Wikipedia:Peer review/Texas Oil Boom/archive1

Texas Oil Boom

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because I have completed a complete draft and would like advice on how to move this to GA/FA.

Thanks, Mcorazao (talk) 02:58, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Brief review by Charles Edward A nice article, but still needing some work. However, it is certainly of B quality, and I would recommend you change the project rating. Here are some items I see that could use improvement:

• MOS issues
  • Your lead has five paragraphs, but should have a max of four. Check out WP:LEAD for more information. I would recommend moving the last sentence paragraph, and making it instead a hat-note and linking it to the correct article. See WP:HAT for instructions.
  • There are a number of short choppy paragraphs in the article. I recommend merging these with other paragraphs. See WP:Paragraph.
  • The reference section should follow the notes section.
  • Your reference and note section each contains multiple books. I would recommend removing all full book titles from the notes section and placing them in the reference section and then making footnotes with the author, year, and page. This will make the notes look less cluttered.
  • References # 2 and 58 do not have access dates, author, or publisher. I recommend using a "cite web" template, but you can add the information without it.

• Prose
  • The article is fairly well wrote, and with just a little work the prose would be good enough for GA. It is still quite a bit shy of FA though.
  • Try tightening things up a bit, for example: "The era can actually be thought of as two separate boom periods, the one launched by the Lucas strike at Spindletop at the turn of the century, and the one launched by the Joiner strike in East Texas at the outset of the Great Depression." would be more concise as "The era contained two separate periods: the boom began by the Lucas strike at Spindletop in 1901, and the second period began by the Joiner strike in East Texas in 1930."
  • I find copy editing to be the most arduous and difficult task in writing an article. Getting a second set of eyes to proof read it before starting a GA of FA review can be invaluable. For some pointers read Wikipedia:How to copy-edit
  • There are alot of weasel words, and weasel like statements in the article. Words like "Perhaps", "Considered", and "Indeed" should almost always be removed and replaced. If you use words like Perhaps or Considered, you need to say "Consider by XYZ to be thus and thus" or "XYZ said it is perhaps the..." Words like that indicate an opinion is being given, and require the source of the opinion to be given. See Wikipedia:Avoid weasel words for more examples and solutions.

• Images
  • All of your images are on the right. WP:Image recommends staggering them left to right, and any image where the subject faces right should be placed on the left.
  • File:Giant Poster.gif is copyrighted has not fair use rational (I don't think there is one) and should be removed from the article.
  • File:Gulf logo.svg, same as previous, no fair use rational and should be removed.
  • File:Abraham Gesner Photo.gif has no source, and is therefore not verifiable. Should be removed unless a source can be located
  • File:Lucas gusher.jpg, the source of this image is to vague. It needs to list a publication, website, etc. Something that verifiable shows it was published prior to 1923.

• Referencing
  • There are significant referencing problems throughout the article, and in my opinion that will be your chief problem in getting through either an FA or GA review in its present state. As a rule of thumb, each new fact, statistic, and paragraph should end with a citation. See WP:Citation Here are some places I feel should have one, but don't:
  • "There is no widely agreed upon end date for the boom. For many small towns which became boomtowns during the 1920s as demand for oil soared, their often extreme dependence on a relatively limited petroleum reservoir caused their local economies to collapse in the late 1920s and early 1930s as production in their fields peaked and the onset of the Great Depression slackened demand. In the major refining and financing centers such as Beaumont, Houston, and Dallas, though the Depression hurt them their booms continued to varying degrees through the end of World War II. As the war ended, demand for gasoline and other petroleum derivates slowed nationwide and the more matured refining centers no longer saw the extreme growth patterns of earlier times."
  • "In 1900, the Great Hurricane struck Galveston destroying much of the city and killing thousands."
  • "The future growth of the oil industry in southeast Texas would largely bypass Galveston altogether as the city struggled to rebuild."
  • "Population in 1900, as today, was predominantly concentrated in the eastern half of the state, with major shipping points at the Galveston Bay and in Dallas-Fort Worth. With the notable exception of El Paso, West Texas and the Panhandle were sparsely populated making the eastern portion of the state more practical initially for the exploitation of natural resources."
  • "The success of the Corsicana field and increasing demand for oil worldwide led to increased exploration around the state."
  • "The new well produced approximately 100,000 barrels of oil per day, an unheard of production level at the time."
  • "Investment in Texas oil speculation in 1901 reached approximately $235 million US (roughly $6 billion in 2008 dollars). Interest in Pennsylvania and other areas of the country for oil production soon paled compared with Texas."
  • "Initially oil production was divided among many small producers."
  • "This allowed less populated West Texas and the Panhandle to again be explored more fully."
  • " His company, which was later absorbed by Magnolia Petroleum Company and then acquired by Standard Oil of New York, built the first modern refinery west of the Mississippi River."
  • "During the 1930s, a Dallas company known as the Great American Finance System, struggling through the Depression, began to finance drilling operations in the state using oil reserves as collateral. Dallas came to establish itself as a financing center for the oil industry. The Great American Finance System eventually reorganized itself as the Great American Oil Company of Texas, which became an oil producer in its own right (and was much later purchased by Phillips Petroleum)."
  • "Growing cities required many new homes and buildings benefiting the construction industry."
  • "The state's commercial centers grew tremendously as well during this period. Houston grew by 555% to 292,352. Dallas grew by 511% to 260,475. Fort Worth grew by 504% to 163,447. El Paso grew by 578% to 102,421. By contrast, New York City grew by 101% and even Detroit, the booming "motor city," only grew by 485%."
  • "Between 1910 and 1930 the percentage of urban dwellers (those living in towns of greater than 2500 people) increased by 32%, resulting in 41% of Texans living in urban areas in 1930."
  • "Wealthy Texans established elite suburbs such as River Oaks, which became a model for community planning in the U.S. Oil-related growth led to the establishment of numerous new institutions such as the University of Houston, the Museum of Fine Arts, Hermann Park and the Houston Zoo, and the Houston Symphony Orchestra."
  • There are quite a few other similar examples in the rest of the article.

• Content
  • The environment section should be expanded significantly. I would recommend highlighting a couple of specific instances of trouble, and also put in some information regarding what specific steps were taken by the state or localities to protect resources or regulate the oil wells. Indiana Gas Boom might be of interest to you, which occurred in the decade before the Texas boom.
  • Is there a rough estimate of how many billions of barrels of oil were pumped in total from the fields?
  • What means of delivery was used to get the oil to market? Pipelines, trucks, ships?
  • Any idea how many people were employed by the oil industry in this period?
  • Did any workers unions problems or strikes arise during this period, especially during the depression, as was common elsewhere in the nation?
  • Is there any hard numbers on just how much tax revenue the oil taxes provided?
  • The biggest thing I see missing is there is no "Decline" section. Eventually the wells dried up, what happened then? About when did they dry up? Was it all at once or gradual? Was there economic fallout because of it, or had the economy diversified?
  • I notice there are no external links. Are there no websites with useful information on this topic?

Overall I think the article is of B quality right now. A fair amount of work, primarily on referencing, and taking care of the minor issues I've mentioned will bring it to GA quality. FA quality will require significant expansion still to cover more subtopics, and a significant amount of copy editting, on top of the referencing required to get it to GA.

I hope this review is helpful to you! The article is already an interesting one, with lots of good content and has obviously taken considerable research. Good job so far, and good luck in the future. Keep up the good work! —Charles Edward ^{(Talk | Contribs)} 21:05, 1 November 2009 (UTC)