Wikipedia:Peer review/Dawson Creek, British Columbia/archive1

Dawson Creek, British Columbia[edit]

An article on a small town in northern B.C., population ~10,000 people. I would like someone to help with the prose and the reference formatting. Plus, comments on how to improve would be great. --maclean25 16:19, 9 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Well, to me at least, this looks like an excellent article. I only saw one format issue and that was a pair of tables that overlapped in the Government and politics section. (It's probably related to the browser width.) You could possibly add some infrastructure information, such as hospitals, gas, electricity, and telecommunications. Also your culture and recreation section could have a paragraph on local TV and radio stations. Thanks. :) — RJH 15:57, 10 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- Yes, the parallel tables have been a problem and it is a browser thing. Originally consructed them in Mozilla, then had to tweak them to work in Internet Explorer. Now they look fine on my browsers (at maximum expansion) but I don't know if it works on others with different settings. If anyone knows how to force the table to stay the same size (and in palce) while the browser window shrinks please let me know. The media stuff I've consider but never got around to (not my most favorite subject in the world). The infrastructure idea I haven't considered, but I will now. Thank you for your comments. --maclean25 16:40, 10 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  - In the header of the first table you could try, for example: style="float: right; margin: 1em;". That should prevent overlap, I believe. — RJH

Pretty good comprehensive article. I'd like to try doing some copyediting, especially on the introduction and the first para of the history (too many "settlements" :-) ) but life is interfering with Wikipedia so I won't get to it until next week. I find the footnotes interfere with the text and most could be incorporated in it as they are not references. Like I said, I'll take a gander at it next week. You might want to include some climate data from [1]. See Dawson City for an example of what I did. 207.189.233.198 21:16, 10 November 2005 (UTC) Somehow, I was logged off. It's me: Luigizanasi 21:17, 10 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- Luigizanasi, where do you find those wonderful sources? I noticed that website has climate data on other small cities (like, Taylor) that I just could not find elsewhere. This will really help. Concerning the footnote style: it was something that made sense in the beginning, but it just kept on growing and growing. I'm going to have to turn them into plain old references and merge(?) the notes. --maclean25 01:02, 12 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

It's a decent article, but you should avoid the use of certain sentence structures. For instance, Dawson Creek’s unemployment rate was quoted at 10.4% is something you might find in mass media; it would be better stated as Dawson Creek’s unemployment rate was 10.4%. I think the Demographics section needs copyediting, because there are several such awkward sentences. Another (very minor) issue is that you link to relevant articles on their second occurrence in some cases, instead of the first. An example is transshipment, which occurs in the Demographics section, but a link to it is found in the subsequent section, Economy. Stylistically, don't use & when you mean and; personally, I also don't like the use of "B.C." - I'd favour province or British Columbia. Also, should the article use Canadian English? (I see a number of center etc.) The images are OK, though I'd prefer to see one that has a close-up (the Art Gallery maybe?) instead of numerous shots from a distance; it'll add variety to the images. The images under Economy and Transportation are remarkably alike; is there some way of getting the same information without making the images so similar? Overall, the article is good, and needs only a few minor tweaks. I've made many of those changes in a recent copyedit. Mindmatrix 19:55, 11 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- Thanks for the copyedit. The underlying cause of the points you mention above is that my background is in report-writing. I instinctively go for the short statements of fact using as few words as possible and don't write anything from start-to-end (but rather a piece here, a piece there). This is why I require help in the prose and getting it to flow well. Concerning the images, I will walk across the street and get a close-up pic of the art gallery when the weather clears up a little. I really like "The Mile Zero Post" image as the wind was blowing well when I took it. I think the "8 Street" image best captures the essence of the town and it looks really good when viewed at full extents. However, I realize it does not convey the intended message of retail activity as a thumb. I will need to take a walk around town and think about this. --maclean25 01:35, 12 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]