Wikipedia:Peer review/Pennsylvania State Capitol/archive1

Add links
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Pennsylvania State Capitol

Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch • Watch peer review

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because it is just about ready to go to FAC, but still needs some fine tuning before then.

Thanks, ​​​​​​​​Niagara ​​Don't give up the ship 19:27, 21 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]


Ruhrfisch comments: As requested here are some comments - this is quite good overall, but needs some improvements before it will be ready for FAC. Here are some suggestions with FAC in mind.

  • There are several places where the article needs to provide more detail, for example in the lead I would change the second sentence The [current] Capitol was designed in [1906? in] a Beaux-Arts style with Renaissance themes throughout.
  • I would also add years to Before the capital was moved to Harrisburg, the seat of government for the state was in Philadelphia and, then, in Lancaster. and to The first capitol burned down in 1897 and the second was left unfinished when funding ran out.
  • There are several places that do not have references but will need them in FAC - for example the last four sentences of the first paragraph of the Huston Capitol section need a ref, or three of the four last sentences (per paragraph) in the Interior section also need refs.
  • There is a picture of the Supreme Court's stained glass dome on Commons - could that be used here? I also really like File:Harrisburg, Pennsylvania State Capital Building.jpg (view from across the river) and wonder if it could be added to the Restoration and preservation section. They are not great, but I will upload the two pictures I have of the rotunda (they are of the balconies to the right and left of the grand staircase)
  • There is nothing in the history from the graft scandal in 1906 or so (dates of convictions might help) to listing on the NRHP in 1977 (about a 70 year gap). This could be a problem at FAC as one of the criteria is that the article be comprehensive
  • I also wondered if a bit more detail on operations of the House, Senate and Supreme Court could be added? Number of legislators, usually times to meet, their complete inability to agree to a budget after 80 plus days of trying... (OK, not the last)
  • Added some more details, but wasn't able to find usual meeting times (I do know sessions can take place anytime between the first Tuesday in January and November 30). At least a budget impasses is somewhat better than a graft scandal ;-) ​​​​​​​​Niagara ​​Don't give up the ship 00:52, 10 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hope this helps. If my comments are useful, please consider peer reviewing an article, especially one at Wikipedia:Peer review/backlog. I do not watch peer reviews, so if you have questions or comments, please contact me on my talk page. Yours, Ruhrfisch ><>°° 04:37, 24 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Some more I am reading the article more closely and have done some minor copyedits, mostly to add some context (please revert if I have intorduced any errors or made things worse). Here are a few more suggestions:

  • I would add the year(s) to this With both the Pennsylvania General Assembly and the recently-formed United States Congress occupying Independence Hall, the state legislature considered proposals for moving the seat of the state government. (mid to late 1770s?) and would also add when Harrisburg was established / founded in the next sentence or shortly therafter.
  • In the Hills Capitol section I would make clear when the actual move of the seat of government was (1810? 1822?) I believe Abraham Lincoln's coffin lay in state there too (on its way to Springfield), which might be worth a mention.
  • In the Cobb capitol section, I would add the location of this building relative to the Hills capitol and to the Huston capitol (was it on the same site or nearby?) I assume they tore at least parts of it down, though it says some of it was to be reused in the new building, in the Huston Capitol section it says Groundbreaking of the Huston Capitol was on November 2, 1902, on the site where the Hills Capitol had formerly stood. which at least makes it sound like the Cobb was in a different place(??)
  • I'm not able to confirm whether the Cobb Capitol was located away from the remains of the Hills Capitol (I could have misunderstood it), so have removed it for now. The Huston Capitol, I believe, was quite literally built around it. ​​​​​​​​Niagara ​​Don't give up the ship 04:29, 26 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • MOS:HEAD says to avoid repeating the name of the article or sections in the headers. I am not sure if Hills Capitol etc. violate this or not - probably OK as is, but would "Hills building" work?
  • Both other FA state capitols use variations of "1st capitol", "2nd capitol" and "3rd capitol" as section headers, if those would be better. ​​​​​​​​Niagara ​​Don't give up the ship 04:29, 26 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • WP:ACCESS also says not to left justify images under a level three or four header, so the left image of the Cobb Capitol may need to be moved.
  • In Graft scandal could the year(s) of the convictions and lengths of prison sentences be added?
  • When were the grounds laid out and when was the Eighth ward leveled? Things like this could be added to the History section (assuming it was after the dedication - I also note that the statues flanking the entrance were added in 1909, so perhaps a sentence or mention of the ongoing work after the dedication could be added (trying to fill the 70 year gap).
  • Can the internal dimensions of the rotunda be given (height from floor to ceiling of the dome, circumfrence of the dome at base, that sort of thing)?
  • Couldn't find any. Probably would need the actually blueprints for that. ​​​​​​​​Niagara ​​Don't give up the ship 00:52, 10 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • It might be useful to describe the interior as if the reader were entering the building - first the rotunda, then where the House and Senate and Court are relative to the rotunda, etc. How many stories is the capitol? How many rooms does it have? That sort of thing.

Hope this helps, Ruhrfisch ><>°° 13:22, 24 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Final thought the more I think about it, the more I believe the history gap could be partly filled by moving some material from the Capitol Complex section to the History section. A framing sentence or two could be added ("Although the Capitol was originally designed to hold the offices for all the state's legislators, less than two decades after the dedication of the capitol new office space was required.") then add the South and North Office Buildings and the Archives and State Museum too. I also think a map of the complex would help, and can probably make one, but have a five map backlog right now, so it would take a while. Ruhrfisch ><>°° 14:23, 24 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

PS Just looked at Pennsylvania State Capitol Complex and there are a LOT of buildings listed there - should all of these be mentioned in the Capital COmplex section too? Ruhrfisch ><>°° 14:26, 24 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I wasn't, just the oldest or most interesting / popular. ​​​​​​​​Niagara ​​Don't give up the ship 00:52, 10 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Finetooth comments: As requested, I'm adding my observations too. I seem to have my nitpick hat on this morning, and I've focused mostly on prose and style issues.

Lead

  • When you're done making other changes to the article, you might think about slightly revising and expanding the lead. For example, I'd suggest inserting the names of the three capitols, which says, "The current Capitol is the third state capitol building to be in Harrisburg. The first capitol burned down in 1897 and the second was left unfinished when funding ran out." This might become "The current capitol, known as the Huston Capitol, is the third state capitol building constructed in Harrisburg. The first, the Hills Capitol, burned down in 1897, and the second, the Cobb Capitol, was left unfinished when funding ran out." This (or something similar) would work a brief mention of the first three main text sections into the lead. I'd also like to see something about the grounds, interior, and capitol complex worked into the lead so that it becomes more like a stand-alone summary of the whole article.
  • One fairly easy way to invigorate the prose would be to flip sentences from passive voice to active voice where that is easy to do. When I'm working with government sources, I often slip into the passive because bureaucrats often write in the passive, perhaps to avoid trouble. It's safer for them to say things like "The lake was drained" as opposed to "Mayor Snaggle and his brother Rufus drained the lake." The actor(s) and a strong sense of action vanish when active is flipped to passive. It's easy to flip these if you know who the actor is. In the lead, the first good candidate for flipping is "The current capitol was designed by Joseph Miller Huston and was dedicated in 1906." This could become "Joseph Miller Huston designed the current capitol, dedicated in 1906." The first sentence of the "History" section could be flipped. It says, "The first government of the, then-Province of Pennsylvania was formed on October 28, 1682, by William Penn in Chester, Pennsylvania." This could become "William Penn formed the first government of the Province of Pennsylvania on October 28, 1682, in Chester, Pennsylvania". In the "Huston Capitol" section, I see "The new capitol was dedicated on October 4, 1906, by Governor Samuel W. Pennypacker." This could become "Governor Samuel W. Pennypacker dedicated the new capitol on October 4, 1906." Well, you see the pattern, and I think you can identify and flip quite a few more of these elsewhere in the article to good effect.
  • "Capitol" with a big C is correct for the formal name, Pennsylvania State Capitol, I believe, but when it's used generically, I think it should be lower-cased. Thus "The Capitol houses the chambers for the... " should be "The capitol houses the chambers for the... ". The second paragraph of the lead begins, "The current Capitol is the third state capitol building to be in Harrisburg. The first capitol burned down in 1897 and the second was left unfinished when funding ran out." Here "capitol" appears both ways, with a big "C" and a little "c". I think these should all be little "c". "Hills Capitol", later in the article, is a formal title, so the big "C" looks right. Ditto for Cobb Capitol. But in the Cobb Capitol section, I see "Construction on the new Capitol began on May 2, 1898." I think "new capitol" is what you want in this case. Long story short, if you agree with my big C, little c analysis, you should probably change the renegades to make them consistent.
  • I also wonder if things like "State Office Buildings" should be capitalized as in "Most of the buildings are centered around the Capitol in Harrisburg, except for State Office Buildings in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Scranton, and Reading." Since "State Office Buildings" appears to be a generic description rather than a formal name, this should probably be little "s", "o" and "b" as well as little "c" on "capitol". Likewise "State Library" looks generic to me even though "State Museum of Pennsylvania" in the same sentence looks like the correct formal title (in title case, as you have it). I'm unsure about names like Rotunda and Grand Staircase. Are these merely descriptive (generic), or are they the official formal names?
  • Both FA state capitols use lower case "rotunda" and "grand staircase". "State Library" should read as "State Library of Pennsylvania", but I omitted "of Pennsylvania", as it didn't seem right to repeat it so close to "State Museum of Pennsylvania". ​​​​​​​​Niagara ​​Don't give up the ship 00:42, 27 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • In the "Interior" section, some of the quantities bigger than nine are written as words, whereas in earlier sections I see things like "22 flags" using digits. A good rule of thumb is to use digits for whole numbers bigger than nine unless, for consistency within a single sentence, you decide to use words for each instance. "It is the largest of the three chambers and was designed with an Italian Renaissance theme. The fourteen circular, stained glass windows in the House Chamber were created by William B. Van Ingen and the five murals in House Chamber were painted by Abbey. The largest of the murals is situated behind the Speaker's rostrum. Called the Apotheosis of Pennsylvania, it depicts twenty-eight famous Pennsylvanians." Here the first sentence is OK using "three", and the second is OK on grounds that maybe you want "five" spelled out and "fourteen" then has to be spelled out for internal consistency within the sentence. But later, "twenty-eight" should probably be 28 for consistency within the whole article. Ditto for 10 stained glass windows and 16 murals further down in the section.

Image placement

  • On my computer screen, the stereo card image of President Roosevelt slightly overlaps two sections. This could be fixed by moving the image up by two or three lines. The Burden of Life image does the same thing, and the fix would be the same. The same problem occurs with the image of the interior of the capitol dome; if you move this one up a bit, be careful not to create a text sandwich. I suppose all of these things look somewhat different on different computers, so perfection may not be possible, but I thought I should mention what I am seeing.
  • Some images have been moved around and new material has since been added so it should be fixed. ​​​​​​​​Niagara ​​Don't give up the ship 00:52, 10 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I hope these few comments prove helpful. If so, please consider reviewing another article in a field of your choice. Finetooth (talk) 18:33, 24 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

More from Ruhrfisch: The lead looks better - the direct quote (palace of the arts) probably needs a ref per WP:LEAD and WP:MOSQUOTE. I also wonder if needs to be explicitly stated that a fire burned down the Hills Capitol (seems clear to me, but does not say "fire"). Also should it say explicitly that the Cobb Capitol was built on the site of the previous capitol? I made a few copyedits and just went ahead and added {{fact}} where it seemed like refs were still needed. Please revert my ce's if I made errors or made things worse. Otherwise looks really nice. Ruhrfisch ><>°° 14:46, 10 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

More Finetooth comments: Instead of generating another list of comments about fairly nit-picky things, I went ahead and made proofing and copyediting changes. Please revert any that don't seem right to you. The article is quite interesting and informative, seems comprehensive to me, and is well-illustrated, stable, and neutral. I can't swear that I caught and repaired all of the nitpicks, but I reduced their number. It wouldn't hurt to have another set of eyes look this over before FAC, but I think it is ready otherwise. Finetooth (talk) 21:26, 12 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Peer_review/Pennsylvania_State_Capitol/archive1&oldid=1136084816"