Talk:Potomac River/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Rollidan (talk · contribs) 15:08, 24 May 2019 (UTC)

I saw this nomination and decided to take it on. The Potomac River I feel is vital to American History, so thank you for nominating it. Know that I may not get back to your responses immediately, but I will work through the article quickly. Also, be aware that this is my first GA review, so I will be regularly looking at GA criteria, as well as existing GA and FA river articles for examples.

GA review (see here for what the criteria are, and here for what they are not)

1. It is reasonably well written.

   a (prose, spelling, and grammar): b (MoS for lead, layout, word choice, fiction, and lists): Overall, the format needs to be improved (see below).

2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.

   a (reference section): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR): d (copyvio and plagiarism): Did not check the sources, but other places were falling short.

3. It is broad in its coverage.

   a (major aspects): b (focused): See below for details, but the article is missing several important sections, and is not structured adequately.

4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.

   Fair representation without bias:

5. It is stable.

   No edit wars, etc.:

6. It is illustrated by images and other media, where possible and appropriate.

   a (images are tagged and non-free content have fair use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions): See below, but images need to be limited in general.

7. Overall:

   Pass/Fail: The article needs significant rework to pass the criteria. See below for details.

First Thoughts

@P999: When I first looked at the article, I saw a okay article overall. However, I noticed several things which raised concerns:

a) The lead is two paragraphs long, which is alright, but considering the current length of the article (106,000 bytes as of May 24) a longer introduction to the topic would be warranted. It also gave insignificant consideration to the History, Legal Issues, and Wildlife sections, as examples.

b) There were 53 pictures on the page when I first looked at it. I see that some images are already in a gallery at the end, but there are still too many in the main body of the article. Consider limiting to one or two per section. This is in guidance to MOS:LAYIM, as well as looking at Colorado River and Hudson River as examples, which have fewer than two dozen images in total.

c) In conjunction with b, there are several sections of the article which could use expanding. The flora section is entirely lacking in prose, and the fauna could use expanding to include prose on the sections listed as well as other sections like invertebrates, etc. The article needs expansion in the history section past 1864 (perhaps some things could be taken from the legal issues and water supply and water quality sections). It also needs some kind of geology mention, and a few sections could perhaps be reorganized to be more like that of other river articles. I saw in your (P999) userspace subpages that you already have some of those things, but as it is, the body needs improvement. (Reference:MOS:BODY)

d) Also in conjunction with above, the extensive use of lists and templates for flora, fauna, tributaries, etc., are perhaps not the most appropriate for the article. Writing about these things in paragraph form would be good. (Examples:Hudson River, Williamette River, etc)

Note that these thoughts only my first thoughts. I am by no means an expert on rivers, but the article needs significant rework if we want it to look like other good and featured river articles. Rollidan (talk) 17:58, 24 May 2019 (UTC)

Know that at the moment, I am inclined to fail the nomination, as the article does not pass criteria 1 or 3, and it needs a lot of work to do so. Rollidan (talk) 18:04, 24 May 2019 (UTC)

@Rollidan: Thank you very much, Rollidan for your comments and suggestions. Since no one else seems interested in working on the PR article at this time, and the changes you recommend are more than I can undertake within the next seven days, I believe that failing the nomination would be the best course of action. Perhaps your review will have attracted the interest of some other editors who will decide to become involved in improving it in accordance with the guidelines you have provided. -- P999 (talk) 18:30, 24 May 2019 (UTC)

@P999: Sounds good. Thanks again! Rollidan (talk) 18:44, 24 May 2019 (UTC)

See also Wikibooks where you can have multiple pages / chapters and space for lots of multi-media throughout. -- GreenC 06:07, 14 July 2021 (UTC)