Wikipedia talk:Today's featured article/September 2, 2022

• User:Dying, I don't know what "Caroline Island has remained one of the world's most pristine tropical islands" means. Can you explain it for me, or tweak the wording? - Dank (push to talk) 01:55, 26 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  hey, Dank! thanks for bringing this up. i was aware that the construction was a bit unusual but had thought the meaning was straightforward at the time. however, if the phrase needs explanation, then it clearly should be reworded.

  the blurb originally read "Caroline Island has remained relatively pristine", which appears to have been a shortening of the article lead's statement that "Caroline Island has remained relatively untouched and is one of the world's most pristine tropical islands". in response to this error report, i had figured that "relatively pristine" may not be a very useful description, so had opted to add the detail from the lead to more clearly describe how pristine the island is. i wanted to leave what i could of the original sentence, so i kept the phrase "has remained", and i left the basic sentence structure alone. although "has remained one of the world's most pristine tropical islands" does not mean exactly the same thing as "is one of the world's most pristine tropical islands", i had assumed that this was not a serious issue as the main difference is that the former also asserts that the island had also been one of the world's most pristine tropical islands at some previous point, which seems self-evident since if an island is pure and unspoilt, then it would also have been pure and unspoilt earlier.

  do you think replacing "has remained" with "is", to more closely conform with the article lead, would make the sentence easier to understand? i was also thinking that a reordering such as

  Despite guano mining, copra (coconut meat) harvesting, and human habitation in the 19th and 20th centuries, Caroline Island has remained one of the world's most pristine tropical islands.

  might work, if the issue is that the "has remained ... despite ..." construction is not very clear if there is too much text between the two parts, while "despite ... has remained ..." might be less susceptible to this issue. dying (talk) 00:25, 27 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  I can't figure out what "pristine" means in that sentence. If it means "without permanent human settlement" or "unspoiled", I suppose that most islands fit that description. And "world's most" has a promotional tone, to me, at least when applied to a tropical island. - Dank (push to talk) 00:57, 27 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  good points. what if "relatively" was brought back, but appropriate context was also included?

  Despite guano mining, copra (coconut meat) harvesting, and human habitation in the 19th and 20th centuries, Caroline Island has remained relatively unspoiled compared to other tropical islands.

  i also replaced "pristine" with "unspoiled", as the latter was used in the article body. dying (talk) 03:00, 27 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  Good, I think that will get a better reaction at WP:ERRORS (but they might still want to tweak it). - Dank (push to talk) 04:10, 27 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  done. thanks, as always, for your insight. dying (talk) 07:57, 27 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Shouldn't there be links on