Texas

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I've listed this article for peer review because… It just got promoted to GA status, and it is on it way to a FA nomination.

Thanks, Oldag07 (talk) 15:26, 1 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Edit I can understand the hesitancy for people to review this page due to its massive size. But thanks to Karanacs' review we have created a way to review single sections of our page: Talk:Texas/FA Prep. Thus maximizing short amount of your time you may choose reviewing this page. Thanks for the help Oldag07 (talk) 05:03, 7 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments by Karanacs

Congratulations on achieving GA status! The article looks pretty good, but I think it needs a lot of work before being ready for an FA nomination. The two most pressing overall issues I see are a) the sourcing is not quite up to FA standard. There should be a lot more books or journals cited and fewer websites. There are probably thousands of books about various topics that are covered in this article, and some of them should be consulted. b) I think the article is getting close to comprehensive, but there are a few gaps. I've tried to list out a lot of specifics as I noticed them below, but this is not a 100% comprehensive list. I'm probably not going to watch this page, so please ask on my talk page if you need clarification. Good luck!

• Get a good copyeditor to do a survey of the whole article
• The 2nd and 3rd paragraphs of the lead cover essentially the same topic and should likely be combined
• I'd add at least a mention in the lead that France had a small colony in Texas too, and a mention that Texas joined the Confederacy during the Civil War.
• The lead also seems to have no mention of several major sectionf in the article, including the climate and government/politics sections
• In etymology, I'd mention that the Spanish used "Tejas" or "Texas" to refer to the state, from the Caddo name.
• I think the information about Texas manifestations in vernacular speech is essentially trivia that could be removed from the article. The info about the Caddos could then go into the history section.
• I don't like that the History section begins with a large picture of the 6 flags of Texas and no text to explain what that means. Sections should begin with text, not pictures
• The history section probably ought to begin with information about the Native Americans who lived in the area. I haven't done much research on the pre-colonial days (hence why the History of Texas article doesn't have much info in it), but I know there were Caddo, Karankawa, and other tribes in Texas long before the Europeans arrived.
• When the article refers to people (such as La Salle), use their whole name the first time they are mentioned.
• The first paragraph of the Colonization section doesn't make it clear that Pineda claimed the whole area of Texas for Spain (which makes it confusing when the article mentions French "encroachment")
• I think the Colonization section misses out on some important information - the fact that there was fighting in Texas during the Mexican War of Independence that actually resulted in the defeat of the Spanish forces and caused a Spanish backlash that decimated the country.
• The information about the Convention of 1832/1833 belongs in either the colonization section or in a separate section on the Texas Revolution
• There is almost no information about the Texas Revolution. It is significant that the Texans kicked out all Mexican troops in 1835, that Santa Anna invaded in 1836 and achieved mostly victories before his defeat at San Jacinto - which was partially due to Santa Anna's policies of taking no prisoners. That angered the colonists enough to join up. Also, much of the revolution was fought by adventurers from the US, who also formed a lot of the new government. And it should mention that Mexico was worried about the US immigration and they feared the US was trying to take over the province
• There is zero information about what happened during the 10-yr Republic of Texas. It might be good to learn who recognize the new country (Mexico didn't), that Mexico invaded ("two recaptures of Bexar" doesn't say by whom), and some of the policies that were enacted (such as Lamar's actions against the Native American population)
• The modern era section seems focused on education. What else happened since 1870?
• There ought to be citations for "debatable. Depending on the source, it can be fairly considered either or both a Southern or Southwestern state. The vast geographic, economic, and cultural diversity within the state itself prohibits easy categorization of the whole state into a recognized region of the United States. The East, Central, and North Texas, regions have a stronger association with the American South than with the Southwest. Others, such as far West Texas and South Texas share more similarities with the latter."
• There need to be citations in the first paragraph of Geology
• There needs to be a bit more emphasis on the fact that Texas is also bordered by the Gulf of Mexico - possible mentioning the number of miles of coastline and the fact that there are barrier islands
• Some of the regions of Texas are briefly mentioned, but there is not a comprehensive explanation of what and where they are. This would make most sense in the Geography section.
• The Llano Estacado is mentioned in an image, but not in the text - that seems a bit of an oversight
• The Davis Mountains are not mentioned at all
• "The natural increase since the last census " - need to specify what year that census way; people from outside the US aren't familiar with the census-taking habits of the US
• The Demographics section seems too much like lists. Some of these lists could be in tabular format; others should be more prose.
• The Demographics section mentions nothing about languages spoken (I know that election ballots have to be translated into lots of languages)
• I think there needs to be a bit more explanation on the wackiness that is the state constitution - what are the "provisions unique to Texas" in the state's Bill of Rights? also mention how specific the constitution is - some of the things that we have to amend it for are nutty (and what is the process for amending it and how often has that happened)
• Need to cite " Scholars attribute the change to the success of Nixon's Southern Strategy."
• I think the Texas Rangers need a bit more explanation - founded by Stephen F. Austin, etc.
• In the politics section, might mention the most recent gerrymandering of legislative districts - that set a precedent in allowing the districts to be redrawn in a year that there were not new census results and there were several lawsuits about it (and it led to the legislature leaving the state, which was funny and might be worthy of mention)
• "Today, Republicans control most of Texas's U.S. House of Representatives delegation, " - Avoid use of "today", etc because the reader doesn't know when that was written - October 2008, Nov 2008, 2004?
• "Of the 32 congressional districts in Texas, 19 are Republican seats and 13, Democrat seats." - this is likely not going to make sense to non-Americans. It makes it sound like we always reserve 19 seats for the Republicans
• Need a cite for this "The state's Democratic presence comes primarily from minority groups and urban voters, particularly in Austin." (South Texas is also often Democratic due to immigration)
• "Dallas remains approximately split." - I don't think this is true anymore? I thought that in 2006 Dallas voters kicked out all the Republicans and that the entire city roster of elected officials was Democratic (Houston is on the verge of doing the same thing, if the Chronicle can be believed)
• There are too many right-aligned pictures. On one of my monitors, it leads to lots of white space because the pictures are too close together.
• Might need a cite for this "Texas has 32 congressional districts, the second-most after California. "
• Probably need a cite for this "County government runs similar to a "weak" mayor-council system; the county judge has no veto authority, but votes along with the other commissioners."
• I don't think that the sales tax holidays need to be mentioned, and if so they don't need so much detail
• "for Texas's business tax climate, the state ranks 8th in the nation" - 8th highest or 8th lowest?
• "a whole, Texas is a "tax donor state" with Texans receiving back approximately $0.94 per every dollar of federal income taxes collected in 2005" - this doesn't make a lot of sense to me
• Might mention the King Ranch - isn't it the largest in the US and one of the largest in the world?
• Might expand a bit on the commercial fishing industry - what are the most common types of seafood harvested/caught and how does that rank with the rest of the nation/world
• "Since 2002, Texas deregulated its electric service."...and, why is this important?
• Might mention that Texas has its own electric grid (I think, and I don't know why, but that is significant considering the whole northeast is on one grid). Texas also has lots of power plants, and I'm not sure how much of the nation's power is produced here.
• How much wind power is produced each year?
• There really isn't information on the cost of living in the state. I'm not sure whether that is available or not
• The Why is the info about the transportation hub in Commerce and not in transportation? I kind of expected to continue reading in that paragraph about the ports, but then I saw it was in the next section
• Interstates are mentioned, but not US highways - should those be included as well?
• I'm not sure if the Trans-Texas Corridor should be mentioned, because it's not a sure thing at all yet
• Might want to mention that the Wright Amendment has been loosened a bit
• In sports, might want to discuss high school athletics a bit - mention the UIL and the number of divisions by school size. Also, is the new UIL program of drug-testing students unique in the nation at all?
• "The American Legislative Exchange Council ranked Texas 26 among the 50 states for education in 2007. " - 26th highest or 26th lowest (not that it makes that much of a difference)
• There probably needs to be a bit more information about private schools, charter schools, and home school (do we know how many kids in each category)
• bexargenealogy.com is not a reliable source
• I don't believe that Lon eStar Junction is a reliable source
• The Texas Civil War Museum is not a reliable source
• The web sources are not all formatted properly
• I'm not sure if "Texas Politics" (ref 51) is a reliable source
• From the references, some of the article looks more like original research. For example, the article uses info from individual cities off the weather channel - this means that the person who added this into the article was deciding for the readers which cities were properly representative of the temperature data for the state, rather than a third-party source (book/magazine/journal article). Example 2: The article directly cites Lockheed Martin and Bell Helicopter websites - that shows that the author is likely cherrypicking information. We need to see this type of data in independent sources
• Is msn city guides a reliable source?
• Is "cleanenergystates.org" a reliable source (i think probably no)
• Is "Association of Religion Data Archives" a reliable source?
• Reference 81 is another wikipedia page - that is DEFINITELY not a reliable source
• Is www.siteselection.com (ref 101) a reliable source?
• Is netstate.com a reliable source (probably not)
• Is FierceBiotech a reliable source
• Is texasfreeway.com a reliable source?
• Is aaroads.com a reliable source?
• Keeptexasmoving.com is not a reliable source
• ref 131 is not a full source (Aviation Week and Space Technology, January 15, 2007, p. 349, )
• is Aviationexplorer.com a reliable source?
• If at all possible, avoid press releases. They are self-published sources
• is coderedtexas.org a reliable source?

Karanacs (talk) 22:42, 2 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]