Talk:Snowy Mountains Highway

Review Request
Hi guys, recently ive greatly expanded the Snowy Mountains Highway article. Im hoping to nominate it for GA status at some point (I intend to get as many NSW/ACT roads as I can to GA status [or higher] as I can). I would appreciate any copyediting and any other pointers that others here would feel would improve the article and/or increase its chances at achieving GA.

Please note: The references for OzRoads are for the imagery only, the imagery being far more reliable than the prose which is largely unsourced. Any other similarities are presumably because the author used the same RTA release concerning this road as I did.

While not needed for GA, it needs more imagery (there is surprisingly little for such a picturesque road), so if anyone has any images in their personal collection that they wouldnt mind releasing as PD or CC, it would be greatly appreciated. -- Nbound (talk) 03:20, 1 August 2013 (UTC)


 * Comments from Evad37
 * I'll look through in more detail later, but here are my initial thoughts:
 * The lead is too short.
 * What kind of information do you suggest I include? There isnt too much of the usual road fluff (planning, extensions, etc.) available, especially much thats worthy of a mention in the lead IMHO.
 * Well, ideally, all sections should be summarised in the lead, per MOS:INTRO, "The lead section should briefly summarize the most important points covered in an article in such a way that it can stand on its own as a concise version of the article." At the moment the only section covered is route description. I would also suggest browsing through other road articles which are GA or better, which is what I did before nominating my first article. We only have a few such articles, but WP:USRD have over 870 GAs, plus more than 75 A or FA class articles. - Evad37 (talk) 02:18, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Several paragraphs are also quite short, only ~2 sentences.
 * Which paragraphs do you suggest merging, I have tried to keep the content each paragraph internally consistent.
 * Its mainly the history section, paragraphs 2 and 3. There are several possible ways to combine them, eg maybe 1+2 (to cover 1928-1933) and 3+4 (to cover 1949&1950s). The route marker could probably be combined into one paragraph, and you could probably change the heading to be a subsection of history, ie ite is the "history" of the "route markers" - Evad37 (talk) 02:18, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Try integrating the photos using left and right aligned thumbnails, rather than a gallery. A longer should help overcome the length of the infobox.
 * Until more imagery is available its not going to look good integrating the imagery, its all from the last ~100km of the road.
 * Well, even with these images, there are possibilities. You could have the first image left-aligned next to the paragraph that mentions the Yarrangobilly Caves, the second image right-aligned at the paragraph that mentions Adelong Street, and the third image left aligned in the history section, where the terminus being changed to Hume Highway is mentioned - Evad37 (talk) 02:18, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately it would not look good on large displays. --- Nbound (talk) 08:25, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
 * The current situation also does not look good on some large displays. Here's how it looks on mine, with screen resolution 1600x1200: SnowyMountainsHwy image gallery, 1600x1200 screen resolution.png The third image gets pushed onto a new line. - Evad37 (talk) 04:49, 9 August 2013 (UTC)
 * The shielding sections should be renamed "Route markers" or similar. In ref 15 ("It will be 'Highway 31'"), the term shield is only used to describe the signs, plus "route marker" would also be the preferred term per MOS:COMMONALITY. (Also, is 'shielding' actually a word?)
 * The two junction lists can be joined together - just include a row spanning the columns to note the discontinuity.
 * The notes after the table can be included in the legend using jctbtm's key parameter.
 * - though will look ugly (3 lines high) until USRD fixes the jctbtm new line issues. (I have half-fixed the issues by coding in an opt-out for the pesky conversion line) (jctbtm now sorted)
 * Regarding the OzRoads ref, it would probably be better to reference/link directly to the relevant images, rather than to the webpage they are on. You also have to be careful about how you use them, as they are WP:PRIMARY sources. "All interpretive claims, analyses, or synthetic claims about primary sources must be referenced to a secondary source, rather than to an original analysis of the primary-source material by Wikipedia editors."
 * I cant do that without citing many images, the citation only cites the gallery on the page. Infact by not citing the gallery as a whole would be a synthesis, by assuming the shield covers all remaining sections not pictured. The gallery covers the road at reasonably regular intervals. I could cite Google Maps as a secondary reference if you feel it would be better, but its basically the same thing and much less accessible to anyone checking. The kind of leap being made with the citation IMHO is no worse than, and probably much better than what goes into most RDs where editors describe things that arent spelt out in words specifically anywhere. happy to hear any counterarguments of course...
 * Well, I think this may be a synthesis issue either way – having them listed in a gallery on a non-reliable source doesn't change what would be synthesis into not-synthesis - the photos only show single points of the road at a time, and so don't directly say anything about sections of the highway. What you really need is a government document or a map to reference – if you have access to offline paper maps or street directory, you can use those as sources. There seem to be several books about the highway, according to trove – if any of the libraries that have them are near you, they could be good sources for a range of things. - Evad37 (talk) 02:18, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Theres only 2 books there concerning the road itself, and one is already cited, and the other would be unusable as a source due to the highway ending at Tathra at at that time (and up until 1996). It took NSW re-doing its entire shielding system to release any shield mapping at all, and what has been released is inconsistent with both real world installations and the non-publically available GIS data supplied to Google Maps and other partners (if the NSW map was to be believed the B72/B23 duplex would be the only one in the state, when others do exist such as A28/A40, it was luck that B72/B23 was done right that I could even cite it for this road ). -- Nbound (talk) 07:39, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
 * It should also be noted that street directories and other consumer maps are not reliable sources for this purpose, for example duplexes are usually poorly implemented if they are at all, complex route traversals may be simplified/modified, etc. -- Nbound (talk) 07:45, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Route description should probably go before history, per this comment from a previous A-Class review: "I think the RD and history sections need to be switched; not because I think what you have is wrong (it isn't), but because it would give someone unfamiliar with [the location] (read: everyone reviewing this article) some geographic context of the area without having to read a map at the same time. It's kind of jarring to read the history without any context and then see it all there in the RD."
 * - Evad37 (talk) 09:50, 1 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Well, I think this may be a synthesis issue either way – having them listed in a gallery on a non-reliable source doesn't change what would be synthesis into not-synthesis - the photos only show single points of the road at a time, and so don't directly say anything about sections of the highway. What you really need is a government document or a map to reference – if you have access to offline paper maps or street directory, you can use those as sources. There seem to be several books about the highway, according to trove – if any of the libraries that have them are near you, they could be good sources for a range of things. - Evad37 (talk) 02:18, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Theres only 2 books there concerning the road itself, and one is already cited, and the other would be unusable as a source due to the highway ending at Tathra at at that time (and up until 1996). It took NSW re-doing its entire shielding system to release any shield mapping at all, and what has been released is inconsistent with both real world installations and the non-publically available GIS data supplied to Google Maps and other partners (if the NSW map was to be believed the B72/B23 duplex would be the only one in the state, when others do exist such as A28/A40, it was luck that B72/B23 was done right that I could even cite it for this road ). -- Nbound (talk) 07:39, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
 * It should also be noted that street directories and other consumer maps are not reliable sources for this purpose, for example duplexes are usually poorly implemented if they are at all, complex route traversals may be simplified/modified, etc. -- Nbound (talk) 07:45, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Route description should probably go before history, per this comment from a previous A-Class review: "I think the RD and history sections need to be switched; not because I think what you have is wrong (it isn't), but because it would give someone unfamiliar with [the location] (read: everyone reviewing this article) some geographic context of the area without having to read a map at the same time. It's kind of jarring to read the history without any context and then see it all there in the RD."
 * - Evad37 (talk) 09:50, 1 August 2013 (UTC)
 * - Evad37 (talk) 09:50, 1 August 2013 (UTC)

- Thoughts/Further ideas?
 * The two route markers sandwich the text on small screens - maybe use Double image or Multiple image. (also, ping only works if you put your signature in) - Evad37 (talk) 02:18, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
 * haha, yeah that'd help, was in a bit of a rush - Nbound (talk) 06:03, 2 August 2013 (UTC)


 * Comments from Imzadi1979— these probably should be moved to the article's talk page
 * I recommend some sort of caption for maps in infoboxes... infobox road has map_notes, and in this case, I'd use Snowy Mountains Highway highlighted in green or something like that.
 * What I've done, when working on highways with disconnected segments, is to further limit the number of junctions in the infobox. The USRD general rule is 8–10, and with segmented highways, I'd suggest narrowing it down to 2–3 per segment.
 * I cant remove junctions without doing so arbitrarily. (There is only one extra junction above the 3 per section count suggested anyway)
 * Is it necessary to list, and link, to NSW for the termini locations? Our general assumption in the US is that if the subject highway is within a single state, the state name can be dropped from the locations. We also drop them for "state-detail" articles on multi-state highways, etc. Since NSW is prominently linked at the top, a reader can safely assume all locations are in NSW unless noted otherwise. That would cut down on some length
 * There would still be the exact same number of lines, common practice is to substitute the state with a city when the road terminates in a suburb of a major city, otherwise the state is used. in both cases it is supplied for completeness.
 * I would avoid forcing line breaks on some items, like pushing "(Entire length)" to a new line on the allocation, etc.
 * This is to keep the infobox to standard. While this is a simple case, many roads have multiple shields and unshielded sections, listing the other way looks much worse on these roads (especially when you keep in mind that some shields have long names like "Alternate National Route xx", "State Route xxx", and "National Highway xx"). Im not particularly concerned with the length of the infobox anyway.
 * A tip for the infobox, but "Location(s)" looks goofy to me. I'd drop the parentheses and just use "Locations".
 * The infobox is also in use on articles covering a single location (eg. junctions/streets)
 * For the junction list, you can use jctgap to accomplish Evad's suggestion to merge the two tables.
 * It's somewhat jarring to see the level of precision drop on the western segment. I would play around with GMaps a bit to overcome its desire to round off to the nearest km above 100 km... . Really, GMaps should be the last resort for measuring the distances along a roadway.
 * Sources are severely lacking for precise distance measurements for most AU roads. The western section will be redone.
 * It's usually understood that minor junctions are omitted from a junction list table, or else we'd have to list every driveway access.
 * This is only self evident to those familiar with WP road articles (I know it wasnt for me when I first saw them).
 * Watch your footnote order; while there is no specific policy regarding this, it has been generally accepted that footnotes should be in numerical order when they appear consecutively.
 * for prose, RJL uses a template to cite.
 * "Highway terminus." isn't a complete sentence, so it shouldn't have terminal punctuation applied. Ditto ""One way road - Exit only."
 * I'm not a big fan on footnoting every column of a junction list..
 * Reference issues:
 * FN3: NSW Roads and Traffic Authority (RTA). This doesn't need the abbreviation here, and I wouldn't link to the state separate from the authority name. Either pipe the link to include the NSW in the output of the link, or unlink it, or even just drop it if it's not part of the authority's name. Additionally, you should be able to use 2nd to pull the edition out of the title. Whatever is done here, FN6 should match, minus the wikilinking.
 * FN4: "THE NEW ROADS POLICY". The Canberra Times (Canberra, ACT). Drop the ALL CAPS in the title per the MOS, and you can omit the location name, unless there's another newspaper called The Canberra Times out there. This last bit applies to any other FNs citing the paper.
 * FN5: it's always a good idea to include PDF in the citations; not all browsers can or will display the PDF icon, and not all URLs that link to PDFs end in ".pdf" to trigger the icon anyway. Check the other applicable footnotes.
 * FN8: since the paper's name is linked in FN4, repeating the link here isn't needed.
 * FN15: since the paper's name doesn't include the location, it is generally a good idea to include it in this case, but I wouldn't link to the city, and you may not need to indicate the state.
 * I will fix up most of these issues in future. (half done)
 * I hope this helps.  Imzadi 1979  →   10:38, 1 August 2013 (UTC)
 * FN8: since the paper's name is linked in FN4, repeating the link here isn't needed.
 * FN15: since the paper's name doesn't include the location, it is generally a good idea to include it in this case, but I wouldn't link to the city, and you may not need to indicate the state.
 * I will fix up most of these issues in future. (half done)
 * I hope this helps.  Imzadi 1979  →   10:38, 1 August 2013 (UTC)

- thoughts/further ideas? -- Nbound (talk) 06:03, 2 August 2013 (UTC)