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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 12:48, 23 April 2008.

Samantha Smith

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Review commentary

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Notified: User:Cmapm, User:PMA, User:Denni, Wikipedia:WikiProject Cold War

This article is in very poor shape for a featured article, probably due to changing standards of featured article criteria. My specific concerns are-

  • Over-abundance of fair use images, many seriously lacking decent rationales. A little bit of work- judging which are absolutely needed and adding appropriate rationales for them- should be enough to fix this.
  • Serious sourcing problems. Though I have no doubt that everything in the article can be referenced to one of the sources that are mentioned, use of footnotes to say where information can be found would be very useful. This would need to be done by someone with access to the books referenced, and would take a while.
  • The prose isn't great, and there are one or two formatting issues.
  • It's also not the longest article in the world, but I can see that would be difficult.

I personally believe that getting this to FA would be difficult, though I think an interested editor would be able to give the article a little love, and turn it into a nice GA. J Milburn (talk) 17:48, 21 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]


I agree with this assesment. I've tried cleaning it up a bit and adding some more inline citations, but I think it needs a lot more work to meet today's FA or GA criteria. Here are some additional suggestions:

Citations Needed

  • Called "America's Youngest Ambassador" in the United States and the "Goodwill Ambassador" should each have sources
  • wrote a letter to Queen Elizabeth II
  • Danish composer Per Nørgård
  • A diamond, a cultivar of tulips and of dahlias, an ocean vessel, and a mountain were named in Smith's honor.
  • The source of the text of the letters should be cited
  • the quoted conversation: "If people are so afraid of him," she asked her mother, "why doesn't someone write a letter asking whether he wants to have a war or not?" Her mother replied, "Why don't you?" should be sourced
  • Smith declared that the Russians were "just like us."

Expansion

  • The 'World Wide Success' Sub section is fairly broad. It could be broken into 1) trip to USSR 2) Media Celebrity 3) Peace Activist.
  • I'm not sure the 'Biography' Section is necessary. The whole artilce is a biography. I would suggest promoting all the sub-sections.

Other

  • 50% of the 'Early Years Section' is actually a history lesson. This doesnt seem to fit. If people think it should be kept, perhaps a 'context' or 'backgrond' section could be added.
  • The tributes section should be re-ordered chronologicaly or by some order of importance. Its pretty random right now.

Hope this helps, Dspark76 (talk) 11:57, 26 February 2008 (UTC) -- I've taken care of a couple of these myself (indicated by strikethrough). - Dspark76 (talk) 00:44, 28 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

NPOV: In searching for references, I've noticed several sources describe Samantha's trip to the USSR as a public relations stunt or critizing the event as Soviet propaganda. The History.com video says president Reagan had similar critism. I think the article could be improved by adding some of this commentary. I've started this process with a reference from The Philadelphia Inquirer, but a few more sources might help. Dspark76 (talk) 22:22, 4 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Good improvements, DSpark. I still think further referencing is going to be a needed for this to look good as an FA. I am also not liking the shorter paragraphs (there is at least one paragraph that is a single short sentence) and the way images are drifting into the references section. I've also fixed a few things myself- remember that references should be formatted as [fact][punctuation][ref1][ref2], no spaces. J Milburn (talk) 09:15, 8 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

FARC commentary

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Suggested FA criteria concerns are referencing (1c) and comprehensiveness (1b). Marskell (talk) 19:09, 16 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comments. This is close and has seen a lot of work, but someone needs to make a final push to get it over the line. I just did a ton of cleanup,[1] but citations are still needed. Editors adding citations should be aware of the errors I found so they aren't repeated: MOS:CAPS#All caps, WP:CITE#Citation styles (do not mix citation and citet, I had to fix them all, they return different styles), inconsistent date formatting and linking, missing publishers, ref placement (see WP:FN), and I think there are still some errors in logical punctuation (see WP:PUNC). I hope someone will do the final work, because this one is close. I also had to prune the external link farm (see WP:EL, WP:NOT, a comprehensive featured article will have little need for external links, as anything worth saying should already be cited in the text). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:27, 31 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. I added some cites and a little historical context, but didn't look at the existing references, though from a glance "February 1984 issue, Disney Channel Magazine" and samanthasmith.info might not meet RS. Ceoil (talk) 20:50, 1 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Had to agree with Dspark76 that this is a biography, so removed the biography section head, reorganised the early life section and inserted a context header fro some clarity. Hope the early life does not seem too short now. Pushed the stamp image back to the right because in most instances I tried, the image was banging down into the citations section and looked really bad, so also added a hard break to avoid it doing that at all. One question would anyone object to cropping the Maine State Museum statue image tighter as there is too much air all around the statue itself that does not add anything to the image context? That would reduce the height by about 20%. Cheers ww2censor (talk) 04:25, 3 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep featured, the changes made to this point have cleaned up the article. I was looking for statements that require further citation and did not find any. The conversation between SS and her mother should be sourced to the book (the website simply quotes it) but this problem is not material. I do not believe anyone has raised a significant criticism on the issue of comprehensiveness. Christopher Parham (talk) 07:19, 3 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment/Nearly there, I agree that a few refs is holding this back. The prose has been improved to a point where it is probably better within the realm of FA status. It just needs some time to fully source the Early life and Context sections. Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 07:26, 8 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I spent an hour searching a week back and also couldn't find any. From a book maybe? I want to close this one. It's a neat little FA but that section needs a source. Marskell (talk) 18:55, 13 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I also spent an hour; this is a tough one. If we delete the uncited material, I'm not sure we have a comprehensive, FA-worthy article. Don't know what to do. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:13, 13 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
One of the books on Sam must have the information - it doesn't feel like a lie - and in one of the press interviews on samanthasmith.info, Sam mentions getting "just a form letter" from Buck Palace when she wrote to the Queen in '77. Paul Melville Austin (talk) 09:17, 14 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Then someone has to find those books; this is what happens when an article isn't correctly cited and then the original editors abandon ship. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:37, 14 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I'm sorry but I can't help for a while as I am on a wikibreak until May 1. Hope it makes it in the meantime. ww2censor (talk) 15:40, 14 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment I don't think the early life detail is important; what activities she liked and where he mother worked are relatively trivial and can be cut, I think. The "context" section is a little underdeveloped yet, doesn't fully convey the public tensions that lead to her fame, and I'd like to see the lead mention that she was used for propaganda by both sides. It's is very close though. Ceoil (talk) 19:47, 14 April 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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