Wikibooks:Featured books/Nominations/Removal/French

French
I'm nominating this book for removal from Featured books, as I don't feel that it has sufficient depth or quality as one of the best books. While an individual chapter may have been acceptable in the past (Featured_books/Nominations/Archives/Archive_1), I feel that it is missing content that would allow learning the language. As examples of issues with the book: While I am working to improve the quality of the book, it seems that it would be a lot more work before it can be finished. The main thing that's missing would be the vocab tables. --Sigma 7 (talk) 17:14, 28 June 2009 (UTC)
 * French/Lessons/Travel didn't contain vocabulary when it was featured. (It does now, but I feel that it's a minimal.)
 * French/Lessons/Money refers to imparfait before it is introduced in the lesson French/Lessons]Youth. This may be acceptable, but it may cause the reader to believe something is missing within the book.
 * There are many instances within the lessons where content is either a stub or outline. I listed one of them, but there they are more frequent in the later lessons.
 * Its grim and we should put it out of its misery... or the very least scrub the shiny star off it. Geoff Plourde (talk) 03:53, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm voting against the removal of the featured books thingymajiggy for this book simply because we have so few featured language books. I see only Spanish and Latin in the list of featured books.  It's important to have a range of books so it appears that Wikibooks is not just home to endless computing books.--ЗAНИA [[Image:Flag_of_Italy.svg|15px]]talk 21:58, 29 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I have done a little work on this since last June, but not enough to improve its quality significantly. Perhaps the initial aim was too ambitious, and the original authors would have done better to aim at a shorter book for beginners. I agree it has a problem with featured book criterion 4 (be complete and clear enough in its current state to effectively teach or learn from), though calling it "grim" is rather harsh.


 * I have doubts about the "featured book" concept anyway as I think it raises unrealistic expectations and promotes a producer-consumer attitude. It might be more useful to have a different label for books that show promise but should be looked on more as an opportunity to contribute and collaborate than as a product to be consumed. Recent Runes (talk) 17:20, 1 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Before my time, but there used to be a "collaboration of the month" system that predated the current one. -- Adrignola talk contribs 02:08, 2 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Wikibooks had two systems that were discontinued and this one put in its place. "Collaboration of the Month" and "Book of the Month". From what I can recall some of the problems were that nominating on a monthly bases wasn't working and collaboration either never manifested or was short lived. The criteria for featured books is intended to be left up to the community and can be relaxed and restrictive as desired. The requirements are somewhat arbitrary and is much the same as the process to decide whether to delete works or not. I sometimes think of featured books as being the polar opposite of the RFD process in that its nominating works of a certain good quality rather than of a certain poor quality. --dark lama  12:38, 20 April 2010 (UTC)


 * I suppose people at the time thought "featured books" would be better than the old system. Going back to the question of what to do with French under the current system, I can see both sides of the delisting argument. It depends on how strictly we want to enforce the rules, but if we were inclined to leniency then we might reduce reader disappointment if we modified the book's Advertisement and Introduction to manage expectations downwards a bit, emphasizing the opportunities to contribute instead. Recent Runes (talk) 14:54, 2 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Changing the expectations of the book could work. --dark lama  12:38, 20 April 2010 (UTC)


 * The current advertisement says: From Montreal to Dijon, from Toulouse to Bamako, learn a language that will take you around the world - with the Wikibook on French. My idea for a more suitable one goes: Are you teaching or learning French? For a study project, why not help develop a section of this well-formatted, but incomplete book?


 * It doesn't sound much like a featured book, so maybe it should be downgraded after all. Realistically, I think it could only claim to be about 50% complete overall. Recent Runes (talk) 19:58, 3 May 2010 (UTC)