Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Pennsylvania Route 145/archive1

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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was not promoted 21:24, 28 April 2007.

[edit] Pennsylvania Route 145

I would like to nominate this article for FA status, since there are no major problems, as presented in WP:WIAFA. It is already a GA, but has recently been improved more to A-class. There are lots of reliable sources and free images, with a link to Commons instead of having a photo gallery. Personally, this article is ready.  V60 干什么？ · VDemolitions 17:37, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

  • Support this article is ready as to V60. It doesn't have any problems at all with violating WIAFA. -- J-A10 T · C 17:43, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
  • At first glance: Lead, first paragraph, reads: covering a distance of 20 miles and 32 kilometers.. Wouldn't or be better, instead of and? I'll probably look at the rest in the weekend. --Ouro (blah blah) 19:25, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Oppose—1a. Poorly written; the lead contains plenty of examples of why this can't pass.
    • "Pennsylvania Route 145 (abbreviated PA 145) is a state highway located in the US state of Pennsylvania, covering a distance of 20 miles (32 km).[1] The route, traveling north-south from Interstate 78 at exit 60 and Pennsylvania Route 309 in Lanark, Pennsylvania north to Pennsylvania Route 248 in Weiders Crossing, Pennsylvania." The opening has several redundancies, such as "abbreviated" and "located". The second sentence is ungrammatical. "North–south" with an en dash, please (= "to"), here and subsequently. Do routes travel? Perhaps "cover" would be better.
    • "seven mile portion"—hyphen required. Same for "third largest".
    • "MacArthur Road is almost entirely divided and between US 22 and Eberhart Road it is up to six lanes wide with slip ramps." Ungrammatical.
    • "paralleling the Lehigh River"—such an ugly word; try "parallel to".
    • Redundant "also" in last sentence. Tony 22:49, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
      • Whoa, that was very close to a personal attack! The reason for that is that it is mostly one editor who was building up this article, and you were sort of criticizing that editor's writing style. In fact, where does it say in the manual of style that en dashes for "north–south" must be used? Where does it say that ugly words must be stripped of? Please assume good faith next time.  V60 干什么？ · VDemolitions 23:39, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
You've put up your article for a gold star knowing that it will be closely criticised. I'm sorry if you find it personally difficult to be told that the text is substandard, but please don't take it as a personal attack—I don't look at how many contributors there are, or who they are; I'm only concerned with matters of language. How do you propose that reviewers point out that Criterion 1a has not been satisfied? Now, rather than reacting in that way, why not research the edit-history pages of similar FAs and other articles to locate people who are interested in this area and who can copy-edit. It's very hard to fix up text that you're close to; others have an advantage. Such collaboration is central to the Wikipedian process. Tony 00:23, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
I've gone through and corrected the (numerous) grammatical errors in this article. It should now be ready for FA. --Rschen7754 (talk - contribs) 01:48, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Thanks, but not even all of the exampls I provided have been fixed. The lead is still choppily paragraphed. There are awkward wordings such as "... the Sailors and Soldiers Monument stands at Center Square. The monument was placed to honor General Phillip Sheridan’s Civil War unit ..." (Placed?). "Six lanes" but "4 miles". Lots to do. Tony 08:26, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
    • I didn't know my horrible writing style messed up the article. Please understand, I worked on this by my self with some help from USRD editors. I do not expect this article to be perfect or brilliant becuase in the FA?, it does not say anything stating that articles should be prefect because I'm not perfect. Please, I tried my best with this article and understand that I'm a horrible writer. -- J-A10 T · C 15:33, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
Look, please treat this process positively. I've never heard such self-flagellation in this room (or anger on the part of VD). I'm sure you can find collaborators to bring this to a standard we'll all be proud of—either during this round or when you resubmit it. Tony 22:02, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
I undestand what you've said but can some else vote or oppose this article and get this over with. -- J-A10 T · C 16:20, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Oppose on the basis of the writing style. per Tony needs an independant set of eyes. A couple of examples below but there are quite a few more.
    Lead of "Pennsylvania Route 145 (PA 145) is a state highway in the US state of Pennsylvania, covering a distance of 20 miles (32 km)." seems much more clunky than
    "Pennsylvania Route 145 (PA 145) is a 20 mile (32 km) long state highway, in the US state of Pennsylvania.".
    • The second sentence is not clear as to how the road travels
    "The route travels north–south from Interstate 78 at exit 60 and Pennsylvania Route 309 in Lanark, Pennsylvania north to Pennsylvania Route 248 in Weiders Crossing, Pennsylvania."... does this mean ?
    "The highway travels from exit 60 of Interstate 78, near Pennsylvania Route 309 in the town of Lanark, north to Pennsylvania Route 248 in Weiders Crossing"
    • As a note on comprehensiveness as well, I can't see text on the composition (tar all the way, concrete?), cost, government acts, funding source. - Peripitus (Talk) 12:21, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
    • Why do you need to know the composition, cost, government acts, or funding?  V60 干什么？ · VDemolitions 02:44, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
      • The composition, cost, government acts, and funding is not going to happen. The reason is becuase the organization that maintains this highway known as PennDOT does not have a magical website where you can get any information. They tend not to keep these types of records, I know this article is going to fail but when I renominate it, please do not mention this. -- JA10 T · C 20:40, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
Somewhere, someone paid a lot of money for this, and there will probably be news articles on that. My view is that without something on the physical structure of the road, and how it came to be, the article is not comprehensive. PennDOT may not have a website but usually the local/state library and news articles have copious material on something as significant as a highway - Peripitus (Talk) 11:30, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
  • comment Please consider looking at the article now that I have made significant changes to it. I think it's ready for FA now. -- JA10 T · C 01:27, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
Still has style issues for me with, for example only, far too many uses of the road's designation making the article very hard to read and overly repetative. As the article is about PA 145 it is hardly necessary to restate this eight times in the lead. Once per paragraph rather than the current five should suffice. Eg:
Where the highway stops being called MacArthur Road, it narrows to two lanes. It then passes through the predominantly rural land parallel to the Lehigh River, crossing the river on a concrete bridge at the Lehigh - Northampton county line.[3] The highway attracts more than the average traffic for roads in the Lehigh Valley. An average of 21,827 vehicles a day use it in Allentown and, where it is known as MacArthur road, 36,345 in Whitehall township.[4]
To me flows and is much more readable (although far from perfect ) than
At the point where PA 145 is no longer known as MacArthur Road, it narrows to two lanes and passes through predominantly rural land paralleling the Lehigh River. PA 145 also crosses a long concrete bridge over the Lehigh River at the Lehigh - Northampton county line.[3] PA 145 is one of the most traveled roads in the Lehigh Valley. In Allentown, PA 145 averages 21,827 vehicles a day. In Whitehall Township, MacArthur Road averages 36,345 vehicles per day.[4]
Peripitus (Talk) 11:30, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
I'll fix that. They should call this the Peer Review. Anything else wrong with it? -- JA10 T · C 20:05, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
What you said is true, someone did pay a lot of money for this highway but there is no record to prove it. PennDOT does have a website but it is mainly pertaining to information about licenses and like I said before, they don't keep data about funding for PA highways. I spoke to a PennDOT employee and he said newspapers won't do me any good either so please don't say this article is not comprehensive because this highway did cost a lot of money but there's nor source to prove it. -- JA10 T · C 19:56, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
The data is certainly available, although perhaps not of overiding importance for the article. It is a gazetted road and this generated copious quantities of official government paperwork, gazetting notifications, local government publications etc... some of which can be hard to find. The best research place is always the library and not just searching catalogues. Librarians are mines of useful information. I can find information that part of the route was used as the Lehigh Trail which seems to have been used for Native american, including the Algonquin, migrations that were reactions to the impact of european settlement, Seems to be mentioned in the book American Highways by the American Association of State Highway Officials (1973), and I'm sure the book Lehigh Township by the Lehigh Township Historical Society would mention the route. - Peripitus (Talk) 22:39, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.