Wikipedia:Featured article review/Dawson Creek, British Columbia/archive1

Dawson Creek, British Columbia

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Review commentary

Messages left at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Geography, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Cities, and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Vancouver. Sandy 21:29, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm sorry to say I feel this article's prose falls far below brilliant or compelling. There is a lot here that is really tedious, like the second and third paragraphs of 'demographics' and the final paragraph of 'economics'. The City maintains 83 km (52 mi) of paved and 15 km (9 mi) of unpaved roads is surely just not worth mentioning, and similar excessive detail includes the length of the runway of the nearest airport, and the length of the sewage system.

There's also lots of text that doesn't appear to be staying focussed on the main topic. I find it hard to believe a town of 11,000 people has its own distinct climate and so the article seems to be discussing the climate of the area the town is in rather than the town itself.

Finally, a lot of text reads like promo material. For outdoor recreation, there is a golf course, ice rink, tennis courts, baseball diamonds, a skateboard park, and a speed skating oval within the municipal boundaries, and For indoor recreation, the city boasts two ice hockey arenas, a curling rink, and an indoor swimming pool, all grouped together in the heart of the city are a couple of examples. Worldtraveller 20:29, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

I think a lot of city articles include a lot of cruft. I think this article is a lot less crufty than many city articles and the demographics section reads fairly well. Between the demographics and the climate sections, I think there might be a sentence or two or three that could go, but I think that can be easily fixed and wouldn't really harm the article.

I noticed that the article doesn't mention BC Rail at all, which I found curious but I don't think is a problem.

I don't see the outdoor recreation sentences reading like a promo, other than the word "boasts" (I decided to be bold and change "boasts" to "has"). Other comments on that one? JYolkowski // talk 21:30, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Hmm, well I disagree there - I think this is the most crufty article of this type that I've seen - especially as it's not even a city but a pretty small town. The 2nd and 3rd paragraphs do not remotely try to give the reader the important information, but simply give a list of statistics in prose form. This will inevitably result in tortuous sentences, which really aren't very interesting. For example Of these households, 30% were one-person households, 26% were married couples with children, and 26% were married couples without children - why is this information deemed worthy of inclusion? The median age of Dawson Creek's population is 34.0 years old, younger than the BC median of 38.4 years, with 22.4% of its residents under the age of 15, more than BC's 18.1% - extremely tortuous, and I would argue that an encyclopaedia article should not include data such as this.

As for the promotional tone, it just reads more like a brochure inviting people to move to the town than an encyclopaedia article. I can't believe, as I said, that a town with 11,000 people has a distinct culture of its own, so a section entitled 'culture and recreation' seems like an odd thing to have. I don't see why the town's recreational facilities are worthy of discussing, and I note that WP:CITY's template doesn't include a 'recreation' section.

Other problems - information about water supply is duplicated, and the lead is too short. But the excess detail and promo tone are what concern me most. Worldtraveller 12:41, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

• Prose needs work. Here are examples.
  • Second sentence lacking a full-stop, ahem. "with an estimated 2004 population of 11,394 people" - aren't all populations estimated? Even a national census uses stats to extrapolate.
  • While we're on population: "This helped the village's population surpass 500 people" - "village's" is pretty ungainly, and surpass isn't the usual word in this context.
  • Isn't is "centre", not "center" in Canadian English?
  • "the twenty-one officer Dawson Creek Royal Canadian Mounted Police" - better as "the 21-officer ...", surely.

It's full of awkwardness. I hope that the contributurs can find someone (preferably a stranger to the text) to fix it up. Tony 16:04, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

• I think "twenty-one officer" would be better in this case because its paragraph is full of stats which already have many digits. --Maintain 07:01, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Note left for Worldtraveller. Sandy 02:22, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

I made some copyedits, eased the promotional tone and cut some details that were perhaps a little excessive. I did not find the length of the runway (indicative of type of airport) or the total length of streets to be out of place. The "recreation" title is new but perhaps it is more appropriate (opposed to "Sports") in this case. I don't think this article needs to be placed in the FARC section. --Maintain 07:01, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, Maintain. There's been some work done on it since nomination. I've copy-edited the top, but more needs to be done. Silly things like "a new highway to southern B.C. made the city a crossroads between British Columbia and Alberta" (fix treatment of the abbreviation). Quite a few of these matters sprinkled through the article. Tony 02:36, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

FARC commentary

Main FA criteria concerns are writing quality (2a), excessive and over-specified information (5). Marskell 18:41, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

• Keep. The concerns here strike me as exceptionally minor. I know this one rubbed WT the wrong way, as it seemed too much space was being devoted to a small city, but I don't see how we can penalize an article on that basis. Marskell 09:29, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. Not stellar, but not too troublesome either. Sandy 22:46, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
• Status Waiting for more reviewers to generate a clearer consensus before this FAR is closed. Joelito (talk) 18:26, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

• Quite a lot of work has been done on it, and it's certainly better written for it. But it's too easy to find glitches.
  • "Population level"—This is wrong; I wonder whether "level" can be removed. In the caption, it's "trend", which can probably also go. Just "Population"?
  • "BC" vs "B.C.". I prefer without the dots, but whatever, as long as it's consistent.
  • "on that same per 1,000 people basis"—ouch, why not "per 1000 people,"?
  • compared with, not to, for contrasts.
  • "Livestock was also important to the region, but less so since a Canadian BSE crisis." Remove "also"; "is" rather than "was" would resolve the tension with "since". Why "a" and not "the", and when was this crisis?
  • Please audit all of the "alsos"; for example "Dawson Creek is also a regional node for air, rail and bus service." This starts a new paragraph, and is weakened by this insipid back-connector. Should "service" be plural?
  • "Prince George—Peace River riding": why the em dash? That's wrong (em dashes don't join items, they separate them); consider piping it with a spaced en dash.

I'm leaning towards "Keep", but would be happy for the prose to be brought up to "professional" standard, as now required.

Small note: B.C. rather than BC is quite common (speaking as a Canadian) but I know of no definite rule surrounding it. A look at the .gov site shows both in use. It seems to me that B.C. is used to abbreviate the name as a single noun (e.g. "the unemployed in B.C.") while BC is used in noun compounds (e.g. "the BC employment insurance program"). Someone else should look to see if they agree with that observation. Marskell 05:51, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Ah, that explains it. If that's what B.C.ians do, fine, but it does appear to be an odd distinction to make. (Tony)

In fact, a ctrl-f through the document shows that B.C. is used alone and BC used in compounds. I believe it is consistent. A few sentences have been edited since the last comment, including your last three Tony. All that remains is "level", which is in the graphic. I'm not sure why you think it's not appropriate. Other than that, I see no reason to continue to hold up this review. Marskell 08:19, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Just "Population in Dawson Creek, BC", without the "Level". And BC should have the dots here <grin>. But yeah, it's in the graphic, so can't be helped. I'm OK if this is retained. Tony 13:54, 29 August 2006 (UTC)