Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Briarcliff Manor, New York/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 by Ian Rose (talk) 09:41, 1 August 2014 (diff).

Briarcliff Manor, New York

 * Nominator(s):  ɱ    (talk)  21:26, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

Briarcliff Manor is a small village in the New York suburbs. It has plenty of interesting history and quite a few notable residents. The village also has a number of parks and historic buildings.

After I saw this article a few months back, I realized that it needed quite a bit of work. I created a user sandbox page and wrote a draft, which was peer reviewed by three users. I later published the article on the mainspace and submitted it as a Good Article candidate, which it passed. I'd hope you can help make the article even better - I believe there's always room for improvement. -- ɱ    (talk)  21:26, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

Image review
 * What is BMFD?
 * Why are you limiting many images to such a small size?
 * File:BriarcliffTrophy.tif, File:WalterWLaw1910.jpg: when/where were these first published?
 * File:BriarcliffManorPolice.jpg, File:HillsideBriarcliff.jpg: is there a more specific licensing tag?
 * File:SaturdayNightLiveBriarcliff.png needs a stronger FUR
 * File:BriarcliffSealOld.png: page? Nikkimaria (talk) 14:19, 28 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the comments, you raise all good points. I talk about the BMFD earlier, so I didn't think it needed to be linked or explained. Many of the images are small to not mis-align section headings, although some could be bigger. The Briarcliff Trophy and Walter Law images date to 1908 and 1910. The trophy picture was in a Briarcliff Outlook publication; I'll try to find the exact one. The Law photo was dated to 1910 and I know it's in a 1939 publication, and probably is in earlier ones. I'll look for it. The SNL image I think qualifies well for identification and critical commentary, how would you change its rationale? The seal was vectorized from a scan of an introductory page (not numbered) of Briarcliff's 1977 history. I'll detail that. Again, thanks.-- ɱ    (talk)  16:13, 28 June 2014 (UTC)
 * I linked the BMFD and made one image bigger. Most images are at the default size, all others are either a bit smaller to (as mentioned above) not hit into the next section, or because they're portrait instead of landscape. The Law photo in addition to the Police and Hillside images I scanned directly from the originals, located at the Briarcliff Manor-Scarborough Historical Society (BMSHS). The BMSHS only found a permanent home three years ago, and therefore any images people have donated to them are without records as to date taken/photographer/any usage in publications. So I cannot have a more specific license or information.-- ɱ    (talk)  17:45, 28 June 2014 (UTC)
 * You should adjust the size of portrait images using the "upright" parameter, as described at WP:IMGSIZE. For the SNL image, the current listed "purpose of use" is "The image shows a scene of Saturday Night Live filmed in Briarcliff Manor" - this is a description of what the image actually is, not an explanation of why it is needed in the article or how it aids understanding. It is also missing an explicit identification of the copyright holder. Nikkimaria (talk) 18:57, 28 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Okay, I substituted the 'upright' bit for all the portrait images, except for the ones in the 'notable people' section because it looks too prominent and people might think it gives undue weight to them. I also changed the FUR for the SNL image. Is that up to par?-- ɱ    (talk)  19:38, 28 June 2014 (UTC)
 * I updated the File:BriarcliffTrophy.tif, and I changed the license on File:WalterWLaw1910.jpg. Does this all suffice?-- ɱ    (talk)  00:23, 2 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Crisco, care to weigh in? I'm still not sure the image is needed to "to illustrate that Briarcliff Manor was the setting for this comedy skit".
 * By the way, image issues aside, I would encourage you to check your reference formatting before someone comes through to do a source review - I spotted several inconsistencies on only a quick glance. Nikkimaria (talk) 00:29, 2 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I'll check it over again now. Could've sworn I got everything, but with this many refs it's hard to be sure... Also, the fact that this small village was in the very first episode of SNL is something that many people doubted until I showed them a clip of the episode; that's why I thought it was important to have the image: verification and illustration of that.-- ɱ    (talk)  00:51, 2 July 2014 (UTC)
 * I fixed some references; please tell me if there's anything else that stands out. Also, you should perhaps fix the link to Crisco1492's page, you forgot to add the "User:" bit. Thanks for your comments so far.-- ɱ    (talk)  20:38, 2 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Argh, you're right, thanks. I don't intend to do a full source review right at this moment, but a few quick points: book refs almost always need page numbers, unless you're actually citing the whole book, and some of them are missing; ditto periodicals without weblinks. More broadly, similar types of sources should generally look the same: for example, we see that the newspaper in FN19 includes a publisher while the newspaper in FN61 doesn't, so pick one option and apply it consistently. Nikkimaria (talk) 22:18, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

Okay. Book numbers are often problematic with history and place articles because sources may have information on introductory pages that aren't numbered, and ebook page numbers often don't match up with print ones. As well, a few books I used are so short that they don't have page numbers. Some books, like The Changing Landscape I cite so many times that it would be best for one to just use the book's TOC or index, rather than making this long article longer with a 'notes' section for individual pages, which would be mostly for this one book anyway. And some paragraphs, like that on 'higher education', I wrote entirely using that book as a source, although I may have used four or five different pages. It's neater and easier to just cite the book for that paragraph than have each portion cited, even though it's all from the same source. For those reasons, I think it's really best to just leave it as the status quo.

With regard to periodicals without weblinks - many are print articles that haven't yet been digitized. The village historical society has archives of news articles that aren't on the Web but still easily count as verifiable. With regard to consistency, I tried to be consistent with formatting and dates, but when it comes to the amount of information, it just varies too much. Some sources have no date, some have no URL, some have no publisher, some have no author, etc.-- ɱ    (talk)  23:15, 2 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Update: I added page numbers for the largest source of this article, the above-mentioned Changing Landscape. My copies of the 1939 and 1952 histories have no page numbers, although the BMSHS ones might; I'll look into that, as well as finding if the 1977 history has them.-- ɱ    (talk)  14:04, 7 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Another update - I found that the 1939 history has no pagination. The 1952 and 1977 ones do, and I added the page numbers of the 1977 book, and I'll do the same for the 1952 book shortly.-- ɱ    (talk)  00:44, 21 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Glad to hear it. I'm a bit uneasy about this source - is it possible to replace it? Also, since Lulu is a self-publishing company, what makes that book a reliable source? Nikkimaria (talk) 17:05, 25 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Nikkimaria: Well, reliable sources also depend on what is being cited. If it's something controversial, you want the top authority on the matter; while if it's a basic fact, you can use a wider variety of sources. I use the lawyer site to reference that the village is "just northwest of central Westchester County". That likely doesn't need a source, but since I wrote this article with everything being attributed to sources, I felt a need to find one. The lawyer site is the only one that specifically mentions Briarcliff's geographic location withing the county, so there it is. If you'd rather we remove it and call it basic knowledge not needing a citation, that's okay.
 * The book published by Lulu was written by Patricia Baldwin Andrews and her grandson Robert P. Oehrig. Andrews is the granddaughter of William Woodward Baldwin, the subject of the publication. And the two authors wrote the book as a compilation of Baldwin's diaries, writings and photos. In fact, the two things that I cite with that reference were taken from Baldwin's writings himself (dating to the first decade of the 20th century), not those of Andrews of Oehrig, just reprinted in their publication. I'd say all of that justifies the information I cite to it- information about Baldwin himself, and about the first car, which Baldwin wrote about, and wrote about driving in it.-- ɱ    (talk)  17:48, 25 July 2014 (UTC)
 * I'll also note that I finished adding page numbers for Our Village: Briarcliff Manor, N.Y. 1902 to 1952, The Changing Landscape: A History of Briarcliff Manor-Scarborough, and A Village Between Two Rivers: Briarcliff Manor. All other sources are internet ones, ones that I already listed page numbers for within the reference, or publications sans pagination.-- ɱ    (talk)  00:09, 29 July 2014 (UTC)

Closing comment -- Sorry but with only an image review after remaining open well over a month this review doesn't seem to be going anywhere, so I'll be archiving it shortly. I don't know if you've sought a Peer Review for it in the past but I'd suggest that might be the next place to take it, prior to any renomination at FAC. Good luck! Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 09:39, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

Ian Rose (talk) 09:41, 1 August 2014 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.