User talk:CaroleHenson/Byway guidelines

Comments and thoughts from Imzadi1979

Scott5114 mentioned Pierce Stocking Scenic Drive as an example. There are a few others from Michigan I've taken up the assessment scale that are worth noting that are applicable to the topic of writing scenic road/byway articles.

• Brockway Mountain Drive is a Featured Article, and it's been on the Main Page last year.
• M-185 (Michigan highway) is a state highway on Mackinac Island, and the only state highway in the U.S. were cars not allowed to drive. It is also a Featured Article, and it was on the Main Page just last month.
• Black River National Forest Scenic Byway, River Road National Scenic Byway and Whitefish Bay National Forest Scenic Byway are Michigan's three National Forest Scenic Byways, and the River Road is also a National Scenic Byway. All three are Good Articles.
• Last, and not least, is M-1 (Michigan highway), an All-American Road. This an A-Class article, which means it's also a Good Article. (We require any article nominated at WP:HWY/ACR to be a GA first, and promotion to A-Class supplements the existing GA status.)

Some thoughts from writing all of these articles:

• I approached the Route descriptions the same way I'd approach a plain state highway: by describing the path the road takes and the landmarks along the way. They can be a little heavier in quotations to outside sources and citations to non-map sources, but that's how you get around using Wikipedia's voice to assert an opinion. Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. Roads/New user orientation#Neutral point of view (WP:NPOV) has some advice on dealing with scenic roads that comes to mind.
  • USRD used to have a "Points of interest" section option for state highways. This was deprecated because a good route description should describe them already as landmarks along the route. Additionally, without specific sources, like the NPS pamphlet on the PSSD, there are neutrality or due weight issues with singling out POIs.
• I also approached the History section the same way as I would with a state highway: by noting the chronology of events that shaped the roadway, its routing and its designation(s).
  • Sometimes a roadway is purpose-built as a scenic road, just as a state highway can be designated on brand-new roads.
  • For articles on most state highways, like M-553 (Michigan highway), there will usually be some back story from before the roads were designated as a state highway, just like there will be some back story from before roads were designated a scenic byway.
• As noted elsewhere, a scenic byway can still use a junction list, as all of the examples listed above have them.
  • PSSD's POI section serves as a surrogate junction list, but it's also built on the MOS:RJL standard.
  • Loops can have junction lists, just look at M-185 for one example. In that case, a zero mile marker was specifically designated. For Lake Superior Circle Tour, I just picked an arbitrary point and went counter clockwise from there.
  • Named roads with multiple numerical highway designations are already handled the same way as single-designation highways. We just have to note where the designations change.
• I'm big on always including the appropriate portals. Portals need to be visible to get viewers, and I've found that the Michigan Highways portal gets decent page view stats compared to individual articles because it is so well linked.
• The roads projects are opposed to the use of coordinates and prefer the use of {{Attached KML}} instead. A KML will draw a line on a map to indicate the full route of a highway, and the coordinates template singles out one point to represent the road. The KML should be used whether or not an article has an infobox, and it's required to pass A-Class Review for the projects.

Sections outside of the standard Big Three will be more appropriate on scenic byways.

• M-1 has its "Cultural impact" section. That section is about the same length as the RD, so it's appropriate to pull that much content into one section.
• Brockway Mountain Drive has its "Scenic opportunities" section. I consider this a good adjunct to the other sections for use when you can't easily note POIs as discrete locations along the route of the road. All of Brockway is good for birdwatching, star gazing and wildflowers, for example. If the scenic opportunities were a bit more specific to single spots, I'd have woven then into the RD like the PSSD article.
• Or you could get M-185 where the RD lent itself to subsections and I could use a "mini-lead" for these topics that applied to the whole road. I could have given it a "Recognition" section like Brockway Mountain Drive's, but the single paragraph for M-185 that fit in with the mini-lead. (I dislike one-paragraph sections the same way I dislike one-sentence paragraphs.)

OK, the short version of everything above: a good article on a scenic byway still follows the same basic formula as a good article on a state highway. The difference is a subtle matter of what is emphasized, and the byway articles will focus on details related to the designation as a scenic byway. Sometimes you'll work all of the touristy stuff into the Big Three, and sometimes it will work better to pull some of it out into separate sections. Regular state highway articles can have content at the upper assessment levels (GA, A, FA) that warrants splitting out less-standard sections as well. Imzadi 1979 → 12:54, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

User talk:Imzadi1979, To ensure that I'm understanding what you're saying:

1. There are more examples of scenic byways.
   1. I used the examples for the three optional sections that you added. Done
   2. Would it be nice to broaden the range for examples to other states and countries, like National Tourist Routes in Norway and it's sub-articles or other articles that branch from Wikipedia:WikiProject Highways#Recognized content?
2. Additional optional sections are: Scenic opportunities, cultural impact and recognition. Done
3. For scenic drives NPOV issue, provide: See: Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. Roads/New user orientation#Neutral point of view (WP:NPOV) Good example: Pierce Stocking Scenic Drive
4. See also sections should include portals from Portal:Roads or sub-portals that begin with "Portal:Roads in", like Portal:Roads in California or Portal:Roads in Australia. Done
5. For route descriptions, add describe the path the road takes and the landmarks along the way. Done
6. For "Points of interest", it sounds as if you're saying that section should be removed, is that right?
7. Roads / Byways
   1. Are you saying to duplicate the information about major junctions that is in the road articles, where there is/are separate road articles?
   2. Are you saying to duplicate the information about the history of the roads that is in the road articles, where there is/are separate road articles?
   3. If so, how do we come to consensus about replication of information? (Scott provided two different approaches for roads/biways that I've pasted into the "definitions" section of the outline and I'm guessing that there are others who share his opinion as there are likely people who share your opinion about always including a junction list in a byway article.)
8. For coordinates use {{Attached KML}} instead the coordinates template. A KML will draw a line on a map to indicate the full route of a highway, and the coordinates template singles out one point to represent the road. The KML should be used whether or not an article has an infobox, and it's required to pass A-Class Review for the projects. Done

Thanks for your detailed input!--CaroleHenson (talk) 15:10, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

Some quick replies:

• You're going to run into issues trying to broaden any standards beyond the US. The Highways project does not have much in the line of standards. Any attempt to port standards over to the projects for Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, India and the UK will involve five separate, and different, discussions to deal with the current differences in standards that exist.
• The portals aren't actually named "Roads in X"; those are redirects from a failed move proposal, and those redirects may end up deleted.
• Honestly, the best course of action would be to add the bit of byway-specific stuff to WP:USRD/STDS instead of creating a separate page of guidelines. Everything overlaps so much, and pretty much the only things that deviate much are the more touristy sections. However, we don't list all of the possible sections that might appear that aren't standardized yet. We don't have "Historic bridges", "Memorial highway names", etc in there now. We might just craft a paragraph that lists possible sections that might appear on a case-by-case basis. This paragraph would cover byway and non-byway sections in total. The rest could then be a copy edit to clarify things as to how they apply both to named byways and numbered highways. Imzadi 1979 → 04:01, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

User talk:Imzadi1979,

I am guessing that you have not seen on the main guidelines page:

"The following is an outline for scenic, historic, archaeological or geologic byways for U.S. Roads. Many of the standards for U.S. Roads apply to byways. Where there are differences, the items are highlighted in beige"

And the message that I posted on the WP U.S. Roads page:

I have updated the outline significantly by narrowing the scope to U.S. Roads - and providing links to sections of Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. Roads/Standards where it appears that here are no differences for scenic roads.

Where there are differences, such as history, route description, sources, etc. those sections are highlighted in beige. I've drafted some approaches, such as naming articles of byways and combined road / byways. It's my rough stab at the language as a novice. It would be great to get your input to see if I'm close to being on track.--CaroleHenson (talk) 23:36, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

The first two items are moot points. Rolling the scenic byway specific items into the existing standards sounds like a wonderful plan.--CaroleHenson (talk) 05:57, 16 August 2014 (UTC)