Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Roxy Ann Peak/archive2

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

The article was promoted by Ian Rose 10:01, 22 December 2013 (UTC) [1].[reply]

Roxy Ann Peak[edit]

Roxy Ann Peak (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

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Nominator(s): LittleMountain5 20:27, 17 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Roxy Ann Peak is a beautiful round-topped mountain that looms over the city of Medford, Oregon. The largely undeveloped peak is protected by the massive Prescott Park, home to several nature trails and many amazing views of the surrounding landscape. I am nominating this for featured article because I think it has vastly improved since its last FAC nearly five years ago, and now meets the featured article criteria. Cheers, LittleMountain5 20:27, 17 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Feedback from Curly Turkey[edit]

Feel free to disagree with anything here; some of it is just my personal opinion.

  • "located at the eastern edge": I think you can drop "located"
  • "1,740-acre (704.2 ha) Prescott Park.": Is "1,740" a precise figure? It sounds rounded, and if that's the case, the hectares should be rounded as well.
  • "the 50 to 35 million-year-old Payne Cliffs Formation&nbsp... 35 to 30 million-year-old volcanic basalt ... 5 to 2 million-year-old basalt intrusion": I'm not a geologist, but don't we normally go from the smaller number to the larger? We're not talking years BCE here. Especially since later on you have "the past 8,000 to 10,000 years".
  • "prone to downhill creep, earthflows, and landslides.": I'd change the order, as "to downhill creep" initally feelslike a typo for "to creep downhill".
  • " far away as near Shady Cove,": "as far away as near" sounds awkward
  • "animals which are still abundant there today": you could safely drop the "today"
  • "led to the Rogue River Wars of 1855 and 1856. After the war,": shouldn't that be "After the wars"?
  • "Roxy Ann and her husband, John, and Stephen and Mary Taylor": if you dropped the first comma it would be more clear that John was Roxy Ann's husband
  • "one for each U.S. state": is there something that could be linked to here?
  • "a Medford police officer who was ... a surge in vandalism, littering ... city limits": overlinking
  • "a trend that would continue for several decades": "a trend that continued"
  • "Vandalism has since decreased by 70 percent.": as of?
  • "than all of the city's other parks combined": I think we can drop "all of"
  • "in part because of a controversial bill passed in 2003": unless you're go into detail about how it's controversial (and probably even then), I'd drop "controversial"
  • "The bill easily doubled": I'd drop "easily"
  • "cost of retrofitting an existing structure approaches $100,000": "approached"
  • "also home to the RoxyAnn Winery,": is "RoxyAnn" with no space how it's actually spelled?
  • "On September 21, 2009 at around": I think there's an argument going on over this, but I believe the guideline still calls for a comma after 2009
  • "Deer Ridge Fire" section: does this really require a whole subsection? Is this fire somehow a defining feature of Roxy Ann's history? Check out WP:WEIGHT
  • "containing trees such as Douglas-fir,": "Douglas fir" should be unhyphenated
  • "The peak is home to many species of birds, including blue-gray gnatcatchers, lazuli buntings, oak titmice, acorn woodpeckers, and California quail on the lower slopes, and mountain quail, mountain chickadees, and red-breasted nuthatches on the upper slopes. Wild turkeys and raptors such as Cooper's hawks, golden eagles, bald eagles, and prairie falcons are also common. Ruby-crowned kinglets, yellow-rumped warblers, and golden-crowned sparrows arrive in the winter.": Apparently most of these animals should be capitalized.
  • again, I wonder if the entire paragraph on Roosevelt elk is due weight
Recommendations that won't affect support[edit]
  • I fixed some harv errors. These can be really hard to catch unaided. If you're not averse to using scripts I'd reccomend User:Ucucha/HarvErrors.
  • The article is fairly dense with inline cites. WP:BUNDLING has some suggestions for prettying things up. Since you're using the sfn template, I'd recommend using {{sfnm}} to deal with it.
  • I like {{<nowiki>[[Template:Portal|Portal]]<nowiki>}} links, and think it would be nice to see something like {{</nowiki>Portal|Mountains|Oregon}} in there. Curly Turkey (gobble) 04:39, 18 November 2013 (UTC) Never mind—even after double-checking I seem to have missed that you had one there already. Curly Turkey (gobble) 04:40, 18 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

———Curly Turkey (gobble) 00:48, 18 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the review! I fixed all but a few of the problems:
  • RoxyAnn Winery is indeed spelled without a space, strangely enough.
  • I agree that the Deer Ridge Fire probably doesn't merit its own section... The problem is that the information doesn't seem to fit anywhere else. Any suggestions?
    • It's not the section header I was concerned about, it was how much space was given to it in ratio to the rest of the article. Was it really such a big deal that it required two paragraphs? Have there been no other fires throughout its recorded history? Curly Turkey (gobble) 04:34, 18 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • It'd be fairly easy to shrink it down to a sentence or two, but then the section would be tiny. Are such sections acceptable in featured articles? LittleMountain5 05:48, 18 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • I shrank the section down a bit. LittleMountain5 04:56, 3 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • I'm still not sure about this being an entire subsection. Is there any statement in your sources that makes this fire stand out? I mean, something along the lines of "biggest fire in 200 years" or something—it seems to me to lack context. Why focus on this fire and not any other? The feeling is that it was included in such detail because it was recent, rather than because it was particularly significant to the subject of the article as a whole. Curly Turkey (gobble) 06:10, 3 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • I (grudgingly) have to agree with you—this is probably a case of recentism. I shrank it further to two sentences, and I wouldn't be opposed to removing it entirely. LittleMountain5 06:55, 3 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • I think that's a lot better, although I'd still prefer a little more context. I googled around a bit and couldn't find anything myself, though, so I won't hold that over your head. I'm not sure "Modern development" is quite the right fit for it—actually, I'm not sure "Modern development" is the best subsection title ("recentism" and all that—also, the section's not all about development). How about renaming it to "21st century" or something? Curly Turkey (gobble) 07:36, 3 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Sounds good, done. I wish there was more context too, but I think it just doesn't exist. I've found a few mentions of other fires, but nothing specific. LittleMountain5 07:43, 3 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm always unsure whether I should capitalize animal common names or not... (And plant names, for that matter.) WP:BIRDS seems to favor capitalization, but many other non-bird articles don't (mainly mammals). What I'm getting at is: should I capitalize just the bird names, or all of them?
    • Clicking through to the articles will show you what's (likely) preferred—me, I use this script, which highlights different kinds of links. The redirects appear in green, and if you hover over them it tells you what they redirect to. In the case of all these animals, they were redirecting to capitalized versions. Curly Turkey (gobble) 04:34, 18 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Yeah, I know they were all redirects—in fact, I created a few of them. They're capitalized now. I just wish animal articles were more consistent. LittleMountain5 05:48, 18 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • I'm far from an expert on the subject, I was just pointing out that they were capitalized in their own articles, so I thought it likely they should be capitalized in this one, too. The other articles themselves could, of course, be mistaken, or there could be multiple standards, etc etc. Without knowing myself, I'd just capitalize the ones that are capitalized in their own articles, or hunt down a subject expert where I wasn't sure. Curly Turkey (gobble) 06:16, 18 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Do you recommend I remove the elk paragraph? I thought it was interesting.
    • There's "interesting", and there's "encyclopaedic". I thought it was just a bit much, and given how recent it was (same as the fire) it made me wonder if it wa really all that significant, or if it jest happened to be recent enough to have a lot of online material to reference it. Unless it can be explained why this event requires so much space, it gives a sense of imbalance. Curly Turkey (gobble) 04:34, 18 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • I changed the article from sfn to sfnm, but I'm not sure if I like it. While the text is cleaner, the reference section seems a lot more confusing, at least to me. Thoughts?
    • It's not a requirement at all, but I prefer it, thinking that one doesn't normally scan over the list of citations—normally one clicks through from an inline cite, and only wants to see the citation(s) for that particular instance. With the prose, however, most of the time you just want the inline cites to disappear so you can just read. Whichever style you go with will not impact whether the article is worthy of FA or not, it was just a suggestion based on my personal preferences. Curly Turkey (gobble) 04:34, 18 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • I didn't like the redundancies that sfnm created, so I changed many of the inline cites back to sfn, but kept some of the more common bundles together to reduce clutter. LittleMountain5 05:04, 3 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Also, thanks for fixing the harv errors. That script is awesome. Cheers, LittleMountain5 03:49, 18 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Support. It would still be nice to have more context for the fire, but I still think this article meets the Featured Article requirements. Curly Turkey (gobble) 08:31, 3 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you! I'll keep my eye out for more fire-related sources. They may be out there somewhere... Sincerely, LittleMountain5 08:45, 3 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Image check[edit]

———Curly Turkey (gobble) 04:45, 18 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the check. (Yes, all but one of the images are mine.) As for the image layout, I don't see much of an alternative... There's not much room to cram all the images on the right, and none of the sections are long enough to not have a left-aligned image under a section heading. Hmm... LittleMountain5 05:48, 18 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Minor issue[edit]

This line: "Roxy Ann Peak has a high level of biodiversity due to its location midway between the Cascade, Klamath, and Eastern Cascade ecoregions, and also because of its wide range of elevations." is poorly worded. I also found that the "Cascade and Eastern Cascade" to be unspecific and redundant in usage. Unless there is a clear reason for needing both, I'd drop the "Cascade" part. I believe that that you could drop the "level" and the "location midway" awkwardness by restructuring the sentence as "The high biodiversity of Roxy Ann Peak is due to its location between the Klamath and Eastern Cascade ecoregions and the Peak's wide range of elevation." Just a suggestion. 209.255.230.32 (talk) 14:31, 19 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  • Additionally, the whole "Flora and fauna" subsection needs a bit of work. Apart from the inevitable "Sea of Blue", I am seeing that it is disjointed in form. First it details what is predominate than it contrasts it by stating what is the "most common in the region, an apparent contradiction of the preceeding sentence. And I am left wondering if any endangered or protected species currently reside on the Peak. I'm not going to go through many of the other prose issues as listed above, but this section stands out for me as needing some expansion and rewording. 209.255.230.32 (talk) 14:37, 19 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • I reworded the biodiversity sentence, but kept "Cascade" and "Eastern Cascade" because they are two distinct ecoregions, both relevant to Roxy Ann Peak. I also reworded some other parts of the section. Hopefully it's clearer now. Unfortunately, I haven't found any mention of endangered or protected species in any of the sources. Thanks, LittleMountain5 20:00, 19 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for checking and fixing it. 209.255.230.32 (talk) 20:59, 19 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from Quadell[edit]

This article is very well-written. I made some minor copy-edits (mostly opinions; feel free to revert and discuss if you disagree with any of them), but the prose is generally excellent, aided in part by Curly Turkey's suggestions. I found a few issues, which I list below.

  • The phrase "was most likely attributed to" should be reworded. (It was definitely attributed to a cause, whether that attribution was correct or not.) Perhaps you mean "most likely caused by"?
  • The sentences beginning "The lower slopes of the peak..." and "At higher elevations..." should really be broken up.
  • An unnamed and unmentioned person dominates the middle of the Roxy Ann Road photo. To be honest, it feels a bit unexpected and distracting for me, like using this for an image of the Taj Mahal. Is there a replacement? If not, I don't think the image shows much that informs the reader about this road; could it be omitted?
  • The paragraph about the "challenge course" isn't clear. It has "15 elements"? What does this mean? The link is to ropes course, and these seem to vary quite a lot. Is there more information on this one?

I look forward to your comments. – Quadell (talk) 16:01, 30 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your review! I agree with all of your concerns, and have addressed them. I could potentially add more to the challenge course paragraph, but I'm not sure if that much detail is necessary. Thoughts? LittleMountain5 07:25, 1 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Support. All my concerns have been addressed, and I believe the article now fulfills our GA FA criteria. – Quadell (talk) 14:15, 1 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Much appreciated! I hope you meant "FA criteria", though. ;-) Cheers, LittleMountain5 02:00, 2 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
D'oh! (Those too.) – Quadell (talk) 13:19, 2 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from Cas Liber[edit]

Queries to follow Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 12:03, 2 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Within the last millennium, the region became home to the Latgawa Native Americans tribe - shouldn't "Indian" be singular here? Looks very odd as a plural before "tribe"....
Prescott Park is Medford's largest park, covering much of the upper slopes and summit of Roxy Ann. The park is two and a half times larger than the city's other parks combined - whoa, four "park"s in two sentences -any reduction of these would be nice.

Support' on comprehensiveness and prose.....looking alright otherwise....Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 12:50, 2 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your comments and support. I singularized "Native Americans" and removed a "park". Cheers, LittleMountain5 17:21, 2 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Source review - spotchecks not done

  • Multipage sources should include page numbers in short cites - most are missing
  • Should trim the GBooks links beginning at the # sign, and they don't need access dates
  • What makes this a high-quality reliable source? Nikkimaria (talk) 03:40, 17 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Thanks for your comments! I added all of the missing page numbers, trimmed the Google Books links, and removed the Peakbagger reference. LittleMountain5 01:18, 18 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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