Talk:Eurostar/GA1

GA Review

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GA review (see here for criteria)

1. It is reasonably well written.

   a (prose): b (MoS):

   Some comments:

   • In general, the article is written with too long sentences and too short paragraphs. Especially where these are combined, this can give bad results, such as one-sentence paragraphs. Merge paragraphs and split sentences.'
   • The lead is short for an article this length. It should perhaps be 50–100% longer.
   • Let the reader determine what is a surprise; thus avoid words such as "unsurprising".
   • Railway stations are proper nouns, and should be capitalized as such.
   • Try to avoid using parenthesis in prose, especially of the type "and with construction of a new high-speed line between Paris and the Channel Tunnel (LGV Nord) under way". Instead, use commas, emdahses or reconstuct the sentence to include it.
   • Why are stations in Britain mentioned, but not those in France and Belgium?
   • I'm not saying it is incorrect, but stating "has been blamed" is very strong. I would have preferred to see a more neutral wording, epecially if it is speculative or disagreement.
   • It is unclear if the Nightstar was actually taken into use.
   • It would be much more logical if the routes were made their own top section.
   • Remember to keep the number of significant digits when converting from km to mi.
   • Does "with a 435m Brussels South Viaduct." mean "with the opening of the 435-metre (1,427 ft) Brussels South Viaduct"?
   • The primary unit of measurement should not be abbreviated (except optionally km/h due to excessive length). This option is normally intended for infoboxes, tables and the like.
   • Not a GA criteria, but still a good thing to learn: Emdashes (—) are for punctuation, while endashes (–) are for disjunction. Also, emdashes are never spaced.
   • It would be a lot more logical if the milestone section was merged into the history. At present, the article jumps forward and back between discussing the chronological occurence of events, the technical aspects of the line, the service and the routes and line.
   • Is the £59 fare for a single or round trip?
   • What does "This security often receives significant investment by Eurostar, in comparison to airport security it is less time-consuming, which is popular with passengers." mean? I do not see the connection between 'investments' and 'less time-consuming'. I think this is because 'investments' is a very vauge word in this sense.
   • Again, it would be more logical if parts of the "performance" section were moved into the history section. At currenet, the first mention of the two fires is in the "operations performance" section.
   • The last part of the "operations performance" section should be converted from bullets to prose.
   • Could the "organisation" section be converted to prose, please.
   • Remember to convert to imperial units (using {{convert}}) also in the "rolling stock" section.
   • Could not the bullets under the retired fleet be included as a "notes" entry in the table.
   • Why is the section on "Ashford International" under "future development"? Would it not be better to place it under history?
   • There is no need to block-quote a single sentence.
   • Company names should never be in italics, even if they do not have an article.
   • What is LCR?
   • The sentence "This would prove beneficial to future Regional Eurostar plans, as it was recently made clear that Regional Eurostar plans would not be considered until High Speed Two is undertaken" repeats almost everything twice. Could it not be shorten considerable.
   • London and Continental Railways needs to be mentioned earlier in the article, than with the Deutche Bahn buying interest.
   • Remember to establish what abbreviations are used by noting them after the first mention of the full-length fragment.
   • Do not duplicate "see also" entries in the text or in the navboxes.
   • Try to minimize the number of external links, per WP:EL. In this case, the only relevant link is the official one, that happens to be in the infobox. Rememeber: a perfect article has no "see also" and "external links" section.

2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.

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

   • As seen with this tool, there are quite a number of dead links.

   All 'real' dead links have been fixed/deleted, the remainder are simply auto-blocks or faults with the tool, The Times links for instance work fine except with that tool (handy :S ).81.111.115.63 (talk) 18:05, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

3. It is broad in its coverage.

   a (major aspects): b (focused):

   • The history, in particular about the pre-construction period, is very short. I seem to remember that there have been plans for this line for ages, and this being an international project, there must have been a massive amount of documentation about the planning. I know that a lot of this relates more to the Channel Tunnel article, but it is also relevant for this article.
   • To be frank, the table listing all the cars and how many toilets and seats each has may be relevant for the subarticle, but it is too focused for the main Eurostar article.

4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.

   Fair representation without bias:

   The article tends to over-focus on the British side of matters, with much detailing on British plans, and considerably less on the French and Belgium developments.

I've done a few things to balance it out more, such as greatly cutting down on the out of proportion 'High Speed One' subsection, mildly enlarging the other route sections abroad, adding a few pictures on the other high speed lines and terminals, and provided a far better and more equal introduction. More developments on the foreign sections would be better, but the state owned segments have much less activity than the privatised version in Britain; there is less to talk about. I'll continue trying to do what I see can be done, anybody who wants to lend a hand, it'd be appreciated.81.111.115.63 (talk) 12:16, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

1. It is stable.

   No edit wars etc.:

2. 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):

   • File:Eurostar organigramme.jpg should be converted to either .png or preferably .svg. This is not a requirement, but it sure would make things easier.

   Call me stupid, but I've downloaded and saved the file onto my desktop, converted it over to a .png (my image editor doesn't have an .svg file format to save the image into) but how do I edit the image used on the site though? There doesn't appear to be a 'replace' or 'edit' function on the image's page for me to replace it with. How do I do this? 81.111.115.63 (talk) 22:25, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

   It is not possible to convert an image from .jpg to .svg. Take a look at Scalable Vector Graphics—it involves saving the data as geometric shapes instead of pixels. This makes it ideal for diagrams, and easy to modify. It requires the use of a program such as Inkscape. As noted above, it is not a requirement, just a suggestion (so don't worry about it). Arsenikk ^(talk) 20:37, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

   • The article is a bit under-images. Feel free to add more images, including termanal stations and railway sections in France and Belgium.

   Much has been done to improve this, image content close to doubled, should be suffice to satisfy this requirement.81.111.115.63 (talk) 12:22, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

3. Overall:

   Pass/Fail:

   I am placing the article on hold. There are a number of prose and structure issues that need to be resolved. Otherwise, the article pretty much covers all aspects and is well referenced (except for the dead links). Good work so far. Arsenikk ^(talk) 09:41, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

I'll crack on with this lot on the 22nd and the upcoming weekend, I'll do my best to fix these flaws as and where I can.81.111.115.63 (talk) 21:51, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Okay, I've done quite a bit but I'm starting to run into barriers. I don't know how to update the problematic picture you hightlighted, it appears that it can't be edited or replaced or re-uploaded even though I've made a conversion of it ready to upload in its place. Also, the "Rolling Stock" {{Convert}} has run into a problem: The code is getting the numbers incorrect. It insists in turning 300 km/h into 190 mp/h, when it is clearly 186. I basically have a choice, let the code place incorrect numbers onto the page thus giving false information to people, or leave it manual where the number is correct. My knowledge with Convert code is limited to say the least, but the fact it is getting the numbers wrong is frustrating to say the least. How do I resolve either of these issues? 81.111.115.63 (talk) 12:51, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

The problems experienced with {{convert}} is due to the issue of significant digits. The template presumes, as is natural, that a value of 300 has two signigifant digits. However, this is a special case where three significant digits is needed—and it is possible to tell the template this with the syntax {{convert|300|km/h|0}}. Here, the 0 indicates that rounding should be done with 0 insignificant zeros. Arsenikk ^(talk) 20:37, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

This GA review appears to have stalled. Arsenikk has vanished and I've been unable to contact him. It is like he just dropped off the web. Can anyone else pick this up, making more suggestions for development and hopefully make the final ruling in his absense? 81.111.115.63 (talk) 23:40, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Comments from second reviewer

Taking over review, as first reviewer has been inactive for over three, but if he returns before I've finished ....Pyrotec (talk) 15:46, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

I'm basically going to work my way through the article, starting from History to the end and then consider theWP:lead last.

History -

• Some work is need to the grammar. Some of the sentences in the second paragraph are a bit stilted.
• Reference 4 is not properly cited. What is "Whiteside, Thomas (1962). The Tunnel under the Channel. Rupert Hart-Davis, p. 17"?
• Reference 5 is not properly cited. What is Wilson pp. 14–21"?
• Reference 9 is inadmissible Wikipedia:Circular: it is using wikipedia as a reference.

Grammar is something I should basically not touch, my own weak area myself, but I'll do my best to sharpen the area out as I can see fit. References number 4 and 5 have been upgraded correctly, they should no longer be at fault, though do advise if I am mistaken. Reference number 9 I believe was originally intended to be a note, I'll try and find some way to make that more clear; it seems too trival and by-the-by for the main text, yet it is an important destinction to take note of, the seperation between the two companies that many people familiar with Eurostar are unaware of, that they are not one and the same as the Tunnel's ownership and operations.81.111.115.63 (talk) 15:11, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

OK, I'll look at the grammar.Pyrotec (talk) 20:31, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Regional Eurostar and Nightstar -

• Ref 31 is broken, "Via", it gives a 404 error message

I think thier entire company website is temporarily knackered, I'm getting 404 Galore all over URL variants. Trying to reach the main page gets a "Site Offline" message, blaming technical issues. Most likely it'd come back online soon enough when their server is fixed and the rest of the site starts running again. 81.111.115.63 (talk) 20:42, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll come back to this one later.Pyrotec (talk) 22:06, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Replacd with a less to the point article, however it still makes the crucial bit of information, buried in tons of other peices, that the Nightstar rolling stock ended up in VIA's hands.81.111.115.63 (talk) 00:31, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Channel Tunnel -

• The statement: "Along the current route of the Eurostar service line speeds are 300 kilometres per hour (186 mph) except within the tunnel sections, where lower speeds apply for safety reasons" needs a citation.

Placed some in, ref name'd in some references from a very similar sentence under Rolling Stock.81.111.115.63 (talk) 00:04, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Services - Frequency -

• This set of claims: "Completion of High Speed 1 has increased the potential number of trains serving London. Capacity exists for up to eight trains per hour in each direction from London to Continental Europe, moving the bottleneck to the Channel Tunnel. Separation of Eurostar from British domestic services through Kent meant that timetabling was no longer affected by peak-hour restrictions." really needs an in-line citation, perhaps more than one(?).

I'll start looking around this one, might be a wee bit of a problematic series of statements to verify (Oh how I wish people had bothered to put thier citations in when they added these things...)81.111.115.63 (talk) 00:04, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Placed a reference into it, and deleted some of the unsubstanciated information I couldn't back up.81.111.115.63 (talk) 00:31, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Sumarising

GA review – see WP:WIAGA for criteria

---

A comprehensive, wide-ranging, well-referenced article.

1. Is it reasonably well written?

   A. Prose quality:

   B. MoS compliance:

2. Is it factually accurate and verifiable?

   A. References to sources:

   Well referenced

   B. Citation of reliable sources where necessary:

   Well referenced

   C. No original research:

3. Is it broad in its coverage?

   A. Major aspects:

   B. Focused:

4. Is it neutral?

   Fair representation without bias:

5. Is it stable?

   No edit wars, etc:

6. Does it contain images to illustrate the topic?

   A. Images are copyright tagged, and non-free images have fair use rationales:

   B. Images are provided where possible and appropriate, with suitable captions:

7. Overall:

   Pass or Fail:

Congratulations on the quality of the article and many thanks to 81.111.115.63 for stirling efforts in adding and fixing the references and in-line citations. This article is now a GA.Pyrotec (talk) 18:56, 19 June 2009 (UTC)