Talk:U.S. Route 12 in Indiana/GA2

GA Review
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Reviewer: Viridiscalculus (talk · contribs) 17:26, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

This article has failed its Good Article review. The main reason is the article does not fulfill Good Article criteria 3a and 3b, which require the article to cover all main aspects of the subject but not be overly focused on one particular part of it. In particular, the History section is heavily focused on one major part of the highway's history and completely neglects anything that happened in the last 80 years. However, it is not just the history that is a major problem. The Lead does not adequately summarize the article. The article is very sloppy with regards to spelling and grammar. The references are inconsistent and incomplete. There may be copyright violations. I put together a list of the major issues and some details that need to be fixed before this article can be sent to Good Article Nominations again.  V C  17:52, 16 May 2012 (UTC)


 * Infobox
 * For the West end, remove the "beneath I-90..." clause because it is unwieldy. Change the city from Chicago to Hammond, since the route actually enter the city of Hammond at the state line.


 * For the East end, mention the nearest city to the state line.


 * Lead
 * "withUS 20 twice" "from Michigan City to Michgian state line" There are at least two typos in the first paragraph of the Lead. There are many more spelling, spacing, and grammar issues in the remainder of the article. Your prose does not need to be flawless for the Good Article process, but you are expected to look over your own work and correct careless spelling and spacing errors like these.


 * First sentence: The word "historical" implies this route no longer exists. Delete it. I would say "parallels" the Lake Michigan shoreline. "runs along" implies the highway is directly on the shore, which is not the case.


 * Second sentence: Indicate the cities at or near the highway's endpoints in Indiana. Also, you need to include the length somewhere in the Lead.


 * "US 12 through Whiting, East Chicago, and Gary is concurrent withUS 20 twice." Two problems with this sentence. One, the concurrency with US 20 is given undue weight. Two, it is not clear where the concurrencies start and end. I would extract the cities, integrate them elsewhere in the first paragraph, and toss the concurrency information.


 * The last two sentences of the first Lead paragraph should emphasize major sights along the highway instead of the highway configuration.


 * "US 12 was part of the Dunes Highway from the Illinois state line to Michigan state line, concurrent with US 20." The first mention of Dunes Highway should be bold because a search for Dunes Highway redirects to this article. "was part" is wrong because the highway still follows Dunes Highway. The last clause in the sentence implies US 12 was concurrent with US 20 throughout the state, which is wrong; US 20 does not enter Michigan.


 * Add the definite article "The" to the front of the second sentence.


 * Chicago and Detroit do not need their states included. Everyone knows which state they are in. Pipe the link. I also advise moving the first mention of Chicago much further to the front.


 * The second paragraph jumps around chronologically. The first sentence is fine, but then it jumps from 1922 to 1918 to 1920s to 1950s to 1926 to unknown. The jump from 1950s to 1926 is particularly acute because of the use of "then."


 * The last sentence would look better if moved to the mini-lead of the Route description.


 * Route description
 * "Only the segment of US 12 that is concurrent with the U.S. Route 20 from the Illinois state line to the split with US 20 in East Chicago are included..." Subject-verb agreement: "Are" should be changed to "is"


 * Spelling: "concurrenct"


 * Wikilink the casino


 * "a distance of 2.24 miles (3.60 km)" Remove this clause. One, exact distances like this are rarely necessary in the Route description. Two, the length contradicts the Major intersections table.


 * US 12 makes several turns to bypass downtown Michigan City. Those need to be mentioned.


 * History
 * This section is very unbalanced and incomplete. There are three long paragraphs about the Dunes Highway and one tiny paragraph about route designations in the 1920s and 1930s. There is absolutely no history after the early 1930s. This was the primary highway between Chicago and Detroit for several decades until superceded by the Interstates. There have been several realignments of the route, the most obvious one (to me) being at Michigan City, yet there is nothing about that.


 * This section starts out with an extensive quote, which is a sore thumb as it is not smoothly integrated into the text. This quote can be paraphrased quite easily. It is possible the quote could be a copyright violation, although I will need a second opinion on that. Please see WP:QUOTE for the proper use of quotes in an article.


 * Major intersections
 * "Max Mochal Hwy." Expand the last word to Highway. There is no need to abbreviate, especially where all generics are spelled out elsewhere in the table.


 * The location where US 12 has a junction with SR 520 is "Pines" in the junction table but "Town of Pines" in the Route description. Make references to locations consistent throughout the article.


 * Images
 * Something seems wrong with the 1925 postcard with regards to copyright. Why would ancestry.com release to the public domain something with an unknown author? I will check with someone more familiar with Wikipedia's policies to see if my suspicions are confirmed.


 * References
 * There are multiple references included multiple times in the list with slightly different details. Examples of this include Refs 12, 15, 18, and 20, and the references to the Albert C. Rose and Suzanne Hayes Fischer works. There are several bullet point references that are implied to be subsets of a numbered reference but are not. Many of the newspaper references are missing page numbers and titles.