Talk:1990 Pacific hurricane season/GA1

Latest comment: 14 years ago by Thegreatdr in topic GA Review

GA Review

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Reviewer: Hurricanehink (talk) 15:27, 3 May 2010 (UTC)Reply

GA review (see here for criteria)
  1. It is reasonably well written.
    a (prose):   b (MoS):  
    Right off the bat, the opening sentence is weird. Was that a leftover from a previous version of the article, or trying to combine two different ideas? Also, the first sentence of the second paragraph is a grammatical failure. Might I suggest rewriting the lede. For example, why is Boris listed after a sentence saying "Overall". Overall sentences are usually first or last in a paragraph.
I'm really confused about one thing. Was the season the 2nd most active or 3rd most active? If was 2nd most active at the time, I think you should avoid saying that and just say 3rd most active on record.
The lede is a little better, although the first sentence is a bit of a run-on now. You can probably get away with splitting the info on the length of the season into its own sentence. Hurricanehink (talk) 16:45, 6 May 2010 (UTC)Reply
"Five named tropical cyclones moved over or very near Socorro Island located about 450 kilometres (240 nmi) south of Cabo San Lucas" - why is the mention of Socorro Island important? Second, there should be consistency throughout the article, as other sections have miles first, then km in parenthesis (none use nmi).
I'm assuming you fixed up other places in the article, and didn't work on the lede or season summary. Here are some other things that caught my eye.
  • A few of the sections were hard to read because they were one big paragraph. Can you try and make all of the sections two paragraphs (if they're long enough)?
  • "Alma quickly strengthened and was near hurricane force by the morning of May 15. A few hours later, Alma was upgraded to a hurricane." - the wording is rather redundant. Is it really that important that it was near hurricane force on the morning, and by later was actually at hurricane force?
  • Speaking of redundancies, the second paragraph of Alma uses the word "Alma" eight times in eight consecutive sentences. That's pretty poor writing, since at least one of those can be replaced by "it", "the storm", etc.
  • "Weak steering currents caused the system to move erratically. However, Cristina moved generally northwestward." - is there any way that could be trimmed down? It's just an example of redundant wording making the article seem clunky.
  • "Organization, which was not apparent previously with the wave, became apparent" - here's another example in the Douglas section.
  • There are a lot of weird issues with commas being in weird locations.
  • "It was downgraded to a tropical depression on June 7, due to these factors"
  • "The low-level circulation of clouds of Tropical Depression Cristina, moved west-northwestward, with the low-level flow."
  • "No damage or casualties were reported, due to Cristina."
  • Africa and Pacific Ocean shouldn't be linked in every section.
  • There are some weird rounding issues in the article.
  • "at 85 mph (137 km/h)"
  • "peak strength of 105 mph (169 km/h)"
  • "with maximum sustained winds of 60 miles per hour (97 km/h)." (also, how come mph is spelled out?)
  1. It is factually accurate and verifiable.
    a (references):   b (citations to reliable sources):   c (OR):  
    Refs are generally good, although I see one missing for the Hernan and one for the Iselle section. Also, the ACE section should be linked to the EPAC HURDAT, as well as a reference saying how ACE is calculated routinely. Also, it'd be great if there were some non-NHC sources. Unless I misread, every source was from the NHC or CPHC. Surely there is a news report or something that could be added for the land-impacting storms. I'd imagine Douglas would have some impact in a newspaper.
  2. It is broad in its coverage.
    a (major aspects):   b (focused):  
    First, a lot of the sections are really long, so it'd be hard for anyone to read the entire article. Compare with other seasons that are good. The meteorological histories are rarely that long, and I think part of the problem is the focus on what each tropical wave did in the Atlantic (which is unnecessary - a tropical wave is not the same as a Pacific hurricane). At the same, I noticed some details are missing, like in Agatha's section, you say it was impacted by wind shear, which prevented strengthening, but how did it quickly intensify to near hurricane force winds? IDK, I guess the other sections aren't really missing info, but that one stood out.
    It's better now. Hurricanehink (talk) 16:45, 6 May 2010 (UTC)Reply
  3. It follows the neutral point of view policy.
    Fair representation without bias:  
  4. It is stable.
    No edit wars, etc.:  
  5. It is illustrated by images, where possible and appropriate.
    a (images are tagged and non-free images have fair use rationales):   b (appropriate use with suitable captions):  
  6. Overall:
    Pass/Fail:  
    I'm going to take a wild guess that you didn't write most of the article, since it doesn't seem like your usual writing. I didn't finish the whole article in reviewing, I just saw the same sorts of comments in section after section. It just seemed amateurish. I am putting it on hold for seven days, although you might want to withdraw it. Let me know if you have any comments.
    No, I did not write this article. When you reviewed it in late 2006, it indicated that the article was nearly there, so I tried cleaning up the wording, fixing the broken links, and making a GA run. This is an important hurricane season for the eastern Pacific basin. I'll endeavour to fix the problems you pointed out and convert to nautical miles, which is what NHC uses. I just had one GA failure for similar reasons (it involved more work than this article does), and don't want to make it two in a row if I can help it. Thegreatdr (talk) 22:22, 4 May 2010 (UTC)Reply
    Fixed the Alma issues, and added references for Douglas and Rachel from the TC rainfall climatology (surprise). I think all the excessive wikilinks are gone and the text of certain storms has been trimmed, per your recommendation. Strike out what's been taken care of so far so I know where to go next. Thegreatdr (talk) 21:40, 5 May 2010 (UTC)Reply
    OK, I figured you didn't write it. Well, to be honest it wasn't that close in 2006, and GA standards have only increased since then. That said, now it's getting there, just some basic things to fix (rounding, referencing, etc). Hurricanehink (talk) 16:45, 6 May 2010 (UTC)Reply
    The lead, Cristina, Douglas, Iselle, and Norbert issues should be resolved now. Didn't someone design a convert template that takes care of the rounding issues? If so, I'd like to use it for those few circumstances. I've had problems finding more than three non-NHC references, even using the google site used in the 1984 AHS reference section. I don't think it's helping that the two systems which neared land were only of tropical storm strength. Thegreatdr (talk) 19:11, 7 May 2010 (UTC)Reply

Fausto, Genevieve, Norbert, and Simon still have ref issues, I'm not sure about the convert template, but that still needs to be fixed (the rounding and the abbreviated units). Also, I notice theire are some instances of nautical miles, which the project agreed to phase out and replace with regular miles. I checked Google news, and there are news stories on Rachel, Marie, and Trudy. For such a notable season, the lede should be longer. Also, not sure if it's worth noting, but Hurricane Diana was technically a tropical depression in the basin, and it could probably use a mention. I'm sorry, I just feel like there's a lot of work to be done still. There's too much track description in the article and too little meteorological details (what allowed storms to strengthen and weaken, what caused their tracks). As a result, I am failing the nomination. Hurricanehink (talk) 16:39, 8 May 2010 (UTC)Reply

If I had a bit more time to edit the article, I'd argue that there were still two more days left in the GAN period. But I don't, so I'll accept the failure. I'll try again in 2-3 weeks. In the meantime, leave me a message on my talk page concerning the web site to google news...because I'm unfamiliar with that site. You're right...Diana should be in this article (should have remembered that). Thanks for the review. Thegreatdr (talk) 21:59, 9 May 2010 (UTC)Reply