Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Manhattan Project feed materials program/archive1

Generalissima

Skimmed through it; very engaging read. I'll do a more in-depth review later, but a couple thoughts I had while reading.

• Where did the uranium captured in Europe during the Alsos Mission come from originally?

  Mostly from the Congo, but some may have been acquired by the Germans from other countries. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 06:15, 26 January 2026 (UTC)

• Lieutenant Colonel G. W. Beeler in April 1946 It might be good to state when his term ended (presumably when the Manhattan Project became the (AEC)

  At the end of the war, Groves replaced reservists with Regular Army officers, largely drawn from the top of their West Point classes. George Wood Beeler Jr. graduated from West Point second in the class of 1933. He served on the staff of the Services of Supply and then the Communications Zone in the European Theater of Operations from February 1943 to January 1944, and then with its Advance Section (ADSEC) until August 1944. He was assistant general manager of the 2nd Military Railway Service until May 1945. He returned to the United States as a logistics planner with the War Department General Staff. He was seconded to the MED in May 1946 and served with it and then the Atomic Energy Commission until February 1947. He served with the Army staff from 1947 to 1949, and then with the Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff until 1951. He transferred to the Field Artillery and assumed command of the III Corps Artillery at Fort Lewis, Washington. He died following an operation at Letterman Army General Hospital on 27 July 1951 and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery. He left behind a wife, Janet née Stocke (m. 1936), a daughter, Jane, and a son, George W. Beeler III. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 06:15, 26 January 2026 (UTC)

• I'm not very familiar with what the Manhattan Project's purpose was after the war - was it just to produce more nuclear weapons? A sentence or two of context in Organization might be helpful.

  Mostly to keep the wartime establishment together until the Atomic Energy Act of 1946 could be passed and the Atomic Energy Commission could assume control, which occurred at midnight on 31 December 1946. This is a convenient end date for the Manhattan Project articles. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 06:15, 26 January 2026 (UTC)

Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 01:52, 26 January 2026 (UTC)

• Ah, thank you for the ping, I had forgotten about this. Looking back over it now...

I think the concerns about length are a bit spurious. This article doesn't present clean, easy splitting points, and it is already written in a very concise matter. I feel the length is appropriate, since it is needed to properly explain a highly complex and technical subject.

Nothing to nitpick for the lede.

Background gives good context. Since it's a US-centered article, should the weights be given in pounds first and kgs second?

American English uses "percent" generally, not "per cent"

The many price figures are good context, but especially with the modern figures in parenthesis, the reader is met with a huge wall of numbers. Maybe put the modern price equivalents in footnotes?

Since Tizard's quote in the first paragraph of Africa is a full sentence and ends in a period, the period should be moved inside the quotes per MOS guidance.

As with kgs/lbs, I think inches should be used, and then millimeters (actually, wouldn't centimeters be more appropriate here?)

The table under Europe is malformed; it needs column and row scope headers (see Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Accessibility/Data tables tutorial, it's a whole deal)

Ditto on the Refined uranium compound production table

I don't see anything else of concern. Paging Hawkeye7, and sorry for the delay. Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 01:40, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

• I've adjusted the tables per Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Accessibility/Data tables tutorial. I think I have it right, but you might want to check. It's tricky and complicated and I wouldn't ask a non-admin to do it
• Changes the "per cent"s to "percent". The article was written in British English and I'm not sure why it was changed.
• Moved the full stop in the Tizard quote
• Changed the mm to cm
• MOS:UNITS says: In non-scientific articles with strong ties to the United States the primary units are US customary (furlongs, chains, hogsheads, etc.) It is arguable whether the article has sufficiently strong ties to the United States and whether it is a non-scientific article. (The Manhattan Project usually used metric.)

Hawkeye7 (discuss) 03:34, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

Borsoka

Sorry to say this, but at 11,000 words the article feels a bit oversized. I am confident that focusing on a specific aspect of the Manhattan Project would work just as well in under 9,000—perhaps around 8,000—words, without losing any of its substance. Borsoka (talk) 02:51, 26 January 2026 (UTC)

I would like to begin by acknowledging the considerable effort and research that have gone into this article. However, articles are generally expected to be between about 150 and 6,000 words, with exceptions subject to increasingly stricter limits at 8,000, 9,000, and ultimately 15,000 words. In practice, many editors treat the 9,000–15,000 range—what should be an exceptional exception—as the normal standard, writing essays rather than encyclopaedic articles. If this tendency continues to be encouraged through the promotion of such long texts to FA status, Wikipedia risks moving away from its role as an encyclopaedia and towards becoming a platform for essays. This does not match what readers expect, namely clear and concise summaries of specific topics. Some topics do require greater length. An article on Human history may reasonably exceed 15,000 words; WWII likely needs more than 12,000 words; and an 8,000–9,000 word article on the Manhattan Project as a whole would be acceptable. An article of around 11,000 words on a specific aspect of that project, however, is clearly too long. For these reasons, I oppose its promotion at this time. Borsoka (talk) 05:11, 29 January 2026 (UTC)

Over the weekend I did some page curation work, marking articles such as Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars (10,721 words) and Western esotericism and Eastern religions (22,429 words) as patrolled, but these are a minority and not indicative of a broader trend. The consensus at WT:SIZE is that the sizes therein are arbitrary and best described as rules of thumb and that Wikipedia is not paper. Studies have refuted the idea we once had that readers were looking for concise summaries; rather, many of them are searching for specific facts. The main article on the Manhattan Project (16,030 words) has been kept down in size by the large number of subarticles; every section is a summary of one per WP:SPLIT. This article has been trimmed down to 10,200 words; I trust you will accept the verdict of other editors that the scope of a topic justifies the length. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 20:55, 8 March 2026 (UTC)

An ongoing discussion about our article size limits suggests that raising the current thresholds would be unlikely to attract consensus. During that discussion, reference was made to academic guidance indicating that our existing limits are already comparatively generous. Our purpose is to produce clear, concise articles for the general reader, not to exhaust a subject for our own satisfaction. Our best articles should therefore be capable of summarising their topic effectively within the established limits. If we were to promote a highly specialised article on a narrow aspect of a single WWII project at over 8,000–9,000 words, consistency would oblige us to accept more than 30,000 words on WWII as a whole, and perhaps over 50,000 on human history. That would take us well beyond what can reasonably be described as an encyclopaedia-building project. Borsoka (talk) 03:06, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

MSincccc

• Placeholder. MSincccc (talk) 06:30, 26 January 2026 (UTC)

Image review

• I would suggest adding alt text to the captions of the images, since it is encouraged to do so by this more recent RfC.
• File:Carnotite-Vanoxite-sea16a.jpg-[URL] doesn't work.

  Replaced. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 20:38, 27 January 2026 (UTC)

• File:Port Radium in 1936.jpg- Source link is dead.

  Replaced. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 20:38, 27 January 2026 (UTC)

• File:Radium Queen at the Fort Fitzgerald docks, July 1, 1937.jpg- I was unable to access both the source links.

  The second one works for me. Replaced the first. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 20:38, 27 January 2026 (UTC)

I took a look up to the end of the Uranium procurement section. MSincccc (talk) 09:55, 27 January 2026 (UTC)

• File:Gilbert Labine examining uranium ore at the Eldorado Mine located at Great Bear Lake, Northwest Territories.jpg- PD-URAApresent, but US public domain rationale is missing.
• File:Port Radium in 1936.jpg and File:Radium Queen at the Fort Fitzgerald docks, July 1, 1937.jpg- Same as the previous image.

• PD-URAA is the US public domain rationale. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 18:29, 28 January 2026 (UTC)

  I consulted Nikkimaria, who noted the following regarding PD-URAA:

  PD-URAA, which several of that article's images use, includes this statement: "there must be a statement on this page explaining why the work is in the public domain in the U.S. (for the first case) or why it was PD on the URAA date in its source country (second case). Additionally, there must be verifiable information about previous publications of the work." These are not clearly present in all cases. MSincccc (talk) 04:36, 29 January 2026 (UTC)

  PD-URAA is the US rationale ie PD in the country of origin before the URAA date and PD-Canada is the Canadian PD rationale i.e. a photograph that was created prior to 1 January 1949. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 05:21, 29 January 2026 (UTC)

  Thanks for the explanation. I have no further suggestions. The article looks good to me. Hence, I will support the nomination. MSincccc (talk) 06:08, 29 January 2026 (UTC)

MSincccc (talk) 09:32, 28 January 2026 (UTC)

SchroCat

Great article, Hawkeye. Really fascinating article on a topic I have no real interest in, but it kept me going to the end. It's long, but I think that isn't an issue on a topic like this - there's so much to get into and there isn't really any part that should be split off. Looking at WP:SIZERULE, this article can, I think, be justified by "the scope of a topic can sometimes justify the added reading material".

There are a few typos to sort:

• There are a couple of non-US spellings in there (reorganised, criss-crossed—non-hyphenated in AmEng, I think—signalled, volatilisation and aluminium x several)
• "might actually be coming": not sure what the "actually" does here
• "was lost.The ore": space needed

- SchroCat (talk) 10:14, 1 February 2026 (UTC)

Corrected these typos except for "aluminium". MOS:IUPAC and MOS:CONSISTENT: "the international standard spellings aluminium, sulfur, caesium (and derivative terms) should be used regardless of the variety of English otherwise employed in the article." Hawkeye7 (discuss) 17:50, 1 February 2026 (UTC)

Ah, well: you learn something new every day. In that case I'm happy to offer my support for this. Cheers - SchroCat (talk) 12:06, 3 February 2026 (UTC)

I only found out about this from John in April 2025 while editing this article. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 18:34, 3 February 2026 (UTC)

Drive-by comment

• Hawkeye7 I have listed this nomination at FAC urgents. MSincccc (talk) 16:30, 2 March 2026 (UTC)

Hi MSincccc, could you leave that to the coordinators. If you feel a nomination could usefully be added to Urgents, feel free to attract our attention and suggest so. Thanks. Gog the Mild (talk) 20:44, 4 March 2026 (UTC)

Gog the Mild My apologies. I will ensure that I notify the coordinators in similar cases going forward. Thanks, MSincccc (talk) 03:42, 5 March 2026 (UTC)

Dumelow

I gave this quite a thorough review at A-class level. I have read through again and make the following comments, some of which may just be personal preference so feel free to ignore - Dumelow (talk) 17:20, 5 March 2026 (UTC)

• "The metal became an important export of Belgium from 1922 up until World War II" - The previous sentence mentions both Uranium and Radium; I assume it is Radium that is meant but it could be interpreted that the Uranium was being re-exported from Belgium

  Annoyingly, both interpretations would be correct, but changed to "uranium" to keep it on topic. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 19:23, 5 March 2026 (UTC)

• I'd be tempted to link tailings as uncommon in everyday English

  linked. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 19:23, 5 March 2026 (UTC)

• "found that it was small enough to be carried by contemporary bombers" I'd suggest "bomber aircraft" here for clarity

  Changed as suggested. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 19:23, 5 March 2026 (UTC)

• "As it turned out, a Little Boy gun-type fission weapon, using about 60 kilograms of highly enriched uranium, required 8,300 kilogram of natural uranium to produce in the isotope separation processes at the Clinton Engineer Works". The second "kilogram" needs to be plural. I am not sure this sentence reads right to me "As it turned out, it required 8,300 kilograms of natural uranium to produce the 60 kilograms of highly enriched uranium needed for a Little Boy gun-type fission weapon" reads better but I appreciate why the weapon name was put first

  Corrected. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 19:23, 5 March 2026 (UTC)

• "Nichols felt that this was a better location for it, as it was close to the ports of entry and warehouses for the ores and the headquarters of several of the firms supplying feed materials." reads better to me with "...and to the headquarters..."

  We already have the "to" earlier. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 19:23, 5 March 2026 (UTC)

• "In March 1942, a few months after the United States entered Second World War" missing "the" before the name of the war; though I think it is more commonly known as World War II in American English anyway?

  I have a feeling that it originally was and someone changed it. Changed to "World War II". Hawkeye7 (discuss) 19:23, 5 March 2026 (UTC)

• " Ore was mined at Port Radium and shipped via Great Bear, Mackenzie and Slave Rivers to Waterways, Alberta, and thence by rail to Port Hope" should this be "...via the Great Bear, Mackenzie and Slave Rivers"?

  Yes. Corrected. I took quite a while figuring out how the ore was shipped. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 19:23, 5 March 2026 (UTC)

• Uravan is linked twice in close succession

  Ooops! Durango is linked to the wrong place. Corrected. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 19:23, 5 March 2026 (UTC)

• "In August, the use of uranium in the photography was restricted to essential military and industrial applications." Should be either "in the photography industry" or "in photography"

  Changed to "photography industry" Hawkeye7 (discuss) 19:23, 5 March 2026 (UTC)

• "To recover some if this, DuPont established a scrap recovery plant" should be "of"

  Corrected. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 19:23, 5 March 2026 (UTC)

• "at a cost of approximately $2,294,l50" should presumably have the numeral "1" instead of the lowercase "l"

  well spotted. Corrected. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 19:23, 5 March 2026 (UTC)

• "This process was adopted by all plants, the only difference being that Mallinckrodt used graphite boxes and shelves to hold the brown oxide while it was fluoridated in steel retorts at high temperatures, while Harshaw used magnesium and later nickel trays inside steel tubes lined with magnesium" Begs the question what did the DuPont and Lindes plant use, but perhaps this isn't known? You also state the different containers used separately later so perhaps the detail on containers can be removed from here?

  Removed. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 19:23, 5 March 2026 (UTC)

• "About 60 kg of highly enriched uranium provided the fissile component of the Little Boy atomic bomb used in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in August 1945" I wasn't clear how this related to the production of uranium tetrachloride?

  Moved down to the metal section. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 19:23, 5 March 2026 (UTC)

Changes look good. Happy to support this - Dumelow (talk) 06:21, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

Nick-D

I also reviewed this article at A-class, and am commenting here in response to a request from Hawkeye7. I'd like to offer the following comments:

• I very broadly agree with Borsoka's comments above regarding the article's size, but would note that the underlying topic is quite complex (establishing supply chains for nuclear weapons from scratch). As such, I think that the article could be condensed a bit, but this topic does require quite a bit of text to cover adequately. I've suggested some areas where the text could be trimmed below.

  I have responded, and trimmed the article, but I think Boroska and I will have to agree to disagree over the canonicity of word counts. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 21:14, 8 March 2026 (UTC)

• "As area engineer, Ruhoff was responsible for nearly four hundred personnel " - where these all military personnel?

  Like most engineer areas, it employed both military and civilian personnel. I Have verified this, amended the text and added a reference, but could not find a breakdown. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 07:36, 8 March 2026 (UTC)

• The 'Eldorado mine' section feels too long

  I have cut it back. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 07:36, 8 March 2026 (UTC)

• Do we know why the Soviets requested uranium as part of Lend Lease?

  "The committee's senior investigator (Mr. Louis Russell) said the Russians in February, 1943, said they required uranium salts for '"military and medical purposes," and uranium metal itself, to harden steel for gun barrels. Russell said he believed that in addition, to wanting to obtain uranium compounds and uranium metal itself, the Russians hoped, by placing orders, to ascertain whether uranium was considered a strategic element by the U.S. Government." Added another reference, but have not incorporated additional text. Let me know if you feel this is worth adding. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 07:36, 8 March 2026 (UTC)

• "During the loading process one barrel fell into the water and had to be retrieved by a Navy diver" - seems like excessive detail; I'd suggest removing any other such titbits.

  I wanted to emphasise how valuable it was. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 07:36, 8 March 2026 (UTC)

• Currency values are not always converted to modern equivalents. I'd suggest omitting this across the board given the complexity of making meaningful conversions over this amount of time (e.g. a common method is to adjust for inflation over time, but this is rather simplistic given that the overall real size of the economy has grown, meaning that a $1 in 1945 was a bigger relative outlay compared to whatever its modern equivalent is).

  Another editor felt that there were too many currency conversions, so I cut back on the number of them. Uranium goes for about USD $190 per kilogram today. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 07:36, 8 March 2026 (UTC)

  I have removed a lot of costs and consequent currency conversions. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 20:20, 8 March 2026 (UTC)

• The "Uranium refining and processing" section is a bit exhausting to read, as it goes into so much detail about each of the key components. I'd suggest looking for areas in which the information on how the different components were produced could be condensed. For instance, the para starting with "Around this time, someone from the Manhattan Project's" is rather wordy.

  Trimmed. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 20:20, 8 March 2026 (UTC)

• The standard of writing and research is incredibly high across the board. This article could easily be a professional book chapter (or two), which I think helps to justify its length, though subject to some caveats as noted above. Nick-D (talk) 07:05, 8 March 2026 (UTC)
  • I fully agree with the final remark above: the article could well form at least a chapter in a highly professional book, and its depth and level of detail are clearly the result of considerable effort and expertise. However, this is precisely my concern: we are here to build an encyclopaedia, and are therefore expected to produce encyclopaedic articles rather than material suited to book chapters. Borsoka (talk) 16:09, 18 March 2026 (UTC)
    • I certainly respect your view, but some entries in specialist types of encyclopaedias can be quite long. For instance, the largest entries in the excellent Oxford Companion to the Second World War run for more than ten pages and have multiple detailed sections written by different experts. Nick-D (talk) 08:28, 19 March 2026 (UTC)
      • Thank you for the reference. Although some entries in the Oxford Companion to the Second World War are indeed quite long, it is worth noting that the entry on the Manhattan Project as a whole is under 30 words, while the article on the atomic bomb extends to only around 7,000 words (roughly 70 per cent of the length of the article under review, which itself addresses only a relatively limited aspect of the bomb's development). Borsoka (talk) 03:13, 20 March 2026 (UTC)
• My comments have been addressed and I'm pleased to support this nomination. Nick-D (talk) 08:28, 19 March 2026 (UTC)

Source review

Didn't do any spotchecking, but looked up some sources and they seem all reliable and properly formatted. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 13:00, 18 March 2026 (UTC)

UC

In response to Borsoka's oppose above: I strongly disagree that selecting an overall word count based on the topic, and then asking that the article be trimmed to it before reading it, is a sensible approach here. Assessments of whether an article is too long should come from, among other things, whether it gives undue weight to certain areas, goes into excessive complexity for a general audience or too much detail for its level in the hierarchy, or on the judgement that parts could be written more tightly without sacrificing anything of importance. To that end, I intend to pick out a section and do a "concision review", with the aim of forming a judgement on these questions. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 14:33, 18 March 2026 (UTC)

I am afraid I must disagree with your remarks above. In my experience of working with professional publishing houses, adherence to prescribed article length has always been a fundamental principle: submissions exceeding those limits are typically declined without review in order to save reviewers' valuable (and often costly) time. While I fully appreciate that WP operates under different standards, I tend to follow an approach similar to that of publishing houses in the interest of efficiency (albeit with some flexibility when supporting first-time GA nominators). In this instance, however, I took the time to read the article's "Background" section in full and made my earlier comment on the scope for reduction on that basis. All the same, an article still exceeding 10,000 words—roughly 1.6 times the generally accepted upper limit—on a relatively minor aspect of a larger project within WWII, itself a major subject in the modern period of human history, cannot, in my view, be considered concise under any reasonable interpretation of the term. Borsoka (talk) 16:01, 18 March 2026 (UTC)

Support Comments from Noleander

• I'm coming to this nomination from Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/FAC urgents

• "Show Ref Check" tool shows everything okay except it reports a missing "loccation" (city) datum for these three sources:
  • Villa, Brian L. (1981). "Chapter 11: Alliance Politics
  • Scalia, Joseph M. (2000). Germany's Last Mission to Japan: The
  • Bothwell, Robert (1984). Eldorado: Canada's National Uranium

  Added locations. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 19:27, 20 March 2026 (UTC)

• N-dash vs hyphen? Manhattan District 1947c, p. VIII-19. I believe MOS:RANGE asks for an n-dash there, as is used for page ranges in all other citations.

  Not a page range, so hyphen is correct. I could use the {{hyphen}} template if you think that would be appropriate. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 19:27, 20 March 2026 (UTC)

• Images: are helpful and informative. The article has a few rows of images which are kinda discouraged by WP:GALLERY, but I think the usage here in this article is appropriate and beneficial to readers. I have not checked free-to-use status.

• Some captions are not following WP:CAPFRAG with precision; e.g.: "Major General Leslie R. Groves Jr. (left) awards Edgar Sengier (center) the Medal for Merit for his contribution to the war effort" probably should end in a period. I'm not a grammar expert, but if I see a verb, I expect a period :-)

• Added full stop. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 19:27, 20 March 2026 (UTC)

• Alt text: visually impaired users that use screen-reader apps will want alt text for all images. Missing in
  • File:Edgar Sengier receiving the Medal of Merit.jpg
  • File:Bowling Green NYC Feb 2020 07.jpg
  • File:BOILER and PROCESS BUILDINGS...
  • ... and others ...

• Prose: Very high-quality & professional. I'm reading through the article, and I'm not finding any suggestions for improvement. What at first seems like it might be a dry subject turns out to be engaging and keeps me interested, like a suspense novel.

• Ran spell check: no issues

• Ran Copyright violation tool: no warnings.

• Minor ambiguity: The Union Mines Development Corporation, a subsidiary of Union Carbide with its headquarters at 50 East 42nd Street in New York City, ... is the street address for the subsidiary, the parent corporation, or both?d

• Union Mines. Deleted the company location. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 19:27, 20 March 2026 (UTC)

• Story line lost? The narrative begins strong in the Lead, Background & Organization sections. But that thread is lost in the following four sections: Procurement, Refining, Other, and Explorations. Can 1 or 2 sentences be added to the very top of each of those four sections that tie the section into the overall narrative. These intro sentences might contain things like:
  • Importance of the section's tasks to the overall mission goals
  • How the section's tasks fit into the overall timeline
  • Who were the leaders of the section's tasks & did who did they report to?

The four latter sections have top-quality prose & content, but they seem isolated ... stand alone.

• Continuation of above: picking a random one of the four: Geological Exploration. This currently begins The Murray Hill Area was established to carry out the exploration for and development of mineral resources required by the Manhattan Project. Consider adding a few words at a start to segue from the Lead (Grove & Manhattan project): In addition to building facilities to refine and process materials, the Manhattan project also needed to discover and extract raw materials. This required geological exploration on a global scale, and development of mines and mining technologies. In 1939 Grove established the Murray Hill Area to .... . (Note: the facts in the hypothetical blue text are fabricated for the purpose of illustration).
  • Ditto for all four of the final top-level sections

    Added some one-sentence bridges. Expanded the Murray Hill Area to include its leadership. This was fascinating stuff and I got sidetracked. One of the blink-and-you-miss-it events from the last week was the helium shortage due to the war in the Persian Gulf. The Murray Hill Area is the start of a long story of the involvement of the Big Oil companies in uranium that goes back to the Manhattan Project. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 00:56, 22 March 2026 (UTC)

One of the most amazing facts I've ever heard is: There is no way to manufacture helium. Once we exhaust the supply from underground, we run out forever. Noleander (talk) 01:38, 22 March 2026 (UTC)

• Manual of Style: Overall, looks good. I cannot find any improvements other than a couple of minor issues mentioned above.

• Images in bottom two sections? Not many images from "Other minerals" section to the end. Not a show stopper for FA, but if 1 or 2 could be added, that might persuade some readers to venture down there.

• Size of article: The size is currently 10,253 prose words, which exceeds the 9,000 words suggested in WP:SIZERULE. That guideline provides an exception: "Probably should be divided or trimmed, though the scope of a topic can sometimes justify the added reading material." [emphasis added]. Vital articles at level 3 or 4 almost certainly are entitled to a waiver ... that includes this article's parent Manhattan Project. But this article is not a Vital Article. Other factors to consider to determine if a larger size is warranted:

1. The topic of the article is defined by sources (not the nominator)
2. Topic is clearly circumscribed
3. Sources have lots to say on the topic
4. Article cannot be conveniently broken into sub-articles
5. Article is not padded with trivia, anecdotes, quotes, or filler
6. Article remains engaging and interesting, in spite of its size

My assessment is that this article satisfies all six of these criteria. So, in my judgement, even tho the article is not a Vital Article, it is entitled to exceed the 9,000 limit.

• Support. An engrossing read. Noleander (talk) 01:38, 22 March 2026 (UTC)
• Closing note: This candidate has been promoted, but there may be a delay in bot processing of the close. Please see WP:FAC/ar, and leave the {{featured article candidates}} template in place on the talk page until the bot goes through. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 15:20, 23 March 2026 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.