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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 delisted by Casliber via FACBot (talk) 3:39, 16 July 2015 (UTC) [1].

Peterborough

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Notified: Chrisieboy, David Underdown, Nortonius, WikiProject UK geography, WikiProject East Anglia, WikiProject England

Review section

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I am nominating this featured article for review because it has not been regularly updated in the past few years, which means it no longer meets the FA criteria that it did back in 2007, when it was promoted. As noted on the article talk page, demographic statistics in the article were vandalised and not reverted until I spotted this more than a year later, which indicated to me that editors haven't been keeping a close enough watch on the article to ensure the FA standard is maintained (and there may well be other vandalism that has crept in). There are now quite a lot of unsourced or dated claims in the article, and as a result it no longer qualifies as comprehensive or well-researched. Cordless Larry (talk) 09:55, 20 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Please see the instructions at FAR ... eight days between talk page notice and FAR listing is cutting it close. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:05, 20 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, SandyGeorgia, I didn't see that there was a guideline of two to three weeks for each stage. I'm happy for this to be put on hold, although I also note that not a single editor has posted a response in those eight days (which has reinforced my sense that no one has been actively editing or monitoring the article of late). Cordless Larry (talk) 15:15, 20 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Whether to put it on hold is a decision the @FAR coordinators: will make, regards, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:25, 20 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Look, this first part of FAR is preliminary to the FARC proper below, so I don't think we need to stick strictly to pre-preliminary discussion on the talk page. I will ping some other near-locals (Hey @Dweller: and @The Rambling Man:!) as this is their neck of the woods (geographically). A brief perusal show uncited sentences and some prose that could be tightened, so let's leave it here and get more eyes now. cheers, Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 03:56, 21 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Directed here from WT:UKGEO, I was ready to make some points about the article, but the above comments aren't encouraging. Should editors post here, at the article talk page, or in "FARC proper below" (which doesn't seem to exist yet)? PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 06:48, 21 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry for the confusion, PaleCloudedWhite, and thanks for coming here to participate. The three steps (talk page, featured article review (FAR) and featured article removal candidate (FARC)) are explained at WP:FAR. At this stage, we're supposed to identify problems with the article and discuss how to improve it. In a few weeks, we'll move on to the FARC stage where people will vote to either keep or remove the FA status. So you don't need to wait until the FARC stage to comment - the only issue as far as I know is that I started the FAR a bit early. Cordless Larry (talk) 07:42, 21 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
PaleCloudedWhite just put comments here, where we can see, judge and improve.... Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 08:45, 21 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
OK. Well, the most immediate impression is that the article structure doesn't follow the guideline at WP:UKTOWNS. I don't know if that has any bearing on FA status, though even if it doesn't, it still seems odd that the geography section is at the bottom of the page, and makes no mention of geology but does cover linguistics. PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 16:33, 22 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Chrisieboy has now started to address some of the problems with the article and I will try to help out. Given this, and that I was a bit trigger-happy with moving this to FAR, I hope we can agree to give it a fair bit of time for improvements to be made before moving to the FARC stage. Cordless Larry (talk) 17:10, 22 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Chrisieboy: @Cordless Larry:, at ten days now, how is progress? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:14, 1 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Some incremental progress is being made, SandyGeorgia, although it's almost all thanks to Chrisieboy so far and help from more editors would no doubt be welcome and also speed up the improvements. Cordless Larry (talk) 06:33, 1 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I left just a few sample edits, but the amount of work needed here is quite substantial.

  1. There is dated text throughout, complicated by a lack of "as of" dates. Pls see WP:REALTIME.
  2. Serious WP:OVERLINKing everywhere. We don't need to link common terms that everyone knows and that readers won't click on from this article.
  3. WP:ITALICS, quotes are not italicized.
  4. MOS:LQ, logical quotation.
  5. Citations-- missing information. Every citation needs a publisher, and an author and date when those are available. Websites need access dates.
  6. Bibliography, are all of those used in the article?
  7. Image captions which are full sentences should have final punctuation; sentence fragments should not.
  8. There are WP:REALTIME issues everywhere ... sample:
    In 1994 Peterborough was designated one of four environment cities in the UK and it is now working to become the UK's acknowledged environment capital.
    Now means ... when ?

There is a quite substantial amount of work needed here just to update the text and clean up the citations. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:36, 3 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

FARC section

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Concerns raised in the review section include referencing, MOS, and datedness. Nikkimaria (talk) 12:35, 9 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Chrisieboy, thank you for the effort, but there is work to be done, and it is early in the game to be declaring a keep. The article will be at FARC for at least two weeks, and there is still time for the many issues to be addressed.

    Starting with the things that are relatively easy:

    The article does not have complete or consistent citations. All sources need a publisher, websources need an accessdate, and author and date should be provided if available. And then all of that information should be rendered in a consistent format. ALso, see WP:REALTIME ("Today, bus services in the city are operated ..."). "Peterborough is a major stop" ... the world major is frequently overused on Wikipedia ... what does it mean? More WP:REALTIME, "To help cope with this influx the council has put forward plans to construct an average of 1,300 homes each year until 2021" ... The council put forward in year x plans ... so it won't be dated when we read it 10 years from now. And there are still maintenance tags on the article. Also, when sentences start with a number, they should be recast to avoid doing that. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:41, 9 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

No improvements since my last comment-- article still has maintenance tags. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:40, 17 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
These examples have now been fixed. Chrisieboy (talk) 11:41, 8 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you, Chrisieboy. Will you be able to address the concerns SandyGeorgia raised in this section? For example, I still see 6 deadlinks, many missing accessdates, and inconsistent style in citations. From looking back at the article's FAC nomination, I see that your chosen citation style was a matter of some debate. I'm not challenging the style itself, but the lack of consistency within the article's cites makes them difficult to understand. Especially problematic for me are the titles (many titles have neither italics nor quotation marks) and punctuation (for example, some cites have commas after titles, while others use a period instead; some lack punctuation altogether). Maralia (talk) 16:47, 9 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
@Cordless Larry: how do you feel about hte article now? Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 13:51, 15 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
A quick scan of the article suggests that many of the concerns that SandyGeorgia raised are still valid. As Maralia notes, the citation style is inconsistent. There are also unsourced statistical claims in the article text (e.g. "Both Peterborough (over 107,000 registered patients) and Borderline (over 137,000 registered patients) local commissioning groups have GP practices within the unitary authority area" and "The majority of Muslims reside in the Millfield and New England areas of the city, where two large mosques (including the Faidhan-e-Madina Mosque) are based") and WP:REALTIME issues (e.g. "As the city expands the council has introduced a new statutory development plan", based on a 10-year-old source). As I see it, attempts to address the issues raised here have been relatively marginal to date, and would need to be stepped up a level in order for the article to be brought back up to standard. Cordless Larry (talk) 14:04, 15 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Agree on that. Was tempted to delist, but I think alot of this is so janitorial should be straightforward, and looking through the page history I am pleased to see at least one IP helping out. ...sigh...I'll leave this open a bit and try to do some cleaning up...one of the other delegates can judge consensus. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 14:34, 15 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I've fixed a few timeframe issues and tagged some more. Worryingly, I also discovered a minor copyright violation. Cordless Larry (talk) 06:01, 16 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Having investigated some of the WP:REALTIME issues, I'm also concerned that there is a lot of material in the article that needs to be updated, which perhaps means the scale of the task is more than janitorial. Cordless Larry (talk) 10:50, 16 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I have run it through Earwig's copyvio tool]. Just running through the comparisons now. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 13:26, 16 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
There's more, including, "The place suffered materially in the war between John I and the confederate barons, many of whom took refuge in the monastery here and in Crowland Abbey, from which sanctuaries they were forced by the king's soldiers, who plundered the religious houses and carried off great treasures" from here. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 13:30, 16 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Actually I think that is the clincher - with the cites still missing, extent of work needed (as pointed out just above), and now checking for copyvios, I will archive as delisted as it is unequivocally needing an overhaul and would be more accurate to gain consensus to promote later after delisting than keep. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 13:36, 16 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
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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