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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 SandyGeorgia 22:20, 12 June 2010 [1].

Harris Theater (Chicago, Illinois)

[edit]

Harris Theater (Chicago, Illinois) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

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Nominator(s): Ruhrfisch (talk · contribs) and TonyTheTiger (talk · contribs)

I am nominating this for featured article because the Millennium Park featured topic currently had 6 WP:FAs among its 15 articles. On September 1, the required FA proportion will be increasing from 1/3 to 1/2. Thus, the topic is in danger of being demoted from WP:FT to WP:GT if it does not get two more FAs before September 1. In addition Park Grill and Grant Park Music Festival are expected to be added to the topic as soon as Park Grill gets through its WP:PR and then a WP:GAC. Thus, the project is likely to need three more FAs before September 1. This is a high quality areticle that is very befitting of the FA designation and it would help the WP:CHICAGO project retain its only FT if it can get promoted. TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 17:01, 17 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I am unable to find the last circular redirect.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 17:35, 17 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks to Tony for co-nominating me. I found and fixed the circular redirect (it was in the {{Chicago Theatre District}} template). Ruhrfisch ><>°° 17:56, 17 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 18:10, 17 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I am also having trouble getting the WP:ALT text tool to recognize the alt text in the infobox.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 18:08, 17 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I seem to have it figured out now.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 18:10, 17 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Image:Compass rose pale-50x50.png is tagged as free from copyright, however it is derived from copyrighted material Fasach Nua (talk) 18:39, 17 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

That template seems to be linked to about 8000 articles. Should we just remove the image or should there be a discussion? Also, are the other images O.K.?--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 19:22, 17 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Could you please explicitly say which copyrighted material / file it is derived from? When I follow the links, it appears to be derived from File:Reinel compass rose.svg which is a free image and a FP, and is itself based on a map image published in 1504 (so PD old). I am not seeing the copyrighted material and would appreciate a more explicit explanation. Ruhrfisch ><>°° 19:29, 17 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The uploader of this image, Eubulides (talk · contribs), stopped editing without explanation on March 19 and it looks less likely each day that he'll ever be back; that's all I know. —Soap— 20:47, 17 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
It is ultimately a derivation from a 500-year old map; how exactly is that copyrighted? Parsecboy (talk) 22:54, 18 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I contacted Fasach Nua and asked for clarification. The answer was that the file it is derived from ( File:Compass rose pale.svg) was licensed GFDL, CC-BY-SA, while the file in question was licensed PD-self. I have changed the license accordingly - here for the talk page conversation and here for my edit to change the license. Thanks to Fasach Nua for the clarification, Ruhrfisch ><>°° 12:15, 6 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for your efforts on that issue and all other concerns in this FAC.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 13:26, 6 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Sources comments: Mainly minor fixes necessary:-

Otherwise, sources look OK. Brianboulton (talk) 15:29, 19 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support. Sources look pretty solid. So does the content. Good job. Dr. Blofeld White cat 13:18, 21 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for your support and kind words. As a general note, I am experiencing computer issues at home and may not be able to get online this weekend (from about 7 hours from now until Monday morning). Ruhrfisch ><>°° 13:29, 21 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Discussion on the locator map moved to Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates/Harris Theater (Chicago, Illinois)/archive1 Ruhrfisch ><>°° 01
42, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
Comments from Binksternet
  • Why is the state Illinois in the title? The article should be moved to Harris Theater (Chicago).
    • If I recall, it was formerly there and got moved here. Here is what the page log says:

09:12, 23 January 2010 Markhh (talk | contribs) moved Harris Theater (Chicago) to Harris Theater (Chicago, Illinois) ‎ (standard disambiguation for articles on U.S. theaters)--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 01:26, 22 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]


Support Well referenced, good photographs. ɳorɑfʈ Talk! 03:29, 22 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your support - note that I have moved this to a more appropriate place in the article chronologically. Ruhrfisch ><>°° 14:36, 24 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support Comment - Concise and well-written. Nice images, too. Some minor comments:

Would it be out of place to say that, for those who may not have that context? -Nasty Housecat (talk) 04:10, 25 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, the sentence has been changed to "The plan also extended Chicago’s performing arts district, which had been predominantly west of Michigan Avenue, east towards Lake Michigan, and linked it more with the Museum Campus and Michigan Avenue cultural institutions.[9][10]" - hopefully this is clearer? Ruhrfisch ><>°° 14:04, 25 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • “The Harris Theater is a privately owned institution serving mostly local mid-size non-profit arts companies and projects, including those sponsoring touring artists such as Old Town School of Folk Music … “ Also reads oddly. Is Old Town School a sponsor? Perhaps “including those, like Old Town School of Folk Music, who sponsor touring artists.”
  • “The MacArthur Foundation enables numerous performing arts groups to have an artistic home base at the theater, where they share hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants.” Can this be clarified? Is it the grants that do the enabling, or is there more to their support?
    • As I understand it the Theater serves as a performing venue that has costs. I imagine the grant funds stage hands and clean up crews. The theater makes it possible for all the small groups to share the cost of such functions at a wholesale rate and the Foundation probably picks up a lot of these costs through their grants.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 03:23, 25 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Makes sense, but might be a bit unclear. Maybe something as simple as "The MacArthur Foundation funds numerous performing arts groups, enabling them to have an artistic home ..." -Nasty Housecat (talk) 04:10, 25 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I changed the sentence to " For example, in 2009 the MacArthur Foundation gave the theater $150,000 over three years "in support of a subsidized usage program for smaller arts organizations".[43][33][44]" and added a ref to the foundation's report on the grant. I thought a direct quote on a specific example might be clearer. Ruhrfisch ><>°° 16:20, 25 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I believe you are correct. Apologies. -Nasty Housecat (talk) 22:20, 25 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • “By providing a regular performing venue, the Harris Theater has also raised the profile of dance in Chicago.” Strictly speaking, the source says it has raised the profile of local dance groups. That seems like a different claim.
It is possible to raise the profile of a few small companies without necessarily doing anything for profile of dance in a place like Chicago -- that would be a much bigger deal. That is how I read it. The theater benefited the dance companies, certainly, and that was all the was being claimed. Is that hairsplitting? -Nasty Housecat (talk) 04:10, 25 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I changed it to a brief direct quote from the Frommer's guide: "By providing a regular performing venue, the Harris Theater has also "raised the profile of local dance groups" in Chicago.[38]". Thanks for clarifying the distinction, Ruhrfisch ><>°° 21:10, 25 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Can the External links be pared down? The map links mostly duplicate the maps already here. The archive links take you to mostly program announcements and reviews rather than information about the theater. The calendar info is available at the official website (already linked). And the Twitter link just seems out of place here.
    • I removed the Loop map as it does not even show the theater, the Twitter link as it can be reached from the theater's official website (which is linked), and the calendar info link. I kept the official Millennium Park map link (it also includes a brief description of all the features in the park), the official theater website, and the newspaper article archives, for 4 ELs. Thanks, Ruhrfisch ><>°° 18:45, 24 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

--Nasty Housecat (talk) 02:36, 24 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose stricken, I'm neutral now. Thanks Tony and Ruhrfisch for your hard work! Karanacs (talk) 19:49, 11 June 2010 (UTC) Oppose by Karanacs.[reply]

  • I'm concerned that the lead includes information about who performed in the last two years - this seems like it will need to be updated yearly, leading to a longer lead. Can we perhaps just mention something along the lines of "Performances through this series have included ..." with two names?
  • What is proscenium?
  • "as a less than ideal venue for jazz groups because of its cost and size." - this is ambiguous. Is it that the size is bad for the sound of the jazz, or that jazz groups can't attract as large an audience? And how does cost factor into this? I know the full explanation is in the body, but the lead needs to make a little more sense
  • The lead is somewhat repetitive. Example: both the second and third paragraphs essentially begin with a sentence telling us that the theater was built for local music/dance organizations.
  • Is there any more background from the MacArthur Foundation study which would be useful here? It might be nice to know what options were available for performing arts in pre-1990 Chicago and why they were inadequate.
    • There are two sentences on the study on the Harris Theater's website's History section; the information from them is parahrased in the article already. The MacArthur Foundation does not have the study online and I have not found it online searching. So much as I agree it would be interesting to know more details, they are not readily available. Thanks, Ruhrfisch ><>°° 15:42, 4 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      • I understand that the study isn't available we can't have info on it. However, can we find anything elsewhere about the state of performing arts in Chicago pre-1990? Anything from the newspaper? When the theater was announced, were there newspaper/magazine articles that delved into why it was being built? Karanacs (talk) 16:12, 7 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
        • I just emailed the MacArthur Foundation asking for a copy of the study. Looking at Google News, I found a fair number of articles that detailed the various proposed plans for the Music and Dance theater after 1990 (it took over a decade before construction started - there were lots of changes in plans and proposed locations before they settled on Millennium Park). I do not think that this article needs to go into all the possible sites, etc. I did not find any pre-1990 articles, but I did find this 1993 article from the Tribune "No room to dance Shrinking performance space tests ingenuity of top troupes". I only read the abstract, but it points out how dependent dance troupes without "homes" were on finding performance space, and how the haves protected their own interests first (Lyric Opera (LO) made one theater into rehearsal and storage space, which removed it from the pool for itinerant troupes; LO's home theater was being renovated when LO was not using it - no problem for LO, but big trouble for other users). The Music of the Baroque homepage's history also goes into some detail how they used to perform only in churces- the Harris Theater gave them a more secure and performer friendly space they could count on. Not sure if this is OR or SYNTH. Ruhrfisch ><>°° 14:31, 8 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • The theater is the culmination of "years of planning by Chicago’s philanthropic, arts, business and government leaders" including groups like Music of the Baroque, which now perform there regularly - does this mean that there were committees to determine how to build this theater, or that there were committees to determine that a theater was needed? Are there any more details on the plan and how it was developed?
  • Can we get a few more details on the Montgomery Ward height restrictions?
  • Do we need to know the details of the other Harris donations?
    • I presume you are suggesting cutting down "The Harrises have a history of philanthropy: in 1993 they gave $7 million ($10.5 million in current dollars) to fund the Joan and Irving Harris Concert Hall at the Aspen Music Festival and School in Aspen, Colorado,[21] and they were the primary benefactors of the Irving B. Harris Graduate School of Public Policy Studies at the University of Chicago, and several other causes for the arts and youth,[2][20]". Do you want it to be totally eliminated, cut to just the first phrase of "The Harrises have a history of philanthropy" or could we include something like "The Harrises have a history of philanthropy for institutions such as Joan and Irving Harris Concert Hall at the Aspen Music Festival and School in Aspen, Colorado and the Irving B. Harris Graduate School of Public Policy Studies at the University of Chicago"--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 04:31, 4 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • I don't like the three pictures wedged together in the beginning of the Architecture section. They are small, which to my poor eyesight then appears as just a bunch of lines - I had to click on the leftmost and center pictures and open them up full size to understand what they were supposed to be. Furthermore, I don't think the pictures add that much to the article. At the very least, I'd get rid of the one on the left. Perhaps either the middle or rightmost could stay and be made a bit bigger so that we can see them (both is probably overkill)?
  • Jay Pritzker Pavilion, which has the benefit that Millennium Park's indoor and outdoor performance venues share a loading dock, rehearsal - now we're assuming that readers know that the Paviliion is the outdoor performance venue. Perhaps this sentence could be restructured a bit. Also, was the theater built first, or was the pavilion? which takes advantage of the other's effort?
  • I got lost in the paragraph that's full of numbers. Perhaps this would be better served in a table (replacing the phot of random performers on stage - which could be any stage anywhere).
    • I am not sure which paragraph you are referring to.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 03:44, 8 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      • I think the third paragraph of the Architecture section was meant originally. I tried to fix it but moving some of the figures / numbers to a caption, removing one figure (the height of proscenium), combining two (the stage height and depth are the same, and reorganized the remaining numbers to try and make them flow better / be grouped together better. Is this OK? Apologies as I think this was lost due to my internet issues. Ruhrfisch ><>°° 04:00, 8 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • This sentence is an opinion - The theater's sightlines and acoustics provide "an unusually modern and stainless-steel bolstered environment" for experiencing performances, can it please be attributed in the text?
  • Lots of repetitive phrasing in the first paragraph of Local performers. "When the theater opened...dozen groups" followed immediately by "The twelve are" and then "When the Harris Theater opened." Can this be reworked a bit?
  • This sentence needs work When the Harris Theater opened in 2003, it provided a goal for aspiring small dance companies like Luna Negra Dance Theater;[35] by 2006, Luna Negra had achieved its goal of performing at the theater, and returned there in 2007. It's overly wordy and not clear.
  • The article repeats the opinion that the theater "raised the profile of local dance groups" in Chicago without attributing this. It then goes on to talk about the Frommer's and Fodor's new editions. I'm concerned that this might be synthesis. We don't know what the previous profile was, and I'm not sure that it's appropriate to do our own comparison of, say the 2000 edition of Frommer's vs the 2010 edition.
    • It is a direct quotation and I have attributed it to the 2005 Frommer's Irreverent Guide to Chicago. So the sentence now clearly identifies the source and year of the direct quotation that the profile of dance groups was raised, followed by quotes from more recent guides (years also given in the text) by Frommer's and Fodor's. Is this clearer? Ruhrfisch ><>°° 15:41, 5 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      • The first sentence is much better with the attribution, thanks. For the next two sentences, though, do those books actually talk about these performances in conjunction with talking about raising local dance profiles? Otherwise, I think it's synthesis.
        • They do not explicitly talk about the profile of dance troupes. I was not sure what else to do, so I moved the raising the profile sentence so it is last in the paragraph (so the other statements do not seem to follow from it). The paragraph is now in reverse chronological order in terms of works quoted - is this better? Thanks, Ruhrfisch ><>°° 04:43, 8 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • "The attempt to facilitate modest-sized performance groups has been appreciated;" - "appreciated" seems like the wrong word when used in this context. Can we really say that the two foundations "appreciate" the attempt?
  • To me it seems too trivial to mention the discounted ticket program for the last 90 minutes before a performance
    • The point of that is in relation to earlier complaints that the theater was to expensive. They have introduced two types of discounted ticket programs. I think it makes sense to elaborate on them. They could become a tradition of some sort. On broadway there are different traditions for discounted tickets like the TKTS and individual theaters releasing last minute tickets. This is in keeping with discounted ticket info like that.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 04:45, 4 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • The article mentions that the Harris Theater has taken some business from the Chicago Theatre, and also mentions a new competition with the local Symphony and the Auditorium Theatre. Is there any information on whether the Harris's programs have adversely affected the other venues?
  • Three of the four paragraphs in Visiting performers start with "The theater"
  • do we really need to know about Payton's illness?
  • do we really need to know that the theater was mentioned in the NYT?
    • For borderline notable articles I commonly throw the name of the most notable reliable sources into the actual text. That was the purpose of this mention. This is not an internationally known theater. However, I think I found content that makes the theater notable in other ways later so I will remove this.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 04:39, 4 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • The three pictures in the Reception section are likewise very small and hard to see. The ones on the left and right seem to be almost the same - do we really need both of them? I like the one in the middle and suggest that it be moved to the architecture section, replacing the others.
  • "it is able to experiment by venturing along new paths" - how?
    • I replaced that with a direct quote from the article so that it now reads He also notes that because of the theater's success it is able "to present an increasing number of risky, sometimes boundary-busting events the likes of which audiences will hear nowhere else in the area". Thanks, Ruhrfisch ><>°° 19:30, 5 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • You don't need to mention the discounted ticket programs in two places - I'd leave it in reception and remove the details from the other section
  • In reception, do we really need to repeat the praise about the acoustics, sightlines, etc? This is mentioned at least 3 times and should be tightened up.

Karanacs (talk) 16:30, 3 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Y'all have done good work so far. I've stricken some, added comments to some, and noticed a few that weren't address. Good luck! Karanacs (talk) 16:12, 7 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

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