Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/M-105 (Michigan highway)/1

M-105 (Michigan highway) edit

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.


Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · WatchWatch article reassessment pageMost recent review
Result: Kept - Clear consensus the article meets the GA criteria now that it has been rewritten and expanded. Note, that GAR is unsuited for discussions around notability. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 08:23, 11 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

There is no information on when or how the road was constructed. There are no sources other than from the Michigan State Highway Department. I note that I found this article because it is currently the shortest good article on the English Wikipedia. Steelkamp (talk) 06:43, 8 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  • Why is this even an article? This is the problem with the "all state/province-supported roads are notable" attitude taken by WP:GEOROAD. This should have never been a GA, none of the sources are even independent (and most are maps, making them all WP:PRIMARY SOURCES) and the article consists of basic route description and a "the road existed from year X to year Y" section. This probably needs to be deleted or redirected. -Indy beetle (talk) 07:37, 8 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delist comprehensive issues as outlined above. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 10:53, 8 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Delist per above. Though do you know how annoying it is article is to hear in conversations as a WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS argument. Like seriously, everyone goes "Oh, if this article is so short to be a GA, anything can be a GA" and it's like, have you ever thought that maybe this article is too short?? Onegreatjoke (talk) 13:29, 8 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Wow, just over 12 hours and the nominator has not had a chance to respond yet, and already 2 delist votes. May I suggest putting the pitchforks aside and waiting to see what the response is. --Rschen7754 19:29, 8 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    • What response could logically buttress an argument that this should be kept as GA? The only defense for this ever getting GA status in the first place was that it was over 10 years ago back when our standards and application of scrutiny were low. -Indy beetle (talk) 20:53, 8 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
      • Not to mention the evidence of original research (my edit) by using a modern state map tool similar to GMaps to make calcualtions about the size of the old route which hasn't existed since 1939. Also, how can we support the claim that the road went "through farm country and rural areas" without a source which actually says that? -Indy beetle (talk) 21:04, 8 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
      • What response? [1] --Rschen7754 01:03, 9 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Keep—thank you for the prompt, Steelkamp, to rewrite and expand this article. Perhaps a heads up (say 72 hours notice on either the talk page for the article or me) would have allowed us to avoid the bureaucracy of a formal review. That said, everything should be fixed up to allow this article to stay listed as a GA with just a few hours' effort.
@AirshipJungleman29, Onegreatjoke, and Indy beetle: you may want to re-evaluate the article as it's been changed since you voted before I had a chance engage with this nomination. Imzadi 1979  02:59, 9 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    • Well, part of me says "touché" in acknowledging your recent improvements to the article, but there still are some problems. What is going on with reference 4 aka the PR Finder. It's just a link to a search tool, it doesn't say anything about this highway. How is it being used to support the claims about "major intersections" and route length? Also "Running through what is today farm country and rural areas" appears to be an original observation of Google satellite images, though that is admittedly more nitpicky. -Indy beetle (talk) 08:25, 9 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
      That mapping tool is used on 233 articles on Michigan's highways and other roadways to accurately and consistently measure their lengths. It is the second generation of a mapping tool called the Physical Reference Finder. MDOT maintains physical reference data on every public roadway in the state, meaning the map can be, and has been used, to measure the mileposts for any extant roadway. The only roadway in the state with an article that cannot be mileposted with PR Finder is Pierce Stocking Scenic Drive because it is neither a city/village street, county road or state trunkline highway. Since the appropriate segments of Kilmanagh and Grassmere roads still exist in the 1939 configuration of M-105, they're in the PR Finder. Imzadi 1979  19:20, 9 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
      The point is it's verifiable. I've had to do this myself many times, and not just on road articles. As an example, the State of Utah has a search tool to search through a library of documents. However those documents are stored on a Google Drive account owned by the state. Problem is I can't (well I can, but not without grief) link to the raw destination document. Wikipedia has edit filters that gray list anything from Google Drive. Sometimes I feel like fighting the battle, and click "yes" repeatedly on the "are you sure you want to link to this" crap, and then have to constantly defend a link to Google drive. Sometimes I don't feel like it, so I link to the search page on the state of Utah's website, which nobody questions, and hope the user has enough common sense to enter the right search terms that will point them to the document I used to source the article. Colorado has a similar database to the one Imzadi used, where a URL to the results of a database search will not work. The only way I've found one can link to it, is to link to the search page, and tell the user what to search to produce the intended results. It's still verifiable, and better than an offline source that requires a trip to a distant library to verify. As to the final point, requiring a source that a highway in rural Michigan passes through farm country is approaching WP:SKYISBLUE territory. Dave (talk) 19:32, 9 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    • So what is it I would have to type into the PR Finder to get the info it supports here? -Indy beetle (talk) 21:35, 9 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
      @Indy beetle: in short, you zoom and scroll to display the desired roadway, whether it is currently a state highway, a county road or a city/village street. State highways and other roads under current MDOT jurisdiction are organized into Control Sections (CS) that are subsections of the highway numbered on a county-by-county basis. You can see these CSs numbered in the Control Section Atlas if you want to reference a roadway by its CS numbers. All public roadways in the state are assigned to Physical References (PR).
      The Advanced Search tool allows someone to work with either CSs or PRs. The search tool allows someone to zoom and scroll to find their target, and then click the button next to the Route ID box to click on the roadway on the map to select it. There are other buttons to allow someone to select the crossroad at one end of a desired segment and get the milepost for that intersection. Then it's simple arithmetic.
      Mileposts run from the southern or western endpoint in a northward or eastward progression. CS mileposts in the southernmost or westernmost county directly correspond to the milepost that would appear on the mile markers. The CS milepost values reset at county lines, but through a chain of continuing arithmetic, the mile marker values on the signs continue to increase to the overall terminus of the highway. PR mileposts work in the same fashion. Not that it's a factor here, but when concurrencies come into play, additional arithmetic may be needed because the CS/PR mileposts may follow a more dominant designation and appear to regress in the direction of an overlapped designation: the MPs along US 41/M-28 progress westbound along along the CS/PRs to follow US 41 northbound, which is M-28 westbound.
      All of this follows WP:CALC: "Basic arithmetic, such as adding numbers, converting units, or calculating a person's age, is almost always permissible." In fact, when M-28 received mile markers for the first time a few years ago, they generally lined up with the mileposts derived from the PR Finder Application years previously, thus showing that the calculations are correct. (Mile markers can be posted up to a tenth of a mile off their correct location per FHWA guidance.) For freeways that had mile markers posted before the exit list tables were created on Wikipedia, again, they generally line up with the values in the field. Imzadi 1979  01:08, 10 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep—I had concerns with the article in its condition before yesterday's needless shock doctrine, but the rewrite has resolved any doubts on my end. VC 14:31, 9 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep - The citations added meet GAC 2b, the rewrite brings the article up to GAC 1a and 3a compliance, and the other issues brought up by the other comments here seem to have been resolved or addressed adequately. SounderBruce 00:10, 10 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep - With the recent improvements to the article made by Imzadi1979, the article is comprehensive and broadly covers the route with both map sources and newspaper articles and therefore meets the GA criteria. Dough4872 01:24, 10 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. The recent improvements have brought the article up to snuff. Steelkamp (talk) 01:56, 10 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    @Imzadi1979: Since you wanted notice of this good article reassessment, I will tell you now that there are several other really short highway GAs which you might want to improve. I would go from the top of this list. Steelkamp (talk) 02:02, 10 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    @Steelkamp: Do you plan on nominating the non-roads articles on that list too? --Rschen7754 02:15, 10 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Some of them at least. It depends, articles can be comprehensive without being that long. If I can spot something missing, then I will nominate that article. I don't have a specific hatred of road articles if that's what you're thinking. Steelkamp (talk) 02:29, 10 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. Without comment as to the earlier state of the article, the two concerns raised were 1) missing construction details and 2) no independent sources. The two concerns were addressed. I found the manner in which this GAR was conducted to be less than professional, but so be it, I guess this is civility on Wikipedia nowadays. --Rschen7754 06:39, 11 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.