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Talk:Gulfton, Houston/GA2

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GA Review

[edit]

I don't think this article is close to meeting the GA criteria. There are too many short, stubby sections (lead, geography, economy, sports & recreation), and the article fails the completeness criterion. Part of the issue, it appears, seems to be a confusion over exactly what "Gulfton" is? The article appears to be written as, and trying to follow the guidelines of, a US city article. But it appears that Gulfton is actually but a small neighborhood within the city of Houston, Texas, lacking its own government (which is really part of Houston's government), and without specific, defined boundaries (the geography section really says nothing about what the boundaries of Gulfton are; the lead seems to define somewhat rough boundaries, but isn't too specific. Many sections seem to go on into very trivial and random facts, without really tying stuff together very well. It's almost like editors are trying desperately to find things to fit the recommended categories. For example, 'geography' sounds like it's written like an advertisement for apartment complexes, and the education section is subdivided into three short subheadings (is 'colleges and universities' really an appropriate name when the only institution of higher education in Gulfton is a community college? The presence of the 'gallery' here also seems unnecessary, and bordering on an advertisement.

I would strongly recommend a major reorganization here. Don't try and write this up like it's an article about a city or a small town. Better to follow the structure of an individual neighborhood. Some good examples to follow here include: Near South Side, Chicago, Old Louisville, Rush Street (Chicago), and Lafayette Square, Buffalo. I think, with a bit of re-envisioning of the structure and what you're trying to say, I think there should be enough to say to put together a good article.

Cheers! Dr. Cash (talk) 19:26, 23 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion about GA2
  • Alright, for the Gulfton article, you said for that: "The article appears to be written as, and trying to follow the guidelines of, a US city article."
  • When, for River Oaks, Houston, Texas, you said: "I would strongly encourage editors to take a look at the WikiProject Cities' guideline for US cities." (from: Talk:River_Oaks,_Houston,_Texas#GA)
  • So, how do you reconcile that? How closely should a neighborhood follow WP:CITY? Both Gulfton and River Oaks are communities within Houston, so surely WP:CITY has to have some role in Gulfton. There is no WP:Neighborhood, so how do I compare the Chicago neighborhoods to the Houston neighborhoods? Also, River Oaks has a similar layout and has been promoted to GA. What does River Oaks have that Gulfton doesn't have? (besides a formal "boundary," as there is no Gulfton homeowner's association or anything like that)
I never actually said that neighborhoods have to follow the guideline. Back in May of 2008, I did suggest the WP:USCITY guideline, since some of the content may be similar. I also stated in that review that the article "did not adhere to the guideline", but back then, I was also somewhat mislead by the title of the article (in this case, a review for "River Oaks, Houston, Texas"), and thought that it was a suburb or town near Houston. It is clear to me that both River Oaks and Gulfton are, in fact, neighborhoods. Wikipedia, to my knowledge, has no specific guidelines for neighborhoods. I have already pointed out several GAs for neighborhoods above, and I think those are good models to follow.
I also did not pass the River Oaks article as a GA. If it was up to me, I probably would not have, since I think there's still issues with completeness (although at first glance, the prose looks to be of higher quality than this article).
  • See, this explanation is why a review period is needed - so you can get into more detail and so people will know what to fix.
  • Now, I will evaluate parts of the review:
    • "There are too many short, stubby sections (lead, geography, economy, sports & recreation)" - So, what should be added? I could say that economy is a bit stubb-ish, but what else is there to say about the economy? What should I add? If there isn't enough about the economy, what should it be consolidated into? With Sports and Recreation, I could rename it to "Culture" (this is what River Oaks does) - I am not aware of any other festivals or necessarily other aspects in the area. But I don't think this section should be consolidated. I don't think geography should be consolidated either, and as per River Oaks it is should be okay to use "geography" in that context. The lead is slightly smaller than River Oaks's lead.
    • You said: "For example, 'geography' sounds like it's written like an advertisement for apartment complexes" ? Maybe in the 1980s there would be a motivation to do that, but now many of the pools have been filled in, as said in the article. How can one enjoy swimming in a filled in pool? Since when can one swim in concrete? The whole point of saying that the pools were there in the first place is to show that the apartment complexes were built for young people in mind, so I suppose I need to make that more obvious.
    • You said: "and the education section is subdivided into three short subheadings (is 'colleges and universities' really an appropriate name when the only institution of higher education in Gulfton is a community college?" - I'll compare that to River Oaks. River Oaks doesn't have the info about community colleges (when the neighborhood is also served by a community college district, although it doesn't have any facilities within RO), so I'll have to see about that. The K-12 section should be good, as should the library section. IMO having a separate heading is justified as community colleges are a form of higher education. Should I rename this section to "higher education"?
    • You said "The presence of the 'gallery' here also seems unnecessary, and bordering on an advertisement." - River Oaks, a GA article, has a dedicated school gallery too. WhisperToMe (talk) 23:06, 23 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I didn't make the final decision to pass the River Oaks, Houston, Texas article as a GA. It's unlikely that I would have with several of its short sections and its image gallery where it is. Dr. Cash (talk) 23:36, 23 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
On Hold

I have changed my decision on this article to on hold. My original comments on the need for a reorganization still stand, but I think editors here are interested in improving it, so I'll give it a chance. Dr. Cash (talk) 23:34, 23 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It appears that the information on 'education' has merged into the 'economy' section. These two should be separated. Also, promote the 'culture' section -- I'd probably place it right after demographics; you might be able to merge the demographics and culture sections, too, since we're talking about the overall culture of the population itself. Dr. Cash (talk) 22:30, 24 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

One question I have is: should the education section be reorganized? I have large blocks of text related to the characteristics of Gulfton public school students and families and the Gulfton school history (overcrowding). Should they be reorganized? WhisperToMe (talk) 18:04, 28 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Anyway, I have added more information "specific" to Gulfton as a neighborhood. Hopefully this article is no longer as directory-like. WhisperToMe (talk) 18:54, 1 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Also would information from a letter to the editor in response to a source cited by this article work? I found http://www.chron.com/CDA/archives/archive.mpl?id=1993_1155253 - which is a letter to the editor about a September 5 article about Gulfton. WhisperToMe (talk) 03:31, 7 October 2008 (UTC) - I also found http://www.chron.com/CDA/archives/archive.mpl?id=1993_1142249 - which is about Bob Lanier's recommendations for neighborhoods to improve. WhisperToMe (talk) 03:31, 7 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

GA passed

After rereading the article and going over recent changes, and making a few copyedits, I feel that the article now meets the good article criteria, and will be listed. Most of the copyediting changes were quite minor, mostly fixing run-on sentences, adding commas, and changing "accessed" to "retrieved on" in web-linked citations, to conform to standards. The bigger changes were rewording to de-emphasize quotations by journalists -- articles should not be written in a style that mentions the journalists and newspapers directly in the article -- it is best to write the article without this and simply cite the newspaper article as in inline citation.

Overall, the article is in good shape. Nice work! Dr. Cash (talk) 16:03, 23 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

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