Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Little Butte Creek (Rogue River)/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 promoted by Karanacs 16:07, 16 March 2010 [1].

Little Butte Creek (Rogue River)[edit]

Little Butte Creek (Rogue River) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

Nominator(s): LittleMountain5 22:28, 1 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
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I am nominating Little Butte Creek for featured article because I believe it covers all aspects of the small stream, and also meets all the criteria. My thanks to Finetooth who gave it a peer review last October, to Wiki.Tango.Foxtrot who passed its GAN last month, and to everyone else who has helped improve the article. Sincerely, LittleMountain5 22:28, 1 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comments. No dab links or dead external links. Alt text present and good except for the maps. The alt text for maps should give the essence of the information that you want the map to provide the reader. That probably shouldn't include which color you chose to give to a particular feature. See WP:ALT#Maps for a few examples. Ucucha 23:00, 1 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • Looking good now, thanks! Ucucha 23:19, 1 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    (edit conflict)I've added much more detail to the map alt texts; see what you think. After ec: Cool, thanks for spotting that. LittleMountain5 23:21, 1 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Comments by Finetooth: In the interest of full disclosure, I should say that I peer-reviewed this article in October and I'm a member of the Oregon project and the Rivers project. The article is very good excellent., but I have a few remaining concerns, detailed below.
    • You mention seven different historic USGS gauges and give data from three, which I assume are the lowermost for each of the forks and for the mainstem. If so, could you add that these are the lowermost and also give the exact locations of the gauges in river miles and river kilometers from the mouth or, in the case of the forks, from the confluence of the forks? Also, does the USGS or the state still monitor the flow of these streams? If not, could you add a sentence to that effect to the first paragraph of the discharge subsection?
    • Layout: I would suggest moving the Brown Mountain image down to perhaps the third paragraph of the Course section to eliminate the text sandwich between it and the geobox.
    • Overlinking. Mount McLoughlin is linked twice in the Course section as well as in the lead and the geobox. I think one in the geobox and one in the lead is plenty. I would suggest unlinking words like "fishing", "agriculture", "swimming", "boating", "temperature", "lumber", "farmland", "forested", and others already familiar to most speakers of English. The Big Lebowski, though, is the sea of blue in the Reference section. Virtually everything is linked, and many of the links are redundant. One way to eliminate a lot of the redundancy would be to enter data by hand instead of using citation templates in the subsections; then you can link only what needs to be linked instead of relying on autopilot linking by the templates. Your method of breaking the references down by type makes some of the redundancy unavoidable, perhaps, but I think it would be helpful to reduce it.
    • :Late evening afterthought. It might be a waste of time to re-work the references just to please me, and the last thing I want to do is waste your time. I'd like to know what others think about the all-blue reference sections. If the consensus is that they are OK, or if nobody else says "boo", I'll strike this part of my objection. Finetooth (talk) 05:35, 8 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I won't withhold my support over this question, which I think stems mainly from varied opinions about what the ideal reference section should look like and how dynamic it should be. I think that having to click an in-line citation number, let's say citation 4, to get to a half-citation in the "Reference" section and then having to click again to get the full citation in the "Other" subsection, is more annoying than helpful. Then, if I don't remember where I hopped from, I am stuck in the "Other" subsection unless I'm clever enough to remember that I can hit the page-back arrow to see where I was in the Reference section. The links from the half-citation to the full citation add to the sea of blue. Anyway, I'm switching to support but not striking this concern because I'm hoping other editors will comment about this particular thing. Finetooth (talk) 18:52, 8 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I could go either way. I myself copied the style from Inner German border, but if you think it's too complex or unnecessarily hard to navigate through, I'll change it to something simpler. Thanks for your support, LittleMountain5 01:31, 9 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I remember now how the Inner German Border came to be a model, actually. The system it uses is not my favorite, but that's OK. Still, all the extra blue links in Little Butte Creek puzzle me. (The Inner German Border looks conservative by comparison.) Why, for example, is American Museum of Natural History linked twice in the first entry in the Books subsection? Is it useful to link the places of publication? Are any readers really apt to click on New York in a bibliographic entry? Is it really helpful to link the Medford Tribune more than once in the News articles subsection? This brings me back to my first thought, that the sea of blue in the bibliography is overwhelming. Black is beautiful, blue not so much. :-) Finetooth (talk) 05:25, 9 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I've removed the redundant links. If the reference section is still a problem, I could always revert it back to something similar to what it looked like before, although it might take me some time. LittleMountain5 00:56, 10 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you. I think that's a significant improvement. Please don't drop the Inner German Border system on my account. A wide variety of bibliographic arrangements are perfectly OK. I'm striking the last of my concerns. Finetooth (talk) 02:25, 10 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • "Nearby watersheds include Big Butte Creek to the north and Bear Creek to the south, both tributaries of the Rogue River, and the Klamath River watershed to the east." - This might be confusing to non-Oregonians because it implies that the Rogue River has only two tributaries. Suggestion: "Nearby watersheds include two Rogue River tributaries—Big Butte Creek to the north and Bear Creek to the south—and small Klamath River tributaries to the east." Also, I'd be inclined to merge this orphan paragraph with the one above it.
    • In Flora and Fauna, some of the links are mysterious in the sentence: "The mixed coniferous forest is home to Woodpeckers, Nuthatches, Towhees, Owls, Swifts, Wrens, and Warblers." Those all look like general terms for multiple species and should be lower-cased as "wrens" is in the preceding sentence. But Woodpeckers is linked to White-headed Woodpecker instead of Woodpecker and Nuthatch is linked to Pygmy Nuthatch. In the next sentence Woodpeckers is linked again but this time to Black-backed Woodpecker. I didn't check them all, and I don't know the correct names. You should check all of these to make sure you're using the correct terminology and that the links makes sense. Common names for multiple bird species (e.g., wrens) are lower-cased; individual species are upper-cased.
Would it be useful to add an image from the Commons of one of these critters? I don't think it would be hard to find a good one. Don't use the Pygmy Nuthatch because the original Flickr license is NC. The File:Northern pygmy-owl.jpg looks fine, and I'm sure you can find others if you'd rather have something else. Finetooth (talk) 17:42, 8 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I've added the Northern Pygmy-owl; it's a nice image. Great suggestion! LittleMountain5 17:54, 8 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Would it be useful to add File:Blackberry2500px.JPG to the Pollution section to illustrate how the blackberry provides little shade? Finetooth (talk) 17:57, 8 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Yes it would; added. :) LittleMountain5 18:06, 8 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • In the "Diversions and dams" section, it's easy to get lost geographically. The very helpful canal map should be moved down from the Watershed section and added to "Diversions and dams". I would also suggest making the map bigger and removing the "Click to expand" note. It also would be helpful if the text included at least some directions (east, west) and distances (miles, kilometers) for the main canals and the things they link. For example, it wouldn't hurt to say in the first sentence that Bear Creek is roughly X miles southwest of Little Butte Creek and that the water from Fourmile Lake has to travel about Y miles through a series of streams and canals to reach Bear Creek. Finetooth (talk) 20:01, 7 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Much more clear. The proximity of the map and caption to the related text is very helpful. The 300px size shows the dams as well as the general scope and complexity of the system. I think readers who want to look more closely at the details will know about clicking to enlarge. Finetooth (talk) 17:19, 8 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thank you for yet another review! Your comments are sincerely appreciated. :)
    @Comment 1: Added some more information.
    @Comment 2: Moved image.
    @Comment 3: De-overlinked. Most of the linking in the reference section is my own, and I agree, quite a bit of it is redundant. However, I think it's nice for readers, who most likely won't look at the reference section as a whole, but only at the one they clicked on from above. Thoughts?
    @Comment 4: Changed to your nicer sentence and merged to the paragraph above.
    @Comment 5: Fixed all the links.
    @Comment 6: Moved, expanded, and removed the note for the map. The only problem with its size is that even at 300 pixels it's barely readable. Is it proper to make it even larger than that? I also added a bit more detail to the section.
    Thanks again, LittleMountain5 01:45, 8 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
All of my concerns have been addressed. Finetooth (talk) 02:25, 10 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support. This is very nice indeed.

  • Do we really need the flag emblazoned within the infobox (in deference to both infobox and flag)?
  • Lead: semicolon before "however"?
  • Why is "irrigation" linked; why "bulldozed"? These are standard English words.
  • Summer 2011—that's ... January? February?
  • Some of the images are a little ungenerous in size at the default 220px. I've boosted a couple. Please audit all. Tony (talk) 11:50, 10 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    Thanks for your support!
    @Comment 1: Removed the flag
    @Comment 2: Yep, added.
    @Comment 3: Unlinked both.
    @Comment 4: Changed to mid-2011.
    @Comment 5: I think the pictures are great now, thanks.
    Sincerely, LittleMountain5 15:27, 10 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comments - sources look okay, links checked out with the link checker tool. Ealdgyth - Talk 15:04, 13 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Why is this article disambiguated? I did a search and there was no other article titled "Little Butte Creek", so the parenthetical "(Rogue River)" is unnecessary. Dabomb87 (talk) 03:29, 14 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    So far there are no other Little Butte Creek articles, but according to the Geographic Names Information System, there are three other Little Butte Creeks in California, and two others in Oregon.[2] The disambiguation could be removed, but I think it's perfectly fine in this case. Thoughts? LittleMountain5 04:01, 14 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    Seems reasonable, since articles for the other creeks could be created in the future. Thanks for the clarification. Dabomb87 (talk) 00:21, 16 March 2010 (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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