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Iron Gwazi

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I wish to nominate this article as a featured article candidate soon. For interested readers, a summary: Iron Gwazi is a steel-hybrid roller coaster located at Busch Gardens Tampa Bay. The roller coaster was initially named Gwazi and built as two dueling wooden roller coasters, opening to the public in 1999. After 15 years of operation, Gwazi closed indefinitely, sitting dormant at the park for several years before being reconstructed as Iron Gwazi.

The roller coaster was one of the most anticipated attractions to debut at a North American theme park. Due to the pandemic, its original opening date was postponed for two years; later, opening on March 11, 2022, to critical acclaim. The roller coaster was voted as the Best New Roller Coaster by the Golden Ticket Awards (an annual award published by Amusement Today for the amusement park industry) and is ranked among the top steel roller coasters in the world.

It has been a while since WP:APARKS had a featured article candidate for its roller coaster/attractions. Any comments are welcomed and would be appreciated. Adog (Talk・Cont) 18:07, 4 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I will take this. First I'll print it out, do a light copy edit, and then come back and tell you what I think. Give it a couple of days. Daniel Case (talk) 08:54, 15 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Review

OK, I'm back, right before Christmas.

The copyedit, I hope, helped. I wound up taking about 1.1K out of the article, which by my experience suggests it was necessary. And indeed, I dealt with a lot of common Wikipedia writing sins: overuse of the passive voice, unnecessary restatement of information (especially an aversion to using pronouns when they were not only OK but necessary, and restating the year when not necessary (also, regularly using exact dates may demonstrate that you've done the research but usually aren't necessary and frankly, get in the way of the narrative), use of superfluous relative pronouns, and so forth. You can look through the diffs for specific examples.

You say you'd like to bring this to FAC. More power to you. I think you have a GA, but it does feel kind of short for FA (Then again, there's this FA). I don't get the feeling the article is wanting for any information it could have, though, save for a few places I'll discuss below, and for all I know you may have sucked all the available sources dry (and it seems like you know what you're doing in that department).

So, on to the specifics:

The most major issue for me is sort of right at the beginning: When I first read the article, I didn't know what the name "Gwazi" meant, even though one sentence further down in the body tells me who consulted on its choice.
Only after printing it out did I learn that it referred to a mythical creature with a tiger's head and a lion's body. Oh. That's in the intro but not in the body.
A very important omission, especially since it's uncited on that single appearance. It might be nice if we repeated this in the body, perhaps with some more explanation if possible, like: What language, what African culture, does this term come from (and why don't we have an article about the original, then? Anyone searching for that is going to be redirected here, at least for now) Was there some specific reason this one was chosen (I imagine the dueling aspect of the coaster, but I'd like to see that in the article if known)? What other names might have been seriously considered?
Maybe this is not information you could find anywhere, maybe you already looked. But the article could deal with this very important, very fundamental fact better.

Added references to said African mythos, and more explanation in "Development" section. Unlike other roller coasters at the park being named after factual African etymology or terminology (e.g. Montu (roller coaster) after the Montu Egyptian god or Kumba (roller coaster) after the Kongo word for "roar"), I cannot find where Gwazi actually refers to this myth. The best reference I can show for this is The St. Louis Post Dispatch, with the quote "Washington University did research that helped A-B [Anheuser-Busch] come up with the Gwazi name...". At this time, I have not been able to find out where this legend comes from nor what is "Gwazi". I theorize it comes from a classic trope of the tiger versus lion. I am not sure the park disclosed other names it made up during its development process.

As for the redirect, Gwazi was the name for the original dueling wooden roller coasters article. As with roller coasters that are renamed or repurposed (such as those done by Rocky Mountain Construction), it has become a process where two subjects are merged, given their common history, regardless of how much the wooden structure or layout is reused (relevant Ship of Theseus). Adog (Talk・Cont) 16:48, 24 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Also, has anyone noted the fact that "Iron Gwazi" is now what they call, over at TV Tropes, an Artifact Title ... i.e., it no longer makes sense as the original Gwazi was a dueling coaster named after a hybrid animal, with the tracks and waiting areas having separate names, and is kept only because branding.

Speaking of the intro, it could probably do with a middle paragraph summarizing what happened between the demise of Gwazi and the opening of Iron Gwazi.

"Gwazi opened the next day, as Florida's first dueling wooden roller coaster. It opened one month after another one, Dueling Dragons at Universal Studios' Islands of Adventure." So, was it Florida's first duelling roller coaster or not? This contradiction needs to be resolved.

"The park said it would announce more information about a new attraction in March, after the completion of track work for Tigris" Huh? What's Tigris? I am guessing you mean this, but I shouldn't have to be. That's the only time it's mentioned, and if it's kept, some explanation and context for that track work would be nice.

"In SeaWorld Entertainment's preliminary second-quarter reports ..." You should be clearer about what kind of reports. From one of the sourced articles, I get to this press release, which clarifies that it's second-quarter earnings/results, and mentions the upcoming release of the company's 10-Q for the quarter, which is a public document filed with the SEC and thus should be accessible online. If this information is in there, it would be the strongest possible source for it.

In the ride experience section, we repeat a lot of information at the beginning and the end for both Lion and Tiger of the original Gwazi. Maybe we could just put that in the section intro?

Also, what is now footnote 79, to The New Southern Encyclopedia, should include the page number. I know it's not available online, but some day it might be, and even so that's a standard part of a citation so someone doesn't have to go through a 500-page-or-so volume trying to verify it.

Likewise, under "Characteristics" is it really necessary to restate that the PTC and GCI trains had room for 24 riders each? That could be said once, before going into the differences between them.

It's also restated under "Steel roller coaster". Fortunately this doesn't happen much in the article, compared to some I've peer-reviewed or GAR'ed, but even on occasions like this it looks like one hand doesn't know what the other one is doing.

We could also try to find more pictures of the waiting areas and theming for Lion and Tiger.

Also, another thing I would be happy to do would be to put the links to the POV videos in an {{external media}} box which would not only break up a text-heavy section, it would help readers who want a visual (Which I think would be almost all of them ... trying to imagine a roller coaster ride from text alone is, well, not something I think anyone save diehard enthusiasts can do).

In the "See also" section ... first, I think there should be a bit more explanation as to why Steel Vengeance is there (it, too, being reborn from a former, flawed coaster) and, in fact, I think you should move the link to Zadra inline and discuss it in the article since that article mentions right there in its intro that it ties Iron Gwazi for RMC's tallest steel coaster, something not mentioned at all' in this one.

And a compliment for making sure the footnotes were competently, fully and consistently done. Very often with a PR/GAN I tend to grit my teeth as I get to the references section while reading the printout as that usually shows the most editorial neglect—most nominators tend to not deal with this section at all and thus leave intact some really poorly done or incomplete older footnotes. But here, going through this was a joy, like skiing a fresh powder run, as I flipped through page after page in seconds without leaving a single red mark. An example that well balances the counterexample discussed in the link above.

OK, that's it. If you have anything you want to discuss about this, let me know. Meanwhile, happy editing and happy holidays! Daniel Case (talk) 06:09, 24 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Adog: to ensure that they saw the above comments. Z1720 (talk) 02:09, 18 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Z1720 and Daniel Case: Yes, thank you for the ping. I have corrected most the information to my best knowledge on the article. While I have taken January off for a small break, I am contacting individuals to find how they got the "Gwazi" name. Thus far, I have not received feedback from the park. I have received from Washington University in St. Louis from their library/archive division that they were unfortunately unable to find mentions of "Gwazi" in their databases from this article. Hope you all are doing well and I appreciate the feedback so far! Adog (Talk・Cont) 16:30, 18 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]