Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Washington quarter/archive1

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

The article was promoted by GrahamColm 21:27, 4 March 2012 [1].

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Washington quarter

Washington quarter (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

• Featured article candidates/Washington quarter/archive1

Nominator(s): Wehwalt (talk) 15:43, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

I am nominating this for featured article because... I believe it meets the criteria.Wehwalt (talk) 15:43, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

Source review - spotchecks not done. Nikkimaria (talk) 23:39, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

• Why abbreviate in FN 57 but not 54?
• FN 58: source italicizes Numismatic News but not NumisMaster
• Be consistent in whether states are abbreviated or not
• Given the abbreviation method you're using for states, "Ma." is ambiguous - could be Massachusetts or Maryland
• "Whitman Publishing, LLC" or "Whitman Publishing LLC"?
• How are you ordering the sources without authors?

Alphabetically by first significant word of the name of the newspaper/other publisher.--Wehwalt (talk) 00:06, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

• How are you dividing "Bibliography" and "Other sources"? It seems to mostly be books vs other, but you're got a report with the books and a book with the other...Nikkimaria (talk) 23:39, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

That's modified now.--Wehwalt (talk) 00:06, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

I will work through these this evening. Thank you for your review.--Wehwalt (talk) 23:51, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

These things are done now.--Wehwalt (talk) 12:03, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Comments from Eisfbnore

• "Hoover was concerned about the large numbers of designs used for commemorative coins in the 1920s, fearing that confusion would aid counterfeiters." — Perhaps change "fearing that" to "and feared that" to avoid noun+present participle construction?
• "The Depression had caused there to be little demand for coin in commerce..." — Methinks 'tis a bit clumsy; how about: "The Depression had diminished demand for coin in commerce..."?
• "The House of Representatives Committee on Coinage, Weights and Measures issued a memorandum stating that the design of the existing Standing Liberty quarter had been found to be unsatisfactory, and that the new piece would not only be struck for 1932, it would permanently replace the older design." — I am a bit confused; does the use of a comma after "1932" create a comma splice?
• "No quarters were struck at any mint in 1933, due to the oversupply caused by the 1932 issue" — Shouldn't the "due to" be "owing to"? I think I've read somewhere that the former modifies conjugated forms of "to be" (indicating that it would be correct in this context), but since it's in the passive, I'm not sure.
• "These minting operations were rapidly depleting the Treasury's stock of silver." — Is the use of the past progressive correct in the sentence? IMHO, it would be more idiomatic with "These minting operations rapidly depleted the Treasury's stock of silver."

Eisfbnore ^talk 12:27, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for your comments. I've done all of these, though I modified matters in most cases, except the comma splice one. I think that one is OK as the final clause is not independent. Note the use of the word "only".--Wehwalt (talk) 12:44, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the fixes. I forgot one point though: "Beginning in 1976, and continuing over the following twenty years, the design was tweaked a number of times" — Isn't the use of tweak a touch informal for an encyclopaedia? My Thesaurus suggests adjust, modify, alter, change, adapt and refine as substitutes. Eisfbnore ^talk 16:28, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

I picked "modify" and recast it in the active voice. Thank you again. Do not hesitate to let me know of other glitches.--Wehwalt (talk) 16:34, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Support I'm not that into numismatics, but I found the article—surprisingly—very interesting, and have no hesitations with giving it my full support. Other than that, I think there might be a comma splice in the sentence "Other commemoratives had been sold at a premium, the Washington half dollar would, for one year, be the normal Mint issue." but I might be in the wrong this time as well. Eisfbnore ^talk 08:54, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the support. I try to write the coin articles both for the coin collecting reader and also for the general public at large. I think you are right; that should be a semicolon.--Wehwalt (talk) 10:37, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Support: My detailed comments were given at the peer review, some months back. I've only a couple of minor issues to raise now:-

• I notice the presence of one or two intrusive redundancies, e.g. "in fact", "actually", which could probably be zapped.
• It would be useful to link the term "territories" as it occurs in the penultimate paragraph of the article, since this term will not be widely understood outside America. How about this: territories?

A worthy addition to a lengthy, high quality series. Brianboulton (talk) 21:53, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for your praise. The recommended changes have been made.--Wehwalt (talk) 22:38, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Comments from RexxS: Looking at the article for any accessibility issues, I am pleased that I can find no major problems. There are a few minor niggles, which may not necessarily be resolvable:

• Alternate text for images is mostly well done, but I can imagine that a screen reader announcing "The progression of Washington quarter obverse designs" might cause a little frustration. This is probably the sort of case where a long description might work. Nevertheless, much of what is illustrated in the image is actually described in the Production sections, so I'm guessing that alt text along the lines of "The changes from 1932 to the present are described in the production section" might be helpful. You could always ask Graham87 whether he felt additional alt text would be an improvement to get a definitive answer.
• The scale of that image File:Wikipedia Washington Quarters Obverse Designs.jpg at a width of 150px results in the embedded text being just a bit too small for my aging eyesight to cope with comfortably. I understand the problems that would be caused on very widescreen monitors by making it much bigger, but I think you could tweak it a little bit bigger to be kind to your elder audience.
• Similarly, I have problems spotting decimal points when they are the first character in a number. I really find it difficult to distinguish between ".18" and "18" at the point size used in the infobox. Is there any reason why that couldn't be "0.18 troy ounces"? The difference between 0.18 and 18 is rather significant.
• I suspect that there is a numismatological convention that dictates ".900 silver, .100 copper", rather than "0.900 silver, 0.100 copper". I suppose "90% silver, 10% copper" is just not what the sources use? I accept that these are proportions, so it doesn't matter as much as if they were absolute quantities.
• Finally, I'm quite comfortable with most conversions between imperial and metric, but found the juxtaposition "(silver) 6.25 g containing .18 troy ounces of pure silver, (clad) 5.67 g, (silver clad) 5.75 g" just a little confusing and somewhat jarring. As this is in the infobox and hence providing a quick overview, would you be expecting the lay reader to make sense of that?

To put the above into perspective, I found the article as a whole to be well written and very informative, as well as accessible for most readers. --RexxS (talk) 03:02, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Thank you. The fact that the quarter has had different specifications during its 80 year existence does tend to strain the infobox, which is fairly inflexible. I'm open to suggestions, but what you see is the best solution I could think of. I will keep tweaking it though. Regarding the .900, I suppose that it could be switched to percentages, but that's fairly impractical in text, if you check the end of the article. I will work through these, and certainly enlarge the quarters image. I will report back when I'm done.--Wehwalt (talk) 10:30, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Support and thank you. I no longer have any issues with text size, and the new alt text makes that image much better for screen readers. I'd be happy to endorse this article as its accessibility reaches the standard I would expect for Wikipedia's best work. --RexxS (talk) 23:21, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Support. Comprehensive, formidably referenced, well illustrated. A few trivial drafting points, which don't affect my support:

• Lead
  • I wondered about the en dash in 1975–dated. I'd expect a plain hyphen, I think.
• Inception
  • "it was anticipated he would interpose no objection to the plan" – a bit wordy. Would "he was not expected to object to the plan" do?
  • "Houdon" – is blue linked in successive paras
• Competitions
  • "Secretary Mellon" is used twice in a row. You might drop the "Secretary" for the second one.
• Production
  • "hoarded in rolls" – a technical term that could do with a word or two of explanation for the layman
  • Image with the five coins – it may just be my elderly eyes, but I found the legends too small to read comfortably at normal 100% view.
  • "The year 1964 saw a shortage of coins" – some people (not me) get very aerated about the idea that a year can see.
  • "a dime contained" – ignorant foreigners like me have heard of a dime but don't know offhand what it's worth in cents; it would be kind to add the figure in brackets.
  • "1776-1976" – en dash wanted, I think – Tim riley (talk) 07:42, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Dash it all. Thank you for your supports. I will deal with these today. It's interesting on the coin roll thing. I'm aware that the US is somewhat unusual in storing coins in roll form (I know in the UK it is weighed plastic bags) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wehwalt (talk • contribs) 10:30, 29 February 2012‎

I think I've changed or explained everything raised by Tim and by RexxS. Thank you for the reviews.--Wehwalt (talk) 15:41, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Image review

• Some sandwiching on my (small laptop) screen with the bust image and the coin below it

It's the best that I can do. The images point in opposite directions and it's not a long section.--Wehwalt (talk) 19:32, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

• File:WLA_lacma_Houdon_George_Washington_bust.jpg should give licensing for bust as well as for image
• File:Wikipedia_Washington_Quarters_Obverse_Designs.jpg needs licensing info for the coins as well as the image
• File:Congressional_Gold_Medal_G_Washington.jpg: should clarify what the tag is licensing (the coin, the image, or both)
• File:2012-ATB-Quarters-Unc-El-Yunque.jpg: should be fairly obvious, but best to provide a licensing tag for the image as well as the coin. Nikkimaria (talk) 00:56, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Those things are fixed except as noticed above, thank you. Four supports, image review done (assuming Nikki is satisfied with the Flanagan's Design images), source review done.--Wehwalt (talk) 19:54, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

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