Talk:Randolph, Tennessee/GA1

GA Review

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GA review (see here for criteria)

It is reasonably well written.
a (prose): b (MoS):
- I have copyeditied part of the article, to find any systematic style and MoS mistakes that are being done. Generally, the article is well written, and with a small copyedit would pass criteria 1.
- Quotes should be in quotation marks, but not in italics. When quoting, the source must be mentioned in the prose (not just cited).
- Take a look at WP:Italics; there is not much that should be in italics on Wikipedia.
- Emdashes are unspaced, and ordinal numbers (e.g. 7th) does not use superscript, according to the MoS.
- Use an endash (–) for ranges (such as 1812–30), not a hyphen (-).
- Is it politically correct to call the Chickasaw "Indians"? I honestly do not know; it is in Norway, but I though it was not in North America. I have not come across policy about it on Wikipedia.
- On Wikipedia, the "1800s" refers to year 1800–1809; for the whole century, use "the 19th century".
- Really short paragraphs should be merged.
- The WP:LEAD only summarizes the history, not the whole article. It could be a paragraph shorter, but I will not insist on that.
- I honestly do not believe an earthquake, without any damage, would be worthy of a seperate paragraph.
It is factually accurate and verifiable.
a (references): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR):
With only a quick check, the references all look good.
It is broad in its coverage.
a (major aspects): b (focused):
The article is well written, interesting, and would eaily pass GA, had it not been for the scope. The history section completely dominates the article. Look at other articles about rural areas and villages that have passed GA and FA. These have a short history section (typically about a fifth), and also have large sections on community/culture, education, transport, geography, ecology (particularly for rural areas), climate, etc. While I understand that Randolph is a small place, the present must dominate the article. I am also a bit concerned that parts of the history section deverge a bit too much from the Randolph article—I would believe that anyone reading the article has a general understanding of US history, and no more than single-sentence diversions to establish context are necessary.
It follows the neutral point of view policy.
Fair representation without bias:
It is stable.
No edit wars etc.:
It is illustrated by images, where possible and appropriate.
a (images are tagged and non-free images have fair use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):
Not checked.
Overall:
Pass/Fail:
The article is well written. However, overfocus on history and underfocus on current situations makes it fail. That said, I very much appreciated the history section. My suggestion would be to copy the history section verbatim (including the lead) into a new article, History of Randolph, Tennessee, and then shrink this articles history coverage to about half. This will allow more detail to be added to the history article (that for such a location could have as much detail as possible), while the main article can concentrate on the status quo. There would then need to be a fair bit of extra content added to this article, but I would believe the history article might be close to a GA by itself. If you want an evaluation of this, feel free to ask me.

Comments

First off all, thanks for your review and for fixing some of the minor issues the article had. It was interesting to get an expert opinion on the article. I will answer here instead of appending it to the review, if you don't mind. Usually, I would like to keep the discussion close to the article but as it failed the GA, this would be more to exchange some ideas with you. As you have offered it in your review, I would like to keep in touch with you for the evaluation of further developments. And if I decide to re-list it one day after improvements are done, maybe your time allows to re-review the article.

It is interesting, a few of the points you have criticized I have noticed myself and there is a reason for some of them. So on one hand it is a pitty that the article failed without a discussion but your detailed evaluation is still very helpful and I like that more time is available than with the GA on hold and all has to be done within a week.

Extensive history section: I wanted the article to be comprehensive and close to complete and to reflect the right proportions. Randolph is not only a small village in 2008, it is a small village since 1865. Since then, nothing big has happened there. The big things to say about Randolph (if you want to exclude pre-history) happened for the most part between 1800 and 1865, for the next 150 years until the present time there is relative silence. So the extent of the history section is in the right proportion, in my opinon.

Splitting History section into a separate article: I have done that many months ago with the Memphis, Tennessee article. I have considered that as well for Randolph but did not do it for a reason. As mentioned above, most of what is known about the place is history, that would not leave much for the main article. Some history facts need to be mentioned in the main article, too, if the history is split off. So to avoid redundancies of two artciles I added the few facts of present day to the vast history and have it all in one article. But, I am sort of torn back and forth here, too. If you think this really makes sense, let us exchange a few ideas before I make the bigger changes here, OK?

Indians vs. Native Americans: Wikipedia is a worldwide encyclopedia, the English version does not represent a certain cultural identity or country. It is worldwide knowledge that happens to be in the English language. In my opinion it would be of no importance to ask whether it is politically correct or not in a given country. Who determines political correctness, anyway? And why? There are two reasons why I sometimes call the inhabitants prior to European settlement Indians and sometimes Native Americans. (1) Variation of speech (2) In my opinion, political correctness produces an undue bias in the information. Honestly, "Native American" is a pretty friendly and neutral to positive term, so nice and friendly that you could almost forget that 5 million of them were killed by Europeans, their land was taken and those few who survived were transferred to reservations. The term "Indian" carries more of the beforementioned slightly negative connotations. And that is important to reflect the historical accuracy and to balance out the slightly too positive bias of nice term.

Earthquake: The settlement is in an earthquake zone and there are earthquakes every once in a while. I picked this example earthquake because it was recent and pretty close. I would like to let it stay but would not insist on it, either.

More than single sentence diversions: You mentioned that in your evaluation. I was pretty sure that I kept the diversions short enough not to disturb the context but long enough to establish context. My aim was to be as short as possible and to include all information that a casual reader might need to understand the topic without necessarily following all the links. (If you print the article, does it leave any questions open?). Would you please let me know where I was carried away too far?

If you prefer the discussion appended to the talk page of the article, I can copy it there now or we discuss it here and I append it later, I am not sure what is most proper. Thanks for your opinion and take care, doxTxob \ ^talk 23:27, 15 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I moved the discussion here, since it may interest other editors of this page, not just the two of us. Concerning the history, I would say it would be easier to diverge in a history-only article, since it would require a greater understanding of the context. The single sentence I (remember today) reacting most on was where it was mentioned that Abraham Lincoln later became president; it struck me as a bit of a stray (I am Norwegian, and I knew that...). I will leave it to your discretion to determine what should be left in and out, I would only point out that this can be an issue, especially when talking about a very small place. Thank you for an interesting comment on the Indian vs. Native American issue; I was just making sure it was thought through. Please ask me if you want advise on this or the history article in the future, however I of principle will not review the same article twice (though of course, I guess the history article is not the same one). As for the earthquake, I was reacting to the particular one mentioned receiving so much prose; if Randolph is prone to earthquakes, state it instead. For instance, X per year in average, and the most damaging one was at X.X on the Richards Scale etc. A full paragraph can be warranted if you find enough about the matter. Good luck with the editing, and do not hesitate with any further questions. Arsenikk ^(talk) 19:07, 16 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your response. Good move to continue the discussion here. I have followed your advice and moved the information related to history to a separate article History of Randolph, Tennessee and reduced some of that content on the Randolph, Tennessee. As I mentioned before, I was torn back and forth regarding this issue, anyway, and your opinion in favor of the split off encouraged me to do that. As you suggested, I moved all history related information (incl. the lead section) to the new article and applied only minor chages to it so far. I will have to go through the minor issues (the italics and dashes and so on) still, but that should be done pretty soon.

Yes, I understand your concern about the details and now I know better what you mean. Usually, I try to give sufficient information for a casual reader who might not be familiar with the topic or U.S. history. Well, I am German and I knew about Abraham Lincoln and that he was a president. You might have noticed that a few paragraphs mention at the end what had become of the protagonists in the paragraphs if they ended up being famous. So, in part it is also a matter of consistency in the writing. By the way: The same sentence is used for Ulysses S. Grant, who would become the 18th president ... and to be honest with you I knew he was a General but I did not know that he had been president ... embarrassing, I know. I will keep it in mind to address the issue later.

I have one more question: You said the source for quotations needs to be mentioned in the prose. Do I just refer to the title of the book or author and year or both? How detailed a mention is warranted or required here?

I respect your principle not to review an article twice. If you like, would you mind to look over the History of Randolph, Tennessee and let me know if the structure overall would be good enough to nominate as GA. You mentioned that the specialized article can go into more detail. If I get a positive response from you and have fixed the issues I will just nominate it and you can still chose if you want to review it or not. That nomination would be under the point World History, right? Thanks a lot for your help. doxTxob \ ^talk 19:45, 16 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Good point about Ulysses (I did not know about his presidency either). I will look over the history article; but since it is not the same article, and I failed the main article only because of scope, I will allow myself to review it (unless someone beats me to it, of course). I will look over the history article once more, and say if it is good to go, but I cannot promise to do it today (I am currently reviewing an article about a former monarch of Malaysia). The nice thing about GA reviews is that I read articles I would never even have opened otherwise. It is highly recommended once you have gotten two or more articles past GA (and actually have read the Manual of Style once).

Regarding the sourcing of quotations: take a look at Wikipedia:Quotations. I would have chosen to use less quotations, and more rephrasing, but in part it is a matter of taste. Of course, other reviewers may find it too heavy. However, I though most, if not all, of them were properly used. Since I am spitting out lots of good advice, I feel you write well; to get it up to 'brilliant' (as the folks at FA seem to like calling it), take a look at User:Tony1/How to satisfy Criterion 1a. This is the final touch you will need to mass-produce GA articles, and get the stuff up a notch to FA. Arsenikk ^(talk) 21:21, 16 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I read it again and I see what you mean. I will try to remove part of the citations and rephrase them. Usually, I use citeations for important words said or written by famous people, or when something has been said so well in so few words and to the point, that I have no idea how to say that better. I quote those to make sure not to plagiarize. Credits to whom they belong. But I have seen a few lazy quotations as well where I might have used someone elses words because I had no better idea to re-formulate it. I will go over the text and try and remove the latter ones.

By the way, I have nominated the History of Randolph, Tennessee for GA today. Last time the wait was about two weeks and I hope that this time the nomination is put on hold and does not fail instantly. It should, there is nothing that could not be fixed in a week's time ... doxTxob \ ^talk 22:16, 16 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I have removed some of the content of History of Randolph, Tennessee. The following sections had information reduced in favour of articles of their own:

European explorers/Cavelier de La Salle -> Fort Prudhomme
Civil War/Fort Wright -> Fort Wright (Tennessee)
Civil War/Fort Randolph -> Fort Randolph (Tennessee)

This solves issues with too many quotations in the prose and reduces the length of the article, which should enhance the readability of the article. This will also help the article not to diverge too much from the topic. No information will get lost for the reader as I have marked the paragraphs below the respective header with the {{main|main article}}-tag to link to the corresponding article. All three related topics are notable enough for an article, in my opinion, and there is potential for expansion for all three of them. I have categorized and linked them. Where disambiguation pages were needed I started them (Fort Wright, Fort Randolph), existing links to the pages from article pages were disambiguated. I also refined the categories for the Randolph images on Wikimedia Commons to reflect the split articles to better accommodate the topic. ( Media related to Fort Wright (Tennessee) at Wikimedia Commons, Media related to Randolph, Tennessee at Wikimedia Commons). The articles related to Randolph were also united in a new category Category:Randolph, Tennessee, a sub-category of Category: Unincorporated communities in Tennessee. I will place a copy of this last comment on Talk:History of Randolph, Tennessee. doxTxob \ ^talk 07:28, 19 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]