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Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Ontario Highway 8/archive2

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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 archived by Gog the Mild via FACBot (talk) 12 December 2022 [1].

Ontario Highway 8

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Nominator(s): Floydian τ ¢ 20:44, 4 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

After a failed initial nomination, in which only an image review was completed (and no further comments), I am renominating this with the hope that it receives additional attention. Highway 8 was one of the first two provincial highways in Ontario, and connected Niagara Falls with Lake Huron. It was initially a combination of a native trail along the Niagara Escarpment and a settlement road from Lake Ontario to the shores of Lake Huron, since upgraded over the past two centuries. - Floydian τ ¢ 20:44, 4 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

HF

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I'll try to look at this later this week. Hog Farm Talk 19:11, 5 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • "The expressway initially follows the former alignment of King Street" - I'd recommend rephrasing this. Based on the Google Maps source, it appears that this is indicating that the path Highway 8 is King Street further to the west, but the current wording would be more likely to be read as stating that King Street formerly followed the path of what is now Highway 8, before King Street was realigned (this may be accurate, but it doesn't seem to be source-supported)
    • Yeah, rather confusing. I've just removed it.
  • "renamed Kitchener in 1916" - link this to Berlin to Kitchener name change
    • Done
  • "These include the Huron Road between Berlin (renamed Kitchener in 1916) and Goderich, which was built c. 1827" - source doesn't mention Berlin
  • "and the Queenston Road (later the Queenston and Grimsby Stone Road" - I tracked the source down on the Wikipedia Library, and it uses the name "Queenston Stone Road", not what's given in the article
  • "as well as Sir Isaac Brock and Tecumseh during the War of 1812" - the source doesn't say Tecumseh used it, is says that the Americans used it when traveling to defeat Tecumseh
    • I had about 25 sources open when I was writing some of the older history, so I hope you don't mind that the above three had some bloopers.
  • "establishing many of the towns in that area named after European counterparts" - pagination issue? I'm not seeing this on the cited page of the given source
    • I can't remember where that particular part of the text came from. It's trivial anyways, so I've cut the "European counterparts" bit.
  • " "Crastor Scott Recalls Schooldays with the Late James E. Carter". Wellington County Museum. Archived from the original on December 24, 2021. Retrieved February 14, 2022." - this isn't published by the Wellington County Museum. It's a genealogical website by the Clark family, and I don't think it's RS
    • Clarks of Tomford, and in particular Marjorie Clark, is a well-established local history expert for Puslinch Township. They have nearly a dozen published books sold by the township that cover its history. See [2]
  • "The route between Hamilton and Waterloo was improved to a stone road circa 1836" - unclear where 1836 is coming from. The source says someone moved to Canada in 1837 and was then working on the road the next winter
    • Typo, should be 1837.
  • "and most often the Dundas and Hamilton Stone Road" - no, the source says it was called the "Old Stone Road"
  • "commissioner Thomas Mercer Jones rode the muddy trail from Guelph to Goderich in June 1929" - presumably a typo for 1829?
    • Correct.
  • Is there nothing to say about the road between 1832 and 1918?
    • Not that I can find. roads generally languished in the mid-to-late 1800s as the railroad came about. Toll roads were the main exception, but I haven't seen any sources on toll roads existing along Highway 8.
  • " The Department of Public Works and Highways paid up to 60% of the construction and maintenance costs for these roads, while the counties were responsible for the remaining 40%. " - not seeing this in the source
    • Hmmm, thought it was in that one. Added a ref that does have it.
  • "until traffic congestion warranted bypassing several cities and towns along the route." - not seeing this in any of the sources in the paragraph
    • Rewritten, although methinks it's a fairly uncontroversial statement that you bypass a town because of traffic issues.
  • "to divert truck traffic from the King and Queen Street intersection" - not seeing where in this paragraph's sources the diverting truck traffic at this intersection is mentioned
    • Removed the word "truck" until I can dig up something in one of the annual reports.
  • "Provincial Highway Construction, 1928". Annual Report (Report). Department of Public Highways. March 31, 1957. p. 47. Archived from the original on August 13, 2022. Retrieved March 1, 2022." - do you mean "Provincial Highway construction, 1958"?
    • Copy paste relic, I've updated it to the correct section title.
  • "McGreal, Ryan (September 20, 2013). "57 Years and Counting: Hamilton's Love Affair with One-Way Streets Needs to End Now". Raise the Hammer. Archived from the original on March 5, 2022. Retrieved March 5, 2022." - is this high-quality RS? It's a community group website and the best credential I can find is that the editor once wrote for HuffPost, which I don't think is sufficient to meet WP:SPS enough for featured article sourcing
    • Good point. The Hamilton spectator ref from the Ramsey Evans bit covers the same info, so I just replaced it.
  • "At it, Ramsey Evans, whom had first suggested the one-way conversion" - source says that Evans was part of a committee that did this, not that he did this himself
    • Tweaked as such. I must've misread it.
  • "Fairway Road (renamed from Block Line Road in 1965)" - not supported by source, which in fact is from 1966 and is using the name Block Line, not Fairway
    • Removed the year, sources conflict on when it was renamed and it's fairly trivial.

I only made it to the Transfers and expressway extensions section, and I'm at an oppose here. This is way more source-text integrity issues than I'm comfortable with at FAC. Hog Farm Talk 02:54, 6 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

My responses are indented above. I would disagree about it being an integrity issue, and more minor tweaks to wording or a source missing to cover a small portion of a larger chunk of text because, as I mention in one of the responses, I had a lot of sources open at once while writing the early history. I still have to deal with the Dundas and Hamilton Stone Road bit, but it's late so I'll get that one tomorrow. - Floydian τ ¢ 04:15, 8 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Floydian: - would you be willing to go through the references throughout all the article yourself to make sure all of the issues stemming from having massive numbers of sources open at once are corrected? I'm moderately busy in RL so I'd rather have some assurance that this issue is resolved before I move to reviewing the rest of the article. I know what it feels like to have so many sources open at once - Battle of Raymond was exhausting for me to do Hog Farm Talk 04:30, 8 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah I'll go through it over the next couple days and will let you know. Floydian τ ¢ 04:40, 8 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Hog Farm, should be good now. No new refs, just repositioning of existing refs and a few chops of text. as much as I'd like to include "Hamilton and Dundas Stone Road," the refs don't want to cooperate. - Floydian τ ¢ 15:59, 10 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Construction began to widen the route as far west as Waterloo Regional Road 12 (Queen Street), south of Petersburg, on July 6, 1992, with a planned completion by August 1993" - a bit nitpicky, but the source is dated July 4, 1992, so it can't support something occurring on July 6, especially since road construction is the sort of thing that's frequently delayed due to weather.
  • "Construction began in August or September 1998 to widen the Conestoga Parkway from four to six lanes between Courtland Avenue and King Street" - again, stating the dates of construction beginning is really just a guess. We can't really say things like this based on an expected beginning date If MODOT started/completed things when they said they would, I'd be overjoyed
  • "It was completed, along with widening of the parkway between King Street and Frederick Street, in July 2000." - source doesn't mention Frederick Street
  • "The expansion of Highway 8 from four lanes to eight lanes between the Conestoga Parkway and Fergus Avenue was originally scheduled to begin in 2001, but was delayed as businesses along Weber Street fought expropriation" - I have several concerns with this statement. I tracked down the source on ProQuest, and it doesn't mention Fergus Avenue, instead referring to the Freeport Interchange. It also says the businesses that opposed it were on King Street East, not Weber Street, and refers to the opposition being against "the road closure plan", not mentioning expropriation.
  • "eight lanes from Fergus Avenue to northwest of the Grand River, in April 2006" - very minor nitpick, but the source indicates that this widening was to occur to the Grand River, not to northwest of it
  • "Both projects were completed and opened, except for one westbound lane over the Grand River, in November 2011; the fourth westbound lane was opened the following year" - again, we can't say with certainty that something opened the year after a source was published
  • "and the C$6.3 million roundabout was opened on September 25, 2012" - again, I have doubts about our ability to source something to the exact day when that date is two weeks after the source was published. Weather could well have delayed it
  • Some sort of short prose summary for the suffixed routes (probably just a description of what suffixed routes are and how many there are) should be added

I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to stick with my oppose her for the same reasoning as at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Strom Thurmond filibuster of the Civil Rights Act of 1957/archive1 - I'm an auditor in real life, and for me, FAC reviewing is like an audit in the sense that if there's enough concerns, you have to consider detection risk and control risk to be high, and can't give out an clean opinion. Hog Farm Talk 21:11, 11 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Also, @FAC coordinators: , I would recommend that this be closed for further work outside of FAC. The degree of sourcing being "off" that I've noticed indicates that this article frankly wasn't ready for FAC. Hog Farm Talk 16:01, 12 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Since WP:PR is kind of a dead horse, do you perhaps have any recommendations where I can get someone to make these kind of audits (particularly that outside-the-box take that is scrupulous of refs, which I'd look at and say "oh, yeah, common denominator") - Floydian τ ¢ 23:27, 12 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • I am going to archive this one. The usual two-week hiatus will apply, which I suggest the nominator uses to double check that the issues identified above have been resolved, prior to another run at FAC.


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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