Talk:History of Louisville, Kentucky

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This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the History of Louisville, Kentucky article.
Article policies
Good article History of Louisville, Kentucky was one of the good articles, but it has been removed from the list. There are suggestions below for improving the article to meet the good article criteria. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.
Citation
This page was cited by LouisvilleKY.gov
Louisville Portal
History of Louisville, Kentucky is within the scope of WikiProject Louisville, an open collaborative effort to coordinate work for and sustain comprehensive coverage of metropolitan Louisville, Kentucky and related subjects in the Wikipedia.
B This article has been rated as B-Class on the Project's quality scale.
Top This article has been rated as Top-importance on the Project's importance scale.
Please explain ratings on the ratings summary page.
To-do: edit · history · watch · refresh
19th century
  • Cover effects of New Madrid earthquake.
  • Expand coverage of the pre-Civil War slave trade in Louisville.
20th century
General
  • Take to Featured Article status.
  • Cover historical snow storms
  • In a comprehensive way, convey Louisville's centrality to three transportation industries as they emerged: inland waterway transport, railroads and automobiles.
  • Cover the flourishing of the performing arts in Louisville (summarize here, and put full history in Performing arts in Louisville, Kentucky).

Contents

[edit] Explanation of new sections

I've set up the article into sections by century. I'm not sure if this is the best idea really, consider History of New York City, History of Boston, History of Miami - every one has a different scheme going (and the last one is a FA). But for now let's see how it goes. I am thinking there will be 3 subsections to each section except the earliest, the 19th century will eventually have a subsection for Louisville during the Civil War, I think. But since that isn't written yet, I am not sure how much space it will need. Anyway, that's where I'm going with all of this... --W.marsh 17:50, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

This construct looks pretty good to me. We can always make adjustments later if needed. By the way, I am working with a Civil War author to create a Creative Commons article re: Louisville during the Civil War on his website, and a subsection and article here can be built from that. —  Stevie is the man!  Talk | Work 18:07, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Resource

Just found this: [1]. It's a (I think) fully online book about Louisville during WW2. I don't have time to read it right now, but I thought I'd mention it here... seems like a good resource. --W.marsh 00:09, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Selected article for Portal:History

After investigation and asking questions, it looks like there would be nothing impeding us from making this article the next Selected article at Portal:History. Since the portal isn't being run very tightly right now, we could possibly end up with our article on the page for more than the standard one-month period. If anyone would like to help write a "blurb" for this article to use on the page, please add your proposal for the blurb to this section. I will probably give it a try myself shortly, but if others want to beat me to it, that's fine and dandy. Thanks. Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 01:00, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Antebellum

The following clause doesn't make sense to me: "However, most cargo was still sending much more cargo downstream in the early 19th century...". Is there a word askew in there somewhere? By the way, thanks W.marsh for all the new content. Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 18:37, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I'll fix it. I've finally gotten some energy to work on this article... hoping to get through the 19th century today... using Yater's book as a reference. I'm a bit worried about over-citation of it, though it is the definitive work to be citing. --W.marsh 18:45, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] GA Sweeps Review: Delisted

In order to uphold the quality of Wikipedia:Good articles, all articles listed as Good articles are being reviewed against the requirements of the GA criteria as part of the GA project quality task force. I am specifically going over all of the "World History-Americas" articles. Unfortunately, as of December 19, 2007, this article fails to satisfy the criteria. The article was passed as a GA back in 2005, and since then, the criteria have changed. The article currently lacks sources throughout the last half of the article. Go through the article and add an inline citation for any statement that a reader may question over its verifiability. If you can find sources online, feel free to include those, although book sources are always great. Additionally, the lead needs to be expanded to several paragraphs to better summarize the article. For these reasons, the article has been delisted from WP:GA. However, if improvements are made bringing the article up to standards, the article may be nominated at WP:GAN. If you disagree with this review, you can seek an alternate opinion at Good article reassessment. If you have any questions, let me know on my talk page and I'll get back to you as soon as I can. I have updated the article's history to reflect this review. Happy editing! --Nehrams2020 (talk) 07:23, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Do you actually doubt any of the claims? Or have you not read them and just want more references to serve as decorations? I see nothing to suggest you did more than count the number of superscript blue numbers. --W.marsh 17:20, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
The article could probably use a few more inline citations, but I totally agree that the article's lead is not at GA-level. Its delisting isn't a big surprise to me. At any rate, I've put out a WikiProject Louisville alert to let everyone know about it and maybe we'll see some work done here soon. I myself don't have much time for Wikipedia right now -- I wish I did, especially for helping to fix this very important article for Louisville. Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 17:28, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
I have no desire to work on it if it's just to be reviewed by people who apparently don't even read the article, just skim for number of references. --W.marsh 17:35, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
Well, there's no rush required. Besides, the lead is indeed problematic, so the delisting is appropriate. Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 17:41, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
  • I've been working on the Andrew Horne page, but I'll see what I can do in getting some more references in the second half of the article like mentioned. Edit, There are no references listed from Civil War on down in the article, over half the sections. I realize that some of these sections are based from other articles in wikipedia; but they still need references. I added two for now, The article needs a lot of nick picking and will take some time to fix it up. Jahnx (talk) 07:54, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
Although I didn't read the entire article, I did look over most of it. The article does need to meet the required criteria to maintain it GA status, and because the last half of the article isn't sourced, it had to be delisted. If you'd like, I can go through the article and point out each occurrence that should be cited (if interested, alert me on my talk page). Also, once you believe you have addressed all of the requirements of the criteria, let me know when you renominate it and I'll review it myself so you can avoid the month+ backlog at WP:GAN. If you have any questions, leave me a message on my talk page and I'll be happy to assist in returning this article to GA quality. --Nehrams2020 (talk) 10:25, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
Do you actually doubt these claims, or do you just want references for the sake of decoration? As long as you apparently don't care about the quality or accuracy of the references, but just want the precious blue superscript numbers after "enough" sentences... I'm not going to be working on this article. Please read WP:V, it only requires references for challenged claims. I also suggest you stop doing "sweeps" reviews until you can be bothered to actually read the articles! --W.marsh 15:33, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
  • The references are needed, I have read this article before and believe the accuracy is good on the subject. However without the proof of the materials then the article could be entirely frabicated. Most of the references needed can be found in other articles on wikipedia. We can spend less time bickering over who reviewed it and what they found wrong with it and spend more time getting it back to GA. Jahnx (talk) 02:55, 22 December 2007 (UTC)
  • GA is utterly pointless, especially if the reviewers admit they don't even read the articles, just do a robotic scan for superscript blue numbers. The article needs improvement, but not references for the sake of references. I could have made up all the stuff cited to pages of an obscure history book, I doubt anyone's checking. References don't guarantee accuracy... accuracy guarantees accuracy. --W.marsh 03:10, 22 December 2007 (UTC)
I didn't admit anywhere that I had not read the article. For several sections, I did glance over them, but I did read the majority of the article. I did not want to delist the article just for the sake of doing so, but to ensure that the quality of good articles is maintained. This article is well-written, but if statements are not referenced, it can be difficult for readers to determine what has been verified and what hasn't. References are not added for reviewers' satisfaction, but for the benefit of the readers. Although editors of the article may know that the information is correct, readers who are new to the subject may have questions over the statistics and other statements and question its verifiability. Again, if you disagree with this delisting, you can seek an alternate opinion by several other editors by taking the article to Good article reassessment. I want nothing more than for the article to be improved, and this article is not that far off from returning to GA quality. Keep up the good work so far, and I appreciate your efforts. --Nehrams2020 (talk) 06:11, 22 December 2007 (UTC)
You have said you didn't read the entire article, only looked over it, scanned some sections. From your analysis it's pretty clear you were just counting references, and had no idea what they were references to. This kind of "review" is not helpful. I ask again, do you challenge any of these claims? Wikipedia:What is a good article? only requires inline references in specific situations, none of which you've indicated are actually present here. You just want a lot of decorative superscript numbers for an article you haven't read, as far as I can tell, and that's not the point of references. This kind of ticky-tack approach has guaranteed the person who added nearly all of the current references (me) will add no more. Your approach isn't working very well. --W.marsh 07:01, 22 December 2007 (UTC)
I'm sorry that you disagree with citing the information in the article, but if you want to, that is fine. I'm not failing this article because it has less than some determined amount of number of references. Is there a reason you are against adding references to the statements that include statistics or quotes? It may be a little extra work on your part or other interested editors, but the article does benefit from it. Although if I as another editor were to look through the references for one statement, I could possibly find the information for another source. But an inexperienced reader new to the article would probably not know how to find the information unless a citation showed where the information came from. If you believe that a statement is covered by another prior source, then the inline citation can be easily used to cover the statement by using <ref name="xxx"/> after the statement in question. A few examples of statements that could use inline citations:
  1. "The "whirling tiger of the air" carved a path from the Parkland neighborhood all the way to Crescent Hill, destroying 766 buildings ($2 1/2 million worth of property) and killing an estimated 74 to 120 people."
  2. "The flood submerged about 70 percent of the city and forced the evacuation of 175,000 residents."
  3. "The final death-knell for the Haymarket, already in decline due to changing economic trends, was the construction of an Interstate 65 ramp through the main part of the open-air market."
  4. "It covered 21 miles and destroyed several hundred homes in the Louisville area but was only responsible for 2 deaths."

Examples such as these include stated statistics and quotes ("whirling tiger of the air") that definitely need inline citations. Please let me know if you have any further questions about the review, and I'll be happy to respond. --Nehrams2020 (talk) 07:53, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Do you doubt any of these claims? You still seem to just be asking for references for the sake of references. If that's all my adding references means to people... I really see no point in adding them. The article needs improvement, but your suggestions are so misguided they're just offensive. I'd always intended to add more references... but not for decor. The article has a lot of problems not visible at a skim... it's just annoying the only thing reviewers seem to notice is the stuff anyone can see in a 5-second glance. Has no one ever read this article? I put a lot of time into the sections that are referenced. I guess that's why I'm so frustrated... it would be nice to know people wanted more out of this article than superscript blue numbers. That's not why I wrote it, yet it's the only thing people seem to desire from it. --W.marsh 07:56, 23 December 2007 (UTC)
I may be willing to believe that the above statements are true, but once again, a new reader to the article may not know or may want to verify that the information that has been placed on the article is correct. The article does need to be improved in other ways of course, but the citations were enough to delist the article. I have explained that the article can be returned to GA status and if you disagree you can seek an alternate opinion. I appreciate your efforts (along with other editors to the article) as the article is well-researched and was an informative read. I'm not judging the article as poor just because it lacks citations, but for an article to remain at the GA class level, certain requirements need to be met. If you are content with the way it is, by all means you can leave it and rest well knowing that the article does a good job on focusing on the topic. I am not attacking the quality of your contributions to the article but rather want to ensure the article does a good job on meeting the criteria and informing readers. Happy editing! --Nehrams2020 (talk) 01:22, 24 December 2007 (UTC)
The only thing that seems to matter in these drive-by reviews is the density of references. My point is just that it's sad that such a trivial thing is apparently the most critical element of the article to readers. There could be a reference after every sentence of the current article, and you'd say it's a GA, I'd say it was still not very good because the actual content is fragmented, choppy, and incomplete. But what's the point of improving those things if all people see is the number of references? --W.marsh 01:41, 24 December 2007 (UTC)