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

The article was kept 10:19, 30 March 2007.

Microsoft

Review commentary

Message left at RN. LuciferMorgan 23:05, 25 February 2007 (UTC) Talk message corrected at Computing; left at Business and Economics. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:29, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

This article was promoted in 2005, since then it has been growing and growing.

  • A bad violation of criteria (4). It is 94KB making it quite unreadable.
  • The lead itself spans several pages, and I think it borders on violating (2a). It mentions some minor details that are nowhere else in this article (history of the capitalisation of the name, exact date of foundation) and fails to give a fair mention of the criticism section.
  • The History section, which is what first caught my attention, goes into a lot of detail. It became a problem 1 year ago already and someone had created a sub-page for it, but for this 1 full year this sub-page has served as a clone of the history section in the main article. The main article still maintains the full text of History of Microsoft (which in itself is a large 39KB article).
  • This is probably related to the length, but the table of contents is also oversized, pushing (2c)
  • I have not looked through this dispute myself, but it seems the neutrality is in dispute - there has been a weasel word tag in the criticism section for several weeks.

--Konstable 23:38, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

  • Comments — this article needs to cut its history section by half; that should take care of most of the length issue. In turn, the lead will probably have to be shortened by a para. The prose is also a slight concern (several cases of "in order" to, some vague terms of size, vague modifiers, and other minor issues). Looks like some work is needed to cut and then polish this gem. — Deckiller 23:56, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
    • Yeah, this is probably the key; if someone could do this that probably solve most concerns. RN 07:04, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Minor comment My script returns a value of 48 KB for the readable prose (which is what really counts), plus another 14KB for references. The remainder is presumably in the infobox, the image markup and captions, the lists under See also and elsewhere, and the accounting table. So it's not as large as it first seems. Dr pda 00:35, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
  • I've tidied it a bit; could use a bit more. As Dr. pda says its about 47k prose size and perhaps could use a little trim; at the time it was mid-high on the size compared to other FAs - maybe that has changed :D. Anyway it's held up fairly well since I last edited in September; creating a history article is still a good idea but is such a big task as you need a lot left in the article to make it "complete". Also, the statement about it "growing and growing" is mostly incorrect - there is a bit but most of the additions were very thorough referencing for when it hit the front page. Original page size is about 55k before inline referencing requirements, and the added referencing was probably 30k on its own; so really there is not too much growth in my opinion (using prose size it is 39k vs. 47k). RN 06:30, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
  • History section — because there is a subarticle, is it necessary to have detailed subsections? a 5-6 paragraph overview with maybe two subheadings might be a good idea. As a matter of fact, chopping that huge history section in half - providing an overview like I said - will bring the article down to below 70 KB. From there, it's just a matter of trimming excess in the other sections, and I'm sure that can be get down to a reasonable 60 KB. — Deckiller 11:48, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment - as per my comments at Talk:Microsoft#History of Microsoft I cannot support this as a FA until the history section is cut dramatically to summary style. Of course I should just be adding a comment to concur with the comments above (most importantly the fact that the history article is a 100% duplication of the history section of this article), however I spent a lot of time cutting it down myself and was swiftly reverted. I have added my comments to the discussion, so the ball is out of my court now. Mark83 23:26, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
  • OK prose size down to 32k. If anyone has any new/other concerns let me know. (hint: the size wikipedia tells you in the editbox is mostly worthless - esp. on an article like this with 50% markup :D) RN 07:31, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
  • Move to FARC to utilize the additional two weeks to complete extensive work still needed. According to Dr pda's script, the prose size is now a reasonable 32 KB, but there are other issues.
    • Section headings should be reviewed for WP:MSH issues; there is a lot of repetition of "Microsoft" in the section headings, and use of the word "the".
    • In the section "1975–1985: The founding of Microsoft" (which according to WP:MSH should be reduced to "1975–1985: Founding")—the first section of the article—choppy prose is found right out of the starting gate. MITS is used as an acronym, but not defined on its first occurrence. Awkward prose as well ("which was set to be used" and "entitled"). This review of one section only suggests an independent copyedit may be in order.
    • Skipping down to another section, one finds: "Microsoft has often been described as having a developer-centric business culture. " Passive language - described by whom? Sounds weasly. This suggests there may be a lack of citations in the article, which should be reviewed?
    • Odd use of bolding is found in Corporate structure. Redundant prose found there as well ("There are several other aspects to the corporate structure of Microsoft. For worldwide matters there is the Executive Team, made up of sixteen company officers across the globe, which is charged with various duties including making sure employees understand Microsoft's culture of business.") Some of these issues could be just things I happened across, but they do suggest that complete copyedit may be in order; perhaps Deckiller will have a look at the article.
    • I just did a lot of cleanup, but Footnotes still need extensive work. Publisher, publication date, and author (when available) are not given for most sources, so on quick glance, a reader can't tell if reliable sources are used. All footnotes should indicate at least a publisher. For example, clicking on Midnight Madness Hypes Xbox 360 Launch. Retrieved on 2006-07-03 reveals an author, publication date, and publisher: all should be listed. All footnotes need to be checked.
    • Is this a reliable source (for example)? Square Manhole Covers and Crazy Questions. Retrieved on 2006-07-01. Is this blog a reliable source? ^ Microsoft "Your potential. Our passion". Retrieved on 2006-05-18. Footnotes need extensive attention.
    • A consistent date format should be used for retrieval dates. Some use Month day, year, while others use year-mm-dd.

SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:36, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

  • Move to FARC per Sandy's reasoning; a lot of work has been done, and the article is quite good, but there are still some issues. Prose is better, but I still see a few random redundancies and other glitches. — Deckiller 01:32, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
  • hmmm, well that's a double-edged sword. Back when I did this and had some time I had to fight to get the footnotes where they are and people thought it was too extensive. Now even publishers and such are needed on each one and stuff i guess; but now I don't have that much free time. Should have just did the article a couple of years later :\. Thanks for the review Sandy et al. :D. RN 18:36, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
    • RN, if some of the other items are going to be addressed, I can help clean up the footnote formatting; we still have two weeks—let me know if I can help. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:24, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

FARC commentary

Suggested FA criteria concerns are size and focus (4), TOC (2c), lead (2a). Marskell 11:31, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep — it's looking much better, and I'm not majorly swayed by size. — Deckiller 19:52, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment There is still a good deal of work to be done to get the article to conform with guidelines; I feel like it's all doable if we could hold the review for another week. Otherwise, I'll have to be a Remove based on the list above. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:16, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment I believe my concerns have been tended to. I have not kept up with this I'm afraid - I have not reviewed other concerns thoroughly enough, so I will not !vote in either direction.--Konstable 13:51, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep. Most of the size problems have been fixed. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 00:18, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep, the issues above have been adequately fixed, in my opinion. Daniel Bryant 07:20, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article review. No further edits should be made to this page.
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