Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Clackline Bridge/archive1

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 13:29, 29 May 2014 [1].

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Clackline Bridge

Nominator(s): Evad37 [talk] 06:32, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

Welcome to Clackline Bridge, Western Australia's only bridge to have spanned both a waterway and railway. It is a heritage listed structure with a unique inclined curvilinear design, formerly carried Great Eastern Highway (my most recent FA), and recieved various upgrades and improvements since its construction in the 1930s. The article itself has been similarly upgraded and improved through a successful GA nomination, Peer Review comments, and copyediting [2], and I believe it meets the FA criteria. - Evad37 [talk] 06:32, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

Image review

• Captions that are complete sentences should end in periods. Nikkimaria (talk) 22:02, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

  Fixed - Evad37 [talk] 03:44, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

Comments from Hamiltonstone

Support. This looks fine to me, with a high level of detail for a relatively minor structure. The one thing that I think would improve it would be a photograph showing some of the timber piers, since they seem to be a key to its heritage significance. hamiltonstone (talk) 06:52, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

@hamiltonstone: I was at Clackline today, and took a number of photos. I have uploaded them to Commons, and added one to the article in place of the external media box. - Evad37 [talk] 15:13, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

Fabulous, that's great. hamiltonstone (talk) 13:41, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

Comments from Cas Liber

Reading through now. Will jot queries below: Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 04:27, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

The bridge was designed in 1934 to replace two dangerous rail crossings and a primitive water crossing. - "primitive"? do you mean "rudimentary"? (primitive makes me think of evolution...)

The bridge underwent various improvement and maintenance works since then, - the since suggests a better tense would be "The bridge has undergone various improvement and maintenance works since then,"

:(23.6 in × 5.9 in) - surely you can say, "(23.6 × 5.9 in)" for this and the other similar?

Support on comprehensiveness and prose Otherwise looks good. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 04:36, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

All done. To avoid {{convert}} repeating the "in" (unit), I had to change "×" to "by", but the meaning remains the same. - Evad37 [talk] 09:10, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

Note: As there haven't been many comments here, I have left short, neutrally worded messages at relevant wikiprojects [3][4] - Evad37 [talk] 11:17, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

Comments from SatuSuro

Support - the joy of placing minor structures in context in a wikipedia article such as this one is realising how important the bridge was at the time of construction, and how easily it is for recent perspecives to assert the minor nature in comparison to the new road structure adjacent. It was in historical context a vital point of the major transport form the wheatbelt had for over 50 years, until road started replacing rail for the agricultural transport mode. Clackline (and Spencers Brook) were vital and essential junction points at the heart of the railway system for the whole state, and the article serves a significant indicator of how so few structures like this still stand, specially considering the more recent road and rail operators penchant for removal of anything that is not 'functional' in their operations. Also as similar communities along the Great Eastern Highway show, heritage structures need good explanaion in view of the lack of adequate offline and online materials easily available - no passerby subsequently goes to a local library to check 20 or 30 year old pamphlets to clarify what they were just looking at at 110km/h

I look forward to similar high quality articles on similar remnants of the transport system and its vestiges of the wheatbelt with anticipation. satusuro 00:45, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

To clarify the support - the nature of technological heritage interpretation is not something that is ever extensively explored in public domain materials - either in engineering or heritage publications in Western Australia, one of the few, is a survey that ended up as a list of 'bridges' in Western Australia in Battye library, and it is an inadequate document with literally nothing more than a list with a limted details and poor photography. To have an article like this is close to unique in focus and approach that really cannot be found in generally available materials. satusuro 13:21, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

Comments from Mitch Ames

I'm not sufficiently knowledgeable on the subject matter to comment on how comprehensive or well-researched the article is, but it certainly meets the style guidelines and is well-written from grammatical point of view. I have made a couple of recent minor changes, and there is one outstanding question about one of the article notes - Talk:Clackline Bridge#"In tern"?. Mitch Ames (talk) 14:03, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

I have replied to Mitch's question on the articles's talk page - Evad37 [talk] 00:45, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

Comments from Imzadi1979

I stumbled here from my nomination, and I'm limiting my comments to sourcing.

• I would update the case (capitalization) on article titles to use a consistent style. That falls within a minor typographic change, and I'd note that the APA style guide says to cite titles in a specific style regardless of how the publication titles things. (This also applies to the entry in the "Further reading" section
• On FN10, ABC News should not be in italics because it is a division of a company. As such, it's a publisher, not a publication.
• On FN11, I would drop the link for the location; other locations are not similarly linked.
• On FN13, I would use {{cite press release}}. Additionally, I wouldn't make the assumption that Judi Moylan wrote the press release herself since it was probably written by a staffer. If she is going to be listed as the author, that's where the wikilink is located. I would also amend the publisher to "Office of Judi Moylan". (At least here in the US, we'd refer to the "Office of John Smith" for our congressmen and other representatives.)

All in all, it's just a minor bit of tweaking to polish the citations.

In looking at the photos and their captions:

• "View along Clackline Bridge in 2012, with the Goldfields Pipeline visible in the background."
• "View of Clackline Bridge from below, showing the structure of the bridge and piers."
• "Clackline Bridge, with the Great Eastern Highway bypass on the left."

These are not complete sentences, so the captions should not end in terminal punctuation. The others look fine.

Imzadi 1979 → 03:28, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

I have put all the article titles in sentence case, apart from proper names (Register of Heritage Places, Road Information Mapping System, Clackline, Clackline Junction), and made the other changes you suggested - Evad37 [talk] 04:56, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

While MOS:ALLCAPS explicitly allows conversion of all caps headlines to sentence case, I'm not sure that conversion of an external source from title case to sentence case is appropriate. Accuracy may be more important than stylistic consistency. This is particularly the case for [5], where Moylan may have been referring to a bypass that was to be explicitly named "Clackline Bypass". In [6], the header is all caps, but the footer is title case. In [7] the header and footer are both title case. Mitch Ames (talk) 11:52, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

MOS:CT would seem to prefer title case, but other provisions of our MOS do no just "allow" conversion from all caps, they require it. As for the stylistic consistency, APA style explicitly requires article titles in citations to be rendered in sentence case, even in publications that themselves use title case in their own article titles. This form of stylistic consistency is important at this level of writing, and certain clues within the text of the source will provide the basis for determining if the author is implying a proper name or not. (I hope we aren't citing sources written I all caps or that have their body text in title case.) Imzadi 1979 → 12:36, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

our MOS do no just "allow" conversion from all caps, they require it
I'm not disputing the conversion from all caps, I'm disputing:

• the conversion from the "title case" of [8] to sentence case. Given that "constructed" in the source is not capitalised, it's not clear that the original is actually title case, so changing the case of "Bypass" may change its meaning.
• the conversion to sentence case instead of title case for [9] where the footer shows the document name in title case and [10] where both the header and footer are title case (not all caps, so not requiring changing).

APA style ...
We're following Wikipedia's style guide, not APA's. Is there something in MOS that says we must follow APA?

I agree that stylistic consistency is important, but so is accuracy in quoting. Mitch Ames (talk) 13:50, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

WP:CITESTYLE says "citations within any given article should follow a consistent style". Using sentence case or title case is a stylistic choice, especially when the title is present in all-caps. As long as proper names are capitalised, then the meaning of the title doesn't change. Reading through Moylan's press release again, I think it is at least ambiguous as to whether she was referring to a bypass that was to be explicitly named "Clackline Bypass", or whether the capital B is for emphasis or in error. For example, she "announced today that a Clackline Bypass and ...", and later, "The Clackline bypass entails...". However, given that it is ambigious, perhaps it would be better to retain the capital letter. As for the others, sentence case doesn't change the meaning, but does allow for consistency in citation style. - Evad37 [talk] 02:26, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

I have restored the capital B in the Moylan reference - Evad37 [talk] 01:39, 26 May 2014 (UTC)

My reference to APA style was to illustrate a point: changing case for a citation is a common typographic change. On that note, my presence here is no longer required. Imzadi 1979 → 02:43, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

• Closing note: This candidate has been promoted, but there may be a delay in bot processing of the close. Please see WP:FAC/ar, and leave the {{featured article candidates}} template in place on the talk page until the bot goes through. Ian Rose (talk) 10:28, 29 May 2014 (UTC)

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