Wikipedia:Peer review/Warren County, Indiana/archive1

Warren County, Indiana

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because I and another editor have put in quite a bit of work on expanding and improving it, and ultimately would like to see it reach "good article" status and perhaps "featured article" status. If there are issues with references, or with grammar, or anything else relating to style, I'd certainly want to resolve such issues. In particular, the "Health Care" section is not very large, and we've had some difficulty in finding much relevant information we can cite on the subject; so suggestions on where and how to place that information would be welcome.

Thanks, Omnedon (talk) 03:20, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Finetooth comments: On the whole, what you have already is well-done, generally well-written and clear. However, it's not yet ready for another run at FAC. I think it is not quite comprehensive, and it has some remaining Manual of Style and layout problems. Here are my suggestions:

• Some of the paragraphs in the article are partly sourced via inline citations embedded within the paragraphs. Presumably these citations support the claims in the sentences they are attached to but not to later sentences in the paragraph. Those later sentences in this article often include claims that need sourcing but lack it. One of the FAC reviewers saw this problem and suggested a remedy, saying, "A general rule of thumb is to ensure there is at least one citation per paragraph, and to end each paragraph with a citation." A very short example of this problem that occurs in the "History" section is the last sentence of the fourth paragraph: "When railroads began to appear in the 1850s, they in turn superseded the canal and made it possible for towns to flourish without river access." The claims made in this sentence need a source; they are not common knowledge, especially the date. The same sourcing problem occurs in the last two sentences of the sixth paragraph of this section and in other paragraphs in the article as well. I suppose that exceptions to the general rule might be sentences that contain only claims that everyone probably accepts as accurate without verification; e.g., "the sun rises in the morning", but the general rule of thumb is that it's a good idea "to end each paragraph with a citation". This would include each of the paragraphs of the "Demographics" section. If the Census Bureau source supports the claims in each of these paragraphs, the citation should be added to the end of the first three paragraphs as well as the last. A bot probably generated the original material, but the bots only do what they are programmed to do. The first paragraph of the "Geography" section needs a source; published maps are generally reliable sources for boundary lines, river courses, and similar data. You can use the "cite map" template for map citations.

Some of these citation issues have been resolved, but I see that there are some more still to do. The demographics section now has more specific references, at least one per paragraph. Update: All paragraphs now end with citations.

• A good rule of thumb for paragraphs, sections, and subsections is to make them substantial rather than extremely short. A short one now and again is fine, but a lot of short ones make for an article that looks and feels choppy. In this sense, the "History" section looks good to me, but the "Geography" section is broken into too many small subsections. One of the undesirable side effects is that the map of Warren County overlaps two sections and displaces an edit button. Furthermore, I think the map is a bit too small at 250px and would be more readable and appealing at 300px. What I would suggest is that you eliminate the subheads from the Geography section entirely and rely wholly on prose flow to make the reading logical and seamless. This would probably include moving the townships paragraph up to just below the three-paragraph description of the county as a whole. Then would come the incorporated towns, the unincorporated towns, and the extinct towns.

I've done as you suggested, and like the result.

• I think I'd eliminate the "Railroads" subhead in the "Transportation" section. An unintended side effect of the short subsection here too is that the image of the grain elevators does not quite fit in the available space. On my computer screen, it displaces an edit button.

That has been done.

• I would suggest solving the problem of the too-short "Health care" section mentioned in the FAC by merging it with "Education" under the head "Education and health care".

Good idea; I've done that.

• Instead of breaking the "Government" section into what are essentially subsections indicated by bolded phrases, I would eliminate the bolded phrases entirely and make the prose do the work. I'd consider merging the one-sentence orphan paragraph that starts the section with the second paragraph and tacking the one-sentence orphan at the end of the existing section to the end of this new merged first paragraph. Each of the other paragraphs could stay in the same order but without the bolded phrases, and I think the section would look much better and would be logical and easy to follow.

This was a section written by another editor and inserted into all of the Indiana county articles some time ago, but having looked at this more closely I agree. This has been done.

• Some of the images are too small. I adjusted the lead image to 300px by adding a size parameter to the infobox and specifying the size. The "thumb" setting by itself defaults to 220px, but maps should generally be bigger. MOS:IMAGES has details.

I've enlarged the maps, and will look into the other non-map images.

• WP:MOS#Bulleted and numbered lists suggests using straight prose rather than lists whenever feasible. I'd recommend turning the 10-item unincorporated town list into a single sentence and incorporating it into the unincorporated town paragraph.

I had converted part of the list to prose before, but now I have merged the rest of the list into that paragraph and have rewritten it based on township, since there seemed little other logical order in which to mention them in paragraph form. It may still need a bit of work, but at least the bullets are gone.

• To satisfy the FA requirement that the article be comprehensive without going into unnecessary detail, you will probably need to add something about climate, possibly a "Climate" section. I haven't found any FAs about counties, but there are quite a few about cities listed at WP:FA#Geography and places. See Ann Arbor, Michigan, for example. Climate charts with data sourced to the Weather Channel (which is considered a reliable source) are common in articles about U.S. cities. You could probably use the data for Williamsport as representative of the whole county. Have any notable blizzards, tornadoes, or floods ever affected this county?

This is in progress. A preliminary "climate and weather" section has been added.

• You might consider adding something about geology to the geography section. What kinds of rock underlie the county? How old is it? Why is the county essentially flat? What made the potholes? Where do the natural springs come from? Where did the county come from, geologically speaking?

User:Huwmanbeing has added some geological detail.

• You might find the suggestions at Wikipedia:WikiProject Cities/US Guideline helpful even though its focus is cities rather than counties. For example, the categories of "sports", "parks and recreation", "utilities", "media", "arts and culture", or "notable people" might trigger thoughts about what might be said about this county.

Not surprisingly, there are not very many notable people from Warren County -- but there are a few, and they now have a section in the article. A media section has also been added.

• To keep certain groups of words from becoming awkwardly separated by line-break on computer screens, Wikipedia uses a no-break code to hold the parts together. I added one of these to "19th century" in the lead, and you can see what it looks like in edit mode. You'll want to track down similar groups in the article and add the codes. Other candidates would be things like $10 million and 4 a.m. WP:NBSP has details.

I've applied this in some cases and am looking for more.

• "World War II and the economic revival of the late '40s and '50s" - I'd suggest using 1940s and 1950s for clarity and consistency.

Done.

• "the adjacent Weiler-Leopold Nature Reserve supports a diversity of flora" - What kinds of flora? In fact, what kinds of flora are typical in the county? I assume the wooded areas are quite different from the farms. Ditto for fauna? Are fish important to the county in any way?

User:Huwmanbeing has added some descriptions of flora in the area.

• "TMF Center, GL Technologies and Kuri-Tec facilities in Williamsport; and the Tru-Flex Metal Hose and Dyna-Fab" - Outsiders won't know what those places manufacture. Would it be helpful to spell out as well as abbreviate things like TMF Center and to briefly describe their operations?

In the case of TMF Center, this is what the business calls itself, and I have not yet found what "TMF" stands for, precisely; but having said that, yes -- some basic description of the businesses would definitely be useful. We'll add that. Update: These businesses are now briefly described.

• I added a {{clear}} template at the end of the Demographics section to prevent the table from overlapping the Reference section. On my computer screen, that overlap was causing the colwidth template to be ignored.

• Citation 40 does not seem to link to a page of data. The problem might lie in the URL. The GNIS URLs can't simply be copy-pasted into citation templates. An FAQ at the USGS GNIS site explains this. A work-around is to use a gnis template embedded in a citation template, like this one, inside the usual pair of ref tags:"Populated places in Warren County, Indiana". Geographic Names Information System (GNIS). United States Geological Survey. You'll have to look at this in edit mode for it to make any sense. Fill in the blank parameters with the appropriate information; for "identifying number" use the GNIS ID for the page you found the data on. (I'm not sure where you found it, so I can't add the number for you.)

I've looked over the GNIS FAQ and have fixed that URL.

• Citation 32 has a dead link.

It would appear that the Niches Land Trust site has changed recently; the current URL has a digit "2" after "WeilerLeopold", so that has been fixed.

• If you add new material, especially big blocks of material such as a climate section, you'll need to rewrite the lead to include a summary of the new material. I usually re-write my leads one last time after everything else substantial is done.

I hope these suggestions prove helpful. If so, please consider reviewing another article, especially one from the PR backlog at WP:PR; that is where I found this one. I don't usually watch the PR archives or check corrections or changes. If my comments are unclear, please ping me on my talk page. Finetooth (talk) 20:45, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

I think these are all excellent suggestions. Some have already been addressed; others will take more time and research, but that's a good thing. This is just the sort of thing that the article needed, of course, and I appreciate your efforts here. Omnedon (talk) 01:52, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

• This looks like a complete article. As it appears you are aiming for FA status I'll list just a few issues, though they may not be very significant:
  • Other settlers followed, but probably not until around 1822. - "followed" implies a direct connection: Cicott and these new settlers. If there is a connection, state it. Otherwise, perhaps try Other settlers eventually came to the area, but probably not until around 1822.
    • Good point; I can see how a direct connection could be inferred from that wording, but I don't know of such a connection, so I'll modify that. Omnedon (talk) 05:44, 29 December 2010 (UTC)
  • Naming the town after Joseph Warren seems random. Was there a connection between him and that area or the founders? maclean (talk) 03:33, 29 December 2010 (UTC)
    • From what I've read about the histories of this and other places, it seems to have been fairly common to name places after famous people who may have had no direct connection with those places, and in this case it may have been a whim of one of the founders, or perhaps an effort to find someone whose name had not been applied as frequently as people like Jefferson or Washington -- or perhaps there was something more specific, but I have found no mention of the connection in any of the sources to which I have access. However, if I can discover a reason I'll include it with a citation. Thanks for your input on this; it's much appreciated. Omnedon (talk) 05:44, 29 December 2010 (UTC)