Talk:Minetta Creek/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Bob1960evens (talk · contribs) 15:19, 10 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I will review. I have read through the article a couple of times, and it is looking to be at or about Good Article standard. I will read through more systematically, making notes as I go. Can I suggest that you indicate when issues have been addressed by adding text below each comment (possibly including the {Done} template). I will not be striking out the text as the items are ticked off, as it makes it much more difficult to read at a later date, and the review forms an important record of why the article merits Good Article status.

I will review the body of the text first, returning to the lead at the end. Bob1960evens (talk) 15:27, 10 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Disambiguation links: All ok
Dead links: Ref 35, "Photograph of Women's House of Detention Site Before Construction" reports a "Page Not Found" error.

Origins of name

I'm not keen on using the / character to show line breaks in the original text. If the line breaks matter, why not show it properly split, to give it a bit of style?

A brook winds its erratic way beneath this site

The Indians called it Manette or Devil's Water

To the Dutch settlers it was

Bestevaer's Killetje or Grandfather's Little Creek

For the past two centuries familiar to this neighborhood as

Minetta Brook

17th-18th centuries

√"Pickerel, bass, and pike" Pickerel is not a fish I know. Suggest linking to American Pickerel, and also linking bass and pike.
"In fact the filling-in had preceded real-estate speculators' infill, according to the British Headquarters Map of c 1782–83, when the British carried out extensive defenses of the city: "they dammed Minetta Water to create a lake in what is now the West Village" I am really struggling to make sense of this. "the filling-in" suggests we should already have heard about a filling-in, but it has not been mentioned before in the body of the article, and it doesn't seem to flow on from the details of fish and wildlife. Nor is it clear whether the British Headquarters Map supports the infilling or the creation of the lake. I suggest you have a go a rewording and expanding this to make it clearer.
√"named for governor John Montgomerie" Is "named for" standard American English? It is not a construction I have seen before. In British English, we would use "named after", but if it is locally ok, then it can remain.
√one hundred and twenty-five chains. I would suggest that most readers will not be particularly familiar with chains as a unit of length. It needs conversion into something more current, either in the quote, or as a note at the end of it.
√Similarly, 400 feet needs conversion to metric units. Suggest using {convert} template.
√"The Ordinance of 1796" As it has not been introduced previously, it should be "An Ordinance", and could it be linked to local ordinance?
√"150 feet north of Greenwich Street" 150 ft again needs a metric equivalent.
√"He concludes his note by noting..." sounds awkward. Try "by stating.." or somesuch.
√"(which had been built over landfill)," Do we really need the brackets? Suggest ", which had been built over landfill,"
√" potter's field (established on April 7, 1797 and in operation until May 25, 1825) on its eastern bank," Suggest using some words instead of the brackets, so: " potter's field, which was established on its eastern bank in April 7, 1797 and continued in operation until May 25, 1825, ..."
√"at the foot of his estate (known as "Burr's Pond")" Suggest using some words and removing brackets.
√ (almost) Paragraph lengths. We have three paragraphs in this section which are very short and consist of a single sentence. They should be amalgamated with surrounding text. So the first could become "The Montgomerie Charter was ratified by the Colonial Legislature in 1732. A subsequent Ordinance of 1796, also reprinted by Hoffman..." The final three paragraphs could all be linked together with a couple of link words, to make one decent-sized paragraph.

19th century

√"The brook ... lay a little north-west of Richmond Hill." is in double quotes. Is it therefore a direct quotation? If so, who wrote it? If it was Cozzens, ref 18 should be moved to the end of the paragraph.
√"Geismar understood this was not enough for the creek to avoid the cemetery..." It is not clear what this means. Can it be reworded for clarity?
√"a military parade ground (which eventually became Washington Square Park)" Suggest "a military parade ground, which eventually became Washington Square Park."
√" (slightly overlapping its neighbor 43 West Twelfth Street, erected in 1861)" Reading text with brackets becomes very tedious. Try adding a few more words, so the brackets can be removed.
√"By 1849, Richmond Hill had been demolished, with row houses taking its place." It is quite a while since Richmond Hill was introduced, so suggest "the Richmond Hill estate" to jog readers' memory that we are not talking about a Hill here. This needs to be combined with the previous paragraph to avoid another one-sentence paragraph.
√"With increasing numbers of immigrants during the latter half of the nineteenth century," needs slight clarification. Suggest "With increasing numbers of immigrants moving to the area during ..." or somesuch.
√Suggest wikilinking real estate.
√"Viele explained that the creek..." Most of this paragraph is unreferenced.
√"ancient channel--as those living near" -- should be replaced with mdash: "ancient channel—as those living near"
√"Janvier goes on to describe ..." Since this was written in 1894, the rest of this paragraph would be better in past tense, rather than present.
√"no buildings can be built on or near it without extensive reinforcements to its foundations" Needs resolving. "buildings" is plural, "its" is singular. One need to change.

20th century

√" the IND Eighth Avenue Line" Suggest expanding to IND Eighth Avenue rapid transit line to improve the flow.

21st century

ok

Legacy

This entire section is unreferenced. Are there streetmaps / trade directories etc, that could be used to verify these entries. There is certainly stuff on Minetta Lane Theatre and Minetta Creek Bluegrass Band on the net.

Lead

I think we have a bit of a problem here. Quoting from WP:Lead: "The lead should define the topic and summarize the body of the article with appropriate weight. Apart from trivial basic facts, significant information should not appear in the lead if it is not covered in the remainder of the article." Most of the lead as it stands would normally be described in the Route section for a rivers article. The first sentence defines the topic. Then we have the route, and the entire article is summarised in the final two sentences.

As a way forwards, can I suggest that the middle of the lead is split off into a Route section. I would also suggest that "From there it flowed southward" would be better as "From there the creek flowed southward", since the previous sentence was dealing with two streams, rather than one creek. Having done that, try summarising the contents to provide a suitable lead. I would suggest that it could contain the sentence about its names, and a smaller amount of stuff about its route. A few of the salient points from the C17-18 section and from the C19 section should be included. The C20 section is going to be a little more difficult to summarise, but something about flooding during construction projects should do, finishing with a note that it has given its name to a number of other features, drawn from the legacy section. For an article of this length, I would suggest two reasonable sized paragraphs would be adequate.

References

As most of them are off-line, I have not been able to check that all of the refs support the content, but where this has been possible, they do, so I am assuming that they have been used appropriately. However, there are a few issues.

√Ref 2 Giesmar is dated August 200. Typo?
√Ref 5 Hawell 1896. I suspect this should be Haswell 1896, and should it include "in Sanderson, 2009:nn"?
√Ref 13 Lispenard's Meadow. This points to Wikipedia. Wikipedia is not a WP:reliable source, since you could write stuff on one page and reference it on another. You can wikilink to it, but cannot use it as a reference.
I find the refs a little confusing, because of the mixture of short form and long form refs, where the long form ref is also part of the list. It would be considerably easier if the long form used the {cite book} template, so

Sanderson, Eric W. (2009). Mannahatta: A Natural History of New York City. New York: Abrams. p. 250. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)

You can then use the {sfn} or {harvnb} templates, which enable you to locate the main source. So Sanderson 2009, p. 251 allows you to click on the ref, and it jumps to the main source. Even better, where you have used sources several times, would be to extract the titles into an alphabetical bibliography, so that the inline refs to those books can all use {sfn} or {harvnb}. This last point is not a requirement for GA, but would make the refs much more accessible. If you want some help with converting them, do let me know.

The formal bit

GA review (see here for what the criteria are, and here for what they are not)

It is reasonably well written.
a (prose): b (MoS for lead, layout, word choice, fiction, and lists):
See comments above
It is factually accurate and verifiable.
a (references): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR):
See comments above
It is broad in its coverage.
a (major aspects): b (focused):
It follows the neutral point of view policy.
Fair representation without bias:
It is stable.
No edit wars, etc.:
It is illustrated by images, where possible and appropriate.
a (images are tagged and non-free images have fair use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):
Overall:
Pass/Fail:

All done. I will put the article on hold. If you need any help or clarification, do let me know. I will keep a regular eye on this page in the meantime. Bob1960evens (talk) 16:23, 11 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

There seems to have been no activity on the article since 10 February. Is anyone still interested in getting this article to GA status? Bob1960evens (talk) 18:47, 26 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Following discussions on User Talk:kosboot, it is still on hold. Bob1960evens (talk) 20:22, 25 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Those discussions are over a month old, and the most recent edits to the article were three and two weeks ago. Perhaps another inquiry on kosboot's talk page is in order. BlueMoonset (talk) 22:17, 29 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Many apologies - the lead-up to April (holidays, taxes, school) I find to be the most difficult time of the year. I'll try to get back into grove later this week - thanks for the very helpful comments! -- kosboot (talk) 17:04, 31 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for still holding - have been ill with 2 different ailments in the past week - gotta resume this week! Thanks for your patience. -- kosboot (talk) 19:58, 7 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It has now been over two months since it was put on hold. There is a suggested time limit of seven days. I appreciate the reasons for the delay in dealing with the issues, but I am going to fail it for now. If you can get the issues resolved, then renominate it, and if you want me to conduct the second review, drop me a note and I will be happy to do so. Regards. Bob1960evens (talk) 22:57, 12 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]