Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Belfast/archive1

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

The article was not promoted 18:31, 16 December 2007.

Belfast[edit]

(Self nomination, with other collaborators) Belfast is a well written, comprehensive and well sourced article. It has recently been peer reviewed and passed a GA review. Despite the current problems with Ireland related articles, this has always been stable. Stu ’Bout ye! 09:24, 16 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comment Think about breaking up long stretches of text with subheadings. Are there city politics? I am sure there are. The motorway sounds unusual, being 10 lanes. Any editors who live nearby that can take a photo? Mrs.EasterBunny 16:35, 18 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • Reply. Hi, thanks for the input. There were more subsections in, but I removed some as per the automated peer review suggestions. I'll look at adding some back and using the TOClimit template. Politics is covered under the Governance section, do you think anything else needs to be mentioned? I'll try to think of a good place to take a photo of the 10 lane section of the M2. This is the best I can see on a Google search, quite hard to reproduce! Stu ’Bout ye! 19:55, 18 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
There's a city council article. Perhaps either there or in Belfast, a short paragraph could be added about the controversies in government. Do they discuss housing, traffic, crime, flooding, or is there some other major problem that the local government is trying to solve?Mrs.EasterBunny 18:29, 19 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Needs work on the writing. Here are random examples.

  • Can you make the infoblot narrower? It squashes the text to the side, and only one item needs to wrap to a second line to achieve this. Why is some of the text impossibly tiny in the infoblot?
  • "He imagined that it resembled the shape of a sleeping giant safeguarding the city."—Can this be put into the Geography section rather than the lead?
  • now often termed 'republican' and 'loyalist' respectively—we'd use double quotes, but italics are more usual on WP. In any case, probably the linking is enough to dispense with further formatting-marking.
  • Inconsistent metrics and old-speak as main units.
  • "Since 2001, boosted by increasing numbers of tourists, the city has also developed a number of cultural "quarters":"—Here, "quarters" has double quotes, but is linked, which is enough. Remove "also" as redundant (even ambiguous), and audit all other uses of "also".
  • Remove "in fact", which is redundant in formal written text. Tony (talk) 15:09, 23 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • Thanks for your comments, I've addressed all your points with the exception of the infobox width. This is due to the Northern Ireland Assembly field I think, so I've asked on the template talk page how I can fix it. I had no idea I used the word "also" so much! Stu ’Bout ye! 19:48, 25 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Pass & support

  • Request: On the Economy section, please place recent first and history after. Thanks. Learnedo 08:55, 27 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • Wasn't sure about this as I thought the section flowed better being chronological, but havig looked at other featured city articles I agree. Changed now. Stu ’Bout ye! 15:07, 27 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment "Climate change is affecting Belfast, with July,[32] September 2006[33] and April 2007[34] breaking records for the warmest such months on record, and June 2007 being one of the wettest months ever." - Not sure that the sources back up the claim that observation of three months within a two year span are evidence of climate change in Belfast. This a narrow, short view, and probably should be removed.Ceoil 00:23, 10 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • Done. I'll replace it with somthing about the floods in June. Stu ’Bout ye! 01:09, 10 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks Stu, I'll have another read later tonight. Ceoil 17:46, 10 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Very nice work. Two minor comments:
  • "Belfast is the anglicised version of the area's Irish name, meaning "mouth of the Farset River"." - What is the irish word? - found it Ceoil 09:55, 11 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Superseded by the River Lagan as the more important river" - in Belfast or in Northern Ireland? Ceoil 09:30, 11 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
In Belfast, the Bann and possibly the Foyle would be equally important. Clarified this in the article. Decided to omit the section on the June floods, per Wikipedia:Recentism. Stu ’Bout ye! 21:44, 12 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, happy to Support now. Ceoil 23:48, 12 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Minor Objections/Comment- I saw two requests for comments on the fac talk page, I believe this article can improve quite a bit.
    I believe Etymology and History should be separated, they are different topics.
    rather specific information about 2005 election results in local government, is this wp:recentism?
    does the coat of arms and motto belong in "governance"? are the topics of the etymology and of the coat of arms and motto of the city are related enough to be under the same heading?
    in geography there is no need for "(from the Irish: Béal Feirste meaning "The sandy ford at the river mouth"[1])." especially within parenthesis and given that the original statement is already cited.
    "(known as “peace lines”)" - may I suggest instead doing away with this and substituting with "commonly known as ..."
    "Since 2001, boosted by increasing numbers of tourists, the city has developed a number of cultural quarters:" deserves a citation.
    I have a minor NPOV concern about "Ongoing sectarian violence has made it difficult for Belfast to compete with Dublin's Celtic Tiger economy" - I'm sure other things were significant - Dublin's economy was not built on the lack of sectarian violence.
    I have a personal and perhaps arbitrary dislike for the gallery under Architecture.
    --Keerllston 01:50, 30 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for your comments. I'll take each point one by one. The etymology paragraph is part etymology, part history. So I think keeping under the history section is better. Etymology on its own would be a very short section. On the 2005 results, I think they are useful as they show the current makeup of the council. Will come back to the other points later, pressed for time. Stu ’Bout ye! 14:18, 5 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I definitely would like you to respond to the other comments - you seem a rather good contributor.
Etymology on it's own might be a short section - but Etymology is definitely a different subject than history - one is the history of the name and the other is the history of the city.
The 2005 results might show the current make up of the council but perhaps this would be better adressed in WikiNews rather than in WikiPedia - maybe a link to 2007 Belfast politics or similar would serve that purpose better?
--Keerllston 23:23, 5 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. I went over this article when it was at Peer Review and now here. Concerning one of Keerllston's points, I found the local government election result useful. Would framing it less like an election result and more like the compostion of the Belfast City Council work? --maclean 20:01, 6 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Is the nominator still following this nomination; I left sample edits several days ago that haven't been addressed? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 05:10, 7 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Sandy, see my comments on the 5th. I'll hopefully get some time to work on this over the weekend, riduculously busy at the minute. Stu ’Bout ye! 09:27, 7 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Great; I refactored Tony's comment (above) because I missed (several times) seeing it buried in italics on the end of your sig. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:57, 8 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Slight Oppose - Mainly due to the history and law and government sections, which are poorly-written in comparison to the rest of the article, which is excellent.
    • Good images, thorough referencing
    • Mostly excellent prose
    • Good lead, but is the fact that Cavehill was believed to be an inspiration for Gulliver's Travels really important enough to put in the lead? Just a minor observation.
    • History section needs some work. Some copy-edting is needed, such as the sentence "Bank Street in the city centre refers not to banking, but to the river bank and Bridge Street was the site of an early a bridge across the Farset." On second thought, is that sentence even needed? Also, is there any particular reason why the city became such an important industrial center? I think this is very important and needs to be addressed. Finally, the last half of it reads too much like a news analysis of the city during The Troubles and not enough like a historical overview. A mention could also be given to the fact that the Titanic was built here; in addition to the obvious popularity of it, it also highlights its importance as a shipbuilding city.
    • Too much focus on the latest elections; we don't need to know exactly how many seats were elected from each party. Nobody who lives outside of the UK, or maybe even Northern Ireland, will really take any meaning out of it; I certainly didn't. Perhaps the makeup of the council should be put into a table?
    • I like the separate section on the coat of arms and motto.
    • The climate section could use some expansion, but this isn't a necessity.
    • Areas and districts section is well-written; the bulleted descriptions of the city districts should be merged into a paragraph.
    • There's some repeat of information regarding tourism in the culture section that is already described in the economy section.
    • Sports section is too list-oriented when referring to the teams.

Overall it's very close, though. Just some minor editing will make me change my vote to support. bob rulz (talk) 06:30, 8 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comment. Several comments so far:
  • Regarding the "(from the Irish: Béal Feirste meaning "The sandy ford at the river mouth)" clause, I'd remove it and save it for the body of the article; you currently introduce the origin of the word before anything else, which may confuse readers.
  • To clarify, I mean remove it from the lead and leave it in the first section, where it flows better. (I definitely agree that the Irish meaning should stay in the article itself) CloudNine (talk) 23:16, 11 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • It may be worth expanding the paragraph about Belfast Metropolitan College in the "Education" section (when was it founded? How many students? etc.).
Comment. This has taken a lot longer than I expected. I thought it was done and dusted in the middle of November, but there have been several new comments since the end of November. There's been some excellent input, and to do it justice deserves more time than I can dedicate at the minute. I'm doing three people's jobs in work at the minute and have exams in early January. So either someone else will have to take it over, or I'll have to withdraw the nomination until after January 12. Stu ’Bout ye! 12:22, 11 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
hum... I'd like to step up and help - I've very little experience and it seems following up on candidate-ship comments is very hard work.. I'd like to try--Keerllston 13:31, 12 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.
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