Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Washington, D.C.

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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 promoted by User:SandyGeorgia 00:50, 30 July 2008 [1].

Washington, D.C.[edit]

Nominator(s): epicAdam
previous FAC


I have been working on this article for several months and I do believe it is ready to submit as an FA candidate. The article has also undergone a recent peer review that I think has hammered out any minor issues. I would like to thank the following users for their dedication in helping the article reach FAC: Patrickneil for his dedicated mentorship; Brianboulton for his extensive peer review; Maralia, Realist2, and Juliancolton for their copy editing prowess; Ealdgyth for being a tireless reference checker; Dr. Cash for his help over at WP:CITY; and last but not least, Saxonthedog for relentlessly making sure the article reflects a NPOV.

I am happy to address any other concerns the editors have about Washington, D.C. Thank you. -epicAdam (talk) 17:23, 24 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Resolved comments from Aude (talk) 17:42, 24 July 2008 (UTC) Oppose The article is quite good, but I see some changes that should be made.[reply]

  • The history section jumps from 1874 to the 1930s. Around the turn of the century, the McMillan Plan was devised and major changes to the city made (e.g. National Mall created, Union Station built and the railroads relocated there, etc.) I know this is mentioned in the cityscape section, but it could also be tied in with the history.
    • If other editors think the information should be repeated in history then I will do so. epicAdam (talk) 18:18, 24 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
      • I provided a mention of the plan in the history section. -epicAdam (talk) 19:51, 24 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Cites are missing in some places (e.g. slavery outlawed in 1850).
    • I didn't think I would need one there, but I added one just in case. epicAdam (talk) 18:18, 24 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • The mention of 9/11 is awkward. That bit doesn't tie in very well with the rest of the article. How has 9/11 affected DC since then?
    • I would mention the effect on security, but 9/11 had the same affect pretty much everywhere else. I think it would be pretty redundant to say that security was tightened as a result. But, I'm not married to having the information in the article in the first place. I'll wait to see if any other editors are concerned about it.
  • I don't think the coordinates should be mentioned in the geography section. The numbers are meaningless to most people. Anyway, the coordinates are already provided in the infobox.
  • The geography section could really use a picture of one of the park areas (e.g. Rock Creek Park, C&O Canal, or other park area). Parks are very important as part of people's everyday life in DC, as a place for recreation, perhaps more so than other cities.
  • In the climate section, the average amount of snowfall is mentioned. There, the article should also mention about the major blizzards that Washington has from time to time. They tend to be a big deal, with schools closed and other impacts.
    • When they happen they are a big deal but they tend to be few and far between; I wouldn't think most of them to be a major aspect worthy of mention. The Great Blizzard of 1899 is already mentioned, however, because it was the largest. epicAdam (talk) 18:18, 24 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
      • Mentioning 1899 is fine, but mentioning generally that blizzards happen on occasion might be appropriate, similarly to how the article mentions about occasional flooding in Georgetown and the occasional hurricane. --Aude (talk) 08:47, 25 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
        • I added information about Washington blizzards using information from the article provided by the National Weather Service. -epicAdam (talk) 18:00, 25 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • The article might be better if it cited Zachary Schrag's book on the development of the Washington Metro system. He talks a lot about transit-oriented development and gentrification, as relates to construction of the Metro system.
    • I would agree that would be great information for the article on Metrorail (Washington, D.C.), but I think is probably too in-depth for a main summary. epicAdam (talk) 18:18, 24 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
      • I think something is missing. One thing is that I can't find when the construction of the Metro system began or when the system first opened, yet the system has had important impacts on the city. Schrag mentions how the Metro system helped stimulate gentrification in the Downtown/Chinatown area, as well as U-Street and other areas with transit-oriented development. At the time the system was planned, building freeways was the popular thing to do. Washington had the option of doing that, and had plans to build a freeway through Adams Morgan and other neighborhoods. But they ended up choosing to build the Metro. Some brief mention in summary style about construction of Metro might fit in the history section, the transportation section, or elsewhere. --Aude (talk) 08:47, 25 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
        • I added information about Metro's role in gentrifying areas along the Green Line, referencing Schrag's book. The information about Metrorail's opening is already present in the transportation section.
I think the story of the Washington metro is fascinating, but I don't want to overemphasize its role in this article. One has to remember that the transit system wasn't meant to help revitalize the city; it was built to quickly shuttle suburban residents to and from work downtown. Plus, gentrification has been uneven. Areas like U Street and Columbia Heights are successful, but other neighborhoods in southeast and northeast aren't really any better off than they were before Metro came through. I don't want to make it sound like Metro was the city's great "development messiah" when it was really one of many factors that aided development. Also, just for comparison, the article on New York City gives its subway a grand total of five sentences, and it is arguably one of the most important subway systems in the world! -epicAdam (talk) 18:00, 25 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

--Aude (talk) 17:42, 24 July 2008 (UTC)}}[reply]

Support - With the changes, the article looks good to me. It does a excellent job of summarizing all the subtopics, and the sources look good. Excellent work with the article over the past few months. --Aude (talk) 20:42, 25 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Support I remember the numerous problems this article had when it was first up for FAC. It was ugly and had issues with citation formatting. I have been astonished with the work that has gone into it in recent months, to the point where I found myself wondering just this week when it would appear up here. I have given advice to editors and have worked on the images at times, but am not a major contributor. I think the criticisms mentioned already are not enough to withhold support, and have been, as far as I can see, already remedied. With attention to the History section, I don't worry that it skips too much, but that it could be shorter yet. Still, it is no longer than that of other similar city articles such as New York City, which is already a featured article. I encourage readers to compare DC with New York to see that Washington, D.C. now deserves to be elevated to featured status.--Patrick Ѻ 20:11, 24 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Support: I did a very detailed peer review for this article (a review which, by the way, is still open and needs to be closed). I raised a great many points, all of which were responded to in a positive manner. Since my review a considerable copyediting and revision exercise has taken place which has improved the article further. I share the view expressed above, that the criticisms on which the oppose is based are relatively trivial and easily rectified. Of city articles, this is probably the best I've seen and is in my view thoroughly deserving of promotion. The only question which I have is about the wikilinking of dates. My understanding of current policy on this is, don't link dates unless they are of particular significance, e.g. a person's dates of birth and death in a biographical article. In this article all dates seem to be linked - including a year-only "1973" in the History section which has got to be wrong, whatever the dispensation. I suggest the editors check whether they are within current date-linking policy and act accordingly. But this is nothing to do with the quality of the article, of which the editors ought to be proud.--Brianboulton (talk) 20:48, 24 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I de-wikilinked the year. But I too have asked for clarification about the dates. I think it makes sense to only wikilink relevant dates, but it seems like full dates are supposed to be linked. If not, then I can quickly delink irrelevant dates. -epicAdam (talk) 21:00, 24 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
P.S. Peer review is now closed. Thanks for catching that, Brian! -epicAdam (talk) 21:16, 24 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Support I did a peer review of the article, and after some minor issues, the article meets the criteria, and then some. I'm not concerned about the history section skipping a time period, as a subarticle exists. An excellent piece of work on such a notable topic. Juliancolton Tropical Cyclone 23:41, 24 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Support, as I couldn't find anything to complain about except for one sentence, which I fixed myself. Tuf-Kat (talk) 02:30, 25 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

  • Current ref 146 "Haynes, V. Dion and Theola Labbe "A Boom for DC Charter Schools" is lacking a last access date.
Otherwise souces look okay, links checked out with the link checker tool. I did a check at the peer review, and the concerns there have been addressed. Ealdgyth - Talk 12:53, 25 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Ref 146 now has an access date. Thank you, Ealdgyth! -epicAdam (talk) 15:48, 25 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

  • There appears to be over wikilinking per WP:CONTEXT. For example, in the intro the following probably do not need to be wikilinked: United States, states, workweek, commuters, trade unions, area, Minority-majority state (Washington D.C. is not a state). Additionally, you could consider not wikilinking the dates, since it is optional per WP:MOSNUM to do so and does contribute to the "sea of blue" effect. Autoformatting (wikilinking dates) only benefits the small percentage of readers who are both logged in and who have set their preferences. The rest just see a blue jumble. —Mattisse (Talk) 22:49, 25 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Note: Wikipedia:CITE#Scrolling lists "Scrolling lists, for example of references, should never be used because of issues with readability, accessibility, printing, and site mirroring. Additionally, it cannot be guaranteed that such lists will display properly in all web browsers." There are also some faulty italics in the citations, resulting from using the "work" parameter on sources rather than the publisher parameter; newspapers, journals and periodicals use WP:ITALICS, but why is the website CNNMoney in italics, for example? See what graphic? For example, the District's unemployment rate fluctuates greatly within the city; in August 2006, unemployment ranged from 1.5% in affluent Ward 4 to 16.3% in Ward 8 (see graphic). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:10, 26 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thank you both for your comments. I have just gone through and performed a section-by-section sweep of the article and have removed unnecessary and/or redundant wikilinks, empty reference fields, adjusted publisher settings to conform to WP:ITALICS, corrected problems with date autoformatting, and removed the hidden scroll bar. Please let me know if you have any additional concerns. Best, epicAdam (talk) 05:33, 26 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - What about the fact that Washington D.C. is not a state? It is jarring to see it called a state in your introduction. Perhaps thinking of Washington D.C. as in the class of "states" is why the article glosses over how its special status contributes to its positives and negatives in the present day. —Mattisse (Talk) 22:47, 26 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Re above comment "it is jarring to see it called a state", the last sentence of the lead begins with the qualifier "If Washington DC were a state...", which is rather the opposite of calling it a state. I see no confusion here. Brianboulton (talk) 15:42, 27 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I apologize for overlooking that. —Mattisse (Talk) 15:57, 27 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Support I'm a little hesitant to support or oppose this article, because I've contributed to it in the past. Though the vast majority of the work has been done by Epicadam, who has done an awesome job recently. It has gone through a GA review, peer review, and improved significantly in the past year. I think Washington, D.C. represents one of Wikipedia's finest city articles, and I would not hesitate in promoting it, IMHO. Dr. Cash (talk) 02:12, 29 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - I am disappointed that this article gives so little space to the architecture. It does not contain a description of the ensemble design of the important buildings with squares adjoining each other in the Italian manner, the streets radiating from the center etc., and other characteristics of the complex geometric overlays famously designed by Pierre L'Enfant and then revised and implemented after L'Enfant was dismissed. Its descriptions of artchitectural style are very general, as provided by wikilinks. —Mattisse (Talk) 17:17, 29 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Alas, therein lies the problem with summary style. Much like like the issue about the role of the Metro, it's hard to pinpoint the exact level of detail that should be reflected in the article. I will say, however, that the cityscape and architecture section is as detailed as that of New York City#Cityscape.
  • As for the street layout, the start of the cityscape section does say, "In 1791, Pierre L'Enfant drew up a basic plan modeled in the Baroque style, which incorporated broad avenues radiating out from traffic circles, providing for maximum open space and landscaping." There is a "see also" to the article on Streets and highways of Washington, D.C., which goes into further detail.
  • Based on your suggestion, I also added a footnote about Andrew Ellicott's role in creating the final plans. We had originally decided against mentioning him because not only was L'Enfant's plan not significantly altered by Ellicott, the plans were never entirely executed, either. It's for this reason that the McMillan plan is highlighted; those architects are largely responsible for the appearance of the city today, even as they followed L'Enfant's general design scheme.
  • The architectural styles are general. Again, relating to the summary style guidelines, it's hard to choose just exactly what buildings and architectural styles should be highlighted without providing undue weight to some subjects. Perhaps a sub-article on the Architecture of Washington, D.C. would be warranted to deal with this in greater depth, but I have a hard time imagining how it would all fit into the main article.
Thank you again for your comments. Best, epicAdam (talk) 18:41, 29 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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