Wikipedia:Today's featured article/requests/Invisible rail

Invisible rail

This is the archived discussion of the TFAR nomination for the article below. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as Wikipedia talk:Today's featured article/requests). Please do not modify this page.

The result was: scheduled for Wikipedia:Today's featured article/April 1, 2015 by  — Crisco 1492 (talk) 14:31, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

The invisible rail (Habroptila wallacii) is a large flightless rail that is endemic to the island of Halmahera in North Maluku, Indonesia, where it inhabits impenetrable sago swamps adjacent to forests. Its plumage is predominantly dark slate-grey, and the bare skin around its eyes, the long, thick bill and the legs are all bright red. Its call is a low drumming sound which is accompanied by wing-beating. Information on the behaviour of this shy bird, usually shielded by its dense habitat, is limited. Recorded dietary items include sago shoots and insects, and it also swallows small stones to help break up its food. It is apparently monogamous, but little else is known of its courtship behaviour. The only known nest was a shallow bowl in the top of a rotting tree stump that was lined with wood chips and dry leaves. The two young chicks were entirely covered in black down typical of precocial newly hatched rails. The estimated population of 3,500–15,000 birds has a restricted range and is classified as Vulnerable by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). (Full article...)

• Most recent similar article(s): no invisible bird ever ;)
• Main editors: Jimfbleak
• Promoted: 2014
• Reasons for nomination: as discussed with Bencherlite, expanded for April Fool
• Support as nominator. Gerda Arendt (talk) 17:57, 10 February 2015 (UTC)
  • As far as I can find, this was the extent of the discussion; no promises were made, and lots of people tend to have good ideas for 1st April. Bencherlite^Talk 18:15, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

• Possibly the bird would be better (more invisible) without an image on the Main page. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 23:50, 10 February 2015 (UTC)
  • Better yet, use the image on the Behaviour section. With a caption highlighting the bird is supposedly seen feeding on said tree. (a more obtuse caption akin to George Washington or Cock Lane Ghost Fanny scratching would also help the comedy) igordebraga ≠ 14:43, 11 February 2015 (UTC)
• Looks good. I made minor tweaks. - Dank (push to talk) 16:30, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

• Comment aliases. The instructions, against aliases, are probably for people. This bird may be known by some readers only (!) as "Wallace's rail" or "drummer rail", - actually the German name is Trommelralle (drummer rail), - I think it would be helpful to show the other names, - unless we want to stay on the mysterious trip ;)
  • Except you lose the joke, such as it is, about the invisible nature of the bird if you give lots of other names by which it is known. Actually I'd like to see an attempt to write this blurb in an April Fool style, with an alternative image as suggested. At the moment it doesn't particularly strike me as amusing enough for 1st April. Bencherlite^Talk 17:11, 13 February 2015 (UTC)
    • I've skimmed the article, and I'm not sure how this can be rewritten as an April Fool's TFA. - Dank (push to talk) 22:12, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

• I think you can try too hard with these "April fool" jokes, and then they become rather laboured and cease to be funny. Or they amuse a small clique and are incomprehensible to everyone else. Also, I would be dead against a blurb that was primarily written "to be funny", rather than as a synopsis of the article. But I won't be making the choice for April 1st. Brianboulton (talk) 23:20, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

• That sounds right to me. After the April 1st article is selected, let me know if you think it's labored. - Dank (push to talk) 23:31, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

• If we do do this for April Fools, no image, or the mangrove image. Definitely. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 23:39, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

• As for the tongue-in-cheek writing... (work in progress)

Invisible rails are large rails that are found on the island of Halmahera in North Maluku, Indonesia. Located among impenetrable sago swamps adjacent to forests, these rails make a low drumming sound which is accompanied by beating.

But yes, very difficult to rewrite. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 23:42, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

• I would like the sago palm forest but serious blurb, why not? If that's not funny enough it could go any other day, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 23:44, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

• If that's done in jest, the lines about the plumage etc. might also have to go. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 23:56, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

• If you want spice, but still real, use the quote by the birder: "I am solidly confident no European has ever seen this rail alive, for that requires such a degree of toughening and such demands on oneself as I cannot so easily attribute to others. Habroptila is shielded by the awful thorns of the sago swamps... In this thorn wilderness, I walked barefoot and half-naked for weeks." - DYK that the bird attracted more than 10k views on DYK? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 00:09, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

An attempt to add more:

Invisible rails are large rails that are found on the island of Halmahera in North Maluku, Indonesia. Located among impenetrable sago swamps adjacent to forests, these rails make a low drumming sound which is accompanied by beating. The difficulty of seeing the rail means that information on its behaviour is limited. There are few confirmed sightings, to the point famed scientist Gerd Heinrich stated observing the rail required him to "walk barefoot and half-naked for weeks." Nevertheless, locals claim to have found the rail in swamps and grasslands.

igordebraga ≠ 14:30, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

• Support running as a straight ornithology article, with no attempt to be funny; Oppose any version played for laughs where the blurb is intentionally misleading. This make-the-blurb-misleading "tradition" is a legacy of Raul and should have been jettisoned a decade ago; it makes a mockery of genuinely important topics, it's incomprehensible to those in parts of the world which don't observe April Fools (that the stream of complaints it generate every year are always scrubbed from Talk:Main page and the complainants sneered at for not getting the joke, doesn't mean they're not genuine complaints), and it means anything that has genuine date significance for April 1 gets bumped to make way for cack-handed jokes. Yes, DYK and OTD still do this (although ITN doesn't), but "the standards of DYK" is not something that TFA should set as its ambition. – iridescent 21:36, 15 February 2015 (UTC)
  • Most of us seem to be agreed that we don't want to strain to give a spin to the April 1 article. It would help if someone would just write a Featured Article intended as suitable for April 1. - Dank (push to talk) 19:54, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

Look above, this was it, the link is not invisible ;) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 20:07, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

@Dank At a quick skim you have Deadalive, Convention of 1833 and German battleship Tirpitz lined up, all existing FAs with April 1 as their "natural" run date, and all kept off the MP by this annual ritual by Wikipedia's pack of self-appointed resident comedians. – iridescent 20:20, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

(edit conflict with Iridescent) Gerda, there's no point in repeatedly referring to a conversation on my talk page last April as if it's holy writ or is somehow binding on any of the TFA co-ordinators, past or present. In any case, Gerda, you're missing Dank's point. Basically there are three main types of TFA on 1st April - see WP:TFAO for the full list and links (I knew it would come in useful).

• The first is the straight subject done in a "send-up" way (e.g. (? (film), George Washington (inventor), Ima Hogg).
• The next is the unusual subject played straight (e.g. Disco Demolition Night, Museum of Bad Art, Wife selling (English custom)).
• The third is the straight subject done straight, as thought it was any other day of the year; this was done in 2004 and 2005 (Byzantine Empire, Nintendo Entertainment System), before the April Fool's "tradition" started.

The first option is exceptionally hard to do well - "?" only worked in 2013 because we reduced the blurb to one character, and that was the USP. Most of the other suggestions for 1st April in my time as TFA coordinator were decidedly unfunny (see WP:TFANO for the handy links to previous discussions). The trouble with Invisible rail is that it falls between two stools - it's not unusual enough to be in category 2, and it doesn't look as though a blurb can be written in a sufficiently amusing manner to fall into category 1. Besides which, category 1 blurbs (as Iridescent notes) attract more flak.

I notice that Girl Pat (1935 trawler) (a) is a brand-new promotion; (b) has date relevance to 1st April (start of voyage) and (c) has an unusual enough subject matter that it works as category 2 (read it for yourself and you'll see). Brianboulton, what do you think about that for 1st April? Bencherlite^Talk 20:44, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

Two misunderstandings, the second being that 1 April is Crisco's turn. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 21:00, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

And what was my first alleged misunderstanding? As for the second alleged misunderstanding, I am well aware that Crisco is due to be scheduling 1st April (not least from comments made earlier on this page) but as Girl Pat is an article primarily written by Brian, it's only courteous to ask him what he thinks about my suggestion. Bencherlite^Talk 21:14, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

First: I referred to a discussion that Dank seemed not to have seen, not as "promise", "holy wit", "binding", but simply showing that the article was written with the intention. I translated it to German where it appeared in a DYK-like section, not on 1 April because the German name is not funny. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 21:51, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

(conflicted) It may be Crisco's "turn", but that doesn't mean that other co-ordinators aren't able to comment or advise. "Turns" are an informal convenience arranged between the co-ordinators – I don't become invisible and mute at midnight on 31 March. As to Bencherlite's suggestion, the newly-promoted Girl Pat would be a better subject for next year – the 80th anniversary of the whimsical voyage. I wouldn't give it priority this year over other FAs which have genuine date relevance to 1 April. But anything, I believe, would be better than a contrived attempt to to be "amusing". I agree strongly with Iridescent's view expressed above. Frankly I am amazed that so many presumably busy and productive editors can be bothered to spend so much on this trivial topic. Brianboulton (talk) 21:28, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

• As Brian said, we are in this together. It may be my "turn", but if consensus is against having ambiguously or misleadingly written TFA text, then I am bound to follow said consensus, without any regards to my personal opinion. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 23:34, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

• Comment: While I support the idea of jokey April 1 TFAs (Wikipedia could use a bit of shirt-unbuttoning cred), I'm not sure about the use of misleading wording to hype up an otherwise ordinary subject. On the other hand, browsing this list, I'm not sure I can find any better alternatives that aren't victim to the same phenomenon (e.g. Marvel Science Stories - it's funny to imagine radioactive spiders, Spider-Man's Venom-ization, Captain America's time travel, or Iron Man's dubious command of physics passed off as "science" until you realize it's not the same Marvel) - maybe Super Columbine Massacre RPG! if a little darkness is tolerated. Tezero (talk) 23:52, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

• In-jokes among the science fiction fraternity aren't funny to anyone else. I'm reminded of the humour dispensed by my classics master at school: heavy-handed, incomprehensible, embarrassing. How we laughed. Let us please play this one straight. The mention of Columbine in this context is tasteless – frankly, disgusting. Brianboulton (talk) 13:47, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

• Well, gee, I don't think the idea of an "invisible bird" is that funny, either, but I acquiesced because apparently others do. We really have two issues at hand here, and one needs to be resolved first: whether humorous article choices are appropriate for April 1 at all before whether this one is sufficient. Tezero (talk) 14:23, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

• There should be no objection to running the rail article, provided the blurb is not doctored or tweaked to spice it up for the 1 April market. As far as I can see, the blurb at the top of this thread does the job. Brianboulton (talk) 15:01, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

Are contributors aware of Wikipedia:April_Fool's_Main_Page/Featured_Article?? --Dweller (talk) 09:54, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

Hmm, I wasn't. Articles like frog cake (which is apparently only GA) are more in line with what would be acceptable; while the Pixies are one of my favorite alternative rock bands, the blurb proposed for them (and others in its style) could be in violation of the apparent consensus against misleading blurbs. Tezero (talk) 21:22, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

• We still need a TFA. Shame Emu War isn't FA yet. Toledo War is, though. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 03:54, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

Support - interesting reading. Looking forward seeing it at TFA.--BabbaQ (talk) 17:39, 7 March 2015 (UTC)