Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Providence, Rhode Island/archive1

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 17:04, 10 June 2007.

Providence, Rhode Island[edit]

I feel this is a thorough, succinct, well-sourced article, giving a good feeling of the subject matter at hand.Loodog 03:06, 4 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

~~Oppose~~ Comments

- Geography section needs work. The following text was added quite some time ago by a bot - "Providence is located at 41°49'25" North, 71°25'20" West (41.823550, -71.422132).GR1 According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 53.2 km² (20.5 mi²). 47.8 km² (18.5 mi²) of it is land and 5.3 km² (2.1 mi²) of it is water. The total area is 10.03% water.
- There's also text added by the bot in the Demographics section - "As of the censusGR2 of 2000, there were 173,618 people, 62,389 households, and 35,873 families residing in the city. ..." This text provides the framework for stub articles on towns and cities across the U.S., based on standard census data, and is only meant to be a starting point. --Aude (talk) 03:37, 4 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  - Comment I've added a little bit of material I found from a source. Other than that, I'm afraid I don't understand what's to be added.--Loodog 18:10, 5 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    - New material is good. Though, one of the featured article criteria is for the prose to be well-written, "brilliant", engaging, etc. What the bot wrote (e.g "As of the censusGR2 of 2000, there were 173,618 people, 62,389 households, and 35,873 families residing in the city.") isn't really written in an interesting, engaging manner. The geographic coordinates don't need to be in the text anymore, since they are in the infobox and elsewhere. Please give the sections a good copyediting, take a look at User:Tony1/How_to_satisfy_Criterion_1a for ideas, and possibly get someone else to also help with copyediting to catch things you might overlook. --Aude (talk) 18:39, 5 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
      - Follow up Done.--Loodog 14:51, 7 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
        The article is much improved, but still needs more cites. (e.g. record low temperature).
        Also, I still think the demographics section can be written in a more "engaging" way. It's very heavy in statistics, written in a way that I don't think is yet "brilliant" prose. Look at New York City, which has eliminated many of the statistics from the prose (though some are now in a table). There's should be more context to the statistics. For example, where you say "city had one of the highest rates of poverty in the nation," maybe there's more you can say about this. Is poverty concentrated in particular neighborhoods?
        
        Are there ethnic enclaves in certain neighborhoods?
        
        I don't know how far Providence is from Boston (I don't see that mentioned, how far in miles, or how long in minutes does Google Maps say for driving distance? or how long by train?), but perhaps is there an influence, with migration of some sorts? I think places like Worcester, Massachusetts are seeing an influx of new residents from the Boston area, for whatever reasons.
        
        Or maybe the population of Providence is declining, losing residents to some other places?
        
        Apparently, Providence's "rate of growth of the Latino population in Rhode Island far outstrips that of the New England region." [1]
        
        In the intro, the article mentions the MSA population "exceeding that of Rhode Island by about 60%." For people not familiar with New England, this is confusing. Why is this so? Because parts of the MSA fall within Connecticut? within Massachusetts?
        
        I'll take a further look at other sections of the article later, but addressing such questions in the article would make it more informative and engaging beyond just citing statistics. --Aude (talk) 20:05, 9 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
        Most of your points, I understand what's to be done. The issue of ethnic enclaves in certain neighborhoods is actually on the page, but some of them I can't find sources to confirm. The distance between Providence and Boston is 51 miles on googlemaps. The city does exert a considerable influence as I know many people who make the commute, and this is the reason Providence was added to Boston's CSA in 2006. I just don't know how to talk about influence in the article without it being original research, since I can't find sources on this either.--Loodog 23:33, 9 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
        Update Oooh, your linked source is exactly what I needed. Thanks :) Question: there are still dry statistics on the page (e.g. As of the 2000 census[28], there were 62,389 households out of which 32.3% have children under the age of 18 living with them, 31.9% were married couples living together, 20.5% had a female...). Can I just remove this or is it an expected part of a city article? NYC doesn't have it, but they have an entire article dedicated to demographics.--Loodog 18:20, 10 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
        I think those details are not needed. Bringing in a more diverse range of sources (as I notice you are doing) for the demographics section helps. --Aude (talk) 21:32, 10 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
        Done.--Loodog 23:41, 10 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Many more citations are needed throughout the article. Demographics, Geography, History, Economy, and Transportation all need help in that regard. Indoles 19:21, 4 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Comment As many citations as I could think to add are now included. Let me know if there's any place else that needs more source support.--Loodog 18:10, 5 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  - Comment There has been improvement, as I can see, but many more citations are still needed. In the Culture, Demographics, History sections more are needed. The other sections that I noted above are looking much better. Indoles 12:07, 9 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    - Done.--Loodog 23:42, 10 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Support - Lets fix things per above and then get this baby on the front page :) --Tom 15:17, 5 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. My reason for oppose similar to Aude. This article is rich in information, but the writing is not brilliant yet. Just commenting on the lead-in paragraph as an example, the word "city" or "cities" was used 8 times. A lot of work is needed to eliminate redundant words, and the prose needs to be more succinct. SeleneFN 19:08, 5 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Comment Agree. Article essentially needs a thorough copy editing. I'll start on this over the next coupla days. I invite others who have worked on the article to do the same.--Loodog 20:07, 5 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Man. "this city is the second-largest city in New England". I didn't even notice stupid redundancies like this.--Loodog 20:21, 5 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Comment something else that would help the article would be to try and find/get some different photos to use, to show the place better than some of the photos presently in the article. The picture in the infobox is particularly gloomy. Also, make sure to link to Wikimedia Commons, with {{commonscat|Providence, Rhode Island}}. --Aude (talk) 20:40, 5 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  - Followup Done. Though wikicommons was already linked via the sisterlinks at the bottom in the EL section.--Loodog 23:41, 5 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  - Followup part 2 In addition to copy edits of the article, more significant changes to the article include an expansion in education about its impact on the city and an opening phrase in the intro that Providence is one of the first cities established in the United States (with source). I apologize for the heavy editing after requesting FA status.--Loodog 03:15, 6 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Great work on the copy editing. Just a few more comments:

Strange "indentation" of the "Geography" section title due to the placement of the picture "New construction in Providence...". This should be fixed by using appropriate line-breaks
Reference 6 is overcited. Cite it once or twice in a paragraph is OK - just place it at the ends if there are no other references added in between.
Some ref numbers are placed with a space bar away from the period - please remove those
Ref numbers should be placed after the punctuation, such as correcting "through the center of the city [11]," to "...city,[11]"
Summarize the following to one sentence because it is currently overly detailed: "Cianci was indicted in April 2001 on various federal criminal charges including racketeering, conspiracy, extortion, witness tampering, and mail fraud. He was ultimately convicted of conspiracy and was released from federal prison as of June 6, 2007 (a book written about his life in crime, The Prince of Providence, is in the process of being adapted to the big screen.[44])". Also, remove trivia about this book and film.
Grammar: "Between these schools attend approximately 44,000 post-secondary students or 25% of the population of Providence"
Rephrase: "higher education exerts in a considerable presence." A considerable presence for what? Meaning of this phrase not quite clear

SeleneFN 16:54, 10 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Update Done, except for your comment about the indentation of the Geography section. I don't quite understand what you mean.--Loodog 23:41, 10 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Comment I've run AWB over the article and it's made changes to the Climate section regarding temperatures. I wasn't sure that it made it better, so make sure that the temperatures are formatted correctly according to the Manual of Style, especially this section. Harryboyles 04:52, 8 June 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.