Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Arsenal F.C.

Arsenal F.C.

Self-nom. One of the leading football (soccer) clubs in England. Article is fairly stable and covers a wide range of aspects of the club. Has previously been peer reviewed. Qwghlm 12:38, 12 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: The references to Liverpool and Man Utd in the lead section ((only Liverpool and Manchester United have won more), and 10 FA Cups (second only to Manchester United)) sounds a bit like fancruft when included in the lead. Perhaps it would be better to include this information later on. TreveX^talk 13:09, 12 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- Have removed the bracketed terms (which were an attempt to justify the "one of the most successful" claim), the reference is now included in the #Achievements section. Qwghlm 14:16, 12 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Support, looks well-written and comprehensive. I probably would have included Lee Dixon in the Famous Players section as well, though. Leithp 13:13, 12 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- As a further thought, how about including something on any Arsenal fanzines? I don't know what it's like for Premiership teams, but in Scotland the fanzines play a large part in unifying supporters as well as being hugely entertaining. This could also tie in with the requests below for more on supporter culture.Leithp 09:09, 13 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: what about a section about the supporters like the IFK Goteborg article has? It would be nice for the article to have more about Arsenal's fans.Kevin M Marshall 14:49, 12 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: It was decided by consensus that a "famous supporters" section would be too long and inherently unuseful. See Talk:Arsenal F.C.#Famous Arsenal fans for details. --howcheng [ talk  contribs  web ] 15:40, 12 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

That is not relevant to Kevin's proposal. Take a look at IFK Göteborg and you'll see what he means, which is a section about the supporter culture around the club, not a list of famous supporters. -- Elisson • Talk 16:53, 12 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Unlike IFK Goteborg, Arsenal's fanbase is pretty heterogeneous, it crosses both class and racial divides. It would be quite hard to do an article that could sum them all up like the IFK article does. Qwghlm 17:28, 12 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I don't insist that you create a section like that, but your "objection" does really not mean much. The IFK Göteborg section has one paragraph about the fanbase structure, and four paragraphs about the supporter culture, supporter organizations, rivalries, attendance numbers, and so on, of the club. I do believe that Arsenal is such a big club that you could write a whole book about the Arsenal supporters. :) I will read the article later on and vote, but missing a supporter section won't make me object. -- Elisson • Talk 19:44, 12 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

A subpage about Arsenal's supporters' clubs would be nice, but I think even a section would suffice. Just name any major fan clubs and discuss how Arsenal has attracted fans in the London area, in the UK, and across the world. It has quite a broad fanbase and I think that needs to be better reflected in the article.Kevin M Marshall 22:40, 12 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for all your ideas - I've now added a Supporters section, feel free to comment on it - though perhaps it would be best to start a new thread below. Qwghlm 12:37, 13 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Object 1) subheading =Players out on loan= is unnecessary. Either merge with parent or promote to a higher level. 2) Do not fragment ==External links==. Use the semicolon (;) to create a bold heading. =Arsenal Ladies= needs to be expanded to at least twice its current size of not more. =Nichalp «Talk»= 15:20, 12 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- Have done (2) and (3). I disagree with (1) - the players are registered to the club, so they should be in that section, but they are not in the playing squad (and hence have no number), so they should be kept separate from the main group. I could if you like prefix that header with ; instead of === so that it does not appear in the table of contents. Qwghlm 17:28, 12 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  Yeah, Use ; for that section. No, you'd need another paragraph on Arsenal ladies, before I withdraw my objection. ==Achievements== should be converted into prose. Also unbold the text. =Nichalp «Talk»= 17:45, 12 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  - Right:
    1. Have converted the === to ;
    2. The main article on Arsenal Ladies itself is little more than two paragraphs long at the moment, to further expand would basically mean duplicating the entire thing. I could just add {{main}} to the top of that section instead, to emphasise that it is only a summary.
    3. The History section, and the History of Arsenal F.C. article both double as prose versions of the Achievements section. It is meant to be a quick at-a-glance list of honours - to turn it into prose would add clutter IMHO. I'm not keen on unbolding either - it's the standard format across all football club pages, and demarcates the name of the trophy clearly. Qwghlm 18:19, 12 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    - I'll review later, but you'll have to expand that paragraph. Most likely I'll get to review only by sat. =Nichalp «Talk»= 19:27, 12 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
      - Have expanded Arsenal Ladies section a little further, but it really is hard to make a decent-sized section given how women's football is dwarfed by the men's game in the UK. Also do note that the two clubs are technically separate entities; the content on Arsenal F.C. should only be a brief summary of Arsenal L.F.C. Qwghlm 20:54, 12 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
      - Question for Nichalp: are you objecting to the article having a short section in it (which I've seen you object to before) or to there not being enough info on the ladies' team in the article? If it's just the section length, which looks like a reasonable enough objection to me, it should be easy to merge it into another section. I don't think it would be fair to say that the article needs more on the ladies' team than it has now: they aren't even remotely as notable as the men's team (wouldn't be surprised if average attendances for the men's team were 100 times higher, for example) and they've got their own article which is linked to in the text. One sentence mentioning them would be satisfactory imo. CTOAGN 00:38, 13 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
      - Qwghlm, its fine now, and I've answered CTOAGN's query on his talk page. =Nichalp «Talk»= 05:08, 13 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. I admit the following comment nit-picking, but I have no problems otherwise with this article. (I'd be more likely to vote "support" if I knew more about soccer to know what I should learn from this article; Arsenal is one of a very few professional teams I have heard of.) The thing is this: in the section "Arsenal in popular culture", we read that "the film is centred on a friendly between Arsenal and an amateur side, one of whose players is poisoned whilst playing." While I assume that this is proper British English idion, without the noun, I am not entirely sure what "friendly" refers to; I presume "game". Unless it is unidiomatic, could the appropriate noun be added? -- llywrch 17:12, 12 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- Have turned it into "friendly match", as that is what it means. In footballing vernacular the word "friendly" alone suffices as a description, but obviously the article should cater for all. Qwghlm 17:28, 12 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- Would "non-competitive match" be acceptable as a replacement? It's not a phrase that's often used when talking about football, but should be understandable by everyone. CTOAGN 00:38, 13 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  - Just make it friendly match. Kevin M Marshall 02:37, 13 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

'Comment: I'll get round to having a proper look at this tomorrow, but I don't like the way that there are a few sections of prose, then some lists, then some more prose. I'd prefer to have all of the prose together and the lists at the end. Also, don't external links normally go after references and footnotes? CTOAGN 00:44, 13 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- Agreed. David.Monniaux 08:34, 13 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  - I've moved the links to the bottom, and the prose about Arsenal Ladies to join the rest. I am not sure what to do with the records/statistics section, as it is a few very short paragraphs of prose that summarise an article that is a series of lists. I would rather have it stay where it is as I feel it's more natural belonging there, following on from the list of honours. Qwghlm 10:19, 13 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: About the crest issue, I would have thought that it had to do with trademark and not copyright, but I may be mistaken. David.Monniaux 08:34, 13 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- The club explicitly mentioned copyright in the press release announcing the new crest [1]. In 2002, the club lost a court case against a street trader who reproduced the old logo after suing him under trademark law [2], as the defendant successfully claimed he was using it as a "badge of allegiance", not a guarantee about the origin of the product. So I can understand why the club might have turned to copyright, not trademark, law to protect its crest instead. Qwghlm 10:19, 13 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: From the first paragraph: "Arsenal Football Club are a football club . . ." and "the team has yet to achieve . . ." And in the third paragraph "The club was then known . . ." I'm not a BrE speaker, but the subject verb agreement seems askew. —Wayward 11:01, 13 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- Have converted to use the plural in all cases (which is how football teams are usually referred by). Qwghlm 11:31, 13 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Six-goal Support Neutral: Still a few things:
- but after hostilities ended, Arsenal won another two titles and an FA Cup. - in which years?
- Crest - a link to a news article about the changes would be good, but not essential.
- Kit - in which year did Forest make this donation?
- Kit - last sentence - minus sign should be replaced by ndash or mdash, but can't remember which :-)
- There are a lot of long sentences separated by with commas, especially at the start of the article, e.g. By then, Arsenal had been relegated to the Second Division, but despite only finishing fifth, Arsenal were elected to rejoin the First Division in 1919 at the expense of local rivals Tottenham Hotspur, by reportedly dubious means. I'd really prefer it if these were edited - they make the article come across as kind of choppy. CTOAGN 21:13, 14 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  - Added those years in.
  - Added in a link in.
  - Unknown, it was very early in the club's history, soon after the club's first match in 1886 (but probably 1887). Thus I have put in "soon after" into the article...
  - I've used ndashes (the unicode version, not HTML entities) throughout, including that section. The Manual of Style doesn't care as long as it's consistent.
  - I have shortened some longer sentences, I could really do with a neutral party to do a few tweaks, though - it's hard copyediting your own prose. Qwghlm 22:55, 14 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    - I don't think anyone would call me a neutral party <grin>, but I've done a copyedit. Unfortunately, I've done it at 3am for some reason so I hope it hasn't introduced a load of mistakes - would be a little counterproductive. All my reservations have been dealt with now, so I'm changing my vote. CTOAGN 02:51, 16 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
      - You put in a couple of mistakes but I've sorted them out now. Thanks a lot for doing this. Qwghlm 10:35, 16 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Support - great. And we need more soccer FA! igordebraga ≠ 01:33, 16 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Support - better than it was when it was nominated. Good enough to get my vote now. Kevin M Marshall 04:06, 16 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Whole-hearted Gooner support - Not that I'm biased or anything. :) --khaosworks (talk • contribs) 01:23, 20 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]