Wikipedia:Peer review/Rosendale Village, New York/archive1

Rosendale Village, New York
This peer review discussion has been closed. I've expanded this article significantly since its GA review, and I was hoping to find out if there is anything that remains missing or unexplained, and to get feedback on the article in general; there are currently 31KB of prose.

Thanks, Gyrobo (talk) 23:02, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Finetooth comments: This is quite interesting and well-done, and I enjoyed reading it. Here are a few suggestions for further improvement.

Lead
 * I added nbsps to combinations in the lead like "19th century" and "Route 32" that would be awkward if separated by line-break on computer screens. The rest of the article should be checked for other instances. WP:NBSP has details.


 * "After disincorporating, the commercial center of the former village... " - The center didn't disincorporate. Suggestion: "After the disincorporation, the commercial center... ".
 * Fixed. --Gyrobo (talk) 18:19, 22 March 2011 (UTC)


 * "The former village has had a number of notable buildings, including four churches." - Verb tense? Maybe "The former village has a number of notable buildings, including four churches." Also, would "several" or "many" be slightly better than "a number of"?
 * I'm hesitant to change the tense here, because only one of those buildings is still a church, and one no longer exists at all. --Gyrobo (talk) 18:19, 22 March 2011 (UTC)


 * "Two bridges span the Rondout Creek in the village: a road bridge the carries Route 32, and the Rosendale trestle, a former railroad bridge currently being renovated as a pedestrian walkway." - This doesn't quite make sense as written. I think the "the" between "bridge" and "carries" should be "that". Also, I wonder if you need "the" to modify "Rondout Creek". I see that you have consistently referred to it as "the Rondout Creek", and I wonder if there's a reason. If so, maybe an explanatory note would be helpful.
 * Fixed, and the "the" modifier was really an unconscious move on my part. I'm going to leave it, for the sake of variety. --Gyrobo (talk) 18:19, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

Decline and disasters
 * "In October 1956, a dinner reception was held to honor the government leaders and flood control officers who had coordinated rescue efforts during the previous year's floods." - Generally, the level of detail seems appropriate, but I thought this particular detail might be too much. Do readers in Australia need to know about a dinner reception in a village in New York?
 * Public reaction to the floods is kind of important, I think, and it's definitely more important to mention than that sentence about the church's bake sale. Does it mesh well with the firemen's parade, or is it too inrelated? --Gyrobo (talk) 18:19, 22 March 2011 (UTC)


 * "The caves were also used to acquire naturally filtered water... " - I'm not sure "caves" is the right word. Do you mean "mines"? It's quite possible that there are both natural limestone caves and artificial mines in the area, but if that's the case, I think you need to use "mines" for the artificial tunnels and "caves" for the natural ones.
 * There are ice caves throughout the town, but the sources don't differentiate between the artificial and natural caves. --Gyrobo (talk) 18:19, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

Modern Rosendale
 * While some of the blue quote boxes look OK, the short one that begins this section looks odd to me. For one thing, it's awfully short. For another, it bumps into the subhead in an unattractive way. Finally, it's not clearly tied to anything in the main text but seems to be an editorial comment or surmise by one person.
 * Removed. --Gyrobo (talk) 18:19, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

Geography
 * To be comprehensive, the article should include something about the geology of the region. This is especially true in light of the mines and caves so important to the history and economy of the village. You mention the dolomite and the Rondout formation in the Joppenburg Mountain section, and that's fine, but a more complete account should, I think, appear in this section. Where did the Rondout formation come from? What other formations are important to the area? What are the important minerals?
 * Done. --Gyrobo (talk) 19:30, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Climate
 * Climate sections in featured articles about towns generally include some text about temperature and precipitation records, major storms, and local peculiarities of various sorts.

Joppenburg Mountain
 * "and it may have been used as the basis of a sermon by a local preacher on the dangers of violence." - "May have been" is a bit odd, and the whole concept is a bit odd. What could the preacher have meant by "the dangers of violence"?
 * Removed, it was really just a guess on the author's part and did seem kind of odd. --Gyrobo (talk) 18:19, 22 March 2011 (UTC)


 * The two old images of the mountain create a four-line text sandwich on my computer screen. That could be remedied by moving them a bit further apart vertically, and there's plenty of room.
 * Fixed. --Gyrobo (talk) 18:19, 22 March 2011 (UTC)


 * I would consider retouching File:Rosendale Wallkill Valley Railroad Bridge 1888.jpg to eliminate the black corners at the top of the image. It is otherwise splendid as an illustration of the mountain and the mine openings.
 * Fixed. --Gyrobo (talk) 18:19, 22 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Please make sure that the existing text includes no copyright violations, plagiarism, or close paraphrasing. For more information on this please see Wikipedia_Signpost/2009-04-13/Dispatches. (This is a general warning given in view of previous problems that have risen over copyvios.)
 * No problems there, I worked from my notes for almost all of this, and made sure to use only the best quotes. --Gyrobo (talk) 18:19, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

I hope these suggestions prove helpful. If so, please consider commenting on any other article at WP:PR. I don't usually watch the PR archives or make follow-up comments. If my suggestions are unclear, please ping me on my talk page. Finetooth (talk) 22:01, 15 March 2011 (UTC)