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Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/U.S. Route 141/archive1

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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted by Ian Rose (talk) 04:44, 8 August 2014 (UTC) [1].[reply]

U.S. Route 141

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U.S. Route 141 (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

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Nominator(s): Imzadi 1979 → 01:25, 16 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

This article is about another one of the US Highways in Michigan (and Wisconsin). Again, our coverage of this highway on Wikipedia is probably the best of any place online, and I feel the article is deserving of the FA star. The article also covers the history of US 102, the first ever US Highway designation to be decommissioned, lasting only two years after the creation of the system. Imzadi 1979 → 01:25, 16 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Image review

Support. Having stumbled here from my own FAC, I thought I'd comment.

  1. So I notice the article is U.S. (note the dots), but the opening sentence says "US" without the dots. How come?
  2. "sections are either freeway or expressway " - I'm not sure this is grammatically correct.
  3. "eight miles (13 km)" - per WP:NUMERAL, both numbers should either be spelled or written as numbers. Make sure you do the same elsewhere in the article (for example: "one mile (1.6 km)")
  4. " for about 14.5 miles (23.3 km)" - that's awfully precise for saying "about"
  5. "The northernmost Michigan section is about 44 miles (71 km), " - shouldn't there be a "long" at the end?
  6. "The entire length of the highway in Michigan has been listed on the National Highway System (NHS),[2] a network of roads important to the country's economy, defense, and mobility." - as with a previous FAC, you don't actually say what "country" you're talking about.
  7. "except for about four blocks along Broadway Avenue which is part of an intermodal connector with the Port of Green Bay" - "which" --> "that"
  8. "The rest of the highway northward from Howard, Wisconsin, has been listed." - I feel like grammatically, there should be a "however" somewhere in here.
  9. "Wisconsin Highway 29 (WIS 29) merges in at an intersection" - this doesn't read that well to me, specifically the "in at an" part
  10. "Running north and northwesterly" - both should either have the "erly" on the end, or neither should, not the current format.
  11. "bypassing Haven, Wisconsin, in 1959 as well." - why the "as well"?

All in all a good read! ♫ Hurricanehink (talk) 17:18, 16 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Hurricanehink: I numbered your points so I can refer to them individually:

  1. The Chicago Manual of Style (16th. ed.) and our MOS both state a preference for the undotted form, however WP:USSH specifies that the article be titled with the dots. At some point, that naming convention will need to be updated, but we have project members who are traditionalists and prefer the periods. (I will note that the standard abbreviation has always been either "US #" or "US-#" for all but one state, and even that state has been recently switched to eliminate the dots in the abbreviated form.)
  2. Tweaked.
  3. Actually, I disagree, but for the sake of not making a mountain out of a molehill, I'll switch these for now. (adding on 08:12, 21 July 2014 (UTC)) The MOS provision you refer to deals with lists of numbers, and doesn't actually speak to
  4. It's rounded to the nearest half mile, which is still pretty imprecise. Would rendering it as 14+1⁄2 miles (23.3 km) make this clearer at the risk of the anti-fraction brigade popping up?
    • I don't think that'd be clear, but I still don't know why you say "About 14.5". Obviously it isn't exactly 14.5 miles, I think that's a fair assumption that it'd be plus or minus a few hundred feet. ♫ Hurricanehink (talk) 17:48, 20 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
      • That segment is 14.46 miles long, so it's "about 14+1⁄2 miles (23.3 km)" or "about 14.5 miles (23.3 km)", so the question is, decimal or fraction? Imzadi 1979 → 22:01, 20 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
        • But it's not even 14.46 miles long. That itself is an estimate, since I'm sure it isn't exactly 14 miles, 2428 feet, and 9.6 inches. It's understood that it's not exact. If you want to be exact, you could just say 14.46 miles and say per whatever department listed the length. For hurricane articles, by comparison, we would say "The National Hurricane Center reported a peak intensity of 160 mph (260 km/h). No need for the about, since that's what the agency said. Just fwiw. ♫ Hurricanehink (talk) 04:55, 21 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
          • All measurements are approximations since the only exact measurements involve definitions. There are exactly 5,280 feet in a mile, and 100 centimeters in a meter, by definition. The source says that segment is 14.46 miles in length, which gives it a precision to the hundredth of a mile. It could be anywhere from 14.455 to 14.464 miles if a more precise ruler were used, but that doesn't matter.

            The more precise values are found in the junction list table as the terminal mileposts for segment, and the overall total is found in its more precise form in the infobox. If I gave each of the four segment lengths the full precision from the sources in the prose in the lead, the passage would be open to criticism for being clunky. So that's why they were rounded off with "about" preceding each measurement. That qualifier is supposed to indicate that each value is rounded off, approximated, etc. To make this all crystal clear, I've revised that passage now to:

            "The highway has two segments in each state; after running through Wisconsin for about 103 miles (166 km), it crosses into Michigan for approximately another 8 miles (13 km). After that, it crosses back into Wisconsin for about 14+1⁄2 miles (23 km) before crossing the state line one last time. The northernmost Michigan section is about 43+1⁄2 miles (70 km), making the overall length about 169 miles (272 km)."
          All five measurements are rounded to the nearest half mile, and conveniently the total of the rounded segment lengths equals the total length from the infobox rounded off. (103 + 8 + 14 1/2 + 43 1/2 = 169 and 168.82 rounds to 169). Even the metric conversion follow nicely. Imzadi 1979 → 08:12, 21 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  5. I didn't include that word because "length" appears later in the sentence, and none of the other component lengths use the word "long".
  6. And I get dinged on US Highway articles if we use too many mentions to the United States, or US because of the consistent repetition of the "US" in the highway name. (One of the non-American FAC delegates actually removed "US" from "US state of" in a previously nominated US Highway article before promoting it.)
    • I'd hardly say that the one prose mention of "United States" is too much :P ♫ Hurricanehink (talk) 17:48, 20 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
      • @Ian Rose: pinging you because I recall that you were the delegate that changed wording before in a US Highway article before promotion. Imzadi 1979 → 22:01, 20 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
      • Also, a quick survey of Category:FA-Class Michigan road transport articles would show that several other FAs on Michigan's highways use substantially the same wording as this article does, and none use "United States'" in place of "country's" in that phrasing. Imzadi 1979 → 22:24, 20 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
        • I know other articles may use the wording, but this FAC is for this article. FAC is a great time to get new ideas, after all ;) But lemme know what Ian Rose says about the wording. ♫ Hurricanehink (talk) 04:55, 21 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
          • The title of the article in nice big text at the top of the page is "U.S. Route 141", and the abbreviation "US 141" is sprinkled throughout the prose quite liberally. Any readers getting through the lead, which also calls it a "United States Numbered Highway", should know that this highway is in the US by the time they hit the sentence in question. Any online readers who hover their cursor over the link to the "National Highway System" will also see that it links to "National Highway System (United States)", although that doesn't apply to printed copies. Imzadi 1979 → 08:12, 21 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
            • If I remember rightly, it was the opening line of the candidate in question that I felt had too many US references. I believe it was along the lines of "US Highway 141 (US 141) is a north–south United States Numbered Highway in the US states of Wisconsin and Michigan" or some such, and since we had "US" in the highway name and "United States Numbered Highway" and the states were linked anyway we didn't need "US states". That said, I see no problem substituting "United States" or "US" for "the country" in the first paragraph of the main body -- I'd say by the time readers get to that paragraph they know what country they're in but OTOH it's not repetitive in itself to mention it in that particular sentence. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 09:31, 21 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  7. Fixed.
  8. I reworked that series of sentences to avoid that phrasing.
  9. Tweaked.
  10. Changed.
  11. Dropped the wording.

Imzadi 1979 → 02:37, 20 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Source review - spotchecks not done

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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