Wikipedia:Peer review/Alamogordo, New Mexico/archive1

Alamogordo, New Mexico

This peer review discussion has been closed.
A year ago this article was reorganized per WP:USCITY and greatly expanded, and it has been stable since then. Last month I went through it carefully and updated all the information and polished the writing and organization, and tried to bring it completely within the guidelines at WP:USCITY. I would like to bring it up to WP:Good Article status.

Requested comments:

• identification of missing topics
• identification of topics that have too much detail, or should not be included at all
• conformance to letter and spirit of WP:USCITY

Thanks, Uncia (talk) 21:38, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Finetooth comments: This is certainly interesting and broad and, with further work, could become a GA candidate. I have several suggestions for improvement.

• MOS:INTRO says in part, "The lead section should briefly summarize the most important points covered in an article in such a way that it can stand on its own as a concise version of the article." The existing lead doesn't quite do that because it says nothing about government, infrastructure, healthcare, or notable residents. With an article this long, you could safely add another paragraph to the lead and perhaps expand the first three just a bit.

 Done expanded lede to provide more context, and point out interesting and notable facts. There's now info on government, infrastructure, and healthcare. I left out the notable residents because none of them is (in my opinion) notable enough to go in the lede. --Uncia (talk) 22:56, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

• I've never seen citations formatted the way they are in this article. The "cite" family is entirely familiar, but what do things the {{Rp}} templates do? If "x-1" are the page numbers, a more common way to handle them is to create a separate section called "Bibliography" or "Works cited" and to enter the complete bibliographical information there. Then you can create references with the usual pair of ref tags, inside of which you can write "Townsend, pp. x–1" instead of using the "cite" template and the "rp" template. Maybe the "Rp" is OK too, but I've not encountered it before. Will readers understand it?

✗ Not done I think {{Rp}} is not widely used, but should not be confusing, so I am leaving these in. I learned the {{Rp}} technique from John Broughton's book Wikipedia: The Missing Manual, in the section Adding Page Numbers to Footnote Numbers. This technique is intended for when you cite a longer work, such as a book, several times, and cite different pages each time. The technique you mention is essentially WP:Parenthetical referencing, more commonly called Harvard style. There is more discussion of the page number problem at the {{Rp}} template page, including some speculation that someday the cite family will be improved so that an additional template is no longer necessary. 03:32, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. I did not know that. Your explanation is helpful, and I will learn more about this system. Finetooth (talk) 04:32, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

• MOS:IMAGES says in part, "Avoid sandwiching text between two images that face each other." The existing article has text sandwiches in "Aeronautics and space exploration", and "Sports".

 Done expanded coverage of Holloman tests, White Sands Space Harbor, Desert Dawgs, Gus Macker; some rearranging of existing text; there's now enough text that the pictures don't sandwich the text. --Uncia (talk) 19:28, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

• MOS:IMAGES also says in part, "Images should be inside the section they belong to (after the heading and after any links to other articles), and not above the heading." The final image overlaps "Hospital" and "Health profile". This could be fixed by combining the two short subsections under the larger main heading and eliminating the subheads. The "Hospital" subsection is too short, in any case.

 Done combined the two sections. 03:32, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

• In the "Economy" section, the table "Otero County non-agricultural civilian employment 2006" is so big that it squashes the text to its left. It appears that the table could be much narrower and still be legible. That would give the text more room to breathe.

 Done broke up some of the longer lines so the table would draw narrower; it's about half its previous width. 03:32, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

• MOS:IMAGES also says in part, "Do not place left-aligned images directly below a subsection-level heading (=== or lower), as this sometimes disconnects the heading from the text that follows it." The F-22 Raptor violates this guideline and should be moved down or to the right. Ditto for the "New buildings in Alamogordo" image.

 Done moved these down. 03:32, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

• The Manual of Style generally frowns on extremely short paragraphs and extremely short sections. Two solutions are to expand or to merge. In the "Demographics" section, for example, it shouldn't be hard to merge the orphan paragraph and the orphan subsection with the other material and to simply delete the two subheads.

 Done merged the orphans, added 2008 estimate for Otero County 03:32, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

• Possibilities for expansion include something about geology (rocks, soils, geological history of the region) and the history of the region before 1898. People may have lived in or traveled through the area for about 10,000 years.

 Done I've added some geology and some accounts of the inhabitants before 1898 (the area has indeed been inhabited for about 11,000 years) --Uncia (talk) 18:34, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

• MOS:BOLD generally advises against using bolding for emphasis except in the first sentence of the lead and in places such as the heads and subheads, where it is added automatically. "Otero County Administration Building" in the "History" section should not be bolded.

 Done 03:32, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

• WP:MOS#Bulleted and numbered lists says in part, "Do not use lists if a passage reads easily using plain paragraphs." For this reason, I'd suggest turning the list in the economic development section into straight prose. Ditto for the list in the "Government" section.

 Done Rewrote these as prose; they now read much better! 03:32, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

• Some of the paragraphs, such as the first three paragraphs of the "Media" section, lack sources. A good rule of thumb is to source every direct quotation, every set of statistics, every claim that might reasonably be questioned, and every paragraph.

 Done I've added lots of references; there are a few statements that I know to be true but for which I cannot find a source, and I have marked these as Citation needed --Uncia (talk) 21:12, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

• I think the Book burnings are oversourced. I'd try to pare these down to one or two of the most reliable sources for each claim.

 Done I simplified the narrative a little (mostly by cutting out direct quotes from the participants) and cut the references back to just the most reliable and accessible ones. --Uncia (talk) 23:06, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

I hope these few suggestions prove helpful. Finetooth (talk) 04:05, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for your detailed, thoughtful, and very helpful comments. I have made most of the changes you recommended, and am working on the rest. --Uncia (talk) 03:32, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

You are most welcome. Just a side note. As it says at the top of the PR page, we have limited space here, and it's best not to add the "done" and "not done" templates. If you like, you can add a non-image version, as explained at the top of the PR page. Finetooth (talk) 04:35, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

All done! Thanks again to Finetooth for extremely helpful comments; I think the article is much better now that when it started peer review. I'm going to leave it at peer review until 20 August (14 days after last comments) in case anyone wants to comment further. Then I'll archive the peer review and move on to WP:GAN. --Uncia (talk) 23:04, 16 August 2009 (UTC)