Talk:Washington State Route 410/GA1

GA Review

Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch

Reviewer: – TMF 11:46, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

GA review (see here for criteria)

1. It is reasonably well written.

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

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:

Detailed notes

Resolved issues

• Prose/MOS compliance:
  • Lead
    • The first sentence makes no mention of the route being in the state of Washington - which is doubly problematic because the route's common name doesn't include the state name.
    • "Pierce County and King counties" - either use "Pierce and King counties" or "Pierce County and King County".
    • It seems like the first sentence is trying to give a synopsis of the entire route in one shot. As a result, it reads like a run-on sentence, and should be split up. The very first sentence of the lead should cover just the basic facts about the route: name, length, location, direction. Anything more than that will result in a large, run-on sentence.
    • I question the amount of detail in the remainder of the lead's first paragraph. Again, it seems like the lead is trying to summarize the route, yet cover everything on the route. I would either trim the amount of detail down or, at the very least, split it into two paragraphs to organize it better. See updated comments below.
    • The "SR 410" in parentheses in the lead should be in boldface per MOS:BOLDTITLE#Format_of_the_first_sentence.
    • "until 1926, when US 410 was established in 1926" - one of the 1926s should be eliminated, preferably the second one.
    • The lead says "US 410 was later decommissioned after US 12 was extended over the route of the highway" - implying that it completely supplanted US 410 - but goes on to say that two segments of US 410 received other designations.
  • RD
    • "State Route 410 (SR 410)" - the SR X abbreviation was already established in the lead, making this unnecessary.
    • Second sentence is a bit wordy.
    • "encounters the western terminus of SR 162 in a diamond interchange." - the use of "in" here is a bit weird to me. I would go with "by way of" or something similar to that.
    • "The interchange was the busiest segment" - an interchange, like an intersection, is just one point on a highway; I'm not seeing how it could serve as a segment. See updated comments below.
    • "interchanges" - Interchange isn't a verb in this sense. Better wording would be to say "connects to", etc.
    • "The other end of SR 168, named the Little Naches Road, is intersected" - reads awkward to me. Wording resolved, but see follow-up comments below.
    • "the byway ends at U.S. Route 12 in Naches" - since the US X abbreviation's already been established in the lead, that should be used here.
    • What I took away from the entire RD is that it has very little in the way of what kinds of areas the route traverses - rural, urban, etc. It covers what entities it traverses well - rivers, railroads, locations - but falls short in the former regard. As it is now, it's barely more than a map converted to prose - if it wasn't for some of the historical and individual location details, that's all it would be. See updated comments below.
  • History
    • Again, the first sentence runs on for a bit too long. In this situation, I would use the opening sentence to give a cursory description of the road (extended from point A to point B) and use successive ones to give details.
    • "White River-Natches Road" - should have a spaced en dash.
    • "Cowlitz-Natches Road" - should have an unspaced en dash.
    • U.S. Route 410 (US 410) - the abbreviation was already established long before this.
    • "The Pacific Highway has a brief concurrency with US 410 from Olympia to Tacoma" - if I'm understanding this right, this is an anachronism. At the point in the history where this is mentioned, US 410 hasn't been assigned yet, meaning a concurrency between the two at this point in time is impossible. This is underscored by a part of a sentence two sentences later, where US 410 is referred to as "future US 410".
    • "but its concurrent state highways changed their designations" - they didn't change their designations; the state did.
  • Junction list
    • Many MOSBOLD violations: any column-spanning cells that aren't headers should be center-aligned but not in bold. You can fix this by replacing the "!" starting the cell with "| style="text-align:center" |".
    • "E." - east? If so, I would spell it out, regardless of how it appears on signage.
• References check out as far as I can tell. There is thing I noticed, though: The AP is erroneously listed as the author of the story titled "Flooding from Naches landslide still a threat". They're the agency that published the story, not the author, and |author= should be replaced with |agency=.
• Aside from the issue with the RD I posted above, the article appears to hit all the major points. There are some tangents in the RD that I'm not sure I would have included, but at the end of the day these ones seem to be supplementing the rest of the RD. I'd be careful of going too far off-course, though.
• NPOV, stablility, and image requirements met. I'm not a fan of the image layout - on my setup all the images are bunched together below the infobox - but that's not necessarily part of the criteria.
• A note: the map has no source data - how the map was made, where the GIS data came from, etc. That's not necessary for GA, but it is necessary for every class higher than GA.

There's quite a few issues with the article, but I believe they can be fixed rather easily. Placing on hold. (Note: this was my first-ever GA review; my apologies if I've been too harsh.) – TMF 12:44, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

• Thanks for the thorough review, TMF. Its very surprising this is your first, since its done better than some reviewers. I've fixed most of the problems, except for the map problem, since all three have no source information. Two were made by NE2 and he doesn't post a full image description, while PHenry is retired and we cannot receive source information from him. –CG^Talk 18:43, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

It should probably be noted that while this is my first GAR, I've made many ACR reviews. ;)

As for the article, it definitely reads better this time around. I still have some prose concerns, though:

Resolved issues

• I think it's kind of a turnoff for a reader to have to go five sentences into the lead to get both of the route's termini - which I consider to be a vital piece of information for any highway. I think the ideal lead for this article would have the first paragraph devoted to information about the entire highway and leave the place-by-place description (such as "Traveling eastward, the roadway serves Bonney Lake and Buckley, crosses and eventually parallels the White River into Enumclaw and Greenwater.") for the second. That said, the first sentence of the lead sentence is much, much better; I'd leave that alone now.
• In the lead, delink and bold Chinook Scenic Byway since it redirects here. (Since it's already bolded at the outset, it doesn't need rebolding. It does need to be delinked in the junction list, though.)
• "US 410 was later decommissioned after US 12 was extended over the majority of the highway in 1967" - the sentence works now, but the "later" is redundant since the year of elimination is given very shortly afterward.
• "SR 410 was initially parts of various state wagon roads until 1926, when US 410 was established, extending from Aberdeen to Lewiston, Idaho." - this would flow better if it didn't have three clauses. I'm not a fan of how the second flows into the third, but it works for GA. Instead, I suggest eliminating the comma after 1926. Also: the front half of the sentence is a bit off. I think "initially parts" is what's doing it. For a fix, I would go with something like "Modern SR 410 was part of various state wagon roads until 1926 when...".
• RD: "The interchange was the busiest recorded part of SR 410 in 2008 with a daily average of 59,000 motorists using the freeway." - part still implies segment to me. You could say that the junction is the busiest point on the freeway if that's what the source indicates. However, most states calculate AADT by segment instead of by point.
• Delink Chinook Scenic Byway again.
• The last three paragraphs are fine in terms of development detail; however, I still find the first (which is on the verge of needing to be split) to be lacking in this regard. As it reads right now, it implies that the route passes through exclusively densely developed urban areas, and since neither I nor most of this article's readers are familiar with the road, that should be clarified if that isn't the case.
• History: The WSDOT acronym isn't defined anywhere in the article. I know what it is, you know what it is, but will the average reader?
• References: There's a glaring date format discrepancy between the article's prose (MDY) and the references (DMY). The entire article should use one date format, and since this is an American article, it should be using M D, Y.
• Other: After looking at the source code, the article's usage of non-breaking spaces is a bit spotty. Per the MOS, there should be non-breaking spaces between the date number and month name in dates, and non-breaking spaces between a road's name and number (so in between "Road" and "5" in State Road 5) and such. Also, as far as I can tell, there are no non-breaking spaces whatsoever between road names and numbers that appear on the displayed end of piped links. A common misconception is that items in links don't wrap, which is definitely not true.

Resolved issues have been struck; some of the original issues remain in addition to the new ones I just posted. – TMF 07:50, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

One more item: the infobox has "Existed: 1967 (as SR 410)[1][2] – present". Since the infobox is detailing SR 410 and the article is about SR 410, it's implied that the 1967 establishment date is for SR 410. Now, if you want to show that SR 410 was something else prior to 1967, I suggest using the "history" parameter to do it. The current setup is a bit strange for my tastes. – TMF 08:01, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

All done. –CG^Talk 17:14, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

Looking much better. I made some fixes myself, adding more non-breaking spaces where needed, fixing a few more dates, and getting the lead straightened out. Also note that I replaced all uses of {{nowrap}} with non-breaking spaces; when nowrap is used for a link that displays text like "U.S. Route 12", it erroneously results in a lack of a break in between U.S. and Route. For links with only one space, it's fine, but I prefer to use the actual spaces instead. Now, I do have at least one more round of concerns:

Resolved issues

• "After a junction with the other end of SR 168, named the Little Naches Road, the highway exits the Wenatchee National Forest and enters Naches." - the sentence gives the impression that SR 168 currently exists in some form. Of course, it exists on the books, but to the general public, it doesn't. The quickest fix here would be to insert "the proposed" before SR 168. Also remove the "the" prior to Little Naches Road.
• The junction list's column headers need scope="col" added per the MOS.
• I'm slightly confused by the Naches detour at the very end of the history. "Nile Road became the permanent detour for the highway," - does this mean SR 410 was permanently realigned onto Nile Road, a la Pennsylvania Route 61 near Centralia? "and the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) completed paving on November 20" - on what? Nile Road? A rebuilt SR 410?

Everything else prior to these comments has been resolved in one way or another, so I've struck and/or hidden them. – TMF 09:51, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Finished with the last three items. Thanks for removing the {{nowrap}}s and I've added "the proposed" before SR 168 and removed the "the" before Little Naches Road. Also added scope="col" to junction list and revised the detour sentence. –CG^Talk 13:42, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

• scope="col" needs to be added to the junction list's column headers, not the table's first line. The page that I linked to shows exactly how to do it.
• It's still not clear to me if Nile Road is now permanently part of SR 410 or not. Adding "in the lanslide (sic) area" didn't really do much for the section. – TMF 17:06, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

• Fixed. –CG^Talk 23:02, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

I'm still not convinced that the detour section is 100% correct after looking at the section's sources, but I'm not going to press the issue any further since that's more of an issue for A-Class or FA. On that note, this article probably needs some more copyediting to reach those levels. I have only one concern left, and it literally came to me as I was preparing to wrap up this review. The westernmost end of SR 410 is a freeway, but the article doesn't cover when said freeway was built. I'm assuming it wasn't constructed in the early 20th century along with the rest of the road. ;) – TMF 03:40, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

I've added a short sentence describing the freeway's construction between 1965 and 1972 with two maps I found/have in my inventory. –CG^Talk 20:03, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

OK, all of my concerns have been addressed at this point. I also made a few last tweaks to the article to fix a couple of areas where the wording was a bit choppy or wordy. Passing. – TMF 02:47, 5 December 2010 (UTC)