Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/Territorial evolution of the United States/archive3

The following is an archived discussion of a featured list nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured list candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The list was promoted by Giants2008 via FACBot (talk) 23:33, 26 November 2017 (UTC) [1].[reply]

Territorial evolution of the United States

Nominator(s): Golbez (talk) 19:39, 1 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

It's been a month since the last nom, which died with a whimper instead of objections. I want to try again, because I strongly believe in the quality of this article, with its 400+ citations and years of research, and am more than willing to implement any improvements that come up. And again I must give props to the others who helped with this, mainly User:Jeff in CA and User:XavierGreen. --Golbez (talk) 19:39, 1 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Resolved comments from User:Calvin999

Resolved comments by Calvin999

Comments from — Calvin999

With a list and table of this size, the lead needs to sourced. It's not easy to find a citation for something written in the lead and makes it hard to check.
- I'm going to provisionally tag this Done; I cited everything without a year, as things with years included can be easily found in the chronological table.
The lead looks very long. The first two paragraphs could be one paragraph, and the final three could be one paragraph also, instead of all being separate.
- Will try.
  - All you've got to do is hit the backspace button on at the beginning of the paragraph so it joins wit the previous. — Calvin999 13:34, 7 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    - Done
The Date column needs to be marked up for access, I've done July 4, 1776 as an example to show you.
- Done
I've done some other marking up changes for you.
The Congress of the United States moved to Washington, now ready to be the capital. → From where, and 'now ready to be the capital' is a bit vague, why?
- Good point, the list hadn't established that Washington was a new city, so will fix.
  - Done
January 1, 1801 → What has the UK renaming itself got to do with this? if it's inheriting disputes, this needs to be written.
- It's not so much inheriting disputes as simply renaming the entity with the disputes. It would be weird for the disputes to continue to say "disputed with Great Britain", as that was no longer the name of the country.
  - The corresponding image says inherits. — Calvin999 13:34, 7 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    - Oh. Whoops. Done
between the United States and Mexico[414] allowed, → Why is only Mexico linked and why is the citation mid-sentence and not after the comma?
- I don't think we need to link the primary topic of the article that far down in it, do we? As for the citation, fixed.
The Bancos along the Rio Grande section needs more sources.
- I'll see what I can do.
  - Done I think.
This information is also available as a kmz file mapped at this location. → I'm not sure this is becoming of an FL to link so informally to a map.
- Will ponder better methods.
  - Done
There are multiple date formats in the references, they all need to use one American format, whether written or numerical.
- Done Fixed the ones I could find.

— Calvin999 08:50, 7 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I've addressed or at least attempted to address all of these issues; please review. Thanks! --Golbez (talk) 19:57, 11 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Support - I can see you've worked really hard on this, it's an impressive list. If you could look at my nomination, I'd be grateful. — Calvin999 08:44, 14 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I read through this last time but it's so long I unfortunately did not have time for a review. My main concern is actually with the length; even though it's a clear table with just three columns, it's unreadable for practical purposes. Perhaps there could be some sort of color-coding (a narrow column with color and sortable symbol?) to distinguish states joining [leaving] the union, changes in borders between states, territorial gains and losses, and overseas claims, etc. While you've done an incredible job making it more comprehensive from what it used to be, the list is no longer accessible to a casual user who is not dedicated enough to sift through so many minor changes. The sections by decade were also nice, especially to get through the 64 changes of the 1860s :). Reywas92^Talk 23:23, 19 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
- I could still split it like before, or add anchors... as for color coding, I don't think that would really work because many entries would have multiple categories. (A quick example that comes to mind: March 2, 1861. On this day, a state seceded and also joined the CSA; two new territories were created ; one territory grew; and one territory shrank.) And sorting on that kind of abstracts a change from its history. Remove it from its context and it means much less. --Golbez (talk) 04:23, 20 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  - How does this look: [2] I found decades to be too imbalanced, with some being 20 pages and some being 2. But I figured out these few major grouping that could work? What do you think? --Golbez (talk) 15:59, 20 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    - I think that works fairly well, but if anyone else has ideas of how to make this not seems so long, do consider them. In the meantime I found no issues in my read-throughs, support with some sort of sectioning. Reywas92^Talk 03:27, 21 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
      - Thank you! And just to be clear, that was just an idea, I immediately reverted it, but I'm definitely open to discussion on this front. Decades, phases, something that might work. Just because I, very familiar with it, can get around it doesn't mean others can. :) --Golbez (talk) 13:08, 21 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
        @Reywas92: I've put them back, I'm much keener to the idea now. What do you think of them? --Golbez (talk) 23:44, 2 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Looks great, Support Reywas92^Talk 23:26, 16 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Resolved comments from Giants2008 (Talk) 00:13, 5 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Comments –

"The American Civil War led to the defeat the Confederacy in 1865". Needs "of" after "defeat".
Around the four states created from land claimed by other states, the spaced hyphens should be en dashes instead per the Manual of Style.
March 1, 1784: Remove "the" from "that had overlapped the Virginia's cession."?
December 29, 1845: Pointing to external links in our text is a no-no; if you want to point to the maps, use them as references.
July 22, 1930: Sames goes for these external links.

Reference 313 has gone dead since this FLC began. Giants2008 (Talk) 21:45, 2 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
- Thank you for the comments! All are fixed except the last. I removed the links, they didn't seem ultimately necessary. As for ref 313... maybe the numbers have changed, but it and all the refs surrounding it look ok? --Golbez (talk) 23:20, 2 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  - I must have gotten the number wrong. Sorry about that. It appears to be number 333, as I type this. Also, reference 388 is also dead, and the September 24, 1928 entry also has an external link in the text. Giants2008 (Talk) 00:13, 5 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  - 333 works for me? In incog mode as well. Maybe it was temporarily down? As for 388: Fixed. And 1928: Link removed. --Golbez (talk) 17:57, 14 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    - If that's the case, then all you have to do is remove the dead link tag from that reference, and from 388. Giants2008 (Talk) 21:03, 21 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
      - Done. --Golbez (talk) 21:53, 21 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Comments by PresN

As per MOS:TQ, punctuation should not be inside of direct quotes unless you're quoting a full sentence that includes that punctuation (I've made this edit for you).
- Thanks!
March 4, 1791 - the dispute map gains some red bits, but the text does not explain; it appears the last "dispute" map was May 12, 1784, which did not highlight those areas in red as the entire country was new/green. Some sort of reminder/note in 1791 would be helpful to mark that they're not new disputes.
- I'm not sure what you mean; 1784 did note the areas that ... hm. Yeah, actually, they should be red, not green, because their status didn't change - they're still claimed by Great Britain. Lemme fix that.... and, fixed.
June 1, 1796 - Reads odd to not start as "The" Southwest Territory
- Fixed.
February 22, 1821 - "The land exchanged in this fashion should not truly count as territory gained or lost" - the "should" is poor tone; replace with "does" or "did"
- Removed that sentence.
September 9, 1850 - This is the only place where I noticed it, but citations should be in number order (not [176][3], as here).
- All out-of-order citations fixed.
March 1, 1862 - the image here has quite different borders with the CSA than the image above it, which is because this whole span you mark different areas as disputed between the internal and external maps; it's unclear (to me) why the US map only marks the CSA states as red, and not the territories/states that the CSA itself claims in the other maps
- The internal map marks the states red that have withdrawn or been expelled from the congress; the dispute map marks all regions claimed by a foreign country, so while Missouri was never expelled, it was claimed by the CSA. The internal maps are from the "POV" of the US, so they always have the maximal interpretation; the dispute maps show where that interpretation conflicts with others' interpretations.
July 18, 1927 - remove external link
- Fixed.
September 24, 1928 - remove external link
- Fixed.

Looks good in general! --Pres N 16:57, 10 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you! --Golbez (talk) 18:22, 14 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Support --Pres N 13:03, 20 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Closing note: This candidate has been promoted, but there may be a delay in bot processing of the close. Please see WP:FLC/ar, and leave the {{featured list candidates}} template in place on the talk page until the bot goes through. Giants2008 (Talk) 23:01, 26 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

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