Talk:Mad River (Connecticut)

Regarding the length of Mad River

Despite considerable efforts, I was unable to find a single, published resource which explicitly stated the full length of the Mad River from its origin at Cedar Lake (on the Wolcott/Bristol line) to its confluence with the Naugatuck River. This is not particularly surprising since the river has historically been regarded as little more than a source of industrial might (and, at that, only its lower stretches in Waterbury have received any attention).

Since this is a fairly essential measurement for any river profile, I decided upon determining a rough length myself. I used Google Maps to trace a measured route along the path of the Mad River from its source to its mouth. The final figure at which I arrived was 11.09 miles. Since this is a fairly imprecise method of determining the length of a river, I rounded that length to 11 miles. I have resolved to qualify any reference to that length with words like "roughly" or "approximately"; I recommend any future authors do the same.

If anyone can find a published length for the entire river, I invite you to incorporate that data and supplant my own. —Jgcoleman (talk) 17:31, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

Regarding change of article title

@JHunterJ:: I noticed that you simplified the article title for this page from "Mad River (New Haven County, Connecticut)" to "Mad River (Connecticut)". I wanted to briefly mention my reason for using that longer title.

I had considered using a simplified name when I originally published this article. However, I ended up opting for the more complex name because there is actually another river known as Mad River which courses through Litchfield County, Connecticut about 20 miles to the north of the Mad River in New Haven County (to which this article refers). The Mad River of Litchfield County is mentioned in various articles on Wikipedia (such as the articles on Winsted, the Flood of 1955 and others) because it has played an important role in local history in its own right.

So, although there is not currently a dedicated page for the Mad River of Litchfield County, I thought that using the larger name for the Mad River in New Haven County would be helpful in preventing any confusion.

I don't feel particularly passionate about the matter and I'm content to leave the simplified title if you think that would still be a better fit. This does seem to me to be an exceptional case, though.

Any thoughts?

If another article is created that would introduce that ambiguity, then yeah, this can be moved back to the more precise title. But it should be at the simpler name until the other article is created, I think. -- JHunterJ (talk) 20:55, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

Alright, that works for me. I've gone ahead and taken a few steps to try and sort out related confusion in a couple other Wikipedia articles. There were a few instances in which dead-end Wiki-links to "Mad River (Connecticut)" had been added to articles which were actually discussing the Mad River in Litchfield County. At the time of their creation, the links didn't point anywhere, but merely served as cues for eventually creating a page for the Mad River in Litchfield County. Of course, once I actually created a page for the Mad River (but for the one in New Haven County, instead), all of these links to "Mad River (Connecticut)" automatically and erroneously began pointing to it. So, for anyone that visits this talk page looking for information on why I've removed those Wiki-links, you'll find your answer in the discussion here. The articles from which I've removed erroneous Wiki-links include: Hurricane Diane, Connecticut Route 183 and Connecticut Route 263. Jgcoleman (talk) 17:28, 26 January 2016 (UTC)