Wikipedia:Featured article review/Yellowstone National Park

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[edit] Yellowstone National Park

Talk messages left at Protected areas, Maveric149, Volcanoes, & Montana. Ceoil 10:43, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

I have spent the over a month updating this current featured article. I have added a lot of information, clarifying misrepresentations and making sure all the references are accurate and as up to date as possible. This is the amount of change that has been incorporated. As this article was last reviewed as a featured article in 2004, I wanted to make sure it continues to meet the standards. Since this is an article about the worlds first National Park, I am determined to ensure it stays listed as a featured article, so any advice would be helpful. My biggest concern is that the article may not be "brilliantly written" as I know I have a tendency to be good at gathering evidence, but not so good at creating great prose. I definitely don't want to remove anything referenced from the article, even though it exceeds the recommended length...there is a lot to talk about, and a lot of the information is already expanded in subarticles that are linked.--MONGO 21:34, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

• Comment. Tempted to cite WP:SNOW. Tight prose, and the article is well attributed, and is generally authoritative. The images are largly free, and taken from commons; while one is a former featured picture. No issues here. Ceoil 00:57, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
  • Thanks for the edits...that is pretty much what I wanted...some copyediting.--MONGO 05:24, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
    • Please, let's leave SNOW off of this page. Part of the initial intent of FAR was as a place for relatively light copy-editing. Marskell 07:29, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
      • Apology, it was meant as a complement to the editors of the article. Irony and computers don't go well together, I suppose. An origional author putting forward his own article for comment is refreshing. Ceoil 08:42, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
• Comment Thumbnail images are not supposed to have hard coded pixel widths, it conflicts with user preferences. Jay32183 15:10, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
  • Adjusted, thanks.--MONGO 06:15, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Mongo, can you please notify any WikiProjects mentioned on the talk page and involved editors/original author (probably Mav) with {{subst:FARMessage|Yellowstone National Park}} ? Thanks, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:46, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Definitely, thanks.--MONGO 04:37, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

• Comment I've been monitoring Mongo's progress on the article for over a month. Everything I've seen him do so far was an improvement and was similar to what I had long planned to do with this article (my second ever FA). That said, I will take a closer look in a day or two to make sure everything works together. --mav 03:07, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
• Comment Looks like a potential keep without FARC; I will print and read entire article in the next few days. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:26, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

I did some minor copyediting, added a very few cite tags, and found some issues that should be addressed. I think the article will definitely retain its star, but there's some work to be done still.

• I saw copyediting needs, fixed some myself, but perhaps you can ask Deckiller (talk • contribs) to run through the article before we close the review. In particular, there was a strange usage of semi-colons; I caught some of them, but I doubt I got them all. I'm also not sure on the capitalization of the seasons in Forest fires and Climate sections. I also added hyphens to mid-date occurrences. There were several sentences that started with numbers, and I also found several occurrences of hyphens rather than ndashes separating date ranges (seee WP:DASH). I did some redundancy reducing, but I suspect there's more. I also removed some instances of "currently" and made them more durable. There is some inconsistent capitalization of animals that should be checked, like lynx and Lynx. Generally, it would be helpful if an experienced copyeditor ran through the entire text again. I'm not sure if "first national park ranger" in the Park creation section should be capitalized. I saw some awkward text, but didn't feel up to the task of repairing it.
• Many of the Government websources are dated; I added some of those dates to the references, but they should all be checked.
• Reference number 11 is messed up; it actually includes several pages, so that text isn't verified to the page listed. They need to be split out.
• There seems to be a problem with the park visitation numbers (5,000 by 1883). First, it should say "annual" or "yearly". Second, the Annual Park Statistics number says something different than the sentence cited to ref 11 (which I couldn't verify on ref 11). Also, if 5,000 were coming in by 1883, but 1,000 automobiles entered the park in 1915, the numbers don't seem to jive—1,000 automobiles doesn't translate to a lot of visitors, 30 years later? Can this be resolved?
• There are at least two pieces of text which don't seem to remain tightly focused on the subject; I suggest they should be removed, and there may be others.
  • (This doesn't relate to Yellowstone, rather areas to the north, not sure it's needed.) It is believed that the moister conditions found north and west of Yellowstone and the lack of historical levels of wildfire due to increased suppression, are the primary reasons for the decimation of the whitebark pine communities in those areas.
  • and was classified as an F4 tornado by Ted Fujita— who developed the fujita scale for classifying tornado intensity. (The info about who he is should be contained in his Wiki article and isn't needed here; I suggest ending the sentence after F4 tornado.)
• I added cite tags on the entire paragraph about how the park got it's name (couldn't find that anywhere in the text) and the bison estimates (they just don't resonate with what I read/saw when I visited Yellowstone, Montana and Glacier), and the comment about learning from the army (acccording to whom?).
• I'm not sure what this sentence is saying, it seems redundant, and the punctuation is off:
  • Other rare mammals such as the mountain lion have been reported to have a population estimated at 25, while the wolverine is known to live in the park, actual population figures are unknown.
• Now, to the biggest problem; the lead should be rewritten. The WP:LEAD is supposed to be a stand-alone summary of the article; it's not. Not only does it not summarize the article, but it has two entire paragraphs which are too much detail for the lead and contain text which isn't mentioned anywhere else in the article. The last two paragraphs of the lead should be moved into the body of the article, and a summarizing lead should be written. This should probably be done last, after a copyedit. Also, both of those paragraphs should be cited.

I think all of this work is very doable during FAR, but don't be alarmed if Marskell moves the article to FARC just to keep it on track timewise—that doesn't mean the article will be delisted. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:12, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

• • Thank you for the time you have spent looking things over and making some adjustments as well. I have added numerous new refs in the history section, breaking up the same link for #11 into direct webpage links. I made amendments to the 1883 visitation issue and tried to address the 1,000 cars thing...I imagine, but can't find out exactly when they banned horses on the roads due to increased vehicle traffic...but the ref says it happened later than 1915 by the way it is worded. I removed the whitebark pine expansion and the part with too much detail about Fujita. I found a ref for where the name for the park came from, and moved that paragraph to the history section. I cited the management policies that were adopted by the NPS from the army. I'll work on fixing the mountain lion sentence and developing a better intro in the next day or two.--MONGO 13:39, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
• Comment — I agree with Sandy's pointers. As for the prose, I'll try to make some time tomorrow afternoon. Tony's back, so he might be able to help as well. — Deckiller 03:12, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

  I believe I have made most of the adjustments mentioned by Sandy...I just added a summary intro which I think is a big improvement. I don't tend to ref the intros too much since they are usually better detailed and refed in the article body. A good copyedit would be helpful and let me know if there is anything else that needs to be referenced, adjusted or expanded. I appreciate the help with this effort.--MONGO 06:16, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Once the prose experts are satisfied, I'm good with a keep without moving to FARC, but does anyone think the lead is too long now? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:47, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

• It is longish. I admit to be an average writer overall, much better at finding references than creating brilliant prose, so what the article needs more than anything at this point is a good copyedit.--MONGO 20:00, 2 April 2007 (UTC)