Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Brazil/archive3

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 User:SandyGeorgia 00:02, 5 June 2008 [1].

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Brazil

previous FAC

This comprehensive article provides a really good overview of contemporary Brazil. The writing is good and the facts are well sourced, I fully support its promotion to a featured article. Felipe C.S ^{( talk )} 04:14, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Comments from Gary King (talk · contribs)

Oppose There are several problems with this article; namely:

• Several uncited paragraphs ("Within Brazil's current borders...", "In 1808, the Portuguese court", and the first four paragraphs of "Subdivisions"). If the nearest upcoming reference references all of the preceding paragraphs, then please still explicitly place those references in the preceding paragraphs so every paragraph has a reference. Shouldn't be too difficult.
• I spot at least a few unreliable sources; hopefully I can save User:Ealdgyth some trouble here. The last time I checked, World66, for instance, was a wiki, and is used as a reference several times in this article. A few of the references are also unformatted (with only the title and URL). There are also a few dead links — about half a dozen.

I would love to see this article reach FA status, but these are only a handful of the issues that exist in this article, unfortunately. Gary King (talk) 06:08, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

• Oppose. I've worked on the article and believe that it has the potential to be featured, but is not ready at the moment. There are issues with formatting (not all references are formatted correctly, I spot numerous MoS problems), reliable sources (as GaryKing has pointed out), and the fact that there is an ongoing debate about content on the talk page that should be resolved. --Kakofonous (talk) 12:02, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Comments

• Refs need to state when they are in a non-English language. Numbers of them are.
• What is IBGE?
• I'm not sure what http://www.fundacaooscaramericano.org.br/eng/Collection/Colonial_Brazil/colonial_brazil.html is supporting in this statement "Initially Portugal had little interest in Brazil, mainly because of high profits gained through commerce with Indochina. After 1530, the Portuguese Crown devised the Hereditary Captaincies system to effectively occupy its new colony, and later took direct control of the failed captaincies."
• Ref 10 is a journal article, correct? (JSTOR: Anglo-Portugese Trade) Format it as a journal article as originally published, not as a website with JSTOR as the publisher. ALL the JSTOR refs should be formatted as journal articles, since I'm assuming you read the whole article and not just the abstract.
• THis source http://www.casahistoria.net/Brazil.htm#Colonial_Brazil is just a collection of links.
• http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/history/lecture34/lec34.html This source would work better if it gave its sources, although it probably passes muster (looks like a online course lecture notes for a college course?)
• Current ref 15 "Reis, Jao Jose "Slave Rebelion in Brazil" is lacking a page number and publication date at the very least.
• Current ref 17 "Brazil's prized exports rely on ..." is lacking a last access date.

Okay, I'm only this far in and there are that many references problems. Please go through and give page numbers for all printed sources. Languages for all non-English sources. Get the JSTOR refs into journal form. Web sites need publisher and last access dates at the very very least. If those get fixed, I'll come back and look over the sources for reliability. Ealdgyth - Talk 13:35, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Comments

Back in 2007 we didn't have any of the aforementioned problems with references. That was the last time I worked on the article. I think since then while many editors made several small improvements, some people have been inserting things indiscriminately (although in good faith). Hence all the new reference problems. Perhaps we can revert parts of the article to older versions in an attempt to save a bit of time? Sparks1979 (talk) 18:11, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Oppose1a. Here are random issues just in the lead.

• Federative? No, translate it as "Federal".
• So religion is important enough to be worth privileging right at the top? I'd have thought the lifestyle and ideology of many Brazilians was very very uncatholic; gives the wrong impression to paint it as a profoundly religious culture of a particular European brand.
• Comma in 7,367 but not in the conversion?
• "While Brazil is one of the most populous nations in the world, population density drops dramatically as one moves inland."—"One" is two entirely different senses jars here. And the second one is a MOS breach.
• "There are currently 26 States and 5,564 Municipalities." Why is "currently" necessary? Is this particularly unstable?
• "One of the ten largest economies in the world"—so which is it: the second-largest? The tenth-largest?
• "with wide variations in development levels and mature manufacturing, mining and agriculture sectors"—with wide variations in mature manufacturing? Insert a comma as a boundary to stop this. It's still a heady mixture of notions in a single clause.
• "Technology and services also play an important role"—so technology plays no role in manufacturing, mining and agriculture? Category problem.

Careful, thorough copy-editing required by fresh eyes. TONY (talk) 06:18, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Oppose per Tony - fails 1a, poor prose. I am actually concerned about how well researched this article is. Only three of the 141 refs are books, the rest are online sources. I would think that for a subject as broad and important as Brazil, some serious research would have been conducted from reliable books. There are some good books listed under 'Further reading', but why haven't these been used as sources? — Wackymacs (talk ~ edits) 08:51, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

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