Talk:Belle Isle Conservatory

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Belle Isle Conservatory/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Ritchie333 (talk · contribs) 12:47, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

I'll give this a go, as I like geography and place articles. It's a shame the article has been sitting in the queue for so long and was previously abandoned.

Lead

• "a 982-acre island park" - this claim (referring to Belle Isle itself) doesn't appear to be in the body of the article. For a GA, every fact in the lead must be mentioned (and, ideally, expanded upon) in the body.
• "and was remodeled and renovated several times years after" - suggest "and has been remodeled and renovated several times since"
• "In 1953 the" - I think there needs to be a comma between "1953" and "the"
• "a strikingly impressive domed center reaching 85 feet in height" - I'd leave out the "strikingly impressive", it sounds a bit too weaselly for my taste. I'd go with "The conservatory's center dome is 85 feet high".
• It may be worth using the {{convert}} template to automatically convert heights to metres. As this structure sits right on the border, I think including metric for Canadian readers would be useful.
• "The conservatory is opened to the public free of charge" - the subtle difference between this and the body is the latter says it is "free to visit". I assume the body also means free as in beer, but it could also imply free as in speech (ie: the general public is allowed in).
• The opening hours are not mentioned in the body. I don't think this a particularly important fact for the lead to mention, but it's a useful fact to mention, so I would simply move it to somewhere in the body.

Specific comments on the body will follow Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 12:47, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

History and architecture

• The first paragraph is unsourced. I can find sources online that prove it opened in 1904, but not for the specific opening date.
• For "almost 49 years it was known as the conservatory" - I'm confused by what you mean here. Do you mean it was known as the Belle Isle Conservatory, known as The Conservatory (proper noun), or something else? As the second sentence provides more context, it might be simpler to just take the first sentence out, and append the second sentence with something like ", and the conservatory was named in her honor"
• "In April 1953, Anna Scripps Whitcomb, who was daughter" - I don't think "who was" is necessary
• I can't see anything in the citation on the second paragraph that actually verifies the claims made, other than a mention of Anna Scripps Whitcomb. The April 1953 date is not mentioned, nor that the orchids were rescued during World War II.
• The remainder of this paragraph is unsourced. A claim such as "one of the government's largest owned orchid collections" definitely needs a citation
• The Historic Detroit source contains quite a bit more information not present in the article, including averaging 1.5 million visitors a year in the 1920s, and the cost of replacing the wooden frame with aluminium

Botany

• The first paragraph doesn't seem to have anything to do with the plants in the conservatory, but rather talks about the component parts of the building. I think this would be a better fit in the previous paragraph.
• "the Vestibule (in the front, serving as the welcome area)" - I can't see this fact in the citation given. The source itself is quite awkward to navigate, being a section of drop-down questions and answers. I would recommend you add instructions of which specific question to click on to verify the facts. In this respect, it's not too different to requiring a specific page number for book, journal and newspaper sources.
• "The Palm house, maintained at 70 °F" - suggest "The Palm house has a maintained temperature of 70°F. As before, a conversion to Celcius for Canadians and foreigners who like the metric system would be useful. Also, the figure itself doesn't appear to be in the source given
• Some of the second paragraph is unsourced. The remainder is sourced to the "Q&A" site which has verification difficulties I mentioned earlier

Lily pond

• "Not part of the original design, the lily pond was constructed in 1936" suggest "It was not part of the original design, but constructed in 1936"

Greenhouses

• I can't obviously see where most information is cited to the web source given. I can see a brief mention of the greenhouses, referring to 10-12 graders using its facilities, but that's about it.

Non-profit involvement & volunteerism

• The first paragraph is unsourced, and seems to be more about Belle Isle generally rather than the conservatory. Particular claims that definitely require a source include "Belle Isle has long history of support through private organizations and donors" and "The Belle Isle Botanical society offered many services"
• "The Anna Scripps Whitcomb Conservatory is free to visit" - just "The conservatory" will do here, we've already been told the name earlier in the article
• "equipment, purchase of plant material, etc." - "etc" is not a suitable term to use in an encyclopedia
• "In 2009, the four organizations put a plan in action to form a single organization that could pool all their efforts and ideas into a larger and more effective non-profit dedicated to improvement projects." - this sentence reads too much like a campaign statement as opposed to an encyclopedia. I would simply say "In 2009, these individual organisations combined to form the Belle Isle Conservancy".
• "Kresge gave the four organizations $100,000, in 2009, and in 2010 another $100,000" - have any donations been given since then?
• "Currently, there are three employees" - "currently" is one of the words to watch and should not be used

Gallery

• The gallery is too big. Our guidelines for galleries say "the use of a gallery section may be appropriate in some Wikipedia articles if a collection of images can illustrate aspects of a subject that cannot be easily or adequately described by text or individual images". I think one of the problems you have is that the article is quite short, meaning that adding specific images of plants held in the conservatory cannot easily be put inline, so in that respect a gallery of the best pictures for both architecture and botany might be appropriate. I wouldn't add more than four or five images here though. The rest should be moved to Commons if they haven't already done so.

Summary

• @Varnent: I've been mulling over what to do with this. I think my main problem with this article is, once we resolve the issues and trim down some of the prose, it's not really long enough, although if we add in some of the facts that are held in book sources, that may address the balance. There are also serious problems with unsourced content that must be resolved.

In conclusion, I think we'd be better off merging this article with Belle Isle State Park (Michigan), which is only 11K, and working on that instead. How does that sound as a way forward? Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 13:38, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

It's been nearly a week since I've commented on the article, which hasn't been touched since July, so I don't think I can see a way of passing it as a GA at this time. Sorry. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 15:57, 6 January 2015 (UTC)