Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Winter Palace/archive1

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

The article was withdrawn by Giano 15:38, 21 November 2008 (UTC) [1].

---

Winter Palace

Nominator(s): Giano (talk)

It's a while since I wrote an FA, and this is a long page so it may well fail. It's hard to keep the momentum of interest going in long pages. The reason it's a long page is that it's a big subject, and I have already carved 17 other pages off it, so I don't want to shorten it any more. The idea is that in 1917 it ceased to be the Winter Palace and became the Hermitage (another huge subject) so I terminated the page at that date in order to let the Hermitage take over. This page took ages to write and I had a lot of help and advice. I'd like it to be an FA to give all the pages on Russian history and architectural pages some publicity (there are 1000s of them languishing) in order to get them expanded. Anyway, here it is what do you think? (The clicky map is quite good). Giano (talk) 10:22, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

I have withdrawn the nimination Giano (talk) 15:18, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

• Support--very detail,although it's not many "blue words"--JackyCheung (talk) 12:14, 21 November 2008 (UTC)
• Oppose per boring nomination. Please rewrite, add name-check to Britney Spears. Also consider more cowbell. Ling.Nut ^{(talk—WP:3IAR)} 12:51, 21 November 2008 (UTC)
• Neutral --Overall, it is almost great, but...

Style

I don't particularly like what is called "peacock terms" in Wikipedia, and they abound in the article (most splendid and so on). Let's readers decide what is splendid. Furthermore, language such as It seems that Peter soon tired of the first palace is particularly inappropriate. How do we know? it was said only cabbages and turnips would grow there, pretended to enjoy life in the new city, It was against such a backdrop of magnificence and extravagance that... and the crowned Russian eagle serves as a reminder of the palace's Imperial history also don't strike me as an example of good encyclopedic style. The article often strays off topic. In particular, I don't see how the short excursion to Versailles in the second paragraph of the second section can be justified. And I feel that the article gives too much weight to the life of the Romanovs outside the palace rather than to the palace itself.

Referencing

Many statements that are not common knowledge and can be quite unexpected to a casual reader are not referenced. And the sources are not particularly good by themselves. They are often just tangentially relevant popular writing. By the way, I cannot find a scholarly review of Cowles (1971), Budberg (1969), Kurth (1995), which are extensively used as sources.

Inaccuracies

who designed the Imperial Academy of Arts across the Neva River from the Winter Palace – It is located across the Neva and a couple of kilometers down the river. It is not anywhere near the Winter Palace, so it is sort of stupid to describe its position in such a way. Yury Velten to build a second and larger extension to the palace, which became known as the New Hermitage -- Velten designed the Old (a.k.a. Large) Hermitage. The New Hermitage was built in the middle of the 19th century, almost a century later.

Storming of the Winter Palace

With the palace completely surrounded and sealed, the Aurora began her bombardment of the great Neva façade as the Government refused an ultimatum to surrender – It seems to me that it is not sufficiently clear from this that the Aurora's shot was most likely blank. And I am sorry to repeat it here, but as long as there is no single account of the alleged storming of the Winter Palace, it is totally wrong to pick up a single version if the events and try to present it as if there were no other accounts. The sourcing of the controversial section "The Seat of the Provisional Government (1917)" is also particularly poor (two sources only – this and this), although scholarly accounts of those particular events abound. In the ensuing battle... – it is hotly disputed whether there was any battle at all. Leaving a trail of destruction and the like is an unnecessary level of detail as long as we don't even know for sure much more general things. Colchicum (talk) 14:48, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

• Comment: I haven't read the article, but I see that the refs/citations need quite a bit of work in order to be consistently formatted: "Maylunas, p.226." vs "Maylunas, p 227", "hermitage Site. Catherine II." vs "Hermitage Site. Catherine II.", "State Hermitage Museum" vs. "The State hermitage Museum" AND "The State Hermitage Museum.", etc. This is very confusing. I also see quite a few duplicated cites that can be fixed with <ref name="">. The References section is a mishmash of formatting styles, and shouldn't cites from online sources refer to the author in addition to the article/page's title (in quotation marks)? María (habla conmigo) 14:57, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Nomination withdrawn

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