Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Chetwynd, British Columbia/archive2

Chetwynd, British Columbia edit

A town of 3,000 people in northeastern British Columbia. Comprehensive and illustrative, yet concise. --maclean25 06:08, 17 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Peer review, First FA nomination

Support - I see no problems. Looks good all around. Issues from previous FAC seem to have been resolved this time round. Plenty of references, informative, well written. Fieari 07:02, 17 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support - Another fine example of what we should be doing for all Canadian communities. Luigizanasi 07:46, 17 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

We should be writing good articles for all communities, not just Canadian ones. - Mgm|^(talk) 12:42, 20 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I stand corrected. :-) Luigizanasi 18:07, 24 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Support Nice article, but I think it needs more refs -;) (that's a joke). Rlevse 15:24, 17 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Pleased to see concerns from the previous nomination are resolved. --Aude (talk | contribs) 15:28, 17 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support per all. Ardenn 16:25, 17 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support - looks good. Flcelloguy (A note?) 22:46, 17 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: I don't suppose there's any chance of getting photos of the area with leaves on the trees? --Carnildo 23:25, 17 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
- I'll need about 3 months to get some photos of green trees. --maclean25 05:35, 18 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Object - I think this fails several FAC criteria. I don't think the writing is compelling or brilliant - in fact it seems very turgid, with sentences like The high unemployment rate illustrates how the existing businesses and industries are not able to satisfy the demand for work being totally redundant, and others such as ...was first elected in 2003 and acclaimed in 2005 very unclear (what does it mean to be acclaimed in this sense?). Nor do I think it's appropriate in length - nowhere does it enlighten me as to why a town of 3,000 people deserves an article no less than 37kb in length. That's the same length as Sydney, and that seems a very strong argument indeed that this article is not of appropriate length. In addition, the article uses references inappropriately, presenting their opinion as fact (The town, one of the most livable municipalities in the province [2]) and unnecessarily citing uncontroversial facts such as the airport code. Footnotes are a distraction for the reader, and many facts simply don't need a reference. 47 footnotes is far too many. Worldtraveller 00:38, 18 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
- As I have been the principal (almost sole) author, there are bits like this that can use some fine-tuning. Thank you for pointing out the examples (which I have fixed), are there any other sections that require attention? if so, how are they technically flawed? However, I am not sure I understand your second point. Sydney and Chetwynd are both articles on towns that follow the same layout as spelled out at Wikipedia:WikiProject Cities. As such, why would they be of different length? Perhaps you are referring to the content. If so please see the sub-articles like History of Sydney and Culture of Sydney, which I have clocked at 58kB combined. If not, what info should be omitted from this article, or sections be split into sub-articles, to make it shorter? Finally, I removed the airport code reference and condensed the 4 school district footnotes to one, reducing the total reference list down to 42. However, as a town of just 3000 people, there is not just a few sources that I can use. There was one book on Chetwynd and it only covers family histories of the early settlers to the area. Other info is scattered over many different places. I am a big fan of Wikipedia:Verifiability and so reference every source used. And I don't want to remove references just to put them in the external links section. --maclean25 05:35, 18 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  - Sydney is a major city of global importance, whereas Chetwynd is a small town with no claim to international significance. If Chetwynd's article is the same size as Sydney that implies to me that either Sydney's is too short or Chetwynd's is too long. I believe it's the latter as I think only very important and broad topics warrant exceeding the 32kb article size guideline and I can see no reason why this small town should have such a lengthy article. There is much that could be made far more concise, such as the demographics section which is, I have to say, a very boring description of very dry statistics. Really only the population is of interest to the general reader, not its detailed breakdown, though the lack of ethnic minorities may merit a mention. The geography and climate section does not seem to be specific to this town, but rather applies to the area it's in so a detailed description would be more appropriate in the regional article. I would think a vanishingly small percentage of readers would be interested in the pH and type of the soil in either town, county or province. I think the schools info is overly detailed - not really any need to say how many people are on the rolls, or what courses are available - that's more akin to information you'd expect to find in a brochure about the school than in an encyclopaedia article about the town. Second paragraph is again a very dry regurgitation of statistics which could be made more readable by concentrating on the essentials and explaining why they are of interest. Under culture and recreation, the sentence In addition to the town's appreciation of its heritage, it has two public art displays is a non sequitur, and sounds a bit like tourist info material. Programming output of local radio stations does not seem like notable information to me. The politics section includes much that is not really relevant to the town, and which would be more appropriately placed in regional articles.
    - Note that we don't dumb down articles simply because another article isn't as good. If Sydney should have more information, than add information to Sydney, don't subtract it from here. Regardless, Sydney's condition has nothing to do with this article's featured status. Fieari 21:01, 19 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
      - You're missing my point. A city of global importance may warrant 37kb; a small town doesn't. This article is not of appropriate length, as required by the FA criteria. Worldtraveller 21:51, 19 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
        I'd expect an article on a city of global importance to be written in summary style, with much of the information in sub-articles and linked articles: Sidney has sub-articles on history and culture, and links to articles on geographic subdivisions, governmental subdivisions, notable landmarks, notable institutions, and notable events. For a town of 3000, 37k is about right, since all the information is in the main article. The 37k you cite for Sidney is only the tip of the iceberg: Wikipedia's got 500k or more spread among at least 100 articles on Sidney. --Carnildo 22:59, 19 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
        Well, there I strongly disagree. I think 37kb is too long for most articles, and is ridiculously excessive for a small town. I have pointed out lots of excessive detail in the article, which I believe makes it not a very interesting read, and also much that is not even specifically about the town. I think it could easily be trimmed to less than 20kb without losing out in any way. Worldtraveller 00:43, 20 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
        
        Looks like I was way off in my estimate: Not counting the 2000 Olympics, Wikipedia has 4,002,833 bytes on Sydney-related subjects, spread across 1,635 articles. Does 36,615 bytes for one town still seem excessive? --Carnildo 21:03, 21 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
        Well I don't know how you calculated those figures, but taking them as accurate then Chetwynd has about 10 times as many bytes per inhabitant as Sydney does. Statistics aside, this article is excessively long for the reasons I've outlined above - pH of the soil is and house by house breakdown of the demographics are among the things that are just not needed. Worldtraveller 00:23, 22 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
        Wikipedia is not a print encyclopedia, where we have to worry about conserving space. The questions that should be asked are as follows: Is Chetwynd a notable topic, worthy of inclusion at all, and the answer is yes. The next question should be asked of each item in the article: Is this peice of information a notable fact about the topic, verifiable, not "fan-cruft", useful for someone that might be writting an acedemic paper on the subject? I would argue that every peice of information in this article meets these criteria. We don't cut out information simply because a topic isn't as big as another topic. If it's useful, good information, it stays... because we don't have wood pulp restrictions! Fieari 18:58, 22 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
        The second point is where our opinions diverge - see above for my description of where there is excessive, crufty detail in the article. Worldtraveller 23:03, 27 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  - As for referencing, verifiability is always the aim but the more footnotes you have, the more you harm the readability of the article. Many facts simply don't need citation, as they are obvious. It is a community station, so its programming uses local content and events probably doesn't even need mentioning at all, let alone referencing. In the 2001 provincial election[39] - what are you citing here? If you're linking to another article you don't need to restate references which back up facts from that article. And I can't believe, for example, that one sentence about the expansion of the town's boundaries requires three separate citations.
    - Verifiability is key, and referencing is very important. Remember, this isn't a print encyclopedia with a staff of full time fact checkers for each article! To have credibility, we need to take steps above and beyond other encyclopedias. Fieari 21:04, 19 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
      - Yes, but as I say many facts simply do not need citations. The sky is blue, oceans are deep, community radio stations report local events, etc etc. Giving such things citations is not just redundant but looks a bit foolish. Worldtraveller 21:51, 19 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
        First, the footnote to the community radio stations is not used to prove anything (or the sky-is-blue, oceans-are-deep type of examples), rather the footnote is used to provide specific (some downloadable) examples of local content (ie. further reading, not proof of its existance). No, it is not required, but the online nature of the article provides a convenient way of providing further information for those who are interested. (It's not appropriate for the 'External links' section since it was used as a source). Second, not liking too many footnotes is a preference. I like reading through many references. It makes me feel confident that I can fact check anything I'm particularly interested in and I am able to ignore footnotes that I don't care for without being interrupted. --maclean25 23:25, 19 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
        Well I have to say I think you're misusing footnotes, then. You can provide a link to further information by including a link in the references section. Worldtraveller 00:43, 20 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  - Also some poor grammar I just noticed is the sentence Effective 4 December 1996, Chetwynd's boundaries were expanded to include 49 km² (19 mile²) more area. Worldtraveller 12:21, 18 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support with a few comments, after I went through and cleaned up a lot of the prose problems I saw (repeated information; repeated use of words; too much passive voice where the active was called for; too many sentences beginning with "Also, ...")

Well, one, anwyay: Is it common in Canada to use liters as the basic unit of measure for water supply and sewer discharge? My understanding is that cubic meters (1,000 liters) are preferred for this purpose elsewhere in the metric-using world (and I have followed that practice with my work on some reservoir articles here in the U.S.) since they result in smaller numbers. Can you (ahem, given that we're partially talking about sewage) clarify this? Daniel Case 06:46, 18 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the edits. It reads better now. As for the measures of sewage and drinking water I do not know the preferred use. My source used gallons (page 12 of 25). I was told to use metric and imperial in the previous nomination so I converted to liters. I never thought of cubic meters. My office suscribes to several Canadian drinking water and sewage systems-related magazines/journals. I will check on monday and let you know what I found on your talk page. --maclean25 07:34, 18 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm ... it used gallons? I thought Western Canada was even more into metric than the east. But I may have that backwards. If gallons are the preferred use, put the metric in following parentheses as cubic meters. Daniel Case 14:08, 18 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Oops, you seem to have a problem. I just went through and identified those gallons as U.S. gallons, based on the conversions given. Maybe you need to go and check to be damn sure they weren't originally Canadian gallons, with your litres being a misconversion. Gene Nygaard 16:00, 17 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Good catch, they were supposed to be in Canadian gallons, not US gallons. I made the necessary corrections. --maclean25 05:55, 18 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Support Impressive - nice work! michael ^talk 11:39, 18 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support A good article. --- S iva1979^{Talk to me} 17:33, 18 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support Amazing detail for such a small town. Staxringold 21:38, 19 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support Very nice balance between comprehensiveness and excessive detail. Article is well referenced and researched, but most importatnly readable. psch e mp | talk 03:43, 20 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Support. World traveller seems to base numbers on current importance--seems like a timeless encyclopedia would not be limited by such constraints. If someone could find 36k of info on Coloma, California, at present near ghost town, but a significant factor in the California Gold Rush, I think it would be FAC material. The 'school' section is less than 1K--can you imagine the school inclusionists having it any less? Stewie Griffin is 23k; you're saying a town should have less info than a fictional character?!? I think most of WT's objections are inactionable, as "correcting" them would result in objections from people concerned with telling all about "real" subjects. Also, since lack of references' is frequent basis of objections to FACs, objecting per 'too many ref' seems disingenuous (sp?), or hair-slitting, at best, and thus also unactionable. If the not-compelliing Marshall, Texas is still a FA, this seems more than worthy. (and God knows how may K we contribute to Ashley Simpson, thanks mostly to otherwise sane contrib UserEveryking. And what the heck is grammatically incorrect about "Effective 4 December 1996, Chetwynd's boundaries were expanded to include 49 km² (19 mile²) more area."? FA San Jose, California, which I was part of pushing when it was an FAC, is over 75k, and Seattle, Washington, which again I was part of during the FAC process), is probably well-over 150k counting sub-articles--a frequent boom-bust town surely seems to require near the same treatment. 165.121.26.221 09:28, 27 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
- This appears to be your only edit. Are you a regular user accidentally logged out? Anyway, I've said the article is too long, not because I have picked some arbitrary length it should be, but because it's got verbose, poorly written, frankly boring sections that could be much improved, as I detailed extensively above. My objections are completely actionable, and I really dislike seeing people more concerned with finding ways to describe objections as inactionable than they are with listening to suggestions. The sentence in question starts with an ungrammatical misuse of the word effective and ends with a redundancy. Worldtraveller 23:00, 27 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support - My town is 50x the population and has 1/3 of the content. Amazing article! Tawker 09:41, 27 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support --Donar Reiskoffer 10:21, 27 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Comment Like something out of the CIA World Factbook... Not intended to be funny, but it made me laugh. :) I read the Worldtraveller objection and discussion, which with all the later edits, mainly boils down to inappropriate length/unnecessary detail. I don't see it. There's no doubt this is a distinct topic, so unless we're trying to formally limit or exclude municipalities (nothing under population X, unless meets other notability criteria, like the IMO not very clear or useful WP:CORP), the more thorough the coverage the better. Nothing here seems excessive once the "who the hell wants to know about Chetwynd" issue is put aside: London, Paris, Chetwynd... Where all of this rampant inclusiveness will lead? Who knows... In THIS case, it doesn't seem to be a practical debate right now in FAC (unlike, say, Early history of Chetwynd, British Columbia, which would have to go a long way not to be a headache...). Hope that's of some use... --Tsavage 07:20, 1 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support I am in partial agreement w/ Worldtraveller (I found what, IMHO, I saw as run-on sentences, clumsy/bulky phrasing, and somewhat "padded" wording that could stand some slight condensation/rewording for flow). That said, those are very minor errors; this is overall excellent work and well-referenced. I knew that Maclean25 gave great advice during peer reviews, but didn't know before that he wrote such articles as these. Well done. Saravask 02:27, 4 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
- I write about what I know. I am currently in a position where I have easy access to these kinds of sources. So this is how I contribute. --maclean25 02:50, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. I hesitate to butt in here, as the discussion seems to have gradually pushed the article's defenders into rather, well, defensive, position, but I agree with Worldtraveller that this is a misuse of footnotes. This statement shows several misunderstandings of their purpose:

the footnote to the community radio stations is not used to prove anything (or the sky-is-blue, oceans-are-deep type of examples), rather the footnote is used to provide specific (some downloadable) examples of local content (ie. further reading, not proof of its existance). No, it is not required, but the online nature of the article provides a convenient way of providing further information for those who are interested. (It's not appropriate for the 'External links' section since it was used as a source).

If it's not used to prove anything, it's not appropriate to footnote it. Footnotes, and the whole referencing system, exists for the convenience of the reader, not the writer ("the online nature of the article provides a convenient way of providing further information"), and the convenient place for the reader to find this link is in the "External links" section. (Yes, it is appropriate for External links, not References, if it's not used to prove anything; it doesn't matter that you as a writer found it enlightening. "Source" means that which is used to prove or support something in the article.)

Not brilliant prose by any definition. Please take a self-conscious, critical look at each sentence, as many people do (and imo should do) before submitting their work to WP:FAC. I'm sure you won't then leave repetitiousness like "The first Canadian census to include Chetwynd as a defined census subdivision was the 1966 census" or many other infelicities. Perhaps get outside copyediting help. This would do a lot more for article quality than, as WT says, looking for reasons to reject criticisms as inactionable.
A very serious criticism from WT that appears to have gotten lost in the wash is this: In addition, the article uses references inappropriately, presenting their opinion as fact (The town, one of the most livable municipalities in the province [2]) and unnecessarily citing uncontroversial facts such as the airport code. I see the phrase "Among the province's most livable municipalities" is still in the Lead section. It's quite inappropriate to speak (in the Lead, yet) this promotional POV claim as if from the mouth of the encyclopedia; a footnote to who actually said it doesn't help. The sentence must be rephrased to show that it's somebody's opinion, and not Wikipedia's. (If such a tired tourist brochure-type phrase deserves being in the article at all; IMO it doesn't, and certainly not in the Lead.) The opposite error is seen in the sentence "According to the Canada Land Inventory, the townsite is on class 5TP soil[18], wherein the soil has limitations, due to topography and stoniness, that restrict its capability to producing perennial forage crops or other specially adapted crops.[19]". It's proper to footnote this statement, but not to use the phrase "according to". It's just information, not POV, and it comes from the authority on the subject. Therefore, do speak it from the mouth of the encyclopedia, don't say "according to", as if it was something subjective and contested. You see? Please go through the article with a keen eye out for this kind of thing, because there's more of it. (The sentence I quote above, ""According to the Canada Land Inventory, the townsite is on class 5TP soil[18], wherein the soil has limitations..." is grammatically strange also, btw. "Wherein", used in such a sense? It could be regional speech, which would be fine by me, but if not, it's just wrong.)
I have to agree with WT also that several paragraphs are terribly boring to read. I'm sorry. They include Demographics and Geography and climate, both murderously detailed instead of summarized for the general reader, and without any structure to lift up and emphasize the most salient facts.
Finally a simple tip: by adding a separate, alphabetical, References section, you could have far fewer footnotes, while still retaining all the citing information. For example, one single reference to the census, as in footnotes 12-14, with a remark like "all population figures are taken from the census unless otherwise stated", would mean you'd need neither footnotes pointing to the census, nor all those cumbersome mentions of the census in the text. Do strive for conciseness and simplicity, please, and don't use footnotes for decoration. An excess of footnotes weighs down the text and looks faux-exact, when there are simpler ways of giving the exact same information. Bishonen | ノート 13:13, 4 March 2006 (UTC).[reply]
- In response to your comments, I will work over the next couple of days on these following points:
  - There seems to be a conflict between those who value the reading experience (that footnotes interrupt) and those who value the easy verification footnotes provide. As a compromise I will work to re-write the text to remove duplicate footnotes and to remove footnotes to obvious sources. I will move those obvious sources to a General references section.
  - I am, of course, always looking for hints on how to improve the writing. I will take more fundamental look at the writing structure. I have an idea for the Demographics section that may make it more readable. Btw, I don’t think anybody called WT’s criticisms inactionable, rather I considered most of it, like definition of what is acceptable for footnotes and content details, as opinion (preference)-based (not explicitedly, to the best of my knowledge, supported - or refuted - by anything in Category:Wikipedia style guidelines). I recognized his point-of-view, some debate ensued, but I’m not going to do whatever anybody utters here. Now that you have seconded his opinion I will take it that much more serious. If five more people support the opinions then I will start thinking there is consensus on this.
  - I did not fix the “most livable municipalities” sentence because I did not see what the problem was, that is, until you pointed out that it sounds like it is a fact, when it is actually a conclusion to a limited one-time study. I changed it to reflect this. Yes, I will go through the article to ensure this sort of wording is corrected.
  - I have a few ideas for the Demographics section that I will be experimenting with for the next couple of days. Geography? Not my specialty but I will see what I can do.
  - Can you provide a link to an article that uses this system of footnotes/references so I can see how it works? --maclean25 02:50, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Object: This is going to be difficult to state clearly, but I'll try. The article is at an inappropriate length. Encyclopedia articles have a duty to be concise, to state the facts that are most appropriate and to leave out those that are extranneous. What is, in a Ram-bot article, a single line, is here two or three lines of explanation. Further, there is local boosterism throughout the article. POV sneaks in (as Worldtraveller points out), and the POV comes from the notes and gets amplified in the body. There is no countering of a booster point of view to try to provide balance (the usual gesture when one's notes are paid advertisers), nor does the article shrink the tourism writing and take its point of view out. There is a reason that articles on towns of 2,000 don't usually go long. This town does not have a rich historical role, wasn't the place of battles, wasn't the location of notoriety or compact. It is a town fifty years old, with a population of 3,000, and the article gives nearly a sentence per citizen. Geogre 13:48, 4 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
- I responded to the length criticism on your talk page. Concerning the booterism/POV I will say that I have little attachment to this town. I have been there 3 times (once on pleasure, once on business and once just stopping while passing through). For the sake of transparency of my sources, the items from this article that came from tourist sources are:
  - the street map, that will published this spring in a regional tourist magazine (see the previous nomination for the reason I had to obtain this)
  - the bit about the trail system up Ol’Baldy hill, from a guide/brochure to the trail system for visitors
  - the bit about the chainsaw carvings, which I read from a plaque on a statue (I have a photo of it if anyone wants to see it – it confirms that it is spelled “Capitol”, not “Capital”)
  - the windmill-christmas lights bit, is referenced a tourism-like source for verification only, but I already knew about it from anecdotes told about it around here, since I could not find any sources to confirm the controversy that people tell me came with them, I omitted that as unverifiable.

The municipality, including one Councillor, reviewed the article for fact-checking, I translated their comment into Wikipedia:Peer review/Chetwynd, British Columbia/archive1. What sections sound like there is tourist-talk? -maclean25 02:50, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Support a bit too much footnotes but excellent article --Jaranda ^{wat's sup} 22:35, 4 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support, but perhaps right-align more of the pictures? -- user:zanimum

I disagree with this: I like the alternating placement, and we should leave it up to User:Maclean25 to decide this. Saravask 01:18, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]