Talk:Hart Lake (Oregon)/GA1

GA Review

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

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Reviewer: ColonelHenry (talk · contribs) 00:57, 17 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I look forward to reviewing this article. I'll begin with some initial comments sometime within the next 24-36 hours after a few readings and confirming some of the citations, etc. Thanks! --ColonelHenry (talk) 00:57, 17 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

First comments/observations

Major CFORK questions

A lot of the history, ecology and geology focuses more on Warner Valley and is the same material found in the Warner Valley article. About 60-70% of the article content focuses on Warner Valley with the rest discussing Hart Lake. This makes me wonder if this content (per WP:CFORK) is properly split from the Warner Valley article, and subsequently whether there is substantial enough content to establish its own article or whether this material is better served merged back into the Warner Valley article. If this question isn't satisfactorily answered per the WP:CFORK policy, this GA review ends rather quickly.

General comments

I don't think the "location" section is appropriate...(1) we are not, as an encyclopaedia, supposed to be writing directions on how to get there. (2) If the information can be recast to reflect its geographic location, it should be integrated into the current "Geography" section. (3) The section is too small to exist on its own per MOS on sections and paragraphs.
- Done. Jsayre64 (talk) 16:10, 19 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Further, rename the "Geography" to reflect that it offers both geological and geographic content--they are two distinct disciplines, and the content is not just geographic in nature.
- Done. Jsayre64 (talk) 16:10, 19 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'm thinking "Lake environment" should be moved into a larger geology and geography as well, and separated as a level 3 header for "Hydrology" from the location information and geological information.
- Done. Jsayre64 (talk) 16:10, 19 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
In "Recreation" - can you provide more information describing the Hart Mountain National Antelope Refuge, USF&WS's involvement in the region, and what BLM does in managing their holdings. Also describe more about "hunting, fishing, bird watching, boating, and camping" activities--especially on why this area is more attractive/unique/etc.--because there are thousands of places that offer the same activities. Why should the fact this is another location stand out?

Lede

A one-paragraph lede does not adequately summarize the content and all aspects of the article, per WP:LEDE. An article this size, from how I would approach it, should have a three-paragraph lede.

More to come, pending responses above. Nominator pinged: @Another Believer:

Observer comments re: WP:CFORK

Comment from uninvolved editor Peteforsyth (talk · contribs)

I have not worked on this article, but have worked on articles about other bodies of water in Oregon, and I'd like to address the WP:CFORK question above. In short, I think this is a very helpful observation, and something that we should consider going forward (perhaps a good discussion topic for WT:ORE); but I don't think it needs to stand in the way of GA for this article. Neither Warner Valley nor Warner Lakes has yet been through a GA review. It seems reasonable to me that this article would include a fair amount of contextual information about the surrounding region. We could then consider whether that material might best be moved to another article per WP:SUMMARY -- and definitely should make those decisions before either of the other articles is put forward for GA. But I'm not sure it's necessary to resolve that decisively before evaluating this article's merits as a GA…is it? -Pete (talk) 21:10, 18 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

@Peteforsyth: - Thank you your comments, I was thinking about asking for a second opinion on the matter after hearing from the nominator. My hesitancy about GA for this article is...is this article about the Warner Valley or about the lake. If it's about the lake, it's heavily unbalanced when 60% of the article is background material--more than a fair amount of contextual information. While I do agree contextual information is necessary, there's a point where I asked with this article "what is this article actually about...and then noticing the considerable overlap with Warner Valley. Whether Warner Valley or Warner Lakes has been through GA is immaterial, since the article itself has to stand or fall on the criteria. But I think CFORK has to be a big obstacle when considering it's eligibility. I'm going to ask for a consensus at Wikipedia talk:Good article nominations#Can an article be GA if it violates WP:CFORK. --ColonelHenry (talk) 21:54, 18 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Fair point. It will certainly be good to have more views on this. Thanks for the thoughtful response! -Pete (talk) 22:33, 18 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I think a good article on a lake (or river) needs to include significant material on the environment beyond its shores. In this case, Hart Lake is located in the Warner Valley so many fact regarding geography, history, wildlife, and recreation apply to both. For example, John C. Fremont explored the Warner Valley and camped along the shore of Hart Lake. An article on the Warner Valley that doesn’t discuss its many lakes is incomplete. Likewise, an article on Hart Lake that doesn’t discuss the surrounding geography, land use along the shore, or the land dwelling wildlife that use the lake would be incomplete. These are distinct articles on related topics that fall within WP:CFORK Related articles rule. This is similar to the relationship between the Willamette River and the Willamette Valley. While the article on Willamette River is focused on the river, it covers a wide range of things that overlap with the Willamette Valley … e.g. geology, geography, history, cities and town, highways and bridges, farming, etc. In fact, the Willamette River article specifically mentions the Willamette Valley at least a dozen times. I don’t know all the Wiki-rules, but in my opinion a article should cover a topic well enough that readers don’t have to seek out to other articles to complete the story.--Orygun (talk) 02:12, 19 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

@Orygun:, on principle I agree with you--but how much overlap is too much? Address this specific question: 40% of this article's content is dedicated to discussing the lake...do you see anything wrong with 60% of the article being significantly copied (practically verbatim) from another related article that is general information, not specific to the lake? Criteria 3b requires this article be focused...when 60% of the content is focused on material covered in other articles, this article isn't focused. --ColonelHenry (talk) 02:22, 19 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I think that’s probably due to the fact that the articles are both reasonably close in terms of development. What if the Warner Valley article was only a Stub or Start level? In that case, the overlap might only be 5% so the content in question would only exist in this article. Would we delete it then? In any case, my goal is to write good comprehensive level articles and then turn them loose…so I need to back out of this discussion. Someone else nominated this article for and you’re the team's expert on Wiki-fomat/content rules so I’ll let you folks figure out how to improve the article without any more interference.--Orygun (talk) 08:46, 19 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Rather than trying to fold all of this into the Warner Vally article, it would make sense to me to remove some of the duplicative material and to add a bit more to this article about Hart Lake. Specifically, I think the article would be improved by shortening a couple of list-y places: the long list of lakes in the Warner Valley chain, and the long linked lists of birds and animals. I would suggest re-adding information about the nearest habitation, the distance from Lakeview, and perhaps the distance from Portland. I would mention the name or number of the road(s) at or near Hart Lake (though I would not include complete driving directions). I would add something about the fish in the lake, "best known for its crappie fishery after a couple of good wet winters", according to a fishing guide in my possession. I would add something more about the geology, if I can find it. But I don't want to do any of this if the article is going to be removed or reduced to a short summary in a different article. That idea is quite a strong deterrent to improving the article, IMHO. Could we possibly back away from that? Finetooth (talk) 18:05, 19 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

@Finetooth:, if you can provide on the article's talk page (with a link to it from here) an outline of what you'd like the revision to look like, and a projected time table, I'd be willing to keep the GA open long enough for you to do it if you'd like and give you a fair shot at it. Provided the other editors agree. Or if you want to recast the article, we can start a new GA review after your ideas are addressed/developed. I haven't decided which course to pursue--I'm still waiting for the nominator to reply (I've pinged him/her), and waiting to sort through opinions that come in during the next few days to get a wider array of ideas. --ColonelHenry (talk) 02:09, 20 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry to interfere again, but I have articles on Crump and Pelican lakes in the works. Will those be added into the Warner Valley article as well? How about the other Warner Valley lakes (Anderson, Swamp, Mugwump, Flagstaff, Upper Campbell, Lower Campbell, Stone Corral, Turpin, and Bluejoint)? Will info on all these lakes be incorporated into the Warner Valley article too? In addition to Crump and Pelican lakes, I believe Anderson, Flagstaff and the two Campbell lakes are all interesting enough to have their own articles at some point. Merging Hart Lake article into the Warner Valley just doesn’t make sense to me. Even if they have some things in common, Hart Lake and Warner valley are different geographic features and should be addressed separately. Are we going to merge Willamette Valley and Willamette River articles or incorporate Mount Hood into the Cascade Range article?--Orygun (talk) 04:03, 20 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

If they're going to have 60% of their content be verbatim material from Warner Valley, that doesn't make much sense from this vantage point.--ColonelHenry (talk) 04:35, 20 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'm slow to respond because I was away from my computer until late Saturday evening. I'll take another look when I'm fresh tomorrow and see what I can come up with. Finetooth (talk) 05:59, 20 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Guess it all depends on whether we want articles to be comprehensive or limit them to unique content only. Because there are so many Stubs and gaps in Wikipedia, I favor comprehensive standalone articles. In this case we have two well-developed articles with common content. Is that so bad? If minimizing overlap is so important, let’s strip out the offending material from the Hart Lake article instead of deleting it. While Hart Lake has a lot in common with the Warner Valley, it is still a large lake worthy of a standalone article…even if it’s only 40% of its current size. I think adding lots of unique lake related info (e.g. geo-location, size, depth, shoreline, water quality, fish populations, etc) for a dozen lakes would water-log the Warner Valley article? Plus, merging things just to avoid overlap is a slippery slope. Should we merge Adel, Oregon and Plush, Oregon articles into Warner Valley. There both small places and everything in/around them applies to the valley as well. How about the Greaser Petroglyph Site and Stone Bridge and the Oregon Central Military Wagon Road? Since they are on the National Register of Historic Places they have separate articles, but there’s probably some common info presented in those articles. There's probably overlap with the Lake County, Oregon article too. In the end, I just don’t think most Wikipedia readers really care if the same info resides in multiple articles.--Orygun (talk) 07:19, 20 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

@Orygun: - I don't mind multiple articles--I'm quite an inclusionist. I'm just concerned that you're thinking making articles on 10 lakes with the same content. This is what CFORK desires to avoid. If you don't have enough for the lakes to stand on their own, or not enough to make them substantial enough, you might want to consider focusing on turning the Warner Valley or Warner Lakes article into a more comprehensive overview, worthy of GA and eventually FA status. For instance, there are several rivers in Northwestern NJ, all of them have articles, but not all of them have enough material to warrant a significant expansion beyond smaller articles--where they would overlap would be a brief mention history and geology (emphasis: BRIEF). 60% of content sharing is not brief, and takes the focus of the article away from the lake to the extent that this lake article is mostly about the valley, not the lake. If you want to write an article about the lake, go right ahead but write about the lake. Cutting and pasting large swaths of a related general article does the lake no service. Instead of being outraged and using bad analogues (hey merge the towns into the valley), look at good comparisions--I recently promoted Death of Adolf Hitler to GA. It doesn't significantly overlap the material from the Adolf Hitler or Nazi Germany articles. It keeps its focus on its subject without overwhelming the article in repeating large swaths of context. --ColonelHenry (talk) 13:12, 20 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It's Sunday morning, and I've had time to think a bit more about this and to do a bit more research. I can add some fairly trifling info about fish from the fishing guide, but I've not found much else specific to Hart Lake. I find myself in agreement with both Orygun and ColonelHenry. I agree with Orygun that Hart Lake is notable; that is, Orygun and others have found sufficient reliable sources to create a stand-alone article. I find myself agreeing with ColonelHenry that promoting the article to GA in its present form would be a mistake. I had not noticed or considered the overlap question until ColonelHenry brought it up, but I think it is a valid concern. Perhaps the best course would be for the nominator, User:Another Believer, to withdraw the GA nomination so that ColonelHenry would not be in the awkward position of having to "fail" the article. Then Orygun could make changes as he sees fit, and I could perhaps add my bit about fish, and Pete might have suggestions about the more general WP:CFORK issues, all in due course, without the pressure of a GA timeline. In general, most geographic entities are notable in that multiple reliable sources, such as the United States Geological Survey, have published information about them. I think that therefore most qualify for stand-alone articles, but I also think that most of those articles will never be broad enough in coverage to meet the GA criteria. That doesn't mean that they can't be close to perfect "B", "C", or "start" articles. Maybe that's what we are looking at in this case. Finetooth (talk) 17:34, 20 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Teammates: I've review article to see what might come out. Here’s my recommendations:

Eliminate second para in Geography section that list other lakes
Reduce species of mammals mention by name, limiting list to just 3 that are closely tied to the water
Delete the middle of the last para in the Ecology section that lists birds not directly associated with the lake; would prefer leaving birds of prey, but that list could come out too if necessary

History section comments and recommendations:

Recommend keeping 2 sentences on native American use; think it’s important and applies equally to the valley and lake
Similarly, recommend text on Fremont expedition be retained. Fremont explored the valley and camp by the lake, naming both (through his names didn’t stick to either feature). Worth noting, Fremont info only applies to Warner Valley and Hart Lake, not Crump or any of the other lakes
Eliminate text on Capt Warner and Col Drew
Reduce text related to Stone Bridge by half
Remaining history info applies direct to the lake and none of it is covered in valley article

This doesn’t eliminate all the common material, but it takes out quite a bit of it.--Orygun (talk) 22:00, 20 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

If you don't mind making those changes, I'd say "go for it". After that, I could add the fish info, citing the 10th edition of Fishing in Oregon, if you like. However, the more I look at what you already have about fish, the less useful the fishing guide appears as a source of additional info. Finetooth (talk) 02:51, 21 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Done I've cut the text sections outlined above. I can further reduce the number of named bird species mentioned in the text if necessary.--Orygun (talk) 21:42, 21 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

@Peteforsyth, Finetooth, Orygun, and Another Believer: - I think that the CFORK issues have been addressed sufficiently. Excellent work.--ColonelHenry (talk) 15:07, 22 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Image check

File:Hart Lake (Lake County, Oregon scenic images) (lakDA0132).jpg - OK
File:Northern Hart Lake (Lake County, Oregon scenic images) (lakDA0090).jpg - OK
File:Hart Lake Area (Lake County, Oregon scenic images) (lakDA0084).jpg - OK
File:Warner Wetlands Interpretive Site, Lake County, Oregon.jpg - OK

All images appear to comply with image use policy and are properly tagged. --ColonelHenry (talk) 15:10, 22 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Suggestions going forward

As you've mentioned doing other lakes and geographic features in the Warner Valley/Warner Lakes area...consider creating a category for the valley.--ColonelHenry (talk) 15:19, 22 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Review and criteria analysis

GA review – see WP:WIAGA for criteria

Is it reasonably well written?
A. Prose is clear and concise, without copyvios, or spelling and grammar errors:
Article's prose is clear and concise, no evidence or indication of copyvio issues, no obvious spelling and grammar issues.

B. MoS compliance for lead, layout, words to watch, fiction, and lists:
Article complies with the criteria 1b MOS requirements.
Is it factually accurate and verifiable?
A. Has an appropriate reference section:
Article present a suitable reference section that complies with MOS and citation guidelines.

B. Citation to reliable sources where necessary:
Article is sufficiently sourced and employs appropriate inline citations.

C. No original research:
No evidence or indication of original research.
Is it broad in its coverage?
A. Major aspects:
Article sufficiently addresses the major aspects of the subject.

B. Focused:
Article's content is focused and complies with WP:SUMMARY and WP:LENGTH
Is it neutral?
Fair representation without bias:
Article appears neutral as there is no evidence or indication of a bias or POV.
Is it stable?
No edit wars, etc:
Article's history is stable and there is no evidence or indication of content disputes that led to disruptive editwarring
Does it contain images to illustrate the topic?
A. Images are tagged with their copyright status, and valid fair use rationales are provided for non-free content:
Article presents four images which are suitably tagged with fair use rationales per the image use policy.

B. Images are provided if possible and are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions:
Images are relevant to the article's subject and are suitably captioned per WP:CAPTION.
Overall:
Pass or Fail:
Promoted to GA.

Thank you ColonelHenry for taking the time and trouble to review this. Having done many reviews, mostly peer reviews, I know how exacting and possibly thankless they can be. Thank you Orygun for sticking with it and agreeing to make a considerable number of changes that might have initially rankled. (I've been there too.) And thanks to Pete, AB, and Jsayre64 for your input and wise counsel. This turned out to be an interesting and successful collaboration. Finetooth (talk) 16:20, 22 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, many thanks to ColonelHenry and all involved. --Another Believer _(Talk) 16:23, 22 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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.