Wikipedia:Featured article review/History of Test cricket from 1884 to 1889/archive1

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 User:Marskell 13:25, 19 September 2008 [1].

---

History of Test cricket from 1884 to 1889

Review commentary

Notified: WikiProject Cricket and Jguk.

This article, promoted in March 2005, needs a radical overhaul to be considered among Wikipedia's best work today. Allow me to run down a list of problems:

• 1a: Needs a thorough copy-edit to meet modern prose standards. Just in the lead, I see "...to describe a form of cricket when the Press used it in 1885." Why is Press capitalized? Also, 2-1 needs an en dash, and then there's this: "But, although it was only recognised as a Test nation later, after 13 years, cricket had a third Test-playing team." Redundancy at the start, and the comma usage could be reduced. Some WP:MOSNUM issues as well.
• 1c: This is the big one. No inline citations, and the References at the bottom include generic Cricinfo and Cricket Archive links, which don't help verify this article at all. FA referencing standards have simply passed this article by in its current condition.
• 2a: The lead is short, even stubby, and badly needs expansion.

There is some unencyclopedic language mixed in as well. One example: "Ideally, they would not have spent so much time batting..." Comes off as POV. I'd also like a photo in the lead, but there are more vital issues to take care of first. Overall, this does not compare to modern cricket FAs in my view, and would not even pass a good article nomination today. Giants2008 (17-14) 22:54, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

Please notify significant contributers as well as associated wikipedia projects and post these notifications at the top of this FAR (see the instructions at WP:FAR). Thanks! --Regents Park (count the magpies) 23:09, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

To start with a minor point, the History of Cricket template at the top of the article hasn't been updated since the early days of WP:CRIC and should be deleted as it no longer reflects the project's cricket history coverage and adds no real value given our category structure.

The major point I would make is that the entire article is superfluous because the cricket project has evolved and left this sort of multi-season review far behind. The contents should be checked against the relevant tour articles and merged in to those where they are useful. The tour articles are:

• Australian cricket team in England in 1884
• Australian cricket team in England in 1886
• Australian cricket team in England in 1888
• English cricket team in Australia in 1887–88
• English cricket team in South Africa in 1888-89

Having done that, the article should be AfDed. It was a good enough article when it was written because the cricket project was in its early days then, but we have moved on.

I should add that the 1887-88 section contains serious factual errors and is very misleading. For example, the Melbourne club invited Vernon's team, not Shrewsbury's, and it was Vernon's team that sustained what Wisden calls "frankly a heavy loss". It is a complete distortion to imply that Shrewbury's team was all-pro and Vernon's was all-amateur: both teams had a mixture of amateurs and professionals. BlackJack | ^{talk page} 05:41, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

Agree with Giants2008 (talk · contribs) and BlackJack (talk · contribs) (though not sure this article should be AfDed). The article in its present state is most certainly not up to current WP:FA standards (or WP:GA standards for that matter). Cirt (talk) 17:29, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

FARC commentary

Suggested FA criteria concerns are prose (1a), referencing (1c), and lead (2a). Marskell (talk) 13:34, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

• Remove - Nothing has been done to address my concerns. The article has barely been touched since the review started. Giants2008 (17-14) 18:07, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
• Remove - Per my comment above. Cirt (talk) 04:33, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
• Remove Concerns over reliability, article focus and structure, prose and neutrality are unaddressed. Two images lack sources. DrKiernan (talk) 10:48, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
• Remove per above. My biggest concern is the lack of historical accuracy. Needs to be completely revised and I would question if that is even worth attempting given that WP:CRIC now has articles covering individual seasons and tours. BlackJack | ^{talk page} 15:39, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
• Remove this is a relic from the old days, when "interesting" and "long details" were effectively the criteria. The article is written in a jolly/fly of the seat type manner which in some parts is reminiscent of a good-natured fellow talking about his mates from the old days at a Hall of Fame tribute speech or something. There is even an excalamation mark at one point. YellowMonkey (bananabucket) 07:34, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
• Remove per above. I was quite surprised when I saw the star on this article. Wizardman 00:51, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

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