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Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/List of railway stations in Greater Manchester

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

The list was promoted by User:Matthewedwards 07:09, 25 September 2008 [1].

List of railway stations in Greater Manchester edit

This list has been worked on by various members of the Greater Manchester WikiProject, and attempts to follow the example set by similar lists of London Underground and West Midlands stations. I have notified the other major contributors Joshii, Jza84 and Mr Stephen, and the project itself, of this candidacy. I believe the article is comprehensive, well-referenced and defines its context and scope appropriately. Hassocks5489 (tickets please!) 20:07, 9 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Resolved comments from The Rambling Man (talk) 10:08, 23 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments - I like... but...

  • Lead is four short paras, would do better as two (pref. 3) bigger, more extensive paras - and a little too many blue links there. Consider what's most relevant to this type of article - i.e. link the rail stuff, the Greater Manc stuff but otherwise be judicious...
  • Any reason why the first main section heading doesn't appear as a standard main level heading?
  • "Northern Rail is the predominant train operating company." - I suspect this needs explanation - either tell me what you mean by predominant (i.e. passenger miles? passengers carried? ) or provide a citation which directly references this quote.
  • Three consecutive paras in lead start with "Greater Manchester" which, while accurate, detracts a little from the engaging nature of the lead.
  • Para 2 of lead could be flowed better - currently it reads like listprose - factoid after factoid...
  • Any reason why we've got three years of entry/exit data? Why not just one with arrows and a reference for the previous year?
  • Managed by col - you need to link Northern Rail each time as the table is sortable so the links could appear in any order.
  • Why is platforms col so much wider than Open year (which probably ought to be called Year opened)..?
  • Advise you centrally align platform and year cols, and right-align cols with loads of numbers like the entry/exit cols.
  • Currently the sorting doesn't work on, say, entry/exit 2002/3.
  • Footnotes - numbers below ten should be written in text and these footnotes should be referenced.
The Rambling Man (talk) 17:01, 10 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Nice to see a railway related list. Comments

  • I think that you should make clear that Liverpool Road station is no longer open otherwise people may wonder why it isn't in the list.
  • I am also not sure that the sentence about the East Lancs Railway is relevant to this list (which as about open National Rail stations).
  • The paragraph about there being two halves to the network perhaps implies that the lines from Victoria are not connected to the rest of the national network.
  • You are not going to thank me for this but the station usage data for 2006-7 is available and should really be included. You have already modified the list to just cover just the last two sets of data and I think that this is about right.
  • Platforms - You have included the Metrolink platforms for Altrincham and Navigation Road but not for Manchester Piccadilly or Manchester Victoria. If I might suggest that the data should just be for the platforms that serve the National Rail services with a note saying that a particular station also has Metrolink platforms.
  • Ardwick has two platforms not one.
  • The lead says that there are 98 stations but I counted (I think) 100.

Boissière (talk) 19:34, 10 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

All my comments have been addressed - Support Boissière (talk) 21:52, 16 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks to both for your comments so far. Changes, responses etc. so far (which I will add to where necessary):
→Corrected wrong format for section header.
→2002/3 data removed. See below as well.
→Northern Rail linked on each occasion in TOC column.
→Changed name of the year opened column; can't see any way of narrowing the Platforms column, although I think it looks a bit better now that the numbers are centred.
→Alignments changed as suggested in years, platforms and usage columns.
→The sorting seems to work on the first and second clicks, then goes wrong on the third and fourth clicks, then works again and so on. I don't know how to correct this glitch, which I have seen before on other tables.
→Footnote wording has been corrected as suggested, and references added.
→Liverpool Road clarified and referenced.
→Removed the East Lancs sentence.
→Metrolink platforms info has been changed as you (Boissière) suggested.
→Yep, Ardwick was an error; it has a two-faced island platform. Corrected.
→I think I'll have to put in a footnote about the 98/100 stations. There are indeed 100 in the list; the source says 98, but from looking at the map on the GMPTE website I can see this is because they are not acknowledging the existence of Reddish South and Denton, the "ghost stations" which only have one train per week. I'll think of an appropriate way to word this.
Other things I haven't covered yet will be attended to shortly. Hassocks5489 (tickets please!) 20:34, 10 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The sorting on numbers of entry/exits doesn't work because the sort treats the numbers as text. You could try {{nts}} for helping out here. The Rambling Man (talk) 07:46, 11 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

→Sorting now corrected for both columns of data.
→2005/6 and 2006/7 data now used. Hassocks5489 (tickets please!) 22:23, 11 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Resolved issues from SRX

Comments

    • The north side's services radiate from Manchester Victoria providing Inter-City transport to West Yorkshire, the North East and Liverpool as well as local suburban services to Rochdale, Oldham and Wigan. - does "Inter-City" need to be capitalized? Also, is "inner-city" meant here?
    • The other thing I don't like is that ref 8 and 9 are used over 27 times, can't other sources be used to reference what 8 and 9 are citing?

--SRX 23:17, 11 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

→"Intercity" is intended: services run to other cities such as Leeds and Liverpool. Capitalisation could be improved, admittedly: I will put in "intercity" instead. I'm concerned about adding a wikilink because these are separate from the well-established InterCity brand.
→The referencing comment concerns me. The books used are the two definitive sources for the often troublesome issue of station opening dates—in particular Butt, which covers every station that has ever existed in Britain, incorporating opening dates, changes of name, closure dates etc. The info in the Greater Manchester-specific book (Brackenbury) matches that in Butt in all cases, such that refs [8] and [9] are essentially interchangeable wherever they appear. Unlike on the similar West Midlands and London Underground lists, there are no websites which give a comprehensive list of opening dates for GM stations ... although even if there was, the data would probably be derived from one or both of these books anyway. In some cases (e.g. Mills Hill, Brinnington), books in my personal collection have been cited as opening date refs; these corroborate the dates given in the other books. I have reached the limit of the usefulness of those books now, though: they contain no more opening-date information. I'm not sure what more I can do on this. Hassocks5489 (tickets please!) 07:57, 12 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
If I can chip in here. The fact that a lot of referencing is from a single source is common to many featured lists. For example, the recently promoted List of solar eclipses in the 21st century uses a particular web page from the NASA web site to source a lot of the info on that page. The various sports lists also tend to use a single source for much of their content. For many topics (including transport) there are one or maybe two sources that are considered authoratative (sp?) for a particular area. Boissière (talk) 21:52, 16 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - my comments have been resolved, mostly issues on my understanding of the subject, meets the FL Criteria.--SRX 20:35, 25 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
→I have restructured and rewritten parts of the lead, which I hope covers all the points raised above that had not previously been attended to. Hassocks5489 (tickets please!) 11:54, 13 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

  • Would be nice to spell out abbreviations the first time they are used in the footnotes (GMPTE, FWT, ATOC, etc.)
  • What makes http://www.thetrams.co.uk/ a reliable source?
Otherwise sources look okay, links checked out with the link checker tool. Ealdgyth - Talk 12:32, 18 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
→GMPTE and ATOC done. FWT doesn't actually stand for anything (see [http://www.fwt.co.uk/index.html here); it's just a brand/trading style used by the Cook Hammond & Kell Group.
→I have used the Light Rail Transit Association website instead. This is a "proper" society, incorporated as a limited company at Companies House, which publishes a magazine which the website supplements. Hassocks5489 (tickets please!) 12:35, 19 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
SatyrTN comments
  • Remove the sorting option from the "Lines served" column - it's free text and doesn't need sorting.
  • I don't understand the green/up arrow -- red/down arrow, or in fact the "Annual entry exit" column at all. Does it mean 358 more people entered than exited the Ardwick statio in 2005/6? Could you note that with an explanation somewhere?

Otherwise, looks good. Well laid out, looks properly sourced. I Conditionally support FLC. -- SatyrTN (talk / contribs) 20:56, 20 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

→Sorting removed from that column.
→I have added a footnote with the explanation of the arrows, showing that it means a year-on-year increase or decrease in pax numbers. Hassocks5489 (tickets please!) 21:35, 20 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Hm. Well. Looking at List of railway stations in Essex and List of railway stations in Wales, they don't have the up or down arrows on those. I see what you're going for, but that arrow confuses me - it says "Bolton had roughly 2 million more users" to me. Or 2 million more entries than exits. The other lists have "station users" for both sets of years - the entry/exit column header you have is confusing to me.
  • Furthermore, I'm not sure how encyclopedic those numbers are. If it really is "users", then I can see having one set of numbers, to show how much use the station gets. But having both sets I think is overkill.
  • One other request - is there a station map like A (New York City Subway service) or List of railway stations in Dover? -- SatyrTN (talk / contribs) 04:57, 24 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
→Odd: I thought the up/down arrows had been used on some other stations lists, but having just checked, I can see they aren't! Anyway, I've removed them. Re two years of data vs. one, other lists of this type seem to go for two by default, and having two gives more benefit as it shows trends rather than just static info. Having two was suggested above as being about right by Boissière (previously there were 3 years of data!)
→I don't think there is a map available on Commons or WP; also it would be very complex indeed and would probably overwhelm the article. The network is quite large and complicated. Perhaps I could provide an External Link to the GMPTE's network map? Hassocks5489 (tickets please!) 15:49, 24 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • I Support this FLC. A map would still be nice - even a thumb of one - but it's not a show stopper :) -- SatyrTN (talk / contribs) 03:51, 25 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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