Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/1998 Pacific hurricane season

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 20:25, 7 May 2007.

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1998 Pacific hurricane season

I did this one not too long ago, and I think it's featured quality. I've been wrong before, however, and I'd love to hear your opinions. Hurricanehink (talk) 21:28, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Comment, can an ACE table chart please be included, before anything else happens? Other than that, I have no problems with the article. Thanks. RaNdOm26 04:35, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Damn, I don't know how I forgot about that. OK, I added it in. Hurricanehink (talk) 15:14, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

• *Jumps up and down to see if anyone is watching this* Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 01:45, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
  • *Joins with Tito in hope that someone else will comment on it* Hurricanehink (talk) 01:56, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Comment - In the intro it says Hurricane Lester and Tropical Storm Frank were also deadly which I presume means they caused fatalities. If so why is Hurricane Madeline not mentioned if it caused 31 people to die; were they indirect deaths due to the flooding? For that matter do indirect deaths contribute to a hurricanes fatality rating? Could probably also do with a light copy edit (I fixed one typo in the intro). Thanks. CheekyMonkey 18:09, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

• I hadn't really thought of including Madeline in the lede, as the deaths were indirect, but I suppose it warrants inclusion. Hurricanehink (talk) 19:49, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

• Object—Improved. 1a. The density of problems in the lead indicates that a good copy-edit throughout is essential to attain the required "professional" standard of writing.
  • "Isis caused over $5 million in damage (1998 USD, $6.2 million 2006 USD) in the country which included over 300 destroyed homes, and later affected the southwestern United States by producing light rainfall and dozens of traffic accidents." Why not insert "US" on first appearance, before "$5"? After this, we assume they're all US dollars, so the clutter can be reduced. Remove "1998", which is obvious. Why not just "(~ $6.2M in 2006)"? "Country" is ambiguous: = rural area or nation? A comma after "country" is absolutely mandatory, since what follows is not a subset. BTW, five million bucks seems like chicken feed - five expensive houses; so what?
  • "These dates conventionally delimit the period of each year when most tropical cyclones form in the northeastern Pacific Ocean." Remove "of each year". Similarly: " The most notable tropical cyclone during the year was Hurricane Isis"—remove "during the year".
  • MoS says don't use numerals at the start of a sentence; best to spell out single-digits, anyway: "The season saw 13 named storms form, slightly below average. 9 storms attained hurricane status, of which 6 became major hurricanes." Then the very next sentence, even though separated by a subheading: "With 13 tropical storms, activity during the season was slightly below the average of 16 named storms,". Tony 00:29, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
    • I fixed up the lede some more. However, I don't think it is fair to assess the lead as indicative of the rest of the article. Hurricane articles are fairly bland and basic, and generally the most problems occur in the lead and summary sections. Hurricanehink (talk) 04:58, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Easy to pass it off that way; so why, when I choose at random a small section below, do I find problems such as these:

• "the center became sufficiently associated with the convection for the National Hurricane Center to classify it as Tropical Depression One-E while located about 460 miles (765 km) south-southwest of Acapulco, Mexico.[4]". Was the NHC on a ship? Spot the two redundant words.
• "in the days subsequent to its formation"—what about some plain English, such as "after its formation". Please audit the whole text for this kind of thing.
• Non-experts will not know what "organization trend" means.
• "it intensified into Tropical Storm Agatha while located about 650 miles (1050 km) south-southeast of Cabo San Lucas." Spot the double redundancy.
• "forecasters predicted it would quickly weaken without strengthening due to passing over cooler waters." You may know what it means, but to us, it's ambiguous. (Is it the strengthening or the quick weakening without strengthening that was caused by passing over cooler waters?)
• "Agatha quickly strengthened, developing a curved band of convection wrapping around the center,[6] and early on 11 June the storm attained a peak intensity of 65 mph (100 km/h) while located about 615 miles". Perhaps "its centre"? Remove "the storm" and "while located". Audit the entire text for such redundant wordings.
• Remove "Agatha" from the second-last sentence.

Thus, please take seriously my earlier comment that the whole text needs attention. Tony 11:03, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

All of those seem fairly minor. I don't see what is wrong to subsequent to its formation. You said that you want to avoid redundancies, and I'd rather change up the wording a bit than use after again. The non-expert, I would hope, would know that a trend is defined as a general tendency, and thus that a strengthening and organization trend would be a be a general tendency toward more strengthening and organization. However, if you don't think they would get that, what would you suggest? I removed most of the "while located"s in the article. Given that I don't know where to find the mistakes throughout the entire article, could someone possibly copyedit the article? It is often better for someone unfamiliar with the work to copyedit it. Hurricanehink (talk) 15:42, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

• Rejoinder—It's like saying that a whole lot of little editing glitches in a Hollywood film are "fairly minor": they'd kill it. Good writing requires a scrupulous attitude to detail, and on WP, an enthusiasm for teamwork; that's why I'm pleased when people to correct my own prose. Just issuing an open invitation here for copy-editors will do nothing. You need to actively woo collaborators; start with the edit-history pages of similar articles (even articles on topics further afield but not unrelated). Nothing like fresh eyes to find opportunities for improvement. "Subsequent to", like "prior to", should be binned unless there's a very good reason to use them. After and before. Only the first part of the article has been worked on since my previous comment. It's an otherwise good article, so it's worth fixing up. Tony 23:35, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Well, I've asked users to copyedit the article (and who are not familiar with the contents) but I can't hold a gun to their head... so I don't know what to do, sadly. Any suggestions? Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 18:39, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
    • Full copyedit by a non-topic specialist finished... is there anything else sticking out like a sore thumb? Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 00:38, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
• Support, in spite of the very minor problems, this meets the FA criteria. A lot of the objections are nit-picking or trivial (which there seems to be quite a history of). --Coredesat 18:37, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
• Support. Fantastic article. Nice read...I didn't find any issues with it in my read through. JHMM13 16:11, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

• Minor oppose for now. Just a few problems:
• The purpose of the lead section is "establishing context, summarizing the most important points, explaining why the subject is interesting or notable, and briefly describing its notable controversies, if there are any." Then what's the point of the "season summary" section? Why not move the important parts of that summary into the lead and delete the rest, since that's repeeated in the main of the article anyway.
• I might be wrong on this one, but isn't the purpose of the "Retrieved on XXXX-XX-XX" at the end of footnotes to tell, when the information was extracted from the internet (!). If all sources cited in the footnotes do in fact come from the internet, then hyperlinks should be included in the footnotes, else what's the point of the "Retrieved ...".
• "See also" sections generally do not help articles at all: if it ain't worth being mentioned in the article, it ain't worth being linked either and advertisement for portals in the main article namespace is highly inappropriate as well in my opionion. So, why not simply remove that section?--Carabinieri 02:47, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
  • I'm glad you said something about the season summary. I was basing it off of another featured season article of the basin (2003 Pacific hurricane season), though there is an obvious redundancy. I changed it. I'm not sure what the problem is with the sources. I did template:Cite web formatting for all online sources, and template:Cite news formating for all newspaper sources. Lastly, the see also section is to point the reader to other seasons in the same year, which I think is rather useful. Do you still oppose? Hurricanehink (talk) 02:58, 6 May 2007 (UTC)
  • Also, portals are usually considered part of Wikipedia's content. For certain, all 50+ of the Tropical cyclone tropical cyclone featured articles and lists would require removing the template link. However, this issue is not restricted just to hurricanes; it is also done frequently on various other subjects, like War, Weather, Sexuality, Architecture, Food, Literature and Photography, to name a few. Removing the portal link is something way beyond the scope of a particular FAC. See also sections are also considered appropriate by the Guide to Layout, so I'm not sure what's wrong with that one either. The links don't seem inappropriate or excessive, either, and it is quite standard to link to similar simultaneous occurrences of the same phenomenon in a different part of the world. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 08:21, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

• • • Like I said, I wasn't really sure about the question of whether the accesdate is necessary on print sources, it just seems a little pointless to me to include it since print sources don't change. As far as the portal link goes, I doubt we'll find anything we could agree on here, I think it's tacky and adds nothing to the article, but I doubt I'll find a consensus for this position in this discussion or in Wikipedia as a whole. For the see also links I'd propose creating a navigation bar-type template - something like 1998 hurricane/cyclone/typhoon season that links all those articles. I think that would look better and wouldn't seem like the article is just trying to advertise other articles. This article fulfills pretty much everything I expect of an FA and my main concern was that summary section (good work!). So I'll support though I'd like to note that I'd prefer removing that portal link.--Carabinieri 09:50, 6 May 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.