Talk:Washington Monument

Washington Monument has been tagged with "section blanking"

The Washington Monument article has been tagged with "section blanking." I'm not familiar enough with the subject to assess the extent of the person's edits. Can someone please review the changes? Thanks. AceSeeker (talk) 17:37, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

An IP editor had removed a subsection of the article, without providing any explanation. I have restored it. HiLo48 (talk) 03:11, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

Thank you. I appreciate your assistance! AceSeeker (talk) 03:18, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

Encyclopedia article?

I'm not sure this is actually an encyclopedia article. It is more like something from a journal with a comprehensive description of every small detail that would be of interest to an engineer. It fails, I think, at being accessible to a general audience. I tried reading it, word for word, top to bottom, and gave up. It's basically unreadable. Example paragraph:

Three types of levels exist, one for marble courses in the walls, one for marble courses in the pyramidion, and one for stair landings. The level of a marble course in the walls is named by the height of its upper surface or joint, in multiples of 2 feet (61 cm), above the lower surface (zero feet) of the lowest marble course in the walls (now below ground), which rests on the old foundation and is at the same height as four Casey marks (the tops of four brass bolts inserted vertically into the top of the old foundation). The level of a marble course in the pyramidion is similar to those in the walls except that they are in multiples of 4 feet (122 cm). The level of a stair landing is named by its height, in multiples of 10 feet (3.0 m), above the lowest landing, which coincides with the entry lobby floor. The zero-foot height or reference for marble courses in the first phase walls (which do not extend through the rubble walls) is 14+1⁄8 inches (36 cm) below that for stair landings,[1]: 56, 58, 65  but marble levels in the second phase walls (except for the 500-foot level) are only 11 inches (28 cm) below their corresponding stair levels.[9]: sheets 32–35 [121]: 22  }} Between the 150- and 160-foot levels the inner walls rapidly slope outward, increasing the shaft well from 25 feet 1 inch (7.65 m) square to 31 feet 5+1⁄2 inches (9.59 m) square with a corresponding decrease in the thickness of the walls and their weight.[9]: sheets 4–5 [18]: 23  The second phase walls at the 160-foot level were 8 feet 7+1⁄2 inches (2.63 m) thick, which, combined with the larger shaft well, yields an outer dimension of 48 feet 8+1⁄2 inches (14.85 m) square at that level. The top of the second phase walls are 34 feet 5+1⁄2 inches (10.50 m) square and 1 foot 6 inches (46 cm) thick.[8]: 3–7 [11] The second phase interior walls have rounded corners (2-foot (0.61 m) radii). The weight of the second phase walls (from 150 feet to 500 feet) are 21,260 long tons (23,810 short tons; 21,600 tonnes). The walls of the entire shaft (combined first and second phases) are 500 feet 5+1⁄8 inches (152.530 m) high.

Is this appropriate material for a general purpose encyclopedia article? Our audience are not specialists. The article is too long anyway, a lot of overly complicated stuff like this could be easily summarized in plain language, reduce it by half the length or more, and not loose anything, the original source can still be cited. -- GreenC 18:04, 4 August 2025 (UTC)

I've redone the "Walls" section. It is now comprehensible to a general reader. Much remains to be done. -- GreenC 19:15, 4 August 2025 (UTC)

@GreenC, good call. I agree the "Walls" section was overly detailed before; we don't need to mention precise dimensions for each level. We could just say that the walls taper as they rise, which I see you've done. – Epicgenius (talk) 19:25, 4 August 2025 (UTC)

Article review

It has been a while since this article has been reviewed, so I took a look and noticed the following:

• The article, at over 11,000 words, is WP:TOOBIG and doesn't follow WP:SS. Information that is too detailed should be spun out, summarised more effectively, or removed.
• There are uncited statements in the article.
• There are unreliable sources used in the article, such as a wordpress website and "Journal of Ottoman Calligraphy"

Should this article go to WP:GAR? Z1720 (talk) 05:13, 8 November 2025 (UTC)

@Z1720, I think I can fix the latter two issues relatively easily.

For the first point, I don't think that's necessarily an issue, as WP:SIZERULE says that articles probably need to be split out after 9K words, but that "the scope of a topic can sometimes justify the added reading material". That may very well apply here; I've had newer good articles reach that point because of the amount of info written about them. According to SIZERULE, an article almost definitely needs to be split out at 15K words, but we aren't there yet. That being said, I do see some places where the amount of detail can be trimmed; the passage GreenC mentioned above is an example of detail that benefited from condensing. – Epicgenius (talk) 05:29, 8 November 2025 (UTC)

• @Epicgenius: No, the scope of the topic does not warrant a larger article. Philosophy, Earth and Bacteria are all articles with a larger scope, but can keep their articles under 8,000 words. Z1720 (talk) 15:09, 8 November 2025 (UTC)

  @Z1720, I don't necessarily agree. These are all larger topics that already have multiple sub-articles, which makes it much easier to comply with WP:SUMSTYLE. Epicgenius (talk) 16:17, 8 November 2025 (UTC)

@Epicgenius: The "History" section is quite large: this section can be spun out into its own article and have excess information trimmed. Information in "2011 earthquake damage" can be moved to the "2011 Virginia earthquake" article. Other information that is too much detail can be removed, like "At the reopening Interior Secretary Sally Jewell, Today show weatherman Al Roker, and American Idol Season 12 winner Candice Glover were present." and "at a ceremony that 12th President Zachary Taylor (1784–1850, served 1849–1850) attended, just five days before he died from food poisoning." Z1720 (talk) 16:26, 8 November 2025 (UTC)

@Z1720, regarding your 2nd point, I agree on some of the irrelevant detail, and I've started to remove that. I just don't think splitting out the whole article will be necessary yet. However, there is an argument to be made that the history section will eventually merit splitting out (in the same vein as History of Grand Central Terminal), especially if further detail is added later. Maybe some of the design section could be streamlined as well. Epicgenius (talk) 16:29, 8 November 2025 (UTC)

@Epicgenius: I recommend doing a full readthrough of the article first to remove excess information. Afterwards, if the article is still quite large editors can discuss whether it is better to spin out sections or remove information that is of a higher level of detail. Feel free to ping me with questions. Z1720 (talk) 16:46, 8 November 2025 (UTC)

Just as an update, I and several other editors have been removing irrelevant or minor details from the article, which now stands at about 9,350 words. – Epicgenius (talk) 01:07, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

MOS:JOBTITLES

@Eyer, regarding your recent edit, MOS:JOBTITLES actually supports the opposite, which is why I reverted your edit initially. "U.S. Representative John Marshall", for example, is correct because "U.S. Representative" denotes a title, not a description. If the text were to say "John Marshall was a U.S. representative", then it would also be correct, but the text specifically puts the title before the name, so the title should be capitalized. – Epicgenius (talk) 01:49, 22 November 2025 (UTC)

The title is "representative", modified by "U.S." See the example "Mao met with US president Richard Nixon in 1972." in MOS:JOBTITLES. Same with "Ohio senator"... "Ohio" modifies "senator". —Eyer (he/him) If you reply, add {{reply to|Eyer}} to your message. 01:54, 22 November 2025 (UTC)

@Eyer, hmm, interesting. I actually think that example might be confusing since it would indicate that "President Nixon" can be either lowercase or uppercase, depending on whether President is a shortening of "President of the United States" or "US president". I might bring that up on the MOS talk page later. Thanks for explaining your reasoning though. Epicgenius (talk) 02:13, 22 November 2025 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: U.S. History Until1865

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation–supported course assignment, between 25 August 2025 and 18 December 2025. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Bodoque1989 (article contribs). Peer reviewers: Bodoque1989.

— Assignment last updated by Early Childhood Teacher (talk) 21:43, 7 December 2025 (UTC)