Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Magic Johnson/archive2

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

The article was not promoted by SandyGeorgia 03:35, 28 February 2009 [1].

Magic Johnson[edit]

Nominator(s): Noble Story
previous FAC (00:14, 28 May 2008)

As you can see, this article was nominated at FAC nearly a year ago. I've worked on it since then, and I've decided to bring it back. Fire away. Noble Story (talk • contributions) 02:48, 18 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comments -

To determine the reliablity of the site, we need to know what sort of fact checking they do. You can establish this by showing news articles that say the site is reliable/noteworthy/etc. or you can show a page on the site that gives their rules for submissions/etc. or you can show they are backed by a media company/university/institute, or you can show that the website gives its sources and methods, or there are some other ways that would work too. It's their reputation for reliabilty that needs to be demonstrated. Please see Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2008-06-26/Dispatches for further detailed information. Ealdgyth - Talk 22:02, 22 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
OK, never mind, I changed to a better ref (USA Today). Should be fine now. Noble Story (talk • contributions) 00:30, 23 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Newspapers titles in the references should be in italics. If you're using {{cite news}}, use the work field for the title of the paper, and the publisher field for the name of the actual company that publishes the paper.
  • Double check that all your websources have last access dates. I noted current refs 58, 51, 59, but there were others.
  • Sources that are in languages other than English need to have that language noted in the reference
    • There are only a couple of book references, and I noted that it was German in the bibliography section. Noble Story (talk • contributions) 01:36, 19 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Otherwise, sources look okay, links checked out with the link checker tool. Ealdgyth - Talk 18:44, 18 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comments - I was a reviewer at the first nomination, and will be looking at this from the top.

  • "He won a championship and a NBA Finals Most Valuable Player Award" Change "a" before Finals MVP to "an".
  • "and the Lakers went on to win a total of five championships during the 1980s." A much less wordy way of phrasing this would be "and the Lakers won five championships during the 1980s."
  • To comply with the MoS, the Off the Court and Career Achievements sections should be Off the court and Career achievements, respectively.
  • Don't like the fact that "Professional biography" is the title of the main section. That doesn't really account for his college career.
  • Early years: "Johnson led Lansing Everett to a 27–1 win loss record" Hyphen for "win loss".
  • The team fulfilled their promise of winning the state title in Chastaine's honor by winning the title game in overtime." their→its. Also, change one usage of "title" to avoid unnecessary repetition.
  • Michigan State University: When Ealdgyth states that printed publications need italics, that is true for the body, in addition to citations. Sports Illustrated is in need of italics.
  • Rookie season in the NBA: "owner Jerry Buss eventually persuaded them to draft Johnson. Johnson...". Close repetition again.
  • "(Kareem) was unable to play in the remainder of the series." The source doesn't say this at all.

There were a few other changes I want to make in the lead, to provide ideas for improvement throughout. For now, take a look at these and watch for my edit. I'll come back after these are done. Giants2008 (17-14) 22:13, 18 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I've reworded as advised. I've split that long section into two (adding "Amateur career"). Also, the ref says "The next morning the Lakers arrived at Los Angeles International Airport for their flight to Philadelphia and learned that Abdul-Jabbar wouldn't be making the trip. His ankle was so bad that doctors had advised him to stay home and try to get ready for Game 7." I've reworded the statement a bit, and it should fit with the ref. Noble Story (talk • contributions) 01:47, 19 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Since the original comments have been done, I'll provide some more now.
  • Byron Scott and Converse links need disambiguation.
  • Something that I happened to spot in the references was the use of pp. in all page numbers. Single pages should have just p., which can be done by changing the pages= parameter in the template to page=.
  • Ups and downs: "after Johnson airballed a last-second shot in Game 3 on a play originally designed for Abdul-Jabbar." I'd like to see a wikilink for "allballed", since that is a bit of basketball jargon.
  • "Johnson signed a 25-year, $25-million contract...". Remove the hyphen from the dollar figure, and don't forget to put in a non-breaking space, like this: $25 million. It would be a good idea to check for non-breakers in any other dollar amounts in the article.
  • "and 2.50 steals per game." Why is the 0 here?
  • Grammar: "and he credited Riley with making Lakers successful."
  • "and faced the Sixers for a third time, who featured...". Change first part to "and for a third time faced the Sixers".
  • Battles with the Celtics: Hyphen for "34 point loss".
  • "But after advancing to the Western Conference Finals". To avoid starting a sentence with but, try "After advancing to the Western Conference Finals, however,".
  • "Johnson was awarded his third Finals MVP title.[52]During...". Space needed. Giants2008 (17-14) 22:57, 21 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Left more on the article's talk page, to avoid clogging up FAC any more. I did find more glitches than during my other readings, which concerns me somewhat. The fixes I suggested should help, though. Giants2008 (17-14) 03:41, 27 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Quite concerned about the heavy reliance on his autobiography. Is this primary source being used correctly? BuddingJournalist 15:22, 19 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Is it? I mean, I guess it's up to the reviewer to decide. Noble Story (talk • contributions) 01:52, 20 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Ref comment -- Errors found with WP:REFTOOLS.

  • gaydenial | Multiple references are given the same name--TRUCO 22:00, 22 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Reference formatting found up to speed.--TRUCO 01:35, 23 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose. Given the large number of biographies written about him, I'm concerned that the article instead relies on an autobiography. As a general rule, an autobiography covers information that the subject wants you to know, not necessarily a balanced overall look at the person's life. Although I think that there are uses for autobiographies (such as filling in more personal detail or providing excellent quotes), they should be used quite sparingly.

  • There are also some prose issues that will need to be addressed. Following are examples only:
    • There is some unnecessary reptition. For example, in the 2nd paragraph of early years, 2 consecutive sentences mention "nicknamed "Magic"" - this could easily be rewritten to eliminate one instance..
    • There needs to be a comma audit - I think there are a lot of unnecessary commas
  • I think some of the information included in the article is unnecessarily detailed. For example:
    • what is the point of including the information about his best friend's car accident? Did this have an impact on Johnson's later life (if so, that needs to be explicitely stated)? Did it have anything to do with basketball (as the rest of the paragraph does)? If not, why is it included?
    • Why does this article need the information about how the Lakers got the first pick in the draft? All we really care about in this article is that they had the first pick.
  • Any information on whether he ever completed his degree?
  • The article probably ought to mention that the Dream Team won the gold medal
  • Don't start a section with a quotation - this is not suitable for an encyclopedic tone
  • Don't use callout quotes - see WP:MOSQUOTE
  • Any information on respopnse to his books?
  • In the refs, ESPN.com should not be italicized - it's not a magazine (same with basketball-reference.com, which is sometimes in italic, but not always); on the other hand, Entertainment Weekly IS a magazine
  • I strongly recommend that you split out book information from the references. It is difficult to figure out which book when all you have is Bork (1994)... - I have to look through all the previous references to find out which book that is.

Karanacs (talk) 15:23, 27 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]


SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:39, 28 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

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