Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Giraffe/archive1

The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was not promoted by SandyGeorgia 14:38, 27 October 2011 [1].

Giraffe[edit]

Nominator(s): LittleJerry (talk) 03:03, 27 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I am nominating this for featured article because since it was promoted to GA status it has had some expansions, improvements and tweakings. It covers almost everything on the animal. LittleJerry (talk) 03:03, 27 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comments. - Dank (push to talk)

I wanted to say something quick and helpful ... but it's a hard call. The prose and MOS compliance tends to be mostly fine at the beginning, and dodgier later on.
"vascularize", "recognize", but "colour", "metre": is this intended to be Canadian English?
Generally, the lead should touch on all the major topics in the article. For a long article like this one, it's hard to do it in less than 3 paragraphs, and most FAs this size have more.
Link genera at the first occurrence, not the second; many readers don't recognize it as the plural of genus.
"It is what’s known as a "calving pool".": Avoid contractions. Combine this sentence with the previous one.
"Maximum lifespan is ~25": Avoid "~".
"Only 25-50%": Only 25 to 50 percent (in AmEng or CanEng, or per cent in BritEng).
"(18 in))": lose the parenthesis. - Dank (push to talk) 03:34, 27 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. I hope this has been helpful, you've got a lot of good suggestions below. Peer review would be a good place to continue to work on this. - Dank (push to talk) 12:37, 27 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Reply to Dank

1. Changed to "color". As for "metre", thats how the converter box puts it.
- WHen all else fails, read the directions (in this case the {{Convert}} documentation). I fixed one example diff - the rest you can fix. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 11:53, 27 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
2. Will get to that.
3. Done
4. Done
5. Done
6. Changed
7. Done

Thank you. LittleJerry (talk) 04:14, 27 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose—First (before the onslaught of critical comments), thank-you for the work you've done so far in bringing a highly-viewed and important article to FAC. A quick read suggests that the article is enjoyable and interesting, and its GA rating is appropriate. However, it needs a MoS tuneup to meet the style guidelines (per the criteria). I'll come back for a more substantive review after this is finished. The comments below are just samples of what should be done to polish the article. Sasata (talk) 04:20, 27 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

lead is too short for an article of this length
why are those stats (mass averages, max height) being cited in the lead? Are they not mentioned in the article text … no they aren't. See WP:Lead
what's the source for the last two sentences of etymology?
there's some text squishing caused by placing images left-right, and subheadings being pushed in
see WP:Caption for rules regarding punctuation
some subsections (Sleep & Stereotypic behavior) are very short and could stand to get merged, or (preferably) expanded
there's a bunch of unsourced stuff in the "Art and culture" section
the "Scientific inspiration" subsection is not FA-ready yet, please expand
the references need to be tidied. Please check hyphen/dash usage; extraneous periods after journal article titles; missing issue numbers for some journals (just have to click through the doi link to get the info in some cases); missing isbn(s); consistency with title/sentence case for article book and journal article titles; consistency in author formatting; consistency with abbreviating journal titles or not, etc.

Oppose per Sasata - fine for GA, not ready for FAC. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 11:53, 27 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose - I admire your willingness to take on this sort of article, but it simply is not yet at the standard required by the FA criteria. In addition to the points raised by Sasata, I also noted:

Some unsourced material, for example "However, elephants also routinely feed at heights up to 5 m (they knock down only a minority of the trees they feed on), and are likely competitors at these heights."
File:Climacoceras_gentryi_e.jpg: what is the source off of which this image is based?
Missing page numbers for some print sources, ex FN 31
Use of questionable sources, for example this
Multiple inconsistencies in ref formatting
Missing some conversions, ex. "mane which is about 12 cm long"
WP:MOS issues - dashes, overlinking, etc

You might consider opening a peer review for this article before trying for FA. Nikkimaria (talk) 11:57, 27 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.