Wikipedia:Peer review/List of tornadoes causing 100 or more deaths/archive1

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List of deadliest tornadoes[edit]

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This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because I would like to get it up to WP:Featured list status. I could use suggestions on the list's format, as well as a way to get inline citations in addition to notes on the page.

Thanks in advance for any help.-RunningOnBrains 18:57, 24 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I have figured out how to use notes/inline citations, so really I just need comments on format/structure/grammar/anything else that could improve the list.-RunningOnBrains 19:29, 25 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Otto4711 comments

  • List heavily relies on a single source almost to the exclusion of all others. Is there no way to diversify the sourcing through contemporary newspaper accounts or other sourcing?
    • I'd say I heavily rely on two sources: The "Bangladesh tornado" webpage, and Grazulis' book. Grazulis is pretty much THE authority on historical tornadoes, and the Bangladesh webpage is by two seemingly qualified meteorologists. I thought that having a consistent source would be better if it provides enough information, but I might be wrong.
  • Why is the criterion for a "deadly" tornado 75 or more deaths and how does this criterion meet WP:NPOV concerns?
    • This is an artifact left over from the conception of the article: I merely copied Template:25 deadliest US tornadoes to begin the page, which happened to be all US tornadoes with 75 or more deaths. I will cut off the last few to make it tornadoes with 100 or more deaths, since thats a lot less arbitrary.-RunningOnBrains 01:56, 28 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
      • Again though, why is any particular number the threshold for "deadliest" and what's the basis for it? You may need to rename the list to something like "List of tornadoes that caused 100 or more deaths" to avoid NPOV issues.
  • Why does the lede mention both the 75 figure and the 100 figure? It leads to ambiguity of inclusion criteria to mention both figures.
  • Merge the single-sentence final paragraph to the paragraph before it.
  • The table looks odd centered, like it's scrunched up unnaturally. I would reformat it to run full-length uncentered and also increase the point size for the font.
  • Spell out country names every time.
  • Page numbers needed for references to Grazulis. Publishers needed for current references 1, 3, 5, 6. Spell out what TORRO stands for.
  • The notes about death and injury totals possibly being higher and that particular storms may have been clusters are based on what for each usage? Even with a reliable source for each usage, does knowing that there may have been more deaths or injuries really impart any additional encyclopedic information? I would suggest putting together a two- or three-sentence paragraph in the lede explaining that getting exact death and injury counts is difficult and explain why (if there is reliable sourcing that discusses it), noting that any particular injury count may be an undercount, and leave it at that. This has the added benefit of getting rid of a lot of clutterful symbols sprinkled throughout the table. I would suggest rather than a bare "may have been higher" note that you explain why the count as listed for any given storm may be low in the "Description" column and source it.
    • That does sound better. What I'll probably do is put a section before the list about death toll uncertainties, then put specific instances in the "description" column.-RunningOnBrains 01:56, 28 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • I don't like the "??" for missing information. "Unknown" is better.
  • Is there anything that can be said (and sourced) for the currently empty description fields? Estimated property damage, anything? If not that's cool.
  • All of the end notes need to be sourced. I'm wondering if some of them can't be incorporated into the description fields or other areas of the table? 15 end notes seems like a lot for a table this size.
  • My preference is that books be listed in a separate section called something like "Sources" or "Bibliography" but I don't believe that's required.
  • Another personal preference is that all months are spelled out and that dates are not linked, but AFAIK there is no current consensus on the latter. For the former, however, because you do have one approximated date ("December 1851") I think cosmetically the table would look better with unformatted and spelled-out dates.
  • Entry 11 for Natchez does not sort in correct date order, either oldest-to-newest or newest-to-oldest.
  • Deaths column is wildly inaccurate when sorted. Some entries in the injuries column also sort incorrectly. My guess is it has something to do with the special symbols, as those are the entries that seem to be out of order (another good reason for getting rid of them). The † figure looks to be the problematic one.
  • I don't see any reason why either the ranking or the Name/Location field should be sortable.
    • As far as I know, there is no way to specify the sortable format by column. Is there a way?-RunningOnBrains 01:56, 28 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Any good "See also" links that could be included here? List of other deadliest weather phenomena perhaps?
  • Any free or fair-use images that can be added?

Hope these comments are helpful. If so, please consider doing a peer review of one or more articles from the peer review backlog. Otto4711 (talk) 22:05, 27 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  • Sorry, one other quick thing, what makes [1] a reliable source? Otto4711 (talk) 23:12, 27 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
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