Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/San Juan, Puerto Rico/archive1

Add links
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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 00:00, 16 July 2007.

San Juan, Puerto Rico[edit]

The article has undergone a mayor reconstruction by me and two fellow users. The article passed GAC a month ago and it underwent a Peer Review wich is now archived. Any concerns presented here will be attended by me or by any member of WikiProject Puerto Rico. Thanks for your time. -凶 16:01, 23 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comments. I've noticed several issues with the text:
  • The lead could be a little longer; the first and second paragraph are a little too small for my liking.-Done
  • In "Old San Juan", there's some oddly placed footnotes. Are they part of the previous paragraph?-Done
  • Do we need to know when the satellite photograph was taken? I'm not sure it's worthy of mention; I've not seen the date noted on any other photo.-Done
  • "East of Old San Juan lies the upscale tourist oriented neighbourhood of Condado, which occupies land that used to be owned by entrepreneur Pablo Ubarri Capetillo, a Spanish railroad developer and Count of San José de Santurce under the Spanish colonial period." It's hard to follow this sentence. I'd recommend splitting it into two.-Done
  • "San Juan constitutes the most populated city in Puerto Rico." I think "is" is sufficient.-Done
  • Second World War should be World War II throughout the text.-Done
  • Overall, the content is definitely there, but some of the prose is a little awkward. I'd recommend a copyedit personally.
I'll add more as I go through the text. If you happen to disagree with any of my comments, let me know! CloudNine 19:23, 23 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Let me start by saying thanks for taking of your time to review and help us improve this page, on behalf of our WikiProject I must say we are grateful. I took the liberty of placing checkmarks in the points that were attended by me already, now I will be absent for a few hours since I have a dinner appointment but when I come back the lead will be expanded. -凶 20:10, 23 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The lead has been expanded. -凶 17:46, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Support - Very nice article. I have contributed with some minor copyediting and left left a few minor suggestions to be taken into consideration, but as it is I believe that it has the makings of an FA. Tony the Marine 19:16, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Support - I also support this article, which has really improved.Pr4ever 20:09, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Weak object. The article is very well written, and well presented. I do feel that the coverage of the city's education system is very thin however. About the only reference I find to tertiary education is that the University of Puerto Rico is historic, and any mention of secondary (high school) education system in the city is non-existent. For tertiary education, a look at this directory reveals the presence of a "University of the Sacred Heart" with 5000 students, and a "Universidad Metropolitana" with 10000 students, as well as some smaller ones, and they really ought to be mentioned in the article. In fact, I think that the education sector of a city as large as San Juan is significant enough to warrant a separate section, or even a separate article with a summary section. Sjakkalle (Check!) 09:24, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - I added a new section on "Education". -凶 02:31, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you. Although there is not coverage of secondary education, decent coverage of the tertiary system is what is important in an article on the city, and a separate article on the education system will be good to have at some point. I support featuring this article. Sjakkalle (Check!) 05:53, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comments from Universe=atom:
    • Why is there no "See also" section? A major city like this should definitely have one.Done
    • Reference #46 is in Spanish. It should be labeled so, especially since it appears 27 times in the article.Done
    • Why is it so that Ref #45 has only the title? Why is there no access-date, publish-date, or publisher (all of which are available on the website)Done
    • The format of several references needs to be changed. Most references have only the title and the access-date. Why is there no publish-date or publisher? These should be included (exception: if they are not available even on the website). References that should be added to because of this include #1-4, 6-11, 13-20, 22, 23, 27-30, and 32-47. Done
    • Perhaps the beginning of section 9 ("Sister cities") can be added to by putting, for example, "The following cities have been identified as sister cities..."Done
    • Section 2 needs some more references in its beginning.
    • Grammar mistake: "A year later, the settlement was moved to a site then called Puerto Rico, Spanish for "rich port" or "good port", after its similar..." (section 1) Comma should be before quotes end.Done
    • Grammar: "...settlement was given its formal name, "San Juan Bautista de Puerto Rico", in honor of..." (section 1) Same thing as previous one.Done
    • Grammar: "...by 1746 the name for the city..." (section 1) Comma required after 1746.Done
    • Grammar: "San Juan as a settlement of the Spanish Empire, was used by..." (section 1) Comma required after San Juan.Done
    • Grammar: "For these reasons San Juan became a target of the foreign powers of the time." (section 1) Comma required after reasons.Done
    • Grammar: "The English returned in 1797 ,during the French Revolutionary Wars, led by Sir Ralph Abercromby who had just conquered Trinidad." (section 1) Comma mistake related to spacing.Done
    • Grammar: "This event happened on April 6, 1917 wich was the day that the United States declared war on Germany." (section 1) Major grammar mistakes: the word which is misspelled. Also, comma is always required after years.Done
    • Grammar:"In May 1898, United States Navy ships, among them the USS Detroit, USS Indiana, USS New York, USS Amphitrite, USS Terror and USS Montgomery, commanded by Rear Admiral William T. Sampson, bombed San Juan during the Spanish-American War, though the city was not occupied." This article is supposed to be written in American English. So, the serial comma should be followed.
    • Grammar: This mistake appears several times throughout the article, all of which should be fixed.
    • Grammar: "Camp Las Casas located in the distric of Santurce served as the main training camp for the Puerto Rican soldiers prior to World War I and World War II, the mayority of the men trained in this facility were assigned to the 65th Infantry Regiment of the United States Army." (section 1) 4 major grammar mistakes in just one sentence: (1) There should be a comma before the participle phrase (located in the distric of Santurce); (2) The word district is misspelled; I can not believe that this was not noticed before; (3) The word majority is also misspelled; (4) There should be a semicolon (instead of the current comma) after World War II because it connects two independent clauses.Done
    • Grammar: "This regiment has been active since 1898 and its still active in the present." (section 1: just one sentence after the previous one) This sounds like slang would. There should be a comma after 1898. Also, why is its used. First of all, if it were to be used, there should be an apostrophe there. Second of all, it should not at all be used but instead should be replaced by it is.Done
    • Grammar: "Camp Las Casas was eventually closed down and on 1950 a public housing project by the name of Residencial Fray Bartolome de Las Casas was constructed on its former location." (section 1: just one sentence after the previous one) There should be a comma after down and one after 1950.Done
    • Grammar: "As a result the city is now composed of a variety of neighborhoods." (section 2) There should be a comma after result.Done

There are more other grammar mistakes in this article, but I do not think that I need to mention them since they all have the same types of mistakes that I have given. Hopefully, they will be recognized and fixed. On a good note, however, if all the points that I raised are taken care of, I think that this article will be worthy of FA status, and I will vote Support. Thank you. Universe=atomTalk•Contributions 14:12, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - I already attended the points with green checkmarks by them, however I didn't get what you meant by saying the serial commas should be followed, can you please explain what you mean further? -凶 02:31, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
In WP:MOS, it says that "If the presence of the final serial comma does not affect ambiguity of the sentence (as in most cases), there is no Wikipedia consensus on whether it should be used." So do as you please with that. Also, where on the Style Guide does it say that numbers should be written out at the start of a sentence? I've seen you make this recommendation a couple of times, Universe=atom, and I have to say I haven't seen it. EDIT: Also, the WP:MOS says that "Punctuation marks are placed inside the quote marks only if the sense of the punctuation is part of the quotation (this system is referred to as logical quotation)", so "**Grammar mistake: "A year later, the settlement was moved to a site then called Puerto Rico, Spanish for "rich port" or "good port", after its similar..." (section 1) Comma should be before quotes end" this is incorrect. --Estrellador* 08:05, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The Manual of Style also states that a particular national variety of English should be followed if the article is related to theat variety. For example, the article British Empire would obviously be written in British English, and the article History of the United States would obviously be written in American English. Similarly, San Juan, Puerto Rico would obviously be written in American English (because Puerto Rico is an American territory). In American English, the serial comma is used, and in British English, it is not used. It should definitely be used throughout this article, which, as it can be seen, is not being so. As for the numbers in the beginnings of sentences, Estrellador*, it is a common known fact that numbers in that position, even if they are years, should be written out. For more information, consult any external grammar manual. As for the comment on the comma & quotation marks, I had thought that it had been like that. If that is not so, as Estrellador* pointed out, ignore that point. Thank you. Universe=atomTalk•Contributions 12:49, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Cheers for the clarification, Universe=atom, and the number-starting-a-sentence thing is in the Manual of Style: "It is considered awkward for a numeral to be the first word of a sentence: recast the sentence or spell the number out." so fair enough.--Estrellador* 16:44, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support It had some minor mistakes which have been taken care of. Antonio Martin 00:09, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Strong Oppose, the article has a good start, but there is a good deal of work remaining, which may or may not be doable during FAC, and I don't feel it's close to FA or should have attained GA with substandard prose. For a comparable article, I suggest looking at El Hatillo Municipality, Miranda. El Hatillo is but one small municipality, affording no sources in the English language, and yet has a more comprehensive article than San Juan, the capital and largest city of PR. Surely there is as much to say about San Juan, if not more, than can be said about El Hatillo?

1a—prose

This is an area that requires more work; perhaps an independent copyeditor can be engaged. However, since the article is not yet comprehensive, copyediting would be secondary to completing the article. Some samples of problems to be addressed:

  • Foreign phrases should be in italics, not quotes.
  • Listy prose; for example, Sports is basically a list, which tells us very little about the place, significance, importance of sports in the Puerto Rican culture.
  • Informal prose: The first edition of World Wrestling Entertainment's pay per view New Year's Revolution was held here in January 2005. Held here?
  • Random samples of prose issues, which are throughout:
    • The Santurce Crabbers won the National Superior Basketball League championship on 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001 and 2003 during this period being recognized as a dynasty.
    • In an attempt to decrease vehicle dependency and road congestion, the City constructed a metro system dubbed “Tren Urbano”, or Urban Train in English, the 10.7 mile (17.2 km) long line connects to 16 stations.
    • A daily ferry service known as the Cataño Ferry, (“La Lancha de Cataño” in Spanish) which operates a route across San Juan Bay between Old San Juan and the municipality of Cataño.
    • ... in Santurce.[25]There are several technological ... (check spaces)
    • Due to technological advances after World War II in the development of the airliner coupled with the island's climate and natural setting, has transformed San Juan into the springboard for tourism around the island, and has made the rest of the Caribbean known throughout the world during the last fifty years.

Other reviewers have listed the extensive prose problems, so rather than list more, I suggest that WP:LoCE be contacted, or an independent copyedit be done after 1b is addressed. The current prose is sub-standard even for GA, and I'm surprised it was passed.

1b—comprehensive

This is another large issue; the article is seriously lacking in comprehensiveness. No crime in San Juan? No municipal services, police, fire, etc? One paragraph on education, no education issues, no secondary schools, no stats? (See El Hatillo article for comparison, or glance through New York City or Boston.) No discussion of health care ? No hospitals? More disappointing than the lack of basic information essential to a city article is the lack of any sense of the culture of San Juan. Sections dealing with the culture rather than imparting a sense of the culture are mostly lists of who's who in Puerto Rico. One short paragraph on Economy? What does a historical list of mayors add to the article? No discussion of political issues, just a list of Mayors? The article content should be seriously beefed up before the copyedit issues above can be addressed.

1c—factually accurate

All hard data should be cited, example: In 2007, the government of Puerto Rico announced a large expansion project to the bayside piers called the San Juan Waterfront at a projected cost of $1.5 billion, which will include docking space for 60 megayachts, 900 total hotel rooms, 1,850 housing units, over 400,000 square feet of commercial space and a new recreational park.

1d—neutral

Watch wording on things like ...

  • East of Old San Juan lies the upscale tourist oriented neighbourhood of Condado, ..
  • San Juan enjoys an average of 82°F (28°C) during the year, ...
2—WP:MOS, WP:LEAD, citation formatting
  • Please see WP:UNITS and fix throughout, or employ {{convert}}
  • Full dates, and month day combos should be linked, see WP:MOSNUM
  • Low value words (example fertilizer) should not be linked, see WP:CONTEXT—common words are overlinked, while some other terms (example, Museum of Contemporary Art of Puerto Rico) should be red-linked or stubified.
  • Please read WP:LEAD; once the article is completed and copyedited, the lead should be a compelling stand-alone summary of the article.
  • Citations are incorrectly formatted; pls see WP:CITE/ES. All sources should include a publisher and last access date, as well as author and date when available.

Please don't use those green check marks to indicate items completed: reviewers strike their own comments as they are addressed, and those only clutter the FAC page. Also, I note three Supports above from authors of Puerto Rican articles, in spite of numerous deficiencies in this article. I hope editors will strive to produce the kind of article Puerto Rico's capital deserves rather than supporting an article with deficiencies. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:07, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Wow, way to assume bad faith, I sincerly hope you were offended by the comment I made on Talk:History of Puerto Rico because if you heard what I have to say about this insult the result would be an immediate block. To assume there is fan vote here and to suggest I'm doing a half assed work here just pisses me off, to leave something clear I work with what is given to me, I took this task out of good will since I haven't lived anywhere near the city since I was three, there is no way for me to get sources on this specially now that I will edit out of Orlando in the near future, so if the users that live in the island don't provide me with information I can't take these articles to Featured Article by myself. I already realized that with me out and the other users working on the page busy, this FAC will fail so you win, kept up this work that way even more users will have a negative image about the administrators at Wikipedia and with time the vandalism will be to much even for them to control. When I come back I will probably go bact to editing pages about organizations and biographies where I can stay away from people like you. -凶 19:17, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose:First of all: User ? (Dark Dragon Flame), please do not accuse user SandyGeorgia of assuming bad faith just because the truth was pointed out. I scrutinized those comments, and all of them turned out to be true. While I had been reviewing this article, these points had slipped out of my hand. This article can still be improved further, and, as SandyGeorgia said, what SandyGeorgia pointed out are only examples from the entire article. As I pointed out in the paragraph after my comments, I had said that the grammar mistakes in the comments were only from the beginning of the article, and the rest of the article was still filled with them. As I look over the article now, I still see tons of grammar mistakes. Please do not interpret my oppose wrongly; perhaps you can apply for FA status in a few weeks after this article has been professionally copy-edited. Thank you. Universe=atomTalk•Contributions 13:49, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. I feel I should abstain myself from supporting or opposing since I contributed to the article, but I believe SandyGeorgia's suggestions are a welcome addition to the article. I would suggest postpone this nomination until some of these suggestions are addressed. The article does not necessarily have to include all of them, nor does it have to be identical to El Hatillo Municipality, Miranda (although comparisons are useful), but adding this information and more copyediting could greatly improve the article. - Mtmelendez (Talk|UB|Home) 13:52, 30 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. There's plenty of work to be done, and I don't think it's possible to complete it within a timeframe of an FAC. CloudNine 16:39, 30 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • oppose law and government section needs content, and demographics section seeds sources--SefringleTalk 05:50, 6 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose many places didn't finish, e.g. chart of temp.Coloane 13:46, 7 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Hence the revamping of the article notice above. It's a work in progress. CloudNine 13:47, 7 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Confused—Cloudnine, you indicated (above in red) that the article was being revamped, but later you said it couldn't be accomplished within the timeframe of FAC. Should I continue to revisit the FAC? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:12, 8 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Yeah; in my opinion the article should be removed from WP:FAC, but I was under the impression it's not ok for me to do so. I revamped what I could (especially as I don't really have any connection with San Juan), but it's not enough really. CloudNine 15:19, 8 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Then it might be good to un-"red" the comment above, since it may cause Raul to leave the article at FAC when he promotes/archives (it gives the appearance ya'll are trying to get it done within the FAC). I just had a peek, and the article is still very far from ready. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:23, 8 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Done. When I posted that red comment, I thought a member of WikiProject Puerto Rico would expand the stub sections. CloudNine 15:36, 8 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. 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.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Featured_article_candidates/San_Juan,_Puerto_Rico/archive1&oldid=1145696830"