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Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Don Valley Parkway/archive1

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

The article was not promoted by Karanacs 23:43, 10 August 2010 [1].

Don Valley Parkway

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Don Valley Parkway (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

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Nominator(s): ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 16:02, 19 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I am nominating this for featured article because I feel it comprehensively covers the subject matter in greater detail than any other single source available (anywhere), it is very well sourced, it contains no speculation, original research, or any of those oh-so-evil impurities :P Grammar is my weakest point, but I am hoping that through peer review and the help of fellow editors (with a special mention to Alaney2k who has been a huge help on this article) that the prose is above par. Cheers, ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 16:02, 19 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comment—a dab link to Newmarket; no dead external links. Why is the TOC not in the standard place? There is some minor inconsistency in the references (most say "Retrieved <date>", a few say "Retrieved on <date>"). Ucucha 16:07, 19 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Dab fixed. The TOC is more or less in the standard place (its placed as such to remove a 3 inch blank space). The citation issue is an issue with the citation templates, which I cannot edit since I am not an administrator. This is beyond my control unfortunately :(
EDIT: It was cite report, one of the newer citation templates. It hasn't been locked down yet, so I edited it so as to remove the "on" - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 16:23, 19 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
(ec) Thanks. I fixed Template:Cite report for you (it looks like I was there first). As for the TOC, WP:TOC has something to say on the topic, including that the TOC should not be placed within the lead (as it is here) because that disrupts screen readers. Ucucha 16:29, 19 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Fair enough. Looks like SandyGeorgia beat me to it. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 16:43, 19 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
There are still numerous MOS errors, but I'm traveling and don't have time to list them all; someone will need to do a MOS review. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 11:24, 20 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I just did a fairly thorough MOS cleanup. Dabomb87 (talk) 13:28, 20 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Source Review by Imzadi1979 (talk · contribs)
  1. All external links check out at this time.
  2. There's a weird formatting error with the {{cite report}} template for the City of Toronto report in the "Bibliography" section of the References. The date is listed first because there's no author. We should ping someone to help correct that. Alternately, is there a body of the city's government that authored the report? Such an "author" could be listed to correct the formatting, and simplify the shortened references in the footnotes that refer to this source. (In this case, I'd consider a committee or department of the City to be the author of the report and the City as the publisher.) The format should be noted as PDF as well, like other references.
  3. The Filey reference's title should be rendered in Title Case. (At least Amazon is rendering it that way off the ISBN search.) Likewise with the Sewell reference.
  4. The Sauriol reference should be reformatted. Natural History Inc. should be sufficient as the publisher. Remove the period after the "Inc" and the ISBN so that the template doesn't double the periods. (The Darke reference #15 is by the same publisher.) You could pipe a link to the magazine to display the publisher's name, or create a redirect likewise.
  5. Moving on to the Footnotes, and this is more of a personal preference than anything, but I guess I don't see the need to list the company that publishes a newspaper. To me, the name of the newspaper is enough, especially with it's a big paper like The Toronto Star. Removing that detail would clear up an inconsistency with the publisher of The Globe and Mail because it looks like the paper either changed owners or the company changed names at some point between 1961 and 1965.
  6. Another stylistic opinion, but since "CTVglobemedia" is the owner of a TV station or network in Canada, I'd prefer that if you can attribute those news stories to one of their outlets (CTV News, I assume) that would be preferable over the company. That would be consistent with citing some references to CBC News.
  7. Refs 20 and 21 look to be the same thing with different access dates. Is there some way that either a) they could be combined together or b) the titles be changed to distinguish them better?
  8. Ref 15 is a book source used only once. I'd move it up to the bibliography with the rest of the books and convert the footnote to a shortened reference accordingly, for consistency. Likewise Ref 30.
  9. Ref 48 should be reformatted. I assume that it's another {{cite report}} error.

The sources of your references all look good to me. Imzadi 1979 → 17:29, 19 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Fixes made accordingly. Books moved to biblio (I assume the book with editors as opposed to authors uses the editor for the shortened ref), cite report errors fixed, periods removed, title caps fixed in accordance with Wikipedia:Manual of Style (capital letters)#Composition titles, CTV News used, and refs distiguished. As for #5 and #9: The Globe switched around 1963 from a private individual as the publisher to a corporation as the publisher. I have always been told to add publishers when they aren't included. As for 9, I'm not sure whats wrong in the ref (guessing the location of PDF), but this is {{cite journal}} (as it is a periodical), which is one of the heavily maintained cite templates. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 18:13, 19 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose per criterion three:
    • File:DVP Shield.svg - Too simple to be eligible for copyright as mere text and simple geometric shapes. Should be re-licensed accordingly.
    • File:Don Valley Parkway 1963.png- No license (!), no author/copyright holder (NFCC#3A), likely failure of NFCC#8. Why is a picture of a lack of safety devices needed to understand there were no safety devices? Why wouldn't "there were no safety devices at the time of completion" be sufficient to convey that understanding (NFCC#1)? Where is that even discussed? The word "safety" only appears once in the article and in another section and context.
    • File:Toronto-dvp-route.png - Fails NFCC#1. A free equivalent could be easily created from a PD map.
    • See MOS:CAPTIONS for when full stops should be used. Эlcobbola talk 19:49, 19 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    I've fixed the two licences. The last image will be replaced very shortly with a free equivalent (I'm working on a route map now). I'll go through the captions in a few hours when I have a chance and fix them up. As far as I know, every one uses full sentence structure. I'll probably hide the historic image in the interim until something can be figured out around that. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 20:52, 19 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    These are now all remedied. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 04:57, 24 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    Issues resolved. Thanks. Эlcobbola talk 16:52, 24 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]


oppose WP:FA Criteria 3 File:Toronto-dvp-route.png is replaceable with free content Fasach Nua (talk) 18:02, 20 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I am making this right now. Check back in about 24 hours as it should be completed by then. Was there any reason besides this that you'd oppose? - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 01:24, 21 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Done, the image has been replaced by one of my own making. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 04:57, 24 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Good work on this page, but there are a some areas I'd like to have more coverage of. What ran through the valley before the DVP? The lead mentions the Don Roadway, but there is nothing about it in the body. There is also nothing about the ecological impact of the DVP and it's effect on the Don Valley. What about the debate over it's construction? Charles Sauriol's Don Valley Conservation Association failed in it's efforts, but the campaign led directly to the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority and the successful anti-expressway moments of the 1960s. - SimonP (talk) 12:52, 21 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    I read on some of this, but the only coverage I found of it (the debate over it) was in his own books. It seems otherwise that it generally went through with no regard, and anyone in the valley was expropriated. Metro had a lot of power when it was first formed, and the ideals of the 1950s were very much "build us this massive project so we can be proud". I think the history of the valley is best left to the Don Valley article, as there is over a hundred years of documented history going on in the valley that it could be made into an FA of its own. As for the TRCA, as far as I've read it came into existance as a direct result of the washed out floodplains left by Hurricane Hazel and the city's desire to prevent subdivisions from being built into the ravines any longer. IIRC they (TRCA) expropriated Sauriol's cottage. I'll see what I can add about the former roads in valley though. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 16:01, 21 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    For an added reference, I seem to recall Murray Seymour's Toronto's Ravines: Walking the Hidden Country including some content on the lack of nature in the Don Valley since the DVP was developed. - SimonP (talk) 23:49, 21 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    Just picked it up today, reading. I'll try and add some info with it and use what I can from Sauriol's books as well. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 03:51, 23 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    Great, I hope that's the right one. I read it when I was making the Toronto ravine system article, and I seem to remember that book dealing with this issue. - SimonP (talk) 13:19, 23 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    I added a bit more at the beginning of the History section. A summary of the natural history of the ravine. There are other details interspersed regarding the former valley taken from Sauriol's book, such as the two removed hills and the re-routing of the Don. Hope you like :) - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 13:25, 27 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Query now that certain updates have been made to the template, is there any reason not to revert this article back to the "standard" style infobox that it used before March 24, 2010? Note that I'm not advocating reverting to the information used in that infobox. Imzadi 1979 → 17:48, 25 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    So long as its fine by other reviewers, I planned on switching all the Ontario infoboxes very very shortly. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 20:19, 25 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comments: I've done a bit of light copy-editing as I have read along, please feel free to revert.
    • "...veering slightly to the right as it passes below Queen Street East." - Seems to me that should be veering east or west. In response to the comment below, I pulled out my maps of this area, and it's pretty clear this particular "veer" is to the west, despite the additional twists and turns later in the road, so I've made the modification myself; hope that is okay. Risker (talk) 22:46, 30 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • "...where on the right-hand side is Todmorden Mills..." - same concern. This sentence is also somewhat unwieldy and could use rewording. (Suggestion: try reading it out loud, anywhere that one stumbles or finds difficulty will also likely be difficult for a reader.)
    • In the History section, please include the date that the project was approved by Metro Council.
    • The last sentence about the Route of Heroes would benefit from being restructured. I've done a bit further copy editing to this sentence, which I think smooths things out, but feel free to revert if you prefer the previous version. Risker (talk) 22:46, 30 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • I've reworded the paragraph about the 2010 municipal election, but the last paragraph with the two environmental assessments needs some further work.
    • I suggest dropping the "location" on the chart at the bottom, as those differentiations are no longer recognized within the City of Toronto and haven't been for a long time; even the introductory sentence at the top identifies that the entire route is within the City of Toronto.

Generally, I found this article to be more informative and interesting than many "highway"-type articles, and will be happy to support once these additional issues are addressed. (Please ping me when you feel they have been, so that I can strike my comments in a timely way.) Thanks for the opportunity to review. Risker (talk) 06:08, 27 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  • Support - I feel my concerns have been addressed. I'll just comment, per the discussion below about Canada Post delivering to places with the names of the former boroughs: Canada Post delivers to the building or location associated with the postal code, regardless of what city name is included in the address. They still continue to deliver letters marked "Willowdale" and "Weston" even though those places haven't technically existed as anything but neighbourhoods since the 1950s, and if you put the "mid-town Toronto" postal code on a letter destined for a house on a street with the same name in Scarborough, it will be delivered to Toronto even if you indicate it should go to "Scarborough". Risker (talk) 22:46, 30 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      • Awesome, it reads much better now. I've already made most of the fixes required, but wanted to comment on two of them:
      • The first note on veering - While I fixed the other instances that I can see, this first case I believe should remain. I cannot figure out a better way of wording it, but essentially it changes direction from north, very slightly angled west, to north, very slightly angled east. The highway curves to the right when travelling north. Any suggestions? Worst comes to worst, I'll do out with it entirely.
      • On dropping the location: While I recognize that they are no longer valid, many residents still divide the city by the former boroughs. In exchange I would put in the neighbourhoods (as named by the Toronto Star neighbourhood map), as I did at Gardiner Expressway... However, I think it is standard per WP:RJL to have at least the location column (Toronto would normally go in another column, the Division column). - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 13:23, 27 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
        • It's only standard to have that column if the roadway exists in multiple locations. M-185 (Michigan highway) is completely within the City of Mackinac Island on Mackinac Island and so the table omits both the County and Location columns. Contrast that with M-108 (Michigan highway), which while in two counties because it is on the county line omits the County column rather than have it span all the rows of the table. If the roadway didn't extend outside of the Village of Mackinaw City slightly, the Location column would be omitted as well.
          In this case, Toronto is more like a consolidated city-county in the US, both the county and the location. In cases like Interstate 70 in Colorado with Denver being consolidated with the county, Denver spans both the county and location columns. I'm seeing both sides of the coin here. If the former boroughs are still in use argument wins, I'd retain them for the Location. If the argument that it's all Toronto now wins, then the Location column gets pulled because it's all in one municipality. I don't know that the neighborhoods idea is better, being the arbitrary creation of a newspaper instead of an actual governmental unit. If used though, the column should be retitled to reflect "Neighborhood" and not "Location" since the latter is understood a bit differently. Imzadi 1979 → 18:31, 29 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
          • As I am led to understand, though the whole city is legally now Toronto, the former boroughs are still recognized units and their names are still in use by the post office, which means they still exists. Besides that, they existed for most of the history of the Parkway. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 19:36, 29 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
            • The USPS will deliver mail address to "Green Garden, MI 49855". Green Garden is an unincorporated "location" south of Marquette off US 41 near Green Garden Hill. The ZIP code, 49855, in that situation is the one for Marquette. The reason that they'll deliver that mail is there is a satellite post office there for receiving outgoing mail and selling postage, but the actual sorting and delivery is performed by the Marquette Post Office. If Canada Post is similar to the USPS, then the reason the former boroughs are in use would be similar: satellite facilities using a Toronto postal code. At the moment, I'm sympathetic to retaining the locations, but leaning toward saying that they just don't exist anymore unless there are some current third-party maps still listing them. (I've been known to list the name of an unincorporated community at a junction instead of the name of the township which legally does exist. Usually in those cases the post office bears the community's name and isn't a satellite of another facility.) Imzadi 1979 → 23:01, 30 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]


Regarding your recent comments, I suppose I was using veer incorrectly instead of 'curve'. At Queen Street, the highway curves from north-north-west to north-north-east (which isn't much, but it's pretty sudden). Cheers - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 05:16, 31 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Non-source review by Imzadi179

In no particular order, I have a few minor comments to make on the article.

  1. Should "William R. Allen Road" be in the "See also" section? It is wikilinked from the infobox and the navigation template at the bottom of the article.
  2. "It connects the Gardiner Expressway in downtown Toronto with Highway 401 and is one of the busiest municipal roads in the city - some sections carry an average of 100,000 vehicles a day" in the lead, that hyphen should be either an unspaced em dash or a spaced en dash. (I personally prefer the former, but either works.)
  3. Can you mix up word choice a little? The lead as a four consecutive "the parkway" constructions in the last sentences of the first paragraph and the first sentences of the second paragraph. You can substitute "route", "roadway", "expressway" or even "highway". And unless you're using the full name, I don't think "parkway" should be capitalized because without the "Don Valley", "parkway" isn't a proper name. Watch for consecutive sentences that start with the same subject wording and fix them accordingly.
  4. The map could use some context. Can you add an inset of the province of Ontario in that dead space below Hwy 401 and above the DVP? Use the inset to show where in Ontario the whole map is depicting. You could also add some labels for the other highways and a caption using the |map_notes= parameter of the infobox. Maybe you could zoom it out a bit to show a little more of the surrounding freeway/expressway network, in the process reducing the height in proportion to the width.
  5. The "Route of Heroes" name in the infobox shouldn't need a citation if it's cited in the body of the article. That's not a controversial or unrepeated statement of fact.
  6. The first paragraph of the Route description is almost unnecessary, unless it is acting as a mini-lead for subsections below. It gives a nice overview of the whole course, but it's a bit jarring to go from a sentence on the northern end back to the southern end in the next paragraph. Maybe you should add some sub headings?
  7. "... pass under the CN/GO Toronto railway viaduct ..." Can you spell out the abbreviated names this first time, with the abbreviations in parentheses?
  8. "... each adding a lane to each carriageway." How about: "each adding a lane to both carriageways."? That removes the extra "each".
  9. "The expressway continues northward, sandwiching the Don River between itself and Bayview Avenue." Which, the roadway or the river, is sandwhiched? How about: "The expressway continues northward, with the Don River sandwiched between the parkway and Bayview Avenue." That should clarify which is the bread and which is the meat of that particular hamburger.
  10. "The expressway curves eastward as it passes the Half-Mile Bridge railway bridge where it meets the interchange for Bayview and Bloor. The long off-ramp to these roads was the beginning of the Parkway in 1961.[8] The off-ramp was later proposed as the eastern terminus of the proposed Crosstown Expressway. The Crosstown, opposed by the City of Toronto, was never built.[9] The Crosstown was projected to be built only after the completion of the Spadina Expressway, which itself was cancelled in 1971.[10] In this section, the highway is in a cut of the hillside."
    1. Can you pipe the redlink to remove the extra "bridge" from the first sentence, or change the second occurrence to "crossing"?
    2. The stuff in the middle about the other expressways doesn't flow well. Try moving that last sentence ahead of the expressway stuff, and copy edit it for flow. By moving it up, you shouldn't have a sentence dangling without a reference.
    3. "The Crosstown" feels like it's repeated too much. You can use "This other expressway was opposed by the City of Toronto and never built. It was projected..." to help the flow.
  11. "the Bayview-Bloor interchange" should have an en dash.
  12. "south-bound" isn't normally hyphenated in US English, and I'm not aware that it is in Canadian English. Ditto for the other cardinal directions in the article.
  13. "Changeable Message Signs (CMS)" is unlinked on first occurrence and linked the second time in a photo caption. Both usages have the abbreviation. I'd ditch the abbreviations totally and move the link.
  14. "The Don Valley Parkway is one of Toronto's busiest municipal routes, along with the Gardiner Expressway." Move the appositive into the middle of the sentence so it reads "The Don Valley Parkway, along with the Gardiner Expressway, is one of Toronto's busiest municipal routes." Otherwise the Gardiner is kinda an afterthought dangling there.
  15. In the first sentence of the history section, "Don River valley", valley should be capitalized.
  16. "one and a quarter million cubic metres" needs a conversion.
  17. "The final cost of the project was $40 million." could use an inflation-adjusted number.

In general the article is well researched and well written, but it just needs some copy-editing for polish. Imzadi 1979 → 23:03, 7 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

My responses, in particular order to avoid confusion :)
  1. Removed accordingly. Even so, Allen Road isn't significant with regard to the DVP.
  2. Done. I've used a space ndash; in several articles so far, so I'll stick with it for consistency.
  3. Done.
  4. Will do. I actually have some other minor details (offramps) to complete in the map as well.
  5. Done. Probably only cited because of how recently it happened.
  6. It is a mini-lead. I am unsure of what subheading would be appropriate for the break between the paragraphs. Would Details work?
  7. Done, same with CPR later in the article.
  8. Done
  9. Done, but now I'm hungry...
  10. Fixed
    1. Done
    2. Done
    3. Done
  11. Done
  12. Done
  13. Done
  14. Done
  15. Done
  16. Done
  17. Done - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 03:26, 8 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
It's all looking good. I'll skim through the history for any additional copy editing needed, but pending that I think this article is pretty much ready. Imzadi 1979 → 22:07, 8 August 2010 (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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