Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Glacier National Park (US)

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[edit] Glacier National Park (US)

This article has been around for three years, however, over the last six weeks, major changes have brought this article to a higher standard. The references have been greatly expanded and information has been updated and enhanced significantly from where the article stood in mid April 2006, [1]. The article has been at peer review for a week and excellent comments there helped to make further improvements. Myself and Elkman created over thirty subarticles to eliminate virtually all the redlined links as shown at Category:Glacier National Park (US). Let me know what you think, and what the article needs to be a featured article.--MONGO 07:24, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

  • Conditional Support -- per copyedit and reduction of gallery size.Comments
  1. The image sizes should be reduced. On lower resolutions, it takes up more than half of the width of the page. 240-270px should be sufficient,
  2. Avoid starting a new section with a left-aligned image. It's easier to read text when it appears on the top left portion.
  3. What is is value of 1.5 m USD in today's $ terms?
  4. Convert the map to png
  5. The glacier gallery creates an unwanted horizontal scrollbar in lower resolutions. Consider vertical arrangement instead.
  6. Do mention what the record temperature drop was, intead of going to an external site. Some figures should be mentioned too. Highest, lowest, average, extreme etc.
  7. 700 miles -- metric equiv?

=Nichalp «Talk»= 08:21, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

I've addressed most of the issues you mention. I've reduced the image sizes, converted 1895 dollars to equal value in 2003, converted and reuploaded the map to PNG, expanded the climate section adding detail about when the record temperature drop happened and expanded more on temperatures, though I was unable to find records of the highest and lowest ever recorded and will look more later. I haven't decided what to do about the repeat images on Grinnell Glacier...I think it is crucial they line up side by side for clarity, but maybe I can reduce them in size, albeit, not too much. I also converted the 700 miles to km...really appreciate the imput you provided.--MONGO 12:05, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
I suggest that you remove the 1998 pic from the gallery then. My personal view would be that it would be easier to observe & compare the shrinking glacier if placed vertically. =Nichalp «Talk»= 15:51, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
I think we have lost the ability to compare them as it means scrolling up and down, plus we have have lost the entire aspect of the conversation on repeat photography by elimating one image, now orphaned....I'll leave it as it is for a few hours and maybe also try it the way I had it with reduced images...what size resolution are you running? I have mine set at 1024 by 700something for IE.--MONGO 20:07, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
Nichalp...have a look at this version and see if it elimaintes the horizontal scroll bar for you...[2]--MONGO 20:18, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
Yes, the above version eliminates the scrollbar. I test at 800x600, the standard web resolution. =Nichalp «Talk»= 12:43, 20 May 2006 (UTC)
  • Object—Needs a good copy-edit; then it will be a great article (great topic, great pics). I noticed lots of redundant alsos. Please use 'in' rather than 'within', 'on' rather than 'upon', and 'among' rather than 'amongst'. Here's one of the many sentences that need surgery:
    • "All the campgrounds in the park that are vehicle access are usually open by mid June and remain so until mid September". Try:—
    • "All campgrounds with vehicle access are usually open from mid-June to mid-September". Tony 08:34, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
      I,ve been trying to get someone to help me copyedit, with not much luck...I'll be back online late tonight to see if I can fix some of the sentence structure. Appreciate your time on this matter.--MONGO 12:05, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
    • I'll see if I can get around to copyediting the article, either this afternoon or tomorrow sometime. --Elkman - (talk) 16:30, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
  • Object Agree that it needs a serious copy edit. The lead paragraph seems to get into a level of detail that doesn't belong in the lead. The lead should entice readers to continue, which it didn't do for this reader, a Glacier lover. Notwithstanding the comment above that image sizes should be reduced, I slightly increased one picture size as my browser showed text trapped in the space between the two pictures. Mongo, I will try to help as I have time (which I don't for a few days). Sandy 12:11, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
Support After copyediting, the article looks great. Sandy 03:58, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
  • Agree I think it is an excellent article. hike395 13:12, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment. I gave it a copyedit, and it looks ok to me on that front now, but I still have one issue--the creation of the actual national park is never discussed outside the lead. That needs at least a mention, and preferably a bit of discussion and background, in the history section. --RobthTalk 16:26, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
    I did a minor expansion citing that U.S. President Taft signed the bill which created the park. IMO, the history of the park is interesting only as a sidepoint...the parks resources are the reason it's a park so that is where the emphasis needs to be.--MONGO 08:33, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
  • Support the many recent and rapid edits make this a fine article. Rlevse 00:10, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
Response to Robth Nope, still needs more work, but thanks all the same. First thing I laid eyes on was "The vast majority of this money" (ungrammatical). Just above is acres with a sq. km equivalent (should be acres and hectares, or sq. miles and sq. km). Then above that is " The park headquarters is located in West Glacier, Montana." (Has someone gone through the article to remove the dozens of redundant words—"located" here)? Let's dig a little deeper, though:
"The vast majority of this money is used to maintain the park at current operational levels, to provide a minimal number of staff, of which more than 60% are seasonal employees who are only employed for a few months per year, and to make minor improvements to structures and roadways that are in immediate need of restoration." There's a category problem in this list of three items: maintaining the park at current operational levels (the first item) encompasses the second two items, surely. The second item has a subsidiary clause (the 60% one) that is a little messy using commas as well—parentheses might be clearer and easier to read. "which" should be "whom", unless the staff are machines. "employees who are only employed" is an undesirable repetition, isn't it? All of these problems in one sentence. Who will help? Tony 03:52, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
No, it's standard in protected areas articles to list acreage and then square kilometers...my understanding is that in the U.S., few people understand how big a square mile is as compared to something tangible, whereby they do understand (at least better) what an acre is. For those in countries that use the metric system (most of the rest of the world!) I understand that square kilometers is more commonly used than hectares...hectares is only used for parks and protected areas that are much smaller in area, since some don't even equal more than a few square kilometers.--MONGO 08:33, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
OK Tony 10:21, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, you're right, actually; I was too cautious when I went through. I'll take another swing at it tomorrow if no one else gets there first, and see how that turns out. --RobthTalk 04:28, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
I did several copyedits this evening, but don't let my "getting there first" stop you -- we could always use another pair of eyes reviewing this. --Elkman - (talk) 05:42, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Comment - I would love to support this article, but the copyediting needs are just too great right now. I went through and got rid of excess wiki links and converted the plants and animals that I saw to non-capitalized forms where appropriate. InvictaHOG 17:12, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I see and I thank you for your contributions. However, bolding the subjects in the image captions is a personal style that has nothing to do with MOS, so I debolded them.--MONGO 17:32, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
You're right, it is personal style. Just trying to help, sorry - InvictaHOG 17:39, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
Oh, no, don't misunderstand me...I do appreciate your contributions...just letting you know I debolded them. We need help with the copyediting...I have a lot of edits to the page so I simply overlook mistakes and poorly worded sentences....this is common in larger articles if one looks at it too much...they have a tendency to miss some of the issues that need fine tuning. Thanks again, as I had completely messed up all those wikilinked dates...they were redundant.--MONGO 17:42, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
  • Support. This is a good, comprehensive article, and the work it's received while here on FAC has cleaned up the language to my satisfaction. --RobthTalk 15:09, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
  • Support great aticle, recent copyediting has improved the text markedly.--Peta 06:18, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
  • Conditional Support This looks a great article that meets the FA criteria. I would however prefer that numeric values have the same precision in US-system and in metric system. See for instance this example:
After the end of the Little Ice Age in 1850, the glaciers in the park retreated an average of less than 23 feet (7 m) per year. Between 1917 and 1926, the retreat rate rose to over 130 feet (40 m) per year and in the period from 1926 to 1932, this rate of retreat exceeded 328 feet (100 m) annually.
The source of these values is in meters i.e. "retreat >100 m". This should not be translated to "> 328 feet (100 m)" but to ">300 feet (100 m)", or even better to "> 100 m (300 feet)".

--Donar Reiskoffer 12:06, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

I was going for precision of measurements overall...I always have standard measures before metric ones in American articles and vice versa otherwise...for example, in Shoshone National Forest, the same standard before metric conversion is shown, whereby in Retreat of glaciers since 1850, metric is shown before the nometric values. I can see your point about not needing to write 328 feet and simply rounding it to 300 feet, but I have had others that have demanded that I stick with the most accurate conversions in terms of distances and areas values.--MONGO 19:21, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
Ok, Support --Donar Reiskoffer 07:09, 24 May 2006 (UTC)