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Archive 1


December 2007 Flooding

Travis - As the revert has already been done, I'll take lead on updating the current event. Once the overall event is over, would you consider adding at least the mention of it in the history section, along with other flooding issues that this stretch has had in the past?

I respectfully disagree that this is not a major issue with this route right now. It not only affects normal travel, it affects it so severely that what was once a 30-minute drive has become a seven-hour detour each way. Aside from that, this closure and its subsequent repair duration will affect interstate commerce, the state budget, and any relief efforts for the city of Centralia that could have come from the Portland / Vancouver area.

Talk amongst many in the Olympia / Lacey / Tumwater area that I keep in touch with reflects the same concern regarding this event and its impact(s). Edit Centric (talk) 07:57, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't disagree that this is a major event right now, but WP:NOT#NEWS states that the "current consensus is that Wikipedia articles are not simply [n]ews reports. Wikipedia considers the historical notability of [events]. Someone or something that has been in the news for a brief period is not necessarily a suitable subject for an article in their own right. ... Routine news coverage and matters lacking encyclopedic substance, such as announcements, sports, gossip, and tabloid journalism, are not sufficient basis for an article."
The WP:N#TEMP notability guideline clarifies, "A short burst of present news coverage about a topic does not necessarily constitute objective evidence of long-term notability. ... Topics that did not meet the notability guidelines at one point in time may meet the notability guidelines as time passes and more sources come into existence. However, articles should not be written based on speculation that the topic may receive additional coverage in the future."
I will readily concede that we're not talking about an entire topic or article, but rather just part of one section of a larger article. As a resident of Tacoma, with co-workers and friends of friends in the affected area, I'm fairly well aware of the temporary impact the flooding continues to have on Interstate 5 in Washington. Whether this impact is notable enough to be considered more than "routine news coverage" -- in other words, having long-term notability -- it impossible to say right now.
In spite of my deletion yesterday, I am not strongly opposed to having the information there for now, with the current event flag (good call!), and to revisit this in six months, where we'll have the benefit of hindsight to see how notable this flooding actually was. Travisl (talk) 18:49, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
Oh heck Travis, we should know something more definite sooner than that, WSDOT is already down there looking at things. What I was wondering is just how many times this has happened in the past along that section of highway. Also, has this ever happened just south of you, in the Nisqually basin? As I remember (I was at Fort Lewis from '89 to '92), that bridge crossing is pretty low...
OH HEY!! Maybe you can help me with something! You familiar with the 405 bypass up in Seattle? I'm currently trying to fix the many NPOV problems with the article's "Future" section, specifically dealing with the "Nickel Project". As I read on WSDOT, Proposition 1 FAILED in the last election, so the project has no funding, and has been put on hold. Is there any part of the project that has already been commenced? Edit Centric (talk) 20:47, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
Nope, I've never heard of the freeway closing in the Nisqually area because of floods. The freeway's low, but the delta out there is much lower, and has a huge capacity for taking on floodwaters. There's been several times that the fields to the south of the river have been flooded -- I'd be surprised if they're not flooded now -- but the southbound freeway through there seems to be built on stilts or something, while the northbound lanes are even higher.
I'll take a look at I-405's "future" section. I'm not familiar with it, much, but I can certainly find sources :-) Travisl (talk) 23:09, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
(adding to my previous comment) It looks like the Chehalis River flooded I-5 in 1990 and 1996, with closures lasting almost a week both times. See US Army Corps of Engineers Civil Works Program, Congressional Submission, Fiscal Year 2002, Northwestern Division at p. 56. Travisl (talk) 23:59, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
Now THAT'S what I'm talking about! :-D With this, we have a clear path to summarizing the current event, and tying it together with similar past events in recent history. Once the current situation abates, then we'll cut it down (WAY DOWN) and include the sourcing for 90 and 96. Sweet! Edit Centric (talk) 01:06, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Summarizing the flood - Call Noah!

Just thought I'd throw that Noah reference into the subject line for some humor...

It seems like this event should be reaching its last chapter soon. Once that happens, what we can do is summarize the recent event, as well as making reference to the 90 and 96 floods in the same area. Here's a possible read:

"During the past two decades, parts of the interstate have been periodically inundated by floodwaters as a result of area storms. Floods in 1990, 1996 and 2007 resulted in the closure of I-5 between the Kelso - Longview and Chehalis - Centralia areas. The causes of this problem, as noted by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, are attributable to clear-cut logging, destruction of natural flood barriers and modifications to waterways in the Chehalis basin." (ref tags go here)

Travis - what do you think? Edit Centric (talk) 06:57, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Me likey. Might as well link the cities, and change the second half of the last sentence to an exact quote: attributable to "decades of clear-cut logging, modifications of waterways, and destruction of natural flood control features within the [Chehalis River] basin." (And yes, those are single brackets around a wikilink). Travisl (talk) 23:05, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
Cool beans, let's do this thing! Edit Centric (talk) 05:40, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
Booyah, done! (Travis, check it out, make any improvements that you think are apropo.)Edit Centric (talk) 05:56, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
I'm lovin' that change Travis, it narrows the whole thing down, dials it in. I'd say we're looking good here! Edit Centric (talk) 17:46, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
Thanks. I'm wondering whether to call the section "In Southwest Washington" instead of "Lewis and Cowlitz Counties", because that's what the local media has called it. That's probably because of the flooding in Grays Harbor County, though, which I-5 doesn't touch. I still maintain that we should re-examine this section in six months to see if it's really of historical importance. After reading about the 1990 and 1996 floods, I'm more inclined to think so, but time will tell. Travisl (talk) 19:38, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

I think the most important question that we have to ask ourselves is "is the event of historical importance to the ROUTE and it's accompanying article here?" I tend to think so, as this has been a recurring issue over a period of 17 years. Until WSDOT or another agency or agencies take(s) measures to prevent another recurrence, it will probably happen again in the future. Edit Centric (talk) 23:49, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

I mentioned on December 11 that I'd look at this again in six months to see if it was really historically significant, and whether it stood the test of time. I'm a week late :-) I'm liking how the entire history section aims to describe the history of the freeway on a county-wide or municipal area basis. It just needs more subsections, to cover the history of the entire route, as alluded to in point 3 of the GA nomination failure report below. As for the historical value, yes, I think it's significant enough to stay. I've made a few relatively minor edits to it, but I think it's good. Travisl (talk) 19:01, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Failed "good article" nomination

This article failed good article nomination. This is how the article, as of February 20, 2008, compares against the six good article criteria:

1. Well written?: Mostly well-written, but there are a few major issues when compared to the Manual of Style. First, the current intro section is far too short accordingly to the applicable policy; a GA-class article must have a lead which is a concise overview of the entire article. Two sentences just doesn't cut it. In terms of simple readability, there are stand-alone sentences and facts, such as in the first section of History, that are disconnected and confusing. In terms of MOS image policy, the current placement and syntax of the images in the body is off. One image fails to use proper thumb syntax, and the placement sandwiches the text with images directly facing each other on either side (which is specifically prohibited). There are some very basic MOS issues, such as the improper caps in the section title for "List of Major Projects", that need fixing also.
2. Factually accurate?: For the most part, the article does a good job of verification with reliable sources and in-line citations, nice work. However, the Route description section is completely uncited, and there are things in it (such as claims of exact distances) that should be cited according to the GA criteria.
3. Broad in coverage?: This is the largest failure of the article. GA-class articles need not be totally comprehensive, but they need to be broad, and this article is most certainly not. The History of the route is extremely spotty. The construction of it is glanced over. The article suffers in some parts from recentism, only talking about the recent flooding in it's coverage of Lewis and Cowlitz Counties. It focuses far too heavily on Seattle, making it unbalanced feeling (one could call it a bias). Some counties of importance, such as Clark county, are not covered at all. There is relevant history from these counties being left out, such as the recent activity surrounding the possible replacement of the Interstate Bridge. In fact, most of the obvious infrastructure of the route such as major bridges is completely neglected. Along with this, the List of Major Projects is thin and confusing. What are these projects? In general, the article needs some major expansion before it could be considered GA.
4. Neutral point of view?: Again, an overwhelming focus in the history on recent events and Seattle could be viewed as a bias.
5. Article stability? No edit wars, etc.
6. Images?: As far as the most vital GA criterion for images (that they are properly tagged with licenses and rationales for fair use where necessary) the article passes. There are some MOS usage issues that I mention above.

Overall, this article needs a major expansion and rewrite in several places to meet the GA standard. Since hold periods are only for minor changes, providing a hold period for this nomination is inappropriate. Please feel free to renominate the article when the issues brought up in this review have been addressed.

When these issues are addressed, the article can be renominated. If you feel that this review is in error, feel free to take it have it reassessed. Thank you for your work so far.— VanTucky 05:25, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Copyeditor's thoughts

Before I go any further, I want to say that User:Juliancolton's comment about the long string(s) of citations is correct. The first step toward fixing this is tedious but otherwise not difficult, and I've started that step to give you an example to work from. All of the citations to page 108 of the Rand McNally 2008 road atlas can be collapsed by using <ref name = "Rand 108"/> for each instance after the first. The different section numbers you have cited for this group of citations are not section numbers; they are internal coordinates. Thus all of these page 108 citations can be covered by one note in the reference section. If you use the "ref name =" method, the Wikipedia software will automatically put the alphabetic superscripts in the right place in the reference section. You should do something parallel for all of the Rand McNally citations to page 110, and it might be possible to collapse other sets of citations in a similar way. The goal is to meet the WP verifiability requirement in the most efficient way possible. See "Using the same citation again" at WP:CITE. Finetooth (talk) 17:28, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Done, with Rand 85, Rand 108, and Rand 110. Also with WSDOTMap. Travisl (talk) 19:11, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
I was just coming on here to see if the references had been acknowledged as well. That is always the first step, followed by just taking some out. Statements of fact about a non-living person don't need 5 references... Dreambeaver (talk) 09:07, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

More from the copyeditor

I'm fried. More needs to be done here, but a lot of it is tedious, like the citation fixing mentioned above. One remaining set of things to fix are the constructions like 10 a.m. with periods and no-break codes to hold the parts together. A second set involves putting no-break codes between the highway numbers and names (U.S. 99, for example) to prevent them from separating on line-break. A third set involves reducing the overlinking. Linking too many things or linking the same things like Seattle multiple times, reduces the effectiveness of the links. If too many things are blue, the reader can't tell what's worth clicking on. You've got the basics for the article here, but it still needs mopping up. Please buzz me if you have questions. Finetooth (talk) 20:14, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

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