Jump to content

Talk:San Diego/GA1

Page contents not supported in other languages.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

GA Review

[edit]
GA toolbox
Reviewing

Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch

Reviewer: WTF? (talk) 18:52, 22 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'll be reviewing this article over the next few days. At first glance, it looks like it's in very good shape. The lead section is a good introduction and is well written. There are three 'citation needed' tags which need to be addressed, in the 'geography', 'crime', and 'real estate' sections.

The article matches up well with the US city article guidelines. Some of the subsections under 'demographics' should be merged into the main section -- the 'race & ethnicity' and 'other estimates' sections are very short, and not really covering a new major subtopic other than presenting some statistics. Most city articles at GA & FA levels do not include these as separate subsections, and incorporate the data into a well-written, concise, 'demographics' section. 'Crime' is fine, and can stay where it is. 'Personal income' really falls more under 'demographics' as well, since it's dealing with information about the population itself, as opposed to a more broad-based description of the economy as a whole. So it should be integrated into the 'demographics' section.

The 'cityscape' subsection contains zero text and two wide panoramic images. Subsections should not contain zero text. It might be better to pick one image (including both seems excessive) and move it to the end of the neighborhoods section (and hence the end of the geography section as a whole) and delete the subsection header. The 'communities and neighborhoods' subsection as it is is really just a list of neighborhoods. It doesn't really contain any description on their organization and/or how these neighborhoods interact as a whole in the greater community. It is also completely unsourced. Is "Skyline" really an individual neighborhood?

Delete the bulleted listing of cable channels under 'media'. Listing the on-air broadcast stations should be included here. A listing of cable channels is typically specific to cable provider, and generally not governed by municipal laws. Wikipedia is also not a directory.

The subsections entitled 'San Diego City Council' and 'major highways' contain no prose & only bulleted lists. This information is best if integrated into prose and included in other sections.

That's the big stuff for now. I'll provide more review against the 6 GA criteria in the next day or two. WTF? (talk) 18:52, 22 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, WTF (great username!). Looks like we've got our work cut out for us. I'll get started on the Neighborhoods section. --MelanieN (talk) 22:59, 22 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you as well! Will it be put on hold until we get all of this fixed? Nevermind, I see you mentioned you have more reviewing to do first. 08OceanBeach SD (talk) 01:06, 23 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I'm still reviewing, specifically in regards to the six criteria. But that shouldn't stop people from fixing the obvious stuff, like the citation needed tags and some of the organizational issues. WTF? (talk) 18:08, 23 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

There, we have cleared all three "citation needed" tags, and the neighborhood and cityscape sections have been revised. (Yes, Skyline is really a neighborhood! [1]) Still more work to do, I realize. --MelanieN (talk) 00:25, 26 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The Personal Income and Race and ethnicity subsections have been integrated in to the Demographics section. 08OceanBeach SD (talk) 01:55, 26 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Nice job on the streets and highways, OB and Dohn Joe! --MelanieN (talk) 23:29, 26 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks! I feel like we have most obvious kinks worked out at this point. 08OceanBeach SD (talk) 02:17, 29 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

more detailed review

[edit]
GA review (see here for criteria)
  1. It is reasonably well written.
    a (prose): b (MoS for lead, layout, word choice, fiction, and lists):
    Overall follows the manual of style, but the prose jumps around a lot. It's really more of an almanac with a random collection of information, as opposed to a concisely-written encyclopedia article presenting paragraphs written about the city and describing how things interact together. See below for more details.
  2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.
    a (references): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR):
    The article appears to have good facts and not WP:OR, but there are significant areas where more citations are needed (see below, as well as the 'citation needed' tags I've added to the article. Citations in the 'references' section that only have a single URL should be converted to proper citations, including author/title/date/publisher/etc, preferably using the citation templates.
  3. It is broad in its coverage.
    a (major aspects): b (focused):
    The article covers the major topics of a city article, per WP:USCITY guidelines. The information could be better organized into a better written encyclopedia article. The presentation of info sort of jumps around a lot and much info looks like it was inserted by many people and not organized into coherent and concisely written sections.
  4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.
    Fair representation without bias:
    See below (politics section).
  5. It is stable.
    No edit wars, etc.:
    The article is stable. I can't see any evidence of edit wars or other issues.
  6. 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):
    All images have suitable captions (though a minor issue with some is that you generally don't put a period at the end of statements in captions, per WP:MOS). The image File:San Diego-Tijuana JPLLandsat.jpg in the geography section needs an appropriate copyright tag in it's description.
Added "(NASA/JPL photo)" but usually that information is accepted as part of the image page in the commons (I think). Anyway, it is a free image. -SusanLesch (talk) 01:57, 3 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Also went through all the captions, which now only end in a period if they are a complete sentence. Thanks for pointing this out. -SusanLesch (talk) 02:05, 3 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  1. Overall:
    Pass/Fail:
  • Overall, the lead section covers the basics. It gives a reasonably good introduction to the city, and the infobox is helpful. There could be an additional short paragraph in there on the founding & some brief history (nothing too extensive). I am a bit concerned by the presence of 8 citations in the lead; since the lead is supposed to be a SUMMARY, which summarizes the article, the information should be presented and cited in the body of the article (subsequent sections), and cited there. The last two sentences of the lead look more like advertising and promotion rather than encyclopedic information.
I have added a brief history summary to the lead. Thanks for the suggestion. --MelanieN (talk) 14:33, 8 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
We have also removed some of the clutter from the lead section. --MelanieN (talk) 02:59, 9 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • The history section is very poorly organized. It jumps around and isn't ordered chronologically, and looks like some sentences were inserted rather piecemeal. It doesn't do a very good job of telling the story of the city's founding and subsequent development over the course of three centuries.
I added some pictures that help to show the narrative. -SusanLesch (talk) 19:34, 1 April 2011 (UTC) Also made copy edits that put things in chronological order. Thanks for pointing out this needed doing. -SusanLesch (talk) 02:17, 2 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I also edited the section for clarity and flow, and eliminated some of the random sentences that (as you noted) didn't really fit in the narrative. --MelanieN (talk) 00:25, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • "The city's police department has been a national leader in its commitment to neighborhood policing." -- I know it's cited, but this statement looks like it came straight from an advertisement for potential new residents.
Good catch. First I tried to edit it but the source is about specialized gang units which doesn't quite relate to the topic of the paragraph. So it's been removed. -SusanLesch (talk) 01:14, 3 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Regarding ref. 39, beachcalifornia.com does not appear to meet reliable source guidelines. A better source for these averages would be either NOAA, the weather channel, or wunderground.com.
You're right about beachcalifornia.com which has been replaced with City of San Diego figures from the department of Public Utilities. -SusanLesch (talk) 00:12, 15 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • The climate section could be better organized. The first three "paragraphs" cover the section intro, then some records & averages, then a whole paragraph on some rather trivial info about official record keeping, and then a new paragraph with a single sentence stating that "There have been only nine days with a recorded temperature of 32 °F (0 °C) or below since record-keeping began in 1872." Seems like this could be reorganized and some of the trivial information heavily paraphrased and condensed.
I did some reorganization. --MelanieN (talk) 14:41, 31 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • "San Diego is known as the "birthplace of naval aviation, although Pensacola, Florida makes a rival claim." This statement needs a citation.
I took care of this by adding a reliable citation and removed the Penascola claim. 08OceanBeach SD (talk) 20:14, 1 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • "San Diego harbor holds one of the largest naval fleets in the world. This has become the largest concentration of Naval facilities in the world due to base reductions at Norfolk, Virginia and retrenchment of the Russian naval base in Vladivostok." When did this occur? There is no citation backing up this assertion.
Could not find a source for this in Google so I removed it, but there is a source (U.S. Navy itself) for what we say now. -SusanLesch (talk) 02:03, 9 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
User:RightCowLeftCoast came up with three good sources for the "largest naval fleet in the world" so one's been added to the article. -SusanLesch (talk) 00:16, 26 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • When I read a subsection under 'economy' entitled, 'defense', I expect it to contain more information about defense contractors and businesses done in conjunction with the military. For example, are the shipbuilding and/or defense supply centers in the city? This section actually contains information on military facilities themselves. It might be more appropriate to include this in a main section entitled, 'Military', and move it to a position in the article immediately following 'Government'.
It appears, as mentioned below, that Melanie took care of this by renaming the title "defense and military" as well as adding more relevant information. 08OceanBeachS.D. 02:54, 13 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • The 'manufacturing' subsection is rather weak. It begins, "There are San Diego companies that develop wireless cellular technology." and then has several random facts that seem to be added rather disjointedly. Could be weaved together better. 'Tourism' is written a little better, but is still very dependent on specific, dated facts, and could be weaved together into a more coherent 2-3 paragraphs describing the tourist activities.
I have rewritten/reorganized the entire Economy section to make it flow more smoothly and incorporate your suggestions. --MelanieN (talk) 00:57, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • The 'education' section mostly just lists the schools and colleges in the city, and has some data on %age of bachelors degrees and the 9th most educated city in the US. It might be nice to have some information on the total number of teachers & students. How much does the city government spend on education?
The city government does not run the schools. As with most places in California, public schools are operated and funded by a separate, independent school district. That's why the article contains no details about the schools - just links where people can go to the school district(s) for information. I inserted a sentence under "Local government" explaining the situation. --MelanieN (talk) 02:49, 9 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Culture section is very, very short. Perhaps some information in Culture of San Diego could be moved in here? Though I see what it's separate -- most of that sub-article is not cited at all (not that that's an issue with THIS article's GA, but if some of it is to be moved here, it needs to be).
  • "The amateur beach sport Over-the-line was invented in San Diego, and the annual world Over-the-line championships are held at Mission Bay every year." This statement needs a citation.
Citation supplied. --MelanieN (talk) 14:41, 31 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • The first line of the 'government' section states, "The mayor, city council members, and city attorney seats are all officially non-partisan by state law." But then, the 'elections' section goes on to explain that the mayor is a Republican. How can this be?
The elections are nonpartisan, in that candidates are not identified by party on the ballot; elections are simply by who gets the most votes. If there is a runoff you can wind up with two Democrats or two Republicans competing against each other. But of course, like virtually all politicians in this country, most candidates are either Democrats or Republicans. Our standard phrase for local officials is "so-and-so is a Republican, although local elections are officially nonpartisan per California state law." We could add that if it would help. --MelanieN (talk) 14:41, 31 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I rewrote to make the situation clearer. --MelanieN (talk) 00:25, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • The 'politics' section doesn't really describe the overall political scene of the city and how that helps to mold the city's local government. It actually covers some very specific current issues and some scandals regarding specific individuals. It's not really appropriate for this section. The gay marriage stuff probably should just all go into Same-sex marriage in California and the scandal stuff is better suited for articles on those specific individuals. Including it here really doesn't make this article WP:NPOV.
The scandals are removed, but now I wonder if that's right--San Diego seems to be governed by scandal. I might have to put them all back in. -SusanLesch (talk) 03:12, 4 April 2011 (UTC) Re-added some major scandals (but left out Sanders' reversal on gay marriage for now because that really isn't a scandal). Anybody, feel free to keep or remove that whole section. -SusanLesch (talk) 03:46, 4 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I think this section needs to stay. It has been trimmed to the basics. The Duke Cunningham info does need to be in there IMO; there are no BLP issues since everything is factual and well documented. I have tried to think of some way of explaining WHY Mayor Hedgecock was forced out of office, but it's just too complicated - what with his two trials and subsequent court decisions and pleas, it would have to go into way too much detail to avoid BLP issues. Let people go to his article for the info. --MelanieN (talk) 14:33, 8 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • The post office section is rather trivial and silly. Of course San Diego has a post office. I think just about every city in the US with a population over 10,000 has a post office! This whole section can be removed without any major problems.
I agree, and I have deleted it. --MelanieN (talk) 14:41, 31 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • The county/state/federal section should definitely come before politics. The part about Randy Cunningham is better suited for his personal article than an article about the city 99WP:NPOV).
Agree about the order, and fixed. A Randy Cunningham summary has been retained as it really did seem to be part of the city's cluster of scandals during that period. --MelanieN (talk) 00:25, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Largely insufficient citation in the transportation section.
  • If you're going to use those sub-sub-sections under the 'transportation' section, I'd make 'transportation' a main section and include those as major sub-sections. Multiple-level sub-sub-sections are highly inappropriate and very confusing for the reader, especially since the difference in font-size is minimal and makes it hard to figure out what's a sub-section vs. a sub-sub-section. The part about 'utilities' is completely uncited, and rather trivial anyways.
This has been taken care of. Transportation was left a subsection but the sub-sub sections were removed and the section was rewritten to have a better flow including most of the removed information that wasn't moved to Transportation in San Diego. 08OceanBeachS.D. 07:09, 7 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The article at present does not meet the six GA criteria. It is on hold at WP:GAN for up to two more weeks while editors work in the issues. After that, if the issues have been resolved, it can be promoted. WTF? (talk) 03:15, 29 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your time! Looks like we have the next two weeks cut out for us... at least our next to weeks of WP time! 08OceanBeach SD (talk) 03:24, 29 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you too for all your helpful suggestions! I think we should respond to them above as we deal with them - just so we can keep straight what has been done. --MelanieN (talk) 14:41, 31 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Is this review done and the article ready to be passed? Not much has happened in the past month and it looks like things have been addressed. Wizardman Operation Big Bear 04:07, 2 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

Lightmouse (talk) 13:59, 2 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It seems that the link to 1_E8_m² comes from the 'area magnitude' section of the infobox that says '1 E8'. I can't test it myself because I'm on a really slow connection. Please try removing that and if it works, we won't need to get the infobox changed. Regards Lightmouse (talk) 14:57, 3 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Right you are! Area magnitude removed. -SusanLesch (talk) 16:14, 3 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Excellent. Thanks for sorting out the other issues too. All my comments resolved now. Good luck. Lightmouse (talk) 18:41, 3 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Hi. I would be happy to fix these if you can tell me what pattern to follow. Wikipedia is sadly remiss in not advocating a date format. Which one do you choose, Ohconfucius? -SusanLesch (talk) 02:07, 7 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Fixing this is easy enough, it's a question of deciding which date format May 7, 2011 or 2011-05-07. If there is no strong preference either way from the assembled editors of this article, I'd be inclined to go for 'May 7, 2011' throughout, as I believe this format is more easily parsed by the reader. Let me know if you agree and I will put it into action. --Ohconfucius ¡digame! 02:14, 7 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you very much for all your help! --MelanieN (talk) 15:36, 7 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Status?

[edit]

This review is currently on the report as the one that has been open the longest and it appears that there has been no activity on it for two weeks. Although WP:There is no deadline, I'd like to see it wrapped up before long, if that is reasonably possible.

A few points about some of the comments above:

  • The Good article criteria do not require perfect or consistently formatted citations. It actually requires only enough that the reviewer can figure out what the source is. This is very minimal, and I personally hope that most GAs will typically exceed it (especially for bare URLs, which are a serious WP:Linkrot risk), but I would not fail an article for imperfect or inconsistent citation formatting. The criteria do not even mention WP:CITE, much less require compliance with it.
  • Citation templates are neither encouraged or discouraged on Wikipedia. Many editors like them; many editors loathe them. The choice is entirely up to the regular editors of this article.
  • The Good article criteria also do not require compliance with the main WP:MOS page or pages like WP:OVERLINK. So while I'm glad that the captions now follow the house style and the capitalization was fixed and the overlinking has been reduced, this is similarly a point that a GA reviewer should not be failing an nomination over. I do not believe that the reviewer was threatening to do that in this case; I point this out as a matter of clarifying the general case, and because we get frequent complaints about reviewers (often accidentally) appearing to require far more than the actual GA criteria. I encourage reviewers to clearly mark such good-but-not-required advice as "optional" or "minor" or otherwise not required. Most editors are happy to have a better-than-Good article in the end, but clarity is also helpful. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:35, 21 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Unless I'm mistaken we have taken care of all of the requests made by the reviewer as well as other users. I wonder if you should or could ping User talk:Wiki.Tango.Foxtrot who seems to still be an active user. -SusanLesch (talk) 00:24, 24 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I agree. We have taken care of all of the reported issues and more. It is nearing two months now that the article has been up for nomination and since the review started. 08OceanBeachS.D. 22:04, 24 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I left a note; the reviewer appears to have been mostly off-wiki for the last two weeks. If we need to find another person to take over, then we can do that, but perhaps we'll wait a few more days. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:46, 26 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
If necessary, how long should we wait before finding someone else to close the review? 08OceanBeachS.D. 01:20, 31 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I'll do a read-through tonight and see if there are any remaining issues. If not, I'll pass it. Wizardman Operation Big Bear 17:14, 31 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Apologies on the delay in getting this passed. It appears that there has been a good deal of collaboration going on in improving this article, and I decided to let editors take a little more time than usual because it looked like people were working well together. My commendations on your excellent teamwork.

I just went through the article, and barring a few minor copyedits that were simply easier to fix than list here, I think the article is ready for GA. Two last remaining issues. First, the JPL/Landset image in the geography section http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:San_Diego-Tijuana_JPLLandsat.jpg seems to have a copyright warning attached to it by another user. Please address that. Secondly, there are three "citation needed" issues (cityscape, education, and transportation) that must be addressed prior to GA. I still have some minor concerns with the brevity of the culture section, and it certainly would not pass an FA review. But I think it's sufficient for GA.

Cheers! WTF? (talk) 21:48, 31 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I took care of all the citation needed tags by adding reliable sources. As far as the image goes, it would seem that the warning does not affect its usage as the image adheres to the criteria present on the tag and maintains two appropriate usage tags licensing the image in the public domain. I would not think it affecting of the GA status as it seems to follow the criterion.
"Illustrated, if possible, by images:
  • images are tagged with their copyright status, and valid fair use rationales are provided for non-free content; and
  • images are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions." 08OceanBeachS.D. 22:54, 31 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Is there a way to find out who added the warning? When I click on 'file history', it just redirects me down in the page and I can see where you edited the auto contrast, but it doesn't show who added the warning. I've had some bad experiences with copyright types on this Wiki before, and it would be best not to anger them. Though I do hate it when someone randomly adds a tag like that and fails to mention it on the article talk page where it might be of interest. WTF? (talk) 23:30, 31 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I looked at the tag and I believe it is part of the tag originally added when the image was uploaded. I believe it is a simple warning that comes with the NASA tag (second one down), but our image isn't affected as shown by the first NASA tag. 08OceanBeachS.D. 23:38, 31 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, the tag issue is probably fine, since it looks like it was added with one of the tags. If you can fix it, great, but unless someone complains, I'll let it go. The citation issues are mostly resolved, though I'm still a bit unsure of the skyline citation under cityscape. The article sentence reads, "The beginning of skyline growth in San Diego is attributed to the construction of the El Cortez Apartment Hotel in 1927." with a citation to skyscraperpage.com. That page shows three other buildings prior to El Cortez around 60-70 m tall, but doesn't really attribute the actual growth of the skyline to any of the buildings. So it could likely be WP:SYNTH or WP:OR if our sentence attributes the growth of the skyline to the fourth building on that list. WTF? (talk) 15:34, 1 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, WTF. I'm still puzzled about what kind of additional information is needed in the "culture" section. Can you give me some suggestions, or point me toward a Good city article that has a satisfactory culture section? --MelanieN (talk) 03:53, 1 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Melanie, it may be of benefit to review the Washington, D.C. culture section as the article maintains FA status. One perhaps more comparable to San Diego is Montreals culture section, with GA status. 08OceanBeachS.D. 23:30, 1 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
That's a good tip. I will add that, when I usually review a city article, what I look for in the Culture section is not just a description of landmarks, monuments, and points of interest. I am also interested in how those points of interest integrate into the overall cultural scene and the population. For example, how do theaters contribute to the theater & arts scene? What kinds of annual cultural events take place in the city? It's also best not to merely link to the websites of the theaters and festivals themselves, but to dig around for some news articles & reviews written by critics (note: not blogs; actual newspaper stories) about these things. The various festivals in a city often tell a lot about the population. The Flagstaff, Arizona article has a pretty decent arts and culture section written this way. Hope this helps. WTF? (talk) 01:58, 2 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I think I may have cleared up any issue with the latest sentence revision: "The development of skyscrapers over 300 feet (91 m) in San Diego is attributed to the construction of the El Cortez Apartment Hotel in 1927, the tallest building in the city from 1927 to 1963." Thoughts? 08OceanBeachS.D. 00:03, 2 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

That's actually pretty good. Looks like all the issues have been cleared up here. The article can now be listed. Congratulations to all those involved. WTF? (talk) 01:58, 2 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:San_Diego/GA1&oldid=1136378863"