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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 kept by Dana boomer 02:22, 23 June 2010 [1].

Roy of the Rovers

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Roy of the Rovers (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

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Notified: Seb Patrick, ChrisTheDude, North wales cestrian, DreamGuy, Tpbradbury, WikiProject Football, WikiProject Comics, Today's featured article/requests

On Wikipedia talk:Today's featured article/requests, Roy of the Rovers was discussed as a possible Main Page article for the end of the 2010 World Cup; however, the article needs cleanup before it should make that appearance. Specifically, I have the following FA criteria concerns:

  • Criteria 1B: Comprehensiveness
    While the lead says that Roy of the Rovers "was the most popular [football comic] ever produced, with an estimated one million readers at the height of its popularity in the late 1970s and early 1980s. As such, it holds a unique place in British football folklore, demonstrated most clearly by the stock media phrase 'real Roy of the Rovers stuff'...", there is no greater discussion of the cultural impact of Roy of the Rovers in the UK except in passing.
  • Criteria 1C: Well-researched
    Whole sections have no citations, including the "Regular features" section. There are multiple [citation needed] and {{refimprove}} tags present. The vast majority of the citations present are to newspapers or the strip's own website, making it questionable if the article content is supported by high-quality reliable sources as required.
  • Criteria 2C: Consistent citations
    The citations are not formatted consistently. The interweaving of footnotes with references makes it difficult to tell when reading the article what statements are backed by references and which aren't, but I don't believe the FA criteria require the footnotes and references to be separated.
  • Criteria 3: Images
    There are five fair-use images of the article. This may be considered excessive fair-use and should be reviewed.

Thank you for your attention. –Grondemar 00:42, 6 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Sadly I'd have to say this article doesn't currently meet the criteria for FA. Supporting 1c above, in fact there are a significant number of other assertions in the article that haven't been flagged for citation but should be. In the first section alone - "Football-themed stories were a staple of British comics from the 1950s onwards" (we know that's true, but ...) "In February 2007, it was announced that a group of fans had obtained the rights to reprint classic strips" "this arrangement came to an end soon afterwards" (raised on the discussion page, but nothing done about it).

Several of the links don't work (#32 for example leads to search results on Channel 4's website for 'Roy'). The plot section weaves in and out of fictional continuity, and once again is without many relevant citations.

Finally, and possibly most significantly, I'm not exactly sure what the article is supposed to be about. If it's about the strip 'Roy of the Rovers', then what is the 'regular features' section in there for? That would only be relevant if the article was about the comic 'Roy of the Rovers'; in which case that section would be relevant, but other sections of the article would not be. Sorry Archiveangel (talk) 11:33, 6 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I did a little bit of work on this article waaaaaay back. To be honest I'm not sure the article can be easily brought up to what is now considered FA quality, due mainly to lack of easily-available sources. There's a new hardback book on the history of the character/comic that came out a while ago and would probably have plenty of good content, but I'm not going to buy it just to try and salvage the WP article....... -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 12:43, 7 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • It would be very sad to see this delisted less than two days before the start of the World Cup. I'd rather see it on the main page, if not on the opening day, then on final day. There are clearly problems with the article, but I don't see them as being particularly difficult to fix. Archiveangel pointed out above what is perhaps the article's greatest weakness, its muddy scope. I propose to be bold and fix that by creating a new article about the weekly comic, in which Roy was just one of the features, and often not the featured one. That will have the additional benefit of removing a large section of uncited text. The prose is a little bit breathless in places, and the citations do need to be checked, and probably added to, but I don't see any reason to give up on this too quickly, especially not now. Malleus Fatuorum 20:19, 9 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Malleus Fatuorum has done some sterling work over the last few days and I think has come close to satisfactorily addressing all the points raised above - what do others think......? -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 07:41, 11 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Much better now it's more focused, and that should make it easier to improve. But the article is still short of a lot of citations in critical places (first statement in the collected editions section for example), and, as discussed before, is currently in the 'primary sources' trap. I suspect it could be lifted a LOT further if Mick Collins book "Roy of the Rovers: The Unauthorised Biography" was absorbed and sourced. Wish I could help, but I don't have a copy, although it's easily found. The article still falls short, but I think we still need to be non-partisan and not lose sight of the yardstick measures because of the potential World Cup milestone. This could be a great article (it almost makes me wish I read the strip and was interested in football!), there's no rush. Cheers! Archiveangel (talk) 12:23, 11 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with you that the sourcing and citations still leave quite a bit to be desired. I'm not so worried about the Plot section though; such sections are commonly very sparsely cited in literature articles, as the story is the source for itself. The glaring omission right now I think is the lack of some kind of Cultural impact (or similarly titled) section; I'll try and knock something up later. I'll see if I can get hold of a copy of Mick Collins's book as well. Malleus Fatuorum 12:46, 11 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I'll have to bow to much more senior (in Wikipedia terms, not age :-) people on plot. It appears initially getting the plot into secondary or tertiary source is critical to the slow crawl up the scale, but, the better the article gets, the less the plot belongs - according to how things work; which I still have much trouble with as a concept - after all, what Roy did and when is probably as important to some as his historical/sociological importance, and the balance between an article which shows the historical background etc. and his 'history' may not work between what the searching public wants as compared to what the article requires under the rules. Put basically, if I look up 'Roy of the Rovers', its probably because I want to see what its about, a bit of the sociological background, but mostly what happened, why and when (both in-chronology and in real-life publishing).
Perhaps a case of Wikipedia should supply what people want, not what Wikipedia thinks people should want, perhaps not. Possibly the usual problem of committee-based decisions, partly a defense against pure anarchy. However, as a result, you have to realise the drive to some sort of common ground rules, to avoid the anarchic mess that many articles are. The beauty is when it all drives in one direction and 'something happens' - just look at this article in such a short time. Despite all that, sometimes its just got to be worth putting a useful article up that's simply worthwhile because it hasn't been covered yet and should be, even if it can't get those benchmarks right now. Better something that can be worked on than nothing. Keep on keeping on Cheers! Archiveangel (talk) 15:52, 11 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Linking: why is "helicopter" linked? And "retconn" is linked, but should we have to divert to learn what its basic meaning is? I see a spaced em dash. "Father and Son"—should S be used? "one-another" hyphenated? "struck towards goal" ... no "the", or is this in-house lingo? The prose generally needs improvement. Tony (talk) 14:51, 11 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
well in theory everything linkable should be linked - the idea is think encyclopaedia: anything explained somewhere else should be linked to that article (mind you, taken to extreme that could just be madness). If there's an article about helicopters, link it, if there's one about retconn, link it. Assume nothing in the way of understanding (ever played the 'describe to someone alien how to wash your hands' game? Drives people mad, although it's lovely to see the light go when people get the insight to how people think). As for general grammatical or spelling errors, just change them. Nobody's offended. Ditto with general prose. Though sometimes it's best to wait until the article's thrashed out, instead of a constant bit here and bit there which may get lost in later changes. Cheers! Archiveangel (talk) 15:52, 11 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Tony1's view, and one I agree with, is that only "high-value" links should be included, not everything that could possibly be linked. In the unlikely event that someone doesn't know what a helicopter is, they can easily find out simply by searching for it. The example Tony drew attention to before though, "retconn", is a case where a reader might reasonably want to know a little bit more about retroactive continuity, as a technique employed by the writers of the later strips. Malleus Fatuorum 17:04, 11 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment – I remember reading this article a while back and feeling so concerned about its state that I seriously considered nominating it here myself. What has happened here is a more stunning turnaround than U.S.–Slovenia. A lot of great, great work has clearly been done. The citations in particular have really been improved. Most of the areas without them relate to the plot, and as Malleus says cites aren't strictly needed there. I did notice two remaining areas that could use references. First, the part in the second paragraph that says the monthly version had sluggish sales, and second, a paragraph in Spin-offs and merchandise (though I guess you could argue that shirts source themselves too). Overall, I'm not convinced that this one even needs to go to FARC. Giants2008 (27 and counting) 15:30, 20 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • The remark about the "sluggish sales" was really to do with Shoot magazine, not about the Roy of the Rovers comic strip, so I've removed it. The shirts is a problem though, because the only source is the web site where they can be bought. Malleus Fatuorum 22:53, 20 June 2010 (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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