2004 Indian Ocean earthquake

While this article was still in progress, it had already won acclaim from multiple news agencies (e.g., theUK Guardian, the ed-tech Insider). It managed to be npov despite a flood of potential scammers and conspiracy theorists, and remains more comprehensive than any other freely available overview of the subject. Well written, well illustrated, well linked to other projects [wikinews, commons] and to external news and multimedia. A model news-feature article. +sj+ 08:13, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Jan 6 FAC discussion

Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/2004 Indian Ocean earthquake/Archive 1

• Object. Still too soon: the situation is still changing far too quickly for us to go over this and get in into FA shape. There's no end of rewriting, copyediting, updating and pruning to be done. Mark¹ 06:30, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • "No end" seems to sum up your feelings on the matter ;) FA's aren't perfect. No articles are. They're just brilliant, model articles. This one happens to be a brilliantly-written model of a news-related article-in-progress, covering changes in an ongoing situation, changing news sources, and changing statistics. This article is already FA quality even before you personally have time to give it a final writing/copyediting/pruning rub-down. I can't wait to see it improve. +sj + 06:44, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)
    • Actually I was rather hoping that someone else would give it an overhaul. My own contributions have been minimal, while Curps and Banyantree especially have the background knowledge to do the job much better. Why can't you wait? ("No end" was a rhetorical flourish). At a minimum, the references to online news sources which we know will disappear need to be replaced with more durable ones; given the number of people who have contributed, including probably many subtle vandals and the plain ill-informed, we need to do a thorough fact-check and referencing; the external links need to be checked and severely pruned to eliminate duplication, and they need to be annotated so that users can tell the difference between them. This is still very much a work in progress. Mark¹ 05:27, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)
• Support I think it's been enough time. Tuf-Kat 06:45, Feb 6, 2005 (UTC)
• Support - I read the whole thing and I'm very impressed. Has all the qualities and FA should have. I've also never seen such extensive use of inline references ; it looks like the whole article is fully referenced this way. Anybody objecting based on newness of the event need only look at the page history for this article to see that further development has settled down a great deal (most of the edits are vandalism and reverts of that vandalism). A great example of why Wikipedia is so much better than the competition. It is just sad, that it takes something like this to prove this fact. -07:04, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)
• Object until the external links are coalesced into references appropriately. Johnleemk | Talk 08:10, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • Inline references are a perfectly valid way of referencing. See Wikipedia:What is a featured article. "Include references by extensive use of inline references and/or by including a ==References== section." --mav
    • No, they really aren't. For instance, let's say that we point to an online article by the Sydney Morning Herald. Three months later, they archive the story. Say goodbye to the reference! This is why they need to be placed into a references section. - Ta bu shi da yu 11:01, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)
    • The difference escapes me. Explain? In a references section, the link will still be dead. +sj + 06:44, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)
      • Was this directed at me? Your indent doesn't make it clear... anyway, I'll respond. The link may still be there, but the references section is meant to give you: a) the author b) the title c) the publication and d) the year. An inline link can't provide any of these things. We can always look at the archives if the link dies - I know that for a publication like the SMH that the State Library of NSW keeps copies we can lookup. - Ta bu shi da yu 21:11, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)
    • Whoops, didn't notice them. I see them so often, they just seem to fade into the background for me. Johnleemk | Talk 09:05, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)
• Supported before, I'll support again. I've often referred to this article for updates on the casualty figures and such. It's excellent work, and a great example of what Wikipedians can do. Everyking 08:28, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)
• Object - poor references. - Ta bu shi da yu 08:37, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)]
  • You must be joking. Every section has at least several inline references. --mav
    • Uh, and yet: no references section! - Ta bu shi da yu 11:00, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)
      • You very conveniently changed that criteria after the fact. --mav
        • I think that has been accepted as a recommended practice for a while now. I certainly agree the inline citations need to be collected somewhere. As noted above though, perhaps inline citations to one specific fact may be better suited to a 'Notes' section, and those sources used and suitable for a general reference for the article are better for the references section. I could be off base though. Object though until the inline citations are collected somewhere is useful form that shows they are used to cite facts. Overall though, appears fantastically well done. With the previous issue fixed, I would be comfortable supporting as a FA now and then if it degrades as new information become available, removing it from being featured then. - Taxman 21:57, Feb 6, 2005 (UTC)
          • I think that every article, even ones that have inline references, should include a separate reference section at the bottom of the article as well. Also, it won't hurt anything to have both at the bottom. →Iñgōlemo← ^talk 05:13, 2005 Feb 7 (UTC)
            • Agreed. - Taxman 22:48, Feb 8, 2005 (UTC)
• Support Should have been promoted last time, jguk 15:18, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)
• Support - excellent piece of work Brookie 16:42, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)
• Support - though the stand-alone sentences in "Humanitarian, economic and environmental impact" should be consolidated into paragraphs or moved to the relevant country impact page. Otherwise, a remarkable article. An account of the development of this article would be fascinating. - BanyanTree 02:52, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)
• Object The article is excellent I have nothing against that. But it's the other bits that makes me object. 1) The number of deaths is still not even near complete, We _could_ make it a FA but then we must regret not accurately showing the disaster to its completion - only a near completion 2) Yhe article was a "In the news" article for like a week or something, why do we need to make it a FA? 3) Not even one reference, for an article of this size that is unbelievable 4) What about the rebuilding after the Tsunami? It only talks about humanitarian aid, but nothing about the actual use of the money to rebuild. Probably due to that this FAC is still too early for information of that kind to be put in. 5) [1] Still a article for target of vandals - but this might not be a valid reason. I am only pointing out it out Squash 07:34, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • The vandalism is relevant in that it's stopping us from giving the article a good, cold-eyed overhaul. That would make it much tighter, and much better. Mark¹ 07:39, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)
• Object Its still too soon to give FA status to this article. It is undoubtably an excellent article, but several major events still have to take place - pledges being met, reconstruction, after the media leaves, etc. I think April at the earliest for promotion. Also I think that some more sections chould possibly be made into their own articles - the page currently carries the warning WARNING: This page is 44 kilobytes long. Please consider condensing the page and moving the detail to another article so it is not approaching or in excess of 32KB. CGorman 21:18, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)
• Support. Inline references are fine for the time being, although as more scholarly treatments get published they should be mentioned in a references section. --Michael Snow 01:00, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)
• Support. A superb job, and worthy of featuring despite analysis yet to come. Denni☯ 03:00, 2005 Feb 8 (UTC)
• Object. References need to be collected in a references or notes seection. - Taxman 22:48, Feb 8, 2005 (UTC)
• Object. This was in the news for quite a while not long ago. Putting it back on the front page so soon gives the impression that there's only a small handful of articles worth being there - few enough that we have to repeat very often. I'm not saying the article isn't of the quality of a featured article, it just doesn't make sense to put it back on the main page right now. LizardWizard 22:53, Feb 8, 2005 (UTC)
  • This is not a valid objection to featuring the article. Mark¹ 04:05, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)
    • Agreed. And besides, being a FA and being on the main page are two different things. - Taxman 19:11, Feb 9, 2005 (UTC)
• Support. The objections seem to be
  • "it is too early" - but it is over 6 weeks later, and no longer a "front page" news story;
  • "it is not comprehensive" - but it presents all that is known (it is certainly much more comprehensive than it was on 6 January);
  • "it has inadequate references" - references are scattered throughout; true, they could also be collected in one place, like H II region, but they are good enough for me;
  • "it is too long" - being over 32k is undesirable, but it has not stopped articles being Featured in the past. -- ALoan (Talk) 12:17, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)
• Object First I want to thank the vast contributions that have and are occuring on this important article, but to be honest it is not a feature, to be self-centered, I first posted this this message on Talk:2004 Indian Ocean earthquake, then after no response I posted this question (same question) on the talk page of Talk:Countries affected by the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and still I have found no reason why this has not been added; this added that I am refering to is, what is the status of the Indigenous Tribes? CBS News... I am curios and I am sure others would like to know what is going on... can someone please tell me why this has not been addressed? (Below is an part copy of info...)

AP article:

Government officials and anthropologists believe that ancient knowledge of the movement of wind, sea and birds may have saved the five indigenous tribes on the Indian archipelago of Andaman and Nicobar islands from the tsunami

...

only about 400 to 1,000 members alive today from the Great Andamanese, Onges, Jarawas, Sentinelese and Shompens. Some anthropological DNA studies indicate the generations may have spanned back 70,000 years

...

Thanks, PEACE ~ RoboAction 08:47, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)

see Effect_of_the_2004_Indian_Ocean_earthquake_on_India#Andaman_and_Nicobar. If it is inadequate, you are welcome to add more info on it. pamri 08:59, Feb 12, 2005 (UTC)

• Support This article has become famous and desperately needs to be a featured article BMWman