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I promoted this article to GA last year, but since then it has been significantly degraded. The text is now a mishmash of English and American spellings (though – cf WP:ENGVAR – it is specifically stated to be in BrEng), the lead is excessive in length, the overlinking is grotesque, and there are "citation" and "dubious-discuss" tags at various points. This article now fails GA criteria 1b, 2b, 5, as well as falling foul of the Immediate failure criterion 1. Tim riley talk 14:18, 2 November 2014 (UTC) reply

0.o - I'll be helping to improve things for sure - I'll start by fixing the one 'citation needed' link I know of (I've just begun contributing after a break of almost five years) and having a look at the British-American English problem. Cheers. THEPROMENADER  ✎  ✓ 14:39, 2 November 2014 (UTC) reply

Support delisting And I say this as a major contributor and the person who promoted it originally. I'm glad to distance myself from this one. Not to mention the sentences which have been added haphazardly in parts, how many paragraphs now which don't end with sources. The core of the content is still pretty solid but it's had too much traffic and editing since which has affected it. I'm not prepared to fight to save it. ♦ Dr. Blofeld 14:40, 2 November 2014 (UTC) reply

Why so quick to throw in the towel? I've already fixed the English-American spelling issues, and removed dubious claims (as I could find no reference for them). THEPROMENADER  ✎  ✓ 15:38, 2 November 2014 (UTC) reply

Tim, Can you give us some examples of the 'overlinking'? The definition in the explanation is... vague at best. I'm having a hard time deciding the 'level' to adjust to. THEPROMENADER  ✎  ✓ 15:42, 2 November 2014 (UTC) reply

The WP rule is no more than two links from any article to another page: one link from the lead and one from the main text. There is a handy device for checking duplicate links here, which I find very helpful indeed. Tim riley talk 16:10, 2 November 2014 (UTC) reply

That's already a great place to start! Thanks a million for the tip. THEPROMENADER  ✎  ✓ 16:12, 2 November 2014 (UTC) reply

Way too much maintenance, way too much time needed discussing "issues", just not worth it. I've felt this way for a long time on this. It wasn't even my decision to select it for improving in the first place, I was simply helping out Gilderien who had nommed it and I thought it worth trying to help promote it as I didn't want him to fail. What I've encountered over it since is quite extraordinary, it's a lot of bullshit I don't need on here.♦ Dr. Blofeld 15:56, 2 November 2014 (UTC) reply

Okay, I'll do what I can to improve the English and layout, but it really would be helpful to know what the most glaring errors are. And I'm not going to go through a year of page history (or longer) to find out who did what, so sorry in advance if I step on any toes. Still, if you can leave any clear directions on what to improve, I would be much obliged. Cheers. THEPROMENADER  ✎  ✓ 16:10, 2 November 2014 (UTC) reply

I'm truly sad to see that only one editor has expressed an interest in remedying the deficiencies identified above, and he has been blocked for his efforts. In my judgment the article has been so degraded as to require a root and branch overhaul to get it back up to GA standard. This is improbable while we have the current manifestations of WP:OWN and persistent edit warring. Together with the widespread absence of citations for substantive statements I think they disqualify the page for GA status, failing criteria 1b, 2b, 4, 5 as well as the immediate fail criterion 1. Now delisted accordingly. Tim riley talk 15:59, 5 November 2014 (UTC) reply

@ Tim riley: Oh they're all interested in the article, but not one of them appears to be working to meet GA or FA criteria and want to edit in a way which they personally think is an improvement. So with conflicting interests and one editor doing one thing, another doing another it's headed in the wrong direction rather than the right direction!! I'd have restored it to the July 2013 version, minus the big landmarks section if I'd thought it would last...♦ Dr. Blofeld 16:41, 5 November 2014 (UTC) reply

The biggest problem is that no-one there, not even me, really knows what the GA or FA criteria is. My 'improvement suggestions' may seem quite naive for someone familiar with Wikipedia standards, but I'm looking at it from a reader, almost in an art direction way, point of view - trying to arrange it into an article that people can read and understand. Its being pleasing to the eye would be an added bonus. That's why I need you around, Blo, not only for your experimented help, but also to show me the error in my ways. Is there really a 'fast-track formula' for GA/FA status, though? THEPROMENADER  ✎  ✓ 17:38, 5 November 2014 (UTC) reply

Give Wikipedia:Good article criteria a read. I think everybody is worrying too much about intricate details and that which don't really matter a great deal to non Parisians and can't what is more important from a global perspective. Yes, we want the article to be as good as possible, but not if it affects the flow and sourcing quality/consistency of the article which is more important. If you want it to regain GA status all you'd have to do is largely restore the July 2013 version, update the large landmarks section with the current condensed one and ensure than every paragraph is sourced and then try to improve the parts of the article you believed give a dated view (culture etc) which I acknowledge not being too familiar with the current city I know little about. I'd have done it myself if I didn't think that it wouldn't last long. Then you could try to follow the sourcing and layout as much as possible and give it the corrections and tweaks needed to get it to FA. But to pass GA an article has to be stable, which this is currently far from being.. As far as I can see there's way too much active interest in this article from editors who in all honesty don't know what a good or featured article requires and can't see that some of the edits made in good faith are actually making it worse from a concision/sourcing perspective.♦ Dr. Blofeld 17:43, 5 November 2014 (UTC) reply

Okay, I'll read that, thanks. I think what's going on is what I mentioned earlier - it's only natural that a broken article motivates people to fix it. I really have no idea what's changed since it got its GA status (I only noticed after the fact that it had even got one, I left last year's 'lede image' nonsense as fast as I could when it was over), but I'm of a mind to suggest putting it back to that state if it's an improvement... but that means going through all the edit history to see if there were any real improvements made by other contributors... sigh. How did it get into that state, was anyone around to see that? THEPROMENADER  ✎  ✓ 18:09, 5 November 2014 (UTC) reply

(after reading above and GAC and checking article) Wait a (expletive) second, it had 'citation needed' tags... again?! I fixed those! And since they were reverted to, they've been sitting there since two days without being corrected?! And I was told - lied to - that the revert was to a version only a 'little hour' before - it had been almost three hours between my fixing that tag and its revert. And our dear admin was reassured many times that all my edits were replaced: none of them were, so I guess it was understood from the get-go that he would never look. (super-long sigh).

So now we have on one side a bunch of contributors who don't know how to bring the article up to GA status, and on the other a group of bully contributors who just don't care. I really think I'm going to propose reverting to the 2013 version. And I'm off for tonight, I'm already getting steamed again. THEPROMENADER  ✎  ✓ 18:39, 5 November 2014 (UTC) reply

And thanks for your visit, guys, that was... fun in a way. Odd. Interesting. Whatever. But thanks for your kind words ; ) THEPROMENADER  ✎  ✓ 18:42, 5 November 2014 (UTC) reply

It's frustrating, but we can't give up. It's a good thing in many ways to review an article periodically and bring it up to standard. I'll be glad to help making sure things are properly sourced. We just need to improve section one by one. Learning from setbacks is the only way one really improves. Though now it seems I finally have to learn British spellings Use of American spelling in some parts seems to be the greatest fault of the article. SiefkinDR ( talk) 18:50, 5 November 2014 (UTC) reply

FWIW, I just suggested going back to the GA-award version on the Paris talk page. Broken is broken, and all the work it will take (and all the opposition it will meet along the way) to get it back to at least GA is too much for anyone. Since no-one will listen to or even look at the article's dilemma, I think this is the only way. Please do leave your thoughts on this there, in case my suggestion is a bit too drastic - laters, guys. THEPROMENADER  ✎  ✓ 19:15, 5 November 2014 (UTC) reply