Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. Roads/Assessment/A-Class review/Highway 401 (Ontario)

NO ACTION

Withdrawn by nominator. Imzadi 1979 → 19:37, 10 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Highway 401 (Ontario)

Suggestion: Promote to A-Class

Nominator's comments: Spent the better part of 4 months rewriting it from scratch. I use old newspaper articles often as supplements to the less specific secondary sources (ie exact dates that sections opened). If a source doesn't seem to back up everything said in the preceding sentence, chances are it is sourced to one of the later footnotes. Almost the entire article can be sourced to the book From Footpaths to Freeways or John Shragge's detailed history online.

Nominated by: ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 04:08, 6 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

First comment occurred: 02:37, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Oppose - This article has too many major issues to consider it A-class:

References are not supposed to be in the lead unless the information is unique there.
I noticed in your disclaimer the reason there are sentences lacking citations. The citations are needed in order to make sure the information is verifiable.
There are several awkward sentences, such as "For nearly 90 km (56 mi), the highway is essentially urban, passing through only a few short breaks on its journey from Mississauga to Oshawa" and "At Harmony Road, the suburban surroundings vanish, and are quickly replaced by agriculture.". I would suggest having a copyeditor look over the article.
"Highway 401 and Interstate 75 ran a pilot project"? How can roads run projects?

From looking at the article, it appears a lot of work needs to be done. ---Dough 48 72 02:37, 7 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Number 1 is optional I believe (and information in the lead should never be unique). The citations are used to support a very contestable claim (The worlds busiest freeway and one of the widest), and I think this is a good instance of where an exception should be made.

Number 2, they are referenced. Just rather than have Point 1.[1][3] Point 2.[2][3] Point 3.[3][4], I use Point 1.[1] Point 2.[2] Point 3.[3][4] The information is verified by its citations, I just don't source every sentence to the same citation, but rather whole paragraphs. This would be relatively easy to fix, but I assure you it would just be clutter.

Number 3 I understand, and that is due to my poor grammar. This is likely the major weak-point of the article.

Number 4 I reworded. The highways were the subjects of the project, which was run by the governments of Ontario and the states I-75 flows through.

Do you know any copyeditors you'd personally recommend. Almost all of the ones listed at editors willing to copyedit aren't active anymore. Would anyone here be willing to take a look? - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 03:30, 7 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'll go through it with a fine-tooth comb. Just give me a week or so (long article!) –Juliancolton | ^Talk 15:06, 7 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you :) I'm open to all criticism here—I want this to be the gold standard for road articles. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 15:17, 7 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

One quick comment – is it really called "the four-oh-one" and not "the 401" (which is used in the article itself)? –Juliancolton | ^Talk 15:11, 7 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Anyone who writes it would do so "the 401", but in conversation it's pronounced as "the four-oh-one". I'll spell it out in the rest of the article if that's necessary, but my thought was that this just shows it is not pronounced "the four hundred and one" - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 15:13, 7 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Well, spelling it as "four-oh-one" seems too informal for an encyclopedic article. –Juliancolton | ^Talk 15:16, 7 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps "...and colloquially as The 401 (pronounced four-oh-one), is..." would work better. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 15:19, 7 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I still don't see why that's needed. First of all, we would need a source that explicitly says it's written as "four-oh-one", and in any case, why do we need to spell it out? 401 is easy to pronounce. Probably not a big deal, just something to consider. –Juliancolton | ^Talk 17:58, 7 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Being someone who lives along the highway, I think it should be kept, so I added a ref for it. When referring to the highway, you usually do refer to it as simply that and people know what you're talking about. Gary King (talk) 02:44, 8 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Works for me. Thanks for the fix. –Juliancolton | ^Talk 13:41, 8 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'm removing the "source", which obtained the information from Wikipedia. ICON publishes many such books that take tidbits from Wikipedia and other sources for its glossary-style publications. No such ICON publication should ever be used as a source. (That book was published in 2008; check its text against this 9 October 2005 revision from WP.) Here's a book that uses the term, though I don't think that's sufficient to make it a reliable ref. I'll search for something more suitable. Mind matrix 18:04, 9 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

By the way, Alphascript books are similar, as they simply publish Wikipedia articles as books. So, this is not a valid ref. Mind matrix 18:16, 9 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

If this truly is a common name, shouldn't it be found in newspaper articles and/or TV report transcripts under accidents and traffic reports? Dave (talk) 06:48, 12 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The 401 is. Only audio would contain the information "four-oh-one". - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 06:59, 12 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Got it. In my opinion a source calling it "The 401" would suffice. Throughout most of the english speaking world pronouncing each numeral like that is common, at least for bus routes, highway routes, train routes, etc. As such it's not a controversial detail. Dave (talk) 14:10, 12 April 2010 (UTC) P.S. I will give this a more thorough review. My apologies, I suddenly got busy.[reply]

Comments

Just some general comments in reply to some of the above comments.

Sometimes there will be unique information in the lead of an article. Usually this is limited to the length of a roadway, although a fully distance-posted junction list should have the distance given for the terminal junction, which means the length is in another location in the article, albeit in a slightly different form.
References are permitted in the lead, especially if there is contestable information there. If that's the case, then even when it is referenced in the body of the article, a reference is highly appropriate in the lead.
I'm not sure how to advise on the pronunciation issue, but I imagine that a newspaper article won't use the colloquial term in print. Your best bet is the transcript of a television or radio news story. Those are supposed to be verbatim copies of the audio. A TV station's website news stories will be closer to print newspaper and magazine sources in style. Of course if there's a news story that discusses how Ontario residents refer to their highways, then it will have the colloquial pronunciation in print.

I'll try to get to a full review later this week, but I can't promise anything yet. I have stuff to do on-wiki with my mileposting project for Michigan, and packing and preparations for a weekend trip to Baltimore on Friday. Imzadi 1979 → 08:18, 12 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support: This article is so much better than what it was earlier this year. The complete rewrite has worked miracles for it, and the quality images have really made it a more interesting read. It's a little long due to the exit list, but other than that I would support it's promotion to A-class. If it does make A-class, it would be the first Ontario roads article to achieve this, a significant milestone for those involved with the wikiproject. To other reviewers, if you haven't looked at the article in a bit, I would suggest a re-read. Haljackey (talk) 21:17, 20 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Withdraw nomination. I think the article is ready for WP:FAC after the recent improvements. I'd like to withdraw my nomination so that I can take it there. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 19:18, 10 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.