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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 promoted by Karanacs 21:27, 26 May 2009 [1].

Oberon (moon)

[edit]
Nominator(s): Ruslik (talk) 19:02, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
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I am nominating this for featured article because this relatively short article about the outermost large Uranian moon, in my opinion, fully satisfies FA criteria. Ruslik (talk) 19:02, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  • Looks pretty good... but there are still some points which need work - mostly minor, but one or two larger ones:
    • Discovery and naming: why no link to William Lassell?
    • Orbit: link synchronous orbit.
    • What effect does being outside the magnetosphere for part of its orbit have on Oberon? Sure, you can find some info by clicking the links, but spelling it out in brief here may be useful.
    • Composition and internal structure: The presence of water ice is supported by spectroscopic observations, which have found crystalline water ice on the surface of the moon. Observations haven't found anything; the observers have. "indicated", "revealed", or something similar may be a better verb here.
    • Water ice absorption bands are stronger on Oberon's trailing hemisphere, opposite to what is observed in other Uranian moons, where the leading hemisphere exhibits - the use of "opposite" here is a little nitpickingly ungrammatical (though "the opposite" would be passable), as are the switch of preposition from "on Oberon" to "in the other moons and the switch from plural to singular ("moons", "hemisphere") " - perhaps something like "...unlike those which have been observed on other Uranian moons, whose leading hemispheres exhibit..." Even then, it's a bit of a run-on sentence and may need splitting in two. An alternative structure might be to change the comma after hemisphere to a full stop and reworking the rest of the passage into a second sentence. (e.g., "Water ice absorption bands are stronger on Oberon's trailing hemisphere. This is the opposite of what is observed on other Uranian moons, whose leading hemispheres exhibit...")
    • ...knock out ice from the surface (comma) leaving...'
    • Oberon's internal structure is dictated by its composition. It may be differentiated into a rocky core surrounded by an icy mantle.[19] The radius of the core (480 km) is about 63% of the radius of the moon, and its mass is around 54% of the moon’s mass. This needs some work. The first sentence is either blindingly obvious or there is more to it which needs a little explanation, though this may be alleviated by improvements to the rest. The second sentence says it may be differentiated, but the third provides some pretty precise figures for how it is differentiated. These contradicting statements need to be reconciled.
    • Surface features and geology: I'd suggest a link to opposition surge, but this appears to be a redlink - the term may need some further explanation, though, either in this article or as its own (stubby) article.
    • Are there any theories worth mentioning on why the surface is red except for the blue areas of fresh impact craters? If so, they also need mentioning.
    • Why is it the most heavily cratered of the moons? Theories? Is it connected with it being the outermost of the main moons? Some form of explanation is needed, even if just to say that we don't know why.
    • Origin and evolution: How do scientists reconcile the water-poor nature of the subnebula with the theory that Oberon "consists of roughly equal proportions of water ice and a dense non-ice component"? see note below
    • Is it likely to be still cryovolcanically active? Is there any evidence one way or the other? Or is any activity likely to have stopped billions of years ago?
    • POSSIBLE MISSING SECTION - you mention Voyager 2 - have there been any other craft to have passed close to Oberon, and if not, are there plans for more which would be able to provide more information about it?
    • Links etc: Checklinks suggests a few problems, including one link that may be dead, one with an access issue (registration only) and one which has a missing access date. I'll leave details of whether they're formatted correctly to someone who knows better about those things, but those three things do need looking at. see note below
    • Both water ice and hemisphere are linked to dab pages rather than to the appropriate articles.
  • Grutness...wha? 22:12, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • Some quick work going on here - that's more than half the points covered already... Grutness...wha?
      • BTW, I've created a short article on opposition surge, so that there's no redlink in the Oberon article. I'd appreciate it if someone who has a more thorough knowledge of astronomy than me (such as you...) could check it out to make sure I've made no schoolboy bloopers... Grutness...wha? 08:15, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
        • Bugger. An article on the phenomenon already existed at opposition effect (which seems to be the older term for it). Looks like a merge is in order... Grutness...wha? 08:30, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
          • Thanks for the article about opposition surge, which I should have created long ago. I added explanation about the influence of the magnetosphere on satellites. I also added a sentence saying that the endogenous activity ceased long ago. As to "water poor", I only meant that as compared to Saturn's satellites, which like Tethys with density of 0.97 g/cm3 may contain significantly more water than 50%, the moons of Uranus are depleted in water. The registration only link displays the first page of the paper. So, it is useful. The dead link is in External links section. I will wait a few days: if it remains dead, I will remove it. Ruslik (talk) 08:44, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
            • And thank you for the quick work! I'd say that this is a short but impressive article, and assuming the problems with the dead (or otherwise) link are tidied up, and assuming that the references are all formatted correctly (something I know very little about, I'll admit), I see no reason why I can't support this for FA. It might still be worth explaining the "relatively water-poor" line with a direct comparison to Tethys or one of Saturn's other moons, but conversely that might unduly weight that section, so I'm happy enough with it left out. As far as the opposition surge article is concerned, although I only wrote a small article, it looks a little bigger than (and largely complementary to) the previously existing opposition effect. I'm not sure which way any merging should go, though, so I'll leave it to someone who has more knowledge of the subject. Grutness...wha? 09:20, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
although they were subsequently revealed as erroneous - erg, I know what you mean by the sentence, and can't help thinking there must be a better word than 'erroneous' here, but I can't think of what...not a deal-breaker but food for thought.
Thanks. I replaced 'erroneous' with 'spurious'. Ruslik (talk) 13:48, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Image review: replaced the GIF with a JPG version; both images are now fine, being federal works. No issues. Jappalang (talk) 12:48, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Otherwise, sources look okay, links checked out with the link checker tool. Ealdgyth - Talk 13:52, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I replaced nineplanets with a book source. Ruslik (talk) 06:57, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Nine planets might make a nice external link (It was borderline as a ref, so it's fine as an external link) Ealdgyth - Talk 19:09, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for an advice. I added it to the external links. Ruslik (talk) 19:10, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support—I gave it a complete read through and it seems to be in good shape with no significant omissions that I could find. It would be nice to know more about the dark material that flooded the larger craters, but I understand why that isn't expanded upon. The one item that you might consider mentioning is the recent first-ever observation of mutual eclipses between the moons of Uranus, including Oberon.[2] It's a curiosity at least, because of the orbital alignment. Thank you.—RJH (talk) 23:21, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    I added a couple of sentences. Ruslik (talk) 07:33, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment - Is there a good reason for 87% of the refs in the References section to include a nonfunctional backlink? For example, 1c, 2f, 3e, 4l, 5d, and every "b" from 7 to 16; 6, 20, 25, and 28 seem to be the only exceptions. Anomie⚔ 11:47, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    This is a result of the use of {{Source list}} template. I wanted to solve one old problem with references: they tend to clutter wiki-text making it unreadable. This template allows creation of an invisible list of references at the end of an article. This method has its own price, of course—nonfunctional backlinks, which actually link to the invisible list of references. So, as a result of this innovation the article has the clean wiki-text with only short ref tags in it at a relatively low price of a number of strange backlinks, which are unlikely to be noticed. Ruslik (talk) 19:10, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    So we're having broken links that will confuse any reader who does notice them in order to make the wikitext slightly less "cluttered" for editors? Anomie⚔ 20:31, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    Links are not broken. They are just not functioning, and therefore they are not confusing. In addition, these backlinks are pointless for readers—they are only useful for the editors, who want to track where a particular source is used. Before the cite extension was created the reflists did not contain backlinks at all. Ruslik (talk) 13:17, 22 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    You have an interesting definition of "not broken" there, and I question your assumption that no readers care about any references enough to want to see what statements are supported by them. Also, BTW, "there were no backlinks until we got the improved software" is an entirely unconvincing argument. But enough of this; I pointed out an issue with the reference links on the page, you obviously don't care, and if those in charge want to promote it as Wikipedia's "best work" despite the issue that's up to them. Anomie⚔ 14:16, 22 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    I have never said that I do not care, but I do not known a simple solution either. If you have something to propose I will be grateful. Ruslik (talk) 15:45, 22 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    Just the obvious suggestion: Don't do that, do it the normal way. And try to convince the devs to fix T7997, T14796, and/or T17724 which will let you do something like this without breaking things. Anomie⚔ 18:05, 22 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Weak Support My only concerns are that it does contain some quite short sentences and I think it could do with one last copy edit to ensure that the article completely flows. The article is short and sweet, are you certain this article is as comprehensive as possible given the length? Dr. Blofeld White cat 18:51, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I am pretty sure that the article is comprehensive. The current knowledge about Oberon is quite limited. Ruslik (talk) 19:10, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

That's what I thought, about a moon of a planet that far away. It's a very concise article and in my own view a very readible and informative one as a lot of article on here tend to ramble on and on rather than having a complete focus. The way an encyclopedia article should be. Good work. Dr. Blofeld White cat 22:05, 21 May 2009 (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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