BYT's claim that it being featured was a set up slightly more believable than the article itself. Robrecht 00:29, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    • Some more negative quotes from critics have been added, and the sentence concerning the reception of The Sixth Sense has been removed. Extraordinary Machine 21:40, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
      • Which is very nice, but it doesn't take away the fact that at the point when it was a FA it wasn't deserving of that status. Hence to let it retain that status would suggest that anyone can just get any article they want featured and then change it to be up to the FA standards if someone complains. Robrecht 12:07, 17 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
        • Well I thought that if the article wasn't deserving of FA status, then somebody — anybody — would have expressed this opinion during the peer review process, and most certainly at FAC. Anyway, I thought the article is supposed to be judged on its current state, which is somewhat different from when it was the FA of the day. Extraordinary Machine 15:58, 17 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. Excellent article that will not be removed. —Hollow Wilerding 02:10, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Weak Remove. I'm very surprised at those asking for the removal of this article from FA status because of it's seemingly trivial content or that fact that it was featured on KaDee Strickland's birthday. Of course only a fan of hers would devote time to writing this article - that's not the point. However, there still exist many grounds that should have been noted during this article's FAC and peer review:
NPOV: Resolved. Per Robrecht's comments. Commenting on the success of The Sixth Sense seems like nothing but a publicity student for KaDee Strickland. It is completely unbalanced and hardly neutral. For example, the section on "Fever Pitch" works - the article analyzes critical response to KaDee's performance. Everything in that section is talking about the actress's performance, unlike the neutrality violation earlier.
Style and Grammar: Resolved. There are two blatant mistakes in the single sentence, "She also appeared briefly in the direct-to-cable independent film Knots, and in the ill-fated Nicole Kidman vehicle The Stepford Wives." "The Stepford Wives" should follow the style of the rest of the article, and be italicized, as here it is most likely referring to the movie adaptation. In addition, the insertion of a comma is simply poor grammar: comma splicing. It continues here: "That same year, she served as an extra in the unreleased independent film The Sterling Chase, and won a slightly larger part in James Mangold's Girl, Interrupted." Almost every instance of a sentence describing a sequence of works is spliced and mutilated. FAs look for brilliant prose.
References: Resolved. While overall citation is well and good, if you look closely, the numbers are not always lined up. For example, clicking on in-line citation 15 takes you to the correct reference, but it's located at 17 in the list. Everything needs to be rechecked and lined up.
Red links and unliked links: Resolved. More a comment than a real complaint, but for a featured article on the main page usually, it's usually best that there not be such a high number of red links. In addition, linking years is always a pain for any article - finding the first instance of every year and making sure it hasn't been linked to yet. You'll want to recheck the article for this; at first glance, I noticed that 1999 was not linked to until the "Filmography" section. -Rebelguys2 02:32, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Some more negative quotes from critics have been added, and the sentence concerning the reception of The Sixth Sense has been removed. I've also tweaked the prose to reduce the amount of commas (mostly by splitting sentences into two), and added the italics around the film titles (they were there earlier this week, but disappeared for some reason). Also, I've reduced the number of year wikilinks in the Filmography section, and the article now only has two redlinks (to the titles of upcoming films Strickland is in). Extraordinary Machine 21:40, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, and nice work; I'll change my vote to Keep. Nevertheless, I'm still left a little bothered by many of the arguments here. It's a well-written, largely neutral article about an admittedly not A-list, but still somewhat notable, female actor. What, honestly, is left to debate, besides the opinion that Wikipedia shouldn't be a repository for topics straying from traditional encyclopedias? Nothing. -Rebelguys2 09:27, 17 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove. POV and poorly written. In particular, there are no quotes from any negative reviews to balance the copious puffery and the use of commas is poor all through. Filiocht | The kettle's on 08:16, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    • Some more negative quotes from critics have been added, and the sentence concerning the reception of The Sixth Sense has been removed. I've also tweaked the prose to reduce the amount of commas (mostly by splitting sentences into two). Extraordinary Machine 21:40, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep for two reasons: 1)The article was recently nominated and there was no indication whatsoever that there were problems with the article. That implies that any problems are with the FA process, not the article itself. 2)The tone of the person who nominated this for a FAR, with words like 'starlet' and 'babe' imply that the problem s/he has with the article is as much about who the article is about as the style of the article itself. I was considering a weak remove but I don't like the tone of the proposal. Mithridates 11:33, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
The "babe" thing wasn't mine, but rather that of an anonymous editor. But I take your point. I still beleve we should delete. Er, remove. There are probably heads of state who don't get this kind of obsessive detail. BYT 12:54, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, got it. Well, we'll see how the rest of the voting turns out. Mithridates 14:27, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I'm flattered, but must note with alarm that EM is even now patiently reinserting material I edited out. So for all I know, we may be back to square one before too long. BYT 21:00, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove. Should never have been used as a Featured Article. This is not an inspiration to other actor articles. If every sinlge celebrity article follow this one's example and level of extraneous, pointless detail, Julia Roberts' would have to be split into 20 separate pages, each one covering two years in her life.Vulturell 19:23, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    • As I said to you on the article's talk page, I tried to emulate the style and comprehensiveness of featured articles such as Sharon Tate, which I feel covers its subject in a similar level of detail to the Strickland article. Extraordinary Machine 21:40, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
      • That's great. Unfortunately, Strickland is no Sharon Tate, and the Sharon Tate article is intself longer than it needs to be. As I said, and as I will keep saying, the Strickland article should by no means be considered a model actor article. We aren't writing a book on these people. We're presenting the important and relevant details of their lives and careers. And almost nothing in the Strickland article is as relevant as it's made out to be. Vulturell 22:32, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove.Wikipedia is a collaborative free encyclopaedia, not a platform for 'fanboy' hagiography. It's a shame that EM is taking so much flak, as he has obviously devoted plenty of effort to this article (not least the presumed effort entailed in actually digging up any information on this lady, whom I myself and I believe almost every other contributor to this debate has never even heard of). That does not change the fact that it is very disappointing that this article was ever granted FA status, and it is VERY disappointing that the timing was designed to deliberately coincide with her birthday. (An abuse of wikipedia). As well as the more explicit POV and slavering statements (now thankfully minimised and balanced to some extent) the whole article is implicitly POV in that it attributes excessive space and importance to irrelevant minutiae in the life of an irrelevant individual. Much of the article consists (even now, and it is MUCH better now) of totally extraneous detail that does not in any way further our understanding of this individual or her work. The comparison to Sharon Tate is completely redundant; Tate is an internationally known historical figure, because of her relationship with Polanski and of course her untimely death- NOT because she was a b-movie actress. (And at any rate, I would suggest that the Tate article should be shortened by at least a third). The Strickland article seems to my reading to violate (at the very least) articles 1, 2d and 5 of the Wikipedia:What is a featured article guidelines, and as such should not have been considered. I would suggest that these should be amended so as to demand an enhanced standard of notability and potential interest (as defined by feedback during the FA selection process). I agree however with Mithridates that the status of this article flags important failings in the peer-review (Strickland garnered one single comment in PR, which was not acted upon anyway) and FA nomination (numerous comments, none of which addressed the points that have been raised in the furore over this article's FA status)processes themselves, and that (especially in light of recent events) these should be sorted out urgently. I also note that the article was self-nominated and had editorial input from only a single wikipedian (EM) when it was chosen as FA. One might consider whether this is correct given the danger of POV 'sneaking' in and the simple fact that wiki is supposed to be collaborative. In a week when wiki has been making the national news (at least in my country) the first experience that many new users had of this encyclopaedia was Kadee Strickland [[[2]]]. Is that what we want? Mistakes happen in any process, and this was one and it shouldn't have happened. Remove remove remove. Sorry EM.86.142.232.45 00:37, 17 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    • Thanks for complimenting my efforts on this article. Are you saying that the comprehensiveness of the Strickland article, in and of itself, is POV? Yes, Sharon Tate is probably better known for being the wife of Roman Polanski (and also for the circumstances surrounding her murder). But if you'll notice, the Tate article covers her career as a "b-movie actress" in quite a lot of detail, and I tried to emulate this with the Strickland article. As I said at the time, I couldn't address the comment on peer review as it would have been in violation of Wikipedia's verifiability policy. There's no policy against self-nominations on WP:FAC, or articles only being edited significantly by one person. I agree that "wiki is supposed to be collaborative", but nobody else at all seemed to be touching the article (apart from minor edits here and there)...and anyway, I made an attempt to attract input from other editors on peer review (and then FAC). Extraordinary Machine 15:58, 17 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
      • The comprehensiveness of the article is not in itself POV. The importance attributed to irelevant detail is POV. As has been noted previously, this level of inclusiveness would probably be somewhat out of place even in the biography of a world-statesperson or similar international figure. Material that does not further our understanding of her work (i.e. that is unrelated to her career) should automatically be stricken. As for the Tate article- I myself mentioned that it could stand to lose a third or more, and much of this would be culled from her career summary. Having said that, I feel that even Tate's career eclipsed Strickland's (can you get C-movie actors? Perhaps we could efine a new category...). Part of the beauty of wikipedia is that there are no space limitations- but waffling serves no purpose except to obfuscate the focus of an article. Much of the Strickland piece is, I'm afraid, waffle, and it was even worse when I first saw it. I would suggest that the reason no-one edited the article was because nobody cares about this woman, and hence I wonder whether notability and wider interest should now be included as FA criteria. Notwithstanding that, I feel KDS does not even satisfy the EXISTING requirements for FA status, as I outlined above. I do not mean to denigrate you or your effort EM, you went about things the right way and you seem to be at least somewhat pliable when it comes to revisions. This debacle does however outline MAJOR failings of process that now MUST be addressed if wikipedia is to be taken seriously as an encyclopaedia and ever move towards a stable version. I feel it's really unfortunate that it is likely that the first (and perhaps only) experience of wikipedia for many people this week was this article. It does not showcase the best of what we have here. 86.139.28.9 18:46, 17 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
        • In hindsight, I think that while the article may have been a little too detailed when it appeared on the Main Page, in my opinion this issue has improved. It's more succinct now (but still comprehensive), and I think it makes for a more interesting read. You make some very valid points about the FAC process, and maybe you could leave a post at Wikipedia talk:Featured articles and Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates expressing your concerns. I disagree, however, that a notability criterion should be added, as I just love the diversity of Wikipedia's featured articles (and all of its articles). Extraordinary Machine 23:21, 17 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • As far as I can tell, the discussion on the talk page is being addressed promptly, and the particulars discussed in the nomination statement here seem uncompelling -- the article was run on the main page because it is a featured article, and articles are regularly featured on days of special significance (my article on Blaise Pascal was on the main page on the anniversary of his death.) Frankly, this is a nice little FA, demonstrating the sort of coverage that WP can give to subjects that wouldn't even get a mention in traditional general encyclopedias. Keep. Christopher Parham (talk) 06:56, 17 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]


Yeah, but Blaise Pascal is both notable and dead. KaDee Strickland is utterly obscure and very much alive. (And, as an aspiring actress, no doubt eager for good PR.) Turning our mainpage into a birthday present for her, or appearing to do so, smacks of fan-driven bias, even though her people didn't create the article for pay. BYT 13:23, 17 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
BYT, may I ask what date you suggest the article should have been featured on? I thought that Strickland's birthday was the most suitable date to represent the article (in fact, it pretty much seemed like the only date directly linked to the article's subject at all). Extraordinary Machine 15:58, 17 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Any date that wasn't her birthday (or the opening date of a new film, I guess). It's not like the article was about something special that happened on that date, unless of course we count her coming into the world as some kind of turning point in civilization. I suppose I should be glad you didn't lobby to have the article coincide with the release date of some new film she's putting out. Would that have been acceptable, in your view? BYT 18:38, 17 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I would not have lobbied for it to be featured on the release date of one of her new films, and might have protested any proposal to do so, as a) it would be only distantly related to the subject of the article and b) I'm not trying to promote her career. Extraordinary Machine 23:21, 17 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. Once you get past niggling details like quotations only being covered in footnotes and not individually attributed, or not mentioning enough negative reviews for her films which may not even criticize her directly...it seems that the primary problem people have with this article is the subject's alleged "insignificance." That is part of the joy of Wikipedia, for me and presumably for thousands of others...finding well-written, authoritative articles about people, places, events, and subjects that were previously totally unknown to me. Finding a story where one never would have expected to find one. Maybe it's not to your liking, but that's a matter of taste. If we claim that press agents are infiltrating Wikipedia to promote their up-and-coming clients (which sounds a bit ridiculous to me, to be honest), where do we draw the line? Perhaps articles on relatively forgotten people from history are only placed here to promote some historian's upcoming book, perhaps articles on places or monuments are only planted by some tourism board or chamber of commerce...et cetera, et cetera, ad nauseum. There's no way to ferret out the "real reason" behind an article, and it's irrelevant anyway. Is it truthful, is it well-written, is it documented; that's really all we ought to consider, in my opinion. Sleeper99999 10:45, 17 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I appreciate what you're saying, but you're putting words in my mouth. What bothers me is not her insignificance, though I would have written a shorter article. What bothers me is that the article that made it through the FA process was so totally awestruck by her life story that the mainpage looked, for all the world, like it had been bought and paid for. A week's worth of patient questioning has determined that that was not in fact what happened, but even so, this was a manifest failure of the editorial neutrality WP is supposed to produce. BYT 13:28, 17 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
As I said, most of the articles and reviews that mentioned Strickland specifically spoke of her positively, so I tried to reflect this in the article per WP:NPOV#A_simple_formulation. Also, no complaints concerning the article's POV were raised during the peer review and FAC processes (in fact some editors complimented it on that aspect at the time), and the article changed little between then and when it appeared on the Main Page. Extraordinary Machine 15:58, 17 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I may be repeating myself, but I consider the peer review and the FAC processes on this article to have been woefully deficient, ignoring as they did massive neutrality problems, and only slightly less massive problems with style, punctuation, and sourcing. I'd appreciate it if you responded to the content of what I'm saying, rather than repeating the fact that the article was peer reviewed and selected as a featured article. I know that. I'm introducing additional topics to the conversation, BYT 18:43, 17 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe the problem is that both sides to this are talking over each other, complaining about generalities without discussing specifics. I don't think we can resolve this by just making the sweeping charge that it's all POV - if we tackle specific passages, maybe we can come to some kind of middle ground. Which sentences are the most guilty of demonstrating POV, in your opinion? Sleeper99999 10:06, 18 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]


I still have a problem with the very end of the article, which advises us about what new KaDee projects to keep an eye out for, and offers the details of a dropped pilot. If you applied this same level of analysis to the career of, say, Drew Barrymore, the article would extend to War and Peace dimensions.
We mention twice that she has been panned for a lousy Southern accent, but tactfully avoid mentioning what an extraordinary accomplishment this is for an actress born in Georgia.
I also think the following is totally extraneous, and have tried twice, in vain, to delete it:
"Strickland is also an advocate of the arts. Prior to the release of Anacondas, she hosted the art debut of fellow actress Heidi Jayne Netzley at the Edgemar Center for the Arts in Santa Monica, California.
Again -- are we going to cover everything in this woman's life? Why not talk about what party she went to last night? It's not a blog, after all, it's an encyclopedia. BYT 13:35, 18 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I reinserted the paragraph about Strickland's art advocacy because I believe that it's worth mentioning her activities outside of her acting career, and the Julia Stiles and Ian McKellen featured articles (as well as non-featured ones) do this as well. I reinserted the bit about her next film because I've seen articles on actors, actresses and singers that contain information about their forthcoming projects and nobody has ever objected to it. I also put back in the sentences about the recently cancelled television series she was going to be in, as it would have been only her second leading role after Anacondas and it received quite a bit of coverage in more recent articles and interviews about Strickland that I have read. I have, however, added a note after the negative quotes about her accent in Anacondas about her coming from the American South. Extraordinary Machine 21:01, 19 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Keep - She's notable enough for wikipedia. Yep, the front page was the first I had ever heard of her. But so what? I don't like too much trivial information in an article, and would probably edit it out or talkpage about it if the article was too long. But this one isn't, it's a short yet comprehensive article on the actress' life and works. - Hahnchen 05:15, 19 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. Issues have been addressed. For good or bad, wikipedia will always have comprehensive articles on pop culture - because that is what some volunteers care about. If the person is notable that is all that matters - if we wish that the article on a significant historical figure were better - then all we can do is work on it - we shouldn't denigrate the efforts of those that write good articles because we don't like the subject matter they write on. Trödel•talk 15:15, 20 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. Maybe a bit too comprehensive. But keep.

  • Remove. This article is an embarassing display of fannish obsession, extensively sourced from dubious sources which mostly provide favorable comments about whatver they cover and repackage publicity materials. The opening section is mostly name-dropping, and the comment about "gained prominence and critical attention" is grossly overstated. Monicasdude 23:47, 27 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep Ohhhh boy. This is an article I remember back from FAC... for starters, the version on FAC was terrible in the sense that it was so unbelievably glowing of her. I was a bit miffed at all the support... I wanted to object myself but whenever I object I want to try to explain my reasoning - especially in this sense since pop culture articles on wikipedia are really tough to pass FAC and you inevitably get a lot of people coming out of nowhere to oppose it on the silliest of grounds. That all said, the current version is sooo much better and passes my tests, so I think it should stay as a FA WhiteNight T | @ | C 19:26, 29 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
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