Talk:Forest Reserve Act of 1891

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Former good articleForest Reserve Act of 1891 was one of the Social sciences and society good articles, but it has been removed from the list. There are suggestions below for improving the article to meet the good article criteria. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.
Article milestones
DateProcessResult
May 16, 2020Good article nomineeListed
September 13, 2021Good article reassessmentDelisted
Did You Know
A fact from this article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "Did you know?" column on May 28, 2020.
The text of the entry was: Did you know ... that after Congress limited presidential power granted by the Forest Reserve Act of 1891, President Theodore Roosevelt quickly protected 16 million acres of forest while the bill sat on his desk?
Current status: Delisted good article

Untitled[edit]

Wow! This page really needs help! I'd do it now, but I'm far too busy. Please, someone just add a link to the document! Peace6459 (talk) 22:38, 8 January 2007‎ (UTC)[reply]

Roosevelt?[edit]

Is there a source for Roosevelt passing this law? Roosevelt was elected in 1900, so it can't be during his presidency. --shadytrees (talk) 23:13, 22 April 2007‎ (UTC)[reply]

The law was passed in 1891 which Roosevelt used to reserve timberlands, the law was 'on the books' when he took office. Marcia Wright (talk) 01:26, 27 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
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 97198 (talk) 15:07, 23 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

  • ... that Grover Cleveland shut down the federal government in 1897 to protect 21 million acres of forestland using the Forest Reserve Act of 1891? Richard J. Ellis, The Development of the American Presidency (2018), ISBN 978-1-315-17604-8, [1]
    • ALT1:... that after Congress limited presidential power granted by the Forest Reserve Act of 1891, President Theodore Roosevelt quickly protected 16 million acres while the bill sat on his desk? Richard J. Ellis, The Development of the American Presidency (2018), ISBN 978-1-315-17604-8, [2]
    • ALT2:... the defining section of the Forest Reserve Act of 1891 was illegally added to an another bill immediately prior to its Congressional vote? Individuals and the National Forests, foresthistory.org [3]

5x expanded by Cthomas3 (talk). Self-nominated at 19:01, 13 April 2020 (UTC).[reply]

  • Comment: Your hooks need to include a link to the relevant article. I've fixed ALT2, but you need to shoehorn the article name or a synonym for it into ALT1 and ALT0. ALT1 is also above the 200 character limit. buidhe 06:22, 15 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thank you, this is my first time doing this. I'll see what I can do. CThomas3 (talk) 21:19, 15 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • I've updated both hooks to contain a link to the article and reduced ALT1 to 200 characters. Thank you for the feedback. CThomas3 (talk) 00:22, 17 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Very nicely written article! New enough, long enough, neutrally written, well referenced, no close paraphrasing seen. ALT1 looks like the hookiest of the lot; hook ref verified and cited inline. No QPQ needed for nominator with less than 5 DYK credits. ALT1 good to go. Yoninah (talk) 16:31, 12 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

GA Review[edit]

The following discussion 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.



This review is transcluded from Talk:Forest Reserve Act of 1891/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: DannyS712 (talk · contribs) 18:02, 5 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]


Review[edit]

GA review
(see here for what the criteria are, and here for what they are not)
  1. It is reasonably well written.
    a (prose, spelling, and grammar):
    b (MoS for lead, layout, word choice, fiction, and lists):
  2. It is factually accurate and verifiable, as shown by a source spot-check.
    a (references):
    b (citations to reliable sources):
    c (OR):
    d (copyvio and plagiarism):
  3. It is broad in its coverage.
    a (major aspects):
    b (focused):
  4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.
    Fair representation without bias:
  5. It is stable.
    No edit wars, etc.:
  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):

Overall:
Pass/Fail:

· · ·

Notes[edit]

  • Passes criteria 6A and 6B since it has no images; not required
  • line-by-line:
    • Lede: The Forest Reserve Act of 1891 is a law that allowed - tense change, should be either all past or all present tense
      • Changed it to be all in present tense.
    • Lede: set aside forest reserves from the land in the public domain - not sure Public domain is the right target to link to; that is for public domain in terms of copyright
    • Lede: After it became known that there were abuses under the previous Timber Culture Act of 1873 that granted additional land to homesteaders agreeing to plant trees, many scientists joined with the American Forestry Association to advocate for stronger laws for the management of the nation's forest land. - became known to whom? what were the abuses? Who were the "many scientists"?
    • Background: Prior to passing the 1891 act, congress had been debating public land policy for more than two decades. - Congress should be capitalized
      • Done.
    • Background: as well as the blatant fraud that was occurring under existing homesteading policy - what was the fraud? What happened?
      • Added In 1873, Congress had passed the Timber Culture Act, which granted 160 acres (65 ha; 0.65 km2) of public land at no cost to anyone who agreed to plant and care for 40 acres of trees for a period of ten years. However, the new law had numerous loopholes that allowed non-residents to claim land for speculation purposes, and family members to give land to other family members to circumvent formal ownership and avoid taxation. with new reference.
    • I'm going to pause the line-by-line notes here - please review the article with an eye towards the issues noted above
  • This appears to be a copyright violation of http://innovaciondocente.upct.es/the-forest-axt.html given the similarities, but since that page is undated I can't tell. That page is not listed as a source - was it used?
    • Greetings DannyS712, and thank you for your review so far. I agree with your comments, and I'll be making changes here shortly. In terms of the copyvio: I couldn't get earwig to work on that page, but the only line that I could see that would be a copyvio is "In total, Roosevelt would quadruple the nation's forest reserves from 50 million acres 200,000 km 2; 78,000 sq mi to nearly 200 million acres 810,000 km 2; 310,000 sq mi". I did not use this website, and I am pretty sure that is a scrape of our article, given that the above was my summary of the paragraph in the source listed: In the space of just ten years, Presidents McKinley, Cleveland, and Harrison had unilaterally reserved almost 50 million acres in forest reserves—equal to about 78,000 square miles, an area the size of the state of Nebraska. Yet nothing in these presidencies could have prepared the nation for what would come next. In seven and a half years in office, Theodore Roosevelt would unilaterally reserve almost 150 million acres of forest land, and area larger than the state of... and it cuts off there. I'd be downright shocked if we both came up with the same wording. CThomas3 (talk) 00:04, 6 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
      I should also say that the purported copyvio page copies exactly the text used in the output of the convert template. CThomas3 (talk) 00:13, 6 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
      @Cthomas3: in that case, I'll AGF that its a backwards copy DannyS712 (talk) 00:15, 6 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
      Does that website's text seem to change for you too? Now I look at it and there's quite a bit of the article copied there, individual sentences interspersed with other unrelated sentences. How weird. CThomas3 (talk) 01:19, 6 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Greetings DannyS712, I hope all is going well. I've done my best to address your concerns above; let me know if there is anything else you wish me to take a look at. Thanks! CThomas3 (talk) 03:11, 16 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Cthomas3: Thanks for the ping.  looking... DannyS712 (talk) 03:15, 16 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I read through the article again. To me, it now appears to pass all of the criteria. Congrats --DannyS712 (talk) 03:56, 16 May 2020 (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.

Merger proposal[edit]

I propose to merge Forest Reserve Act of 1891 into General Revision Act. I believe these are the exact same laws, both passed in 1891 and being found at 26 Stat. 1095-1103. While the Forest Reserve Act article lists the Statutes-at-Large, and the General Revision Act does not, I found the same reference for the Forest Reserve Act used for the General Revision Act in Gary D. Libecap, Bureaucratic Issues and Environmental Concerns: A Review of the History of Federal Land Ownership and Management, 15 Harv. J.L. & Pub. Pol'y 467 (1992). It has been difficult to find a source that lists both these names at once, but every discussion I can find on either law points to the exact same statute. It appears that "Forest Reserve Act of 1891" is usually used on topics related more to § 24 of the original statute, while General Revision Act refers to the broader law.

However, I have neither the time nor energy to manage this merger. But it seemed my duty to point out this discovery. At least if the articles are not merged, the difference needs to be made much clearer. Even the General Revision Act mentions many of the same consequences of the law (e.g. Presidential forestry reservations) as the Forest Reserve Act of 1891, so their subject matters are not so easily independent for two articles. Zkidwiki (talk) 04:32, 27 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Zkidwiki, Thanks, I have merged the content of the articles. The content was suprisingly different enough there wasn't much explicit duplication, but it's clearly the same topic Reywas92Talk 15:16, 13 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]