Talk:Jacksonville Skyway

POV

It has also been argued that the Skyway was a scam to gain large amounts of money through taxes related to the projects and payments from the contractors, especially in light of the undisclosed millions spent to build only a few miles of track.

Argued by whom? This sounds like conspiracy-theory level POV to me.```` —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.1.199.36 (talk • contribs)

Country specification

The specification of what country this is in is not necessary, and is especially abnormal for names of places in the United States. dcandeto 17:46, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

It's a standard on Wikipedia. Not everyone lives in the U.S. If it's "especially abnormal for names of places in the United States", it's only because U.S. editors assume everyone knows the names of all 50 states. --NE2 23:01, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Actually, if you'll look around, you'll see that it is, in fact, not the standard to include the country name, unless you are talking about the place itself (for instance, in Jacksonville, Florida, reference is made to the fact that it is in the United States, but such a reference is absent in Jacksonville University, and properly so). The country name is normally left off for U.S. states and Canadian provinces, unless they are the subjects of the article themselves. Accordingly, the country name does not need to be specified in Jacksonville Skyway, and can properly be removed. dcandeto 02:10, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

Hello, All.

A practice's commonness or rarity matters only so much. What matters more is the usefulness of information and the convenience of access to it.

While Florida is probably likelier to be known, than unknown, in the rest of the world as being part of the United States, is the same true of, say, Nebraska? No. Instead of assuming that everyone knows that this state or that state is a part of the U.S., the courteous, logical, fair thing to do is, at the first mention of a U.S. state in any article, mention also that the place designated by that name is part of the United States. Surely, we would expect the same for a mention a Nunavut (Canadian territory), Styria (Austrian province), Dumfries and Galloway (in Scotland), Anbar (Iraqi province), Haryana (Indian state), Queensland (Australian state), Mokhotlong (district in Lesotho), Cleveland (English county abolished in 1996), etc.

If a reader doesn't already know that Florida is in the United States, the reader has to follow a link to find that out.

We can reasonably apply to the United States the same "Specify geographic location up to the level of country, but don't bother so much with hemispheres and continents" standard that works well and courteously for mentions of locations in other countries.

President Lethe 04:08, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

The Jacksonville Skyway is not a place. The only articles that consistently (more than 4% of the time) include place names up to the country are themselves place names (Jacksonville itself, or Duval County, for instance). This is not just true for Jacksonville, but true for all the articles I've been able to find that deal with U.S.-based subjects. The article on Jeb Bush does not mention anywhere in the beginning that he is a U.S. politician, just a former governor of Florida. We should also include the fact that the U.S. is a country, and that it is on Earth, in case people don't know. dcandeto 07:20, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

Hi, dcandeto.

Jacksonville is a place. So is the Skyway: it includes a fixed route over which a vehicle moves; this route is fixed to the Earth and spans miles of it.

Again, this is not about consistency with some other articles that are also illogically lacking in certain basic information.

Let's all remember to steer clear of sarcasm, especially in editing articles themselves.

Mentions of U.S. places deserve the same treatment that is logically applied in the better way of mentioning non-U.S. places. (And mentions are more than just articles named for specific places.)

Thanks for pointing out the shortcoming in the Jeb Bush article, though. I'll add the missing info. Every time I come across such an omission, or get word of it, I fill in the extra detail.)

President Lethe 20:54, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

Jacksonville is a place. The Skyway is not, has not ever been, and will not ever be, a place. Duval County is a place. Florida is a place. Transit systems are not places. We'll see how much flak I get for regularizing placenames to City, State/Province, Country, as you say should be done. The fact that I'm having to do it to a great many articles belies the notion that country name is standard when state or province is mentioned, but I will give you the benefit of the doubt. dcandeto 21:35, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

Hello again.

In my head, any term that can be given as an answer to "Where are you?" or "Where is it?" (e.g., "I'm on the Skyway", "I left my wallet on the Skyway") is a place.

I hope people don't give you flak, and I'm glad you're helping to insert country names at first mentions of most sub-country-level places, to help establish geographic context for readers unfamiliar with those places' locations.

Just to clarify: I agree with you that most of Wikipedia's mentions of U.S. places don't include country locators; but, as you correctly ascertain, I think many that don't should.

I also should clarify my own position that this doesn't necessarily have to occur in every single instance. For example: in the Jeb Bush article, which I edited after you brought it to my attention, I set the U.S. context in the article opening by mentioning that Florida was in the United States, but I didn't go on to write "in the United States" after that article's mentions of other U.S. states, such as Texas.

The first time an article brings up a location that is in a country, or each time it switches to a previously unmentioned place in a new country, there should be mention of the country; but, when no international shifts are occurring, countries needn't be mentioned every time.

For example: "Person X was born in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in the United States. At age 11, X moved to Albuquerque. [No repeat of "New Mexico", because we haven't yet mentioned any other states.] At age 23, X moved to Long Beach, California. [No repeat of "United States", because we haven't yet mentioned any other countries.] Three months later, X went to visit London, England. [England is mentioned (even though it's probably most readers' expectation for London), because the London mention is the first mention of a second country.] While there, X decided to tour Darlington. [No repeat of "England", because we haven't mentioned any non-England places since mentioning London.] Afterwards, X returned to Long Beach via London. [No repeat of "California" or "United States" for Long Beach, because its state and country locations have already been established; no repeat of "England" for London, because its country location has already been established.]"

President Lethe 03:33, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Articles on individual stations

Please do not perform massive changes on the article and related articles without discussing them first. Keeping the stations separate is consistent with just about all mass transit articles on Wikipedia (see Toronto, Montréal, New York, Miami, etc. dcandeto 16:10, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

New edits to article

The new changes made to the article, including the new infobox and the table of stations should not be reverted. Please make sure that all editors assume good faith when editing the article. Reverting non-vandalized edits is not assuming good faith. These changes have only expanded the article and made it more detailed, therefore there is no reason for them to be removed. Unless the changes involve major article reformatting, there is no reason to have to discuss them beforehand, unless they are controversial in some sense. –Dream out loud (talk) 17:23, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

The changes do involve major article reformatting. Please discuss proposed major changes here beforehand. dcandeto 17:30, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Universal Mobility

This article is categorized as being a "UM people mover" which is a reference to Universal Mobility who produced monorails (one such version is the Monorail at Hersheypark). This article does not mention Universal Mobility in anyway, and for that matter, doesn't mention who produced it initially, only who refitted it. So, can anyone confirm who built it, and if it was Universal Mobility or not? Thanks. --Son (talk) 17:19, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

FSCJ vs. FCCJ

Based on the use of FCCJ in the article and FCCJ in the station article, I may have vandalised the text by changing FSCJ to FCCJ.

The use of the two names is inconsistent and confusing throughout the titles and content of articles discussing Florida State/Community College at Jacksonville.

I apologize for the confusion.

Someone needs to clear the issue up and make relevant changes to all wiki articles discussing FSCJ/FCCJ a main article should be made for each name of the institution with one linking to the current name where the entire article could reside. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.200.4.237 (talk) 18:47, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Individual station articles

There is one article per station, but I doubt any would pass a DR at this stage (WP:GNG, WP:EXIST, WP:OTHERSTUFF, etc). Most have very similar information that would be better suited in a more generalised history section, and each station dealt with in the main article. Something very similar has been done at Light Rail in Sydney (see Inner West Light Rail) and I suggest it would improve the article. I thought I should post something on the talk page before doing anything, noting that there was a similar move/discussion about 6 years ago, however, in that time policies for inclusion have changed. What are the thoughts of other contributors? Liamdavies (talk) 15:49, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

I've always thought that would be a good call. After they had sat with no improvement for many years I rewrote most of them recently, and their current state contains literally all of the material I could find for them. However, for whatever reason it does seem to be the common practice to have distinct articles for every train station, as in List of Miami-Dade Transit metro stations. Is there a pressing reason for that? For the most part they remain in as bad a shape as the Skyway articles were in. I don't object to the merge, mind you, but I do hope you find a way to incorporate the material I added from third-party sources as well as the info on the lines.--Cúchullain ^t/c 17:27, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

Are there any other examples of this format in use, specifically in the US? The Inner West Light Rail was a nicely written article, but I have not seen any other examples of that style page. Even other light rail lines in Sydney seemed to not follow the Inner West standard. Also, wikipedia links on Google maps help guide users to stations. Would a merger remove these icons on google maps? I do see the benefit of making pages for the lines instead of stations, with the Skyway being a small system. I feel like I've seen the simultaneous application of both formats in an attempt to define a transit system. I don't see pages as a bad thing as long as station pages are linked. These pages may be linked for multitude of reasons. A station could be included in lists, categories, rankings, news events, and media files, not to mention topics like architecture, transportation, sustainability, urban planning. The ubiquitous nature of the transit station infobox on almost all transit stations in the US would make me a little hesitant. Some kind of threshold would have to exist that states, transits systems with <# stations should have separate pages. Or should it be based on ridership? I feel like there are a lot of unknowns. Tell me what you think.Mathew105601 (talk) 23:14, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

Remember WP:OTHERSTUFF, just because other systems have separate articles doesn't mean this one does, and every article should meet WP:GNG, simply WP:EXISTing isn't sufficient to warrant a page. All the existing articles would be redirected to the relevant section in this article, so both internal and external linking won't be affected. It isn't my intention to remove information, but simply to present it all in a more simplified holistic way, none other the articles are very large, so it would still only be a mid sized article even after the merger. And I think that this is one of the biggest considerations, systems with a huge amount of stations would be unusably immense if all stations were listed in the article, however, even then a separate article should still meet WP:GNG. I'm not out to change convention, only to deal with this article and it's handful of stub/start class stations articles that in my mind aren't needed. Liamdavies (talk) 08:51, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

As an additional comment I'd like to specifically talk about this comment "The Inner West Light Rail was a nicely written article, but I have not seen any other examples of that style page. Even other light rail lines in Sydney seemed to not follow the Inner West standard.", The Inner West Light Rail line is the only light rail line in Sydney, all others are heavy rail, so it isn't inconsistency, it's different systems. I would hazard a guess that due to the nature of Sydney's rail system (like most suburban/metro/rapid transit systems) multiple lines share stations, meaning that to have a section on the station in each line would require a huge amount of maintenance work (this would be another consideration as to if station articles should be separate or not). This is not the case with this article, it in fact would be easier to maintain if everything was on one page, remember that separate articles could be spun out later if sections or the article got to large. I am also solely using the Inner West Light Rail as an example of how all stations could be presented, not as an excuse of why this should be changed. Liamdavies (talk) 09:00, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

It's been almost two weeks, any more thoughts on this? Liamdavies (talk) 14:47, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

As I said before, I think this is probably good. I still don't know what justification is behind creating a separate article for every train station, regardless of available sourcing for them, but in the interest of creating the best possible encyclopedic coverage of this topic, I say go for it. It's not as if we can't still link to the stations and have them redirect here, or just restore them all if it's a problem. Again, though, I put a good bit of effort into cleaning up the articles with the amount of cited info I could find, so I'd appreciate it if that info were retained.--Cúchullain ^t/c 13:24, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

Also, I think the name of the article should be "Jacksonville Skyway". It seems to have been moved to the present title in 2007 on the grounds that it's the "official name",[1] but I don't see any evidence that it's more widely known. It's usually just called the "Skyway", both by JTA[2] and the local press. Of course that won't work because of the other Skyways, but "Jacksonville Skyway" is more common on Google Books than "JTA Skyway" (114 hits vs 64; most of the latter are Wikipedia knock-offs). The Florida Times-Union has had 33 stories referencing "Jacksonville Skyway"[3] compared to 10 for "JTA Skyway".[4] Since people outside of Jacksonville won't know what JTA is, I think "Jacksonville Skyway" will be more recognizable for readers.--Cúchullain ^t/c 15:14, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

After seeing no objection for five day,s I went ahead and moved the article to Jacksonville Skyway. If it does prove controversial later we can have an RM then.--Cúchullain ^t/c 18:49, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for doing the move. I'm still waiting for Mathew105601's input before carrying out the merge, but if I don't hear anything in the next week or so I'll probably start work on it. Liamdavies (talk) 10:11, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

It's probably not what you want to hear, but I still disagree with the move to one page. If I was given an example in the US of such a change I would be willing to say yes. My suggestion is to pose the question to other similar systems in the states, for example Detroit or Miami. I would see what kind of feedback those systems produced. This a democracy and I'm on the losing side, but I think do diligence is still important. Positive responses from those two systems would give you a more powerful mandate to change more smaller systems to one page and possible set a format for future use. I like the name change. Jacksonville Skyway makes much more sense. It's not the MTA Subway, it's the New York Subway. Good job Cuchullain. Mathew105601 (talk) 14:31, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

Mathew105601, it doesn't really matter what other structure systems have. The question is should this system have a dozen or so stubs, or one large comprehensive article? I understand you disagree, but saying that we shouldn't change because others aren't changing is a little circular. We are not a democracy, we are a collaborative project that is based on consensus and policy. In this case there is no policy that I know of, so we should make a pragmatic decision on what to do here. I still don't see the point in a bunch of little disparate pages when all the information would build a better picture and overview of the system (if I may use that term) in one article. It is for this reason, and not precedent (which doesn't matter, can you please read or at least acknowledge WP:OTHERSTUFF so I know that you're not simply ignoring it?) that I have suggested this merger. Are there any content or accessibility based objections that you have to the merger? Or is it primarily because other systems have separate pages for stations? Liamdavies (talk) 14:45, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

I understand your argument. I highly disagree that precedent doesn't matter. It sounds like you are hell bent on this change. Do as you please, but it does not have my blessing. Sorry. Mathew105601 (talk) 16:25, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

I'm not hell bent, I just don't see any compelling reason to maintain the status quo, I'm open to having my mind changed. But to be brutally honest, as far as I can tell your argument is simply that other systems have separate station articles, so this one should too. It's hardly a compelling argument, you must have something more. As I said, a merger wouldn't affect links through google maps or from other articles, so the 'web' would be maintained. Liamdavies (talk) 17:37, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

It seems that the practice of having distinct articles for every train station, regardless of their independent notability, is the work of members of WikiProject Trains. There may be a reason for this, but I'm not seeing it. And in my limited experience with project members, it appears they do some things that aren't in line with the wider policy and practice on Wikipedia, for instance insisting on parentheses in article titles when they aren't needed for disambiguation (cf here, here and here). I'm reaching the conclusion that articles for independent stations have more to do with one project's arbitrary internal norms than what makes for the best encyclopedic coverage or better fits Wikipedia's usual standards. As such I don't know how much stock we should put in the precedent if it conflicts with providing the best coverage of the Jacksonville Skyway. It's certainly the case that no one bothered to source or clean up any of these articles (and hundreds like them for other systems) for many years, and what's there now is literally all the information about them I could find.

As such, I say let's go ahead with it, if there's a problem with it I'm not seeing, we can change it back then.--Cúchullain ^t/c 19:47, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

Done, all content has been merged here, with the old pages made redirects. Liamdavies (talk) 09:22, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

So what's next? Are you going to do this to all the Port Authority Trans-Hudson stations too? Hey, why not the entire New York City Subway system, or every other rapid transit system in the world? ---------User:DanTD (talk) 12:58, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

Why not indeed? Could you illuminate the reasons every train station needs an article, or am I correct in suspecting that this is just an internal WikiProject Trains convention? I think Liam has done a good job in actually doing article work.--Cúchullain ^t/c 13:08, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict)This isn't about setting precedent, or a template for other systems. It was just that in this case the system article and station articles were simply quite small, and one larger article can better inform readers. Port Authority Trans-Hudson and the station articles are more substantial, to place all the content in one article would be far to large, and NYC subway is just absurd - not even comparable. And, must I reiterate that precedent isn't really why or how things get done here, and generally falls under WP:OTHERTHINGS, may I direct your attention towards WP:STATION, specifically: "There are many thousands of railway and subway stations. The question is sometimes raised as to whether one of these places is notable enough for a standalone article. Wikipedia:Notability says: 'A topic is presumed to be notable if it has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject.'" Liamdavies (talk) 13:17, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

Word. It seems my suspicions were correct, that this is just an arbitrary TWP convention that has no real reasoning behind it. And I'm not putting much stock in the words of someone who comes in with that unhelpful attitude, especially when they've never made a single constructive edit to these articles as far as I can tell.--Cúchullain ^t/c 17:57, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

How it could look

Hi all, below is a prototype of what I'm thinking (yes I know the coding is somewhat lazy), some of the text may be moved elsewhere compiled with other articles (there is a bit of overlap), but as a concept what do you think? Liamdavies (talk) 06:55, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

It looks good. The headers for individual stations should be second level (===Rosa Parks Transit Station=== instead of first level, otherwise it should be fine. As an aside, this is the one station I wouldn't mind seeing keeping its own article even if the others are merged, as it's also the city's main bus station. But obviously it should have a section here too.--Cúchullain ^t/c 16:01, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I was going to nest them all under "Stations", but thanks for the reminder. I think you've given some good reasons as to why Rosa Parks Transit Station should remain separate, so it won't be merged. I'll start on the others soon. Liamdavies (talk) 06:55, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

Good work, Liam. I've been going through and working on the sections; turns out there's more redundant info than I even thought. More reason this merge was a good call.--Cúchullain ^t/c 13:08, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

Rosa Parks Transit Station

Northbank Line      Southbank Line
Layout	Opened	Transfer
1 island platform 2 track	1997	JTA Bus (18 bays)
Location
201 Union Street West, Jacksonville 30°19′59.67″N 81°39′31.63″W

Rosa Parks Transit Station is an intermodal transit station in Downtown Jacksonville, Florida. It is operated by the Jacksonville Transportation Authority and serves as Jacksonville's main city bus station as well as a station on the Jacksonville Skyway elevated people mover. It is located on Hogan Street between State Street and Union Street, and is the Skyway's northern terminus. It is across the street from the Downtown campus of Florida State College at Jacksonville.

The station was built in 1997 to serve as both a new bus station and the northern terminus of the new north-south segment of the Jacksonville Skyway. Construction on the Skyway extension began in 1993, and coincided with the system's switch from Matra to Bombardier Transportation technology. The station became operational on December 15, 1997.

As Jacksonville's major bus transfer point, the station features eighteen bays for city buses. Bus transfers are made on the ground level, with the Skyway element on the elevated platform. Highly regarded among intermodal stations in transit circles, Rosa Parks Transit Station has won awards for its architectural design.

Revisiting the station coverage

Over two years after it was completed, I think we should revisit the question of covering all the Skyway stations at this page. I supported the measure before, but I'm afraid as the article expands (and hopefully, as the Skyway expands in the future) it will continue to clutter the article. I'm thinking of reworking the section as just a summary of the stations and the line without all the other info, and moving the main info elsewhere. This could entail moving to a separate article, or moving back to individual articles (which remains standard on Wikipedia). Unfortunately, the person who headed the consolidation, Liamdavies, has retired from Wikipedia. Mathew105601, do you have any input?--Cúchullain ^t/c 17:42, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

Yeah, it shouldn't have been "F"ing done in the first place... Lol, I'm kidding of course. After my opinion was overshadowed I was actually quite content with the changes. I would say my goal on Wikipedia is to emulation and standardization. Whatever structure Miami Metromover or Detroit Peoplemover use should take precedent. That is not to say that other transit system's wiki formats couldn't be applied. I agree that I would like to see an expansion of the actual Skyway system. Mathew Stilwell (talk) 23:16, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

The risk there is emulating stuff that's bad to begin with. That's definitely the case with these station articles: at some point, a small group of people decided that every single station in the (English speaking) world should have a separate article, which resulted in creating thousands of permastubs that no one ever bothers to improve. There's really no good model to follow. I think Liam did a very nice job merging in the station articles, but as more sources come in on the Skyway, it's going to get very cluttered in short order. This is a problem that's only going to continue.

In the interest of providing the best possible coverage of the Jacksonville Skyway, I'd like to move out the station material and replace it with a summary. Unfortunately, that means moving out a lot of the good work. I can think of two ways of doing it: either creating a fork with all the same info, or restoring the individual station articles. The former would probably be the better bet, but there's really no good model to follow there and it could result in creating a lot more work for very little payoff. I think in the short term, at least, restoring the old articles will save the most time, and we can discuss other options later.--Cúchullain ^t/c 03:06, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

Ok, Mathew105601, I went ahead and restored the station articles to get ready to work on the section here. At some point we may want to merge them all into a standalone article on the stations, but I don't want to put that much work into a bunch of stations instead of the main article. They will need to be updated, including the templates: for one thing Jefferson station (Jacksonville Skyway) had to move as there's another Jefferson Station in Philadelphia. As such the template links are broken. Also, per WP:USSTATION (which didn't exist in 2013), all articles follow the format "Xxx station", with "station" decapitalized, and when necessary they're disambiguated by adding (Jacksonville Skyway).

I'm not sure JTA runs the lines the same way they did in the past, with "Northbank" and "Southbank" lines. I can't find any reference to it on their website.--Cúchullain ^t/c 16:44, 8 January 2016 (UTC)