Wikipedia:Featured article review/O-Bahn Busway/archive1

The following is an archived discussion of a featured article review. Please do not modify it. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page or at Wikipedia talk:Featured article review. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was kept by Nikkimaria via FACBot (talk) 6:54, 6 February 2016 (UTC) [1].

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O-Bahn Busway

Notified: Michael (original nominator, retired), Jj98, WP Buses, Australia noticeboard

URFA nom

Talk page notice Jan 2015

Review section

This is a 2006 promotion that has been tagged for a year as outdated. There are other issues, which I will list if someone engages to improve the article. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:16, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

• Move to FARC, insufficient progress. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:55, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

FARC section

The review section concerned the article's datedness. Nikkimaria (talk) 15:52, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

• Delist. Needs updating and copy-editing. Unaddressed concerns with sourcing and comprehensiveness on the talk page: Talk:O-Bahn Busway#FA Concerns. DrKay (talk) 09:15, 3 April 2015 (UTC)
• Delist - This needs a fair amount of work. In addition to other text previously tagged as outdated, the fares are out of date. The claim "The O-bahn design is unique among public transport systems..." seems to have been invalidated by the 2011 debut of the Cambridgeshire Guided Busway. Some attention is needed to representations of money: Australian dollar is not linked until the sixth section of the article; some figures are given as A$ while others are simply $; and no conversions are given at all. The See also and External links sections need pruning. The citations need work: there's a bare url, a dead link, missing accessdates, and an undefined source (UBD Adelaide?). Maralia (talk) 22:16, 3 April 2015 (UTC)
• Delist. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:38, 8 April 2015 (UTC)
  • Hold, improving. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:48, 27 April 2015 (UTC)
    • I am going to be traveling and may not have internet access (don't know yet); once Maralia is satisfied, I'm satisfied. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:58, 22 May 2015 (UTC)

• Comment A couple of us have put some work in to returning it to standard, but none of us are FA experts, so are really only responding to specific concerns, not the general principles. Any additional advice and assistance would be welcome, although it may be too late now. --Scott Davis ^Talk 09:29, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

I will be out all day, but will look in this weekend. Thanks for the effort! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 10:46, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Review

• Too much happening in this image caption, it took me a long time to figure out what it was trying to say: "Pressed Metal Corporation South Australia bodied Mercedes-Benz O305 on the O-Bahn guide-way".
• Is this hyphen an Austrlian or English thing? "city's rapidly expanding north-eastern suburbs".
• Per WP:V, how would one go about verifying sources like these ?
  • Items of Interest for Planning of Luton Dunstable Translink, Appendix A: Report on Adelaide O-Bahn by Tom Wilson
  • Busway Information, Paper Three: Operational Strategy, South Australian Department of Transport (1983)
    • Are these published documents or some sort of in-house thing?
• Where is this information from the lead cited in the article?
  • The Adelaide O-bahn was the first bus rapid transit system in Australia and among the first to operate in the world.
• Is there any problem with the simpler language of:
  • The population of Adelaide more than doubled from 313,000 in 1933 to 728,000 in 1966.
• instead of:
  • Adelaide has had significant population growth since the industrial expansion following World War II, with the population having more than doubled from 313,000 in 1933 to 728,000 in 1966.
• In addition to the growing population, there was an explosion in the number of new motor vehicle registrations, a 43-fold increase in the period from 1944–65. This was fuelled by nation-wide full employment, annual economic growth close to 10%, and the discontinuation of government fuel rationing after World War II.
  • More unnecessary verbiage which sounds like a political promotion.
• There have been a number of proposals to extend ...
  • is sourced to 1983, suggesting the article still needs updating (what happened with that)?
• On a quick skim, I didn't find current usage/ridership/whatever data.
• Sentences should not start with numbers.
• Convoluted bodied bodied bodies ... I don't know what it's saying:
  • Pressed Metal Corporation South Australia bodied 41 rigid and 51 articulated bodied buses, their cost included in the original $98 million budget.
• These along with a single Mercedes-Benz O405NH make up today's fleet.
  • No as of date, no idea what "today" refers to, and an incomplete citation, with no date as a clue.
• Biodiesel fuel was trialled between July 2005 and May 2006.
  • And ???

In summary, there are prose issues, but more significantly, I am still concerned about needed updates, and quite a few of the citations are incomplete. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:29, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

@ScottDavis: are you still following? More than a week has passed ... I am still at Delist. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:11, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

That ping will not work as you did not sign again when you changed the name. Rcsprinter¹²³ (parlez) @ 16:12, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

thanks, sorry, I thought I had! @ScottDavis: SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:14, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

Sorry @SandyGeorgia: - I had seen your more detailed notes but not had time to look at them and the article properly since you posted them. Thank you, I'll try to address some in the next few days. I hope that @BarossaV: might drop back in to help too, but he/she might be away as they haven't edited for over a week. --Scott Davis ^Talk 11:25, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

Review response

Thank you for the detailed review. I have attempted to address most of your points, and perhaps a few others I saw for myself.

• I think I have trimmed and simplified the captions
• Yes. north-east is spelled with a hyphen in Australian English (ref: Macquarie Dictionary online)
• I have not found those documents online, not sure if that shows I didn't look hard enough, or if they are only available in hard copy somewhere due to their age. a comment on the Railpage forum confirms that one of them exists and can be found from that reference.
• I deleted the sentence about first BRT - I think it is probably true, but I have never heard it called that, so unlikely to find a reference that it was first, other than a complete list with start dates, if such exists.
• Thank you for the suggested simpler language. I think I went further in a few other places too.
• No extensions have eventuated, so references are simply to a selection of proposals. Something might come of the current proposal to add a tunnel or lanes closer to the city, but the consultation is not complete yet, so it probably won't look exactly like the concept drawings. If anything, I'd like to shorten that section to avoid undue weight, but I think it needs to remain in some form.

Thank you for the help on this article. I don't know if I've done enough to save its FA status, but I'm certain it has improved through the review process from where it was when it was nominated for review. --Scott Davis ^Talk 12:51, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

• Thanks for continuing, ScottDavis, and for the improvements; I can give it another pass to see where we stand, if you indicate that you are committed to restoring it to standard. If not, I'm unsure if I should invest the time, so please let me know of your availability to continue work. Bst, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:09, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

Yes @SandyGeorgia:, I am prepared to continue working on it. Thank you for helping. I don't have easy access to resources that are not online though, so I can't verify or expand the citations for things that are cited to documents without URLs from the 1980s. --Scott Davis ^Talk 05:58, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

Update

1. The WP:LEAD is short and doesn't adequately summarize the article, but the work of finishing the lead is usually best left to last, after content in the body is nailed down.
2. In the "See also" section, I suspect that Bus rapid transit could be linked somewhere in the article and removed from See also, but I'm unsure where to link it.
3. Citation consistency, some have author first, some have author at end, some have author last name first, some have author first name first ... pick on :)
   • (author is last here). Items of Interest for Planning of Luton Dunstable Translink, Appendix A: Report on Adelaide O-Bahn by Tom Wilson ... and this is missing publisher ... where does one locate this document?
   • First name last name. Susan Marsden. "Hindmarsh – a short history". Professional Historians Association (SA). p. 23. Retrieved 10 April 2015.
   • Last name, first name. Donovan, Peter (1991). Highways: A History of the South Australian Highways Department. Griffin Press Limited. ISBN 0-7308-1930-2. (Books need page numbers)
   • tom name ? Pengelley, Jill; Zed, tom (16 October 2009). "South Road Superway to connect Regency Rd, Port River Expressway". The Advertiser. Retrieved 16 July 2010.
4. More citation consistency, some of the citations are rendered by manual (rather than template), and there is no consistent punctuation ... for example,

   Hunt for O-Bahn fleet Adelaide Advertiser 29 September 2007

   has no punctuation whatsoever, while other citations have periods after title and publisher. All of the citations should use the same format ... preferably with punctuation :)

5. Missing accessdates ... these things change ... Route 500 timetable Adelaide Metro ... and again, no punctuation ... you all might discuss whether you would rather use citation templates for consistency.
6. It is not clear that all of the External links are necessary ...

Prose (this is not a comprehensive list ... skipping around for samples)

1. "developed with American assistance" ... US ? Venezuelan? Argentine? All are America ... unclear what is meant here, government, private enterprise ? Vague.
2. The same as problem as before ... excess wordiness ... why not instead of:
   • A transport blueprint, developed with American assistance, was presented to the government in 1968: the Metropolitan Adelaide Transport Study (MATS).
   • A transport blueprint, the Metropolitan Adelaide Transport Study (MATS), was developed with assistance from (??) in 1968.
3. Isn't "abandonment" kind of a one-time thing? How do successive governments abandon something? The plan was abandoned by successive governments, ...
4. alluvial soil could probably be wikilinked ...
5. comma ? On some sections 115 km/h (71 mph) was achieved in tests.

This article is definitely improving, and you're on the right track, but I suggest that @Tony1: might help on the prose matters. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:47, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

@Maralia:, @DrKay:, fresh eyes needed. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:21, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

Yes, getting better. I removed three external links (one was about transport in Adelaide generally; another was a personal website that had only 3 images; and the last literally did not mention the O-Bahn). I also took care of the rest of the citation formatting. Agree that some prose work is still needed, but this is getting close. I've struck my delist comment above. Thanks for your work, ScottDavis; just a little more tightening for clarity, along the lines of SG's "Prose" list immediately above. Maralia (talk) 04:26, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

@ScottDavis: Thanks for taking care of the specific issues mentioned above. This is getting close to ready, but the prose isn't quite there yet. I undertook a major rewrite of the Planning section in an attempt to demonstrate a more logical flow. I still think this article would benefit from a full copyedit. Maralia (talk) 05:49, 22 May 2015 (UTC)

Thank you @Maralia: I have read through and tweaked a few phrases, but I suspect I've reached the limit of my ability. The "Expansion proposals" section feels very long and somewhat incidental. It also seems to assume a fair bit of knowledge of Adelaide landmarks and geography. To someone reading from further away, does the article lose anything significant by deleting the heading and first three paragraphs of that section? --Scott Davis ^Talk 13:52, 22 May 2015 (UTC)

This seems to have stalled, but while the issues with the original article at the time of its writing seem to generally have been fixed, I think it's out of date. There is no mention of the extension in the lede, and gets all of two sentences in the article, which seems drastically short since it's both politically controversial and probably the signature public transport policy of this term of the Weatherill government. The Drover's Wife (talk) 11:32, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

My reason for not putting any more about the current proposal to extend is that it is currently still only a proposal. I agree there could be an update that there are now four versions of the proposal in 2015, but it doesn't belong in the lead until it is actually happening; there have been many other proposals that have not eventuated. The political controversy probably belongs just as much in Rymill Park or Weatherill government. I need help from someone else to polish the text further, as FA-standard text is not what I usually practice. --Scott Davis ^Talk 13:28, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

I can understand it not going in the lede on that basis, but there still needs to be more details in the relevant section of the article since it is a significant political issue. The Drover's Wife (talk) 12:07, 14 June 2015 (UTC)

In my opinion the quality of the text is fine.--Grahame (talk) 00:24, 16 June 2015 (UTC)

• Keep. FARC section open for 4 months with no substantive delist votes remaining. DrKay (talk) 14:31, 2 August 2015 (UTC)

Comments

• ozroads.com.au is a self-published source.
• Last two sentences of the second paragraph of Development not sourced
• First paragraph of Buses is not sourced
• The article would really benefit from a map of the route
• I would expect a more detailed route desription for the busway – from one end of it to the other, describe the direction it travels in, features it passes, type of development around it, suburbs it goes through, etc. See the route descriptions of Kwinana Freeway, Great Eastern Highway, Forrest Highway for some examples of how a route from point A to point B can be described – readers should be able have a basic idea of what a journey on the route is like.
• The Route table, which uses {{AUSinttop}}, can have an interchange column turned on. This will allow the location column to be used for the actual suburbs, which is its purpose.
• Does any reference show the distances ad being exactly 3.0, 6.0, and 12.0 km? If not, don't use a false precision.
• Converted speed limits should be rounded to the nearest 5 – the extra precision doesn't serve any purpose for readers
• In terms of structure/organisation, I would usually put a description-type section first, before a history-type section. This allows readers, especially those not familiar with the subject or area, to understand more of and have some context of what is discussed in the history section.
• The lead is meant to summarise the article, and so there shouldn't be information in there that isn't in the rest of the article – I don't see O-Bahn etymology, passenger capacity, operated by Light-City Buses, and current passenger numbers elsewhere in the article.
• The lead seems quite short and an inadequate summary of the article – whole sections aren't mentioned at all (Effects on local development, Environment).
• Has an infobox been considered? {{Infobox rail line}} has some appropriate fields, and allows ones that aren't applicable to be skipped. The route diagram could also go in the infobox.

Those are the more major issues issues I can see – I haven't done a full check for MOS or other minor/copyediting issues. - Evad37 [talk] 07:26, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

I'm not going to attempt to address all of those at once tonight, but am making a start...

• OzRoads is a secondary reference for two points about the MATS plan, the text probably is suitable by just removing it, but they are offline sources difficult to access.
• It appears the unreferenced sentences were referenced until a significant copyedit in April seems to have just dropped the reference, so I have put it back.
• I've cited the first sentence of that paragraph, haven't found a WP:RS for the rest yet.
• I've tried making a few maps for Wikipedia, but my computer system is not really up to the job yet. I think the SA roads datasets has the relevant data with a suitable licence. I hope to get a suitable computer within 12 months.

I've learned a new parameter for {{convert}} - thanks :-)

Route table, lead and infobox can wait for another session.

--Scott Davis ^Talk 14:26, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

@ScottDavis: and @Jj98:, do you feel you've covered all of @Evad37:'s issues raised above. I don't think leaving this open a few more weeks is a problem if we are in striking distance of keep territory. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 13:38, 15 November 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for the nudge @Casliber:. I had thought I had addressed @Evad37:'s issues, but have made a couple of new edits to the lead section after looking with fresh eyes today. The "O-Bahn City Access Project" also now addresses comments from @SandyGeorgia: months ago, and @The Drover's Wife: before any certainty that the extension would go ahead this time. --Scott Davis ^Talk 00:01, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

2016

@SandyGeorgia: @DrKay: @Maralia: @Evad37: @Casliber: Could I please have an update on this? It has been open for review for almost a year, and I have done what I am capable of. I'd like an opinion on the two sets of route numbers (in the route table, and again with brightly coloured numbers just below). I'm not sure if either is practically maintainable, and don't know the source of the pretty colours for the route numbers (I did not add that bit, it appeared about a week ago). --Scott Davis ^Talk 12:27, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

The list is duplicated at List of public transport routes in Adelaide#O-Bahn City Routes and so can be replaced with a link. I have declared above and so cannot close this review. @Ryan 868: @Jj98: @Grahamec: @The Drover's Wife: I'm sure the other coordinators would find more declarations helpful. DrKay (talk) 10:20, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

Thank you. I have cross-referenced instead of duplicated the list. Hopefully someone will accept that we have saved this FA and close the review soon. Thank you everyone for your help and guidance. --Scott Davis ^Talk 10:24, 16 January 2016 (UTC)

I've looked through the article now, and my issues have been resolved, so I can declare keep (and sorry about the lengthy delay) - Evad37 [talk] 13:22, 16 January 2016 (UTC)

The Drover's Wife raised a concern about the lead. It seems to me that the last sentence of the third para of the lead is out of date. Maybe it should say something like: "There are no active proposals to extend the route, although an extension at the city end was formerly proposed to reduce the number of congested intersections buses must traverse to enter the Adelaide city centre."--Grahame (talk) 22:55, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

That sentence is a summary of the section "O-Bahn City Access Project". There is a current project to excavate a tunnel through the parklands. A contract has been let (ref 56 at the moment), however I have no evidence of actual on-site construction yet (but have not passed the site for a while, either). The trouble with a long review period is that the extension was only proposed since the beginning of the review, and had several quite different iterations before the one that has been settled on. The current plan was documented on 22 July, and the section separated from other proposals on 3 November. --Scott Davis ^Talk 23:57, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

Yes, how about: "A contract has been let for an extension at the city end that will reduce the number of congested intersections buses must traverse to enter the Adelaide city centre; this is due to open in 2017."--Grahame (talk) 00:52, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

I'm ok with that wording, so have put it in the article. I expect that there will be able to be an update to say construction has started some time in the next month or so. --Scott Davis ^Talk 21:25, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

• Closing note: This removal candidate has been kept, but there may be a delay in bot processing of the close. Please leave the {{featured article review}} template in place on the talk page until the bot goes through. Nikkimaria (talk) 16:54, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

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