Wikipedia:Peer review/Withrow, Minnesota/archive1

This article as put out for peer review was gutted by another user not wanting, or knowing how (see edit history to view user) to participate in the peer review process. Hence, this request for peer review is no longer valid. Please see edit history to view the original article put out for peer review.

Withrow, Minnesota


This article is about Withrow, Minnesota, an unicorporated community which once existed in Washington County, Minnesota and was absorbed by the respective communities of Hugo, Grant, and May Township in Minnesota. The community was platted in 1915, but failed in a petition to incorporate in 1947 as the community lacked the requisite 50 residents required. I began research for this article in 2016, and have ammased a lot of time and resources obtaining information regarding the veracity of the community before finally compiling the article in the sandbox and transferring it to the main page. I've listed this article for peer review because I believe this to be a comprehensive history of Withrow. It is the longest article I have written about a Minnesota ghost town since in some respects, portions of Withrow still exist. I have tried to assure no resource was left untouched in the preparation of this article (in fact, it may be over-sourced), and it provides the most comprehensive information about the community in one location. The article is modeled loosely on the FA Pithole, Pennsylvania, and the articles Elcor and Manganese, Minnesota, which I helped promote to achieve FA status. The article both reads and flows well thanks to revisions by the Wikipedia Guild of Copy Editors.

Thanks, DrGregMN (talk) 22:17, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

Comments from Z1720
Comments after a quick skim:


 * The first paragraphs in "Establishment and community" are quite long. Any way to split it into two paragraphs?
 * Done
 * "Withrow formerly had a Girl Scout troop, #1292[62] and a Boy Scout troop, #169.[63] Withrow also had a baseball team, the Gophers,[39][64][65][66][67] a Woodmen of the World Camp,[68] a Mothers club,[67][69][70][71] a 4-H club,[66] and a Community Club.[69][70][72][73][74] " Are this many citations needed in these sentences? If so, maybe WP:CITEBUNDLE.
 * Removed duplicate citations.
 * Theres a when tag before the sentence listed above.
 * Removed. The tag was placed by my favorite copy editor, Jonesey95.  I've incorporated his suggested sentence to lead off the paragraph, and moved the scout troops to the end.  The problem stems from not knowing when the individual scout troops were formed and dissolved: I could attempt to call the individual scouting organizations, but this would be construed as WP:OR and the citations would be personal interviews, neither of which is acceptable in Wikipedia; it's also not a guarantee that they would even have the information.  I've incorporated the dates of the articles in the sentence to reflect that scout troops were in existence at least for the individual years published.
 * "Railroads" has a lot of short paragraphs. Any way to have longer paragraphs?
 * The paragraphs were originally longer. I intentionally broke them up so as not to confuse the readers with the Canadian Pacific Railroad and the Canadian National Railroad, both of which currently converge at what was once Withrow.  It did not read well with too many "Canadians" in one paragraph.
 * "selling the Ballroom at auction in 2017 to Laura Miron Mendele.[130][131][132][133][134][135] Lawrence Xiong purchased the facility from Mendele in December of 2019, who rebranded the ballroom as the Keystone Wedding and Events Center.[136][137][138][139][140]" Again, are this many citations necessary here?
 * Removed duplicate citations, some of which were relocated in the section about the Withrow Ballroom as supporting citations.
 * Ref 103 is to IMDB, which is generally considered unreliable on Wikipedia.
 * I'm going to leave it for now. I have not been able to find a more reputable source citing the former Withrow Elementary School as a location for the film Killer Movie.

Those are my thoughts. I think this article is close to ready for a GAN, and with some more work could be nominated for an FAC. Z1720 (talk) 23:15, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

Sorry about the delay in responding to your criticisms; they have been most useful. Please feel free to have another look. I know Peer Review has many articles waiting for review, so I don't intend on closing out the review process just yet: it's always helpful when there is more than one set of eyes looking at an article. Thank you, Z1720! DrGregMN (talk) 21:16, 16 January 2023 (UTC)