Talk:Staten Island Railway/GA2

GA Reassessment

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The History section of this article was almost entirely an assemblage of sentences and paragraphs copied verbatim or almost verbatim from the cited sources, most of which are under copyright, thus failing GA criterion 1b, "respects copyright laws". The History section has been rolled back to an earlier state, which will need improvements, mainly in prose, to meet the GA criteria, though it's actually not all that far off. Antony–22 (^talk⁄_contribs) 06:30, 11 November 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for noticing that. I was younger then, and I must have not realized the problems of doing what I did. As time passed I forgot that I did that. Thanks for noticing, and I will start cleaning it up. I am not mad at you, I am glad, as this will teach me how to be a better editor on Wikipedia.

My revisions will be made in my sandbox, User:Kew Gardens 613/sandbox. --Kew Gardens 613 (talk) 14:42, 11 November 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for your understanding. Writing for Wikipedia does have sometimes-exacting standards that are different from those taught elsewhere. If anything, it's surprising that nobody caught this much earlier in your process of expanding this article, so that you could have avoided these issues altogether. I'll take another look once I get some free time. Antony–22 (^talk⁄_contribs) 06:16, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

Comments from Maile

I had a skim through when searching for an alt DYK hook. This is a huge article, 69395 characters, 140,576 bytes. And my thought was that it is really confusing in the prose and needs a thorough copyedit. For instance:

• "Commodore Vanderbilt" appears unlinked as the financial backer, and we don't find out until the next paragraph that Commodore Vanderbilt is, in fact, Cornelius Vanderbilt, but unlinked wherever he appears.
• The first paragraph under History. 4 of the 6 sentences in the paragraph begin with "The line was", "The route was", "The charter was" and "The Staten Island Railway was"
• James R. Robinson is also mentioned as "Mr. Robinson", but not linked.
• William H. Vanderbilt is mentioned, but not linked. He would actually be William Henry Vanderbilt.
• Eltingville is not linked, so we don't know which Wikipedia article it refers to, but maybe it's Eltingville, Staten Island.

That's just the tip of the iceberg. In fact, I see very few links in this article, considering it's size. I don't think it's GA quality, and I think it could benefit from going through a detailed Peer Review. — Maile (talk) 01:26, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

Comments by Epicgenius

Note: I am the original reviewer. I am very embarrassed for not having caught this copyright violation (I did not have this tool handy at the time of review; otherwise, I would have put it on hold for longer). There are two sources that this article's history section seems to be based heavily on: http://jcrhs.org/B&O.html (82.1% probability of significant plagiarism) and http://northshoreprofile.qwriting.qc.cuny.edu/history/ (45.9% probability). However, I don't think this article needs to be delisted. Since these are only two sources that seem to have been "almost significantly" plagiarized, I think a copy edit would help get this article back to non-plagiarism version. epic genius (talk) 02:13, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

Well, I guess it's a good thing we have DYK to give these a second look. I actually started going sentence by sentence and found that nearly every sentence was an exact or close copy of a sentence in the cited source. There were some sources that were "borrowed from" more heavily, such as the two you described, but often it was just one sentence pulled out in isolation. So just axing the text from those two sources wouldn't have solved the problem.

In any case, the article goes into much, much farther detail than is needed for GA purposes; I think it would actually be easier to pass if it were more concise. But given the author's willingness to revise the article, I think that once all the issues are cleared up it's likely that the GA status can be kept. Antony–22 (^talk⁄_contribs) 06:04, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

Awesome. I'll start off by rephrasing anything that seems to be copied, starting with the first sentence of the History section, which seems to have been affected the most. epic genius (talk) 19:46, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

Commentds by Kew Gardens 613

Thanks guys for notifying the problem to me. I want to fix the problems. What are the specific ways that the problems can be addressed. I think that I rewrote a good amount of the sentences. However, do I need to change them more? If specific help could be given it would be much appreciated. Thanks. --Kew Gardens 613 (talk) 01:35, 15 November 2015 (UTC)

I wonder if the article couldn't be tightened a bit. The prose is also kind of choppy, with each sentence jumping from detail to detail without coming together into an encyclopedia-style narrative. For this kind of writing it's more important to tell the story in a way that makes a coherent whole, referencing the sources as necessary, rather than trying to combine individual facts from different sources. One last thing, you don't have to put a ref for each sentence; if you have consecutive sentences using the same source, you can just have one ref on the last sentence (as long as you still have at least one per paragraph). Antony–22 (^talk⁄_contribs) 08:25, 15 November 2015 (UTC)

Comments by Antony–22

The biggest impediment to this article retaining GA status is the prose. The GA standard for prose is that it is "clear and concise", and the article as it stands needs improvement on both counts. Echoing my comments above, the history needs to be turned into a more coherent narrative, and some of the less important details should be omitted. I'd strongly suggest submitting this article to the Guild of Copy Editors once it's been confirmed that the copyright issues have been dealt with.

Alternatively, another route might be to split the history section into its own article, History of the Staten Island Railway, and then summarize the history here in about five or six paragraphs. That would be much less work right now, since there would be much less prose to deal with here, and you could take your time improving the new article to GA status as well. Antony–22 (^talk⁄_contribs) 20:00, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

Good job on the condensation. I think this article is the right length now. A couple of high-level organization items to fix:

• There are a lot of short one- or two-sentence paragraphs, making the prose choppy. These should be combined as appropriate into longer paragraphs.
• There are a bunch of short one- or two-paragraph sections. These should be combined into larger sections.
• I think "Route characteristics", "Personell", and "Fare" could be made subsections of the "Current use" section, since they're a bit short to stand on their own.
• The rail diagram currently in the "Stations" section ought to be part of the infobox at the top. The map currently in the infobox might be better moved down to "Current use".
• Is there a reason we need an oversized photograph of Clifton station? Is it special?
• "Former stations on closed lines" should be subsection of "Stations", and the main article template should be moved to the beginning of "Stations".
• "Industries serviced" shouldn't be its own subsection under former stations; the information should be integrated elsewhere in the article.

Antony–22 (^talk⁄_contribs) 04:43, 6 December 2015 (UTC)

I have done some of what you have requested. What do you mean by the main article template? Also, I don't know how to integrate the industries served into the article. Thanks for your work. --Kew Gardens 613 (talk) 14:00, 6 December 2015 (UTC)

Oh, I just meant the {{Main}} template. I see that's been done already. Also, it might be better to have the information about the primary clients as a sentence in the subsection on each branch itself.

The article's getting close. I'm satisfied on 1b, 2abc, 3ab, 4, 5, and 6a. For images, I don't think that the New Dorp picture is terribly revealing. Perhaps it would be better to take that out and then look at the station articles or their Commons categories, and pick out your favorite three or four to illustrate the article. (On the other hand, the North Shore Branch photo is awesome for that section.) I'll be back in the next few days with some final prose suggestions. Antony–22 (^talk⁄_contribs) 07:44, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

Okay, last batch of comments. This will pass once these are dealt with.

Lead

• The first paragraph says SIRT is "operated by the Staten Island Rapid Transit Operating Authority (SIRTOA)" but the second says it is "run by the New York City Transit Authority"; this needs to be clarified.
• "Staten Island light rail is planned for these corridors." Is this still current, or is it out of date?

History, 19th century

• In general, locations/stations should be wikilinked at their first mention.
• "as the Eltings and Anna Seguine, for whom the stations were named after, were influential..." seems redundant to state that the stations were named after them, perhaps change to "as their namesakes, the Eltings and Anna Seguine, were influential..."
• "Wiman offered to "canonize" him by naming the place "St. George." Law, humored by this, granted Wiman yet another option." is a close paraphrase.
• "after the SIRT filed for an Act of Congress" It's unclear what this means. Did they lobby for Congress to pass a law?
• "an Act of Congress authorizing the constructing a 500-foot (150 m) swing bridge over the Arthur Kill became a law" Grammar needs correcting; it would be clearer to say "Congress passed a law authorizing..." or even "Congress authorized..."

History, 20th century

• "The branch was cut back south of the bridge after the bridge was built." Unclear what this means; was the portion of the line south of the bridge removed?
• "...and was replaced by a state-of-the-art, 558 foot vertical lift bridge in 1959." New bridge should be wikilinked
• "The industrial track on the West Shore of Staten Island, the Travis Branch, which was built in the 1930s to Gulfport, was extended to serve a new Consolidated Edison power plant in Travis, along Staten Island's west shore." Sentence should be reworded to be more concise

Current use

• "The Main Line used to serve Nassau Smelting, the Staten Island Advance, and Pouch Terminal." Are these passenger or freight clients?
• The Freight subsection is really mostly about history, rather than current use; maybe some of it should be moved up to the History section.
• The final paragraph is a close paraphrase.

Future

• "The MTA broke ground on a new, $15.3 million, ADA compliant station..." It just feels odd for a section called "future" to begin with something that happened in the past. This could be reworded to talk about the future opening first.
• "The project has yet to receive funding" As of what year?

Branches and stations

• "RCB Ballpark (where the Staten Island Yankees play) passenger station" It's awkward to have the parenthetic phrase right in the middle of the station name. Perhaps replace with "passenger station for RCB Ballpark, where the Staten Island Yankees played"
• "is being discussed... as part of the Staten Island light rail plan" As of when? Is it still being discussed?
• West Shore Line subsection is a close paraphrase.

Antony–22 (^talk⁄_contribs) 03:37, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

I think that I have corrected these problems. If there are any other things that need to be fixed, please notify me. Thanks so much for your work. --Kew Gardens 613 (talk) 18:06, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

I am now satisfied that the GA criteria are met. Excellent work! I know this has taken a long time and a lot of effort, and I appreciate your perseverance and positive reaction to feedback. Antony–22 (^talk⁄_contribs) 02:50, 15 December 2015 (UTC)