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This page is for the review and improvement of featured articles (FAs) that may no longer meet the featured article criteria. FAs are held to the current standards regardless of when they were promoted.

There are three requisite stages in the process, to which all users are welcome to contribute.

1. Raise issues at the article's talk page

  • In this step, concerned editors attempt to directly resolve issues with the existing community of article editors, and to informally improve the article. Concerned editors should give article watchers two to three weeks to respond to concerns before nominating the article for Featured article review. During this step, articles are not yet listed on this page (but they can be added to Wikipedia:Featured article review/notices given, and removed from there once posted here).

2. Featured article review (FAR)

  • In this step, possible improvements are discussed without declarations of "keep" or "delist". The aim is to improve articles rather than to demote them. Nominators must specify the featured article criteria that are at issue and should propose remedies. The ideal review would address the issues raised and close with no change in status.
  • Reviews can improve articles in various ways: articles may need updating, formatting, and general copyediting. More complex issues, such as a failure to meet current standards of prose, comprehensiveness, factual accuracy, and neutrality, may also be addressed.
  • The featured article review coordinators—Nikkimaria, Casliber, and DrKay—determine either that there is consensus to close during this second stage, or that there is insufficient consensus to do so and so therefore the nomination should be moved to the third stage.

3. Featured article removal candidate (FARC)

  • An article is never listed as a removal candidate without first undergoing a review. In this third stage, participants may declare "keep" or "delist", supported by substantive comments, and further time is provided to overcome deficiencies.
  • Reviewers who declare "delist" should be prepared to return towards the end of the process to strike out their objections if they have been addressed.
  • The featured article review coordinators determine whether there is consensus for a change in the status of a nomination, and close the listing accordingly.

The FAR and FARC stages typically last two to three weeks, or longer where changes are ongoing and it seems useful to continue the process. Nominations are moved from the review period to the removal list, unless it is very clear that editors feel the article is within criteria. Given that extensions are always granted on request, as long as the article is receiving attention, editors should not be alarmed by an article moving from review to the removal candidates' list.

To contact the FAR coordinators, please leave a message on the FAR talk page, or use the {{@FAR}} notification template elsewhere.

Urgent reviews are listed here. Older reviews are stored in the archive.

Table of Contents – This page: Purge cache, Checklinks, Check redirects, Dablinks

Featured content:

Featured article candidates (FAC):

Featured article review (FAR):

Today's featured article (TFA):

Featured article tools:

Nominating an article for FAR

The number of FARs that can be placed on the page is limited as follows:

  1. No more than one nomination per week by the same nominator.
  2. No more than five nominations by the same nominator on the page at one time, unless permission for more is given by a FAR coordinator.

Nominators are strongly encouraged to assist in the process of improvement; they should not nominate articles that are featured on the main page (or have been featured there in the previous three days) and should avoid segmenting review pages. Three to six months is regarded as the minimum time between promotion and nomination here, unless there are extenuating circumstances such as a radical change in article content.

  1. Before nomination, raise issues at talk page of the article. Attempt to directly resolve issues with the existing community of article editors, and to informally improve the article over at least a two-week period. Articles in this step are not listed on this page.
  2. Place {{subst:FAR}} at the top of the talk page of the nominated article. Write "FAR listing" in the edit summary box. Click on "Publish changes".
  3. From the FAR template, click on the red "initiate the review" link. You will see pre-loaded information; please leave that text.
  4. Below the preloaded title, write which users and projects you'll notify (see step 6 below), and your reason(s) for nominating the article, specifying the FA criterion/criteria that are at issue, then click on "Publish changes".
  5. Click here, and place your nomination at the top of the list of nominated articles, {{Wikipedia:Featured article review/name of nominated article/archiveN}}, filling in the exact name of the nominated article and the archive number N. Click on "Publish changes".
  6. Notify relevant parties by adding {{subst:FARMessage|ArticleName|alt=FAR subpage}} ~~~~ (for example, {{subst:FARMessage|Superman|alt=Superman/archive1}} ~~~~) to relevant talk pages (insert article name); note that the template does not automatically create the talkpage section header.
    Relevant parties include
    • main contributors to the article (identifiable through XTools),
    • the editor(s) who originally nominated the article for Featured Article status (identifiable through the Featured Article Candidate link in the Article Milestones), and
    • any relevant WikiProjects (identifiable through the talk page banners, but there may be other Projects that should be notified).
    The Notified:message at the top of the FAR should indicate who you have notified and include a link with the date of the pre-notification given on article talk.

Featured article reviews

[edit]

Buildings and architecture of Bristol

[edit]
Notified: Rodw, Iifar, WP Bristol, WP Architecture, WP England, WP UK geography, WP Historic sites, noticed 2025-05-20

I do not believe that this 2007 FA promotion is up to the modern sourcing expectations. There is some uncited text, and a couple of the web sources are unlikely to be high-quality RS (Spoonster Spouts and the bristolhistory tripod.com source). What concerns me more is the number of instances where the text is not directly supported by the cited sources. For instance, "To support the growing population, public service buildings such as the Beaufort Hospital (now Glenside), schools such as Clifton College and public houses such as the Mauretania Public House were constructed" is cited to a source that does not mention the Beaufort Hospital or the Clifton College. Or, " Characterised by complicated polychrome brick and decorative arches, this style was used in the construction of factories, warehouses and municipal buildings built in the Victorian era" is followed by a bunch of sources discussing the architecture of various buildings, but not summarizing the Bristol Byzantine style or its importance. This attempt at supporting a general statement by compilation of examples that don't really add together to the general statement is found in multiple places throughout the article. Hog Farm Talk 02:13, 21 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Looks like it needs some sourcing and copy editing as well as alt text like every other FA from the time. If no one else bothers while I'm working on Manchester I'll do the fixes after I've done that. For now it's just a light ce. JacobTheRox(talk | contributions) 22:30, 21 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Very happy to have a look at the sourcing issues. It should be a relatively simple job to replace those which are of concern. Andrew Foyle's Bristol Pevsner City Guide appears lightly used, and the 2011 revised Somerset: North and Bristol Pevsner not at all, unless I've missed it. That said, the citation formatting looks very odd to me. As an example, the first Historic England cite is given as "<ref name="4goL7" />". In the References section, this becomes "<ref name="4goL7">{{cite web|title=Church of St James |work=historicengland.org.uk |url=https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1282067 |access-date=25 October 2006 |publisher=Historic England }}</ref>". I completely get that this approach may have been appropriate in 2007, but in 2025, I would expect to see this; <ref>{{NHLE|num=1282067|desc=Church of St James Priory|grade=I|access-date=23 September 2025}}</ref>. I could take on the, rather laborious, task of changing them, but am a bit reluctant to do so without Rodw indicating they're ok with it. The more difficult bit is the Source/Content integrity issue that Hog Farm raises. Perhaps if I look out for them as I go through the sourcing, HF could then flag any others about which they still have concerns? KJP1 (talk) 08:32, 23 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Update

  • Have replaced the weaker sources x 3;
  • Have dealt with the 5 {cn} tags through adding cites/re-ordering;
  • Have ensured that every para. ends with a cite;
  • Done a bit more copy-editing.

I think that leaves the alt. text / the source integrity questions and the referencing system used. How to address these? KJP1 (talk) 11:43, 23 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I can take a further look this weekend. My impression was that the issues seemed limited to a few sections. Hog Farm Talk 01:46, 24 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Bryce Canyon National Park

[edit]
Notified: Mav, WikiProject Geology, WikiProject Protected areas, WikiProject United States

I am nominating this featured article for review because there are numerous uncited statements including some tagged with "citation needed" since 2024. Z1720 (talk) 16:31, 1 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Z1720: If you could mark the uncited statements with {{cn}}, I will fix as many as I can. — hike395 (talk) 18:42, 1 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Hike395: Done. Z1720 (talk) 18:53, 1 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Z1720: Fixed all of the {{cn}}, either by adding refs or trimming unsupported material. What else needs to be done? — hike395 (talk) 00:38, 2 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Hike395: Citation concerns seem mostly resolved. The next step is to copyedit the article: there is some WP:PROMO text that has been added over time and prose that is awkwardly written. I have started removing some, but others might have more patience and interest in completing this task. Z1720 (talk) 18:57, 6 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I have been on wikibreak for a bit, but will get back to this. — hike395 (talk) 10:36, 23 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Enzyme kinetics

[edit]
Notified: TimVickers, WikiProject Molecular Biology/Biophysics, WikiProject Molecular Biology. Noticed: 2020-12-13, 2025-08-10

I am nominating this featured article for review because there is lots of uncited text, including entire sections. Z1720 (talk) 15:14, 25 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I have a textbook that covers much of the content, (* Ochs, Raymond S. (October 2012). Biochemistry. Burlington, Mass: Jones & Bartlett Publishers. ISBN 978-1-4496-6137-3.). I'll see how far (no pun intended) I get with it. Graham Beards (talk) 16:16, 25 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Most of this is standard textbook stuff dating back 50-100 years. You don't need to cite stuff like that. Just put a list of ten recent biochemistry textbooks in the bibliography. Genome42 (talk) 14:46, 26 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
We do. It's a requirement, especially of a Featured Article, that it adheres to Wikipedia:Verifiability. Traditionally, we like to see a citation at least after each section of an article. Graham Beards (talk) 15:45, 26 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Coeliac disease

[edit]
Notified: Jfdwolff, WikiProject Medicine, 2022-12-03 2025-07-05

I am nominating this featured article for review because of numerous findings. There is not much post-2020 sources in the article, and this might need to be updated. There is a yellow "too technical" banner at the top of "Immune Therapy". The "Society and culture" section is filled with indiscriminate information from some religions, but I think this section is too much detail for this article and can be removed. "Research directions" needs to be updated, better formatted, and checked to ensure promotional cruft is removed. There are some uncited statements in the article. Z1720 (talk) 17:34, 20 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Ajpolino, Colin, Graham Beards, and IntentionallyDense: this article has good bones and is probably saveable. (Jfdwolff is already notified.) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:08, 20 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I saw the note at WT:MED. On the subject of indiscriminate information from some religions, I don't agree. This is relevant to a lot of the people affected by gluten intolerance (more than 25% of the people in the world belong to one of those religions, and the disease is over-represented in many countries with more Christians), and it is a serious religious issue for some of them (#til that Catholic priests are require to eat gluten). This is a subject of ongoing interest to healthcare practitioners (my favorite, though much too old to cite, is a paper in the NEJM that tried to estimate just how much gluten would actually be consumed in Catholic and Anglican communion rites) and something that dieticians ask about. We have reliable sources saying that "cultural and spiritual beliefs may impact" patient compliance with a gluten-free diet, giving Catholic communion rules as an example.
There are other things I might consider adding to the ==Society and culture== section, such as:
  • changes to restaurant menus and processes
  • how incarcerated/institutionalized people deal with this
  • popularity of a gluten-free diet among people who don't have celiac
  • cost and unhealthfulness of gluten-free substitutes (e.g., gluten-free bread, which is typically ultraprocessed)
but I do not recommend removing the content about religions. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:17, 20 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@WhatamIdoing: Concerning the religions: why is Christianity and Judaism included in this section, but not other religions? If religions were to remain, I would like other religious considerations to be added, if able. The article should be proportional to the scholarly research, but the exclusion of other religions is something to be resolved. Your bulleted list are excellent additions to this section, but I am also worried about WP:TOOBIG so if the section becomes large, it might be a good idea to WP:SPINOUT. Considering that the article is already at over 7,000 words, that might be something to consider sooner rather than later. Z1720 (talk) 21:27, 20 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Do you know of any other religions that require their adherents to consume gluten? If there are more, then they should be included. But assuming these actually are the only two, then others shouldn't be mentioned, because it would be WP:OFFTOPIC and WP:UNDUE to mention any religions that have nothing at all to do with the subject of the article. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:47, 21 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think the burden of proof is on those who think that other religions need to be discussed as well. I am personally not aware of particular religious considerations outside the ones already mentioned. From the Jewish perspective (with which I am most familiar), there is lively debate whether oat matzo can be used for the Passover seder or not in people with coeliac disease. Happy to find a recent secondary source. JFW | T@lk 08:54, 24 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Today I learnt about the article List of foods with religious symbolism. This might help. JFW | T@lk 08:57, 24 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@WhatamIdoing: perhaps you'd have the time and interest to revamp the Society and culture section? I can commit to updating at least a section or two. Not sure that'll get us all the way to meeting the FAC criteria, but at least it'll improve the article. At a glance it does look like it could use some TLC. Ajpolino (talk) 22:32, 24 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Let me see if I can find any good sources over the next couple of days. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:09, 26 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I've left some unfinished notes in User:WhatamIdoing/Sandbox 3, which anyone is welcome to use. Most of these sources can support only weaker claims, but some of them might be useful as examples. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:51, 17 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Also going to add that the societal aspects of a medical topic are often the hardest to find information about. This means that not all perspectives will be covered due to lack of sources (and as WAID mentioned, relevancy). If you're looking for an example of this, Heartburn recently passed as a FA despite having a very European focused history section (due to lack of sources exploring the history elsewhere). IntentionallyDense (Contribs) 18:28, 25 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Above it was asked if there were sources about other religions and Coeliac. I searched for sources and found a couple mentions about Islam and IBS where coeliac is mentioned, but it might be hard to determine which medical condition the source is referring to.

However, the search brought up a different but slightly related concern: the "Treatment" section mentions how patients can have difficulty adhering to a gluten-free diet, but there's not much detail. Looking at some sources, I see papers discussing struggles that different cultural groups have with this adherence. Perhaps adding a paragraph to the article in "Diet" about patient difficulties adhering to the diet is warranted. Some potential sources:

  1. "Factors relating to compliance with a gluten-free diet in patients with coeliac disease: comparison of white Caucasian and South Asian patients" in Science Direct (available through WP:LIBRARY)
  2. "Experiences of ethnic minority patients who are living with a primary chronic bowel condition: a systematic scoping review with narrative synthesis" in Springer (available through WP:LIBRARY)
  3. "Coeliac disease in Caucasian and South Asian patients in the North West of England" [1]
  4. "Immunogenetics of Celiac Disease: A Focus on Arab Countries" [2] Unfortunately, I don't know how to get access quickly to this source, so I am basing its potential use on what I can gather from the abstract, knowing that access to the entire source will be needed before it can be used in the article.
  • "Do social inequalities exist in terms of the prevention, diagnosis, treatment, control and monitoring of diabetes? A systematic review." available through WP:LIBRARY, contains a literature review, with several sources listing the groups that were studied, with some entries including race, cultural groups and religion.

Some of these sources also mention religion (Christianity, Muslim and Hindu mostly) though some references are only about the demographics of study participants. Unfortunately, I am busy in real life over the next few days so it will be difficult for me to continue this search. I also am unfamiliar with this topic area, so I am hesitant to BEBOLD in a FA and add info without getting it checked by a more experienced editor first. Feel free to ping me if there's a way I can help, and I will try to bring more ideas if I get a chance to search for more sources. Z1720 (talk) 03:48, 25 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'm numbering your sources above, so I can say:
  1. PMID 15380905 is a primary source that fails WP:MEDDATE (2004). It also doesn't support a claim that other religions celiac compliance. NB that this paper believes that being Muslim, Sikh, or Hindu is an "ethnicity" rather than a "religion".
  2. PMID 34407752 is a 2021 scoping review that says "None of the papers addressing...coeliac disease reported data addressing religious influence". The religious content in that paper focuses on the difficulty that Muslims with Inflammatory bowel disease have in maintaining ritual purity.
  3. PMID 30891843 is a primary source and doesn't say anything about religion. It speculates that immigrants from South Asia to the UK probably experience language barriers in their medical care.
  4. PMID 31659945 is a review in a mid-range journal and doesn't say anything about religion or about dietary compliance. (It's about which gene variants are more common in which parts of the world.)
In short, I wouldn't recommend any of them. None of these are relevant to the question raised at the start about religion, and on the question about the "struggles that different cultural groups have with this adherence", the struggle is probably not really cultural in nature. It's probably about language barriers/education, poverty, and at some level whether you "believe in" your celiac diagnosis. If you try to follow a gluten-free diet and feel no better, then a person who "believes in" their diagnosis will double-check their diet plan and probably discover some hidden gluten sources (soy sauce, beer, deli meat...), but a person who doesn't will say "See? It doesn't matter what I eat. This gluten thing is wrong".
There might be some cultural factors (e.g., the difficulty of rejecting an offer of hospitality varies by culture) but those won't be unique to celiac (e.g., if you feel awkward saying 'no, thank you' to an offered biscuit because of celiac, you'd feel equally awkward saying 'no, thank you' to food that could trigger a non-celiac food allergy, or refusing a cup of coffee if it sets off your migraines, etc.). WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:08, 26 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Could the article benefit from having a Classification section (see WP:MEDORDER)? The lead says it is an autoimmune disease, but info about that is spread throughout various sections, and several of the recent reviews below contain information about disease classification. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:51, 17 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The sentence about spelling in an oddly placed one-sentence section could be better incorporated by using a section called Classification and terminology as at dementia with Lewy bodies. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:54, 17 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Old and primary sources in the Research directions section still need work. Information dated to more than five years should have been covered in newer reviews by now, and primary sources may be UNDUE. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:58, 17 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Why is there no Prognosis section? (Eg PMID 35815828 and PMID 36555205) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:06, 17 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Why is there no Differential diagnosis section? Eg, irritable bowel, etc.

Recent reviews that should be contemplated:

  • PMID 35691302 2022 Lancet
  • PMID 36067801 2023 on pathogenesis and also gives info for Classification
  • PMID 32950520 (we use Lebwohl 2015, this is 2021, should be checked for updates)

Checking those at least should reveal if more updates are needed. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:17, 17 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

MOS:NUMRANGE has changed since this article was written: work needed. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:27, 17 August 2025 (UTC) I think I got all of these. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:20, 17 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Dated primary sources at "These factors may just influence the timing of onset.[68]" Work is needed, so I will probably switch to the article talk page for continued review. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:29, 17 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  • Could we get an update on status here? Nikkimaria (talk) 15:15, 20 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Sure thing. I've done a significant amount of work to the article. So far I'm close to done with the symptoms, causes, and mechanisms sections which just leaves diagnosis, screening, treatment, epidemiology, and research directions. Some of these shouldn't take me as long but I do predict that the diagnosis and treatment sections will take me at least a week each as this is huge topic area and my process is quite thorough. Currently Colin is giving some feedback on wording and then I will most likely gets some additional input regarding technical stuff.
    I'm also in university right now and working so this is understandably not my main priority but I do feel that I have a pretty good grip on the recent literature and have no doubt that realistically this article can be brought up to FA status again it just might take some time. If I had to guess I would say another 4 weeks or so but that depends on others involvement. IntentionallyDense (Contribs) 17:34, 20 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Space Invaders

[edit]
Notified: Guyinblack25, WikiProject Video games, WikiProject Science Fiction, WikiProject Japan Noticed: 2021-04-07 2025-05-17

I am nominating this featured article for review because the later parts of the article have small, one-or-two sentence paragraphs that should be reformatted better, and the "Remakes and sequels" section is quite long and should either be summarised more effectively or broken up with headings. The game's reception and rankings sections suffer from the "X says Y" pattern. There are unreliable sources like "Discogs" used in the article and some uncited statements. An orange "irrelevant references to pop culture" banner is at the top of "In popular culture" Z1720 (talk) 02:19, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The article has become quite crufty over the years, but I think it's salvageable. It will take time though, as my free time has been drying up. As always, any help (especially with copy editing) would be appreciated.
Regarding a series article, I don't think there's enough content in reliable sources to warrant one; I think it would be too derivative of the original game article. Maybe there have been new developments during my retirement, but except for a few special reimaginings/crossovers, the basic premise and gameplay of all the sequels are very similar; the later versions mainly just add a new twist or gimmick. So much so that the list of games will tell you the relevant information. Happy to be proven wrong if the reliable sources are there though. (Guyinblack25 talk 04:49, 16 June 2025 (UTC))[reply]
There's SIGCOV of the entire series here, the article goes indepth about the entire series and not just the first game. Some more here, albeit the same publication. However, there is also SIGCOV of the series here as well. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 05:43, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for those; they are new to me and will help with the clean up. However, they are quite similar in scope/breadth to the other coverage I saw when I first researched the game for its GAN and FAC back in 2008. The coverage—about development, reception, impact, and legacy—always leans heavy towards the original game. Occasionally there's full coverage that focuses on a specific port or remake (e.g., Space Invaders (Atari 2600 video game), Space Invaders DX, and Space Invaders Infinity Gene), but the sequels and remakes are mostly just mentioned that they exist with a brief description of how they were slightly different from the original. There's a reason why of the dozens of releases, very few have Wikipedia articles. While the original was certainly groundbreaking, the series as a whole isn't very deep compared to most other series. That's why List of Space Invaders video games was created, to give the many non-notable sequels and remakes a home. (Guyinblack25 talk 22:22, 16 June 2025 (UTC))[reply]
I continue to believe the series is independently notable of the first game, and not just as a list. I wouldn't be surprised if many of the series' games were notable and just don't have articles due to a lack of interest from editors. One example? Super Space Invaders, which got many, many reviews yet somehow still lacks an article. Space Invaders Evolution is also notable, but apparently ignored probably because most of the reviews are in print. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 05:53, 17 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that a few more articles about the individual games could likely be created. However, a few observations about the coverage I've seen:
  • Reception content likely exists for more of the games, but development information is rarely there or at best sparse. (Not a reason to not create individual articles, but this is a hindrance for a comprehensive series article.)
  • Among the reliable sources, the focus is typically on the original game rather than discussing the series as a whole, which is understandable because the gameplay is very basic (albeit timeless), so the games in the series lacks the depth of other video games that came later. And Taito has leaned into the basic gameplay design very successfully over the decades, but aside from a few exceptions, it did not deviate far from the basic design.
  • Similar to the above point, coverage of the impact and legacy focuses almost exclusively on the original's impact. Maybe the authors used the title of original interchangeably with the series title, but so many examples (Invader's graffiti art, media parodies, inspired music, etc.) very clearly draw from the original.
  • In short, a series article would read too much like an article about the original, but with the information reordered differently in a series format. I.e., it would not add much new information.
Again, happy to be proven wrong if the reliable sources are there for the series as a whole, but as of now, I don't see the coverage being there. Maybe I'll change my tune if I come across sufficient sourcing while cleaning up this article. (Guyinblack25 talk 13:29, 17 June 2025 (UTC))[reply]
@Zxcvbnm: After further research, I have to admit that my stance has changed some. I believe a series article could be possible; although I still question how much new context and info it would provide. I think the development history of other titles in the series is there (especially after reading Andrzejbanas' work on the Atari ports), albeit slim for some of the less popular titles. I still have reservations because from what I can tell the legacy would still lean heavy on the original's legacy. A few other titles had their own unique bits of legacy, but they mostly pale in comparison to the original's. I do see the argument that the prolonged legacy, especially for things decades later, could be attributed to the series as a whole. But I've seen only a few sources that could be interpreted at best as ambiguous; many clearly reference the original. Again happy to be proven wrong, but just thought you'd like to know that I'm not opposed to it anymore. (Guyinblack25 talk 17:00, 30 July 2025 (UTC))[reply]
I think it's unfair to say that simply because the original was a hyper-mega-hit, the other games in the franchise are somehow unpopular and unimpactful. Almost nothing will ever reach the height of popularity that the original Space Invaders reached - it's basically part of the Cosmic Microwave Background of video games as a whole. But then there's stuff like Space Invaders Extreme and Infinity Gene that could certainly be considered critical and commercial successes on their own, at least as much as any other video game. We shouldn't let the success of the original Space Invaders overshadow the multimillion dollar franchise that came afterwards and certain is still very big business for Taito. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 20:06, 30 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
They are not at all unpopular or unimpactful. It's just as you put it, the original reached an unparalleled level that few other games will reach ever again. And the coverage in reliable sources reflects that, which is why I have the stance I do because the reliable sources dictate what goes in the articles. I was proven wrong before, and I acknowledge the possibility that I could be wrong again if there are reliable sources out there. I simply have not come across them in my research, which I think has been pretty thorough, but I admit has not an exhaustive search. Regardless, I do not oppose a series article anymore. I just have don't have high expectations for it and caution against leaning too much on content from the original's article. (Guyinblack25 talk 21:27, 30 July 2025 (UTC))[reply]
  • Comment - there's still much to do, but I think the article has moved along far enough that others can see what it will look like after it's cleaned up. Any feedback on the changes thus far? Any suggestions for future edits? If not, I'm moving forward with mental road map I have. (Guyinblack25 talk 04:08, 27 June 2025 (UTC))[reply]
    I think the article has improved dramatically, but I'm not sure if it would still be at featured status. The retrospective reception section is relatively weak, just being listed in several "best of" lists. While we do have separate articles for the Atari 2600 and Atari 8-bit ports, we don't have any reviews for the countless other ports either, which should probably be here. It still has the banner tag for overt pop culture references, but I'm not really seeing how its that overt at the moment from a quick glance. Andrzejbanas (talk) 17:18, 7 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Yea, it's definitely not FA level yet. The Retrospective section does still have a ways to go. All I've done so far is rename the old Ranking section and moved it into the Reception section. A full review of the sources and rewrite of the content is needed. Same with the Cultural impact section. So far I've only done trimming and minimal copy editing.
    That's a good point about the other ports. I'm not sure how they should be handled. Any help digging up reviews for the ports would be appreciated. After seeing the sources, we can see how to proceed. (Guyinblack25 talk 23:11, 8 July 2025 (UTC))[reply]
    I'm glad we're on the same page. You've done a great job of working at the article regardless! I'll see if I can find time to get some reviews of the ports in. Andrzejbanas (talk) 12:26, 9 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Update Checking in again. Here's the mental road map I've been working from and the current progress.

  • Gameplay - in a good place
  • Develop - in a good place
  • Release - in a good place (Not needed, but would be nice: if anyone has a copy of They Create Worlds: The Story of the People and Companies That Shaped the Video Game Industry, Vol. I: 1971-1982 by Alexander Smith, this section could be expanded with some production/manufacturing details. The only preview I found doesn't provide page numbers.)
  • Reception - needs to be evaluated. need to check sources and possibly needs a copy edit
    • Retrospective - needs a complete rewrite and possibly expansion
  • Legacy
    • Remakes and sequels - needs a copy edit and maybe some expansion or clarification. Just started working on this section and it seems a little out of focus.
    • Industry impact - need to review for flow and manual of style consistency
    • In media - in a good place
    • Cultural impact
      • would like a better source about the Japanese PTA sentence.
      • would like a better source about the "Space Invaders elbow"
      • orphan sentences - not sure where to add the Space Invaders injuries and the Highways England safety campaign.
      • need to review and copy edit the art paragraph

Any suggestions, feedback, and help would be appreciated. (Guyinblack25 talk 04:55, 18 July 2025 (UTC))[reply]

I think the Cultural impact section is in a good place now. I rewrote the "Space Invaders elbow" to attribute the source for better context and combined the two orphan parts into a paragraph. It mainly needs a good review/copy edit for grammar and review at this point.
Regarding Japanese PTA trying to ban the game, I'm hesitant to keep this for the following reasons:
  • I couldn't find another reliable source to support the claim (in English at least). All mentions I found were on non-reliable sources that clearly had copied an older version of the Wikipedia article. Maybe there's a Japanese source, but my Japanese isn't good enough to do a proper search.
  • The source stated in the sentence attributed here that the Japanese government had to increase production because the game essentially caused a shortage, which looks to be debunked as an urban legend now. It sounds like the writer was trying to hype up with game and didn't verify the statements (my assumption though).
  • I think the paragraph already gets the point across that there were several efforts to ban/restrict the game. So the article isn't any less without this statement.
Thoughts or any objection to removing it? (Guyinblack25 talk 18:11, 19 July 2025 (UTC))[reply]
Are there any sources that doubt this claim? I have some making-of for this article I might be able to include. Gotta love it when articles just reiterate wikipedia though. Going to get worse as published work just gets AI to write their articles for them. . . Andrzejbanas (talk) 15:40, 31 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It's the only source I've seen to make the claim. At least with "Space Invaders elbow", there's a third party author to attribute to the statement and the New England Journal of Medicine article to give some credence. I searched for something to corroborate the Japanese PTA statement (albeit mainly in English sources) and came across nothing. Literally the only mentions I found were blatant copies of the Wikipedia article; nothing else from even unreliable sources. So that coupled with the rationale about the coin urban myth, I removed it because the article isn't any less without it. There's already a whole paragraph about people using the game to campaign for legislation against video games. If someone can find maybe a reliable Japanese source, it would be great to add it back in. (Guyinblack25 talk 20:17, 2 August 2025 (UTC))[reply]

My free time to edit is quickly disappearing. I think the article is very close to finish line, but I want to get feedback on any outstanding items others see. I want to see how much more is needed to wrap this up. Also, if anyone can help with copy editing or other clean up, it would be greatly appreciated. (Guyinblack25 talk 04:38, 15 August 2025 (UTC))[reply]

I think you've basically addressed most of the material I've suggested. I think the previous issues with the article have been addressed to have it retain its FA standard. I can try to give it an overview soon, but from a glance, I'm seeing an article that should stand as an FA. Andrzejbanas (talk) 13:48, 19 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I did one last push of clean up. I think the article is about 99% done now. A few citations need a bit of clean up, but the prose and content is in a good place now. Regardless, I'm spent and have little free time to do much more.
@Z1720: since you opened the FAR, can you weigh in? (Guyinblack25 talk 01:53, 30 August 2025 (UTC))[reply]
  • @Guyinblack25: Sorry for the delayed response. Citation concerns are resolved. I suggest using the New Yorker source in "Further reading" for inline citations or remove it if it is not usable in the article. There is a lot of "X says Y" in the article and attribution of what reporters say: If multiple sources state similar ideas, these attributions might not be necessary and instead the information can be merged together and summarised more effectively. See WP:RECEPTION for ideas on how to do this. Z1720 (talk) 17:02, 1 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Z1720: After reading the essay, I'm not sure what else can be done. While I don't claim to be the best writer, I feel I've applied many of the suggestions already through the course of the clean up. For example:
  • Sections and paragraphs are organized into themes.
  • Summaries are used throughout much of the article, especially as the first and main idea of paragraphs. Specific and varied details with attribution follow as supporting evidence.
  • Variants of the sentence structure "A said B" are used.
  • The sentence length is varied to reduce monotony.
Aside from simply removing content, maybe another set of eyes can copy edit it further.
Regarding The New Yorker link in "Further reading", it does have a few pieces of development and impact information not already in the article. I can try to integrate it later this week. (Guyinblack25 talk 19:48, 1 September 2025 (UTC))[reply]
  • @Guyinblack25: There are many sections that have this pattern of writing, such as "Reception", "Retrospective", "Industry impact". The article doesn't need a quote from every reviewer about their opinion on the game. Rather, if multiple reviews have the same perspective, they can be combined together and explained in prose. This will also help reduce the length of some very large paragraphs and sections so that it is easier for the reader to read. Readers are more likely to care about what the reception of the game is than they are to want to read every individual opinion. Z1720 (talk) 20:16, 1 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Z1720: I appreciate your perspective on this. However, you said that already as did the essay you linked. After being immersed in sources and the article for the past two and half months, I simply do not have a fresh enough perspective to see the details to the general statements you are saying, regardless of how obvious it may be to you. If you'd like to wait longer for me to put some distance between myself and the subject, I can revisit the article later. If someone else can copy edit the article further, I'm sure they could finish it up sooner. If neither of those are feasible, then perhaps it's time to move forward to FA removal. (Guyinblack25 talk 20:53, 1 September 2025 (UTC))[reply]
@Guyinblack25: I don't think this article needs to have its FA status removed as everything seems cited and improved: the article just needs some improvements to tighten up the language and reduce the large sections a little bit. I'm fine with keeping this open for a couple days or weeks to help give perspective or to see if other editors want to do a copyedit. Feel free to ping me again if this is ready for a re-review. Z1720 (talk) 21:56, 1 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Bæddel and bædling

[edit]
Notified: JnpoJuwan, Queen of Hearts , UndercoverClassicist, Ælfgar, Asarlaí, WikiProject Linguistics, WikiProject LGBTQ+ studies

A number of editors have raised various concerns with this article and suggested that its FA status is inappropriate. This has led to repeated back and forth debates on the talk page over a variety of elements (hinging on whether the article is overrepresenting queer sociological sources, underrepresenting linguistic sources, and if it accurately summarizes the positions of some linguists and the OED), with the page itself in a sort of stalemate due to a lack of consensus either way. As the original creator of the article, I'd rather this get reevaluated for FA status in light of these concerns rather than contribute to a whole lot of wasted editor time on the prolonged debate. Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 23:50, 3 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  • I'm not very comfortable with "voting" to deslist something, but I have to say that I do not at all understand why Bloodofox's additions to the article were removed. I also agree with several editors on the talk page that some of this seems like an attempt by a few writers to reinterpet what was probably just insults (slurs) towards effeminate males ("not real men") into something resembling modern gender identities.★Trekker (talk) 22:48, 4 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Hey, StarTrekker. Historical linguist Anthony Liberman says the terms meant hermaphrodite (which is apparently offensive now and people use "intersex"), which I would say supports the "sex" aspect. The article prominently includes this view (as the first definition in the lead and main body). The hypothesis about the connection to gender are supported by 5 scholars. Would you support escalating the dispute—e.g., an RFC regarding whether the 5 sources stating this are biased activist sources to excise them; or a DRN case? I hope you understand my perspective, which is essentially that there are strong opinions on both sides causing a stalemate, and that escalating could be the best (or only?) way to get consensus. (If the concern is that a cabal of editors is blocking an editor from making improvements, I believe this belongs at ANI, but as this is FAR I want to focus on content here.) — ImaginesTigers (talk) 08:14, 6 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not familiar enough with this subject, so I'm going to refrain from trying to get too involved in trying to change the article, I was more so making a comment about current state of modern research on LGBTQ topics. I'm not accusing anyone of being part of a cabal, certainly, I think all editors here are acting in good faith.★Trekker (talk) 23:41, 6 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'd suggest that any escalating should be done by an editor who feels that there is a problem with the current composition of the article, as the first step would be to make the case that this is so. UndercoverClassicist T·C 08:29, 6 June 2025 (UTC) (In light of edits to the above, this is no longer relevant) UndercoverClassicist T·C 09:03, 6 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I understand that. If StarTrekker agrees that the sources are biased, for example, then I wanted to suggest what remedies I believe can move that discussion forward (RFC, DRN). StarTrekker said they don't like voting for de-listing, and (to further that) I don't feel de-listing resolves the dispute. People will still disagree even if there is no star on the article. RFC, DRN, RSN or ANI offer some movement forward (in my view, FAR doesn't—you can't discuss fixing a problem if editors don't agree that there is one). I'm hoping to understand StarTrekker's concerns to inform what venue might be appropriate. — ImaginesTigers (talk) 08:48, 6 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delist but a vote shouldn't be necessary: the fact that at least one core source was falsified should be enought for a delisting and thorough review. I have demonstrated that nobody did a proper source check before passing this. That alone is reason to delist it: that is simply unacceptable. Consider that both the editor who primarily wrote the article and the FA reviews who passed it along admitted they didn't have access to a crucial source for this article (contemporary OED of all things!) and yet, incredibly, went ahead and invented statements attributed to that source. (As an aside, although I've experienced significant and remarkable hostility associated with this page, I would have happily helped and provided any sources needed and gladly worked with these editors on what should be a pretty straightforward article even to get the article to FA.)
Additionally, as many have highlighted, right now the article intensely emphasizes a remarkable 'third gender' theory, including from at least one explicitly activist source (which promotes and embraces the theories of activist Leslie Feinberg and even berates scholars for not doing the same), over the works and comments of historical linguists, the actual experts on this historical linguistics topic. Look, the article doesn't even even touch on toponymy or any number of other core elements on this discussion — even from that perspective this just ain't an FA article.
In reality, historical linguists typically simply consider these words to be pejorative terms for cultural violations of conceptions of masculinity. In linguistics, the vast majority of discussion around these words has been around its likely etymological relation to the extremely common contemporary English word bad, which the article barely even touches on and when it does so, it does so in a blurry and seemingly confused manner. Most notably, many linguists consider these words to likely evidence an unattested precursor to modern English bad going back to at least West Germanic, as Liberman makes clear, but which you'd have a difficult time deducting from the article as it exists. :bloodofox: (talk) 23:58, 4 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delist in order to allow the necessary rewrite. Mistakes happen, although the lack of scrutiny in this instance was a serious failure of process. But once the issues were raised and referenced improvements were offered, and especially after several of us weighed in on the talk page bringing the problems to the authors' attention, the article should have been fixed promptly. It shouldn't have required this formal step, pending which readers are still being underinformed as well as misled by the balance issues. Yngvadottir (talk) 00:22, 5 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    @Yngvadottir: FAR is not a discussion on delisting; that is for FARC. This is the stage where issues with the article are addressed so it hopefully can avoid being sent to FARC to be potentially delisted. Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 01:17, 5 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • To me, this discussion seems very premature. I'll do my best to break down the concerns raised as I understand them, though I would like to be clear here that I'm transmitting them rather than endorsing them:
    • The article should include discussion of toponymy For context, during the recent edits, the following paragraph was added on the subject:

In addition to the Old English textual record, the word bæddel may occur in English place names. However, these place name elements may derive from an unattested personal name, *Bæddel, a pet form of the name Badda. The word bad is first attested in English surnames (compare Asketinus Baddecheese, 1203) [citation to the OED]

If that paragraph were proposed at FAC, I would advocate for its removal -- it doesn't seem to have the material to give the topic a real hearing. There are no examples, a vague "may" without attribution, and a "compare" statement in the editorial voice, against WP:EDITORIALISING. It's also cited to a single source, which is a dictionary, so hasn't really shown WP:DUEWEIGHT -- the OED is a tertiary source, and Wikipedia articles are expected to rely on secondary sources. However, as was pointed out in the edit summary that removed it, this would be a perfectly legitimate thing to discuss on the Talk page, or even to open an RFC for. I cannot however see how this paragraph could be considered make-or-break for the article's FA status.
  • The article did not receive a full spot-check at FAC: this is not required or usual for articles beyond a nominator's first. It would be perfectly legitimate to say that it should be, but that's a discussion about the FAC process -- which would therefore be appropriate on the FAC talk page. As receiving a thorough spot-check isn't a requirement for promotion to FA, not having received one isn't grounds to delist. The "obvious" solution here would be for one of the editors asking for such a spot-check to do it themselves, and report back -- if concerns then arise, we can act on them.
  • The article uses an "explicitly activist source". Bloodofox has used this description on the Talk page for Wade 2024 as cited, in the Routledge Handbook of Trans Literature. On the face of it, I would need a lot of persuading that an academic handbook in one of the Anglophone world's major academic publishers does not pass WP:HQRS. I cannot access the text myself, but if we're going to say that the source is "explicitly" activist rather than academic, what's the basis from within the work itself to say so? (EDIT: the source has been posted below and, assuming that this is the whole text, I at least can see none: it's perfectly normal for academics to endorse perspectives and paradigms from people outside their field, or outside academia, but I don't even see that Wade is doing so here.) Alternatively, are there reviews in sources of similar or higher quality which call it such? Even then, stepping several moves ahead, even if there were consensus that it is a biased source, WP:RS reminds us that reliable sources are not required to be neutral, unbiased, or objective. We would then be in a discussion as to whether the claims should be presented in Wikivoice or with attribution. We also have a whole noticeboard precisely for this kind of discussion.
  • There are concerns about whether the sources cited support the claims to which they are matched. I really don't think moving to FAR based on the fact that there was a concern, that concern was fixed, and so there might be more is a sensible thing. For context, the concern was here, and the sentence The philologist Julius Zupitza theorised that the English word bad is derived from bæddel ... The OED Online and the 1989 second edition of the Oxford English Dictionary continue to support Zupitza's theory, with the latter dismissing alternative etymologies from Celtic words as "out of the question", while also suggesting a possible origin from bædan. The mistake was that these editions no longer mention Zupitza (though the first did, as correctly stated immediately above): the fix was The philologist Julius Zupitza theorised that the English word bad is derived from bæddel ... The OED Online and the 1989 second edition of the Oxford English Dictionary continue to state that bæddel is "perhaps related to" bad, with the latter dismissing alternative etymologies from Celtic words as "out of the question", while also suggesting a possible origin from bædan. The correction is welcome, of course, but I think we need to keep in perspective that this was a pretty small difference.
I may have missed a few, but it seems clear enough that all of these have straightforward, established procedures to address them -- by my count, an RFC, a post on RSN and a spot-check by an editor. I don't see that any evidence has been put forward that the article does not meet the FA standards, or good reason to believe that FARC is the right place to resolve any of these editors' concerns. UndercoverClassicist T·C 07:01, 5 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This is just such a weird take. First, as anyone with even a drop of a background in English etymology knows, the OED is a core WP:RS for English language etymology. This is article is clearly an historical linguistics topic. Attempts at dismissing the OED's etymologie as off topic is a sign of an individual that really needs to become familiar with historical linguistics topics before editing on these topics.
This editor's "concern" was an explicitly falsified claim attributed to a source. There's no sugar coating it. And not just any source but one of the most important sources in the article, the etymologies of the OED. Meanwhile, the activist source—it is quite openly that—is focused on promoting, well, the works of an activist, Leslie Feinberg. Wade's article discusses the topic through a pro-Feinbergian lens while making a major claim that the words may refer to a 'third gender'.
Honestly, it is a real shame that what could be a quality article is being so fiercely blockaded by editors who a.) did not check the sources or work to fully cover the topic and especially b.) attack or dismiss those editors that bother to.
It's just not appropriate to treat an article as a battleground to defend rather than a resource for all that we all benefit from improving. :bloodofox: (talk) 09:05, 5 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
FYI: I have a relevant academic background, although I don't think this matters much and I wouldn't brandish it like a dubious flag. Such things have been abused in the past (see Essjay controversy). I have some follow-up comments, queries, and suggestions for resolving this issue.
  • Regarding the omission of toponymy (which UndercoverClassicist covers in their first bullet point above), you previously wrote on the Talk that Anyone with the slightest familiarity with this topic will encounter discussion of this important matter. Can you how demonstrate its importance to the topic with another source, or is the dictionary listing itself the case for inclusion?
  • I was actually drawn to this topic by your statement that Wade 2024 was an activist source. I posted the full source for Carcharoth, and any others, to review.
  • Rich Farmbrough responded that it's interesting that four glosses is seen as a paucity of evidence let alone suppression, considering the ubiquity of hapax legomena. Would you respond to that? Wade hasn't made up medieval translations—these glosses are by individuals from hundreds of years ago, approximating terms from language to language (in this case Old English to Latin). When it comes to scholars interpretations, they are attributed as such (i.e., the first sentence). What do you propose as an alternate first line?
  • If you believe the Routledge Handbook entry in question is activist scholarship, would you consider making a neutral posting for WP:RSN about it? The last time you visited RSN for this article, you inquired about whether Liberman was allowed. The consensus was, of course, yes. We could do the same for Wade.
  • If the problem is that these sources are framing the "order" of the article (including the first sentence), we could—as AirshipJungleman29 suggests—make an RFC arguing if this source and the other 6 making similar claims are appropriate to structure the article around?
  • Wade provides the views of multiple other scholars who concur with him. Do you have any sources contradicting Wade's suggestion? Do you have any that outright reject the terms as relating to gender/sex/sexuality? While I adore the work of Dr Liberman, and have been in contact with him a few times over the past few weeks (for which I am grateful), nothing in Dr Liberman's posts on the origin of "bad" contradicts Wade's writing.
I hate BATTLEGROUNDING behaviour (e.g., I am fed up dealing with people removing basic sales information from Veilguard), but UndercoverClassicist has provided, in my view, a fairly persuasive counter-argument, not an entrenched battleground position. If you believe UC, Generalissima, or any others, are biased activist editors, would you consider going to WP:ANI? You could seek a topic ban from GA/FAC for misconduct. Or, personally speaking, if I shared your position, I wouldn't waste any time trying to convince them: I'd make my case at the WP:Dispute resolution noticeboard, where a third-party can mediate. Or, as another option—as this appears to be a GENSEX contentious topic—you could even post a CTOP warning on their page and take them to WP:AE for editorial misconduct and negligence.
There are so many ways this dispute can be resolved, but I agree with AirshipJungleman29 that your current approach isn't working. — ImaginesTigers (talk) 13:40, 5 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
As a follow-up thought. DRN really could work great here, but you could also make a series of edit requests for others to discuss? (I am not likely to weigh in, personally.) But others have suggested making proposals via the Talk page instead of insisting that you personally get to rewrite the article (when others disagree). It's not an unreasonable compromise. If the inevitable rejections come through, you'll have a stronger case to escalate than "I made 12 Talk threads". — ImaginesTigers (talk) 14:28, 5 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
First, you've written this response aimed at critiquing me personally. I find the comparison to the Essjay controversy outrageous, insulting, and beyond the pale. Please strike that and refactor your text: Seriously, are you here to improve the article or to attack an individual editor? A reminder: this is a linguistics topic. If editors are uncomfortable or ungrounded in linguistics, they're going to have a hard time.
Second, the paper you've provided an excerpt from explicitly demands that scholars embrace the theories of activist Leslie Feinberg, a non-medievalist, non-linguist, etc. Let's not get it twisted: it is without a doubt activist material. There is no question about that. The question is why it is so intensely emphasized over the works of historical linguists.
Third, your claims of an exchange with Liberman are completely irrelevant and unverifiable. And if you did talk with Liberman, it seems unethical to post claims he has made about other scholars here. Uncool.
Fourth, the "edit requests" (a reminder that nobody needs to request to edit an article, including featured articles) either get ignored or mass reverted by the approvers or primary editor. And I am really not interested anymore in going back and forth with the hostile approvers who decided it was OK to just rubber stamp the article without even checking the sources, yet make it a priority to defend the article from any additions, improvements, or adjustments.
Fifth, you're making the classic 'the approver committee must approve all edits here (so that they can be lawyered out existence)' argument. At this point I say: Let others discuss the matter. In my view, and in the view of several other editors on the talk page, the article clearly downplays linguistics (which should be the focus of the article) while intensely emphasizing a notion of a 'third gender' in the article. That's obvious. The article can and should be improved, not blockaded.
Sixth, seeing editors make excuses for not checking sources before passing something on to FA and then attacking those that come along, dig up, and actually check sources has been an eye-opening experience for me and causes me to question why I bother in the first place. I am sure plenty would feel the same. It's a toxic environment fostered by the primary contributor and approvers and leads to a negative impact on the project. It is not helping the article.
Finally, while you've so far fully embraced ('been persuaded by') UndercoverClassicist's endlessly wordy wall-of-text blockade (another way to keep people from touching the article), I say if you're actually interested in trying to improve the article and not just here to attack me personally for this or that, maybe go for it. Again, we're here to work on articles, not endlessly lawyer on talk pages to keep people from actually contributing to the project. :bloodofox: (talk) 21:32, 5 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
With the fifth point, the fundamental thesis here seems to be that consensus against these changes doesn't count, since it consists in part of the editors who nominated it and reviewed it at FAC? Am I misunderstanding your point? Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 22:40, 5 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The "consensus" you refer to is the FA approver-approved version. The article needs new eyes and ears beyond the FA approvers who revert just about any change to the FA version. It certainly benefits from a thorough review. :bloodofox: (talk) 00:50, 6 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The article needs new eyes and ears beyond the FA approvers: as I count it, at least three people in this process have told you that this is a great idea, and pointed you towards the the processes to get those eyes and ears on it (propose edits for discussion before making them/after reversion, open an RFC, start a discussion at RSN, go to DRN). Why not try some of those? UndercoverClassicist T·C 07:21, 6 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The irony of you calling UC's response an "endlessly wordy wall-of-text blockade" is quite something, considering that both UC and IT are responding to your...how can I say this nicely... endlessly wordy wall-of-text blockades. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 00:43, 6 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm allowed to respond to them. I haven't "blockaded" anything (all my edits to the article get immediateley reverted by the FA reviewers with a demand for their approval) and would have immediately caught the issues with this article were I part of the FA (like I did when I saw it). :bloodofox: (talk) 00:50, 6 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
"I'm allowed to respond to them." Yes, and they're allowed to respond to your especially lengthy posts in equal amounts of detail. I'm sure if they didn't respond to one of your important points, you'd be upset that they were ignoring what you have to say. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 01:10, 6 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I am sorry you feel my response was critiquing you personally; I bear gratitude and respect for your contributions on Norse mythology content—and strive to focus on the case and not contributors. As I said in my response, my goal was to provide follow-up comments, queries, and suggestions for resolving this dispute. If you feel I have failed, and attacked you, I encourage you to outline this at ANI or AE where I would defend myself—I won't waste precious space doing this at FAR. It is never reasonable for anyone to [go] back and forth with the hostile approvers, so I recommend dispute resolution as a structured venue for resolving issues of that nature. A single, well-written argument can completely shift the prevailing view of editors in those forums.
Regarding the paper, I suggested these be outlined at an RFC—this would move the dispute forward, not blockade. I simply disagree with your analysis. Erik Wade (who wrote the piece, not Leslie Feinberg) is an English Renaissance scholar. The Wade piece does not mention Feinberg: it mentions 6 medieval glosses for the 2 terms and 5 scholars' views. I requested any sources contradicting Wade's suggestion or any that outright reject the terms as relating to gender/sex/sexuality. Demonstrating that in your response to an RFC would be devastating to the case of other editors, change my mind on the article's balance, and make me support changes.
Regarding the article clearly downplays linguistics [...] while intensely emphasizing a notion of a 'third gender' in the article: The viewpoint regarding "third gender" takes up 1 sentence in the lead (36/257 words). It comprises 15% of the "Analysis" subheading. In my view this does not constitute "intense emphasis"—it is simply a represented viewpoint from a HQRS, located at the very end of the lead and the second of two Analysis paragraphs. As a resolution, might I suggest DRN or an RFC? Likewise, aspects concerning sexual characteristics are supported by the historical linguist Liberman's Chapter 2 blog, which describes both as synonyms for "hermaphrodites"—if that isn't a non-normative sexual or gender category, I'm not sure what is.
Regarding your view that I am making the classic 'the approver committee must approve all edits here, I simply disagree. When others do not share your views (and there is essentially a stalemate), there are processes for escalation and acquiring new consensus. All articles are open for editing and all changes are subject to reversion if others disagree. If the dispute persists, there are many avenues for escalation. If your response doesn't consider whether ANI, DRN, AE, RSN or an RFC might be appropriate, I have little further to add but I thank you for reading — ImaginesTigers (talk) 07:24, 6 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'll ignore the attacks on my character because they're pointless: But know that I get enough death threats and attempts at offline stalking, and I don't appreciate you adding comparisons to Essjay to the mix.
The Wade piece does not mention Feinberg is false. Wade outright says: "In this chapter, I use Feinberg's historical research as a guide to religion in the European Middle Ages." The excerpt you provided does not mention Feinberg but the full the piece by Wade is indeed focused on Feinberg to a degree that the author takes the unusual step of attacking other scholars for not embracing Feinberg's theories. Again, Wade aggressively promotes the work of Feinberg—just not in the exerpt you've quoted from.
As for the rest: I've made my points. This linguistic article needs more linguistics from linguists and less emphasis on theory from Feinbergian sources. :bloodofox: (talk) 08:58, 10 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Hey bloodofox – while you note that you'll ignore alleged attacks on your character, you keep raising them. My last reply does not mention Essjay and highlights ANI as an appropriate venue for you to raise concerns and for me to defend myself. I won't discuss conduct at FAR, as requested by a coordinator.
About the Wade source: I said in my last reply: If your response doesn't consider whether ANI, DRN, AE, RSN or an RFC might be appropriate, I have little further to add. I provided the full relevant extract (a section on the words); provided commentary on the extract's analysis; discussed the author's qualifications; mentioned its widely respected publisher; analysed the source's use proportional to others; and requested the work of any scholars who contradict the viewpoint you find problematic. Your response reiterates Wade "aggressively promotes the work of Feinberg"—has Feinberg written on bæddel and bædling? I believe our differences and the resulting discussion indicate we can't resolve our differences through discussion. Consequently, I'll reiterate that dispute resolution seems more appropriate, inviting wide community input. Thank you — ImaginesTigers (talk) 14:17, 10 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
And yet you've repeatedly left out the focus of the paper: Promotion of Feinberg (once more, as the author makes no bones about: "In this chapter, I use Feinberg's historical research as a guide to religion in the European Middle Ages"). I've shown that you are for reasons unknown to me downplaying the central focus of the paper and that it clearly promotes the works of Feinberg, a non-academic and an activist. I don't know why you're going to lengths to imply that this is not the case when it is right there in the paper, as I've quoted. It's an activist piece focused on an activist. :bloodofox: (talk) 14:49, 10 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Happy to talk about the source itself, just not what I've done or haven't done.
What I'm not understanding is how Feinberg's work has influenced Wade's interpretation of bæddel and bædling—has Feiberg written about these terms? Wade does mention Feinberg elsewhere in the paper, but specifically cites her research. If Wade was using Feinberg's historical research here, I'd agree it's a problem. But Wade, himself an English Reinaissance scholar, doesn't mention her—he cites other scholars' conclusions about the terms being related to sex. Wouldn't those scholars' credentials, whose conclusions Wade cites, be the ones to interrogate instead of the mention of Feinberg in the abstract? — ImaginesTigers (talk) 15:06, 10 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The entire paper is focused on promoting Feinberg and Feinberg's theories. :bloodofox: (talk) 15:11, 10 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Even if Wade's article were about endorsing Feinberg's ideas (and I remain very unconvinced that this is true, certainly for the parts used in the article), I'm struggling to see it as a problem. Reliable sources need not be unbiased -- WP:RS is categoric on that point -- but plenty of the most respected authorities in history, archaeology, and so on are or have openly been communists or Marxists of various flavours, and approached their work from a Marxist perspective -- to say nothing of others with well-documented political leanings with obvious implications for their scholarship. It would be a very bold and uncommon argument to say that (say) the works of Eric Hobsbawm could not be cited in a Wikipedia article because their author was an activist, still less (as here) that any source endorsing his scholarship must also be purged. That doesn't mean that we accept the authors' views uncritically: like anything else, we look for points of consensus between reliable sources and attribute subjective or controversial material.
At any rate, if a piece has been published in an academic work (and The Routledge Handbook of Trans Literature is about as cut-and-dried academic as they get), that by definition means that it has been accepted by the gatekeepers of the scholarly world, and so must be considered under WP:DUEWEIGHT. If a Wikipedian is saying that, contrary to the judgements of the reviewers and editors at the academic press, the work is unreliable because of their own opinion of the arguments of the authors cited, that is simply WP:OR. UndercoverClassicist T·C 15:21, 10 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps read the article beyond the excerpts that have been chosen to cut out all the Feinberg-worship. Although you've, in my opinion bafflingly, previously argued that we shouldn't be citing famed linguist Liberman's work in the article, I'm not arguing we should not include references to Wade's activist piece. What I am saying is that a.) there's no denying Wade's piece is activism focused on promoting the works of activist Feinberg (who Wade calls an "activist scholar"—although Feinberg never went to college or, as far as I can ascertain, even published anything peer-reviewed) and b.) we should be centering the works of linguists on this linguistics article. And there is much to add from linguists about it. :bloodofox: (talk) 15:31, 10 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If being unbiased isn't a request for reliable sources how does Wikipedia avoid bias then, or does Wikipedia openly admit to being biased itslef?★Trekker (talk) 13:57, 5 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
WP:RS (and others) give the guidance here -- where sources present ideas which are clearly matters of judgement, we attribute.
This happens all the time in historical articles -- you might, for example, have a historian saying that the Battle of Stalingrad was the turning point of the Second World War, that life in medieval Europe was nasty, brutish and short, or that George Washington was the greatest American president. All of those may be important historical judgements, but none of them are verifiable or falsifiable in nature. In that case, we would write e.g. "The historian Clare Voyant has described life in medieval Europe as 'nasty, brutish and short'" -- the statement then becomes absolutely verifiable, since it is trivial to verify or falsify that Voyant actually did write that.
As to whether we should include Voyant's perspective, that's a matter of the prominence of Voyant's work in the relevant scholarship. There are plenty of FAs which deal with very controversial topics in this way -- BAE Systems is a good example where the issues are extremely emotive and the stakes relatively high. On another note, though: Wikipedia does admit to being unreliable! UndercoverClassicist T·C 14:11, 5 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Abstained. I am not particularly knowledgeable in the subject topic and do not have any strong opinions on the course to take. Juwan (talk) 12:06, 5 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • The article seems to be unbalanced. There is enough information in primary sources to confirm that these words existed and had some meaning in Anglo-Saxon that could be associated at different times and in different places with (closely?) related concepts around "non-traditional male sexuality". I don't think much more can be adduced than that. So while it's OK to say that scholars of sexuality have concluded this or that, we can't really allow this to be the focus of the article. If we did the article would be better named something like "Middle English evidence for non-traditional sexualities". The question then arises if we only provide WP:DUE coverage of the sexuality, is there enough article left? All the best: Rich Farmbrough 16:38, 6 June 2025 (UTC).[reply]
    There's a ton that can be added here from discussion from philologists. Right now it's shoved in at the end and presented in a very odd and misleading manner. For example, just surveying a few sources, there looks to be widespread agreement from linguists that these two words likely developed from the unattested precursor to contemporary English bad, which seems to also occur in personal names and place names. This is ignored in the article. Generally, anything to do with linguistics seems to be really downplayed in favor of the notion of sexuality topics and the remarkable 'third gender' theory. :bloodofox: (talk) 08:31, 10 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    We presently have the following on this topic:

    Sayers proposes a shared etymology of bad, bæddel, and bædling from linguist Xavier Delamarre's reconstructed Gaulish word *baitos 'foolish, mad, immoral'; this adjective could have been carried into Old English by the hypothetical form *baed, which would connote physical and moral deficiency (characteristics perhaps associated by Old English speakers with the native British populations of the rest of the British Isles). Writing in 1988, the linguist Richard Coates also describes bæddel and bædling as descended from a common ancestor with bad, in the form of a hypothetical Old English *badde possibly meaning 'worthless' or 'of ill omen'. Liberman, concurring with Coates on the etymological link to *badde, states that bæddel was formed from bad.

    I'm sure more could be added, and that would be a fruitful discussion if the sources go further, but I would also be mindful that this is not an article about the etymology of "bad", so detailed discussion on that outside these two words is probably undue in this particular article. UndercoverClassicist T·C 08:56, 10 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This is an article on two obscure words that almost never come up anywhere beyond the etymology of the word bad. In turn, the vast amount of discussion on this topic comes from linguists discussing this word in connection with the word bad.
This really should have been a simple and straight-forward article but at this point no doubt more effort has been expended on this and the article's talk page than in creating the article itself. :bloodofox: (talk) 09:07, 10 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • this has already been noted, but FAR is not for "delist" or "keep" !votes. ... sawyer * any/all * talk 16:40, 6 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    So struck. All the best: Rich Farmbrough 16:44, 6 June 2025 (UTC).[reply]
  • Note Wikipedia does not forbid tertiary sources, far from it. See WP:TERTIARY. All the best: Rich Farmbrough 16:44, 6 June 2025 (UTC).[reply]
    • @Rich Farmbrough:: WP:DUE, which you cite, leads with Neutrality requires that mainspace articles and pages fairly represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources, in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in those sources. Your statement that while it's OK to say that scholars of sexuality have concluded this or that, we can't really allow this to be the focus of the article. seems to be at odds with that. Do I read you correctly that you're saying we should apply a different inclusion standard here (namely, that the prominence of material in the article should be determined by what can be read in primary sources?) UndercoverClassicist T·C 19:47, 6 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
      AIUI, Rich @Rich Farmbrough was explaining that the focus of the article currently, with its emphasis on the "third gender" hypothesis and deemphasis on philological scholarship, is at odds with its presentation as an article on a philological topic. If most of the academic treatment on the topic is from modern exegeses of OE words to support sociological arguments about sexuality, then that should be reflected in the title and the article should not present itself as if it is an overview of a linguistic topic. However, if the article is going to be structured through the lens of historical linguistics (as the title implies) then it needs to be centered around linguistic concepts, with non-linguistic scholarship being much less prominent because it is less DUE. JoelleJay (talk) 00:55, 8 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
      I think that's an interesting argument, and I have some degree of sympathy with it, but I'm not convinced that Wikipedia articles really have a "genre" -- at least not explicitly, though obviously articles about medical topics tend to be written in the "dialect" of medical studies, articles about classical literature tend to sound like they're written by classicists, and so on. I'm also not sure which of the FA criteria it would relate to, as long as balance of views in the article is the same as the balance of views in good scholarship. UndercoverClassicist T·C 07:49, 8 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Coordinator note. Given the comments so far, I'd like to highlight for participants what FAR is not:

  1. A vote. Keep and delist declarations are not made at the FAR stage, which is intended to focus on potential improvements. Only if and when this is moved to the FARC stage will such declarations be appropriate.
  2. Dispute resolution. Such issues should be addressed via the usual DR processes as needed.
  3. A venue for personal comments. Comments addressing other editors should be taken to user talk, or if necessary ANI.

Please keep these points in mind and keep comments here focused on the FA criteria and how the article does or could meet them. Nikkimaria (talk) 14:52, 7 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If this review is still open, I would like to try and (from my perspective) clarify a point that is being discussed above, but is still causing some confusion, both here and elsewhere. People are saying that Wade "cites" Feinberg, as if this is just a reference he includes to Feinberg's works. While convenient to use, the phrasing "cites" is misleading here. It would be more accurate to say that Wade frames his entire chapter around Feinberg's works, and this necessarily needs to inform our (Wikipedia's) use of part of Wade's work (this is the element of about a page relating to 'Bæddel and bædling'). The key points can be seen in the abstract for the 11-page chapter (I posted this abstract in full here). When you see phrases like "It takes the historical scholarship of the activist and novelist Leslie Feinberg seriously in order to explore Feinberg’s claims about the history of Christianity and trans life in the early Middle Ages." and "I test Feinberg’s historical hypotheses" and "My chapter thus suggests that scholars have misjudged Feinberg’s work as without historical value. I build on hir work by making two further points" - what you are seeing there is Wade explicitly saying (unsurprisingly, as it is his job and career to do this) that he is rehabilitating the status of Feinberg's work and saying that they have value as historical scholarship, and that he is building on Feinberg's work. This is my understanding of what User:Bloodofox means when he has been (clumsily, IMO) referring to Wade as an "activist scholar". It is possible that the only way to properly include Wade in this article is to explicitly tie what Wade says about 'Bæddel and bædling' to the fact that he is saying it in terms of rehabilitating Feinberg as a source of historical scholarship. Except we might need to find someone who says that to justify saying it ourselves. The main point is that you need the context of the entire chapter to understand what is going on here. A number of people (me included) do not have access to that entire chapter. Just the abstract and the extract that User:ImaginesTigers posted here. This ends with the sentence "Feinberg (1996, 68–69) argued these pre-Christian categories of non-normative gender survived in the Christian stories of trans saints. Do they?" That this assertion from Wade is not currently in the article suggests either that the Wade-Feinberg connection is being omitted as a deliberate editorial choice (which might need justification), or that it needs saying more explicitly. This is probably best placed under assessment of FA criteria 1b, 1c and 1d (comprehensive, well-researched and neutral). Carcharoth (talk) 13:10, 17 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If we were citing a view of Feinberg's that Wade endorses, and using Wade's name to do that (e.g., where Wade writes "as Feinberg says, pineapple belongs on pizza", we were writing "Wade writes that pineapple belongs on pizza"), the analysis here would be correct -- Feinberg should be properly credited as the source of the idea. However, I can't see that this is the case. Wade is cited for statements that do not seem to be directly taken from Feinberg -- to wit:
  • The number of glosses known for the term.
  • The association in early medieval English thought between "the east" and effeminacy.
  • The possibility that Bædling denoted a third gender, or intersex people.
If any of those can be shown to be Feinberg's opinion, rather than Wade's, then Feinberg's name should be attached to them (alongside Wade's), if it would be appropriate to attribute (i.e., if we're considering them a matter of opinion rather than fact, which at least the first two do not seem to be). However, absent that, it would be deeply misleading to imply that e.g. Feinberg believed there to be two known glosses for these terms, when Feinberg probably never gave the question any thought. It would certainly be undue and WP:OR/WP:SYNTH to say something like "the queer scholar Eric Wade, who cites Leslie Feinberg in his work, believes that Bædling may have referred to intersex people" -- we cannot put those facts alongside each other, or imply a connection between them, unless a reliable secondary source does so. UndercoverClassicist T·C 13:40, 17 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
What does "Feinberg (1996, 68–69)" say? I assume from the year that this is Transgender Warriors (the bibliographic section of Wade 2024 would confirm this)? Am I misreading what Wade is saying about his three case studies and how he is connecting them? Despite it 'only' being a page that explicitly talks about 'Bæddel and bædling', it seems to me from the abstract that Wade is weaving the concepts throughout his chapter, i.e. more than the two pages (p.55 and p.56) cited in our article. It is very difficult for a reader to know that this has happened, that there is 'further reading' in the Wade article that has been silently omitted here. I really think that in order to integrate Wade 2024 properly into this article, access to the whole chapter is needed. Carcharoth (talk) 14:29, 17 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
In which case, you're welcome to request it at WP:RX, or some other means. However, it seems odd to suggest that an article doesn't meet the FA criteria based on its treatment of a source you haven't seen. UndercoverClassicist T·C 14:34, 17 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you. I may have fallen for the classic fallacy of thinking you can read a single (or a few) pages from a source and not the whole thing (this is more common with very big books). In this case, as an 11-page chapter, there is no excuse. BTW, I don't think I have ever said anywhere that I think this article does not meet the FA criteria. It is a very readable article, and a lot of scholarly effort has gone into it. I do think the concerns raised justified a review. Carcharoth (talk) 14:40, 17 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I would like to question whether the article's topic really is linguistic. We do not make articles solely on etymologies, as Wiktionary is the site for that. Instead, the main topic of the article seems to me to be the referent of these terms. For that, only sources in queer studies make sense to cite. Like most Wikipedia articles, an etymology section seems to creep in anyway, but it really shouldn't occupy too much space. Besides, see the Wiktionary entry on bad, there isn't consensus anyway on its origin. Aspets (talk) 13:22, 19 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I have considerable sympathy for Generalissima as author of the article as the sources are academic works about Latin and Old English texts and ancient and modern sexual identities. I think that it is correct to include the views of both philologists and gender scholars. However, I have looked at the Definition section in some detail and think it needs more work. See talk page 1, talk page 2. Possibly that could be done before/ instead of a FA Removal Candidate discussion. Further spot checking would be useful as well. TSventon (talk) 07:12, 21 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I want to clarify the chain of claims. The claim si that Leslie Fienberg makes claims about these words, which are then cited in another text, which is then cited in this article? I just want to make sure I understnad things. Is Leslie Feinberg is an expert in anything? I'm scanning her various biography pages, and I can't see any kind of post-secondary degree. If she has no relevant degree, didn't publish any ideas in academic fields, didn't subject herself to peer review, then she would simply be a self-appointed expert, and thus we can safely just ignore any of her writings as WP:UNDUE. Lots of people write lots of different things, it doesn't mean we have to cite them. Using a secondary work simply launders her views, obscuring the source to make it seem more legitimate. Anyone citing non-expert opinion would make their works very questionable as well. Harizotoh9 (talk) 09:49, 29 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The claim si that Leslie Fienberg makes claims about these words, which are then cited in another text, which is then cited in this article. I think that is the claim, yeah. I think there's a couple of problems with that claim. Chiefly, Feinberg hasn't written about these words. The "contested" part is by medievalist scholar Erik Wade, whose abstract just mentions Feinberg. You can read the disputed section here (this is the only part of the book cited in the article). This extract quotes several practicing medieval academics.
In short, I can't get behind removing a Routledge-published book because Leslie Feinberg is mentioned in the abstract and cited in another chapter. — ImaginesTigers 11:18, 29 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
We can get some baseline here then. 1. Leslie Fienberg is not an academic or a scholar and is not publishing within the academic system or with peer review. 2. The book Transgender Warriors is not a book of academic history. The page for the book actually goes out of its way to say it's "popular history". 3. I'm not sure what to call this person, other than a writer and political activist. They have a background in communist ideology, one of her main outputs is writing in Workers World, and her last words were "Hasten the revolution! Remember me as a revolutionary communist." Harizotoh9 (talk) 21:31, 16 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
no one has claimed that Feinberg is a scholar, and again, she has never written about the words "bæddel" or "bædling". Feinberg is also not being cited in this article. Erik Wade, who is as subject-matter-expert in medieval history writing in a peer-reviewed academic work, cites Feinberg's theory on gender in a different section of the work than is being cited here. what is the issue??? ... sawyer * any/all * talk 00:22, 17 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with Sawyer777 -- and would reiterate that it is perfectly normal for academics in the humanities and social sciences to write pieces suggesting that ideas from non-academics, activists, philosophers and creatives can be interestingly or fruitfully applied to their area of study.
At any rate, we are now over two months in and I don't think anyone has articulated a claim that any of the FA criteria are not met. There might still be disagreements over aspects of the content, but (as others have noted elsewhere) I don't see anything here for which FACR is the right avenue. Is there any good reason to keep this page open? UndercoverClassicist T·C 07:32, 17 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
i'm of the same thought. if someone can name an FA criteria that the article currently does not meet, please speak, otherwise i believe this should be closed without action. ... sawyer * any/all * talk 07:43, 17 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Yngvadottir:? Nikkimaria (talk) 14:28, 23 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the ping. I am bewildered by the FA criteria, at least as they are being applied here, since I was told this was not a discussion on whether the article should be delisted, but merely a discussion as to whether it meets the criteria; but if it doesn't meet the criteria, it should be either fixed or delisted, and attempts to fix it have been stymied on the grounds that it's an FA? Since it is possible that despite the initial complete rejection of Bloodofox's changes, the initial rejection of Bloodofox's sources, and Bloodofox's apparent retirement, one or more editors have nonetheless improved the article in the intervening period, I took a top to bottom look at it. I still would not personally accept this article as meeting the highest standards of the encyclopaedia.
It lacks clarity on some points. For example, the fact that effeminati molles is the term glossed by bædlingas in the Cleopatra Glossaries is only made clear in the top caption; in the article text, effeminati molles is listed as one of the terms glossed, then a few lines later we learn that "Like other glosses, the Cleopatra Glossaries ... associate bædling with effeminacy and softness." The terms glossed should be clearly associated with the glossaries (I'd use parentheses after each glossed term). (Less importantly, surely effeminati molles could as well be rendered "soft, effeminate men/people" as "effeminate soft ones"?) And A-S/OE yfel isn't the "root of 'evil'" (cute nod to the Bible!), it's the ancestor of Modern English evil.
There's some sloppiness or lack of follow-through in the referencing, below the standard I would expect in an FA. The article cites the Dictionary of Old English (for its "tentative" definition and lack of etymology) with no indication that this is the modern, in-progress project to replace Bosworth-Toller, An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary. It cites the latter (1898, last revision 1972) from one of several online editions, giving only its year, 2014 (and without a link to the article on the work). The lack of the 1972 date for this source is misleading, and the article actually cites the modern project only at second hand; its entry needs to be checked for tentativeness, and it needs to be cited directly as well. Also, in the article text wæpenwifestre lacks its long í, even though it's been correctly copied in the footnote link. If I am reading the annotation correctly, the entry on that 2014 site hasn't been hand-corrected. This version has; note the italics. Neither has ǽ on wǽpen-, but this scan of the page shows that Bosworth-Toller has a long vowel on all such words. Again, I am unfamiliar with FA standards. But when writing as a scholar, I would always cite the original work and not just someone's précis or commentary, and check it if at all possible; sometimes something like that ǽ is going to matter. Another point of carelessness is that Bloodofox corrected the publication date of Sayers' article from 2020 to 2019; 2019 is in our article text and in the doi number, but in the citations and bibliography the correction has been wiped out in the reverts.
I would place Etymology above the argument about gender signification, but that appears to be a lost cause since the significance for gender studies is being used as the primary argument for notability. There remain concerns of balance or wording. The Analysis subsection under Definition rejects the homosexual/gay interpretation largely by preferring modern concepts of gender identity. Particularly noticeable in the sentence at the end of the first paragraph, "Bædling is thought by scholars to denote some sort of gender nonconformity, sexual passivity, or possibly a third gender."—which is weaselly in its lack of attribution, despite having four footnotes. The other paragraph is presenting arguments and suggesting broad agreement; it should at least be contextualised by time; note that the quotation from Clark given in a footnote begins "If we assume that the Anglo‐Saxons recognized a continuum of gender", which is a very modern assumption; and that the implications of wǽpenwífestre for the Anglo-Saxon clerical view of mannish women are not explored in the slightest in our article. "Effeminacy" has more than one meaning. (I would also expect at least one reference to the context in the texts being glossed, other than the Penitential; do some of these go back to Classical Greek contexts, as suggested by Bell's inference about pederasty, or do these glosses all occur in the context of sexual policy in the early medieval Church? Surely at least some of the scholarly articles on the meaning of the A-S/OE terms cover their context, which is relevant for whether the terms being glossed referred to gender presentation, intercourse, or both.)
Most seriously from my point of view, at least some of Bloodofox's concern about the article not adequately covering the scholarly arguments that are not about gender remains valid. We are misrepresenting Liberman's view; we have "Liberman, concurring with Coates on the etymological link to *badde, states that bæddel was formed from bad." This is simply not what he wrote, and despite an allusion in the following sentence to a nickname (unexplained in our article), the article entirely lacks what Liberman actually says. Here's the passage that Bloodofox had added as a separate paragraph: "Writing in 2015, Liberman derives a potential West Germanic precusor to contemporary bad (and its potential precursor, Old English bæd) from a baby word (see babble word) meaning 'bad'. It would have therefore been used alongside the more standard Old English word yfel ('evil') before leaving "the nursery" around the 1200s and appearing in medieval nicknames. Bædel, meaning 'an evil man', would therefore derive from this Old English word.<ref name="LIBERMAN-2015-3"/>" The passage on possibly related placenames has also been excised (as has the reference to Wyatt 2009 describing bædling as having an "extremely pejorative sense"). Instead the article tails off, with two sentences both saying bæd occurs in nicknames in the 13th century. Those parts of the article were disimproved and Bloodofox's changes to them were both more informative and reflective of the source, Liberman; and in my view the "pejorative" point is a necessary adjunct to the (widely accepted) etymological association with bad, lest we give the impression that the historians of gender are arguing that gender nonconformity was completely accepted in Anglo-Saxon society.
I think I will now make some small edits, including adding the year and the link for Bosworth-Toller, but I take it that anything more will simply be reverted. Yngvadottir (talk) 22:47, 23 August 2025 (UTC) ... And my edit also made a fast fix to the summary of Liberman's argument. Over and out for now. Yngvadottir (talk) 23:27, 23 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@UndercoverClassicist and Sawyer777: Nikkimaria (talk) 13:40, 6 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Honestly, the above seems broadly sensible to me -- I don't know if Generalissima would have a view? But it looks to me like pretty much everything there can be actioned easily enough with pretty minor changes to the text, and I'd be happy to give that a go. There are a couple of points where the suggestion is made that there are probably sources articulating certain arguments -- it would be helpful to include those specifically (or just to add them in). UndercoverClassicist T·C 13:59, 6 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
UndercoverClassicist, if by "the above" you're referring to my stuff, please, go ahead. I don't dare really get into it, in part because it remains an FA (though I don't think it should be) and in part because of the comprehensive pushback against Bloodofox. But I wonder whether you are, because I picked some serious nits. The article doesn't even plainly list the attestations, jumping straight into interpretation based on the coexistence with words denoting weakness and softness without actually saying what that association is on the page; the differences between the texts, the fact one word occurs more commonly than the other ... the reader doesn't at this point get any of that foundational information. I noticed that one of the citations for the "third gender" proposal explicitly rejects that, at least on one page of the article, and compares Old Norse ergi and related adjectives, citing a specific scholar's analysis; that bears on the "gay" interpretation that our article almost entirely ignores, and ergi doesn't appear in this article even as a See also. I stopped and wrote up my impressions before reading the entirety of the articles we cite (and after finding we were continuing to misrepresent Liberman's analysis). But the misrepresentation of Liberman (and of the OED, previously fixed) was serious, and so is this slighting of the gay aspects/analysis, especially if it turns out we are also misrepresenting that other scholar. (I suspect there's also relevant material on wǽpenwífestre that my cursory search didn't find.) Quite a teardown and rebuilding is needed before I would call this an adequate article on the topic—and that's based on my close reading of the article and scan of key sources. The perfect should not be the enemy of the good. Whether it has to be delisted first or whether you and others can fix its deficiencies is ultimately not important to our serving our readers (and doing justice to scholars' work). But either way, it needs to be done ASAP. I'm going to be crass and ping Alarichall, an Anglo-Saxonist, in case he can list any relevant works on Anglo-Saxon queer-related terminology. Yngvadottir (talk) 21:16, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
UndercoverClassicist Are you still planning on working on this? Nikkimaria (talk) 14:48, 27 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think "planning" is a strong word! I'd quite like to see what Generalissima makes of it and my diagnosis, and then I'm working through a queue of other Wiki projects, but in principle I'm happy to start chipping away at it. Equally, I'd be very happy to share that job with other editors. UndercoverClassicist T·C 16:09, 27 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm honestly pretty burned out on this article in particular at this point and don't think I have as much to contribute—I clearly am not as well-versed in the finer points of Old English scholarship as some here—but Yngvadottir's points seem broadly reasonable, and I would really appreciate it if you or anyone else could take the time to make edits. Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 17:05, 27 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Augustus

[edit]
Notified: PericlesofAthens, WikiProject Biography, WikiProject Classical Greece and Rome, WikiProject Royalty and Nobility, WikiProject Military history, WikiProject Ancient Near East, WikiProject Politics, WikiProject Religion, WikiProject Rome, Vital articles/Level/3

As noted in August 2023 by UndercoverClassicist, this 2007 FA contains significant sourcing issues:

  • Heavy overuse of one source (Eck & Takács 2003)
  • Use of dated secondary sources, some of which are nearing a century old
  • Uncritical use of ancient primary sources as citations.
  • Underuse of high-quality modern sources, some of which lie unused in the "Further reading" section
  • Not enough detail on legacy and assessment in post-classical politics.

These problems call into question the article's adherence to FA criteria 1b), 1c), and 1d). ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 10:39, 18 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Pinging Ifly6, who was in that conversation (and will probably have a valuable view on the sourcing), but I'm probably not going to have the time to take them up on their offer a proper collaboration at the moment, if indeed it still stands. Scanning back over the article quickly, I think what I wrote in 2023 is still true. UndercoverClassicist T·C 10:45, 18 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Also pinging @Carlstak and T8612:, who were in the discussion as well. UndercoverClassicist T·C 10:46, 18 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@UndercoverClassicist Hello! As the editor who initially wrote and submitted this article as a FAC back in 2007, it behooves me 18 years later to now safeguard my little legacy here at Wikipedia. This review comes as no surprise, of course, considering how the article was never that stellar to begin with and further edits over time have diminished its quality even further (for the record I was not the one to add the smattering of primary sources cited in the article). I wrote this article when I was a 21-year-old in college with nothing better to do. I am now a middle aged man with a demanding full time job and an absurd amount of social commitments this spring. Please allow me a proper amount of time to address all of these concerns (at least a couple months). I have begun an earnest effort to address them by using up my break time at work (when I could be exercising instead, LOL) to cite Roller (2010) as a buttressing source for Eck & Takacs (2003). The latter is admittedly overused, but I don't see a need to remove any citations from that source if we can simply buttress it instead with multiple layers of verification via other cited secondary sources. Roller is certainly useful as an academic source for the bits about Cleopatra and Antony; I plan on adding other sources in the coming weeks. Unfortunately I do not have time tonight or even tomorrow night to continue work on this given my social commitments, but hopefully I can continue working on this by Thursday night and maybe, if I'm very lucky to have any free time and not utterly exhausted, on Sunday afternoon as well. I simply do not have ample time to do all of the work that is truly needed. I'm going to have to call on you and others to please aid me in my efforts to research secondary sources and add citations where they are most needed. Also, @AirshipJungleman29, if you could clarify exactly what you mean by "not enough detail on legacy and assessment in post-classical politics," I could begin to address that, but I'm not sure which details are missing in your estimation. Kind regards, Pericles of AthensTalk 15:05, 22 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Just noting here that I will be busy all day today, but will make a concerted effort tomorrow (Sunday, April 26th) to read through Bringmann (2007), which I own, and continue citing that source in the article. I will also continue consulting Roller (2010) and adding citations from that source. If anyone has suggestions for easily accessible sources found online (via Google Books, for instance), that would be highly appreciated. I don't have a lot of time to drive down to the nearest university library and spend a day there finding suitable sources, reading them, taking notes, and then citing them here in the article. I'd rather avoid all of that just to salvage my old Featured article, but I will do what is necessary. Pericles of AthensTalk 18:03, 26 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
UPDATE: I've made some small but noteworthy improvements already by using Bringmann (2007), but it's a real headache to clean up the sloppiness of other editors, especially in the "Name" section of the article that was created after my successful Featured Article candidacy of 2007. Too many cooks spoil the broth, so to speak! For instance, someone cited Goldsworthy (2014) without bothering to let us know which page number they consulted, and this particular citation was used to buttress a primary source citation for Suetonius. Ugh! There are a lot of weeds to untangle here, but I hope everyone will please be patient as I try to use what little spare time I have in the coming two months to address these problems. I have asked another Wiki editor who I've collaborated with in the past for help on this, but unfortunately this is out of their depth. @UndercoverClassicist Do you happen to have direct access to high quality recently published reliable sources on Augustus? I have a few books about ancient Rome lying around at home (like the aforementioned one by Bringmann), but I cannot use them for verifying everything. Any help would be greatly appreciated! I could use a helping hand right about now, because this whole thing is starting to give me a migraine, I'm sleep deprived as it is, and it's really starting to stress me out. I'm not looking forward to seeing one of my FAs lose its status only because I no longer have the adequate spare time in my busy life to work on articles here. Thanks for any help in advance and any life preservers thrown my way! Also pinging User:Johnbod for help on this, out of sheer desperation (sorry to drag you into this mess, old friend, not sure who else to contact at this point since I rarely frequent Wikipedia anymore). Cheers. Pericles of AthensTalk 03:18, 28 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Got to make this one brief, I'm afraid:
  • As a first step, I'd look to promote Zanker and the two Galinsky books from the Further Reading.
  • The Cambridge Companion gets a couple of cites: have we used that fully?
  • Wallace-Hadrill's Augustan Rome isn't that recent, but has a recent-ish 2nd edition (2018).
  • This one from 2010 is brief, but I suspect will have good bibliography.
  • This one (Hekster) is specifically about image, but I had it presented to me at a recent-ish conference as the "next word" from Galinsky, Zanker et al.
I might be able to track down stuff that isn't available on IA and TWL if it would help. UndercoverClassicist T·C 06:51, 28 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for highlighting these as important sources, but do you have access to these books? I have access like anyone else to resources made available on Google Books, but I'm not buying things on Amazon simply to improve a Wikipedia article (I'll see if Google Books contains snippets of these, but I'll need full access on a database like Internet Archive if I'm not driving down to my local university library). I don't work in academia, so I no longer have access to databases like JSTOR. I was at least able to use Fratantuono (2016) to untangle weeds and clean up the mess made by other editors in the "Names" section, deemphasizing Suetonius given @AirshipJungleman29's concerns about primary sources being used uncritically (though I don't mind retaining them in certain spots simply to buttress secondary sources and as a useful reference for readers). This article is going to take so much work, but unfortunately my workday has already begun, and I barely have a single free evening this entire week to sit down and give this article the attention it deserves. If you do not have the adequate spare time in your own busy life to help with edits to this article, do you by any chance know other editors here who would be willing to lend a helping hand? It's a daunting task simply because I don't have the time for it (not like I did when I was 21-years-old and editing here in between going to college classes, rock/metal concerts, and weekend keg parties, LOL). Would you have any spare time to help with cleaning up citations and shortening them? That alone is time consuming work. Any help on that alone would be hugely appreciated, and I'd give you a shiny reward on your talk page for it! Cheers. Pericles of AthensTalk 13:12, 29 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
You can get a lot of these via WP:TWL, if you meet the criteria? The Cambridge Companion, for instance, can be read in full via Cambridge Core, which is part of that. I'm happy to send over individual chapters and articles, if you let me know what you're looking for -- otherwise, the good people at WP:RX always amaze me with their skills in tracking down obscure sources. UndercoverClassicist T·C 13:59, 29 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@UndercoverClassicist Cool! Thanks for suggesting the Wiki Library. Oddly enough I knew nothing about it, probably because it was founded when I was overseas in the Peace Corps, and then shortly after that I moved to yet another country for my graduate degree and was not editing Wikipedia during that time either. How do I access this Cambridge Core, exactly? I don't see a link for it via the library. The resource request page looks promising, though. I will definitely utilize that and make a request or two there. Much appreciated! If the Cambridge Companion has a chapter or two on the early life and family upbringing of Octavian then it would be very helpful if you could share that. That's perhaps the part of the article that relies the most on primary source citations (I've started to reverse that already, but there is still much to be done there). Pericles of AthensTalk 17:22, 29 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Feel free to email me any chapter as such from the Companion, if that's how you intend to share it (that's usually how I've shared things in the past, aside from using personal sandboxes). Pericles of AthensTalk 17:34, 29 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Cambridge Core is under Cambridge University Press -- the TWL link is here; you'll have to be logged into TWL for it to work, or you might need to access it directly from the TWL page. UndercoverClassicist T·C 18:36, 29 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@UndercoverClassicist Cool! Thanks! I have access to the Companion now, virtually every chapter. I don't see anything in particular about the early life of Augustus, though, just various things about his reign after he became emperor. Still very useful for the later part of our article here on Wikipedia, but I'll need additional sources about his childhood and family life. Pericles of AthensTalk 19:52, 29 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Have you come across this fairly new biography (2023)? It has a slightly unusual focus (each chapter is based on an astronomical event), but a quick flick through suggests it's probably got as much on his birth and childhood as we're likely to get -- I imagine Goldsworthy and Everitt are probably similarly close to what's possible there? UndercoverClassicist T·C 20:30, 29 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@UndercoverClassicist Nice find! Thanks for sharing. Although it contains a bunch of other tangential information, the first chapter of that book by Anne-Marie Lewis actually confirms a lot of material for the "Early life" section of our Wikipedia article. Bravo! When I have a chance tonight I will be adding this source to our bibliography and citing it generously in that section. Pericles of AthensTalk 21:32, 29 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm extremely happy to announce that Lewis (2023) has been added to "Sources" and cited in the article to confirm the birthplace as Ox Head on the Palatine Hill. I also relied on Lewis to create an endnote about Octavian's date of birth following the citation by Bringmann (2007). This article is starting to shape up! I have run out of time tonight, but I'll tackle it again later this week. I'm starting to feel much more optimistic about it! Cheers. Pericles of AthensTalk 01:54, 30 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@UndercoverClassicist Hello again! Just letting you know that apparently only the introduction chapter of The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Augustus is available via PDF at www-cambridge-org. For whatever reason, the PDFs of other chapters only contain two pages: the cover page for the chapter followed by a blank page, and then nothing else. A shame! However, there are other sources to consult. The Cambridge Companion also doesn't help much with biographical details on Octavian's life, as we have discussed. Pericles of AthensTalk 17:28, 4 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Are you sure you're downloading the right bits? If, for example, you download the PDF for "Part II: Intellectual and Social Developments", you get the two pages, but if you download any of its sub-parts (which are the "real" chapters, like "3 - Mutatas Formas: The Augustan Transformation of Roman Knowledge"), I at least get the full PDF. If that doesn't work for you, shoot me an email via Wikipedia with what you need: I should be able to get it. UndercoverClassicist T·C 17:37, 4 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The problem was I was not able to see the sub-parts in the URL I was looking at, but I searched the book again in Cambridge Core, and now the sub-parts/chapters are listed. I'm reading Eder's chapter right now, so it appears that all is well. Thanks! As I suspected, though, it provides great information on the reign of Augustus, but not exactly the details of his early life as Gaius Octavius (and then Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus). It will at least be somewhat useful here and there, and I plan on citing Eder (2005) in the "Name" section at least once for backing up Bringmann (2007) on translating Augustus as "the revered". Pericles of AthensTalk 13:18, 5 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yes -- honestly, I think you might end up being disappointed if you want to write a biography of the "real" Augustus that cuts through the myth-making and ideology -- I'm not convinced such a thing is possible! We have to be led by the sources: if they don't give a huge amount of detail about what Augustus did between the ages of four and ten, or what they do say is clearly just variations on traditional and implication-heavy stories, there's not a lot we can do. UndercoverClassicist T·C 15:34, 5 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@UndercoverClassicist I think you'll be pleased to know that I have moved Galinsky (2012) out of the "Further Reading" section and into the "Sources" section, so that I could cite his work in both the "Early life" section and "Legacy" sections of the article. Hurray! Serious progress is being made, especially since the "Legacy" section needs a serious cleanup. That first paragraph will need many more citations, but paragraphs have been rearranged more logically per subject matter, and Galinsky provides excellent input and a nuanced perspective about the Pax Augusta that was sorely missing from the article. Hopefully within a couple months all primary source citations will be diminished or relegated to support status or endnotes, and recently-published reliable sources like Roller, Lewis, Bringmann, and Galinsky will buttress, clarify, and expand on points made by Eck & Takacs. Pericles of AthensTalk 12:50, 1 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
A suggestion rather than an instruction -- it might be a good idea to try to get one (fairly short) section "done" -- that would mean that reviewers here can get a sense of what the final product will look like, and give a steer if needed. UndercoverClassicist T·C 13:35, 1 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@UndercoverClassicist Not a bad suggestion! In that case the "Name" section at the very beginning should be a top of the list priority. It still needs a bit of work, and I'll make sure everything there has a proper secondary source citation. After that I'll continue work on the "Early life" section. I'm happy to have cited Galinsky where he was truly needed, though. Pericles of AthensTalk 14:58, 1 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@UndercoverClassicist It's only one small step, but I'm happy to announce that the "Name" section has at least been cleaned up, reworded a bit, filled with new citations from secondary sources, and all primary source citations have been moved into endnotes for now. Let me know if this looks suitable, or if further changes must be made to elevate the quality of that section (to meet our rigorous FA standards). Cheers! Pericles of AthensTalk 15:55, 7 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
What are the high-quality sources in the Further Reading section for me to try and add into the paragraph? Thelifeofan413 (talk) 18:16, 2 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Thelifeofan413 Most of those sources seem useful, but which "paragraph" are you referring to here? The first one in the "Legacy" section that I mentioned? That one simply lacks enough citations from reliable sources, with several sentences failing to have inline citations. Most of these statements are obviously factually correct (on the same sort of level as the claim that "George Washington was the first president of the United States"). However, they still require citations per the strict standards of a Featured status article. I'm unfortunately too busy today and perhaps all weekend to delve back into this project, but I will have time next week to provide more citations. If you're able to add even one citation (using the "sfn" shorthand method), that alone would be a serious contribution and a really big help! Thank you. Pericles of AthensTalk 20:28, 2 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I will try to do this as when my schedule permits. Thelifeofan413 (talk) 07:00, 3 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@AirshipJungleman29 Thanks for letting me know about the review! It was quite a long time ago when I wrote the article and submitted it for Featured status, back when I was in college! I'll have a look at it over the weekend when I have a chance. Hopefully I will have some time next week to work on improving things here. Pericles of AthensTalk 11:01, 18 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Could we get an update on status here? Nikkimaria (talk) 15:10, 24 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    @Nikkimaria Hello! Just letting you know that I'm still working hard to improve the article and made significant edits just today on the "Early life" section, after completing the initial "Name" section. Unfortunately I have a very busy weekend, but I am still fully committed to improving the article and will tackle it more next week when time permits. So far I have made a concerted effort to replace primary source citations with secondary source ones, shifting the former to endnotes where they can still be useful as further references. I plan on finishing the "Early life" section by the end of next week, and will comb through the rest of the article after that. I've been using a variety of sources for that job, and lately I've been relying a lot on Galinsky (2012) for the childhood and upbringing of Octavian. I plan on using a variety of secondary sources, of course, and have beefed up the article here and there with ones that were previously delegated to the "Further reading" section (Galinsky included). Please give me a couple months to make further improvements before final judgments are made. I'm doing all of this in my very limited spare time, so if you know anyone else who could help, please let me know! Regards, Pericles of AthensTalk 18:53, 24 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    @PericlesofAthens is there any "grunt work" i can help you with? Remsense 🌈 论 11:27, 7 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    @Remsense Thank you so much for offering help, my friend! Citations are the biggest problem, with primary sources that must be shifted to endnotes in particular, replaced by secondary source citations. I've unfortunately been extremely busy this week, will be busy most of next week too. Only have time tomorrow afternoon/evening to work on the article, plus Monday & Tuesday next week (no time for it after that, not until mid-late June). My plan is to try and finish "Early life" section ("Name" section is done). I'm primarily using Galinsky (2012), Cambridge Core via Wikipedia Library, but there are a lot of weeds to untangle. My plan involves creating a better explanation of the First Triumvirate, at least mentioning it in the "Early life" section. Current article version does a somewhat poor job of contextualizing it (First Triumvirate not even explicitly mentioned until the "Second Triumvirate" sub-section), Caesar's Civil War, and explaining Julius Caesar's relationship with young Octavian. If you could simply find secondary source citations for replacing already existing statements that only rely on primary sources (like Suetonius and Nicolaus of Damascus), that alone would be a huge help! Cheers. Pericles of AthensTalk 19:27, 7 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Just want to give a huge thanks to User:Matarisvan for helping move standalone sources into the bibliography. It's an enormous help, since I'm overwhelmed with the work that needs to be done on the article and moving much slower than I have anticipated due to life and work throwing me curveballs in the last couple of weeks. Progress has been much slower than I have wanted, so any little bit helps! I'll try to continue work on the article sometime later this week, but cannot make solid guarantees that the Early life section will be fully complete by the end of this week. I was traveling out of state on vacation last weekend going into Monday, and nearly everyone in my family has a birthday in June. Total nightmare for my wallet and spare time. LOL. Pericles of AthensTalk 19:03, 24 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    @Nikkimaria It has taken me forever due to my busy work and social life, including summer travels, but I'm proud to announce that both the "Name" and "Early Life" section are finally done and ready for review! I have also made substantial improvements to the subsequent "Rise to Power" section. A huge amount of the primary sources have been shifted to "Notes" and secondary sources now dominate the remaining inline citations seen in the "References" section. The latter has also been cleaned up substantially by User:Matarisvan who shifted standalone cited sources to the "Sources" section, so huge shout out and kudos to them. Unfortunately, I have virtually no time the rest of this week to work on the article (ugh, typical), but I will try to squeeze in time on Sunday evening (July 13th) to power through the "Rise to Power" section and provide necessary additional secondary source citations to buttress Eck & Takács 2003. Overreliance on the latter source was a major concern listed by User:AirshipJungleman29, so I will do my best to alleviate that concern now that primary source citations have been obliterated. Kind regards, Pericles of AthensTalk 03:28, 8 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Some good work there. A few minor pointers as you go forward:
    • We don't generally put pronunciation transcriptions in body text, unless the pronunciation is particularly important (e.g. when someone began pronouncing their name differently).
    • When we're translating a word, rather than mentioning it (e.g. "the Spanish word case 'house'"), we normally put the translation into brackets -- so he called himself Princeps Civitatis ('First Citizen') juxtaposed..., or else in some sort of phrase (e.g. "he called himself Princeps Civitatis, roughly meaning 'First Citizen'").
    • For reasons I don't quite understand, but probably to do with the template, notes c, n and r have extra close brackets. There may be more: it seems to happen when you refer people to Suetonius.
    • We need to pick a lane on how we do names (MOS:WORDSASWORDS): see his rival Mark Antony referred to him as Thurinus ... Marcus Junius Brutus, one of the assassins of Julius Caesar, referred to Octavian as Octavius [no italics] ... In English he is mainly known by the anglicisation "Octavian"
    • He transformed Caesar, a cognomen for one branch of the Julian family, into a new family line that began with him: I don't really understand what the difference is here. What was new about the way Augustus passed it to his (adopted) son Tiberius, versus the way Caesar's father passed it to him?
    • the Volscian town of Velletri (Latin: Velitrae: we should generally use names as they stood at at the time (so Vercingetorix wasn't born in France), so just Velitrae would do here. You could add "(modern Velletri)" if you thought lots of people would be helped by that, but I don't think many will.
    • Note M needs reworking to avoid a parenthetical citation; these are now depreciated.
    UndercoverClassicist T·C 11:39, 8 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    @UndercoverClassicist Thanks for pointing these out! I will try to fix these issues on Sunday, but unfortunately my workday has begun, along with a relentless week of nonstop social commitments after work and further Summer travel plans out of state. At the very least I'll tackle these concerns by next week. Cheers! Pericles of AthensTalk 13:07, 8 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Checking in - any further update? What issues remain? Nikkimaria (talk) 20:41, 19 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    @Nikkimaria Sorry, I don't have time to explain it in full since I have to leave my house this very instant (nonstop social commitments when I'm not working, the busiest summer I've had in recent memory, almost wish it was COVID again so I'd have spare time). I will try my very best to tackle this next week, but I can only do tiny edits here and there, and none this weekend unfortunately. I'm happy to be busy with friends and family, but it's making me depressed at the same time, since I am desperate and eager to salvage this article. I have not given up on it, that's a promise. Cheers! Pericles of AthensTalk 20:49, 26 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@PericlesofAthens: What issues remain? Nikkimaria (talk) 14:30, 23 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Nikkimaria Unfortunately several issues, and I know I keep asking for extensions, but this last month has been absolutely insane for me, with tumultuous things happening to both friends and family that I had to deal with. That's on top of August travels, road trips, and social plans always getting in the way of me working on this article when I'm not working my regular job. I finally, finally, finally have some spare time starting tomorrow night to work on this! I just can't do anything tonight, because of an insane amount of chores and shopping I absolutely have to do before I die and pass out in my bed in two hours, after a very stressful day at work. The cruel, ironic part is that starting next month I'll have hilarious amounts of free time and less social commitments (despite my birthday being in September), so I can work on this article more at that point. I fear, however, that this FAR process will be closed by then, since it's been open for so long. Please let me know if I have a bit more time to salvage this, now that I can finally sit down and do it this week. I will try my very best to address the issues UndercoverClassicist brought up back in July, and more. I spot a few more primary sources being cited throughout the article, plus areas where Eck (2003) needs to be buttressed with additional sources. Cheers. Pericles of AthensTalk 00:56, 26 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
We can wait a bit longer. Nikkimaria (talk) 01:05, 26 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Nikkimaria Thank you for letting me know! I had to deal with yet another family issue/emergency this week, unexpectedly, but I will try to tackle some things brought up by UndercoverClassicist right now, before I leave my house to join up with friends and family for a US Labor Day weekend of boating out on the lake and dinner parties. Hopefully sometime next week I can tackle things beyond UndercoverClassicist's latest points/issues raised and sweep away any and all primary sources that are still cited here and there (beyond the "Early life" section). Pericles of AthensTalk 19:40, 30 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@UndercoverClassicist I have been delayed nearly every single day since we last corresponded, for reasons outlined here and others, but I have finally, finally found time when I'm not totally physically exhausted or mentally demoralized to address the minor points you raised in July. I'm not happy at all about the solution I had to make for Note M and removal of the parenthetical citation. If you have a better solution please let me know, other than just coupling it with a regular citation placed before it (to haphazardly specify the precise Galinsky page number). Please let me know if I missed anything in the "Name" and "Early life" section, but I addressed all the specific issues you raised, even the thing about the cognomen Caesar (clarifying that he continued its use as a name and that it eventually became a standard imperial title, something that is also explained later in the "Legacy" section). I will comb through subsequent sections of the article next week, but I'm swamped for the rest of the weekend, unfortunately, and already have friends and family blowing up my phone asking about my whereabouts and why I'm not with them right now to prepare for our lake trip (LOL). I can't even get a minute to work on this in peace. Hope to hear from you soon! Pericles of AthensTalk 20:27, 30 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
"Name" section looks mostly good:
  • I have some reservations about so many pronunciation guides, not all of them massively helpful (do we really need "Thurinus" but not "Ceasar"?), in article text -- here I would follow the advice in MOS:LEADCLUTTER if any are felt really indispensible.
  • We shouldn't attribute Cicero and some other contemporaries called him Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus as well as "the young Caesar" according to historian Karl Galinsky, as this isn't a matter of opinion -- it's either in Cicero's extant works or it isn't.
  • It's not totally clear what's meant by the bracketed names Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus and Imperator Caesar divi filius Augustus. Honestly, given the text that follows, I think you could just delete them both.
Ditto Early Life:
  • As note F is quite long, I would follow WP:PAREN and replace the parenthetical citations with foonotes.
  • his now lost autobiography: hyphen in now-lost.
  • Note M needs a citation in the note.
  • Note N looks very strange with the archive link.
  • College of Pontiffs (Rome's college of priests) is very misleading: it was far from Rome's only college of priests. It was probably the most prestigious (certainly the most prestigious open to men), and you can probably find a source for that.
  • Note R is almost entirely cited to a primary source -- the same rules apply as in body text.
  • the toga virilis 'toga of manhood' vs magister equitum ("master of the cavalry"): note formatting inconsistency. I think brackets and single quotations is probably the way to go: following the letter of MOS:GLOSS only really works when also in the realm of MOS:WORDSASWORDS.
UndercoverClassicist T·C 14:47, 31 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@UndercoverClassicist Thank you very much for responding! I will try to address all of these points this week the moment I get a chance. I'm at work right now, and am busy virtually every evening and night this week, but I will squeeze in whatever time I can to address this. Also yes, I agree about the point about Cicero. Cheers! Pericles of AthensTalk 13:13, 2 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Update: great news, @Nikkimaria! Next week I will have tons of time to work on this article, but this weekend is crazy for me since it's my big 40th birthday celebration today. Starting Monday I should have loads of free time to work on this article, with social commitments after work finally clearing up and becoming more sporadic. I can finally salvage this article and give it the attention it deserves! Cheers. Pericles of AthensTalk 19:09, 13 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@UndercoverClassicist: Hello! Thanks once again for providing the list of suggestions above. I'm confused by a couple of them, but I will try my best to address each point. I removed the titles/names in parentheses as requested, and removed the mention about Karl Galinsky for Cicero. I'm not quite sure what needs to be done with the name "Thurinus," though I think it is worth mentioning in the "Name" section (provides context for how contemporary Romans used naming conventions in subtle disparaging ways for political purposes).
As for parenthetical citations, WP:PAREN states that "this also does not affect explanatory footnotes," but I will still follow your advice by changing parenthetical citations within footnotes to shorthand citations (I've had technical difficulties doing that recently, causing errors somehow, but it seems to be working okay now). I have completed this task for the "Early life" section, and did the same for another footnote in the "Heir to Caesar" subsection. I will comb through the rest of the article very soon for other instances.
I'm not sure how to handle the archive link in Note N; are you saying it should be removed? I removed the statement "Rome's college of priests" per your request. I also added Galinsky as a secondary source within Note R, and only mention Velleius Paterculus as a reference for further information (alongside Suetonius). I have also followed your advice about consistent formatting, placing 'toga of manhood' and "master of the cavalry" within parentheses and within single quotation marks. I hope that you find these changes to be suitable, and I look forward to addressing further concerns. I'll be rather busy tonight, but I will have more time tomorrow to work on this article. Cheers! Pericles of AthensTalk 19:04, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@UndercoverClassicist @Nikkimaria Just updating you here at the end of September to inform you that I've done a bunch of work in cleaning up citations, moving further primary sources into footnotes, rewording various passages, and providing consistent formatting for Latin phrases translated into English, per the suggestions above. However, the "Legacy" is still quite a mess and requires serious work with finding citations, especially for the sub-sections "Month of August" and "Creation of Italia." The "Physical appearances" section needs drastic work and reduction of reliance on primary sources, which should all be relegated to footnotes per our discussion. I'm still working on all of this, but it's difficult as usual to find spare time for it! I wish I had a hired team of ten editors working on this article. There's still a few things to untangle, especially towards the end, but major progress has once again been made. Pericles of AthensTalk 23:55, 30 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Very sad news, though, it looks like I no longer have access to Galinsky via Cambridge Core, even with the Wikipedia login. I suddenly need to belong to some institution to gain access to it. Damn! I really needed it still. LOL. @Nikkimaria @UndercoverClassicist any advice on how to access it otherwise or other works if Cambridge Corps is suddenly being difficult? I was not done using it. Perhaps I could find time to visit my local university library? That's quite a trek, though, and you know me (don't have much spare time for anything these days). Pericles of AthensTalk 00:45, 1 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Which Galinsky (and which chapters) do you need? I've got alumni access to Cambridge Core. UndercoverClassicist T·C 06:29, 1 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@UndercoverClassicist Hi! In particular chapters 2 and 3, but also things like the index. It's frustrating that I've lost access to it. Pericles of AthensTalk 12:54, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for responding and helping out! Pericles of AthensTalk 12:55, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Is this the Cambridge Companion or the Introduction to the Life? Either way, it'll be fine -- shoot me an email via Wikipedia with the list and I'll send you the files you need. UndercoverClassicist T·C 14:17, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Featured article removal candidates

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Place the most recent review at the top. If the nomination is just beginning, place under Featured Article Review, not here.

Aquaman (TV pilot)

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Notified: Bignole, Srfanone, Davey4, WP TV, WP USA, WP Comics, noticed 2025-08-10

Review section

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As is listed on the article talk page in more detail, I am concerned that a number of the sources used in this 2007 promotion do not meet the modern expectations for source quality. Hog Farm Talk 23:02, 13 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Move to FARC - issues unaddressed. Hog Farm Talk 13:41, 25 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

FARC section

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Sourcing. Nikkimaria (talk) 14:50, 27 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Ashton-under-Lyne

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Notified: Nev1, Jza84, WP UK geography, WP England, WP Greater Manchester, WP Cities, noticed 2025-03-22

Review section

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In March, RetiredDuke brought up concerns on the article's talk page regarding uncited text, date prose and statistics especially regarding demographics, religion, and economy; and a seemingly-significant 2018 redevelopment mentioned in the lead but not in the article body. I agree that these concerns are significant enough to warrant a FAR, and the issues have not been addressed in the time since the notice was made. Hog Farm Talk 23:40, 10 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Shoot. I just now realized that Wikipedia:Featured article review/Manchester/archive1 is still open - this may need put on hold if someone wants to pick up one or both of these FARs. Hog Farm Talk 23:46, 10 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

FARC section

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Issues raised in the review section include sourcing and comprehensiveness. Nikkimaria (talk) 14:03, 13 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

India

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Notified: Flemmish_Nietzsche, RegentsPark, Moxy, Fowler&fowler, Z1720, Kharbaan_Ghaltaan, Chipmunkdavis, Nichalp, ALittleClass, Benison, Saravask, User-duck, WikiProject India, WikiProject Asia, WikiProject South Asia, WikiProject Countries, WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors

Review section

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Long overdue for this 2004 FAR which has not seen formal review in years. There are major concerns chiefly regarding the prose quality of this article. It's not up to 2025 FAR standards. The lead is bloated and large, with tons of excessive citations and awkward sentences. Lots of "trivia"-esque information in the lead which could be trimmed down. The pre-FAR discussions yielded some improvements but not anywhere near FAR quality. Simply put, even a cursory glance at the article should be ample to conclude that the prose is not at the level of other country FARs like Germany and Japan.

Just to give some examples of the poor prose.

  • "Kerala is the most literate state with 93.91% literacy; while Bihar the least with 63.82%" (semi-colon connecting a non-independent clause)
  • "Yet, India is also shaped by seemingly unyielding poverty, both rural and urban" (editorializing tone, "unyielding")
  • The official Indian defence budget for 2011 was US$36.03 billion, or 1.83% of GDP (the word "its" should be before "GDP").
  • This is accomplished by mixing—for example of rice and lentils—or folding, wrapping, scooping or dipping—such as chapati and cooked vegetables (em-dash hell)
  • It is the seventh-largest country by area; the most populous country since 2023;[21] and, since its independence in 1947, the world's most populous democracy (semi-colon hell in the second sentence of the lead, with superfluous information about different population rankings --- just say "most populous country" and get it over with!)

The article frequently aggressively uses semi-colons in a way that, while not ungrammatical, is not good style in my view.

On the factual accuracy, I have identified issues as well. For instance, just as I am writing this, I noticed the claim "in the Punjab, Sikhism emerged, rejecting institutionalised religion".This is misleading. Sikhism is a religion and is institutionalized in the sense that there is a central institution (the Akal Takht) which can make binding edicts on its followers. It turns out that what happened here is that the source was misrepresented. The author does not state that Sikhism was not institutionalized, but only that the first guru was influenced by a tradition that apparently rejected institutionalized religion. But, even if true, this would not establish the claim as Sikhism was borne of ten gurus and they all contributed to the formation of the religious doctrines; as it turns out, the religion did institutionalize chiefly under the latter gurus (the Khalsa).

The pre-FAR discussion is here and sparked a lively discussion. Further to my initial pre-FAR notice, other users, notably ALittleClass, have identified additional examples of poor prose and citations in the article body. ALittleClass has also noted the omission of crucial cultural aspects of India in the article; despite being a lengthy article it is rather unbalanced. I have identified further examples of this. For instance, untouchability is mentioned in the lead, but not elaborated upon in the article body except for a brief mention that it has been banned.

Concerns have been brought up regarding the article for a number of years (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) but due to inertia there hasn't been a great change to get this article up to standard. JDiala (talk) 08:15, 7 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Other users that have given suggestions for potential changes or mediated the talk include Rackaballa, Z1720, Fowler&fowler, Joshua_Jonathan, पाटलिपुत्र (who gave a detailed and clearly very effortful list of potential image substitutions) and Kharbaan Ghaltaan. There are definitely improvements being made on the article, but the article currently does not meet our featured article standards, and a more intense period of improvement will probably be needed to get it to meet the standard (concerns have been brought up multiple times over the past 5 years, as JDiala notes). Also, if this article was nominated for GAN, there would also be multiple things flagged for fixing, but the changes needed to achieve that level may be more superficial, I'm not very experienced in differentiating between the two standards.
I would request someone who understands Indian English to review my original section of potential issues to see if I correctly identified errors, or just misunderstood the rules of the dialect. ALittleClass (talk) 08:53, 7 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I would also suggest of removing unnecessary images from certain section, which is not irrelevant to trends of countries articles. There is also too much bias and stereotypes showing in the article Kharbaan Ghaltaan (talk) 09:18, 7 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Some other sentences I noticed that should be revised:
  • (mentioned in original post) "Economic liberalisation, which began in the 1980s and the collaboration with Soviet Union for technical know-how, has created a large urban middle class, transformed India into one of the world's fastest-growing economies, and increased its geopolitical clout." I changed "clout" to "status", but "know-how" still seems imprecise.
  • "Buddhism, based on the teachings of Gautama Buddha, attracted followers from all social classes excepting the middle class;" The end of this sentence basically makes me think that both the Buddhism attracted followers from both the lower and upper classes, but specifically not the middle class. Thus, the implied claim from this sentence is kind of hard to believe (although I will accept it if given evidence).
  • "In the 1989 elections a National Front coalition, led by the Janata Dal in alliance with the Left Front, won, lasting just under two years, and V.P. Singh and Chandra Shekhar serving as prime ministers." Unnecessarily wordy and hard to parse.
  • "Painted manuscripts of religious texts survive from Eastern India about the 10th century onwards, most of the earliest being Buddhist and later Jain. No doubt the style of these was used in larger paintings. The Persian-derived Deccan painting, starting just before the Mughal miniature, between them give the first large body of secular painting, with an emphasis on portraits, and the recording of princely pleasures and wars." Is this sentence set of sentences referencing two specific works or two entire forms of art? A confusing mixture of singular and plural tenses is present here, and other confusing phrasings. This "visual art" section may need a more extensive rewrite.
  • (Already mentioned in original post) "The dhoti, once the universal garment of Hindu males, the wearing of which in the homespun and handwoven khadi allowed Gandhi to bring Indian nationalism to the millions, is seldom seen in the cities." ...sure...
  • "The popularity of tandoori chicken—cooked in the tandoor oven, which had traditionally been used for baking bread in the rural Punjab and the Delhi region, especially among Muslims, but which is originally from Central Asia—dates to the 1950s, and was caused in large part by an entrepreneurial response among people from the Punjab who had been displaced by the 1947 partition." again hard to read, the em-dash is too much and needs to be it's own sentence
  • "India has played a key role in the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation and the World Trade Organization. The nation has supplied 100,000 military and police personnel in 35 UN peacekeeping operations." Nothing seemed wrong with this sentence, it just appeared to be potentially uncited. (unless the [271] source of the first next paragraph also covered it, I did not check deeply)
And, reiterating what multiple people have echoed, there are some gaps in the culture section of the article, most notably no writing on music.
ALittleClass (talk) 09:24, 7 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I have to say the sentiment here feels a little overblown. I don't see anything that warrants suggesting this article no longer deserves its FA star. A few queries here and there (perhaps), but the use of semicolons is reasonable in context, and while there is always room for improvement, nothing here is a major red flag. The lead is a reasonable length for an article about a country as large and complex as India. The citations there are likely included to ensure every claim is properly sourced, which is a good thing. As for "Sikhism emerged, rejecting institutionalised religion", it's not saying Sikhism is uninstitutionalised, but that it emerged under the first guru in this form. That said, I agree this phrasing could improved.
Perhaps our assessments of what constitutes good prose vary significantly, as I personally found some of the sentences cited as examples of poor prose to be even impressive in how much detail they pack (while still remaining presentable). India's history and culture are vast and naturally some are going to feel certain aspects are under/overrepresented. This will be a source of disagreement among editors so we must try to echo how reliable secondary and tertiary sources present those topics when talking about India. Untouchability should only have two or three sentences giving context on its emergence in history. I do agree there can be a few additions on music and film, but nothing too densely detailed. In its current form, the article is still very close to meeting FA criteria. In fact, the standing version today could probably be closed as a reasonable keep at FARC. Let the improvements continue, but the article is not in nearly as bad a shape as it's being made out to be. DeluxeVegan (talk) 10:38, 7 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Citations in the lead for uncontroversial claims are MOS:LEADCITE violations. Introducing a significant subject (untouchability) in the lead without elaborating on it meaningfully in the body is a MOS:LEAD violation as this is not consistent with the purpose of the lead which is to summarize the body. It is also a MOS:JARGON violation as a technical term is introduced without defining it. At least two of the highlighted quotes (in green) I provided involve blatantly grammatically incorrect sentences. These aren't differences of opinion. They're just not grammatical. Semicolons cannot link an independent clause with a subordinate clause, for instance.
Having unusually large "info packed" sentences is not considered good prose. Splitting off sentences when they get unwieldy is considered good practice. This is the professional standard in English. This is a difference of opinion and somewhat subjective, but I believe mine is closer to the standard in professional English prose and the standard in other FA articles. The examples cited by ALittleClass are clear examples of bad prose. This is where I stand and I believe most native English speakers would concur.
As for your claim "it's not saying Sikhism is uninstitutionalised, but that it emerged under the first guru in this form", that's not clear as the sentence makes no mention of the first guru. The first guru is only mentioned in the linked source, not in the wikitext. A typical reader would take away from the wikitext that Sikhism rejects institutionalized religion. This is gravely misleading. Having your only sentence on a major religion (one that originated in India) be misleading in this way is not acceptable in an FA.
You suggest that the article can be fixed after some minor polishing but this is what has been said for years now (see linked talk page discussions). At some point we must realize that the problem is not so trivial. JDiala (talk) 11:48, 7 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
MOSLEADCITE violation? Have you read the guideline? Although the presence of citations in the lead is neither required in every article nor prohibited in any article, there is no exception to citation requirements specific to leads. The necessity for citations in a lead should be determined on a case-by-case basis by editorial consensus. You can't violate rules that aren't real no matter how much they are lawyered into existence. This tendency to inflate relatively minor issues into sweeping faults runs through much of your critique.
Long-standing doesn't automatically equal intractable. I've said my part on the prose and will leave it to others to weigh in, but I see this as a strong article that just needs polishing to let the good shine brighter. DeluxeVegan (talk) 12:25, 7 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Of course, any guideline may be violated if there is a truly compelling reason to do so (see WP:IAR). This isn't an excuse to ignore guidelines. I haven't seen a compelling reason presented why this article's lead requires more citations than other FAs. FA criteria is clear that FAs are intended to be the very best articles the project has to offer and is also clear that the prose plays a major role in this. A sufficient accumulation of "minor issues" should therefore be adequate to revoke FA status. That said, I'm hoping the issues are resolved before we reach that stage. JDiala (talk) 18:22, 7 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Having citations in the lead is not a violation of the guideline, it is expressly permitted by the guideline. CMD (talk) 01:25, 8 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Citations are permitted provided the material being cited is controversial or likely to be challenged. This issue routinely comes up in FA candidacies and this is the standard. Look at literally any other FA, especially recent FAs; they have hardly any citations in the lead. JDiala (talk) 16:29, 8 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The material which is challenged or likely to be challenged is where citations "must" be included, not where they could be included. They are permitted for use anywhere, and some FAs make liberal use of them, such as Pancreatic cancer. I do prefer a lead with fewer citations and would like them reduced, but that's a matter for local consensus, not because the guidelines say it has to be done. CMD (talk) 16:53, 8 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The standard in FAs has always been to minimize the number of non-critical lead citations. This is a longstanding convention and routinely shows up in FA reviews. Finding another select FA where this is not met is a textbook case of cherry-picking. JDiala (talk) 18:29, 8 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That's not what cherry-picking is. The longstanding convention is the existing guideline, which is being misread in this FAR. CMD (talk) 08:26, 9 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That's precisely what cherry-picking is. You're providing a singular exception (pancreatic cancer) to a longstanding convention. You can have your views but I'll just reiterate what I said: this is not the standard the community uses in the overwhelming majority of discussions on the LEADCITE issue, and you've yet to provide a compelling reason why this particular article requires a different standard. JDiala (talk) 03:08, 11 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
First you say there's a policy violation, and when that was shown to be false, you move on to claiming some imaginary standard is being flouted. How hard do you think it is to remove something? It would take barely five minutes to write a script for it. The fact that it hasn't been done means editors disagree with you and you should let it rest. DeluxeVegan (talk) 04:56, 11 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The point of FAs is precisely to recognize articles that meet standards which exceed bare policy requirements. Just because the letter (not the spirit) of the law allows infinity lead citations doesn't automatically make doing so FA-acceptable. You need compelling reasons to violate long-standing FA conventions. These have not been provided. JDiala (talk) 09:40, 12 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The long-standing convention is that it is FA-acceptable. You are asking for evidence for an issue that does not exist. (And again, if someone says "Look at literally any other FA", providing an example of one of the literally any other FA is not cherry-picking, it is directly responding to what was asked.) CMD (talk) 01:41, 13 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose going any further. The overwhelming consensus in the talk page discussion was against proceeding to the FAR. I consider this FAR to be flagrant disregard of Wikipedia values and traditions. user:JDiala could not have their way in a different discussion (see Talk:Subhas_Chandra_Bose#Problematic_and_biased_lead_sentence) and they chose to seek vengeance by coming here. Besides, my understanding was that user:Z1720, admin and FAR regular, was attending to the final smoothing of prose, and had stated in a Talk:India discussion that an FAR was not needed. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 00:59, 11 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
By definition, a FAR process is initiated by an editor if it is deemed that internal talk page discussions have failed to keep the article up to FA standards. The point of the process is external community input when local consensus on the talk page isn't adequate. Also the consensus on the talk page was split with multiple editors in favour of a FAR (myself, ALittleClass, Kharbaan Ghaltaan) and several other editors not taking a clear stance but identifying significant problems in the article which have not been resolved yet.
The rest of your comment consists of aspersions and personal attacks better suited for ANI; I won't respond to those. JDiala (talk) 03:08, 11 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Close without FARC Fowler&fowler«Talk» 10:38, 12 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Support The article no longer meets FA standards due to major omissions in coverage, weak prose structure, and shallow treatment of complex topics.
Text generated by a large language model (LLM) or similar tool has been collapsed per relevant Wikipedia guidelines. LLM-generated arguments should be excluded from assessments of consensus. — Newslinger talk 08:12, 8 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
  • Coverage gaps: Entire domains central to India’s present are either missing or barely mentioned:
    • No discussion of recent political trends, including majoritarianism, Hindu nationalism, or India’s declining press freedom rankings.
    • Major legislation (e.g. CAA, UAPA amendments, electoral bonds) appears without analysis or political context.
    • Climate change is reduced to one-line mentions in Geography. Missing are India’s COP positions, vulnerability to extreme heat, coal policy, and major air pollution metrics. No references to IPCC or UNEP data.
    • The article entirely omits India’s malnutrition crisis, including key public health metrics and disparities. This is a serious gap in education and health coverage.
    • Indian cinema and literature are nearly absent. There is no mention of Bollywood, regional industries, Pather Panchali, Bhagwad Gita, Tagore, Premchand. This is a serious omission for a cultural power.
  • Neutrality: Caste and religious violence are structurally minimized. There is no mention of Gujarat 2002, Delhi riots, or post-1950 caste politics. Statements like “India is a pluralistic society” are unbalanced and lack critical framing.
  • Prose and tone: The “Modern India” and “Contemporary Issues” sections read like a bulleted list, lacking synthesis, cohesion, or encyclopedic depth. Promotional phrases like “fast-growing economy” remain.
Unless this article is rewritten with depth and analytical structure, I support taking it to FARC. (Edited comment to remove "deslisting" - as rightly pointed by DeluxeVegan)
Rackaballa (talk) 02:52, 12 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Delisting is not in contention at FAR, only at FARC. Using LLMs to dissect minor points and then jumping the gun to endorse delisting can't genuinely be seen as a good-faith attempt to improve the article. DeluxeVegan (talk) 08:53, 12 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
"Using LLMs to dissect minor points" - WP:BAIT Rackaballa (talk) 09:02, 12 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I agree. The article has a lot of structural biases that need addressing, especially when it comes to caste, or the country's recent, and highly notable, rise in hindu majoritarianism and religious nationalism through Hindutva. The economy section makes no mention of the country's inequality, which is now worse than under british colonial times (It only mentions economic disparities between states). There is very little information on air pollution or climate change. Much of this is a gross violation of WP:NPOV by omission. Worst of all, this is heavily documented by WP:RS, so there isn't even a reason to not include this. The article does not view India factually but rather does so through rose-tinted glasses, which is dangerous for an encyclopedia as big as wikipedia. I support taking the article to FARC. EarthDude (wanna talk?) 03:41, 22 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Issues with images

There are several images that could be improved in this article: Image gallery moved to talk page. Nikkimaria (talk) 14:20, 23 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

पाटलिपुत्र (Pataliputra) (talk) 13:19, 7 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Also almost all images in this article give a dull impression and bad representation of India and its people. It only shows poor villagers, backward rural areas, and villages. There must be correct way to show India's traditions and culture, with balanced modern aspect too. Kharbaan Ghaltaan (talk) 22:19, 7 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Most of the concerns above are overblown, and I do not believe an FAR is needed at present. Many of the issues are stylistic rather than objective problems: others are aesthetic choices that could be done differently but in no way constitute FA criteria failures. With respect to images, for instance, even setting aside the euphemistic use of "mainstream" to imply "Hindu", I count ten images with religious symbolism in the article. Of these, I count five "Hindu", two "Buddhist", one "Muslim", one "Christian", and one Sikh. One could reasonably argue for more modern images, but again this is not an FA criteria failure by any stretch of the imagination. Finally, the presence of citations in the lead is not prohibited nor discourages, and any editors with experience writing about south Asia would know that the material therein is in fact frequently contentious, and the use of citations is beneficial. I recommend we close without FARC. Vanamonde93 (talk) 16:57, 8 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
One of the criterion for FAs is professional and well-written prose. Failures in that are grounds for a FAR. You write that "any editors with experience writing about south Asia would know that the material therein is in fact frequently contentious", but this is both a generalization and an appeal to authority. You would have to go through the citations one-by-one and analyze the extent of talk-page contention for each of the corresponding claims for your statement to be substantiated. In truth, the overwhelming majority of lead citations are for claims that have never been contested in the talk page. JDiala (talk) 18:29, 8 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That assumes that we discourage citations when material isn't contentious, which is plain wrong. We neither discourage nor encourage citations, and the inclusion of citations in the lead is perfectly acceptable even for uncontentious material. South Asian content is contentious, however, and the presence of lead citations discourages drive-by removals. As such it is doubly not an FA criteria failure. Vanamonde93 (talk) 18:17, 9 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
"South Asian content is contentious" is misleading as not all SA content is contentious. "India is located in Asia" for instance is not a contentious statement. You need a granular analysis of individual contentious claims in the lead; this is what other FAs do, even those in controversial subjects e.g., Evolution, Armenian genocide denial and Climate Change. No one's contesting that "[a] large-scale loss of life and an unprecedented migration accompanied the partition", for instance, or that India "has disputes over Kashmir with its neighbours", yet those claims are accompanied by citations. Similarly, we have three lumped-together citations for uncontroversial statements about India's population ranking in the first paragraph. This is not the standard for FAs in 2025. JDiala (talk) 09:40, 12 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Your basic contention of citations in the lead being a bad thing is unsupported by policy and has no bearing on FA status. Vanamonde93 (talk) 18:34, 12 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Unnecessary citations in the lead are a bad thing, not in the spirit of the LEADCITE, and routinely show up in the FAC/FAR discussions. The discussion is going in circles so this will be my last comment in this sub-thread. JDiala (talk) 19:36, 12 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with your opinion on images, but not regarding FA-criteria. FA-criteria and trends both works together. Look at articles - Bulgaria, Japan, East Timor, and Australia. This article is overtly "unique" and "different" from other. Pls visit here to get more better understanding Kharbaan Ghaltaan (talk) 09:50, 9 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The post of Patliputra is a word-for-word copy of their Talk:India post of four or five years ago. Please post the link to the previous discussion here, including its xenophobic slant, as you will be able to view the opinions of the major contributors, including admins, to this post. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 01:01, 11 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The article has a lot of concerning structural biases, such as when it comes to caste, Hindu majoritarianism and religious nationalism, income inequality, pollution and climate change, etc. Without being addressed, they violate WP:NPOV quite significantly. I believe an FARC is necessary. EarthDude (wanna talk?) 04:03, 22 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Close without FARC per Fowler&fowler and Vanamonde93. The article had a very rigorous review recently, and the regulars and admins (which include FAR regulars) have come into a consensus that the article doesn't need to proceed into FAR now. Point to JDiala: consensus is not majority or number of users supporting a view. Three editors repeating same point is not consensus, it's WP:IDONTLIKEIT. The general consensus in the discussion at the talk page was the article is upto FA standards, as seen by senior editors and, FA and FAR regulars with experience in the region. This discussion is superfluous IMO. The small prose and style issues can be discussed in the talk page and can be modified if consensus supports it. — Benison (Beni · talk) 06:06, 11 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I strongly oppose these image proposals. They violate WP:NPOV, such as replacing images on Islam or Christianity with Hinduism (even though the latter is given a lot of images in the article already), is highly exclusivist. Replacing images of agriculture, which continues to be where much of the population works in, with images as random as cars, seems nothing more than neoliberal fantasising. The only acceptable proposal here is for the geography section, and even then adding three images for replacing one seems excessive. EarthDude (wanna talk?) 03:56, 22 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • I have already given some of my thoughts at the top of the review, but more time has passed and the article has not substantially changed.
I believe this article does not meet requirement 1b of the featured article criteria, AKA comprehensiveness. Specifically, in the "Culture" section, the article does not have any body writing on many art forms one could expect in the article, such as the music of India (referenced in the lead but found nowhere within the article), theater in India, literature of India, and the media of India (such as their prominent film industry which is also referenced in the lead).
It is very much possible to make room for these additions, such as by swapping the "Visual arts" section for a general "arts" section or trimming other cultural sections, such as a paragraph in the section on clothing, which cites one source, that source being 2 pages of an argumentative book which is centered not on clothing but the cultural impact on Bollywood. I pointed out that a sentence from this paragraph was argumentative and unencyclopedic in tone, and despite getting consensus from other users to revamp this section, nothing has been done to alter or revamp it. I also posted about this general issue with cultural coverage on the talk page, gave a proposal on how to rework it, and got no response whatsoever for either support or opposition.
If this article were to be nominated for FA today with the current standards, this would definitely be flagged for something needing to be fixed before it could qualify. This entire section has not even been touched since the start of the FAR. Because of this, and also instances of prose below the FAR standard that have not been fixed, I support taking this article to FARC. ALittleClass (talk) 07:48, 13 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
India is Wikipedia's oldest country FA, now 20 years old. The country, India, a part of South Asia, has a longer and more diverse history than any region in the world outside of Africa. It was the first region to settled by Homo sapiens when they migrated out of Africa. Before neolithic cultures took root in western South Asia ca. 7500 BCE, India had a 50-thousand-year interregnum of thousands of isolated hunter-gatherer enclaves, leading to exceptional cultural diversity. India has some 25 official languages, with rich literatures of their own. It has half a dozen classical languages, among them Sanskrit and Tamil, one a standard-bearer of the reconstruction of the ancestor language of all Indo-European languages and the other of Dravidian languages, not to mention hundreds of dialects with literatures of their own. Were it not for the British East India Company gradually expanding its rule over India from 1757 to 1814, the region would have remained a diverse continent, like Europe, with dozens of countries. I believe it is unrepresentative of what FAs aspire to, to apply cookie-cutter rules to a region such as this. Canada, much compared above, is a European settler society, whose pre-settler diversity is a recent reconstruction and acknowledgment. The same, more or less, applies to Australia. Germany, with somewhat older history, nevertheless, is more culturally uniform than many sub-regions of India. Were we to be comprehensive here, the India article would become a long list; too long; or a high-level summary too abstract for most readers. The article India has more talk page archives than any FA, I wager. So much has been discussed over the years. I suggest that we be more humble in quick assessments of this page. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:08, 16 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
What you leave out is that the "[discussions] over the years" often amount to you bullying away editors who point out concerns. JDiala (talk) 14:46, 16 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • I support taking this article to FARC as well for the reasons already given. I also believe if this article would be nominated today, it probably wouldn't even pass current GA standards. There are many country articles which I'd consider to be better than or of similar quality as this one but are only rated GA- or B-class. This article in its current state clearly doesn't represent Wikipedia's highest-quality of work as a FA-class article should. Maxeto0910 (talk) 14:08, 20 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    You should look at the response to India's last TFA on October 2, 2019, before waxing off-handed judgments here. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 13:33, 16 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

FARC section

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  • Delist per above. Given the number of issues that have been pointed out, I do not anticipate they can be quickly resolved. Editing activity on the article also hasn't been high enough to indicate a serious effort to resolve issues. JDiala (talk) 19:12, 24 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delist per the reasons given above. Like I already wrote, I think the article in its current form doesn't represent Wikipedia's highest-quality of work as should be expected from a FA-class article. Far from it. Maxeto0910 (talk) 07:48, 25 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Close without FARC, keep as FA also supported by user:Vanamonde93 and user:Benison. Also I expect, user:Johnbod and user:RegentsPark. Most editors of FA India, I wager, are unaware of this behind-the-scenes activity. How did this get to FARC? (Redacted) Will the coordinators, user:Ealdgyth, user:DrKay, please note that Sandy G is not editing these days. Also, user:Z1720, who had planned to go through the article, please note. I last edited this article on May 30. Unexpected death and acute personal grief have kept me away from Wikipedia. At the very least, I should be allowed to review the article and update the citations over the next month and a half, until Halloween. It would be a real tragedy if Wikipedia's oldest country FA, now 20 years old, were to lose its status in such a way. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 12:33, 16 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    You can of course update the citations if you are able, but please avoid commenting on the motivations of other editors here. (This goes for other editors as well). Nikkimaria (talk) 00:55, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Keep as FA": The concerns expressed above can be boiled down to WP:IDONTLIKEIT. Essentially, "I don't like the prose"; "I don't like the images"; "I don't like that some content is not included"; "I don't like multiple semi-colons" (sorry guys for forcing you to see more semi-colons but, hey, they do exist!). Not everyone is going to like everything and I don't see any substantial reasons given for delisting the article. In this particular article, the images, the content, the prose (especially in the lead) was all done through a consensus forming process and I see no reason why a few IDONTLIKEIT's should overturn that consensus.RegentsPark (comment) 13:36, 16 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep per RegentsPark and agree with what Fowler&Fowler said. This is such a blown out of proportion IDONTLIKEIT clearly. These 'concerns' raised here are majorly are nothing minor copyedits can't fix. Rest anything and everything can be added onto the article after getting a consensus from the editors who have been taking care of the FA for decades.— Benison (Beni · talk) 13:46, 16 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment (Redacted) In the interest of fairness, I will ping others involved in the article and this discussion for their perspective, especially since many of them might be unaware this has reached the FARC stage: Rackaballa, ALittleClass, EarthDude, Kharbaan_Ghaltaan, Moxy. The points raised by others also lack merit. Consensus is fine as a process, but there is no guarantee that the outcome of that process results in an FA-tier article. FAs are delisted when the regular editors of an article fail to uphold the standard. That is what has happened here, in the view of several editors whose arguments have not been rebutted as of yet. JDiala (talk) 14:13, 16 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Please keep comments focused on how this article does or does not meet the FA criteria. Nikkimaria (talk) 00:55, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment I have my own thoughts about potentially condensing some areas, although I'm not sure where they lie from personal preference to potential FACR issue, however in any case this FAR has been muddled with minor things like misunderstandings of LEADCITE to major things like the assertion that Muslims are not part of mainstream Indian society. Given this is now at delist/list without progressing beyond that muddle, it is likely best that this is closed to allow for individual issues to be raised in more focused discussions. CMD (talk) 14:28, 16 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. The vast majority of concerns above are not policy-based reasons for revision, let alone removing FA status. Lead citations are not prohibited or discouraged in any way. The prose nitpicks are just that: no evidence of precision or clarity issues has been presented. Many of the image proposals are based on the implication that images of religions besides Hinduism ought not to be included, and carries no weight. The only serious proposal was related to the geographic images, which was dealt with on the talk page. Some reasonable suggestions have been put forward by ALittleClass and EarthDude among others as to expansions and updates in some sections, but that hasn't been the focus of this FAR, and I see no reason we cannot handle such updates through normal processes. Vanamonde93 (talk) 17:51, 16 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delist. The article is factually misleading and lacks the standards of even B-class.

I will start with the very first paragraph which claims "the most populous country since 2023;[21]". Where is the evidence for this? Indian government hasnt done any population census since 2011.

Now we can enter the 2nd paragraph, which claims "By 1200 BCE, an archaic form of Sanskrit, an Indo-European language, had diffused into India from the northwest.[31][32]" The scholarly accepted date for this period is 1700 BCE - 1500 BCE. What has convinced the author to reduce a number of centuries is not imaginable for me. Then we see another misleading claim, "India's pre-existing Dravidian languages were supplanted in the northern regions.[34]" This is contrary to scholarly conensus which is firm that Dravidian languages (see Brahui language existed in Balochistan (northern Indian subcontinent) since the ancient times and were never replaced as there are still enough speakers there. I would also cite prominent archeologists such as Ahmad Hasan Dani, B. B. Lal who have found no evidence of a "Dravidian" to be having any significance in Northern Indian subcontinent. Things only get worse on the lead as you read more. The next we read is "By 400 BCE, caste had emerged within Hinduism,[35] and Buddhism and Jainism had arisen, proclaiming social orders unlinked to heredity.[36]" It is a universal fact that caste is a prevalent factor since the ancient times in South Asia. To say it emerged within Hinduism only in 400 BCE and was swiftly denounced by Jains and Buddhists is outright pseudohistory. Next we read is "Widespread creativity suffused this era,[38] but the status of women declined,[39] and untouchability became an organised belief." I am not sure if the puffery about "creativity" is needed but the degradation of women and untouchability are ancient issues. They did not emerge this much recently as the article falsely claims. The last sentence we read in this paragraph claims "In South India, the Middle kingdoms exported Dravidian language scripts and religious cultures to the kingdoms of Southeast Asia.[41]" Can anyone point me out the period before the British raj where South India and North India were connected with each other as single entity? This appears to push the Hindutva narrative which seeks to treat entire South Asia (or larger area) as a single entity for "thousands of years".

Entering the third paragraph, we see: "The resulting Delhi Sultanate drew northern India into the cosmopolitan networks of medieval Islam.[44] In south India, the Vijayanagara Empire created a long-lasting composite Hindu culture.[45]" These misleading claims are pushing Hindutva narratives that Northern India was now oppressed by the Muslims and Hindus were safe in Vijayanagar Empire. Then we read something laughable, "In the Punjab, Sikhism emerged, rejecting institutionalised religion.[46]" Sikhism is itself an institutional religion. The next sentence is, "The Mughal Empire ushered in two centuries of economic expansion and relative peace,[47] leaving a rich architectural legacy.[48][49]" It appears to claim that it is only architecture where Mughal legacy survives when Mughal legacy survives in many other things such as Indian food, music, military and more. The next sentence is, "British Crown rule began in 1858. The rights promised to Indians were granted slowly,[51][52] but technological changes were introduced, and modern ideas of education and the public life took root.[53]" This tells that the British Empire was all great for South Asia, and they were only benefitting them. How can we ignore all those man-made famines by the British Empire in South Asia? The list of their atrocities is huge. The paragraph then tells "A nationalist movement emerged in India, the first in the non-European British Empire" but fails to tell why. It is necessary when you are praising the colonial empire but the article failed to do the necessary. After that we read "In 1947, the British Indian Empire was partitioned into two independent dominions", when in fact, the British left hundreds of princely states with a choice to remain independent like a separate country. The last sentence of this paragraph tells "A large-scale loss of life and an unprecedented migration accompanied the partition." This is contrary to the fact that all of the violence was highly expected and that's why the British regime hurried it up, leaving Indians to handle the aftermath of the partition.

Finally, we are on the last paragraph which is not as ridiculous as the above however, it does include among the most outrageous claims out of the whole article, "Indian movies and music increasingly influence global culture.[66]" The cited source has been grossly stupid misrepresented.

This is my analysis of only the lead. The rest of the article has larger issues which should be resolved, however, I dont have enough hopes as per my experience with this article so far. Ratnahastin (talk) 11:25, 26 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  • Delist: I have already given my reasons. The article either lacks or omits extremely important and significant information about the country and its current state. Worst of all, whether intentionally or unintentionally, the article gives weight to Hindutva narratives. — EarthDude (wanna talk?) 16:31, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    We have people arguing to delist because the page includes too much imagery of non-Hindu religions...and you're arguing to delist because it gives too much weight to "Hindutva narratives". This is a good illustration that the page as written at least tries to be balanced - but also a good indication that delisting isn't going to achieve the changes you wish to see, and working with people who have maintained it for a long time is far more likely to do so. Vanamonde93 (talk) 16:41, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Hindutva is a political ideology, not a religion. Not sure the concerns are contradictory here as you're suggesting. JDiala (talk) 17:30, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Manchester

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Notified: WikiProject Cities, WikiProject England, WikiProject Greater Manchester, WikiProject UK geography, Joshii 2022-05-12 2023-11-21

Review section

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I am nominating this featured article for review because there are a lot of unsourced sentences and paragraphs, information needs to be updated to include more recent figures from the 2021 census and other more recent statistics, and there are lots of sources in the "Further reading" section that could potentially be used in the article (or removed if not used as inline citations). Z1720 (talk) 19:37, 13 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

FARC section

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Issues raised in the review section include sourcing and currency. Nikkimaria (talk) 14:02, 16 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: I have updated the statistics (except ethnicity and religion) using 2021 census data. It was really outdated, with most of it coming from 2012. I will work on the citation-related issues as well with the hope of saving its FA status; if anyone could highlight places where these citations are needed that would be helpful as the article is not very familiar to me. Thanks, JacobTheRox(talk | contributions) 22:12, 27 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: I think all the {cn} tags have now been addressed and that every paragraph now concludes with a cite. I've added a paragraph in the Economy section to update it. I've also added a bit on "scientific firsts" to the Education: Higher education section. The lead has Rutherford, the Manchester Baby and graphene - all without cites - but I couldn't find it, with cites, in the body, as would be expected. If I've missed it, just let me know and I'll revert. KJP1 (talk) 07:41, 25 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

J. K. Rowling

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Notified: Talk page of article, will do individuals in the morning — Adam Cuerden 22:32, 11 June 2025 (UTC) — continues after insertion below[reply]
No diff for prior talk page notification.
Notifications not done, so I have completed the notifications for Adam Cuerden of WPs listed on talk, and the ping list established on FAR 1. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:39, 14 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
And Simonm223. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:51, 14 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Review section

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I am nominating this featured article for review because I don't think that it comes near, or is capable of coming near, the basic standards of neutrality for a featured article, and the complete breakdown of any sort of consensus editing.

Every change, no matter how minor, takes months of debate. A skim of the talk page will show just how ridiculous just getting the smallest edit through is.

However, I think the rot goes incredibly deep. This article has issues in almost every section, even outwith the controversial ones. It's also excessively long, often because of an indiscriminate level of detail that quotes every little incident in her life that sources connect with Harry Potter.

J. K. Rowling#Early life and family

An astounding level of detail, with no real editorial hand. Consider this passage:

Her parents Anne (née Volant) and Peter ("Pete") James Rowling had met the previous year on a train, sharing a trip from King's Cross station, London, to their naval postings at Arbroath, Scotland. Rowling's mother was with the Wrens and her father with the Royal Navy.[14] Pete Rowling was the son of a machine-tool setter who later opened a grocery shop.[15] They left the navy life and sought a country home to raise the baby they were expecting,[15] and married on 14 March 1965[10] when both were 19.[16] The Rowlings settled in Yate,[17] where Pete started work as an assembly-line production worker at the Bristol Siddeley factory.[15] The company became part of Rolls-Royce,[18] and he worked his way into management as a chartered engineer.[19] Anne Rowling later worked as a science technician.[20] Neither of Rowling's parents attended university.[21]

That is an astounding level of detail about her parents (and even paternal grandparent's) careers. I'm not going to quote every example of this, but it's a good example of the bloated, rather disorganised prose that makes up this article. The general feel of this section is choppy and vaguely organised, a largely indiscriminate collection of facts. There's a lot of mythologising; lots of attempts to connect her life to Harry Potter which I'm sure sources do, but which feels a little unencyclopedic. This continues. — Adam Cuerden 22:32, 11 June 2025 (UTC) — continues after insertion below[reply]

Yes, sources do connect her early and family life to her work, and they also work to address the "rags to riches" misperception by establishing that she had a middle-class background. I have trimmed a bit. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:16, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

J. K. Rowling#Secondary school and university

In the first paragraph, the phrase 'Smith writes that Rowling "craved to play heavy electric guitar"' comes out of nowhere and goes nowhere. In the second paragraph, there's a discussion that begins "She began to smoke, took an interest in alternative rock..." that seems to be where that tidbit - if it's worth including at all - should have connected to. — Adam Cuerden 22:32, 11 June 2025 (UTC) — continues after insertion below[reply]

Not there now. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:16, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, because I am trying to fix this, so I removed it. The trouble is that I can give examples of problems, but they repeat over the whole article, and smaller-scale ones being fixed won't fix large-scale structural issues. Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 8.9% of all FPs. 20:26, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Presenting the issues you have on talk would likely see them addressed quicker, and avoid us having to clutter this page on smaller items. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:16, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The level of detail continues excessively high.

J. K. Rowling#Marriage, divorce and single parenthood

I think the discussion of her father is a violation of WP:BLP. You can argue this section feels like hagiography, but I think that reflects a lot of the sources, at least. — Adam Cuerden 22:32, 11 June 2025 (UTC) — continues after insertion below[reply]

Calling something that well sourced a BLP vio is a stretch, nontheless, trimmed, while leaving enough detail to explain how she ended up living in poverty rather than with her father. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:16, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

J. K. Rowling#Publishing Harry Potter

"Inspiration and mother's death", several sections above presumes familiarity with Harry, Hermione, Ron, and the Mirror of Erised and does not explain what any of them are, so why are we summarising Harry Potter now? This is either pre-exiting knowledge, or it's too late to explain it.

A lot of monetary figures. The end of this section seems to exist solely to link to all the books under their full titles, which is clunky and better done in a bibliography (like the one at the end). It makes the paragraph near-unreadable. — Adam Cuerden 22:32, 11 June 2025 (UTC) — continues after insertion below[reply]

Responses from this section on at article talk, to preserve space on this page. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:06, 17 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

J. K. Rowling#Religion, wealth and remarriage

Quite disorganised. Why does a sentence about the claims that Harry Potter was occult appear in the first paragraph only to be instantly dismissed? (The material is covered much, much later in #Religious reactions). The whole section lacks any real structure.

J. K. Rowling#Adult fiction and Robert Galbraith

It's odd not to mention the Ink Black Heart controversies. This repeats the issue from #Publishing Harry Potter where it seems to need to link to every single book and list the year it came out in prose.

J. K. Rowling#Later Harry Potter works

It's odd to give so much space to a defunct website when the article is already so excessively long, without even mentioning it's defunct. A sentence on Pottermore existing (and ceasing to) would probably be enough.

A lot of speculation about the Harry Potter television series presented as fact. Like, "planned to span 10 years" is better than saying it "will span". Maybe it's clear it's speculative.

J. K. Rowling#Children's stories

Dubious as to whether these are notable enough to fit summary style. The "throw it all in" approach is not used for other authors.

J. K. Rowling#Influences

The Mitford material was covered already. A lot of this should be in Harry Potter (series), not here.

J. K. Rowling#Style and themes

Summary style is utterly violated here. Why, at this point, are we suddenly doing a five-paragraph deep dive into Harry Potter, with one sentence on her other novels. This is ripe for culling from an excessively long article.

J. K. Rowling#Reception

SOME of this may deserve to be here, but it should go into the discussions of the books. We're basically making a second pass through her literary oeuvre at this point, starting over from the beginning. Most of this is on Harry Potter (series), and should be in that article, not here. #Gender and social division is particularly bloated for what's supposed to be an article on the author. #Religious reactions probably has some relevance, but is excessively bloated; the relevant material is in #Religion, wealth and remarriage.

J. K. Rowling#Legacy

Another section that's mostly on Harry Potter (series). Some of this is probably relevant, but at this point reading through a bloated, disorganised biography, it's hard to say what. I have no idea what "spawned a textual afterlife among fans and forgers" is meant to mean.

J. K. Rowling#Philanthropy

The description of Beira's Place is oddly (and very NPOV-problematically) written to hide its anti-trans intent, made explicit in the articles about its launch.

Fails to put things in chronological order, which is both disorganised, and hides that all non-anti-trans donations mentioned come before the anti-trans ones, in other words, her "charitable" giving appears to be largely entirely for anti-trans causes since 2022.

Rest of the article

We're in the sections that start to try and hide her transphobic views, so let's cover the NPOV issues now:

  1. Politics: Fails to mention her rejection of Keir Starmer was explicitly because he said that someone shouldn't state transphobic things. This despite this being the main point of the source linked. Like, it doesn't have to be mentioned (and the source is a mess), but if it is, and the source is going to be used, it should be mentioned accurately.

The section on her transgender views is fine-ish, albeit hard fought for. It's not particularly well-written, but I'm not surprised; the process for the current version was One of the worst processes on Wikipedia - That entire archive is part of the process, it continues for most of Talk:J._K._Rowling/Archive_20, the entirety of Talk:J._K._Rowling/Archive_21 is a continuance, and then in Talk:J._K._Rowling/Archive_22#Citation errors and CITEVAR SandyGeorgia writes 'I don't think the version was ready to be installed, people lost patience when we were almost over the finish line (so we don't have a strong consensus version), but I was too busy to say so then ... [...] Slower and steadier was doing the job; I hope we can resume that mode of editing.' - this after two exhausting months and something like a dozen drafts. Generally, there seems to be WP:OWN issues.

Problems continue. The article lead currently states, in Wikivoice, "...Her remarks have been described as transphobic, resulting in condemnation from various sectors and fueling debates on freedom of speech. Rowling denies being transphobic, stating that her views stem from her experience of domestic abuse and sexual assault. Her expression of these views has impacted her public image and relationship with readers and colleagues, altering the way they engage with her works."

The bit about "her views stem from her experience of domestic abuse and sexual assault" is insidious. It basically implies that transgender people either did the domestic abuse and sexual assault Rowling experienced (which is not true), or that transgender people are highly prone to such actions (also untrue), and the substance of Rowling's fringe views is only gone into late article. We should not have actual attacks on transgender people in the lead. A featured article should have basic respect for facts, and a featured article should not be a WP:COATRACK to promote fringe theories that promote hate.

It's a problem, and that article's relation to Rowling's views on transgender people has been problematic for years, edits generally attempting diminishing non-fringe views in favour of giving Rowling's attacks on trans people more space. Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 8.9% of all FPs. 22:32, 11 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The transgender section is being actively worked on at Talk:J. K. Rowling#Re-writing the main; re-working the lead should follow, but the portion you most object to in the lead was removed some time ago. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:06, 17 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Commentary moved to talk - Nikkimaria (talk) 15:19, 14 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  • Out of process - procedural close - step 1 not completed - Adam Cuerden has not engaged with any of the issues above except the transgender issues (see article talk page). Their stated view is that we should be calling her views transphobic without rebuttal from her because WP:FRINGE requires us to treat Rowling's fringe hate speech as fringe hate speech, not worthy of equal coverage with its rebuttals.[3] This is a single issue content dispute, consuming a lot of editor attention. If there are issues with any other content (which was all fully workshopped and reviewed in the last FAR in 2022) then this should have been discussed first on the talk page. But a plain reading of that talk page shows thousands of words expended just to remove Rowling's rebuttal of the accusation she is transphobic, and this is an abuse of process and will be a huge waste of editor time for no reason - and yes, that is forum shopping. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 07:18, 12 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Talk:J._K._Rowling/Archive_22#Style,_and_a_lack_thereof_in_the_current_version.. I raised issues with the full article. This is a microcosm of the talk page: Ignore substantive complaints about the aarticle, call for more procedure, make personal attacks against the person stating there's issues with the article. WP:NPOVN is full of comments on how bad the article is. Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 8.9% of all FPs. 12:09, 12 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Maybe best not to mention personal attacks. [4] Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 12:24, 12 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    (Personal attack removed) Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 8.9% of all FPs. 13:37, 12 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Close per procedure - Since procedure evidently wasn't followed and, at minimum, the vast majority of issues raised do not require a FAR to fix, I too propose closure. TBicks (talk) 12:37, 12 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Talk:J._K._Rowling/Archive_22#Style,_and_a_lack_thereof_in_the_current_version. Procedure was followed. These issues with the article were raised months ago. You can't just say proceure wasn't followed. Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 8.9% of all FPs. 12:09, 12 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I feel like i'm being gaslit now. You have just linked a talk post from a year ago in which you bring up 4 specific concerns about 1 section of the article. In this FAR, you have expressed issues with 13 specific sections plus "the rest of the article". TBicks (talk) 12:32, 12 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I have been engaging with the article's issues for over a year, and no progress has been made. I've said repeatedly there are issues with writing throughout the article, and have gotten no responses when I have, no attempts to change it. You're basically asking editors to repeatedly raise points on an incredibly hostile talk page over and over, when it's clear no-one cares about the article's problems. Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 8.9% of all FPs. 13:27, 12 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Procedure is to "attempt to directly resolve issues with the existing community of article editors, and to informally improve the article over at least a two-week period".
    Not only did the talk page you linked not raise the vast majority of concerns you raise here, but you seem to have made only 6 posts there (including the initial post) over the course of 9 days. TBicks (talk) 12:37, 12 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I have made posts there for over a year trying to improve it. No substanstive progress has happened. Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 8.9% of all FPs. 13:27, 12 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Commentary moved to talk - Nikkimaria (talk) 15:19, 14 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  • Move to FARC There are numerous issues with the article that clearly showcase it doesn't belong as an FA in its current state. With several of those issues being outlined well by Adam Cuerden. In short, the prose is incredibly poor and bloated, focusing on minutia, trivia, and content that really has no purpose in being in this biography (and with the parents and grandparents info, really anywhere unless they're independently notable). It was certainly good enough to pass the quality standards of FA a decade and a half ago, but standards have risen since then and this article's quality has minimally improved. Really degraded in several ways. Add to that the intractability of getting anything meaningful changed through the talk page and it seems therefore doubtful that improvements will be made in any reasonable amount of time for the vast number of problems. So, I suppose I also preemptively support delisting when it comes to the FARC discussion, unless the large amount of needed changes somehow manage to occur. Which I am doubtful about happening. SilverserenC 21:21, 12 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Demote/Move to FARC Fails WP:FACRIT criterion 1e. stable: it is not subject to ongoing edit wars and its content does not change significantly from day to day, except in response to the featured article process the subject of the article is too contentious due to her views on transgender issues for the article to be stable long-term and thus fails the criterion to be considered a featured article. Just demoting it and moving on seems to be the best use of everyone's time. Hemiauchenia (talk) 15:18, 13 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm not familiar enough with the article to comment on whether it specifically should be an FA, but overall contentious topics can absolutely still be FAs. Our (highly aspirational) goal is ultimately to make every article an FA, which will necessarily include them. The reason for the stability criterion is just that it's impossible to judge a rapidly evolving topic against the FA criteria, but I see no reason why Rowling's article would need to change so quickly as to make that a problem. Sdkb talk 04:29, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Hemiauchenia Barack Obama remained featured throughout an 8-year term; the criterion was never meant to preclude any article from being featured, and Obama surely was as controversial and changed more day to day than JKR. I've not seen editwarring; if I had, I would have sought remedy. I have seen WP:BRD sometimes result in non-consensual text stick longer than optimal. Nor have I seen content changing significantly day to day except to reflect normal and expected updates; it was well acknowledged this article would need updating as better sources on the transgender issues became available, but editors seeking change rarely provided sources supporting desired changes. Ping also SMcCandlish, who mentioned 1e edit warring. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:54, 18 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Except I didn't; I mentioned lack of stability, and also long-term PoV pushing to suppress any viewpoint other than the one most of us here agree with, including suppression of Rowling's own statements. Hemiauchenia making a different argument also citing 1e doesn't make my 1e arguement identical to Hemiauchenia's. I've never suggested a contentious topic cannot be an FA; several of them are, but they are marked by conscientious efforts at neutrality with a pretty broad group of editors at those articles. (That said, "neutrality" does not mean both-sides-ism with regard to patently fringe nonsense like "Obama is not really a US citizen" or "trans is sin" or "gay is a mental disorder".)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:39, 23 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Move to FARC. Obviously fails the stability criterion, and no amount of additional notice is likely to change that. Yes, there was no formal notice, but if this was closed as out of process, it would be the third FAR request in a row we've done that with. At a certain point the repeated FAR requests and constant concerns raised about the article have to become a form of notice; the notice criterion is intended to avoid out-of-the-blue requests with no basis, not to waste time on reviews for articles where long-running disputes and concerns are glaringly obvious. Numerous concerns have been raised on talk for a long, long time and no real progress has been made at settling them. And beyond that, the purpose of the process is not to punish individual people - the suggestion above that we should close it to avoid encouraging Cuerden is silly; take him to AE if you think he's behaving inappropriately, but here, our goal is to do right by the article. Given the extreme, protracted instability on the article (coupled with the fact that its FA status gets cited in discussions as an implicit rationale for the slow motion on changes, eg. here or here), it is clear that there are obviously legitimate concerns and that (further) notice isn't going to lead to those concerns being assuaged. Past a certain point we need to address the actual root issue rather than getting derailed into procedure, and the root issue is that 1. this isn't at featured article quality and isn't likely to regain it in the near future, and 2. the false perception that it is at featured article quality is an impediment to actually improving it. --Aquillion (talk) 16:02, 13 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I want to just add that my own, failed, attempt at a FA review was engendered specifically because I saw the FA status as an impediment to handling the neutrality problems in the article. Simonm223 (talk) 13:46, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Simonm223 several (mostly uninvolved) editors declared in FAR3 there was not a POV problem. Why did you not then follow Nikkimaria's advice to next use NPOVN?[5] I ask because there are allegations of "stonewalling" on this page that I believe unfounded, as appropriate DR venues were bypassed (along with the problem of discussions not based on sources). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:59, 18 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I have to agree entirely with Aquillion's comments above, with regard to FA-related impediements to both review and direct improvement of the article. The tail does not wag the dog: we're here to write great and encyclopedic content, not mire that work in red tape. PS: I also want to address a comment made somewhere else in here, along the lines that FAR[C] concerns being raised are some kind of PoV-pushing opposition to the subject herself. That's nonsensical to me. I don't think anyone here has some idea in their head that only subjects we love and admire should be FAs, that's it some kind of award pinned to the person/company/work/product/idea/whatever the article is about. Even if an editor hated Rowling more than they hated anyone else, they should still want this to be a (proper) FA, i.e. for the article on the subject to be the highest quality we can muster, if for no other reason than their beefs with Rowling would have the best sourcing we can find and would not get marginalized right out of our content. Anyway, I do have faith that this can be a proper FA; it just isn't one right now, and the FA label and wrangling about it are in the way of actually improving the article quality to again match that label.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:11, 23 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Speedy delist or at least move to FARC. I feel the nomination has become way too heated to warrant a speedy closure, and even if the nominator was out of process, they unintentionally revealed just how unstable the article is in its current form. Aquillion and Hemiauchenia bring up good points as to how the article fails WP:WIAFA, and I don't think the nominator repeatedly acting out of process should outweigh the actual status of the article and discourse surrounding it. This seems like a textbook case of WP:IAR. Ten Pound Hammer • (What did I screw up now?) 04:42, 14 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • In case what I said above wasn't clear, I also support a Move to FARC. It's hard to satisfy both stable and comprehensive when an increasing part of the subject's notability is due to ongoing current events. Right now I don't believe either is well-satisfied, or at least I can say a large part of what I've spent the last week doing is arguing with another editor who has been attempting to wholesale rewrite a large section of the article that went through an extensive drafting process not even a full year ago, and before that my main participation on the talk page has been begging other editors to include more recent sources. I also don't believe the neutrality criterion is satisfied either, since the more recent sources tend to be increasingly clear about the fact that she's an anti-trans activist. Loki (talk) 04:53, 14 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Move to FARC or delist. I’m pretty doubtful this will get to a stable enough point to retain FA status. Innisfree987 (talk) 14:28, 14 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • As a uninvolved editor, move to FARC. Calls for a procedural close are nonsense, as the instructions at WP:FAR were quite obviously followed. Unlike WP:GAR, stability is a reason for an article to be delisted at FAR, which is for FAs that may no longer meet any of the WP:FACR. It seems to me quite obvious that in light of current events, to remain fully comprehensive the article must necessarily use referencing that does not meet WP:BESTSOURCES, and that to remain fully cited to WP:BESTSOURCES the article will not be fully comprehensive. If an article is unable to meet both of two of the FA criteria because meeting one violates the other, that is unfortunate, but the best thing to do is to move it towards no-longer-being-an-FA. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 15:05, 14 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Move to FARC The writing is obviously not up to Featured standard. When a Featured Article isn't good enough to merit the status anymore, we should either fix it or remove the star. Stepwise Continuous Dysfunction (talk) 15:06, 14 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Move to FARC Talk page discussion is useful as long as it leads to article improvement. It is not useful when it's used to Stonewall against beneficial changes. (Redacted) The featured status of the article is no longer merited and actively standing in the way of improvements. (t · c) buidhe 15:25, 14 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Procedural issues aside, in terms of fixing the issues raised, I think that the vast majority of sections can be fixed via the subject's talk page if they are raised there. Although i've not been active on the Rowling page as long as some others, i'm yet to see an issue unrelated to trans/politics get stalled, so for most sections raised here, I think rewrites/fixes could be fairly speedily achieved. It's very possible (i'd even say likely) that a FAR/FARC will be needed for the trans related stuff discussed in the "Rest of the article" subsection, as that area has certainly become somewhat of a battleground, but at least if we can get the other stuff sorted first, we can avoid a needlessly convoluted FAR where we attempt to rework 13 sections on top of the contentious trans related stuff (which by this point really needs a dedicated process of its own to disentangle). I think talk would be the best place to start for the moment, if only to clear out the noise and home in on the issues that really need to be addressed in an FAR. Otherwise I can see this process becoming extremely convoluted extremely fast.TBicks (talk) 17:15, 14 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Coordinator note. Given the comments so far, I'd like to highlight for participants what FAR is not:

  1. A vote. Keep and delist declarations are not made at the FAR stage, which is intended to focus on potential improvements. Only if and when this is moved to the FARC stage will such declarations be appropriate.
  2. Dispute resolution. Such issues should be addressed via the usual DR processes as needed.
  3. A venue for personal comments. Comments addressing other editors should be taken to user talk, or if necessary ANI.

Please keep these points in mind and keep comments here focused on the FA criteria and how the article does or could meet them. Nikkimaria (talk) 15:19, 14 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Those above, and myself, seem aware of that, hence why I and others above are instead saying Move to FARC, which is specifically the kind of statement that is meant to happen in these reviews if decided upon. Unless you were referring to the initial responders prior to comments like mine? SilverserenC 17:35, 14 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If you are responding to #1, I would guess they are referring to the fact that
a) 5 of the 9 people who have indicated a wish to move to FARC, have also indicated a preference to demote/delist (fwiw this includes yourself)
b) There was someone trying to illicit a keep/delist declaration from me TBicks (talk) 17:53, 14 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • elicit (never could spell!)
TBicks (talk) 18:03, 14 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Silver seren I fundamentally take issue with that line of reasoning. It's one thing to vote to move to FARC because the article has sufficiently been commented on and edited in response to comments at FAR to the point that it is ready for a FARC consideration. It's another thing to rush something out of FAR prematurely with the clear intention of rapidly submarining at FARC. This is clearly what voters are wanting, and given the controversy on Rowling, its seems clearly biased towards the subject matter and an abuse of process. We do what's best for the article and our encyclopedic coverage always. What is best here? To take our time at FAR, and give the feedback and attention it should get in terms of tightening prose and making better editorial decision on article development and improvement. Even if the instability problem is an issue later at FARC which causes the article to fail at FA review, we can still make a better article through FA process by giving it a proper look over here at FAR.4meter4 (talk) 18:28, 14 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
In regards to this, and your comment below, please don't forget to assume good faith. It’s not bias to think it’s bad for the encyclopedia to have a protracted process around an article that has no chance of meeting the FA criteria. As some have noted, those who want to improve what can be have the talk page at their disposal, but we don’t need to belabor the FA question when its outcome is pretty clear. Innisfree987 (talk) 19:16, 14 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Innisfree987 I understand that to some the outcome is clear, but I think it is possible that FAR review might lead to a more stable article. It also might not. We won't know until we actually try to tackle the problem in FAR review. Not trying though is a rejection of the article itself through a defeatist attitude. That could be perceived as a bias given the controversial subject matter. There is no way around escaping the optics, no matter how much we quote WP:AGF. Railroading controversial topics through FAR so they can be rejected rapidly at FARC is a bad look. Letting the process proceed normally and succeed or fail in a natural way at the normal FA procedural pace is the way to go.4meter4 (talk) 20:00, 14 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I don’t think it helps to be the person who keeps introducing the allegations of bad faith; there are plenty of legitimate arguments here, like WP:NOTBURO. Innisfree987 (talk) 20:18, 14 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Please do not make a bolded !vote twice. Sdkb talk 04:23, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Move to FARC. I think I have now seen ample evidence that there are intractable disputes going back to well before this review was started. I agree that some issues could likely be fixed through simple edits, but the biggest issue is that the article is unstable in the sense that there is a decided lack of consensus on how to handle Rowling's current profile vis-a-vis a history that had quite a different one. Emphasis which may have been reasonable in past iterations of this piece now looks unevenly made and unduly emphasized in light of content that is being soft pedaled or kept out entirely. I think we need to move this discussion to a venue where we can decide to delist the article, even if only temporarily, so as not to mislead readers into thinking that this is an example of the best articles on Wikipedia. jps (talk) 17:55, 14 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose move to FARC. Support following FA review procedure as articulated by Nikkimaria. We have editors rushing the FA process with an attempt to prematurely move it out of FA review to FARC where they can rapidly submarine the nomination. Given the controversy surrounding Rowling, moving this prematurely to FARC could be perceived as a bad faith decision made from bias rather than a measured neutral course of action. It's important with all nominations, but particularly controversial ones, that we strictly follow FA review process/procedure; even if some see this as not likely to be fruitful in later steps along the FA chain of approval. Ultimately, a proper review here could do things to improve the article, such as tighten prose and improve editorial decisions throughout the article. It would not be a fruitless exercise in terms of improving article quality, even if it never gets the FA stamp of approval. For that reason alone its worth taking our time at this stage, even if ultimately it may fail to pass a later stage in the FA process.4meter4 (talk) 18:04, 14 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I mean, a lot of these would be highly difficult to fix. Summary style is pretty much ignored for much of the article, leading to it being incredibly bloated with trivia; it doesn't make proper use of other articles, hence repeating a whole lot of material better covered at Harry Potter (seriew), the talk page has gotten so broken that constructive editing is nearly impossible, with its status as FA being used to block needed changes (and pretty much any change not discussed on the talk page will be instantly reverted).
    I think it's the deeper issues that are most insidious, though. The article bears artifacts of previous versions throughout it, little non sequiturs, bits where the topic just randomly jumps for a few sentences. This raises serious questions about sourcing attribution and WP:SYNTH issues, as sloppy editing can easily create both, which are difficult to check given most of the sources are paywalled. I suspect a lot of work - and collecting most of the sources used - would be necessary to even begin a rewrite, which would need to throw out large chunks of the article. I don't think anyone even has an idea what the structure of a fixed article would look like, and actually getting agreement on such work would be incredibly difficult. Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 8.9% of all FPs. 21:03, 14 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Hmm... I think it would be helpful at the very least to make specific remarks as to specific passages of text as regards to SYNTH rather than vaguely making claims about the overall state of the article. If there are places where you suspect SYNTH is an issue for example, then those specific places should be identified. If we are going to delist this, we should at very least take the time to do a proper diagnostic analysis of the current state of the article so those wanting to bring it back to FA at a future date have some sort of framework to work from, and those working at FAR have something to work from. Best.4meter4 (talk) 23:49, 14 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I've said this on the talk page, but the end of the Legacy section has a "According to scholars this shows..." where what "this" is has some major questions: It looks like a statement by Pugh was inserted into the middle of a passage cited to Thomas and Tosenberger; the "this" probably actually refers back a sentence earlier, to "...her statements about characters – for instance, that Harry and Hermione could have been a couple, and that Dumbledore was gay – have complicated her relationship with readers;"
It's subtle, but it probably changes the context of the conclusion in a way likely misleading. It'd need checking all three sources to be sure, though. Anyway, check Talk:J. K. Rowling, I explain it better there because I'm not trying to explain quickly. I also know for a fact there used to be one or two blatant SYNTH issues, though we've fixed those. Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 8.9% of all FPs. 02:51, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Given the controversy surrounding Rowling, not bringing the article to FARC could be perceived as a bad-faith decision. It would be very easy to read that as saying that the article can't have its gold star called into question, and that the Wikipedia community will appeal to arcane procedural concerns in order to keep that gold star there.
Well, plenty of people wouldn't care at all (did you know that the average person only knows the meaning of two acronyms for Wikipedia back-channel forums?). But among the fraction who would, many would see not taking it to FARC as a bad sign for Wikipedia's standards. Stepwise Continuous Dysfunction (talk) 04:09, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Nice try to flip the script, but nobody is advocating avoiding a FARC if it is necessary. We can't determine that until a proper FAR is done, and editors are given an opportunity to fix identified problems. There is a reason we require articles to go to FAR before they are taken to FARC, and that calls to delist at FAR are banned. I note that the calls to move this directly to FARC under claims of instability are ignoring the spirit of the guidelines given for step 2 at WP:FAR. If you are going to comment here you must engage with the process as articulated in the guidelines, which basically state that the goal of FAR is to identify problems and give editors who want to work on the article time to address/ fix them. If editors aren't willing to engage in that process in compliance with the guidelines then they shouldn't be commenting at all. 4meter4 (talk) 05:55, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • FARC it, per criterion 1e: "stable: it is not subject to ongoing edit wars and its content does not change significantly from day to day". This article has been an editorial shitshow for several years. PS: While I do not agree with Rowling's TERF crap, whether or not I agree with it or anyone else in here does is arguably irrelevant, since this is not POVpedia. I cannot get behind the idea that our article should represent only one viewpoint on Rowling's socio-political positions and especially not that her own statements on the matter should be entirely suppressed. FRINGE really doesn't apply to socio-political stances with very broad (if unreasonable) support even if most of us wish that support did not exist. This is not similar to "the Earth is flat", or "space aliens built the Egyptian pyramids", etc. Resist the urge to try to use WP as an advocacy platform no matter how important you think that advocacy is.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:28, 14 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Claims on FAR about length, focus, excess detail, BLP vio, etc) do not reflect sources, and Adam Cuerden acknowledges not having accessed one of our most comprehensive sources. That information should inform comments on focus, excess detail, BLP vio, and the like; discussion of weight and focus should be based on best sources, and until/unless AC has gathered and read those sources, his commentary might be considered as not yet fully informed. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:23, 14 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    FWIW I do have access to Pugh and I second criticisms 2, 3, and sort-of 4 (I'm more concerned that "religion" and "wealth" are mixed in one section with poor focus than that we have a section on those things at all). For 1, I don't agree with that specific example but could be convinced there is too much trivia in the article elsewhere.
    I don't think any of those criticisms relies on access to any source. They're all directly about the current text of the article. Loki (talk) 23:48, 14 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    For the record, the numbered points are the ones at Talk:J._K._Rowling#Summary_style, which are specifically ways I feel this article violates WP:Summary style. To make the FAR easier to follow, I'll briefly state what the points are here:
    1. The article contains a lot of trivial facts. I used as an example the first paragraph in Early life, which, honestly, isn't that bad, just very detailed compared to other FA biographies.
    2. About one-third of the article is focused entirely on Harry Potter, going into stylistic discussion and literary analysis, when WP:Summary style would put this into the many subarticles, like Harry Potter (series), and give a fairly brief synopsis in J. K. Rowling.
    3. It lists off every book in the two series in order at J. K. Rowling#Publishing Harry Potter and J. K. Rowling#Adult fiction and Robert Galbraith just to link to them, when we have a bibliography for that.
    4. It sometimes sets up concepts, but then drops them until much later. Example: the lengthy discussion of her religion in J. K. Rowling#Religion, wealth and remarriage when that depth of coverage presumably only exists at all because we later have J. K. Rowling#Religious reactions
    Just, if people are going to refer to points by number, it's probably easier if they're here. Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 8.9% of all FPs. 00:23, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Close without FARC, because the issues raised here do not warrant delisting. This article has been the subject of a gargantuan effort to summarize the best sources on the subject, and it is an excellent summary of those. No, really, it is. The problem is that, like every good compromise, the current version has left everyone unhappy: and there are a good many editors who simply cannot accept that a version they dislike is considered FA quality (I dislike some wording currently used. I would change it if I could. Consensus is against me, and I've accepted that: I'm not starting an FAR over those few words). Unlike the 2022 FAR, the issues raised here simply do not merit changing status. There have been kilobytes of discussion about Rowling's transgender views and how to present them, but the most extreme change that could come about as a result of those discussion is of a few dozen words - that is not, in my view, "instability" with respect to the FA criteria. The summary-style issues are all stylistic nitpicks (sorry!). I do not believe a single extant FA will do any better than this page when subject to similar scrutiny. If we delist this it will be purely because our editor body lacks the ability to compromise over a contentious topic, and that would be a crying shame, not to mention a serious indictment of our model. Vanamonde93 (talk) 00:38, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    it will be purely because our editor body lacks the ability to compromise over a contentious topic, and that would be a crying shame, not to mention a serious indictment of our model -- Fascinatingly, I agree with your diagnosis but not with your moral conclusion. Crowdsourcing cannot and should not handle controversy well precisely because it is a controversy. It isn't an indictment of the model nor is it a crying shame that NPOV disputes disqualify articles from being FA because I am of the opinion that not every article can become featured. I am fine with Wikipedia saying, for the time being, "It may not be possible to write an article on this subject that rises to our highest standards." That is so much more mature and honest than the hyperbolic "sum total of human knowledge" hubris that gets bandied about sometimes. jps (talk) 01:56, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    +1 (t · c) buidhe 03:27, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    There are varieties of controversy. We cannot write FAs when the body of high-quality sources is changing rapidly. In this case there's no rapid change, only a slow drip of provocative tweeting. What Rowling's views are, and what the desired effect of her advocacy is, are matters of settled fact. WP:DUE, WP:BLP, and WP:LABEL place sharp limits on how we can present those facts. An editor body committed to collaboration should be capable of handling this: this isn't Racial views of Winston Churchill, or Origin of SARS-CoV-2, or anything else where what Wikipedia considers the best sources are actually at odds over the substance of the matter. Vanamonde93 (talk) 16:58, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Hmm... I think that this article matches my controversy meter for to the radical views of Churchill or the origin of COVID-19 somewhat similarly. The problem isn't so much that there is controversy over precisely what Rowling's views are (to be fair, there isn't much controversy over the origin of COVID-19 or what radical views Churchill had either -- in spite of certain contrarian sneerers arguing otherwise). The problem is that there is controversy as to how WP:WEIGHTy this presentation of self and advocacy is given the outsized impact her career as an author was. I do not see consensus in the sources I perused over these matters for how the framing is best handled. Do you? jps (talk) 23:20, 17 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    There are serious scholars saying that Churchill's views were simply a defense of empire, or that Covid came from a lab/from a market. I know of no serious scholars stating that Rowling hasn't advocated against trans rights. So I do see consensus here, actually. Even with the caveat that I have not gone deep into the source material in the last year, the general patterns are quite clear. We have sources covering the evolution of Rowling's public expressions. We have sources discussing what causes Rowling has put her money toward. There is no no ambiguity that she has advocated against support in the law for gender self-recognition. There are a couple of sources discussing how this has affected her relationship with fans - this material is thin, but not a matter of contention. And we have a few pithy quotes summing this up: the Variety quote comes to mind (I suggested putting that in the lead, to dodge the difficulties of summarizing Rowling's tweeting, but other solutions can be devised). None of this is substantively contentious. What causes controversy is Rowling's steady stream of tweeting, but we shouldn't be covering that in blow-by-blow fashion anyway, because of DUE, NOTNEWS, etc. (this is not Rowling-specific. I have consistently argued against including sound-bytes from public figures in BLPs). If she says something significant, it is covered by retrospective sources with a little delay - at that point we can work them in.
    Fundamentally, any piece of text can be written in several different ways that are policy-compatible. In this instance I don't see substantive disagreement that merits NPOV tags, edit-warring, or failure of the FA criteria. Vanamonde93 (talk) 16:24, 18 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • I basically agree with jps here, in that I think it may not be possible for an article that is significantly impacted by current events to ever be a featured article, because in that case "stable" and "comprehensive" conflict, and that's fine. Similarly articles with significant controversy related to them have a much more difficult time remaining at featured quality because of disagreements about what is neutral and what is comprehensive. That's also fine. It's not a problem that (for instance) our articles about historical world leaders like George Washington or Neville Chamberlain are often featured but articles about current world leaders like Donald Trump or Keir Starmer rarely are. Featured status implies a level of source stability that is hard to come by for articles about political controversies happening right now.
    I also don't agree that it's just "a few dozen words" at issue. The problem is that an increasingly large part of the subject's notability is not reflected in the article. We're at the point where nearly every source, news or scholarly, spends at least some time on Rowling's views on trans people, so if we did change the article to reflect the sources properly it would be very clearly unstable. But if we keep it the way it is right now, it's not comprehensive. You can't say "we haven't changed it that much so it's not unstable" because there are two prongs to this fork. Loki (talk) 03:13, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Wikipedia:Today's featured article/November 4, 2008. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:55, 18 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • This falls under WP:NOTREPUTATION. If we've failed to write a featured article, then we've failed to write a featured article; we need to admit that fact. Most of our articles (even most of our high-traffic articles) are not featured. It's a high hill to climb and sometimes reaching it is going to be a slog. I do think that it is possible to get the article to a stable state eventually but it'll require a lot of work. Saying that we have to treat the current version as FA despite its instability because to do otherwise would be to admit defeat is putting the cart before the horse. But also, and this is crucial - you say that the problem is that the editor body lacks the ability to compromise. But part of the problem is that FA status, by its very nature, can discourage reaching such compromises by encouraging people eg. to cite WP:FAOWN and generally argue that the article represents accepted compromises already. And that's not helping here - part of the reason stability is a criterion for maintaining FA status is because from a big-picture viewpoint instability means that whatever compromises previous version had are clearly not holding; we need to reach new compromises for things that have changed, and FA status is getting in the way of that. --Aquillion (talk) 12:31, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Aquillion: NOTREPUTATION is a well-articulated argument for ignoring what social media says about us: I'm making the basic point that our ability to work together on contentious content is central to our success. And my contention with respect to this article is that we have written an FA here, or at least written something that has stood up to far more scrutiny than the vast majority of our FAs. No proposed changes from either Rowling's most trenchant critics or her staunchest defenders contains anything near the level of new material for us to remove FA status on the grounds of instability. What we have right now is nitpicking, and edit-warring, and that's an indictment of the editor body, not the content. Vanamonde93 (talk) 20:09, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I haven't seen any indications of editwarring, and those who are arguing 1e, instable, are either misinterpreting WP:WIAFA or failing to present any evidence of editwarring. If I saw edit warring, I'd take it to AE, and I haven't (I have seen some BRD); we can't penalize an FA because of a few behavioral issues. And 1e was never intended to prevent us from the routine maintenance of keeping articles up to date (Barack Obama was an FA throughout eight years of his presidency, and it's difficult to imagine that being less controversial than JKR); that we have people editing who hadn't read or discussed sources is a behavioral issue, not a stability problem. I'd like for anyone who is arguing the article is unstable to present the evidence of editwarring or major changes other than normal editing to update an article (which would be easier if those arguing on talk would actually consult sources and then confine discussion to sources, sans venting and rants and off-topic tangents that don't advance article improvement). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:12, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • The article went through a long and comprehensive FAR in 2022, I would need to see strong evidence that the article has degraded since that consensus. --Guerillero Parlez Moi 11:28, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    The person who nominated the 2022last FAR was @Simonm223: Perhaps they would be equipped to opine on whether they think framing the 2022 review as comprehensive enough to warrant only considering whether the article had "degraded" since that time is well-motivated. I gathered from their comments on the WP:NPOVN thread that they think there may be ongoing concerns in terms of whether enough wide-enough community input was had with respect to seemingly intractable NPOV and OWN controversies, and my investigation of the talkpage discussions and matching with the complaints registered here seems to me to indicate that we might have an instance of either WP:CCC or WP:LOCALCONSENSUS. jps (talk) 12:42, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I do not believe the Rowling article to presently be neutral. I respect WP:LABEL concerns with regard to a BLP but I think the local consensus has skewed too far in the opposite direction and has come to under-represent the extent to which her anti-trans political activism has come to define responses to her and her work. I agree that there is a local consensus that is quite protective of the page although I believe at least the majority of those people who form the consensus are doing so in good faith. Simonm223 (talk) 13:00, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'd honestly say that the 2022 FAR is responsible for many of the article's problems. It closed with a promise of more work going forwards. A comparison to today shows that little further work actually happened. It added what appeards to be huge copy-pastes from Harry Potter, ruining the article's focus. If this was raised at FAC today, it'd be torn apart. Quite frankly, I think the FAR resulted in an article just good enough to take the focus off of it, under the assumption further work would polish it. Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 8.9% of all FPs. 19:06, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    "It added what appeards to be huge copy-pastes from Harry Potter" can be viewed as an allegation that @Vanamonde93, Olivaw-Daneel, and AleatoryPonderings: (who did most of that writing) breached WP:CWW, or I did when copying text developed on talk in to the article (my high content contribs are because I did most of the WP:CWW from talk to the article, even when I didn't write the text, and I'm fairly sure I never breached attribution). This is a very serious charge, implicating specific editors. Please provide evidence via diffs for this copy-paste on talk so content can be attributed correctly via CWW templates. This kind of mistake makes it appear you are moving too fast; FAR is a deliberative process, and there's no need for hurry or undiffed charges of copyright breaches. (Also, please thread your posts chronologically.) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:59, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Adam, if you had exercised the least bit of due diligence you'd know content was copied from J. K. Rowling to Harry Potter to comply with summary style, and to address a glaring lack of analysis at the series article [6]. You would also know that the literary analyses were added to Rowling's article because at least seven editors - with more than 50 FAs between them - noted that literary analysis was necessary [7]. You are making it hard to take your concerns seriously. Vanamonde93 (talk) 20:14, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    And this; always first at JKR, and properly attributed when copying. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:23, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    You're kind of trying very hard to be offended, especially as the actual 2022 FAR has been gutted and stripped off to many subpages, making it near impossible to coherently review it. The actual point was that the article excessively duplicates a more appropriate article for that content, the direction of content flow was the opposite of my assumption, but copying content into an FA from an appropriate subarticle with appropriate credit is not actually something that is at all problematic behaviour. Merging content into an article is part of normal editing; I don't see why you think that'd be an "allegation". That it went the other direction does go some way to explaining why, in 2022, the FAR went the way it did, and the result was considered a good version. However, now that Harry Potter contains all the content, it's time to take a hatchet to (not all, but a good chunk) of the remaining content in J. K. Rowling. Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 8.9% of all FPs. 20:43, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Move to FARC or delist - Featured Article Review just isn't an appropriate venue at this point. That is an implication of a collaborative effort to improve the state of the article back to an acceptable quality. However, with the situation around this article that's just not realistic. Despite years of divisiveness and constantly churning debate on a talk page, and an enormous effort at a previous FAR, the article has only grown more controversial. Currently the same voices have been battling over the same points for section after section with absolutely no sign consensus will ever be reached. As others have indicated above, the editing process for this article has simply broken down. If that same article has significant issues, and I'm convinced it does, it's not in a place where it can reasonably use the FAR process at the moment. That's just redirecting the entire mess from the talk page to another venue where it will continue to go nowhere. If I ask myself whether this would stand a chance in hell at passing FAC in its current state the answer is no. Enough opposes would be generated from the transgender topic alone—the part so bogged in procedure we can't even change small wordings anymore—and everyone without a strong opinion on that matter would oppose on the grounds the page is an active battleground with no sign of stopping and it's clearly inappropriate for a prospective Featured Article. LittleLazyLass (Talk | Contributions) 16:52, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment to coordinators. @ Nikkimaria, Casliber, and DrKay. Having "move to FARC/delist interjections" throughout this FAR is making it difficult to have a focused and centralized discussion on issues/needed improvements for the J. K. Rowling article. As the featured article review coordinators, I think it is time for you all to decide whether it is worth continuing this WP:FAR further. Adam Cuerden has made a good effort at trying to engage with the step 2 process productively, but otherwise very little engagement has been done to address specific issues in the article. Most editors are not actively providing constructive criticisms but simply want to skip the step 2 process and move directly to the delisting stage. The overall consensus appears to be that step 2 is unlikely to be fruitful and should therefore be abandoned under a WP:NOTBUREAU rationale. Concerns over article instability and protracted arguments impeding the editorial process over a long period of time have informed that opinion. While I personally would like to see a proper FAR done, the current environment here does not seem conducive to that happening. For that reason, I suggest the coordinators make a firm decision about moving to FARC now or indicate outright that that option is a non starter. If it's moved now so be it. If it's not, a new discussion thread should probably be created that is targeted at productive engagement at this FAR, and a clear warning that all premature move to FARC/delisting comments at this stage will be redacted/hidden per the step 2 guideline forbidding that kind of commenting during the FAR process. Otherwise I don't think a productive FAR would be possible. I could live with either decision, given the lengthy history of contentious talk page disputes at the Rowling article, but others, such as SandyGeorgia, might take issue. Regardless, the coordinators need to say something and provide some leadership because the current environment isn't productive. Best.4meter4 (talk) 21:15, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    What lengthy history of editwarring? Please present evidence; I've not seen it and if there is some, I'd like to see those editors sanctioned. I'm unsure why this claim is made throughout this FAR; I have seen instances where editors inserted changes that did not have consensus, and those have stood precisely because other editors won't edit war.
    And I disagree that improvements aren't happening; the process is working just as it should, except that those entering Delist don't seem to have read the instructions. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:22, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@SandyGeorgia The comment I made was talk page directed. You could be right on the history of contentious editing. I am not well versed enough on the article history to make a well-informed assessment. My impression from the talk page archives is that there have been contentious disputes between editors, but whether that has spilled over into edit warring on the page itself I cannot say. Regardless, you make a good point that we need specific evidence of edit warring (such as behavioral blocks of editors). This would be something the coordinators could make explicit, that any vague accusations of article instability or edit warring will not be tolerated. We need evidence of such behavior through article differences. For me personally, I am finding it difficult to stay focused on this page because so much of the conversation is off-task when compared to the instructions at WP:FAR. So again, something needs to be done to put things back on track, and keep comments on-task.4meter4 (talk) 21:44, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
4meter4: Because FAR notifications weren't done on time, editors coming here might not have understood the two phases, as that is part of the instructions in the notification template; once faulty declarations start, others continue. The FAR Coordinators are patient and experienced, and able to deal with this.
The talk page issue is partly because, over a year in, we still had editors who demanded certain changes without consulting sources. Now that this FAR is going to run, we should see curtailment of that problem. I am starting down the list presented at the top of the FAR, but some of it isn't actionable, or would be better dealt with on article talk; I can't recall ever seeing a FAR presented in the fashion this one was, which makes responding to points a bit unwieldy. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:07, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The problem being that people refuse to sufficiently utilize sources is certainly your opinion, but if that was something everyone could agree upon we wouldn't be this far into this mess to begin with. Several other people feel like the issue is that the page is being stonewalled. As far as delisting the article is concerned, it doesn't actually matter who is right: the page is deadlocked. You can't just present your opinion on the matter and suggest that because your opinion is right there isn't actually anything in the way of resolving the problem at FAR. What would be needed to counter concerns with the page being put through the review process is any sort of indication why this would manage to fix everything when nothing until now has managed to do so for any extended period of time. I'm open to hearing it, but "we just follow my existing suggestion of what needs to happen" isn't that. LittleLazyLass (Talk | Contributions) 00:08, 17 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Editors felt there was stonewalling because there was a lack of consensus for a change. Lack of consensus is not stonewalling, and the issue could have been resolved by taking the matter to an RfC. If there was any actual stonewalling behaviour, that would be a matter for AE. It is not, in any case, a matter for FAR. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 07:39, 17 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Lack of consensus is uncomfortably disconfirming according to my reading of WP:FACR. I understand that there is concern that people might game the system by pretending that there is a lack of consensus or a controversy where there is none just to, I don't know, stick it to a FA writer or something, but I don't think that is what is happening here. I think there is a genuine dispute over whether the subject is being handled properly. WP:RfC can help with dispute resolution, for sure, but the existence of the dispute is something I think calls into question the FA-status itself. jps (talk) 15:18, 17 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The stonewalling has been the refusal for over a year to consult or provide sources when entering opinions or long rants on talk, and consensus can't (or shouldn't, although I see it does, irresponsibly) form around personal opinions and rants unsupported by sources. Opinions that don't reflect sources do not indicate a WP:FACR breach; they are a behavioral matter. Similar is beginning to happen on this page, which is rife with misstatements, inaccuracies and misrepresentations sans diffs (eg the mention of a BLP vio in the opening statement, gratuitous mention of copy-paste, the idea that sources used in FAR version didn't support text, or the article is unstable because of editwarring with no evidence of same, although I did see a new editor edit war today). The existence of disputes, when those disputes have not been backed by sources does not call into question the FA status; it calls into question the functioning of dispute resolution to curb disruption on a featured article that is doubly-WP:CTOP and where best editing practices are supposed to be used. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:41, 18 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, come. We have the Variety source, which states a retrospective analysis very, very clearly. We have other sources. The problem is that they're always dismissed as "not good enough", even though sources defending her of much more dubiosity are in the article. Compare:
Sources for "J.K. Rowling denies her views are transphobic", which is shoved into the lead:
Sources for transphobia taking over her life:
  • https://variety.com/2024/tv/news/harry-potter-hbo-series-jk-rowling-transphobia-1236215642/ - This had widespread agreement to be in the article. Why was it deleted out of the article? "Rowling, meanwhile, has made her campaign against trans identity the central focus of her online persona." was quoted, and is now gone. There was talk page agreement for this. It was removed in this edit by being commented out. That might be a mistake, but it does feel like there's no consequences for removing things that make Rowling look bad, and it's very difficult to include anything new.
  • Whited, Lana A., ed. (2024). The Ivory Tower, Harry Potter, and Beyond. University of Missouri Press. ISBN 978-0-8262-2300-5. (Introduction): Text (in article): 'Whited asserted in 2024 that Rowling's sometimes "flippant" and "simplistic understanding of gender identity" had left some transgender people feeling betrayed and permanently changed her "relationship not only with fans, readers, and scholars ... but also with her works themselves"'
...Etc, etc. The point is that there's some scholarly works, there's a few excellent clear, detailed sources, and on the other side, we have basically nothing of note. A very brief BBC article and a self-published article. And yet the sourcing requirements for her anti-transgender stuff are not held to the standard of the ones saying she says she isn't. And the lead makes sure to quote the badly sourced denial, without summarising the better quality sources. Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 8.9% of all FPs. 18:22, 18 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 8.9% of all FPs. 18:13, 18 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I will say that although the talk page has been particularly feisty, and there have certainly been edits made without consensus which have had to be reverted on occasion, the editing behavior has actually been pretty good on all sides, particularly when it comes to stuff like edit warring.
Agree on the FAR instructions point. I can't say I think it's going to get any easier, with stage 1 having being bypassed. We are having to address 10 or 15 concerns which are entirely new to us, lol. Can't imagine it's going to be a quick (or particularly smooth) process. TBicks (talk) 23:09, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
While I agree it may not be smooth, I think proceeding with FAR at this point is the appropriate next step. I will reiterate to all participants that FAR is not a vote; comments at this point should specifically be about how this article does or could meet the FA criteria. Nikkimaria (talk) 02:02, 17 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
On the WP:WIAFA front, I think it has severe issues with writing quality (1a), the neutrality and comprehensiveness are in question given we have sources stating that the focus of her online persona has become attacks on trans people (1b, 1d), I think that it has certain WP:PARITY issues when combined with a certain amount of WP:OWN issues: Newspapers and online sources seem to be fine for giving her statements when she's defending herself, but the talk page archives are riddled with people bringing up news sources for outrageous things she's done to attack trans women, e.g. Imane Khelif, and being told that there's insufficiently good sources for them, even when the sources are the same level as others. While we probably shouldn't cover every incident, it definitely appears that there are issues with suppressing one side of her behaviour, leading to POV issues. Rewrites of the transgender section generally attempt to frame things in ways more positive to Rowling, even when this goes against sources. Point 2b, requiring appropriate structure, and 4, requiring summary style seem to be quite comprehensively violated; as I've said repeatedly, the structure is very poorly handled, with a lot of bloat.
I have found citation issues in the past in the article numerous enough that I'm worried as to whether the article would pass a close check of sourcing. (1c), but, despite the weird difficulties getting a couple of those fixed, there isn't anything current I'm aware of. (To give some exaples of citation issues, not all identified by me, Talk:J._K._Rowling/Archive_14#“Death_threats”_claim_cites_biased_article_of_extremely_questionable_reliability, Talk:J._K._Rowling/Archive_17#The_POV-pushing_last_paragraph (Suissa and Sullivan) - actually, that last is rather a key example with problems with this article. Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_440#Suissa_and_Sullivan is one of the most shocking things I've dealt with on Wikipedia: The source A. Failed verification to cite text it was meant to. B. showed every sign of appalling scholarship - the citations include blog posts, and they weren't even reported accurately - and C. was an incredibly biased, anti-transgender source, and it took an appalling amount of effort to get it to not be used to fail to support the text attached to it. It's a microcosm of how Talk:J. K. Rowling breaks two or three of the five pillars, which - I know it's not exactly a WP:WIAFA requirmement that the talk page not be toxic sludge, but I think that's more because no-one ever thought it needed said. Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 8.9% of all FPs. 03:41, 17 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I hear your frustration. Talk page behavior isn’t something that falls under FA purview though. I do think we can use FAR to push through any content changes that are needed. It might be helpful to rework any controversial spots such as the transgender related section of the article in your user space Adam to the place where you think it meets FA standard. You could then share that with us here. That would help those of us not already invested in the article to understand A. What the problems are and B. What a solution might look like. The advantage of doing that during a FAR review is that a different pool of editors are likely to be engaged in reviewing article content, and that could help break through any stonewalling tactics. Best.4meter4 (talk) 06:20, 17 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
In general, I think we need to be careful about placing too much WP:WEIGHT on social media behavior unless there has been significant WP:SECONDARY source coverage of said behavior that takes a long view of said behavior (which I believe there are sources that do this in Rowling's case). There's a lot of WP:TABLOID type press on Rowling's posts that are little better than click bait. We have to be careful here to follow WP:BLP guidelines, and selecting sources that place Rowling's comments into a broader context. I'd be much more in favor in emphasizing sources that have looked at Rowling's social media posts across time, rather than say reacting to one individual tweet or comment. Articles focusing largely on a single twitter dispute in general (but not always) are on the low end of quality scale for sources. I'd also like to point out the danger in taking disparate comments on social media and stringing them together in some sort of unified narrative (particularly if this was not done for us in RS). This is bordering on WP:SYNTH/WP:OR. I'm also somewhat concerned over the issues raised at Wikipedia:Neutral point of view/Noticeboard#Promotion of anti-trans fringe theories on J. K. Rowling. The unwillingness to incorporate peer reviewed materials is not good. Some of the sources Adam wants to bring in should be allowed. On the other hand, to me the NPOV thread reveals an attempt by Adam to censor Rowling's POV. If Rowling is stating certain life experiences shaped her viewpoints on trans related issues than those are pertinent to the topic area and should not be WP:CENSORED from the article no matter how much it may offend. The article is about Rowling, and her perspective. Removing her point of view is a non starter. I would strongly object to removal of the words "her views stem from her experience of domestic abuse and sexual assault". This isn't a FRINGE opinion in this context as the main topic is Rowling and her opinions. That sentence is at the heart of Rowling's POV, so no it can't be altered or removed in my opinion because without it we lose Rowling's POV and would misrepresent her. In short, we shouldn't censor Rowling, nor should we censor the use of RS.4meter4 (talk) 21:51, 17 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Regarding that particular sentence (seeing as it's relevant for FAR, if it goes through), I don't think it's reasonable to remove it (even as someone who absolutely thinks the article is too soft on Rowling). From her own mouth, it is a critical aspect of the nature of her views, even if it's based on complete nonsense. Should it be in the lead? Maybe, maybe not. But what I don't think is okay is including it with the wording that was being presented at that NPOV discussion (and in the live version of the transgender section), which leaves abundant room for the reader to assume implication she was has a history of assault by trans woman that objectively doesn't exist. The first source used in the transgender section explicit points out that a cis male individual was responsible for her assault, so we can absolutely add that detail and address WikiVoice concerns without excluding her point of view. LittleLazyLass (Talk | Contributions) 22:34, 17 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It could definitely be tweaked to avoid confusion/misinterpretation. I do think the connective thread of her thinking on safe spaces for women in relation to her experience of sexual assault should in someway be made. It does color/inform her opinion on policies/laws relating to public restroom access for trans people; which has understandably caused controversy.4meter4 (talk) 00:00, 18 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think that stating her views is important, but we need to be far more careful than the attempt to quote a snippet of her views in the lead was. We also need to be a little careful about.... hm, how to say this?
There's certain ways of phrasing a distasteful opinion that uses rhetoric alone to make them sound more reasonable, and Rowling's views have also gotten more extreme over time. I think there's a danger in only quoting carefully phrased arguments from early in her transgender controversy and ignoring that she's said much more extreme things. For example - and this is on a different topic, but it elucidates it: This tweet from 2020 was quoted a lot in early reports on her. Compare this tweet from yesterday, which - while we probably shouldn't use it - does make it clear that she has an entirely men-have-penises-women-have-vaginas view of gender.
One could quote the first tweet to make her seem more reasonable ('Rowling stated that, while she respected trans peoples ability to live their lives, "my life has been shaped by being female. I do not believe it’s hateful to say so."), but that is definitely outdated. One could quote the second tweet to possibly get a better idea of her views ('Rowling wrote, "I'm a woman because I belong to the sex class whose bodies are provably organised around production of large gametes."') However, BOTH of these basically cover the same thought: Rowling apparently sees womanhood as assigned at birth based on genitals.
Please don't take that as a suggestion for the article: The point is that when choosing quotes, some of them, especially in the circa 2020 era, seem to be (by comparison to more recent quotes) more her using rhetoric to make her position seem more reasonable than the simple statement of her views she has now, or her views have gotten more extreme on those subjects. If our goal is to explain what Rowling's views are - and in a section summarising her views, what they are is probably more important than what they were - then there are some quotes we shouldn't use in favour of others. We don't need to quote any of the awful things she said, but I feel like readers shouldn't be all that surprised she could say such things after reading our article, given we have plenty of sources to say her online behaviour is notable. Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 8.9% of all FPs. 01:52, 18 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Meh. It's good to be up to date on an evolving topic, but we should also avoid being overly beholden to WP:RECENTISM, or indulge in original comparative analysis. We don't need to reflect her latest tweets; nor do we need to balance the material with things she has said that have not received attention in secondary RS. The problem with taking her current social media posts and comparing them to old ones is that requires us to do original thinking about how we perceive Rowling's opinions have evolved. If we have secondary sources doing this for us, that is one thing, but if we are putting statements up side by side and on our own saying she said this here but now she said this here so this indicates this... That's clearly WP:OR thinking, and that isn't our job here at FA or anywhere on wikipedia for that matter. Our job is to do a literature review of secondary and tertiary materials in this area and accurately represent that material. This is why I think it is essential to not use PRIMARY materials at all in this section/ and ignore PRIMARY materials as irrelevant. Otherwise the section will be constantly unstable as people tend to tweet frequently. It is also too easy to POVPUSH otherwise. Any quotes we use should be from SECONDARY coverage and any analysis of the quotes should be from SECONDARY sources as well. Putting that general understanding of sourcing into place should bring balance to achieve NPOV and stabilize that section of the article. I would also strongly urge not using SECONDARY materials about only a single tweet. That brings in WP:UNDUEWEIGHT issues. The best secondary sources are the ones that look at Rowling's views from a big picture/ long term view across time.4meter4 (talk) 03:18, 18 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It's more of an example. There's plenty of secondary coverage. Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 8.9% of all FPs. 03:54, 18 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Summary style I've said this on the talk page, but for convenience:

The sections primarily on Harry Potter are: Publishing Harry Potter, Films, Later Harry Potter works, Influences, Style and allusions, Themes, Reception (Intro), Reception (Gender and social division), Reception (Religious reactions), Legacy, Legal disputes, and Bibliography.

While there might be some minor cuts to discuss (do we need to mention who made the films' screenplays?), I think we can agree that Publishing Harry Potter, Films, Reception (Intro) and Bibliography have absolutely no controversy to be included (tweaks aside), and Later Harry Potter Works can be discussed seperately.

This leaves us with two groupings: Influences, Style and allusions, Themes, and Reception (Gender and social division), are Harry Potter literary analysis, as is about half of Legacy, and the second paragraph of Reception (Religious reactions). We'll call this "HP Literary analysis" The other halves of Legacy and Reception (Religious reactions), and all of Legal disputes is... let's call it "Effects of publishing Harry Potter (but not on J. K. Rowling)", or "Effects" for short.

The question is, if we take each of these groupings together, are they excessively long? 14 paragraphs on Harry Potter literary analysis is a lot, and I'd argue ridiculously long. There is a spinoff article (Harry Potter) which already contains most, if not all of this content. For the record, the main biographical section (Early life to Adult fiction and Robert Galbraith) is 28 paragraphs, including the six on Harry Potter.

The second grouping is about 6 or 7 paragraphs, some on the shorter side. It's probably more off-topic than the literary analysis, though not entirely; as such I'd say it's a little long. For example, the third paragraph of "Legal disputes" has very little relevance to Rowling herself, and my inclination is to cut it.

One can talk about how there's "Only three paragraphs" in a particular section, but we need to look at the groupings to see if WP:UNDUE is violated. Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 8.9% of all FPs. 01:02, 19 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  • There are thousands of scholarly publications about Rowling. The vast majority of those are literary analyses. During the 2022 FAR we attempted to boil down these thousands into 14 paragraphs. By my count the article has about 70 paragraphs outside the lead, even discounting some short ones at the end. 20% of an article about an author being devoted to literary analyses is entirely reasonable. Vanamonde93 (talk) 17:04, 19 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • I just re-read the introductory chapter of Pugh -- still one of our most comprehensive scholarly sources -- which begins with a biographical summary. It is 19 pages; the first 8 pages cover JKR's early life and how it relates to her writing, along with fame, wealth, philanthropy, awards, politics ... and the last 10 pages cover Themes and Influences. That is, slightly more than half of this scholarly article is devoted to tying the information about her life to her writing, and exploring themes and influences in that writing. I don't think it can be said we've given UNDUE weight to this aspect; we have yet to see a work as comprehensive as Pugh's, that's without considering all the other work referenced by Vanamonde93, and we've given considerably less weight to literary analysis in an overview of her life than Pugh does. Considering weight given in Pugh, I don't see a source-based or actionable reason for this issue to be affecting discussion of FA status. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:18, 19 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    The fundamental thing you're failing to engage with is that Pugh had one book to cover everything, we have two main articles. Look at this as an introduction, that's going to prepare readers to jump to a chapter entitled Harry Potter, but whose main focus is the things not covered in that chapter. Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 8.9% of all FPs. 22:01, 19 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Also, I love that you keep asking me to move to the talk page, and then come on here, to announce that no changes should be made. The article is in violation of WP:WIAFA point 4, "It stays focused on the main topic without going into unnecessary detail and uses summary style where appropriate." The article doesn't use summary style, and does not stay focused on the main topic. If there's no chance of this actually being improved, then staying at FAR is a waste of time. Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 8.9% of all FPs. 00:06, 20 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Same for Pugh. It is a 168-page book; our article is the equivalent of his introductory chapter, which is a 19-page summary overview (that includes the biographical detail and overview of her works). His remaining chapters are the equivalent of Wikipedia sub-articles. His introductory bio chapter is a summary, and our article is patterned similarly. We stay focused instead of going in to, for example, the remaining 150 pages of Pugh's book. Influences and Themes are not unnecessary detail in an author bio of this nature.
    I am sympathetic to concerns that the transgender content warranted updating, have trimmed biographical detail where you asked for it, am worried that some items raised on talk were archived by bot before they were addressed, and have urged on talk that others help with some of the TODO list, but I am not seeing a reason for cutting literary analysis or how doing so will benefit the reader. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:26, 20 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • The Harry Potter series is notable for shattering publishing and sales records, spawning films, plays, amusement parks, video games, etc. What about this particular series brought children and parents to bookstores for midnight releases? What's the magic sauce that worked for these stories? Critical analyses, whether of themes & motifs, style, and so on are always included in author bios (or at least should be) and are no less important for Rowling than for anyone else. I'm opposed to trimming the themes because it would be undue and introduce neutrality issues. If Adam is interested in how it got to how it is in the article he's free to peruse my sandbox and the other one dedicated to JKR here, with the understanding that once material was moved from sandbox to mainspace it was then worked over, smoothed, improved, etc. But casting aspersions is not the way to go, no more than expecting editors who are living with difficult circumstances to fix everything per my input, right now, today. Victoria (tk) 18:01, 19 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    It doesn't need to be fixed by others, Victoria. I am entirely capable of editing the article. But there's no point doing so if I'm going to be reverted. Sandy, Victoria, how do you respond to my point that Pugh was covering things in one book, but we have literal dozens of articles? We should talk about Harry Potter's high sales, we should talk about how it affects her notability. But we have a "Chapter 2", the article Harry Potter. We're not balancing for this single article, we're balancing for the two articles together. Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 8.9% of all FPs. 22:12, 19 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm also opposed to cutting the literary analysis. For an author bio, and particularly for this author bio, it would be a nonsense not to have this analysis in her author bio. Gutting the article of all its content is not going to make it better. The case has not been made that what we have on literary analysis is undue. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 18:12, 19 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm not saying to cut all of it, just to reduce it to summary style. It's pretty bloated, and, I'd argue, rambly. Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 8.9% of all FPs. 23:29, 19 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    The previous FAR is now being invoked for why discussions of what to cut from the literary analysis shouldn't even be allowed to begin. I'm not at all convinced this FAR is going to move in a direction where the article is actually FA status, just one where it's slightly improved and people close it because they're tired of dealing with it. Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 8.9% of all FPs. 14:23, 22 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Editors including myself have mentioned the previous FAR not because its consensus holds paramount but because between that FAR and this one there are a good many editors discussing the need for literary analysis in this article, while AFAICS nobody else has supported your contention that it violates summary style or constitutes bloat. You need to recognize that your views in this respect are not in sync with the rest of the editors here, and as such even a version that survives FAR is highly unlikely to satisfy you completely. That is the nature of consensus-driven editing. Vanamonde93 (talk) 17:26, 22 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    No-one, not even me, is saying there should be no literary analysis in this article. But there's too much. Saying no cuts are needed is ignoring a WP:WIAFA requirement for summary style where there's other articles. Not only is it pretty badly written, but the level of detail is absurd when the plot of Harry Potter isn't established. Take the third paragraph of #Style and allusions:
    Arthurian, Christian and fairytale motifs are frequently found in Rowling's writing. Harry's ability to draw the Sword of Gryffindor from the Sorting Hat resembles the Arthurian sword in the stone legend.[246] His life with the Dursleys has been compared to Cinderella.[247] Like C. S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia, Harry Potter contains Christian symbolism and allegory. The series has been viewed as a Christian moral fable in the psychomachia tradition, in which stand-ins for good and evil fight for supremacy over a person's soul.[248]
    We haven't established what the Sorting Hat or Dursleys are, and the entire paragraph is based on extremely niche books, well away from J. K. Rowling biographies. The defense that "biographies of Rowling cover literary analysis" doesn't work when you're having to use niche academic publictions specifically deep diving into Harry Potter for all the content in the paragraph. Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 8.9% of all FPs. 17:38, 22 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I have never read a Potter novel, and can easily understand the comparison being made with the Arthurian sword in the stone; context is adequate for understanding there. You've misunderstood the issue about the previous FAR; please read more carefully, or ask on talk if uncertain about intended meaning. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:43, 22 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • ImaginesTigers
I have no previous involvement with this article so I can provide some uninvolved input. Leaving a placeholder for my review, probably sometime tomorrow or the day after. To keep it simple, I’ll likely structure it like my FAC reviews. — ImaginesTigers (talk) 16:15, 22 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
ImaginesTigers if you have substantial items to be addressed (that is, if your comments go beyond yay or nay with examples of where it meets or doesn't FA crit.), they can be more easily addressed on talk, and summarized back to this page. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:17, 22 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Broadly, I concur with many concerns raised in this FAR.
  • 1a. well-written: Earlier sections are fairly strong but later the subject rapidly shifts between whatever sourcing allows because the sourcing is not as often directly about her. Some examples include the previously cited "Later Harry Potter works"; direct analysis of the Harry Potter novels (i.e., instead of analysis of JKR or her overall body of work). In my view these are structural problems. We've created an article as a set of discrete biographical chunks when when I'm not seeing this sort of coverage in sources.
  • 1b. comprehensive: This echoes the structural problem above. Rowling's gender critical activism cannot sit in a discrete segment given how it permeates essentially any source mentioning her. JKR tweets that she likes the new scripts? The first thing Deadline do to contextualise this is by framing it within her gender critical views. Very similar – the reporting around her thoughts as given by the Independent mention wider context.
  • Aside: There's considerable commentary about poor or inadequate coverage of sources on the Talk. Here is one example (2 June 2025); here is another (May 2025).
  • 1c well-researched and neutral: Following on from my structural observation above, I believe concerns over neutrality stem from this. For example, our article says In June 2024, she wrote that she had a "poor opinion" of Keir Starmer and that it would be hard for her to vote for Labour. Here is the first line of the source cited for that: JK Rowling has criticised Labour for "abandoning" women over its stance on the rights of transgender people. We are actively neglecting context given by sources to discretely package the transgender-critical stuff into a single section, making both sections worse—in my view, the right approach to this (while she's alive) is to incorporate her gender-critical views into the wider article where it makes sense to do so becuse that is what sources do.
  • As a clarification: While this doesn't matter for some elements (e.g., we're likely never including that she likes a couple scripts for the TV series), it certainly does for others (e.g., her views on Starmer). We provide a long "Life and career" section that doesn't mention her views on trans people once—this isn't okay because it has dominated coverage concerning her for almost half a decade.
  • Additionally, I'm a bit confused about whether we're properly reproducing what the source said in other contexts. It feels messy. For example:
In the Transgender people section, our article reads: She rejects the view that gender identity is different from birth sex, and that it should take priority in equalities law. I don't think the first clause in particular is supported by this source because it does not ascribe the first clause's view (i.e., gender identity and birth sex) to JKR. The source ascribes that view to gender-critical feminists but does not mention JKR as a gender critical feminist. Our article describes JKR as a gender-critical feminist. This tips into OR.
There is surely enough sourcing for us to get this right, but it feeds into the wider structural concern posed by treating her ("gender critique/"transphobia") as a "View" in isolation instead of contextualising it, as sources do, as the result of specific actions (i.e., responding to legislation; or a blog post she writes; or responding to a politician's support for the view). It's a challenging structure to maintain when the "View" affects other aspects (e.g., her relations with political parties, or her funding of women's shelters etc).
  • 1d. stability: Setting aside my personal views on structure, the article isn't stable. Since 2020, there have been over 10 Talk page archives. There are none where an editor hasn't objected to content, usually on the basis of neutrality. I'm seeing no less than 6 RFCs in 3 years. I will respectfully push back on any notion that there is firm consensus for the article's current shape. I'm saddened by the prospect of losing an important Featured article and, while usually I'd be willing to participate in a rescue effort, virtually every statement I make above will be subject to an RFC to establish the change, then dispute resolution to to refine content for inclusion, and then probably contested in 3 months. Connect this with my aside on comprehensiveness above, which shows the lengthy discussions that entail when a concern is raised (e.g., a new source for inclusion)—these further attest to instability.
The tone of the discussion above and on Talk from virtually all major participants is pretty poor and makes me hesistant to roll up my sleeves. While I'm grateful to the editors involved in those ongoing discussions, across this thread I see inactionable feedback; frustrations over vague process irregularities; reading "aspersions" and demands into dry commentary on coverage. An article can be unstable while retaining the same basic shape because we favour the status quo. At this stage, I agree that the FA star is an obstacle to improvement. It can be Featured, but the current structure considerably downplays JKR's actual views, doing a disservice to virtually all readers and viewpoints.
To any participants: I am happy to be asked follow-up questions; please do so below this comment. To the coords: I'm happy to be pinged for a re-review when you are deciding whether to close or move to FARC.— ImaginesTigers (talk) 15:40, 23 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
ImaginesTigers, you never disappoint; thank you for using the page to evaluate vis-a-vis WP:FACR, and doing all that work so quickly. You identified several core problems (old structure, sourcing, source-to-text integrity).
We didn't have the sources in 2022 to write the article the way you now suggest, which would reflect the scholarly Whited (2024) comment that Rowling's sustained engagement with transgender concerns has changed the relationship with "her works themselves". Having one transgender issues section may have worked based on sources we had through 2021 for a controversy that fired up in 2020; it no longer does, and re-envisioning the structure through the lens you present could well address many of the problems.
Also, the current version was largely written by five different editors, working on different parts, which could explain some of your other observations about how or whether it hangs together. Too much effort has been spent since this FAR was launched in rejigging what's there, while your insight provides a whole new way to look at the article, with a new structure and re-write that can solve many of the ongoing problems. This happened in the 2022 FAR, where one editor's observations significantly altered the course of the work and the outcome; it can be done again.
We disagree on two points. The presence of RFCs is not an indication of instability (which is 1e by the way); quite the opposite. It can be an indication of disruptive editing, or an attempt to solve that, or an attempt to seek broader consensus-- that's a good thing. I've still seen no indication of instability, rather difficulty in formulating RFCs and the fact that the 2021 RFC hamstrung our lead in the content. But the stability itself could be the issue: a new structure was needed!! But a rejigging to your suggested structure and using the newer sources could eliminate the need for several RFCs now envisioned. Also, when you reference aspersions, I interpret that you're suggesting some have been too thin-skinned, and you may have been lucky to miss things best not re-visited. Even the thick-skinned hope those won't be seen again, and we can move forward with your suggestions.
You say "usually willing to participate" and then "hesitant to roll up [your] sleeves"; would you be willing to engage if aspersions are contained and efforts refocus towards a rewrite to a new structure, utilizing the new scholarly sources already identified and others? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:05, 24 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
In theory I'd roll up my sleeves under those conditions, but given the reality of this article, probably not; I'm sorry Sandy. I've provided my diagnosis, so to speak, but we can't administer treatment on that basis. Spreading out the article's most emotionally charged content would be the opposite of frictionless—fraught and painful. It repeats current disputes on an even larger scale.
  • Primarily, you and I can't simply decide that I'm right—i.e., I'm not convinced we can get strong consensus to make these changes (or how we'd even start). I can easily imagine the debates my proposal would cause on both sides.
  • Increasing the amount of controversial material and meeting the FA criteria isn't a realistic prospect. This is the nature of controversy: it resists the strong consensus that is essential for maintaining trust in promoted content. It's unfortunate but it is what it is.
  • I haven't touched on the concerns expressed elsewhere—for example, concerning summary style... an issue for which I have no fix but think does constitute valid (if somewhat unactionable) feedback. I would need to dedicate more time to those complaints but struggle to see the point because I don't believe we can satisfy everyone to FA quality in more contentious places.
Regarding instability – original research sneaking in is a consequence of instability because we're prioritising forest over trees. While the star stands, I doubt we can get firm consensus because the star is part of what makes this dispute emotionally charged (i.e., Featured-quality representation of a culture war issue). Right now, I believe the article does a disservice to virtually all readers—I'd find it problematic at GA level. And there's a compelling case that instability has led to the erosion in quality. I hope editors remain interested if it loses the star; my interest would certainly increase. Aspiring to FA quality from the jump is a Sisyphean endeavour, doomed to "no consensus", and too painful for me to get involved beyond sharing my observations.
I'm standing behind my suggestion that this move to FARC, but will check back in every week or so to see if progress has been made. — ImaginesTigers (talk) 14:20, 24 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Move to FARC - The article fails WP:FACR 1d (neutrality) and 1e (stability) as evidenced by ongoing neutrality discussions at WP:NPOVN/Talk:J. K. Rowling and constant changes to the article. TarnishedPathtalk 10:14, 24 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    ImaginesTigers above makes a compelling case for this article not meeting WP:FACR. TarnishedPathtalk 10:26, 24 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    IT makes a compelling case for how efforts can be re-focused and issues can be addressed, if anyone is willing to engage. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:13, 24 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Thanks, ImaginesTigers, for your followup. FAR has seen quite a few controversial biographies reworked to FA status in the past, but I understand your argument. Should anyone step up to do the work, and if aspersions cease, "Hold in FAR' is a possibility, but since I'm not seeing that happen, I'll remain undeclared. Bst, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:24, 24 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Thanks ImaginesTigers, that's quite helpful.
    Re organization - the article structure has bothered me for a long time and it was raised & discussed in this FAR thread, though we never came to any conclusive decisions if I remember correctly. I could be wrong, so don't hold me to it - we may have decided to go with what's there now. Since last year when Whited's and Konchar-Farr's newest volumes of criticism were published it seemed a good time to update throughout and try some reorganizition at the same time. (Disclaimer: I had hoped to do that work in the autumn/winter but have been dealing with intractable health issues that keep me away - hence engaging during that period and now has been and continues to be impossible). Since last summer I've also been thinking the "Transgender" section should have more visibility and at the least be moved from outside the "Views" section, possibly given it's own section, but more ideally be folded and woven into the biography section, because aside from the Strike series, which is, I believe now is complete, that is Rowling's main focus since 2020. "Legal disputes", "Philanthropy", "Politics" and "Press" could also be moved & possibly even some discarded.
    In terms of literary critique, we need some, but what's there could be swept away and be rewritten from scratch, with the caveat that it receives due weight. The "Reception" section has, in my view, never seemed to be about reception per se. This section was also discussed during the 2022 FAR here but, again, not sure what was decided. In my view this edit and this edit are misplaced. This a section that could see a wholesale rewrite and possibly incorporate info re number of books sold, publishing records broken, books being released at midnight to large crowds, and then selected reviews, i.e NYT, Guardian, etc.
    Anyway, I'm just spitballing here. The work is doable in my view because a FAR can stay open as long as is needed. The issue is that it's very difficult to gain agreement or consensus on anything and the talk page atmosphere is difficult, so in the end you're probably correct. Still thinking but wanted thank you and throw out a few ideas. Victoria (tk) 17:42, 24 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I think that there's too much obstruction to have much chance of saving it. If it's been made clear for years that any edit not discussed in detail on the talk page will be reverted, it's very hard to believe there's any point doing copyediting that isn't done in the most painful and stupid way. Drafting a dozen drafts of proposed changes, installing none of them until the end of a multi-month process... and this is to cover the whole article, so a massive amount of work....
    Like, if there was even a smattering of agreement for the things that need doing, I'd be willing to do some of the work. But there's no point trying to get the summary style sorted when we can't even get agreement on the more obvious parts. (Talk:J._K._Rowling#Effects_of_publishing_Harry_Potter,_not_on_Rowling_cuts). I stand by what I said there. If nothing is on the table to be cut, but there's agreement here that summary style isn't being followed (see reviews above), I don't see how it's going to move forwards.
    Two things happened that I'd say are particularly problematic:
    Basically, the things that are being worked on aren't going well, and the things I attempted to work on were claimed to be fine on the talk page, actually a problem here.
    At this point, I think it's time to open the FARC. Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 8.9% of all FPs. 23:59, 24 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    This comment appears to show exactly why more time is required to hold at FAR. The complaint that edits were made to the transgender people section ahead of Adam Cuerden's proposed schedule is disingenuous, as that discussion and the start of the edits predates this process, and was the only section being considered for changes on the talk page for the months prior to this process.
    Adam Cuerden opened this process with a list of objections that had no recent discussion. Many of those do not seem to be discussed in any archives at all. That there may be pushback on whether they are an issue is entirely reasonable. That there is a lot of work already being undertaken in good faith to resolve these issues is unacknowledged. For instance, we have a change to the Pottermore information ready to go (where Adam Cuerden had placed an "undue" tag, so whether he intended it to be addressed now or later is immaterial - if you tag a featured article, editors will wish to address the tag).
    That Pottermore update had me reading multiple sources, and took considerable thought. Careful updates take that. There is no rush here.
    On that: Adam Cuerden is clearly very much involved in this process, which gives some deep knowledge that is helpful, but, in my view, suggests we required an uninvolved editor to read the article and provide input for the article. ImaginesTigers did that three days ago. I suggest that, as stage 1 (the talk page discussion) was skipped, that we should now have two to three weeks from ImaginesTigers input to see if we can address the issues raised there. This needs more time and also some more editors to actually do the work, but moving to FARC is premature. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 07:38, 25 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    What became of the rewrite promised on 25 June? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:34, 13 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    200px Sometimes, things happen. Bad cold and this. Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 8.9% of all FPs. 00:27, 17 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Think at this point, though, with a plan to rewrite the whole structure of the article, I'll hold off for now. Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 8.9% of all FPs. 09:48, 24 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Move to FARC/delist: the key question is, would this pass FAC now? I sincerely think it would not. The constant bickering on the talk page about every last word is indication that the article is nowhere near stable enough for FA status. The talk page indicates neutrality has been an issue for years too, with or without the {{POV}} hatnote. This isn't a "this article wouldn't pass FAC because of entropic decay" case; this is a "this article would be snow closed at FAC because of the talk page shenanigans" case. Sceptre (talk) 20:27, 10 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    +1. This would be a quick fail for even GA at present given the ongoing neutrality disputes (with or without the POV tag). TarnishedPathtalk 13:38, 11 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm not pleased that TarnishedPath manually archived 6 Talk threads about improvements, including one made only weeks in direct response to my feedback here. Bewildeirng thing to do without any discussion. Link Incredibly suspect given their comment directly above this. Strongly suggest undoing that and allowing the threads to be manually archived. — ImaginesTigers (talk) 16:32, 12 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Hi @ImaginesTigers, all of the threads I archived were stale, having not had comments in 10+ days and were due to auto archive in a few days anyway. Is there any particular thread that you would like restored to the talk page? Noting that if I do and there are no comments within a few days they will automatically archive. TarnishedPathtalk 00:43, 13 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    If I wanted it reverted I would've reverted. In the middle of a dispute where "is the article being improved" a key point, let stuff get manually archived. You should be able to point to automatic archiving as evidence of no improvement isn't taking place. Presupposing the outcome is not helpful; I was waiting for some threads to get manually archived before chiming back in. — ImaginesTigers (talk) 10:43, 13 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Big sigh. As it happened I popped in yesterday to post re organization but the thread was gone. I wasn't around during the holiday week, wanted to the give the RfC a few days to breathe, so yesterday seemed a good time. Anyway a very truncated post here: some combination of Ursula K. Le Guin (nice placement of views); possibly Enid Blyton; George R. R. Martin and Brandon Sanderson might work. But it will require discussion (obviously needs a thread to do so) and I'm not encouraged about getting anything hashed out until after the RfC ends. In terms of archiving, those of us who have worked the page for a long time have a good sense when a thread is getting stale and a comment needs posting. But it's very very difficult to get into that page which is making me rethink whether salvaging anything is even worth the time. Victoria (tk) 14:23, 13 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    TarnishedPath please undo the manual archiving. I am no longer following the article but am still following this FAR and have not yet entered a declaration for several reasons -- one of the main reasons is that a rewrite was promised for 26 June that has not yet appeared, and now the outstanding work that was underway on the talk page is gone. I imagine I am not the only editor who was patiently waiting for the promised rewrite, and now also waiting for an RFC to conclude before entering or updating a FAR declaration. Ongoing work was stalled in polite deference to a promised 26 June rewrite; it shouldn't be removed, rather timestamped so it will continue once the promised rewrite appears. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:47, 13 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    @Victoriaearle, @ImaginesTigers and @SandyGeorgia, the discussions have been restored as requested. TarnishedPathtalk 23:43, 13 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    There's a significant difference between the 12 July TOC and order of threads, compared to the 14 July TOC. I don't have time (or energy) to deal with this right now but won't be posting to as it is now.
    ImaginesTigers I've been playing around in my mind with a full restructure and am thinking it might just be best to dive in and do the work, but can't get to it until late this week or the weekend or maybe even as late as next week. Are you looking for work to happen within a certain time-frame? Victoria (tk) 20:21, 14 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Hey Victoria, over the past few days I've basically hardened on moving to FARC. If we add in the ongoing RFC—which is about what to call her views, not how to describe them, or her positions in a way that represents all reliably published viewpoints, edit fix typo: I think it's nearly impossible
    In this context, I know how painful it would be. What we'd need is:
    • Consensus for:
      • a) A new article-wide structure
      • b) A systematic way of presenting and structuring contentious material that effectively handles DUE.
    I don't even think we got that. If you look at the big Talk post I made, the follow-up response didn't address my feedback and asked was "Shall we change it to a level 2 heading and rename it?" It's hard to feel reassured.
    As I said in my feedback, spreading the content out over the article is right for the article, but it's also (quite literally) a minefield. There's certainly nothing to indicate even gently that your work wouldn't be reverted, driving us back to the write-by-committee approach that caused the article to have OR in the first place.
    Apologies. I know this is unsatisfying. If it is delisted, you can count on me helping you. I think I'd have fun pitching in with the literary stuff. The other stuff – the painful stuff – is not my wheelhouse. — ImaginesTigers (talk) 21:23, 14 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Not my wheelhouse either.
    I had hoped to post about structure in that thread but didn't get to it soon enough and I knew getting consensus would be really really difficult - and I didn't want to clog up the talk page during the RfC.
    Basically I agree with what you've written above. I've been mulling over whether it's worth trying to put in the work (which, honestly, would be really really difficult for me), or whether to move on to FARC. Thanks for the reply. It takes a lot of pressure off. Thanks, too, for the work you've put in here in evaluating. Victoria (tk) 21:39, 14 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    It was my pleasure. I'm sure it won't be the last time I spend thinking about the article now that it's on my radar. — ImaginesTigers (talk) 21:56, 14 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • When is this moving to FARC? TarnishedPathtalk 01:27, 1 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

FARC section

[edit]
Issues raised in the review section include neutrality and structure. Nikkimaria (talk) 15:07, 9 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Hold in FARC; the RFC that should have happened before this FAR was initiated is underway, and will help provide direction, along with the commentary from ImaginesTigers, which presents a way forward to resolving the impasses. Instability has been argued but no valid example has been given. The laundry list of (many easily addressed) issues presented at the start of this FAR have mostly been addressed. Broadly, as outlined by Vanamonde93 in multiple places throughout this FAR, the article complies but an update to the transgender material was always envisioned, yet did not proceed as talk page discussions frequently did not engage sources. That seems to be happening now, in reverse order (should have been done before launching a FAR) so there is a way forward, and time should be allowed for the RFC to close and for work to get underway. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:20, 9 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • How is the RFC that was actually started, on which word to use to describe her, at all relevant to any issue raised in this FAR? Because if there is a single mention of whether it's better to call her anti-trans, gender critical, or a TERF in this entire discussion I can't find it, and a search for "TERF" and "gender critical" didn't find any suggestions that we need to decide which of those terms to use to describe her. Nor was anything like that raised in the list of problems with the article. I have no idea why you think that RFC should have been run before this FAR, because no-one was asking for it at the time. No-one argued that was what was keeping this away from FA level. I'm not sure why it's being run now.
Trying to hold that RFC up as if it has anything at all to do with this FAR makes it look like you don't care about what you're actually arguing, as long as it looks good at first glance. Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 8.8% of all FPs. 20:59, 12 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Hold in FARC: I am in agreement with SandyGeorgia Billsmith60 (talk) 15:32, 15 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delist There is absolutely no chance of this getting to FA-quality when the main thing that's happened is a vote that's been going on for a month on a single word (or possibly two-word phrase) while all other discussions died off (no comments in a month, save for a new suggestion about adding in her latest twitter controversy). Progress isn't just slow, it's stalled completely. The RFC is on a single word, not any of the other massive problems brought up in it, and there's some agreement in discussion that the RFC was malformed from the start. It's patently clear that no improvements are likely to happen. Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 8.8% of all FPs. 20:24, 12 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support holding in FARC until the RFC closes. I personally don't feel I can make a decision at FARC while there are on-going good faith efforts to solve raised issues.4meter4 (talk) 23:57, 12 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Which RFC are you talking about? I've not been following this saga closely so would be helpful to have a link.  — Amakuru (talk) 13:20, 14 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    This one. Loki (talk) 17:22, 14 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Additional partial notifications at 14 August. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:32, 16 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  • Delist - Coming here after lurking on the talk page for awhile, I don't think this article meets FA standards. The article reads as rather bloated, with too many quotes regarding unnecessary granular details, like a teacher describing her mother as "absolutely brilliant ... very imaginative", what color a car is, or the specific grades she got (WP:NOTEVERYTHING). It reads more like it's straight out of a biography rather then a summarized, encyclopedic article. The bulk of literary analysis would also probably be better served in separate articles, personally I recommend using how the J. R. R. Tolkien article handles his writing as an example. Finally, while I agree that Politics of Harry Potter stay separate due to relating to the book series, the content fork of Political views of J. K. Rowling seems antithetical to refining this article's quality. Branching off information directly tied to the subject leads to fractured editor focus & quality. While it may help prevent content disputes in the short term for single articles, it'll expand into much larger content disputes over the span of several articles in the long term. It's obviously not impossible to fix this article, but that it has these issues shows that, in the meantime, it should spend some time back in the shop. - Butterscotch Beluga (talk) 18:27, 14 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delist. I get these pings because I was involved in a previous FAR save for this entry, so I know what it looks like when the needed major revisions are happening. I am surprised anyone thinks a sprawling RfC to decide just a couple of words represents that kind of progress. To me, it’s not FA quality and it’s not headed that way. Innisfree987 (talk) 22:07, 14 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Innisfree987, the missing piece of that position is that Adam offered a rewrite over a month ago, then said a month later he would hold off for now, so one can imagine for the two reasons (pending RFC and Adam's version on hold), others are also in wait mode. At any rate, there are no deadlines at FAR. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:54, 14 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Or the WP:DEADLINE IS NOW. We just keep advertising to readers that a subpar entry is FA-quality indefinitely? At some point enough is enough, and like you say Adam said he’s not working on that now. Innisfree987 (talk) 23:06, 14 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delist - This article fails several WP:FACR, as ImaginesTigers outlined in the review above. In particular, it is not stable and not neutral. MidnightAlarm (talk) 18:49, 15 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • I confess I have lost faith in our ability to separate personal feelings about Rowling's recent activity from our assessment of what constitutes a good biography of her. As stated above, I believe that aside from the section about her views on transgender people, the concerns are overblown or plain incorrect. A large number of editors did a ton of work sifting through both biographical and literary sources, and the end result has not been shown to misrepresent the source material in any way that rises to the level of delisting an FA. The transgender section is a persistent problem, given the strength of views on the subject, the mealy-mouthed media sources, and most critically, Rowling's continued online activity. It has needed updates, and will continue to require updates, but at least in this area there is a genuine argument to be made that changes are necessary. As such I believe we should hold in FARC, even though I am skeptical that a resolution to the RFC will pacify those demanding delisting on the grounds of NPOV of the material in the RFC. Vanamonde93 (talk) 19:24, 15 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    It's hardly the major dispute, is it? ...It feels like, even in FAR, that the editors would rather fight over minutiæ than deal with any of the large scale issues. It's been a month long RFC on which synonym to use, and the whole time, no progress has been made on the bloated biography, the excessive amount of Harry Potter content, the WP:Undue weight given to her rebuttals of every single criticism against her, far in excess of how much reliable sources treat her personal responses. The RFC won't change a bloody thing, because it can't; it's covering a new issue, seperate to any of the problems raised here, is malformed in question, and is most likely is going to be closed "No consensus". It's not some bold move, it's rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 8.8% of all FPs. 11:12, 16 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    It's the major substantive dispute, in which objections have basis in policy. The objections to including literary analyses are either overblown or inactionable. Vanamonde93 (talk) 20:14, 16 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    It... really isn't. If you think the article is at FA quality if you change two words, you've ignored all previous discussion. Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 8.8% of all FPs. 00:30, 17 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I have ignored nothing, I have just not repeated yet again my lengthy rebuttals above about how removing literary analysis from an author's biography isn't in keeping with core content policy. Vanamonde93 (talk) 16:02, 17 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Hold in FARC per SandyGeorgia & Vanamonde93. I must admit, I have lost interest in the JKR article, as personal opinions have made the entire attempt at fixing it too murky on all sides. It is clear to me that the article could be FA quality with a little collaboration, which is why i'm leaning 'hold in FARC', but all progress seems to have halted due to a poorly thought out RfC. Now that the RfC is closed, the work to improve the article can hopefully begin again. It will require those who bring up apparent issues with the article to actually engage & collaborate to fix those issues, though, rather than relying on others to do it for them. Bringing up issues, making little-to-no attempt to fix them, and then arguing for delisting based on no progress happening isn't ideal. TBicks (talk) 21:05, 16 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delist - As noted by others, the article fails WP:FACR criteria, particularly in regards to stability and neutrality and with no clear path forward to resolve the issues. TarnishedPathtalk 01:30, 17 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Sceptre has put it most clearly below when they stated "This is an article which would be speedily closed if it came to FAC on the grounds that it is not, and will not, be stable or neutral to the point where it could pass its candidacy". This discussion has been going for over two months now and the article is no closer to being stable or neutral. TarnishedPathtalk 12:43, 22 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Hold in FARC per SandyGeorgia, Vanamonde93 and TBicks. Speaking personally I have neither the time nor inclination to get involved in the detail of this article, but looking at the above it seems clear that there are some who are willing to put in that effort. A large amount of analysis and planning for potential ways forward has gone into the FAR above, and now that the RFC has closed as no consensus to change the labels at they stand, the work can begin in earnest to address the issues that were brought up in the FAR. Articles should not be delisted merely because a few editors insist that the article is not saveable, despite manifest attempts on all sides to effect the necessary changes. Cheers  — Amakuru (talk) 09:57, 17 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Hold in FARC per SandyGeorgia, Vanamonde93, Amakuru and TBicks. There are editors who have expressed interest in working towards FA standard in good faith and I am not convinced that the problems are insurmountable. Note that I stated hold in FARC above because of an open RFC and am only commenting again now that the RFC is closed.4meter4 (talk) 12:03, 17 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Undeclared right now. I'd describe my position as disheartened and will just explain why. My June 23 review seemed to genuinely resonate. Upon request, I provided some detailed thoughts on Talk. A month later, I outlined to Victoria (July 14) why the Talk response left me dispirited (nobody can agree), and my view about moving to FARC basically crystallised.
  • Reviewing the above declarations, my review is cited variously as directionally useful, reason to de-list, and unactionable. If editors can't agree on a diagnosis (or if one is necessary), how can we get consensus for treatment (not to mention implementation)? Even thinking about pitching in, it just sounds miserable.
The main contributors are either burned out or prohibited by personal circumstance. Adam has withdrawn from making changes. Some editors suggest he takes up that work, but there is active resistance to some of his suggestions (e.g., changes to the literary section). Victoria and I discussed whether we might make those updates, but divided response on the need makes it seem like a thankless, divisive effort, with an associated RFC... With her difficult circumstances and my limited time, it sounds like a recipe for editor burn out. About the work I proposed for the bio/trans section (see here), same story - probably headed for another RFC (more likely: several of them). A crowd can play Pokémon, but I'm less convinced one can produce featured-quality articles (or even make good editorial decisions). If the result was "no consensus" after another 2 months, I'm right back to "Well, I still stand by my review". Just a rock and a hard place. I'll hold off before entering a formal declaration. – ImaginesTigers 15:04, 17 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@ImaginesTigers: I appreciate your review above as among the only dispassionate commentary in all of this. I agree with some pieces, I disagree with others, but that's besides the point: I stepped away from this because the opinions expressed here and at the talk page have been trenchant and mutually exclusive to such a degree that bridging that gap does not feel possible. With structural issues in particular there is a fundamental lack of recognition that a literary biography can be structured multiple ways that are FA-compliant. There is also a fundamental lack of recognition that when sources about Rowling's political activity are using some kinds of language, we cannot synthesize those sources to use more robust language, regardless of how we feel about the underlying issues (it's both validating and deeply frustrating when the RfC closure mirrors what I've been saying for...months? years?). If this was a debate between Victoria, Sandy, you, and me over the structure, I would participate with enthusiasm. We did this once before, and created a synthesis that none of us was completely happy with but was a vast improvement over what came before. But I have no stomach for rewriting literary material that some editors want to remove altogether, with no basis in policy. So I step away. If conditions here were to change I'd reconsider, but I am not hopeful. Vanamonde93 (talk) 16:01, 17 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for responding @Vanamonde93. I absolutely commend the work you and others did at the 2022 FAR. People genuinely working together to improve the article. Being honest, I've found it hard to respond. I can't answer for others' feedback. Any editor suggesting we remove the literary sections would obviously not have my support. That is silly.
In your response, you said [aside from the transgender section] the concerns are overblown or plain incorrect – I genuinely thought you meant my review. In my comment above, I say one declaration describes my review as "unactionable"—that was how I interpreted your declaration, which I'd gladly strike if wrong. In response to me you say I agree with some pieces, I disagree with others, but that's besides the point, I don't think it is besides the point at all. If we talk through some of my feedback, there's a prospect for compromise. Probably the only positive highlight of this FAR is Sandy disagreeing with Adam but taking the feedback about summary style on board and making a series of edits to implement some of that feedback. In principle I'm willing to help... but only if we can at least agree in principle for the merits of work.
For example, something really simple: are religious reactions to HP important? Absolutely! Do I think it's right that the two-paragraph section mentions Rowling once? No I think that needs some work. Reading your response, and others, I genuinely thought, "Damn, we'd need RFC to get consensus to fix this?" Overall the article seems uneven to me—in prose quality, in depth.
If you look at my comment here, I outlined some suggestions in more detail. It was intended as a kind of engagement prompt, but seems to have totally failed at that. If you would be willing to read it in this way, I would happily engage. Please accept my apologies for how long this is. I'm grateful you responded to me and wanted to outline where I'm at. – ImaginesTigers 20:12, 17 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@ImaginesTigers: I didn't mean to suggest your feedback was unactionable, and if I phrased my reply poorly to suggest that I apologize.
I have substantive comments, and a practical one. The substantive disagreement is simply that Rowling has, to a very unusual extent, been defined by a singular work. I struggle to think of other authors whose work has been the focus of so much literary criticism, but still known for a single work (perhaps Harper Lee, or Ian Fleming - but I digress). As such material about Rowling's work is inevitably heavily skewed toward material about HP. There is always room for improvement in phrasing, and I welcome such a discussion. But unlike with other author's I've worked on, "this section is skewed because it only discusses one of Rowling's works" is a bad starting point. Your argument is more nuanced than that, but I believe you are still attempting to separate Rowling from HP to a degree that isn't possible.
Otherwise, I agree with much of what you've said, in that our material on her life, her philanthropy, and her views is quite poorly structured, and while I do like the structure of separating literary critique (that is very challenging to weave into biographical sections) other organization than mine can be created and would have my support. And I'm not opposed in principle to tightening the literary analyses sections, and have done so myself in the past [9].
So much for substantive disagreement - you and I could discuss this, and likely come to a consensus. But I don't want to dive into this, because after spending weeks of effort I see no indication that we'd satisfy everyone else arguing to delist this. Adam Cuerden has been banging on about too much literary analysis and some prose nitpicks that have received scant support - if we were to restructure as you suggest, I don't see him withdrawing his "delist". There are editors here who believe that NPOV will not be satisfied unless we describe Rowling as a transphobe in Wikipedia's voice, which isn't a tenable position policy-wise at the moment, but is contributing to a number of people supporting delisting. There, too, a group of committed editors could arrive at an updated policy-compliant summary - but to what purpose, if any compromise is seen as insufficient?
Perhaps I'm being too pessimistic, but ultimately the effort/impact ratio at this article is one of the poorest I've seen on Wikipedia, certainly the worst I've experienced as an editor rather than an admin. And so my motivation to participate further is minimal. Vanamonde93 (talk) 23:08, 17 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Vanamonde93: I never thought I'd be so saddened by a response agreeing with me. On the substantive disagreement, I don't really believe that's substantive, yeah—I think we'd be on the same page with one or two more comments. But genuinely unactionable suggestions shouldn't prevent us from implementing good ones. My review and feedback was ultimately aimed at satisfying all parties, so I'd hope that at least some of my feedback resonated with @Adam Cuerden. Adam, what do you think about this feedback? – ImaginesTigers 00:01, 18 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@ImaginesTigers: If you were able to be in charge of the article, I'd have faith it could reach FA again. But the article's created a et of procedures and gatekeeping which are fundamentally broken, and prevent all progress. It's not that there aren't good ideas. It's that there's multiple people shouting "Everything's ine! Nothing needs to change! Well, maybe we can change a couple words. Let's run an RFC." and so on. If we said that no-one who had worked on this article before, say, six months ago was allowed to work on it anymore, I'm pretty sure it could easily reach FA status, because the problem isn't the proposals, it's that none of them ever reach implementation. And that's down to a toxic culture around the article. I don't think we can discuss this article without bringing up how uniquely bad the talk page culture and gatekeeping are on the article. It took literal months to remove a source that literally failed verification a bit ago. The toxic culture eats up anyone trying to improve the article, leaving only the status quo, and, because the people trying to make changes have given up, a false view that the article is fine.
So, it's not that I think the ideas are bad. I just see them as doomed. And I don't want to see an outcome like the last big FAR: some improvements, promises of more, all progress shut down almost immediately after, citing that FAR as a reason why no changes should be made. Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 8.8% of all FPs. 09:09, 18 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I spent over an hour writing an assessment of conduct issues and then realised, what on earth am I doing. Obviously that's not what I'm here for. I'd describe my experience at this FAR has been friendly but unproductive. Highlighting areas that I think constitute "low-hanging fruit" (EG. #Religious reactions) the atmosphere is so negative that nobody will talk about the detail. We obviously can't remove any editor from the process if they edited the article over 6 months ago; on the other side, nor can we exclude the person who opened the FAR from improvements as a condition of participation. You use the word toxic a lot Adam. I understand the metaphor: just when I begin to think there's a prospect of getting something done, it dies by fumes. But there comes a point when we all have a responsibility for lowering the temperature. I'll leave you with an idiom: You aren't stuck in traffic; you are traffic.
From a "where do we go from here" perspective, it is a pipe dream that an RFCs like "should we call her gender critical" will fix structural issues, prose concerns, comprehensiveness etc. The RFCs are demonstrably counterproductive: even if we did decide to redistribute the content, we can't touch the material under discussion at the (back to back) malformed RFCs. Meh. What a mess. – ImaginesTigers 12:41, 18 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think what I'm trying to say is that after years of attempts, I've lost faith in the ability of this article to be improved to the necessary standard, and have seen its FA status used to block changes, so I see its FA status as part of the problem. I generally agree with your suggestions for what needs done. Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 8.8% of all FPs. 21:37, 18 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
FWIW I basically agree with Adam here. If this article did not start out as an FA it would be close enough to one that it would be relatively straightforward to bring it up to FA status. But because it is currently an FA the presumption that the status quo is correct is so strong on the talk page that necessary updates over time are not being made, which makes it much more difficult to bring it back up to FA standards again. Loki (talk) 03:12, 19 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
LokiTheLiar .... It's unfortunate that the talk page was distorted by premature manual archiving, but that is not what Talk:J. K. Rowling/Archive 25 shows. (Nor what the disordered Archive 26 from Who is engaging onward shows.) You and Sirfur were working collegially, and many others were engaging productively and collaboratively. (Admittedly, IT's analysis changed perspectives then on how to approach that section and your work.) Regardless, on this page, everyone who has engaged with more than driveby commentary has now expressed agreement that ImaginesTigers has outlined a way forward. If people have decided not to move forward, it's not because any current status is standing in the way. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 09:52, 19 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
IT, I understand your confusion :)
Victoria has been known to -- and is capable of -- fixing an article on the fly even after other considerable concerns are raised, and there are several other FAR regulars who can and have also dug in and gotten very difficult articles cleaned up -- and I mean articles with much deeper problems than this one, and with considerable disruption, that on first glance seemed unfixable. And many (MANY) articles have been repaired at FAR even after moving to FARC, and QUITE often taking as long as a year. The process is designed to not let disruption stop the work, and to accept delays so that articles can improve, regardless of whether the star is retained. Your analysis falls in line with that goal. The work of FAR should be allowed to proceed.
So I'm not at all discounting your conversation with Victoria when I enter a declaration to give it more time, and let the RFC conclusions shake out, and let work get underway. Repeating: FAR is not a vote, and the instructions make it clear the goal is improvement; the FAR collaborative disposition hasn't fully taken hold here yet, but I'm hopeful that it still can. Except in extraordinary circumstances (like copyvio or extremely poor sourcing) how long it takes has not been a past concern at FAR. Further, the idea that, in the interim, the star is misleading readers isn't based on data -- this article isn't going to appear on the mainpage (which is an endorsement of quality), and non-Wikipedian readers probably don't even know there's a star, much less what it means, and the article is (rightfully or wrongfully) tagged; while most Wikipedians know the processes for addressing issues when there's a bronze star, and if not, they've been well advised by a multitude of notifications.
All that said, I just glanced at the article to see what changes have occurred since I unwatched, and I see that an edit was made that adds content to a wrong section (philanthropy), with a breach of WP:CITEVAR (the stuff I always cleaned up), and that completely duplicates content already in the Views section. [10] (It belongs better in Views because JKR's philanthropy is in the realm of tens and hundreds of millions, not one.) So if no one is watching and fixing stuff outside of the transgender area, the article is going to deteriorate, and I'll be forced to a delist declaration based on negligent deterioration. And glancing at the talk page, reveals that -- as on this FAR page -- there are still tone problems in spite of the RFC closure spelling out very well the way forward. (I'm unsurprised the RFC close so closely mirrored what Vanamonde93 has said all along, and perhaps some time is needed for that to sink in.) Ongoing hyperbole is impeding work. It has been explained from the beginning of this FAR that FAR is not a vote, and is a deliberative process: it remains to be seen if work will get underway now, but if it does, there is no hurry. Disruption is handled through dispute resolution processes. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:39, 17 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
While I understand it isn't a vote, and that's why I didn't provide a declaration, many others (including yourself) have, so there's certainly an important procedural element of tallying. At the end of the day, I'm only one reviewer. If this were an FAC, and I couldn't convince the nominator that my feedback was correct, my job is to oppose the nomination. If I don't have faith we can make the improvements I think are required, that's why the delist declaration exists. That's the point at which I provide that. The trans stuff will go on forever; I think the broader article has problems beyond it, and that's the only bit I'm willing to work on. – ImaginesTigers 21:46, 17 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'll respond on talk, 'cuz this is getting a bit meta. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:25, 17 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Re IT at 12:41: regardless of diagnosis, what is the way forward? Finding commonality so work can begin.
You've outlined structural proposals that got sidelined by other issues. (I continue to lament that so many productive discussions were prematurely archived, then returned in the wrong order, as Victoria noted, and that was part of what put her off, and then those threads that were still productive were archived again and never timestamped to keep active. But at least you seem to know where to find your productive starts in archives, and bringing them back might be wise.) I can't recall that anyone disagreed substantially with you (but my memory could be muddled on that).
Other concerns have at least now been addressed by RFC; even if that sapped time, we now have a conclusion that could help lower the temperature around labels, because there isn't community support for using any given label. (That doesn't mean that no consensus conclusion might not change as work evolves.)
One way forward is the same way we did it last time, and what you've already tried but got sidetracked on; first, discuss sources without attempting to work yet on content. (Refer back to the misunderstanding between Simonm223 and me -- re the issue that google searching which limits to sources using the term transgender is not a complete survey, because it leaves out any that do not -- to Vanamonde93's point about the volume of sources on JKR/HP for example.) This approach provides an opportunity for collaborative teamwork to develop, and for editors to find commonality. Once you have a list of best sources that need to be contemplated, you will have more buy-in and more of an idea of who is going to engage in a collaborative effort, and how to approach content and structural issues. (For example, discussions above reveal that Vanamonde93 and you can probably come to agreement.) This approach, with very few exceptions, led to very limited misbehaviors in the 2022 FAR. Once editors settle in to recognize that the goal is to improve content -- forget about the star for now -- you will be able to work on structure/content. Just start somewhere. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:47, 18 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Also, re EG. #Religious reactions) the atmosphere is so negative that nobody will talk about the detail -- I don't think that's what's happening in this case. I suspect your concern there is relatively easily fixed, so that it just hasn't bubbled up to the top yet. I think -- but could be wrong -- that material was mostly written by Vanamonde93, and uses sources I haven't seen. With the two other editors who did most of the writing gone, I suspect it's just a matter that no one has taken up yet, but it shouldn't be difficult if you, or someone, does. I just don't think it's that nobody wants to talk about it -- it's just been overshadowed for now. I suspect a sandbox proposal between you and Vanamonde would get the job done. If you've had a chance to read Smith and Kirk, and I think Pugh might get in to this as well, the religious reactions actually helped propel JKR's fame, so my only input is to make sure we don't leave out that aspect. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:56, 18 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delist - it's still all the same. People say people are working on it and we need to let things play out, but the article has been under constant discussion for years. We're still not close to an endpoint. Calls were made to wait on the RfC, and it has closed now without providing any meaningful direction or springboard. No consensus, nobody agrees about anything, back to square one. A vague suggestion to "consider other options" isn't anything. We've been trying options for years. Nobody is going to magically find something that will make everyone happy about this article. How long are we intended to "hold in FARC"? Weeks? Months? Until everyone can agree the article is in an acceptable spot; so, never? If the article defies expectations and fixes its problems, it can go through normal FA candidacy then. For now, it's been given more than enough leeway to keep that little star. LittleLazyLass (Talk | Contributions) 18:08, 17 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delist per LittleLazyLass just above me. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 13:07, 18 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Undeclared leaning hold. Of the FA criteria, 1.a (prose) might be debateable but would be easy to fix with a good copy-edit if needed; 1.b & c (comprehensive and well-researched) are generally satisfied; 1. d (npov) is still being discussed and for me the main reason to hold; 1. e (stable) is generally satisfied in main space, but in this case it tends to go hand-in-hand with the npov discussions; 1. f (no plagiarism etc) is satisfied; 2. (MOS) is satisfied - and it's not easy to comb through to bring titles, dashes, commas, etc into compliance; 2. a (lead) is satisfied, but improvements can always be made to any page; 2. b. (structure) could use some improvement in my opinion and is the place that might surface, in an organic manner, issues that need work, places to trim or snip, places to expand, etc. but that work really can't go forward in the face of back-to-back RfCs; 2. c (citations) is satisfied - the article has a lot of citations, a complicated system and requires a fair amount of upkeep for those familiar with the style (I'm not); 3. (media) is satisfied; 4. (length) is satisfied, though suggestions for further use of summary style is worth consideration. Given this, it's not awful. No article, even a featured article, will ever suffer from further work, so there's that. I'd be happy to pitch in with the re-org (in my mind that should happen first), but also in my mind the last week of August/early September is the time to get back into the classroom and to work. That last comment is said somewhat lightly and should not be taken seriously, but my gut says to wait for the npov issues to work their way through the talk page. Hence a hold.
    All that said: I'm somewhat sanguine, but if a majority truly believe it's not worth even trying (which seems to be case), it's more challenging, hence a undeclared. Finally, regardless of the outcome here, I'd very much like to have a go at the structure. If the article is delisted it won't matter; if it's on hold if might help. Victoria (tk) 19:21, 18 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Update: struck "undeclared" and move to "hold" based on the excellent work being done by ImaginesTigers in various sandboxes. That work might not be immediately visible, but work is being done. Furthermore, just to say, Buidhe's comment is particularly demoralizing when heavy lifting is underway. Until the work is done, saying that the existing editor base isn't capable is insensitive and hurtful. Victoria (tk) 13:28, 2 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delist: as I said in the previous section, this isn't a scenario where the article has undergone entropic decay and just needs fixing to remain featured. This is an article which would be speedily closed if it came to FAC on the grounds that it is not, and will not, be stable or neutral to the point where it could pass its candidacy. If/when the problems on the talk page are dealt with, then we can look at taking it through FAC, but I do not want to see it held in FARC in perpetuity for a fixed article that may never come. Sceptre (talk) 14:20, 20 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delist per Sceptre and LittleLazyLass, too many never-ending NPOV discussions. LittleJerry (talk) 23:46, 20 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Several delist votes since my last comment so I want to say hold in FAR despite deep misgivings about the article. I've given a grave assessment multiple times across multiple places so I've collapsed it; reiterating that the article needs work isn't particularly constructive from me anymore.
Multiple editors with very different takes have said they'd be optimistic if I "took point"—that's enough for me to think it's worth attempting. Being frank, editors seem hopeless/demoralised across the board. But losing the star doesn't achieve anything, right? The article doesn't change; the Talk will continue being a place where people get mad. We can't eliminate all future complaints but I do think we can create a balanced article with clear inclusion criteria, an intuitive structure, that is easier for editors to maintain/curate long-term. There's more than enough sourcing to do this right, and generally I think we can mitigate the need for constant RFCs (maybe I'm wrong).
So far, I've started a proof-of-concept and refined it with responses in an associated discussion. It remains a work in progress. (Personal opinion: I feel particularly that we should be a bit more brutal on absorbing and cutting #Reception, but I don't know how yet. See discussion for other points.) I'm also performing source analysis, focused only on 2022–2025 HQRS right now, but later expanding backwards (and include HQ news) as I go through existing sources for spot checks. This is a lot of work for one volunteer.
So, if you have a strong perspective, please create a heading and weigh in before it's brought to Talk. If you have time you can speed this up. I'll directly ping some regular Talk participants in the next day or so, but having more editors along to say "I hate X" or "Here's an idea for Y" would be great. Whether you hate or love Rowling, you should want this article to be Featured. – ImaginesTigers 20:53, 21 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Hold in FARC: Wowsers, this takes some reading. I agree with SandyGeorgia, Vanamonde93 and TBicks et al and especially after reading he criteria feedback by ImaginesTigers. I'll take a look at the proof of concept and if I feel I can aid, I shall.Halbared (talk) 08:58, 22 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Hold in FARC - I was holding off from saying anything here, because it looked like there were many people opining, but few putting the effort into effecting the changes required to ensure the article content is reworked as suggested. If it were going to languish here, and ultimately be delisted, it might as well go now. But as ImaginesTigers has now agreed to take a lead in the process, and given that it is their review that we are working to, there is now every possibility that all the issues can be addressed, and that a delist would thus be premature and counter productive. I'll be willing to assist in the work, but there was never any possibility that I would lead it. Given that we now have a viable route forward, let's get this done. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 09:13, 22 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I actually think the FA process would be good for this article. The detailed analysis of every point and multiple close readigs and reviews are a resource it would benefit from to help shake off the dust of previous versions. Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 8.8% of all FPs. 11:44, 23 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delist: the article manifestly does not meet the stability requirement, and that it also does not meet the neutrality requirement is a fact that seems to be both manifest and something people inadvertently agree about via having different ideas about what would need to change in order for the article to be neutral. I furthermore agree with the assessment of those who've argued it also fails the comprehensiveness requirement. If the article does not meet FACR, substantive changes need to be made in order for it to meet FACR, but it is clear from the talk page that even small changes are hard to agree on. What's more, being listed as an FA despite the problems has been (and seems like it will continue to be) an impediment to fixing the problems and improving the article to a state that could meet FACR (because some editors subject changes away from the old "FA version", changes based on new sources that help the article meet criteria 1b, 1d and 4, to endless debate and opposition). Sceptre said "If/when the problems on the talk page are dealt with, then we can look at taking it through FAC, but I do not want to see it held in FARC in perpetuity for a fixed article that may never come", but I would go a step further and say that indefinitely holding it as an "FA" (an article with an old FA star) impedes making it an FA (an article that actually meets FACR). -sche (talk) 08:41, 23 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If I might be forgiven a quick note: I just found a whopper of a WP:SYNTH violation hiding in the article. In the "Philanthropy" section, the text reads, "Long interested in issues affecting women and children[source 1], Rowling established the Volant Charitable Trust in 2000, named after her mother. [Source 2]". The trouble is that Source 1 is from 2022, and has no mention of the Volant Charitable Trust. It's implying that her reason for founding the Volant Charitable Trust in 2000 was her long interest in issues affecting women and children, which... Do I need to spell out how having a "long interest" in something doesn't necessarily mean you had that interest a full 22 years ago? And that's before getting into the analysis of it, where the comment about issues involving women, given what Source 1 is discussing, is probably just a polite way of saying anti-trans activism, since it's about her founding a trans-exclusionary rape crisis centre.

This is one of the big reasons I'd rather not just pass this in FARC. This isn't the first thing I've found that failed verification, or which was using two sources for SYNTH purposes. It kind of needs a forensic analysis of sources, like happens at FAC, to make sure none of that remains. Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 8.8% of all FPs. 01:58, 24 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This is the 2022 FAR version, with all three bios (Kirk, Pugh and Smith) establishing the context and the early interest in philanthropy based on her life experiences. This is the edit that removed Kirk and Smith -- the context for the early interest.
BTW, now Alalch E. has converted 2000 to 2020 (likely a good faith mistake). The content as written was correct, although the sources supporting it were misplaced. Since IT will be restructuring, updating and rewriting that bit anyway, perhaps someone will re-correct the 2020 back to 2000 for now. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 05:33, 24 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, fixed typo. Edit: I must say, although it isn't important anymore: The content as written was not correct on verifiability and needed to be changed to become compliant. The reason is what Adam Cuerden had identified. —Alalch E. 05:35, 24 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
A different change might have been to consult the original, and just restore Kirk and Smith, rather than rewrite, but it is moot as IT is re-working. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 05:58, 24 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It's appreciated (although honestly it'd be way more appreciated on the sandbox talk). I hadn't spotted this one yet as I haven't reviewed philanthropy. I've found at least two statements that that probably misrepresent the source in the biography. As I rewrite, I'm reviewing each source – it's painstaking, miserable work. – ImaginesTigers 11:30, 24 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delist Sceptre and -sche said it better than I could. I have zero expectation that the article can be fixed up to FA standard by the editor community that actually exists (although I'd love to be proven wrong). Work on the article can and should continue, but we've strung this out long enough. (t · c) buidhe 00:20, 29 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delist Simply put, as one comment on the talk page said, this is unlikely to be in a perect state before 2040, 15 years from now. Why are we so insistent on holding the star onm it when it's obviously nowhere near perfect?(sorry, signed late)--2600:6C51:447F:D8D9:588E:8710:838A:81AE (talk) 06:02, 29 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Update my earlier hold in FARC. ImaginesTigers is making steady progress in sandbox, with participation from Victoriaearle, and considerable feedback from others. The RFC close demonstrated that there was not consensus for meeting certain demands, and reinforced the path forward as outlined by ImaginesTigers. The idea that the article will be held in FAR "in perpetuity" is historically unfounded; considering time lost on the misstart, the article is being held appropriately as improvements to address concerns are underway. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 08:48, 29 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I hardly think an RFC close of no consensus can be said to show anything. Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 8.8% of all FPs. 20:23, 1 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delist This article no longer meets FA standards, particularly regarding stability (50+ edits in a week) and neutrality (UNDUE weight given to anything praising or criticizing Rowling). The Talk page is full of recurring disputes with little real progress. The article is bloated in many places (even after admirable trimming by SandyGeorgia), and fails to provide a balanced, concise, encyclopedic treatment of the subject. These problems are not new, and there is no indication they will be resolved soon. Until substantial work is done it should not retain featured status. Nosferattus (talk) 22:31, 30 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Hold for now While I was initially skeptical of the prospect of fixing this article, ImagineTigers' rewrite project has been surprisingly successful so far. I don't think it'd be appropriate to delist this until that either gets to the full article or stalls out. Loki (talk) 18:07, 2 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    @Nikkimaria: Is there a timescale to set here? Say, until start of October? Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 8.8% of all FPs. 20:22, 8 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    There is no defined timeline. Nikkimaria (talk) 23:39, 8 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Withdrawing hold declaration. I'm very sorry; I expect this will be disappointing to several users. I've started to realise I'm at the start of an extended wiki-break. Several events across my personal and professional life—foreseen and unforeseen—have exacted an immense toll on my time and drive. I need to remove Wikipedia from the back of my mind when there are more important things going on. If nobody else picks up the task, consider this a de facto delist declaration on the ratinale I've outlined previously. I have no objections to future editors making use of my sandboxes (2–6). Unused recent sources can be found here, with sample source content divided by section here, and actually redrafted content (various states of completion) here. I'll try to remember to revisit my declaration in a few weeks/a month, but otherwise I won't see responses here, and the best way to reach me is by posting on my talk or sending an email. – ImaginesTigers 16:00, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@4meter4, Vanamonde93, Sirfurboy, Halbared, Amakuru, and TBicks: Given this declaration, are any of you intending to take over the lead on this? Nikkimaria (talk) 14:28, 13 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Unfortunately I do not have the neccesary time at the moment (at least, enough time to do a good enough job), so will have to decline. Apologies. TBicks (talk) 14:35, 13 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I do not intend to take over on this. I lack the time, and given the way this process has unfolded I lack the motivation. I hold to my view that outside of the transgender views section, the issues brought up do not merit delisting (I don't know how to reflect that in a declaration here: is "keep" even an option?) and within that section the need for updates and revisions is going to be constant, meaning that a failure of a particular revision to meet NPOV again does not reflect on the article's status overall. It's also worth noting that while many users cite a failure of NPOV as a reason to delist, there is less agreement on that matter than you'd think: some editors believe the article is too charitable to Rowling, while others believe it is too harsh (or that proposals to amend it are too harsh). As such even the current version, imperfect as it is, is threading the needle between what various camps desire, and is close in content if not structure to what a compromise version would look like. I imagine delisting is inevitable at this point. That's saddening, both because I worked hard on this at a previous FAR, and because as I note above it reflects very poorly on our ability to move contentious topics through our content review process. Vanamonde93 (talk) 14:46, 13 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Per discussion on article talk, are LokiTheLiar and Victoriaearle willing to take the lead? I can be in for cleaning up citations and MOS issues if they need that help. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:51, 14 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think there's material in User:ImaginesTigers/sandbox6 that can be moved to main space and we should consider doing that, rather than losing the work ImaginesTigers put into it. I'm not able to keyboard well enough these days for any kind of sustained editing, but am able to do some reading and be available as a sounding-board, so to speak. Loki has a good sense of what should be done in my view, and has posted an alternate structure that would probably work. As I explained to ImaginesTigers, I'm not a good outline person; I can't tell from an outline what will work until I dive into the text and start sorting, but being unable to do so pretty much disqualifies me from editing. Basically, regardless of what happens here, I'd love to see the work already done brought out of user space and used as a springboard for further improvements. I cannot take lead, but think with a crew of willing editors at least some work can be done, perhaps more than we thought. Victoria (tk) 21:39, 14 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I can definitely at least shepherd the process up until we can agree on a new outline. I'm hoping at that point we can swap to a more usual collaborative editing style to fill out the text. Loki (talk) 00:27, 15 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
To understand the process, all the amendments made in the sandbox, and then when we are agreed it gets moved to the main?Halbared (talk) 08:41, 16 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yes but, before you make significant unilateral changes to the structure please discuss at Talk:J._K._Rowling#Another_new_structure_draft first. Loki (talk) 23:41, 16 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I don't feel I have the level of capability to do that. I felt more comfortable as a reader/draft assistant.Halbared (talk) 08:40, 16 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delist. As I said above, the article is not stable and is unlikely to become stable; there's no real indication that any of the improvement drives are likely to result in increased stability, given the lack of consensus on key points of dispute. The article has seen constant revert-wars and reverts that show no sign of easing up, as well as protracted NPOV disputes over major parts of the article. And as I pointed out before, if it is possible to find a compromise that would make the article stable, the inappropriate FA status is an active impediment to such improvement efforts - it discourages people who are happy with the current version from compromising or accepting major changes; yet those people are too few, and lack the arguments, to actually make that version stable, contributing to the endless circular timesink the article has become. If it does reach stability in the future it can always be taken through FA later, but it is clear that the current article couldn't possibly make it through, and it seems exceptionally unlikely that any of the existing efforts are going to get it to that point in a reasonable timeframe. The people working on this article and its underlying disputes have had literal years to bring it to FA status or to reach a stable consensus on neutrality; there's not going to be a sudden hail-mary in these last few months that will magically solve all of that at once. If it can be fixed at all, it will take time and effort and compromise, and the first step towards making that possible is acknowledging that the state that it's in currently does not meet the FA criteria. --Aquillion (talk) 18:15, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. I personally am not able to take on a leadership role here because A. This isn't an area I have much knowledge in (which admittedly might be an asset as I have no set POV on the controversial issues), B. I have many wikipedia projects of my own I am working on which I don't want to leave off. Given the loss of leadership I am considering whether or not to support delisting. If someone competent steps up to replace ImaginesTigers I will support them, but if that person doesn't emerge in the next few days I am likely to support a move to delist. Best.4meter4 (talk) 14:43, 13 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It looks like Loki has become less active, but there's been talk activity - will revisit this weekend to see if that has restarted or if closure is appropriate. Nikkimaria (talk) 00:02, 1 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not less active! I've just been waiting for feedback. Loki (talk) 02:37, 1 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
What is your timeline? Nikkimaria (talk) 02:49, 1 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It seems like there's consensus developing for my proposed structure (albeit slowly) so I think I can start outlining the text this weekend. After that, not sure. Loki (talk) 21:09, 1 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delist. Enough time has passed without someone replacing ImaginesTigers in a leadership role. While I do think the issues are fixable, we can't wait forever here at FA review. Editors can always apply for FA again if and when those fixes happen.4meter4 (talk) 00:13, 1 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Anne Frank

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Notified: Wikiproject Jewish Women, Wikiproject Jewish history, [11]
@Ali Beary: please also notify major contributors. Nikkimaria (talk) 17:44, 29 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Ali Beary and Nikkimaria: Why are the relevant WikiProjects still not notified of this review? – Editør (talk) 11:39, 16 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If there are additional WikiProjects that you feel should be notified, by all means notify them. Nikkimaria (talk) 13:04, 16 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Nikkimaria That's not really an answer though. Editør (talk) 11:57, 20 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Even better: it's a solution. If you believe additional projects should be notified, you are empowered to notify these projects. Nikkimaria (talk) 02:09, 21 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Review section

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I am nominating this featured article for review because there have been issues with cleanup tags for over a year, and there appears to have been no attempt to resolve these issues. This is an issue with criterions 1c and 2c. The issues are as follows:

In the paragraphs beginning with In May 1940 and In 2015, Flemish journalist Jeroen De Bruyn, there are unreliable source tags in the last sentence.

There is a "who?" cleanup tag after In January 2022, some investigators.

In the middle of the paragraph beginning with Witnesses later testified, there is a tag requesting a better source.

Near the end of the paragraph starting with On 19 August 2022, there is a clarification needed tag.

There's not many, but I believe that an article isn't good enough for FA if there's cleanup tags. Thank you! Ali Beary (talk!) 18:13, 24 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I've looked into the points you listed:
  • In May 1940: source replaced
  • In 2015, Flemish journalist Jeroen De Bruyn: can you elaborate on the problem with the source?
  • In January 2022, some investigators: clarified
  • Witnesses later testified: can you elaborate on the problem with the source?
  • On 19 August 2022: clarified
– Editør (talk) 00:29, 28 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Ali Beary, could you explain the issues with the two remaining tagged sources so it is clear what needs to be done to remove the tags? – Editør (talk) 08:01, 30 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I have removed the two remaining cleanup templates and explained why in the first and second edit summary. I believe all issues in this review have now been resolved. – Editør (talk) 15:31, 2 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Editør, what do you mean in the first edit summary by "with Wikipedia pages as sources"? Ali Beary (talk!) 12:03, 4 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The publications are notable and have a Wikipedia page to establish this. – Editør (talk) 12:10, 4 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Note that notability and reliability are different things; a source can be notable but not reliable, or reliable but not notable. Nikkimaria (talk) 02:20, 5 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The edit summary was also meant to refer the reader to these Wikipedia pages that don't indicate any problems with reliability of the referenced publications.
@Nikkimaria, I think you are just explaining terms that could have been confused here. Or did you also mean to imply that you believe there is an issue with the reliability of these two sources? – Editør (talk) 13:32, 5 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I haven't looked at the specifics of the two sources, just noting that whether a Wikipedia page exists about them doesn't really matter. Nikkimaria (talk) 13:49, 5 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Alright, noted.
@Ali Beary, have all issues now been resolved? – Editør (talk) 17:29, 5 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I suppose all the issues are solved. The article may stay as a FA. Thank you for your work on fixing this! If something happens and the article is nominated for FAR once more, would you like to be pinged to fix it? Ali Beary (talk!) 12:31, 7 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Great! You may ping me, although I am not really a frequent contributor of this article. – Editør (talk) 16:09, 7 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Nikkimaria: could this review be closed? – 17:37, 30 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'd like to see another review or two before closure. Nikkimaria (talk) 14:57, 31 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The issues raised in this review, that surely was rather limited, seem to have been resolved two months ago and there has not been any activity here since early April. I think this review should be closed instead of kept open until someone raises more issues at some point in the future. – Editør (talk) 18:02, 31 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • I can't recommend that the article be kept as an FA in its current state. There is uncited material throughout the article. The "Legacy" section is especially long and unwieldy, containing long passages sourced to non-independent or unreliable sourcing. Probably around half of the citations in the article are to news sources, which is not really compliant with WP:FACR's demand for "high-quality reliable sources", especially when there is such a huge amount of academic scholarship available on the topic. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 16:43, 2 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    • "There is uncited material throughout the article."
    Probably some other users also looked into this. I have removed uncited material from image captions and added six more citations, so all paragraphs now at least end with a citation. Is there any more material that needs a citation?
    • "The "Legacy" section is especially long and unwieldy, containing long passages"
    Possibly some other users already worked on this. Could you be specific about which paragraphs you believe are still too long, if any?
    • "sourced to non-independent or unreliable sourcing. Probably around half of the citations in the article are to news sources, which is not really compliant with WP:FACR's demand for "high-quality reliable sources", especially when there is such a huge amount of academic scholarship available on the topic."
    Although I think this is a reasonable request, it is hard to effectively address this issue from such a broad statement. Could you be specific about which sources you believe are unreliable? – Editør (talk) 08:33, 14 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    @AirshipJungleman29: a quick reminder of my question. – Editør (talk) 22:33, 13 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Editør, see my comment below. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 23:06, 13 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Thank you for your reply. Your comment is not really answering the first two questions though, and only partially answering the third question. I agree that Statista should be replaced, as should probably be Dutch News. I don't see how a Mexican school database would be an unreliable source for Mexican schools, and there is a second source for this information, a government website.
    With regard to the Anne Frank House/Foundation/Fund/Educational Centre, aren't these already third-party secondary sources with regard to the person of Anne Frank? And to give an example, when replacing the Statista source, wouldn't an overview from the Anne Frank House with visitors numbers be an appropriate source for this sort information? – Editør (talk) 00:06, 14 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Editør:
    • "Your comment is not really answering the first two questions though, and only partially answering the third question."
      As you say, the matter of uncited material seems resolved. The second question is part of the third, hence why my above comment included them in the same sentence.
    • "I don't see how a Mexican school database would be an unreliable source for Mexican schools, and there is a second source for this information, a government website."
      We are not looking just for reliable sources, we are looking for high-quality ones, per FA criterion 1c). Databases such as these are not high-quality sources per WP:SCHOLARSHIP, which points out that secondary sources are preferred on every occasion. It is impossible to determine WP:DUEWEIGHT from a database.
    • "With regard to the Anne Frank House/Foundation/Fund/Educational Centre, aren't these already third-party secondary sources with regard to the person of Anne Frank?"
      No, institutions with an interest in promoting the life and works of a person by definition cannot be third-party, especially if (as is the case with many) they are describing themselves. Please have a look at WP:IIS
    • "And to give an example, when replacing the Statista source, wouldn't an overview from the Anne Frank House with visitors numbers be an appropriate source for this sort information?"
      If we were discussing any old article, it would probably be alright, if not great. If we are discussing an article at Featured Article Review with reference to the FA criteria and its requirements for high-quality sourcing and due weight determined from reliable independent sources, absolutely not.
    Hope that helps. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 10:00, 14 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

FARC section

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Moving to get additional perspectives on whether this article meets the FA criteria. Nikkimaria (talk) 19:29, 5 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Editør: Thank you for your work on this. I note that a further two citation needed tags were added last month. If these cannot be addressed, can the article survive that paragraph's removal? DrKay (talk) 11:32, 13 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I've tried to resolve these citation issues by adding four citations. – Editør (talk) 11:54, 13 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Thank you. I have a couple of minor irritations: the legacy section is a bit listy and there is no freedom of panorama in Guatemala, so it could be argued that the photograph of the sculpture infringes on the sculptor's rights (though it could also be argued to be de minimis, as the photo includes the surroundings). But these are not sufficient to concern me overly. Keep. DrKay (talk) 13:03, 29 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • We still have large sections of "Legacy" cited to Anne Frank House Annual Reports, Anne Frank House/Foundation/Educational Centre websites, WP:STATISTA, searches of Mexican databases, etc. None of this confers WP:DUEWEIGHT: that is a job for third-party secondary sources. If this were nominated at FAC today, I would oppose on that alone. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 12:15, 31 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]


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