Talk:California State Route 17/Archive

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Archive This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

It might be interesting to note that, in general, residents of Santa Cruz and other areas serviced by Highway 17 south of the summit dislike the proposition of making the expressway portions safer. They feel that removing the highway's treacherous nature would increase traffic into Santa Cruz county, an area that already has mild traffic problems.

No one calls it "State Route 17". Everyone calls it "Highway 17". I'm changing the text and moving the article back to reflect that fact. Nohat 01:21, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

  • It appears Caltrans calls everything State Route X (and SR X), though I'm also getting matches on Caltrans's site for "Highway 17". As we should have a consistent naming for all, does anyone know what they are all called officially? The use of SR X seems to imply State Route is the official designation. --SPUI (talk) 12:23, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names) Nohat 15:50, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Should we move California State Route 82 to El Camino? Interstate 405 (California) to the 405? --SPUI (talk) 16:11, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)
(a) No, because parts of 82 aren't called El Camino Real--San Jose St. in Daly City/SF, The Alameda in SJ, Santa Clara St., etc.
(b) Perhaps, but only if no other roads are also called "The 405", which I doubt is the case. Nohat 17:15, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)
(b) Then we'd use The 405 (California). Just as here, people call it Highway 17, not California Highway 17. --SPUI (talk) 20:30, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I think not including a word that indicate the article is about a highway makes it unnecessarily ambiguous. My point is just that most people call them "highways" not "state routes". In fact most people call Highway 17 just simple "17" but that's too ambiguous a title. The policy is to balance ambiguity with the common name. I think, however that California Highway 17 is sufficiently unambiguous and yet familiar--it didn't need changing to the perhaps more correct but certainly less common name "California State Route 17". Nohat 23:04, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

SPUI, please stop moving this article. Nobody calls this road a "state route", so it should not be at an article with "state route" in its title. Nohat 19:19, 7 May 2005 (UTC)

CalTrans calls it a state route. That should be enough, for consistency's sake. --SPUI (talk) 20:41, 7 May 2005 (UTC)
consistency and official names are not part of the naming policy here. sorry. It's the common name that is the policy. Nohat 21:48, 7 May 2005 (UTC)
The "common name" is "policy" to a certain extent; the city naming conventions make that clear. Except for New York City, which is somewhat of a special case, every U.S. city is at City, State, despite no one calling it that. --SPUI (talk) 23:15, 7 May 2005 (UTC)
I don't see what the city naming policies have to do with this article. It's not about a city. But disregarding that, the US city name "policy" is disputed and is only implemented as widely as it is because the vast majority of those articles were created by a bot. The only naming policy that enjoys continualy reaffirmed consensus support is the "use common names" policy, which applies here. Nohat 08:17, 8 May 2005 (UTC)
I think that California state Route 17 would be better, because currently, all the other state route articles are also 'california state route XXX' now; the 'cliaofnria state highway XXX' will redirect to 'california state rotue XXX's article. For the sake of consistency, i'll agree with SPUI. --atanamir 22:24, 8 May 2005 (UTC)
Maybe they shouldn't be at those names, particularly if nobody uses those names. First and foremost articles should have titles that represent things that people actually call them! Nobody calls this road "California State Route 17", except for maybe a few bureaucrats in Sacramento and their admirers. I looked yesterday as I drove over this road and even road signs on the highway say "HWY 17". The book about this road is titled Highway 17: The Road to Santa Cruz [1] (and not "State Route 17"). Consistency is not a valid reason to abandon common sense. Nohat 23:20, 8 May 2005 (UTC)
It's not quite true that we always use the most common name - for instance, the ship USS Carl Vinson is actually at USS Carl Vinson (CVN-70), because we decided to adopt a common style for USN ships that avoids what would be horrendous ambiguity problems, even though it makes some unambiguous names longer than they might be otherwise. Category:Peers is another well-knonw example. Pretty much any time people have had to organize scores or hundreds of similar articles, they've adopted a uniform naming scheme, even if it means that some names end up with a more verbose version than is common. The "use common names" rule should maybe clarify that it may be overridden by systematic naming schemes. Stan 05:04, 9 May 2005 (UTC)
This isn't a question of ambiguity. This is a question of using an obscure technical name ("state route") over the commonly-used normal name ("highway"). As far as I can tell, there is no benefit to using the obscure techincal name over the commonly-used normal name: there isn't any ambiguity to be avoided! "State route" is just a fancy name for "highway". I don't understand the point of using an obscure techincal name when there is a perferctly good unambiguous name that is also what people actually call it. Nohat 09:08, 9 May 2005 (UTC)
OK... i guess it doesn't matter that much to me either way -- but if you really do want it to be State Highway 17, I'd suggest you go through the entire List of California State Routes and change those all to California State Highways too. Having one 'California State Highway' article really sticks out like a sore thumb. this place calls its a state route. Plus, it's not exactly an 'obscure' name; I've heard state 'highways' been referred to as state 'routes' in many other states (more so than states that refer to them as 'highways'). Take the example of Gasoline -- everywhere outside the US calls it Petrol -- yet many here in California will gawk at you if you call it petrol; but on wikipedia, 'gasoline' redirects to Petrol. Why can't we just do it that way -- have a California State Highway 17 article redirect to California State Route 17, and explain that it's commonly called 'California State Highway 17' in the body of the article itself? Most encyclopedias have the 'obscure technical name' as the article titles. In short, I think everything should either be California State Route, or California State Highway -- not a hybrid mix of both, as it will cause much confusion. --atanamir 11:29, 9 May 2005 (UTC)
The analogy with petrol is not apt. The article is about the same substance which is used in the U. S. and outside of the U. S.—there is a "fairness in dialects" policy that states that an article which has multiple perfectly common names that varies by dialect has to be at one title and generally, it's the original title, UNLESS the topic is specific to an area where one name is many times more common, in which case the more common name is used. Since California Highways are specific to California, the titles of the articles should reflect what Californians actually call them. Further, I hope you weren't serious about applying your argument about "other encyclopedias"—clearly other encyclopedias' policies don't apply here. Nohat 17:07, 9 May 2005 (UTC) Also, just because other articles are badly titled doesn't mean this one should be. Consistency is decidedly not an official Wikipedia policy for naming articles. I am not personally responsible for correcting all the other articles' titles. Nohat 17:15, 9 May 2005 (UTC)
I take you don't participate in any of the WikiProjects; one of their important roles is to agree upon consistency rules that override generic WP style, and the Don Quixotes of WP have rarely been successful in tilting at the projects. You're not going to succeed with your trickery, so persuade us or go away. Stan 04:20, 10 May 2005 (UTC)
The wikiprojects do not have authority to violate the naming conventions; at most they can explain how the naming conventions have been interpreted with regard to certain groups of related articles. The only binding policies are the offical policies. Nohat 00:50, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

Nohat just edited the new redirect to prevent moving it back. Call it bad faith, call it being an asshole, whatever. --SPUI (talk) 19:38, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

He copied the template too just to change the word 'route' to 'highway', lol. --atanamir 22:34, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

Move the article back to its original articlespace. Consistency and namespace form are strong arguments for State_Route. I would dispute Nohat's assertion that "nobody calls it state route." I'm in the SF Bay Area and I often hear "state route" used. Perhaps that's just me - but then perhaps "Highway" is just Nohat. As noted, when there are sequences of articles on similar topics I see no reason not to use the route's official name as is used in every other article. It's also more specific - CA-17 is a *state route* - which is different from the generic and ambiguous "highway." "State Route" correctly classifies the route as part of the hierarchy of highways - State Route, U.S. Highway and Interstate. --FCYTravis 03:48, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

  1. Consistency and "namespace form" (whatever that is) are not valid arguments because they don't reflect Wikipedia's naming policy. As I said before, the only policy that applies here is the use common names policy.
  2. I never meant to imply that absolutely nobody calls it a "state route"—obviously somebody does if that's its "official name"—just that the number of people who do so is infinitessimal compared to the number of people who call it "Highway 17". I would have thought that it was obvious that my rhetorical hyperbole was not meant to be interpreted literally.
  3. The other articles should probably also be moved to reflect their common names, but that is not the issue in this case. This article is about "Highway 17", which is the salient name, as I explained above. There is a web site devoted to the road, and it's called Hiway17.com. If you do a Google search for "+California 'state route 17'" you only get about 2240 hits, whereas a search for "+California 'highway 17'" gives well over 33,000 hits, an almost 16 to 1 ratio of hits on the web, which being written language will tend to be more formal (and more likely to use the official name) than spoken language, where the disparity in usage is probably many times greater. There is even an entire book about this road, and it's titled Highway 17, not State Route 17.
  4. There is nothing ambiguous about "California Highway 17". There are no other highways in California called just "17", as this one is.
  5. This hierarchy of highways is not very persuasive as being somehow canonical. In fact
    (California) (state) Highway :: U. S. Highway :: Interstate (Highway)
  6. seems much more logical to me (they're all highways), although the U. S. Highway system and the Interstate Highway system are not hierarchical; they are complementary. Nohat 04:42, 10 May 2005 (UTC)
In a sense they're hierarchical - US highways are less federally-funded than Interstate highways. U.S. highways are 50-50 federal match, whereas Interstate are 90-10 federal match. --FCYTravis 05:35, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

If I remember correclty, the article was originaly at California Highway 17, or perhaps California State Highway 17. A few weeks or months ago, SPUI went through all the CA highways and changed them to SR names. I know in SJ-land, Highway 17, Highway 85, Highway 237 are more common than the SR names, while Highway 87 is probibly better known as Guadalupe Parkway than any other name. Gentgeen 05:51, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

I will propose a compromise - the article remain at "California Highway 17" but the link on the List of California State Routes remain "California State Route 17" to conform with the other articles - and the name in the infobox also be edited to "Route 17" again to conform with the official technical usage that is standard for all other infoboxes in all other articles regarding California state routes. The boxes are about the legal definition of the highway - and the legal definition is of Route 17, not "Highway 17." --FCYTravis 05:54, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

"California Streets and Highways Code Section 317. Route 17 is from Route 1 near Santa Cruz to Route 280 in San Jose." --FCYTravis 05:57, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

This seems reasonable to me. I'm not too particular about the content of the box, other than the fact that it seems very silly for it to say "California State Highway System" and "California State Highway" in the very same box and then say "Route 17". But apparently people are attached to the word "Route". The title of the article, however, should remain "California Highway 17". Nohat 09:00, 10 May 2005 (UTC)
Well in Massachusetts it's the State Highway System (with signs saying State Highway Begins/Ends at the boundaries of state maintenance) but EVERYONE including MassHighway calls it Route XX. I haven't yet decided what should be used there, though some looking makes it seem that State Highway refers to the state maintained roads and Route to the numbered roads. Looks like that's another one to change the naming conventions of. There may be something similar in California; it appears to be the Streets and Highways Code but State Route XX. --SPUI (talk) 11:17, 10 May 2005 (UTC)
People are attached to the word Route because it's the legal name of the highway route. It's not silly at all to include the strict legal definition of the road in an infobox about the road. All Interstate, U.S. and State Routes in California are, by California law, simply considered Routes - there is no distinction in the CS&HC between them. Interstate 80 is Route 80, U.S. Highway 399 is Route 399. In fact, there are actually several highways that have different signed numbers than the legal Route number. For example, part of the highway that is signed Business I-80 in Sacramento is actually, by law, Route 51. The bottom line is, telling someone that a highway is "Route 17" is important information that is NOT conveyed by simply calling it "Highway 17" because Route refers to the specific definition of the state highway in California law. --FCYTravis 19:45, 10 May 2005 (UTC)
Perhaps then, like the taxoboxes, the highway info boxes (excuse me, state route info boxes) should contain the common name in addition to the official name, and any other names the highway might go by, like Highway 85, which is called "The West Valley Freeway". Also, since all the numbered highways in California are state routes, then why is it only the state highways, and not U. S. Highways or Interstate Highways, that are on pages titled "State Route"? It seems that being a "state route" is a secondary designation consequent of firstly being some other kind of highway, in this case a California Highway. In fact, it seems that the title "California Highway 17" conveys more information in fewer words than the title California State Route 17, because the latter could also be a U. S. Highway or an Interstate Highway, whereas the former is plainly not. Nohat 01:12, 11 May 2005 (UTC)
Because a "State Route" is not a "Route." A "State Route" is the official title of a California "state highway." "Route" is the legislative definition of the road. As I mentioned earlier, some "Routes" are not actually signed with their route number. Route 51 is not signed as State Route 51. Instead, it's signed as Interstate Business Loop 80. I know it's confusing, but the job of Wikipedia isn't to pretend the confusion doesn't exist - it's to properly explain the confusing parts. I agree that including the common name of a highway in the taxoboxes would be useful in certain instances - the only possible issue is where certain lengthy highways have different "common names" over different parts. For instance, SR-1 is variously the Cabrillo Highway, the Pacific Coast Highway and the Shoreline Highway along its length. However, I think these few cases can be worked around - otherwise I think it would be quite useful to include those common names in the boxes. --FCYTravis 04:35, 11 May 2005 (UTC)
On a purely technical note, "california state highway" is in a way misleading too because not all 'state highways' are 'highways' -- 17 is eacutally an expressway and a freeway. 'state route' is a neutral term that doesn't invoke confusion between whether or not the route is a freeway, and expressway, a highway, or a road. --atanamir 08:28, 11 May 2005 (UTC)
To make it clearer: All State Routes are Routes. All Routes are not State Routes. --FCYTravis 04:40, 11 May 2005 (UTC)
OK. So it is possible for a route, which is defined by the state, to not be a state route. If ever there were an reason for not modeling a naming scheme for wikipedia articles, it would be this confusing nightmare. Another problem with having roads like Highway 17 have the title "State Route 17" is that it blurs the distinction between routes defined by the state (including state routes) that are commonly known by their number and other state routes, like Route 82, which are not commonly referred to by their number, but instead by the names of the roads that compose the route.
It was not confusing until you decided to make it confusing by having one or two articles as 'california highway XX' and eveything else as california state route XX. --atanamir 08:06, 11 May 2005 (UTC)
It was very confusing for someone familiar with Highway 17 who is looking for an article about it to find it at a name that they have never heard of. This is the point of the use common names policy—it's an implementation of the principle of least surprise. The smallest number of people will be surprised if an article is at a title that represents the most common name for the topic covered. Nohat 08:14, 11 May 2005 (UTC)
I highly doubt people have 'never heard of' it being referred to as 'state routes' before. Caltrans traffic reports and web site always refers to them as state routes. --atanamir 08:21, 11 May 2005 (UTC)
The situation is too complicated for there to be a one-size-fits-all solution for titling these articles, because you get silliness like "California State Route 17", which is a name that only bureaucrats and their admirers use. This is exactly the sort of situation where "use common names" is the only policy that could sensibly apply. Nohat 05:21, 11 May 2005 (UTC)
The "one-size-fits-all" solution is what the government did to make it easier to manage all the routes by giving them one naming convention. For those that value consistency in an encyclopedia (obviously not you), by giving all the articles one title that matches the official name of the routes helps make the information easier to find / recognize. This is also one of the goals of the CA/SR wikiproject -- to help structure the articles better, which is what you are now undermining. --atanamir 08:07, 11 May 2005 (UTC)
I haven't changed the structure of the articles, I only changed what they were titled. The "state route" titles still act as redirects. I'm not undermining anything; in fact I am improving Wikipedia by making the article titles conform to the official policy for article titles. If you disagree with the policy, go discuss at the policy's talk page, but don't undermine Wikipedia by willfully disregarding the policy. Nohat 08:14, 11 May 2005 (UTC)
To clarify, the articles themselves should of course explain that each road has an official designation "State Route whatever", but the titles should reflect the common name of the road. Nohat 05:22, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

What about this as a compromise -- just what it used to be -- California State Highway 17? cahighways.org refers to it as "california state highway route 17," and the article itself resided at CASH 17 for quite some time as well. It's somewhat in between 'california highway 17' and 'california state route 17', and all the articles can be named this way to meet the consistency needs of me and several other people that have spoken up here. --atanamir 08:21, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

Makes sense to me. Make it so. --FCYTravis 09:17, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

If you get to unilaterally move articles based on your belief - with NO consensus expressed - then I get to too. "Hiway" is in "common usage" as expressed by the Web site you noted, and State is an important differentiator. We've offered I don't know how many compromise efforts and you've consistently and dogmatically refused every single one of them. I edited the redirect. Fair is fair. --FCYTravis 18:12, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

This isn't a battle. There's no "fair" or "unfair'. There's obeying the policy, and there's wantonly disregarding the policy. No one has shown how the policy supports having the title be anything other than the article's original title California Highway 17. Individuals don't make up the rules as they see fit—policies have been decided upon and are to be followed. If you disagree with the policy, the correct avenue of action is to dispute the policy on the policy discussion page, not to wantonly disregard the policy and try to "negotiate" some kind of alternative arrangement. Nohat 20:59, 11 May 2005 (UTC)
You are arguing that you are the sole interpreter of the policy and that nobody can question your interpretation of it. Clearly, there are many people contesting your interpretation and I see *no* consensus for the move. --FCYTravis 21:13, 11 May 2005 (UTC)
There was not consensus to move it to the SR title, either. All Nohat has done is restore the article to its original title, which is also the more commonly used name. I also think that most of the other state highways should be returned to their original titles. Gentgeen 21:18, 11 May 2005 (UTC)
No one has contested my interpretation of the policy. Everyone is just ignoring the policy and making up other reasons to support having the article at "California State Route 17", none of which are supported by the policy. No one except me has framed their argument for what the article title should be in terms of official Wikipedia policy.
I also note that this article was originally titled "California Highway 17", and there was no attempt to gather support for moving to the "state route" title. All the California highway articles had perfectly reasonable names until some presumably well-meaning but imperious users went on a misguided attempt to introduce unnecessary "consistency" that gives many articles ridiculous names that makes Wikipedia hard-to-use and confusing for everyone except bureaucratic fetishists, not to mention blatant violations of policy. "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds" —Ralph Waldo Emerson. Nohat 21:24, 11 May 2005 (UTC)
"Wikipedia:Naming conventions (precision) Be Precise, when necessary." - "State Highway" is a precise term that is necessary to distinguish the road from the generic "Highway." I think if we can come to agreement that perhaps "State Route" is too bureaucratic, then adding "State" to the "Highway" preserves the idea of the "common name" - after all "Highway 17" is still intact so that when one searches that term, they'll find it - WHILE still honoring the precision of the road being a State Highway as opposed to a U.S., Interstate, county or even local "highway." --FCYTravis 21:28, 11 May 2005 (UTC)
What other highway could possibly also be called "California Highway 17"? Nohat 21:33, 11 May 2005 (UTC)
While California State Highway 17 does not necessarily specifically have an analogous Interstate or U.S. highway, there are several State Highways that do invoke this ambiguity. State Highways 110, 15, etc. are paired with Interstate Highways of the same number. Also, there are several lettered County Highways and roads that possess the number 17. It simply makes sense to use the unambiguous, systematic, concise AND COMMON "State Highway." --FCYTravis 21:47, 11 May 2005 (UTC)
There are county routes that also may bear the '17' route number and may also be highways. We have already offered a compromise at 'State Highway 17' from 'State Route 17'; clearly, we are not going to agree on any one name. But perhaps you should yield as well and agree on 'State Highway 17' as the compromised title for the article. --atanamir 21:50, 11 May 2005 (UTC)
BTW Nohat, if you're arguing that "Highway 17" is the common name, I don't see why you're so dogmatically fighting adding "State" between "California" and "Highway." The addition of the "State" does nothing to modify the common name. It simply explains and clarifies that common name. Otherwise, following your sacred policy, the California belongs after the "Highway 17" in parenthesis - Highway 17 (California), as all it's doing is disambiguating the location. --FCYTravis 21:52, 11 May 2005 (UTC)
I can accept "California State Highway 17" as an acceptable compromise, but internal references in the article should remain simply "Highway 17". It should be noted that the disambiguation policy at Wikipedia:Disambiguation says, "Do not disambiguate ... if there is no risk of confusion". Articles whose titles are ambiguous should have titles that are more specific; however, just because there are a couple that are ambiguous doesn't mean that every one needs to be preemptively disambiguated. Also, the parenthesis for disambiguation are only to be used if it the disambiguator can't be attached to the name for syntactic reasons. In this case it can, so parentheses are unnecessary. Nohat 22:09, 11 May 2005 (UTC)
That's certainly reasonable, Nohat. I don't think anyone's arguing that every internal reference in the article has to be to that. Once past first reference, I think it's perfectly reasonable to just shorten it to "Highway 17." As you said, it is common usage. That certainly makes sense. Repeating overly long phrases does nobody any good. (As an aside, perhaps this would make an interesting article... the ways in which people perceive route numbers seems to vary widely, and it would be interesting to note that different regions of the U.S. have developed different highway dialects. A-la "Highway 17" here, but "the 5" in Los Angeles, or "the expressway" back east.) --FCYTravis 22:16, 11 May 2005 (UTC)
Oh, and you convinced me pretty thoroughly on the "State Route" issue... I did a little digging and found that there's just not that much there *at all* that calls 'em state routes... the various "Highway" constructs are much more numerous. There were all of 11 hits for "California State Route 17" - one was CalTrans and most of the rest were Wikis. Yup, you're right, nobody but bureaucrats call it "State Route 17!" LOL. --FCYTravis 22:22, 11 May 2005 (UTC)
That's because it's State Route 17, but we include the California for disambiguation purposes. --SPUI (talk) 02:43, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

OK. So is there any opposition now to my moving this article to "California State Highway 17"? Nohat 22:38, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

No complaint from me; i will be happy this fiasco is over with. --atanamir 02:08, 12 May 2005 (UTC)
Same complaint as I've already explained at length. --SPUI (talk) 02:43, 12 May 2005 (UTC)
A google search for '"Highway 17" California' [2] yields 37,600 hits, while one for '"State Route 17" California' [3] yields only 5980 hits. I have no objection to the article residing at the more common name. (oh, and a side note about Wikipedia practice with regard to allowing governments to tell us how to title articles, go look as Kiev.) Gentgeen 04:15, 12 May 2005 (UTC)
oops, the main article page can't be moved. only the talk page can be?