Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Riverina

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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted 00:37, 3 December 2007.

[edit] Riverina

I'm nominating this article for featured article because it is a comprehensive, factually accurate, well referenced article on an important agricultural region in Australia. The article reached GA status in March 2007 and was reviewed and confirmed as GA in September 2007. It is the key article of the Riverina WikiProject and as such has had a great deal of attention. The article is stable, neutral in tone and content and has a comprehensive set of freely licenced images. This is a self-nomination. Mattinbgn\talk 21:24, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

  • "Support. Superb article. Rebecca 22:42, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Comments - sorry, just started reading when something cvame up but to work on - the lead should be 2-3 paras, should be easy to combine a couple. Also, the aboroginal mention is a little stubby and listy. Just a little more embellishing would be good - size of communities, notable individuals, extant status of languages or any other notable info. More later. cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 23:20, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Reply Have combined the lead paras and moved one to the article body. Agree with more detail on indigenous communities. Maybe not in history but in demographics and culture sections? Will take a day or two to source and write. -- Mattinbgn\talk 11:08, 31 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment - It's a good article, and has good info, but it needs some more polish in some places. The pictures on the agriculture section are excessive. In one place, there is prose bordered by pictures on both sides. I think some of them need to be removed. Also in the notes section, the style is inconsistent. In some places you have "Charles Sturt University" go before the name of the page, while in other cases it is the other way around. Also a couple of them don't work or lead to a test page. Aside from that, this is in good shape generally speaking. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 00:30, 31 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Reply Checked all notes for dead links and think I have got them all. Fixed the CSU notes for consistency. -- Mattinbgn\talk 11:08, 31 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Positive Comment - I haven't studied the article enough for critical comments but I must say that it was enjoyable reading! So work out the details for the FA but know that the editors have made it interesting. Mrs.EasterBunny 21:42, 31 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment: Ref. 83 is a dead link, so consider fixing it. DSachan 03:33, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Reply - Missed that one - should work now. -- Mattinbgn\talk 04:35, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

Oppose—Not well-written. Here are random examples, mostly from the lead, of why the whole article needs the attention of someone new.

  • Why bother to abbreviate "New South Wales" only to spell it out again almost immediately?
  • How could it border on a non-neighbouring state? And wouldn't it be more logical to describe the geographical regions that surround it (as you've partly done) rather than political units? We're told this yet again in the first section. Why the fixation with colonial states (bring it out under the federation section, but not everywhere)? Then we see a map that has the R substantially in Victoria, next to more obsession with states (lower-case s, please). States are not people ("who").
  • "In the 20th century, development of major irrigation areas"—"the" is missing.
  • "late 19th century push"—hyphens missing if it must be attributive.
  • Third para in lead: every rag-tag statement is shoved into this para. No cohesion or logical flow.
  • "15,000 - 30,000"—Read MOS on en dashes.
  • So the Riverina is arid? That's implicit in the first para of "Geography".
  • Aboriginal people 40,000 years: hotly contested figure.
  • South western: formatted differently in the lead.
  • Captions not whole sentences: no dot. Tony (talk) 11:51, 4 November 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for your comments. While I understand that responding to the points above will not change your opinion on the whole article, I will respond for the benefit of other reviewers:
  • New South Wales is no longer abbreviated at all in the body of the article. The abbreviation is shown in the lead as it is used in the references section. This is only in cases where the cited body uses the abbreviation (such as NSW Health) - see here
  • Agreed, bordered and neighbouring state is tautological. Will be fixed. Surrounding regions in NSW are described where it is possible to describe them. Unlike Regions of Western Australia, regions in much of the nation are unofficial, not formalised and tend to "fuzziness" at the boundaries. I am not sure I understand what you mean by colonial states; pre-federation there were colonies, post-federation these colonies became states (using "states" in its sense as sub-national political units). The problem with trying to refer to regions in Victoria is that there is no commonly used term to describe the area of northern Victoria along the Murray. The Mallee is used to refer to the region extending upstream as far as Swan Hill, from then on a plethora of names are used such as "Murray Valley", "Northern Country", "Goulburn Valley" and "North East" amongst others. Rather than use names without any real currency in the area or explain in detail the area of Victoria in question, it is clearer (at least to me) to refer to the area as Victoria, a place whose name and boundaries are clear. I have removed other instances of "the state of" in the article and I think I have picked up your point about regions. I believe the section on the bioregion adequately describes the difference between the bioregion and the Riverina as it is commonly understood. I have removed the sentence relating to the proportion of New South Wales covered by the bioregion.
  • Agreed, fixed
  • This is perhaps my ignorance showing, but where is a hyphen required here? I have removed "19th century" from the lead so I am unsure if this comment still stands.
  • Agree that the third para is choppy and will rewrite
  • Modified to comply with WP:MOSDASH
  • The Riverina is indeed arid in parts; "Rainfall levels in the Riverina are generally low with the median annual rainfall over most of the region between 250-500 millimetres (mm)" and "land described by Oxley 100 years earlier as "country which, for barrenness and desolation, can I think, have no equal."". Referring merely to the "arid Far West" implies that the Riverina is not arid, which is not correct. The Riverina's ample water comes not from rainfall but from the Murray and Murrumbidgee rivers, fed by rain and snow upstream from the Riverina.
  • This one is interesting. I am not aware of any major dispute about Aboriginal settlement in Australia taking place at least 40,000 years ago, except from biblically literal creationists. My reading is restricted to popular science rather than research papers, but my understanding that any dispute is based on competing hypotheses of how indigenous Australians arrived here and the level, if any, of gene flow between Homo sapiens arriving from Africa and the existing Homo erectus populations in South East Asia in the indigenous population. From the article on Indigenous Australians - T"he general consensus among scholars for the arrival of humans in Australia is placed at 40,000 to 50,000 years ago with a possible range of up to 70,000 years ago though not as widely supported." Given general consensus, using "over 40,000 years" would seem to follow consensus opinion without delving too deeply into areas outside the scope of the article.
  • Agree with south western and captions and will fix. Thanks again for taking the time to have a look at the article. -- Mattinbgn\talk 22:05, 4 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Support Well-researched and informative article. Melburnian 10:11, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Support - Well-researched indeed. Someone might want to go back through and do some minor copyedits, and make sure all the references use WP:CIT, for uniformity. Also, a note, I love the beautiful pictures! Great work. Curt Wilhelm VonSavage (talk) 07:50, 20 November 2007 (UTC).
All references now use citation templates. -- Mattinbgn\talk 11:49, 2 December 2007 (UTC)


Support; this is much better. Congrats. But please attend to these issues.

  • Mid-19th century.Y Done
  • "The Riverina has strong cultural ties to Victoria and the region was the source of much of the impetus behind the federation of Australian colonies." Use a comma as a mild boundary between these two ideas you've integrated into the one sentence.Y Done
  • I see the edit link in the middle of a para in "Landform and hydrology". Maybe it's my browser or OS.N Not done, I have the same problem. I have listed it at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#edit links to see if a solution can be found. Y Done, solution found.
  • "The closed Hampden Bridge over the Murrumbidgee River at Wagga Wagga - the new Wiradjuri Bridge is in the background." Can't use a hyphen as punctuation like that. Try a semicolon or even a period.Y Done
  • Read MOS on en dashes. 500-800 mm.Y Done, I think I have them all
  • "The Federal Hotel in Berrigan, one of a series of hotels built or renamed in the southern Riverina as a result of the Federation campaign." Not a full sentence, so no period. See MOS.Y Done
  • "A 1916 map of the Riverina. Note that the area where Griffith and Leeton would later be built was largely uninhabited until the development of the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area." MOS says not to use "note that". Just make the bold statement.Y Done
  • Agriculture: truly awful squishing up of the text between the two images.Y Done, by removing an image
  • You gonna use % or per cent? Not both.Y Done, I think I have them all
  • It's quite heavily linked. Why link dictionary words such as "customs and "smuggling". We know what they mean.Y Done, removed wikilinks throughout the article.
Thanks for your comments, I have addressed the ones that I could at this stage and I am seeking assistance on the last one. -- Mattinbgn\talk 07:44, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Just a quick note: it's probably an idea to update the politics section in the wake of the election result. Rebecca 06:58, 2 December 2007 (UTC)Y Done, thanks for the reminder. -- Mattinbgn\talk 07:12, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

  • Support – comprehensive article, appears to comply fully with WP:MOS.Grahamec 11:43, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.