Talk:Texas oil boom

New article

Folks,

As I was working on other Texas-related articles I noticed that I couldn't find an article on this important historical event/period. This really was a revolution of sorts and key to Texas' modern history. Right now this is just a stub.

Please feel free to offer commentary on the direction for the article. My thinking is that it should not be a general history of the early 20th century but rather should focus on the history more closely related to the boom (i.e. the more direct effects on the state). I'm thinking it should cover the economic, sociological, cultural, and political effects.

--Mcorazao (talk) 15:59, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

Just curious, but are there ellipses in the second half of the article?? or is it yet another bug in firefox? --Nsaum75 (talk) 06:52, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

No. I probably shouldn't do that. The thing is that the article is still incomplete. There are sections where I found good reference material for some specific content so I filled in that content and the reference. But the section I would put that content into was still very incomplete. So as not to have somebody swoop in and start tagging the article as being biased because a particular section currently focuses too much on one thing I just put the ellipses as placeholders to show that the section is not finished (and reminders to myself). I am hoping to have a complete draft of the article this week. --Mcorazao (talk) 12:34, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Oh, okay. No problem. I just wanted to make sure it wasnt my browser acting up again (using Beta version of FireFox). In case you were unaware, there is a {{underconstruction}} template too. --Nsaum75 (talk) 02:58, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Discussion: Brief review by Charles Edward

Charles Edward posted a peer review here.

Questions and replies, if Charles has time:

• 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.

I wanted to put an hat note like that except that I am unaware of an article or even a section of an article that specifically addresses that period. I suppose that I could create the article (or delete the sentence). The only reason that I added the sentence is that I have seen references that actually use the term "Oil Boom" unqualified to refer to the 70s/80s period (less common but not unheard of).

I think, if nothing else, you could put that note italicized across the top. If you had any information on that boom, you could always make a couple paragraph stub on it too.

I actually went ahead and created a page on the 1970s Energy Crisis since it seemed like that was something that should exist. I linked to that since it was that crisis that precipitated the 70s/80s boom. --Mcorazao (talk) 03:35, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

• 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."

Actually I always have trouble with these types of statements. The problem here is that this division into two periods is not a widely held historiographical convention. What I find in the sources is that, when talking about the boom, some sources focus on the 1901 - 1920s period, some sources focus on the 1930s - 1940s period, and some focus on the 1901 - 1940s period. I wrote the article based on the last one. However, it seemed to me I wasn't being NPOV if I didn't acknowledge that the boom was slowing in the late 1920s and the Joiner strike renewed the boom era. But I don't know what the right wording is to avoid WP:OR and maintain WP:NPOV.

I see, well if books tend to treat them separately, I would think that it would be ok to treat them separately within the article, even if they are not expressly noted as separate in the sources. My primary goal with that comment was more to show how you could take a fairly long sentence and shorten it up and still say about the same thing.

• 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.

In some of these cases I put the reference at the beginning of the paragraph. I guess I need to move references to the end.

Thats correct, and if you feel you need to reference multiple times, you can leave it at the first sentence and put a duplicate at the end of the paragraph.

• 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.

Thanks. I actually started to add more about efforts by communities to protect the environment. But most of that occurred starting in the 50s and 60s (there was some that occurred earlier I could talk about). So I deliberately avoided talking about conservation efforts that occurred afterward.

Thats understandable. In the government and politics section you talk about the laize-fair state position, which in part answer this

• Is there a rough estimate of how many billions of barrels of oil were pumped in total from the fields?

Good question. I'll see if I can dig up some numbers. Of course, there is probably a signficant disparity from the amount that came out of the ground and the amount that reached the refineries (hence the environmental problems).

• What means of delivery was used to get the oil to market? Pipelines, trucks, ships?

Pipelines largely brought it to the refineries. Then ships, trucks, etc. to end customers. I'll expand ...

• Any idea how many people were employed by the oil industry in this period?

Have not seen statistics on that. I'll keep looking ...

• Did any workers unions problems or strikes arise during this period, especially during the depression, as was common elsewhere in the nation?

There is a little bit that I have seen on that subject but not a lot. My understanding is that people were flooding into the state so rapidly and the state was so anti-union that organized labor simply could not get much traction.

That might be worth noting, if there is a source. That is fairly stark contrast to other similar booms and a unique thing, especially given the time period that it occurred in.

• Is there any hard numbers on just how much tax revenue the oil taxes provided? I said a tiny bit about that in the Government and politics sections.
• 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?

The wells did not "dry up" during this period (rather the fields as a whole did not dry up). There was no real "decline" (well, not statewide; in individual communities there were local crashes and declines as discussed in the article). All that really happened was that by the end of WWII the cities and the industry in Texas had become relatively mature and gov't demand for oil was going down (because the war was over). The industry went on but the big boom times were over (for the time being). Even as there were new discoveries and new peaks in demand the state and the industry were already so big that these localized events no longer caused the huge surges that the state had previously seen. Texas simply settled into a pattern of more normal development. I guess I could try to state that more explicitly. Frankly I hadn't done so because I haven't found a source which explicitly makes a similar point so it is somewhat WP:OR to say this without a source. This issue is in fact why the Timeframe section is a little awkward.

That makes sense. I would suggest some sort of "Aftermath" section still, that gives an idea of about how the whole thing gradually ended. It don't need to be detailed, but some sort of an end date or range should be included

• I notice there are no external links. Are there no websites with useful information on this topic?

I looked a little. I didn't find any authoritative sites that explicitly discuss this particular period (though there are, of course, many sites that cover topics related to the period or discuss the period in a much larger context). But I honestly hadn't looked all that hard. I'll see what I can do.

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)

Very useful. Thanks so much.

--Mcorazao (talk) 21:59, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Thats good to hear! If you would like another set of eyes for a copy edit before you take the article to a review, let me know when you are ready to have it reviewed. I'd be glad to give it a copy edit. :) —Charles Edward ^{(Talk | Contribs)} 02:04, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

OK, I've moved the references to conform to WP:MOS, added references, and modified the prose. Hopefully this addresses your concerns. I removed most of the controversial images. One that I think is ok I left in and have requested more info. --Mcorazao (talk) 07:41, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

I have copy editted the article, and made a significant change in the lead. There were a few areas I was not perfectly sure about, and may have copy editted out a bit of the meaning. Feel free to revert any or all of the copy edit. I have also added citation tags wherever I felt they were needed. Again, feel free to remove them if you disagree. The article is pretty close to GA in my opinion, and could probably pass a review. —Charles Edward ^{(Talk | Contribs)} 16:57, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks so much! --Mcorazao (talk) 17:59, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Why is there a picture of Dallas Love Field?

This is not mentioned in the article or its relevance to the Texas Oil Boom. I think it should be removed. Rlbarton (talk) 16:44, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Admittedly Love Field is not the best picture but I was having trouble finding a free picture from the era that would be more specifically emblematic. I'm not sure, though, I understand the explicit argument for removing it is. Nothing says the subject of an image has to be explicitly described in the article. The section is simply talking about economic development during this era.

Anyway, if you have a suggestion as to an available image that would be better please share. --Mcorazao (talk) 16:57, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Texas Oil Boom/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Dana boomer (talk) 03:29, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Hi! I will be reviewing this article for GA status, and should have the full review up shortly. Dana boomer (talk) 03:29, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

GA review (see here for criteria)

1. It is reasonably well written.

   a (prose): b (MoS):

   • The lead especially has an overabundance of "boom" and "boom era". While I realize that the article being about a boom makes it hard to write without referring to that term, it makes for rather repetitive reading. The last two sentences of the third paragraph, for instance, contain the word boom three times.
   • There are a lot of short paragraphs in the article, which make the article choppy and harder to read. Some of these should be combined if possible.
   • I believe the article is overlinked, with multiple linkings to the same term/place throughout the article, and basic things such as state in the lead and well-known countries in the Mechanization section being linked. Although it's not a big deal, I would have a prose/MOS guru, such as User:Tony1, take a look at it if you plan to take the article to FAC.
   • The information on Houston being the city that the Depression forgot is repeated in the Economy and Urban Development sections.
   • Just for future knowledge, when you write something like "In 1917, xzy happened..." there should be a comma after the date. I fixed the ones I saw, but may not have caught all of them.

2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.

   a (references): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR):

   • In references such as #4, the title should be decapitalized, even if it is capitalized in the original source.
   • A couple of web refs, such as #64, need access dates.

   • So the policy has been modified but does not actually say this. Are we interpreting the requirement now to say that access dates are necessarily for all web sites? --Mcorazao (talk) 15:31, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

3. It is broad in its coverage.

   a (major aspects): b (focused):

4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.

   Fair representation without bias:

5. It is stable.

   No edit wars, etc.:

6. It is illustrated by images, where possible and appropriate.

   a (images are tagged and non-free images have fair use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):

   • File:102 329 nobel oilwells.jpg says "Please decide for yourself if it is fair use or not". It includes a Russian PD template, which I believe to be correct, but this sentence should probably be checked and removed.
   • The image in the Environment section has the caption "False-color satellite photograph of Galveston Bay, courtesy of NASA". From what I can see, this is a USGS photo, not a NASA one.

7. Overall:

   Pass/Fail:

From my initial sweep, this looks like a nice article. So far, I've gone through references and images. I'm stopping here for the night, and will be back tomorrow evening to finish up the prose review and others parts and pieces. Please feel free to start on these comments, or to wait until I've finished the full review. Please let me know if you have any questions! Dana boomer (talk) 03:48, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

I apologize for not getting back to this sooner. RL got a little crazy... In reply to the image question that you left on my talk page, I'm really not sure. I'm really not the person to ask on complicated copyright matters - I can usually spot a bad copyright, but I'm not that great at figuring out how to turn it into a good one. I would suggest asking User:Awadewit or User:NuclearWarfare for advice on the image. Prose comments in a bit. Dana boomer (talk) 23:31, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

The full prose review is now above. Once those issues are taken care of, as well as the one remaining reference issue and the image things, this article should be good to go for GA status. Thanks for being patient with me! Dana boomer (talk) 00:45, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

I've gone through the article and hopefully fixed the things you requested. I am still looking at the Azerbaijan oil wells images to try to figure out what to do (I'll probably end up stripping the image). --Mcorazao (talk) 15:31, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Things are looking really good. The main thing with the access dates is that they allow reviewers/other editors to see when the article was last accessed, which makes it easier to fix broken links through internet archive sites. They also allow editors to quickly identify possibly dated information in articles - for example, if an article says "today, the population of smith city is 5,000", but the accessdate is from 2005, it raises a red flag that the stats may need to be updated. Anyways, the access dates in this article look good now - I tweaked a couple that were using the wrong parameter and not showing up. The Handbook of Texas template is odd, using a retrieved= parameter instead of an accessdate= one like most other templates do. Anyways, the only thing left with this article is the Russian image, so when that is dealt with, the article can be passed. Dana boomer (talk) 20:34, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

I still can't figure out how to establish the image's status. I actually tried to pull some other images from this period from other articles but they are also problematic. So for the time being I am just removing the image for lack of a better alternative. --Mcorazao (talk) 05:03, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

OK, with that gone, the article is good to go for GA status. Nice work! I hope that Awadewit is able to help you establish free-use licensing on the image, it's a nice one. Dana boomer (talk) 15:44, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Debate: iconic figures

In the recent peer review one of the comments made was the following regarding the Iconic figures section:

This section is just a summary of the four men's Wikipedia articles. Consider removing it or combining their names and accomplishments in the appropriate article sections.

I personally disagree (though obviously I am biased) as I think distributing the discussions of these people into the rest of the prose would dillute their significance. Additionally I think there is value to the reader in highlighting the key players separately from the rest of the historical discussion. But I'm wondering if I am alone in that opinion (obviously my opinion is not universal).

Comments?

--Mcorazao (talk) 15:14, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

Capitalization of the title

On the Oil boom page, it lists the Mexican oil boom, Calgary oil boom and North Dakota oil boom. All of these have the "oil boom" part in full lowercase, but the Texas Oil Boom page capitalizes the first letters of both words. What can be done to change this? ☞ Rim ^{< Talk | Edits >} 17:38, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

A regular user wouldn't have been able to move the page to an uncapitalised title because there were edits in the way. You could've requested that it be done at requested moves but, because I'm an admin, and I think this is an uncontroversial request, I've moved the page for you. Graham87 04:39, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

Thank you, I'll make sure to remember this in case something similar happens in the future. ☞ Rim ^{< Talk | Edits >} 06:02, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

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Rename to Croatian oil boom?

Per List of Croatian inventions and discoveries, this is apparently a Croatian invention(!). As are Spindletop, rotary drilling and a whole bunch of stuff around Anthony Francis Lucas. Blowout preventer in particular seems to be just too late for this (Lucas died in 1921).

Yeah. Whatever.

Anyway, this is a troublesome group of topics. See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Technology#National invention categories It would be useful to have someone with knowledge of the oil industry comment or refute this. Andy Dingley (talk) 15:04, 27 July 2017 (UTC)