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Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Typhoon Karen/archive1

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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 archived by Graham Beards via FACBot (talk) 15:22, 17 December 2014 (UTC) [1].[reply]

Typhoon Karen

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Nominator(s): Cyclonebiskit (talk) 20:19, 11 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Typhoon Karen in 1962 is regarded as one of the wost natural disasters in the history of Guam. A powerful Category 5-equivalent storm, Karen battered the island with winds estimated at 285 km/h (185 mph), destroying the majority Guam's infrastructure and devastating the environment. Some referred to the wasteland left behind as "hell" with almost nothing left standing in the storm's wake. Despite the ferocity of Karen, relatively few people lost their lives. In the years following Karen, a massive change in how the United States handled Guam took place. Formerly an area of military occupation, Karen paved the way for military security to disbanded and allowed the economy to flourish.

From a mighty disaster came a new beginning for Guam. Both the economy and infrastructure of the island were overhauled due to the typhoon and Karen is the key catalyst that has made Guam what it is today. I hope you all enjoy reading this article as much as I did writing it! Regards, Cyclonebiskit (talk) 20:19, 11 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Support as GA reviewer. That being said, I have just a few tiny nitpicks.

  • You should explicitly mention SSHS in the lead if you're gonna say Category 5.
  • Link maximum sustained winds in the lead?
  • " Total losses on the island amounted to $250 million" - are losses and damages the same?
  • "either California, Hawaii, or Wake Island" - either implies only two. I'd drop that word.
  • " it was later attributed with improving" - change "with" to "to"
  • Maybe indicate where Truk is in the MH? Otherwise, if you started upon reading the MH, there is no indication which ocean or continent the storm formed near.
  • "The lowest verified pressure was 931.9 mb (hPa; 27.52 inHg) at the Agana Naval Air Station." how is this the lowest if the one after it was lower?
  • The lead says that Karen reached peak intensity after Guam, but the MH doesn't mesh with that. How come?
  • "Wind gusts over the southern tip of Guam were estimated to have peaked around 185 km/h (115 mph)." ... " Based on this measurement, a study in 1996 estimated that gusts peaked between 280 and 295 km/h (175 and 185 mph) over southern areas of the island." = see the problem?
  • "The ROK Han Ra San and RPS Negros Oriental sunk" --> "sank"

Just those few little things. I'm still happy to support :) ♫ Hurricanehink (talk) 21:28, 20 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Image check - all OK

All images have sufficient source and author information and are either CC or work of the US military. GermanJoe (talk) 19:32, 8 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Comments. As always, feel free to revert my copyediting. - Dank (push to talk)

  • Per WP:MOSTIME: "Context determines whether the 12- or 24-hour clock is used; in both, colons separate hours, minutes and seconds". I put in colons in half of the article already; please do the rest.
  • "The damage across Guam was described as "'much more serious than that of 1944' when [United States] troops liberated the island."[1]": That's more of a spotcheck problem: you're representing material quoted from two sources as if it came from one source.
  • Support on prose per standard disclaimer. These are my edits. - Dank (push to talk) 04:27, 15 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Going through the article again, I'll finish tomorrow morning, looking good so far. - Dank (push to talk) 04:50, 2 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Okay, went through it again, found and fixed some instances of the problems Andy points out. Still supporting on prose. - Dank (push to talk) 15:18, 2 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose, 1a. I started reading at Aftermath and didn't make it far.

  • "they were delayed due to the inoperable airstrips" is ungrammatical; "due to" is only appropriate when it can be replaced by "attributable to" or "caused by", i.e. used as an adjective.
    • m-w.com, usage note: "Due to is as grammatically sound as owing to, which is frequently recommended in its place. It has been and is used by reputable writers and has been recognized as standard for decades. There is no solid reason to avoid due to."
    • dictionary.com (from the Random House Dictionary), usage note: "due to occurs commonly as a compound preposition and is standard in all varieties of speech and writing."
    • Steven Pinker, The Sense of Style, p. 264: "both [meanings] are fine".
    • American Heritage Dictionary, usage note: "the tide has turned toward accepting due to as a full-fledged preposition". - Dank (push to talk) 03:03, 2 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Despite damage at the Guam Memorial Hospital, other civilian and military installations were able to handle injured persons as many were transferred to the Navy's hospital" I can't parse this sentence. Why would people be transferred to the Navy hospital "despite damage"?
    • Thanks. I've improved readability with: "Guam Memorial Hospital was damaged, but other civilian ...".
  • "Additionally, he instituted a curfew between 8:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m." lacks clarity. The curfew was from 8 to 6, but why write it to introduce the ambiguity that he performed the action during that time frame?
    • Andy, tell 10 people that someone set a curfew between 8 and 6, and ask them if they thought that you meant that the person chose a time between 8 and 6 to say that they were setting a curfew for some other time. If any of them understood the sentence that way, I'll rewrite it. If none of them do, then the sentence isn't ambiguous.
  • "At schools, teachers were called in to guard supplies and equipment" Again, ambiguous writing. The calling was done at the schools? Better: "Teachers were called into schools to guard supplies and equipment."
    • I see what you're saying, but for me, the outside possibility that someone will misread it is more than compensated by the better flow of the text as it is: it establishes the setting with the very first noun.
  • "Additionally, a 15-man team ... were deployed" Normal for British English, not elsewhere.. are we going there, and being consistent?
    • Thanks for catching that, but I don't like your fix. It was "Additionally, a 15-man team of United States Air Force communications technicians were deployed"; the "was" would grate after all those plurals. I changed it to "Additionally, 15 United States Air Force communications technicians were deployed ...".
  • "It was also estimated that schools on the island would be closed for six months." Here and elsewhere you use the passive tense and avoid stating a subject. Is the subject unknown, or unimportant? In the previous sentence it was Guerrero doing the estimating.
    • The source says "Officials estimated that schools would be closed for six months." Why is that better than "It was also estimated that schools on the island would be closed for six months"? Who cares who the officials were? I'll read through checking for passive voice to see if the writers are misusing it, but they aren't misusing it in this case.
  • Photo caption uses the "massive junkyard" quotation; it's in quotation marks earlier in the prose but not here?
    • Fixed.
  • There is some error ("chapter=ignored") in the References section.
    • Cyclonebiskit, can you have a look?

Looks like it needs a once-over. --Laser brain (talk) 21:35, 1 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    • I'll go through it again. - Dank (push to talk) 03:39, 2 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    • Checking on passive voice ... none of these are a problem for me, are they a problem for you?
    • "Typhoon Karen was the most powerful tropical cyclone to strike Guam and was regarded as one of the most destructive events in the island's history.[1] Karen was first identified as a tropical disturbance on November 6, 1962, well to the southeast of Truk."
    • "It was regarded as the worst typhoon to ever strike the island."
    • "only 11 people were killed"
    • "Thousands more were sheltered in public buildings and later tent villages for many months."
    • "More than $60 million in relief funds were sent to Guam over the following years to aid in rehabilitation."
    • "On November 6, 1962, a tropical disturbance was identified over the Pacific Ocean ..." - Dank (push to talk) 04:03, 2 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thanks for the responses. I don't have a problem with any of these, nor a problem with any of your responses—I fully recognize that many items in grammar are subjective. I think you misinterpreted some of my comments as requests for changes when I was really just asking the author to check his assumptions against mine. For example, no person would misunderstand the curfew sentence but ambiguous writing is just a poor practice to be in, and it often confuses ESL readers. Re: passive vocie, when one reads a sentence in the passive voice, the assumption is that the subject is either unknown or unimportant. I'm just asking to make sure that assumption is correct. Oh, and the "due to" item is widely discussed and disputed—I happen to consider it clunky and there are much more elegant ways of stating the point. Will read through again tomorrow. --Laser brain (talk) 05:05, 2 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Going through again. I also look for "due to" when I'm copyediting, mostly because of WP:Checklist#because, and because "due to" will sometimes force what would have been a verb to turn into a flabby noun. I just found one of these objectionable due tos and rewrote it ... I also found a case of passive voice that shouldn't have been passive (we know that Guerrero said it, and we should say that). Let me know if you see anything else that needs fixing. - Dank (push to talk) 14:54, 2 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thanks. And, I'm sorry but I keep getting delayed in finishing my read-through. Will do my best to finish up within the next 24h. Do we know where the nominator is? They haven't edited this page since it opened. Are you the proxy? --Laser brain (talk) 21:35, 3 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Additional comments

  • "Karen underwent a period of explosive intensification as its eye became small and increasingly defined." I'm having a lot of trouble relating things like this to the source provided. On what page does this information appear?
  • All the constructions similar to "35 km (22 mi) wide eye" are odd to me as they are all missing the necessary hyphen. It's ungainly and needs rewriting. Curiously, I clicked through several other Typhoon FAs and didn't notice this construction in use at all. Most of them mention the eye or the eyewall but don't provide measurements.
    • I agree. I allowed it because a variety of other writers like it, and I haven't been able to win the fight to get rid of it, but "35 km (22 mi) wide eye" is just clunky. - Dank (push to talk)
  • "After attaining this initial peak intensity on November 9" Is there another peak intensity?
  • Later, "Continuing west-northwestward, Karen attained its peak intensity on November 13" This is confusing to me, the lay reader. How many peaks are there?
    • He's using the term sources use in general, but I agree with you that that usage is jargony. I'll raise this issue over at WT:TROP in my current thread there. - Dank (push to talk)
  • "Closest to the eye was Naval Magazine where a pressure of 907.6 mb (hPa; 26.80 inHg) was estimated but never verified." This (among other things) are sourced to a letter to the editor of a magazine. Why is that a reliable source? Doesn't it matter who wrote the letter? What's implied is that someone at Naval Magazine wrote a letter claiming they made this measurement, but this needs a lot more clarity.
    • I personally consider the Mariners Weather Log a reliable source since it has been held in high regard by the meterological community for a long time and was even saved from being put out of existance in 1995 after several letters/phone calls testifyed as to the value of the magazine. This is backed up by meterological services from all around the world, who have contributed various reports and letters into it for publication etc. Having been given digital copies of all of the issues last year i have gone and read the letter in question and can state that the letter was written by the Meterologist in Charge of the Guam Weather Station. However, all of the pressure readngs were contained within an editors comment on the letter, but i do not see any comments on if they were verified.Jason Rees (talk) 20:10, 4 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Damage to vegetation was total across central areas of the island, with complete defoliation taking place." Just not well-written. "Damage was total" sits very oddly.
    • Changed to "Vegetation was completely defoliated across central areas of the island". - Dank (push to talk)
  • "Military structures suffered the most from this phenomenon as the buildings were designed in a way that pressure differences between the interior and exterior would not equal out." No, the source doesn't really say that.
  • "like being 'shrapnel or artillery missiles.'" Again, just awkward phrasing.
    • Crap, that was a typo I introduced yesterday when I fixed something else. Fixed now. - Dank (push to talk)
  • I'm not too comfortable going much further with this due to the absentee nominator, but I'm pretty readily finding glitches everywhere I look. I don't think it's ready. --Laser brain (talk) 17:46, 4 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Note -- This has been open a long time but I'm loathe to archive it when you guys are actively reviewing/editing. If the nominator has left, however, we may not have many options -- will check back in a day or so. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 13:35, 4 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I left a msg yesterday at the nom's talk page, and today at WT:TROP. - Dank (push to talk) 14:58, 4 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
As a friend of Cyclonebiskits on Facebook - i have dropped him a PM today but it would not surprise me if hes rather busy in real life.Jason Rees (talk) 20:10, 4 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry about that, this article slipped my mind. I'm busy this weekend with family but I'll try to read through what I can when time allows. Cyclonebiskit (talk) 17:23, 6 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Cyclonebiskit, any update on this nomination? --Laser brain (talk) 15:28, 14 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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