Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Richard Dawkins/archive1

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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 19:48, 21 March 2008.

Richard Dawkins[edit]

Self-nominator. I'm nominating this article for featured article because I feel this article satisfies Featured article criteria. Masterpiece2000 (talk) 04:53, 13 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from Moni3: This is not an area that I have a lot of experience in, but I've read interviews with Dawkins, and my partner (who is a biochemist) and I have discussions about religion, evolution, and Dawkins in particular. She's adding to this commentary through me.

  • There's a lot of technical terminology that should be described simply for readers who are unfamiliar with the science in the article.
  • The second paragraph in personal life is odd. It describes Dawkins' formation of his thoughts on religion and evolution and then discusses his marriages, as if that's a cause and effect relationship. Perhaps creating a paragraph just for his relationships.
  • The evolution (ha!) of his theories, I think, should be in the same section. The aforementioned portion of Dawkins' thoughts on religion and evolution should go in the section on education.
  • Perhaps a sentence for the ignorant (me) to describe what "argument from design" means.
  • There is no citation for the first paragraph under "Evolutionary Biology".
  • Please describe what spandrels are and what their importance is to evolutionary theory.
  • In the lead of the article, you mention that Dawkins is the originator of new ideas, chiefly memetics. I think it would be very helpful to describe the impacts Dawkins' books had in the scientific community. You have some passing reference to criticism, but if Dawkins turned the scientific world on its ear, that should be made clear.
  • Please explain what reductionist is, in relation to the memetics debate.
  • I don't understand from the article the significance of the usage of "meme" in the context its being used. I'm not sure what it's missing, but I don't get it. --Moni3 (talk) 15:49, 13 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think the "Religion" section needs a topic sentence to start off with that introduces Dawkins career-spanning relationship with organized religions, and perhaps a sentence or two that prepares the readers for the extent of his arguments against religion.
  • This section: Dawkins notes that feminists have succeeded in making us feel embarrassed when we routinely employ "he" instead of "she"; similarly, he suggests, a phrase such as "Catholic child" or "Muslim child" should be seen to be just as improper as, say, "Marxist child": children should not be classified based on their parents' ideological beliefs. is confusing.
  • Has the article had a copy edit from the League of Copy Editors?
  • Comments
    • Some of the formatting in the references is a bit odd. What is the "Twelve" in this Hitchens, Christopher. God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. Twelve, 5. ISBN 0-446-57980-7. reference for?
    • I'm unsure about using a source from Dawkins himself for some of the details of his life. Also, what is the publisher of the Curriculum Vitae? Is that coming from Oxford? It needs a publisher.
    • I'm uncomfortable with quoting to this without going directly to the source article: Downey, Robert (11 December 1996). Article in Eastsideweek (title unknown). Eastsideweek
    • A number of references need publishers... and/or other needed information:
      • BBC News Online, 2001-10-12. "Richard Dawkins: The foibles of faith." Accessed 2006-01-29
      • Aims of the Simonyi Professorship?
      • Simonyi Professorship, 2006. Prof. Richard Dawkins
      • The Darwin's Rottweiler article needs publication date and last access date
      • Radio Times, p. 27, there is no way to verify this reference.
      • Abigail Lustig et al. Darwinian Heresies, Cambridge University Press, ISBN is this a book?
      • Terry Eagleton, 2006. "Lunging, Flailing, Mispunching." London Review of Books.

I could go on and on, but the references need serious serious work. Please ensure they all include information that allows folks to find the specific source, i.e. publisher, date of publication, etc. When they are cleaned up, I'll try to look at them for reliability. Ealdgyth | Talk 16:53, 13 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from AC+79 3888 Ealdgyth, I have attempted to rectify everything you have pointed out here. There were a number of anomalies in references due to contributing editors not coordinating their efforts. Much of it has been tidied up recently. AC+79 3888 (talk) 22:55, 13 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from Richard001

  • Lead, lead, lead. An article's lead is the first thing you look at, and this one just isn't long enough. Should be roughly twice as long, with at least 3 paragraphs. Take a look at other articles to see what I mean (actually don't, you'll find almost all of them suffer the same problem, to a much worse extent...) Richard001 (talk) 08:07, 14 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comments
  1. The lead mentions his support for Brights movement. But the body of the text does not mention it anymore.
  2. The last sentence in the lead: "His extensive writings on the topic include 2006 book The God Delusion, which, as of November, 2007, had sold in excess of 1.5 million copies in English-speaking territories, and been translated into 31 other languages, making it perhaps his most popular work to date." This info does not qualify to be in this short lead. I don't see this info anywhere in the body of text.--Dwaipayan (talk) 09:37, 14 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from AC+79 3888 As the text concerning the popularity of The God Delusion is clearly of importance, the obvious thing to do is to incorporate something on it into the main body of text. I'll try to do so (of course, if anyone else feels up to the task, feel free). AC+79 3888 (talk) 14:28, 14 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from Masterpiece2000 I don't think there is too much problem with the lead. Compare the lead of this article with the lead of the article Barack Obama (a featured article). Masterpiece2000 (talk) 06:50, 15 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Not quite ready yet The article has excellent material and is well balanced. However, it needs significant copy editing. There are many run-on sentences. Some paragraphs should be divided, and some reordered. Dashes are used inconsistently. Citations of sources are not consistently formatted, and some lack important information, such as the author; citation of Web sources should be by author (if stated) and title, not a paraphrase of the fact to be supported by the citation. And so on. The article is appropriately classed as a WP:GA, but does not approach WP:FA quality yet. Another peer review would help, as would a request to the League of Copy Editors (although I believe they have quite a backlog). Finell (Talk) 07:19, 15 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Almost support There are some minor copyedit needs, and incomplete citations as described above. In particular, web references need both publication date and access date; some have neither. Also see if you can remove some of the quotation marks as there are a lot of quotes in the article and these tend to break flow. However this is a terrific article on an important and interesting topic, and I enjoyed reading it. Kla’quot (talk | contribs) 07:12, 16 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

  • Oppose—Poorly written. The lead contains fertile ground for a copy-editor. So does the rest of the article.
  • No hyphen after "-ly"—see MOS.
  • "He has since written several best-selling popular books, and appeared in a number of television and radio programmes, concerning evolutionary biology,..."—Consistent tense: "HAS appeared"; remove comma after "programmes".
  • "well known"—hyphen in all varieties of English.
  • A list is a list is a list; why does "also" suddenly intrude? "He is an outspoken antireligionist and atheist.[4] He is also a secular humanist, sceptic, scientific rationalist,[5] and a supporter of the Brights movement.[6]. He is a prominent critic of creationism and intelligent design." Let's make it a proper, uniform list and establish a better relationship between between the opening statement and the rest: "He is an outspoken antireligionist and atheist[4] – a secular humanist, sceptic, scientific rationalist,[5] a supporter of the Brights movement.[6]", an outspoken antireligionist and atheist,[4] a secular humanist, sceptic, scientific rationalist,[5] and a supporter of the Brights movement,[6] and a prominent critic of creationism and intelligent design."
  • "His extensive writings on the topic"—which topic, after that list?
  • Hyphens used as interrupters. See MOS's sections on dashes. In any case, the temporal phrase needs to be a smoother part of the clause—I'd remove the interrupters.
  • Remove "other". Tony (talk) 00:56, 17 March 2008 (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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