Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Mini Moke

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 review. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted 18:52, 24 February 2007.

[edit] Mini Moke

Self nomination This article has passed WP:GA and been generally well received by Wikipedia:WikiProject Automobiles members. It's stable, well referenced and contains no fair-use images. As far as I can tell it passes all of the FAC requirements. The only slight problem is that it's only 17kBytes long - which is a little short for an FA. However, when you've said all that needs to be said, anything more would be useless padding - so there we are. The subject of the article is a fairly obscure British vehicle - there aren't many books about it - I'm 99% certain that every book that contains any information about it whatever is in my collection and is referenced in the article. Additionally, the article has been carefully read by several leading members of the Mini Moke Club (who, sadly, are not Wikipedians) - the few minor flaws they managed to find have been passed on to me and eradicated since passing WP:GA. SteveBaker 03:42, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

• Indeed this is a very good article. I have cleaned it up a bit per MOS (minor changes) and I used the citation templates for some of the references. When editing it (expanding cm and other units out in text) I used British English because I found kilometre in the article, but you can change it if you like. The paragraph below is choppy, lots of short sentences ruin the flow making it difficult to read.

From 1975 a pickup version of the Moke was produced with a 1.45 x 1.50 metre (55 x 59 in) drop-sided bed which protruded behind the back of the vehicle. There was a cloth top over the cab area. At least two four-wheel drive Moke prototypes were manufactured by Leyland Australia in the late 1970s. Unlike the British 'Twini' version, these used just one engine. One of those prototypes is now privately owned by an enthusiast in Western Australia. Leyland were planning to market this version but the end of Moke production in Australia in 1981 saw the demise of the project

• This paragraph is also a bit hard to read, it's using the same sentence twice right after one another "Because X, Y occurs." Mix it up a bit.

Because the Moke's A-Series engine, gearbox and suspension are identical to those of a standard Mini (which was still in production up to October 2000), most spare parts are still readily available. Because there is no chassis, the front and rear subframes holding the wheels, brake assemblies and suspension are bolted straight onto the monocoque shell just as with a standard Mini. Mokes tend to require much structural maintenance if they are to stay in good running order

Once these 2 paragraphs are cleared up or if it's decided to do something else (you never know) I would be happy to support. James086^Talk 08:11, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

After one has read and tweaked these paragraphs about a bazillion times, it gets hard to see the wood for the trees! Both suggestions are well taken. I've made changes to both paragraphs, I think they read more easily now (but now I've read and tweaked them a bazillion-and-one times...so...) let me know if there is anything else I can do. SteveBaker 15:46, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Oh - and yes, this was originally a British car (although the Aussies have some significant claim to it) - so I've used British English throughout. SteveBaker 15:59, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

• Comment, would it be possible to create a short stub for the Nuffield Guppy to avoid a redlink?--Nydas^(Talk) 16:38, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
  • It would be possible if I could find anything at all to say about it! Alec Issigonis' biography merely mentions the name - offering no further details. The Nuffield company was pretty obscure and there isn't much written about it. The top Google hit for 'Nuffield Guppy' is this article and the only other links that are talking about this vehicle are mirrors of this article! The best stub I could personally come up with would be "The Nuffield Guppy was some kind of a motor vehicle that was designed by Alec Issigonis for some sort of military role."...I thought it would be better to leave it as a redlink so that someone who knows something about it would spot the redlink and be provoked into writing something. Redlinks are (in moderation) a good thing - they help the Encyclopedia to grow. SteveBaker
    • OK - Nuffield Guppy is now a happy little stub! SteveBaker 03:05, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
      • Support, this is a fine article. Great work finding out about the Nuffield Guppy.--Nydas^(Talk) 13:46, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
• Support as paragraphs have been reworded. Excellent work. James086^Talk 07:03, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Hmmm - it's all gone awfully quiet. Are we done? SteveBaker 02:43, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

• Oppose in the lead; a vehicle can't be a cult - it would be logical to say that it has a cult following; the lead also lacks focus it goes from what they are to how they were popular and back to where they were first made. The prose of the rest of the article needs work, it slips into a non-professional tone in parts, grammar needs work, and the single sentence paragraph pops up a few times. The latter part of the article is comprised of short sections that don't really say much, could the competitions and kits sections be merged into the text somewhere else (competitions into history and kits into construction)?--Peta 00:53, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
  • comment You said: "a vehicle can't be a cult"? Well, the Wiktionary definition of "cult" gives as its sole example of proper usage: "The Lord of the Rings" is a classic geek cult novel - so we can have cult novels but not cult cars? I'll try to reduce the number of single-sentence paragraphs but I'm mindful that a paragraph is supposed to be about a single subject and that just glueing separate paragraphs together without regard to content just in order to limit the number of short paragraphs is not a good thing. SteveBaker 05:54, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
  • The two short sections are now merged into other sections (see below).SteveBaker 16:55, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
• comment with this sentence In Australia the Mini Moke was a popular car for college students into the late 1980s, the term "college students" when referring to Australian students is ambigious as its a term not used within Australia, student are referred to as either using High School or University. Gnangarra 08:06, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
  • OK - I might argue that whilst we are talking about Australia, this article is written in British English - but to avoid the issue entirely, I'll say just "students" and leave it at that. SteveBaker 16:53, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
• Comment -- Although I disagree with User:Peta about the tone/grammar (I think it's suited to the subject matter and isn't unencyclopedic) I'd agree about consolidating paragraphs; "Kit cars and look-alikes" would fit well as a "Construction and maintenance" sub-section, while the "Competitions" bit could, I reckon, be reduced to a single paragraph and spliced into either "History" or "Popular culture" (since sport's become part of pop culture nowadays). I was going to do a quick edit and revert just to have both versions to compare, but I noticed I'd need to tamper with the layout/position of images, so I chickened out. I also reckon that since the Mini page isn't specifically about construction and maintenance, you don't need to give it a Main article: Mini. And well done on getting the Nuffield Guppy stub off the ground too. --DeLarge 15:24, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
  • OK - I've merged those two sections. Kit Cars is now a sub-section of construction & maintenance - I guess that kinda fits. The "Competitions" part ended up being split in two because putting it into the history section resulted in the first paragraph being related to British Mokes and the second to Australian ones. I'm still not convinced that this is a good change - because anyone who is interested in competitions involving Mokes would have looked to that section - but now the information is kinda mooshed in with what is essentially a time-line of the development of the car...but anything for a quiet life! If I ever find more information about racing/autocrossing Mini Mokes so I can expand on the theme a bit, I may re-instate that section - but that's not going to happen anytime soon. I replaced the {{main|Mini}} with a 'seealso' - but because so much of the information about the nature of the engine, transmission, suspension, etc is in the Mini article - we need some kind of a link here. Incidentally, the Nuffield Guppy article required me to spend $75 on purchasing an original memo written by Issigonis to Nuffield management from a collector in Germany - the guy told me that it contained the answer to my question (which it did) - but wouldn't tell me what it said unless I bought it from him! Such is my commitment to getting the truth out there - I hope you guys are happy!  :-) SteveBaker 16:50, 23 February 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.