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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 User:Marskell 08:39, 5 August 2008 [1].

Helium

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Review commentary

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Notified Wikipedia:WikiProject Elements and User:Mav.

FA Criterion 1c -- verifiability.

In my opinion, this is an excellent article with respect to content, style, and comprehensiveness. However, I find the sourcing deficient. Perhaps the de facto FA standards were looser in 2005, or perhaps the article itself changed, but the current situation is that a large fraction of the factual statements in the article do not have a reference. I can add {{fact}} tags if requested, but there might be too many. Here's a broad overview of the sections that might need references:

  • The second half of Compounds
  • The end of Extraction and use
  • Most of Applications
  • The last paragraph of Gas and plasma phases
  • Parts of Helium I state and Helium II state
  • The second half of Scientific discoveries
  • Last paragraph in Natural abundance
  • Half of Modern extraction

I don't doubt that much of the evidence may be in some of the references already cited, or perhaps in the general references listed at the end. But where? I'm especially concerned about numerical data and certain factual statements. Just to give an example, there is the statement "an estimated 3.4 litres of helium per year are generated per cubic kilometer of the Earth's crust". I wonder, where did this number come form? There are many cases like this. All the numbers in the article have to come from somewhere, and it should be clear to the reader where. --Itub (talk) 09:09, 20 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

*sigh* And it seems like it was just yesterday that we finished reviewing Hydrogen. I'm fairly busy in terms of Wikipedia, and I'm about to get very busy in real life. However, because mav is planning a trip to Egypt, I'll try to get on this so he can enjoy himself. Please allow me a little time to get started - I want to finish copyediting Candide first. My plan of action will then be to review the sources already used to see if they cover other material. Then I'll go about trying to find new sources. Huzzah! --Cryptic C62 · Talk 14:01, 20 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The article has not degraded since the last review. The issue is that standards have increased. I'll see what I can do later tonight and tommorrow; be patient, I'll probably want to expand the article as well. --mav (talk) 16:22, 21 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Tried to add some refs. The last paragraph in Natural abundance needs thestatment that only He4 is radiogenic and all the He3 here on erth comes from somewhere else.--Stone (talk) 21:53, 21 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
For the science I found good refs, but for
  • Most of Applications
  • The last paragraph of Gas and plasma phases
somebody with more knowledge should help me with this.--Stone (talk) 11:47, 23 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I'm reasonably confident that the online databases to which I have access will be adequate for the Applications section. I'm almost done copyediting Candide, after which I will begin working on this. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 22:55, 25 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It does need work. I wonder whether the Directors might agree to a better timing for you guys? This process works best when the main editors are given reasonable conditions to improve an article. TONY (talk) 03:32, 25 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If you have the time, it might be more efficient to place the {{fact}} tags in the places where you think it might need them, even if there might be a lot of them. Nergaal (talk) 10:44, 1 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Most of the article is referenced now. I added a few references that I could find, and a few {{cn}}'s in other places. I'm sure that with a few more days of working on this it will be ready. --Itub (talk) 12:12, 1 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I have reordered the sections to something that seems more logica. I have also added refs for several [citation needed] tags. There are only 2 tags left that I am not sure how to look for them (Li and B bombardment and the crystal growth one). Also, the number of distinct Notes has increased from 45 when it was nominated, to 77 now. Nergaal (talk) 00:24, 8 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The bombardment bit isn't that important, so I commented it out. Found the ref for the other part (something from my original expansion using LANL as a reference). I think we are done now. --mav (talk) 02:26, 8 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I went through the article really carefully now, and fixed several things that I noticed. I also found and marked three more spots where a citation would be helpful, and one that requires clarification. These are the last tags I place, I promise! Once these are done, I will gladly withdraw my nomination, if that is allowed by the FAR protocols. --Itub (talk) 10:50, 9 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I found a link that might solve the last [citation needed] tag. I left it as hidded text because I cannot actually open the entire document. If someone can open it then unhide the ref. 80 refs from 45; much better. Nergaal (talk) 15:50, 9 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Please do not withdraw, simply say that everything is fine (once it is). That way, a bot will close this nomination as Kept and reflect that on the article history. --mav (talk) 18:24, 9 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
So? Is this done yet? Nergaal (talk) 23:49, 10 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Great work here. I've asked Sandy for her magic referencing eyes. No need to withdraw it yourself, Nergaal. Marskell (talk) 14:13, 11 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

  1. The main picture is an empty jar! Yes, it is! Perhaps a picture of its atomic structure could be added? There's one on commons.
  2. "Far from being a rare element, helium was present in vast quantities" appears to contradict "On Earth, helium is relatively rare".
  3. "Throughout the universe, helium is found.." can this be phrased more scientifically? Perhaps "In stars and space, helium exists.." (I have no idea whether this is or true or not; I'm just giving an example of how it could be made to sound less as if someone has gone to the Zogborg System of Zfrax to check it for non-plasma helium.)
  4. The section "Helium I state" confuses me. It says "helium I boils when it is heated. It also contracts when [it is cooled]". Does this mean that when heated it contracts? If not, then the "also" should be removed. Perhaps, a graph of volume against temperature would be helpful here?
  5. What's a hyperfragment? I don't see it anywhere else on wikipedia or explained what it is. (Don't tell me, I'm not that interested, just see if it can be explained somewhere.)
  6. Should "3x10−27 second" be "3x10−27 seconds"?
  7. "Helium has been put inside the hollow carbon cage molecules (the fullerenes) by heating under high pressure of the gas.": Is the heated gas helium or fullerene? Is fullerene a gas? Is it a mixture of both which is heated or only the helium? Should this be: "Helium has been put inside hollow carbon cage molecules (the fullerenes) by heating under high pressure."?
  8. "Helium is the second most abundant element in the known Universe after hydrogen and constitutes 23% of the elemental mass of the universe." universe or Universe? The word "universe" is used three times in that paragraph.
  9. Minor points:
There is some duplication of points. There are two "Extraction" sections and the final "application" duplicates some points in "biological effects". But as I have indicated, this is not major and I appreciate that there are rationales for duplicating these points.
Some units (kelvin for example) are spelled out after they've been used as abbreviations earlier.
Some dates are day-first, others month-first. Some are not auto-formatted.

I'm not saying this should be moved to FARC. I'm just saying these points confused a non-chemist. DrKiernan (talk) 16:48, 11 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Itub is already busy beavering away at the above comments! Feel free to strike them once you feel they're done. DrKiernan (talk) 17:06, 11 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, I've struck out the ones I tried to address. If you disagree with any of them, feel free to unstrike them. --Itub (talk) 17:16, 11 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

There's still a citation needed tag and a clarify tag. From current ref no. 20 on, there are missing publishers and unformatted citations. I'm not sure dividing references into "prose" and "table" will make sense to readers. There are strange italics and incomplete citations (missing publishers) in Reference as well. Does "Applications" really have to be presented as a list? Can't it be prosified and organized into paragraphs, grouping like items? There are also little MoS issues throughout, but I'll list them after these and DrKiernan's items are addressed. The writing just isn't crisp and clear: this one sentence typifies what it feels like to get through this article:

After an oil drilling operation in 1903 in Dexter, Kansas produced a gas geyser that would not burn, Kansas state geologist Erasmus Haworth collected samples of the escaping gas and took them back to the University of Kansas at Lawrence where, with the help of chemists Hamilton Cady and David McFarland, he discovered that the gas contained, by volume, 72% nitrogen, 15% methane—insufficient to make the gas combustible, 1% hydrogen, and 12% of an unidentifiable gas.

SandyGeorgia (Talk) 05:21, 12 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'll start working with the references to try to clean them up today. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 12:55, 12 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
How come there still isn't a bot that takes the links and transforms them into a full citation templates? Every FA I've been through had MOS problems with citations, like these ones; a bot would boring part out of the way of editor and let them make other more useful contributions :( Nergaal (talk) 17:41, 12 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Well I know there are bots that add titles and DOIs and stuff, but some of the other information isn't always as clear. Often times I have to navigate to different pages than the original article in order to find copyright information. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 21:17, 12 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, but publishers and formatting citations? Instead of spending time on some other future FACs users are stuck here. Nergaal (talk) 21:26, 12 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The reference for the naming of helium has to be added the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Preliminary Note of Researches on Gaseous Spectra in Relation to the Physical Constitution of the Sun should include it or the full paper in the next few months. When I have access again to JSTOR I will try to get it.--Stone (talk) 20:38, 12 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Tried to find the word helium in all three publications [2] [3] [4] of Frankland and Lockyer, but was not sucsesfull. The biograpy of helium literature gives a article with the title Discovery of new spectrum lines in sun, since found to belong to helium. as reference, but the real title is Notice of an Observation of the Spectrum of a Solar Prominence and this article only mentions the D3 line and not helium. The claim that frankland suggested the name must have a proof some where.--Stone (talk) 08:32, 15 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Now i read:
  • Jensen Why helium end in ium 2004
  • Lockyer Helium Story Nature 1896
and now I have the clue that nobody knows who suggested the name, but Lockyer and Fankland and other scientists started to used the name helium shortly after its discovery in the spectra and befor the isolation of Helium by Ramsey.--Stone (talk) 10:05, 15 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Are we done yet? :) Nergaal (talk) 20:29, 14 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Patience, friend. Sandy, I've beefed up the citations as best I could, both in terms of information and formatting. Care to take another look to reevaluate? --Cryptic C62 · Talk 22:45, 16 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

FARC commentary

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Suggested FA criteria concerns is referencing (1c). Marskell (talk) 13:20, 18 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

A lot done here. How do people feel? Marskell (talk) 13:20, 18 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

There is a link I've left as hidden text, link which I think should qualify. But I cannot access the entire source to be sure. Nergaal (talk) 15:43, 19 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Lots needed still; WP:NBSP check needed (found several missing in the lead); inconsistent date formatting ( ... first detected on August 18, 1868 as ... and ... On 26 March, 1895 British chemist ... Conservation Helium Sale" (2005-10-06). Federal ... and several more ... which is it?); why are you using a blog source (Sattler)? Why is there a self-reference to Wiki in References ? Who is Nick Strobel and what makes him a reliable source? See Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2008-06-26/Dispatches. Ditto Mark Winter; how do they meet WP:SPS? Missing accessdates throughout the citations. Copyedit needs; why is bright yellow sometimes hyphenated, other times not? The snake that I identified in the review section hasn't been touched; this prose wouldn't get past Tony (be glad he's not peeking in here lately :-). WP:OVERLINKing everywhere; see first two sentences in "Natural abundance" section, where hydrogen is linked twice, even though it's repeatedly linked earlier (it's linked seven times in the article). These are SAMPLES ONLY. Closer attention to MoS and copyedit is needed. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:03, 20 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Nick Strobel is the second source, because the first is basically the same in a peerreviewed journal with limited access, so if somebody whants to read more it would be stupid to send him to the library, if there is a good source also in the net. --Stone (talk) 07:49, 20 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, let's put the remaining issues into list form and strike them out as we go:
  • NBSPs
  • Inconsistent date formatting
Tried to get them found only 3 dates.--Stone (talk) 05:17, 21 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Questionable sources
Added additional ones, but left the questionable ones in place, I will have a second look.--Stone (talk) 05:17, 21 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Missing accessdates
Went over them, do books need one too?--Stone (talk) 05:17, 21 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
No, unless they have "harrypotteresque" magical properties and their contents change after you read them! :-) Access dates only matter for changeable sources such as websites and online databases. --Itub (talk) 06:59, 21 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Overlinking
undid two links, but will try to find others.
Removed more than 40 unnecessary links, should be enough for now. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 01:36, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Copyedit
Others will be better in this.--Stone (talk) 05:17, 21 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I'll start with NBSPs. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 22:10, 20 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments - I'll try to drop in tomorrow and do a source check. I'm exhausted tonight. Ealdgyth - Talk 03:43, 21 July 2008 (UTC) Points of concern:[reply]

The authors are Don L. Anderson (Seismological Laboratory, California Institute of Technology), G. R. Foulger (Dept. Geological Sciences, University of Durham) & Anders Meibom (Laboratoire d'Etude de la Matiere Extraterrestre) so they should qulify for expert.--Stone (talk) 14:11, 21 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • And same for http://scuba-doc.com/?
  • Short form names are used in the notes, but I don't find the books in the references? Examples: Encyclopedia of the Chemical Elements
I found only this one. Nergaal (talk) 22:10, 25 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
This page is really good and accessable, so the additional peer reviewed source basically states the same and everybody can have a look not only people from a library or university computer.--Stone (talk) 14:23, 21 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Mark Winter, the author of webelements.com, is a senior lecturer of the chemistry department at the University of Sheffield.[5] Seems like good qualifications to me.

Are we done yet? :) Nergaal (talk) 22:12, 25 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Leaving the joke aside, why is this FAR(C) taking so long? Two FTs are waiting on the line :| Nergaal (talk) 11:40, 26 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Good question. After waiting two weeks for someone to clean up the listiness in the Applications section, I went ahead and did it myself. Perhaps someone who knows Helium can improve on the work I did, since I don't know if the way I grouped items makes the best sense. There is still a citation tag. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:32, 26 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I tweaked the splitting a bit; besides perhaps short paragraphs it looks ok. Nergaal (talk) 21:30, 26 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • I spent some time cleaning up the citations as best I could; quite disappointing. They aren't completely clean, but Marskell can decide if they're good enough. Author format is all over the place, there were accessdates with no URLs, there are still missing language icons, there are dead links, still a citation needed tag, and many of the sources are quite dubious and it's surprising that such a common topic can't rely on better sourcing. It's unclear why some sources are listed in References and others aren't. It's also surprising that the Elements group is still not formatting citations completely and consistently. I won't mind if Marskell decides this is good enough to keep, but the quality is disappointing and it's not our best work. I hope the Elements Project will bring future FARs to standard before entering Keep declarations and waiting for other editors to do the cleanup. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:38, 27 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, it is quite disappointing... that after all this time there isn't a bot that can do the mindless job of auto-formatting the refs. There seems to be two general ways that work for FA-level referencing, and I am very surprised that there isn't a taskforce trying to put up two bots to do them. Is it actually that hard? Or if a bot is that hard to implement, why isn't there a project dealing only with refs formatting of FACs?
This would leave the members that are not signed up for WP:ReferencesAreTheONLYImportantThingInAnArticle, but for WP:ICareAboutATopicOtherThanFromattingRefferences actually enjoy adding to the meat of the article, not to the glitter! Instead a good percentage of all FACs and FARs have to go through a loooong debate over formatting refs, and who is not bored enough to do them. It wouldn't be a problem, but it drains attention from other artices/projects... and for example, if it wasn't for this really anal part of FAR, people would have worked for two more FACs , copper and chlorine. Nergaal (talk) 05:08, 27 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Nergaal, the reason we're focusing on references here is because that's the biggest problem with the article and it's the reason the FAR was created in the first place. A Featured Article is supposed to be Wikipedia's best work in all aspects, which means that the meatiness of an article does not excuse its flaws. You're frustrated that there isn't a bot to do the tedious work for us, I've been working 50+ hour weeks, and mav has been in Egypt. As valid as these excuses are, the fact of the matter is that the work has not been done. So let's do it! Let's all buckle down, pitch in a little, and get this done! Issues to be dealt with:
  • Inconsistent author formatting
    All citations now use author=Last, First and coauthors= First Last, First Last
  • Missing language icons
  • Dead links
    Not really sure what you want here. I scanned a good chunk of Notes and the entirety of References and External Links, and all of the URLs were good. I replaced one citation marked with the dead link template, but that contained a working link to a subscription database. Are you asking that all references requiring subscriptions be replaced?--Cryptic C62 · Talk 21:54, 28 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Citation needed tag
    I removed the unsourced statement. It seemed to have been copied from air hunger, which has some decent references, none of which cover the material in question. The material was added about 2 years ago by User:Badocter, who has since retired from editing and left no email address. Helium air hunger yielded 0 results on EBSCO, and 9 irrelevant results on Nature. Given that the information was totally non-crucial anyway, it seemed to make the most sense to just delete it. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 00:01, 30 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Questionable sources
Sandy, just to clarify, by "missing language icons", do you mean the interwiki links? Or do you mean missing language= parameters in the citations? I assume it's the latter. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 17:28, 27 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
To answer Nergaal's question, why not do the sourcing correctly the first time, so the citations don't have to be cleaned up by a bot or by another editor? Are you unfamiliar, for example, with the standardized formatting for PMIDs provided by the Diberri template filler? If you simply format all your journal articles to agree with Diberri, and use his template filler for PMIDs, there would be no problem. If the Elements Project had citation standards (as bio/med articles do, by conforming to the Diberri format), the inconsistency wouldn't be there to begin with; look at any bio/med article (autism, Asperger syndrome, DNA, etc; notice the clean citations and consistent author names and formatting; compare that to the Elements articles.) This isn't a bot problem; it's a WikiProject Elements problem. You all have had enough FACs and FARs that other people shouldn't have to clean up your articles for citations, MoS, etc. at this stage; you aren't novice editors. Cryptic C62, there are some sources that are not in English; they need language icons, or to have the language parameter filled in the cite journal. I see that has now been done. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 04:01, 28 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Heh. I had never seen Diberri's tool before. Later today I'll scan each of the citations for unusable links, list them here, and either try to correct them or replace them with other sources. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 10:27, 28 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Me neither. It seems very nice, but unfortunately many (most?) chemistry journals are not on Pubmed. --Itub (talk) 10:48, 28 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Note: I just checked and they have more chemistry journals than I expected. Apparently I just have had back luck in the past, and I do use some of the more obscure journals that are not included. --Itub (talk) 11:04, 28 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - I certainly sympathize with Nergaal about the over-emphasis of the formatting of citations; Readers don't really care if we mix 'page' with 'p.', if an author's first name is put before his last or if a web ref is missing an accessdate, etc. Since I contribute mostly by adding prose (hint: by adding real value to readers), I don't count those type of issues as very important. What is very important is completeness, readability, factual accuracy and, pursuant to the last point, the presence of inline citations for figures/numbers, and controversial or surprising points. MoS issues are far lower on my priority list (esp for FARs with bigger issues) and I hope everybody else's here as well. So if you think MoS issues are important, then go ahead and fix them with a light heart (knowing that others don't like to do that). --mav (talk) 22:40, 29 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Our readers might or might not care or notice, but we have in the Elements Project are a whole lot of editors who have been through numerous FACs and FARs and should know the basics and the standards by now, should be able to maintain the articles to standard, and need not be relying on others to explain standard stuff on FARs or to do the work themselves. These things shouldn't keep coming up with experienced FA writers (when a relative newcomer or less experienced FA writer appears to help out on a FAR, it's more understandable to have to dig in and do the work ourselves, but there are a lot of y'all and you should be able to maintain your FAs, or at least not question why your FARs are taking so long if you aren't doing the work). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:27, 4 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Seriously, are we done yet? Thanks to Cryptic, all the issues seem to have been solved. Nergaal (talk) 04:52, 4 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I said earlier I wouldn't mind if it was kept, but I've spent a lot of time on this article already, and don't have time for yet another look; last time I checked, it wasn't ideal, but it was close enough. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:27, 4 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Closing. As far as it goes, Mav is correct that reader could care less about ref formatting etc. But I tend to view it in terms of broken window theory: by paying attention to the small issues you wind up paying attention to everything. I have never audited refs and not found myself also auditing prose and factual accuracy. So I don't think we should throw up our hands and say the MoS doesn't matter. In any case, this has moved to keepish territory so I'll get it out of here. Marskell (talk) 08:35, 5 August 2008 (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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