Talk:China National Highway 106

Article issues

This is an unsourced article (tagged since December 2009) and the accuracy of content is in doubt. While there are images that contain the highway numbers, as well as the km marking, there is an embedded list with many km notations that is not supported by sources with links to articles that are not only likewise poorly sourced but don't mention this subject.

That the highway exists is probably not in doubt but if nobody is watching this article to provide some sourcing I am going to remove the embedded list and return this to a short stub so the tags can be removed. Otr500 (talk) 10:47, 4 November 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for your message. I am not the person who created numerous articles about various highways - I just added a few photos to this one - but let me try to analyze the issues one by one:

* For the list of cities through which the road runs, any good China atlas, as well as online maps such as Baidu Maps or Google Maps can serve as a source. If you feel that it's necessary, I can add the data of an atlas I have as a reference to the table.

* For the kilometers numbers (i.e. which city is at which kilometer mark), finding a reliable source may be a bit trickier. There is no doubt that the agencies responsible for the construction and maintenance of the National and Provincial Highways in China keep track of their mileage very precisely. Just like with US Highways and State Highways in the USA, not only kilometer posts are put at every kilometer, but also the locations of specific objects (bridges, construction projects, road closures, etc) are reported in fractional km, e.g. a fairly typical notice 车主必看！106国道南林至洪港段禁止大型车辆通行的公告 ("Attention drivers! National Highway 106 will be closed to large truck traffic between Nanling and Honggang") identifies the affected section as being from km 1360.200 to km 1384.200（里程桩号K1360+200—K1384+200), and identifies the location of Nanlin No. 1 Bridge by means of the position of its central pillar at km 1427.634 （中心桩号K1427+634). Once I am at this, I should mention that occasionally the physical road length changes (e.g. because a new tunnel has shortened it, or because a bypass has been built around a town and has been designated as a section of the National Highway, instead of the town's main street); as such changes accumulate, the DOT (or whatever it's called in China) may decide to re-number kilometer posts along the entire road, and you sometimes can see new posts next to the removed old ones. At any rate, I don't have a printed source that identifies the kilometer positions of every city along the road (my provincial atlases just put a number mark every 20 km or so along each national hwy), but driver advice web sites have the numbers. E.g. this page 国家干线公路查询 (National trunk road query) gives the numbers for city positions along the road the same way our Wikipedia article does, from Beijing 北京 at 0 km via Tongshan 通山 at 1423 km to Guangzhou 广州 at 2466 km. While I can't vouch for the provenance of this site's data, they seem to be fairly complete and correct; e.g. their main page for the natoinal highways, https://tools.2345.com/jiaotong/guodao.htm , seems to have links to a table for each one, and they all seem to make sense. It stands to reason they just loaded the data from some database published by the DOT or a similar agency. It would of course be better to find an official source, if anyone cares. If you really do, you may raise this issue at the talk page for the main article, Talk:China National Highways.

* Specifically, about the photos I uploaded - well, pretty much any user contributed photo we have (e.g. any photo of any town, village, national park, etc) has to be accepted at the contributor's word (that s/he really took the photo in the town or park s/he says he did), unless there are reasons to think otherwise. In the case of this highway, I snapped a few photos along this road in southern Hubei in 2008, and uploaded them to commons:Category:China National Highway 106. I kept the last 4 digits of the file name generated by the camera in the name of each image, so that at least one can see they form a sequence, and I tried to get mileposts, signs, etc into frames whenever there were some to be seen. For this specific junction, I went slow enough through it to be able to take 3 photos, and I linked the other two to commons:File:TongshanXian-G106-G316-junction-0018.jpg (under "other versions"), and expanded the descriptions of each one to describe the important signs. One can search on the name of this junction 贾家源, on Google Maps, and it will show where it is (much like the coordinate link in the Commons page shows). The sign inside the junction itself (shown in commons:File:TongshanXian-G106-G316-junction-0019.jpg) shows that I was coming to that T-junction from the west, and the left turn was toward 黄石 Huangshi, to the right, toward 南昌 Nanchang, just as the map would tell.

Regards, -- Vmenkov (talk) 16:25, 4 November 2019 (UTC)

Vmenkov: WOW! Thanks for taking the time to give such as detailed reply. My critique of the specific image simply lies along the point of fact that if the actual subject of an image is unclear then use on an article can be questioned. I am not arguing against the use of the image just giving a suggestion when adding photos.

When I read an article I always see if there are improvements and possible expansion especially on lower class articles and in areas I work such as roads. Like you, I would prefer a primary "official source" over a dubious one.

Images can be uploaded to commons with no problems. They are considered Self-published. They can be argued against on the enwiki for many reasons that include being too vague or appear to be just presenting artistic work or being simply decorative. I generally don't worry too much about it unless it does not enhance the article at all, is some totally unidentifiable picture, or violates other policies and guidelines for inclusion. You can see an example in the image at Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Images#Choosing images. The location is clearly evident but the scope is not clearly defined. In the mentioned image the subject is the road but the beautiful mountain view grabs attention first. My suggestion was that pulling a little tighter shot on the road and toll booth clearly provides scope as well as image identification and relevance. That was really all I was referring to.

The image with the caption "Combined G106/G316 forms the main street of many villages in Yangxin County, Hubei" includes "many villages" but is obviously a specific area. The image gives the view of buildings, the mountains in the background, and a little view of a road. It is a good image but when I see it (as well as other readers or editors) there needs to be a connection between the image and the article. This is lost because the image is clearly about the "buildings" and there is no content in the article to tie the two together so it can be seen as just a picture drop. From your detailed reply I can see that is not your intention so was just pointing these things out.

I look at things like the embedded list in the "Route and distance" section and links. Most of the listed "cities" do have links in the lead of the articles to this article, with some exceptions like Xincai County (Henan), so some content concerning the road can be added there giving value to the link. I only add to a lead what is found in the body of an article (summary) so would not just drop a link there.

You mentioned your photos ("photos I uploaded") and that pretty much any user contributed photo "has to be accepted at the contributor's word". This might be true on commons but would be a misconception of thinking as far as article inclusion. You added examples of "any town, village, national park, etc" and many times these would be self-identifiable. A photo of a mountain would likely not be argued against but can be, as you pointed out, if "there are reasons to think otherwise". A main thing to remember is that the burden of proof of verification is on those adding content because it is not expected that "One can search on the name of this junction" for verification. If you have coordinates for a photo I would think adding it to the description a good idea. Anyway, thanks for the pictures. When someone is in another country it does add value to be able to look at photos. Otr500 (talk) 14:23, 6 November 2019 (UTC)