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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 03:43, 13 January 2011 [1].

Thistle, Utah[edit]

Thistle, Utah (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

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Nominator(s): Dave (talk) 07:06, 9 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I am nominating this for featured article because I think this is a fascinating story that might make a good TFA someday (it would be a good fit for any day in the mid-April timeframe). This is the 2nd nomination for this article. The first nomination only received one prose review, which concluded the article needed copyediting. The checks for sourcing or images issues did not find any issues. Since that time, the article has been reviewed by a few editors. There are some content changes to the article since the last nomination. I found some new sources and slightly expanded the coverage of the Geology, Aftermath, and Economic Effects sections. I also added two self-taken photographs I recently discovered in my archive. Dave (talk) 07:06, 9 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comments - I have some concerns with this article before I can support it for FA:
  1. In the lead, it may help to include a sentence about Thistle declining before the landslide occurred.
    • Good idea. Done.
  2. Citation needed for "The Spanish Fork River flows northwest from Thistle, towards the city of Spanish Fork, before reaching Utah Lake."
    • I'd like to discuss this one first. It's an easy thing to verify, virtually any area map would suffice. However, I don't believe it's a statement anybody would be likely to contest. As such, my take on WP:V is an inline citation is not necessarily required. If you still feel it needs a source, I can add one easily enough.
  3. It appears Thistle had inhabitants up until the 1983 landslide. Is there a reason why the Census figures stop at 1950?
    • Most likely the town was disincorporated, and as such stopped being counted by the census as a separate entity. However, I do not have a source for that. For whatever reason, 1950 is the most recent census figures available.
  4. The sentence "This line branched from the main at Thistle, proceeding to mines near Marysvale, following modern US-89." sounds choppy.
  5. The three sentences "Gradually the town shrank in population. The passenger depot was torn down in 1972. The post office closed in 1974." should be combined.
  6. "The maintenance crew didn't think much of the situation, however, and repaired the track as needed.", remove contraction.
  7. Combine the sentences "The landslide closed the main railroad for three months. U.S. Route 6 and US-89 were closed for seven months." In addition, use consistent abbreviations for US 6 and US 89.
  8. "The D&RGW estimated the slide cost them $80 million in lost revenue", $80 million needs an inflation conversion.
    • I intentionally did not include the inflation adjusted figure here. As this paragraph is full of figures using 1983 dollars, and the figures before and after this one are inflation adjusted, I assumed the inflation from 1983 is well conveyed. However, I could see how including the inflation adjusted figure here would add more value than the per day figure, which is rounded to one significant figure. Would you prefer I switch which figure is inflation adjusted? or are you requesting that all figures are inflation adjusted? (I checked but MOS:NUM isn't clear on the subject).
  9. "A 2002 study placed the cost of rebuilding the modified routing of the Marysvale branch line at $80 million." also needs an inflation conversion.
    • Nice catch, no other figure is in 2002 dollars. Done. Thanks.
  10. The sentence "The highway patrol requested the ceremony be canceled and the highway opened early, as they were unable to disperse the crowds, even though some tasks remained, such as painting stripes." sounds choppy.

See my responses in line. Thank you very much for the review. I have implimented most of your suggestions, except where I asked a follow-up question. Dave (talk) 03:46, 10 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I think I've got everything. Some of the sentences you pointed out were re-worded by Malleus. Thanks for the review. Dave (talk) 23:14, 10 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support - My issues have been addressed. Dough4872 06:11, 11 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Source comments – Looked at the formatting of the references and did a few spot-checks.

  • Infobox gives the elevation as 5,033 feet, while the source and body have it at 5,043 feet.
  • Reference 3 appears to be from a magazine article. If so, it should be formatted as such.
  • The author of reference 10 is given first name first, as opposed to the others, which are given last name first. Consistency should be aimed for here.
    • Done
  • De-link the publisher in reference 41.
    • Done This one I'd like to discuss. The reason I included the 2nd link is that the primary link, links to a list that serves to verify the fact is true. However this list is not very helpful to those who may want additional information in general. As such I used the publisher field to link to a menu page where that list, as well as others, are available. Given this explanation, are you still opposed to the link, or is it acceptable now? Dave (talk) 04:11, 10 December 2010 (UTC) Never mind, decided it wasn't a big deal. Dave (talk) 05:36, 10 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Didn't find any other issues in the sources I checked, and the reliability of the sources seems fine. Giants2008 (27 and counting) 03:34, 10 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Responded inline. I do have one followup question for you. Thank you for the review. Dave (talk) 04:11, 10 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the copy-edits. Dave (talk) 23:14, 10 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]


I agree with the change you are proposing. There is an issue, this image is used in about 200 articles on the english wikipedia and 100+ on several others. It's a fairly low risk change, still, it's probably wise to notify WP:UTAH, at a minimum, and allow some time for comment. Dave (talk) 19:13, 11 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Agree. It will be an improvement to those 300+ articles. GreenGlass(talk) 19:46, 11 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Done, I'm not an inkscape expert, so I hope I didn't mess anything up. Dave (talk) 06:41, 12 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
FYI, discussion is ongoing at [2] regarding this issue. WP:UTAH is so far supportive of this change, but the graphics lab in Germany that made many of the location images is not. It's unlikely that any change to this image will be made soon.Dave (talk) 20:43, 12 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
One interim solution would be to upload the inset version to enwp under the same file name. Then enwp gets the new version, and the other projects (and the location of the objection) would be unaffected. Imzadi 1979 → 21:20, 12 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the suggestion. I could also upload the map with the inset to "Dave's Map 'o Utah.jpg" and manually override which image the infobox uses for the map. However, as this was just a suggestion for improvement, not a requirement to buy another vote, I'll stick with the long term approach. Unfortunately it's sounding more and more like that means to get the Americans and the Germans at the table for talks. Should somebody later say, no, this is a requirement, I'll implement one of the short term fixes. =-) Dave (talk) 16:41, 13 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
For those still following this thread, after bouncing around several venues, the effort to add an inset map is focusing on implementation at the infobox level. That is good, as this means thousands of similar articles can have an inset map with no to minimal article changes. However, the bad side is we would be making a significant change to a highly visible template used on tens of thousands of articles, and this change would need to be thoroughly tested, especially given that my template coding abilities are modest. Discussion currently at Template talk:Location map Dave (talk) 21:29, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Dab/EL check - no dabs or dead external links. --PresN 00:13, 15 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for checking. Dave (talk) 06:47, 15 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comments - nice article, some nitpicks:

  • "The routes of U.S. Route 6..." - redundant phrasing
  • "acre feet" - should that be "acre-feet"?
    • This is auto-text generated by the metric-imperial unit conversion templates. If this needs changing, a discussion should be held at the template talk page, as this would affect all articles that use the unit conversion templates.
  • "The landslide was the first presidentially-declared disaster area" - not sure how to reword this, but the landslide wasn't a disaster area, it created one
    • I changed "was" to "resulted in", does that work?
  • "The Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad" - should "The" be capitalized here? If so, why is it lower-case in the lead?
  • First paragraph of History has multiple small grammar and consistency issues
    • Please identify any remaining issues. I've read this section so many times that grammar errors escape my attention. =-)
  • "Fifth-generation descendants of the Pace settlers continued to operate a family-owned cattle ranch when the town was evacuated" - do you mean they stayed there to run the ranch despite the evacuation, or simply that they were still there at the time of the evacuation?
    • changed "when" to "until", is that better?
  • "equivalent to $2 million in $2011", "equivalent to $98 million in $2011" - ?
  • "The Utah Railway has an ownership interest in the line, resulting from an older track sharing agreement" - this should appear back in "Railroads"
    • This fact is mentioned in the railroad section, albeit in a different context, and repeated here for contextual clarity. Please advise if this is not sufficient.
  • Why are "Geography" and "Geology and climate" so separated?
    • Originally the Geology section was before the history section. My thinking for the current order is the following: Geography should be the first section, as this section serves as an introduction of sorts. The Geology information should be last as it is fairly technical in nature. As for the climate, the guidelines at WP:WikiProject Ghost towns at one time called for a separate section for climate data. I scoured the internet for climate data for Thistle but could only come up with 2 or 3 sentences; not enough to justify a separate section. As such, I didn't know where to put it. Please advise if you have an idea for a better section order, or if you see a flaw in my logic.
  • Page(s) for Milligan, Gore, Fackrell (and unnamed Deseret News writers), Polly articles?
    • These were not available. In the case of Milligan, it's an online magazine that does not have numbered pages. The Deseret News articles were obtained from various on-line news archives, some of them provided page numbers, others did not.
  • "Genevieve, Atwood" or "Atwood, Genevieve"? University of Utah press or Press? pdf or PDF?
  • Be consistent in including or not including publisher locations. Nikkimaria (talk) 22:15, 7 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • I cannot be entirely consistent, as I do not know the location of most of the web based sources, and I was specifically asked to include the location of "Art City Publishing", as they are not internationally known. However, your point is duly noted. I have added location for all book citations. Is that sufficient, or would you prefer that I add them to all newspaper citations? (There's only 2 newspapers cited regularly, and the location of the Salt Lake Tribune is obvious IMO =-) )
Thank you for the review. I have implemented your suggestions verbatim, except where noted above. Dave (talk) 23:29, 7 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This looks pretty good to me, although I've not gone through it properly. I'm keen to encourage editors of this type of article to exert a little influence on their colleagues WRT overlinking and a few other glitches, like hyphens for minus signs in coordinates and temperatures.

  • I'd not link "landslide" (common English word); but keep the link to the technical "slump"). Why is "presidentially" linked. I think we know what that means. MoS says not to hyphenate after an -ly adverb, too. Lovely to see a US town article that isn't massively overlinked with items like "marriage" and "population density". Memo to your colleagues :-) .
  • "By fall, the tunnels to restore the flow of the river"—it's distinctly American (autumn elsewhere). And "fall" is March to April for me; is that what you mean? Tony (talk) 03:01, 9 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the kind words. These were all easy fixes, please advise if you find additional issues. Dave (talk) 04:58, 10 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. I went through this to some degree before it was nominated, and I've just read through it again. I don't see any showstoppers and, as Tony mentions, there are plenty of road and geographical articles that should aspire to the strategies used here. Thanks again for the interesting read, Dave. --Andy Walsh (talk) 00:05, 12 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Closing note: it's not clear to me if the image issue is resolved, and Wiki is glitching right now (not all images loading), so I'm trusting this will be worked out if still needed. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:17, 13 January 2011 (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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