Talk:Tri-state water dispute

Ambassador-provided article feedback
Hi there, guys. My name's Fluffernutter and I'm one of Wikipedia's online ambassadors. I was asked to read this article and give some feedback on it here on the talk page, so here are some impressions I have from the article:

In general

 * 1) The use of wikilinks is very good. You haven't overlinked things and overwhelmed the article, but you've linked lots of terms and places that people reading the article might be interested in.
 * 2) The article is well-organized and the prose is quite good, though there are a few weak points here and there (I'll get to those further down)
 * 3) Remember that our manual of style calls for punctuation to come before inline references. So the format is "Sentence blah blah"., with the period coming before the reference.
 * 4) The referencing for some sections of this article is very weak due to reliance on partisan sources. Please remember that Wikipedia articles strive for neutrality, and thus should base their information as much as possible on neutral sources.

Lead section

 * 1) Is there a source that directly supports the sentence, "Lake Lanier in Georgia, created by the Buford Dam, is a major cause of the issue due to the State of Georgia's capability to control the water levels of both river basins by regulating the flow of water from Lake Lanier to Alabama and Florida."? This strikes me as something that needs to be well-sourced, since it's sort of assigning blame.

History section

 * 1) The "Alabama Rivers Alliance" and "Upper Chatahoochee Riverkeeper" sources are not ideal to use for this sort of article. It's not that they seem to be writing in a particularly axe-grindy way in most of their content, but just by reading their names it's clear that they may have a strong point of view on the issue of the water dispute, and it's always better to use neutral sources when they're available. If there's alternate sourcing available (and maybe there isn't, I don't know), I would recommend trying to cite more of this section to things like newspapers, where the facts are generally assumed to be reported in a neutral manner, as sources if possible.
 * 2) There's a little verb-tense weirdness going on under the "Since 1990" heading - the wording goes back and forth from "things were not agreed" to "the problems are..." a few times. Not unreadable, but could use a second-look by someone who's got a good grasp of verb tenses and moods.

Positions section

 * 1) "...the people of metro Atlanta require and can safely extract 705 million gallons of fresh water...". Is this sentenced intended to say that the people of Atlanta can extract water from the reservoir themselves? Because that's how it reads. I would suggest changing it to something like, "...require 705 million gallons of fresh water, which can be safely extracted..." instead.
 * 2) The source "Water wars: GOP shift new reality as tri-state talks begin" looks like it might be a letter to the editor from a newspaper, and is hosted on a site external to the newspaper. This is problematic in my mind for two reasons: first, if it is a letter to the editor (the formatting makes it difficult to tell), a letter to the editor is not really a reliable source for anything except the opinion of the letter-writer, which is not how the source is being used in the article; second, because it's hosted on a website other than the newspaper's own, it's impossible to tell whether the newspaper really published it, in what format, and with what wording. To fix this issue, I would recommend first, changing the link to point to the letter (article?) on the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's own website/archive, and second, if it is a letter to the editor, rewriting the sentences this source is supporting to reflect the fact that it is an opinion piece (you could say things like "...supporters of Georgia's position on this issue argue that the state's position is unique..." instead).
 * 3) The Georgia section is significantly longer than the Alabama and Florida sections. While this isn't necessarily a problem - if there's more information available on Georgia, there's nothing we can do about that - please take care that you're not putting undue weight on the Georgia side of the issue at the expense of the other two states' sides.
 * 4) "Charting a New Course for Georgia's Water Security" is an explicitly partisan piece - a "call to action". This should not be used to support any statements in the article other than statements about the position of the UCR. "Conflict, Conceal, and Capture", for example, which is currently cited to this call-to-action, appears to be a mocking slogan applied to Georgia's strategy by the UCR, but the article doesn't make this clear - it cites the slogan to the UCR as if it really were a Georgia slogan.
 * 5) To summarize my thoughts on the Georgia section, right now I would remove the entire paragraph that begins "For the past two decades..." and ends "...the reallocation of portions of Lake Lanier for the purpose of supplying the needs of metro Atlanta", because none of it is currently sourced to a reliable, neutral source, and for that reason, it reads as pushing a point of view rather than being a neutral encyclopedia section. However, the sentence "Nathan Deal, current Governor of Georgia, is currently emphasizing resolving the conflict with Alabama by seeking new solutions to Atlanta's need for water" is well-cited and should stay.

I hope this review helps; please feel free to ask any questions you have here. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 14:22, 23 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Thank you. I havent looked at all the issues in awhile but I have a quick idea on how to fix the lead, per your question above about sourcing the claim. Couldn't we just change the word "cause" to "factor"? That much is pretty much established in the body text, I believe. When I get more time I will look into this further. El duderino (abides) 06:37, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Page not found errors
A large amount of the references linked sent you to a 404 or 403 error. For example, all of the first 5 links send you to an error. I don't know if it's a issue with how the pages are linked, or if a lot of these sources have been taken down, but having big sections of the references not working probably isn't very good. Kpoorvin (talk) 16:28, 26 August 2022 (UTC)
 * I have fixed most of the dead references and added archived versions of them; there were two that I could not find archived versions for and had to tag as dead links, but I've also added archived versions of the remaining working links so that if they suffer from the same link rot that working versions still remain available. - Aoidh (talk) 19:02, 26 August 2022 (UTC)

Wikipedia Ambassador Program course assignment
This article is the subject of an educational assignment at Troy University supported by WikiProject United States Public Policy and the Wikipedia Ambassador Program&#32;during the 2011 Spring term. Further details are available on the course page.

The above message was substituted from by PrimeBOT (talk) on 16:35, 2 January 2023 (UTC)