Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Harrisburg, Illinois/archive2

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 not promoted by SandyGeorgia 22:54, 20 April 2010 [1].

Harrisburg, Illinois edit

Nominator(s): Ruhe1986 (talk) 23:52, 16 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I have been working on this article for more than a year, It has reached Good Article Status, and now I think it's ready to be nominated for featured article. Harrisburg, Illinois was one of the leading bituminous coal mining distribution hubs of the American Midwest between 1900 and 1937.

At its peak, Harrisburg had a population that reached 16,000 by the early 1930s, and had one of the largest downtown districts in Southern Illinois.Ruhe1986 (talk) 23:52, 16 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comments. No dab links or dead external links. Ucucha 00:00, 17 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I am not familiar with the editor who did the GA review, but there are WP:MSH errors throughout, I fixed the WP:FN breaches, and newspapers should be in WP:ITALICS. Also, the Notable people section is entirely unsourced. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:05, 17 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Please see the WP:FAC instructions, and do not alter reviewer comments-- you can add your responses below them. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:02, 17 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, Fixed Notable People References, and fixed the headings.Ruhe1986 (talk) 01:05, 17 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Citation cleanup is needed throughout. Newspapers, journals and periodicals are in WP:ITALICS, other websites are not. Also, there are raw citations, example:

http://www.city-data.com/towers/cell-Harrisburg-Illinois.html#Antenna

SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:17, 17 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

images File:Hburgil_logo.jpg does not have a valid FU rationale, File:Hbgnatbank1.jpg has no rationale Fasach Nua (talk) 16:07, 17 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comments:

In "Demographics", the table + bar graph is necessary. Remove 1, preferably the bar graph.--Redtigerxyz ^Talk 05:27, 19 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I removed one unrefed sentence for you. I also fixed the placement of two-three images to remove white space. It's a good article but there are some bare URL's as stated earlier. You'll need to fix them before I can support.--White Shadows ^{you're breaking up} 23:22, 19 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose It needs information on state and federal politics. Who/which party holds the local seat. What are the local statistics for elections, ie counting the booths in the town and not the overall data for the whole district as it wouldn't be homogenous, eg Waterfall Gully, South Australia YellowMonkey (vote in the Southern Stars and White Ferns supermodel photo poll) 01:02, 20 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose on criterion 1a

Is there no prehistory for the area?
If the Piankashaw were driven out before European settlers arrived, how do we know the Shawnee were the more aggressive?
" English settlement began in earnest in 1790 but these settlements had important differences in the way they began": Repetition of "settlement"; would changing the first occurrence to "colonization"?
"The French looked upon their efforts as merchants and Missionaries with farming supplementing the need for trade, mostly along a river, not inland": This sentence is poorly constructed and awkwardly phrased. That the French viewed the English settlers as merchants and Missionaries (shouldn't that be lower case?) is their opinion; were they or not? Also, there is ambiguity: was it the settlements that were along the river or the trade?
"…resulted in large parcels being distributed": large parcels of land?
The first paragraph of the pioneer and native coexistence section is confusing. As well as the above example, it's stated that the English (no Irish, Scottish, or Welsh?) and French settled the area, but then the reader is told the Indians sought British help to resist this.
"Harrisburg was platted…": What does this mean? I'm unfamiliar with the phrase, although that may be because I'm not from America. It may require a wikilink.
"The settlers had outnumbered most of the Native Americans by 1840": You can't outnumber most of a thing. Either you mean "the settlers outnumbered the Native Americans in the area by 1840" or "the settlers outnumbered most of the Native American tribes in the area by 1840".
"Harrisburg was platted just a few miles south from the junction of the Goshen and Shawneetown-Kaskaskia roads, two of the earliest pioneer trade routes in the state.": This sentence would seem to fit better at the start of the controversial founding section, otherwise it feels disjointed.
The controversial founding section is confusingly structured. It starts off with the foundation of the town, without a specific date, and then we jump back in time to the details of where the county seat was. As choosing a central place for a new county seat appears to be the primary reason for the creation of Harrisburg, this should be explained before the reader is told that Harris et al donated land.
I've heard of wind mills, water mills, cotton mills, iron mills, and flour mills, but what is a planning mill?
"Harrisburg also saw the opening of several saw mills": Repetition of saw.

At a glance the article appears good, but after reading the first three sub-sections, it's clear the article needs a thorough copy edit to and attention paid to the way information is structured. Nev1 (talk) 22:32, 20 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

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