Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Sydney/Railway stations

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[edit] Notability of railway stations

I've been looking at some of the 180-odd articles on railway stations in Sydney. I recognise that these form part of a 5000-article universe of railway stations with their own pages. But I think that most of them are non-notable. Another user has set out draft guidelines on the notability of rail infrastructure, helpfully titled Wikipedia is not a timetable, which can be viewed here and here. I think they deserve serious consideration.

My concerns about the Sydney station articles are as follows:

  • Some stations (even in metropolitan Sydney) are not, and never will be, notable (e.g., Engadine)
  • Some stations are arguably notable, but their articles lack information that speaks to that notability (e.g., Newtown)
  • Many station articles appear to be based on original research (e.g., Campbelltown)
  • Virtually all Sydney station articles contain information better suited to a rail enthusiasts' site, of which there are many.

I would suggest that articles on Sydney railway stations only be included if they can be substantially based on information sourced from credible printed-matter sources—not CityRail, not railway fan websites and certainly not personal observations. If a station can meet this criteria, then detail from other sources could be added. Any other information can go on the railway line pages.

We can argue all day about notability. It's my plan to spend substantial portions of my day doing exactly that. But User:Mangoe makes a compelling call for self-regulation: "If we create serious and brilliant articles then more editors will be encouraged to create more and more such articles. If we create trivia then more and more editors will be encouraged to create more and more trivia." Joestella 02:18, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

As I've told you before, there is a long-standing precedent on Wikipedia that all railway stations are inherently notable. You may think that Engadine is not notable - many people disagree with you, which is why no railway station has, that I can remember, been deleted since at least 2003. If you disagree, there is the option of nominating articles for deletion, but I and others will vigorously fight any such move, and there is no excuse for trying to enforce your own personal opinions via the back door, as you seem to be trying to do here. Rebecca 02:31, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
Remember to assume good faith, Rebecca. Rather than nominating dozens, or hundreds, of articles for deletion, I'm simply encouraging discussion. So far, you have not engaged with any of my (I would think reasonable) concerns. Given that no-one could seriously claim that Allandale railway station, New South Wales is notable, there is a legitimate question of where to draw the line. Joestella 03:09, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
As I wrote on your user page, I think the difference between railway stations and everything that has a notability criterion (people, companies, bands, etc.), is that info on railway stations can be verified, unlike those other entities. I write that I'm a deletionist on my user page, but I see no compelling reason why we need interrupt Wikipedia in such a way - gutting the place of all small train station articles will be quite difficult and achieve nothing, and will confuse editors trying to decide where to put information. Currently, an advantage of having articles on train lines, train stations and train networks separately, is that it covers each level consistently. If you object to unverified information, delete the information, but leave the article. Although I wouldn't phrase it in the same way as Rebecca did, I think this is the wrong place to have this discussion - this has far wider implications than WikiProject Sydney. enochlau (talk) 23:18, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
And I'm interested in hearing your opinion of why Cityrail material isn't credible - it's like saying we can't get information about a company from the company's website. enochlau (talk) 23:21, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

There are sound reasons why all railway stations are considered notable. Many towns would never have existed if they had not been served by rail. A town's railway station allowed natural resources and farm products to be shipped to market, and equally allowed equipment and supplies for resource extraction and agriculture to be shipped to the town, as well as serving to move people. Even if the station is no longer served by passenger trains (even if it has been demolished), it continues to be notable because it was once crucial to the town's development. (Recall that Wikipedia also has many articles on dead politicians, writers, and scientists who have made no recent contributions – because they're dead – but because they were notable in their lifetimes.) As well, a railway station may also be architecturally or hsitorically notable (perhaps attested to by being designated as an historical building, or by being associated with wartime troop trains), or because a former railway station has been converted for another notable use, such as a museum or art gallery. -- Eastmain 03:43, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

  • Eastmain, these are all reasons that a station might be notable. They are not reasons why all stations are notable. Your logic does not hold for other classes of entity, such as businesses or bus stops. If you can prove notability (using your criteria or mine) for "all railway stations" then I encourage you to get on with the required edits. Joestella 04:03, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

How is Campbelltown Station original research? Just because it doesn't have references doesn't mean it is original research... if that were the case then half of your edits over the last few days, Joe, would have to be deleted. I assume that they aren't, even though most of it isn't referenced; why do different standards apply here? JROBBO 06:38, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Indeed, just because it doesn't have references doesn't mean it is original research. I merely said that a lot of it appears to be original research. In which source would you find information on platform configurations or other station design information, for example? Joestella 14:43, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

If you read WP:NOR, it doesn't exclude the possibility of say, taking a photograph of the station, and then describing the configuration, as seen in that photograph. That's not original research or original theories - compare it with, hypothetically, a paragraph on the supposed fung shui of Panania railway station's staircase alignment. enochlau (talk) 23:18, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
Good point. In general, this isn't being done, though. Joestella 03:57, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
It also says that photos are a primary source and secondary sources are generally preferred. Any interpretation of primary sources requires a secondary source.Garrie 05:29, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Developing notability criteria

The general point that I would make are these. First, I am not specifically advocating the exclusion of material, merely its reorganisation into a smaller number of larger articles. Second, no-one could convincingly argue that just because one railway station, or one city's railway stations, are notable, it follows that all railway stations in all cities are notable. I don't need to spell out the implications of applying this logic to other things. What other class of entity is inherently notable but still fails standard notability criteria? Assuming then that we can all agree that railway stations are not exempt from some form of notability criteria, the question is what criteria do we use to assess the notability of railway stations?

Some guidance can be drawn from existing pages on Wikipedia. I would think that the criterion that a topic is notable if it has been the subject of multiple non-trivial published works, whose sources are independent of the subject itself represents a commonsense minimum standard. My understanding is that this criteria enjoys broad (though not universal) acceptance among Wikipedia users. Of course, most railway stations fail the published works test. A proposed alternative requires one, rather than multiple, published works. This would be a good compromise, although most stations would probably still fail the test.

There is no commonly-accepted criteria for notability applying specifically to railway stations. One proposal from User:Mangoe seeks to relax the above criteria slightly. Again, most railway stations would fail even this test.

Among the more broadly-accepted notability criteria are those relating to companies (a guideline) and places of local interest (a proposed guideline). It is relevant to note how the multiple local operations of a single organisation are typically dealt with: there is a clear parallel here. The companies guideline notes that "Many companies have chains of local stores or franchises that are individually pretty much interchangeable—for instance, your local McDonald's. Since there is generally very little to say about individual stores or franchises that isn't true for the chain in general, we should not have articles on such individual stores. However, a "List of Wal-Marts in China" would be informative. Also, an exception can be made if some major event took place at a local store." Some railway stations could have their own articles on historical or architectural grounds. But most railway stations would fail this test.

The proposed guideline on places of local interest offers no relaxation of notability criteria per se, but helpfully notes that "Initially, information on places of local importance should be added to an article on the community where that place is located."

You are certainly not obligated to follow this strategy, but it does have several advantages, including the following:

  • Articles on communities are more comprehensive and detailed
  • Places of local interest have better context within encyclopedia articles related to the community
  • Fewer tiny stubs on places of local interest that may have little potential for expansion
  • Since the community articles are highly unlikely to be nominated for deletion, the information is more likely to be kept than if it were found only in its own article.

One strategy that generally should not be followed is to add a large number of small stubs at one time. This tends to cause aggravation.

This proposal looks favourably upon sites of local importance, and yet it would still see most individual station articles deleted.

[edit] Moving forward

I copped a lot of abusive posts for merely suggesting that notability criteria might apply to railway stations. Starting this discussion represented an attempt to "enforce" the will of a "puffed up nobody" through the "back door", I was told. I've been on both sides of notability debates and I can only guess at why my approach here would be controversial. Perhaps because the 5000-odd railway station stubs worldwide took a long time to create. Or because everyone points to everyone else as an example of a consensus that emerged. Neither are strong reasons for retaining a large number of exceptionalist, low-quality articles. I strongly suggest people leave the emotion out of a discussion about Railway station Wikipedia stubs.

My compromise suggestion would be to include stations that meet the multiple-publications criteria, and to include stations that are marked as "Interchange between CityRail services".

The current approach seems to be to create articles and then find content later, in the hope that each article can grow organically and shed its status as stub. Forgive my pessimism, but this will not happen for most railway stations. Far better to agree on a standard for notability, apply it, merge the smaller stubs into the main line articles and then get on with actually researching and writing content. As long as this doesn't happen, the lack of notability criteria will spill into other categories, as it has for ferry wharves and tram stops. Tomorrow, the Sydney monorail stops—next week, a stub for every McDonalds store? Joestella 14:43, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

I disagree with your extension from CityRail stations to McDonald's franchises. One place where I found multiple references to Sydney railway stations was in the NSW Parliament's online hansard archive. There are lots of places where you can find information on these stations, e.g. CityRail newsletters, local community newspapers, etc., it's just that we haven't yet gone out to find them. enochlau (talk) 23:27, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
Enochlau is right on the mark. As I pointed out with the example of the Alamein line stations in Melbourne, it is relatively easy to come up with a decent article on railway stations - even suburban ones, as there is a lot of material. Your analogies are bunk - tram stops and McDonalds are far less notable, and have none of the cultural significance that Enochlau outlined above. Quite simply, you don't get to unilaterally delete or merge a ton of articles on your own say-so - you need to get a consensus, not assert a "compromise" which would involve the deletion or merging of a whole bunch of articles which would otherwise survive AfD. Rebecca 00:48, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
Rebecca, your response borders on hysterical. This is a discussion. Depending on its outcome, articles might be nominated for merging. If that happens, more discussion. When you say "Quite simply, you don't get to unilaterally delete", you are intentionally misrepresenting my approach. If you can't engage with the debate without attacking me, edit somewhere else. For a start, you could add your view on tram stop significance to this page. Enochlau, all I'm saying is that for each station, an assertion of notability needs to be made, and research needs to be done. I don't dispute that what you say is true for some stations, but no-one could suggest its true for all. The research is not being done. Editors are generating (and intricately formatting) hundreds of non-notable stubs—doing a lot of work and making decisions on information structure more emotional than they should be. Joestella 03:46, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
Yet I am suggesting that it is true for all railway stations (Tram stops are a nonsense - no one is trying to write articles about them). I'm fed up with this attitude of "oh, if I can't get these deleted, I'll waste the time of those arguing to keep them". As I've pointed out below, the sources are there aplenty - and evidenced by the fact that, with a couple of hours work, I was able to write quite reasonable little articles on every station of a suburban line, in the case of Melbourne's Alamein. It would be nice if someone expanded all of these articles, but in the meantime, they are perfectly fine as is, and I'm fed up with having my time on Wikipedia dictated to by people with a deletion fetish for whatever topic it is this week. Rebecca 04:18, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
How about ignoring notability for a moment and looking for verifiable Reliable citations. Not primary sourced reproductions of tourist information and timetable information from the operators website but encyclopedic information from secondary sources. Railway stations are essential elements in the development of infrastructure and the key ones have been the subject of signficiant published material, yet many of the railway stations struggle to have any references that aren't fanboy websites or operators websites. I tend to see railpage.org.au as being fanboyish as is nswrail.net. Apart from which, self-publishing your own information then citing it on wikipedia stinks of vanityGarrie 03:56, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
The problem with this is that you're looking only online. Most states have some very good books on rail history which contain a lot of useful information about individual stations (that's how I did the Alamein line pages, and that was just with a couple of hours reading from a couple of the most obvious sources). Books on local or regional history are also likely to be of use, as may parliamentary and departmental papers, which should be available from any state library. While the online sources may be cruddy, there are a wealth of good, solidly reputable sources for, I would argue, most probably every station. If I put a couple of weeks into it, I think it quite likely I could find enough material to get on an average suburban station to featured status. Rebecca 04:18, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
Sorry, Rebecca - we're coming at this from the opposite directions. What I mean is, if you look at Quakers Hill railway station then it's all unreferenced, primary sourced material. And according to WP:VERIFY then:
  • Editors adding new material should cite a reliable source, or it may be challenged or removed by any editor.
  • The obligation to provide a reliable source lies with the editors wishing to include the material, not on those seeking to remove it.
(not trying to tell you how to suck eggs but those are the relevant parts of the policy)
These articles have been around for a long time. It is up to the proponants of these articles to bring them up to the required standard - not for those of us who couldn't care less (I don't really have an opinion - they just need to meet the policies and standards WP:V, WP:RS), or even more so - those contributors who are opposed to directory-style information. And by the way, you said
(Tram stops are a nonsense - no one is trying to write articles about them)
but what is Capitol Square MLR station, Sydney(the whole family of them is part of what bought Joestella here)?Garrie 05:16, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
Articles being unreferenced is not a deletion criterion. It was proposed recently and roundly rejected. The point the policy makes is that unreferenced material doesn't have to remain, and that it can be challenged by anyone who disputes or questions it. The point here, however, is that none of this information is disputed or questioned - you're just using as a means of trying to make an end-run around the deletion policy, and the utter lack of consensus to delete either unreferenced articles or train station articles, and blackmailing users who disagree into complying with your views ("agree to delete or merge these articles or be prepared to spend all your time on Wikipedia upgrading them to my standards"). Rebecca 05:23, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
Having re-read the above comments, I want to point out that enochlau is a bit off the track with suggestions that Cityrail be relied on as a source for information regarding railway stations they operate, as they have a vested interest in the information they provide showing themselves in the best possible light - can you seriously expect me to believe anything they say about when they will spend money upgrading stations or how long it will take to build the new north-west rail line? Same for any primary sources. They should not be preferred sources for information but in the absence of anything else they will suffice. And Hansard is only just any better, given that everyting a politician reads in parliament has been written by the department they are the minister of. How many public servants does it take to keep one politician in parliament? Ministerial Liason Offices are fairly well resourced units in any government department.Garrie 04:05, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

I strongly oppose any proposal of any sort to delete stations in Sydney because it would be applied inconsistently everywhere. Currently every station on the London Underground is considered notable, as is the New York Metro, the Hong Kong MTR, the Singapore MRT, the Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Guangzhou Metros, and so on; even the New Zealand networks mostly have their own stations! Try to merge their articles and they would be up in arms. Every other city in Australia has articles on individual stations... you get my point. To restrict this discussion to Sydney's stations is completely ridiculous - if you want to restrict notability to individual stations you should write a notability guideline for Wikipedia, not hold a "back door" discussion here. People on the other side of the world need to be involved in such a discussion, or else we get a vast inconsistency. This is NOT the place to agree on something like this. I also resent people writing notability criteria for something they really haven't contributed to— some of us have spent a lot of time on here writing station articles and slowly improving them - it takes time, and people who just come in an start deleting left, right and centre as a means of trying to force expansion are not being helpful. I would respect views for deletion more if they came from people who had actually been doing some work on this stuff and made some contributions to it; but that has not been the case so far. Thirdly, just because an article does not have primary sources does not mean it is original research. Yes, a lot of the articles need sources and I am trying to source them all the time, but since doing that will require a lot of off-web research it is going to take some time. People need to be patient and allow those of us who are working on the railway articles to actually do some work on them: at last count there were probably only 3 people who took a serious interest in CityRail articles: if we had more than that there might be a bit more work on them, but trying to do 500 odd articles on Sydney transport places (including sourcing photographs for them, which takes ages!) is no small task when you have so few people. I think Rebecca and enochlau have also made some good points.

I'm really starting to feel like my work and time on Wikipedia has been wasted: this has been my main project and it feels like it's been sabotaged by users with their own agendas that don't care about Wikipedia policy; if this gets too much I'm very tempted to take my stuff elsewhere if I'm not wanted here and establish a copyrighted website where my research can't be copied and distributed freely like we have the liberty to do on Wikipedia. JROBBO 08:21, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for this, JROBBO. I for one urge you not to get discouraged - you've been doing quite a lot of good work, and have singlehandedly been trying to do a job that we had four people actively doing in Melbourne. Rebecca 05:20, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
JROBBO - I don't like that you feel like you're wasting your time. I would like to contribute more to all articles which are related to Sydney. You seem to have knowledge and access to resources regarding public transport in this area.
But without indicating your sources you make it difficult for others to argue to retain your work, or to participate in adding to the large number of articles which are currently used to describe public transport in the largest city in Australia.
Rather than an all-at-once philosophy it might be better to have a more organic approach. Grow the article about the whole organisation, then about segments of the organisation, then about branch/station/whatever locations. But in each instance ensure that information is verifiable from reliable (hopefully non-primary) sources.
Having said that: if you are interested in conducting research by visiting railway stations and looking into and summarising primary records like railway timetables and procurement information to find out fleet information then maybe this is the wrong project for presenting your results. But I hope I am misinterpreting your words because you have contributed a large volume of work to WikiProject Sydney.--Garrie 05:31, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
This is simply not the way we do things in Wikipedia. We don't force people to work on articles about the House of Representatives or John Howard before we let them write about their local MP, and people shouldn't be trying to dictate how other people work on on railway-related topics either. If, as JROBBO has quite rightly pointed out, individual railway station articles are good enough for virtually every single major metro system in the world, then they are good enough for Sydney, and though the two objectors are noted, they do not have the right to bilaterally tell the authors of content to get stuffed. I'm also getting fed up with the anti-offline research attitudes displayed here; just because the sources available are not available through Google, and *gasp* require reading books, does not mean that the topic is any less legitimate. Rebecca 05:57, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
Rebecca, who has assigned each station as being or not being easy access? Such an assessment should really be done by an organisation looking at - say - is the station able to be accessed using either elevators or ramps not exceeding a slope of 1:40 (I think - I'm not an engineer). But such an assessment is on (nearly?) every cityrail station article! This is exactly the type of information which needs clear references and cannot be readily identified from taking a photo and talking about it (as is discussed above). Even if the station has an elevator - does it comply with relevant standards for the number of patrons etc? this requires analysis of more information than is available by looking at a photo Garrie 05:39, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
It's taken from the CityRail pages - that information is freely available if you thought to took a look. There is a link to station facilities on all pages with the newer infobox (which is gradually being changed over). It's not original research. Most of the editors who have done work on it have deleted a lot of it anyway which was not useful; it used to be the only thing on some pages. JROBBO 12:37, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

JROBBO, it's laughable that you would say "I would respect views for deletion more if they came from people who had actually been doing some work on this stuff and made some contributions to it; but that has not been the case so far", presumably referring to me, and then cry about how disheartening it is that someone would question the stubs you've created. Or are you genuinely not aware that I've been adding content on this and related subjects?

Anyway, we've cracked 4000 words on this debate and the only counter-arguments offered to my "railway stations should be subject to normal notability criteria before they get their own stub" are:

  • The content is coming. Sydney railway stations will be different.
  • All the other cities do this.
  • Merging articles is like deleting them, and that alienates editors.

In response, all I can say is:

  • The content is not coming for most of these. Prove me wrong and I'll eat my copy of the Parry report into sustainable public transport.
  • If the other cities are wrong, the change has to start somewhere.
  • We should do all that is reasonable to keep our editors happy. Merging articles keeps the content they have so painstakingly generated, however little there is of it in absolute terms.

— Joestella 07:07, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

All of those three are perfectly valid points, and far more valid than "Joe wants, therefore it must be done". Content develops slowly, and it certainly won't happen if you insist on getting rid of what work has already been done. And merging is the worst of both worlds - it puts a sharp halt to any further article development, and serves no useful purpose except to serve the deletion whims of someone with a bee in their bonnet. I'm fed up with your attitude on this - you write questionably notable content on public transport and bitch when people nominate that for deletion, and promptly do the same thing to other people because this particular topic doesn't interest your personally. Rebecca 01:19, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Can we please look toward ensuring that any content added to these articles is from cited reliable sources? If they all relate to the same edition of the Institute of Engineers Railway Journal then that's fine . But there should be some sources on some of the articles somewhere!Garrie 05:39, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes, Garrie, we have already said we will do that. However, these things take time, and since I don't spent 24 hours a day here it means it will take a bit longer than what you expect it will. JROBBO 12:51, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
As someone who works a lot on geographic articles, which are similar in the sense that every one is automatically notable even though it would be difficult to write more than a few lines on some, you would be amazed what you can dig up. For example - every train station was built at some point in time, and cost money out of someone's capital works budget to do that. That can't be done without a bureaucratic process (and a reason to go through it), and inevitably leaves a paper trail. Entries in the Government Gazette, minutes of the transport authority or even the local council available through state libraries and records bodies, and any public discussion (newspaper articles, Hansard etc) could also be brought in. That, along with the textbooks, should be enough to drive any notability argument about a railway station into the ground. I also agree with JROBBO that one needs to have a foundation before one can build a house upon it - one has to start somewhere. It can take hours or even days to produce the sort of quality article that is being discussed here, and it may be a far better use of one's time to start the articles off and do what one can rather than doing the on-top stuff from the first (someone who has a specific interest or expertise in the subject area or has access to more resources may be in a better spot to do that). Some of the best articles (including some FAs) that I've seen at Wikipedia started as stubs on seemingly unimportant topics. Orderinchaos78 14:17, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

I was drawn to this article because of its entry in RFC. As an incrementalist, I do not see any reason why Wikipedia can not accomodate more articles on train stations. However, I also believe that all content should be verifiable and that there should be content. Empty or very small articles should be merged. Any train station, especially in a large city, has been used by a large number of people and cost a lot of money to build and maintain. Any thing that affects a large number of people is notable --- Skapur 17:22, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

  • I was also drawn here by the RFC and I fully agree with Skapur's comment. --- Hillel 13:00, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Should I take it that this debate has fizzled and we're going to leave it as the status quo? enochlau (talk) 00:08, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] fully unreferenced articles - new category for speedy deletion.

I am reposting something that I mentioned on JRobbo's talk page...

You might want to visit this page for a look at a new speedy deletion criteria. I'm neither for nor against the criteria but if it is accepted as a criteria for speedy deletion then a lot of Sydney Public Transport articles would be quickly listed for speedy deletion. From what I read - there's no ifs buts or maybes, it's either provide the source or the article gets deleted.

So it would appear that there is a far greater dissatisfaction with articles which have gone a long time without ANY references than just me.Garrie 20:50, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

You're hardly the only one - I'm also very keen on getting Wikipedia universally referenced, and I support a version of the linked proposal. I'm just fed up with the pointless and arbitrary focus on the least important articles so as to push another goal together (deletion, not referencing). Rebecca 23:14, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
My rationale for mentioning the proposal here is to bring it to the attention of several editors who have worked on articles which may be deleted if the proposal is endorsed. Hopefully my mentioning it will both:
  • encourage those editors to provide references and
  • participate in the proposal
I looked over the proposal and abstained from participating. But I am going back to articles stubs I have worked on and started getting some kind of reference together for them!Garrie 00:15, 4 January 2007 (UTC)