Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/New Orleans, Louisiana/archive1

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[edit] New Orleans, Louisiana

I think this page compares quite favorably with the U.S. cities that have reached featured status (Marshall, Texas; Seattle, Washington; San Jose, California; and Newark, New Jersey). I've done some editing on the page, but it's mostly been limited to cleaning things up, fixing clunky prose, and proofreading. Kevin M Marshall 16:12, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

  • Object — 1) infobox needed 2) images seem to float across section headings 3) History too long. Make a new article and provide a summary here. 4) Geography is full of lists so too famous residents 5)Climate and education section too small 6) celebrations would be better under culture. Nichalp 20:36, Mar 18, 2005 (UTC)
    • I've added the infobox (although images of the seal and flag are still needed) and taken care of the history section. I'll try to work on the rest of your suggestions at some point this weekend or early next week. Thanks for your comments--the suggestions are all very good ideas.--Kevin M Marshall 15:33, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)
1) Try and avoid the overuse of subheadings. Take a look at Johannesburg and Sarajevo on the use of minimal subheadings. It would be preferable if you could summarise the history into three to five paragraphs without the headings. 2)Push the infobox a little lower 3) Image placement is terrible. Its all over the place 4) Move the famous residents to a new page. Its not important here. 5) The neighbourhoods and parishes could do with a template in which the places spread horizontally rather than vertically. 6) NO REFERENCES (Please read the guidelines) 7) Transportation could be shortened. Nichalp 19:03, Mar 19, 2005 (UTC)
  • Comment. What's there so far seems pretty good, but comparing the size to Seattle (including its 'main article' and 'see also' subpages) and San Jose, I have to wonder if it's comprehensive/detailed enuf. SJ is 50k, and Seattle about the same size as NO, but has MANY subpages--the subpages of History of Seattle alone total about 60k (I haven't read them, so there is a possiblity that they are unnecessarily detailed or wordy, but I doubt they'd be bad enuf to be the cause of the entire disparity). Sarajevo is also about the same size, but has many more subpages. Unfortunately, I don't know enuf about the city to give many specifics, but poking about at NO tourism seems to imply there are many more attractions/museums worth mentioning. Wikipedia:WikiProject_Cities suggests discussing major parks. The table I made here when Seattle was an FAC may give ideas of other topics that could be added.
I have just completed Mumbai(its above on FAC). Most of the topics listed in the table are included inline. Geology, crime, education, sports are all in a summary. Page size is <30 kb. its better to have subpages rather than to have a long list. A featured article should also be asthetically appealing and by adding lists and numerous sub headings it makes the page gharish. Nichalp 19:37, Mar 21, 2005 (UTC)
I'm not quite sure what direction to go with the size of the page. Some of the history sections on the main page of featured city articles are quite lengthy, with several subsections; others are very brief. I'm tempted to say that shorter is better and that subpages should be used, but it seems that there's no clear consensus on what length the history section should be. Quite a bit of the general outline for a city article is fleshed out, but I think we could have an even better guide as to what can be expected from the history section on a city's main page.
Do we want to adhere to the 32KB size limit or totally disregard it? If we're going to go with lots of subpages, there really isn't much reason to make 50 or 60 KB articles.
Also, while I can understand the visual disgust at a table of contents with too many headings, I think that in the body of the article subheadings are generally very useful.Kevin M Marshall 00:20, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I may have inadvertantly overly focused the discussion on the History section. I'm more concerned with things like the NO Online site listing 43 museums, while the article mentions three, only one of which has a Wikipedia article (they include the aquarium as a "museum" for some reason). Maybe not all 43 are worthy of note, but I would have to imagine at least a quarter to a third probably are. Also, I'm not suggesting it all has to be added in toto to the main city page, but right now the main page is about all there is. I personally prefer it consolidated like San Jose (even if it takes it to 50K--the 32K number was arbitrarily based on technical limitations of old browsers), rather than having to jump between dozens of subpages like Seattle, but either way, they both have so much more content it just seems like there has to be stuff missing. One thing it seems to be missing from the Project suggestions is parks; a couple things I'm used to seeing in comprehensive city articles are sister cities and 'city in literature' info. There also seem to be more festivals that could be mentioned, such as the Satchmo SummerFest and Essence Music Festival. Also there's hard to classify attractions like Six Flags New Orleans. The New Orleans Opera Association, is claimed to be the oldest opera in North America, and how about Louisiana Philharmonic, and local ballet and theater companies? And one comment about lists--I know a number of FAC voters oppose them, but they are seen by some as a more effective presentation of some kinds of information; while San Jose was an FAC, I converted lists in a number of sections into prose, but once the article was featured on the main page, most were converted back to lists. Niteowlneils 06:05, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)