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February-August 8, 2006

Template:Project U.S. Roads East

Talking to Myself

New talk page... so I guess I'm talking to myself. --TinMan 06:49, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

HI! Stratosphere (T/C) 05:16, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

I-74 map

That's because I got to it first :P Stratosphere (T/C) 05:15, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Sports userboxes

Can you take a look at the discussion at Wikipedia_talk:Userboxes/US_and_Canadian_Sports. -- Jeff3000 03:38, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

New userboxes

I have deleted a userbox template you recently created, as userboxes should no longer be created in templatespace per the terms of the German userbox solution. Here is the userbox code so that you can recreate the userbox in your userspace ("userfying") if you wish.

<div style="float: left; border: 1px solid {{{1|#388}}}; margin: 1px;"> {| cellspacing="0" style="width: 238px; background: {{{2|#8b8}}};" | style="width: 45px; height: 45px; background: {{{1|#fff}}}; text-align: center; font-size: {{{5|12}}}pt; color: #000;" | '''{{{3|]}}}''' | style="font-size: 8pt; padding: 4pt; line-height: 1.25em; color: #000;" | {{{4|This user is from the ] region of ].}}} |}</div>

--Cyde Weys 17:54, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

NC 24 Talk

Hi TinMan (Or Gooday? which one?),

I couldn't help but notice you put "It's part of the NC State Highways Wikiproject format and U.S. Routes Wikiproject format (basic rules) laid down before I got here. --TinMan 23:36, 14 July 2006 (UTC)" as an argument during the debate to change NC's name. I humbly submit to you to never, ever use that as an argument. One of the epicentres of the debate, WP:CASH's "naming convention" rule was a haphazard one i slapped on during another debate at California State Highway 17. In this diff I stated that "The contents of each article in this project should reside in California State Route XXX, with XXX being the route number; also, California State Highway XXX should redirect to the article as well." I wrote this at a time where I was not as knowledgable as I am today, and today i stand corrected knowing that its official and correct name is "State Route X". Boy, did that simple mistake turn horrendous! SPUI noticed that this was incorrect, and tried to fix it, but ran into a roadblock of people who like the status quo and rejected change, opting to stay with "whatever worked" at the time. After choosing my naming convention, "California State Route XX," I hastily moved whatever article that didn't match that convention to meet it, making it seem that California State Highway 17 looked terribly out of place. Thus, the "standard" was born, albeit being an incorrect standard. There were only several people aside from myself working on the articles at the time, so the change seemed to be innocuous. Quickly, however, this naming convention seemed to spread to all states. Later on, in another heated debate regarding the capitalisation of the article name, the following sentence, "Note: In all uses of the phrase "California State Route", capitals are to be used. This includes stubs and categories and templates and lists," was slapped on so it could be cited as 'evidence' without regard to its correctness or usefulness (that sentence, however, seems to be fine -- State Route is the proper noun, and California is the state. The context behind that, I believe, was to preseve the article title List of California State Routes, where "California STate Route" was supposed to be a proper noun and capitalised. I, too, supported this at the time -- but now have really learned the distinction between State Route and state routes as a proper noun vs. not a proper noun.) But alas, such small changes from 2 years ago have grown to a trainwreck of an issue today. Many of the supported of the Principle that you have decided to vote for (i'm not pointing fingers at anyone) have said that "this is the way it is and it seems fine so there's no reason to change it," kind of in a "if its not broken don't fix it" mood -- but however, it IS broken, and it DOES need fixing.

Anyways, thank you for your time in reading this; although it seems I may be trying to have you change your vote, I'm not -- you can keep your vote, your principle can pass -- as long as your reason for voting for your method is not "because it was the way it was on the rules when i came" is your argument. Good day! atanamir 03:30, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Reply

Thanks for the reply. In the spirit of discussion, I guess I'll address each one of the points you made:

The road signs and addresses of residents living on a North Carolina state route read "N.C. Highway x", which is an abbreviation of "North Carolina Highway x"

OK -- then I would agree that North Carolina Highway X would be appropriate for NC, since that seems to be the official method of calling it. (It can be confusing at times because a DOT would call them multiple names, but North Carolina Highway X seems fine to me, especially if there's documentable evidence that it is referred to as such.). So, I agree with you here.

Misplaced Pages policies say you should avoid disambiguation with parentheses if it can be avoided. I think it can easily be.

This is an opinionated matter as well ("as well", since i finished writing the entire thing and realised i had forgotten to reply to this). If you think it can be, then OK -- it can be. But, from my point of view, we can avoid disambiguating anything with parenthesis: Planet Mars, Mars God, Astrological Mars, To Mar, etc. You can kind a way to always avoid disambiguating with parenthesis -- but then again, if it is really to be avoided, why did it come up in the first place?

Since "common names" are usually derived from TV and by reading road signs, etc. I think Proposal 1 is the most common way of speaking the "common name" of the route.

I'm sure this has beed said, but: the common names varies widely from region to region. In california, the northlands calls it "85" or "highway 85" or "route 85," while the southlands refer to all of the numbered routes like "The 55". It'd be hard to have one state with routes at both "California Highway 55" and "California The 55" -- hopefully even you'd agree that'd be ugly!

Since it is on the road signs and addresses, it is an official name.

Back to #1's agreement with you. However, In CA, signs NEVER use CA X or CA Highway X -- the always say Route X. Even for interstates, I've seen signs like JCT RTE 5.

No Joe Schmoe would type "Term x (State Name)" in a search bar that is unfamiliar with Misplaced Pages's organization.

At the same time, who would type "Time (magazine)" into the search bar? Thus I believe Priciple I should be implemented as redirects, while the actual article itself would reside at its official name. Most people would type "US 20" to get to the article on U.S. Route 20, but the article isn't located at US 20. On the other hand, if the article WAS at US 20, and there was a redirect from U.S. Route 20, it would seem to imply that "US 20" is the correct name -- I do this a lot myself sometimes, for example, I was confused whether the book of the bible was called Revelations or Revelation. I went to "Revelations" on the search bar, and found the article to be at "Book of Revelation". Many, many, many people I know call it revelations.

Proposal 1 would prevent confusion and bump up the articles on Google queries

I will be willing to agree with you here. It may end up bumping up the search queries, but at the same time, a query for "Time Magazine site:en.wikipedia.org" will also return the correct article as its #1 result: The words are all still in the title.

Proposal 1 would not cause confusion where more than one state's routes are dicussed. Example: when describing a state route ends at another state route at the state line.

Both principles, when used correctly, shouold not introduce ambiguity at all. The problem is right now that people are treating "California State Route" as a proper noun in its entirety, when it should be sometthing like California's State Route or State Route in California. This seems to be grammatical minutiae, but some people (not to name names again) on wikipedia have constantly argued for principle one believing that California State Route X is a propert noun. This has led to a largescale argument also about the proper-noun-isms of "List of California State Routes" -- as if "California State Routes" is a proper noun (as i mention in my original post). Thus, the IInd principle will serve to help not mislead those into thinking Statename State Highway/Route in its entirety is a proper noun.

after note: That's the problem with principle I in many of the states (some, like NC, excluded): Principle one chooses a convention that is netiher common nor correct, and that will lead those who are not knowledgable to assume that they are the correct names because they havent' seen them before! But if anyone reads wikipedia enough, they will realise that parenthesis separates the disamibguating portion of the name from the name itself, and will help to not misguide people. atanamir 21:53, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Nobody I know just says "State Route x" or "State Highway x" here. It's just not done! "NC x" is the most popular abbreviation, yes, but it's just that, an abbreviation.

Agree, see #1 or #4

Nearly every state's routes abbreviation has the state name first. Example: "NC x", "WIS x", "M-x", "K-x", "TX-x". Why can't the article have the state name first? Why do you not want it included?

As said above, this is to help to not mislead those into believe the correct name for the route is Statename Highway X. As wikipedia's influence grows and its readership grows alongside it, it will be important to separate the correct names of things. Everyone calls them cars, but its correct name is automobile, and that should be where its article should be.

Redirects can be made for Principle 2, so the pipe trick will still work with Principle 1.

I guess in the end, this is purely an opinion. From my opinion, that argument is: Why should we settle for the article being at the incorrect (although could be) common name and having a redirect from its official name? It's like putting the article for televisions at tv, and creating a redirect from television -- it doesn't really make sense, in my opinion.

Either way, I think even with principle II, NC will end up at NC Highway X (note how this is different from principle I, which state that NC must use NC state highway X!). atanamir 21:51, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Matt Moricle article

A tag has been placed on Matt Moricle, requesting that it be speedily deleted from Misplaced Pages. This has been done because the article seems to be a biographical account about a person, group of people, or band, but it does not indicate how or why he/she/they is/are notable. If you can indicate why Matt Moricle is really notable, I advise you to edit the article promptly, and also put a note on Talk:Matt Moricle. Any admin should check for such edits before deleting the article. Feel free to leave a note on my talk page if you have any questions about this. Please read our criteria for speedy deletion, particularly item 7 under Articles. You might also want to read our general biography criteria. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag yourself. To contest the tagging and request that admins should wait a while for you to assert his/her/their notability, please affix the template {{hangon}} to the page, and then immediately add such an assertion. It is also a very good idea to add citations from reliable sources to ensure that your article will be verifiable. — ERcheck (talk)