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Blackford County, Indiana

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This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because I have added (as has a second individual) substantially to its content, and hope to upgrade this article to a featured article.

Thanks, TwoScars (talk) 21:34, 4 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Finetooth comments: Thanks for your work on this interesting article. It looks pretty good but will need considerable polishing to have a chance at FAC. Here are some suggestions:

  • I'd be inclined to rearrange the sections in this order: Geography, History, Demographics, Climate, and then the others. The first four are more basic, it seems to me, than the other categories. I think putting Geography first is especially important since many references in the other sections are to places within the county, which most readers will be unfamiliar with until they read about the geography and look at the maps.
  • The existing article is a bit too list-y. I'd recommend turning the lists in the Education and Notable people sections into straight prose paragraphs without bullet points.
  • I'd suggest tightening the lead a bit so that it's only four paragraphs long instead of five, as recommended by WP:LEAD#Length.
  • The lead image is good except for the red light on the left, which looks odd hanging in mid-air. I believe this could be fixed with a cloning tool in Photoshop or a similar program. If this is not something you want to undertake, I'd be glad to attempt it. Just ping me on my talk page if you want me to do that.

Lead

  • "The county was supposed to be organized on April 2, 1838, after a February 15, 1838, act by the Indiana General Assembly that took territory from Jay County.[3] County officials were not elected until 1839 after a second legislative act." - I think these details could be omitted from the lead, which only needs to summarize the essence of the main text sections.
  • "who was the first Speaker of the Indiana General Assembly and a long-time Chief Justice" - Lowercase "speaker" and "chief justice".
  • "and is also the site of over ten unincorporated communities" - Generally numbers bigger than nine are rendered as digits in Wikipedia articles. Here the number should be 10.
  • "Before the arrival of non-indigenous settlers during the 1830s...". - There's a complication here and in the History section that's related to the three sets of people who lived here sequentially. The Miami were not indigenous but, as you say below, were the first settlers. Indigenous describes the first set. Perhaps "European-Americans" would do for the third set.
  • "The original non-indigenous settlers were mostly farmers... " - Same problem with "non-indigenous".
  • I see overlinking in the lead and elsewhere in the article. I would not link common terms like "farmers", "swampland", "drainage", "manufacturing", or "agriculture", for example, since most readers of English already know that they mean. WP:OVERLINK has details.

History

  • "The boom period lasted about fifteen years... " - 15
  • "are credited as being the first-recorded permanent settlers" - Tighten to "were the first-recorded permanent settlers"?
  • "Benjamin Reasoner was the first non-native... " - Perhaps "Benjamin Reasoner was the first outsider, other than the Miami,... ".
  • "on the other side of the county" - Maybe say which side instead of "other side"?
  • I'm not sure you need quite so much detail about the formation of the county. I'd consider summarizing the legal maneuvering more tersely, without the direct quotations.
  • "The land that would become Blackford County was the western part of Jay County." - No need to link Jay County here since it's linked earlier in this section. Generally one or two links (a maximum of one in the lead and one in the main text) is sufficient for terms that need a link. Ditto for "Indiana" and "Muncie", for example.
  • I'd be inclined to make the county-seat part of the legislative debate into a separate paragraph.
  • "Over the next twenty-five years... " - 25
  • "to connect the Indiana cities of Fort Wayne and Muncie — running north-south through the Blackford County" - Em dashes should be unspaced. North–south takes an en dash rather than a hyphen. Ditto for similar constructions elsewhere in the article.
  • "(see railroad map)" - I'd omit all asides like this one. Since "you" is understood, they are imperatives, which rarely appear in Wikipedia articles. The standard "See also" head is a notable exception. Readers will be able to suss out which images illustrate which parts of the text without help except what they read in the captions.
  • "Most of the "Louisville" part of the name can be seen on the railroad map herein." - Ditto for this aside and others like it.

Gas boom

  • "The Gas Boom transformed the region... " - Lowercase "gas boom" except when it is part of a formal name; e.g. Indiana Gas Boom.
  • The two largest employers were glass factories:" - What attracted glass manufacturers to the county?
  • "Since these inspections were in Hartford City and Montpelier only, additional manufacturing employees from Mollie, Trenton, Millgrove, and possibly other communities in the county could be added to the count of 1,346." - Needs a source.
  • "and a 1904 directory lists ten of them" - 10

Post-gas boom

  • "the method originally used for producing window glass became obsolete," - What was that method? What changed?
  • "meant that the local Post Office" - Lowercase "post office" when used generically.
  • "and roads competed with the interurban]] lines... " - Oops! Typo. Not sure what you want here.
  • "In 2011, the plastics plant closed" - Was that the same as the 3M plant? Better make this clear.

Government

  • "The current president of Blackford County's board of commissioners (as of June 15, 2011) is Fred Walker." - It's often useful to omit words like "now", "current", "today", and the like and to find substitutes with a more specific meaning. Here I'd just say, "Fred Walker was named president of Blackford County's board of commissioners in June 2011." Or something like that.

Extinct communities

  • "Blackford County also has at least ten communities" - 10

Economy

  • "Emhart Gripco is Montpelier's leading employer, with over people working at its facility." - Something missing.
  • "although farm workers account for only about 5% of the county's workers" - "percent" rather than %.
  • I'll stop here with the line-by-line commentary. I don't think I caught everything, but I hope this helps. I'll try to return and add a few more comments later if real life allows.
  • Please make sure that the existing text includes no copyright violations, plagiarism, or close paraphrasing. For more information on this please see Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2009-04-13/Dispatches. (This is a general warning given in view of previous problems that have risen over copyvios.)

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) 23:56, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

A few more comments by Finetooth:

Climate

  • "Blackford County has endured a few tornados, including a category 4 (maximum speeds 207 to 260 mph) on Palm Sunday (April 11) in 1965 that crossed Blackford County 7 miles (11 km) from the center of Hartford City." - The wind speeds should be converted too. To avoid nested parentheses that the conversion would create, perhaps recasting like this would do: "Blackford County has endured a few tornados, including a category 4 storm with maximum speeds of 207 to 260 miles per hour (333 to 418 km/h). It crossed Blackford County 7 miles (11 km) from the center of Hartford City on April 11, 1965, Palm Sunday."
  • Did the category 4 storm cause significant damage?

Demographics

  • "38.9 percent of the family households had children under the age of 18 living in them." - Sentences in Wikipedia articles don't start with digits but use words instead. However, it would probably work better in this case to recast the sentence rather than writing the number rather awkwardly as words.
  • "Because the 2010 Census was completed recently (by Census standards), not all data are ready (August 2011) for public consumption. Therefore, the following statistics are based upon the 2000 United States Census." - Rather than explaining this, I think you'd be better off simply starting this paragraph with "As of the 2000 Census... ". The numbers can be updated when they become available.

Education and health care

  • "Blackford County has at least four universities located in adjacent counties less than 25 miles (40 km) from Hartford City." - This is a bit awkward. Maybe "Four universities, although in counties outside of Blackford, are less than 25 miles (40 km) from Hartford City."
  • If the county has a health department that offers any medical services such as vaccinations, that would be worth mentioning.

Notable people

  • One of Johnson's more notable inventions is the first "electric operator for sectional upward-acting doors". - It's best to avoid linking anything inside a direct quotation since the link was not part of the original.
  • As a parent and community leader, McKee may have organized the first "after-prom". - I assume this means locally. If so, I don't think it's significant enough to include. If, on the other hand, McKee invented something that had never been tried anywhere, this should be made clear. The word "may" is a separate problem. It's a "weasel word" that will not survive scrutiny. Did he or didn't he?

Other

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