Talk:South Dakota/GA1

GA Review
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I have gone through and made a number of copyedits to the article prior to writing this review. However, I do have some comments prior to promoting the article to GA:
 * Is this "While several notable Democratic senators have represented South Dakota at the federal level, the state's government is largely dominated by the Republican Party, and Republicans have carried South Dakota in the last eleven presidential elections." necessary in the lead? Politics is relatively transient and unless you're trying to summarize something more about the state by providing the information, I'd leave it out.
 * Per MOS:IMAGES, images shouldn't be left-aligned under section headers as (for example, under Geography, National Parks and Monuments, etc) as it tends to cause spacing and alignment issues for the surrounding text. Further, text shouldn't be "sandwiched" between two images like is currently happening in National Parks and Monuments
 * Numbers with units attached to them, such as 25 miles need to have non-breaking spaces per WP:NBSP. You can also use Template:nowrap or Template:Convert, which automatically add in the proper coding.
 * "South Dakota is situated in the north-central United States, and is usually considered to be a part of the Midwest, although the Great Plains region also covers the state. Additionally, South Dakota is at times considered to be a part of the West." Using language like "is considered" and "at times considered" is not encyclopedic language. I would source these to some official source so you can say, "According to the U.S. Census Bureau, South Dakota is part of..."

Review to be continued
I am happy to say that this article is ahead in the count. A top-level article on a U.S. state is one of those we need to get right, and this article is (mostly) well-cited, comprehensive and well-organized. This Northeasterner actually learned some things about a state I've never had the opportunity to visit.

I just have a few places where I'd like to see cites, and I will indicate them in the text as well as here. Other than that, the only issues are copy-related, and I will take care of them myself before passing it, assuming the needed citations are added.

Citations needed for:


 * "...at times considered to be part of the West." By who? When?
 * I guess the two sources used for the East River/West River thing cover this as well (as in East River is in the Midwest and West River is in the West, the Missouri is a stark divider, etc.) so I added duplicates of those references to this statement, along with a bit of a re-wording to more closely reflect what the sources say. Alexius  Horatius 12:11, 8 February 2009 (UTC)


 * " ...the ring-necked pheasant has adapted particularly well to the area after being introduced from China." Turned out we just needed to move the footnote to come after that particular clause. Daniel Case (talk) 00:38, 8 February 2009 (UTC)


 * "...Of the ten largest cities in the state, Rapid City is the only one located west of the Missouri River." You can just point this one to a map somewhere, actually.
 * I went ahead and added two references for this, one to a state map from the national atlas and the other to a census list showing the population of pretty much every place in the state. This might come close to a slight violation of WP:Synthesis, but on the other hand I don't see how anyone can really disagree in good faith with the statement given the references provided. Alexius  Horatius 10:11, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

I'll be back later to do the copyedit. Daniel Case (talk) 00:31, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Good work! I'm starting the copy edit now, section by section. Daniel Case (talk) 21:16, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Passage and suggestions for further improvement
OK, I have copyedited, cut it by a half K, and added one tidbit of information that I thought was significant (it was the Supreme Court's Marquette Bank decision (four years prior to Citibank's move and not contemporaneous as the cited source claims ... see notes 7 and 8 in that article for the accurate history of why so many of us mail our credit-card bills to the prairies) which made that move possible and feasible for Citibank). As promised I have passed it.

If this article is to be developed further, to A-class or FA, however, some other issues need to be addressed before then:


 * Fragmenting and attendant duplication of information: Some bits of information really seem to be in the wrong section. We should learn about Harney Peak as the state's highpoint in the first graf of the geography section, along with its lowpoint (as SD is landlocked, this is important). The last graf of the history section reads like it should be in the economy section (and as far as that section goes, I think a daughter Economy of South Dakota article is in order). Speaking of which, for that reason we get the mention of Citibank twice, and Sturgis comes in under both tourism and recreation. Pick one. Also, the stuff about the Hutterites belongs in religion, not race and ethnicity. The graf about the Indian reservations at the end of "Cities and towns" should be combined with the graf about them in "Geography".


 * Some indiscriminate collections of information. Do we need to list every U.S. route that traverses the state (I would assume only if they are economically important like the interstates)? Do we need exact circulation figures for the state's major newspapers? Remember summary style.


 * Illustration. The geography section is illustrated with two maps screenshot from US government sources. There are two other maps in the article. All fine and dandy, but there are some problems. First, the screenshots should be trimmed and cropped to show just the map and not the other elements; they're distracting. Second, maybe we could use this information to create one more readable map that shows this information? It would free up the geography section to put in a picture of a nice Black Hills landscape, something the state is known for. As it is I now know more about what the state's major downtowns look like then its most notable geographic feature (and no, a picture of Mount Rushmore, however much it is identified with the state, does not show us the Black Hills).

A few more things a little later. Daniel Case (talk) 23:50, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Now I'm back. The founding date of Aberdeen needs to be cited. As does the economic benefit of I-90, and Rapid City's economy.

Some more information we could have:


 * Geography. What's South Dakota's largest lake or reservoir? What's its lowpoint? Those are "vital statistics" that should be in that opening graf.


 * Media. Maybe a sentence about who the state's largest Internet provider is/are, and stats on broadband penetration? That's media, too.


 * Religion. Besides putting the Hutterite stuff there, it would be nice to read here about Native American religion among that population. What percentage practice it? What are the specifics? Daniel Case (talk) 04:25, 10 February 2009 (UTC)