Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Dundee/archive1

Dundee

I'm nominating this article which myself and several others have spent a lot of time on bringing up to standard. I believe it's now ready for FAC. It is comprehensive and well referenced. Has recently been through its second peer review and all the suggestions were addressed  YDAM TALK 14:42, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

*COMMENT Stuff fromt the first FAC round is mixed in here! Rlevse 19:36, 3 November 2006 (UTC) my mistake, sorry. Rlevse 00:42, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Comment I found four spelling mistakes 'recieve', 'benifits', Parliment, and the hilarious 'navel bombardment' and there may be others. I suggest that in future you copy any article that you edit into a word processing program and run the spell-check. I always think that a poorly spelt article, as opposed to my speciality of typos, rapidly blows the credibility of the author. Does William McGonagall really deserve a place in the summary as the most important person to have been born in Dundee? And the first person mentioned, despite the name of Scott, was actually born in Devon. 'Jam' (twice), 'jute' (twice) and 'journalism' do not need capitals in the middle of a sentence. (Was the wonderful 'preserve' pun intentional?) There is much inelegant wording that would benefit from another editor. eg 'Full train of passengers' might be better as a 'train full of passengers'. 'Constitutes' = 'is'. 'Distribution' ='variety'. 'Dundee employment' = 'Employment in Dundee'. I thought the first computer was built by Tommy Flowers at Bletchley Park. What was 'jute control'? 'Enterprise Zone' could have a wiki-link. 'Albert square' should have both words capitalised. I would say 80% of the way there. JMcC 17:31, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

I have incorporated most of your suggestions and I will fix the lead soon. The sentence about the first computer refers to the first one that was actually built in Dundee, not that the first one ever was built in Dundee. I will fix that sentence soon to make it more obvious. (oh and yes that pun was deliberate. I will take it out if you think it's inappropriate)  YDAM TALK 18:10, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

I've edited the article to address most of your remaining concerns. About the lead, Scott is mentioned in order to provide the context about the RSS discovery. Dundee is known as the "City of Discovery" and the RSS discovery needs to be mentioned to explain why. Mention of Scott could be omitted but it would be reducing the context of the ship. I'll happily remove it though it though if you think it shouldn't be there. As for McGonagall his association with Dundee is by far the most prominent then any other literary figure. I do feel that the mention in the lead is proportional to it's importance to the city. That aside are there any other flaws that need to be addressed.  YDAM TALK 19:23, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

• Oppose—Much better Tony 14:35, 25 October 2006 (UTC)1a. This scores 3/10 for writing, IMO, where 8/10 might be the required "professional" standard. There are lots of problems in the prose throughout; a consistent theme is the uncomfortable combining of ideas into single sentences. Let's take a look at the lead.
  • "Dundee is a royal burgh and the mottos of the city are 'Dei Donum' (Latin: 'Gift Of God') and 'Prudentia et Candore' ('With Thought And Purity').[2] Typically only the latter is used for civic purposes. The area was first settled by the Picts in the Iron age and the settlement became a royal burgh in 1191." Disorganised: we read that it's a royal burgh, uncomfortably combined in a single sentence with the mottos; then a stubby sentence extending the statement on mottos; then way back to the initial settlement, then to the year in which it was made a royal burgh.
  • "During the industrial revolution, the city grew rapidly with the influence of the local jute industry, and Dundee became known nationally as the city of 'jam, jute and journalism', after its three main industries." We have jute, then a national reputation that includes jute among three main industries. Are we to assume that journalism and jam can be dated back to the industrial revolution? It's unclear. If not, deal with them in separate sentences.
  • "Dundee is known as being the home of ..."—Spot the redundant word.
  • "The city has continued to see a decline in population since the start of the 1970s." This "has seen" expression is becoming a little tired in WPian articles. Try a plain, simple statement: "Dundee's population has declined since the start of the 1970s." Kind of odd that you give reasons for the historical increase in population, but not for its decline.
  • "The Royal Scottish National Orchestra also regularly play in the city's Caird hall." It's not a cricket team, so it would be more usual to say "plays" (not mandatory, I suppose). Why "also"? There's no mention of other places where the Orchestra plays. Remove the word. Shouldn't "hall" start with "H"?
  • "A significant number of the population are on low income or receive state benefits with more than half of the city's council wards amongst Scotland's 10% most deprived.[7] and less than half of housing is owner-occupied." Ungrammatical in two ways: you can't say "number of the population"; is that meant to be a full-stop before [7]? And the last clause should be the same grammatical construction as the "with" clause. "Half of housing" needs a deictic ("the"?). "Amongst" should be just "among", unless you want to be elaborate and formal. If you have to use "with" as an additive link, for heaven's sake, put a comma before it.

I don't usually say this, but you need to take a look at User:Tony1/How_to_satisfy_Criterion_1a:_redundancy_exercises and the bit on "Smoothly integrating ideas into a sentence, at User:Tony1/How_to_satisfy_Criterion_1a#Sentences. Can you search for copy-editors to collaborate? Start with the edit histories of related FAs and other similar articles. Tony 03:13, 16 October 2006 (UTC).

Thanks a lot for those comments, I was beginning to think this nomination had been entirely forgotten. It's been a while since I did any major editing to this article so I did a heavy bit of copy-editing myself with the help of those links you provided, though I will still look for another copy-editor. I've addressed the specific examples you raised and hopefully most of the other flaws in the article. Perhaps you could take a quick scan and give me an opinion on its current state  YDAM TALK 21:17, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

• Looks better, but still more to do, for example:
  • "l'ess than half of homes"—"fewer than half of the homes in Dundee".
  • Why are the plain years linked? This dilutes high-value links that you want readers to follow. For example, do I really want to know that 2004 was "a leap year starting on Thursday", that it was the International Year of Rice, or that an apartment building collapsed in some place in Turkey that year? I kid you not, that's how it starts. I'd delink all plain years (as opposed to dates)
  • "its marmalade and journalism industries"—bit odd to lump them together in that way. Try "its marmalade industry and its journalism."
  • "giving Dundee its name as the city of 'jam, jute and journalism"—try "epithet" instead of "name".
• "between the years 1991 to 2001"—Remove two words as redundant.
  • The caption "Original Tay Bridge ..." Should start with "The original ...".

What about another WPian to sift through it carefully? An hour by a good copoy-editor should be enough. Tony 12:51, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks a lot for those suggestions I have implemented the specific examples you mentioned. The article had actually already received a copy-edit by another wikipedian this morning, though I will endeavour to find another copy-editor as stringent as yourself and inform you here when done.  YDAM TALK 20:04, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

I finally managed to get someone to copyedit it. I got User:Rama's Arrow who had worked on Dhaka the most recent FA on another city to take a look at it, I hope his edits have improved the article.  YDAM TALK 20:25, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

• Support I've reorganized the format and cleaned up much of the prose, which was littered with minor grammatical errors. I would always defer to Tony or Spangineer but in my assessment this article is ready for FA status. I will crosscheck to make sure further errors are rooted out. Rama's arrow 21:41, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

• Support Much improved. I admit to a quick edit in places, with which I hope you agree in the main. Check that I have not altered the meaning of anything by accident. I am puzzled that out of the 10 secondary schools, 11 are Catholic. Sounds like Enron accounting. Are there 10 secondary state schools and a further 11 Catholic schools? JMcC 14:07, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

I think that should be Catholic schools as separate from secular secondary schools. Dunno know, Rama's arrow 16:49, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Apologies for that error, I don't know how it managed to slip through. Thanks for catching it though. Those figures originally came from the information here [1] guess I must have not been concentrating when I counted.  YDAM TALK 18:08, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

A look at the history reveals that the mistake in numbering came from when I took out references to the former and latter from that sentence and explicitly referred to the type of school but managed to get them mixed up in the process, D'oh)  YDAM TALK 18:53, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

• Comment you may want to trim the external link farm to support WP:EL, which most violates currently. Thanks Jaranda ^{wat's sup} 20:52, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

• Done  YDAM TALK 21:08, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

• Support - I think it meets the criteria. Trebor 19:25, 7 November 2006 (UTC)