Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/List of ghost towns in Oklahoma/archive1

The following is an archived discussion of a featured list nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured list candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The list was promoted by PresN via FACBot (talk) 00:25, 16 May 2025 (UTC) [1].[reply]

List of ghost towns in Oklahoma

Featured list candidates/List of ghost towns in Oklahoma/archive1

Nominator(s): TheDoctorWho (talk) 07:35, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If any of you knew me personally, you'd all say that this was inevitable for me and you all knew it was coming. Since you don't, you'll have to take my word for it. History in general, but more specifically ghost towns, have always been a huge interest of mine ever since I (accidentally) visited my first one in 2020. Long story short, this hyperfixation quickly turned into a special interest, that somehow turned into my university senior capstone/portfolio project‽‽‽

I realized how poor of a shape this list was in and practically rewrote/revamped the entire thing to improve everything from sources to accessibility and illustration. Since I was doing this anyways, I went ahead and wrote it up to the FL standards and decided to go ahead and nominate it. Since I believe this will be the FL of its kind I didn't really have anything to model it off of. That said, I modeled it off the closest lists I could find, lists of municipalities (namely List of municipalities in Washington). I hope you guys enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it. :)

If anyone is curious on what my capstone project actually was... I should mention that all five ghost town images are ones that I photographed in 2023. Four of them are actually 35mm film photographs that I hand-developed and then digitized myself (yes, someone is still shooting film in 2025), while the remaining one is a digital image. These images aren't technically included my portfolio because I wasn't quite ready to release them into the public domain yet, but essentially think of them as the b-list images. TheDoctorWho (talk) 07:35, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

Lead image caption is not a sentence so it should not have a full stop
"Oklahoma has an" => "The US state of Oklahoma has an" (can't assume that users in far-flung corners of the world know that Oklahoma is a US state)
"and after being bypassed by highways and interstates" => "or after being bypassed by highways and interstates"
"such as being part of the Tar Creek Superfund Site for existing in an unusual location" => "such as being part of the Tar Creek Superfund Site, for existing in an unusual location"
"such as ruins or foundations and have been reverted for agricultural use" => "such as ruins or foundations, and have been reverted to agricultural use"
"they weren't actually cops to begin with" => "they were not actually police officers to begin with"
That's what I got. A very interesting topic. We don't have anything like this in the UK...... -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 08:55, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
- @ChrisTheDude: Done, thanks for the review! Although I haven't been to any outside of Oklahoma, they're all over the country here. This page lists a few over in the UK, but not sure how their appearance compares to those here. TheDoctorWho (talk) 04:23, 21 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Support - now that you mention it, that whole "several villages were evacuated to be used as training grounds for the British Army and U.S. forces. This was intended to be a temporary arrangement, but many of the villages remained abandoned, and are used for military training to this day" thing certainly rings a bell..... -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 07:09, 21 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

OlifanofmrTennant

Lead should explain what Oklahoma is (similar to how the Washington municipalities does it)
"Whitefield is said to have begun declining during the Great Depression." who said it? Needs a citation
Why does footnote I say by 1975, should the table list 1975 as the dissolved date
Most footnotes need citations
Ref 4 is misspelled as "ghsot"
Under "Martha" Jackson county is listed in lowercase

That's what I found ping me when done Questions? four Olliefant (she/her) 17:42, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@OlifanofmrTennant: Thank you so much for the review! I expanded the location of Oklahoma in the lead slightly, and then added two sentences to the history section about its location. Regarding the "By 1975" footnote, the book has a photo with the caption "Mouser, 1975. Abandoned elevator adjacent to the abandoned rail line." It doesn't list any actual dates of abandonment nor the year of closure for the businesses. No school or post office existed there. All I know is that it was abandoned by 1975, not necessarily that it was in that year. Everything else has been addressed. TheDoctorWho (talk) 04:23, 21 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Support Questions? four Olliefant (she/her) 16:38, 21 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from Bgsu98

"The towns initially began for a number of reasons, including prior to statehood, and often as liquor towns, boomtowns, and mining towns." This sentence reads awkwardly to me, but I'm not sure I can put my finger on why. Maybe something like "These towns began for a number of reasons, often as liquor towns, boomtowns, or mining towns, and many pre-dating statehood." Also, "initially began" sounds redundant.
Perhaps wikilink "statehood" with History of Oklahoma#Early statehood.
"These places vary in their state of current existence..." – I would recommend "These places vary in their current states..."
"A small number have also gained notability for other reasons such as being part of the Tar Creek Superfund Site for existing in an unusual location, or for crimes." Some commas are needed in there.
"Prior to statehood these were..." Again, a comma is needed. "Prior to statehood, these were..."
"after the discovery of natural resources such as oil or petroleum jelly." Comma after "resources".
"Morris for example, classified them..." Comma after "Morris".
"...and go completely unused" Personally, I would say "...and are completely unused".
"Schmidt meanwhile, had a lower threshold..." Comma after "Schmidt".
"a methodology to describe the locations then-status." Apostrophe after "locations" and pluralize "status" (the locations' then-statuses).
"Oklahoma's ghost towns are in various states of existence." You might cite some examples here that demonstrate these different states of existence. For example, something like "Emptytown has no physical remains left and has been reverted to agricultural use." Just a thought.
"because they weren't actually cops to begin with." "Cops" isn't an encyclopedic term.
Photographs under "List of ghost towns" seem to be properly formatted. Y
Table appears to be properly formatted. Y

A very interesting article! I hope my comments are useful. Bgsu98 (Talk) 19:58, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Bgsu98: Thank you, I appreciate you taking the time to review this! I believe I've addressed most everything, I did shift the statehood link slightly further town to "after Oklahoma was admitted to the union" since that's when statehood began. Apologies for using the term "cops", I'm aware it's essentially a slang term for encyclopedias, I believe I was writing that sentence at 4 a.m. and meant to come back and change it later. 😅 TheDoctorWho (talk) 04:23, 21 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

- It looks good… I’m happy to support. Bgsu98 (Talk) 12:03, 21 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Drive-by comment

I like the multiple-images template at the start containing maps a lot, but I'm not sure if the alt text is ideal -- I'm not sure how it would be read by a screen reader, but I imagine if it ended up as "Map of ghost towns in Northwest Oklahoma", "Map of ghost towns in Northeast Oklahoma", etc. seven times, that would be somewhat grating for someone viewing this with a screen reader. I'm not sure how this can be fixed, but I wanted to point it out. Mrfoogles (talk) 22:03, 22 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think (not having used a screen reader) it might be better if there was a way to have screen readers skip the images entirely; I don't know if there's a way to make it just skip the first 7 and read the caption of the last. Mrfoogles (talk) 22:07, 22 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
There's the option of just setting the alt text to "refer to caption" (acceptable per the guidelines laid out at MOS:ALTTEXT). Do you think that would work better? TheDoctorWho (talk) 22:24, 22 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Delegate comment

I was looking to see if I could close this, but I think there's a pretty glaring issue that stopped me: the very first sentence says that there are 2000 ghost towns, but the list only has 164, and there is nothing in the text to explain the discrepancy. Obviously you're using a different inclusion criteria than Ruth 1983 did, but the list needs to be explicit about why there's not 2000 towns listed here, whatever that reason is. --Pres N 21:35, 30 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@PresN: Does the footnote that I just added to the table caption suffice? I could also add it in prose above the table or images if that's a better location.

As far as I'm aware, no complete listing of the full 2,000 exists and even if did it would easily be INDESCRIMINATE. I did enact a stricter inclusion criteria than what I first discovered this list in, which I noted in detail on the talk page.

Morris 1978 also estimates there to be around 2,000, but the book only discusses ~150. He states that he excluded "some" for lack of information and/or because the period they existed was so short. Schmidt 2024 echoes Morris' estimate, but only includes ~100 for similar reasons (some of which are the same ones that Morris covered). TheDoctorWho (talk) 22:33, 30 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Never got this ping for some reason; I'm good with the addition. Source review passed; promoting. --Pres N 18:21, 15 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.