Talk:Higher-speed rail/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: MusikAnimal (talk · contribs) 23:21, 15 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I'll be taking on this review. This may take a while as I'm generally very thorough with my reviews, and this article is somewhat sizable. Thanks for your patience! — MusikAnimal ^talk 23:21, 15 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

GA review – see WP:WIAGA for criteria

Is it reasonably well written?
A. Prose is "clear and concise", without copyvios, or spelling and grammar errors:

B. MoS compliance for lead, layout, words to watch, fiction, and lists:
Is it factually accurate and verifiable?
A. Has an appropriate reference section:

B. Citations to reliable sources:

C. No original research:
Is it broad in its coverage?
A. Major aspects:

B. Focused:
Is it neutral?
Fair representation without bias:
Is it stable?
No edit wars, etc:
Does it contain images to illustrate the topic?
A. Images are tagged with their copyright status, and valid fair use rationales are provided for non-free content:

B. Images are provided if possible and are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions:
Overall:
Pass or Fail:

Concerns

Definitions

This may be more FA-criteria, but perhaps we're using too many citations to support material unlikely to be challenged, in stating who uses the term higher-speed rail.
These are some countries that have some definitions on higher-speed rail I'd personally reword this to flow nicer, how about "Some countries with an established definition of higher-speed rail include:"
In the list, I see that "higher-speed rail" is first used in double-quotes, and later it and other terms are presented in italics. I personally think using double-quotes is more fitting, but if you want to show emphasis we should use the <em> HTML tag or the {{em}} template (MOS:EMPHASIS).

Speed limits

Second paragraph, "at-grade crossings", I'd link this as with [[At-grade intersection|At-grade crossings]]]]
In Europe … Is there a source to support these claims?

Similar categories

Again with italicized "higher-speed rail". I'm not completely opposed to using italics, but I do think we should keep it consistent throughout the article.
More issues with italics… should all the railroad networks (InterCity, Mini-shinkansen, etc) be italicized? They are not in their corresponding articles. MOS:ITALIC does detail that trains and locomotives may be italicized, but I'm unsure if that applies to railroad networks/services.

Rail improvement strategies

In the Speed limits section, we don't refer to "positive train control" as a proper noun, yet here under "signal upgrades" we do. Looks like lowercase is the correct representation.
Under "track improvements", the first paragraph contains no references. If it supported by subsequent references we should duplicate it here. Otherwise we need to find something to ensure verifiability.
"continuous welded rail" should probably not be italicized
Under "crossing improvements", third paragraph about the US is not supported with a reference.
Under "Rerouting and passing sidings", In areas that there is frequent interference … is probably better worded "In areas where there is…" (where instead of there)
Under "Electrification": The content here says electrification would require catenary lines to be build above the tracks. Just curious… what about the systems that use a third-rail next to the track? Does that not apply to higher-speed rail? Maybe we should clarify this.

Earlier attempts

The subsection on Canada is not sourced.
Under "Minnesota", looks like Empire Builder should be italicized. Meanwhile, "River Route" is first italicized and later in the first paragraph it is not.
Last sentence under Minnesota, is there a source for this?

Current efforts

The section on Canada is unsourced.
Under United States, I think we can utilize grouped footnotes for the explanatory notes (currently indicated by asterisks). I'm interested to hear your thoughts on this. I can help with implementation.
None of the measurements in this section are accompanied by metric system conversions. Obviously the US does not use the metric system, and including the conversions in the table would clutter it quite a bit. What are your thoughts?

There are also a series of dead links, and I have tagged each as such. If you're not already aware of it, there is a handy tool called the WayBack Machine to get archived versions of now nonexistant web content. Once a suitable archive is identified you can use the archiveurl and archivedate parameters of the citation templates.

This concludes my initial review. I still need to go through and do some fact checking, but feel free to go ahead and address the above concerns. I'm going to put the article on hold while we improve it. I'm confident we can meet all the GA criteria in a reasonable amount of time. — MusikAnimal ^talk 01:18, 17 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you so much for taking your time in reviewing the article and provide very detailed comments. I have addressed all sections except Current Efforts. For the Current Efforts section, I don't think there is any higher-speed rail project in the work for Canada at this time. I could not find any news source on this. I don't know who added it so I couldn't verify that. Should we just remove that then? For the grouped footnotes, I will try to do this later. For the unit conversion in table. I'm not quite sure about that. Do you know how other editors address that in other articles? It is cleaner if there is no conversion in those little table cells. If it has to be done no matter what, then I guess a clean look become secondary at that point? Z22 (talk) 06:39, 17 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Improvements look good! Still a few things left:

I noticed you said in your edit summary that the train service names are left in italics per convention. If it's not already obvious, I'm not completely familiar with such conventions, but it seems like InterCity, Mini-shinkansen, etc, are concepts and/or networks, and the names don't appear to be italicized in their corresponding articles. Just wanted to make sure I was clear on that. If they should in fact be capitalized I'll take your word for it.
Verifiability is a must; so unfortunately, if we can't find a source for Canada's current efforts, that content will have to be removed.
As for the grouped footnotes, it occurred to me that we are also using inline citations within the explanatory footnotes... I don't know if this would even be possible if we were to use grouped footnotes. This is unique in that there does not appear to be an established way to present explanatory footnotes that meets our needs. It's fully legible, after all, so I'm going to say let's just leave it as is.
I was more interested in your opinion regarding the conversions in the table. Frankly, I agree that that would clutter it beyond legibility. Here again I'm not sure of an established guideline. In the end guidelines are, well, guidelines – we don't have to follow them verbatim. If we feel presenting the data in a different way would better for the reader, let's ignore the guideline.
Finally, perhaps you didn't see my note on all the dead links. We will need to repair those to the best of our ability, or replace them as needed.

That concludes round two of the review. We're moving along quite well, I can see the shiny green of good article icon from here :) — MusikAnimal ^talk 02:30, 18 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Generally, only the service names are italicized. You are right that the classifications are not italicized so I fixed that. For Canada, I removed the unsourced sentence and moved up a sourced paragraph from the US section to Canada because it mostly talks about the Canadian side and only have Detroit as the terminus. Agreed that for the explanatory footnotes, we can leave them that way for now. Also, I think we should leave the tables alone without unit conversions. I tried on my local changes without saving to see how the tables would look with conversions and they were messy. So we should just leave them alone. For the dead links, I hope I fixed them all. Please let me know if you see that I still leave out something that have not been addressed yet. Thanks again for your time in reviewing this. Z22 (talk) 05:21, 18 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Y Looks excellent! This nomination has passed. Congratulations! — MusikAnimal ^talk 06:29, 18 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. A great experience working with you on my first GA review. Z22 (talk) 03:28, 19 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]