Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Washington State Convention Center/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 archived by Laser brain via FACBot (talk) 15:45, 10 October 2018.

Washington State Convention Center

 * Nominator(s):  Sounder Bruce  07:53, 10 September 2018 (UTC)

Seattle's convention center sits atop a freeway (which I hope to bring here soon), wraps around a non-profit theatre, and sits under a few high-rises. It is made famous by one of gaming's biggest conventions (which just ended) and was the host of the 1999 WTO conference that was disrupted by the infamous Battle of Seattle. In fact, during its construction the project nearly went under after one of the lead developers filed for bankruptcy because of a lender agreement gone south.

This article went through a GOCE copyedit and was languishing for an entire season in the GAN backlog, so I've decided to push this forward. It's a bit of a long read for convention center, but the project was more than just a place for bleary-eyed visitors to hob-nob and indulge in plenaries and meetings.  Sounder Bruce  07:53, 10 September 2018 (UTC)

Tony1
Lead:
 * "meeting centers"—any word to substitute to avoid such a close repetition of "center/s"? Thesaurus? Especially since there are more to come in the opening para. Suggestion: "and the convention center opened on June 18, 1988" -> "and the complex opened on June 18, 1988" ... but up to you; I'm unsure that's a good substitute there. And "the existing facilities"? Just thinking out loud.
 * "A second expansion at the site of Convention Place station, a block north of the original convention center, has been under construction since 2018 and is planned to be completed in 2022." What about: "A block north of the original facility, a second expansion at the site of Convention Place station has been under construction since 2018, with competion expected in 2022." ... or something like that.
 * If it's already under construction, why does a caption below talk of "planned construction site"?
 * Is the area given for the each of the two halls, or both?
 * Parking spaces? Bit boring for the lead.

Tony (talk)  10:56, 10 September 2018 (UTC)
 * I've rewritten the lead per your comments. Thanks for dropping in for the early review.  Sounder Bruce  23:06, 10 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Anything more to say?  Sounder Bruce  02:43, 25 September 2018 (UTC)

A few paragraphs further down:
 * "It re-opened the following year for use by conventions, trade shows, banquets, and other events"—you could remove two words.
 * Dropped "use by"
 * "recommended a facility with 70,000 to 90,000 square feet (6,500 to 8,400 m2) of meeting space and 40,000 to 60,000 square feet (3,700 to 5,600 m2) of exhibition space to host conventions of up to 7,000 attendees. It would cost $47 million (equivalent to $149 million in 2016 dollars)"—why not use closed en dashes to reduce the clutter? Do we need the "equivalent to"? Why not and equivalence to 2018 dollars?
 * Switched the "to"s to dashes, which are surprisingly accepted by convert.
 * The inflation conversion is generated by inflation, which is updated when new data becomes available. Pending catastrophic economic changes, the difference between 2016 and 2018 dollars should be minimal.
 * Clunky–bumpy: "It would cost $47 million (equivalent to $149 million in 2016 dollars)[7] to construct, paid for using state and county funds, and be located at one of four sites:" "Construction would require $47 million of state and county funds ($149 million in 2016 dollars), at one of four sites:", perhaps?
 * That sounds good to me.
 * "creating approximately 13,000 new jobs"—"some" would be less spikey than the x word. But more importantly, does this come from some press release by a body with a conflict of interest? I'm always suspicious of claims of new jobs. To start with, is that permanent new jobs, or just through the construction phase? Always needs to be stated by these shysters.
 * The newspaper article is quoting the study, which seems to focus on permanent benefits but does not outright state that the jobs are permanent.
 * No, well they're almost certainly not, if experience is anything to go by. It's part of the lying and exaggeration used by vested interests. Please remove their propaganda if you can't be sure from the source. Tony (talk)  08:51, 3 October 2018 (UTC)
 * "siding with the business community over the city's hired consultants"—I read the unintended meaning into "over" (concerning).
 * Swapped the order and filled it out a bit more.
 * "The city and chamber of commerce began lobbying the state legislature for the approval of $64.2 million (equivalent to $190 million in 2016 dollars)[7] in 30-year general obligation bonds issued by the state, and a hotel-motel tax increase to pay for the project". They "began"? Or they "lobbied". "to approve $....".
 * The post-recommendation drive marked the start of formal lobbying to legislators, so I've made that a bit clearer.
 * "The state legislature considered the financing plan in February 1979, with Governor Dixy Lee Ray taking a neutral stance on state funding despite her support of the project.[20] However, the bill was introduced too late in the legislative session to pass out of committee.[21][22] A citizen initiative barring the city from funding a convention center project or other tourist activities was filed and placed on the November 1979 ballot,[23] where it was defeated by voters.[24][25]"—"...1979; Governor took ...". So the proposal to bar funding was defeated. It's a nest of double negatives. Voters wanted it to be funded, right?
 * Ref 7 is a mess of red.
 * The inflation-fn template has been broken for a few days, but it should be fixed soon.

My earlier hunch was right. Needs cleaning up and resubmission. Tony (talk)  07:18, 2 October 2018 (UTC)

Coord note
Bit surprised this hasn't attracted more commentary -- I'll list it under FAC Urgents but if it doesn't get more attention very soon I'd expect to archive it. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 05:47, 2 October 2018 (UTC)

Comments by RL0919
This seems close to the mark, but the winding history of the project requires strong attention to clarity. Some of the longer paragraphs and sections made me wonder if there are details that could be trimmed out. Here are some specific spots that need cleanup or clarification:


 * The infobox seems overstuffed with images: a logo, a photo, and two maps. The second map supports zooming in to see the details, so I would think the first map could be removed.
 * Removed the non-interactive map.
 * I didn't do a full source review, but I did notice that ref 6 uses the Rp template for the page number, but no other notes do. This source is only cited once, so using Rp seems pointless. I'm also not clear on what page is actually being cited; the document uses section numbering, so there is an S-3, I-3, II-3, etc. I suspect I-3 is the intended reference, but it should be clarified.
 * Fixed the page referencing.
 * I want to second Tony1's reservations about uncritically repeating pre-development job projections. There is a substantial literature indicating such studies are inaccurate. For a relevant example, this source criticizes inaccurate projections of increased usage of the WSCC made in a 1994 study of the then-proposed (later approved) expansion. And given that the facility broke ground almost a decade later, any projections from the 70s seem to have limited relevance. (Other elements of such projections are also untrustworthy. Notice that the requested funding, after adjusting for inflation, went from $190M to $227M to a $334M actual cost.)
 * I'll leave out the jobs projection, and integrate the 1994 study critique at a later time.
 * "Architects TRA and engineer HNTB" -- I believe that as names of firms, 'TRA' and 'HNTB' are collective nouns, so I would think the singular 'architect' and 'engineer' would be used. Even if I'm wrong about that, I would expect the construction to be parallel, either both singular or both plural.
 * Fixed by using TRA's actual name.
 * "A group of elderly First Hill residents" -- is age relevant here? It's not mentioned again. If you omit the description, the sentence could probably be merged with the next one to something like: "A group of First Hill residents opposed the freeway site design and announced plans to file a lawsuit to halt further planning."
 * The GOCE copyeditor created a lot of odd sentence splits during their run-through, so I have to track back and patch things. I've taken advantage of the split here to add more detail.  Sounder Bruce  07:09, 8 October 2018 (UTC)
 * After the initial reference to CHG International, it is often referred to just as CHG, but then sometimes the more expansive "developer CHG International" creeps in. Unless there is a significant separation between mentions, I would think just CHG is sufficient after the first reference.
 * Chopped down to the short-form.
 * "The convention center project required CHG to deed its parcels to Westside" -- this construction seems to obfuscate the source of the requirement, since a "project" is not an independent entity. Did Westside require this as a condition of funding, or was it mandated by some other source such as a regulatory body?
 * Re-ordered based on information from the citation.
 * "further complicated by President Ronald Reagan's steel import quota" -- this would be more clear and less surprising if you mention that the import quotas were imposed in September 1984, after the project was approved. (Sources for that should be easy to find if the date isn't in the sources currently cited.)
 * The source lists the import quotas as having "been announced earlier this week [Jan. 10]", so this might be a separate action.
 * "federal seizure of imported Taiwanese and Japanese steel later found to have cracked joints in need of repair" -- I'm confused again. If the cracks were found later, why was the steel seized originally?
 * Split apart, as the issue wasn't really related to the seizure.
 * The Eagles Auditorium Building and McKay Hotel are referred to multiple times, but their relationship to the project isn't particularly clear. The Eagles building finally gets some explanation after it has already been mentioned a couple of times; what the McKay has to do with the project is a mystery to me.
 * Both buildings were turned into low-income housing, a key political point that was mentioned earlier. Added a mention to a sentence in the Construction section.
 * "The convention center enjoyed success during its first five years of operations, helping revitalize Downtown Seattle and its retail core." Suggest: "The success of the convention center during its first five years of operation helped revitalize Downtown Seattle and its retail core."
 * Fixed.  Sounder Bruce  07:28, 8 October 2018 (UTC)
 * The sequencing of the Events section comes off a bit odd, first describing overall activity as of 2016, then describing various specific events from various times, then backtracking to 1999 to talk about the WTO protests.
 * I've split out the WTO protests into a separate subsection. I prefer having the statistics before listing out major annual events.  Sounder Bruce  07:29, 8 October 2018 (UTC)

I also made a few small edits; as usual those can be undone if they seem wrong. --RL0919 (talk) 05:32, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

Coordinator comment - This has been open for a month without any declaration of support for promotion, and doesn't seem to be heading in the right direction at present with open suggestions for rework and improvement. Therefore, I will be archiving it shortly and it may be re-nominated after the customary two-week waiting period. In the mean time, please action feedback as appropriate. -- Laser brain  (talk)  15:45, 10 October 2018 (UTC) -- Laser brain  (talk)  15:45, 10 October 2018 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.