Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Tornadoes in the United States/archive1

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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 not promoted by User:SandyGeorgia 01:39, 16 August 2008 [1].

Tornadoes in the United States[edit]

Nominator(s): RedThunder


I'm nominating this article for featured article because... I have looked over the article and believe it meets criteria. Copy edit may be needed, but I'm not sure after reading it over again. RedThunder 00:21, 13 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

  • Oppose Needs a major copyedit. Some examples, just in the lead.
  • The United States has many more tornadoes than any other country, seeing about four times the activity estimated in all of Europe. Remove "many", as it is POVish. Also, change "seeing" to "receiving".
  • The United Kingdom also has a very high tornado density (more than 33 tornadoes reported annually),[5] but most are small and result in minor damage. Remove "very", also POVish.
  • Remove some of the references from the lead.
  • The United States is also the country hit by the most violent tornadoes, rated EF4 and EF5 on the Enhanced Fujita Scale. Very confusing. It sounds like all tornadoes in the U.S. are EF4 and EF5.
  • The central parts of Tornado Alley, experience the most activity, with about five tornadoes per latitude-longitude radius (or a circle about 50 miles (80 km) wide) per year. Remove the first comma.
  • Since autumn and spring are transitional periods (warm to cool and vice versa) there are more chances of cooler air meeting with warmer air, resulting in thunderstorms. "Since" → "Because". Also, remove the "(warm to cool and vice versa)", as most people know the difference between autumn and spring.
  • But favorable conditions can occur at any time of the year. Stubby sentence. Try not to begin a sentence with the word "but".
  • They can also occur at mostly any time of day. "Mostly any time of the day" needs to be worded better.

–Juliancolton Tropical Cyclone 00:30, 13 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - Needs an enormous copyedit, preferably several, as Julian notes above. Also, the Harvard-style references need to be formatted using {{Harvnb}}, not {{Harv}} - the latter adds parentheses around them. Nousernamesleft (talk) 00:44, 13 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose - one other thing. The lead is supposed to summarize the article in full; the lead of this article both misses out on major points from the article and introduces material not stated in the rest of the article. Nousernamesleft (talk) 01:00, 13 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose - Both Juliancolton and Nousernamesleft are right. I've read the article, and had to read many sentences a few times before understanding. Needs serious copy-edit. Calor (talk) 00:51, 13 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

  • You've used a tertiary encyclopedia source to source a tertiary encyclopedia source. Surely there are better sources for information?
  • Link checker tool is showing that a link is dead.
Otherwise sources look good, links checked out with the link checker tool. Note that I'm traveling, so responses may be delayed a bit. Ealdgyth - Talk 13:22, 13 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment—and I had mentioned a wish for more Tornado FAs yesterday. I'll skim through the first few paragraphs and see how the prose holds up. — Deckiller 07:05, 15 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose—significant copy-edit needed, as others have mentioned above. I could list examples, but that would be redundant. Copy-editing can be difficult in these situations, because many sets of fresh eyes are required; plus, the first person to copy-edit almost always takes heat and wrongly appears incompetent, because he or she is only breaking the ice. Improvements of this type come in waves, and wave editing requires strategic distance and/or many people. I'd say you should start with three copy-editors, have them revisit the article after three days, and then have one or two people touch up. — Deckiller 07:11, 15 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • I've started working on the lead, but that opening sentence is admittedly extremely awkward—does anyone have a solution? It's important to keep the intro as "Tornadoes in the United States". — Deckiller 07:55, 15 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Reference and image checks - I'd have to do this eventually, so here I go.

  • 404 - [2]
  • You cite so many things to Britannica - a tertiary encyclopedia relying so heavily on another one is not good.
  • All other links check out fine.
  • Image:Tornado with DOW.jpg appears to have an incorrect source.
  • All other images are fine.

Nousernamesleft (talk) 21:57, 15 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Further comments; I'm unsure about the comprehensiveness of this article. There doesn't appear to be anything on damages or costs, and adding that would either require restructuring the article somewhat, or adding a little of it to each section. Nousernamesleft (talk) 22:02, 15 August 2008 (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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