Wikipedia:Peer review/Calaway Park/archive1

Calaway Park

This peer review discussion has been closed.
So basically, this article just failed GA. I've addressed a number of the concerns, regarding sourcing. There is a citation needed tag remaining, with regards to safety, but I'm working on that.

That said, the reviewer (who offered further help, but is in the midst of getting married, so I'm turning to here) suggested two options I'm not entirely keen on.

• They suggest that the text is too tedious, "and parts of it read like they are the legal documents themselves, rather than an encyclopedic description thereof." The issue is, I've simplified the whole thing down from what it was in a score of scatter newspaper articles. I really don't know where to iron out further.
  • Should this section be split off from the main Calaway Park article? There's scores of information available about their financial difficulties, difficulties dealing with the people of the area and municipal governments, etc., but then afterwards, nothing much at all. The Calgary Herald treated them as if they didn't exist, most seasons in the 1980s and 1990s. Does anyone agree that the first few years were so negative, that the sections cloud the rest of the article? I'm only willing to summarize and simplify further, if there's a split, and the existing content exists elsewhere.
• They suggested a prose approach to the ride listings. Thing is, Calaway Park doesn't have sections like Idlewild and Soak Zone, the only existing theme park FA, so how would you order the prose? And unlike The Wizarding World of Harry Potter, one of the few GAs about theme parks, there's no narrative to the rides at Calaway. It's a thrill park with live shows, not a theme park.

I'd love to hear what others have to think about these points, for or against. Thanks, Zanimum (talk) 02:26, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

With regards to the rides section, what if it were a table, as is the case with Playland (Vancouver), Galaxyland, La Ronde (amusement park), etc? Perhaps name, generic ride format, any remaining freeform description... maybe? -- Zanimum (talk) 02:44, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

Finetooth comments: Thanks for your work on this article. Here are a few suggestions:

• The "History" section, which includes much more detail than necessary, could be improved by compression. Parts of it remind me of newspaper reports of small-town planning-commission meetings. I think much of the "Tied up with development appeals" subsection, for example, could be reduced to a couple of paragraphs that summarize the main points.

• I would not advise making the lists into tables. Rather, I would suggest de-listing the article by turning these lists into prose. One way to do that would be to choose a ride or two within each subsection, describe those rides in some detail, and then add a sentence or two about the other rides in the same category. For example, it might be possible to elaborate a bit on the Hilltop Runway and the SuperJet Rollercoaster and then add a couple of sentences such as "Rides for children also include three related to boats, "Freddie Fireboat", "Theodore Tugboat", and "Yachts for Tots", as well as... ". Readers might not need a complete list, though they would no doubt want to know in general what to expect.

• Parts of the article lack citations. For example, the entire "Children's rides" subsection lacks a source. What reliable source says the height limit for children using the "Ball Crawl" is 54 inches? My rule of thumb is to include a reliable source for every set of statistics, every direct quotation, every unusual claim, and every paragraph.

• I'd set the lead image slightly bigger, 300px. I'd rearrange the other images in such a way that they did not overlap section boundaries, and I'd try to figure out some way to use at least one image in the upper sections.

• When all other changes are done, the lead will need to be rewritten so that it is a summary of the entire article. This would involve summarizing the "History", for example, as well as the other sections. It might mean adding a "Location" section to the main text. The lead should not include any important information that does not appear in the main text. WP:LEAD has more information.

• I notice some smaller problems that would probably be caught by a copyeditor. For example, the lead says the park has 33 rides, but the infobox says 32. For another example, the alternative bolded name for the park should appear in the first sentence of the lead rather than lower down in the article. A third example are the numbers in "that development beyond the initial 60 acres (of a total 143 acres)", which need metric conversions. Volunteer copyeditors may be available through WP:GOCE/REQ.

• "By opening day, the boom in Calgary had passed." - Maybe I'm missing it, but when was opening day? The infobox says 1982, but I don't see the date in the main text.

• Please make sure that the existing text includes no copyright violations, plagiarism, or close paraphrasing. For more information on this please see Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2009-04-13/Dispatches. (This is a general warning given in view of previous problems that have risen over copyvios.)

I hope these suggestions prove helpful. If so, please consider commenting on any other article at WP:PR. I don't usually watch the PR archives or make follow-up comments. If my suggestions are unclear, please ping me on my talk page. Finetooth (talk) 21:46, 6 August 2011 (UTC)