Talk:Illinois Route 98/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Imzadi 1979 → 04:40, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

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

I made a few edits to the article myself to address a few issues that aren't purely a part of the GA Criteria.

It is reasonably well written.
a (prose): b (MoS for lead, layout, word choice, fiction, and lists):
The prose is reasonably well written, but it could use some more interesting details, if available.
It is factually accurate and verifiable.
a (references): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR):
There were some issues with the information presented in the reference citations themselves, but I have corrected them. Please watch that you're crediting the proper publisher of a source in the future though.
It is broad in its coverage.
a (major aspects): b (focused):
It follows the neutral point of view policy.
Fair representation without bias:
It is stable.
No edit wars, etc.:
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):
No graphics that aren't highway markers makes this one easy to check.
Overall:
Pass/Fail:

Lead and infobox

I converted the infobox over to the {{jct}} template for the junctions. While not required, that template does deal with WP:ALT-related graphics issues automatically, and by using the template, if future changes are needed to comply with the MOS, the template will update the articles for us.
I added the abbreviations for Illinois Route 98 in the lead. It's always best to introduce the abbreviations that will be used in the article, and since {{jct}} uses "IL 98" for the formatting, I added that as well.

Route description

Like the other sections, I inserted the necessary non-breaking spaces between the alphabetical and numerical portions of highway abbreviations. This is designed to prevent the number from wrapping to the next line. Our readers use all sorts of screen sizes and configurations, so we can't assume where a line may or may not break.
The RD is kinda dry. It would be nice if you could "spice" it up a little, but that may not be possible.
One possibility is to find a travel guide book that mentions the area and if this road passes any landmarks, add a sentence or two on those landmarks. Something like a "Route 98 passes the largest/widest/tallest/smallest Foo in Bar."

History

This section is fine save some comments related to the references

Major intersections

Nothing here of note, except that I did switch the table over to the templates. Should the MOS gods make it an issue again, we may have to update MOS:RJL to specify a column with the km conversion for each article. If so, {{jctint}} can be updated to general the conversion and add it to all of the articles at once. I'm personally recommending that all highway articles be transitioned to template usage in the future.

References

My biggest issues were with reference formatting

The historical IL maps were not published by the Illinois State Library. They were published by the Illinois Automobile Department. The URLs to online versions hosted in the Illinois Digital Archives at the Illinois State Library are convenience links, but don't change the original publisher.
The ISO dates were mis-formatted on a number of the footnotes. If the number for the month or day is one digit, a leading zero should be added. I switched them all over to standard dates though because there's no need to use a format that's not really common to our readers.
The PDF format wasn't indicated. Not all browsers will load the graphics at the end of the links, nor can all readers' browsers load PDFs. Some may not want to load a PDF because of the time on their connection. In either case, it's always best to give that warning.
I added the scales for the maps, but that's not strictly required.
However, to better comply with WP:V, section numbers should be added to the maps that have grid referencing. They are analogous to page numbers in a book.
I removed the duplicate wikilinks to IDOT. A publisher only needs to be linked once in a reference section; anything more is WP:OVERLINKing.

Overall comments

Have you looked for any old newspaper articles that might have historical information about the road? It would be nice to diversify the sources used beyond government-only sources and Google Maps. Even using another third-party map would be nice, say a current Rand McNally atlas instead of the 2009-2010 IDOT map
Overall, I see no deficiencies in the article that prevent it from promotion as a GA. This isn't the type of article I'd recommend taking to higher assessment forums though without the addition of extra information as I mention above. Reviewers at FAC as well frown on only using maps to cite historical road information even though they've come to realize the necessity of the technique.

I will pass the article, but please add grid references for the maps that have them available though. Imzadi 1979 → 06:10, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I added the grid references for the maps. There's not much I can do about the RD since the road doesn't pass any major landmarks to my knowledge, and I can't find any articles with information on the route, nor do I have a third-party atlas. I wasn't planning on taking it to a higher assessment level unless I can find more information, though, so that shouldn't be an issue for the time being. Thanks for the review. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 22:45, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]