Talk:Celilo Falls/GA1

GA Review

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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I am reviewing this article. Detailed comments will follow soon. Brianboulton (talk) 16:09, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

Preliminary review Generally a well-written and interesting article. My main problem was grasping its focus: is it about a former settlement called Celilo Falls, or about a waterfall called Celilo Falls, or about a stretch of river which contained Celilo Falls along with other features lost to a dam? The article begins: "Celilo Falls […] was a tribal fishing area…", which indicates a focus on the settlement. However, the next sentence begins: "It was the first drop in a long series of rapids…", where "it" presumably means the waterfall. The article has a detailed subsection on the Narrows and The Dalles, which were features respectively three and ten miles downriver from Celilo. There is reference in the text to "the Celilo area", which again takes the focus away from Celilo itself , as does the large aerial photo of the river. I think that overcoming these uncertainties will require a rewriting of the lead, and attention to other issues which I have listed.

• Lead
  • The lead needs extending, to provide a concise summary of the whole article, rather than a brief introduction, per WP:Lead
  • Boldface should only be used in the first sentence, for the main name of the article and any alternative names. Otherwise, use italics rather than bold for emphasis.
  • What is the date of the infobox photograph?

• Celilo falls (Geography subsection)
  • Spaces are not necessary around mdashes

• The Narrows and The Dalles (Geography subsection)
  • The names The Narrows and The Dalles in the text should not be bold.
  • The two main paragraphs of this section are about other rapids systems, below Celilo Falls, and I wonder whether this much detail is necessary in this article? My preference would be to delete these paras, absorbing the short first paragraph of the section into the previous section, to provide a single-paragraph "Geography" section, thus avoiding the confusion of having a subsection with the same title as the article.
  • What are the dates of the two photographs associated with this section?

• History – fishing and trading
  • Why suddenly refer to the place as Wyam?
  • Is it possible to develop more text on the early days of the settlement? If there are 11,000 years of history, I imagine some noteworthy events must have occurred, before the arrival of Lewis and Clark. This will help to fix the focus of the article more firmly on Celilo itself.
  • The focus comes into question again, by the references to the "Celilo area", and later to the "three major native fishing sites".

• Navigation: I’m not certain of the point of the Joseph Nathan Teal quote. I don’t know what he meant, nor whose opinion it is that his sentiment “endured for decades”. (Decades is imprecise anyway)

I moved the quote into a quote box, and adjusted the text. I agree that it didn't flow well before; hopefully this addresses that. I think it's important to keep this quote in some form, as it captures the high-minded rhetoric and attitude that was prevalent at the time, both locally and in the whole "taming the rivers of the west" mission of the Bureau of Land Management and other federal agencies. -Pete (talk) 20:24, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

• Flooded by the dam: To maintain the chronology, "as occurred in the 1948 destruction of Vanport.." should read: "as would occur…etc" This last section of the article is quite affecting (which I'm not sure is supposed to be a good thing in an encyclopedia), but again it seems to be about more than Celilo. Is it a possibility that this article could be merged with The Dalles Dam (or the other way round – this is much the more developed article)? This is a possibility for consideration, unless more Celilo-specific information can be pumped into this article to clarify its focus.

I look forward to your responses. Brianboulton (talk) 21:02, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

Note: In the absence of any response to the above review, after five days, I am about to fail the article. Please respond. Brianboulton (talk) 22:26, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Brian, thank you for the thorough review. I think your questions about the focus of the article are good ones, and ones that those of us working on this article have tried to consider; but your fresh perspective may be a great help in moving toward resolution of some kind. Most literally, "Celilo Falls" is the name of one waterfall, but in common parlance in the region, the name is also applied to the trading center, and to the entire stretch of the river including the Dalles and the Narrows. So there really is no definitive answer to the question; and since much of the notability of the waterfall and the stretch of river derives from its role as a fishing site, I don't think it would be helpful to create separate articles. Still, as you suggest, some judicious shifting of information among this article, Celilo Village, Oregon, Lake Celilo, and The Dalles Dam might still need to be done. This will not be a quick fix; I'll try to work on it in the coming days, and hope some others will join in too. If you feel the need to fail the article rather than leave it on hold for too long, I'll understand; I'll work on the article some more in any event, as your points are all well taken. -Pete (talk) 23:14, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

It's on hold until 10 July. Brianboulton (talk) 22:47, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the helpful review. You've touched upon the main difficulty in this article -- defining what exactly we mean when we say "Celilo Falls" -- and perhaps we should have a discussion about the proper scope of the article as we determine how best to explain that scope in the lead section. The problem, of course, is that "Celilo Falls" is used by various writers in various contexts to mean different things -- sometimes it refers to the geological features (the waterfalls and rapids) and sometimes to the cultural features (the native settlements). When it is used in a geological sense, "Celilo" most often refers to the first big drop or series of drops (already you see the ambiguity creeping in). Sometimes the term is extended to include the Short Narrows. When used in a cultural sense, it may be extended even further to include the settlements all the way down to the Long Narrows, also known as the Dalles. Complicating the matter further, the native settlements themselves changed over 10,000+ years. There were permanent villages as well as seasonal trading camps, and what we know about the settlement patterns from the archaeological record is not the same as what we know from the 19th-century explorer and settler accounts, which is not the same as the Celilo Village that existed on the banks of the river when the falls were submerged in 1957. I believe the most important definition of "Celilo Falls" is the one currently found in the first sentence, "a tribal fishing area," or native fishery. But the history of native communities like Celilo cannot be so easily "encyclopedized" as articles about modern cities can be. The article will need quite a bit of work to unfold this history. I take an inclusive view on the scope, believing that this article in its ideal form should be about "Celilo Falls and the Long Narrows," in other words, an article about the entire tribal fishing area extending for ten or so miles along the Columbia River. That makes more sense to me than having separate articles about the Celilo Falls waterfall proper, the Short Narrows, the Long Narrows, the Dalles rapids, etc. There is so much overlap that this should all be in one place. Celilo Village, Oregon should remain a separate article, as it didn't really come into existence until 1957 and is located some distance away from the original native settlements. The Dalles, Oregon should remain a separate article about the modern city, with a hatnote pointing to this article for readers interested in the geological formation of the Dalles and the historical settlements.

As a first step toward trying to address these concerns, I have rewritten the lead section and removed the infobox (which I feel puts too much emphasis on the geological "Celilo Falls" only). There is much more to be done, of course. Other solutions? Northwesterner1 (talk) 08:45, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

The changes to the lead, and other textual amendments, have resolved most of the ambiguity about the name and focus of the article. I'm not sure that there is that much more that needs doing; the article is well-written, interesting, a little sad, but it certainly engages the reader. The following points, all relatively minor, are still outstanding:

• Dates are needed for the photographs
• In the "Celilo Falls, looking west" image, the caption should briefly describe the activity taking place.
• Geography section: Having established in the lead that "Celilo Falls" refers to the Falls and to the surrounding native settlement area, the name shouldn't be used as a heading for a subsection dealing entirely with the falls. I suggest that this subsection be renamed "Main waterfall" or something similar.
• "Flooded by the dam" should be a main section on its own, not a subsection of History. You might consider putting the last two brief paras into an "Aftermath" section.

Brianboulton (talk) 11:42, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

I addressed everything in this, most recent list. I found the name of the photographer of the black and white photos, there's an article on him. I chose "Legacy" as, I think, a more neutral section heading than "Aftermath." -Pete (talk) 16:56, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

So far as I am concerned, the article is fine now. By all means continue to tweak it, but it is GA-worthy as it stands. The reference formats need attention, however:-

• Page numbers should be written, e.g. "p. 80" or "pp. 80–82", not just as numbers
• Some on-line citations lack retrieval dates
• The cite web format has not generally been followed

These points, however, do not constitute grounds for holding up its promotion. With regard to the GA criteria, it is well-written with no obvious MoS violations apart from some reference formatting. It is also comprehensive, fully referenced, neutral and stable. Its images are delightful. All in all, a good piece of work, short but highly informative. Congratulations. Brianboulton (talk) 00:11, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the review, Brian, and for helping us see ways to improve the article.Northwesterner1 (talk) 01:27, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Ditto, that! -Pete (talk)

Actual location?

So what are the coordinates for the falls' site? 45°38'52.76"N 120°58'12.02"W was where I'd been told in the past but I'm not sure. An aerial photo from around the time the dam was about to be completed shows the falls at what I think is 45°37'57.67"N 121° 6'7.58"W --24.21.148.155 (talk) 02:48, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.