William L. Mercereau was one of the Engineering and technology good articles, but it has been removed from the list. There are suggestions below for improving the article to meet the good article criteria. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.
Article milestones Date Process Result October 17, 2020 Good article nominee Listed February 26, 2023 Good article reassessment Delisted
	A fact from this article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "Did you know?" column on July 27, 2017. The text of the entry was: Did you know ... that William L. Mercereau, Superintendent of Steamships for the Pere Marquette Railway, was responsible for building up what was at the time the world's largest carferry fleet?
Current status: Delisted good article

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This review is transcluded from Talk:William L. Mercereau/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: MWright96 (talk · contribs) 14:47, 6 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Going to review for the GAN October 2020 Backlog Drive. MWright96 (talk) 14:47, 6 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

1. It is reasonably well written.

   a (prose): b (MoS for lead, layout, word choice, fiction, and lists):

2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.

   a (reference section): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR):

3. It is broad in its coverage.

   a (major aspects): b (focused):

4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.

   Fair representation without bias:

5. It is stable.

   No edit wars, etc.:

6. It is illustrated by images and other media, where possible and appropriate.

   a (images are tagged and non-free content have fair use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):

7. Overall:

   Pass/Fail:

Lead

• "His home port for thirty years of his fleet of steel carferries was Ludington, Michigan." - home of his fleet of steel carferries for thirty years

•  Done

• "The old fashion technology previously involved transferring bulk material from railroad cars to steamship vessel" - antiquated

•  Done

• "The break-bulk transfer involved crews of laborers at both the loading and unloading points. That was a costly time-consuming process that was inefficient for profits." - These two sentences might be better off merged into one.

•  Done

Early life and education

• Any information about his parents and what they did?

• ((Done}] Researched for this, but was unable to find anything about his parents. --Doug Coldwell (talk) 15:44, 7 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• "He later moved back east to Saginaw, Michigan. There as a young man of 105 pounds (48 kg) he started as a coal stoker on locomotives for the Flint and Pere Marquette Railroad." - consider merging these two sentences together

•  Done

• "After a little more than a year at this job" - just more

•  Done

• "His first steamship he worked on was" - The

•  Done

• "He later worked on the steamships Pere Marquette No. 3 and No. 5 for some time." - how much time exactly?

•  Done sources only say a few years.

• Wikilink Lake Michigan

•  Done

• "Mercereau quit working for the railroad company after a couple of years" - how many years exactly?

•  Done copy edited

• "to get a business degree." - more formal; obtain

•  Done

• "In August, 1898," - the first comma is unneeded

•  Done

Career

• "Technology was introducing in the 1890s" - better; In the 1890s, technology was introducing

•  Done

• "but this old technology was on its way out." - the text in bold is informal and needs rewriting to a formal style

•  Done

• "but this old technology" - antiquated

•  Done

• Wikilink carferry to the appropriate article on the first mention

•  Done

• "The next steel carferry for the railroad company was the SS Pere Marquette No. 17. It was basically the same as PM No. 15 except with more extensive cabin accommodations." - consider having both of these sentences merged

•  Done

• " This carferry originally was called the SS Muskegon and renamed as the SS Pere Marquette No. 16 as the second carferry in its fleet." - but was renamed

•  Done

• "Business was growing rapidly, so he then ordered two more steel carferries. " - With business growing rapidly, he ordered two more steel ferries.

•  Done

• "He was known as the "Father of the Fleet" since he gave 31 years of service to the Pere Marquette Railway." - known by whom?

•  Done

• "He was known as the 'father of the railroad on the water'" - same query as above

•  Done

• "for transporting as a complete loaded freight car unit." - transportation

•  Done

• "for the commercial transportation industry in general in the long run." - long-term

•  Done

Later life and death

• The Ludington Daily News states he died on the evening of September 1, 1931. It might be helpful to include this in the article body.

•  Done

References

• All mentions of newspapers.com should begin with a capital letter

•  Done

• References 3, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 and 15 are missing the page numbers

•  Done

• Reference 11 is missing the author

•  Done

Am putting the review on hold to allow the nominator to address or query the points raised above. MWright96 (talk) 19:00, 6 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

•  Working Starting to address issues.--Doug Coldwell (talk) 19:02, 6 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]
• MWright96 All issues have been addressed. Can you take another look now. Thanks. --Doug Coldwell (talk) 20:18, 7 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]
• @MWright96: - Did I get everything? --Doug Coldwell (talk) 08:44, 17 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• @Doug Coldwell: Now promoting to GA class. MWright96 (talk) 13:00, 17 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Looking at Train ferry it mentions that An early train ferry was established as early as 1833 and The first modern train ferry was Leviathan, built in 1849. plus Although others had had similar ideas, it was Bouch who first put them into effect.

This article says Mercereau developed the technology of loading a complete railroad car full of freight directly onto ships as one unit. and in the 1890s, technology was introducing the idea of just loading the complete railroad freight car onto the ship instead of transferring its contents to ship holding tanks. The package steamships with bulk holding tanks had carried freight this way since 1882, but this antiquated technology became obsolete. The railroad car ferry then came about, and the first ones were wooden craft.

Reference 3 has the title Idea Of Carferries Got Its Start Here in 1897 which, again doesn't match the Train ferry pages. The date that they refer to is 1897 which is when the first steel ferry was entered into service which is probably what they are referring to which makes me concerned about using it for this article. Gusfriend (talk) 09:38, 20 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• In the article I wrote, He was also known as the 'father of the railroad on the water' because he brought to fruition the idea of loading the complete railroad car onto cross-lake ferries for transportation as a complete loaded freight car unit. using Reference 12. Reference 3 is used for Mercereau's biography information. I don't see an issue with either of these references.--Doug Coldwell (talk) 13:32, 20 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

This article is part of Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/20210315 and the Good article (GA) drive to reassess and potentially delist over 200 GAs that might contain copyright and other problems. An AN discussion closed with consensus to delist this group of articles en masse, unless a reviewer opens an independent review and can vouch for/verify content of all sources. Please review Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/February 2023 for further information about the GA status of this article, the timeline and process for delisting, and suggestions for improvements. Questions or comments can be made at the project talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 09:37, 9 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]