Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Hoover Dam/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 promoted by Karanacs 17:10, 2 July 2010.

Hoover Dam

 * Nominator(s):NortyNort (talk), Wehwalt (talk) 02:28, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

I am nominating this for featured article because... This is a joint nomination for myself and User:NortyNort. Hoover Dam. It isn't the biggest chunk of concrete out there anymore, but its building and presence has taken hold of the American psyche in a way few other engineering works have. The article is comprehensive, we believe well-written, and profoundly illustrated, thanks to a wealth of government-produced images (we had to reject some images that were nothing short of spectacular, just because room is limited). This article is a vital article and is also a part of Wikipedia for Schools. We believe that reviewers will find it deserves to join FA ranks in time for the 75th anniversary of its dedication this September. This is a WikiCup nomination, though I will most likely be eliminated at the end of June.Wehwalt (talk) 02:28, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

Media Good job, however File:Latickes.jpg will have to go per wp:nfcc, you may want to consider submitting File:Nightdam.jpg or File:Hoover_Dam_Panorama1_NV_07_2005.jpg for featured pic Fasach Nua (talk) 16:28, 26 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Latickes.jpg is gone and I'll delete the photo using my adminly powers.--Wehwalt (talk) 16:30, 26 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Forgot to mention File:Hooverdamjetflow.jpg Fasach Nua (talk) 16:33, 26 June 2010 (UTC)
 * You mean as a potential FP, right? I see no problems with its license, it's a straight Bureau of Reclamation image.--Wehwalt (talk) 17:07, 26 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Yep, WP:FA Criteria 3 met in full Fasach Nua (talk) 17:28, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

Sources comments: The sources themselves look OK, but there are numerous format issues and other small fixes needed:- *Ref 17: The Boulder Canyon Project Act is in numbered sections. Could these be used in the citations to pinpoint sources? Also, the retrieval date is not in the article's standard format *Ref 47: In the source, "Cofferdams" is a single word, not "Coffer Dams"
 * Ref 1 should have a retrieval date
 * Ref 2: title does not match source. The subject appears to be "Hydropower at Hoover dam", not "Lake Mead".
 * Ref 10: An illicit pp. See also 20, 32
 * These are cleared, but see 16, and please check thoroughly for others. Brianboulton (talk) 11:18, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Ref 54: Retrieval date not in the article's standard format
 * Ref 76: Link goes to a chronology, not to a page with the indicated title
 * Ref 80: Publisher omitted, retrieval date not in the article's standard format
 * Date format fixed, publisher still missing Brianboulton (talk) 11:18, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

Brianboulton (talk) 21:41, 26 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Per reference 17, the appropriation of funding for the dam and canal is in SEC. 2. (b) but I would have to tag on an old reference for the actual act, unless that information is present in the book that was sourced? I am not familiar with the source there now.--NortyNort (talk) 22:24, 26 June 2010 (UTC)
 * The information is there in Stevens, the act only had the text of the act, of course. The only thing the act needs to support is the direct quotation in the naming controversy area.--Wehwalt (talk) 22:31, 26 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Those matters listed by Brianboulton have been taken care of.--Wehwalt (talk) 23:06, 26 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Not quite! See unstruck items above. Also, the retrieval date format for ref 96 is still inconsistent. Brianboulton (talk) 11:18, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Now done (I hope). Thank you for the detailed work.--Wehwalt (talk) 12:37, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
 * All sources issues now resolved. Brianboulton (talk) 15:51, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Awesome, thanks.--NortyNort (talk) 02:58, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

I came to the article just because I wanted to read about the concrete, not through the FA process. Anyways, I don't understand this part:
 * "Instead, the dam was poured as a series of columns, with a 5 feet (1.5 m) section of a column being poured at any one time."

Were they five feet wide, or deep? Is that old picture there showing them doing that part of the job? It would be nice to clarify this a bit. Thanks. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) 19:35, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the comment. I've rewritten that to spell it out, and added an image of that stage of the dam construction.  Let me know if this remains a problem.--Wehwalt (talk) 02:01, 29 June 2010 (UTC)


 * That explains it.
 * "and a series of concrete blocks in columns was poured" - should it be "were poured"?
 * ", the pipes would be filled with grout." - should it be "were filled"?
 * "which was used to deliver the bucket to a specific column." - should it be "were used"?
 * "from pea-sized gravel to 9 inches (230 mm) stones" - "9 inch" instead of "9 inches"?
 * "As the grade of aggregate differed depending on placement in the dam" - That makes it sound like the stones change size depending on where they were placed. Maybe "As the required grade of aggregate..." or something.
 * "and 1,110,000 cubic yards (850,000 m3) in the power plant and other works." - This part doesn't flow well from beginning of the sentence.
 * I've only read the concrete part, you may want to look at your tenses throughout. It was fun to read, though. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) 14:36, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I've massaged the text to get rid of those (I tend to overuse "would" and have looked carefully at each remaining use in the article) and checked for similar occurances elsewhere. Thanks for the praise.--Wehwalt (talk) 14:53, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I trust you on the rest. I support this FA attempt, and must say it's pretty cool.  This is the first time that I've read an article for general info reasons, and not wiki related reasons, and been drawn into an FAC. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) 04:08, 30 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Many thanks, on my own behalf and that of my conom, who is undergoing the trauma of moving right now and may not be on for a few days, but I'm on watch so everyone feel free to keep reviewing.--Wehwalt (talk) 12:31, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

Comment: I have begun reading this. One early point that strikes me is the extent to which the multiplicity of images tends to overwhelm the text. It seems grouchy on my part to complain about the images, most of which are individually wonderful, but there is clear MOS violation in the repeated squeezing of text. I recognise it will be a hard business deciding what to cut; perhaps the glum-faced president, smarting about his election loss? I'll leave this for your consideration and report back later with comments on the prose. Brianboulton (talk) 11:23, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

Support. This is a well-written and excellently sourced article that is finely illustrated with great images. It would make a superb addition to the roster of Feature Articles on wikipedia. Nicely done guys.4meter4 (talk) 21:31, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

Conditional support: a well-constructed and carefully researched article that should be of interest to general readers as well as engineers and concreteers. I see that steps have been taken to address my concerns, expressed above, about over-imaging. I'd like a little time to reassess this, and would also be interested in others' opinions on this issue. Meanwhile I have a number of minor points needing fixes (I've done a bit of ce on others), and a few prose issues.
 * General
 * Consistency is required regarding how numerics are recorded. For example we have "forty-foot", "eighty miles", "five million dollars," but elsewhere 20 miles, 100 page, 76 drawings etc
 * I'd like a second link on "arch-gravity dam" when it's mentioned in the Design and preparation section. The link in the lead gets rather lost in the opening line.
 * Las Vegas is described both as a "city" and a "town" (these distinctions are important in the UK, perhaps less so in the USA?)
 * "damsite" - a neologism?
 * I think the "International Workers of the World" should be briefly described rather than relying on the link.
 * Who were the "Wobblies"?
 * "in the works", in this context, seems rather colloquial and unencyclopedic.
 * Not sure what is meant by "excused performance"?
 * "Each gate weighs five million pounds" this info should be given numerically, with conversion.
 * Prose
 * "In 1906–07, the Southern Pacific Railroad spent $3 million to stabilize the waterway after a catastrophic breach that caused the Colorado River to fill the Salton Sea, an amount it hoped vainly would be reimbursed by the Federal Government." The words "an amount" are too distanced from their subject by the intervening material - needs a rephrase.
 * "A government camp was established for surveyors and other personnel near the damsite, this soon became surrounded by a squatter's camp." Punctuation fix needed
 * "... a temporary cofferdam protecting the Arizona tunnels was blown while hundreds of truckloads of rubble were dumped into the river, eventually blocking it" I don't get a clear picture of what happened here - whether this was a mishap or something planned.
 * "The morning of the dedication, it was moved forward three hours, as Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes had ordered the ceremony built around a Presidential speech to be made at 2 p.m., but neglected to state that he meant 2 p.m. Eastern Time, when a radio slot had been reserved for President Roosevelt's speech." The sentence is impossibly convoluted and needs to broken up into smaller parts.
 * "In the last half of 1936, water levels in Lake Mead were high enough..." High enough for what?
 * "Power generation allowed the dam project to be self sustaining; repaying the 50-year construction loan, and continuing to pay for the multi-million dollar yearly maintenance budget." The three "ings" in the sentence make for awkward reading and I find the grammar slightly suspect; rephrase suggested.

I see no problems in fixing these minor matters. Brianboulton (talk) 22:13, 1 July 2010 (UTC)


 * I see none either, and I expect to implement them soon. "Excused performance" is the lawyer in me full throttle, I fear.  Thank you for the full review, I know you are not doing many right now.  The image situation is much improving, and by the time you take your second look should be fine.  There are literally thousands of PD images for use in this dam article and most are of high quality.  I may get spoiled.--Wehwalt (talk) 22:18, 1 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Those issues are done. I believe all the remaining numbers meet WP:MOSNUM.  None evades the convert template, except one use each of "five-foot" and "one-inch", which occur close by a use of the convert template for that exact measurement and it would look odd to have the same measurement converted again.  Both are in the concrete subsection.--Wehwalt (talk) 23:56, 1 July 2010 (UTC)
 * I ain't gonna get a second look; the article is being promoted. Well done. Brianboulton (talk) 18:31, 2 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Holy crap, that was fast.--Wehwalt (talk) 18:38, 2 July 2010 (UTC)


 * With User:Brianboulton's reviews and Wehwalt's work, I Support this dam article. :) -  NeutralHomer •  Talk  • 23:39, 1 July 2010 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.