Wikipedia:WikiProject Highways/Assessment/A-Class Review/Portage Glacier Highway

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Withdrawn by nom. --Rs chen 7754 19:56, 28 June 2012 (UTC) [reply]

Portage Glacier Highway[edit]

Suggestion: Promote to A-Class

Nominator's comments: After a Peer review went uncommented on, I decided to go ahead and nominate this article. Its not the longest article, but for an 11-mile long road in rural Alaska, I feel this is covered substantially.

Nominated by: Awardgive, the editor with the msitaken name. 19:28, 23 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

First comment occurred: 23:26, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

Comments by Fredddie[edit]

Since this is your first HWY ACR, I'll explain my process here. I will split my comments by section of the article and any comments made are in order as I read it. I will begin shortly. –Fredddie ™ 23:26, 23 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Infobox and lead

You could probably comfortably pipe out Alaska in the infobox locations (Portage and Whittier)
Where exactly is the road called Portage Glacier Road? I did a search on the page thinking I just wasn't seeing it; it's not there. You should not introduce information in the lead and then not mention it again in the main article.
"Most of the highway travels through mainly rural areas of the northern Kenai Peninsula, with the Anton Anderson Memorial Tunnel passing under Maynard Mountain, part of the Chugach Mountain Range." The bolded part of that sentence is a separate thought from the beginning half of the sentence. Please split it out and then rewrite it so it's not a fragment.
There is a large jump from the early 1900s to the year 2000. Did nothing happen in the interim?
The "As of 2012, ..." sentence is just asking to become dated. I would remove it.
Unless it's a highly controversial topic, don't put references in the lead. (National Forest Highway numbers are rarely controversial)

The biggest question I'm left with after reading the lead is this: how did people manage before the Anton Anderson Tunnel was bored?

Route description

First off, I would apply WP:LEAD and summarize the RD before you go on much further.

Chugach Nat'l Forest

First sentence
1. "The highway begins as a section of road named the Portage Glacier Highway.[5]" Well, duh. If you can't tell, this detail really isn't necessary.
2. "This road begins at the highway's western terminus, a junction with the Seward Highway, ..." Wordy.
- Start out with something more concise, like "The Portage Glacier Highway begins at an intersection with the Seward Highway at the site..."
Highways are linear objects, so "At this point..." is probably not the best way to start a sentence about a highway.
You can probably combine the "At this point..." sentence with the next one.
Except I wouldn't say continues yet (it just started) and it's heading southeast not "in an easterly direction".
"Peaks of the Chugach Mountains..." rewrite this sentence so the road is the subject, not the mountains.
Ref 7 (http://www.wfl.fhwa.dot.gov/programs/plh/fh/documents/ak/AKFH-035.pdf) does not support the claim of going through wetlands.
Don't use abbreviations until you have defined them (USFS).
One mile is almost always converted to 1.6 km, even in approximation.
There are four sentences describing a bridge crossing a creek.
1. Bridges are built, not created
2. Construction or reconstruction. Which is it?
3. I know stuff there is named after Portage Glacier, but you don't have to say Portage so much.
"The tunnel, which is..." Wordy
0.5 mi is actually an adjective in this instance. That should be formatted {{Convert|0.5|mi|km|adj=mid|-long}}
Ref 10 (http://www.fs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/stelprdb5251312.pdf) does not support the claim that Portage Lake is scenic. I am not necessarily saying it's not scenic, but it also borders on WP:NPOV.
Actually the sentence with Ref 10 should be combined with the one before it.
Placer Creek Bridge. Two sentences for a one sentence idea. Combine them.

I'm seeing a pattern here and hopefully after reading this you can see it as well. You are writing for an encyclopedia; our readers expect a higher standard of writing than this. You should write clear and concise sentences. That means one good sentence to explain a bridge crossing a creek – not four. Yes, you will lose a lot of length, but a good article is not necessarily long.

Tunnel

"(often referred to simply as the Whittier Tunnel)" put that between commas instead of parentheses.
Don't tunnels go through mountains?
"...automobile traffic and rail traffic..." the first traffic is redundant.
Instead of linking highway tunnel, you should link to a list of North American highway and combined rail/highway tunnels by length.
Tunnel upgrade? What tunnel upgrade?
This seems like an odd place to mention the tunnel is tolled. (Why not in the Tolls section?)
"Due to the fact that..." No sentence should have to suffer by starting with those words.

Whittier

You should mix up your verbs, you use pass twice in quick succession.
Same thing with terminus and terminal. I never use terminus when I can use end.
The NHS would be better suited for a section lead like I mentioned above.

Traffic

Something just seems...off...here. Maybe the others will have suggestions.

Tolls

Wouldn't this information be presented better as a table?

History

Was the highway called the Portage Glacier Highway in the early 1900s?
Why did the U.S. Military "create" the tunnel?
You used created in quick succession.
The State of Alaska didn't build anything, I'd bet the DOT&PF did all the work.
The timeline of this paragraph jumps around (1982 comes before 1998)

Whittier Access Project

We need to review MOS:HEAD to see if this is the right heading for this section.
In, "...in a ceremony overseen by then-governor Tony Knowles.[11]" I'm not sure overseen is the right word.

Major junctions

I have a hard time believing it's really a toll plaza at MP 6.5
There is no destination at the eastern end. I'd make it the ferry terminal.

Overall

This article needs a lot of work to be considered "A-Class". As it is now, I oppose. –Fredddie ™ 02:55, 24 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Comments by Imzadi1979[edit]

I concur with the above, and I'm going to add my own comments on some specifics Fredddie didn't touch upon.

Chugach Nat'l Forest

Unlike Fredddie, I do change the metric conversion of an approximated measurement so that the metric is closer to the actual value. (I recall writing "less than one mile (1.3 km)" in an article before for something that was around 3/4 or 7/8 of a mile.) I've seen similar done when the Associate Press includes metric in their wire stories. These stories typically have alternate units in parentheses so that a news editor can swap the conversions into the body text for non-American audiences. However, since you're saying "another mile", you're implying a whole mile. So if it's not close enough to a full mile to make a full 1.6 kilometers, change the text to better reflect that this isn't about a full mile so that the smaller conversion makes sense. I think here though it's the apparent clash between one thing not equaling the other.

Traffic

I think I know why Fredddie's gut is telling him something is off: the initial traffic count is an annual total, not the usual average annual daily traffic (AADT). Then then next two are monthly averages, followed by an AADT. The mixture of time scales on them makes comparison hard.

References

"Alaska Department of Transportation & Public Facilities" isn't linked in fn 1, yet it is in fn 3.
Fns 4 and 15 both have FHWA linked; normally only the first time is linked to avoid WP:OVERLINKing.
Fn 7 calls it "Western Federal Lands Highway Division" yet fn 22 uses "Western Federal Lands Highway". Which is it? (Note that if the name changed at some point, it would be appropriate for names not to match. AASHTO was once AASHO before the 1970s, so older items published or created by the group could have varying names, but I don't think we have that case here.)
On fn 12, what type of source is this? If it's an online edition of a book or magazine, treat it as such and format it appropriately.
Fns 20 and 21 have the inset name and edition as part of the map title, when they should be in the |inset= and |edition= parameters of the {{cite map}} template. Please don't use {{cite web}} with |format=Map because it's not consistent with the other map citations.
For maps, please try to determine the cartography information as much as possible, just as you would include authorship details for books, magazine or newspaper articles, etc.
For fn 24, I would seriously attempt to find out the volume, issue and page numbers to the article from that journal. Email a librarian at the law school and ask; they should be able to look it up and get you that information, especially if you say you don't need the article itself, just the rest of the bibliographic information. The journal has ISSN 0046-2276 as well that should be added. If you click that link to WorldCat, you might even find a library near you that has it where you can check the issue yourself. (When I do citations now, I try to make sure to find a ISBN for books, and ISSN for journals/magazines/newspapers or an OCLC for every possible source, even the online versions of print publications.)

Based on these deficiencies and Fredddie's comments, I must also oppose at this time. Imzadi 1979 → 04:54, 24 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Toolbox items

Alt text is missing. Not a FA requirement, but something that should still be provided.
There are no disambiguation links present, so that's good.
The two FHWA NHS links change paths. FHWA just redid their website, so you probably should update the URLs to point to the new page locations.

Image review

We haven't typically done these, but I'm doing one here. Unless the images change, a link to this can be included in any potential FAC nomination statement so that reviewers at that forum won't have to duplicate the task In terms of licenses:

File:Forest Route 35.svg—properly notated as originating in the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices and marked as being a public-domain work of the federal government. No issues here.
File:Ruinsofportage.JPG—freely licensed by a wikimedian, no issue here.
File:AntonAndersonTunnel.jpg—see #2
File:Whittier-Tunnel-Interior-With-Safe-House-2008-May-31.jpg—see #2
File:Flag of Alaska.svg—public domain
File:Blank shield.svg—see #2

In terms of captions:

No caption needed for the forest highway marker, the names in the infobox suffice.
Caption is succinct
See #2
See #2
See #2, but as a possible copyright violation, it has to be removed.
The portal icons don't need captions because of their method of use.

I have flagged the welcome sign photo for speedy deletion on Commons, please remove it from the article. If you don't, a bot will once deleted. You may wish to go through the remaining images and place the descriptions in {{information}} templates, and add the coordinates of the subjects' locations. (Not required at FAC, but still a very good idea.) Imzadi 1979 → 06:16, 25 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Comments by Dough4872[edit]

Oppose - In addition to the prose issues mentioned by Fredddie and Imzadi1979, which I will skip over, I have a major concern with the history. It appears the first 100 years of the road's history is compressed into one paragraph. I'm sure there can be more to be said about the road. In the sentence "The Portage Glacier Highway was first created during the early 1900s[1] with the completion of the first stretch of road, a bridge over Portage Creek and the Portage Lake Tunnel.", I'm sure a more exact date can be found. Ditto for "By the mid-1950s, the portion of the highway traveling from the Seward Highway intersection to the western end of the railroad tunnel existed as an unimproved dirt road, as well as the portion of the highway located in Whittier." I would suggest doing the research and fully completing the history before nominating at ACR. The standards at A-class are higher than at GA as this essentially prepares articles for FAC. Overall, I would suggest this ACR be withdrawn in order to complete the history before nominated again. Dough 48 72 17:55, 24 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Note: Unless substantial efforts to address the issues are made, I plan to speedy close this after 00:01 UTC, July 1. --Rs chen 7754 06:24, 25 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Considering the copyvio picture that was just removed today and the nominator's past history with copyvio photos, you may close it even sooner. –Fredddie ™ 22:30, 26 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I am withdrawing this nomination so that I can research more of the history of this highway. - Awardgive, the editor with the msitaken name. 19:37, 28 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page, such as the current discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.