Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Hurricane Iris/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 Ian Rose 10:31, 30 July 2014.

Hurricane Iris

 * Nominator(s): ♫ Hurricanehink ( talk ) 03:44, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

This article is about a powerful hurricane in October 2001 that was one of the worst on record in Belize. However, it was pretty small, so the damage was pretty localized. I believe this article is the best compilation of sources on the storm on the internet, and it passes all FA criteria. Hope you enjoy reading! ♫ Hurricanehink ( talk ) 03:44, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

Comment: I copyedited the article per my standard disclaimer. These are my edits. - Dank (push to talk) 21:19, 7 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Thank you Dank, I forgot to show my appreciation earlier! ♫ Hurricanehink ( talk ) 16:05, 12 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Sure thing. - Dank (push to talk) 17:03, 12 July 2014 (UTC)


 * Image and Source Review all images are validly in public domain sourced from United States government agencies. A source check of five citations indicates no close paraphrasing concerns and states the information cited. Secret account 01:18, 14 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Support well done hurricane article Secret account 01:18, 14 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Support excellent article. My only suggestion is that, in the see also section, the description for the Belize hurricane is a tad repetitive of the article title (and maybe is not necessary). Regards.-- MarshalN20 T al k 02:19, 16 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks! I removed the redundancy. ♫ Hurricanehink ( talk ) 02:22, 16 July 2014 (UTC)


 * Support I made minor edits to the references. There was inconsistency with middle initials of the NHC authors. Other than that, I had no issue with the article.--12george1 (talk) 18:17, 19 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Support Comment : the caption for the track map mentions colored points, but does not indicate what each color means. (Yes, I know that it uses the SSHWS color scheme, but most readers don't know that, and MediaViewer hides the Saffir-Simpson small template transcluded in the File page. Please change the caption so that it indicates what each color means somehow. Tito xd (?!? - cool stuff) 16:41, 21 July 2014 (UTC)
 * If it's OK, I brought this up on the project talk page, as this would affect every article in the project. I hope that the discussion will be resolved shortly, however :) ♫ Hurricanehink ( talk ) 19:09, 21 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Per the results of the linked discussion, I've gone ahead and implemented the change on . That addresses all of my concerns, so switching to support. Tito xd (?!? - cool stuff) 02:04, 22 July 2014 (UTC)

Just to be clear, the argument that it's better to leave things as they are because 'we've always done it that way' or because 'changing it would affect too many other articles' doesn't give us an excuse to keep doing the wrong thing. Where we don't have consensus on exactly what the right thing is, however, precedent gives us something to follow. Whether storm articles should be treated as principally scientific or not isn't something to be decided in this FAC, and given that uncertainty I don't think the case is made that this article goes against MOS, since the primary unit employed seems appropriate in relation to a former British colony and, as I understand it from previous discussions in such articles, in relation to Atlantic storms. I'm therefore going to close this review to promote the article, thank everyone for their participation, and suggest that any further discussion take place at the storms project and/or MOS. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 15:30, 30 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Comment - The topic of the order of units used has been brought up elsewhere, and since this is a candidate that is impacted, I thought I should draw some comment from those watching this FAC. The WP:MOSNUM guideline says that for scientific articles, the  main units chosen will be SI (with conversions in parenthesis) - km or km/h should come before m or mph. The MOS says that for non-scientific articles related to the US, you can use customary units first, but this seems to be about Belize.  So my question to the nominator/voters: is this a scientific article or a non-scientific article related to the US? -- Netoholic @  00:39, 24 July 2014 (UTC)
 * This is an interesting question. Normally I'd say it might better be pursued outside the FAC process but OTOH we might be able to knock it on the head quite quickly here. The nominator is using the same standard as in the related Hurricane Hattie, which was promoted to FA not too long ago. I notice he also applied local unit preferences to Cyclone Joy, employing metric first, which is the standard in Australia. That still leaves the question of whether a storm article should be considered 'scientific' or not, and whether an article on a storm that primarily affected Belize (a former British colony) should give primacy to metric or imperial measurements. I gathered that although otherwise metric, the British standard for speeds and distances is still imperial, in which case the standard applied here would make sense. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 01:25, 26 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the thoughts Ian Rose. I don't believe a storm article should be scientific. Years ago, we decided not to use knots, meters per second, or nautical miles, which are the preferred units for scientific articles. We try and make them for the layperson to be able to read it. ♫ Hurricanehink ( talk ) 17:41, 27 July 2014 (UTC)
 * If it is a non-scientific article, then SI should still be used unless the article is about the U.S. or UK. So then, why does this article use mph primary? -- Netoholic @ 19:03, 27 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Belize uses Miles per hour. It's a former UK territory. However, by standard, every Atlantic hurricane article uses mph, which is how we've been doing it for 11 years. ♫ Hurricanehink ( talk ) 17:04, 28 July 2014 (UTC)
 * So are you saying that WP:MOSNUM is incorrect or incomplete? Right now, only US and UK non-scientific articles are listed as exceptions to the general rule that SI measurements are primary. There is no mention of former territories being exceptions, and I think that is hardly true because many former territories are fully metric. Lastly, "this is how we've always done it" has no bearing on this review of this particular article. If no one has caught on to this particular inconsistency with regards to the MOS before, it is not a free pass to continue to be inconsistent. -- Netoholic @  22:03, 29 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Then the MoS is what should be changed, not hundreds of articles. Dustin  ( talk ) 22:21, 29 July 2014 (UTC)
 * How many thousands of non-hurricane articles would have to be changed if the MOS is changed? -- Netoholic @ 22:37, 29 July 2014 (UTC)
 * I am not suggesting changing the non-hurricane articles. This change should make an allowance for hurricane articles in these circumstances. That was implied. Dustin  ( talk ) 22:50, 29 July 2014 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure anyone has presented good reasoning as to why hurricane articles are non-scientific (when they clearly use very rigidly scientific sources) and what circumstance merits them being an exception within the MOS. Metrication doesn't mention anything about weather data being an exception in any country, and the only exception Belize is mentioned for is it uses US gallons. -- Netoholic @ 23:29, 29 July 2014 (UTC)
 * If a policy or guideline gets in editors' ways when maintaining Wikipedia, ignore all rules. Do you honestly think it is worth the trouble of changing hundreds or thousands of articles just because of one unimportant rule? Dustin  ( talk ) 23:44, 29 July 2014 (UTC)
 * We're talking about whether this Featured Article Candidate is complying with important MOS standards. -- Netoholic @ 23:54, 29 July 2014 (UTC)
 * And you are advocating that we change hundreds to thousands of articles to use km first just "because the MoS says they should". I doubt you'll get much if any support for that from members of the relevant WikiProject. Dustin  ( talk ) 23:58, 29 July 2014 (UTC)
 * I would say to that: only the articles seeking FA status or that come up for FA review would need to specifically be updated. I am sure the rest will follow in time as word of the applicability of WP:MOSNUM spreads around the project. It is only you that is suggesting that "hundreds to thousands of articles" need to be updated immediately. -- Netoholic @ 00:03, 30 July 2014 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.