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Talk:North Carolina Highway 102/GA1

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GA Review

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Reviewer: Imzadi1979 (talk · contribs) 14:46, 1 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

GA review (see here for what the criteria are, and here for what they are not)

Ok, since this is your first nomination, I'll start by explaining that some comments below are technically not required to pass GA. However, they are being given so that the article will be good, even if you don't need to do them so it will be Good.

The first of these comments deals with the links in the toolbox. In this case, the article does not have any links to disambiguation pages, and it doesn't have any dead external links. Good so far. Since there is [1], you may want to add that link to an "External links" section, and shift the KML box out of the References because the KML links involve external websites.

  1. It is reasonably well written.
    a (prose, no copyvios, spelling and grammar): b (MoS for lead, layout, word choice, fiction, and lists):
    See detailed comments below by article section.
  2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.
    a (reference section): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR):
    See detailed comments below for possible OR issues in the history and some citation-related issues in the references section.
  3. It is broad in its coverage.
    a (major aspects): b (focused):
    You're good here for a GA. If this were going to ACR or higher, you'd run into issues related to breadth of content in the history. You'd want information on the roads before NC 102 was designated, etc. Some articles can't be taken higher up the scale for this reason, and GA is still a worthwhile achievement.
  4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.
    Fair representation without bias:
    This one is easy to meet on any article that isn't about a controversial road.
  5. It is stable.
    No edit wars, etc.:
    Edit-warring is usually not an issue on highway articles, unless we're dealing with a controversial road. You're good to go on this point.
  6. It is illustrated by images and other media, where possible and appropriate.
    a (images are tagged and non-free content have fair use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):
    Technically, there are only highway marker graphics in use. Of them, the only one reviewers at ACR or FAC would check is the main one at the top of the infobox. It meets our requirements (although the license needs to be updated per commons:COM:USRD/L at some point). Photos and a map would be nice, and if you were to nominate this at ACR, they'd be practically required.
  7. Overall:
    Pass/Fail:
    I'm going to place this nomination on hold for 7 days. You can reply below when you've completed something, but please do not strikethrough any of my comments on your own. Also, please try to keep the bullets and indents intact, and sign your comments. Imzadi 1979 → 19:18, 1 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Lead
  • The infobox and the junction list say 22.3 miles, but the prose in the lead says 22.4.
OK my mistake, the original article said 22.4 and I mapped it and found it to be 22.3. Its fixed now--Ncchild (talk) 19:30, 3 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • For as short as the article is, breaking the lead into two paragraphs is neither required nor discouraged.
Route description
  • "NC 102 begins at NC 903 west of Ayden and then heads east until it reaches Ayden. After 2.6 miles (4.2 km), NC 102 enters Ayden..." OK, both sentences alone are fine. However, when paired like this, they're a bit jarring to read. First you say that the highway starts at one place and runs to another. So in my mental picture following the route of this highway, now I'm at Ayden, but then we go backwards to the segment west of Ayden.
  • I don't know that it matters if the intersection has a stoplight or not.
  • Exact distances like that, although still quite rounded, aren't really needed. They're best used sparingly because they're clunky. (They're clunkier because we have to have conversions). Using things like "About a mile (1.3 km) further east..." works, and you can use a more precise metric value than rounding "about a mile" to "1.6 km".
OK, there fixed--Ncchild (talk) 20:53, 3 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • What does "SR 1725" mean? I'm going to assume it's "state route", but it could be "secondary route" or "state road"; you've never defined it in the text so readers will be confused. A simple "County Horne Road (State Route 1725, or SR 1725)" works to give the definition (assuming that's the proper expansion of the abbreviation; substitute the correct one as needed.) Once it's defined once, you don't need to repeat it, just like you've done with NC 102, US 17, I-95, etc.
It is secondary road, I added the Secondary Road 1725 or SR 1725 at County Horne Road--Ncchild (talk) 19:30, 3 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • "in which a locally owned restaurant is the only commerce at the intersection", is too detailed of information.
  • "Stokestown-St.Johns Road" has an interesting question. If the road connects Stokestown with St. Johns, that should be an en dash (–), not a hyphen. Google Maps and other sources may use a hyphen, but we are allowed to make minor typographic corrections. (We can also drop or add periods to abbreviations, switching between U.S. and US in newspaper headlines just to be consistent with our formatting.) It could also be named after someone with a double-barrelled name, in which case the hyphen is proper. You'll need to check this out and correct as needed.
    • OK well this is hard. There is no Stokestown or St. Johns in Eastern North Carolina according to Google Maps. By guess is that it would be a town to town thing since there are other roads like it nearby--Ncchild (talk) 19:30, 3 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • "3.7 miles (6.0 km) after the road turned in a southeastern direction", I'd revise since to mention the turn/change in direction before the intersection since you're getting the sequence of events backwards by backtracking.
Yeah, agreed and done--Ncchild (talk) 20:53, 3 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • "which is just a flashing light intersection with no stop signs", again, overkill with detail. These sorts of statements are also on the border of Original Research unless your map marks stoplights, flashing lights and stop signs.
Removed--Ncchild (talk) 20:53, 3 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • One general note about footnote positioning. The unwritten rule is that everything in a paragraph before a footnote is being cited to that footnote. Then everything after is cited to the next footnote to appear, and so on and so forth.
    • "NC 102 begins ... crosses a CSX railroad" is being cited all to the railroad map. Now, I assume that only the "CSX railroad" info it cited to the rail map, so you'll need to copy the the Google Maps and 2013 paper map citations to appear in the middle of the sentence, say like: "Ayden along 3rd Street,<footnotes>" (Yes, you can insert a footnote after a comma in the middle of a sentence like that.)
    • "The route continues eastward from that intersection and crosses Creeping Swamp and Gorham Swamp* before crossing over a railroad owned by Norfolk Southern.† Immediately after NC 102 crosses the railroad tracks it ends at US 17 with a stop sign." Repeat the GMap/NCDOT map footnotes at the * and the rail map foonote at the † in that pair of sentences, leaving the GMap/NCDOT map footnotes at the end of the paragraph to cite that very last sentence.
History

"offical" is misspelled.

"In 1931 the two sections of NC 102..." should read "By 1931" since you can't assume that the change happened in 1931 to appear on the that edition of the state map. In general, to state that a change happened in a year (or other time frame), you need citations to the map before and the map after the change at the end. If you have that, then the dates of the map can be used as the range of time.

  • "concurrency" should be linked to concurrency (road) if you haven't used the word before. In linking that, make sure to "pipe" the link so that "(road)" doesn't actually appear in the text.
  • This is an optional suggestion, but I would never directly link to NC 23 over North Carolina Highway 23. Those redirects make for great shortcuts in writing an article at first, but at the higher levels of writing, they have disadvantages.
    1. A reader hovering his or her mouse cursor over the link doesn't get the full name to appear, and we can't assume they'll understand the convention.
    2. A reader who uses a redlink like that to make a new article will create it at the "NC 23" title, and someone else will have to move it to the proper name, "North Carolina Highway 23". If the bots don't pick it up, we may never know that the article is in the wrong place.
  • "Between 1931 and 1936, the road was extended to its current eastern terminus at US 17. The road had a short concurrency with US 258 from Snow Hill to three miles (4.8 km) to the northeast." two dates, two cites.
  • "Between 1931 and 1938, NC 102 was rerouted in Goldsboro leaving NC 102A old the old route"
    • Two dates in the sentence means two citations at the end.
OK, fixed--Ncchild (talk) 20:53, 3 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • "In 1941, NC 102 was routed onto US 13 through Newton Grove." has two cites (good), but unless you're trying to keep the footnote numbers in numerical order, you should really have the 1940 map as fn 9 and the 1941 map as fn10. Also, if the map dates line up, that's probably something from 1940 (usually the assumption is that the map is correct as of the beginning of the year unless dated otherwise...)
    • Please check all of your map citations for this issue, and adjust things accordingly.
  • "The routing of NC 102 has stayed the same since 1977.[18][4]" should have fn 4 listed first, not last, so that the footnotes appear in numerical order.
Major intersections
References
  • If you can shift the KML box, you may want to put the references into columns. You can do that either by using {{reflist|2}} or {{reflist|30em}}. The latter of these is now preferred since it will tell a browser to use as many 30-em-width columns as will fit, instead of allowing only two columns to appear. Some USRD editors will say they prefer to go to multiple columns once they hit 10 footnotes, others will say 15. This is optional, but something to consider.
  • I can't double check your paper maps, but as long as you've listed the publisher and cartographer correctly, they look fine on that count. Just make sure that if the newer maps are actually published by NCDOT, you're listing that instead of the NCSHC. (Usually I will see people try to say that old maps from the 1950s are published by the Michigan Department of Transportation, when the organization didn't have that name until 1980; always match things up as they appear on the maps, which is what it looks like you did.)
  • Now then, map editions:
    • If the edition of a map is the same as the publication year, you don't need to list it. If it's different, you do.
    • If the 2013–2014 map doesn't use the year in the title on the cover of the map, you should make that |edition=2013–14 (you can drop the extra 20, but you need an en dash [–] there, not a hyphen). If it is in the title, then just fix the hyphen.
  • For the 1976 and 1977 maps, "North Carolina, official highway map" should be fixed... I doubt the comma is correct, and the other words should be set in Title Case to match the other titles. (Title Case is how traditional newspaper headlines are capitalized: first word, last word, every verb and every word over five letters long get capitalized...)
  • One last thing, but the MOS is in flux about date formats in references. WP:DATEUNIFY says you need to be consistent with your formats. The YYYY-MM-DD format in the accessdate for Google Maps isn't matching up with the Month YYYY date on the rail map. Honestly, I suggest to people not to use the YYYY-MM-DD format in articles at all since the The Publication Manual of the APA (APA style), The MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers (MLA style), Chicago Manual of Style, and the AP Stylebook formats for citations and dates in prose don't allow it. (The first three are the most common citations used in high school or college writing, and the last one is used by newspapers.)

Looks good, but recent changes added a few little issues. I'll fix them and promote the article, but I'll note them here for future reference:

  • "about 2 and a half miles" should have the "2" spelled out; integers under 10 are typically spelled out, especially when the "and a half" is, otherwise it would be 2+1⁄2 or similar.
  • I should have mentioned that the space in "NC 102" and similar should be a non-breaking space.
  • I also shifted some links around so that they appeared on the first mention of another highway.
  • Once you mentioned I-95, you didn't need to spell it out again. Imzadi 1979 → 21:40, 3 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
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