Talk:Draining and development of the Everglades/GA1

GA Review

This article is pretty much there, I think. I do, however, have a few issues that I think ought to be addressed:

• "Florida quickly formed a committee to consolidate grants to pay for any attempts. However, not until after The Civil War and Reconstruction were over in 1877 did attention turn back to the Everglades." Turn back? When and why did it turn away?

• "Smith suggested cutting through the rim of the Everglades (what is understood as the Atlantic Coastal Ridge) ...". "... known today as the Atlantic Coastal Ridge"?

• "A band of hunters, naturalists, and collectors ventured through in 1885, taking along with them the 17-year-old grandson of an early resident of Miami. The landscape unnerved the young man shortly after entering the Shark River: "The place looked wild and lonely. About three o'clock it seemed to get on Henry's nerves ...". Was Henry the young man? What's the purpose of the detail "17-year-old grandson of an early resident of Miami"?

• "Napoleon Bonaparte Broward promised to drain the Everglades during his race for the governor in 1904 ..." This reads very awkwardly to me on a number of levels. He was going to drain the Everglades during his election campaign? Racing for the governor? What about "campaign to be elected governor". Presumably this was the governorship of Florida?

• "Two severe hurricanes in 1926 and 1928 ...". That suggests to me that there may have been four hurricanes, two in 1926 and another two in 1928.

• Shouldn't the long quotation in Exploration start with either "The" or "... the"?

• "However, an early report by the project reflected local attitudes about the role of the Everglades to the nearby developed areas:" That doesn't seem to make sense.

• "Adding 100 pounds (45 kg) of the element ...". Manganese sulfate isn't an element.

• "Fields in the EAA are typically 40 acres ...". Needs a metric conversion.

• "The canals proposed by Wright were unsuccessful in making the lands south of Lake Okeechobee fulfill their promises to local farmers." Seems strangely written. What promises had the lands made?

• "Engineers were pressured to regulate the water flow for farmers, but for commercial fishers as well who often requested conflicting water levels in the lake". "... not only for farmers"?

• "The 1920s presented several favorable conditions that helped the land and population boom, one of which was a 20-year absence of any severe storms". There were 20 years without storms in the 1920s?

This is a fairly long article, which I haven't quite finished reviewing yet, so there may be a few further points to follow, but these are my initial thoughts. --Malleus Fatuorum (talk) 19:56, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Ok. Changes made. I think I need to formulate a Convoluted Sentence Barnstar, which in reality should actually be a Convoluted Sentence Barnparallelogram. If there is anything on Wikipedia that unites my articles, it is my clumsy attempts at saying what I'm trying to say. And stuff. Thanks for the review. I know it's long, and I appreciate the time you're putting into reading it. --Moni3 (talk) 20:41, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for dealing with those so quickly, just a few more points:

• "The scouts returned, reporting not enough land was possible to build through the Everglades ...". Not sure what this means. Not enough land was available?

• "Some burned off the sawgrass or other vegetation to find the peat a source of fuel that continued to burn". They didn't do it to find the source of peat presumably? Perhaps something like "... only to discover that the underlying peat continued to burn"?

• "Quickly the focus of government entities homed in on the control of floods rather than drainage." Reads very awkwardly. What's a government entity?

• "the United States declared legal limits of the lake to be minimum at 14 feet (4.3 m) and maximum at 17 feet (5.2 m)". Not clear what this means. How would passing a law have any effect on the depth of water in the lake?

• "... the Dade County Port Authority (DCPA) eventually purchased 39 square miles ...". What's the significance of "eventually" in that sentence?

• I don't know what the current protocols are for referring to American Indians/native Americans, but would it be permissible in the lead where it says: "the U.S. military's mission was to seek out Seminoles ..." to say something like "Seminole Indians" instead of "Seminoles", so that those of us not so well versed in American history don't have to follow the link? --Malleus Fatuorum (talk) 21:44, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

• "The DCPA bulldozed it and laid a single runway they declared was for training pilots". What was it the DCPA bulldozed?

That's about it. It's a really nice and informative article that you ought to be proud of. I'll formally put it on hold now, at least for the few minutes before you fix these last few points. --Malleus Fatuorum (talk) 21:44, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

All fixed except for the point of water levels in Lake Okeechobee. Because all these Everglades articles kind of run together in my mind, I don't know if it's clear that water levels changes drastically within a year or throughout many years. The one constant found in the Everglades, including Lake Okeechobee, is variability. The conflict people continue to run into is our desire and need to ensure the environment of South Florida remains stable, which it will not do anytime soon. When legal limits were set for the lake, it was another step, another notch deeper that affected the ecosystems, ensuring that consequences down the road would somehow come back to bite us in the ass. Does that need to be made clear? If so, how?

Thank you for reading the article. I appreciate your time very much. I don't know if you are part of the FA Team, but I do plan to take this to FA. Do you have any suggestions to prepare it for that? Thanks again, MF. --Moni3 (talk) 22:20, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

(ec) Thank you for so quickly pandering to the few minor points that I brought up; it's great when a nominator responds as quickly and as positively as you've done. I still find the point about the legal limits set on the depth of water in Lake Okeechobee a little opaque, but that may be because I'm unclear on US law. Is it a federal responsibility to maintain the water depth between those limits? What happens if they're breached, who gets punished? But that's not a show-stopper as far as I'm concerned, so I'm very happy to list this article as a GA now.

I'm not a part of the FA Team, for reasons that I won't bore you with. Looking towards an FA nomination though, I wouldn't expect too many problems over the content of the article (perhaps excluding the issue of water depth in Lake Okeechobee), or at least no insurmountable ones. MoS compliance, referencing, images, and sources look pretty good as well. I think the main issue to be addressed is the usual one that comes up at FA; a professional, even brilliant, standard of prose. FA reviewers tend to forget that it's rather easier to write inspiring prose about a work of literature than it is about a geographical area or feature, but nobody ever claimed that life was fair. I wish you luck in your future attempt to secure FA status for this article, but for now congratulations on achieving a GA listing. --Malleus Fatuorum (talk) 22:53, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Oh, I have to revert one of your copy edits. Prohibition is an era in the US and an amendment to the Constitution, so it should remain capitalized. --Moni3 (talk) 22:27, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Fair enough. It isn't capitalised in the prohibition article being linked to though. Should that link be changed to Prohibition in the United States? --Malleus Fatuorum (talk) 22:53, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

I changed the link. Thanks. I think the purpose of legislating the water level in the lake is to determine who should maintain it, and who should be responsible if it does not get followed. Read - who should get sued the next time it floods. --Moni3 (talk) 23:05, 10 June 2008 (UTC)