# Talk:Pennsylvania Route 39

The article is well-written with plenty of sources, broad in its coverage, and well-illustrated. I'd say it meets our good article criteria; good job! Krimpet (talk/review) 06:25, 1 April 2007 (UTC)


### Pennsylvania Route 39
previous PR

I hope the chances of PA 39 are better than PA 145's were. PA 145 got hit hard during the FAC. -- JA10 T · C 20:03, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

If an article is a GA, but is the FA for a WikiProject, does that make the article an A-class?  --myselfalso 15:04, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Not necessarily. (→zelzany - new age roads) 16:50, 8 July 2007 (UTC)
What makes an A-class then? --myselfalso 18:18, 8 July 2007 (UTC)
It depends.  But a benchmark would be something of State Route 1002 (Lehigh County, Pennsylvania)'s quality. (→zelzany - new age roads) 19:13, 8 July 2007 (UTC)
A system hasn't been developed yet to determine this. Ideally, someone would bring a GA to the USRD reassessment page, where it would be looked at by multiple editors to determine if it is A-class. Hmm...I should probably propose that idea... --TMF Let's Go Mets - Stats 20:14, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

This article has been reviewed as part of Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles/Project quality task force. I believe the article currently meets the criteria and should remain listed as a Good article. The article history has been updated to reflect this review. I realise it's had some problems on FA- and A-level reviews, but 1. most of the objections have been addressed, and 2. GA criteria are less strict. The two {{fact}} tags are still of some concern though, and should ideally be addressed as soon as possible. Lampman (talk) 14:59, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

I started working on a redraft of this article, and I am using New York State Route 28N as a model. If anyone can give some input, or assist with revisions, I would appreciate the feedback and assistance! 
--hmich176 07:57, 22 December 2013 (UTC)


### Lead
I started with the lead, but I am not satisfied with my results so far. I think what should be mentioned in the lead is an overview of the route, that the history of the route's designation is relatively unknown, and that PA 39 had been a designation used in northeastern PA in the early 1920s, which is why all of PA 39's child routes are in the area between Williamsport and Wilkes-Barre/Scranton. I'm not sure whether it's necessary to go into so much detail about the Legislative Route history in the lead. 
--hmich176 07:57, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

I recommend working on the lead last. This is because it needs to summarize the body, and any changes to the body will affect the lead. (Also you'll need to double check the length conversion; using |sing=on or |adj=on turns the length into an adjective, but you're not using the length as an adjective in that sentence.) Imzadi 1979 →  08:11, 22 December 2013 (UTC)
I'll definitely fix that. That was a copy/paste job. I started with the lead in this case because the body's already been pretty well revised. I don't think substantial change is necessary to the body, except there should be more information about the designation's child routes being orphaned. --hmich176 08:31, 23 December 2013 (UTC)


### Designation
About PA 39's designation, what I've been able to find is that it wasn't designated by the General Assembly in legislation. This means that it was left to the Department of Highways to determine. I have maps of Pennsylvania from 1937, which clearly doesn't have PA 39 designated, and maps of Pennsylvania from 1938, which does have PA 39 designated. However, there are no public records that show when the DOH designated PA 39. If there is a record that exists, it's some place where the sun doesn't shine, evidently. 
--hmich176 07:57, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

Sounds like Michigan, and several other states. You'll have to deal with what the available sources provide. However, your assumption about the year may be wrong; does that 1938 map reflect the changes up to a date within 1938, or at the start of the year? If it's at the start of the year, the highway would had to have been designated in 1937 to show up on the 1938 map. Imzadi 1979 →  08:11, 22 December 2013 (UTC)
@Imzadi1979: I was able to find two references in two newspapers in regards to the establishment of PA 39. I have added them to the article accordingly. The state highways department sent out two press releases. One stated they were changing or creating 225 route designations in Pennsylvania; the other stated they were releasing the new state transportation map, which illustrated the changes. Shields and other signage were distributed within two weeks of the announcement, and as quickly as Monday, May 3, 1937. One newspaper - the Harrisburg Telegraph - relied more on what they were looking at on the new map, while the other paper - The Evening News - relied more on the press release stating the changes. It's quite a treasure trove, because so many changes happened. Any ideas on where I can upload them to share? I found the two articles on newspapers.com, so I can't upload them to Wikipedia. --hmich176 15:14, 8 April 2014 (UTC)
Other than sharing sources via e-mail in response to verification requests, I don't think you technically can legally upload the articles anyplace without running afoul of copyright laws. Otherwise, the references look good, although I don't know without looking at them if you really need two for a date. (No harm, but it looks slightly odd.)
Providing a little constructive feedback, but "No by-line" should be dropped (omitting it implies the same, especially with older news sources that were rarely given bylines). The date format probably should be Month DD, YYYY since that is how most of the US (outside of the military, etc) formats the date. The location can be dropped from the Harrisburg Telegraph cite since that is implied by the title of the paper, and based on the advice from APA, MLA and Chicago MOS, the state name should be abbreviated when it is given. (For footnotes 21–24, you should add the location. Other than fn21, drop the wikilink; it's only needed on the first citation from a publication/publisher and you should be consistent about either linking or not linking them.) One other thing, footnotes 1, 2, and 8 are all showing red error messages for me because they have |accessdate= defined but lack a URL. Imzadi 1979 →  00:28, 9 April 2014 (UTC)
I will make these changes. Thanks!  --hmich176 08:16, 9 April 2014 (UTC)
Changes have been completed. I removed the "No by-line" in the |author= field. I removed wikilinks from references, save initial mentions. I reformatted the dates. I also removed a citation from the establishment date in the lead and infobox, but I retained the second reference in the "Designation and Extensions" sub-section. With that said, I haven't seen the error you're getting with the footnotes you mentioned. --hmich176 08:40, 9 April 2014 (UTC)
At the moment, you have to "turn on" the error messages because they are hidden for most users at the moment. However, they will be displayed in the future. Basically, they're using bots and scripts to clear as many articles from the hidden error categories before the error messages are unhidden. You'll notice that even when an |accesssdate= is defined, unless there is also a URL, no date displays; that is by design. Imzadi 1979 →  22:30, 9 April 2014 (UTC)


### Further history
I've worked on the history subsection, reorganizing and downsizing. I reduced the amount of information about the Linglestown roundabout and merged the rest in with the article about Linglestown, PA. 
--hmich176 07:57, 22 December 2013 (UTC)


### Goal of revision
I would like to bring this article to FA status, ultimately. Since the designation of the route has a murky history, I'm concerned this would dissuade reviewers from elevating the article's status, even if it were perfectly written. I recently changed the infobox designation year to 1938 based on what I've seen on a variety of maps. Previously, it was mid-1930s, which was a sticking point for some reviewers. Given there isn't a hard designation date other than what we see on maps, I would think this might discourage some. 
--hmich176 07:57, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

Again, you have to go with the sources you have; I think you're expecting a bit too much in some respects. Imzadi 1979 →  08:11, 22 December 2013 (UTC)
You should start with a goal of bringing this article to GA status. Once you do that, you will be familiar enough with the content and sources that you will have a much better idea of how feasible and difficult it would be to achieve FA status.  VC  14:30, 22 December 2013 (UTC)
Never mind me. This article is already a GA! I generally agree with Imzadi1979 about assessing your capability of bringing this to FA by assessing your collection of sources.  VC  14:57, 22 December 2013 (UTC)
I would suggest using any newspaper databases that you may have - you can check your local library, or sometimes other local libraries. --Rschen7754 22:23, 22 December 2013 (UTC)


### Additional comments
If you have any comments you'd like to add, feel free to post them under any section above. Any additional comments you can leave below.
--hmich176 07:57, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

Replied above, copying your signatures so people know you started the comments in each section. Imzadi 1979 →  08:11, 22 December 2013 (UTC)
I would advise looking at other reasonably complete Pennsylvania articles and see what methodology was used for sourcing, format, etc. That will give you a good idea of what's available. If all you have are map sources, you can use the word circa to denote that the years given are not exact. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 23:44, 22 December 2013 (UTC)
Yes, using circa is a good idea. From comparing with other articles, PA 39 seems to be a unique case that there's not a lot of information available. --hmich176 08:34, 23 December 2013 (UTC)