Wikipedia:Featured article review/Exploding whale/archive3

The following is an archived discussion of a featured article review. Please do not modify it. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page or at Wikipedia talk:Featured article review. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was removed by Dana boomer 15:36, 27 February 2011 [1].

Exploding whale

Review commentary

Featured article candidates/Exploding whale

Notified: Tbsdy lives (formerly Ta bu shi da yu), WikiProject Internet culture, WikiProject Oregon, WikiProject Cetaceans

According to the template, featured articles are supposed to be among "the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community." In my opinion, this article - initially promoted in 2004 - doesn't make the cut by our present-day standards. Here are a few of the current issues (note that all reference numbers are based on this version:

The article title and scope are problematic. The first sentence says that "The term exploding whale most often refers to an event at Florence, Oregon, in 1970 [...]" but later on in the article, other events are mentioned. The problem is that the article doesn't cite any reliable sources that tie together all these disparate events under the rubric of "Exploding whales". A Google Book search did turn up one reliable source ([2]) that appears to support this synthesis, since it mentions both the Oregon and Taiwan events as "well-documented cases of exploding whales on land". However, this source is not cited anywhere in the article. And there's still no source that justifies the inclusion of the "Others" section. Reference links #21 and #22 are also not working properly.
Sourcing is terrible, especially for a Featured Article. There is one published, full-length book that appears to cover this specific subject (The Exploding Whale: And Other Remarkable Stories from the Evening News, by Paul Linnman and Doug Brazil, 2003), but this is only cited once in the article. Why? Also, as noted above, the one reliable source that appears to tie together the Oregon and Taiwan events under the "exploding whales" classification is not cited at all. Reference #4 appears to infringe WP:LINKVIO and is not a particularly reliable source - we should be citing Linnman's book instead, or referencing the TV show directly, not linking to an unauthorized transcript on a random website. Reference #9 is again to TheExplodingWhale.com — what makes this a reliable source? I can't find any information on who wrote it or whether they have a reputation for fact-checking and reliability. Reference #10 is to perp.com — what is this site? why do we think it is a reliable source? Again, I can't locate an author name. Citing random websites for article sources may have been acceptable in 2004 when this was promoted, but not now, especially not on a FA. References #11 and #12 are Usenet posts — not sure why this is considered worthy of inclusion. Some other sources (e.g. #2, #7) do not mention whale explosions at all, and their inclusion would appear to be a violation of policies on original research by synthesis. Several books are listed under "References" — why aren't there any inline cites for any of these?
Both the article and the lead are very short. Even with markup included, it's only about 18K. This is far shorter than most featured articles.
The prose isn't that great. The opening sentence is rather clumsy, as are parts of the third paragraph. None of the article consists of what I would consider brilliant prose.

Concerns over quality have already been raised by several editors on the talk page; see comments by Eaglizard ("I don't really know how some articles get FA") and Tisane ("I know this article has sentimental value, but is it really up to today's featured article standards?"). Even the original nominator, TBSDY, has noted that "You really should check when that was made FA. It was like 2 or 3 years ago, and since then it's changed hugely, and the standard of course has risen."

In short, I think this article violates Featured Article Criteria 1(a), 1(b), 1(c), and 4. Quite frankly, I'm not sure there is enough out there to upgrade this article to what we would today consider legitimate FA status. It might be able to measure up as a Good Article, but even that would require a lot of work. *** Crotalus *** 14:34, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed that the "others" section is complete synthesis. Will work on a further analysis. Ten Pound Hammer, his otters and a clue-bat • ^{(Otters want attention)} 00:24, 17 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- Tagged the dubious sources. Also, under almost no circumstances should we ever cite a newsgroup. Ten Pound Hammer, his otters and a clue-bat • ^{(Otters want attention)} 00:29, 17 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  - I think the main issue here is to decide whether the article should focus on and properly cite only the two notable notable incidents and tie them together under that one supporting source that mentions both, or to expand the article to include all incidents of "exploding whales" - both intentionally exploded by humans or spontaneously and unexpectly, in which case the article would need multiple reliable sources to back up the claim that exploding whale incidents do occur worldwide and that their cause can be either natural or manmade to be mentioned alongside properly cited definitions of what an "exploding whale" constitutes. ~A H 1^(TCU) 03:31, 28 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

FARC commentary

Featured article criteria of concern brought up in the review section include references, prose, original research/synthesis and comprehensiveness. Dana boomer (talk) 22:13, 24 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - This has been at FARC for over two weeks. Could we get some comments on whether this should be kept or delisted? Dana boomer (talk) 14:40, 13 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure whether, as nominator, I'm supposed to post a bolded !vote, but I would favor delisting as the issues mentioned mostly don't appear to have been addressed at this time. *** Crotalus *** 16:37, 15 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Delist - stumbled across this and couldn't believe it was a FA. I was planning on FAR'ing it myself until I saw it was already going through one. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 23:03, 15 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- It was made FA like 5 years ago. Not that it should be FA now, but a bit of historical context would help assist you make less insulting conclusions. Thanks. - FluffySquid (talk) 04:23, 19 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Delist per my concerns. Ten Pound Hammer, his otters and a clue-bat • ^{(Otters want attention)} 03:01, 20 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Delist agree per comments above per Crotalus horridus (talk · contribs), The ed17 (talk · contribs) and TenPoundHammer (talk · contribs). No work has done since the FAR has started, mostly due to cleanup and referencing issues. JJ98 (Talk) 00:06, 23 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

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