Talk:Chesapeake Bay Bridge

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Good article Chesapeake Bay Bridge was a nominee for good article, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There are suggestions below for improving the article. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.
October 18, 2007 Good article nominee Not listed
To-do list for Chesapeake Bay Bridge: edit · history · watch · refresh
  • Fix issues found in GA nom (strike out any that have been taken care of as they are fixed)
    • Grammatical errors
    • Needs more citations
    • Needs more info
    • Some images need to be rearranged
    • Some external links fail WP:EL
    • Inconsistent formatting of citations
    • MOS:NUM errors

Contents

[edit] POV?

Some of the text in the future crossing section seems to be promoting the northern crossing as the best option, indeed the article does mention that that crossing is considered the "most sensible", but that doesn't really belong either. The most interesting thing I noticed is that someone completely removed any mention of cons for that crossing, it only lists pros now. I do believe that the final report from the task force will be out next month, and that will be the best time to fix this up. Until then someone needs to balance out the POV of that section at least a little.-Jeff (talk) 02:53, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

Well i would really have to look over the book to see what is in it, but yes, it seems to be a lot of op-ed work in it, then just delivering of information, epically when you see comments like "thus not a real solution for the state of Maryland", plus as much as it is sourced from the one source, their plenty of information that is not sourced, especially abut the infrastructure in Baltimore and northern Maryland, which is very incorrect. Anyway personally i think the section ought be rewritten. --Boothy443 | trácht ar 05:39, 7 May 2006 (UTC)


Points above are well taken, but I would like to point out that even suggesting the Ferry option as a legitamate alternative is only seriously considered by those who don't want any bridge what-so-ever, and even the committees notes state that a Ferry would in no way be considered a crossing alternative. It is most often used by the "No Growth & Leave us alone" types as a distracting issue to mis-lead people into believing: ferry impact=bridge impact. Also, I have noticed that people are not citing their sources i.e. "concerns that historic towns in the county such as Chestertown, would become suburbs of Baltimore.". While that statement may correctly demonstrate the feelings of people in Kent County I believe a source should be cited, or else it just may be the writer's POV and/or wishful thinking. I think in the long run their should be a separate page devoted to discussing the contorversy of a new bay bridge, and it be agreed to just let the facts stand for themsleves.-Oyarsu
I think that conclusion is common sense...Kent County is just a few miles across the Bay from Baltimore...if a road connected them, they would clearly be suburbs. It sounds like you are biased against "no-growthers" and/or those that want to protect their rural way of life. If you want your bridge, put it in the place that would have the most positive impact - between Southern Maryland and Somerset County. It diverts the DC traffic straight across the Bay to Ocean City and existing roads would only need to be expanded and have the right-of-way available to do so: Route 4,5, 413, and so forth could easily be widened. Those areas are among the poorest in the state and could use the development. On an unrelated note, perhaps it could be mentioned that a company is now offering flights from AA County to Ocean City, another travel alternative. WillC 10:36, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
The article does not suggest that the ferry option would be a good alternative, it simply lists some facts associated with it. Also, it is fairly common knowledge that Kent County residents don't want to see their county become "Kent Burnie". I don't live in Kent County but I have seen several newspapers and online sources that state that residents are afraid of this scenario, because they claim that it will destroy their rural way of life, and that most residents will spend their money in Baltimore instead of at local shops. So I figured this could be considered common knowledge and didn't bother finding a specific source. As for splitting it, I was considering this myself (to something like 2000s Chesapeake Bay crossing study), but I'd rather wait for the full report to be out before we split it. Also, we need to remember to maintain a balanced POV by listing both pros and cons for each "zone".-Jeff (talk) 02:16, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

The section has now been split to 2005 Chesapeake Bay crossing study (talk page).-Jeff (talk) 18:11, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Improving

Given this article's status as a B-class article I'd like to see if we can improve it further. If we can get enough people on this task hopefully it can reach GA or even FA status. I added a to do list, so if you see anything on there that can be done do it, and if you can think of anything else that can be added/improved add it to the list or do it yourself.-Jeff (talk) 04:09, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Primary title

I believe the nicknames for the Bay Bridge should all redirect to William Preston Lane, Jr. Memorial Bridge, since it is the official name. --Vees 05:32, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

According to WP:NC (CN), we should "Use the most common name of a person or thing that does not conflict with the names of other people or things". In short Wikipedia's convention is to use the common names for topics over the official names. If the official name is what most people call something then we use that, however in this case very few people actually use the official name. Also, although most people call it the "Bay Bridge" that term can refer to a number of bridges, so we go with the simmilar-yet-unambiguous "Chesapeake Bay Bridge". Hope that helps.-Jeff (talk) 16:30, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
Thank you. --Vees

[edit] Bridge Fare

if you buy a book of "everyday" passes in advance, they are cheaper than the full price fare. It is 12 for 25 dollars. WillC 12:25, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

OK, I'll add that, along with the approximate price per pass ($2.08)-Jeff (talk) 20:28, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Bay Bridge logo

It looks like the Bay Bridge now has an official logo, I noticed it while looking at baybridge.com. The front page there includes the logo for the 2007 Bay Bridge walk, and it also includes a link to a PDF file about private driveovers. Although the PDF file is on a topic unrelated to the bridge walk, it includes a very similar logo. I just thought I'd bring this to this article's editors' attention. I also think we should hold off on including the logo in this article for now, since it seems the logo has gone through a few different iterations. I'm guessing a more final version will be included on the redesigned site when it launches later this spring.-Jeff (talk) 03:45, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Failed "good article" nomination

This article failed good article nomination. This is how the article, as of October 19, 2007, compares against the six good article criteria:

1. Well written?: grammatical errors here and there
2. Factually accurate?: not many refs in the article; history needs a lot more
3. Broad in coverage?: some more can be added
4. Neutral point of view?: yes
5. Article stability? yes
6. Images?: some need to be rearranged

Some of the external links fail WP:EL, refs are formatted inconsistently, and there are some MOS:NUM errors.

When these issues are addressed, the article can be renominated. If you feel that this review is in error, feel free to take it to a Good article reassessment. Thank you for your work so far. O2 (息 • 吹) 21:49, 19 October 2007 (GMT)

Thanks for your input. Just a few questions I still have about your assessment:
1. Such as? Any specific examples?
2. OK, will fix
3. Can you think of anything specific that can be added?
6. How? My take: WP:IMAGE suggests using images near relevant text, and this article only has two such images (the historic photo and the aerial shot of the development in Ocean City). Certainly there's room for improvement there. The distant shot could be removed since the panorama does a better job of showing the bridge from that perspective, and the article could probably use images of walkers on the bridge (for the Bay Bridge Walk and Run section), and of the lane signals (for Traffic control). Sound good? Any further suggestions?
Other points:
  • External links - I've cleaned them up. The Baydreaming page misspelled Grasonville, so it doesn't exactly come off as a reliable source, I also removed links that were easily reachable from other linked pages to shrink the list down. The remaining pages all seem to discuss the bridge itself, its history, etc, rather than simply listing simple facts that can/could be found in this article. Let me know if there's anything I missed.
  • Inconsistent formatting of refs - Before I fix this, I'd like to know: is there a preferred style? I always use [http://www.example.com] because it's easier to type. WP:CITE only says that whatever style was in use before should be used, however an editor recently converted all the refs at the time from the numbered-link style to the footnote style. Maybe I'm missing something.
  • MOS:NUM compliance - I implemented the recommendations for units in the infobox, and full dates. Anything else?
-Jeff (talk) 14:06, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
Use {{wide image}} for panoramas. Every other image suggestion you said are fine for this article, as it adds to the content already present. Citations have to be detailed; credits, links, and such have to be prominently displayed in the references section (WP:CITE#HOW). Even more, the first source listed is a fact sheet; what fact sheet do you mean? I should be able to directly click on the link to the source, have an ISBN number (book), or tell me the exact newspaper article title and the newspaper to conform with WP:V. I don't care if it's in external links or not; I should be able to easily access the source from the references section. As with grammar issues, various sentences in the history section need copyediting, and speaking of that same section, it crucially needs more sources. Keep up the good work though, O2 (息 • 吹) 23:02, 25 October 2007 (GMT)

[edit] Additional info

To help meet the "broad in coverage" GA standard, I'm using this section to contain some important facts related to the bridge that belong in the article. Feel free to add some more.-Jeff (talk) 16:09, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

  • Ferries were taken over by the SRC because the bridge (to be built by the SRC) would have otherwise put the Claiborne-Annapolis Ferry Company out of business.
  • Spiro Agnew favored the two-span option of the '67 study. Those who opposed it referred to it pejoratively as "Agnew's Double Cross".