Talk:Flagstaff, Arizona/GA1

GA Reassessment

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Hi, I'm Kingsif, and I'll be doing this review. This is an automated message that helps keep the bot updating the nominated article's talkpage working and allows me to say hi. Feel free to reach out and, if you think the review has gone well, I have some open GA nominations that you could (but are under no obligation to) look at. Kingsif (talk) 22:50, 4 April 2020 (UTC)

Good Article review progress box Criteria: 1a. prose () 1b. MoS () 2a. ref layout () 2b. cites WP:RS () 2c. no WP:OR () 2d. no WP:CV () 3a. broadness () 3b. focus () 4. neutral () 5. stable () 6a. free or tagged images () 6b. pics relevant () Note: this represents where the article stands relative to the Good Article criteria. Criteria marked are unassessed

• I feel that the lead could be longer. A reason for opening this reassessment, beyond the orange tags, was a matter of coverage. Some of the things mentioned in the lead are barely or not expanded on in the body.
• There's a lot of refs in the lead for non-controversial things, these belong attached to the corresponding parts of the body text
• A more recent image than 2000 should be used in the infobox
• There are two places where there is a citation needed tag, but more sentences without the tag. There is also a single, primary source, tweet being used as the source for the below part, which seems unrealistic (and a secondary source for verification is needed on the record)
  • Overall, the city features an average of 277 days without measurable precipitation each year. Despite snowstorms often being spread weeks apart, snow often covers the ground for weeks after major winter storms due to the low night temperatures refreezing the snowpack, even when daytime temperatures are above freezing. The highest recorded snowfall in a single day was 35.9 inches (91.2 cm) on February 21, 2019.
• Orange tags for government section needing update, and for the media and popular culture section needing refs - for over a year, there has also been a merge proposal attached to this section, which suggests it is liable to not be stable
• There's a lot of refs to the city's own website's home page... which isn't useful and is possibly a biased source if the information is on other pages
• Talk page has suggestions for improvement that have not been implemented; some over a decade old
• All the images are good and commons licensed - but
  • As well as more recent infobox image, there must be better ones of the university building, too
  • Though the San Francisco peaks is a nice image, it is in the cityscape section, and doesn't show the cityscape

History

• History feels very in brief and a bit like a timeline, since there's poor linking between paragraphs. It became a major city with Route 66, and yet the only mention of the road in the history (there's barely any in the article at all) is an uncited sentence, Flagstaff went on to become a popular tourist stop along Route 66, particularly due to its proximity to the Grand Canyon. that also mentions the Grand Canyon so fleetingly.
• There's a bunch of short sentences packing the end of the section that seem like brief updates since the 2007 GA listing, and are not of adequate quality or depth. Since about 2010, for example, the city has become a real hotspot for foreign athletes because of its climate and elevation in elite training... no mention.
• Stylistic concerns including placement of wikilinks. Punctuation seems fine. Inconsistent capitalization in Clark Telescope.
• Not enough refs for the etymology, which also warrants its own section
• What does "unkempt air and high prices of available goods" even mean?
• This history also does a disservice to the current downtown by going into lots of detail of its decline before briefly saying it started getting better in the '90s

Geography

• The intro of this does not mention that it is the county seat of Coconino, which seems important. It also doesn't mention the combination landscape of the city. I also note the red link for the Rio de Flag, which could easily get its own section in this article, if not its own article, but with some discussion in this article about the etymology relating to the city.
• The cityscape subsection describes a lot of roads in Flagstaff, and not much else. Not even that the city is kind of split in half and has distinct cityscapes in downtown and East Flagstaff. A map shows only two roads that aren't interstates that connect downtown and the mall side of the city... This part is also entirely uncited and has some informal phrasings like A road called Beulah Boulevard....
• The 'five distinct seasons' part is so OR.

Demographics

• Though I assume all this detail is pulled from the various census reports, there's no refs. Also, no census would say that As a college town, Flagstaff's population is considerably more educated than the U.S. average
• Crime section is one sentence containing one stat from 2017. Not even a mention of multiple(!) skunk attacks at NAU being handled by police, which is somehow the first thing that comes up when googling 'Flagstaff police' in news. I imagine there's more than that, though, since NAU PD (a separate police department?) also seems to have records of a couple shootings...

Overall

• This is where I say that already the lack of coverage and lack of sources would quick fail this if nominated for GA today, and we haven't even reached the tagged sections... I've got to recommend demotion. Kingsif (talk) 23:31, 4 April 2020 (UTC)
• @CaptainEek: I saw you made some edits - I've also been working on the article, did you want to act as nominator or collaborate? Kingsif (talk) 18:48, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

  Kingsif, I can collaborate some, I don't have tons of time but I'll do what I can! CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 20:26, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

• It has been about a week since the assessment comments. I had forgotten that GAR cannot quickfail, and tried to do this so that I could research the city to expand the article then renominate fairly quickly, as the general purpose is to reach GA quality. In this week some other editors have come foreward to contribute and gave a variety of good sources, and I have started working roughly top-down with research to expand the sections to a good level of coverage, which was the biggest issue. Several sections have improved greatly. Having added about 80,000 bytes to this article in the last week, I feel it would not be right to make the final judgment. Pinging @BlueMoonset: to ask how they would like to proceed. Kingsif (talk) 03:54, 11 April 2020 (UTC)

• Kingsif, as the person who opened the reassessment, if you think after the work you and others have done (when it is complete) that it appears to you to meet the GA criteria, there's no reason why you can't close it as "kept", even if you did a lot of the repair work yourself. There is no rush, however: as long as progress is still being made in addressing the issues, this can (and should) remain open. You can certainly ask for opinions here (or people can volunteer them), but the ultimate decision is yours, since this is an individual reassessment. If someone strongly disagrees with you, another reassessment can be opened. BlueMoonset (talk) 22:37, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

• @BlueMoonset: I haven't done work on this article in a while, and though some of the editors from the relevant projects have chimed in, editing has died down. We face an issue: the government and education sections are largely unreferenced, and it may be because I'm not in the US at the moment, but I can't find any sources to support much of the information. I'd flag it for OR, hoping someone else can find refs or amend to something accurate that's supported by refs. However, these sections are already light on details considering it's a reasonably large city. I can flag the sections and ask for help at the WikiProjects on these areas specifically. Kingsif (talk) 00:24, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

• Kingsif, it sounds to me like a lot of good work has been done, but if this doesn't meet verifiability in the government and eduction sections, then there probably does need to be flagged for this problem, and that means it should probably be delisted—the reassessment has been open for two months, and it seems time to close it. Should the sections later be brought to meet the GA criteria in this regard, the article can be nominated at GAN. Thanks for your care in working on improving the article. BlueMoonset (talk) 00:54, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

Drive by comment

I don't see a compelling reason to include two native names in the first sentence of the article, where it (imo) detracts from readability. I would encourage moving the footnote on etymology and alternative names to a separate section titled "Name". Compare Seattle, where the name is derived from Lushootseed, but that is discussed in the history section. buidhe 22:18, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

• There are also some unresolved "citation needed" tags, and the prose size (77kb) could stand some splitting. Maybe History of Flagstaff could be split off. buidhe 22:22, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

• @Buidhe: I did make History of Flagstaff, Arizona per your suggestion. Kingsif (talk) 00:21, 15 June 2020 (UTC)