Wikipedia:Featured and good topic candidates/State highways in Marquette County, Michigan

State highways in Marquette County, Michigan
This topic has been in the works for a while, and eligible for FT consideration since the list was FLC-ed. I waited until now though to nominate it because the newest FA has just passed. The topic includes all of the state trunkline highways in Marquette County, Michigan. The three longest are currently at FA level, the business loops (which are state-maintained in Michigan) are GAs rated as A-Class by WP:USRD through the project A-Class Review. The remainder are GAs I will likely be working towards taking to FAC by the end of 2010. Imzadi1979 (talk) 02:46, 7 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Support - 4 FCs/10 total = 40% Featured Content. This is a great topic, Imzadi. –CG 03:28, 7 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Support - 40% of the articles are Featured Content (more than the minimum 33% required per WP:WIAFT) and it covers every aspect of the topic broadly. Dough4872 (talk) 04:11, 7 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Oppose - The FL criteria have changed a lot since the lead article was promoted. The lead article should undergo a FLR before this nomination is closed (my opinion is that it does not fulfill the criteria anymore, and creating a topic based on this would be pointless). Nergaal (talk) 04:38, 7 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment - like Nergaal, I am disinclined to support anything that is on WP:FLT. I realise that WP:FLT is in no way official, and this topic, as it stands, meets all the FT criteria, but what's the point if the lead article may not meet the FL criteria, and hence may just get demoted soon? Give it a run through FLR and see if it comes out the other side - rst20xx (talk) 11:36, 7 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Query — If I am to understand correctly, it's being specific to one county that raises the flag on the FL at the heart of this proposed topic. There are two current FTs that are similar in New York for Hamilton County and Warren County at 6 and 11 articles apiece, respectively. The FLs at the heart of those topics aren't listed unlike this topic's list. What would the suggested geographic breakdown for highways in Michigan be then? There are 13 current Interstates, 13 current US Highways and 136 other current states trunklines. A FT topic based on 162 articles plus the necessary lead articles would be considered ungainly by many. I opposed the FT and FL for Amenia, NY because it was based on a census-defined place, but county boundaries are relatively fixed. The next level up from the county would be either of Michigan's two peninsulas. Please advise, since I can delay on a FT and redefine the FL to encompass all of the Upper Peninsula if needed, but Marquette County is the state's largest county, and would have the largest number of highway designations outside of the Lower Peninsula's metro areas. Imzadi1979 (talk) 17:50, 7 June 2009 (UTC)
 * "The FLs at the heart of those topics aren't listed unlike this topic's list" - actually that's not true; notice that List of state highways in Hamilton County, New York is on WP:FLT but List of highways in Warren County, New York isn't. If I were to take a guess as to why, I would say it would be because the latter isn't just restricted to the state highways, but also includes the county highways, whereas the former is considered to fail 3.b. because of the splitting off of List of county routes in Hamilton County, New York. So it actually has nothing to do with generalising these lists across the whole state, but just with generalising them across a county. I can see the logic in this, and indeed if you reworked the lead article of this topic to include county routes, then I would hope that would solve the problem. It'd make for a much more useful list IMO.
 * Note also that despite the Warren list including county routes, the Warren topic does not include county routes in the actual topic, because as you say, to do so would make the topic too large. It's generally accepted that you can pick out a part of a lead list in this way - see also the "albums" topics which have "discography" main articles but don't include EPs, singles, etc.
 * So yeah. Add the county routes and that should fix the problem - rst20xx (talk) 19:52, 7 June 2009 (UTC)
 * As mentioned in the list, all roadways in Michigan that are not state trunklines or city streets are county roads. Since this is the largest county in the state of Michigan, the list of county-maintained roads would be enormous and dwarf the rest of the list. As an example, Heritage Drive is a county road, lettered as county road JAB. Midway Drive is CR 502. Both are sections of roadway formerly part of US 41 before the 4-lane divided highway was built in the 1960s. A listing of county roads was not included in this list, because as the article title says, it is a "List of state highways in Marquette County, Michigan" and the list does discuss the other classifications of roadways in the county. Townships in Michigan haven't maintained or designated roadways since the passage of the McNitt Act in 1932, unlike where in New York, townships do maintain roadways. Imzadi1979 (talk) 20:44, 7 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Argh sorry I completely missed that, you Americans and your non-unified systems :@ Exactly how many county routes are there then? Is it possible to work out a figure? rst20xx (talk) 00:27, 8 June 2009 (UTC)
 * A conservative estimate would be at least 200. Remember that it isn't just the longer roads that carry numbers, but the streets in Marquette Township (which can be indistinguishable from the streets in the City of Marquette) plus the streets in the unincorporated communities of Big Bay, Champion, Gwinn, K.I. Sawyer, Republic and Skandia. I can request a copy of the county land atlas and plat book to see what I could do, but honestly it's going to be a large number to add. Imzadi1979 (talk) 04:34, 8 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Hmm honestly I think that that is doable. Warren has 82 and yet the whole article is still only 27K. The thumbnail images are absolutely tiny - rst20xx (talk) 10:58, 8 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Butting in about the Hamilton list - I can try fixing up Hamilton when it comes to County Routes, but Hamilton doesn't have any reference routes, interstates and or US Federal Highways. Just those 6 routes plus the 24 county routes.3 1/2 years of Mitch32 20:51, 7 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Strong support - Obviously meets the criteria. – Juliancolton  &#124; Talk 03:41, 9 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Comment — after some consideration, I'm retracting and reformulating my previous comments here. I have an interlibrary loan request to get an atlas of Marquette County that would list the various roads, but I feel compelled to make a further point. County roads are not state highways. You're comparing two different systems at work here. One is maintained by fuel tax revenues and administered as a state wide system. State highways have minimum design criteria, they get priority for snow plowing and other maintenance. County roads don't even have to be paved! They encompass logging trails, gravel roads, and what would be streets if the municipality were granted a charter and made a city. There is a reason that they aren't state highways. The defined scope of the list is state highways, not "all roadways in the county". Incidentally, this county is larger than the state of Rhode Island. It's almost as large as Delaware. When I said 200 county roads, I was being very conservative. It's quite likely 5 times that. I won't worry about the thumbnails, only the numbered CRs would have shields, the rest are signed with blade signs like city streets. We would be including roadways that in New York are township roads or city streets. You can't compare Michigan's systems with New York's once you get outside of the definition of state highway. For that reason, I will oppose any attempts to force county roads into a list of state highways... the two systems are mutually exclusive. Imzadi1979 (talk) 03:50, 9 June 2009 (UTC)
 * OK, well it would be good to know what exactly we're dealing with here (the logic surely goes that having two lists instead of one is a fail of 3.b, and 200 county roads is doable for one list... but 1000 certainly isn't), but at any rate this is largely a debate about the quality of the lead article and not the quality of the topic, and as such this isn't exactly the place to be having it (partial culpability to me here, sorry about that). The only thing relevant here is whether the lead article is going to get FLRed. I think in order to garner more supports you need to try and get the lead article off the WP:FLT list, and that may well mean starting an FLR on it and having this debate there, which IS the place for it - rst20xx (talk) 10:59, 9 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Support. The topic currently meets the criteria. If it doesn't at some point in the future, then it can be reviewed. And even if the lead list loses featured status because it's not long enough, it could still be audited due to having limited subject matter. Rreagan007 (talk) 14:14, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

NOTE the main article has been submitted for FLRC; see Featured list removal candidates/List of state highways in Marquette County, Michigan/archive1. This topic nomination will probably be suspended until the FLRC is closed. Nergaal (talk) 14:58, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
 * What is the status of this nomination now that the FLRC was closed as a keep? Imzadi1979 (talk) 00:36, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm not happy with that close. I thought we were waiting for you to receive the library book so we could determine exactly how many county highways there are. If there were a lot I would have happily voted keep. If there were sufficiently few, I (and maybe others) would have voted delist, saying that the article should be remodelled to include a section on them like List of state highways in Hamilton County, New York, List of highways in Warren County, New York or List of highways in Essex County, New York. But now we got no answer, which is the one thing I didn't expect - rst20xx (talk) 09:52, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I stopped by the library today. The interlibrary loan request is still pending. It seems that MeLCat (Michigan eLibrary Catalog) requests involving similar distances between libraries can take 3–4 weeks. It's only been around 2 weeks since that request was made. On another note though, quite a few editors expressed opinions that the list met the criteria to be featured in the first place. It could very well be that any FLRC would expire in the time it will take to get the book from a library that's 7.5 hours away. I'm unsure what you'd have any of us do next. Imzadi1979 (talk) 00:24, 24 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Honestly, I'd like to wait until the book arrives. After all, there is no deadline - rst20xx (talk) 01:40, 24 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Does that really have any bearing on this nomination? It seems like that's a matter for FL not FT. This nomination has already been held up by a featured list review, which is now complete. I think this topic should pass, and if the main list gets demoted at some point in the future then the appropriate action can be taken here. Rreagan007 (talk) 15:14, 24 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I think, like originally argued, it is better to make sure a topic is not going to immediately run into trouble before promoting it. As per this discussion, IMO the FLRC did not resolve anything re: 3b. It might be a good idea to hide this nomination though until the book arrives - rst20xx (talk) 15:25, 24 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I just got the book today. I counted the roads from the index which covers 3 pages. The count of roads under the jurisdiction of the Marquette County Road Commission is 1,059. This should resolve the remaining issue from the FLRC and allow this FTC to continue unimpeded. I can scan the index if desired. Imzadi1979 (talk) 20:18, 24 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I forgot that the index doesn't include the numbered county roads, just the named or lettered ones. I'll have to go page by page through the atlas to tally things like CR 480, CR 581 and cross-check to make sure that things like CR 551 (Cherry Creek Road) isn't listed in the index under the street name. In other words, the number is over a thousand roads. Imzadi1979 (talk) 20:43, 24 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Full support - that resolves that problem! There is no way that many roads can be added to the list so as far as I am concerned I do not see the list ever being delisted for failing 3b. Sorry that this held up the nomination for so long but it's all been resolved well in the end - rst20xx (talk) 11:09, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Close with consensus to promote - despite Nergaal's outstanding oppose, I believe the 5 supports, and the fact that Nergaal opposed stating that the lead should undergo an FLR (which it now has, and it passed), mean that this topic has consensus to be promoted. If you could get M-15 (Michigan highway) and M-45 (Michigan highway) up to scratch then the four former routes could be added too - rst20xx (talk) 15:05, 28 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Actually scrap that, the two excluded routes were renamed, not decommissioned, and they are in the topic under their new names. D'oh... rst20xx (talk) 15:24, 28 June 2009 (UTC)