Talk:Wigwag (railroad)

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	Wigwag (railroad) is a former featured article. Please see the links under Article Milestones below for its original nomination page (for older articles, check the nomination archive) and why it was removed.
	This article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on July 5, 2004.
Article Milestones Date Process Result April 27, 2004 Featured article candidate Promoted April 9, 2006 Featured article review Kept April 25, 2006 Featured article review Kept March 26, 2007 Featured article review Demoted Current Status: Former featured article

To-do list	Pending tasks for Wigwag (railroad):	(purge cache –  edit this list)
	Find and add more references Improve the breadth and depth of the references; more thoroughly investigate the FRA's resources for applicability Expand the lead to more fully summarize the article Revamp the flow of the article into a more logical order Improve the overall writing
See also Wikipedia:WikiProject Trains/Todo

	This article is part of WikiProject California, an attempt to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to California on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can edit this article, or visit the project page to join the project and/or contribute to the discussion.
B	This article has been rated as B-Class on the quality scale.
Low	This article has been rated as low-importance on the importance scale.

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Trains.
	See also: WikiProject to do list and the Trains Portal
B	Quality: B-Class. (assessment comments)
Mid	Importance: mid-importance.
Sel	Portal "Selected article" week 24, 2005.
	This article is maintained by the Operations task force.

Contents 1 layout nasties 2 headline? 3 Request for references 4 Concerns raised on FARC 5 US specific

[edit] layout nasties

I'm afraid the image layout goes haywire on mozilla (and I think on opera too). I'm familiar with the problem, and I can fix it if need be. However, it would be nice if larger images were uploaded and the new thumbnail syntax used to produce the floating images on the page itself. Would that be possible? -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 23:30, 7 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Super, better images and more modern syntax. Looks great -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 15:47, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC)

[edit] headline?

Wigwags occasionally make headlines as well. In Richmond, California, a crossing that marks the historic location of the western terminus of the BNSF is protected by two upper-quadrant wigwags as seen in the photo and has been the subject of some notoriety as of late. See the link immediately below for more details.

What link, what headline? Wolfman 03:51, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I came over to this talk page to ask the same question. I followed the first link in the list, but didn't see anything. I'm going to delete the graf. If anyone knows what it is about, please just write it here, rather than sending readers on a wild wigwag chase. -Willmcw 09:56, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Request for references

Hi, I am working to encourage implementation of the goals of the Wikipedia:Verifiability policy. Part of that is to make sure articles cite their sources. This is particularly important for featured articles, since they are a prominent part of Wikipedia. The Fact and Reference Check Project has more information. If some of the external links are reliable sources and were used as references, they can be placed in a References section too. See the cite sources link for how to format them. Thank you, and please leave me a message when a few references have been added to the article. - Taxman 19:57, Apr 22, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Concerns raised on FARC

This page has been listed twice at Wikipedia:Featured article removal candidates, but has been removed because no one could trouble themselves to leave a message here detailing the article's perceived problems so they might be able to be fixed. So here is a summary of what was mentioned in the two FARC nominations. (Comments edited only to shorten and add comments in brackets for context).

• Poorly written, no references, bad image formatting. Not a good example. Páll ^{(Die pienk olifant)} 00:26, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
• I've removed some unnecessary images and improved the formatting on the remaining ones, but this is definitely not a featured article. --Danaman5 03:44, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
• It fails Criterion 2a [well written] miserably; most sentences require editing. Tony 04:08, 9 April 2006 (UTC)
• Even if you threw refs in here it is very far from exemplifying our "best work." The intro is too short, the design section is too long and "history of", "design of" and "location of" subjects are inter-mixed to a degree that requires structural revamping. There is certainly some interesting and specific details in here and I wouldn't call it "low quality." Rather I think it the sort of middle of the road article you find a lot on the wiki: info more or less in place but structure and references lacking. Marskell 09:31, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

So lets see what we can do to improve these. I've moved the one site to a references section because it explicitly states it was used as a reference. - Taxman ^Talk 14:13, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

• There is a mention in the text of some data from the FRA, but it's not cited to anything specific. The FRA's website is likely to contain all the needed information. Looking through it I see a lot of reports, but I don't know enough about the subject to do much. Specifically the safety section has a link to reports and publications that could be very useful. I'll make a note on the Wikipedia:WikiProject Trains talk page to see if anyone can help. - Taxman ^Talk 14:29, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

can the article be nominated for FARC on 1 may if nothing is done to address the above issues? Zzzzz 21:21, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Seems a little unreasonably short, as there's not an urgent need to de-feature the article, moreso to improve it. A couple weeks doesn't seem out of bounds, but why not do your best to fix concerns instead? See Wikipedia_talk:Featured article removal candidates for a discussion on a reasonable amount of time. - Taxman ^Talk 22:35, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

May 1 seems absolutely reasonable if we're only talking about how it should be fixed and not actually fixing it. If Taxman or Zz have knowledge on the topic and can revamp it, great (I don't). But if they don't and I don't and no one shows up who has been involved in its history or knows the subject, we should send it to FARC. FARC is there for a reason. This is not a poor quality article vis-a-vis wiki in general, but it is a poor (arguably very poor) FA. There's nothing urgent about any of this and it could've gone unnoticed for another year. But if people don't think it belongs, then FARC is actually a better place for it than a dead talk page. You'll notice Taxman that your last comment went unanswered for almost exactly twelve months. Marskell 22:59, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

But again, the best place to discuss the appropriate time is on the FARC talk page where that conversation is ongoing as part of the latest thread. One week has not been considered reasonable by anyone else before. The goal of the project (and FARC as part of that) is to improve articles. So we should first focus on reasonable efforts to improve the article, give it some reasonable time (which I strongly feel a week is not), and then if nothing happens, it will proceed smoothly through FARC and no longer be featured. Much better is to let some of the people that do know trains have a chance to improve the article if they can, as I have placed some notices to that effect. - Taxman ^Talk 00:25, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

And thanks to a note on my talk, now I know about the discussion too. I'll take a further look through my own reference library and see what I can find. I'll be attending the NMRA's Midwest Region convention this weekend in Chicago, so I don't know how much time I'm going to have, but I'll put in as much as I can toward improvement here. Slambo (Speak) 02:18, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] US specific

I'm amazed this has ever been considered for FA. The entire article is US specific.

Wigwag is the term used for the automatic crossing signals in the UK also (these have red and amber lights in a V arrangement). How long the term has been used in the UK I don't know, but if it is anything significant, then the historical section should be expanded too.

Not to mention that the article should probably not be "Wigwag" but rather a general article on railway level crossing signals (i.e. incorporating the same concept as wigwag in other countries).

zoney ♣ talk 13:57, 29 November 2006 (UTC)