Talk:Pennsylvania Route 563/GA1

GA Review

Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch

Reviewer: Imzadi 1979 → 07:12, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

GA review (see here for criteria)

---

DABs and EL are good.

1. It is reasonably well written.

   a (prose): b (MoS for lead, layout, word choice, fiction, and lists):

   See below.

2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.

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

3. It is broad in its coverage.

   a (major aspects): b (focused):

   Too many extraneous details in the RD section as detailed below.

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):

   Drop the links from the captions. The links should already be listed in your prose.

7. Overall:

   Pass/Fail:

   Please fix this article. The quality of the writing is not at GA-level expectations. Imzadi 1979 → 08:27, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Infobox

1. Why no date?

1. Added. Dough4872 21:11, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

1. Why no counties?

   Added. Dough4872 21:11, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

2. Why the periods after the locations? Those aren't full sentences.

   Removed. Dough4872 21:11, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

3. Why is PA 309 in the junction list when PA 563 doesn't directly intersect it?

   Removed from infobox. Dough4872 21:11, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

   You could have substituted PA 313 since they run concurrently. The point was more that there was a better junction to list than a highway that is only indirectly connected to the subject of this article. Imzadi 1979 → 01:09, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

   Added PA 313 to infobox. Dough4872 15:55, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Lead

1. You mention too many other highways to the point that it's an alphabet soup of designations. Rather than reference locations by intersecting highways, try other landmarks for variety.

   Cut down on route designations. Dough4872 21:11, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

2. Even though you strictly don't need a second paragraph, I'd still break the lead into two to make the easier to read.

   Split. Dough4872 21:11, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

3. Why do you use the county names after the townships and the repeat the names in the next sentence? If there are not two Upper Salford townships or two Nockamixon townships, drop the links to the county names from that first sentence and move them to the second one.

   Moved links. Dough4872 15:55, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

   You moved the links, but you didn't remove the superfluous mention of the counties. The links were fine where they were, but you repeated the counties' names too soon after that first mention. I asked you to remove the counties' names after the township names for two reasons.

   1. Links adjacent to links are a no-no per the MOS
   2. The redundancy of having the counties' names appear so close together. Sometimes such redundancy is necessary, but here it is not.

   Instead you've now made the situation worse. The first mention of each county's name is no longer the link, which is against the MOS, and you've still got the redundant working which is bad writing! Please fix this as originally suggested to rectify the original issue, and the newly created one. Imzadi 1979 → 20:49, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

   Removed county names from first mention, since readers can click on the name of the township and figure out what county it is in. Dough4872 21:17, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

RD

1. "on two-lane undivided Ridge Road" there should be a comma between the two adjectives "two-lane" and "undivided".

   Added. Dough4872 21:11, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

2. "PA 563 makes a left turn at the Barndt Road/Moyer Road junction, continuing northeast on Ridge Road into Salford Township The road runs through wooded areas with some residences." three things here. Remove the left and substitute a cardinal direction. Second, if the two roads are intersecting, use an en dash (–) not a slash (/). The slash notation with roads indicates concurrency, not disjunction or intersection. Third, I think you missed a period or other punctuation mark.

   Fixed. Dough4872 21:11, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

3. You can clean up the prose of the first sentence by removing a few of the "residential" references. Actually, you're mentioning surroundings too much, and sometimes in language that's just not "well written". Please trim out about 50% of these references in the text and tighten up the language used for all of the remainder.

   Cut down on some references to residences. Dough4872 21:11, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

4. "which provides access to the PA 309 freeway at an interchange." By definition, access to a freeway is by interchange normally. The last three words of that sentence are redundant.

   Removed. Dough4872 21:11, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

5. "There is no direct connection between PA 563 and PA 309, with PA 563 passing over the freeway a short distance past Lawn Avenue." See WP:PLUSING for the reasons why this is a badly constructed sentence.

   Reworded. Dough4872 21:11, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

6. "Upon crossing the Tohickon Creek, which feeds into Lake Nockamixon, the road continues into Haycock Township." The fact that the creek feeds the lake isn't relevant to the highway that crosses it. Secondarily, you've repeated the lake's proper name a second time, which is overly repetitive in such a short distance.

   Removed. Dough4872 21:11, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

7. "In this area, PA 563 leaves the park boundaries before reentering them past the Old Bethlehem Road junction, at which point the route continues along the northwest edge of the state park." Is the fact that the road leaves and re-enters the park particularly notable or special? It doesn't sound like it to me.

   Reworded. Dough4872 21:11, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

8. "A short distance following the Deerwood Lane intersection, the road passes the main entrance to Nockamixon State Park." On this second reference, "state park" would suffice rather than the full proper name. Like the comment on the lake above, you're repeating the same name "Nockamixon" several times, even if the repetitions are for a lake and a park.

   Used pronouns. Dough4872 21:11, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

9. Ok, the lake's mentioned again, and to boot, there's a township as well with the name! Please rewrite this whole paragraph to address the redundancies.

   Cut down on the use of Nockamixon. Dough4872 21:11, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

History

1. More alphabet soup. I'm sorry, but I'm not in a soup mood, I'm looking for meat.

   Cut down on a few mentions of route designations. Dough4872 21:11, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

2. "By 1930, PA 563 was designated to run from PA 63 near Bergey northeast to PA 412 near Harrow, following its current alignment between PA 63 and PA 313, where it continued northeast on Ridge Road past PA 313, passing near Weisel and eventually continuing northeast to PA 412." Really long run-on sentence that mentions other designations twice. I think you could rewrite that whole statement in a more concise manner that flows better.

   Split sentence into two. Dough4872 21:11, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

3. I'm not reading farther on the History section. Please rewrite it.

   Made some tweaks to sentence structure. Dough4872 21:11, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

4. "...plans began to create Lake Nockamixon along the Tohickon Creek..." I didn't know that concepts, expressed on paper or not, could create a lake. You might want to reword this sentence.

   Changed to construction. Dough4872 15:55, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

5. "reloacted" spelling error.

   Fixed. Dough4872 15:55, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

6. "As a result of constructing the dam and creating the lake, the northernmost portion of PA 563 had to be reloacted to a new alignment to the north of the planned lake as a portion of the route north of Kellers Church would be severed by Lake Nockamixon. Between 1970 and 1972, the new alignment of the route was built. As a result, PA 563 was routed to follow PA 313 to get from Ridge Road to its new alignment." Rewrite this. Using the passive voice in this section of the article just sounds bad. As a second concern, see if you can find a news article that talks about why the lake was created. Since the lake is "why" the road was moved, it would be nice to know "why" the lake was needed or desired.

   Rewrote. Also added why lake was created. Dough4872 15:55, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

   "This lake was proposed as part of a goal for every Pennsylvania resident to be within 25 miles (40 km) of a state park and was intended to fill a gap between the Philadelphia and Lehigh Valley areas." That sentence is uncited, and poorly written. It answers only why of the reason why. It does not answer the who. Please find the who, add it and flip the sentence construction to the active voice. Something like: "The Department of Blah Blah Blah wanted to yada yada yada.^[#]" Imzadi 1979 → 20:49, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

   Added mention of who created the lake. Also tweaked sentence and split into two. Dough4872 21:17, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

External links

You don't have any. In the absence of listing any, I'd suggest switching the box from {{commons category}} to {{commons category-inline}} which will produce the same link in an inline format appropriate for listing as the start of a bulleted list in the section.

1. Changed. Dough4872 21:11, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Linking

1. U.S. state is a low-value link, especially located next to Pennsylvania. Drop the link.

   Removed. Dough4872 21:11, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

2. As mentioned above, captions don't need links

   Removed. Dough4872 21:11, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

3. You've repeated links in the body of the article from the lead. This article isn't long enough to warrant relinking. Please audit the whole article and remove the superfluous links.

   Done. Dough4872 21:11, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

4. Footnotes 2 &3 have the publisher linked each time.

   Delinked ref 3. Dough4872 21:11, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

5. Footnotes 4–6 are to PDFs, yet they don't have |format=PDF set. Especially now that the PDF icon has been changed, and doesn't scream PDF anymore, this attribute needs to be set.

   Added. Dough4872 21:11, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Overall comments

1. Non-breaking spaces are needed in route designations.

   Added non-breaking spaces. Dough4872 15:55, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

In light of the recent changes, the article now meets the criteria. Imzadi 1979 → 23:45, 19 February 2011 (UTC)