Wikipedia:Peer review/Rail transport in Northamptonshire/archive1

Rail transport in Northamptonshire

Listed for peer review because it was recently promoted to GA (which I didn't think would happen - really thought it would fail and that I'd get feedback but hey-ho) and I'd like to gain a peer review so that I can improve the article. I do think it needs improving but I'm not sure how to action this.

Thanks, DimensionalFusion (talk · she/her) 10:38, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

Airship

As requested, I'll give general feedback aimed at improving the article, maybe with a featured content nomination in mind.

• This is one of those odd articles that could be both a list or an article, and would probably be eligible at both WP:FAC or WP:FLC, it it was formatted appropriately. My personal inclination would be WP:FLC—it feels quite listy to me—but it's your call. If it's a list, it might need a name change.
• Regardless, the lead needs expansion. It needs to summarise the entire article—I'd want to see detail on the history, on former lines that are no longer in operation, and on the current state of affairs. WP:LEAD says a three sentence lead for an article of this size is woefully short.
• You may also look at MOS:OVERSECTION, especially for the history section. The section could easily be four paragraphs long in total, and it currently has four subheadings. All that does is unnecessarily clutter the prose, and for minimal benefit for the reader, who you can assume knows that earlier events will be found near the start and modern events near the end.
• You know what this article really misses? Maps. I don't know if {{location map}} can handle drawing lines, but if you could somehow wangle maps of the former railways or the current ones, that would be really helpful.
  • OH, and a map of Northamptonshire is an absolute must. People might be reading this from darkest Siberia. They might not even know what Northamptonshire is. I don't actually think there's a link to Northamptonshire in the body. WP:MTAU is not typically applied to articles like this, but I think you should probably bear it in mind more than you have.
• On references, there seems to be a lot of dependence on one source, Lost Railways of Northamptonshire, which considering its title is fair enough; you really have to keep an eye out for plagiarism, especially close paraphrasing, if you do this though. I don't believe the GA reviewer asked to spotcheck (which they really should have), but they will at FAC and they probably will at FLC.
• On the note of citations, Wake 1935, Hatley 1959, and Gough 1984 don't actually refer to anything. Might want to find those books again. If you want to see the errors yourself, install User:Trappist the monk/HarvErrors.
• There is variance between the actual lists of stations on the line in the "Former railways" section, and the prosified lists of stations in the "Current operations" section. Might want to standardise.

Feel free to ping if you have any further questions. Nice article, but in need of some polish, and maybe some thought as to what it actually is. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 23:55, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

@AirshipJungleman29;

The reason for the variance between the prose list of current stations and those listed in the Former railways section is that the ones listed there are former/closed stations, whereas the ones in current operations are open stations.

A map would definitely be nice, and the lines are all on OpenStreetMap, but I can't for the life of me figure out a way to compile it into a map. The reason that there's no general map of the area is that I assumed that anyone who did not know where the county was could just click on the link to the Northamptonshire article which is in the lead. There's not a link in the body because I've been that duplicate links are bad

I'll probably just remove the citations that don't go anywhere, because they're covered by other sources anyway

I'd like to check for close paraphrasing or plag, but I'm not sure how feasable that is

How does MTAU apply to the article? I'm a bit lost regarding that, clarification welcome

I'll look at expanding the lead and removing the history sub-sections, no problem there

I don't think this article could be a list without getting deleted, it's essentially a duplication of the category Category:Disused railway stations in Northamptonshire. Ultimately I think it works better as an article, but I'm unsure how to do this whilst retaining the information about the closed stations

DimensionalFusion (talk · she/her) 08:59, 8 November 2024 (UTC)