Talk:Brewer Island

Brewer Island has been listed as one of the Geography and places good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
January 16, 2022	Good article nominee	Listed

A fact from this article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "Did you know?" column on December 6, 2021.

The text of the entry was: Did you know ... that before Foster City was built on Brewer Island, unsuccessful proposals included a hog farm, two military air bases, two civilian airports, and an entertainment complex larger than Disneyland?

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Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Kavyansh.Singh (talk) 05:17, 27 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

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Comment or view
Article history

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... that before Foster City was built on Brewer Island, unsuccessful proposals included a hog farm, two military air bases, two civilian airports, and an entertainment complex larger than Disneyland? Source: Numerous within article (each of the "unsuccessful developments" sections in history).

Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Dan Quayle 2000 presidential campaign
Comment: I'm going to see how many articles I can write today. Wish me luck!

5x expanded by JPxG (talk). Self-nominated at 22:03, 17 November 2021 (UTC).[reply]

More than long enough, with a huge expansion (466 B/75 words to 11 kB/1789 words) occurring in one day -- the same day it was nominated. Article mentions and cites hog farm, ✓ military air bases, ✓ civilian airports, ✓ and larger-than-Disneyland entertainment complex, ✓ although the last one was buried a bit. QPQ done. Vaticidalprophet 08:18, 19 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Excellent! I'd like to take this opportunity to thank @Hog Farm:, without whose sacrifice this hook would not have been possible. jp×g 10:12, 19 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Promoting to Prep 7 – Kavyansh.Singh (talk) 05:17, 27 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

GA Review

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

Reviewer: Eviolite (talk · contribs) 15:37, 1 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, I'll take this one. eviolite (talk) 15:37, 1 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

GA review (see here for what the criteria are, and here for what they are not)

It is reasonably well written.
a (prose, spelling, and grammar): b (MoS for lead, layout, word choice, fiction, and lists):
It is factually accurate and verifiable.
a (reference section): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR): d (copyvio and plagiarism):
It is broad in its coverage.
a (major aspects): b (focused):
It follows the neutral point of view policy.
Fair representation without bias:
It is stable.
No edit wars, etc.:
It is illustrated by images and other media, where possible and appropriate.
a (images are tagged and non-free content have fair use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):
Overall:
Pass/Fail:

Sorry, got a bit sidetracked... a generally nice and interesting read, here are my notes:

Sourcing looks all good, though there's a weird inconsistency with some using via=Newspapers.com and some not.
You use the same USGS map twice (in the infobox and at the end) - consider removing the one at the end?

Be consistent with "W.P.A. Brewer" vs "W. P. A. Brewer" in lede and body

Got it. jp×g 03:54, 15 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Is "(now Foster City's coordinates)" necessary?

Fixed (and copyedited that section overall a bit). jp×g 03:54, 15 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Note the abbreviation USGS for the United States Geological Survey when first mentioned.

Got it (in "Geography", could also put this in the infobox if that comes before that section). jp×g 03:59, 15 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

"and used at one point for oyster farming" doesn't really flow well, recommend adding a "was" after the and or splitting it into a new sentence/combining with the next one, though that's just my opinion.

Looks better now. jp×g 03:59, 15 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think the repetition of "the land remained undeveloped" in every single section is useful, especially when only citing something from 1955 - you could just say that in an overarching sentence under History or Unsuccessful developments, like "Many plans were proposed for the island between 1912 and 1953, but by 1955 the land was still undeveloped."

I think the repetition aids in getting the point across, but would be willing to remove it if you really want. jp×g 03:59, 15 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

"proposed bridge" is an WP:EASTEREGG, so consider explicitly writing San Mateo-Hayward Bridge in the link

Got it. jp×g 03:59, 15 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

San Mateo Times can be linked, as can San Mateo, California and Burlingame, California.

Got it. jp×g 03:59, 15 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It seems some sources also name it as "Brewer's Island" such as [7] and "Brewers Island" in [9]; is that prominent enough to note somewhere?.

Got it. jp×g 03:59, 15 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Instead of the SFBA/CA/US pin maps, consider using {{Infobox mapframe}} for more interactivity

Got it. jp×g 01:46, 16 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I feel like you could include more human geography stuff, like the bridges and state route that go through it. If possible finding the population and density of the island as well might be helpful for context. I see that it seems a small portion of Brewer Island is still in San Mateo, which should probably be mentioned as well.

I do not have a whole lot to go by in terms of what content should go in what article when there's an island and a city on the same landmass -- examples I could find were Alameda (island) ←→ Alameda, California and Grosse Ile (Michigan) ←→ Grosse Ile Township, Michigan.

It could help to include the names of various water features around the island (most prominently being the lake's name "Central Lake", shown on the map but not in the prose, but also the sloughs that bound it).

Got most of it (the islands proved elusive). jp×g 01:45, 16 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Is there really nothing relevant since 1960 when the island became developed? I feel like the article comes to an abrupt end. At the very least it seems the San Mateo-Hayward Bridge was rebuilt in the 1960s to go through the island. There are also other prominent features visible in the map not mentioned in the prose as well, like the various islands within the lake, but I understand if there are very few RSes going into detail about that kind of stuff.

I will make an effort to find some more stuff (which I think will also address the stuff about the islands in the lake, and expand some of the other history as well). jp×g 05:17, 15 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I managed to find some stuff to expand the Geography section, although for some reason it proved quite hard to find anything about the little islands in the lagoon. jp×g 01:45, 16 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@JPxG: Putting on hold for now. eviolite (talk) 23:08, 1 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

As for the last issue (the end of the article around the construction of Foster City), I think there is kind of an interesting ontological question here. Basically, once the city was constructed on the land, that's what everyone called it. Anybody talking about the goings-on at 37°33′25″N 122°15′50″W began saying "Foster City" instead of "Brewer Island" some time in the 1960s. While Brewer Island certainly didn't stop existing per se (the land is still there, and for the most part it remains an island), it's hard to come up with a reason why any content relating to it should be here and not at Foster City. While it would of course be possible to pick a brief highlights reel of stuff that's happened in Foster City since its construction, it seems like there would be no natural cutoff point to stop it from becoming a content fork of that article. jp×g 03:36, 2 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@JPxG: Regarding the contentfork stuff, that's an interesting point and makes sense. I think though that events relating specifically to the land rather than the city should belong in this article, such as land-reclamation stuff (if they exist), though that's not really easy to define. I just found that the ending was a bit abrupt. There's also the issue of the northwest corner that's in San Mateo.

In any case though, how's this going? It's been almost a week on hold, and of course I can always hold it for longer, so I'd just like to remind you about this review. I understand that you are busy with other things such as the FAC and other GANs. eviolite (talk) 16:57, 8 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@JPxG: any updates? It's been nearly another week without edits, will have to fail the review if this continues to be the case, unfortunately. eviolite (talk) 12:34, 14 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Good morning. I would respond to this in more depth but I just spilled tea all over the damn floor so I will be a few minutes. jp×g 22:47, 14 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

All right, I think that about gets everything. @Eviolite: Let me know what you think. jp×g 01:46, 16 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I still don't really like the repetition of "The land remained undeveloped" as the source is from over 40 years after the earliest attempt and I don't think it can directly cite "The land remained undeveloped [after 1912]" (as there could have been structures built in the ensuing years that were then demolished before 1955) - but I suppose it's fine for GA. Great work, JPxG. eviolite (talk) 06:06, 16 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]