Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Francium

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 promoted 21:24, 28 April 2007.

[edit] Francium

I've been working on this article for quite some time now, and I've poured information into it from every reliable source I could find. It quickly passed GA, and it has had a long and productive peer review. I feel that it is the best possible Francium there could be, and for that reason, I have nominated it for featured article status. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 20:31, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

• Comment. Avoid phrasing like this: "This missing element became the focus of many researchers, and several false claims were made that the element had been found before an authentic discovery was made." Many researchers? Several claims? Can you reference this? Sweep through it again to check for this kind of stuff. JHMM13 03:08, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

• I've rewritten all weasel phrases, or at least all the ones I could find, as best I could. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 04:00, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

  Nice job. Support from me. Nice read. JHMM13 15:57, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

• Comment Weak Support- I suspect not very much more could be added given what the subject matter is. I think it satsfies all criteria but the prose is abrupt in places and there are lots of short paras. However, I admit nothing jumps out as an alternative rightaway. I'll have a look if I have time and I think this should get over the line during this FAC as it doesn't need too much tweaking. cheers, Casliber | talk | contribs 04:25, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Do you have any glaring examples of abrupt prose? I know all too well where the short paragraphs are, but there's little to be done about those. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 13:47, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

That's just it. I've read through it again and it's very concise and succinct...maybe a little too so I dunno. I think it must be that the subject matter's so dry...cheers, Casliber | talk | contribs 14:13, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

• Support. The article is short compared to most featured articles, but I attribute that to the topic. It is already longer than the treatment in most chemistry books and encyclopedias. There's probably no much else to say about francium without getting into really esoteric trivia from the original literature. --Itub 15:06, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

• Conditional Support. I've read through this article a number of times and closely tracked its development, aiding when I could. I believe it now requires only a few minor touch-ups before it is ready. These are:
  • A re-solution of the solution issue, see the talk page.
  • In my last round of copyediting, I left a number of comments inline where the text contains minor ambiguities, or needs a bit of clarification. Fix 'em.

Once these concerns are addressed, I shall eagerly support. Good work Cryptic! -- Rmrfstar 22:24, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Alrighty, I removed the solubility statement. Although it did come from an encyclopedia, the information therein may not have been updated in several years. Also, Hyde's experiment directly contradicted the statement.

I do mean that Hulubei's work was accurate, not just "good".

I looked for more information about the small branching, and I realize now that I merely inferred the statement that you tagged. Whoops. I removed it and adjusted the paragraphing.

--Cryptic C62 · Talk 04:08, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Comment: you are making a tempest in a teacup out of the solubility statement. I don't think that any chemist would doubt that, in general, francium salts are "soluble" in water, same as sodium, potassium, rubidium, and caesium salts. Of course, some salts are more soluble than others, and some might even be called "insoluble". Exceptions are very common in chemistry, but a statement such as "francium salts are soluble" would normally be interpreted to mean "salts with a loosely defined set of 'common' anions such as halides, sulfate, nitrate, phosphate, carbonate, and hydroxide", which in fact are all soluble salts for the other alkali metals I mentioned above. Of course, one could argue that the solubility of francium salts cannot be measured in practice due to the tiny amounts of francium involved, but the periodic table has been pretty good at predicting many things in the past. ;-) There is no contradiction between being able to coprecipitate francium with caesium perchlorate and francium salts being soluble. First, because the whole point of coprecipitation is that it allows you to precipitate something soluble that would otherwise not precipitate by itself. Second, because even "soluble" salts can be precipitated out of solution by reducing the amount of solvent, the temperature, or increasing the concentration of the counter-ions. Otherwise how would anyone get highly soluble salts like sodium chloride to crystallize? I don't think you need a citation for saying that francium salts are expected to be soluble. But if you want proof that it has been said on the scientific literature, search google books for "francium salts soluble". [1] --Itub 08:05, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Alright: I'm satisfied! -- Rmrfstar 12:18, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

• No full support yet I've left quite some straightforward recommendations for improvement on the talk page. They have been generated with the peerreviewer script, which simply lists various SMART requirements that generally accepted Wikipedia guidelines give for high-quality articles. In my perception, these requirements ought to be met for a Featured Article; the only thing involved is just laborious copy-edit work. Wim van Dorst (Talk) 11:29, 20 April 2007 (UTC).

I've addressed all of the issues, except the lead, as I disagree with how the script assesses lede size. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 01:12, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

I find the automated thingy not bad but I consider it a guide more than anything else (and best used prior to this point really) cheers, Casliber | talk | contribs 01:18, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

I too recommend using the peerreviewer script before WP:FAC, just as a simple guide and handy tool to standardization guidelines. The weasel words and the refs fixed therefore give you Weak support. Wim van Dorst (Talk) 20:04, 21 April 2007 (UTC).

What can I do to improve that to a full support? I really don't think the lede needs to be expanded, as the article itself consists of only 9000 characters. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 20:30, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Support. Excellent article. Very easy to read. Axl 16:17, 21 April 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 candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.