Talk:New Richmond Tornado

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New Richmond Tornado was a good article nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There are suggestions below for improving the article. Once these are addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake. Reviewed version: July 20, 2007

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[edit] Fujita Scale?

Why isn't the Fujita Scale (F0, F1, F2, etc...) for this tornado listed? (: If there is a reason it isn't, the reason really should be said. The article lists the damage, which is what the ratings are based on, I believe. Therefore, shouldn't its rating on the Scale be able to be determined? —Preceding unsigned comment added by KEB (talk • contribs)

The Fujita scale was not created until 1973, and only retro-actively applied to tornadoes since 1950. While it is likely that this tornado was an F4, or even F5, without structural analysis by engineers, or extreme photographic and testimonial evidence, there cannot be an objective rating on the F-scale. Don't forget, in the days before modern engineering, buildings were not built as sturdily as today, so complete destruction of a small town might occur with an F3 or even F2 tornado. Runningonbrains 21:44, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] West central Wisconsin

I live in New Richmond and it is most certainly not in east central Wisconsin. Mark fixed and closed. 12.193.140.196 07:15, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Lake St. Croix Beach

I made a minor edit to this article.... There is no such thing as Lake St. Croix. The town of Lake St. Croix Beach, Minnesota lies on the St. Croix River (Wisconsin-Minnesota). Gopher backer 23:06, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Never mind, after further research I've discovered that Lake St. Croix refers to a wide part of the river. Gopher backer 00:03, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] GA Review

Hello, I'm currently reviewing this article for its nomination as a Good Article and will be leaving notes here so you know what I'm thinking as I read it. I've already checked against the "quick fail criteria", making sure that the article is verifiable, generally neutral, stable, and does not have any copyright problems, so right now I'm checking to see if the article is formatted correctly, adequately referenced, and covers a broad range of information in a completely neutral manner. I'm also documenting any edits I make here as part of the review. Here goes:

• Ok, to begin with, I did a quick reading of the article just to get a feel for it. A few sections struck me as being slightly biased, using peacock words and so forth. The citations looked ok, and it seemed to cover a sufficient amount of information. I'm going to read it in detail now to double-check everything.
• Lead is a good summary, short but sweet.
• Warning - I'm going to be blunt here. "June 12 was a very warm, sunny day for most of the afternoon." Who cares? Written like this, the sentence doesn't really serve a purpose in the article. Skip right to the circus (which should be left in), or reword it to somehow relate it to the subject without sounding "peacocky".
• Changed "will some hail" -> "with some hail"
• Don't start sentences with "And". It's bad grammar.
• Changed "The entire town, save the extreme west end, was totally destroyed." to "All but the extreme west end of the town was completely destroyed." It just reads better to me that way. And I really don't like the word "totally", it sounds too peacocky.
• "The damage wrought by the tornado was so complete, the town had to be essentially rebuilt." The tone of this sentence does not sound encyclopedic to me. There are other sentences I've read to this point that lack a professional tone as well, this is just an example. Try to make it sound as though it's being read off a speech prepared by your strictest college professor. Or something like that. For this sentence, maybe something along the lines of "The extensive damage caused by the tornado required much of the town to be rebuilt."
• List of peacock/non-NPOVish type words:

• unprecedented (lead)
• swept to their deaths (paragraph 3, Synopsis)
• turned out to be a death trap (paragraph 3, Synopsis)
• totally (paragraph 1, Aftermath)

General Comments: Ok. I'm afraid this article still needs a little bit of work. Try to reword some of the sentences to get a more formal tone out of them. A few places in here sounded almost as though they were out of a dramatic novel - the "death trap" line comes to mind here. Remember that this is an encyclopedia. I know that this was a tragedy, but try to make the article a little less tragic. You can say basically the same thing without the same phrasing, just use my changes and comments above as examples. The information covered in this article is very complete - I really don't know what else there is to say about a tornado that only lasts a few hours - and you've done a good job of making sure everything is referenced. This is really close, but I don't think it's there quite yet.
The Verdict: To allow these concerns to be corrected, I am going to place this nomination ON HOLD for a period of no more than 7 days. I am confident that you will be able to improve the article enough in that time to allow it to pass with flying colors when it gets reviewed next. As I've said, this is good, it just needs a little tweaking to make it Good. Good work so far, and good luck with the rest! Hersfold ^(talk/work) 23:39, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Sorry for the very long delay in getting back to this - I've been away for the last week or so. Unfortunately, during the hold period, only one edit was made to the article other than a spelling correction I made. I do not believe this single edit addresses the concerns noted above, and so I cannot promote this article to GA status at this time. I do recommend you continue to work on the article, however, as this is possible GA material. Thank you for your patience, and good luck. Hersfold ^(talk/work) 14:29, 20 July 2007 (UTC)