Talk:Washington State Route 25/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Imzadi 1979 → 07:13, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

GA review (see here for criteria)

1. It is reasonably well written.

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

   See below for issues with the prose. The lead also has issues.

2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.

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

   One source may potentially not be a RS. There is an un-cited paragraph. See below.

3. It is broad in its coverage.

   a (major aspects): b (focused):

   I'm saying no because I think the RD section needs to be longer; see below. It's also not focused enough on the highway. There's too much stuff in here about the bridges, which should be in articles about the bridges.

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):

   The captions don't need links when the body of the article has the links.

7. Overall:

   Pass/Fail:

   I'm holding. See the comments below.

Links

1. There are two links to disambiguation pages present: Lake Roosevelt and Northport. Please change the targets of these links to actual articles.
2. WP:OVERLINK. U.S. state does not need to be linked. You do not need to link to the same bridge twice in the lead, once in the RD and a fourth time in the history. For an article of this length, the first occurrence is plenty. Cities do not need to be linked in references. Gifford–Inchelium Ferry is linked twice in the lead.

1. Redlinks. Technically, redlinks aren't a bad thing but the following needs to be fixed. For all of them, verify that the subject is actually notable and worthy of an article. If not, remove the link.
   1. Spokane River Bridge at Fort Spokane is overlinked, a redlink and a bad article title. See if you can find an actual article to use for this link. Otherwise, fix it into Spokane River Bride (Fort Spokane, Washington). Then remove the extra links. Once in the lead is enough.
   2. Columbia River Bridge at Northport Do the same for this as the one above.
   3. Detillion Bridge Third bridge redlink. See if there's an article and fix the link.
   4. Meyers Falls, Washington may be something that you can redirect to an existing article. double check that it is spelled correctly and see if you can redirect it, if possible.
   5. Fort Spokane another place. same instructions.
   6. Gifford, Washington a third place.
   7. Rice, Washington a fourth place
   8. Columbia Gardens, British Columbia a fifth place. Don't pipe the link to Columbia Gardens, BC unless you've established that BC=British Columbia. The last sentence of the first paragraph of the lead should have a "(BC 22)" added on the end. You do that in the RD, but this is the first mention in the article.

1. Captions don't need links if the term is linked in the body of the article. Remove them.

References

1. Is there any particular reason you're using DD Month YYY formatting for dates? Most of the US uses Month DD, YYYY formats. There's no need to change the article since they are mostly consistent, but you might want to consider sticking to the standard format used in the US on articles about American highways.
2. Ref 6 needs a |format=PDF added to the template. When citing to two separate pages like that, use a comma and not a semicolon.
3. Ref 7 should have an en dash (–) inserted into the title, not a hyphen (-). Even if the original source used a hyphen, we use en dashes and you can and should change that per WP:Manual of Style#Internal consistency. Similarly MOS:QUOTE specifies "Although the requirement of minimal change is strict, a few purely typographical elements of quoted text should be conformed to English Wikipedia's conventions without comment."
4. Refs 16 and 17 specify the location of the legislature. Why doesn't Ref 1 do the same? Consistency please.
5. Ref 19 can't be published in 1919 if the cartography for the map was not done until 1944. The publication date is 1944, the 1919 belongs in the title only.
6. Ref 21 is the same situation. It was published in 1963. The 1929 belongs in the title only.
7. Ref 23, how can that source be titled for the years 1893–1935 and be published in 1931?
8. Ref 25 has a broken dash: "1011&nadsh;1012". Either flip the "d" and the "a" around, or use the insert links below the editing window to directly input a – .
9. Ref 26 as a publication date that doesn't match the other dates in terms of its format. Either change it, or change the rest.
10. Ref 30: how is this a reliable source? I can't tell if History Ink, the non-profit organization that runs HistoryLink exercises editorial control over the content they publish. If not, then this is not a reliable source without further information on who the author is. Otherwise, you should try to get the book used as a source for that article and re-source the information to it instead.
11. Ref 32, a comma not a semicolon to separate the two page numbers.

Lead

1. Remove the third paragraph completely. For an article this length, that's too much lead. Now if you expand the RD as I suggest below, you'll need to keep some length here, but as it stands, three paragraphs is overkill.
2. Fix the overlinking and redlinking mentioned above.

Route description

1. Unlink any highways already mentioned in the lead, and there's no need to repeat the full name for US 2 with the abbreviation in parentheses.
2. Expand this entire section. For 121 miles, this is way too short. What non-bridge, non-ferry landmarks are along the way? What kind of terrain? Are there mountains in these parts of the state? What about forests?
3. "At Gifford, the highway serves as eastern terminus of the Gifford–Inchelium Ferry that travels across the Columbia River to the community of Inchelium in Ferry County and is owned by the Colville Confederated Tribes." So the highway in Gifford is owned by the tribes? Break this into two sentences, one on the highway being the terminus for the ferry. and the other about the ferry itself.
4. "There isn't..." We don't use contractions in our prose. (They're fine on talk pages or review pages though.)
5. "West of Kettle Falls, SR 25 passes under an overpass used by the Kettle Falls–Grand Forks, BC route operated by the Kettle Falls International Railway." I would flip the sentence around to move the railway name first and the route name second. End it something like "an overpass used by the Kettle Falls International Railway's Kettle Falls – Grand Forks, BC route."

History

1. "SR 25 began as a series of county roads connecting small communities on the Columbia River that were constructed between 1909 and 1912" Where the roads or the communities constructed in 1909–12? If it's the roads, try: "SR 25 began as a series of county roads that were constructed between 1909 and 1912; these roads connected small communities on the Columbia River."
2. "1913, the Inland Empire Highway was established and included a segment from Meyers Falls, currently known as Kettle Falls, to the Canadian border at Boundary was included." You have "... and included... was included." Drop the "was included".
3. "The Inland Empire Highway was shifted west in 1915 and several roads from Meyers Falls to Davenport became State Road 22 (SR 22) and crossed the Spokane River with the Detillion Bridge.^[17][18][19]" I see two issues here. Many people get suspicious of any sentence that needs three citations.The second is the whole part after "and crossed". What's crossing the river, the Inland Empire Highway or SR 22? Break that whole last section off into a new sentence. Move which ever references are needed for the rest of the sentence forward and run what ever reference for the bridge after that second sentence.
4. "but was extended north to the Canadian border at Boundary in 1931.^[22][23][24]" Another case of three sources. The sentence is fine, but you're using a statute and two maps. I think you can safely drop one map out completely. You might even be able to remove both map citations completely.
5. "PSH 22 became SR 25 and SSH 22A became SR 251, an auxiliary route of SR 25.^[1][26][27]" put a comma after SR 25. "PSH 22 became SR 25." is a complete sentence. So is" SSH 22A becaome SR 251, an auxiliary route of SR 25. If you can spilt the footnotes up to move one after that comma I told you to insert, do it.
6. "SR 251 was later removed from the state highway system in 1983." Remove that. You already talk about SR 251's history in its section.
7. "The Spokane River Bridge at Fort Spokane, successor of the Detillion Bridge, was opened in 1941 to replace the span, which was flooded by Franklin D. Roosevelt Lake.^[5][28][29]" Break this into two sentences. The first should be about the Detillion Bridge, and the second should be about the replacement. Move the footnotes as needed.
8. "A bridge across the Columbia River at Northport began construction in 1949 and was completed as the Columbia River Bridge at Northport on June 13, 1951." There are two problems here. The first is that you've used that redlink again. The second is that the phrase "Columbia River ... at Northport" is repeated. I would drop the link completely. It's already linked and mentioned in the lead. That or move the name of the bridge to the front of the sentence as the subject.
9. "On March 28, 1995, the Spokane River Bridge at Fort Spokane was listed on the National Register of Historic Places and was joined by the Columbia River Bridge at Northport on May 24, 1995." Remove this completely from the article. That's a detail that should be in the articles on the bridges, not the highway.
10. "Ferry service remained privately-owned until 1974..." Remove the hyphen. Adverbs that end in -ly are not usually hyphenated with the adjective.
11. "In 1981, the Colville Confederated Tribes and United States Bureau of Indian Affairs began a new ferry service with the M/V Columbian Princess and continues to the present." Change the second "and" to a "that".

Related routes

1. The dash in the location in the infobox needs to be spaced. As it is typed out now, you're saying that the highway is located on the border between Northport and Canada. By putting the space in there, you'll make it clear that the highway instead ran from Northport to the Border.
2. "a railway operated by Kettle Falls International Railway" change the first used of "railway" to a synonym to avoid the repetition.
3. "Originally county roads until 1912,[15] the roads became part of the Inland Empire Highway from 1913 until removal in 1915." The highway was removed? Or do you mean that the name was removed? Maybe the highway was removed from state maintenance? You need to clear that up. If you can, change the second "roads" to a synonym if you can as well.
4. "The roadway became state-maintained again when State Road 22 was extended north to Canada in 1931.^[22][23][24]" Once again, see if you can eliminate a grouping of three footnotes at once.
5. "In 1937, the extension became SSH 22A,[25] which later became SR 251 from 1964 until 1983." "... became ... became ..." Can we have some variety? There are 250,000 words in the English language, I'm sure you can fix that like all of the other similar repetition problems.
6. "The roadway is now known as the Northport–Boundary Highway and continues to be maintained by Stevens County." Great sentence, but it needs a cite.

Overall layout

1. Portal boxes don't go in the External links section; they go in the See also section, if present. The boxes that appear in the External links are the InterWikimedia links/boxes to Commons categories or content on Wikisource, Wiktionary, etc. I'd move the portal box to the top of the References. Since you don't have a See also section.

MOS issues not in the GA criteria

1. I see that you italicized the ship name. The slash (/) should be removed from MV.(Wikipedia:Naming conventions (ships) lists the current guidelines on naming ship articles which is to remove punctuation from the prefix.)
2. "Kettle Falls–Grand Forks, BC" and "Kettle Falls–Columbia Gardens, BC route" each have a dash error. Since the terms on each side of the dash have internal spaces the dash itself is supposed to be spaced as well. This should be: "Kettle Falls – Grand Forks, BC" or "Kettle Falls – Columbia Gardens, BC"

Summary

This article needs work to meet the criteria. Almost every sentence in the history section has a note on it for fixes. There is a problem with links, both in terms of overlinking and excessive redlinks, but also overlinking the same redlinks. As of right now, the lead is too long and the RD is too short. Please fix these items above. As you complete them, I'll strike through them if they're actually fixed, or comment if further issues remain. Imzadi 1979 → 09:25, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

P.S. I've watchlisted the article, so I can follow your editing. I'll be keeping tabs on things, so you don't need to put checkmarks all over the review above. Imzadi 1979 → 09:36, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Given the conversation with the nominator on IRC, no further progress will be made on this article in a timely fashion. The standard hold period will soon elapse. With the holidays, I'm going to close the review. The nominator can renominate at a later date. Imzadi 1979 → 03:48, 23 December 2010 (UTC)