This is my first source review, so please let me know if I'm doing it right or not :). Ref numbers are as of the latest revision at 06:31, 18 February 2015 (UTC).
- Formatting:
- Most of the refs wihtout a specified author use "Staff", but some just leave author field blank: Refs 3, 7, 8, 14, 27, 28, 29, 78. I'm including the map citations which put the publisher in the author position, because according to Help talk:Citation Style 1/Archive 7#cite_map that is likely to be changed soon.
- 1, 49: Ellipses in the title seem odd, don't citations usually contain full titles? Or are the ellipses from the original title?
- @Imzadi1979 and Evad37: The full titles are substantially longer; should they be used instead? --Rschen7754 01:07, 24 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- I think the full titles should probably be used. My reasoning is that, for this article, the References section contains full citation details (as opposed to WP:SFN), and is basically equivalent to an end-of-text reference list. While various real-world citation styles may allow (or require) a shortened title for an in-text reference in certain cases, I would think full titles would be required for the corresponding end-text reference. (Perhaps Imzadi can confirm if I'm on the right track here?) Another option is to just use the chapter number and session number for the citations, and have a relevant quote, which may include ellipses, at the end of the references. - Evad37 [talk] 02:26, 25 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- I agree that full titles are preferable. I will say that the APA guidance for citing social media postings says to quote the full tweet (140 characters) as the title, but for Facebook and other social media they say to quote the first 40 words as the title and truncate the rest, basically an incipit. Now I know that sometimes when dealing with lengthy bill titles (the British Parliament is famous for them) that the legislature will provide a short title for citation purposes. For example, the Patriot Act has a full title of "An Act to deter and punish terrorist acts in the United States and around the world, to enhance law enforcement investigatory tools, and for other purposes" and a short title of "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001" which can be abbreviated "USA PATRIOT Act of 2001".
So you could quote the full title of the legislation, you could use a short title if one is provided, or you could use a 40-word incipit, but I wouldn't use ellipses like that to selectively drop words. The incipit version still gives a reader plenty of "meat" to find the specific piece of legislation. Imzadi 1979 → 02:43, 25 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- 5: Title should be "National Highway System: California (South)"
- 7: Should use document title (like ref 4) rather than browser title
- 27: "Section" seems unnecessary, surely just "San Diego inset" would do?
- Source reliability: No problems detected
- Dead links: Refs 1, 6, 49
Is there anything else I need to check for a source review? - Evad37 [talk] 00:17, 7 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- @Imzadi1979: Since you're the most familiar with source reviews, any thoughts? --Rschen7754 17:18, 7 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- I think you covered the bases, a SR at FAC checks both formatting consistency and reliability. I pretty much agree with what you've noted, Evad37, although I would add a few things.
- Some publishers/publication names are wikilinked, and others are not. I would suggest wikilinking all of those on first mention, so things like "California State Assembly", "Thomas Brothers", "Federal Highway Administration", "The San Diego Union", etc should get a link if "Automobile Club of Southern California" and "California Department of Transportation" are linked.
- For note 78, "California Department of Transportation" should be moved to the publisher parameter not the author one. Also, "California Department of Transportation" should be wikilinked in note 2, not note 78, and certainly not twice in note 78. The eastbound link should be credited to "Sunny Kals" as the author, and "Don Howe" should be the author for the westbound link, with the respective "7/5/2007" and "9/21/2006" dates used. (I'm trying to figure out where the "November 7, 2008" date may have come into play, it appears that there's a different version of the PDFs being displayed. If so, maybe pull the older PDF out of archive.org or update the citation and access-date accordingly?)
- That date was probably copied en masse to all of the California articles, regardless of the actual date it was updated. Anyway, I've fixed all of the completed California articles accordingly. --Rschen7754 05:26, 30 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- For all of the maps, I'd prefer to see
|scale= and |cartography= filled out. If it's a fixed-scale map (in other words, not variable like Google Maps), and the scale isn't explicitly noted, a |scale=Scale not given can be used.
- Also as Evad noted, {{cite map}} is due to be transitioned over to Lua later this month, perhaps in just a week or so. For most USRD editors' map citations, that will mean they'll want to copy the publisher name into
|author= so that the output of the start of the citations will have the same look. (Copy, not move as the publisher will be displayed separately in the middle of the citation.) Going forward on copies of paper maps, I'd also recommend adding |location= , just as you'd include the publication location on a book. (It will be fair to assume the location is the same as city where the DOT headquarters is located.) This will enhance our consistency with other citations.
- One last item to consider is that some titles are in title case, likely as a direct copy of how that newspaper or source rendered them, and others are in sentence case. I would harmonize them all to the same capitalization scheme, and I would also drop extraneous periods in the older headlines ("May Include S.D. Roads in State System" → "May Include SD Roads in State System"), neither action constitutes more than a "minor typographical" change, but does promote a more polished look. I also use non-breaking spaces in citation titles just as I would in the body of the article and for the same reasons.
- I hope this helps, Imzadi 1979 → 17:58, 7 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
All the issues I raised have been resolved, but I'll let Imzadi1979 sign off on his part of the review - Evad37 [talk] 01:53, 24 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- Things look good. I'll comment that for note 3, "1 inch=1900 feet" is fine, but the ratio of "1:22,800" is a very simple conversion, or "1 in = 1900 ft" works better to be more compact. (I think the equals sign should have spaces on either side for legibility, but that might be a preference thing.) Nothing else jumps out at me. Imzadi 1979 → 05:46, 24 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Map scales can be converted to the unit-less ratios very simply. "1:22,800" means that 1 inch on the map represents 22,800 inches in reality. If the original scale were instead "1 in ≈ 1900 ft", an approximation, the scale would be noted as "c. 1:22,800". I'm not sure how we'd want to handle this, but I think that starting to switch over to the ratios over time would be nicer, cleaner and easier for readers than dealing with some maps in inches:feet, inches:miles, cm:km, or even the oddball in:km I've found. I'll also note that most library catalogs I've consulted use the ratios.Imzadi 1979 → 05:46, 24 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
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