Talk:Oregon and California Railroad Revested Lands/GA1

GA Review
The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.''

Reviewer: Dana boomer (talk · contribs) 14:45, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

Hi! I'll be reviewing this article for GA, and should have my full review up shortly. Dana boomer (talk) 14:45, 30 March 2012 (UTC)


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


 * 1) It is reasonably well written.
 * a (prose): b (MoS for lead, layout, word choice, fiction, and lists):
 * * I've made a few minor copyedits. Please feel free to revert if you don't like them or if I accidentally changed any meanings.
 * ✅ Looks good. --Esprqii (talk) 19:06, 31 March 2012 (UTC)
 * * Origin section. Wow, is that a long opening sentence... It should probably be split up into at least two sentences.
 * ✅ --Esprqii (talk) 19:06, 31 March 2012 (UTC)
 * * Land fraud section. I"m not sure why you link the title of US Attorney, but not the titles of US Senator or Representative. US Representative is linked in the next section - that link should probably be moved up to this first usage.
 * ✅ --Esprqii (talk) 19:06, 31 March 2012 (UTC)
 * * Revestiture of lands section, "Not only had they violated the terms of the grant agreement, but in 1903, had declared it was terminating land sales". Plural/singular agreement - "they" vs. "it".
 * ✅ --Esprqii (talk) 19:06, 31 March 2012 (UTC)
 * * Revestiture of lands section, "they would have received if the land were owned." Owned by who?
 * ✅ Hope I cleared this up, the point is that if the land were owned by private citizens rather than the government, those citizens would have had to pay property taxes on the land. Let me know if this is still not clear. --Esprqii (talk) 19:06, 31 March 2012 (UTC)
 * * The O&C Act section. Again, a really long opening sentence.
 * ✅ Hope this is better. --Esprqii (talk) 19:14, 31 March 2012 (UTC)
 * ::* Decline in timber revenue, "In 1989, timber harvest revenue peaked at $1.5 billion." Is this annually or total?
 * Need to dig into this a bit more to break out the O&C payments from the other rural county dollars. --Esprqii (talk) 19:27, 31 March 2012 (UTC)
 * ✅ I clarified this part a bit more. --Esprqii (talk) 19:01, 2 April 2012 (UTC)
 * * Decline in timber revenue, "By this time, the impact of overharvesting and increased environmental concerns began to negatively impact timber sales." Is this overall (throughout the US) or just in these 18 counties?
 * ✅ Clarified and cited. --Esprqii (talk) 19:28, 31 March 2012 (UTC)
 * * Do we have any information on how much money these counties received total over the life of the various Acts? Is there any information on how much lower the taxes were in these 18 counties compared to others in the state/nation, and if this had an impact on the demographics/overall population of the counties?
 * I think I can find the first part of this. The second part is going to be pretty hard to answer. Since the land was federally owned, no taxes were collected, and for many of the counties, it was a large share of the potential tax base. You might also be asking about how those counties kept their other taxes very low, since they had this steady stream of federal dollars, and how much lower they kept them. That might be good to add and I'll see what I can find on that. --Esprqii (talk) 19:27, 31 March 2012 (UTC)
 * ✅ I found some more information about the total received for part of the time. It gets a little murky later on as the dollars start to get intermingled with other federal monies and it's not always broken out, so I don't want to compare apples to oranges. I also added some info that gives a flavor for how the counties kept their taxes low with the stream of federal dollars available. --Esprqii (talk) 19:01, 2 April 2012 (UTC)
 * ::: There is also an update to current legislation I need to add here--the U.S. House voted on the Senate bill and it looks bad for the county money. I'll try and get some info on that soon. --Esprqii (talk) 19:27, 31 March 2012 (UTC)
 * ✅ Updated the Congressional action. --Esprqii (talk) 19:01, 2 April 2012 (UTC)
 * 1) It is factually accurate and verifiable.
 * a (references): b (citations to reliable sources):  c (OR):
 * * Ref #16 (LaLande, Jeff) is a dead link.
 * ✅ Fixed link. (It was not dead, the person who made the link was brain-dead. ;-) ) --Esprqii (talk) 19:06, 31 March 2012 (UTC)
 * * What makes Ref #13 (Draffan, George) a reliable source?
 * ✅ I removed it. I used this article to mine for primary sources, but we don't need the article itself anymore. Should I make it an external link? It is a good summary and essay, but you're right, i'ts not exactly a reliable source. --Esprqii (talk) 19:06, 31 March 2012 (UTC)
 * * Spot checks revealed no problems with copyvio, coverage, etc. (No action needed)
 * ✅ --Esprqii (talk) 19:06, 31 March 2012 (UTC)
 * 1) It is broad in its coverage.
 * a (major aspects): b (focused):
 * 1) It follows the neutral point of view policy.
 * Fair representation without bias:
 * 1) It is stable.
 * No edit wars, etc.:
 * 1) It is illustrated by images, where possible and appropriate.
 * a (images are tagged and non-free images have fair use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):
 * 1) Overall:
 * Pass/Fail:
 * a (images are tagged and non-free images have fair use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):
 * 1) Overall:
 * Pass/Fail:
 * Pass/Fail:

Overall this is a very nice article, on a subject of which I had not previously been aware. I have a few niggles with prose and referencing, so I am placing the article on hold until these can be addressed. Please let me know if you have any questions, Dana boomer (talk) 15:38, 30 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your very thorough and thoughtful review! I will address the issues you bring up as soon as possible, probably in the next day or two. Again, thanks! --Esprqii (talk) 17:48, 30 March 2012 (UTC)
 * All of the work done so far looks good. The Draffan link would make a good external link, if you wish to do that. On my questions at the end of the prose section above: if you can't find much or any information on these questions, it's not a big deal, and I won't hold up GA promotion over whether or not the answers to my questions are added to the article. It is just information I think would be interesting and useful to the reader; however, the article doesn't need the information to meet the "broadness" criteria of GA. So, let me know when you've finished the research you're doing on them (whether or not it results in you adding anything), and the article should be good to go. Thanks for your quick response, Dana boomer (talk) 14:50, 2 April 2012 (UTC)
 * I found a better source for the Draffan material in a book he wrote with another author, so I added that back as a citation. Other than that, I think I have everything that I can put in now. Thanks for your review! --Esprqii (talk) 19:01, 2 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Great work! Everything looks good, so I'm now passing the article to GA status. Dana boomer (talk) 21:19, 2 April 2012 (UTC)