Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/1860 Atlantic hurricane season/archive1

The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was not promoted by Ucucha 14:52, 15 October 2011 [1].

1860 Atlantic hurricane season[edit]

Featured article candidates/1860 Atlantic hurricane season/archive1

Nominator(s): Juliancolton (talk) 02:03, 2 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I am nominating this for featured article because it brings back to life a chronology of storms forgotten by all but a few devoted scholars. These cyclones relentlessly battered the U.S. coastline, submerging small delta communities nestled between the Mississippi, the Atlantic, and Lake Pontchartrain. I wrote this article, and am nominating it here, to build knowledge of historically significant storms that nobody has ever heard of. I have utilized all available outlets for information, which, admittedly, is limited to two or three sources, and have built what I consider to be the most comprehensive and complete account of this deadly series of storms anywhere. Juliancolton (talk) 02:03, 2 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose - Sorry, I don't think this can be considered "the most comprehensive and complete account" of this topic when there's a book chapter (not used here as a source) on the same topic. A glance at the references for this book chapter will reveal several additional sources that could be used here. Sasata (talk) 02:25, 2 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Title: Historical Accounts of the Drought and Hurricane Season of 1860

Author(s): Dodds Stephanie F.; Burnette Dorian J.; Mock Cary J.

Editor(s): DupignyGiroux LA; Mock CJ

Source: Historical Climate Variability and Impacts in North America Pages: 61-77 DOI: 10.1007/978-90-481-2828-0_5 Published: 2009

Yes, but that source has little to add to Ludlum and Partagas; in fact, it's based primary on them. There are perhaps one or two tidbits to add (hydrological benefits of the storms), which I'll look into tomorrow, but nothing major. Juliancolton (talk) 02:33, 2 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Has there been any progress on this? Ucucha (talk) 13:42, 7 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Weak Support with comments.

Delink the redlinks in the infobox. Y E ^Pacific ^Hurricane
I think the Methodology section should be re-titled to Background and some people like myself don't know what Methodology means. Y E ^Pacific ^Hurricane 03:27, 2 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Giving that the timeline section has no content, I think it should be merged with the Storms section. Y E ^Pacific ^Hurricane
Have you considered giving Hurricane One an article? Y E ^Pacific ^Hurricane 03:27, 2 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Otherwise, It's good. Y E ^Pacific ^Hurricane 03:27, 2 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Source review - Nikkimaria (talk) 03:30, 2 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Use a consistent format for retrieval dates
Have the newspaper articles cited in Partagas been checked for additional details? What about Sullivan 1986 and the other sources cited by Partagas?
Need page numbers for Roth
Date ranges should use endashes, even in titles

I haven't looked at the article cited by Sasata, but I too am unsure as to whether all available sources on this topic have been exploited. Nikkimaria (talk) 03:30, 2 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Copyscape review – No issues were revealed by Copyscape searches. Graham Colm (talk) 13:43, 2 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Support, with the note that I reviewed it for GAN. I was rather impressed with how alive JC made the storms feel. He did a great job using the sources available, and I am very pleased with the writing. --♫ Hurricanehink (talk) 14:58, 2 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Support. For a season that was over 100 years ago, with little references like we have today, I am fully supporting this article. Good job JC! TropicalAnalystwx13 15:01, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

Support; but I'll give it a run-through. HurricaneFan 25 12:23, 3 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Changes:
- En dash added in Saffir–Simpson Hurricane Scale link
- [[maximum sustained winds]] to [[maximum sustained wind]]s
- Spelling fix in Lake Pontchartrain
- Removed underscores
- Changed "over" in the infobox to "at least"
- Fixed hurricane season links
- De-linked Biloxi, Mississippi (linked earlier in section)

Comments:
- You say Hurricane One impacted Biloxi early on, but a gale was experienced later, which makes it sound like the storm retraced back along its path. Can you clarify?
- The section entitled "Hurricane Five" has an infobox that is labeled as "tropical storm". Why?

HurricaneFan 25 12:35, 3 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comments –

~~En dashes needed in Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale in the Storms graph~~ and in the first paragraph of Hurricane One. Also, there's one in Hurricane Two needing a dash, and one in Hurricane Four.
~~"The cyclone drifted south of west for three days". Makes more sense to me to just have the word "southwest" in there, since it's a bit easier for the reader.~~
~~"experienced a gale beginning of the morning of August 11...". Should the first "of" be "on" instead?~~
~~Hurricane Four: "It was first detected on September 10 local time...". Is the time itself missing, or is that just referring to the day?~~
~~Typo in "Its fist data point in the hurricane database list it as...". Also, "list" should probably be "lists".~~
~~Capitalize last word of "Mississippi River delta"? It's that way earlier in the article.~~
~~Hurricane Six: Don't need another Plaquemines Parish link, since there's already one in an earlier section.~~ Giants2008 (27 and counting) 02:47, 4 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I put strikes through the ones that were fixed. TropicalAnalystwx13 (talk) 11:55, 4 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
For the future, please don't strike out a reviewer's comments by yourself. The FAC instructions recommend against this, and it creates problems when reviewers come back to check on an article. Here, the first comment wasn't fully resolved in my mind, which no one reading this FAC can see when somebody else strikes it out. Giants2008 (27 and counting) 17:10, 7 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Neutral for now. For covering something that occurred about 150 years ago, this article is pretty damn good. However, I think the writing might be a bit unnecessarily fancy in some areas. I'm not sure whether this would be detrimental to a featured article, so I'll just point out some instances below. Auree ★ 19:28, 14 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

"in rapid succession" seems a tad superfluous. I'd get rid of it
"[...] caused severe inundation of low-lying and coastal communities, inflicting severe damage and killing dozens of people." – You twice use the word severe in one sentence.
"onslaught" seems awkward in hurricane terminology, to be honest.
"In many cases, the only evidence that a hurricane existed was reports from ships in its path, and judging by the direction of winds experienced by ships, and their location in relation to the storm, it is possible to roughly pinpoint the storm's center of circulation for a given point in time." – Split this beast into two separate sentences after "in its path"
"As the three landfalling storms progressed inland, information on their meteorological demise was limited." – This sentence seems a bit too extravagant.
"although its track is obviously truncated due to a lack of available information" – same as above
"and in Balize, nearly every structure in the town was destroyed:" – "in the town" is redundant, and replace the colon with a semicolon
"In New Orleans proper, heavy rain and gusty winds were reported, but no flooding was reported." – reported, reported
I feel that using ambiguous wording such as "probably" in an encyclopedic article weakens the prose. Any way to avoid this?
"The storm was just as severe at Mobile, Alabama" → in Mobile, Alabama?
"efforts made to piece together wind observations from ships reveal" – A bit verbose
I question the usage of "life" in hurricane terminology. How about "existence" or "duration" instead?
"the most densely populated areas were now located in the eastern semicircle of the storm, which is the most intense." – Oh? Since when?
"laid to waste vast fields of sugar cane" – Abstruse wording.
"Flood waters rose until early on October 4, when they slowly began to let up" – Change "let up" to "recede"?

Don't get me wrong, the article is brilliant, but as an encyclopedic piece I'm not too sure it needs to be as fancy as it is right now. Auree ★ 20:01, 14 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.