Fermi Paradox

Article is no longer a featured article.

I posted the comment that I might take this page to FARC three days ago, without reply. I'll simply re-post here what I mentioned on the talk page:

1. Most obviously, this page lacks in-line citations. There are only three references. I assume some of the External links were also used for writing but this doesn't help some one who wants to source things later, as what link matches what point isn't obvious.
2. (It should have) "a substantial but not overwhelming table of contents." The TOC is absolutely overwhelming here.
3. "It is of appropriate length, staying tightly focused on the main topic without going into unnecessary detail." That's debatable here.
4. Finally, some of the logic is a bit tortured and hard to follow, and a touch liberal with undefined "they"s and "critics": "Even if intelligent life occurs once for every few billion of these "ordinary" planets and takes billions of years, they argue, there are potentially trillions of planets (or more) and the universe is billions of years old as well." Marskell 14:07, 4 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

1 I agree with. However, although I wasn't involved with the article when it was a featured article, it seems unlikely that any citations that were present then have since been removed.

2 I feel that the table of contents to this article is perfectly appropriate. It's in the nature of the article that it has to cover a long "tree" of topics, branches of those topics, arguments that are branches of those topics, and counter arguments to those arguments. The TOC does an excellent job of organizing all of this. The article would be vastly less readable if one were to interfere with its TOC structure. Furthermore, "overwhelming" is a subjective word with no quantitative meaning.

4 It's not the fault of the article that there are lots of "billions" involved when discussing something that concerns the size and content and age of the universe. That said, it goes almost without saying that some of the writing in the article could be improved.

In conclusion, this is the first time I've heard of FARC, so I'm not at all familiar with the policy or its history. My impression is that it would be a mean-spirited action to take except in cases where the quality of the article has become so bad that it reflects poorly on Wikipedia. I find it hard to believe that anyone would feel that way about this article. KarlBunker 14:51, 4 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Weak Agree: I've been heavily involved in the re-write. Even so, I have to agree that the article is not currently up to FAC quality - nor do I believe the article was up to FAC quality before the re-write due to the "inline citations" issue. I believe that this article is another of those "this was a FAC in 2002, but our standards have tightened since then" articles. A total of 3 inline citations were removed as far as I know, because the points they were supporting have been removed. Still, I would address the issues.

1. Agreed - this article needs to be cited. External websites should be listed in a cite.php manner.
2. I echo the comment about the TOC made by KarlBunker: the topic is large, and branching, and to remove parts of the TOC would either mean the removal of large sections of the article, "mashing" related but distinctly seperate points together, or using some other means of dividing the article (like breaking sub-points into bullet lists - clumsy and against the style guide). While the TOC is very large, for this article, it cannot be anything but.
3. The article states the Paradox, then goes on to discuss the emprical means by which we have tried to resolve the paradox, and then dicusses the theoretical means by which we have tried to do that same. While some sections - probably the SETI section - could be split off into a seperate article and linked in as a summary, there's not a lot by way of totally un-needed sections.
4. Some of the language can be tightened. However, rather than decrying it, "be bold" and tighten it. Un-named critics and theys should be thinned out, and specific people named who have such views, I agree. This would, however, come about automatically as a by-product of fixing point #1.

Vedexent 15:24, 4 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment. Ok, I'm sorry, but the table of contents is absolutely unnacceptable. Yes of course overwhelming is subjective, but so are all the criteria. This TOC is exactly why that is in the FA criteria. Make some of the lower level headings just bold instead of sections. That will solve the TOC problem at no real loss. And yikes, I hate to vote remove, but this still needs a lot of work that I'm not qualified to help with. - Taxman ^Talk 16:41, 4 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Counter-Comment: Why not, instead of gutting the article's organization, use the __NOTOC__ tag, and create a manual TOC, perhaps limited to the first two levels. This would still make the article navigable, would not require violation of style or organizational guidelines (bullets or bolds for section headings), and would make the TOC smaller. - Vedexent 16:59, 4 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • Additional Counter-Comment: Given a choice, I'd much rather see the article be snubbed by the Cool Kids Clique of FA status than see it made stupider in order to conform to an arbitrary standard that makes perfect sense for other articles but not this one. Vedexent's manual TOC idea sounds good, though I don't know how that would be done, since [[Article#subheading]] tags don't work within an article. KarlBunker 17:17, 4 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
      • Lovely response. Changing overdone subsections into bold headings doesn't make an article "stupider" (sic). It would simply make the table of contents less overwhelming. - Taxman ^Talk 13:09, 5 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
      • It's also a non-issue now if you check the article - the TOC has been redone. - Vedexent 13:26, 5 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Discussion Actually the manual TOC isn't that hard. Include the __NOTOC__ tag in the article. I didn't know that [[Article#subheading]] tags dont work, but [[#subheading|subheading_alias]] do. As for the "dumbing down" - I don't think anyone is suggesting that. In some cases it is possible to summarize a section and migrate the information to other articles where the info is more appropriate, and the SETI article is a good candidate for this. Still - even in such cases you still leave a summary of the migrate material, along with a ((main|article_name]] tag at the head of the section. This gives an "overview" and allows the reader to easily dig deeper if they want. It is also possible that other sections could be thus treated, and may end up creating new articles. - Vedexent 17:32, 4 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • Point #2 resolved: I've added a manual TOC as per the discussion, limited to two levels. - Vedexent 19:21, 4 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment. I think that if the article can be cited, the SETI section merged into the SETI article, summarized and linked, and a manual "level-limited" TOC can be implemented, (been done) then a lot of the article problems will be vastly improved. Not all, and it may still not be FAC material - but it makes inroads into some of the article's major problems. - Vedexent 17:04, 4 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep - if you check out the Talk Page, it looks like right now there's a considerable effort to improve upon some of the points discussed above. I would propose keeping this article as an FA for now to give the editors some time to deal with these objections. Furthermore, three days is not enough time to add inline citations to an article of this length and detail. I don't think this nomination was made in good faith, and I think it should be withdrawn to give this article's editors time to act on these criticisms. The Disco King 17:59, 7 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Defense: I think the nom was made in good faith - at the time the nominating user was getting no feedback on the talk page. Also, since that time, the nominating user has been one of the ones involved in fixing the problems. I agree with everything else said though :) - Vedexent 19:59, 7 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • Further defense: Why do you think this nomination was not made in good faith? That's a poor thing to say without an explanation. Given that you seem to have looked at talk and the history since the nom, you'll notice that the nominator (myself) has been actively attempting to address the points at issue. If this is FA worthy after two weeks, great. Two points:
      1. TOC/Length/Focus issues are being rapidly addressed (by Vedexent, me, and others). On this basis I think the FARC nom can be answered soon (certainly within two weeks).
      2. Citation issues have been partly addressed, but are still of enormous concern. I honestly don't think this will be properly cited before the FARC nom runs its course. But...
    • Let it be de-listed. If this is removed and there is still good momentum to improve it, we can live with no star for a week or two, and get the satisfaction of a good going over on the main FAC page. It needs the full attention of an FAC.
    • In sum, this is absolutely not bad faith and I have no intention of withdrawing it. It should be improved, regardless of whether that means it's not featured for a time. Marskell 21:19, 7 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
      • Reply - I feel that it's in bad faith because the comments you made on the talk page about items which were in need of improvement were made three days before you nominated this for FARC. Not giving the editors sufficient time to address your criticisms is unfair, and as you mentioned, it's not likely that these issues can be addressed in the brief time-window that the FARC nom process allows for. I feel that this article earned the right to become an FA by merit of meeting the criteria at the time it was passed. The criteria have changed; do we blame the editors of this page? They need time to bring it up to the current standards, and they shouldn't be punished by demotion while they are actively trying to do so. The Disco King 05:33, 8 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
        • Well, I've explained myself. If you'd like to continue to assume bad faith, go for it. Marskell 06:10, 8 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
          • To step away from the harsh words here, but still comment, I must say 3 days is not enough time. Some authors don't check Wikipedia every day, and they may simply have missed the edit. Try asking again, or better yet, making some edits to the article. That tends to get people to notice it as it pops up on their watchlist. An edit summary referring to the deficiencies listed on the talk page would help. In any case there seems to be good work being done on the article so I commend you for that, Marskell. Less arguing and more editing is always good. - Taxman ^Talk 14:00, 8 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
            • The first response to the suggested nom on the talk page occured 22 minutes after the nom actually occured. "Talk:Fermi paradox" plus "Featured Article removal" is a clear enough heading, and three days is clear enough time. You nom, you get a response. So it goes. Marskell 21:10, 10 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Update. Well, this nom is sort of at the end of the line. I and other users have made substantial changes, but about half of this (the last half) remains uncited and un-gone-over in general. Great improvements but still great defeciencies. The last plea for comment on its Talk Page has been unanswered after a week. I would like to see this a FA in general and hope to work toward that, but I think it should be delisted until we're sure our 60K on the topic is a tight, sourced 60K. I posted a note to Jeff to this affect, but he hasn't turned up yet. Marskell 22:56, 22 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]