Talk:U.S. Route 385 in Colorado

notes on original SH 51 alignment

• Roads M-49, K-51 to Stonington (diagonal at state line by 1936)
  • original alignment until 1926-1927 turned twice more, going via Wentworth rather than Lamport; this may have been Roads M-52-S-49
• Roads X-44, Stonington to Walsh
  • until 1931-1932 turned twice more, probably on Roads X-46-AA-45 bypassing Walsh to the east
  • appears to have used Illinois-Maplewood-Colorado-Santa Fe in Walsh
• Roads 45-RR-38, Walsh to county line
• Roads 21-N-22-R-25, county line to Granada (diagonals south of Granada by 1936)
  • originally used Roads 21-N-25; changed by 1936 (but doesn't show up on state maps until 1940)
• Road 24.5, Granada to county line (diagonal south of county line by 1936)
• Road 66, county line to Sheridan Lake
  • may have originally used Roads 66-N-67; changed by 1936
• Roads R-66-Y-65, Sheridan Lake to county line
  • may have originally taken more turns out of Sheridan Lake and then used Roads 66-V-65; changed by 1936
• Road 45, county line to Cheyenne Wells (stairstep south of Cheyenne Wells apparently until paved in 1961-1963)
  • appears to have used used Roads 45-M-44 until 1924-1927
• Roads 44-DD-48, Cheyenne Wells to county line
  • 1923 only shows Roads 44-GG-48, probably erroneously
• Road 48, county line to Burlington (diagonal south of Burlington by 1936 - but why do 1930s state maps show a jog the other way?)
• Road 49, Burlington to county line (some diagonals near county line by 1936)
• Roads FF-9-DD-19-CC-26-GG-30-HH-33-HH.5, county line to Wray
  • may have originally used Roads HH-33-JJ south of Wray; if so it had been changed by 1936
  • moved east to current alignment in 1939-1940
  • appears to have been moved to Road HH all the way into Wray in 1942-1946; had previously followed Blake-7th-Main
• Roads HH.5-HH-39-GG-42-FF, Wray to county line
  • diagonal immediately north of Wauneta by 1936
  • current alignment in 1937-1939
  • not clear when it was realigned to use HH out of Wray
• Roads 43-10-39, county line to Holyoke
  • moved west to current alignment in 1937-1939
• Road 39, Holyoke to county line
  • diagonal at Road 38 in 1937-1939
• Roads 39-4-45, county line to Julesburg
  • appears to have used Roads 24-47 until about 1936 (1923 map shows it ending at 2 (Road 32.5) south of the South Platte; 1924- shows it crossing the Platte to Julesburg)

Most of this is probably too minor for the article. --NE2 00:50, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

Regarding the reversion of my edit

My recent improvements were blindly reverted under the guise of reverting the citations, even though that reverted many other formatting fixes that brought the article into better MOS compliance (non-breaking spaces, full state named in links so non-American editors who don't know the difference between NE and NV can read the full state name on mouse-over, etc).

1. I supplied full author information for several of the sources, details which were missing previously.
2. In some cases, citations were missing proper publication years/dates
3. In all cases, it was unclear if a source was citing an entity as the author or the publisher because they were using a non-standard citation format that was not APA, MLA, Chicago, or our in-house CS1 style. Per policy, it is allowable for an editor to impose a single, known, citation style when the style used in the article is unclear.
4. No online citations were listing their accessdates, which combined with full attribution of authorship, publication and other details is needed to combat WP:Linkrot.
5. In the case of one footnote, a proper page reference was lacking. The appendix of that book uses "a-" followed by lower case Roman numerals, but the citation previously pointed to an un-prefixed Latin number as the page, which is a totally different page in the body of the book. Yes, someone should be able to figure out it was referring to the page in the appendix because of the URL used, but such sloppy citation can be confusing, and we should be better than that.
6. The remaining citations that have not been touched need to be broken apart into separate footnotes; footnote 8 needs to be broken into 20 separate citations so that the details of each paper map are clear for those wishing to verify the details by obtaining their own access to those 20 maps. Footnote 12 needs to be broken into two separate citations for the same reason.

The article has been improved, and those improvements should remain. Imzadi 1979 → 21:06, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

Citation templates

As the author of this article, I oppose the added clutter that they bring. Don't add them per Wikipedia:Citation templates. --NE2 21:46, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

Are you going to address the fact that you reverted many other valuable and useful additions in your petty smiting of the templates? Also, are you going to address the fact that you have incomplete citations missing information and using a confusing format? Imzadi 1979 → 21:57, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

I disagree strongly about random nbsps all over the place being a valuable and useful addition, and the other stuff looks like random formatting choices that add little if any. You have thousands of existing articles to apply your style to. Why go after ones that are being created now? --NE2 22:02, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

The subject of the article, and its abbreviation, should appear in boldface text in the first sentence of the lead. If alternate names also appear in the lead, especially if there are redirects until those titles, they should also appear in bold. The national US 385 article is already linked in the hatnote, so it does not get relinked in the lead sentence.

Non-breaking spaces are valuable because they keep the alphabetical and numerical portions of a highway designation from appearing on different lines separated by a line break. They are not "random", but rather applied in specific situations.

The notes in the junction list column should start with a capital letter. They may be sentence fragments, but so are most photo captions, which also start with a capital letter.

We really should never link to locations using their postal abbreviations in place of the full state name. We can pipe the link to display the abbreviation, or omit the state, but we should always link to the full state name. Not all of our readers are Americans. Even those that are may not remember all 50 state postal abbreviations. (My college geography professor, with a Ph.D., uses "CN" for Connecticut on our quizzes and exams as well as bungling several others, and he was born here in the US.) By linking to the full state name, a reader can hover his/her mouse over the link, and the tooltip will pop up with "Boise City, Oklahoma" even if the link says "Boise City, OK". (Note, if the article, like this one is specific to a single state like Colorado, the links to any locations in other states are supposed to contain the state's abbreviation per WP:USRD/STDS.)

The citations are incomplete, and they're not providing enough information so that an editor can location paper copies in libraries in necessary to verify the information being cited. The lack of complete citation information also does not allow a reader to make an informed judgement about the reliability or suitability of the sources as they are presented. If you don't like the templates, then how about we use fully formatted APA, MLA or Chicago style citations so at least the reader can tell who the authors/cartographers and publishers are, as well as tell when the works were published under their proper titles?

Wikilinks in citations should only be used once, and not repeated in successive footnotes. This complies with the spirit behind WP:OVERLINK. In other words, only footnote 1 needs a link to the CDOT article, and the department's name should be unlinked in foonotes 2, 4, 8, and 15. The census should not be relinked one line below the first link.

Overlinking dilutes the value in directing our readers to the links that are important. We give them too many targets to click on instead of the ones that provide them with value. In the case of references, that's any links to the source material, as well as links to authors/publishers so readers can gain that extra information to evaluate the source.

Your last edit summary to the article said to "bugger off", but using that language causes me to dig my heels in a bit. You're now stuck discussing this with me until we reach a mutually agreed solution. Imzadi 1979 → 22:32, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

I'm not even reading this wall of text. Bye. --NE2 22:37, 19 November 2013 (UTC)