Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/A82 road/archive1

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 by Ian Rose 10:04, 30 July 2013 (UTC) [1].[reply]

A82 road[edit]

Featured article candidates/A82 road/archive1

Nominator(s): Ritchie333 ^(talk) ^(cont) 08:39, 25 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The A82 is one of the most important roads in Scotland, with some highly notable scenery. In my view, therefore, it's one of the most worthy to try and take to FA status. The article has already been assessed by representatives of WikiProject UK Roads and WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors, and recently featured as a Did You Know? on the front page. In our view, it's now ready to undergo a thorough review as a Featured Article Candidate. Ritchie333 ^(talk) ^(cont) 08:39, 25 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose. While a lot of effort has been put into the article, I do not believe that it meets the FAC standards. On a procedural note, this article has not been through GAN or WP:HWY/ACR, which does not by itself disqualify any FAC, but those venues are strongly recommended for preparation before coming here.
- MOS:RJL - the article is missing a table of the major junctions, which all other road FAs have where the road is still in service. With over 50 road FAs having gone through FAC, it is generally established that to be "comprehensive" the article must contain one.
- Prose and clarity:
  - "providing memorable driving experiences." - is that a good or a bad thing?
  - "The A82 has an extensive history." - not really worth saying, fluff
  - what does "detrunked" mean? "dual carriageway"?
  - "The road continues" starts two consecutive paragraphs
  - Overuse of "dual carriageway"
  - What is a "freeflow junction"?
  - "to a high quality single carriageway standard over the 1980s" - what makes it high quality?
  - "constructed between 1990 and 1992." yet your maps are 1990 and 1994...
  - "It is sandwiched between the shoreline of the loch and the mountains to the west, and it runs" - is the second "it" needed?
  - In fact, lots of "runs" too. Check for other repeated words throughout, and try to remove redundant words wherever possible, explain or link unfamiliar terms. Stopping here, skimming the rest of the article... please, have a copyeditor look at this.
  - Between Invermoriston and Drumnadrochit, there is a roadside memorial to John Cobb, who was killed on the loch attempting to beat the water speed record. - swimming? boating?
  - "Today" should not be used, see WP:DATED
  - Per WP:MOSITALICS#Quotations - "It is normally incorrect to put quotations in italics."
  - Lots of "The A82", use some variety.
  - "12 months" needs a nonbreaking space, please check for them throughout
  - The new road will be to modern day standards... constructed to?
  - What is a diversion route?
- Comprehensiveness and structure: you say that specific sections were built starting in 1724, yet I never see that year mentioned anywhere else in the article - indicates that there's probably stuff missing. The history parts of the article are poorly organized; some of it is split into the Route section, and some of it is in the History section, making the history of the actual road hard to follow - it's hard to tell when the road was built since it's woven into the text. Also, one paragraph does not a subsection make, yet there are a few subsections like that in the history. Finally, after all you said it has an "extensive history" yet it's barely over a screen long - a bit contradictory…
- Focus: I don't see anything unique about the Gaelic Signs section or any reason why it needs to be included in the article besides a brief mention, seeing as it could be copy-pasted to many other Scotland roads in the area (Wikipedia:Content forking). Also, signs should be lowercase.
- Images: the map is huge and takes up half of the infobox. Also, what does green mean? What does red mean?
- Captions: they should either be complete sentences or fragments, mixing both is not a good idea. If it's a complete sentence, it needs a period; if not, then don't include one.
- Lead: the lead should be a summary of the rest of the article, yet it seems that there is some stuff, including an entire source (source 5) that is not repeated anywhere else in the article.

Mostly minor stuff, but the prose issues, history issues and the missing junction list are an oppose for me as they are major parts of the article that are not present. --Rs chen 7754 12:03, 25 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose Too many minor prose and formatting issues; fairly easy to fix but cumulatively fail this at the moment. Also questions over scope; why a whole section on Gaelic signs? Why no mention of the M82? Needs too much work to meet standards. Also, this is not a "deer warning sign". What does "a number of" mean? Why is it better than saying "several" or "some"?--John (talk) 08:56, 26 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Comment I think the problem is I've struggled to recruit a really good copyeditor for this - I'm getting better at Tony1's prose writing exercises but I can't hand on heart say I'm getting a pass over about 60% at the moment. Nominally peer reviews go by WP:UKRD but I don't really see anyone else tackling articles to even GA level. I have asked around a few of the other good copyeditors I know but most seem to be busy - in your case John, I assumed you were occupied with Ealdgyth on Battle of Hastings. Happy to close this for now, as the main reason I moved it from GAN to here is because the copyeditor thought it was great. I think also it would be good to get a co-nom if we decided to give it another go later. I know Farrtj has had similar problems trying to get KFC through FA. Ritchie333 ^(talk) ^(cont) 12:56, 26 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- Sorry- I did notice some of the issues, like the repetition, but I erred toward preserving the flavor of the prose when I should have edited more aggressively. What you really need- and, sorry again, but this narrows the field much further and won't make it any easier for you- is a British copy editor. There's a lot of British vernacular here that's unfamiliar to me, and you need someone more qualified to address that. Dementia13 (talk) 13:32, 29 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Comment—given that the nominator has indicated a willingness to withdraw this nomination for now, I won't formally oppose, however if this FAC is left open, please register this review in opposition to promotion at this time. Based on a skim read of the article, I have the following issues:
- There are dash formatting issues through the article. The subheadings are using spaced en dashes, "St George's Cross – Alexandria", when they should be unspaced per MOS:DASH. Entries in the prose include "Dalnotter - Inverness Trunk Road" and "Glasgow - Clydebank - Dumbarton - Alexandria - Crianlarich - Ballachulish - Fort William - Fort Augustus - Inverness" which are using spaced hyphens instead of the proper unspaced en dashes.
- Referencing formatting is a mess.
  - Cartographers aren't indicated on maps.
  - Hansard' is linked in every footnote, which is WP:OVERLINKing; the first footnote that is sourced to the Hansard is all that needs to be linked. This also applies to other repeated sources like Ordnance Survey maps, or repeated authors. While correcting this, please audit all footnotes to make sure that the first instance as numbered has the link, and not the second, as done with The Guardian on footnotes 28 and 29.
  - Book citations lack city of publication; this isn't an issue, per se, but it isn't that common in my experience.
  - Date ranges and page ranges in citations should use en dashes. Even if that means changing a hyphen in a title (which is a minor typographic change).
  - Footnote 8: the title of the webpage should be "About Us" and "Transport Scotland" should be indicated as the publisher. We don't need to parrot the HTML title when the top of the webpage gives the simplified title, and we shouldn't omit a publisher because it is redundant to a portion of the title.
  - Newspapers that lack a city in their title normally have that location supplied for clarity. Footnote 23 links to "Daily Record (Scotland)", but it should display the city of publication in the citation.
  - Footnote 58 lacks attribution to the author.
  - Why is "BBC" in italics in "BBC News (BBC)"? Normally, a television network, or a division of a network, would be considered a publisher and rendered in roman (normal) type, while a specific program is a work and rendered in italics. Assuming BBC News is the name of a program aired on the BBC, the roman and italics is backwards; if BBC News is just the division of the network that produces the news, then the parenthetical is redundant and neither would be in italics.
  - Why is the BBC credited as the author on footnote 53, but not the publisher? Why is there a space before the colon in the title?
  - Footnote 69: wouldn't "Highways Magazine" be the name of a work, and shouldn't it be in italics?
  - Footnotes 75 and 76 should have |format=PDF inserted into the citation templates to indicate to a reader that the links are to PDFs. Reliance on the automatic PDF icon display has issues, and we should be explicitly supplying this information, even if its rendered a bit redundant.
  - Words like "Limited" or "Company" are normally omitted from publisher names in citations.
  - Another consistency issue: are we separating titles from subtitles with colons or dashes? This sort of typographical change can be made for consistency in our presentation without concerns over changing the titles the publishers used. To have both formats in use makes our article look sloppy and unpolished.

Unless or until these sorts of minor formatting details are fixed, this article can't be judged as part of "our finest work". Imzadi 1979 → 18:08, 26 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Closing note: This candidate has been archived, but there may be a delay in bot processing of the close. Please see WP:FAC/ar, and leave the {{featured article candidates}} template in place on the talk page until the bot goes through. Ian Rose (talk) 14:43, 29 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.