User talk:Mangoe/Railroad line and station articles

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You have new messages (last change).

Contents

[edit] Notes

Just to note, light rail is not the equivalent of a bus stop (for example see Docklands Light Railway). Also, light rail in most cases does not even apply to subway althoigh it does to rapid transit. Also, i find the Glasgow Subway interesting. Did you know that it is the third oldest underground\subway system in the world? Despite this it has not expanded beyond its single line. It sounds like you are in favour of urban over rural in terms of stations. Should i continue? Simply south 22:15, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

You are not reading what I wrote carefully. It is the Baltimore Light Rail where the stations are like bus stops; that's just a fact. Obviously other systems will be different; the MBTA Green Line is light rail, but otherwise is just another line in a conventional subway system, for the most part.
And yes: I would suggest deleting all of the Glasgow Subway station articles. They mostly lack content separate from that of the main article. A quick peek at four of them revealed one which could be retained as a railway station article, and other with a detail which could have been handled just as well with a note in the main system article.
As far as rural versus urban: obviously small towns have less to write about than large cities, on the average. I don't see this as some egalitarian enterprise in which each placename on the map ought to be represented by equal disk usage.
I suspect you will continue, but mostly what I'm seeing is a list of quibbles and suppositions rather than systematic address of the point. It's obvious that you feel your work on a whole bunch of station articles is threatened, but when I look at one (Tonypandy railway station for instance) I see that although there are many references to it, they are with but one exception (it appears) products of its inclusion in a large template box which lists all the stations. Well, this could just as well be replaced by a category, but then I go to the article on the Rhondda Line, and see all the stops listed twice: once as places, and once as stations. The whole thing could be reduced, with a great deal of additional clarity, to a map (which is missing) and a table of stations referring to the places. I don't think that this has anything to do with Wales being different from Maryland, but it does seem to me that it has quite a bit to do with the British railfans having gotten a lot further along in entering these sorts of articles than the Americans have, and thus have more to lose in a cleanup effort. Mangoe 23:23, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
Some of the articles have only just been created. They may eventually turn out like the London Underground articles. Btw, the Rhondda Line is a commuter line on the national system. Simply south 10:08, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
- but it also has its history, and the title Rhondda Line is not part of that until modern railway PR got their hands on it! There is no mention of the fact it originally was part of the Taff Vale Railway system, when it certainly wasn't a "commuter line on the national system" but was originally conceived as freight only, although passengers were carried from the beginning (see article). This is part of what I have been bemoaning since I came into Wikipedia: the fact that the names of services (ie the trains) on routes (ie the geographical railway) gets priority, even if individual parts of the route followed have completely different beginnings. Peter Shearan 13:04, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
Maybe they will, but I'll bet that they won't. What you're more or less admitting here is that you don't have the information at hand to expand them. And I suppose that a corrolary point is that I think that even if they ought to be there, they are cluttered with far too much apparatus. The article on Tonypandy railway station is an example: the entire content of the article is contained in a single sentence and in a pred/succ box that could have been simply another sentence. Mangoe 22:14, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

That is, i can't expand them enough yet. Yes they do deserve to be there. Anyway, if i am basing notablity on google (i don't normally do that), i have checked and each subway station\underground station does have even yp to over 1000 hits. Is that notable enough?

and surely that is because there are many people who wish to travel from their nearest subway station\underground station, and not because they are anxious to know what its architecture/history is? Peter Shearan 13:04, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Also, i am wondering whether this is a good idea. I rely on other users and IPs to expand the articles are they are likely to know the Glasgow articles better than i do. Give them time. Simply south 11:56, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

All I'm seeing so far is nothing more or less than an argument for removing articles which, over time, do not move beyond stubiness. This is not something confined to railways. I'd whole heartedly support the idea we should engage in a project to rationalise the existing station articles, look dispassionately at what's left, remove those that can't or don't move beyond stubs, and then - as the proposal suggests - make more use of line pages and tables.
But none of that is justification for a policy, and the current proposal doesn't work for a number of reasons. It betrays an American bias (see references to ADA and trains stopping anywhere) and takes a one-size fits all approach. Given the divergent set ups of different national and regional networks, and the existance of various WikiProjects, surely the manner in which articles are constructed is better left to individual national or system WikiProjects where they exist, and to WP Trains where they do not.
I can't see any reason at all for including rules on how articles should be linked together (which is unrelated to the issue of their notability). If we are going to do this, let's have a third pass, with a stripped down, generalised proposal for station article notability only.
Mtpt 18:02, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
Well, it is more than that; it supplies some ideas about rail station and line articles ought to be written, and how they should relate to articles about the places they serve.
And I disagree about the accusation of American bias. Indeed, I believe that authors of foreign station article systems are invoking this supposed bias in order to avoid evaluating their articles against the proposed standards. I'm all for trying to express standards that can be applied with some objectivity across all systems, and I believe that such standards can be devised. But nobody seems to have any interest in that; they seem to be mostly interested in exempting their pet system (or for that matter, their own work) from having to be seriously reworked if not deleted. I've asked over and over for others to come in and edit the two essays I've written. One person made substantive changes to the first essay, and nobody has seen fit to update this one. I don't think it's because I've managed to accurately represent the consensus; I think it's because most commentators prefer not having guidelines or standards.
This all started with my observation that these station articles consistently have very little information about the stations themselves. My supposition, based on the discussion thus far, is that the Wiki medium has tempted railfans in to creating a lot of trivial articles which actually work against understanding. As it stands, it seems to me that genreal readers would be better served if most of these articles went away. If people could come along and write an article about stations which could stand on their own, then all of my qualms would go away (though I still think the relationships between articles need work). But if that were to happen, then the notability standards would be met and the issue would be moot. Mangoe 18:55, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
I'd start with the observation that a consensus against having a policy is itself a consensus. The eventual question would be "Should we have this as policy?", and people are entitled to say no without being obliged to offer an alternative. You characterise it [the avoidance of a policy] as most commentators prefering not having guidelines or standards. This may well be the case, but there are existing standards of notability that apply to station articles as to anything else.
You complain above that people are not engaging with you in producing a policy. I would counter that you have yet to make the case for a policy. What you have suggested can largely be boiled down into the statement "The fact that a train stops here, does not make here notable". From the comments so far, a fair number of people seem to disagree.
As for the American bias: it just won't wash to say people (principally, as you appear to acknowledge, people opposing the proposal) are reading this in. Every example in the proposal is American. In fact, aside from a reference to UK listed buildings (which if I'm reading the history right was actually a reference to a US system someone misread as a reference to the UK system causing it to be expanded) and a frivolous reference to the "...first station in Poland...", this proposal is one based on American stations which you wish to apply globally.
The problem with this is summed up by part of your explaination of why "Station stops and station buildings are not the same thing": "Railroad passenger service occupies a bit of a middle ground. Trains, unlike subways, can stop almost anywhere; before ADA requirements, no facilities of any kind were required for a station stop. However, it was commonly the case that station buildings were provided." I don't know when this was last true of UK railways. I'm not certain it ever was. But I do know that the fact that all UK stations have platforms and the vast majority have buildings has nothing to do with the DDA.
There are some sensible ideas in this proposal, such as including station details into place articles where there is little station information. There are some frankly quite odd ideas, such as not linking stations together (linking is, for example, the status quo on UK stations) which I can't see being adopted. But overall, no convincing justification has been advanced for having the policy at all.Mtpt 20:06, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
There is no consensus. I am not the only person largely in agreement with my positions, and I note that the other main proponent is British. What is happening is that since there was no previous consensus (as evidenced by the varieties of treatment in different systems) those who object to the negative recommendations are pleased to keep things in a state of "no consensus" because the outcome is then "continue to do as you please".
While the proposal itself may only mention American examples, the discussion is littered with discussion of foreign cases. I've cited specific American examples where there are station facilities and no station articles.
We keep brushing up against the claim that non-American systems largely have buildings, and by implication, that the Americans don't. I haven't taken so many Amtrak trains that I can be sure of that, but in any case it doesn't seem as though anyone thinks that very many of these station buildings is remarkable enough to write anything about them. (And that observation is already in the article.) It seems, therefore, that what is happening is that either people are converting a lot of listy material about train lines (especially timetables) into these networks of articles, or that they are dumping this material in from fan sites that have already performed that conversion.
And that leads me to the issue of the linkages. I made arguments about this in the essay, and it seems to me that people are largely not bothering to address them because they are more concerned about article deletion. To repeat the argument: Railways are not networks of stations; they are networks of lines. Lines are not chains of stations; they maintain their connectivity as stations open and close. Therefore the representation of lines as chains of hyperlinked articles about stations is the wrong way to model them in an encyclopedia.
Finally, I'm getting a bit tired of reading "there are some good suggestions". Since nobody seems to have the nerve/gall/will to take the essay and edit everything out but the "good suggestions", it feels to me like a rhetorical formula to cut some of the sting out of "your proposal stinks". It wouldn't hurt to at least get a consensus on the "good suggestions". The most important (in my opinion) good suggestion— making sure that the place articles talk about the stations— would represent a lot of work to get all these articles caught up. But I feel it is crucial to transforming this from the plaything of a bunch of railfans into something that is generally useful. Mangoe 21:55, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
If you're tired of reading it, produce a proposed policy in those area. People are telling you they don't support this one, but do support certain ideas in it (most of which are not about notability). As I said above, you're the one saying this policy is necessary, and it's your responsibility to convince everyone else!
And frankly, if you now see lots of non-American examples in the discussion which support your case (having read the discussion, I think most have been quoted against it!) then why aren't you editing your proposal to include them?
As for linkages, that is a seperate issue. I strongly disagree with what you're suggesting, and I harbour the suspicion that it owes more to the fact the US articles are not so liked than to any real reason not to do so. If the article should not exist at all (i.e. there is nothing to put in it) then it shouldn't be being linked. But if it does exist, there's no reason why it shouldn't be linked to the relevant line(s), train company(s), and to the neighbouring station(s).
I don't see any consensus - other than perhaps against this proposal. Mtpt 06:45, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
The linkages are not a separate issue. I find them unilluminating and obscure; the information they supposedly convey I find I can only obtain from the line articles. I don't know British geography to any level of detail; I can mostly place the biggest cities in about the right places, and that's pretty much it. So I need a lot of geographical assistance to understand these articles, and it's not being supplied in these linkages. They are a very laborious way to assemble information that I can get in a second from an ordered list-- or better still, a map.
The basic problem is very simple: I've gone out and found these cataloguing efforts, and looking at the articles, I can't make any sense out of the networks they are supposed to be representing. Not only that, but the networks are almost entirely cut off from the rest of Wikipedia. So far I have not found a single rail station article in Japan or Britain which is linked to by the place article, except for the major stations in London. And that is the most basic requirement: if there is an article about the station in Anytown, then the article on Anytown needs to link to it. It's especially important in the Japanese system, where the station names and the town names don't appear to correspond much of the time and where there are multiple towns with the same name. As it is, I can't make any sense of the Japanese rail network at all from the Japanese articles, and I can't make much more sense out of the British articles. My impression is that there are a lot of stations which are mostly like one another (or at least not so different as to elicit comment) which are more or less randomly linked together. The station articles give me no reason to read them in terms of the stations themselves, and the linkages give me no sense of geography. So I have to conclude that either the people who are writing these are so familiar with the geography that they fill in the map in their mind, or that they don't care about the geography particularly. At any rate, the articles are opaque to an outsider. I don't think it's just because I'm an American that I can't follow them. Mangoe 12:18, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
The more we go around this, the less this sounds like a policy about notability, and the more it becomes a set of guidelines for the content of station articles and the linkages they should make and have.
Well, that was the point of shifting from the one form to the other. I personally wouldn't take notability out of the picture, but even though it seems clear that by lack of consensus all stations will be notable enough to get articles, the way these articles are written is not informative. Mangoe 18:46, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
The basis of your criticism looks pretty limited. Take the criticism above about a lack of geographic information. If you haven't found a single UK place article which links to the most relevant stations, I think you must have been looking exclusively at railway halts in the Scottish Highlands. That notwithstanding, I've already said above I agree that making more use of place articles (and that would extend to properly linking station articles to them) is a good idea, and all you actually seem to be saying is that the article on X place should link to Y station, and vice versa. Most UK station articles already start with a statement to the effect of "Y station is a railway station in X, on W line.", and we would simply a guideline that a linkage should be placed in the article on X.
You are incorrect. In fact, I don't think I've looked at a single Highland station so far. I've looked at articles you personally have touched at some point, found the corresponding place article, and found that there is no link back to the station. I've also found this in Welsh and Japanese cases. Articles that reference railway station tend to reference each other, and they are referenced by railway line articles, but so far as I have checked they are not usually referenced from outside these subnetworks of articles. If the only guideline we can agree on is that the place-to-station reference should be created, then that's something. Mangoe 18:46, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
"Avoiding things Mangoe finds unilluminating and obscure" is not a practical basis for a wikipedia policy, and at the moment I'm seeing no more connection than that between your original assertion that station articles are not prima facie notable, and your comments on what linkages should be made. By all means, break this into a series of guidelines on specific issues or areas, and lets talk about those. As it stands, this proposal doesn't work, is based on flawed logic and information, and no case has been made for the necessity of having it at all. Mtpt 17:55, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
Actually, I think it's an excellent basis for a policy. After all, I'm a railfan, and I'm a pretty smart guy (with degrees and such to prove it). My interests in the world are pretty catholic. So I think that making articles that are illuminating to me and not obscure to me is a not only a low standard to meet, but a reasonable minimal standard. Your attitude that you don't have to concede anything to me as a reader is the antithesis of how a reference work for a general audience should be written.
The article is already broken up into a series of guidelines, with section headers even. You can talk about them right now. Mangoe 18:46, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Between subways and light-rail commuter systems

I still think that this page is too US-centric. I'm going to go off on a small tangent here; but only because I think it may be important. (Uh oh)

There is still a large gray area between subways and the light-rail commuter systems such as you've mentioned in this page. Although I grew up in the US, we didn't have any commuter rail systems in my neck of the woods; but, it seems that most of the ones are like a spoke & wheel system (like a bus system)? That is, they all bring everyone in from the outlying areas, into a central area. There is no connection between the outlying station on one spoke and on another, for example. Looking at the map at SEPTA Regional Rail, that seems to be a fair assumption. And, perhaps you're working on the premise that rail systems are either like that, or they are classified as subways. (as an aside, is itbecause of the perceived complexity and interconnectedness of the subway system (versus the spoke/wheel type) that they have been given the notable tag already in wikipedia??)

In Japan (and presumably England and other places; but, I'll defer to someone more familiar with the situations there), even the non-subway systems are interconnected and complex like a web. For an example, see Ōu Main Line, with 100 stations stretching across 300 miles (most of which are around 100 years old). Nearly 1/4 of those stations have transfers where more than one line in the web intersect. I listed that one because the table makes it easy to see the transfers; and it's also where I intend so spend time over the next few weeks in translating the existing Japanese articles into the English wikipedia.

I also understand the difference between a station stop and a station now. I had been puzzling over that on your other talk page (the idea of a station stop without a station); and when you wrote before that a train could stop anywhere, I was a little confused. Maybe now my comment about the finite nature of train stations makes more sense, too.  :-)

So anyway, I think I now understand what it is that you're trying to eliminate. The notability standards are a good start; but I hope there is a better way to divide up the rail transportation systems besides A) Subway; B) Everything else. I'll make my detailed change suggestions in a second section below, so they don't get mixed up in this miniature diatribe. Neier 05:45, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree a little it might be US-Centric, "Note that these apply only to railroad stations and station stops, not to subway stations. " Why is it only applied to railroad stations and not subway stations/mass transit stations? Places like Japan regular railroad stations handle more passengers perday than the vast majority of US Mass transit/subway stations. Limitedexpresstrain 19:41, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
As the discussion progresses, I'm inclined to eliminate the qualification about subways, since I'm seeing more examples where the articles written about subway stations fail to meet these criticisms.
As far as Japanese traffic levels are concerned, that's a one-line observation in the main article on Japanese passenger service. It doesn't make any given station remarkable. Mangoe 22:20, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
Its a fact that traffic on trains in Japan serve far more passengers than in the United States. But that is beside the point, the point I was trying to make was why should subway/mass transit stations be excluded when there are "railroad stations" in Japan do serve more passengers than your average "subway" (I prefer Mass transit terminology) station in the United States. Another item, at least when it comes to trains in Japan. If we were just to list stations on on a line page, how is one supposed to find out that a station is on a particular line page? redirect to the line page? There are many cases (in Japan at least) where train stations share the same name, but are operated by different train companies and serve their individual train company's station in a given train station complex, I guess one would have to disambaguate. But then you have stations with the same name, in the same city but in different parts of the city. If one wanted to find info on XYZ station, but didn't know what line or company, you need the info on surrounding area so you'll know in particular what train station one is talking about and served by what line or company. Limitedexpresstrain 23:18, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
How would they find it? By looking the place article, of course, at least if this article is well-written enough. For example, if I'm interested in Titipu, I'd type in "Titipu", and look in the contents of that article for for "Transportation", and it might say, "Titipu has rail stations on the Nanki-Poo and Yum-Yum lines." In fact, if it is served by rail, it certainly ought to mention that adequately. I don't know-- maybe it might make sense to put some of the other apparatus there too. It seems to me that in most cases mentioning it there obviates any other article, and since it ought to go there above all else, in most cases there's no point to a separate article. Mangoe 01:11, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
So, we include information about the station on the line page; we include information about the station on the town page; but the only place we don't include information about the station is on the station page, because there are too many station articles? Neier 14:59, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
I'm not sure if "Nanki-Poo and Yum-Yum lines" was a tounge and cheek joke about Asia, but I didnt' find it funny, forgive me If I read too much into it.
"Railroad passenger service occupies a bit of a middle ground. Trains, unlike subways, can stop almost anywhere; before ADA requirements, no facilities of any kind were required for a station stop. However, it was commonly the case that station buildings were provided" possibly under US rail system view that is, but it is not always the case for foreign rail systems. Many train operators (at least in Japan) operate in extent as a mass transit system/subway systems, but are not categorized as mass transit systems. Frankly I dont think anything I can do will change your mind (+vice versa), I think wikipedia should have these station articles. We can agree to disagree. Limitedexpresstrain 05:31, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
No Asian insult. The references come from a classic Gilbert & Sullivan Musical called The Mikado and they are The three little maids from school. Sorry not time this morning to add the links but if I did should I link Mikado to the wheel arrangement as well as the play! --Johnrnew 08:29, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
"a little US-centric" it certainly is - and how! The fact that stations stops are accepted as a norm is completely foreign (no pun intended) as far as UK railways are concerned. There used to be such things as "halts" (unstaffed stations) in the not-too-distant past, and in some cases there was a necessity to inform the train staff if one wished to alight there, and there were even examples of passenger-operated stop signals if one wished to board a train - but to stop anywhere ... never! (and I bet someone finds an example!) Peter Shearan 13:13, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
Um, no. What you describe is in US parlance a flag stop. Just to get the terminology straight:
  • Station stop: Where the trains stop to pick up and discharge passengers
  • Railway station: The buildings and other structures used to support station stops
As for Nanki-poo, Yum-Yum and Titipu: yes, they are names from The Mikado, as said above. There comes a point where the brain runs out of example names. For once an certain anglo-centrism failed me. The names mean nothing; they are just examples.
What's lacking in this discussion of Japanese rail is any explanation of how the difference between Japan and the USA translates into a difference in article construction. It seems to me that the model I presented is actually better for Japan than most, at least based on the articles I've seen so far. The way that it is being said that Japan is different is tending to tilt me more in the direction of not entering station articles, because it seems as though the stations themselves are like highway intersections: all subtly different, but very few remarkable. Mangoe 14:12, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
Besides turning place or line articles into a total mess, dominated by information about stations which is best kept to station pages, I can think of several differences. First of all, the station:municipality ratio in Japan is 4:1 (4200 stations (sourced from a review of an encyclopedia on Amazon), and 1000 towns (sourced from a Japanese encyclopedia (2006) I have in my room)). Compared with the interstate interchange:City (not town?) ratio in the US (1:2) (14,231 : 30,000), mentioning that a city has an interstate exit would be appropriate. Mentioning that a town has (average) four railroad stations, and then proceeding to describe them, taking 3 times the amount of space devoted to the rest of the town (because just like stations, a lot of towns are not that interesting) is misdirected. Duplicating 100 stations worth of info on a line page is also inappropriate.
I've covered the fact that DAB pages are needed for many many stations. DABing to the middle of a 100-station list would seem to frustrate the reader more than enlighten them. Making the wrong selection, and having to search through two or more lists to find the station you were interested in is even more frustrating.
Also, in my experiences, outside of large cities, the line name that runs through a station is not always well known within the area's population; be it native speakers, or non-native speakers. I once got in a cab with a Japanese "guide" from Tokyo once, and she asked the taxi driver to take us to the "Nanboku Line". While it is appropriately named, nobody in Sendai calls our subway by that. I told the driver the station we wanted to go to, and all was well. In rural areas, there is "The JR line", which is whatever line happens to run through their town. If pressed, you might be able to get the official name from someone, but, I would be willing to bet that a random sampling of "What line runs through XYZ station" would be met with "JR Line" as an answer. My guess (and, it's just that) is that you would get equally blank stares in the US if you asked someone where "XYZ Station" is, or "The ABC Red Line"; so, that doesn't matter a whole lot.
All subtly different, but very few remarkable is a good description of the different types of salamanders in Urodela, or any other number of articles. To you and me, a salamander is a salamander. But, because there is differences, there are entries. Not a paper encylopedia.
Finally, as some people view Wikipedia as a multilingual tool, keeping in sync with the more authoritative source (the native language resources) needs an article to be pointed to from the source, or else create a convoluted redirect that would be prone to getting bot-fixed all the time. That is what I've been trying to get at all along – The Japanese wikipedia, with entries for all stations, reflects the subculture as a whole (there are multiple books available which give descriptions of all 4200 stations; etc). Some books are devoted to just the buildings. Some books describe the nearby facilities by every station. Other books are devoted to the box lunches served at stations (I am not making that part up; but, I also have kept myself from translating those portions of the source articles so far, because I have better things to do with my time; and, the fact that they change, just like timetables). Some books are published in series (the stations of the XYZ line). Should stations be mentioned on a line page – you betcha. But, just like a state page should not be cluttered with scads of information about towns which (other than their census information) have no meaningful content, the lines should not be burdened with details about each station – no matter how sparse the details about each particular station may be. Neier 16:19, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Proposed changes

[edit] Notability criteria

Is Listed building necessary? Besides being limited to the United Kingdom, it looks like the properties which determine whether a building is listed or not is already taken into account in other items in your list.

Sorry, I didn't realize this was a UK term: we have the same concept of "listing" in the USA. I've updated the item to reflect the main USA list. Mangoe 13:52, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
Personally I would like the Listed Building fact left in as it is a fact about the station itself and the sort of fact generally harder to find out about than the rail service information. Same I am sure applies to the US and overseas equivalents. However if there is an article already there about the building, as a building, then a simple link to that would suffice.

I would also suggest adding that the station being a point of transfer for two or more lines is enough to qualify it for notability.

I'm inclined to disagree on this one, as it is something that can be reduced to a short phrase in a table, and is (in my opinon) best presented there. If the transfer is particularly complex or is reflected in some unusual feature, that of course would be different. Mangoe 13:58, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
I support Mangoe on this one as just too many junctions, of very limited significance, to regard them all as notable. Would you include a detailed reference to every logging spur or closed colliery branch junction? Perhaps in a full history book on a line but not a Wikipedia overview article.
So, again, instead of listing details about a station on ONE station page, we list it on two, three, or four line pages; as well as the city's page? This seems the opposite of making things simpler for the readers... Neier 16:22, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

I also think that the criteria needs to include these (from WP:IMP) An article is "important" enough to be included in Wikipedia if any one of the following is true:

1. There is evidence that a reasonable number of people are, were or might be simultaneously interested in the subject (eg. it is at least well-known in a community).
2. It is an expansion (longer than a stub) upon an established subject.
3. Discussion on the article's talk page establishes its importance.
The issue at present isn't whether information should be presented at all, which is how these criteria approach the issue. In fact, I think these are in general a poor set of criteria (which is probably why WP:IMP has largely been replaced by WP:NOT). The second in particular figures in the current discussion as (from my angle) an "avoid this" approach. It has been amply proven that one can expand any article on a station stop by repeating information from the parent line article on it, especially if maps and infoboxes and lists and pred/succ boxes are used. The question at hand is this: is it really better than leaving the station as an entry on a table? My contention here is that it is actually worse, because it creates a lot of clutter and obscures relationships. Mangoe 14:11, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
this gets more and more interesting! I am wholeheartedly in favour (favor!) of railway geographical route articles, which include details within it of the stations on the route (with appropriate additional info if there is any), and also mentions the names of the services (again, if there are any) which actually traverse that route. The talk earlier about the Rhondda Line is a case in point - it is simply a PR means of delineating that service, and leaves little room for any historical background, so it gives none. I've commented above on that Peter Shearan 13:19, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Other guidelines

A table of stations is a good idea for a line article, even when all stations are individually listed in their own articles. It presents some information (like transfers, etc) in an easy to see fashion. (Ōu Main Line for one example).

I oppose the use of maps on station articles (unless it is an area map around the station). Line maps belong with the line article. I also disagree with not hyperlinking stations together.

I am still afraid that Take advantage of place articles may turn a place article into not much more than a listing of stations when there are very many stations in a defined area. (This is an argument against the grouping of stations into a common article–line, or location–but, if there is little or nothing to say about the stop (ie, no building; not a recognized landmark; not important in the community; etc), then, I suppose it may still work out)

I mildly disagree with the Omit the tourist information section; especially in the case where an attraction has its own article. WP:BTW. Other information, like government offices, etc may not be large enough to justify its own entry, but the fact that they are listed would make it less impossible to find in a search as well. Then again, that's not tourist info, so maybe it's ok anyway. Neier 06:51, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

I've made some changes to reflect some of these concerns:
  • If a station was built to serve an attraction, this should be mentioned in discussing the station.
  • I've tried to clarify how place articles can be used with an example.
I'm not really getting into the "list of stations" issue on places because I'm failing to think of an example that's illuminating. In London or Baltimore, for example, the stations could all have their own articles because there's much that could be written about them beyond the fact that trains stop there. (In the case of London, this has been done.) Looking at Silver Spring, Maryland (which could use a little clean-up) it mentions train and Metro service; A couple of sentences could be added to the article about the train station, but I don't know that there's a need for a separate article.
If there were (and of the various stations on the line, this is the one which could support it), the hyperlink issue would then pop up. Which stations should it link to? Well, there used to be a station in Takoma Park, Maryland, so it should link to that one, except that it doesn't exist and there's next to nothing available to write an article from. Going the other direction, the train almost certainly stopped at Forest Glen, but again there's no station there now. OK, heading west.... Well, there's Kensington, but there's not much to say about the station. And so forth. The issue then becomes that the links cry out to editors to write articles, and those articles must have links, and so forth.
There's something to be said for building the web when it's a web, which is why I specifically mentioned subway networks. But when it's just a sequential list, and the primary references are back and forth along the list, then hypertext is the wrong medium. Rail lines are not chains; links are the wrong representation. Mangoe 15:05, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Citing sources - see WP:CITE

I mentioned this in another thread regarding this topic. I add the comment for several reasons:-

1) Many articles I have noted when using the railways area in Wikipedia have not cited sources.

2) If you cite the source, and it is on line, there is not need to expand the article. Example for UK, and I am sure most other countries, there is no need to add a map as a link to a mapping source like Multimap is free and of much more value as the link can be zoomed in and out and the station placed into the local context. Example Weymouth Station

3) As many wikipedia items are general articles specialists wanting the detail can go away and find that detail in the source documents.

--Johnrnew 09:13, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Not necessarily for (2) and (3). For example, there is a good deal of map and other info for all Japanese stations online, and in books; but, unless you can read Japanese, it is basically useless. (Maybe the pictures would be nice). And, for the stations in (1) that I've created in the English wikipedia, they are all sourced from the Japanese wikipedia (and, included the link on the left side in the languages section) Neier 14:43, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Analogue to Highway?

For highway articles, the analogue to the train line is the route, and the analogue to the station stop is the exit or interchange: I wonder if this is strictly true? One needs to look at the raison d'etre for a railway/road and a highway, I would have thought. Each are primarily there to provide intercommunication between communities of whatever size, and have historically been so. The talk of Interstate Highways (or, in UK parlance, Motorways) is of long-distance routes which avoid many of the intervening settlements because of their relatively minor importance. The real analogue is with the pre-Highways - the ancient highways - or even Ancient trackways if further back in time! They set out to give the means of transport between settlements, and railways/roads have historically done the same thing. To take a UK example: the A25 road. Although it now has some by-passes, it still carries out its original intent, joining Maidstone in Kent with Guildford in Surrey. To do so it passes/passed through some twenty settlements of a reasonable size, and numerous others. On the other hand, its namesake, the M25 motorway, where it is parallel to the A25 (and that is only to the south of London), has only a handful of junctions ("intersections"). Railways in the UK did much the same thing. Unlike the original US railroads which often had no settlements to serve until their arrival, UK rail routes connected with those already existing - although there are a few examples where settlements grew up because the railway provided employment (Crewe is a good example).

My point is that it isn't the "intersections" which are equivalent of the railway station, but the settlements along each route. The intersections only exist because there are settlements worth connecting nearby. That is why I agree that each geographical rail route is worthy of an article, and each such article can then describe its stations/services/etc, without the need for separate articles for every station Peter Shearan 14:37, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Um, no. The settlements along each route are the same thing ("analogue" seems silly). The interchanges and stations are analogous as being the interface between the places and the transport system. Mangoe 02:35, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Japan, again

I've been looking through some of the line articles and noticing a curious thing: the place articles tend to have only the most minimal mention of rail service, and never link to the station articles. This indeed seems to be an issue with all these "network of rail station" article entry projects. All these arguments about using the information seem to stumble over this point. The place articles should mention the stations, and should link to the articles if they exist.

Perhaps the chaos that is Japanese place naming requires a different approach. I have to say, though, that what I'm seeing now is not helping my understanding. Mangoe 04:04, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Buses

Actually, from the titles of your discussions and policies, how do anything related to buses (with the exception of guided buses) even relate to railways? Simply south 12:20, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Chucked it all and started over

I've deleted all the explanatory material in the article and reduced it to a set of guidelines. I've omitted notability and station-to-station linkages since it's clear that there will never be a consensus to do anything about the mass of articles already entered. Mangoe 19:02, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Redrafted. The preliminary material was a hang over from a notability proposal, and not relevant to a set of guidelines on content. I've also added a statement to the effect that these are not criteria for notability or deletion. If there is an acknowledgement that there is not consensus about the existing articles, we should not be creating policy on them by the back door. There is nothing to stop editors applying the guidelines retrospectively.
I've particularly added reference to diagrams - there is a reason why diagrams, not maps, are used for transport systems - and to using redirects and tables, which seem far more useful in avoiding stubby articles than any number of maps or amount of decent copyediting. Mtpt 22:16, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
It seems pretty good to me. Mangoe 02:06, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
If I may comment - yes it seems to hit all the right spots Peter Shearan 12:33, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
I mostly agree; but I still think that if information about a station is going to be duplicated in both a location and a line article, then it makes more sense to just link both the location and the line to a separate article even if it is small or insignificant.
I also agree that place articles (in Japan) can do a much better job about linking back to the stations that they contain. I don't think that anyone has focused on that, although there are a few exceptions. Perhaps one reason that there is no links like that is that when the location articles were created, very few station (or even line) articles existed. We also had to deal with a naming convention, since many station names are duplicated througout the country; so I am not surprised that nobody took that info from the Japanese wiki. Since long lists of stations has the possibility of overwhelming some of the smaller towns (which even though are small, are spread out, and have many stations) I'll see if we can decide on a consensus for how to go about including the links at the Japan project (not just rail, but whole Japan) page. Neier 13:49, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
I'm not quite following the point about the linkages. I think what we're trying to say is something like this:
  • Lines link to places and/or stations, and to connecting lines
  • Stations link to lines and places (and maybe to adjacent stations)
  • Places link to lines and stations (if latter exists as article)
The chief point from my perspective is that the place articles have largely gotten left out of this, so that there is no direct path from (say) an article on a town to the part of the rail system that serves it.
Going into public service announcement mode, I think we have to take responsibility for making sure that the place articles and the station articles link to each other, maybe to the point of creating stub place articles. I understand the issues with Japanese place names and realize that something will to be worked out with the Japan project. But the descrepancies between station names and place names make the linkages especially important. Mangoe 15:38, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Are we getting anywhere?

I have been following the flow of these notes, very occasionally putting in a comment. I cannot believe that there is likely to be any concensus between the two of you; it seems a great pity that no-one else has entered the fray, since it is quite apparent that neither of you are about to give in! As I have said before, the present UK station articles leave much to be desired, since they all seem to be "off the peg" and include little beyond what can (and probably has been) gleaned from timetables. There is the added complication that scant regard is given to historical factors in any one line or station, and the fact is that, insofar as an encyclopaedia goes, they are precious more than that. So there I agree that Wikipedia is not a timetable. Since we can agree that neither towns nor stations - nor lines come to that - in the main offer much in the way of interest, I cannot follow the argument that they would become cluttered up. I am also somewhat bemused by the fact that the arguments so far appear to veer between USA and Japan. The geographical similarities/dissimilarities between either of them and the UK perhaps don't allow too much comparison, I would have thought. The historical background to UK railways plays a huge part in the development of its railways, and that is reflected in the system today. Of course one could say the same about the railways of Argentina, or anywhere else; but reading what is being said (and perhaps (between the lines (no pun intended!)) I remain unconvinced of the US/Japan modes being a way forward, or even dominating a possible conclusion. You may care to see Wikipedia:WikiProject UK Railways which seems to have ground to a halt recently because of the sheer size of the intended work? Peter Shearan 10:42, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Haven't we reached a consensus on the guidelines? I know there are some unanswered comments above, but they seem to be irrelevant given the revision to the attached article. Mtpt 11:26, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Station stop"

Me again! I have been puzzling over the term "station stop" ever since I first saw it mentioned here. Yesterday I saw a re-run of the film "Music Man" which begins on a train. The conductor (guard in UK parlance) announced each "station stop", and it was then that I realised it is NOT a term in use on UK railways: the word ".. stop" is never used. "The next station is .." is what we would expect to hear; or "the 10.58 to Manchester will call at all stations between X and X". To our ears it seems like tautology - if the trains stops there, then why use the additional word?

There we go again - "two nations divided by a single language"!! Peter Shearan 06:22, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Australian Station Selection

Hello - I wanted to comment on these guidelines in relation to Australia. My personal opinion is that Wikipedia may not be a timetable, and so shouldn't include stuff like whether a station has toilets, phones, etc., but there's not really a limit to what WP can include, so I think it's quite ok for each station in a major city to have a separate article. For country routes, I've found that a section in the town's article on the railway line usually suffices, but where there is enough information about the station itself, it should have its own article. I don't think we should just be restricting articles because we can. WP is large and therefore can accommodate a lot of information - so why not? (JROBBO 05:40, 2 August 2006 (UTC))

Well, because a lot of it isn't really information-- at least, not information for general readers. I would tend to expect that the major stations in a city would get their own articles, because there's more to say about them. But a station on the edge of town that's just a platform or two and maybe a ticket kiosk doesn't seem to be to have much point as a separate article. Of course if there's enough information about that station, but if it's just repeating text from the line or the town article.
I don't follow what this has to do with Australia.... Mangoe 13:03, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
Agreed Mangoe. Some 300 Sydney suburban rail stations have articles, most of which are stubs, and will probably stay as stubs (as you said, how much can you write about a platform and ticket kiosk?). Details of these stations would be better within the article on the line or the subrub - why make someone click on a link just to read a couple of sentences?--Mako 21:52, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
I disagree - I'm all for inclusion of WP articles - when WP has so much scope, I don't see the point of just cutting out articles for the sake of it. The project for CityRail is going to take a long time, yes, but there is information out there for each and every station. (JROBBO 04:08, 3 August 2006 (UTC))
Well, here's the thing. Here I am, an American, and I look at the article on Beecroft railway station, Sydney. This is the entire text that's not in an infobox:
Beecroft is a CityRail railway station on Sydney's Main Northern railway line. It serves the suburb of Beecroft, a residential area. Beecroft has an island platform in the middle of a reverse curve, and is located on a steep 2.5% gradient. The station has steps from street to the platform, and thus has no Easy Access for wheelchairs.
And then there's an infobox with a great deal of very detailed information, and a pred/succ box for the line, and I think the second sentence above is the only information that isn't duplicated in one of those. But then I go to the CityRail website, and they have this nice page where you can look up all of that information by station name (and not only that, but you can for instance find the names of all the stations which have toilets, which strikes me as a little pointless). This is precisely the kind of transcription which I, as a reader, find pointless. I can get the information from the system website faster, and I would assume that it is more up-to-date, because I can only assume that someone has at some point laboriously copied all that info, station by station, into Wikipedia. And when I start looking at the stations on the Blue Mountains railway line, New South Wales, I see the usual pattern: the station articles don't link to the place for the most part, and the place articles don't link to the station.
What's proposed here is only guidelines, and nobody is going to be able to use them to successfully support attempts to get your articles deleted. But if this is being done for any reason other than the entertainment of the editors, more work needs to be done. And I look at the cluttered mess which is the article on Arncliffe railway station, Sydney (which doesn't display properly on my machine because of all the infoboxes and images), and down at the bottom of the infobox there's even a link to the CityRail listing of the same information! The article at least has the virtue of having the proper place/station links, but when all is said and done, there's not much more information on the station page than there is on the place page.
I really don't see what the point is of talking about scope. When I look at the various flag stops out on the intercity lines, I really don't see how there is anything more that could possibly be said about them than is already in the articles. If they are stubs, they are likely to remain so. Mangoe 11:42, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
That's not true (your last point) - most of the intercity articles have a history relating to the establishment of the railway in the town. This stuff just takes time. This is what I object to - people asking for things to be "banned" on WP because they want high-quality articles. If you want high-quality to be written by people who don't do this as a full-time job and have access to every resource in the world, you have to expect that articles will take time, and so they should be left for people to develop. By the way, I'm fixing the East Hills lines articles (like Arncliffe) - a user uploaded some photos and I haven't had a chance to fix them all. (JROBBO 13:00, 16 August 2006 (UTC))
Most of them don't have enough such history to write an article about; most of these articles will never be improved. The thing is, people are finding time to spend a great deal of effort to put these highly formatted articles in; lack of time is not the issue here, or the articles wouldn't be written. What appears to be lacking is the information to write better articles. And speaking as a person who looks for that sort of information, the simple fact is that it usually isn't there. Even specialist books about specific lines have lists of stations, and that's all. So what is happening is that, since quality isn't to be had, authors substitute a show of structure.
To be really blunt, the current situation on these articles bespeaks a fannish culture in which towns are only important as the places where stations are located. Mangoe 13:18, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Places of local interest

I've created this page to discuss all places of local interest, including railway stations. This discussion of railway line and station articles had some good ideas that I've borrowed for this. If you're interested in commenting on or editing this proposal, please feel free to do so. Thanks, JYolkowski // talk 15:02, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Stations: inherent differences between types

I have been editing commuter rail articles and I find the lists of stops with links somewhat disturbing. I've ridden most of the lines whose pages I edit. To my U.S.-based point-of-view, there is nothing more to write about many of the stops listed. When a stopping-point has an interesting station building, that's notable. When a stopping-point for (local, commuter, subway) service is (or was) a stopping-point for longer-distance service, that's notable. I completely agree with the discussion here on your talk page that linking to places makes sense. We can then go edit the place articles to point back at the station articles, when appropriate, or at least make sure there is mention of rail service in the article. I like the format in SEPTA and LIRR articles which offers a table of stations, divided into different municipal levels. This allows us to link to a place name served by trains without necessarily linking every possible stop of a train. Some commuter rail lines have dozens of trains per day over a line with one or two stops at a particular station. Unless there is compelling reason to give each station a linked article, I don't see reason for their existence. Many of the stops in Chicagoland are currently redlinks, for instance. They should be unlinked unless, IMO some minimal notability standard can be met. The stations on intercity lines (and I understand that the distinction between commuter, regional, and intercity can be blurred in parts of the country and parts of the world) are often more significant, particularly when they serve as transfer points. They would rise to notable rather easily.

WP:NOT mentions things like Wikipedia is not a how-to guide. I interpret that to mean that mere descriptions of stations, particularly those available on the rail service's own website, are not articles of an encyclopedic nature. MKoltnow 17:00, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../m/a/n/User_talk%7EMangoe_Railroad_line_and_station_articles_3624.html"