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Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/History of Pittsburgh/archive1

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History of Pittsburgh

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This article is a good example of a Wikipedia article on the history of an American city. While keeping within article size guidelines, it is a more comprehensive history than can be found in many book-length treatments. Lorant's excellent history, for example, lacks a pre-European section. The article would be of interest to many readers, I believe, because the city has had such a colorful history. The article also has compelling graphics that convey the transformations the city has undergone. Tomcool 22:42, 15 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose. It's a good subject for a FA and there's plenty of good material in the article, but there are some problems that need resolving. There's no lead section at all, the reader is dropped, without context, into a somewhat fragmentary account of various native nations living in an area that has not been related to Pittsburgh. It's great to have an article suggest that there's much to be said about native history in a particular region of N. America, but a heading like "Native American era (possibly 19,000 years ago to 1747 A.D.)" is too sharply defined (did the Native era come to an abrupt end in 1747? Is it certain that there were no Native people in the area before 19,000 years ago - better to leave the heading more general). More needs to be said about the Native history of the area (e.g. I suspect disease wasn't their only killer). For my taste the article is a little listy, but you may disagree, either way, the layout could probably be tidied a bit - it seems haphazard. There are some copyediting issues to deal with, but nothing that can't be easily fixed, I think. How about working on it a bit more, then I think it will be a very plausible FA candidate. Pinkville 23:14, 15 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Object I've never been able to object to an FAC without reading a single word, but this fails WP:WIAFA criterion 2(a) right off the bat by having no lead whatsoever. The pictures are also very poorly placed- why are the vast majority of them centered on the page? The word "possibly" should be removed from the first heading, as it's incredibly unencyclopedic; perhaps the use of "circa" would be better. I'm with Pinkville on there being too many lists and tables. There are also far too many red links (I counted thirteen in the article); if something is important enough to link to (and, hell, Braddock's Field is linked to twice), at least write a stub for it. Fuinally, there are too many one- and two-sentence paragraphs. This is definitely a very good article- among the high points are that all of the images are fair-use and relevant to the article, the prose is generally good and everything is well-referenced- but it needs some work to be of Featured quality. -- Kicking222 02:32, 16 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you all for your prompt and helpful feedback. I have addressed your concerns by:

  • writing a lead section, following the guidance of WP:Lead.
  • placing most of the images to the right, leaving only panaramic images in the center, and tweaking their sizes so that they fit well within their sections, remain large enough to be viewed as thumbnails, and appear proportionate to one other.
  • consolidating too-short paragraphs into larger, related paragraphs
  • removing internal links to relatively obscure entities such as Captain Simeon Ecuyer, and creating stub articles for Braddock's Field and Edgar Thomson Works

Regarding listiness, I have left in the lists, because they are the most economical and readable way to convey a lot of specific data. I've attempted to create a fact-filled article, using the 1911 EB article on Pittsburgh as a model. Since the contributors have already exceeded WP:LENGTH by 5kb (especially since adding the lead section), the only way to reduce the listiness is to eliminate (rather than put into narrative) some of the lists, with subsequent loss of detail. I hope that in the light of the above changes, you will reconsider your votes. Tomcool 17:50, 16 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comment The ballpark photo should be placed next to the "Reinvention" section, as it is from this most recent time period. I'm currently re-evaluating the article. I can definitely say that you've done a great job with the article, and a great job with cleaning it up. -- Kicking222 22:49, 16 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Changed to Weak Support While there are still a few minor problems (the section "The Steel City" still has a ton of one-sentence paragraphs, and with little detail on many of the important events mentioned, such as the 1877 railroad strike and the Homestead Strike"; "helping to make possible the Allied victory" is also a wee bit too POV/unencyclopedic for my tastes; the final photo in the article is too large and still unnecessarily centered), I think this has quickly become an excellent article. I can get around the listiness, though I'm just slightly concerned about the prose, but I can't explain why. A few thinks are also wikilinked to way too much; Governor Dinwiddie is linked to three times in four paragraphs, and Fort Duquesne is linked to in consecutive sentences. Per convention, something need only be linked to once (or, at the very most, once per section of the article). Despite these details, which can easily be fixed (if I wasn't about to leave, I'd probably fix them myself), I think I am confident enough in the current state of the article to !vote to support it. -- Kicking222 22:59, 16 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I've further amended the article in response to the feedback above. I've eliminated redundant internal links, consolidated short paragraphs into longer paragraphs, eliminated some less important lists and converted others into narrative. I've also futher adjusted the image placements, added detail to the captions, and added an image of an engraving of the Union Deport fire of 1877. Re: moving the ballpark image; I need an image in that section of a Ren. I project, and the 3 Rivers stadium is probably the most famous. I've added detail to the caption in order to make it clear why the image is included in that section. Tomcool 19:16, 17 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Obejct—1a. Here are examples in the lead of why the whole text needs to be copy-edited.
    • Opening sentence: "... over the control of the forks of the Ohio, which is where the Allegheny River and the Monongahela River join to form the Ohio." Vague and repetitive; is the Ohio a river itself?
    • "in order to"—no, just "to" (as well, you have "order" in the subsequent sentence, which makes for a little repetition).
    • "He also named the settlement between the rivers "Pittsborough"—Remove "also" and it flows better. Every sentence is an "also".
    • "when farmers rebelled against the new federal government about taxes on whiskey." "About" is not the right word—"rebel about"?
    • "A great fire burned over a thousand buildings in 1845"—I took it first as "burned over", but no, you mean "burned more than". Please change the other "overs".
    • "The city's population swelled to half a million, including many European immigrants." When?
    • "shrunk"? Nope, "shrank".

Don't just fix these; find someone else to go through the whole article carefully. Tony 01:10, 18 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the feedback. I'd like to withdraw this article from FAC. We'll work on the copy editing and reference density, submit for peer review, and then resubmit for FA later. Tomcool 15:42, 19 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
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