Wikipedia:Peer review/Accokeek, Maryland/archive1

Accokeek, Maryland

I've listed this article for peer review because I am attempting to nominate this article for GA status. I have attempted to follow the guidelines at WP:CITY and taken a look at other GA and FA city articles as a starting point. My main concerns are the history section; I'm not 100% sure what else should/could go in that section. Any advice, questions, etc. are greatly appreciated and thank you in advance.

I am currently working on taking pictures of the area, and they should be uploaded / placed in the article this week.

Thanks, —Michael Jester (talk · contribs) 13:15, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

Hi @Michael Jester:. I took a quick look at the article you've obviously been working on for some time now, and can offer a few observations to get you started. Hopefully, others with more experience of Peer Review than me will add other helpful comments for you. I found it an interesting article - at least in parts- and certainly deserved to be at assessed to at least C-class as it stands. There are a few quite obvious howlers which need fixing straight away and some general reworking (copyediting) to make the page contents flow a little more easily. (But I appreciate how hard it is to spot these when you've worked on something for so long.) A good trick is to print off the article, then read it out loud. It should sound coherent and no words should be repeated too frequently, or make you stumble as you read them out. Here are a few sample lines that need attention:

• While the area around Accokeek was settled by Native Americans since approximately 2,000 BCE, John Smith was the first European to settle the area in 1608. (two 'settle's and two 'areas' - so maybe find a way of splitting the sentence and using alternative terms?)
• The area around Accokeek had been lived in since around 2000 BC; (houses get lived in; I'd suggest 'occupied'.
• The village of Moyaone disbanded before European settled the area. (needs an 's' at the very least)
• The Native Americans were upset that the settlers were wearing-out the land due to farming various crops, which led to multiple battles between the two. Between 1675 and 1682, the Native Americans left the area as a result of losing. (I get the gist here, but there needs to be a much less clumsy way to explain this)
• In 1861, Accokeek was still rural, and agriculture was the main economic factor for the place. (again, it makes sense, but sentences like this need to flow and be less be clumsy, I feel).
• Between 1935–39 Alice Ferguson initiated archaeological excavations to attempt to locate the original site where John Smith found. (found what? Maybe where John Smith originally settled is more appropriate? There are simply too many uses of 'found' and Foundation' in this one paragraph for it to be easy reading. A GA article needs to be well-written and to flow nicely. I think a little bit more work needs doing on this aspect).
• Because the History section contains lots of unconnected but interesting tidbits, it might be best to start a few more paragraphs (maybe all of them?) with the date. Then the reader can skim down and appreciate that a logical jump in time has been made)
• In 1990, Accokeek official became a CDP when the US Census Bureau defined the place's boundaries.(offical->officially; place's ->its)
• Climate: ...and rain is equally spread out through the year.[23] - this link is dead.
  • Fixed the link. I guess it's a good idea to archive links from the start.
• Demographics: As of 2013, 92.8% (9,690) of Accokeek residents spoke English at home as a primary language, while 3.2% (335) spoke Spanish and 2.4% (253) spoke Tagalong. (I'd never heard of this language, but I'm sure none of them speak bicycle! I'm guessing it should have been Tagalog? A good way to quickly check links in articles is to go to your preferences and enable Hovercards in the Beta tab, so that a summary of the wikilink pops up when you mouseover it. That one did make me chuckle a bit, though, when it popped up)
  • Ha, ha, ha. I never even noticed that!
• Demographics: The top industry is public administration (26.9%), followed by professional, scientific, and management, and administrative and waste management services (20.2%) (I presume it's not 20.2% of people involved in waste management services is it? If so, this could be teased out to explain why it's such a high percentage. Is there a hugerecycling plant at Accokkek, for instance?)
  • Nah. The US Census breaks job industries that way. I wasn't sure how to word it so that 20.2% of the work force is those industries.
• History: Looking back at September 2014's edits, there seem to have been some interesting historical sections which have since been deleted. I presume there is a good reason for this i.e.lack of citations? I would probably move the Beretta company into the economy section as it sounds as if their withdrawal will have a signifcant economic impact, and has less to do with the regions history. I might also ask you whether Accokeek Creek Site is significant enough to the page content as to be worthy of a 'see also' link at the top of the History section? I'm not qualified to judge that, though.
  • According to WP:ALSO, articles that are already linked in the article shouldn't be in the See also section.
• External Links: I notice these have disappeared since 2014, and wonder why, as some looked quite informative. However I note a significant discrepancy in the area of land stated in the Accokeek official website, and, intriguingly that it refers their readers to Wikipedia for more statistics - so you'd better be sure they're correct, LOL! (They quote: Area land (square meters): 48.235km² ; Area water: 16,787km², as opposed to Land: 71.06km²; Water: 3.54km² in the article's infobox). There are still a few numbers and distance units that could do with a non-breaking space instead of a hard space.
  • Unfortunately, I removed the website because it's not officially Accokeek's website. It's run by local people. I felt it didn't qualify because of that reason.
• Finally, why not include a hyperlink to Bing or Google satellite map of the region? I would have welcomed that as I'm in the UK and the article has not really got over to me its wider context - something an external link to a map would do so easily.
  • Woah, never thought of something like that. Good idea! Added.

I hope this helps to get you started. Parkywiki (talk) 20:27, 8 May 2016 (UTC)

Thank you, Parkywiki! I will start working on the copyedit from a printed page today.