Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Typhoon Gay (1989)/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 GrahamColm 05:38, 20 June 2012.

Typhoon Gay (1989)

 * Nominator(s): Cyclonebiskit (talk) 13:19, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

Typhoon Gay was one of the worst tropical cyclones to strike Thailand on record. Its unusual origin an unprecedented intensification within the Gulf of Thailand caught hundreds of vessels off-guard, leading to tragic loss of life. Its unprecedented intensity in the region led to immense damage onshore as well, with tens of thousands of buildings damaged or destroyed and nearly 600 lives lost. The storm's trail of damage continued into India where a further 69 people were killed. All told, the typhoon was responsible for nearly 1,000 fatalities and ranks as one of the worst natural disasters in Thailand's history.

Over the past several months, I've rebuilt this article from the meager piece it was into what I believe is the most complete account of the storm available. Relative scarcity of information made writing this a bit of a challenge and for the scale of damage caused by this storm, the article's size may seem a bit short. I've read through every journal mentioning the storm I could find and I fully believe there is nothing left to add. With that, it's time for this to enter the spotlight. I hope you enjoy reading this article as much as I did writing it. Cyclonebiskit (talk) 13:19, 2 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Quick question. How come you put a clear after the table of contents? That creates a bit of unnecessary space. --♫ Hurricanehink ( talk ) 16:52, 2 April 2012 (UTC)
 * To keep the format. If the clear isn't there, the infobox will be pushed into the next section and make it a bit messy. Cyclonebiskit (talk) 12:05, 3 April 2012 (UTC)
 * OK. I tested it and thought it looked fine, but I'll trust you. --♫ Hurricanehink ( talk ) 14:35, 3 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Note: This is a WikiCup nomination. The following nominators are WikiCup participants: Cyclonebiskit. To the nominator: if you do not intend to submit this article at the WikiCup, feel free to remove this notice. UcuchaBot (talk) 00:01, 3 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Expect a review of the article soon. hf24 14:16, 4 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Comments
 * Lede


 * Shouldn't "Kavali Cyclone of 1989" be bolded per MOS:BOLDTITLE?
 * It's not an official name for the storm, it's just a common name for it in India. Cyclonebiskit (talk)
 * "800 fatalities" needs an &amp;nbsp;
 * Done Cyclonebiskit (talk)
 * Same with "November 1989"
 * Done Cyclonebiskit (talk)
 * "more than"? What does track file say? If it says 120, then do 120, not "more than"...?
 * It's another way of saying that it attained typhoon status to avoid using "typhoon" too many times. It also works well with the track since it attained 120 km/h winds early on Nov. 3 and continued to intensify throughout the day. Cyclonebiskit (talk) 14:39, 4 April 2012 (UTC)
 * "first typhoon since 1891" – linky?
 * Reference #8 Cyclonebiskit (talk) 14:39, 4 April 2012 (UTC)
 * "after temporarily weakening over land and gradually reorganized" doesn't flow too well
 * Removed "after temporarily weakening over land" Cyclonebiskit (talk) 14:39, 4 April 2012 (UTC)
 * "by surprise" seems a bit informal. I don't have a problem with it, but the tone seems a bit too casual.
 * I'd prefer to leave it as is for now unless another editor has similar concerns. Cyclonebiskit (talk) 14:39, 4 April 2012 (UTC)
 * "275 offshore fatalities" needs an &amp;nbsp;
 * Done Cyclonebiskit (talk) 14:39, 4 April 2012 (UTC)
 * "amid" seems a bit like "during"..."under" or something might be a better word IMO
 * During and under don't work as well in this context. Would amidst work better? Cyclonebiskit (talk) 14:39, 4 April 2012 (UTC)
 * How can a ship be "under" swells? "Amid" is the perfect choice of words here (btw, "amidst" = "amid", just a much more archaic BrE version of it)  Auree   ★ ★  01:11, 5 April 2012 (UTC)
 * "588 people" needs an &amp;nbsp;
 * Done Cyclonebiskit (talk) 14:39, 4 April 2012 (UTC)
 * "1989 United States dollars" ^
 * Done Cyclonebiskit (talk) 14:39, 4 April 2012 (UTC)
 * "Striking India as a powerful cyclone" isn't too relevant at this point; it was mentioned earlier in the lede and readers should understand that...
 * It notifies the reader that the focus is shifting from effects in Thailand to effects in India. It's just there for transitory purposes. Cyclonebiskit (talk) 14:39, 4 April 2012 (UTC)
 * "20,000 homes" – nbsp...
 * Done Cyclonebiskit (talk) 14:39, 4 April 2012 (UTC)
 * "100,000 people" ^
 * Done Cyclonebiskit (talk) 14:39, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

hf24 14:25, 4 April 2012 (UTC)
 * hf24, for future reference, instead of cluttering the FAC page by listing every single instance where &amp;nbsp; are required, could you leave a more general and much more helpful comment like "add &amp;nbsp; for numbers throughout"?  Auree   ★ ★  01:08, 5 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Support now. --♫ Hurricanehink ( talk ) 23:22, 19 April 2012 (UTC)
 * You say in the lede that Gay was the first typhoon since 1891 to make landfall in Thailand, but the MH clarifies by saying that it was the first typhoon to form in the Gulf of Thailand and cross into the Bay of Bengal, which is slightly different. Are both facts true?
 * Yes, both are true. Cyclonebiskit (talk) 17:15, 9 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks for clarification. ♫ Hurricanehink ( talk ) 17:48, 17 April 2012 (UTC)
 * "Sixty-nine deaths and 410 million ($25.27 million) worth of damage were attributed to Gay in India." - can you find a way to reword so it says "69 deaths" and avoid passive voice?
 * Tony took care of this. Cyclonebiskit (talk) 12:55, 17 April 2012 (UTC)
 * The 2nd and 3rd sentences both say "soon", which struck me as odd, a bit.
 * Changed the first use to quickly. Cyclonebiskit (talk) 17:15, 9 April 2012 (UTC)
 * "As the newly christened Tropical Storm Gay strengthened, "it presented a paradox to forecasters."" - Who said that quote?
 * Lt. Dianne K. Crittenden in the JTWC ATCR. I'm going to take a guess that this means I'm supposed to mention who said it in the article? Cyclonebiskit (talk) 17:15, 9 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Yea, the quote should be attributed :) ♫ Hurricanehink ( talk ) 17:48, 17 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Added Cyclonebiskit (talk) 11:55, 18 April 2012 (UTC)
 * "Additionally, its central pressure was estimated to have decreased to 930 mbar (hPa; 27.46 inHg)." - which agency?
 * Estimated by the IMD. Wouldn't the sentence refer to the IMD anyways since it's in the preceding one? Cyclonebiskit (talk) 17:15, 9 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Not automatically, since the article does mention several warning centers. I'd stick in "Additionally, the agency estimated..." or something. ♫ Hurricanehink ( talk ) 17:48, 17 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Added 11:55, 18 April 2012 (UTC)
 * "Shortly before all crew members were going to abandon ship, the eye of Typhoon Gay passed over and winds fluctuated violently and changed direction, preventing the ship from remaining stabilized despite being within safe operating limits." - can you split that in two?
 * Split it at the eye passing over. Cyclonebiskit (talk) 17:15, 9 April 2012 (UTC)
 * "Consequently, the vessel abruptly capsized with all 97 crew members during the overnight hours of November 3 before any life boat could be deployed." - I think "on board" is missing after "all 97 crew members". Correct me if I'm wrong.
 * Added it in Cyclonebiskit (talk) 17:15, 9 April 2012 (UTC)
 * "Numerous trees and power poles were uprooted and wooden houses built on stilts were blown over near where the storm made landfall." - I know it isn't essential to avoid passive voice, but I think this sentence can be made clearer by using active voice.
 * Reworded, does it work better now? Cyclonebiskit (talk) 12:55, 17 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Yea, I think it works better. --♫ Hurricanehink ( talk ) 17:48, 17 April 2012 (UTC)
 * "Several towns and villages across Chumphon province were devastated" - "devastated" here sounds a bit... emotional and non-encyclopediac. How do you mean?
 * I think in this instance "devastated" properly indicates what took place. As stated later in that paragraph, entire villages were wiped out by the storm and hundreds were killed. Cyclonebiskit (talk) 12:55, 17 April 2012 (UTC)
 * OK, fair enough. --♫ Hurricanehink ( talk ) 17:48, 17 April 2012 (UTC)
 * "Schools across Chumphon and Surat Thani provinces were severely impacted by the typhoon. Many of these were constructed from wood and many were destroyed." - you can probably combine these sentences to something like "The typhoon destroyed many schools across Chumphon and Surat Thani provinces, many of which constructed from wood." Or something. Make it shorter and cleaner.
 * Used suggested sentence Cyclonebiskit (talk) 12:55, 17 April 2012 (UTC)
 * "Multi-story buildings lost their upper floors and all had their windows and doors blown out. " - is this still referring to schools? And is that referring to those two provinces? The all is tripping me up.
 * Reworded but I'm not sure if the new sentence is somewhat out of place. Cyclonebiskit (talk) 12:55, 17 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Does that mean multi-story churches? --♫ Hurricanehink ( talk ) 17:48, 17 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Where did churches come from? Now I'm confused. Cyclonebiskit (talk) 11:55, 18 April 2012 (UTC)
 * The previous sentence, and that you mention churches in a subsequent sentence. I don't think you necessarily had to split that sentence in two, btw, since this - "Multi-story buildings lost their upper floors" - just seems small. --♫ Hurricanehink ( talk ) 12:52, 18 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Combined the sentence with the previous one so it's not so small. I'm still confused where you're getting churches from. Cyclonebiskit (talk) 14:20, 19 April 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry, I meant schools. Now, the multi-story buildings... does that mean the schools? --♫ Hurricanehink ( talk ) 14:40, 19 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Ref 27 isn't working for me.
 * Works fine for me Cyclonebiskit (talk) 12:55, 17 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Weird, same. --♫ Hurricanehink ( talk ) 17:48, 17 April 2012 (UTC)
 * "Generators were brought in to keep hospitals and government offices running as much of Chumphon province remained without electricity for more than two weeks." - pick another word other than "as", as it's ambiguous at first glance whether it means "because", "while", or something else.
 * Changed to since Cyclonebiskit (talk) 12:55, 17 April 2012 (UTC)
 * " In the four years following Typhoon Gay, land use for orchard, rubber and oil palm plantations decreased from 33.32 percent to 30.53 percent." - percent of what? The overall area of Thailand?
 * Previous sentence states it's for Surat Thani Province. Cyclonebiskit (talk) 12:55, 17 April 2012 (UTC)
 * All in all, a good read. It's pretty close to FA status, IMO. Keep it up! --♫ Hurricanehink ( talk ) 00:38, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

Source review - spotchecks not done. Nikkimaria (talk) 16:25, 8 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Some titles use hyphens when they should use endashes
 * Replaced them Cyclonebiskit (talk) 12:55, 17 April 2012 (UTC)
 * FN 11, 12: volume/issue?
 * Not available for #11, added it in for #12. Cyclonebiskit (talk) 17:26, 9 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Be consistent in whether you provide locations for newspapers and journals, and if so how these are notated
 * I provide them whenever possible but they're not always there. Cyclonebiskit (talk) 17:26, 9 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Fn 17: typo?
 * Fixed Cyclonebiskit (talk) 17:26, 9 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Don't italicize news agencies or publishers; do italicize publication names
 * I think I fixed them. Might have made it worse though... Cyclonebiskit (talk) 17:26, 9 April 2012 (UTC)
 * FN 24: formatting. Nikkimaria (talk) 16:25, 8 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Not sure what's wrong here. Can you explain? Cyclonebiskit (talk) 12:55, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

Prose at top
 * Mmmm, who's doing this writing? I can barely fault the lead. I've just made a few trivial edits based on personal pref. Please revert if you don't like. Since you're using US spelling, you might consider the US dash for Category 5–equivalent, which avoids the need for double hyphenation. Range dashes are more readable when there are conversions to range as well, I think (done). The weird symbols won't be internationally recognised (remember the topic is both India- and Thailand-related, and the readers are everywhere); it's up to you, but my pref would be to put them in parentheses and make the US$ the main currency. My, there are an awful lot of nbsp syntaxes in the edit box. I don't mind, but it is daunting for newbies. Let's hope we can organise an easy shortcut for this, soon. Nice work, but I haven't looked further. Tony   (talk)  05:47, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

Prose in top sections—if this is a contender for the Cup, I wonder why closer audits of the prose haven't been done.
 * Integrated theme and paragraphing. The storm is awkwardly personified: "Despite the narrowness of the gulf, the storm was able to take advantage of warm waters and good outflow, owing to its small size."—please consider "the storm took advantage of". But I still feel it's awkward every with this change. Unsure ... "gulf, the small size of the storm [something or other] ...". I don't have the technical knowledge of the field to fix this, but something tells me this should be more clearly a lead-in to the subsequent statements (is it the ultimate causal factor in what then happened, this small size combined with the warm waters and good outflow?). Then the fact that the strengthening was faster (and perhaps stronger? ... unsaid) than anticipated is separated by a paragraph break. Isn't this part of the same integrated idea? I don't mind if the next para starts with "Gay attained typhoon status early on November 3", or even "Later on November 3, ...". The access to warm waters is an interesting issue that reappears at the end of the section ... I'm starting to get it, but in reverse.
 * Repetitions et al.. "the typhoon attained winds of 185 km/h (115 mph)"—second "attained" in five seconds; here it's less suitable, don't you think? And in another five seconds there's a third "attained", again of wind. (I sense here, too, there's a slight feel in the writing process of personifying a storm; perhaps this should be reserved for the human managers and victims.)
 * "... Gay resumed strengthening as the ridge to its north intensified and ..."—the "resumed strengthening" is a little clunky. Could it be just "strengthened", given the strong temporal context in the adjacent clauses? There's another "strengthening" in the next sentence, too. Do watch the repetitions. Then there's another "attained" (its peak intensity), but here entirely appropriate (it wouldn't pall if one or two previous usages of the word, and the immediately following one, were changed).
 * "Winds fluctuated violently and changed direction, preventing the ship from remaining stabilized despite being within safe operating limits."—I guess the limits are to tonnage? Sorry to be dumb.
 * "with gale-force winds located within 95 km (60 mi) of the center."—you could remove "located".
 * "Two days after the sinking, four rescue ships and two helicopters in the region were searching for survivors;[13] four people were rescued from the vessel by November 6."—Three issues: (1) by November 6 ... not on? I guess the sources allow no greater precision ... (2) This is the first date in the section; was Nov. 6 two days after the sinking? (3) Were the four people rescued from the vessel underwater? (4) Are these four included in the six crew who survived? I'm confused.
 * "collectively" could be removed. Tony   (talk)  13:29, 18 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the comments; I've tried to deal with all of these, except for the tonnage limit and the vessel part (I'll leave those to Cyclonebiskit).  Auree   ★ ★  17:35, 18 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your help Auree, it's much appreciated. As for the tonnage, the article didn't specify what it meant by "safe operating limits," so we can only guess that it was tonnage. I'll get to the second comment about the sinking later when I have more time. Cyclonebiskit (talk) 12:18, 19 April 2012 (UTC)
 * There was no information from what I read on where the four people were rescued (if they were in the ship or floating in the sea around it). The four survivors mentioned are part of the six overall that survived the sinking. I'm not sure where that becomes vague so could you clarify what causes the confusion? Cyclonebiskit (talk) 14:16, 19 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Support Very accessible, well written article--great work guys. A few minor comments that don't affect my support:
 * "classifying Gay as a modern-day Super Cyclonic Storm" Why is "modern-day" included here?
 * I would assume its because the Super Cyclonic Storm cat was only introduced in 1998/99 Source.Jason Rees (talk) 21:34, 1 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Oh, yes, that makes sense now. Mark Arsten (talk) 17:18, 2 June 2012 (UTC)
 * "before passing over the Seacrest, an oil drilling ship." Should "oil drilling" be hyphenated here?
 * Some repeated wikilinks: Andhra Pradesh, Thailand, Gulf of Thailand, Andaman Islands, and Kavali.
 * Some overlinking, India, Thailand, and the United States probably shouldn't be linked.
 * "Throughout Andhra Pradesh, 69 fatalities and 410 million Rupees ($25.27 million USD) worth of damage was attributed to Typhoon Gay." Is "was" correct here, or should it be "were"? Mark Arsten (talk) 19:35, 1 June 2012 (UTC)


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