Talk:U.S. Route 30 in Ohio

Latest comment: 2 years ago by Imzadi1979 in topic Intricate details

Intricate details edit

I'm giving the article a copy edit, and I was trying to trim out excess, intricate details. I gave up because the route description section is torture to read. The section is way too long for a highway of this length; there are featured articles on longer highways with more succinct RD sections that read so much better. Honestly, trying to read this text is a slog, and frankly, no reader will bother to read through the whole thing.

Some things of note:

  1. We don't need a recitation of every creek. Maybe if the body of water doesn't have its own article, it doesn't need to be mentioned.
  2. We don't need a recitation of every overpass. If the two highways don't connect, don't bother unless it's a major highway where an interchange would be expected.
  3. Also, linking all of the creek names to the same list article without pointing to a specific entry to is against the spirit of WP:OVERLINK. It's also quite annoying to a reader who is dumped at a list who then must try to find the object of that link.
  4. The RD should not be written as if it were a prose version of the junction list table. Yes, a well-written section will discuss some of the intersections, but not all of them. We typically exclude county roads from junction list tables (unless the intersection is an interchange) because those minor crossings aren't noteworthy. The same sentiment applies to the prose in an RD, and doubly so for township roads.
  5. The RD probably doesn't need to explain how some intersection types work when it already links to an article about that type. (But also, see #5 about not mentioning every intersection.)

Based on the RD alone, I've downgraded this article's assessment to a C. It should not be changed back until the RD is trimmed by about half to remove the "wall of text" phenomenon that's going on here. Imzadi 1979  16:25, 14 April 2022 (UTC)Reply

Indeed. @Chaswmsday: Keep in mind that the average reader doesn't care about roads this much and doesn't need to know this detail. I would say that I'm a road enthusiast and even this puts me to sleep. --Rschen7754 18:03, 14 April 2022 (UTC)Reply
In all fairness, the bulk of this detail was added by Detcin in 2013, but it's only gotten worse since then. Imzadi 1979  18:23, 14 April 2022 (UTC)Reply