Wikipedia:Peer review/Neighborhoods of Davenport, Iowa/archive1

Neighborhoods of Davenport, Iowa

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I've listed this article for peer review because…I want to get the page up to featured list quality. I had nominated it for GA previously, and the editor suggested I nominate it for FL, because it is essentially a list.

Thanks, CTJF83 chat 03:59, 20 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

comments by doncram Some quick thoughts:

• The intro is a bit unclear, IMO. It states " The city is divided into five areas for neighborhoods: downtown, central, east end, near north and northwest, and west end.[1]" It begs the question: Who divides it that way? I see there is a footnote to a planning commission or something, but if you want to organize the list according to their scheme I think you need to explain whose scheme it is, explicitly.
  • Fixed CTJF83 chat 20:49, 27 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Next sentence is: "The neighborhoods contain many architectural designs including Victorian, Queen Anne, Tudor Revival, along with others.[1]" To be technical, buildings have architectural styles like those; i don't believe that neighborhoods are designed by any one of those styles. There could perhaps be some planned neighborhoods which actually have a particular style of neighborhood layout/design, however. But you seem to be referring, perhaps too broadly to be useful for readers, to the probable fact that there are houses in those styles. I would imagine there are many other styles of architecture represented in Davenport, too, including styles that are more restricted to industrial and commercial buildings, which are also in neighborhoods.
  • Do you suggest removing the whole sentence "The neighborhoods contain many architectural designs including Victorian, Queen Anne, Tudor Revival, along with others" or just rewording it so it doesn't sound like the neighborhoods are all focused on one specific design? CTJF83 chat 20:49, 27 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • I suggest rewording. As a summary, lede-style statement, given that there is info on architectural styles in the neighborhood sections below, perhaps you could say something like there are several/six/however many neighborhoods which have concentrations of specific architectural styles, while many other neighborhoods have typically vernacular architecture or are more diverse in their architecture. If you say something like that, you should make it be clear in each of your following neighborhood sections which type of neighborhood it is. The lede section is summary. Actually you should look at guidelines on writing ledes, see wp:lede. I have seen another frequent peer reviewer often commenting that a lede should pretty much contain mention of the topic of each separate section following, and that it usually should not contain anything not covered in more detail elsewhere. --doncram (talk) 20:06, 29 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• I notice at National Register of Historic Places listings in Scott County, Iowa that there are actually hundreds of places in Davenport that are listed on the National Register, including, by my quick count, at least 17 separate historic districts. Few of these have articles yet, but I know that there are available extensive NRHP nomination documents for each one of them. Many are covered in a NRHP "Multiple Property Submission" (document available at http://www.nr.nps.gov/multiples/64000149.pdf ), which i recommend considering for use as a source. But, I was checking the NRHP list first with the idea that i could suggest that you link to individual NRHP places, from each of the neighborhood sections in your list. However since there are so few with articles so far, I wonder if it would be better to advise that you recruit others to work on developing articles about many or all of them, before trying to bring this neighborhood article up as a FLC. Especially for the historic district ones, it seems to me that it would improve this neighborhood list article to link to them, and to include summary information about some of the historic districts (from articles that have yet to be developed in wikipedia, yes). I and other WikiProject NRHP members could possibly help you with developing some of them. You could post at wt:NRHP about that.
  
  • • The on-line PDF document i linked actually contains two reports, dated 1982 and 1983, and are possibly the basis for, or a major contributing element of, the 1985 off-line study which appears to be your primary source. I note that it mentions neighborhood(s) such as Smart-Monroe which the current list-article does not mention, and that it provides some other detail on neighborhoods such as Riverview Terrace which the list-article does cover. Riverview Terrace appears to be NRHP-listed. Since these documents are long, i suggest when footnoting to it to be sure to include page numbers of the PDF document using the {{rp}} template. --doncram (talk) 20:06, 29 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • I would start articles on the NRHP, with help. It isn't really a task I want to take on myself, do you know (including you) of any of the members who would specifically help with this? CTJF83 chat 20:49, 27 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • I notice u've just asked Pubdog, who has done a lot of very good starter articles on NRHPs, especially working systematically in states where NRHP documents are available on-line at a state site. Unfortunately I cannot find a state repository of on-line docs for NRHPs in Iowa (tho i did not check the National Park Svc's own system for its IA coverage yet). You might reach others who would help with creating stub articles at least, upon request at talk page of the project (wt:NRHP) but asking individually is fine too.
    • Another you might contact is User:KudzuVine, who is very experienced and skilled in uploading historic Historic American Buildings Survey/Historic American Engineering Record (HABS/HAER) pics. Searching at the HABS/HAER website http://lcweb2.loc.gov/pp/hhquery.html on "Davenport IA" and on "Scott County IA" yields about 10 places where there are historic pics available, which would help in developing articles. I didn't cross-check HABS items vs. the NRHP list but there is usually some overlap, and where i have identified places of specific interest K has always been extremely helpful about selecting, cropping, uploading pics.
    • User:Royalbroil has done a lot of Iowa NRHP work over time
    • I notice at Wikipedia:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places#Members that 3 others identify Iowa as their location or interest area.
    • To begin to make a dent, I would encourage you to identify one or a few historic districts on the NRHP list that seem to correspond to a neighborhood, and request the NRHP documents for them. These are provided free of charge in either scanned form by email or by postal mail, upon request to nr_reference (at) nps.gov . You may find them very valuable, especially if there is an NRHP historic district that corresponds pretty well to a neighborhood. doncram (talk) 19:31, 29 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Also, I wonder if you have identified any other neighborhoods list-articles, either FL or not, which you would like to emulate. I am aware of neighborhood list-articles for a number of U.S. cities including Boston MA, Hartford CT, Philadelphia PA, but i don't particularly recall any one being a great model to follow. Do you have one or two in mind, though?
  • Well there are no neighborhood articles in either FL or FA. The Hartford one is a decent start but the other two, like most neighborhood articles are more of just a list without substance and descriptions. Perhaps I could turn this into the FL/FA model. CTJF83 chat 20:49, 27 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Hope this helps a little! --doncram (talk) 19:33, 27 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• • Thank you for the review. CTJF83 chat 20:49, 27 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • You're welcome :)
    • Another big question is: how comprehensive is this list of neighborhoods? In some cities the city is officially partitioned into named neighborhoods, and then all such official neighborhoods should certainly be covered. But in these and all other cities, there are many unofficial neighborhoods used in newspaper coverage and by real estate brokers and for many purposes. Not sure how you get a comprehensive list, but it's worth mentioning as many as you can find, even if you choose to just say a given neighborhood is pretty much covered in a section about a different name. You don't need a separate section about every past name. But have you done a lot of Google searching/browsing and/or searching in archives of the local newspaper, to dig up neighborhood names as well as articles about them? Lots of newspapers include real estate section articles about "Living in X neighborhood" from time to time. Certainly there must be some such articles to use as sources. I would bet that public library librarians would be very helpful in knowing about such and in helping you find them, if you are local. --doncram (talk) 20:06, 29 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      • I can try and expand. All these came from one book about historical neighborhoods, I'll see what else I can dig up. CTJF83 chat 19:38, 30 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]