Talk:U.S. Route 20 in Indiana/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Rschen7754 19:45, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

GA review (see here for what the criteria are, and here for what they are not)

1. It is reasonably well written.

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

   Prose needs improvement.

2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.

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

3. It is broad in its coverage.

   a (major aspects): b (focused):

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):

7. Overall:

   Pass/Fail:

Lead

• The lead is too short. It needs to be at least another paragraph, and cover the content of the whole article. See WP:LEAD for details.
  • Better, but the second paragraph has no links, and there are grammar issues.
  • The first complete section of the parkway being called "Bypass US 20". - fragment
  • Other small realignment included the route through Michigan City, which followed US 35 from US 12 to I-94. - realignments?
  • A small realignment in LaGrange County was done in 2005, in which the roadway was straight. - straightened? Rschen7754 20:38, 25 June 2011 (UTC)
    • Still some issues. Please proofread before submitting to GAN next time.
    • US 20 through Whiting, East Chicago, and Gary is concurrency with US 20 twice.
    • US 20 was part of the Dunes Highway from Illinois state line to Michigan City, concurrenct with US 12. --Rschen7754 03:32, 27 June 2011 (UTC)
      • Still there. --Rschen7754 08:12, 31 July 2011 (UTC)
      • After I finally copyedited the lead myself, it finally meets the standard. Not stoked about having to do it myself. --Rschen7754 21:30, 31 July 2011 (UTC)
• US 20 though Gary, East Chicago, and Whiting, Indiana, US 20 varies between one-way streets, two-lane streets, four-lane streets, and same part with US 12 are even more lanes. - bad sentence structure
  • • US 20 varies between one-way streets, two-lane street, and four-lane streets, - all need to be plural --Rschen7754 06:48, 27 June 2011 (UTC)
• Then east of Gary to Michigan City US 20 is a two-lane highway. From Michigan City to west of South Bend US 20 is a four-lane undivided highway and two-lane rural highway. - commas would help with readability
  • That just made it worse. Now it's a run-on sentence. A comma should go after the first City and after the first Bend. Rschen7754 20:38, 25 June 2011 (UTC)
    • Better, but you need a capital for the word "from". --Rschen7754 03:32, 27 June 2011 (UTC)
• US 20 bypasses around the west and south sides of South Bend and Elkhart. - bypasses around is not a good construction.
• Please go through and add commas where necessary- it's definitely making things harder to read.

Route description

• You don't need subsections for every single paragraph.
• Please go through and add commas where necessary- it's definitely making things harder to read.
  • A few more may be helpful, but the RD meets the minimum in terms of commas. --Rschen7754 06:48, 27 June 2011 (UTC)
• Replace Ave. with Avenue.
• From Bridge Street to Vermont Street eastbound traffic of US 12/US 20 are on 5th Ave. and westbound traffic is on 4th Ave. - subject/verb agreement.
• After US 35, US 20 is four-lane undivided highway until Rolling Prairie, passing State Road 39 at Springville. - is a four-lane undivided highway?
• Section 1.4 - you keep using the same words over and over again to start sentences.
  • Seems a bit worse than it was before? --Rschen7754 20:38, 25 June 2011 (UTC)
    • You have three sentences starting with "US 20" right next to each other. --Rschen7754 06:48, 27 June 2011 (UTC)
• Then US 20 has an interchange with US 33 near Dunlap.. - really choppy (try US 20 then?), also, you've got 2 periods.
• US 20 heads east from Elkhart, passes through or near Middlebury at State Road 13, Shipshewana at State Road 5, Lagrange at State Road 9, and Angola at Interstate 69. - run-on
  • Better, but "Passing through an intersection with SR 15 south of Bristol." is not a complete sentence. Every sentence needs to have a subject and a verb. Furthermore, English has some rules regarding dependent clauses and gerunds that influence whether a sentence is complete.
• St. Joseph Valley Parkway is linked twice; it should only be linked once. --Rschen7754 06:48, 27 June 2011 (UTC)
• This intersection is a four-lane undivided highway, then soon after the intersection US 20 becomes a two-lane highway. - run-on sentence. Rschen7754 20:38, 25 June 2011 (UTC)
  • The correction you made doesn't fix the problem. If you need to make a compound sentence you need either a semicolon or a comma followed by a conjunction.
• Soon after the interchange with Old US 20 is an interchange with CR&nsp;17.
• Just west of Ohio State Line US 20 passes under the Indiana Toll Road (I-80/I-90). - Just west of the Ohio state line?
• US 20 passes through is intersection as a four-lane divided highway, then soon after the intersection US 20 becomes a two-lane highway.
  • Still not fixed.
• Then soon after the intersection US 20 becomes a two-lane highway. - Bad to start a sentence with "Then".
• On th south side of Middlebury US 20 has an intersection with SR 13.
• On the way th Lagrange US 20 passes through an intersection with SR 5 just south of Shipshewana.
• This section of US 20 is two lanes, undivided highway. - is a two-lane undivided highway?
• With small sections near the intersection with SR 15 and SR 13 having four-lanes divided highway. - fragment
• US 20 then enters downtown Angola, passing through a roundabout with SR 127 and Old US 27]].

History

• The first paragraph is entirely unsourced.
  • Still. --Rschen7754 20:54, 25 June 2011 (UTC)
    • A map from 1922 doesn't support this statement. You need one from 1916, 1917, 1926, and 1927 to support this.
    • Similar deal with the 1973 one.
• Illinois State Line - should be "the Illinois state line." State lines are not proper nouns. Please go through and correct.
  • Still there. --Rschen7754 20:54, 25 June 2011 (UTC)
    • Illinois state Line is not acceptable either.
• "Until the 1998," - Until 1998?
• In 2005 a series of sharp curves around Rainbow Lake were removed, the curves were located six miles west of Lagrange - run-on, you can't just randomly combine sentences like that.
  • It works; I was thinking of replacing the comma with a semicolon, that would have been better. --Rschen7754 20:54, 25 June 2011 (UTC)
• I'm against long quotes like that; WP:NOT a quote repository - that's Wikisource.
  • Better, but I see no reason why this can't be paraphrased. --Rschen7754 06:48, 27 June 2011 (UTC)
• I don't get how the Dunes Highway relates to US 20.
  • Usually if I write a comment like that, it needs to be clarified in the article; explaining it here doesn't do any good. --Rschen7754 06:48, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

Future

• Plans to make US 20 a four-lane highway from the east end of the St. Joseph Valley Parkway to SR 13. - fragment

Overall sourcing

• You only cite maps and DOT/FHWA sources here - which is fine for GA class, but will cause problems in higher venues. Just a warning.
• Source 12 should really be 2 citations.
  • Every source needs to be in its own <ref></ref>. --Rschen7754 06:48, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

Placing article on hold - the prose needs cleanup, and the history needs sourcing. --Rschen7754 20:18, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

• Made notes above. Some of the issues above were not addressed. I do agree with some of Imzadi1979's comments below, and it probably is beneficial to incorporate some of his suggestions if you want to take this article further; however, some of them are beyond the GA criteria, and the decision to pass the article remains up to me, the initial reviewer. --Rschen7754 20:54, 25 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Still not done; more fixes needed. Please please please proofread before posting saying you've fixed everything. --Rschen7754 06:48, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

Comments from Imzadi1979

• I don't think that the History section is very complete. There is a major issue there: footnote 1 is a link to a page on I-69 in Indiana from INDOT, and has nothing to do with US 20 at all. That means that this History section is still unsourced.
• Honestly, I think the history section is probably only a third or a quarter of the size it should be to cover the historical information about the highway that should exist. It should be cited to historical maps or newspaper articles to detail these changes unless INDOT has some sort of archive of historical documentation on the roadway.
• Can we get the locations (townships, I assume) for the two blank spots in the junction list?
• "9.63-10.01" that should have an en dash (–) instead of a hyphen to correctly match the other similar entries.
• Can we have consistent date formats in the references?
• Can we have consistent usage of abbreviations in the prose of the article. In general, it's a good practice to give the full name of a highway by type the first time it's used, and then abbreviate all other highways of that type thereafter. Since US 20's abbreviation is given in the first sentence of the lead, all other US Highways should be abbreviated on all uses. Give the first mentioned State Road's name in full with the abbreviation in parentheses afterwards, and then abbreviate the rest of them. Same for the Interstate Highways and County Roads.
• "Only the segment of US 20 that is concurrent with the St. Joseph Valley Parkway are included as a part of the National Highway System (NHS)." This sentence needs the citation. "The NHS is a network of highways that are identified as being most important for the economy, mobility and defense of the nation." needs a separate citation; that map does not back that statement.
• The See also section could use the {{portal|Indiana|U.S. Roads}} box added.

Imzadi 1979 → 00:02, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

Replies to Both Rschen7754 and Imzadi1979

• Foot note number one was linking to I-69. This was due to INDOT changing the website on late Thursday PM or Friday sometime. The old page was the mile log, the foot note number one is now linking to the mile log in PDF format on INDOT's website.
• Added more to the history section.
• Added more references, the new references are not maps.
• In the route description removed the five sections, now having only two sections.
• Reworded the old section 1.4.
• Reworded some of the old section 1.5.

Your comments should be resolved. Detcin (talk) 15:37, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

More comments from Imzadi1979

• What's all that stuff about the Dunes Highway doing in here? You've missed my point completely.
  • Rather than have the 85-year history of US 20 in Indiana detailed, the previous article had just a paragraph that laid out a few details without explaining them fully.
  • There is still an entire paragraph of the History that has no citations at all, yet has details that should be cited.
  • There is still a gap in time in the History from the 1930s (note, decades don't get the apostrophe. 1930's is possessive form) to the 1970s. Are you saying that US 20 was not changed at all for 40 years, even though the Toll Road and other Interstate Highways were built during that time frame?
• That Dunes Highway stuff increased the length of the History, yes, but it's also problematic for other reasons
  • WP:UNDUE: is that not undue weight to focus so much of the History on one section in the northwest of the state when US 20 is so much longer and traverses the full width of the state?
  • I seriously think that the section was just copy-pasted into this article without much attempt to integrate it. Case in point, the footnotes from that section don't match the footnote style from the rest of the article.
• Footnotes 1 and 4 still don't have access dates. While they aren't strictly required, it helps others in case the links go dead or get changed in the future.
• Date formatting in the citations is still inconsistent. I would suggest reformatting all of the ISO-style dates (i.e. 2011-05-02) as American standard format dates (i.e. May 2, 2011) for both consistency and reader readability.
• Footnote 4 should have its publication date added (December 17, 2007).

Imzadi 1979 → 18:54, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

Replies to Rschen7754

• Cited the paragraph of the History that had no citations at all.
• US 20 was concurrent with US 12 from the Illinois state line to Michigan City and US 12 is the Dunes Highway. Until US 20 was reroute farther away from Lake Michigan, the alignment it takes today.
• Reworded the area around South Bend and Elkhart.
• Fixed the typos
• Added links to the lead

Your comments should be resolved. Detcin (talk) 01:47, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

Detcin, do you plan on making the above changes soon? --Rschen7754 20:17, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

Rschen7754, I believe the above changes have beed resolved.Detcin (talk) 01:32, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

Not to step on any toes, but there are several errors in the references used. From the footnote I used on U.S. Route 131 (footnote e): "The Indiana State Highway Commission, later the Indiana Department of Highways, was merged into the Indiana Department of Transportation in 1989." which is cited to footnote 56 (updated after and INDOT website revamp): Staff. "Facts & Photos". Indiana Department of Transportation. Retrieved July 30, 2011. Imzadi 1979 → 02:04, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

Noted, I'll start working on this again over the next few days. --Rschen7754 08:12, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

Failing article - nominator frequently states that all comments have been resolved, when clearly they haven't, and no attempt was made to resolve some of the comments. This article *still* needs a thorough copyedit and it's clear that the nominator is not capable of doing so. The history section is still a mess. It's not our responsibility at GAN to rewrite the article, and there are entire sections that may have to be. We are happy to help you with this article, but GAN isn't the place for the extensive work that is still needed. --Rschen7754 21:36, 31 July 2011 (UTC)