Wikipedia:Featured article removal candidates/Tea

Tea[edit]

A holdover from the "Brilliant Prose" days.

Violates WP:WIAFA criterion 3(b). It exhibits very poor topical organization. Most of the 57 sections and subsections consist of a heading followed by a few disjoint sentences. Just a few sections (such as The word tea come close to being well-developed and comprehensive summaries of the subtopics that they claim to treat.
Violates 2(a): "succinct lead section that summarizes the entire topic ...". Taking a look at the lead, then at the 57 sections and subsections, I would not say that the lead does a good job of summarization. Poor topical organization also plays a role in this. Reorganizing this article along the lines of model food-related FAs such as Black pepper and Butter (which have excellent topic organization) would be a monumental task for such a vast and sloppy article as this.
Violates 2(c): "factually accurate". There are a few references at the end that are are not cited in the article's prose. The March 15, 2004 version (when this was made an FA) lacks references completely. Meanwhile, there are four HTML links to web sources that do not cite or lay out their primary references. This makes it impossible to verify their veracity. I do not see any evidence that print materials were used to fact check the many weasel-worded and controversial claims made. I get the impression from the poor writing that the reference section was added as "reference padding" and as an afterthought.
Tea violates criterion 3 in that it has large numbers of WP:MOS violations, including unattributed weasel wording, incorrect capitalization of headings, and again the very poor organization of the article. These examples come after only a cursory inspection. I am sure there are many other types of violations.
Many sections themselves are poorly organized and/or contain highly speculative and unsourced claims. Examples are World's Finest Tea and Tea creation myths. "Tea creation myths" consists of a bullet listing of random factoids and myths that in no way fit together coherently. Meanwhile, "World's Finest Tea" offers us such unverified gems such as “the tea that is widely reputed to be the finest in the world is Kilburn Imperial”. This doesn’t even make any sense, considering that most fine varieties of white and oolong teas come from China, not Sri Lanka. I just get the impression that people have been adding such random claims to the article out of their own heads, leading to an infestation of POV, weasel-worded, and unsourced assertions.

There are more examples of the above. Saravask 18:59, 23 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. I pretty much agree with the nominator but haven't seen enough to really vote. The world's finest tea thing is laughable if it's not well sourced. That's a bold statement and would need to show that a majority of connoisseurs agree or something along those lines. This also links to the Singapore wiki as a reference. I wouldn't have a problem it if linked to a certain revision of the page that we could all agree was well sourced. However, as it stands it's rather unreliable. I would like to see the diff between when it was made an FA and now and see if we can remove some of the trash and keep good additions. gren グレン 20:13, 23 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
This article went through a vote at Wikipedia:Archive/Refreshing_brilliant_prose_-_Others#Other under "Tea". The article's talk page was tagged with {{FA}} on March 15, 2004. This is the 04:07, 15 May 2004 revision (note that the FA version lacks references). There have been over 500 edits since then, and this is the diff. Saravask 20:26, 23 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Withdraw nomination. I've just noticed that major structural changes are underway, such as the removal of the "World's Finest Tea" section and major copyediting. The topics are being reorganized as well. I ope these improvements will continue. It shows promise. Thanks. Saravask 23:14, 23 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]