Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Amarillo, Texas/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 review. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was not promoted 00:11, 11 February 2007.

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Amarillo, Texas

This is mostly a pessimistic FAC nomination. I worked on this article since early 2006 by revamping the article and trying to make it have featured article status. However, I stopped working on it since autumn. Not because it is "perfect" and "finish." Just don't have the time and effort to find flaws. Also the last two peer reviews for this article were not exactly helpful. Especially, the second one consider nobody responded. Now to why I'm wasting my time to nominate this. The article has the right amount info regarding the size of the city and metropolitan area. (about 200,000 people) Most of the article's photos were taken by me except the Palo Duro Canyon and of course, the photo dated back to the early 20th century. No problems with the photos and they're tagged properly. It has over 70 references even though most of them are just from the city's main newspaper, Handbook of Texas, and the City of Amarillo's website. If the nomination fails, at least I will have some feedback. :-P --J. Nguyen 03:38, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

• Support - Well-written article. It is also very well cited with footnotes in almost every line. The sources are reliable and the self-made pictures are very good too. Front page article. --Ineffable3000 04:14, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
• Object I only read through about the first half, but it's not the most well-written article. Could definitely use a thorough copy-edit.
  • Lead could use expansion per WP:LEAD.
  • Amarillo's name probably derives from the nearby Amarillo Lake and Amarillo Creek, named in turn for the yellow soil along their banks and shores (Amarillo is the Spanish word for the color yellow) or the yellow wildflowers that were plentiful during the spring and summer. Kind of awkward. The "or" is ambiguous, it's unclear whether the "yellow wildflowers" stuff is referring to the lake and creek or Amarillo itself.
  • Sanborn also offered to trade lots in the new location to businesses in the original city’s site and help the expense of moving buildings. "Moving buildings"!? Did they really move the actual buildings? Also, I think "help with the expense" is better.
  • It rained heavily and almost flooded Berry’s part of the town in 1889... "It...almost flooded"? Try "Heavy rains almost flooded Berry’s part of the town in 1889..."
  • By the late 1890s, Amarillo had emerged as one of the world's busiest cattle shipping points, and its population grew significantly. The "by the late 1890s" seems to indicate that this should be "...its population had grown significantly".
  • ...feed-manufacturing center after an increasing production... Awkward. Try either "after an increase in production" or "after increasing production".
  • In order to try to help revitalize it, the organization Center City of Amarillo was formed to establish partnerships with groups who have a huge presence in the city to support the downtown. Redundancies abound! Get rid of "in order to try". The later "...to support the downtown" is probably unnecessary too, since we know the group is trying to revitalize it. "huge" is not the most encyclopedic word.
  • Since its conception in the 1990s, Center City created archways over two streets, sponsors public art projects such as murals, and started block parties in the downtown area. Tense issues with those verbs. Should be "has created", "sponsored".
  • The 31-story Chase Tower, the tallest building between Dallas and Denver, was opened in Amarillo's downtown in 1971. It is an office building and had two prior names: SPS Tower and Bank One Center. Is the second sentence really necessary?
  • A local newspaper article in 1914 promoted the planting of trees as a sanitary asset due to the author cited studies by the New York County Medical Society and the New York City Park Commission which claims areas with trees have less bacteria and fewer dust particles
  • Amarillo is in an area of the United States which tornadoes are most frequent called the "Tornado Alley."
  • Some curious wikilinking...I would think that most readers know what the words "color", "yellow", and "sunrise" mean (also see WP:CONTEXT). I also saw multiple wikilinking of the same phrases (nuclear weapons, helium, oil). Gzkn 09:04, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
• Comment some dates in your footnotes are wikilinked some aren't. Pref is to wikilink all. Using the accessdate=yyyy-mm-dd option makes it easy.Rlevse 11:39, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
• Comment I'm hesitant regarding the culture section and subsections - I think they need more of a historical context. How has Amarillo's culture changed over time? Tuf-Kat 04:11, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

• Object. WP:MOS issues; for example, full dates are not wikilinked,[1] and non-breaking hard spaces are not used on units of measurement. [2] Interestingly, this article didn't receive peer review feedback, where those sorts of basic issues are usually detected - which leads to concern about what other WP:MOS issues might exist. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:40, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment Okay, I can understand I had to put a non-breaking space on the measurements. Didn't catch that one. I fixed that but what I don't understand is your dates issue. Prior, to the nomination I wikilink all full dates expect the one in the intro because I didn't catch that. Most of the full dates are in the "History" section and they have been wikilink prior to your complaint. There's no wikilink on partial dates. ("April 1887" shouldn't be wikilink according to the style guide.)--J. Nguyen 16:26, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
• Object. Though there's a lot of good information here, I don't think that the article is up to FA level yet. I agree with Gzkn that there are several sections that need to be rewritten. For example, "Completed in 2000, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Park adjoins with a shallow playa lake which located south of it was the original town site of Amarillo." The flow needs to be improved as well, like one paragraph which starts with a sentence saying that the city suffered a depression, and then the next sentence talks about all the highways that intersect in the city, bringing business, which seems to contradict the first sentence. I'd also like to see references closer to some of the more unusual claims, such as about being the helium capital, and having an organization that's hosting block parties. --Elonka 04:33, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article review. No further edits should be made to this page.