Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/List of municipalities in Florida/archive1

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

The list was not promoted by The Rambling Man 17:33, 31 March 2012 [1].

List of municipalities in Florida

Nominator(s): Mgrē@sŏn 16:11, 10 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I am nominating this for featured list because...I am a member of Wikipedia:WikiProject Florida and my goal was to expand/update this list to match the featured List of counties in Florida. Mgrē@sŏn 16:11, 10 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Note: Listed on FLC by The Rambling Man (talk) 08:17, 1 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from Harrias ^talk

Why do the populations, Government type, Label and Incorp. year columns have full-stops (or periods) at the end of them when none of the other columns do? It seems rather arbitrary?

--During article development, I added the period to verify that I had reviewed the entry when I went through the data a second time. It does not serve a purpose now. I removed the easy ones (government type and label). The numbers require a fair amount of time.

In the lead Council–manager government uses and endash, but in the table it uses a hyphen. I know that they are subtly different things, but it looks inconsistent. Not really sure on this one though.

--I made a change to the "Council–manager government" table entries, but I don't think it's right.

Also, in the pie-chart a third symbol is used: a slash. The pie-chart should also be consistent with the text. It also seems odd that in the lead you cite ~70% of governments are Council–manager government, but in the chart these are split into Council/manager and Commission/manager, thus giving an inconsistent view of the statistics.

--I will change the slash back to a hyphen for consistency. By definition, council-manager is not the same as commission-manager, but in Florida, they are virtually the same. What is your suggestion?

I'm not at all keen on the pinching of the text in the lead where the map and the pie-chart squeeze the text between them. Perhaps try moving the map all the way to the top and maybe dropped the pie-chart a little too? This still won't solve it on very wide-screens, but at least on those the screen will be wide enough that the text isn't stuck in a really small column!

--I moved the pie chart lower so that it doesn't appear side-by-side with the state map.

Per WP:COLOR shading alone shouldn't be used to highlight information (such as you use for the county seat) this should be accompanied by a accessible symbol (as seen in the similar list for California.)

--I added a dagger to heading explanation and to each county seat.

I'm also not keen on the "Tallahassee ۩ Capital" – something along the lines of "Tallahassee (State capital)" would seem to work much better to me.

--I added an accessible symbol to the intro along with the one for county seat.

Abbreviations such as "Pop. rank" and "Incorp. year" need expanding somewhere for explanation.

--I added a line in the "notes" section explaining "Incorp. year" and Pop. rank".

Also, is the "Pop. rank" column even needed, given that the table can be sorted by population anyway?

--If a user sorts by county or area, they would have no way to know where a city ranked by population in relation to other Florida cities. Other city lists included it, so I did, too.

The alphabetical "Contents" table seems pretty pointless when the columns is initially sorted by population, as if (for example) you click on "M" it takes you to "Macclenny", which is then followed by "Fort Myers Beach", while "Mascotte" is a fair way further down.

--I added a note below the table explaining that it is only applicable when the list is sorted by place name.

Per WP:DTAB row and column scopes need to be defined. Again, the California list shows this in practice.

--Not sure I understand what you are requesting. If you are looking at the California passage,

"The first municipality to incorporate was Sacramento on February 27, 1850, while the most recent was Jurupa Valley on October 1, 2011.[5] The largest municipality by population and land area is Los Angeles with 3,792,621 residents and 468.67 square miles (1,213.8 km2). The smallest by population is Vernon with 112 people, while the smallest by land area is Amador City at 0.31 square miles (0.80 km2)", that information is already provided in the intro prior to the wikitable. Please advise.

Read Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Accessibility/Data tables tutorial, that should explain about the row and column scopes, otherwise, I know that The Rambling Man will be able to explain them. I'm away with work for the week, and will have extremely limited web access, so probably won't revisit this until next weekend. Harrias ^talk 07:20, 5 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Harrias ^talk 12:45, 3 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose Over three weeks later, and the table still lacks row scopes. Harrias ^talk 20:55, 27 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose – Sorry, but I don't think this is up to FL standards at the moment. The key issue for me is excessive detail in the lead, which causes the intro to be too large. There are also a number of style issues throughout.

Resolved comments from Giants2008 (Talk) 17:17, 15 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

*Speaking of photos, the lead image is massive and is taking up about half of my widescreen monitor. Any chance it could be reduced in size somewhat?

--Photo has been shrunk 50%. To be useful, it must be opened at a high resolution anyway, so it can be smaller still if it improves the overall appearance.

The lead is at nine paragraphs, way too long for any article. I wouldn't expect to see a lead of more than four or five paragraphs, and would only recommend five for a long article. A good amount of this material is going to need to be either combined or chopped (or moved into a distinct section).

--I removed the last few paragraphs, consolidating the Florida-specific information in one paragraph.

No reason to capitalize "Consolidated" in the third sentence.

--Changed.

Also no reason to have items bolded in the sixth paragraph.

--This text was removed with the third item resolution.

"similar to the Federal model in the U.S." Again, no reason for the capitalization of a non-proper noun ("Federal").

--This text was removed with the third item resolution.

In taking a close look at the content itself, I don't think that any of the last three paragraphs are needed. They all talk about government systems, which is really excessive detail for a simple list of municipalities. Even if it was truly needed, you could get away with including all of the key points in a single paragraph. This by itself is largely responsible for the lead being too large.

--Resolved with item 3 when I removed the last few paragraphs, consolidating the Florida-specific information in one paragraph.

The section heading "List of incorporated towns and villages" could stand to lose the first two words, as we don't really need to be told that it's a list.

--Changed.

From a note above the table: "The the table of contents...".

--Changed.

"ranked from 1-410 by population." En dash needed for the number range.

--Changed.

In the table headings, Pop. Rank should be Pop. rank (again not a proper noun or official title), and a similar fix should be made in a note above the table.

--Changed.

Why are there periods after the populations and years of incorporation? They seem useless to me.

--This was left over from data verification when setting up the table. I will plan to remove them.

For each entry of "commission--manager", there shouldn't be two straight hyphens like there are now. Stylistically an en dash would be used in this situation, but I personally don't believe anything more than a single hyphen is required or desirable.

--This was an attempt at putting "en dash" into the data. I plan to correct this, also.

In the population comparison table, what do the numbers on the right mean? I assume the ones on the left are for population, but I'm just curious. Is it a measure of size?

--It is a repetition of the scale on the left because the table is wide.

The See also section doesn't need to include a link to Florida, since one is included in the first sentence of the lead. Anyone interested in that article will have clicked on it there.

--Changed.

Photos could use alt text.
~~All references need publishers and access dates, and ref 11 shouldn't have the title in all caps.~~

--Changed ref 11 title. I don't know what you mean by "All references need publishers and access dates". I assumed that was an automatic system function.

Giants2008 (Talk) 16:43, 11 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

No, automatic system function has nothing to do with it. We need to know who published whatever reference you use (ref 5 lacks this), and we need to know the date a website was last accessed (needs to be added to all online cites except 4). This makes it easier for us to gauge reliability, helps retain a citation if it goes offline as it makes Internet Archive use easier, and is proper style-wise. Giants2008 (Talk) 17:17, 15 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I've now learned the basics of how to format references using the cite template, and adding ALT text to an image. Thanks for the info; I'll be a better editor with it. Mgrē@sŏn 15:57, 16 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Newest image with Florida in red still needs alt text. Other than that everything I mentioned looks done. Giants2008 (Talk) 18:20, 16 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Image review

File:FlaCitiesMap.PNG, File:FloridaCitiesbyPopulation.PNG, and File:FlaGovtTypes.PNG could use a better description. While this is not strictly required by WP:IUP, FLs should lead by example.
File:Map of USA FL.svg claims that permission for its use is granted under the following licenses: GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version; Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0; and Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic. Only one of these licenses would be necessary, but since all of them are claimed to be applicable here, all conditions for each of them have to be met. Looking at the first:
- The GFDL v1.2[2] requires that "at least five of the principal authors of the Document (all of its principal authors, if it has fewer than five) [be listed]" and that it contains a History section listing previous versions.

~~This review is incomplete. I may return with more comments.~~ Good raise 01:06, 23 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Looking at it again: All images appear to be free and are properly tagged, with the one exception named above. It's not that the image is not available under GFDL v1.2, just that attribution is inadequate. The GFDL is (intentionally) a bit of a beast in that regard. Seeing as the file is also available under two other free licenses, this isn't a problem, but it would still be nice if the File: page was improved to fix this. Good raise 12:14, 24 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I added the original author's name to the file page in question on the Wikimedia file page. There is only one version, but there is a history section. Does that resolve the issue you raised? Mgrē@sŏn 23:25, 27 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.