Talk:Grand Trunk Railway/Draft

With all due respect, this article is not ready for approval.

Russell Jones asked me to take a look at this article which he just nominated for approval and I have done so. With all due respect, I do not think this article is ready for approval.

This article was written in early 2007, and since then, a very few revisions/additions were made in early 2008. I have no quarrel with the content of the article. However, during the 2 years since it was created, it has not been formatted to be consistent with how CZ articles are meant to be formatted:

1. It contains a "See also" section (which is a Wikipedia-ism). The contents of that section should be moved to the "Related Articles" subpage.
2. It contains an "External links" section (another Wikipedia-ism). The contents of that section should be moved to the "External Articles" subpage.
3. The only contents of the current "Related Articles" subpage are articles collected by a robot. Those robot-harvested articles (plus the articles from 1. above and plus others) need to be sorted into the required format of "Parent topics" (such as History), "Subtopics" (such as Railway history and Canada, history) and "Other related topics".
4. It strikes me that some of the sources listed in the "Bibliography" subpage (especially the one listed as a Primary Source) should be used in the main article page as in-text references in the <ref></ref> format. The article currently does not have even one in-text reference.
5. The current article consists of one large section. I would like to see it split into an introduction (lede) and at least 2 more sections.

I realize that all of the above listed items are rather trivial, but they do need to be fixed. I could very easily fix items 1., 2., and 3. above and I am quite willing to do so if Joe Quick (our Approvals manager), Hayford Pierce and/or Matt Innis would say that my doing so would not disqualify me from adding my name to the approval nomination. After all, fixing 1., 2., and 3.would be simple formatting copy edits.

As for 4. and 5. above, I think those should be done by someone who is more of a historian than I am. Milton Beychok 22:10, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

It does not in any way disqualify you from participating in the approval process, Milt. It would disqualify you from being the only editor to oversee approval if you were to make content changes, but Russell has not made content changes so he could approve it himself without you. I consider the single-editor method of approval to cover cases like this where there is a single un-involved editor and an author-editor.

Of course, if someone else wants to take care of Milt's concerns, that's great too! --Joe (Approvals Manager) 22:29, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, Joe, and I will go ahead and fix the first 3 items above. Milton Beychok 22:46, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments, Milt. I took this about as far as I could content-wise (see below, too). It was RJ's project and it looked pretty complete to me, so I thought, let's fly this up the flag pole and see what others think... Thanks for pointing out the formatting issues. I can do. And, Joe, I did think about going solo on the approval, but I've been called out before for doing that after making revisions. Russell D. Jones 00:07, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

I am less troubled than Milton by the lack of in-text references here, since that is fairly common in historical writing. As I read over the article, nothing in particular really stood out as demanding substantiation and there are no direct quotes requiring accreditation, so I would recommend we leave it as is for the first approval. Russell has done a nice job polishing this one up and I am going to join him in recommending it for approval. It would be nice if we had someone from engineering to take on the issues there, but we don't seem to have anyone at this point. Perhaps the discussion on this page will be enough to red-flag the matter for future revisions; that doesn't seem to me to be a sufficient reason not to approve it at this point. It is a modest entry that colors within the lines. If there were engineering issues that leapt off the page (like crossing Lake Michigan lengthwise!) it might be a different story, so if anyone with an engineering background sees anything like that, speak up. Otherwise, it looks to me to be good to go. ...said Roger Lohmann (talk)

Okay, I've polished it up again and think Milt and I have met all of his criticisms. I've updated the Metadata. Russell D. Jones 01:32, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

The article now looks and is in fact much better. I am quite satisfied with it now and I will sign on as one of nominators. Milton Beychok 03:01, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Content question

This article appears to deal completely with the business aspects of creating and running the railroad. Were there any engineering challenges to be solved in its implementation or operation? Transportation-related articles have been assigned to Engineering because there usually are some technical issues. Howard C. Berkowitz 22:39, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

I really don't know that much about GT, GTW, or GTP, to answer this question. There was the Pacific extension, but by the time GT did that the transcontinentals had worked out the problems of traversing the Rockies. Russell D. Jones 00:07, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

style edits

Reading over the article quickly, the flow of the text struck me as very jumpy and somewhat crude. I've made some adjustments, which I think will help, but I would encourage others to look it over with an eye for stylistic elements. --Joe Quick 21:33, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

date for approval - confirmation needed

I'm a dumb old Kop who spent 25 years of his life in a European-style dating country (which I like, actually). I just want to make certain -- is this article to be approved on August 9th or September 8th? I think that Editors ought to use the standard American spelling out things, such as August 9, 2009, rather than just a bunch of numbers run together. And yes, I do realize that the metadata baloney for Editors is probably just as onerous and unintuitive as it is for Constables.... Hayford Peirce 23:58, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

That got me a little confused too. It wasn't immediately clear which date writing system was being used. I went off to look for another example that would be obvious so I could interpret this one. What did I find? Benjamin Franklin, which was approved on April 4th! Ugh... :-) Then I found some others that Russell nominated with less ambiguous dates, using month first. So, Hayford, we'll see you tomorrow, right? ;-) --Joe Quick 02:38, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Well, I dunno if you will or you won't. Unless the Editor who put in this date for approval *clearly* spells out to me which date should be applied, I won't do it. See y'all on September 8th maybe...? Hayford Peirce 06:23, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

How about August 9, 2009. I have enough trouble with my time zone.... The instructions for filling out the metadata on approval say to use a bunch of numbers. I prefer a real date format. Can we just change the approval instructions or do we have to go through the Ed Council for changing policies like this? Sorry for the confusion. Russell D. Jones 16:14, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

If the instructions to the Editors are as murky and unclear as the ones to the Constables were before I personally rewrote them, then they're probably horrible. Subject to being banned from CZ for giving you my opinion, I would say that any Editor involved in the approval process OUGHT to use the format of August 17, 2009, rather than anything else at all. Yes, I WILL approve an article that is dated 2009-31-08 or 2009-08-31, because at least in *that* case it's clear which is the day and which is the month. But if an article up for approval is dated 2009-11-12 I'm just not gonna do it. So PLEASE write out the name of the month! Thanks! Hayford Peirce 17:18, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

I'm changing the instructions then. Jones 19:22, 9 August 2009 (UTC)