Wikipedia:Featured article review

Reviewing featured articles 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: , Checklinks, Check redirects, Dablinks

Featured content: Featured articles ← Featured lists Featured pictures Featured topics Featured article candidates (FAC): Featured article criteria Featured article log Featured article statistics Featured article review (FAR): Archived FARs Former featured articles Unreviewed featured articles/2020 Today's featured article (TFA): This month's queue About Today's featured article Recent TFAs and statistics Current TFA requests Potential TFA requests TFA oddities Most viewed TFAs Featured articles yet to appear as TFA Script to track TFA recent changes Featured article tools: Mentoring for FAC Nominators of featured articles promoted Recent changes to featured articles Random featured article

Nominating an article for FAR The number of FARs that can be placed on the page is limited as follows: No more than one nomination per week by the same nominator. 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. 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. 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". From the FAR template, click on the red "initiate the review" link. You will see pre-loaded information; please leave that text. 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". 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". 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

House of Plantagenet

Notified: Daduxing, Biblioworm, WikiProject Royalty and Nobility, WikiProject Military history, WikiProject European history, WikiProject Middle Ages, WikiProject England, WikiProject France, WikiProject Ireland, WikiProject Wales, and WikiProject Genealogy. (The nominator could not be notified due to their indefinite block.)

The article was promoted nearly ten years ago, but I am not convinced that it still satisfies all of the featured article criteria, for the following reasons:

• Even after a very brief review, I have identified several instances of unverified claims ([1], [2], [3], [4]) and at least one highly questionable statement ([5]). In order to retain its featured status, the article requires a thorough examination of its sourcing. Unfortunately, I do not have access to many of the works currently cited.
• The article does not cite a single academic study devoted specifically to the House of Plantagenet, leaving its scope insufficiently verified. For example, there is no explanation as to why only four related families (the Tudors, de la Pole, Pole, and Stafford) are given dedicated sections, while other related families are omitted.
• The article relies to a considerable extent on individual Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (ODNP) entries for members of the Plantagenet dynasty. This appears to conflict with our policy, which states that "Wikipedia articles usually rely on material from reliable secondary sources". While our guidance recognises that tertiary sources "can help provide broad summaries of topics that involve many primary and secondary sources and may help evaluate due weight", excessive dependence on ODNB entries concerning individual Plantagenets carries a substantial risk of original research and synthesis. For instance, the inclusion of a section on the succession to Queen Elizabeth I is not supported by a reference to any reliable source that treats the House of Plantagenet as its principal subject. To justify retaining its featured status, the article should incorporate additional sources dedicated specifically to the topic.
• Finally, given that the nominator was blocked indefinitely from editing following a prolonged history of blatant plagiarism ([6]), editors who wish to see the article maintain its featured status will need to ensure that the text is demonstrably free from plagiarism and close paraphrasing. Borsoka (talk) 04:00, 3 December 2025 (UTC)
• Delist immediately There has been considerable discussion of this already at Talk:House_of_Plantagenet#Preparation_for_FAR, which should probably be copied here. Given the block of the main contributor, and Borsoka's declared unhappiness with everything about the article - definition, scope, sourcing, and possible plagiarism, I think it is clear (following the pattern of Middle Ages) where we are heading here. Borsoka has already launched a drone barrage of tagging, which will in due course be followed by a complete rewrite, probably with a different scope, and then an attempt to grandfather an effectively new article as the FA. This failed at Middle Ages, and should not be allowed here. It's probably better to delist immediately, and if Borsoka still wants do do a rewrite, let him get on with it, and take the new article to FAC for a full and proper review, which FAR has never pretended to offer. Some comments on Borsoka's individual points (see also the talk page discussion):
  • "unverified claims" and "at least one highly questionable statement" - Borsoka can always produce blizzards of such things; when people can be bothered to get into the weeds, many do not stand up to examination. Others should be easy to reference.
  • "The article does not cite a single academic study devoted specifically to the House of Plantagenet" and "To justify retaining its featured status, the article should incorporate additional sources dedicated specifically to the topic" - Borsoka keeps making this point, but is there in fact any such source? A family history stretching over some 400 years is not obviously likely to attract "a single academic study" of real quality, though certainly plenty of popularizing books of various levels of quality. Having demanded the use of such a source, he should point to examples that might be used, if only to justify how FA status might be retained. Personally I doubt that any source that will content Borsoka exists.
  • "there is no explanation as to why only four related families (the Tudors, de la Pole, Pole, and Stafford) are given dedicated sections, while other related families are omitted" - which "other related families" does he have in mind, and why should they be included?
  • Borsoka has little experience of editing on British history, and seems to misunderstand the status and quality of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (ODNP), where important articles such as those on members of the dynasty are written by the top specialist historians, who have often written books on the same subject. How does using ODNP carry "a substantial risk of original research and synthesis"? I'm not seeing it.
  • "For instance, the inclusion of a section on the succession to Queen Elizabeth I is not supported by a reference to any reliable source that treats the House of Plantagenet as its principal subject" - this is a bizarre complaint, with no support in policy at all. The "succession to Queen Elizabeth I" came after over a century of rule by the Tudor branch of the dynasty, and to try to exclude sources that do not cover the early Plantagenets, several centuries before, is just ridiculous. Johnbod (talk) 17:57, 3 December 2025 (UTC)

Devil May Cry (video game)

Notified: WikiProject Horror, WikiProject Video games. Did notify the FA nominator, but as they haven't edited Wikipedia since 2010, I'm not really expecting anything there.

This 2007 FA does not qualify for modern FA status standards. There are numerous and substantial issues that will take time to correct. I highlighted a few on the talk page but I've found many more. Among them are:

• The lead does not summarize the gameplay section
• The lead does not summarize the reception section adequately
• The gameplay section relies on one source and the last paragraph is not cited at all
• The reception section is way too short and only comments very breifly on what reviewers found good about the game
• Generally lacking and awkward prose in several points in the article
• Inconsistent citation styles
• Poor quality citations, namely Tweets

There are many more that I probably missed. I did do a little bit of work on the lead, but the problems with this article are extensive and will take a lot of time to fix that I frankly have better things to do with. ZKevinTheCat (talk) 07:01, 30 October 2025 (UTC)

Agree with the nom, and the (lack of) sourcing issues are deep. Take this sentence: "Devil May Cry spawned a sequel, Devil May Cry 2 and a prequel, Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening; both of which have sold more than two million copies. A fourth game, Devil May Cry 4, was released on February 5, 2008, in the United States for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC. Total sales for all versions as of February 10, 2016 is well over 3 million copies. The game has likewise resulted in the release of two novels by Shinya Goikeda,[55][56] and an anime series. " - apart from the readability issues, there are a whole lot of claims, but the referencing only relates to a small few factoids. This is a sample from a 10-minute glance but it's very obvious that a complete overhaul is needed. Ceoil (talk) 16:06, 30 November 2025 (UTC)

Madagascar

Notified: Talk:Madagascar at 9:26, 4 September 2025 (UTC), WP:MADAGASCAR, WP:AFRICA, WP:COUNTRIES, Lemurbaby, Zanahary

Government and History sections need to be updated (1b), there's also a few citations needed (2c). Of the History section, I've rewritten the first two subsections and some of the third, they probably need review and at least to be copyedited (1a). Thanks Kowal2701 (talk) 15:18, 22 November 2025 (UTC)

Fixed most of the citation issues, I can't find a source for 'peoples along the east and southeastern coasts often have a roughly equal blend of Austronesian and Bantu ancestry.' ChaoticVermillion (converse, contribs) 11:58, 1 December 2025 (UTC)

Theatre Royal, Drury Lane

Notified: Ssilvers (largest contributor still active) [7], WikiProject Architecture [8], WikiProject Theatre [9]

I am nominating this featured article for review because of outstanding issues raised at an URFA/2020 review, namely:

• Unclear writing and some minor organizational issues in the history section
• Lack of coverage of the current extant building, and a paucity of information on the 20th century and present history of the theater
• Unsourced or apparently unsourced passages throughout.

Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 18:08, 21 November 2025 (UTC)

Delist. I just took a quick look at the article, and, in addition to the issues mentioned by the nominator, I am sorry to say that the prose has serious problems. I fixed a dangling participle in the Lead, which also had MOS:OVERLINKing. If anyone wants to save this star, I'd say they have a lot of work to do. Someone should compare the current version with the version that was promoted to FA. -- Ssilvers (talk) 19:11, 21 November 2025 (UTC) Per the below. -- Ssilvers (talk) 22:18, 22 November 2025 (UTC)

Please do not declare keep or delist in the review section. We will move to that phase in a succeeding section if necessary. DrKay (talk) 21:46, 21 November 2025 (UTC)

@Ssilvers: I suggest striking your delist vote because we aren't yet in that stage. See WP:FAR process. We are currently in the beginning of stage 2. Delisting doesn't happen until after stage 2 has ended and we move to stage 3, known as FARC. We are nowhere close to being ready for FARC as generally FAR takes at least a couple weeks at minimum to complete (sometimes much longer depending on the article). Right now, we are essentially doing a peer review and allowing any interested editors time to step up and make improvements based on that peer feedback. Best.4meter4 (talk) 20:45, 22 November 2025 (UTC)

Review section

Comments from 4meter4

David Fuchs Has made several excellent suggestions for article improvement at Talk:Theatre Royal, Drury Lane#WP:URFA/2020. In general I think the history section of the theatre post 19th century is poor. Butt left his managing role in 1931 and we essentially don't cover who ran the theatre for most of the 20th century. We probably would be better served eliminating the major 20th/21st century productions section all together (besides who determines what is "major"?), and working towards incorporating content on those productions into a newly built history of the theatre during the 20th and 21st centuries (but not together; they should be separated) with an eye towards prose rather than bulleted content. The newly renovated theatre could be covered in the 21st century section. That might mean removing some of the listed productions which be ok (sourcing will let us know what to keep and what to cut).

I don't like the inconsistency in the sub-headings. We have this weird approach where we call the buildings 1rst, 2nd, 3rd, but then call the last "Modern theatre". To me modern theatre when reading means the genre of modernist theatre not a building. I would re-name this 4th theatre for clarity and consistency. I also would remove "-present" from "1812-present" because we don't provide years for the other sub-headings, or alternatively add the year range to the other sub-headings. I think we need to re-think how to have further sub-headings under this last section. I think "19th century", "20th century", and 21st century" would be clear and one possible approach. Another could be by the manager(s) of the theatre. Honestly it depends on the sources and what seems natural content wise. Building the history will help determine the subheadings.

The only other thing I would add to this is that the bibliography section stops with sources in the year 2013. In looking at the internet archive there are more recent book sources that could be used within the article (not that that this is necessarily a must). The unsourced content on Novello for example could be partly sourced/clarified to content in this book and some of the unsourced musical content to this book.4meter4 (talk) 20:45, 22 November 2025 (UTC)

I don't agree with simply cutting the major productions section. Major productions are long-running productions with notable leading players, or other unusually successful productions: for example, running more than two years with a mostly notable cast and director, or which win the Olivier for best play/musical. -- Ssilvers (talk) 22:28, 22 November 2025 (UTC)

Hmm... My question is who is making that evaluation? Is a source making this evaluation for us? If so, that works. But if we as editors are analyzing and evaluating to make a judgement about productions... that is WP:OR. It seems to me that at the moment the concept of this section is built from WP:OR/WP:SYNTH paradigm because it's criteria for inclusion isn't based on something published in WP:RS. That's not something we can support. Now if we were to remove the evaluative word of major and simply label the section productions then it would be fine because we wouldn't be placing a value judgement onto the content. 4meter4 (talk) 23:04, 22 November 2025 (UTC)

I'll also point out that length of run isn't necessarily the only criteria for whether a production is "major". Some works can be critically or artistically significant but have a short stage life in terms of the number of performances. I don't know enough about the history of this theatre to say whether or not a production of that type happened or not at Drury Lane, but we need to consider carefully what we mean by "major" and whether or not that has a basis in RS.4meter4 (talk) 23:25, 22 November 2025 (UTC)

Makemake

Notified: 21.Andromedae, ArkHyena, Double sharp, Geni, Gog the Mild, Kwamikagami, Praemonitus, Renerpho, Serendipodous, Thirtyfourninety, WikiProject Astronomy, WikiProject Astronomical Objects  · 2025-11-06

I am nominating this featured article for review because I have rewritten the entire article and I want to ensure it stays up to FA standards. Nrco0e (talk • contribs) 00:39, 7 November 2025 (UTC)

To give context, I rewrote the entire article to address talk page complaints about the article's quality and outdated content from September 2025 (see previous version). I believe I have addressed these complaints, but I can't be sure unless someone else uninvolved agrees. I now have 82% authorship of this article; I've been editing this alone (with minor help from Renerpho), so surely I've missed something! For this reason, I am asking for feedback (preferably as soon as possible). I've decided to send this article to FAR instead of peer review because the peer review process is less popular and will not offer the same amount of timely feedback as an FAR would. Essentially, treat this like a featured article candidate (FAC)—this is not a "keep" or "delist" discussion.

Particular aspects of this article I would like reviewed include:

• Check if sources are used correctly (WP:Verifiability)
• Check that I did not synthesize differences sources to make one statement (WP:SYNTH)
• Check that the prose is readable and understandable to a layperson. If there's anything confusing, please please please bring it up!
• Images

Of course, feel free to review any other aspects of this article that I have not named above. I look forward to your feedback! Nrco0e (talk • contribs) 00:39, 7 November 2025 (UTC)

I've started some basic copy-editing with things that probably don't need discussion. (Rv me of course if you disagree.) I'll post here things I'm not sure how to improve. For now, their search for planets and other Solar System objects beyond the orbit of Neptune seems a bit wordy/awkward; maybe just 'planetary objects' or 'large objects' beyond Neptune? They were after all looking specifically for things that would rival or surpass Pluto. — kwami (talk) 01:56, 7 November 2025 (UTC)

Fantastic, thank you for your copyedits! I agree that "planets and other Solar System objects beyond the orbit of Neptune" sounds too wordy; "large objects" will do. I've gone ahead and made that change. Nrco0e (talk • contribs) 03:28, 7 November 2025 (UTC)

"which led Brown to suspect that Ortiz's team had fraudulently made use of Brown's data to claim the discovery of Haumea" - although there was at least some unprofessional conduct in not mentioning that they had accessed the data, we don't actually know that there was any fraud, and is strikes me as a bit leading to suggest that again here where it isn't directly relevant. Maybe just delete this clause? After all, they´d worry about being scooped just from knowing that the data was publicly accessible. — kwami (talk) 02:05, 7 November 2025 (UTC)

@Kwamikagami: Hmm yeah, writing this section about the Haumea controversy has been a bit finicky since I wanted to be prudent about narrating the events so I don't make it sound like one party is at fault. I'll agree with you and lean towards deleting the sentence about fraud; it's not that relevant to Makemake. I have two possible ways of rephrasing the sentence preceding the fraud statement:

• "However, this plan was upended when a team led by José Luis Ortiz Moreno at Sierra Nevada Observatory in Spain controversially announced their own discovery of Haumea on July 27, 2005"
• "However, this plan was upended when a team led by José Luis Ortiz Moreno at Sierra Nevada Observatory in Spain announced their own discovery of Haumea on July 27, 2005, which sparked a controversy over the discovery of Haumea."

Which one is better? Nrco0e (talk • contribs) 03:37, 7 November 2025 (UTC)

I'd go with the first but remove the word 'controversially'. You provide the link, which I think is enough. At first there was no controversy, but nonetheless Brown was worried about being scooped on Eris and Makemake, so the later controversy is irrelevant. It wasn't that Ortiz et al specifically might scoop them, but that anyone could. — kwami (talk) 05:34, 7 November 2025 (UTC)

Ah I see, that makes sense. Removed the fraud part. Nrco0e (talk • contribs) 05:38, 7 November 2025 (UTC)

I restored 'Brown realized that his team's observing logs containing the positions of Haumea, Eris, and Makemake were unintentionally public and had been accessed by a computer at Ortiz's institution.' That explains why he was worried about Makemake but is purely factual. — kwami (talk) 05:51, 7 November 2025 (UTC)

@Kwamikagami: I see that you're restored the computer access part. I suppose that can be kept if that provides context for why Brown feared about getting scooped. So I won't object to that. Nrco0e (talk • contribs) 05:52, 7 November 2025 (UTC)

Haha whoops, you beat me to posting the comment. Nrco0e (talk • contribs) 05:55, 7 November 2025 (UTC)

Yeah, I think it's relevant, and it doesn't say there was any wrongdoing. Ortiz et al. say they did this, and even if they were completely above-board, someone else might not be. — kwami (talk) 06:09, 7 November 2025 (UTC)

@Kwamikagami: I see that you've reworded the dwarf planet paragraph in the classification section. I'm unsure about the phrase "is believed to be a dwarf planet"; the word "believed" gives a more uncertain sense which contradicts all other sources I've read, which unquestioningly call Makemake a dwarf planet. Would it be better to replace "believed" with "considered"? Nrco0e (talk • contribs) 06:35, 8 November 2025 (UTC)

I have a hard time with the word 'considered'. People tend to use it for opinion standing in for fact, rather than for consideration of the evidence, or to avoid having to take a stand. I'd rather simply say 'Makemake is a DP' than the wishy-washy 'considered' to be a DP. Maybe something more along the lines that 'there is scientific consensus that MK is a DP'?

The named as a DP bit is also a bit fraught, as various astronomical groups and orgs did announce MK as a DP, but AFAICT it was never actually categorized as such officially. Popular accounts generally present its DP status as official fiat rather than scientific consensus, and I'd like to be careful not to be repeat such implications here. (Unless of course they turn out to be accurate.) — kwami (talk) 07:24, 8 November 2025 (UTC)

I suppose saying "scientific consensus" works better. Nrco0e (talk • contribs) 07:40, 8 November 2025 (UTC)

There are cite errors involving the named reference "SWRI-geothermal", which is not defined nor used in the content. Should the reference be properly added to the article or removed from it entirely? Thirtyfourninety (talk) 03:15, 7 November 2025 (UTC)

That's a ref error arising from improper capitalization of "SwRI". I've fixed it. Nrco0e (talk • contribs) 03:27, 7 November 2025 (UTC)

"The commercial Solar Fire astrology software uses an alternative symbol" - is this really notable enough to include? There's at least one other symbol that was created for a series of books before the Moskowitz symbol became established, and a second proprietary software uses Moskowitz's Orcus symbol for Makemake. I don't know that any of them have spread beyond their creators or original software. — kwami (talk) 05:52, 8 November 2025 (UTC)

If you don´t want to imply that the Moskowitz symbol is the only one, maybe a comment could be made - with the same ref but expanded page numbers - that a few other symbols have been used in astrological contexts. Though I don´t think Seltzer's symbol had been identified and so isn´t named in that ref. (Though the Solar Fire symbol looks an awful lot like Seltzer's and so might be a modification of it.) — kwami (talk) 05:56, 8 November 2025 (UTC)

Hm. I'm ambivalent about keeping the Solar Fire mention. I do agree that Moskowitz's symbol isn't the only one for Makemake, but I'm not familiar with astrology and what constitutes as a reliable source for that. The Seltzer symbol was mentioned in the Makemake article before I rewrote it, but I removed it because I couldn't find any source that backs it up. Nrco0e (talk • contribs) 06:12, 8 November 2025 (UTC)

"maybe a comment could be made - with the same ref but expanded page numbers" - not sure what you mean by that, could you elaborate? Nrco0e (talk • contribs) 06:13, 8 November 2025 (UTC)

I just meant that the same ref mentions another symbol, but I don´t think on the same page. Personally, I don´t think any of the other symbols (or the software) are notable enough to mention by name, but we may want to mention that other symbols exist. — kwami (talk) 07:11, 8 November 2025 (UTC)

Ah. Sure, that would work. Nrco0e (talk • contribs) 07:18, 8 November 2025 (UTC)

As for Seltzer, his stuff can be found online, but I don´t know of any 2ary source. He actually designed the other symbol for Eris that made it into Unicode; for whatever reason, his Haumea and Makemake symbols didn't. His Eris symbol isn´t notable either, IMO, but as a Unicode character it's useful for other things. — kwami (talk) 07:33, 8 November 2025 (UTC)

Is the orbital period expected to vary from 307 years because of interaction with the planets? Because that's what 'about' implies to me -- either that or the sigma in the measurements affects the last digits. If we only mean that we've rounded off to the nearest year, I think that's understood -- just about any measurement we give is going to be rounded off. — kwami (talk) 06:09, 8 November 2025 (UTC)

@Kwamikagami: Depends on what reference frame you're looking at. In a reference frame centered on the Solar System Barycenter (SSB), the orbital period does not vary much and stays fixed at 307.60 yr with very little variation (much less than two decimal places shown here). I've made it clear in the article that SSB-centric orbital elements are preferred and used.

For a reference frame centered on the Sun (heliocentric), the orbital period of Makemake does appear to vary over time; the Makemake heliocentric orbital elements list given in reference 43 shows how the heliocentric-frame orbital period of Makemake (labeled 'PR', in units of days) changes over 200-day intervals. The web page for this shows a heliocentric-frame orbital period of PR= 1.118183827349468E+05 (306.14 yr) on 1995-Oct-10, and a period of PR= 1.116172203556945E+05 (305.59 yr) on 1996-Apr-27. So in a heliocentric frame, the instantaneous orbital period does change by a couple years over time because of the Sun's movement around the SSB (which in turn makes the Sun move relative to Makemake, which messes up the orbital period).

In summary, the SSB-frame orbital period of 307.60 yr is the exact figure. I suppose you can drop the "about" in this case. Nrco0e (talk • contribs) 06:55, 8 November 2025 (UTC)

In the origin section, the note that A 2021 review paper by Jeffrey M. Moore and William B. McKinnon notes that there have been various hypotheses that give time interval estimates ranging from "few tens of Myr [millions of years]" to ~600 Myr after the Solar System's formation, though more recent hypotheses favor the former—this would imply the dwarf planets formed closer to 4.6 billion years ago is misleading. Moore & McKinnon are referring to the formation of the Kuiper belt as a structure, not of the objects themselves which would have happened earlier. @Nrco0e: I know we have discussed that exact reference before, and I probably said something different at that time; but I think the footnote can just be removed. This belongs into the Kuiper belt article, not here. Renerpho (talk) 05:44, 7 November 2025 (UTC)

Fair enough. Removed the footnote. Nrco0e (talk • contribs) 05:45, 7 November 2025 (UTC)

• The article says, "The axial tilt of Makemake has not been measured, although it can be reasonably assumed that its rotation axis is aligned with the orbital plane of its moon". Why is that reasonable? I'd expect the obliquity to be at right angles to the moon's orbital plane just from angular momentum arguments. Otherwise the article seems in reasonably good shape and is FA worth. Praemonitus (talk) 21:23, 7 November 2025 (UTC)

  @Praemonitus: "I'd expect the obliquity to be at right angles to the moon's orbital plane just from angular momentum arguments." Yeah, I meant to say that "its rotation axis is aligned with the orbital [pole/plane normal] of its moon." Which phrasing is clearer? Nrco0e (talk • contribs) 21:29, 7 November 2025 (UTC)

  Turns out I was following the phrasing from the Parker et al. (2016) paper:

  "...if spin pole of Makemake and the orbit plane of S/2015 (136472) 1 are aligned..."

  I don't think this would be semantically accurate?

  Nrco0e (talk • contribs) 21:32, 7 November 2025 (UTC)

  The paper says that "the projected long axis of Makemake ... runs nearly North-South," while the satellite "likely evaded detection in previous satellite searches due to a nearly edge-on orbital configuration," which I think would put the pole axis perpendicular to the satellite orbit plane (for a low obliquity). I dunno; the more I read it, the more confused I get. Praemonitus (talk) 22:35, 7 November 2025 (UTC)

  The word choice may not be exact, but I get what Parker et al. were trying to say. I think it's fine if I just say "...assumed that its rotation axis is aligned with the pole of its moon's orbit." Nrco0e (talk • contribs) 05:57, 8 November 2025 (UTC)

  Works for me. Thanks. Praemonitus (talk) 03:48, 24 November 2025 (UTC)

adding in some potentially controversial changes (or changes i'm currently not equipped to carry out yet) i'd pitch:

• (about 3.6% Earth gravity) – probably needs a footnote for how this figure was calculated
  • Added footnote explaining the value of Earth's gravity. Note sure about explaining the calculation literally since kwami removed those parts in my other footnotes. Nrco0e (talk • contribs) 00:42, 13 November 2025 (UTC)
• ...although the ring could potentially be replenished if cryovolcanic eruptions could eject carbonaceous dust into orbit around Makemake – would it be better to say if eruptions are able to eject... instead?
  • Yes, that wording would make sense IMO. It removes the implication that we already know that cryovolcanic eruptions could do that in the first place. Nrco0e (talk • contribs) 00:42, 13 November 2025 (UTC)
• Larger moons could be hidden if they orbited very close to Makemake. – i'd suggest specifying that "hidden" in this context means WRT telescope observation capabilities. a reader could plausibly read this as being hidden physically by Makemake itself.
  • Good catch. I've reworded it. Nrco0e (talk • contribs) 00:42, 13 November 2025 (UTC)
• Makemake is not known to have rings. – this feels slightly vaguer than Makemake does not have any known rings. to me, even if it's intended to hedge WRT the rings hypothesis (is not known—to whom?). however, i don't believe that is necessary since the authors disfavored that hypothesis.
  • I'll go with your suggestion, it reads off as more direct. Nrco0e (talk • contribs) 00:42, 13 November 2025 (UTC)
• i feel like some content from this paragraph beginning with Despite being exceptionally bright, Makemake was discovered relatively late... could better fit the History section. overall, the Observation section could be condensed—it's much larger than similar (sub)sections found in Pluto and Ceres's; Eris lacks one entirely (albeit all three have not been revamped in quite a while.) ArkHyena_woop! (she/they/it) 23:12, 12 November 2025 (UTC)

  Hm. Not too sure about that. Most of the time I'm ambivalent about discussing precoveries in the Discovery section or in a standalone Observation section, but here I'm leaning towards keeping it in the Observation section since there's plenty to talk about. The prose of the precovery paragraph feels more "distant" compared to the narrative-driven Discovery section, so putting these together would feel jarring IMO, if you get what I mean.

  But I do agree that the precovery paragraph should be somewhat trimmed. I've attempted trimming out the list of surveys and publication dates. Let me know if the result is fine. Nrco0e (talk • contribs) 01:35, 13 November 2025 (UTC)

  @ArkHyena: (err... courtesy ping. I forgot to do that.) Nrco0e (talk • contribs) 01:37, 13 November 2025 (UTC)

  @Nrco0e and ArkHyena: Is calling it "exceptionally bright" really warranted, when the source we give (Moltenbrey, p. 212) doesn't use that phrase, and instead says that the reason for its late discovery is "similar to the case of Haumea"? What's exceptional about it when the only similar dwarf planet was found under essentially identical circumstances? The two have essentially the same brightness, and were even located in roughly the same part of the sky. "Exceptionally bright" is a quote from Mike Brown, and it's fine quoting him earlier in the article ("Mike Brown found the object in his inspection of the images and identified it as exceptionally bright"), but I'm not sure about adopting that as fact. Renerpho (talk) 02:22, 13 November 2025 (UTC)

  @Renerpho: Would it be better if it was rephrased as either "Despite being very bright..." or "Despite being one of the brightest trans-Neptunian objects..."? Which is better? Nrco0e (talk • contribs) 03:06, 13 November 2025 (UTC)

  The latter seems to work best. The Sun is very bright; trans-Neptunian objects are not. Renerpho (talk) 03:12, 13 November 2025 (UTC)

  Got it. I've changed it accordingly. Nrco0e (talk • contribs) 03:38, 13 November 2025 (UTC)

• Cryovolcanic outgassing of methane has been hypothesized to be ubiquitous among large trans-Neptunian dwarf planets like Makemake. -- The source [10] doesn't say "large trans-Neptunian dwarf planets". It speaks of "KBOs similar in size to Charon or smaller (but large enough to have undergone differentiation into bodies with a rocky core surrounded by an outer ice shell and possible subsurface ocean)". Are those the same thing? In the source, the relevant reference 37 (Neveu's "Prerequisites for explosive cryovolcanism on dwarf-planet class Kuiper belt objects") doesn't seem to limit itself only to a subset of dwarf planets. Why don't we write "ubiquitous among large trans-Neptunian objects like Makemake", or "among trans-Neptunian dwarf planets like Makemake"? Renerpho (talk) 08:14, 24 November 2025 (UTC)

  I'll stick with "among trans-Neptunian dwarf planets like Makemake" for clarity. Nrco0e (talk • contribs) 09:09, 24 November 2025 (UTC)

  Sounds good. Renerpho (talk) 10:29, 24 November 2025 (UTC)

revisiting since it's been quiet for a bit, but after another read through and a spot check of a handful of references i can't spot any remaining major issues. if i haven't missed anything major, it's probably time to close this FAR (of course, i'd like some help doing a full final check for any sourcing issues before doing so) ArkHyena_woop! (she/they/it) 00:22, 30 November 2025 (UTC)

Geography and ecology of the Everglades

Notified: Moni3, WikiProject Ecology, WikiProject Florida

I am nominating this featured article for review because...the article contains multiple unsourced statements and the paragraphs under human impact section doesn't look good. 🍕BP!🍕 (🔔) 00:52, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

"paragraphs under human impact section doesn't look good." Lol Zoolander.

I don't care much that your verb doesn't agree but yeah you're gonna have to be specific here. Whaddaya want how long what? There's already articles for Draining and Restoration. You remember the Restoration article. It was delisted when no one did anything to it. That's not the point of all of this is it? To delist articles without doing any work at all?

I eagerly await your specifics!!! Until next time! (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ Moni3 (talk) 23:23, 7 November 2025 (UTC)

@Boneless Pizza!: ↑ . Nikkimaria (talk) 15:38, 8 November 2025 (UTC)

It looks like the citation issues were promptly resolved. I'm not an expert on this subject, so I’ll say Keep for now—unless others raise concerns about the sourcing 🍕BP!🍕 (🔔) 22:20, 8 November 2025 (UTC)

It took half an hour to fix it.

It's absolutely bananas that FAs are being delisted because those who find them lacking cannot spend half an hour working on them. Really depressing, tbh. Moni3 (talk) 16:08, 11 November 2025 (UTC)

• Comments after a quick skim: The "Human impact" section doesn't contain any citations after 2011. Is there any information to add here? There's still a "citation needed" tag in the "Biodiversity" section. @Moni3: Z1720 (talk) 16:02, 15 November 2025 (UTC)

  The articles Draining and development of the Everglades and Restoration of the Everglades cover human impact. They're linked. Moni3 (talk) 20:36, 16 November 2025 (UTC)

• @Moni3: Summaries of those articles should be added here. A wikilink is not enough. Z1720 (talk) 20:38, 16 November 2025 (UTC)

  How much? Moni3 (talk) 22:59, 20 November 2025 (UTC)

Bryce Canyon National Park

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)

@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)

@Hike395: Done. Z1720 (talk) 18:53, 1 September 2025 (UTC)

@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)

@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)

I have been on wikibreak for a bit, but will get back to this. — hike395 (talk) 10:36, 23 September 2025 (UTC)

• Could we get an update on status here? Nikkimaria (talk) 15:00, 18 October 2025 (UTC)

Apologies, have gotten busy with lots of template editing. @Z1720: it would be helpful if you could mark the sections that you think need attention (even with HTML comments). — hike395 (talk) 14:54, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

Later -- done some copyediting and fact verification. Guidance of what to edit is welcome. Will continue the process. — hike395 (talk) 17:47, 25 October 2025 (UTC)

• Comments: "European American exploration and settlement" has short paragraphs that should be formatted more effectively. The "Later" section needs a better heading (maybe "Post-1950"?) and should be expanded. Information from the "Ecology" section should be added to the lead (currently there is none.) Z1720 (talk) 16:07, 15 November 2025 (UTC)

@Z1720: Apologies: I missed this without a ping. Did the following edits:

• Reformatted and copy-edited "European American exploration and settlement"
• Changed header to "Post-1950 and expanded with a few notable events
• Added two sentences to the lede about ecology

Does this now seem like a FA, or are there more issues? Feel free to ping me. — hike395 (talk) 11:55, 1 December 2025 (UTC)

• @Hike395: I added a citation needed tag to the article. Once resolved I think this is ready for a keep. Z1720 (talk) 13:59, 1 December 2025 (UTC)

@Z1720:  Done — hike395 (talk) 15:24, 1 December 2025 (UTC)

Coeliac disease

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)

@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)

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)

@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)

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)

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)

Today I learnt about the article List of foods with religious symbolism. This might help. JFW | T@lk 08:57, 24 July 2025 (UTC)

@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)

Let me see if I can find any good sources over the next couple of days. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:09, 26 July 2025 (UTC)

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)

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)

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" [11]
4. "Immunogenetics of Celiac Disease: A Focus on Arab Countries" [12] 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)

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)

• Hey everyone, thanks for your great work. I see that there hasn't been significant edits on this article in a while, and there are some unresolved citation needed templates. Is there an update on this? Z1720 (talk) 21:02, 15 August 2025 (UTC)

  When I can find the time in the next two weeks I will start to pick away at the unsourced bits. IntentionallyDense ^(Contribs) 08:34, 17 August 2025 (UTC)

  Hold, since AJpolino is on the job, and ID (a competent medical editor) has agreed to work on the remaining sourcing, and will presumably notice any updates needed as they read. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:45, 17 August 2025 (UTC)

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)

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)

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)

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

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)

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)

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)

• Could we get an update on status here? Nikkimaria (talk) 15:15, 20 September 2025 (UTC)

  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)

• I would appreciate a bit of time to be allowed for me to take a break from working on this page due to off wiki issues that are currently consuming most of my time. I understand that this has already been a lengthy review, however I will say that I do feel I’ve got a good handle on the current scope of literature in the area which means a lot here. Colin has been helping out as well, but I know he’s also a busy person. In the meantime I would appreciate any help with tidying up pride, formatting, and citation formatting for the causes/mechanisms section, the serology section of diagnosis and any other quick fixes others could provide. IntentionallyDense ^(Contribs) 07:10, 6 October 2025 (UTC)

Augustus

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)

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)

Also pinging @Carlstak and T8612:, who were in the discussion as well. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 10:46, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

@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 Athens^Talk 15:05, 22 April 2025 (UTC)

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 Athens^Talk 18:03, 26 April 2025 (UTC)

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 Athens^Talk 03:18, 28 April 2025 (UTC)

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)

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 Athens^Talk 13:12, 29 April 2025 (UTC)

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)

@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 Athens^Talk 17:22, 29 April 2025 (UTC)

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 Athens^Talk 17:34, 29 April 2025 (UTC)

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)

@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 Athens^Talk 19:52, 29 April 2025 (UTC)

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)

@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 Athens^Talk 21:32, 29 April 2025 (UTC)

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 Athens^Talk 01:54, 30 April 2025 (UTC)

@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 Athens^Talk 17:28, 4 May 2025 (UTC)

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)

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 Athens^Talk 13:18, 5 May 2025 (UTC)

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)

@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 Athens^Talk 12:50, 1 May 2025 (UTC)

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)

@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 Athens^Talk 14:58, 1 May 2025 (UTC)

@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 Athens^Talk 15:55, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

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)

@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 Athens^Talk 20:28, 2 May 2025 (UTC)

I will try to do this as when my schedule permits. Thelifeofan413 (talk) 07:00, 3 May 2025 (UTC)

@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 Athens^Talk 11:01, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

• Could we get an update on status here? Nikkimaria (talk) 15:10, 24 May 2025 (UTC)

  @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 Athens^Talk 18:53, 24 May 2025 (UTC)

  @PericlesofAthens is there any "grunt work" i can help you with? Remsense 🌈 论 11:27, 7 June 2025 (UTC)

  @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 Athens^Talk 19:27, 7 June 2025 (UTC)

  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 Athens^Talk 19:03, 24 June 2025 (UTC)

  @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 Athens^Talk 03:28, 8 July 2025 (UTC)

  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)

  @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 Athens^Talk 13:07, 8 July 2025 (UTC)

  Checking in - any further update? What issues remain? Nikkimaria (talk) 20:41, 19 July 2025 (UTC)

  @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 Athens^Talk 20:49, 26 July 2025 (UTC)

@PericlesofAthens: What issues remain? Nikkimaria (talk) 14:30, 23 August 2025 (UTC)

@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 Athens^Talk 00:56, 26 August 2025 (UTC)

We can wait a bit longer. Nikkimaria (talk) 01:05, 26 August 2025 (UTC)

@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 Athens^Talk 19:40, 30 August 2025 (UTC)

@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 Athens^Talk 20:27, 30 August 2025 (UTC)

"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)

@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 Athens^Talk 13:13, 2 September 2025 (UTC)

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 Athens^Talk 19:09, 13 September 2025 (UTC)

@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 Athens^Talk 19:04, 17 September 2025 (UTC)

@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 Athens^Talk 23:55, 30 September 2025 (UTC)

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 Athens^Talk 00:45, 1 October 2025 (UTC)

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)

@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 Athens^Talk 12:54, 2 October 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for responding and helping out! Pericles of Athens^Talk 12:55, 2 October 2025 (UTC)

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)

@UndercoverClassicist Sorry, my week has been totally insane after someone rear ended my car and basically wrecked my trunk door at the worst time of year for that (and the other driver has expired insurance, LOL, great). Anyways, yes, it's Galinsky's Augustus: Introduction to the Life of an Emperor from 2012 that I need. I really need chapters 2, 3 and the index for now, if I'm going to tackle the next section of the article here in earnest. I'll send you an email! Pericles of Athens^Talk 19:48, 5 October 2025 (UTC)

And, once again, thank you endlessly for helping me with this! You're a lifesaver. Pericles of Athens^Talk 19:50, 5 October 2025 (UTC)

Email sent yesterday, but take all the time you need to gather that. I'm busy as usual, of course, not made any easier by the car situation. Cheers! Pericles of Athens^Talk 16:56, 6 October 2025 (UTC)

I edited the "Month of August" subsection, one of the worst in the article, removing the primary source cited there and the uncited speculative comments. I provided two new secondary sources, both of them online: a British Museum webpage and an Encyclopedia Britannica entry. I'm not sure if either of these are cited correctly or what standard I should even follow, so any help with that would be greatly appreciated, if anyone knows how to do it properly. Pericles of Athens^Talk 20:48, 6 October 2025 (UTC)

I also removed the entire "Creation of Italia" subsection for now, not because it's untrue, but because I cannot immediately find a reliable scholarly source for all the claims there, and we cannot just use a sole foreign language source as the only cited source. The editor who added this in also did not follow the chosen citation method (shorthand citations, sfn). Pericles of Athens^Talk 20:53, 6 October 2025 (UTC)

@UndercoverClassicist Hi again, could you please send me an email with the requested parts of Galinsky (2012)? I am very eager to continue working on this article, but I no longer have access to high quality sources, and I want to continue using Galinsky in particular. Thank you. Pericles of Athens^Talk 19:15, 9 October 2025 (UTC)

All sent to you. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 06:35, 10 October 2025 (UTC)

Thank you, UndercoverClassicist! I emailed you back to thank you there as well. Much appreciated, and I'll jump right back into this on Monday. Also, I visited my local university library and was able to scan the entire book of Patricia Southern's Augustus published by Reuters in 2014! Very happy about that and will be citing that in addition to Galinsky (2012). Pericles of Athens^Talk 02:14, 12 October 2025 (UTC)

Small update, very busy today unfortunately (far more than I had anticipated), but will dive back into work on this tomorrow night or so. Pericles of Athens^Talk 18:50, 13 October 2025 (UTC)

Ugh! I have a new job and just got past onboarding phase, so I'm busy with that and family issues, and personal issues helping my girlfriend, and it's Halloween season so each of the next three weekends are stacked with activities for me, but my schedule will be less brutal in early November. I will try to sneak in more work on this article by Monday when I have spare time again. Good thing is I have Patricia Southern's book and Galinsky's book, and with those two sources I should be fine. Pericles of Athens^Talk 14:20, 17 October 2025 (UTC)

I tried to find time to work on this, but have been busy lately due to Halloween events every weekend, and now it's literally Halloween! This weekend is going to be insane for me, so I won't even have a second to work on this article. Hopefully by Tuesday I can resume work without having to worry about social engagements after work. Pericles of Athens^Talk 18:02, 31 October 2025 (UTC)

Update: As usual, my time these days is being completely sucked dry by my girlfriend, by health issues, by social commitments, by the need to do chores and shopping that just leaves me exhausted, and by other projects I'm working on outside of work. I will try to set aside time this weekend to work on this article, but just reading through Southern's enormous book alone seems like a daunting, miserable task that I don't have time for. I really fear that I cannot save this article, and I really genuinely need someone's help with it. Can anyone help, please? Pericles of Athens^Talk 15:37, 13 November 2025 (UTC)

@UndercoverClassicist @Nikkimaria It is by no means complete, but the "Rise to Power" section has been dramatically improved with citations from Galinsky (2012). Thanks once again, UndercoverClassicist, for providing me with necessary PDFs of that source! Hopefully I can find time tonight to skim through Pat Southern's book and cite it in the article to bring greater balance to the variety of sources cited here (not just citations from Eck and Takacs dominating multiple sub-sections in a row). As it stands, the vast majority of primary sources have also been removed from inline citations found in the prose body. They are now mostly relegated to certain sub-sections of the "Legacy" section and the "Physical appearance" section, though I see a couple tags were added in the "Sole ruler of Rome" section indicating that primary source citations need to be replaced with secondary ones. I'll address that as soon as I can. Pericles of Athens^Talk 21:36, 20 November 2025 (UTC)

It's not a perfect fix for either situation, but I removed some of the primary source speculation in the "Sole ruler of Rome" section, removed an unnecessary uncited statement there that was recently tagged, and placed primary source material found in the "Physical appearance and official images" section into a footnote (with only secondary sources used for inline citations there). Pericles of Athens^Talk 14:32, 21 November 2025 (UTC)

@UndercoverClassicist @Nikkimaria I very much want to cite the 2nd edition of Patricia Southern's Augustus published in 2014 by Routledge. The only problem is that the first edition of this book published in 1998 is cited several times throughout the article. In reading my version, I have confirmed that the page numbers do not align at all, and the 2nd edition contains additional materials and appendices (one that even mentions restoration work on the Mausoleum of Augustus at the beginning of "the twenty-first century," i.e. obviously after the original publication in 1998). What can I do here? I'm not sure what the guidelines or protocols are for citing two different editions of the same book. It would have been an enormous waste of my time going to the library and scanning the entire 2nd edition only to not cite it here a single time. I'll continue with Galinsky (2012) in the meantime, but I'm not happy about this. :( Pericles of Athens^Talk 14:50, 21 November 2025 (UTC)

You can cite both editions, or you can replace the earlier edition with the newer one - either is fine as long as the material is supported. (And assuming that the material from the first edition is still appropriate). Nikkimaria (talk) 00:30, 22 November 2025 (UTC)

@Nikkimaria Awesome! Thanks for clarifying. I'll cite both editions then, since that's easier for me (path of least resistance). Pericles of Athens^Talk 04:30, 25 November 2025 (UTC)

@UndercoverClassicist I'm happy to announce that I'm finished working on the entire Rise to Power section! I can cite a few additional sources like Southern here and there, but ultimately the problems raised in this review have been addressed, at least for that section and the previous ones. I'm now moving on to the next section on the role rulership of Augustus. Pericles of Athens^Talk 20:31, 25 November 2025 (UTC)

A lot of big changes have been made to this article, including a huge amount of citations from Southern (2014) across various sections, and additional information on everything from building projects in Rome to wars against the Sabaeans in South Arabia and Kushites in Sudan and Lower Egypt. The sub-section on proscriptions looks immensely better than it did before. The only sub-section that still needs serious cleanup and work is the "residences" one in the Legacy section, though I've already managed to cite Southern (2014) there for the House of Augustus on the Palatine Hill. I need help with sources for some of the other residences of Augustus. Pericles of Athens^Talk 06:51, 27 November 2025 (UTC)

It might be worth pointing out that the link between the structure known today as the "House of Augustus" and the man himself is incredibly tenuous -- have a look at the article on the Temple of Apollo Palatinus (shameless self-promotion alert) for a little on this. Essentially, when it was first excavated, it sort-of matched the description given in Suetonius of Augustus's house (and I think we should make explicit that this is what we're basing the idea of a modest house upon), so we know Augustus lived there because it matches Suetonius's description. Further excavations revealed that it didn't actually look much that house at all, but now it was decided that Suetonius may have been wrong, because we know that the building is Augustus's house, so it doesn't matter if it matches the description. You may see the problem here! UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 07:02, 27 November 2025 (UTC)

@UndercoverClassicist Hi again! Indeed and agreed about the so-called House of Augustus. I just recently made sure to stress the point by Southern 2014: p. 336 that the identification of the home as one belonging to Augustus is still "not certain." Also, @User:Ifly6 has been a great help of late adding newly cited sources to the article, including Hinard 1985 about the proscriptions of the Second Triumvirate. Pericles of Athens^Talk 20:46, 1 December 2025 (UTC)

Re the house, you may also want to add in material from a note I wrote for House of Augustus. Ifly6 (talk) 21:53, 1 December 2025 (UTC)

@Ifly6 Great suggestion! Per your request, I have edited the article to include input from Bingham 2021, with an inline citation and footnote supporting Wiseman's contentions about the identification of Augustus' home. Lately I have also been using Galinsky 2012 and Southern 2014 to buttress, reorganize, and amend various statements using Eck & Takács 2003 as the cited source. In the process, I thankfully spotted a typo with an incorrect page number for Eck & Takács 2003 in the "Change to Augustus" subsection, an error that must have been introduced when the article's citations were converted to shortened footnotes. It's a good thing this FA review was started by User:AirshipJungleman29, otherwise I would have never revisited this article and nitpicked it enough to notice it! The article is in a much improved state as a result of this lengthy FAR process, with massive improvements made to every section. Kudos to @Nikkimaria for allowing so many extensions, it is much appreciated. Pericles of Athens^Talk 05:44, 2 December 2025 (UTC)

No worries. Let me know if you need more help accessing sources. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 10:36, 2 December 2025 (UTC)

@AirshipJungleman29 Thank you kindly! I will certainly let you know when and if I need a particular source. The Wikipedia Library is a fantastic venue for accessing various resources, but unfortunately I lost access to Cambridge Core sources specifically. User:UndercoverClassicist had to share some materials with me after that happened. At the moment I'm still plowing through Galinsky 2012 and Southern 2014, and have used other sources lately like Burstein 2004, Bringmann 2007, and Roller 2010 to shore up claims about Antony and Cleopatra. I only had snippet access on Google Books to David Shotter's Augustus Caesar (2005, 2nd ed.), so if you somehow have full access to that then that would be most welcome if you could share (since it's already cited a bit in the first two sections). I never had access to Colin Wells' The Roman Empire (1995), but it's a somewhat important source considering how it has been cited for various claims about the second settlement of Augustus in 23 BC. Both Shotter 2005 and Wells 1995 don't appear to be available in the Wikipedia Library, at least in a cursory search. Any help with these sources or others you might have access to would be greatly appreciated. Pericles of Athens^Talk 17:29, 2 December 2025 (UTC)

It brings me great pleasure, though, to say that, while I and others are still improving things, we have at least adequately if not fully addressed some of the initial concerns raised in this review.

1) The "heavy overuse of one source (Eck & Takács 2003)" is now a largely moot point considering the wealth of citations from other secondary sources like Tatum 2024, Lewis 2023, Wiseman 2022, Southern 2014, Galinsky 2012, Roller 2010, Lindsay 2009, Bringmann 2007, Welsby 1996, etc.

2) The "use of dated secondary sources, some of which are nearing a century old" has at least been addressed and older secondary sources like Syme 1939 are mainly used to buttress statements that involve the citation of other secondary sources (though for legacy purposes Scott 1933 and Syme 1939's inputs are still occasionally included, and Theodor Mommsen's opinion is mentioned but his works are not directly cited).

3) The "uncritical use of ancient primary sources as citations" has now been fully addressed, I think, with singular use of primary sources as inline citations wiped clean from the article. Only a smattering of them are included in footnotes here and there (coupled with modern secondary source evaluation of those ancient primary sources; for instance, see the "Residences" subsection).

4) The "underuse of high-quality modern sources, some of which lie unused in the 'Further reading' section" has at least been addressed somewhat with the recent addition of many new high-quality modern sources, which @User:Ifly6 and I have added. The 'Further reading' section is always going to contain at least some great sources that I simply cannot access, because I'm not currently working as an academic, and am using anything I can get my hands on.

5) The concern about there not being "enough detail on legacy and assessment in post-classical politics" has been addressed somewhat, with recent expansions of the "Legacy" section, though the specific issue of post-classical politics still needs to be fleshed out and given its due. That's perhaps the biggest remaining sore point of the whole article, but thankfully I have some sources that speak on the issue a bit, and I will be citing them shortly. Stay tuned! Pericles of Athens^Talk 16:29, 3 December 2025 (UTC)

Featured article removal candidates

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

Honoré de Balzac

Notified: Scartol, WikiProject Biography, WikiProject Balzac, WikiProject France, WikiProject Theatre, WikiProject Conservatism, 2025-08-10

Review section

I am nominating this featured article for review because there are a lot of uncited statements throughout the article, including entire paragraphs. The article uses website and older sources when I think better sources can be found. Some sections are too long and should be split up or reworded more effectively so that readers (especially mobile) are able to read the text. There are also lots of short, one- or two-sentence paragraphs which should be merged together. Z1720 (talk) 03:48, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

• Move to FARC. Concerns remain. Z1720 (talk) 16:03, 15 November 2025 (UTC)

FARC section

Issues raised in the review section include sourcing and structure. Nikkimaria (talk) 02:22, 22 November 2025 (UTC)

Bæddel and bædling

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

Review section

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)

• 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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

• 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)

• 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)

  @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)

• 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)

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)

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 can see a similar argument by SchroCat that several of your changes breached WP:INDISCRIMINATE, a description you rejected because "secondary sources do it" (Wikipedia is not a 2nd-party source) and suggested SchroCat wasn't appropriately qualified to provide a response to you (in my view, this is not an argument likely to generate consensus). SchroCat's objection is very similar to UndercoverClassicist's here—i.e., the justification for inclusion hasn't really been made.

• 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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

"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)

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)

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)

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.

• As an aside: Due to the indenting, I can't tell if you are replying here to my first comment (which references my qualifications and Essjay) or my response to your response (which you directly quoted).

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)

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)

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)

The entire paper is focused on promoting Feinberg and Feinberg's theories. :bloodofox: (talk) 15:11, 10 June 2025 (UTC)

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)

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)

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)

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)

• 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)
• 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).
  

  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)

  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)

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)

• this has already been noted, but FAR is not for "delist" or "keep" !votes. ... sawyer * any/all * talk 16:40, 6 June 2025 (UTC)

  So struck. All the best: Rich Farmbrough 16:44, 6 June 2025 (UTC).
  

• Note Wikipedia does not forbid tertiary sources, far from it. See WP:TERTIARY. All the best: Rich Farmbrough 16:44, 6 June 2025 (UTC).
  
  • @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)

    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)

    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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

@Yngvadottir:? Nikkimaria (talk) 14:28, 23 August 2025 (UTC)

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)

@UndercoverClassicist and Sawyer777: Nikkimaria (talk) 13:40, 6 September 2025 (UTC)

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)

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)

UndercoverClassicist Are you still planning on working on this? Nikkimaria (talk) 14:48, 27 September 2025 (UTC)

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)

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)

@UndercoverClassicist: Could we get an update on status here? Nikkimaria (talk) 15:02, 18 October 2025 (UTC)

No update to the previous, except that I now know what Generalissima makes of it. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 17:32, 18 October 2025 (UTC)

FARC section

Stalled. Nikkimaria (talk) 14:25, 1 November 2025 (UTC)

Enzyme kinetics

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

Review section

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)

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)

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)

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)

• @Graham Beards: I see that you made some edits to the article in August. Are you interested in continuing to work on this? Of course, there's no obligation to do so. Z1720 (talk) 00:38, 20 September 2025 (UTC)

  Hi, what else do you think is needed? Graham Beards (talk) 06:42, 20 September 2025 (UTC)

  @Z1720: ↑? Nikkimaria (talk) 14:36, 4 October 2025 (UTC)

• @Graham Beards: I have added citation needed tags to the article. Please note that the cn tag may be for multiple preceding sentences, as there are entire paragraphs without citations. Also, statements like, "The Michaelis–Menten kinetic model of a single-substrate reaction is shown on the right." will need to be reworded, as mobile users display images above or below the text. I found multiple instances of this, which can be found by doing a ctr+F search on the page for the term "left" and "right". There is also a "failed verification" tag in the article. Z1720 (talk) 01:57, 6 October 2025 (UTC)

  Sorry, I don't have time for this. Graham Beards (talk) 07:03, 6 October 2025 (UTC)

• Move to FARC. Citation concerns remain. Z1720 (talk) 23:33, 8 October 2025 (UTC)

FARC section

Sourcing. Nikkimaria (talk) 15:04, 18 October 2025 (UTC)

• @Graham Beards: I see that you made several edits to the article on Oct. 22. Did you resolve the sourcing concerns, and is this article ready for a re-review? Z1720 (talk) 03:41, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

  Yes, I think it is ready. Graham Beards (talk) 13:13, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

• @Z1720: ↑ Nikkimaria (talk) 03:40, 29 November 2025 (UTC)

Yeah, I've been procrastinating on this. Sorry about that. @Graham Beards: Some comments below:

• The lead is quite long. Is all the information there needed?
• I added some citation needed tags to the article. Feel free to remove if a citation is not needed there.
• In the "Multi-substrate reactions" sections, a couple headings have a citation at the end of them. What are they citing? Should the citation be moved to the section's text?

I will admit that math is not a strength of mine, so I won't be verifying the information for the equations. The article should be close to a keep. Z1720 (talk) 15:07, 30 November 2025 (UTC)

I think we can delete the paragraph from the Lead that begins "This example assumes the simplest case of a reaction..." I'll take a look at the citations issues, Graham Beards (talk) 17:37, 30 November 2025 (UTC)

I have dealt with these issues. On a general note, this is a highly technical article that is unlikely to be of much interest to the lay reader, but none of the content is likely to be contested as this is all well established fact. The mathematics is standard for the subject and the only likely errors would be typos. Having said this, I can't see any. Graham Beards (talk) 11:41, 2 December 2025 (UTC)

• Keep. Concerns resolved, no further concerns. Z1720 (talk) 14:43, 2 December 2025 (UTC)

Ashton-under-Lyne

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

Review section

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)

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)

• Move to FARC Concerns remain. This can be held in FARC if there are overlap concerns with Manchester, but so far no one has indicated that they intend to work on this article. Z1720 (talk) 18:50, 6 September 2025 (UTC)
• Move to FARC - some uncited text has been cited since this went to FAR, but the bulk of the article's issues are unaddressed. Hog Farm _Talk 14:44, 12 September 2025 (UTC)

FARC section

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

• Comment I am currently working on Manchester which is taking me a long time due to being busy in real life and the amount of work needed on the article. Please refrain from delisting this before the Manchester FARC is over and I've had time to pick this up. Thanks, JacobTheRox^{(talk | contributions)} 21:56, 21 September 2025 (UTC)

India

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

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

Close without FARC Fowler&fowler«Talk» 10:38, 12 July 2025 (UTC)

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 or similar AI technology has been collapsed in line with the relevant guideline and should be excluded from assessments of consensus. — Newslinger talk 08:12, 8 August 2025 (UTC)

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)

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)

"Using LLMs to dissect minor points" - WP:BAIT Rackaballa (talk) 09:02, 12 July 2025 (UTC)

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)

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)

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

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)

• 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)

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)

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)

"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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

• 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)

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)

• 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)

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)

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)

• 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)

  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)

FARC section

• 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)
• 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)
• 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)

  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)

• "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)
• 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)
• 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)

  Please keep comments focused on how this article does or does not meet the FA criteria. Nikkimaria (talk) 00:55, 17 September 2025 (UTC)

• 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)
• 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)
• 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)

• Delist - The issues raised are significant enough to warrant a delist. The long term stone walling of the article has also prevented any improvement of these issues. Chronos.Zx (talk) 05:45, 27 September 2025 (UTC)
• Delist per accurate analysis above. Highly unlikely if these problems will be fixed anytime soon. Lorstaking (talk) 09:47, 30 September 2025 (UTC)

  If the problems include not stating that India has the largest population, that would mean going against what secondary sources have been saying on the matter for a couple of years at this point. CMD (talk) 13:05, 30 September 2025 (UTC)

• 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)

  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)

  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)

  The point regarding imagery has already been addressed after much discussion. As several others in this discussion, including me, have already noted, the greater issue with this article lies in its countless factual misrepresentations and omissions of important information, including giving weight to Hindutva narratives. However, given the persistent stonewalling this article has faced over the years, I have little hope that it can be substantially improved in its current state. — EarthDude (wanna talk?) 07:15, 5 October 2025 (UTC)

  There was no mention of the article giving weight to Hindutva narratives in the discussion preceding the FAR, and searching for the word in recent archives it does not seem to have been raised on the talk page in 2025. The article has changed over time due to discussions, however as Vanamonde93 notes contradictory issues have been raised. If you are considering potential stonewalling, it is worth considering that there are far more posts seeking to add more Hindu images, or change the economy section to mention poverty less, rather than the opposite concerns you raised above. CMD (talk) 10:25, 5 October 2025 (UTC)

• Keep FA Per Vanamonde and others. Upd Edit (talk) 11:06, 24 October 2025 (UTC)
• DelistNeutral per above and suggestions.

I do understand that there might be a lot of errors that are still currently unadressed, I do see evidence of WP:IDLI and the misunderstanding of Indian English. IDLI applies because India is part of the India-Pakistan Conflict CTOPS and South CTOPS, therefore both NPOV and IDLI apply, also in addressing LEADCITE. I did find some problems (some kindly addressed), For example:

• MOS:LEADCITE is pretty much required for FAs to this point. The moment I see so many sources in the lead section, it gives me a headache why this even is an FA, let alone a GA. Also per above.

• Climate section under "Geography" section: missing {{main|Climate of India}}, which should be considerably obvious.

• "Politics" section: "Congress"? This can be misleading as Congress, specifically in the US, is the legislative branch and a branch of the government and not a political party. Using "Congress" in the article can be incredibly misleading as, when I first looked at it, I thought it meant the India Parliament as a whole.

• MOS:SANDWICH in "Modern India" under "History" section.

HwyNerd Mike (tokk) 20:40, 26 October 2025 (UTC)

Much of this complaint has no basis in policy whatsoever. LEADCITE does not mandate the removal of citations. "Congress" is the common abbreviation for the party: we would not change this just for US readers, and a parenthetical definition is easily provided. Image sandwiching is not visible to all editors, but when found, is trivially fixed. Vanamonde93 (talk) 18:43, 26 October 2025 (UTC)

I still retain my thoughts.

• MOS:LEADCITE states that an article should "avoid redundant citations" as it would be a visual hindrance to readers. Therefore, it is expected for an FA to maintain such standards.
• {{Main}} issue: Done. Thank you!
• The INC should be addressed as "the Congress", which is what the INC article uses. "Congress" is not only for US readers, actually, the more I think about it; it is most commonly applied to the U.S. Congress in a broad, worldwide scale, and it makes things confusing when it is only addressed as "Congress" in the article.
• MOS:SANDWICH: still unaddressed.

If you may, address these issues. Thank you. HwyNerd Mike (tokk) 18:59, 26 October 2025 (UTC)

No, LEADCITE says " editors should balance the desire to avoid redundant citations in the lead with the desire to aid readers in locating sources for challengeable material". Most aspects of the summary are contentious, as regular editors of this article are well aware. I did fix the sandwiching issue you pointed out, to the best of my ability, given my wide screen. If there are other instances of sandwiching, please let us know. As for "the Congress": I have made some modifications, but please note that the article is written in Indian English, which not infrequently omits the definite article in places it would be used elsewhere. I am not going to insist on preserving that, but suggestions of change ought recognize that the text derives from an attempt to follow linguistic conventions, not carelessness. Vanamonde93 (talk) 19:36, 26 October 2025 (UTC)

"Most aspects of the summary are contentious" This has already been discussed and you have provided no evidence to support this claim. It's an attempt to handwave away the issue. There are dozens of instances of excess citations in the lead, can you match each instance with corresponding talk page discussions indicating each of them are contentious? JDiala (talk) 04:44, 29 October 2025 (UTC)

• Delist - As per numerous concerns raised above. A delist would certainly allow the editors to finally address the issues with the article without much obstruction. Azuredivay (talk) 07:18, 20 November 2025 (UTC)

  @Azuredivay: Please don't punt to others. Such opinions are of no value. What specifically would you add to this article that you are being obstructed from adding? Give two or three examples, please. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 16:33, 22 November 2025 (UTC)

• Delist - Based on concerns raised above and below, especially by Moxy,[13] this is precisely the issue that has kept this article in its current state. It fails to meet FA standards. Srijanx22 (talk) 15:42, 22 November 2025 (UTC)

  It's easy to punt to others, but Moxy's own Canada is nothing but a sea of blue links. Please examine the ultimate doozy, the section of literature, and I come to it as someone who had ready Lucy Maude Montgomery in childhood, Robertson Davies in young adulthood, and I'm reading, or rather listening, to Miriam Toews's (pronounced Taves) memoir a big part of which is the suicides of her father and then sister, both by jumping in front of a speeding train. In fact, before I ordered it using a credit on Audible, I read Lorrie Moore's review "How goes the battle" in the New York Review of Books. I used WP's own resource for finding I have also read a large number of authors from the time period in between such as Michael Ondaatje's English Patient in graduate school, which I thought was not at the level of the finest works of other authors writing then) and Yan Martel's Tiger somethingor other that I didn't care for that much,

  Numerous Canadian authors have received international literary awards including the Nobel Prize in Literature, the Booker Prize, and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Canadian literary awards and prizes include the Governor General's Literary Awards, the Giller Prize, the Latner Griffin Writers' Trust Poetry Prize, the Burt Award for First Nations, Inuit and Métis Literature and several accolades for literature aimed at children.

  So, please tell me, dear @Srijanx22:, if that tells you anything about Canadian literature, or merely about the prizes being awarded in literature? Even if you click on every blue link, what knowledge have you come away with. In other word's it is easy to punt something to other editors but their grass, speaking metaphorically, is not greener. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 16:57, 22 November 2025 (UTC)

  PS All I know is that in my 19 years on Wikipedia, I have never written something as opaque as that section on Canadian literature. Similarly, editors on India like to add their favorite blue links, often of the rah-rah variety in acronyms. eg. India is a member of the UN, UNESCO, ESCAP, FAO, UNICEF, WHO, ASEAN, ADB, .... ABCEDFG, GFDECBA. It is far far harder to write qualitative articles. Because in order to do that you have to read, and read not just one book, but half a dozen. Only then can you say something meaningful. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 17:18, 22 November 2025 (UTC)

  Odd choice to talk about .... You're discussing the second paragraph in a summary section at Canada#Literature that discusses the primary themes in its historic and modern literature that is followed in the second paragraph with lists of the countries most renowned writers in multiple fields VS zero information at all here about the topic. Caution should be taken to ensure that the sections are not simply a listing of names or mini biographies of individuals accomplishments vs overall themes in society with links to articles to acquire more information. There's a big difference between articles written by a collaborative group that do our best to follow community protocols. So let's give a comparison of a section that actually exists here and at Canada - again let's talk about India#Religion - India has two sentences about demographics and seven images mostly about architecture vs Canada#Religion that discusses government positions, society's views, religious adherence alongside information about demographic and it's changes with one image representing the society's views about diversity in religion. Moxy🍁 18:07, 22 November 2025 (UTC)

  Guys, this isn't helpful. If you think improvements should be made to the Canada article, raise it at that article's talk page, or if necessary start an FAR for that article. The quality of this article should be assessed directly against WIAFA only. Nikkimaria (talk) 18:42, 22 November 2025 (UTC)

  I suggest you back off. I am going through a difficult time. I've made an announcement. Others have given me space. You do nothing but breathe down my neck with the same old issues. Please do something else until the end of the month and let me edit in peace. The same goes for other editors who come cantering in along well-worn paths and pronounce their perfunctory judgments. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 20:58, 22 November 2025 (UTC)

  That was a reply to Moxy. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 20:58, 22 November 2025 (UTC)

  I do not edit the page......agree with Nikkimaria... pointless talk.... nothing will change for accessibility for our readers. Good luck! Moxy🍁 01:27, 23 November 2025 (UTC)

A request to put this discussion on hold until December 1, 2025

I won't comment on the quality of the discussion above, but it is clear that it is nowhere near a consensus. Allow me then to make a request. (I did make them earlier, but they were lost among other posts in the discussion.) As some of you know, I suffered a catastrophic personal loss six months ago. Despite continuing treatment at the department of psychiatry at the Massachusetts General Hospital and by psychoanalysts associated with the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute and by phone at the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis, I am only now beginning to take my first faltering steps out of my complicated trauma and grief. As some of you also know, I am not only the the editor with the largest number of edits in this article but have also edited it for the last 19 years, which is only two less than its 21-year history as a featured article, Wikipedia’s longest for a country. In light of what I have just stated, I request that the FAR be put on hold until December 1, 2025, and I be granted the month of November 2025, to improve the article in the best possible manner. Whatever Wikipedia’s dogma is in this regard, I trust that editors here will be forgiving, and allow me space to bring it up to standard. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 12:18, 29 October 2025 (UTC)

Consensus is determined by the quality of arguments, not a vote count. An experienced editor like yourself should know this. I am sincerely sorry for your personal loss. I think it is a fair ask to request the FAR coordinators do not close discussion prior to December 2025 so that we can work on the article for the next month. However, what I do not believe is a fair ask is putting the discussion on hold altogether so that other editors cannot express their views here. But anyways I'll let the coordinators decide as they have the authority. JDiala (talk) 14:57, 29 October 2025 (UTC)

Happy to give you November to work on the article. Nikkimaria (talk) 14:46, 1 November 2025 (UTC)

Thank you, Nikkimaria. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 20:12, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

• I am starting with the Demographics section, Health subsection; I will then move to Religion, Languages, Urbanization and Population subsections, leaving Education out for now, as it was rewritten by Professor Rjensen, not too long ago. After that I will revise Section 6, society and sports subsections. Simultaneously, I will check, and update if need be, the sources in Section 1 though 5. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 13:32, 14 November 2025 (UTC)
• I have updated the Geography section, revising the account of the orogeny of the Himalayas. I've restored the original caption (from this page's TFA, 2 October 2019) of one of the pictures, which is really about the monsoon. I will move that picture into the Climate subsection. This will create room for a picture in the Geography section (proper). I propose that we add the Featured Picture File:Panorama of Himalayas from Ranikhet, Uttarakhand, India.jpg. In fact, I will go ahead and add it, so other editors can view it in context. This picture has an advantage in that it shows a portion of the range, rather than a single mountain or scene, and therefore illustrates the adjoining text better. The peaks seen in the panorama, include Nanda Devi, the highest mountain entirely within India's borders (Kangchenjunga, which is higher, however, lies on the border of Nepal and India, two-thirds in Nepal and one-third in India.) Nanda Devi, moreover has had a long cultural history in the Kumaon and Garhwal regions of the western Himalayas. It also lies in the center of the Nanda Devi National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Natural Site. Seen in the panorama are other mountains such as Trishul and Nanda Kot. I am pinging UnpetitproleX, our resident expert on Wikipedia's Featured Pictures. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 15:23, 18 November 2025 (UTC)

  Thanks for the ping. I do like the panorama image very much (it was taken and uploaded by a young local youtuber from Nainital, I edited it and then nominated it to FPC at commons as well as WP). It was recently our picture of the day to commemorate the anniversary of Uttarakhand’s creation as a separate state. While I do think the picture may not be our most striking image from Featured pictures of the Himalayas of India, I believe it carries the most visual information of the lot there, and that in my opinion takes precedence here. It shows some of the tallest mountains not just in India, but also the world. So I believe it is a reasonably good pick for the geography section. (Incidentally, I’m currently reading Luke Whitmore’s brilliant and heartfelt book on Kedarnath and Nachiket Chanchani’s illuminating Mountain Temples and Temple Mountains, both works focused on the cultural and religious significance, historical and present, of these very mountains to the local community as well as the larger South Asian Hindu world.)

  One small issue with it I can think of, though, is that since it is a wide panoramic shot, at thumbnail size it appears rather small. Perhaps, we could use either {{wide image}} or [[File:filename|caption|thumb|upright=1.5 (/a suitable size)]] format? Or perhaps we could convert the lot of three geography images (along with the Tungabhadra and Andaman mangrove pictures, that is) into a gallery like the other sections/subsections? I am also fine with leaving it as is if that is more appropriate for a FA. UnpetitproleX (talk) 00:36, 21 November 2025 (UTC)

  OK, I see below that the gallery format is not without its criticisms. Whichever format may be most appropriate is fine by me. I must say I do like the current selection of pictures very much. We do have a big (and continuously growing) collection of Indian FPs, which gives us an abundance of options to select from but also makes the process of selection all the more complicated. UnpetitproleX (talk) 00:58, 21 November 2025 (UTC)

  Thanks for that, I'll try to put the three pics in geography in gallery mode at the bottom and leave them there until tomorrow, and I'll also experiment with the upright 1.5 suggestion. Thanks very much. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:53, 21 November 2025 (UTC)

  I forgot to ping you, @UnpetitproleX: Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:54, 21 November 2025 (UTC)

• As many of you know, the India page has had a 20-year-old tradition of using Wikipedia Featured Pictures in its illustrations, as far as is possible. One section in which such pictures are not lacking is Biodiversity. Using the gallery mode begun in the visual arts section by Johnbod, I have added six Featured Pictures. Most are recent. I have tried to keep a balance between mammals, reptiles, insects, birds, flora, and different geographical regions of India. I'm doing away with the charismatic megafauna, such as tigers, as they've been on the page for most of its life as an FA. I'd like to hear from some editors who have long been with this page: RegentsPark, Vanamonde, Abecedare, also some newer ones such as, Benison, and of course, UnpetitproleX Fowler&fowler«Talk» 01:18, 19 November 2025 (UTC)

  PS I might do this some other sections as well, as quite a few FPs have appeared in the last five years (since the page's 2nd TFA). I hope you will indulge. We can discuss their worth and relevance later. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 01:49, 19 November 2025 (UTC)

  Display of a fragmented image gallery on mobile

  Galleries cause accessibility problems for many readers.....not only does it cause horizontal scrolling to apprear for the whole article resulting in mass white space for many there is also a huge difference in image sizes....they are generally discouraged as per....

  • WP:GALLERY "Generally, a gallery or cluster of images should not be added so long as there is space for images to be effectively presented adjacent to text. " "Gallery images must collectively add to the reader's understanding of the subject without causing unbalance to an article or section within an article"
  • MOS:ACCIM "Avoid indiscriminate galleries because screen size and browser formatting may affect accessibility for some readers due to fragmented image display."
  • WP:UNDUE "Undue weight can be given in several ways, including but not limited to the depth of detail, quantity of text, prominence of placement, juxtaposition of statements, and use of imagery."
  • WP:COUNTRYGALLERIE (project essay bassed on our MOS) "Galleries or clusters of images are generally discouraged - (unless a point of contrast or comparison is being made) - as they may cause undue weight to one particular section of a summary article and might cause accessibility problems, such as sand­wich­ing of text, images that are too small or fragmented image display for some readers as outlined at WP:GALLERY. Clusters of images may cause images to appear too late or too early for associated prose text, see MOS:SECTIONLOC for general recommendations. Articles that have gone through modern FA and GA reviews generally consists of one image for every three or four paragraph summary section, see MOS:ACCESS#FLOAT"

• • Disabilities in India - visual (24.3%), locomotor (17.4%)

  Moxy🍁 17:08, 19 November 2025 (UTC)

  Thanks, Moxy. I did read the built-in caution in the gallery, and I've noted your points, but as Johbod's visual art section has a gallery, and as there were criticisms citing MOS:SANDWICH etc in the other sections, I thought at least I won't have those in the gallery. Why don't I complete the revision, and we can then together figure out how best to display the images. Thanks again for your input. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 19:48, 19 November 2025 (UTC)

  if your wondering what updated modern non-picture books FA and GA country articles look like see WP:COUNTRYSIZE Moxy🍁 23:09, 19 November 2025 (UTC)

  No I'm not wondering. I don't read things made up by one person, in this instance you. The FA India has been around long before you have, long before Canada, a relatively homogenous European settler colony became a WP FA. Please don't be presumptuous. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 04:12, 20 November 2025 (UTC)

  It's a project of editors that have harmonized hundreds of articles bringing them up to modern standards with basic accessibility in mind for our readers. You are 100% this is one of the oldest FA articles and it shows. Dont you find it perplexing this keeps coming up? Moxy🍁 10:25, 20 November 2025 (UTC)

• I am finished with the pictures. One of delightful things of the last few years is the sudden abundance of Featured Pictures in India-related topics. As some of you know, from the get-go—i.e. from the time user:Nichalp, admin, arb, and pacesetter for the drive for more South Asia related articles on WP brought India to FA status—this page has preferred FPs for its illustrations. Of the 54 pictures (not including maps or graphs), 30 are now FPs. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:45, 20 November 2025 (UTC)

  India#Religion Are you sure 7 images for two sentences follows the spirit of WP:GALLERY "Wikipedia is not an image repository. A gallery is not a tool to shoehorn images into an article......" Just FYI the article now has double the images of any other FA country article that normally consists of one image for every three or four paragraph summary section. Moxy🍁 17:29, 22 November 2025 (UTC)

  I haven't begun to write the religion section. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 17:42, 22 November 2025 (UTC)

• I'm noting that today the page size is 9,412 words. I might go up or down in the coming days, but I will keep it below the 10K limit suggested, I think, by Z1720. The lead size is 722 words. I could try to reduce it a little, but probably not below 700. I've taken a look at the page's galleries on my iPhone and desktops. There were no issues viewing them, and Johnbod's gallery has been in place for some three or four years with not too many complaints. I will be now working on revising the page, and will not respond to comments. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 16:02, 20 November 2025 (UTC)

• @Fowler&fowler: Thanks for the work you and others are doing on this article. Upon a quick skim, some areas that might be places for trimming text are "Modern India" (under history), the first part of "Geography", "Foreign relations", the first part of "Economy" (and that section might need to be updated, as I see 2007 statistics), and "Cuisine". For each of these sentences, I would recommend trimming between a sentence and a paragraph: removing a little bit in each bigger area will help readers focus on the most important aspects. Z1720 (talk) 16:46, 20 November 2025 (UTC)

  Thank you for this @Z1720: Fowler&fowler«Talk» 18:49, 20 November 2025 (UTC)

• Noting: finished Languages and Mathematics sections for now. Will work on Dance. Prose size = 9851 words. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 13:33, 26 November 2025 (UTC)
• I am almost there. I'd like to request two weeks more, until December 15, that is, a firm deadline.

• Article size today: 9,588 words. There are 89 pictures of which 42 are Wikipedia Featured pictures
• Some subsections in Culture have been reworked or added, including Society and Mathematics. Two other subsections Music and Dance are almost ready. In the Demographics section Languages has been rewritten. I would like to work more on Health (i.e. public health) and Demographics proper (i.e. life expectency, mortality, migration). After than I'd like to proof read the whole article, esp prose and citations. I believe by December 15, this article will be as ready as it will ever be. I thank you all in anticipation. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 13:19, 1 December 2025 (UTC)

Manchester

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

Review section

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)

• Move to FARC No significant edits to address concerns. Z1720 (talk) 23:06, 26 July 2025 (UTC)
• Move to FARC - the further reading has been removed but the sourcing issues are still present. Hog Farm _Talk 23:47, 10 August 2025 (UTC)

FARC section

Issues raised in the review section include sourcing and currency. Nikkimaria (talk) 14:02, 16 August 2025 (UTC)

• 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)

• @JacobTheRox: I have added citation needed tags per the above request. Z1720 (talk) 18:46, 6 September 2025 (UTC)

  Thanks; I'm putting a bit more work in this weekend including alt text hopefully. JacobTheRox^{(talk | contributions)} 19:35, 6 September 2025 (UTC)

• 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)

• Keep: I think I'm all done unless there are any other suggestions:
  • Alt text added to 45 images
  • Entire article copy edited
  • Economy and demographics largely updated
  • Lead rewritten and expanded
  • Single-sentence paragraphs and sections largely expanded.
  • Missing sources added

Pinging @Z1720:, @Hog Farm:, @Nikkimaria:, @KJP1:, @Joshii: for a response (ideally keep please!). I am quite busy irl but am happy to make minor edits over the coming week. Thanks, JacobTheRox^{(talk | contributions)} 22:47, 8 October 2025 (UTC)

• @JacobTheRox: Article length is over 11,000 words, longer than what WP:TOOBIG recommends. I suggest going through the article and removing information that is too detailed. There are also sections that are quite long where trimming or breaking up the text using headings should be considered. These sections are: "1800–1939: Industrialisation and expansion", "Government", "Demographics", "Economy", "Music", and "Literature". Typically, I recommend 2-4 paragraphs per heading. Z1720 (talk) 23:40, 8 October 2025 (UTC)

  The article is already summary style, so there aren't any easy splits. My opinion is that an article covering something as significant as Manchester having 11,000 words is perfectly reasonable. I have copyedited some of the sections that you mention above to split them up into smaller sections; maybe now it is easier to see what has to go? My worry is that by removing paragraphs because the article is theoretically too many words, we will detract from the article's purpose and coherence. JacobTheRox^{(talk | contributions)} 09:30, 11 October 2025 (UTC)

  I tend to agree. It's a major city and a scan of the topics covered doesn't immediately suggest anything that should be moved/cut. It already makes good use of the, large number, of sub-pages, Architecture of Manchester, Transport of Manchester, etc. As a comparison, London, a GA, is 20K bytes bigger, although I appreciate it is the capital. WP:TOOBIG does allow latitude in this area. KJP1 (talk) 09:40, 11 October 2025 (UTC)

  I think a discussion about the length of the article is reasonable as its size has jumped by about 2000 words during the FAR(C) process due to expanding stubby sentences and copyediting for coherency. However, as all the information in the article is generally necessary, I don't think it affects the FAR(C) process because FA?/4 requires the article "stays focused on the main topic without going into unnecessary detail and uses summary style where appropriate", not that it has to meet a certain number of words or characters. JacobTheRox^{(talk | contributions)} 09:44, 11 October 2025 (UTC)

@KJP1 and JacobTheRox: I disagree. There are many sections in the article that could be spun out with information summarised more effectively in this article, and some paragraphs that can be removed. Examples listed below:

• "1066–1800: Before industrialisation" and "1800–1939: Industrialisation": cut it down to four paragraphs (the typical maximum length of the lead of an article)
• Other information in the "History" section can be spun out to History of Manchester, especially things that are only mentioned but not explained, too specific, or off-topic.
• "Government" Get rid of the level 3 heading and use a paragraph (maximum) to explain the mayoralty in the city. This section doesn't need the historical information of how Manchester has been governed (that's for the "History of Manchester" article or something similar). Instead, only speak about how the city is governed now.
• Remove "Green belt" heading, reduce the information and merge into the "Geography" section. Information about Manchester's geography within the green belt can be in North West Green Belt.
• "Demographics": Too much historical detail. Move previous demographic information to the history of Manchester article and have this section focus on the city's current demographics. Remove the paragraph about the Manchester Larger Urban Zone as off-topic (this is an article about the city, not the surrounding area)
• "Transport": remove historical information and focus on what the current transportion infustructure is. Historical information can be spun out to other articles. Some sections (especially air) give too much detail about individual airports. Instead, these sections should be summaries of what transport comes into the city (total air travel in all airports combined, for instance). Specific information about each airport can be spun out.
• Merge "Music artists" and "Music venues". Move the list of artists from Manchester to "List of music artists and bands from Manchester". Instead, this combined section should focus on the musical trends of the city.
• Merge "Nightlife" and "Gay village" into an entertainment heading. Information about the LGBTQ+ community can be moved to other sections (like geography to describe the urban layout of the city, or demographics to describe the percentage of the population this encompasses).
• "Education": Information about specific universities, their rankings, and historical information should be spun out to their respective articles.
• Overall, I suggest a full copyedit of the article to look for redundancies, summarising words more effectively, redundant phrasing (WP:REDEX will help) and spinning out information that is too detailed. If this is completed I am happy to take another look and hopefully the article can retain its status. Z1720 (talk) 18:15, 13 October 2025 (UTC)

• Since my comments above, only about 300 words have been trimmed from this article. @KJP1 and JacobTheRox: is there interest in summarising information more effectively or spinning out text? Z1720 (talk) 16:11, 15 November 2025 (UTC)

  I can’t speak for User:JacobTheRox, who did most of the work, but a couple of points from me. First, can you try and follow Civil. Lobbing insults around isn’t productive. As to length, you did not mention this as an issue when you sent the article to FAR. When all the issues you did raise had been dealt with, you decided the article was too long. I disagreed, made clear my disagreement here, and therefore did not then work to condense the article. My assumption is that JacobTheRox feels similarly. My view is that, should you still feel length is an issue, you should move to FARC, where I shall repeat my disagreement with your view. KJP1 (talk) 17:06, 15 November 2025 (UTC)

• @KJP1: If you feel I am being uncivil, you are welcome to post on my talk page or ping/contact the FAR coordinators. I am a little confused about where you think I am being uncivil. Please note that this is already at FARC, so the next step is to determine whether this article should be kept or delisted. Work on the article can still continue, and articles are unlikely to be delisted while work is ongoing. Z1720 (talk) 17:19, 15 November 2025 (UTC)

  My apologies for muddling the stages, and if I misinterpreted your final comment. But my central point remains - I do not consider the article too long, and oppose delisting on that basis. KJP1 (talk) 17:42, 15 November 2025 (UTC)

Do I think that a discussion about the length of the article could be productive? Yes. Do I think that it is relevant to the FAR? No. The job of FAR is to ensure that if an article were to appear at FAC today, it would pass (but maybe with a bit of leniency if we're being realistic). Although it is correct that the article is long, it is not ridiculously long, in ridiculous detail, or has any headings which ought to be removed. The issues raised at FAR were:

• The article needed citations, which were then added by various editors but mainly myself and KJP1;
• That the information was outdated, and the entire demographics section was updated to include recent statistics, 2021 census information, and information about the effect of Brexit (2016–2020);
• That the further reading section needed trimming, which was done almost entirely before the move to FARC.

I have also added alt text to all the images and expanded single-sentence paragraphs (although I think some of that may have since been trimmed down). I also intend to update the spoken Wikipedia element once the FAR/FARC ends. I think this is more than enough work and that if Manchester had never been a featured article and came to FAC today, that the article length would not stop it being promoted (or in other words, keep, which I believe KJP1 has also insinuated is his !vote). JacobTheRox^{(talk | contributions)} 15:49, 16 November 2025 (UTC)

• I am going to put a delist declaration, with the caveat that my only remaining concern is the length: WP:FA? criteria #2 says an article "follows the style guidelines". WP:SS is one of the guidelines, which talks about article length. While there are some articles that can justify the longer length, I do not think Manchester is one of them. I have outlined areas above which could be summarised more effectively. If the article is summarised more effectively, I would re-review and see if I would change my declaration. Additional editor input is welcome to help determine this article's FA status. Z1720 (talk) 20:00, 16 November 2025 (UTC)

  Just a question – if you think the article is still too long and the other editors who have been working on it don't, why don't you just... make it shorter? No one has reverted or been hostile to trimming of the article so far, so if you think those areas need improvement then WP:JUSTDOIT. JacobTheRox^{(talk | contributions)} 21:30, 17 November 2025 (UTC)

• @JacobTheRox: The last city article I trimmed was Shanghai, just over 10,000 words to 8,400. It took several days and lots of energy, both of which I do not have right now, nor is it sustainable for me to volunteer to trim every article that needs it. I would rather subject-matter editors do the trimming. Z1720 (talk) 03:06, 18 November 2025 (UTC)

• Comments:

1. I'm inclined to cut the image of a bee from the infobox. It's just a picture of a bee, not an official logo.

2. There are several places in the lead where links are placed adjacent to each other. This is deprecated per WP:SEAOFBLUE, though exceptions are permitted.

3. There appears to be a contradiction in the section on Roman history. One sentence says that the city centre has been continuously populated since 79 AD and another says it was abandoned in the 3rd century AD. However, the abandonment could refer to Romans only and not inhabitants of any cultural background.

4. Several sentences in the Government section are copied word-for-word from a public domain source (the gazetteer). While they are accredited, this is generally not considered FA-standard.

5. The long list of artists in the Music section has unclear sourcing and unclear inclusion criteria. It would be best to have a single source for the entire list. (Please do not add a source for each entry, that would be overkill.)

I would appreciate clarity on point 3, if anyone can provide it. My other points are more advisory than declarative because that content is not obviously wrong or contradictory. DrKay (talk) 14:15, 22 November 2025 (UTC)

1. I quite like the bee but I do get your point. The fact it has 1⁄2 an article at Symbols of Manchester#Worker bee makes me think it should stay.
2. I have rewritten parts of the lede to remove seas of blue; I think this comes from the idea that everything with an article must always be linked, which is not true
3. I think you've explained it yourself – the Romans were not the only people in Britain; not every Roman left just because the Emperor said the rule was over; and as long as there were a handful of people left in a settlement it would expand in population after the Angles/Saxons/Jutes/Vikings conquered it. If you want me to find a source for that, I can, but it's also somewhat common sense imo.
4. I will work on this if no-one else does but I can't today
5. I agree that a source for famous musicians from Manchester is needed, as a source verifying a specific artist is from Manchester does not mean that artist should be included. JacobTheRox^{(talk | contributions)} 10:36, 23 November 2025 (UTC)

Anne Frank

Notified: Wikiproject Jewish Women, Wikiproject Jewish history, [14]

@Ali Beary: please also notify major contributors. Nikkimaria (talk) 17:44, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

@Ali Beary and Nikkimaria: Why are the relevant WikiProjects still not notified of this review? – Editør (talk) 11:39, 16 August 2025 (UTC)

If there are additional WikiProjects that you feel should be notified, by all means notify them. Nikkimaria (talk) 13:04, 16 August 2025 (UTC)

@Nikkimaria That's not really an answer though. Editør (talk) 11:57, 20 August 2025 (UTC)

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)

Review section

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)

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)

@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)

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)

@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)

The publications are notable and have a Wikipedia page to establish this. – Editør (talk) 12:10, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

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)

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)

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)

Alright, noted.

@Ali Beary, have all issues now been resolved? – Editør (talk) 17:29, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

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)

Great! You may ping me, although I am not really a frequent contributor of this article. – Editør (talk) 16:09, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

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

I'd like to see another review or two before closure. Nikkimaria (talk) 14:57, 31 May 2025 (UTC)

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)

• 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)

  • "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)

  @AirshipJungleman29: a quick reminder of my question. – Editør (talk) 22:33, 13 August 2025 (UTC)

  Editør, see my comment below. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 23:06, 13 August 2025 (UTC)

  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)

  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)

FARC section

Moving to get additional perspectives on whether this article meets the FA criteria. Nikkimaria (talk) 19:29, 5 July 2025 (UTC)

• @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)

  I've tried to resolve these citation issues by adding four citations. – Editør (talk) 11:54, 13 July 2025 (UTC)

  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)

• 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)