Category talk:Railways of Sodor

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[edit] Category name

It might be expected that the category name should be "Sodor Railways", since that would be more in keeping with general WP policy. However, that name has been used in certain Railway Stories -related literature as a collective Brand Name for the various railways during a specific period of Sodor history. (I think the reference is explained in one of the reference books, but I don't have them to hand to confirm this.)

Therefore, please do NOT request a re-name of this category to "Sodor Railways", as that would be misleading.

EdJogg 13:33, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] TK&E and W&S Railways

Why is the links to the TK&E and W&S Railways that are merely redirects to the Island of Sodor page unless of course you or someone else is planning to create pages for these railways. Penrithguy 15:42, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

There is always the possibility of creating articles for these railways, although I'm not sure there's enough information available to warrant it. I added them to the category as these allow direct access to the subsection within Sodor (fictional island) - it did not seem appropriate to add 'Sodor (fictional island)' to a category that was specifically intended to group just the railways together.

A couple of weeks back, I had a look at the WP guidance on adding redirect pages to categories. The only advice was that straight redirects to the same page should be avoided - hence, for a cat that contained Sodor (fictional island) it would not be appropriate to add Island of Sodor (a straight redirect) as well. On the other hand, I would suggest that the addition of a redirect to an anchored link is useful, since a reader browsing the category would not otherwise be aware of its existence.

This would be even more appropriate for links to multi-character pages. For example, the redirect 'Oliver the Western Engine' could be included in Category:The Railway Series characters, which would avoid the need for a reader to determine whether Oliver might be found on the 'Major', 'Minor' or 'Unfeatured' character pages, which are all cat members.

BTW - The redirects themselves may well be used elsewhere, for example in Fictional locations in The Railway Series.

EdJogg 16:32, 23 January 2007 (UTC)