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What to do with former routes

We have a number of articles on former routes; some of which are in need of a junction list. A couple old US Highways that I've worked on have old maps showing the route, but only have distances labeled between major points, and not every junction. I could use Google Maps to find the interval mileposts, but that's introducing a level of precision that's finer than on the map. And that's only if the route hasn't been broken up by new construction.

So, how should we handle these? Fill out the table as much as we can? Omit the mile/km column? Bulleted lists à la national routes? –Fredddie™ 05:44, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

I would fill out the table as much as possible. Generally you can find mileposts if the route's been decommissioned recently. If not, then just omit the mile/km column. Sometimes (like U.S. 66 for example) it may not be practical to include a table since the route was decommissioned so long ago; then don't worry about it. --Rschen7754 06:27, 7 September 2011 (UTC)
There's no reason not to rely on Google at that scale. By tenths of a mile you may start to see some issues. For routes that are broken up by modern bypasses, use the linear measurement tool. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 13:57, 7 September 2011 (UTC)
Are you talking about the scale at the bottom corner of the map? Otherwise, I have no idea what you're talking about. –Fredddie™ 22:17, 7 September 2011 (UTC)
I agree with Floydian. A tenth of a mile is 528 feet, which, in highway terms, isn't all that precise. I would fill out the table as much as possible. If the table is missing some numbers because the source doesn't include them, that's ok too. Imzadi 1979 → 18:21, 7 September 2011 (UTC)
Comment: I wouldn't try putting in distance data for highways that were decommissioned too long ago under some circumstances, unless you had a definitive source for these. Relying on old maps and online mapping may not take into account reroutings and realignments that occurred. A hatnote should possibly be placed above the table saying that the distances in the table are based on data that existed at a particular point in time. Depending on the length and history of the route, a bulleted list may be better for this section--giving the general course of the most major junctions only.-- LJ ↗ 19:25, 7 September 2011 (UTC)


Question: Does {{jcttop}} have a parameter to disable display of the mile/km column? -- LJ ↗ 19:25, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

No, it doesn't. Imzadi 1979 → 19:39, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Deletion of coordinate column on M5 article

I deleted a new-added column of coordinates from the artcile M5 motorway. An objection was written to my User Talk page. A debate started on that page, which I feel is better continued here. The debate to date reads:

Text copied from User Talk:Martinvl

As I think you know, there is no consensus one way or another in the RJL discussion. There clearly is no space consideration in the M5 table; and separate columns for coordinates is pretty much a de facto standard for tables, as a perusal of the following links demonstrates. I could point you to a couple of thousand more such tables, but you get the drift. Some members of highways projects may want to play silly buggers over this, but fortunately they do now own the articles in question. On wikipedia, we are about providing the best service for our readers. Our readers are not best served by providing partial information where the complete picture can be provided with nil downside. I trust you will reconsider you position, or else point me to settled policy or guidelines forbidding such information. --Tagishsimon (talk) 23:23, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Neither is there any consensus for excluding a coordinates column, period, in MOS:RJL. No matter how you spin it. I refer you to the second paragraph of WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS. --Tagishsimon (talk) 00:17, 14 September 2011 (UTC)
Then clearly you haven't read the discussion on the talk page, where almost everyone except you and PigsontheWing has made it clear that they don't want a separate column. Showing us a list that is composed entirely of non-road articles, save for two in which the junction list is not the table in question, proves absolutely nothing. Multiple editors have spoken, but feel free to break WP:3RR. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 01:38, 14 September 2011 (UTC)
It's good of you to infer that I would wish to break 3RR. Your good faith overwhelms. I would rather you read para 2 of otherstuff, and also Wikipedia:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS#Precedent_in_usage, and explain why none of this affects road junction lists. There is - to my perception - a long history of your side ducking all discussion and insisting that no consensus means no consensus to do stuff you don't want done. --Tagishsimon (talk) 01:49, 14 September 2011 (UTC)
I've read all the relevant discussion; and there is no consensus either way, as was pointed out to you more than once in recent weeks. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 19:38, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

Continuation of debate on WP:RJL page

Please add any further comments here. Martinvl (talk) 06:18, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

If you go back to the subsection Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Road junction lists#cases you can get a feel of the areas where there was consensus. There was certainly consensus that one should not tag every junction. Martinvl (talk) 06:24, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Agreed. --Rschen7754 06:38, 14 September 2011 (UTC)
Poppycock; not only was no such consensus demonstrated; but it was explicitly stated - when I questioned the way it was being conducted - that the discussion had not been notified to interested parties, as it was "a brainstorming session that goes on before a proposal is written, commented on, and put up for a vote" (not that we have votes). Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 19:50, 29 September 2011 (UTC)
Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Road_junction_lists#Cases is where the very clear consensus emerged for NOT tagging every junction. There was consensus that tagging the 5 to 10 most important junctions, should consensus emerge to tag the article at all, is permissible. Either way, per WP:BRD, the onus is on you to convince the greater number of editors who oppose your stance to join the lesser number who approve of it. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 20:16, 29 September 2011 (UTC)
Please read what I wrote immediately above, which refutes your false assertion. In the light of such bogus claims; and the similarly ridiculous claims made in edit summaries on the M5 article, I've raised the matter at DRN. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 20:21, 29 September 2011 (UTC)
Regardless of whether it was a vote or brainstorming session or loose collection of thoughts, it shows a pretty obvious consensus. You were and still are well aware of that table, so please neutrally bring in more editors through DRN to make it legit.... though I fear that no matter what the result, it will only be appealed to the next higher level of resolution. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 20:33, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

Should a key to a table precede the table, or follow it?

Should a key to a table precede the table, or follow the table. The discussion is here. The discussion relates to tables not on road junction lists, but on baseball awards lists, but the only discussion I could find of the issue was at this MOS, so I made reference to it in that discussion. Feel free to correct me if I got the discussion at this MOS wrong, or somehow you feel it does not apply.

Thoughts would be appreciated, at that discussion, if you have any in either direction. Thanks.--Epeefleche (talk) 00:26, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

M23 revocations (18 Nov 2011)

I have revoked the last two additions to the M23 article because the Junction List had become too cluttered. For a start, space was constricted because of images that overran into the RJL area. Then, in spite of consensus saying that coordinates shoudl not be in their own column, one editor shoehorned such a column into place. Another editor then added mile conversions to the kilmetre readings, leaving them all in the same column, making it difficult to read either. Both editors forgot that whatever we add, it must be done in a manner that is useful to readers.

I strongly oppose having miles and kilometres in the same column, as do most others (I believe), likewise I think it overkill to add coordinates for every junction. I invire the respective editors tp put their case on this page and not to clutter up an alredy full RJL.

Martinvl (talk) 14:36, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

1. Move the images to give space for the table. 2. RJL offers no advice on how to handle coordinates. It is the RJL page tat binds, not your perception of discussion in talk:RJL. You forget that miles and coords are useful to readers. That's why they're being added. There are cogent reasons for providing coords for every junction, not least in terms of giving the user the full choice, not merely a choice from the subset you deem approved; and in producing GeoGroupTemplate links to google & bing. The tables in question havd 3 or 4 columns: there is not a width issue, fullstop. You may think it "overkill", whatever that means, but you might want to have sufficient humility to understand that other do not; and if there is not an overriding reason to ban coords, you would be better advised to acquiesce to the addition of more content, than trying to be the dead hand on development.
Ideally miles and km should be in seperate columns, but it's not the crime of the century to have them in the same column. There are other equally or more ugly parts of the sanctioned RJL advice: centred numbers, rather than right justified, for instance (someone totally missed numbers in table 101 to come up with that bogus justification); or the ragged left justification in description columns caused by the US road marking shields. It's not easy to understand why you swallow these beams whilst complaining about the flecks. --Tagishsimon (talk) 14:50, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
I think we have been quite clear about the consensus regarding no coordinate column; certain editors just refuse to accept that consensus. --Rschen7754 14:51, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
The evidence that you do not have that consensus is a) the RJL page still says there is no consensus, and b) subsequent to the lastg discussion here, you, iirc, went to dispute resolution and got no consensus there. If there was consensus, neither of these would apply. All that there is is a small caucus uninterested in coords that is determined to stop those who are interested in and can made a valid case for coords.
I've already made a suggestion elsewhere that we use the UK motorway articles to experiment to see whether anyone but the caucus has a problem with coords. I wish you had the confidence of your convictions, that coord column are beyind the pale, to see if in practise this is the case. I wish, too, that you'd address the other issues I noted above. Right now you all give the impression that you're suffering from complaisency about the designs you have come up with, and a not-invented-here reaction to anything you have not. --Tagishsimon (talk) 14:58, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
WP:There is no cabal - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 15:01, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
There was no problem with image display on my machine, nor, presumably, on Tagishsimon's. This sounds like an issue local to an individual machine's settings. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 17:53, 20 November 2011 (UTC)
Martinvl, miles are essential information on UK road article (see WP:UNIT) - they are not "clutter". -- de Facto (talk). 17:40, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
I know this has been discussed in the UK. I don't remember what the conclusion was. --Rschen7754 17:43, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
File:A38DriverLocationSign km415.jpg
A driver location sign
The rationale to use miles on British road articles is because British road signs, by and large, are in miles. However, Driver location signs (see picture to the right) have been erected at 500 m intervals and as British RJL reflect strictly what is displayed on the road signs themselves, the figures on the DLS's should be catalogued as displayed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Martinvl (talk • contribs) 18:26:42, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
No, the rationale is that the British people use miles. That the driver location signs use location numbers (with no units displayed on the signs - so drivers don't actually know they're from kilometres) that happen to be kilometres is irrelevant. {{convert}} can happily convert the km to miles. The choice is miles and km or miles only for British articles - km only is not an option. -- de Facto (talk). 18:33, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
In that case, why not just have the numbers that appear on the driver location signs with no units attached? However, adding a "km" is little extra effort and has the added bonus of giving readers a lot more information about what the number mean, which in turn means that they might actually use the signs and should they have to call the emergency services, they are better primed as to what should be done, or are you into censorship? Martinvl (talk) 20:36, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
"km" is not on those signs because the numbers aren't kilometres - they are arbitrary units that just happen to equal 1km. Even if they were kilometres that would make them less efficient. The purpose of the signs is that they be readable at speed and contain the minimum amount of information necessary to provide the emergency services with to location of an incident (i.e. the motorway, the carriageway (or slip road), and the point on that carriageway). Because of the way human brains work, the less information there is to take in the more likely it is to be remembered - motorists don't even need to know the units are a distance. Thryduulf (talk) 15:23, 20 November 2011 (UTC)
Well... if they are equal to a kilometre than they represent the kilometric distances along the highway. I think you guys should focus a little less on exactly duplicating signs, and more on providing the useful information to readers. It doesn't matter if we present it in a different way, as long as the data is correct. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 16:06, 20 November 2011 (UTC)
I've proposed a "best of all worlds" method below - please see what you think about that. -- de Facto (talk). 20:44, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
"in spite of consensus saying that coordinates shoudl not be in their own column" - There is no such consensus. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 11:07, 20 November 2011 (UTC)
WP:BRD. Everytime you are bold, you are reverted. Now discuss, or don't, but you certainly are NOT going to get your way without compromising with the far greater number of editors who do not approve of your personal opinions. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 16:04, 20 November 2011 (UTC)
You appear not to understand BRD (which includes warnings that "BRD is not a valid excuse for reverting good-faith efforts to improve a page simply because you don't like the changes" an "BRD is not an excuse for reverting any change more than once"); and to have forgotten that we've already discussed this ad nauseum; and the only refusal to compromise is yours. Your reference to numbers of editors shows you also continue to fail to grasp that Wikipedia is not a democracy, and we don't do voting. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 17:42, 20 November 2011 (UTC)
Keep thinking that. You'll just get reverted, and by far more editors than me. Learn to take a hint Andy, nobody agrees with you except your buddy Tagishsimon. I'm fucking tired of your logical fallicies and complete lack of regard for standard debate process. YOU AREN'T GETTING YOUR WAY! MORE PEOPLE DISAGREE WITH YOU THEN AGREE WITH YOU. IF YOU CAN'T GRASP THIS CONCEPT, THEN GO START AN RFC OR AN ARBCOM. Until then, you are outnumbered. Deal with it. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 17:53, 20 November 2011 (UTC)
QED Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 17:56, 20 November 2011 (UTC)
You're right. What has been demonstrated is that without compromise, you get 4 months of circuitous discussion and nothing changes. What will be demonstrated is the reversion of two editors who cannot accept any opinion but their own. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 19:41, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Location of discussion

Question: why are changes to the M23 motorway article being discussed here with no notification on its talkpage that this is happening? -- de Facto (talk). 17:36, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

This effects road articles in general. Some editors have just taken it upon themselves to ignore the larger voice and do what they want anyways. M23 is affected in this latter sense, but the discussion is not limited to that article in any way. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 17:43, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
And why no notification there - as a courtesy to those watching there but who may not watch here? I've added a notification there myself now. -- de Facto (talk). 17:59, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
Because that basically means we have to spam every single UK roads talk page. --Rschen7754 19:29, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
Surly you only need to put a message on the talkpage of any particluar article being discussed - Talk:M23 motorway in this case. There may be watchers of that article who do not watch this page, and who deserve to know its contents are being discussed. It's a matter of common courtesy really. -- de Facto (talk). 19:39, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
If you check the comments made when I reverted the coordinates and the miles simulataneously you will notice that I invited discussion on this page, partciularly as the issues at stake, as Floydian rightly points out, are issues that affect every RJL in Wikipedia. In particular the coordinates issues has been going on for some time. Martinvl (talk) 20:36, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
Acknowledged. But a message on the talkpage would have been more obvious, rather than just burying it inconspicuously in the edit summary. -- de Facto (talk). 20:42, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

WP:LINEAR

Just a comment, but I invite a few editors to answer a simple question for me. In the draft guidelines for geotagging linear features, it states at Wikipedia:WikiProject Geographical coordinates/Linear#Options that the last option for an editor to consider is "No coordinates". Look, I'm at a point where I could care less how the UK highway articles are formatted, but I'm frankly very tired of certain editors telling us (the collective group of "roads editors") that we MUST bow down to their wishes and add content that we, in our editorial judgement, do not feel is needed. At this point, we have two FACs being disrupted by a debate about coordinate tagging when there are other facets of the FA Criteria to consider on whether or not the articles meet the bar that's been set. The debate over coordinates, which is really a minor detail in the grand scheme of all of the detail covered in an article about a 300-mile-log (480 km) highway, which won't even be resolved at the FAC because that discussion affects more than that article, should be held in a proper forum.

We have no obligation under any policy nor any section of the Manual of Style to add coordinate tagging at this time. If Pigsonthewing and Tagishsimon feel so strongly that these articles need them, start a site-wide RfC at an appropriate forum and present a case for the community to consider. Should the community decide that we need to add them, then I'm sure that the interested editors here will work to come up with a solution on implementation. I will then reluctantly run through all 200+ Michigan highway articles and add coordinate tagging in a few days' time, case closed. But until there is a requirement in policy or the MOS, editorial judgement is allowed to decide that details are not needed.

As for distances, I've noted below that US articles will be switching to a format that lists both columns at some point in the future. Tony1 posted here earlier this year inquiring about requiring such a thing, and the compromise was to require a footer with conversion equations. Well, with some work, the templates used by USRD are being amended to generate the converted values, and a core template has been developed to speed expansion of {{jctint}}-style templates to Canada. MOS:RJL, like the rest of the MOS should not require specific templates, just specific output. I would support continuing using two columns for the UK, and honestly, all of the world going forward as the simplest solution. Imzadi 1979 → 03:57, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Suggested method for adding kilometres as well as the mandatory miles to British junction lists

As WP:UNIT (and common sense) dictate that UK-related articles must give at least miles for all distance information, and as it seems reasonable to include the km values too for the benefit of readers who prefer that unit, and as some editors are unhappy with the use of the standard WP:UNIT method of incorporating secondary kilometre measures (the "mile (km)" method) in the table (see the M23 discussion above), and as we seem to need (for some reason) 2 location distances for some junctions, and as it seems ridiculous to do the conversion externally or duplicate data or add the information manually, I suggest we adopt the following method of using the available powerful functionality of the {{convert}} template to help keep everyone happy!

M23 Motorway
km mile Northbound exits (B Carriageway) Junction Southbound exits (A Carriageway)
27.4 17.0 (Road continues as A23 to Croydon)
Croydon A23 		J7 Crawley, Gatwick A23
Non-motorway traffic
(Start of motorway)
28.2 17.5
30.5 19.0 Reigate, Heathrow Airport, Oxford, Sevenoaks, Maidstone, Stansted Airport, (M3, M4, M40, M1, M20, M11), M25 J8 Heathrow Airport (M4) , Stansted Airport (M11)
Maidstone (M20) (M3, M40, M26) M25
31.0 19.3
42.7 26.5 Gatwick Airport, Redhill, Reigate A23 J9 Gatwick Airport, Redhill, Reigate A23
43.1 26.8
45.8 28.5 Crawley A2220
East Grinstead A264 		J10 Crawley A2220
East Grinstead A264
46.1 28.6
48.8 30.3 No exit J10a Crawley B2036
49.2 30.6
53.3 33.1 (Start of motorway)
Crawley A23
Non-motorway traffic
Pease Pottage services 		J11
Services 		Brighton, Crawley A23
Horsham A264
Pease Pottage services
(Road continues as A23 to Brighton)
53.8 33.4
Data from driver location signs are used to provide distance and carriageway identifier information
1.000 mi = 1.609 km; 1.000 km = 0.621 mi

Are there any views or opinions on adopting this approach? -- de Facto (talk). 20:38, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

Yes - Please engage brain before you engage keyboard. This is roughly what is already on the project page, except that the example on the project page also include a way of incorporating coordinates of principal junctions (instead of all of them). Perhaps you should read up the project page before leaping into a discussion. Also, if you read the project page, you will see that there is no consensus as to how coordinates should be handled, except that they should not have a column of their own (which is one of the reasons why I revoked the coordinate column on the M23 article). The consensus towards the way shown on the project page is essentally one of "We don't support it, we don't object to it, we would like to see it in action". (I trust that this is a fair summary as I developed the approach).
Going forward from here, the example that Defacto produced above used the whole screen - I have no problem with that, but when images interfere with the RJL, there is a problem. May I suggest therefore that whoever wants to add a "miles" column to a RJL where space is limited is responsible for first ensuring that there is enough space. I will continue to oppose the addition of a coordinates column on grounds that it makes thing too cramped.
BTW, we should also try to ensure that both destinations columsn are of equal width. Martinvl (talk) 20:54, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
Martinvl, there is no choice about the miles for British related articles, it is the kilometres that are dispensible. I've offered a solution which incorporates kilometres too. The base template I used is from the RJL page - with one extra column to allow kilometres. The coords and width issues are exactly the same with this one. Are you going to support it? -- de Facto (talk). 21:03, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
Are we talking about the same thing? I am talking about this page to which I will give my support with the proviso that before anybody adds columns to the RJL, they must ensure that there are no pictures or other clutter that will reduce the width of the RJL. Martinvl (talk) 21:18, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
That's the base template I used - yes. The only differences with mine are it uses {{convert}} to do the work of providing the 2 columns (hence the col order " km | mile " - convert won't do it the other way), it accommodates the "from - to" distances for junctions and my assumption that the 'mile' column is mandatory as per WP:UNIT. Do you support my proposal (BTW there are no optional extra colums to give it extra width)? -- de Facto (talk). 21:41, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
Do you really need "from - to"? Generally it's okay to just take the centerline. --Rschen7754 21:48, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
I have no problem with swapping the miles/kilometres columns - if only DeFacto had made it known that this was his contribution I would not have made the comments that I did make.
The use of the from-to distances is historic - one can pay the Department for Transport loadsa money and get a CD ROM (which is what the Satnav perople do), or one can write begging letters and somehow an in-house EXCEL spreadsheet showing fromn-to data will miraculously appear on one's computer :-). (Some UK RJLs have centre points instead). I believe that the data on that spreadsheet matches the data on the CD-ROMS (hence WP:VER is satisfied as the data is public and can be verified publically as well). I have done a sanity check on a few data items myself when driving. Martinvl (talk) 21:57, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
Rschen, I don't see why "from - to" is necessary, but it already exists in the M23 article - and I'm not arguing against that. Obviously if we omit it the whole thing will be that bit more elegant. -- de Facto (talk). 22:19, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

As a side note, we're planning on updating the templates used to general junction/exit lists in the US and Canada in the coming months to generate a kilometer column automatically from a mileage input (and vice versa). The changes have already been coded, but before the templates are updated, we need to revise how some articles deal with inputing the values. (For ranges, the second number needs to be input as a separate parameter for the conversions to work properly, and other non-numeric characters need to be moved from the mile column). The benefit is that articles using the templates will list both measurement systems. Americans reading about Interstate 19, which is marked in metric will get mileages for the first time in the table among other things. You can see how it will look at template:jctint/testcases. Imzadi 1979 → 00:29, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Table format: right justification of columns of numbers

I should like to propose that WP:RJL advocates the right justifies columns of numbers such as miles, kilometers and exits.

I understand the orthodox approach to laying out tables or columns of numerals is to right justify the numerals and use consistent decimal places, presumably to aid comprehension. (What is the orthodoxy is not the easiest subject matter to search on, as it happens, but for instance, this advice from MSDN regarding text boxes: Right-align numeric text whenever: *There is more than one numeric text box. *The text boxes are vertically aligned.*Users are likely to add or compare the values.[1] and this search indicates support for right justification. Currently RJL examples show center justification of miles, kilometers and exit numbers. My first thought on seeing RJL compliant lists is that they are typographically illiterate; I make the presumption that at least some other readers will conclude likewise. Thoughts? What are the downsides to right justification? Why does RJL center justify numerals? ==Tagishsimon (talk) 01:16, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

The templates for the US and Canada already right-align the mileages, but centers exit numbers. We switched the mileages, for the same reasons you advocate, several months ago. We center the exit numbers because so many are suffixed, so you'd have 4, 5A, 5B, 6 in places. If the non-templated examples need updating, that's fine by me. (Of course, like most of the MOS, we don't have any explicit or implicit requirements to use any specific templates so long as the end results are compliant.) Imzadi 1979 → 01:40, 9 December 2011 (UTC)
Yup. The Highway 402 example and the M5 example in the RJL pages have left and center, respecively, by the looks. --Tagishsimon (talk) 01:48, 9 December 2011 (UTC)
The templates that we use only work in the U.S. We're working on bringing them to Canada, but it's a slow process. --Rschen7754 01:52, 9 December 2011 (UTC)
(ec) Hwy 402 could be converted to templates, if you ping Floydian (talk · contribs) since Ontario is moving to them. He's worked with Fredddie (talk · contribs) to build a core template behind the various RJL templates we use in the US to make them extensible to other jurisdictions. In the interim, you have my blessings to update the wikitable coding to right-align distances and center exit/junction numbers. Imzadi 1979 → 01:55, 9 December 2011 (UTC)
{{Jctint/core}} is very close to being able to be used anywhere, even the UK! Right now the only issue standing in its way is the use of primary topics. (US cities are almost always constructed [[City, State]] and that's just not the case in the rest of the world.) –Fredddie™ 02:15, 9 December 2011 (UTC)
I'll update the 402 example once I get to template-ifying more articles, which should be in the next couple weeks. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 03:50, 9 December 2011 (UTC)
It's looking like USRD will be doing a secondary drive to convert at least all of the upper-class articles to templates, and try to get as many of the rest switched over for consistency and compliance. We'll be working on cleaning up existing template usages against the newer standards so articles don't break when the second distance column is activated at some point. (That could partially involve clarifying this guideline to allow it.) As for why RJL center justifies, it doesn't. The UKRD-style formatting does, and that was never change a year or so ago in the attempt to harmonize the divergent standards to be closer to each other. Imzadi 1979 → 03:54, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Table format: headings

Still on an orthodoxy trip, I'd like to propose that WP:RJL advocates that tables should have headers which describe the content of the tables, as the M5 example almost does. I appreciate that RJLs are normally found beneath a section header ==Junction list== but for me it is axiomatic that the table will indicate what it is a table of, so that its contents can instantly be appreciated without reference to a secondary cue. I envisage a title of pattern: XXX junctions, so, M8 Motorway junctions, A1043 junctions, Oklahoma State Highway 88 junctions, etc. --Tagishsimon (talk) 02:38, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, I oppose this one. The heading is already enough. Plus, with table notes above the table, it would look really odd to have "The entire highway is in Foo. All exits are unnumbered." and then "M-2 major intersections" at the top of the table. Imzadi 1979 → 02:50, 9 December 2011 (UTC)
Oppose. What other junctions would be listed in the Oklahoma State Highway 88 article? --Rschen7754 03:00, 9 December 2011 (UTC)
Oppose as well. Seems redundant. –Fredddie™ 05:04, 9 December 2011 (UTC)
Support. This is an MoS and WCAG accessibility requirement (so I've notified the accessibility project). It's perfectly possible to formulate wording which doesn't repeat the section header; perhaps using the word "features", since we often list things which are not junctions. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:02, 15 December 2011 (UTC)
Oppose, redundant. No accessibility requirements are broken when I use a screen reader with any junction lists - They read the section header, the hat note, then announce that there is a table of data, then read the data left to right, top to bottom. Deaf and blind are covered, we can't help dumb. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 15:46, 15 December 2011 (UTC)
Note Freddie's comment, below about WCAG. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:25, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
Indifferent, If there is something woth saying that does not appear in the notes, then it might well be appropriate to have an introduction, but it shoudl not be mandatory. BTW, I would still like the junction list itself to be in a template so that it can be printed off, much like the list in the Basingstoke Canal article, but when I tried that a month or two ago, I was outvoted. Martinvl (talk) 16:27, 15 December 2011 (UTC)
Support as WCAG accessibility requirement. Not sure where I'd report this, but the Oklahoma State Highway 88 junction table has another accessibility issue, as column one does not have the required row headers on each row, and the header for the last three rows is merged. Miles would make a more accessible first column. Thisisnotatest (talk) 08:29, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
I'm reading through WCAG 2.0 and I'm not seeing this requirement anywhere. What section is it listed? –Fredddie™ 16:53, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
Never mind, I found it. –Fredddie™ 17:12, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
And are you still opposed to Tagishsimon's proposal? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:23, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
Tagishsimon's proposal is not the same as the accessibility concerns, so yes, I am still opposed. I may be swayed, however, with examples that pertain to the original proposal. –Fredddie™ 18:35, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
I dunno. I find it hard to believe that you read H39: Using caption elements to associate data table captions with data tables but cannot agree that a proposal that tables should have headers which describe the content of the tables, is about accessibility. --Tagishsimon (talk) 22:37, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
Worst proposal I've seen on Wikipedia to date. What else would be in a table in the junction list section, a table of exotic cheeses? —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 02:43, 23 December 2011 (UTC)
In what way is a proposal that seeks to bring RJL tables more into line with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 and Wikipedia:DTAB#Data_tables the "Worst proposal I've seen on Wikipedia to date"? Can you explain, please. --Tagishsimon (talk) 22:37, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
He did: It's redundant repetition. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 22:39, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
So what for you is the status of the WCAG standard and our own MoS guideline in respect of (as they phrase it) table captions? Do they just not apply to RJLs? Why? --Tagishsimon (talk) 22:43, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
Any junction list table will be directly below a heading titled "Junction list" or "Exit list" or similar. That labels what the table is. Duplicating that just makes the article read like it was written by fuckwits that like to say the same thing over and over again. Come on now, whoever wrote this standard wasn't thinking of situations where a table is the only content under a header, they were thinking of situations where a table was amidst running text. This is an attempt to solve an accessibility problem that doesn't exist.—Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 22:25, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

RFC on coordinates in highway articles

There is currently a discussion taking place at WT:HWY regarding the potential use of coordinates in highway articles. Your input is welcomed. --Rschen7754 01:31, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Needs work

This "guideline" is way off WP:ACCESS (e.g. use of colour, symbology, MOS:DTT), and its examples are really poorly presented, with unnecessary capitalisation, failures to meet WP:DASH. Anyone presenting it as an example of "what to do" should think again. Can we work this out please? The Rambling Man (talk) 22:08, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Colour is permitted and this guideline follows WP:COLOR - any rows with a coloured background should have a note in the notes column that conveys the information, and the tables should have a legend at the bottom. I don't know of any use of symbology aside from the use of route markers, which are supplemental. Do you have some specific examples? - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 22:47, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
Well, there's the WCAG standard and MoS guideline on table captions we're discussing above, for example. --Tagishsimon (talk) 22:51, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
That is the one major issue I'm aware of, but there is a concern of redundancy there from many editors. Some of the examples may not have column scopes either ( a quick fix, and a result of copying them from articles with the intent of providing a worldwide perspective. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 22:58, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
I can only presume that the many editors were unsighted on our own MoS and on WCAG when they considered the matter. Its surely inconceivable that RJL curators would wish to set the table format against such guidelines and standards. Presumably they'd wish to move towards standards compliance? Wouldn't they? --Tagishsimon (talk) 23:13, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
As for capitalization, what deficiencies are there? Roadway names and designations are proper nouns, and directions are not.
{{Jct}} is used to produce the "<marker graphic(s)> <link(s) to intersecting highway(s)> en dash <destination(s)>" constructions, and it consistently uses spaced en dashes.
The slashes are standard notation for concurrent highways and MOS:SLASH specifies that "where a slash occurs in a phrase widely used outside Wikipedia, and a different construction would be inaccurate, unfamiliar, or ambiguous" it is an acceptable use. To change them out for a different construction would not be in keeping with how this is notated in the RSs.
This page requires that if the colors are used (they are optional), they must have a notation imparting the specific information in the notes column, and the table must have the color key in the table footer in addition to the conversion key. The {{jctint}} family of templates used by many articles that use the optional colors also generate a tooltip for that row with the explanation for the color, making a second method of imparting the information. Imzadi 1979 → 23:24, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
Capitalisation -> "M5 Motorway" should be "M5 motorway" (for instance). "(B Carriageway)" -> "(B carriageway)" (for instance). Slashes, who mentioned those (I mentioned dashes, perhaps that was what you were after – see the misuse of spaced hyphens in the last table here)? Colours, well you need to be very clear on associating colours with their wordy key, quite how you expect "Concurrency terminus" to be associated with "Exit not numbered for southbound traffic; I-275 joins I-96 and uses its exit numbers; cloverstack interchange with three loops" I have no idea. Nor would any non-expert in this field. Simply, it's not clear enough. You talk a bit about the {{jctint}} template, how do screen readers treat it? The Rambling Man (talk) 21:19, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
"I-275 joins I-96 and uses its exit numbers" means that interchange is a concurrency terminus, which is why that line is shaded the green color. When two highways join together, they form a concurrency (road), period. The fact remains that there are additional notes worth imparting there as well.
Thank you for the specifics. The overlooked hyphens in the Japanese example have been fixed, and the British example has had its capitalization altered, although that is something WP:UKRD will need to be told as well. Imzadi 1979 → 22:11, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
I still maintain that there is no way on earth that general readers will know that "Concurrency terminus" is associated with "Exit not numbered for southbound traffic; I-275 joins I-96 and uses its exit numbers; cloverstack interchange with three loops". It ain't happening. You need to consider the non-expert who may read this. As far as I know, in the UK, we don't have "concurrency terminus" nor do we have "cloverstack interchanges", certainly not in normal parlance. Notifying WP:UKRD is fine, but it underlines the fact that these style guides are really just hints and tips and haven't been thoroughly reviewed by the community or by anyone who understands the whole gamut of the MOS. It's a general problem but it's perpetuated by people claiming that these kind of guides are gospel. They're not, they're far from it. They may be nice advice but they need serious review against the fundamentals of the real MOS before they can be claimed to be used in anger. The Rambling Man (talk) 22:33, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
To be honest I agree about that term. That is why I've made a specialized version of the footer template just for Ontario that doesn't include it. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 22:36, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
" The fact remains that there are additional notes worth imparting there as well." not at all. The notes say something very different and non-experts (like me) don't get it. So it needs work. The Rambling Man (talk) 23:14, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
Or alternatively (as I've suggested), add the distinct phrase "Concurrency terminus" to the notes, and then say whatever it is you wish, that way everyone's a winner. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:49, 27 January 2012 (UTC)
Just to be clear, wherever a color is used, a note matching the color key at the bottom should appear in the notes column? For those states using junction list templates, this will be an easy fix. –Fredddie™ 23:18, 27 January 2012 (UTC)
Yes, that way there is no ambiguity and non-expert readers don't have to "interpret" the notes. The Rambling Man (talk) 14:01, 28 January 2012 (UTC)
Oklahoma currently uses {{ccr-end}} to generate the notes, which produces the text "Western end of US-70 concurrency" (for example). Is this not acceptable? If not, why not? —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 15:10, 28 January 2012 (UTC)
I am referring to this manual of style (the Interstate 275 example) which does not appear to do that. See above. How does "Northern terminus; freeway continues west as I-96, north as M-5 and east as I-696" equate to "concurrency terminus" to any non-expert reader? I have never discussed "Oklahoma". The "Ontario" article I have been looking at is manually coded, by the way. The Rambling Man (talk) 16:55, 28 January 2012 (UTC)
I'll update the Ontario example, but both the example here and the featured article candidate are now on templates, and should not have the concurrency terminus note in their footer (Ontario doesn't use that or the incomplete colours/keys) - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 17:41, 28 January 2012 (UTC)
Hey Rambling Man, if you've never discussed Oklahoma, I'm more than willing to discuss it with you; it's a pretty okay state! There is much to discuss about it. But seriously though, I was trying to see if you liked the output {{ccr-end}} produced to see if maybe deploying that template wider would satisfy your concerns. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 23:55, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

Route diagrams

Just wondering if any thought had be put into building these into articles. Could it work in with the junction lists table? They do similar with railways: Template:Railway_line_legend Other examples;

ShakyIsles (talk) 22:26, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

The main concern is that this fails WP:ACCESS; this isn't very accessible for those who are disabled. --Rschen7754 22:37, 15 February 2012 (UTC)
Personally, I love these diagrams, but as someone who attempted to create one a few years ago, they are entirely unwieldy for even an experienced user. Unless someone came up with a set of templates with English syntax, I don't ever see them being deployed en masse on roads articles. –Fredddie™ 01:45, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
While it looks neat, it appears to simply be some of the information in the junction list table displayed in a graphical form. The table conveys more information in a slightly more compact format, while being more accessible. I don't really think we would be adding much by implementing these. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 13:04, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Proposed edit to template:jct

To all interested editors: I have proposed an edit to the protected template {{jct}}. It is a minor edit that simply passes {{{country}}} through to the subtemplate {{jct/statename}}, so that the subtemplate can differentiate between states that have the same abbreviation, namely Western Australia and Washington, and the Northern Territory and Northwest Territories. You can view the edit at the sandbox, and comment at the talk page. - Evad37 (talk) 17:18, 14 June 2012 (UTC) (Crossposted from WT:HWY)

This edit was done by WOSlinker (talk · contribs). –Fredddie™ 01:02, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

Proposed amendment to Special-case scenarios

Following on from the discussion at WT:WA, I propose the following be included in the MOS:RJL special-case scenarios:

  • In countries that have no common or official abbreviations, abbreviations must still be included. They should have a {{Tooltip}} to inform readers of the route type and number, and should link to a list of routes. The road name may appear without brackets, and link to the road article (if it exists). Note: Do not use these abbreviations elsewhere in the article, as per WP:MOS - Do not invent abbreviations or acronyms.

This amendment is primarily intended for Australia (although there may be other countries with the same situation). This is needed for four main reasons:

  1. There are very few articles on Wikipedia for individual routes in Australia: They are the exceptions, with nearly all articles for road names. This is because road names are much more important than route numbers, and in general a road will always be referred to by its name.
  2. Internal consistency: As per WP:MOS, "Consistency in language, style, and formatting promotes clarity and cohesion; this is especially important within an article". As all rows in the exit/intersection list table will have road names, it would be inconsistent to use brackets for roads that have a route allocated, and no brackets for roads without a route allocation.
  3. Readers' experience: The road names need to be links so readers can go to those articles with one click, rather than through a disambiguation page or a list of road routes. Brackets should not be put around road names because, from an Australian perspective, if anything should be in brackets, it should be the route abbreviation. (Note: I am not advocating to put route abbreviations in brackets, this just follows on from #1 above)
  4. Provide consistency across Australian road articles. Without the above amendment (in some form), I would anticipate editors (including myself) formatting to suit the Australian situation as per Wikipedia's fifth pillar and Wikipedia:Use common sense. This amendment would improve consistency (between Australian articles), one of the aims of the MOS. - Evad37 (talk) 05:29, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

Note regarding #4 above - I am definitely open to discussion about this proposed amendment, including its wording, and options other the ones I am proposing (if they address reasons 1-3 above) - Evad37 (talk) 12:54, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

A couple of problems I have with this:
  1. If there aren't that many articles on individual highways, by number, then don't link the numbers. Alternately, only link the number if the link is blue. Farm to Market Roads in Texas and County Roads in Michigan are linked only if the article exists, and County Trunk Highways in Wisconsin don't link at all. In the Wisconsin case, those roads are so rarely notable, the few that may be will be notable under a name and not the letter assignment.
  2. The parentheses around the name serve to separate the number from the name. Articles on North American freeways (which include all interchanges/grade-separated junctions) will include listings for unnumbered/name-only or even city-only junctions, yet no one has ever complained of a consistency issue with the names appearing out of parentheses when they lack a highway number. (See U.S. Route 131 for a FA where there are exits that have highway numbers, many others that don't, and at least one has at just the destination.) We're not dealing in consistency with just Australian articles here, we're dealing with consistency in all highway articles, so if we're going to eliminate the parentheses, we need to change that globally, because the situation of named roads without numbers and named roads with numbers appearing in the same table isn't unique to one country.
  3. That's never been an issue on my end. In short, whatever articles exist and benefit the reader should be linked; we've unlinked country road numbers but linked names. There's the the overlap of the named freeways in the New York City area where the number has an article as do each of the named sections; in that case the number and the name get links.
  4. Consistency is a good thing, but we need need consistency across highway/road articles globally as well. I guess I don't see this as something that's so country-specific.
I will say that my mind is changing on the tooltip/abbreviation issue, and I'm finding that I'm leaning against the tooltip in this case for a couple of reasons
  1. If the number were to be linked (because there is a link to a set index page/dab page present and the template displays blue links and suppresses red ones), we have competing tooltip behaviors at work. A link normally presents a tooltip to the article, but this would avoid that in favor of a generic expansion of the abbreviation. I'd rather not override the default in the case of blue links.
  2. If the abbreviations aren't common, then don't abbreviate. Ontario is sent not to abbreviate "Highway" as "Hwy" even though that's common enough; Arkansas uses "Hwy" though, so Australia wouldn't have to abbreviate, per se, but
  3. A good article always introduces any abbreviations used. U.S. Route 131 makes a point to include the "US 131" abbreviation in the first sentence. (After that, other US Highways are mentioned by abbreviated name only because the convention has been introduced already.) It also makes a point to introduce the abbreviation convention for a State Road in Indiana with "State Road 13 (SR 13)". Ideally if the abbreviations are going to be used in Australia, the prose should do the same.
That said, certain abbreviations are probably second nature to me. SR=State Route or State Road in many parts of the US, so if I were to see it, it wouldn't need to be explained. At the same time, we've strived to make sure that our better articles introduce those abbreviations properly and use them consistently for others.
I guess in this case, I'd unlink the SR 3, remove the tooltip, spell out the designation/number if it's judged to be uncommon as an abbreviation, and leave the name in parentheses. If the abbreviation is judged to be ok, then I'd make sure that the article is specifying, and using it, in prose. If the prose isn't going to use it, then don't abbreviate it. Imzadi 1979 → 14:03, 20 June 2012 (UTC)
I'd like to point out that I've always felt that the parenthesis convention is actually one of the strong points of the RJL specification. Say you have two highways with names and numbers—RJL makes it easy to just do something like " SH-3 (Northwest Passage Highway) / SH-63 (Needless Highway) – Antlers". You can still include all the highway names, numbers, and destinations and everything is presented in a straightforward way to the reader. That said I do think it might be worth looking into an option for putting the road name first and the number second in parenthesis situations where that makes more sense, like " Aristocrat Highway (SR 13) – Bumcivilian". Australia is far from the only jurisdiction where names are more prevalent than numbers; Alaska comes to mind as another example. (This should probably be done on a by-state or equivalent basis, though; in Oklahoma, the Lake Hefner Parkway and Broadway Extension freeways are known more often by name than by number, but nearly every other highway in OK is known by number first, so even though the name is more common in that one instance it is better to refer to them as SH 74 and US 77 first for consistency's sake.) —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 16:28, 20 June 2012 (UTC)
I would be in favour of this suggestion - Evad37 (talk) 17:16, 20 June 2012 (UTC)
However, something would still need to be worked out regarding abbreviations (see below) - Evad37 (talk) 17:23, 20 June 2012 (UTC)
Some replies to the points Imzadi made
"If there aren't that many articles on individual highways, by number, then don't link the numbers. Alternately, only link the number if the link is blue."
I would readily agree to this. The main reason I suggested linking to a list is based on the current MOS:RJL, which states "When linking to highways, a commonly used abbreviation should be used for the displayed text for the link".
Do you think the wording of the current MOS:RJL would need to be modified to reflect this?
"The parentheses around the name serve to separate the number from the name ... We're not dealing in consistency with just Australian articles here, we're dealing with consistency in all highway articles, so if we're going to eliminate the parentheses, we need to change that globally"
If this is the purpose of the parentheses, then perhaps they can be put around the route number for Australian articles. Also, why can't MOS:RJL allow for regional differences? WP:MOS already allows for different varieties of English, and states that "An article on a topic that has strong ties to a particular English-speaking nation should use the English of that nation" - Is there any good reason why that logic can't apply to roads?
"That's never been an issue on my end. In short, whatever articles exist and benefit the reader should be linked; we've unlinked country road numbers but linked names."
Thanks for clarifying this. Perhaps this can be explicitly stated in MOS:RJL?
"If the abbreviations aren't common, then don't abbreviate"
Just to be clear, are you proposing that no abbreviations be used for route types? (as, (I would argue,) there are no common abbreviations for route types in Australia). This could lead to some very long entries in the table rows, ie:
National Highway 95 / National Route 1 / Tourist Drive 203 (Great Northern Highway)
- and that's the length without any destinations listed (to be clear, this is one road with three concurrent route allocations)
Regarding tooltips: "If the number were to be linked (because there is a link to a set index page/dab page present and the template displays blue links and suppresses red ones), we have competing tooltip behaviors at work"
OK, but then that leads either to the full name situation above, or to route numbers not being linked at all - which still isn't feasible (see below)
Regarding route abbreviations, "if the prose isn't going to use it, then don't abbreviate it"
I don't think the prose of any article of an Australian road is going to use uncommon, unofficial abbreviations, as that would violate the MOS regarding abbreviations: "Do not invent abbreviations or acronyms"
- Evad37 (talk) 17:14, 20 June 2012 (UTC)
The "commonly used abbreviation should be used for the displayed text for the link" is to specify that disambiguated highway names are to drop their disambiguation, either the "in Michigan", "(Michigan)", "(Michigan highway)", or "(Marquette County, Michigan)" of "U.S. Route 41 in Michigan", "Interstate 375 (Michigan)", "M-28 (Michigan highway)" or "County Road 492 (Marquette County, Michigan)" and similar, and since there are common abbreviations, to use them instead of "U.S. Route 41", "Interstate 375" or "County Road 492". (M-28 can't be abbreviated any more than its full name, obviously, but other states have longer names for the equivalent.)
I'm not personally convinced that this is on the same level as dialects of English. As well, one edge case doesn't redefine the situation. If most Australian highways were triple concurrencies, that argument might sway me, but the majority of the cases I've seen in articles so far are single designations, maybe two. {{Jct}} doesn't support octuple concurrencies because of the increasing complexity involved after the fourth designation, yet we have I-74/I-465/US 31/US 36/US 40/US 52/SR 37/SR 67 outside of Indianapolis. (I-69 is supposed to be added to that section as well to make a nine-way concurrency in a few years.) I don't see a need to make any changes into the guideline, just cases to refine how the templates are displaying things in the articles. Let's bring the articles up to standards/guidelines first and see if there's any changes needed. So far we haven't actually brought any Australian articles into full compliance with this guideline yet, and I'd like to see more done on that end first. Imzadi 1979 → 18:31, 20 June 2012 (UTC)
I think this situation is very similar to the variations of English (if not one itself), in that they are major differences between countries/regions. The example given in MOS of soccer vs. football is quite apt. Soccer is commonly used in America and Australia, football commonly is used in Europe, and Wikipedia prefers no major national variety. In comparison with the situation here: highways are commonly referred to by route number in America, by road name (and almost never by route number) in Australia, and yet MOS:RJL only allows "<shield icon> Route Number (Road Name)", not "<shield icon> (Route Number) Road Name" or "<shield icon> Road Name (Route Number)". Also, if the MOS:RJL means "highways should be specified without disambiguation", I think it should probably include that phrasing, for countries that don't use abbreviations. - Evad37 (talk) 20:41, 20 June 2012 (UTC)
Mitchell Freeway and Great Eastern Highway Bypass are now up to MOS:RJL current standards, but I am reluctant to change any more before sorting out these issues. - Evad37 (talk) 20:46, 20 June 2012 (UTC)
Overhead sign on the M25, United Kingdom showing road identifiers in parentheses

On British roads, parentheses have a special and consistent meaning, best explained with reference to the picture on the left. This picture is taken on the M25. If you leave at the next junction you will be on the A22 which leads onto the A25 (in reality you will drive about 4 km along the A22). If you stay on the main carriageway, you will be able to join the M20, M11 and A21 futher down the road. Martinvl (talk) 19:03, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

This is true, but it is already long established precedent that while we try to convey an accurate idea of what the signs we do not necessarily use all the conventions that are used on road signs. For example, we do not follow the US practice of setting directions in small caps (like "I-35 South") nor do we include "Route" in front of all highway types on Missouri-related articles like their road signs do (like "Route I-44 west").
If I am correctly understanding the meaning of the parentheses on the sign presented, it would be easy to clear up any confusion caused by different sets of parentheses by using the word "to", like "A22 – Eastbourne, Godstone, Caterham, Westerham (to A25)". This has the benefit of clearing things up for people not familiar with the UK parenthesis convention as well (an American reader would find the practice unfamiliar, for example). —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 20:38, 20 June 2012 (UTC)
Not quite right. Eastbourne, Godstone, Caterham are all on the A22. At Godstone, you leave the A22 and join the A25 for Westerham. (This sign does not tell that though). Martinvl (talk) 20:47, 20 June 2012 (UTC)
In that case, it should probably be something like "A22 (to A25) — Eastbourne...[etc.]" —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 22:21, 20 June 2012 (UTC)
I'd even be OK with "A22 – Westerham (via A25), Eastbourne, Godstone, Caterham". It's not in sign order, but if it were, it could potentially read like they were all via A25. –Fredddie™ 05:22, 21 June 2012 (UTC)
  • In countries that have no common or official abbreviations, abbreviations must still be included.
Can't say I agree with this. Abbreviations are seldom, if ever, used on Ontario road articles or by Ontario road geeks or engineers. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 23:02, 20 June 2012 (UTC)
While that was part of my original proposal, I now no longer advocate it, and several other things I wrote, so I am going to put a new proposal below - Evad37 (talk) 05:00, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

New Proposal

  • In regions that have no common or official abbreviations, do not use abbreviation, but still specify them without disambiguation.
  • In regions where roads are known by name predominately, rather than by route number, the road name may appear without parentheses and link to the road article (if it exists), as long as the route number is in parentheses.
    • For example, if a sign reads " Reid Highway / Midland", then the exit should appear similar to " (State Route 3) Reid Highway – Midland" in the junction list.

Alternative proposal

same as above, except:

    • For example, if a sign reads " Reid Highway / Midland", then the exit should appear similar to " Reid Highway (State Route 3) – Midland" in the junction list.

- Evad37 (talk) 05:00, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

By the way, the first point would go under the section "Highway link appearance" and the rest under the section "Special-case scenarios" - Evad37 (talk) 06:13, 21 June 2012 (UTC)
Discussion
I like the alternative better. –Fredddie™ 05:15, 21 June 2012 (UTC)
I also prefer the alternative (If it helps, btw, the sign can be seen via Street View here). Orderinchaos 15:50, 22 June 2012 (UTC)
Proposal by Scott5114
This is along the same lines as the alternative above but the wording is a bit more explanatory and changes the organization up a bit. The bit about names also codifies a few common practices that somehow haven't been written down anywhere.
  • Under "Highway link appearance" heading: Replace the section with "If the agency responsible for the highway system of a road appearing in the junction list abbreviates the name of that type of highway in its official documents, use that abbreviation (e.g. I-59, not Interstate 59). If no official abbreviation exists, an abbreviation commonly used by the general public can be substituted instead. If there is no abbreviation in use by either the road agency or the public, use the full name with no abbreviation. Any disambiguation or other alteration to the article title for Wikipedia administration purposes should be dropped (e.g. A1, not A1 road (Great Britain); I-40, not Interstate 40 in Arkansas)."
  • Under a new "Named roads" heading: (since this is far from a special-case scenario) Junctions which list both the route number and its local name (i.e., the name of the city street the route follows) or its officially designated name on signage should have both included in the exit list. If multiple names are given, every name should be listed. Names which do not appear on junction signage, especially memorial highway designations and other names not used by the general public, should generally not be listed in the exit list. The name(s) shall appear in parenthesis after the route number they apply to; e.g. if the junction signage reads " Monroe Ave./Pittsford", then the exit should appear similar to " NY 31 (Monroe Avenue) – Pittsford" in the junction list.¶ In regions where highway routes are predominately known by name and rather than by number (Australia, Alaska, et. al.), the locations of the name and number should be reversed; that is, the highway name should appear first, and the route number after the name in parenthesis. For example, if a sign reads " Reid Highway / Midland", then the exit should appear similar to " Reid Highway (State Route 3) – Midland" in the junction list. This provision should be exercised on a regional basis, not in the case of individual highways or highway segments being referred to by name.¶ Where names appear in the exit list, type designators such as "Street", "Road", or "Highway" should be spelled out in full, not abbreviated. Directional prefixes or suffixes that are not part of the road's actual name but only serve to disambiguate or locate the road within the city should be abbreviated (e.g. S.E. 44th Street, not Southeast 44th Street; but North Star Road, not N. Star Road, assuming that the road is named after the North Star rather than as the north half of Star Road). Abbreviations should not be used where the road is question is part of a Utah-style street numbering grid, however (800 West, not 800 W.).
Thoughts are appreciated. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 20:30, 21 June 2012 (UTC)
Discussion

I agree with the general direction this is going. One trivial comment, if we're going to single out the "Utah style" of addresses, we might want to address the common but unofficial practice of dropping 2 zeros and using ordinal numbers. (Using Scott's example, stick with the official "800 West" as the street name and not the colloquial "8th west".) I know it's the proper thing to do, but it's going to require electro-shock therapy to kick that habit. =-) Dave (talk) 22:13, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

Shouldn't be much of a problem to add "or colloquialisms" after "abbreviations" and then give an example (800 West, not 800 W. or 8th West). —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 23:25, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

👍 Like I also like the direction this is going in. However, I'm not to sure about the directional prefixes and suffixes - perhaps this should be specified as a regional option, rather than the general rule? For example, Beechboro Road has been split into sections due to the construction of a highway, and is now known as Beechboro Road North and Beechboro Road South. Whilst the main northern section it is sometimes signed as "Beechboro Road N." (to keep the signs shorter), I would list it on a junction/intersection list as "Beechboro Road North" - Evad37 (talk) 05:04, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

That's a case of the direction being integral to the name. Personally, there are times that I'd rather we crafted a general exception in this segment of the MOS to the "don't capitalize directions" rule because it's rather odd to me to have only one word in an entire string of text that isn't capitalized because that is a direction.
However, I'd also specifically like to see us add an explicit prohibition against using ALL CAPS, Small Caps and other formatting types just to match the sign. (The UK articles are notorious for that by using "THE NORTH" instead of "The North" and linking it to the intended destination.) As well, I don't think non-standard abbreviations should be used to match the signs. MDOT here in Michigan loves to abbreviate the word "Grand" in a city name like "Grand Rapids" as "Gd Rapids" or the "West" in the city of "West Branch" that becomes "W Branch". I'm opposed to abbreviating any directions in road names. "S." in Italian and other languages is the abbreviation for "Saint", not "South". "N" is used for "Number" in some languages, and while we deal in English around here, we also cater to a large non-English-speaking audience too. Imzadi 1979 → 05:43, 22 June 2012 (UTC)
Imzadi, how do you feel about the first part of the proposal: to have, in the regions where highway routes are predominately known by name, in the format "<shield> Road Name (Route Type & Number) – Destinations" ?
ie Reid Highway (State Route 3) – Midland
(I know that in your reply to my original proposal you said "... leave the name in parentheses", but that was when I had the route number without parentheses) - Evad37 (talk) 10:37, 22 June 2012 (UTC)
I'm not in favor of it, but I'm not formally opposing it at this time. Call it "judgement reserved". At this juncture though, we have some opportunities here to hash out some other issues since Scott's brought them up to clarify the proposals. The biggest issue though is this: we are an encyclopedia. We don't duplicate the formatting of specific signs in our junction/exit lists, we duplicate the content. If we duplicated the formatting, we'd have SVG graphics or photographs of each guide sign. Instead, we use a table that distills that signage, which varies in exact practices, into a consistent format. That way if our reader is American, Australian, British, or Canadian, they can readily interpret the tables of any highway article based on known expectations as to how we do things. Imzadi 1979 → 16:00, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

Imzadi1979's proposal

OK, here's my proposal that should unify things without too radical of a restructuring of the existing text. Text to be added is in italics, and text to be removed is stuck through. I'm also going to implement the good and bad formatting the rest of the MOS uses for examples.

The "Highway link appearance", "Text appearance", "Route markers" and "Special-case scenarios" sections are all merged under the heading "Text appearance" as follows:

Text appearance
  • Text in the tables must comply with other provisions of the MoS, specifically regarding boldface, italics and ALLCAPS. Directional Junctions shall should be formatted in the following general pattern: "(route marker) (number and/or name of intersecting road) (direction)".
  • If route marker graphics are used, generally, they should have a height of 20–25px.
    • They should always appear at the beginning of the line, per the principle behind Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Icons#Do not use icons in general article prose: "Icons should not be used in the article body...This breaks up the continuity of the text, distracting the reader."
    • Use of marker images shallshould be limited to the Destinations column(s) only.
    • Any highway designation represented by the graphic shall be represented in text as part of the name or number listed for the roadway.
  • The highway designation, any applicable names or both shall be linked as appropriate to an article on the intersecting roadway.
    • List the predominant name or number first followed by any alternate names in parentheses. In the United States, the primary identification for a road is any highway designation given and signed by the state departments of transportation or a county agency, so they should be listed as SR 1 (Pacific Coast Highway) not Pacific Coast Highway (SR 1). The reverse is true in Australia, so those references should be formatted Reid Highway (State Route 3) not State Route 3 (Reid Highway). This variation shall be determined on a regional basis for consistency across a set of articles for a jurisdiction such as a single country or major subnational subdivision.
    • If the agency responsible for the highway system of a road appearing in the junction list abbreviates the name of that type of highway in its official documents, use that abbreviation (e.g. I-59, not Interstate 59). If no official abbreviation exists, an abbreviation commonly used by the general public can be substituted instead. If there is no abbreviation in use by either the road agency or the public, use the full name with no abbreviation. Such abbreviations shall also be introduced in the prose of the article for reader clarity.
    • Any disambiguation or other alteration to the article title for Wikipedia administration purposes should be dropped; use A1 or I-40, not A1 road (Great Britain) or Interstate 40 in Arkansas.
    • Where names appear in the junction list, type designators such as "Street", "Road", or "Highway" should be spelled out in full, not abbreviated. Use First Street or Maple Road, not First St. or Maple Rd. as not all abbreviations for such are universally used or widely known.
  • Directions must be entirely lowercase per Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Capital letters#Compass points: "Directions such as north are not proper nouns and do not take capitals." M-28 east not M-28 East
    • Directional prefixes or suffixes shall not be abbreviated and colloquialisms for road names shall not be used. Use 800 West or Southeast 44th Street, not 800 W., 8th West nor S.E. 44th Street
  • If there are two exits in an interchange, one for each direction of the crossing road, they should generally be combined into one row, unless this would complicate matters.
    • If the two exits have different numbers, that should be noted in the notes column, for example "signed as exits 1A (north) and 1B (south) eastbound", in a case where only the eastbound freeway has the split.
    • If two interchanges with different roads have the same number with different lettered suffixes, they generally should not be combined.

There are two methods for displaying concurrencies. A simple note may be placed in the notes column for the interchanges where the concurrency begins and ends, or a multi-column row can be used to mark the termini of the concurrency. Ideally, this multi-column row should span the Destinations and Notes columns, allowing the milepost and exit number to appear to the left. In some cases, a concurrency between two freeways can cause the exits along one freeway to "adopt" the exit numbering system of the other for the length of the concurrency, then revert back to the original numbering system after the concurrency. See Interstate 77 in Virginia for an example in practice. To deal with this issue, any and all exit numbers for that interchange should be displayed.

The net effect is to take comments regarding the other proposals and integrate them into one section by bullet points based on the general formula already in use. I did alter what Scott proposed in one respect: directions are not to be abbreviated. This means that only commonly used abbreviations for highway designations as determined by official or local usage should be used and the rest of each line should be spelled out in full. it also avoids forcing editors to determine if "East Jordan Road" is the east side of Jordan Road, or a road named after, and connecting to, East Jordan, Michigan.

The guidance on concurrencies is being removed under my proposal because the column-spanning technique has rarely been implemented well without duplicating information already in the table. Any other cases of column-spanning are already defined in the "What to include" section. The other part of that section has to deal with exit numbers, which is something left to editorial discretion along with the remainder of the notes. Imzadi 1979 → 17:30, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

Support. Directions in full form is also good for clarity with international audiences (and no abbreviations of them are mentioned at MOS:ABBR). (changed 06:23, 25 June 2012 (UTC), see other comments below - Evad37 (talk))
A couple of very minor points: The MOS section Directions and regions no longer exits, the current link is Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Capital letters#Compass points; and Reid is misspelt as Reed in the "bad" example - Evad37 (talk) 18:41, 22 June 2012 (UTC)
If they'd stop changing the MOS so often... wait aren't we doing that here? Ok, I updated the link and fixed the typo. Imzadi 1979 → 18:48, 22 June 2012 (UTC)
  • Strong Oppose Keep in mind that tables are not prose. MOS:ICON says that icons should be next to the term they are connected to for the purposes of screen readers. In some places, this may be better served at the end of a line (as I often do with border crossings: (Canada route marker) Highway blah continues into the United States as Interstate bluh (Interstate marker). I also make use of them in notes (for county roads that are former highways), so I have to oppose this wording w.r.t. the placement of icons (but otherwise support). - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 19:15, 22 June 2012 (UTC)
    • Ontario Highway 401 and Don Valley Parkway] don't have icons in the notes column, and a simple revision of the one entry kept the icon from appearing in the middle or the end of the line on the 401. We've had reviewers want all of the icons in our junction/exit list tables completely removed during the course of a FAC, and all of the icons removed from the infobox with the exception of the large one on top for the subject of the article. Granted this isn't covered by this discussion, but they've been stripped from List of highways numbered 117 for quite a while, only to be quietly restored at a later date after the loudest "anti-icon" editors left the discussion. (It was silly to have them stripped out of one article, but not the rest of the series, IMHO, which is why I restored them.) We walk a fine line here, which is why we've limited the usage so strictly to appease the loud factions that would have us completely remove the icons we use. So long as we keep the restrictions in place, the objections have been nullified, but now is not the time to push those boundaries lest we risk further limits imposed from outside the "roads editors" community. Imzadi 1979 → 10:27, 26 June 2012 (UTC)
      • I don't see how strengthening a second guideline helps. The two examples are not all the examples, and many of the GAs do have icons in the notes column. The only reason they were removed in the case of 401 is because the graphics weren't made for any of the currently redlinked highways. So long as this larger change includes the should to shall adjustments for icons in the notes column and only at the beginning of text, I cannot support it. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 06:54, 1 July 2012 (UTC)
        • Some questions to progress the discussion:
Floydian, do you really need the Canadian route markers and highway name/number at border crossings? For example, the Ontario Highway 402 has the route marker in the infobox at the top of the page, and all common names in the first sentence of the lede. Could you not format the border crossing row as something like " Continues into Michigan as Interstate 94 and Interstate 69"?
Imzadi, whilst anti-icon editors would always prefer less icons and tighter control over them, is there any real need to change the current guideline wording of "Use of marker images should be limited to the Destinations column(s) only"? - Evad37 (talk) 04:01, 8 July 2012 (UTC)
The current wording is a should, and the proposal is to make it a shall. In other words, the guideline already prohibits their usage in a less stringent format. This tightens up and enforces existing precedent. Imzadi 1979 → 04:07, 8 July 2012 (UTC)
Exactly. Keep the proposal to what's necessary for Australia instead of including these enforcement amendments that are completely unnecessary for accomplishing the goals that this discussion set out for. I'd like to see some other editors opinions on this, because in my several years here, Imzadi is the most stringent MOS:ICON observer I've come across, and I think rules that were meant to curb abuse are being applied strictly in cases where it may make sense to bend the precedent. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 05:02, 8 July 2012 (UTC)
I support "should" wholeheartedly. In fact, I think that having the shields display when the "to" parameter is used should be prohibited as well. That being said, this discussion has gone on for far too long; this seems like the topic for another discussion. Let's change it to "shall", make sure something gets passed and progress is made, and discuss this another time. --Rschen7754 05:13, 8 July 2012 (UTC)
Then I have to strongly oppose. Its essentially sneaking through an amendment along with the larger bill. There is no need to change should to shall in this discussion, and I think its deplorable that its getting "snuck" through in this supposed update for allowing the Australian naming scheme for roads to be used. Discuss it as a separate issue. I will go against this. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 11:49, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

I agree with Floydian on this point. Just because there is consensus for 98+% of Imzadi's proposal doesn't mean that the whole proposal should be implemented now - there isn't consensus at the moment. I think it is better to implement the 98% which does have consensus, and afterwards open up another discussion for "should" → "shall" proposal. - Evad37 (talk) 12:58, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

  • I support most of this, but I strongly oppose beyond the level that I oppose coordinate templates, almost (but not quite) as strongly as I would react to the suggestion that we format exit lists in eighteen-point magenta Comic Sans spelling out directional prefixes and suffixes. In addition to being unwieldy, spelling them out simply isn't done in the real world in my experience. Anywhere. Not on signs, not on maps, not on envelopes, not on driver licenses. "Southeast 44th Street" is barely recognizable to me as a street in Oklahoma City, simply because I have never seen it spelled out that way in real life. Even USPS does it: they have a little widget on their website that looks up addresses and their zip codes for you, and I typed in a random address on "Southeast 15th Street", and it automatically changed it to "SE 15TH ST" for me. I don't buy the "international audience" argument, because if a reader has any interaction with American addresses at all, they are going to run into these abbreviations. Spelling out suffix names makes sense because there are so many of them and there are quite a few obscure ones (raise your hand if you've encountered "Trfwy." before) but directional abbreviations are something that is so universal, spelling them out is, in my mind, on the border line of inventing usage. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 22:55, 22 June 2012 (UTC)
      • Wait, this is bad?! Why not change the verbiage to only require spelling out directions where it's actually required (the East Jordan Road example above) or where it would be otherwise ambiguous. –Fredddie™ 00:54, 23 June 2012 (UTC)
      • And yes, I've encountered Trafficway. Only in the Kansas City area, though. –Fredddie™ 00:55, 23 June 2012 (UTC)
        • Fortunately I don't have Comic Sans installed, so that is just rendering in Adobe Garamond for me, so, bad luck. :P
        • If you look in my proposal above, in the bit about direction abbreviations, I made the distinction that streets where the direction is a integral part of the name should be spelled out, but others abbreviated. So it would be "S.E. 44th Street" since it's just the 44th Street that is in the southeast part of town, but "North Star Road" if the street is named after Polaris and not just the north half of Star Road. I think this is logical and helps clue the readers in to the function of the directional prefix/suffix. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 01:37, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

Note: I plan to comment here, but I've been away for a few days and am only now sitting down to read everything. --Rschen7754 02:58, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

  • Support except for the prefix and suffix stuff. That's just simply not how it's done in cities that use them, having spent an extended amount of time in one before. They're always abbreviated. So in that regard, with the prefixes and suffixes related to direction I support Scott5114's proposal. However, I think we should always spell out any street type suffixes/prefixes. Is Ave. Avenida or Avenue? What is the official abbreviation of Freeway? Frwy? Fwy? How about Expressway? Expwy? Exwy? How do you abbreviate Calle? What if different English-speaking countries use different "official" abbreviations? And for the non-native English reader, this may be even more confusing. So in that regard I support original proposal. --Rschen7754 03:39, 23 June 2012 (UTC)
  • Hmm... after looking at the MOS#Abbreviations closely, I think the most relevant guidance is "Do not use unwarranted abbreviations: Avoid abbreviations when they might confuse the reader, interrupt the flow, or appear informal". In regards to the prefix directions, they are not informal (it is how they appear in real life), and they do not interrupt the flow (being either the first text in a table cell or the first text in parenthesis). That would just leave confusing the reader. Imzadi earlier gave some examples of where they might be confusing for international readers: "S." in Italian and other languages is the abbreviation for "Saint", not "South", "N" is used for "Number" in some languages, and while we deal in English around here, we also cater to a large non-English-speaking audience too.. It would seem to me that if the directional abbreviations are explained in the prose before appearing in the table, it would be okay. Where does everyone else stand on this? - Evad37 (talk) 04:19, 23 June 2012 (UTC)
    • I really don't think that what "S." stands for in Italian should really be all that relevant to our decision here. We don't stop and explain words in parenthesis, or avoid their usage, just because they're false cognates. If I am reading the Italian Wikipedia and I see "S. John" and I go "OH OKAY THEY'RE TALKING ABOUT A DUDE NAMED SOUTH JOHN thanks so much Italian Wikipedia!" that is just me being dumb and not using basic logic. When you read things in a different language you just have to accept that some things, like abbreviations, are going to be different. If we have to not use the parts of English that might be confusing to people that speak other languages, we'll all be writing articles for the Simple English Wikipedia and the non-road editors will give us funny looks. Sometimes our readers just have to be expected to learn things that they don't know from context. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 22:46, 23 June 2012 (UTC)
  • Support Imzadi's proposal. I can go either way on the directional prefix and suffix, but would tend to side towards what Scott originally proposed and allow for directional suffix or prefix not integral to the name of the street being allowed to be abbreviated. -- LJ ↗ 04:46, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

Another issue related to whether or not to abbreviate a directional prefix or suffix: cities that partially repeat street names in their grid systems. In Escanaba, Michigan, the numbered streets run north–south and the numbered avenues run east–west. The avenue numbers repeat depending on their position relative to Ludington Avenue (the baseline) but the streets don't repeat as they are numbered heading away from Sand Point. So you have the case where the suffix on the avenues is needed to differentiate between 5th Avenue North and 5th Avenue South, which are separate streets 11 blocks apart, yet 5th Street North is the northern part of 5th Street. While Scott's proposal would have us abbreviate the suffix on the streets (as non-integral to the names) but not the avenues (as integral), this level of detail will come under strict scrutiny on the basis of consistency. Best to leave them all unabbreviated when the average reader won't draw the conclusion desired by Scott's proposal, and FAC-level reviewers will question the apparent inconsistencies. Imzadi 1979 → 23:27, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

Why don't we just change the wording to say directions may be abbreviated with the caveat that if there is anything resembling ambiguity, they should not be abbreviated? –Fredddie™ 23:32, 23 June 2012 (UTC)
How about abbreviating everything except cases where it is clear that the direction is not intended as a prefix/suffix? Thus, "5th Street N.", "5th Avenue E.", but "North Star Road", "East Jordan Road", "South Carolina Avenue", etc. This would probably be the closest match to usage outside Wikipedia, honestly.
Alternately, tell the FAC reviewers to get a clue and make them learn something about the subject they're reviewing... —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 03:16, 24 June 2012 (UTC)
Sounds good. --Rschen7754 03:58, 24 June 2012 (UTC)
I don't like the idea of mandating abbreviations, but I don't like the idea of forbidding them as well. Make it so that both ways are correct. –Fredddie™ 11:36, 24 June 2012 (UTC)
I'll support Fredddie on this - as long as there is a clause for regional consistency (ie city-wide, or whatever is most appropriate) - Evad37 (talk) 06:23, 25 June 2012 (UTC)
Yes. Consistency is more important than any of the ways we've listed. –Fredddie™ 12:08, 25 June 2012 (UTC)
  • In addition as to whether or when to abbreviate directions, it would seem to me that there should be a clear way of distinguishing between directions that are part of a name, integral or not, and the actual directions of roads at junctions. Using <em> tags (or other changes to the text display) to distinguish actual direction would violate MOS:TEXT. Using parentheses would lead to double sets of parentheses when these roads also have route numbers. Using square brackets is an option, which would look like: "5th Avenue South" and "5th Street [north]", for the above examples, and like "I-10 [west]" and "Reid Highway [east] (State Route 3)", for roads with just a route number or name and route number. Any other ideas? - Evad37 (talk) 04:36, 24 June 2012 (UTC)
    • US road signs do this by using small caps (i.e. "5th Avenue South" vs. "5th Street North"; this was done in exit lists a long time ago, and I support doing so, but unfortunately, as you point out, we are prohibited from doing so by MOS:TEXT. Ultimately, on this topic, I think we may just have to live with the same ambiguity that exists in real life. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 00:13, 25 June 2012 (UTC)
      • If you must highlight the direction, the only option is italics. "Reid Highway east (State Route 3)". It's there as an option, but I don't think we should codify it here. –Fredddie™ 00:51, 25 June 2012 (UTC)
      • The lead of the MOS specifically says "The goal is to make the encyclopedia easier and more intuitive to use" and "Writing should be clear and concise ... avoid ambiguity...". I still think there should be more than just a capital letter to distinguish between directions as names and as actual directions. Whilst we're fixing up MOS:RJL, we might as well discuss ways to avoid this ambiguity without violating MOS:TEXT. (By the way, Australian road signs use all-caps for this - another method prohibited by MOS:TEXT) - Evad37 (talk) 02:48, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

Before Michigan switched to the Small Caps method on guide signs, if only one direction of an intersecting highway was available from the exit or ramp, the direction was in underlined ALL CAPS. For example, since from exit 319 on I-75 the only choice for M-27 was northbound, the sign read on three lines: " NORTH Topinabee Cheboygan". MDOT doesn't use any directional suffixes on most freeway guide signs unless there is ambiguity; on the smaller ground-mount signage they will. (Of course MDOT also abbreviates the "Grand" in "Grand Rapids" and the "West" in "West Branch" even though they are integral to the city names.)

New York is/was famous for outlining street names with a box to differentiate them from destinations on guide signs as well. In short, there actually hasn't been as much standardization on text formatting on American signs as one might think, and what has been used violates our text formatting standards. We are free to come up with a system that both promotes consistency and removes ambiguity. We need to reflect the content of the signage, but we don't have to reflect its exact formatting. I am willing to compromise on the directional abbreviations to the point of making either usage optional, provide no ambiguity is inserted into the articles. The minute anyone starts misleading readers through their editorial choices, and they attempt to use any MOS guideline as justification for such ambiguity or inaccuracy, the {{trout}}s come out. Imzadi 1979 → 10:11, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

"We are free to come up with a system that both promotes consistency and removes ambiguity" - this is exactly the point I was trying to raise for discussion. It doesn't matter if real-life road signs use all-caps, small-caps, or eighteen-point magenta Comic Sans to signify actual direction as opposed to road name. We should have a system that is unambiguous, and compliant with MOS:TEXT. That is why I suggested [brackets] for actual directions (not part of the road name). Fedddie suggested (but didn't seem to support) italics, but I don't see that as being compliant with MOS:TEXT. (Note: this is a separate issue to that of directional abbreviation) - Evad37 (talk) 12:04, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

My proposal for directions:

  • Directions must be entirely lowercase per Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Capital letters#Compass points: "Directions such as north are not proper nouns and do not take capitals." Use M-28 east not M-28 East. Parenthesis or square brackets should be used to separate directions from road name, as shown below:
    • Use parenthesis for roads that are not part of routes: Royal Street (east), not Royal Street east nor Royal Street [east]
    • Use square brackets for roads that are part of routes: Reid Highway [west] (State Route 3) or Great Eastern Highway (National Highway 94 [east] / State Route 51 [west]), not Reid Highway (west) (State Route 3) nor Great Eastern Highway (National Highway 94 (east) / State Route 51 (west))
    • Do not use any brackets for roads referred to by route number predominately: SR 1 north (Pacific Coast Highway), not SR 1 [north] (Pacific Coast Highway) nor SR 1 (north) (Pacific Coast Highway)
  • Directional prefixes or suffixes that are not part of the road's actual name, and only serve to disambiguate or locate the road within a city, may be abbreviated if the agency responsible for the road abbreviates the name of that type of highway in its official documents, or if the general public only use the abbreviated form. Use S.E. 44th Street, not Southeast 44th Street, for the street in Oklahoma City.
    • Directional suffixes shall not be abbreviated unless there is a type designator. Colloquialisms for road names shall not be used. Use 800 West, not 800 W., nor 8th West
    • The use of these abbreviations shall be consistent across a city or other major subregional area.

- Evad37 (talk) 05:42, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

This is getting unworkable. The distinctions you'd draw by encapsulating, or not, directional components within either parentheses or brackets are really getting esoteric, and most readers would never deduce the differences without a key someplace (and the color key and conversion keys where needed are already getting to be information overload). So if we just amend my propose to state that directional prefixes or suffixes integral to the name of a road, such as "East Jordan Road" which connects to a city named "East Jordan", or a "North Star Road" named after the common name for Polaris, the North Star, should never be abbreviated nor and all other directional indications on road names may be abbreviated, we have consensus here to approve the language I proposed. It's not what I'd prefer, but we don't get everything we want in a compromise. Imzadi 1979 → 06:05, 1 July 2012 (UTC)
OK, I'm willing to let this go in order to achieve consensus. I think this issue should still be discussed, but perhaps in a separate "brainstorming" section after the discussion of this proposal has concluded. - Evad37 (talk) 01:55, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

Coding Jct to allow "name (route)"

There seems to be consensus to allow "name (route)" for regions with names as the primary identifier. Coding {{jct}} and its subtemplates to allow "name (route)" is a little complicated, due to existing complicated code (in {{jct}} etc). Suggestion and comments are welcome at Template talk:Jct - Evad37 (talk) 09:11, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

Of course, with the exception of the required footers in the table, MOS:RJL really has never required the use of any specific templates. (Even they could be hand-coded in individual articles, although I really wouldn't recommend that method.) Most of the MOS does not require the usage of templates (except the section on the display of coordinates). That said, {{jct}} does make things much simpler, but the actual template is quite complex and few editors know enough on how to change it. Imzadi 1979 → 09:51, 26 June 2012 (UTC)
I know the MOS doesn't require specific templates, but (as you noted) using the templates is an easy way to make MOS:RJL compliant tables. I am willing to do all the coding and testing by myself if no-one else is able to, or if they don't have time to spare, but I posted the above as a notice for anyone who wants to help. - Evad37 (talk) 10:52, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

Scott5114's proposal

This is mostly the same as Imzadi's proposal above, but with direction language amended to allow abbreviation, and with the previous "should" condition with regards to MOS:ICON. Text to be added is in italics, and text to be removed is stuck through. Text that is different from Imzadi's proposal is underlined.

The "Highway link appearance", "Text appearance", "Route markers" and "Special-case scenarios" sections are all merged under the heading "Text appearance" as follows:

Text appearance
  • Text in the tables must comply with other provisions of the MoS, specifically regarding boldface, italics and ALLCAPS. Directional Junctions shall should be formatted in the following general pattern: "(route marker) (number and/or name of intersecting road) (direction)".
  • If route marker graphics are used, generally, they should have a height of 20–25px.
    • They should always appear at the beginning of the line, per the principle behind Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Icons#Do not use icons in general article prose: "Icons should not be used in the article body...This breaks up the continuity of the text, distracting the reader."
    • Use of marker images should be limited to the Destinations column(s) only.
    • Any highway designation represented by the graphic shall be represented in text as part of the name or number listed for the roadway.
  • The highway designation, any applicable names or both shall be linked as appropriate to an article on the intersecting roadway.
    • List the predominant name or number first followed by any alternate names in parentheses. In the United States, the primary identification for a road is any highway designation given and signed by the state departments of transportation or a county agency, so they should be listed as SR 1 (Pacific Coast Highway) not Pacific Coast Highway (SR 1). The reverse is true in Australia, so those references should be formatted Reid Highway (State Route 3) not State Route 3 (Reid Highway). This variation shall be determined on a regional basis for consistency across a set of articles for a jurisdiction such as a single country or major subnational subdivision.
    • If the agency responsible for the highway system of a road appearing in the junction list abbreviates the name of that type of highway in its official documents, use that abbreviation (e.g. I-59, not Interstate 59). If no official abbreviation exists, an abbreviation commonly used by the general public can be substituted instead. If there is no abbreviation in use by either the road agency or the public, use the full name with no abbreviation. Such abbreviations shall also be introduced in the prose of the article for reader clarity.
    • Any disambiguation or other alteration to the article title for Wikipedia administration purposes should be dropped; use A1 or I-40, not A1 road (Great Britain) or Interstate 40 in Arkansas.
    • Where names appear in the junction list, type designators such as "Street", "Road", or "Highway" should be spelled out in full, not abbreviated. Use First Street or Maple Road, not First St. or Maple Rd. as not all abbreviations for such are universally used or widely known.
  • Cardinal directions designating the direction of travel a highway follows must be entirely lowercase per Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Capital letters#Compass points: "Directions such as north are not proper nouns and do not take capitals." These directions shall not be abbreviated. Example: M-28 east not M-28 East
    • Directional prefixes or suffixes that are not part of the road's actual name may be abbreviated according to common usage (e.g. both Southeast 44th Street or SE 44th Street are acceptable). Any abbreviations should be applied consistently, on at least a city-wide level. Colloquialisms for road names shall not be used (e.g. in a Utah-style street numbering grid, use 800 West, not 8th West. Such prefixes take capitals, as they are part of the street's full title.
    • Street names that contain cardinal directions that are not a directional prefix or suffix shall not be abbreviated (e.g. North Star Road, not N. Star Road, assuming the road is named after the North Star; Southwest Boulevard, not SW Boulevard).
  • If there are two exits in an interchange, one for each direction of the crossing road, they should generally be combined into one row, unless this would complicate matters.
    • If the two exits have different numbers, that should be noted in the notes column, for example "signed as exits 1A (north) and 1B (south) eastbound", in a case where only the eastbound freeway has the split.
    • If two interchanges with different roads have the same number with different lettered suffixes, they generally should not be combined.

There are two methods for displaying concurrencies. A simple note may be placed in the notes column for the interchanges where the concurrency begins and ends, or a multi-column row can be used to mark the termini of the concurrency. Ideally, this multi-column row should span the Destinations and Notes columns, allowing the milepost and exit number to appear to the left. In some cases, a concurrency between two freeways can cause the exits along one freeway to "adopt" the exit numbering system of the other for the length of the concurrency, then revert back to the original numbering system after the concurrency. See Interstate 77 in Virginia for an example in practice. To deal with this issue, any and all exit numbers for that interchange should be displayed.

Based on the discussion above, this set of changes seems to be what most people would find the most palatable. If there are no grave objections to it I'd like to see if we could go ahead and add this to the guideline and then any further desired addenda can be hashed out separately. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 16:48, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

Support - No issues here, and hopefully the other stuff that was contentious in Imzadi's proposal can be discussed after these changes are made. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 17:01, 8 July 2012 (UTC)
Support begrudgingly; I see Imzadi1979's point about "should" not reflecting status quo, but whatever. --Rschen7754 20:45, 8 July 2012 (UTC)
Support - Evad37 (talk) 01:09, 9 July 2012 (UTC)
Support –Fredddie™ 01:37, 9 July 2012 (UTC)
Support -- LJ ↗ 05:29, 9 July 2012 (UTC)
After adding my support, I noticed two items that need clarifying.
  • Cardinal directions, 1st bullet -- The '800 West' example is missing a closing parenthesis.
  • Cardinal directions, 1st bullet, last sentence "Such prefixes take capitals, as they are part of the street's full title." -- As worded, it seems like this statement is meant to be placed at the end of the second bullet describing directionals as part of the name (in which case "prefixes" should be changed to "cardinal directions"). Otherwise, further clarification might be needed for that sentence statement to make sense as it reads contradictory to the first sentence of the paragraph (i.e. perhaps "prefixes" should be changed to "abbreviations").
Results of these clarifications does not alter my stated support above. -- LJ ↗ 05:51, 9 July 2012 (UTC)
I had already spotted the missing close-paren not too long after submission, but figured there was no need to fix it until implementation. As for the prefix caps, the intent there was to specify that while stuff like "M-28 east" shouldn't be capitalized, titles like "SE 59th Street" or "North Wacker Drive" should be (which is common sense, but it would be nice to guard against morons like FAC reviewers that might not understand what's going on). Perhaps that should be split off into a third bullet point. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 10:28, 9 July 2012 (UTC)
Figured it was something like that. For clarity, it might be better to put the colloquialisms in a separate bullet and make it read "prefixes and suffixes" in the subject paragraph. -- LJ ↗ 05:14, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

I went ahead and applied these changes. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 11:50, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

Formatting of directions

See also: previous discussion
Note: In Australia, roads are referred to by name, not route number. As such, there are no official or common abbreviations for route types.

The current formatting of directions (which designate the direction of travel a highway follows) is not very clear for readers, when road names are used in junction lists. This is because the only difference between a directions that are part of a name and those that are the actual direction of travel is whether the first letter is capitalised. For example, " Morley Drive west (State Route 76) / Morley Drive East (State Route 76)". It is not clear and obvious that the road to the west is called "Morley Drive" rather than "Morley Drive West", especially if the reader isn't familiar with the area. This is not an "isolated incident" or "edge case" - the main reason this issue hasn't come up before is that MOS:RJL has only very recently been updated to allow for roads to be formatted as Road Name (Route Number) (in appropriate regions, such as Australia).

I would like there to be a clearer distinction between these two uses of cardinal directions. As Imzadi noted in the previous discussion,

"We are free to come up with a system that both promotes consistency and removes ambiguity. We need to reflect the content of the signage, but we don't have to reflect its exact formatting".

It doesn't matter if a particular road authority uses ALL CAPS, Small Caps, or 10 metres (33 ft) fluorescent pink Comic Sans on their signs, as we need to comply with the other provisions of the MOS. My idea would be to put all "direction of travel" directions in brackets, so that the above example would become " Morley Drive (west) (State Route 76) / Morley Drive East (State Route 76)", and the example of "M-28 east" in the current MOS:RJL would become "M-28 (east)". This idea has the advantage of being easy to implement for junction lists formatted with {{jct}}, as the brackets could just be added into the code.

Fredddie commented the following in the previous discussion:

If you must highlight the direction, the only option is italics. "Reid Highway east (State Route 3)". It's there as an option, but I don't think we should codify it here. –Fredddie™ 00:51, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

I would also be interested to hear other ideas - Evad37 (talk) 09:51, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

Discussion
  • Oppose brackets/parentheses, oppose italics. Double sets of parentheses adjacent to each other looks sloppy, so a "Morley Drive (west) (State Route 76)" construction is not aesthetically pleasing. Using square brackets as in a "Morley Drive [west] (State Route 76)" does not eliminate this issue. Square brackets are typically reserved for the additions or alterations to directly quoted text or for nesting parentheses instead of parentheses. Italics is supposed to denote emphasis, words as words or titles of various kinds of works like books, albums, journals/magazines or court cases. It's also used for names of ships and aircraft, such as the Spirit of St. Louis or the RMS Titanic. The differentiation we're stuck with is the fact that when a direction is part of a proper name, it gets capitalized and when its merely an adjective, it's lowercase. Imzadi 1979 → 05:25, 14 July 2012 (UTC)
Theoretically it would be possible to have "Morley Drive West east". I don't think anyone disagrees that that is incredibly awkward, but there's not a lot we can do. I'm not going to oppose anything, but I'm also not going to support codifying anything regarding directions. –Fredddie™ 05:39, 14 July 2012 (UTC)
Of course we're abbreviating travel directions from "eastbound" to "east", in part because the directional tabs placed with the marker is signed that way. If we had a "Morley Drive West east", I'd instead use "Morley Drive West eastbound" to avoid the issue of confusion. At least the businesses in Traverse City that are on the northern half of the north-south leg of US 31 get "North US 31 South" for their postal addresses. Imzadi 1979 → 06:03, 14 July 2012 (UTC)
  • Oppose. 95%+ of cases don't need the distinction. I'd be open to hearing other proposals, though. --Rschen7754 06:07, 14 July 2012 (UTC)
  • How about something like "In order to avoid confusion with road names, a travel direction such as northbound may be used instead of a cardinal direction (e.g Beach Road North southbound, not Beach Road North south; Main Street eastbound rather than Main Street east, if there is a nearby road named 'Main Street East'; but not 1st Avenue westbound if there isn't a nearby road named '1st Avenue West')" ? - Evad37 (talk) 02:33, 15 July 2012 (UTC)
I like this, but I still don't think we need to codify anything. –Fredddie™ 02:48, 15 July 2012 (UTC)
I'm with Fredddie on this: you can get too many rules and turn people off from trying to comply with the guideline. Imzadi 1979 → 04:29, 15 July 2012 (UTC)
I understand that you don't want to make the guideline needlessly complicated, but on the other hand, shouldn't there be some sort of record of the consensus reached (assuming we do reach consensus)? Or will we (in the future) just point editors to the archive of this discussion? - Evad37 (talk) 05:07, 15 July 2012 (UTC)
Support record of consensus is crucial. The MOS has practically everything codified (which this is a part of); concerns regarding that should be taken up at WT:MOS. --Rschen7754 05:09, 15 July 2012 (UTC)

Rather than make another bullet point, just append to an existing one à la:

Cardinal directions designating the direction of travel a highway follows must be entirely lowercase per Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Capital letters#Compass points: "Directions such as north are not proper nouns and do not take capitals." These directions shall not be abbreviated. Example: M-28 east not M-28 East or M-28 E. Directions may be expanded to read as northbound instead of north as needed.

(addition in bold) Imzadi 1979 → 05:26, 15 July 2012 (UTC)

 Done MOS:RJL amended with the above - Evad37 (talk) 03:55, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

Defined order of color precedence

I was thinking it might be a good idea to define, when colors are used, which colors are the most important, that is, which should be used when multiple colors may apply. I think the logical order would be future (orange) → closed (gray) → incomplete (red) → concurrency (blue), and this is the order of precedence I have been using. The thought is that if the interchange doesn't yet exist, it is by definition closed; if it is closed, it doesn't matter which ramps exist since you can't use them, and it is more important to the motorist/reader that they might not be able to make a desired movement than it is to show the concurrency termini.

Or is this too obvious to bother writing down? —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 16:59, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

Not everything that should be obvious actually always is. It can't hurt to add to the guideline. In my head, I'd switch to make concurrencies more prominent than missing movements, but I am fine with either. -- LJ ↗ 04:25, 14 July 2012 (UTC)
I'd support if it was worded with a should and not a shall. I agree with LJ; I would put a concurrency ahead of a missing movement. Also, it's green, not blue. –Fredddie™ 04:58, 14 July 2012 (UTC)
Agreed with concurrency over incomplete, and with shall should. --Rschen7754 05:08, 14 July 2012 (UTC)
I'm not sure we need to spell this out. I too agree with concurrency over missing movement. An interchange can't be both "future" and "closed" because by definition, "closed" implies it was "open" at some point. If something is not yet open, it can't serve as a concurrency terminus, nor could it be a case of a missing movement on its own. Closed can trump incomplete and concurrency termini, but in the case of a junction that is a concurrency terminus, if it's closed, some other junction has to take its place. In short, most of these are pretty much mutually exclusive with the exception of "incomplete" and "concurrency", and either could be used with no ill-effect since the notes has to contain both sets of conditions. Imzadi 1979 → 05:14, 14 July 2012 (UTC)
IMHO, whenever we have the ability to spell something out like this, we should, especially coming from a state like California, where past editors have edit warred over stupid crap like this. --Rschen7754 05:16, 14 July 2012 (UTC)
Edit-warring is bad, period. The only way to concretely prevent it from ever happening is to full protect all articles, forever. Even when you spell out guidelines in the MOS, people will feel justified to WP:IAR stuff they disagree with, if they think they are right. If they are sufficiently adversarial, they will edit-war to re-assert their personal "correctness". This isn't Singapore, and we don't legislate for every possible contingency and remove editorial judgement. Actually, we can't because when a rule gets in the way of improving the article, we ignore the rule and improve the article!
The thing is, we have four color choices. That gives us six possible options of a two-way overlap:
  1. Future and closed/former: not possible because if it's never been open, it can't be closed/former. If it was once proposed and then cancelled, it can be removed from the table completely.
  2. Future and incomplete: until it's open, there are no movements possible for a driver; once it's open, it could be lacking a choice.
  3. Future and concurrency: until it's open, how does the second highway connect to itself? It must use another junction to make that connection. If that second highway itself isn't open yet, it can't be concurrent with the subject highway at the moment.
  4. Closed and incomplete: it's closed, so who cares if it previously was incomplete?
  5. Closed and concurrency: how does the concurrent highway make the connection back to the rest of its routing? It has to be rerouted through another junction point unless it just terminates as a useless concurrency.
  6. Incomplete and concurrency: this is about the only one that can really cause and overlap. Short of making a fifth color that applies only to concurrency termini that are missing possible movements, it's best to leave it to editorial discretion as to which color is used because both conditions (the incomplete status and the concurrency terminus) have to be mentioned in the notes anyway.
There may be other possible combinations in the real world that could produce an overlap of possible color choices, but they're going to be sufficiently rare that the guideline need not concern itself with the trivial or the edge cases when we have editorial judgement and IAR. Put me down for oppose on this proposal. I appreciate the thought behind it, but I can't support it. Imzadi 1979 → 05:41, 14 July 2012 (UTC)
Again, disagree; the sixth scenario is quite common in California, and usually a documentation of consensus is what is needed to stop this edit warring, or at least helps us make a case for the proper way of doing things. --Rschen7754 05:47, 14 July 2012 (UTC)
The sixth isn't unheard of anywhere, but however bad the AL2TB/Freewayguy/I-210 experiences were, MOS:RJL is not the policy against edit warring; that's WP:Edit warring. Imzadi 1979 → 05:56, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

I ran into the incomplete/concurrency conflict several times on I-44 in Oklahoma; it happens quite a bit in Tulsa. (A lot of times it is a "westbound exit and eastbound entrance" scenario; the only movements present are those where the concurrent route enters/leaves.) I see that a lot of people advocating that concurrency should take precedence. I found this surprising since while concurrency termini wouldn't affect someone's routing, missing ramps would, and determining "Hey, am I able to take Exit 413 from westbound I-38?" is something that I think someone might look to our exit lists to determine. Yes, it should still be in the notes, but I find the extra oomph from the red highlighting is helpful. I'm interested in seeing how you guys arrived at the conclusion that concurrency should take precedence. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 08:25, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

Well, for me, it's mostly the symmetry in having each end of the concurrency marked in green. I have specific examples, but in many cases, the missing movement in a concurrency terminus isn't necessary for other reasons (why drive south to turn north when a third roadway runs between a pair of interchanges on the two highways?) Imzadi 1979 → 08:51, 14 July 2012 (UTC)
I don't use these junction lists as a means of determining my routing for going somewhere (I use mapping sources for that), so the missing movements are less crucial to me as a reader. I am often more interested in finding out where concurrencies end. I also agree with Imzadi about seeing both ends of an overlap marked in green. -- LJ ↗ 10:15, 15 July 2012 (UTC)
I can see the appeal in making sure both ends of a concurrency appear the same. However, I'd wager most of our readers don't really care where concurrencies end. Indeed, many of them are probably not roadgeeks and don't know offhand what a concurrency is. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 10:19, 15 July 2012 (UTC)

Additional colors discussion

Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_U.S._Roads#EZ-Pass_only_exit_list_color --Rschen7754 21:23, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

WT:USRD#Junction list threshold

See above; this would remove the bullets and add semicolon-style headers to all summary articles where there's state-detail articles for the routings in individual states. --Rschen7754 05:06, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

Coordinates on road junction lists

Hi. I was told to ask my question here in the response to this discussion. Can I add coordinates of each interchange into junction lists, maybe in the 'interchange name' column under the name itself? I am currently creating a new junction list for this page because the one currently on the article did not comply with many of the MOS's guidelines, especially on the use of WP:COLOUR. Thanks in advance. Pizza1016 (talk) 08:14, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

We typically add KML to articles instead, since that's a more versatile solution; see California State Route 78 (upper right hand corner) for an example. While there's technically nothing banning you from including the coordinates, that provides much less information and adds clutter to the junction list table. There was a discussion about this at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Highways/Archive 4 earlier this year, and that was the consensus. --Rschen7754 08:25, 18 November 2012 (UTC)
How do I add in KML? Do I use a mapping software like Google Earth? Pizza1016 (talk|contribs|uploads|logs) 08:48, 18 November 2012 (UTC)
That's probably best. We have a tutorial at Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. Roads/Maps task force/Tutorial (look for the Google Earth KML part). --Rschen7754 08:51, 18 November 2012 (UTC)
OK. Thanks very much for your help! Pizza1016 (talk|contribs|uploads|logs) 08:52, 18 November 2012 (UTC)
Adding a KML file to an article is not a substitute for displaying coordinates in an article, and the former is an additional feature, not an alternative. The view that coordinates in junction lists are "clutter" is far from being accepted by everyone, and attempts to have them prohibited, or dropped in favour of KML, found no consensus, contrary to the misleading claim made above. They provide information that KML does not, by identifying the location of specific points, in a manner more readily accessible to casual readers. Note the M5 motorway example in the style guide (though that uses footnotes, and it's possible to display the coordinates inline instead). Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:28, 18 November 2012 (UTC)
Oh, I see. I will include both of them in the article then. (Please see my talk page for another comment) Pizza1016 (talk|contribs|uploads|logs) 10:51, 18 November 2012 (UTC)
Likewise, Andy's view that a KML file...is not a substitute for displaying coordinates in an article is far from being accepted by everyone. The U.S. Roads project is generally of the view that a KML file is a valid way of presenting coordinate data that makes the use of individual {{coord}} templates unnecessary. At this point it is a religious dispute. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 12:20, 18 November 2012 (UTC)
Andy is right that the discussion found no consensus, but KML has been accepted at FAC and is now the preferred practice among most editors who work on road junction lists on a daily basis. –Fredddie™ 12:44, 18 November 2012 (UTC)
From the closing of the RfC earlier this year: The consensus of this RfC is section 9 to use shapefile software to illustrate the the area of highway mentioned in the article. KMLs are the implementation of that shapefile software, and there was no consensus to require nor forbid the use of {{coord}} in the lists. The {{Attached KML}} template has been developed to take the KML data and draw a line on the map that shows the full route of a linear object instead of displaying a series of disconnected point. KMLs can also draw polygons to show the whole area of a city instead of reducing it to a single point when zoomed in. Imzadi 1979 → 13:26, 18 November 2012 (UTC)
Thank you for acknowledging, as I said, that there is no prohibition on the inclusion of coordinates in junction lists. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:55, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

Direction indication when no mile markers are used

Many highways don't use mile markers for their major exits/intersections. In these cases (and maybe in all cases?) it's helpful to indicate clearly which direction the list goes in (e.g., west to east or north to south, or whatever). For example, at Texas State Highway Loop 360#Junction list, this information is given in the Notes column ("Southern terminus" at the top, "Northern terminus" at the bottom). At Texas State Highway Loop 1#Exit list, it is indicated with a header-like row near the top of the table ("South end of freeway") and in the Notes at the bottom ("Northbound exit and southbound entrance"). At U.S. Route 290#Junction list, however, it is difficult to tell which way the list is going until the very end of the table, where the Notes say "Eastbound exit and westbound entrance". I think it would be helpful to indicate this information clearly, in regular text, before the table. So, for example, above the table at U.S. Route 290#Junction list, it would say, "Traveling from west to east, the major junctions of U.S. 290 are as follows." Or something like that. Can we develop a guideline about this? - dcljr (talk) 03:02, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

The US standard is to list them in a) west-to-east order for an east–west highway, b) south-to-north order for a north–south highway, or c) clockwise order for a full circle beltway, even if that means running the numbers from an inventory log backwards. M-115 (Michigan highway) runs diagonally, northwest–southeast, it's signed north–south, but inventoried west-to-east. The numbers run backwards in the table, and there is a note there for that exception. Imzadi 1979 → 03:17, 19 November 2012 (UTC)
OK, but given that most people reading these articles probably won't know the convention you describe above, I think it would be helpful to explicitly state the order above the table in each article. No? - dcljr (talk) 23:28, 19 November 2012 (UTC)
I'll second that it should be clear which direction the table runs. The above standards, as you mention, are for the US, not global. Having said that, I don't think there is a need to explicitly say so above above the table. A short note for the top and bottom entries would be sufficient, such as "southern terminus", or "continues south as ..." - Evad37 (talk) 23:50, 19 November 2012 (UTC)
Well, the route description follows that convention too. --Rschen7754 23:56, 19 November 2012 (UTC)
I wouldn't be against adding something to the guide that doesn't forbid it. I don't necessarily think it should be required, but we should provide guidance to those who want to add it. –Fredddie™ 01:09, 20 November 2012 (UTC)


Temporary conditions

Is it possible to amend the color scheme for road junction lists to indicate if a condition is temporary, such as when a road is under construction? What I want to do is add a CSS class named "temporary" to such indications so that a special background pattern can be applied, similar to the striping that you see on construction barricades. --  Denelson83  03:02, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

For temporary interchange closures in the past, I just used the regular "closed" gray shade, and then removed it when the interchange reopened. Anything else complicates the situation, and I would oppose anything fancy that won't work in most browsers, and would complicate the color key already in use. Imzadi 1979 → 03:38, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
Can you put together a mockup of what you're proposing so we can see it? I'd like to know what I'm supporting or opposing before doing so. –Fredddie™ 03:53, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
From how it's described, a striped pattern, I'd think it would be too busy where some other single color might be better. I would also like to see a mockup before making a final decision.
I would also add that a road/interchange under initial construction would use the "unopened" orange color with an appropriate note, and a long-term construction closure could simply use the "closed" gray with note as Imzadi suggested. Other temporary conditions probably don't merit being mentioned in the tables, or would just as easily be done without colored background. -- LJ ↗ 05:29, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
The CSS code is as follows:
background-image: repeating-linear-gradient(-45deg, transparent, transparent 10px, rgba(0,0,0,.05) 10px, rgba(0,0,0,.05) 20px);
--  Denelson83  05:56, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
Which, when previously added, didn't work in WebKit browsers (Apple Safari, Google Chrome, etc). Any CSS tricks we're adding should work in the widest possible number of browsers used by our readership, and since WebKit has over 40% of the market share, that pretty much sinks the deal for me. Imzadi 1979 → 06:02, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
It doesn't work on Firefox either. It does work on Opera, but I could not test with with Internet Explorer as that browser has not a Mac version for about a decade. As soon as I can get back to the office to try the CSS code in a preview on IE for Windows, I will. Imzadi 1979 → 06:39, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
It doesn't work on Internet Explorer 9 on Windows either. Imzadi 1979 → 10:09, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
I'm using Firefox 17 on Windows XP, and it shows up just fine. --  Denelson83  06:57, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
But believe it or not, I can't find this "gradient" specification in the W3C CSS definitions. However, since this is really something that only I want to see, I want to add a CSS class to the code so that I can refer to it in my personal monobook.css code. --  Denelson83  07:01, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
Here is a mockup. I did a second line with just a background color just to make sure I wasn't coding anything wrong. I, too, can't see the repeating lines. –Fredddie™ 14:43, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
Mockup

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

It works for me on Firefox 17 (Linux), but I'm not really sure what having gray stripes accomplishes... —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 20:43, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
Lines are there with Firefox 17 on Windows 7. However reading the text is very hard as the stripes really distract. IE9 on the same machine does not show the lines. Vegaswikian (talk) 21:45, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
I also see the lines on Firefox 17 (WinXP). That is distracting, and I wouldn't support implementing this as it makes the text harder to read. -- LJ ↗ 22:31, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Chicago addresses

I am redoing an exit list to use the templates, and as you can see, most of the exits have the street's place in the numbering grid listed (e.g. 4600 North). I have two questions about them. –Fredddie™ 23:43, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

  1. Do we want to include them at all? They are listed on big green signs.
  2. If we do want to include them, do the rules that apply to the Utah numbering grid apply here (direction is capitalized)?
    I would just drop them. They are not going to mean anything to anyone who isn't a Chicago native. I have a feeling the purpose of them might be to disambiguate multiple exits that serve the same street at different points, since St. Louis does something similar. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 00:42, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

Colour of motorway emblems

Is it just me or is the blue colour to denote motorways too bright in M18 motorway (Great Britain) versus that recommended in this manual of style? I'm not good at determining subtleties between close colours so would appreciate a more colour-literate person take a look! The Rambling Man (talk) 21:48, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

According to this DfT site, the colour components for blue should be:
  • Red - 0 (Hex equivalent #00)
  • Green - 121 (Hex equivalent #79)
  • Blue - 193 (Hex equivalent #C1)
Combining these gives #0079C1 which is the colour specified in RJLUKhdr. Martinvl (talk) 22:10, 3 March 2013 (UTC)
To provide some perspective, the UK has been using a different format than the rest of the world for a while. At the time this was last discussed there was no consensus to switch to the format used in the US/Canada/New Zealand, and we left things as is. --Rschen7754 22:21, 3 March 2013 (UTC)
Should the style guide therefore be updated to state that for UK RJLs, the blue to be used is not the same as the one that is currently prescribed? I don't see it being a major issue, particularly as we have a nice reliable source as provided above by Martinvl. The Rambling Man (talk) 07:46, 4 March 2013 (UTC)
The blue that we are using is the one prescribed by the DoT. Why do you think otherwise? Martinvl (talk) 07:49, 4 March 2013 (UTC)
Did you even bother looking at the page I linked then? The M18 page? The Rambling Man (talk) 07:52, 4 March 2013 (UTC)
I did not look at that particular road because I knew that I would be applying the RJLUK templates to it in the near future. You may rest assured that the template has the correct hue. Martinvl (talk) 08:01, 4 March 2013 (UTC)
Oh, you didn't read what I wrote or check it? Never mind, I'll fix it myself. I suggest you hold off applying "your templates" until there's a consensus to do so! The Rambling Man (talk) 08:04, 4 March 2013 (UTC)
I saw your repairs. We were talking about two different things - I was talking about the banner (which is also wrong, but which you did not fix), while you were talking about roads in the list itself, something that also needs to be agreed. So far, I have been neutral on that one. Martinvl (talk) 08:41, 4 March 2013 (UTC)
Sorry, the "banner" on the M18 page is incorrect? News to me. The Rambling Man (talk) 08:45, 4 March 2013 (UTC)
Yes, it is - it uses "colour" #0080d0, not "colour" #0079C1. The green component is #80, not #79 and the blue component is #D0, not #C1. Don't worry, it will be corrected automatically once the templates are applied.Martinvl (talk) 09:54, 4 March 2013 (UTC)
I'm not worried, but thanks for your concern! The Rambling Man (talk) 10:27, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

White background for "Secondary roads"

Is this a good idea? I imagine most of our readers and editors have a near-white background for Wikipedia already. Without a symbol as well as the colour (per WP:ACCESS) I cannot believe this approach is useful to anyone, regardless of the fact that it sort-of matches road signs and their coloration. Speaking for myself, I can barely perceive the background colour on my retina display Macbook Pro..... The Rambling Man (talk) 21:52, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

I don't really know what you are getting at. Black lettering on a white background is the norm for Wikipedia pages, so for road junction lists related to secondary roads, one would just not colour the banner. BTW, I am not aware of any RJLs for secondary roads. Martinvl (talk) 22:15, 3 March 2013 (UTC)
If you don't get it, perhaps you should take a look at WP:ACCESS. Currently we have a key which means that the way to identify a "secondary road" is text on a white background which is imperceptively different (but different nevertheless) from the standard Wikipedia background (at least the one I use). The style guide is clear, it uses bgcolor=white to define the background, it's not a case of "just not colour the banner". I didn't suggest there were "any RJLs for secondary roads" at all. The pure white background is used to identify secondary roads which are linked from other major routes. The Rambling Man (talk) 07:38, 4 March 2013 (UTC)
What I don't get is why we bother colouring the banner at all. If you're looking at the junction list on M25, the title of the article itself should be enough to tell you it's a motorway. It seems like an unnecessary frivolity, especially when we have to point out its meaning with a color key. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 07:46, 4 March 2013 (UTC)
I agree. Right now it's the worst case scenario. I suggest that the background prescription is removed entirely from secondary roads. The Rambling Man (talk) 07:47, 4 March 2013 (UTC)
I personally think that we should take the opportunity to remove the colored header entirely from RJL, but I understand that the UK road editors will not follow RJL if this happens (most articles there are not in compliance as it is). --Rschen7754 07:49, 4 March 2013 (UTC)
Rschen7754, could you point me to a motorway article (a UK one, like the M18 or M25 or whatever) and tell me what's non-compliant about it in your opinion? I'd be interested to see what I could do to help. The Rambling Man (talk) 07:59, 4 March 2013 (UTC)
I don't have the time to dig around right now, but I'm referring to the white text on black backgrounds that are still used on many articles, and the edit warring to keep those in place. If that's not a violation of WP:ACCESS, then I don't know what is. --Rschen7754 08:01, 4 March 2013 (UTC)
Well I'm happy to remove it whenever I see it, it'd need to be removed from the style guide. What some people forget is that WP:ACCESS is part of the style guide as well so forcing people to use colour schemes which aren't useful is contradictory. Project guidelines should really flow down from the Wikipedia style guidelines. The Rambling Man (talk) 08:14, 4 March 2013 (UTC)
To be clear, this background prohibits the white text on black backgrounds too. --Rschen7754 08:19, 4 March 2013 (UTC)
Thuis is one of the things that the RJLUK family of templates wsas fixing.Martinvl (talk) 08:42, 4 March 2013 (UTC)
Fixing it by not having text on an imperceptible white background? The Rambling Man (talk) 08:46, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

UK RJL templates

I have created a set of templates for use on British road junction lists and I have also created a category “Road junction list templates”. All my new templates commence with the letters “RJLUK” and they can be found in the category.

The results of using these templates can be seen in the following artciles:

Do others have any comments before I request the admins to lock these templates?

Martinvl (talk) 08:25, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

I'm a bit puzzled as to why the table is mostly hardcoded table syntax, instead of using templates. See California State Route 52 for an example of the coding that we use. --Rschen7754 08:28, 1 March 2013 (UTC)
Perhaps because this is a first-pass. Further templates can be added at a later date should the need arise. Martinvl (talk) 09:09, 1 March 2013 (UTC)
Of course it's your call, but with my computer science hat on, this doesn't seem like a good approach as there's a lot of redundant coding that is not clear to the new editor. --Rschen7754 09:10, 1 March 2013 (UTC)
Where are the location columns? Not including the columns assumes the reader is already familiar with where the road is. –Fredddie™ 13:15, 1 March 2013 (UTC)
As per discussions in 2010, (here), we do not have them. We do however have as map on each article (for example here). Just to remind you, people in the United Kingdom pay more attention to large towns and cities than they do to counties, unitary authorities and the like. Martinvl (talk) 18:30, 1 March 2013 (UTC)
Note that the matter is contentious, and that the MoS for roads shows an example with coordinates. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:45, 1 March 2013 (UTC)
That's nice. This discussion isn't about coordinates, and I doubt anyone aside from you really cares to rehash that BS again. (I know I sure didn't get out of bed this morning thinking "Gee, it sure would be swell to waste time today discussing coords for the trillionth time!") —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 20:34, 1 March 2013 (UTC)
I suggest you read the linked 2010 discussion before you start making assertions about what is and is not in scope. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:47, 1 March 2013 (UTC)
Sorry I didn't reply sooner as I had to leave for work. The reason I'd like to see location columns is for our readers who use their smartphones to pull up articles. There are readers (USRD had feedback from one such user a while back) who use our roads articles as a driving reference instead of or with a map. They can glance at a junction list and know in what city the next major road is without needing a map. –Fredddie™ 23:41, 1 March 2013 (UTC)
We already do that - the UK RJLs reflect exactly what is on the signboards themselves (at least that is what we try to do). I often prune out towns added by editors who are being over-enthusiastic. That is why we have two columns of destinations - one for each direction. Martinvl (talk) 23:55, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

This is just some general advice for when you start working on the templates for the template rows—code any logic that it uses in Lua, if at all possible. Lua code is a lot more readable than Parserfunctions, so if you or someone else needs to add something on down the road, it is simpler for them to determine how the existing code works. See {{Routelist row}} and Module:Routelist row for an example of a Lua template in action. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 20:34, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

  • I would swap the mile and kilometre columns back to how they are in all the current motorway articles that use them. UK roads are mile-centric and the undiscussed swap may provoke some unrest and I suspect may give rise to unnecessary disputes and disruption, even rejection of the templates, especially if they are locked. Cobulator (talk) 21:22, 1 March 2013 (UTC)
Driver location sign, emergency telephone and location marker post at km 2.8 on the M27 in Hampshire."2" and "8" are marker on each item
Driver location signs are in kilometres. There are no mile markers on British roads (even though distances are given in miles). Placing themn as they are minimises the surprise for readers whao are actually trying to correlate what they see in Wikipedia with the real world. Martinvl (talk) 21:52, 1 March 2013 (UTC)
The big surprise for many will be to see kilometres in an article about a British road at all. All signposts are in miles and road distances are always discussed in miles. For an as painless introduction as possible, I think the best policy would be to start with the least amount of visual change possible and make the result look close to what was there before. After the templates have become established would be the time to discuss swapping the columns around. Swapping the columns around without any discussion or consensus could prove to be a big mistake. Cobulator (talk) 22:01, 1 March 2013 (UTC)
Which is best, for a person to have a big surprise when reading Wikipedia, or, having gathered information from Wikipedia, having that surprise when behind the wheel? I think it better to have that astonishment when reading Wikipedia. Martinvl (talk) 22:09, 1 March 2013 (UTC)
You missed my point. We are talking here about the introduction of new templates. I am saying that I think they are more likely to be accepted without challenge if they do not drastically change the article appearance. If they are used as a vehicle to slip in controversial and undiscussed changes into the articles they may trigger resistance and even be rejected altogether. Cobulator (talk) 22:17, 1 March 2013 (UTC)
Are you aware that a few weeks ago a sockpuppet of a banned user (User:DeFacto) added the mile columns and placed them first? He was editing as user 202.183.*.*. For example, the article on the M602 (which I am currently updating) had kilometres only from February 2009 until two weeks ago. If we ignore DeFacto's changes (he is a banned user), you will see that most of the British RJLs had only kilometres. Martinvl (talk) 22:25, 1 March 2013 (UTC)
I would encourage you to consider doing both miles and kilometers, to allow people from all countries to be able to understand the measurements. The US roads project has recently switched to doing both, even though 99% of our roads are signed in miles and the metric system is only used in the scientific realm. --Rschen7754 22:30, 1 March 2013 (UTC)
That's a different discussion (Martinvl's), I'm looking at the difference between your M25 example above and the M25 motorway article itself, and I see columns swapped unnecessarily. I think you should swap the columns back, and the template adoption will probably pass virtually unnoticed. If you think that the columns should be swapped, then raise that as the subject of a separate discussion. Are you aware of the preference in the UK for miles rather than kilometres on the roads? Cobulator (talk) 22:42, 1 March 2013 (UTC)
The issue at stake in the UK is that all roads are signposted in miles, except for driver location signs which are placed on the side of the road at 500 m intervals (see picture to the right). British road are designed in kilometres, but the British Government does its best to hide this fact from the bulk of the British public - a kind of cultural apartheid (even though the Highways Agency, a government department is quite public about the matter - see [2]). You will not see the letters "km" in the picture, but the digits "2" and "8" appear on all three pieces of roadside furniture. Martinvl (talk) 23:11, 1 March 2013 (UTC)
This isn't about the politics, or the rights and wrongs though, it is about the adoption of the template. My view is that it should leave the article content and presentation as it is today, and that such content changes should be discussed separately. Why do you want to complicate the transition to template use (I think that's an excellent idea) by trying to introduce such content changes at the same time? Cobulator (talk) 23:23, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

To inform the discussion of other relevant information:

I have no idea which unit should go first, but the italics is a violation of MOS. --Rschen7754 23:26, 1 March 2013 (UTC)
Where exactly is the prohibition on using italics in the MOS? I could not find it. Martinvl (talk) 23:55, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

A couple of comments are in order:

  1. The tables should be built with distance columns, always. A blank column in the table indicates to potential editors that they should help complete the table by filling in the missing data, while omitting the column tells potential editors there's nothing more that needs to be added.
  2. A good template would create all of the code for each line of the table so that editors would not need to insert a mix of table formatting and template coding.
  3. In the short-term, the templates should replicate the existing formatting as best as possible, and then the formatting can be refined going forward.

As a personal preference, I too agree that there should be location columns in the future. County and town/city/etc would be ideal, and quite consistent with how most other countries are formatting things. Imzadi 1979 → 10:52, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

The templates appear to be useful, however you've got the km/miles columns the wrong way round! Jeni (talk) 09:36, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

I see you've already started converting articles despite the consensus that appears to be here. If it would make it easier for you, I'm happy to go through and fix so that for you, as I appreciate you're probably sick of junction lists by now! Jeni (talk) 09:39, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
Hi Jeni,
Since we will be revisiting the RJLs, it might be worthwhile agreeing a few more standards that we will apply. I will comne back to that later. In response to Imzadil1979, the consensus among UK editors is that location columns are of little interest, especially with towns and cities being noted in the destination list. The only geographical boundaries that will be noted are the England/Scotland and the England-Wales boundaries (which potentially have a legal significance). Martinvl (talk) 15:57, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
For convenenience, could you link us to the discussion where that consensus was achieved please? Cheers. The Rambling Man (talk) 16:01, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
It is scattered across many archives - one of the sticking points being the overlap of historic counties, ceremonial counties, administrative counties, unitary authorities, london boroughs etc. Also, the UK roads group started developing road junction lists independently of the US roads groups so two different patterns emerged. Ther ehave been efforts over teh past few years years to harmonise what we can, hence the set of templates that I am writing. It will be noticed of course that I am writing UK-specific templates. Martinvl (talk) 16:42, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
So there's no way to demonstrate this "consensus"? Just a "feeling" you've got? I suspect it's time to ask the questions directly to get a more direct answer. The Rambling Man (talk) 07:46, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Really simple question

Okay, so in RJL prose, the word "junction" is used very frequently. Should it be capitalised or not? My suspicions would be that it should be capitalised when used in the "blah blah at Junction 2 of the M...." but not in the context of "it's a very nice junction with shiny bits".... Right now there's a proper mix (throughout the UK lists at least) and it'd be helpful to make them consistent. The Rambling Man (talk) 09:52, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

You are quite right. You are welcome to make the corections. Martinvl (talk) 10:34, 6 March 2013 (UTC)
I know I'm welcome to do that. This is Wikipedia. (Oh, and once again, the irony of you "welcoming" me to make corections hasn't gone un-noticed!) The Rambling Man (talk) 18:32, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Distance columns of British Roads

The issue of how to display distances on British Roads has arisen again, complicated by double standards on the part of the British Government. The British Government uses miles when talking to the public at large, erect road signs showing miles, but design roads using kilometres. The use of mobile phones rather than roadside phones neccessitated the erection of driver location signs which had to be in kilometres, but the Governemnt has been very coy about publicising this.

Driver location signs are not widely understood by motorists – surveys consistently show that about 60% of motorway users have actually noticed the signs and that about 20% know what they are for. My own surveys show that of those 20%, very few know that they are in kilometres. Given this background, we need to display distance (or is that location) information in a manner that it cannot be misunderstood.

  • In my view it is mandatory that we display the actual numbers on the posts, doing anything else would be fundamentally wrong.
  • If we show both miles and kilometres, then given the low driver perception then, in accordance with the principal of least astonishment we need to shout at readers – that the information on the roadside is given in kilometre. I prefer to do this by italicising the miles column which is a means of telling readers "Take note".
  • We show only the values displayed, marking the columns "MP" (marker post) or "chainage" with a note in the footer that these values are actually given in kilometres.

Any thoughts – whatever we do we must make sure that if the readers want to correlate the numbers shown with the numbers on the roadside, that they are aware of the kilometre/mile dilemma and we should remember that not many readers actually read the notes. Martinvl (talk) 09:26, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

Please read WP:MOSITALICS regarding the issues with italics. --Rschen7754 09:48, 3 March 2013 (UTC)
In short, italics is basically only used for emphasis, words as words, scientific names, foreign words, vehicle names and certain types of artistic, literary or legal works. Using it for emphasis in an entire column is not correct. Imzadi 1979 → 10:27, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

Comment - As reccommended in WP:BRD, I have Reverted the Bold edits (here and here) of Martinvl in which he introduced italics into the mile column for UK road junction lists. I have asked him to wait now to see what consensus develops in this Discussion before restoring his changes. 178.105.26.216 (talk) 10:34, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

I'm going to note that those reversions, along with the miles disclaimer reversions, have concerned me. "He did it first so I reverted him" is not a valid excuse. Please do not do this again, or both of you could get blocked. --Rschen7754 10:40, 3 March 2013 (UTC)
We have a very special condition here - the British Government is employing double standards and they are sailing very close to the wind, they hide their statement of what the numbers mean deep on the internet - the average motorist is not aware what they mean. If we state what the numbers mean in both miles and kilometres, then we must adhere to the principal of least astonishment and make it absolutely crystal clear that the number on the sides of the road refer to the kilometre value, not the mile value (which is what the motorist woudl expect). The options asd I see it are:
  • Show only kilometres - in this way there is no confusion and we adhere strictly to WP:V (which takes precedence WP:ITALIC.
  • Show only kilometres and change the heading the "MP" with a note that "MP" means "Marker post" with an explanation. In this way we will refelct exactly what is on the roads and pass no judgement.
  • Show miles and kilometres and have something that screams at the reader - "You might not believe it, but the marker posts on the roads in kilometres, not miles."!
I utterly reject the concept of displaying miles and kilmetres as being equal as this does not convey the information that is presented on the side of the road.
Martinvl (talk) 11:02, 3 March 2013 (UTC)
In the United States miles are displayed first, and thus are not displayed as being equal. Would this be a possible solution? --Rschen7754 11:03, 3 March 2013 (UTC)
No, this is not a solution. Everything in the US is in miles unless specified otherwise. The UK Government applies double standards - miles for the motorists and kilometres for the road engineers (a form of "cultural apartheid"). Wikipedia has got to be very careful not to convert the UK Government's "ecconomy of the truth" into an outright misleading statement. I have tried to do this by italicising the miles column. Can you suggest a better way? I reject the concept of a footnote, because hardly anybody reads the footnotes. I need something that is foolproof - British readers expect miles on both the distance columns and roadside markers - we have no control over the roadside markers. Martinvl (talk) 11:43, 3 March 2013 (UTC)
This cultural apartheid/double standard argument is a red herring. In this case, WE (as in Wikipedia) DON'T CARE WHAT THE UK GOVERNMENT DOES. We only care about reliable sources. So, if the most reliable source is the DLS in km, we use km and then convert to miles. End of argument. Move on. Let's go expand some stubs. –Fredddie™ 12:52, 3 March 2013 (UTC)
Or how about this for the table header:
Location DLS Mile Junction Carriageway A Carriageway B Notes
Keep in mind this is a mockup and I'm inserting my desire for location column; BUT, we get the best of every world here. We use DLS as a length reference, it's converted to miles, and we don't label DLS as km since that would somehow shock and appall the British public. It's stupid to continue arguing over this. It's so simple. –Fredddie™ 13:16, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

The primary purpose of Driver Location Signs is simply to provide a unique ID code that can be read out over a phone. Anyone doing so doesn't care whether the ID code is based on kilometres or miles or furlongs or whatever. So I don't see any need to change the current style in our tables. -- Dr Greg  talk  14:21, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

Why not use them to their fullest extent? What are we trying to hide - that the UK Government is aplying double standards? Martinvl (talk) 14:36, 3 March 2013 (UTC)
@Freddie: What is wriong wuith "shocking and appalling" the British public. Are we trying to censor the fact that the UK Government is applying double standards? Isn't part of our job to educate our readers? If we need to expose the UK Government's doubvole standards by educating the public, so be it. Furthermore, by making people aware of the driver location signs, we could be saving lives. Martinvl (talk) 14:40, 3 March 2013 (UTC)
Your statements are quite shocking. Wikipedia is not a place to push your own point of view; please see WP:NPOV. This has all of the makings of an arbitration case. --Rschen7754 18:41, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

Obviously the only completely fair solution is to put the km and mile conversions directly over top of one another. That way users of both miles and km will be equally unable to read the measurements in their unit of choice. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 18:36, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

Martinvl, from a non-RJL editor, it's not the position of this project or manual of style to "educate" the reader to this perceived "double standard". Road signs in the UK are in miles, so let's use miles. If someone wants to write a separate article about "driver location signs" together with verifiable reliable sources then that sounds dandy. In the mean time, this is not the right place for this crusade. As Dr Greg says, the signs provide a unique ID whether it's km, miles, parsecs or whatever. And since most, if not all, of the major routes in the UK are now covered by cameras and have regular junctions, identifying the location of an accident is pretty straightforward (if you're on about "saving lives").... Rschen7754, as for "arbitration case", nonsense... unless Martinvl is actively disrupting Wikipedia, right now all I see is him forcefully arguing his position. This is nowhere close to "arbitration"... The Rambling Man (talk) 18:55, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

I think what I was trying to say was hidden within frustration, but we can use the DLS distance as our km column, which would then convert to miles (as shown in my header example above). The separate article about DLS will notify our readers that they are measured in kilometers. I have edited my mockup above to demonstrate both the DLS and mile columns and getting the UK standard closer to the US standard by keeping the separate columns for each direction. –Fredddie™ 20:47, 3 March 2013 (UTC)
Well to be more clear, it's attitudes like that that are what arbitration cases are made of, where someone believes it's our responsibility to educate regarding a double standard (classic POV pushing). Having filed many cases, this isn't close to that progression yet at this point in time. --Rschen7754 21:51, 3 March 2013 (UTC)
@The Rambling Man: Please visit Driver location signs. As regards the saving of lives, I think that you have over-estimated the number of cameras on the motorways. Also, there is no way that a camera can tell whether or not somebody has pulled up on the side of the road because of car problems or because they are suddenly taken ill (for example, a driver suffering heart attack). I agree with Rschen7754 that this is an arbitration case - possibly arbcom should become involved because this touches on the interpretation of Wikipedia's role when handling double standards on the part of governments. Martinvl (talk) 22:24, 3 March 2013 (UTC)
@Freddie - in theory, the DLS article covers the use of kilometres and miles, but in practice it does not - at 18:53 this evening The Rambling Man proved it as part of this thread when he wrote "If someone wants to write a separate article about "driver location signs" together with verifiable reliable sources then that sounds dandy." Even though we were debating driver location signs, he weighed into the argument without realising that such an article already existed. Martinvl (talk) 22:24, 3 March 2013 (UTC)
@Rschen7754: While it might not be Wikipedia's role to educate readers, it is certainly part of Wikipedia's role not to sow seeds of misunderstanding, so if we place mile equivalents next to the verifiable DLS values, we need to be sure that readers are aware that it is the DLS values that are placed on the DLSs along the motorways, not the mile equivalents - and we can't rely on readers following up links to follow this up (as The Rambling Man proved). Education is one way to ensure that seeds of misunderstanding are not sown. Martinvl (talk) 22:24, 3 March 2013 (UTC)
ArbCom is a last resort, not a first resort, and they never rule on a content dispute. However, they can rule on a conduct dispute, and this is getting dangerously close to POV pushing. That being said, my point that I was trying to make (and which has been misunderstood) is that trying to use Wikipedia to push your own point of view in trying to "educate" people about a certain stance is never acceptable, and can eventually lead to sanctions imposed by ArbCom. --Rschen7754 23:46, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

Martinvl, you say "this touches on the interpretation of Wikipedia's role when handling double standards on the part of governments." rubbish I'm afraid. Wikipedia doesn't have a "role" in this. We use reliable secondary sources. If you want to embellish the "driver location sign" with your POV and pointy editing, that's fine, but it's not a manual of style issue. I suggest you take up the discussion there. P.S. Love your spelling of "Educatiojn". The irony was not lost on me! The Rambling Man (talk) 08:03, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

I must disagree about Wikipedia not having a role. Of course Wikipedia has a role where government double standards – it must not make the problem worse. Following on the argument above, I am rapidly becoming convinced that the correct way forward is to have a column headed “DSL” and to report exactly what appears on the driver location signs/location marker posts, no more and no less. A note should be added to the bottom of the table stating that these values are in kilometres as per this Highways Agency site. This approach will satisfy WP:VERIFY to the letter and will not cause any confusion.
The government, by not quoting units, has removed the scope for confusion – there is only one number for any one situation. If we add the units of measure, then we are both sabotaging the government’s anti-confusion tactic and putting nothing concrete in its place. Martinvl (talk) 15:42, 4 March 2013 (UTC)
No, Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. It can note that different units are used in different circumstances, maybe even explain why using reliable sources, but it's not Wikipedia's job to continually cry out "double standards". The Rambling Man (talk) 15:47, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

Back to the problem, a simple solution is to have km first and a miles conversion second and a footnote saying the km comes from the DLS. We don't need a mighty song-and-dance about this (note, I count twelve instances of "double standards" here, I guess someone's trying make a point? (Do also note, we should definitely not be advocating that editors use Wikipedia to help report accidents, see Wikipedia:Risk disclaimer.......) The Rambling Man (talk) 17:11, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

Where do you get this thing about "advocating that editors use Wikipedia to help report accidents"? Martinvl (talk) 18:50, 4 March 2013 (UTC)
Your reference to "we could be saving lives"? Anyway, that's clearly a red herring and we don't need red herrings because red herrings move the main point of the discussion from something legitimate to something rouge and fishy. As I said above, "Back to the problem, a simple solution is to have km first and a miles conversion second and a footnote saying the km comes from the DLS. We don't need a mighty song-and-dance about this (note, I count twelve instances of "double standards" here, I guess someone's trying make a point?". Km first, miles converted second, and a footnote. And take your "point" elsewhere, deal? The Rambling Man (talk) 18:55, 4 March 2013 (UTC)
You might like to have a look at User:Martinvl/M5. You will notice that certain of the column headers have footnotes attached to them. These footnotes are expanded in the footer. I made these changes (not yet released) so that footnotes cpould be included in the actual junction list itself. You might notice that a test footnote has been attached to Junction 11A. Martinvl (talk) 20:21, 4 March 2013 (UTC)
Yes, yes, I've seen it, marvellous work indeed. Although there's no need for all the italics, as well you know, and the sentence about the "data" is really poorly formatted. Also, note 2 is irrelevant since we all know that 1 mile = 1.609 km. We don't have such caveats anywhere else on Wikipedia. Nice attempt, but I sincerely hope you take advice on how to format things in accordance with the wider MOS before you roll out your oeuvre..... The Rambling Man (talk) 20:31, 4 March 2013 (UTC)
Nowhere else in Wikipedia do we make statements that can easily be misconstrued - in this case an innocent noting a few figures from the miles column (because everything else on UK roads appear to be in miles) and then trying to reconcile DLSs on the roadside with the figures to hand. I don’t know what you do in real life, but I have spent much of my working life catching situations where mis-interpretation can arise and to me, this is an example that is just waiting to happen. Martinvl (talk) 20:44, 4 March 2013 (UTC)
This isn't something "that can easily be misconstrued" and to be honest, I think you're giving undue weight (i.e. a red herring) to something that is frankly insignificant in the big scheme of things. We all accept the DLS notices are in km. We all accept that 1 mile is 1.609 km. We can make a note for each table to say that distances are derived from DLS. That's job done. Where's the problem, is it a red herring you're positing? We're here to report junction distances, not government scandals or "double standards" (for the 13th time). Stick to the facts. If you want a conspiracy, make it elsewhere. This is Wikipedia, not the X Files. What I do in "real life" is entirely irrelevant, but I bet my mortgage twice you'd be surprised. Your "but I have spent much of my working life catching situations where mis-interpretation can arise and to me, this is an example that is just waiting to happen" can apply to any walk of life. Your example is a red herring. It doesn't add any weight at all to the discussion. Look at the compromise. Km first, miles next, and a note to say where we got the km distances from. Objective, simple and encyclopedic. Job done. Minus red herring. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:59, 4 March 2013 (UTC)
The Rambling Man wrote "We all accept the DLS notices are in km". A year or two ago I was going to Gatwick by taxi. The taxi driver (who spends most of his day travelling to the M25 and thence on to Heathrow or Gatwick) was aware that DLS signs gave distances, but when I mentioned that they were in "kilometres" he was totally unconvinced until he had checked them against his odometer. If he did not know, then I am convinced that Joe Public does not know. What I said earlier is that if we stick to facts, then we report just the kilometres under the title DLS, and apart form a footnore, nothing more, nothing less. In that way nothing can get misconstrued. Martinvl (talk) 21:04, 4 March 2013 (UTC)
What a fascinating anecdote. If this was "Anecdotapedia" then it'd be worth listening to. Otherwise, we'll just get on with being objective, simple, encyclopedic and use normal reliable conversions to move from the DLS km to miles. No italics required (since when did they ever mean "Take note"! I think, perhaps, you've entirely misunderstood the purpose of Wikipedia. It's not a "guide to survival on motorways", it's an encyclopedia. Once again.... if you insist .... km first, miles next, and a footnote saying where we get the original km measurement from. Simple as that. Unless, of course, you think the DfT have redefined how long a kilometre is. Note, this is not a "public service announcement", this is an encyclopedia. Whatever you're "convinced" your "Joe Public" thinks is utterly irrelevant. The Rambling Man (talk) 21:11, 4 March 2013 (UTC)
This was posted to WT:USRD earlier today by Chaswmsday (talk · contribs) regarding something totally unrelated to this, but I thought it was brilliant in the context of this discussion. "I believe it's generally better practice to leave the definition of a linked term to that term's own article." ... "IMO, if someone is interested enough, they'll visit the link. If they don't come back to the first page, so what? We can't dictate another reader's interests." Back to my own words, give a link to DLS, don't bother with a note that it's in km, and move on. –Fredddie™ 22:29, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

A new concern I'm finding, I was under the impression that a list of DLS locations, or just DLS information in general, was readily available. M25's DLS, the most famous example, are cited to what appears to be a personal website hosting a Highways Agency document. I have tried searching the Highway Agency's website, and I can't find anything dated later than 2010. Certainly the DLS program has expanded since then. This dearth of information on DLS makes me wonder if we should bother using them. –Fredddie™ 02:43, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

The M25 document is on a personal website, but it WAS on the Highways Agency website. I saw it there when I first added it to the article. However, with the change of government in 2010, the new set of ministers set about "rebranding" their departments and a lot of internet material is no longer available online. The M25 map was one such item which, fortunately, was salvaged by somebody in the Netherlands. (PS, I suggest that you read George Orwells Nineteen Eighty-Four where the Ministry of Truth spend's it life rewriting history).Martinvl (talk) 07:42, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
If the document is being held by something no longer considered a reliable source then it could be a red herring. The document could have been modified and many red herrings could have been placed within it. We can't rely on it, so it should not be used. All references to such personal webhosts should be removed to avoid red herrings. The Rambling Man (talk) 07:48, 6 March 2013 (UTC)
No No No and again no!!!!! The important thing is that is was published by a reliable source - in this case the DfT. Martinvl (talk) 08:00, 6 March 2013 (UTC)
No, we can't trust it. It could have been modified. It's hosted by an ureliable source. It's like suggesting a video "officially" released to YouTube is reliable. We don't need any more red herrings. We need to remove this and preferably find a reliable alternative, e.g. the DfT website. Sorry about that. The Rambling Man (talk) 08:14, 6 March 2013 (UTC)
Would you trust the paper copy that I had taken from the offical website - all that I need to is to cite the document number? Of course, if your middle name is "Thomas", you can always go to sites like this one. Martinvl (talk) 08:18, 6 March 2013 (UTC)
A paper copy is fine if you cite the document, the author/publisher, the date of publication and the page reference or page range for each particular motorway. Funny link to Google, just about sums up motorways in the UK. The Rambling Man (talk) 08:29, 6 March 2013 (UTC)
WP:VERIFY states "Source material must have been published (made available to the public in some form)". This DLS in question has been made available to the public in some form - thousands see it every day (even if they do not register that it is there). The Google Map photo proves that it is there. This is verifiable. You can get in a car, drive to the place shown on Google Maps and check it out for yourself. Martinvl (talk) 08:44, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Please read what I wrote: "A paper copy is fine if you cite the document, the author/publisher, the date of publication and the page reference or page range for each particular motorway." Thanks! Oh, and just because I can go and see something, claiming that "I've seen it" makes an adequate reliable source is fiction! The Rambling Man (talk) 07:45, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

Reliable source?

Can someone explain (or point me to a previous discussion) where CBRD was declared as being a reliable source? It's used extensively on UK road lists, despite a disclaimer on the home page stating : "I make no guarantees as to the validity of any information on this website" and "the information on [the website] is not officially sourced or endorsed". It also says "as of July 2012, this site is no longer being updated and you might find some information has become out of date or obsolete"... I realise this is the MOS for road lists, rather than the main project page, but this seems to get much more interest than the UK project pages. The Rambling Man (talk) 17:22, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

As far as I am aware, this source has never been declared as being reliable in the Wikipedia sense. However the British Government is loath to make informaiton public unless you are the AA Road planner or Via Michelin Route Planner and pay loadsamoney for the privillege of up-to-date road information. Historically though, many members of SABRE - The Society for All British and Irish Road Enthusiasts have contributed to various roads articles, but due to a tightening up of the "reliability criteria" over the years, they have fallen away. We are left with a lot of stuff that predates this tightening up of criteria. For the record, I must point out the CBRD dates from 2001, about the same time as Wikipedia. By and large his stuff is accurate, he has always responded to people who point errors out to him. Bottom line is that if you plaster "Unreliable source" over all the references to his website, you will "run out of red ink" and will probably do more harm than good, unless you can assemble an army of people to sort things out. Martinvl (talk) 17:44, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
I need to see how it stacks up against the WP:RS guideline, there are well defined parameters there, I don't need to see how it matches against your conspiracy theories. How does this source meet WP:RS? If it's unreliable per the guideline, then we should remove it, and I'll do that as soon as possible. The Rambling Man (talk) 17:48, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
The problem is that it probably was considered a reliable source when it was cited, so if you really need to weigh it up against WP:RS as it existed when the citation was added. Martinvl (talk) 18:04, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
Not at all. We need to "weigh it up" against current standards. If it cannot be demonstrated to meet current standards then it's no longer reliable and should be removed. The Rambling Man (talk) 18:07, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
I can guarantee that it never was a reliable source, since self-published sources like personal websites, as a rule, almost never are, and never have been. The only difference between the time they were added and now is that Wikipedia takes reliable sourcing much more seriously these days then it did in years past. (Back in 2006 when I was writing my first FA, it seemed like the FAs were the articles that even had references.) —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 20:22, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
Well quite, that's what I thought. And I'm certainly in agreement when you note that refs and reliable sources are so much more part of the furniture of decent articles these days than they used to be. So we should apply today's standards to today's articles... The Rambling Man (talk) 20:30, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
On first glance I'd consider it as reliable as say http://www.aaroads.com in the U.S.... which also is a SPS and isn't reliable either. --Rschen7754 20:34, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
Ok, well unless there's any serious objection based in the guideline, I'll remove this unreliable source as appropriate. Thanks to everyone who contributed. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:47, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

Road numbers

I don’t know about US road signs, but if you were to see the sign “Horsham A281, Worthing (A24)” (which I saw earlier today), I would expect to drive along the A281 and at some point on the A281, I would pick up the A24 to Worthing. This convention is very common in the UK. In view of this I have taken the liberty of making a small change to the project page to reflect UK usage.

I would also like some feedback about an editor who has been changing road identifiers in junction lists such as "M25" to M25. I have no strong feelings, but I would like to standardise on whther we use this notation or not. From the point of view of UKL road signage, there is nothing wrong with this notation. If we agree to go ahead with it, I can write a template to standardise the way we do it. Martinvl (talk) 16:58, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

The background color for the text might run afoul of some section of MOS, probably WP:COLOR or WP:ACCESS. I'll leave it to someone better versed in MOS to comment on the specifics.
As for the parenthesis convention, that is pretty much a UK-only thing. Readers from outside the UK are unlikely to understand the implication of the parenthesis—without your explanation, I would assume that a road at the junction was designated A24 officially, but signs were absent (i.e. an unsigned highway), or, somewhat closer to the truth, that while the junction doesn't directly access A24, you can use A281 to access it (though I likely wouldn't have picked up that this is how you reach Worthing). It would probably be better to spell it out as "A281 – Horsham (Worthing via A24)" or similar.
It should be noted that in many instances it is folly to try to replicate a sign exactly in a junction list. If we were to do that with US signs, we'd have something along the lines of " South – Dallas" instead of what we actually use, which is "
 I-35 south – Dallas"—the latter includes a link and a textual representation of the graphic, which is better for our readers, even if it means the table doesn't match the sign exactly. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 18:14, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
This M25 also has a link built in, but I would be loathe to write M25 M25. Try hovering the mouse over the two variants of "M25". Martinvl (talk) 18:34, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
Ah. This may be another strike against that format, then; I am pretty sure such subtle links are discouraged. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 18:42, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
Yes, and furthermore, odd formatting like that is also strongly discouraged due to accessibility concerns. --Rschen7754 18:49, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
In view of the above, I am in the process of removing this technicolour - particularly the green/gold which affects people with some kinds of colour-blindness. Martinvl (talk) 22:04, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
For what it's worth, I think {{Jct}} is set up for the UK. M25 clockwise / A1 north / A200 west – London, Glasgow –Fredddie™ 06:04, 6 March 2013 (UTC)
That template looks like a good thing as it provides a nice piece of visualisation and also the information in an ACCESS-friendly manner. I think we should look into what this would look like on one of the currently "decorated" motorway lists. The Rambling Man (talk) 09:23, 6 March 2013 (UTC)
UK and US signposting
  • UK overhead signposting
    UK overhead signposting
  • US overhead signposting
    US overhead signposting

I am not totally convinced about the need for these templates in UK motorway RJLs. The above pictures show quite clearly that shields are used on US roads, but there is nothing comparable on UK motorways - though things are a littel different on restricted access primary roads. Martinvl (talk) 10:49, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Yet on other signage in the UK, the numbers appear on a colored panel that's different from the background of the remainder of the sign. For an example, there's the M4 panel on the Magic Roundabout sign with a blue background on an otherwise white sign. These colored panels serve the same purpose as our highway marker "shields" in the US and elsewhere, so I'd be in favor of treating them the same. Imzadi 1979 → 10:58, 6 March 2013 (UTC)
That seems reasonable in circumstances where the coloured panels appear on the actual roadsign itself. Martinvl (talk) 11:16, 6 March 2013 (UTC)
What we're looking for is a general style rule, not one that is dependent on the knowledge of each and every roadsign in the UK. The Rambling Man (talk) 11:21, 6 March 2013 (UTC)
And I think Martinvl missed a point I was trying to make: even though the M25 "panel" is blue on a blue sign without an outline, and unlike the green BS I-20 shield on a green background with its white outline, the fact still remains that motorways are signed with blue backgrounds in their segments of the sign, and such a panel serves the same purpose as the highway markers in other countries like the US, Canada, etc. Imzadi 1979 → 11:26, 6 March 2013 (UTC)
But notice that primary roads (eg "A24" on the above sign) are not shown in green and gold, neither are there any "chopsticks" on the sign. Martinvl (talk) 11:32, 6 March 2013 (UTC)
Did I miss the bit where we said we were trying to make the decorations look like the overhead signs? Or were we trying to make it easier for readers to identify that junctions would lead to other motorways or primary routes? The Rambling Man (talk) 11:42, 6 March 2013 (UTC)
I know that the DfT spend a good deal of effort studying ergonomics - on my travels around Europe I am rate the UK motorways and the French autoroutes as joint top with the Italians bottom of the European league, so I am willing to trust the results of the DfT ergonomic research. If we add to that the ability in Wikipedia to Wikilink, the templates come out a poor second, though of course I am happy to listen to solid arguments one way or the other. Martinvl (talk) 12:54, 6 March 2013 (UTC)
I don't think you got what I said. This is Wikipedia, not a roadsign design competition. We're trying to do what we can to support our reader. After all, we use background colours and symbols all the time (and in accordance with ACCESS) to assist the reader. Why should this be any different? The Rambling Man (talk) 13:01, 6 March 2013 (UTC)
We can create motorway number panels without the "chopsticks". The Motorway and Transport fonts are freely available on the Internet. I could have a set of motorway panels created and uploaded to Commons in 20 minutes if we were really pressed for time. –Fredddie™ 13:19, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Parentheses (continued)

Following on the parentheses discusssion, what is the feeling that a footnote to the effect

«As per UK road signage practice, "A1" means "leading directly to the A1" while "(A2)" means "leading indirectly to the A2"»

at the first instance of a road name appearing in the RJL. Martinvl (talk) 13:08, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Personally, I dislike it. A footnote clutters things up. In the US, our signs use the words "to" or "via". You'll see signs saying "M-6 to I-96" or even just "To M-37". There are cases where signs might say "M-35 via CR 480", flipping the order around. I don't see why something similar can't be used for the UK. Yes, it's less compact, but it imparts the same information to say "To (the) A2" as replicating the sign convention without the need to add a footnote for non-British readers. Imzadi 1979 → 14:54, 6 March 2013 (UTC)
How would you catalogue this road sign? This sign appears on the M3 one mile (not one metre!) from the M25 junction. Martinvl (talk) 15:48, 6 March 2013 (UTC)
M25 – Heathrow Airport, Gatwick Airport.
Naturally, I'd add a UK-specific airport image, but that's what we have right now. –Fredddie™ 15:58, 6 March 2013 (UTC)
(edit conflict) My proposed solution would use two lines, and if possible, I'd insert a direction after the M25 on each line (clockwise and anticlockwise or a cardinal direction if appropriate).
M25 <direction> / M4, M40, M1 – Heathrow
M25 <direction> / M23, M20 – Gatwick
Note that {{jct}} uses the green airport sign by default, but it can use other graphics that are more appropriate, as when is used in Australia. Imzadi 1979 → 16:02, 6 March 2013 (UTC)
I am happy about the two lines. However, the text that you have written tells me that to get to Heathrow I must take the M25(N), then the M4, M40 and M1. This is incorrrect. Please go back to that Google site, zoom out, and see what this sign really means. Martinvl (talk) 16:12, 6 March 2013 (UTC)
I did and that's why I didn't include any of the parentheses. I'm not exactly sure why M40 and M1 are on that sign. Signs in the US follow the KISS principle a little more closely than signs in the UK do, it seems. If this were the US, right after you entered M25 towards Heathrow, there would be a distance sign telling you how far M1 and M40 were. There's no need to mention it on the big sign like that. –Fredddie™ 16:29, 6 March 2013 (UTC)
Freddie, we are in the UK, not the US, so, I would prefer to follow UK notation. Martinvl (talk) 17:27, 6 March 2013 (UTC)
Actually, this is English Wikipedia, not UK Wikipedia, so where "we" are isn't terribly important. A consistent and useful approach is essential for our readers. We're not here to replicate signage. The Rambling Man (talk) 18:34, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Question about parentheses: On the A11 southbound, there's a sign which has "(M11 South) 2" as it's first entry. However, the A11 leads directly to the M11, in fact, there is no decision-making required at all, the A11 flows into the M11. How is this "indirect"? Question about decorations: approaching the Stansted M11 junction from, say, Takeley, there's an enormous junction sign. The background is white, the motorways are shown in white text on a blue background with the "chopsticks" and the A-roads are shown in gold text on a green background. So it seems perfectly reasonable to have similar decorations on these lists. The Rambling Man (talk) 17:04, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Do you have any Google Map references? Also, you have cited a non-motorway - the UK motorway-specific signs can be found here. Martinvl (talk) 17:36, 6 March 2013 (UTC)
Yes, once again I'm asking why you feel it necessary that we attempt to replicate precisely the signs on motorways, when actually using our brains to assist our readers is of much more importance. I like the link you provide to a degree as it demonstrates that many motorway signs do indeed use green background and gold text to indicate A roads. As for the (M11 South), here's your link. I'll find the Takeley link in a moment. The Rambling Man (talk) 17:52, 6 March 2013 (UTC)
Here you go: a wonderful example of a typical junction sign when approaching a motorway in the UK, containing all the lovely decorations to assist drivers. We can easily use a similar approach to assist readers. The Rambling Man (talk) 17:54, 6 March 2013 (UTC)
In practice we would use this sign to provide data for the southbound exits (which happen in this case to be the same as the north-bound exits). Both columns should show: "Stanstead Airport, Colchester, Bishops Storford A120" and on a separate line "Birchanger Green Services". The layout of road signs that are not actually on the motorwayy are of no consequence. Martinvl (talk) 08:28, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
Honestly, if you're not going to read what I've written, this discussion is pointless. One more time, third time's the charm, where is it mandated that we try to replicate the signage on the motorway? Are we not trying to provide information to the reader that he would find useful and in a manner which is both helpful and stylish? My example was simply to demonstrate that to "help drivers" the DfT does indeed use different coloured backgrounds and chopstick sign. By the way, it's "Stansted". Oh, and you didn't answer the question about "parentheses" which clearly does not mean simply "indirectly".... The Rambling Man (talk) 09:03, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
I quite agree with TRM on this issue. In short, the key purpose of the table isn't to replicate the signs as they are formatted in the field, rather it is to impart the information in a standardized format using Wikipedia's "house style". If we wanted to replicate the signs, we'd recreate them as graphics and have a gallery instead of a text-based table that seeks to describe the various junctions along the length of the subject roadway. Imzadi 1979 → 10:56, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
I took another looks at Fredddie's proposal and another anomaly manifests itself - If the A5080 is going to appear in a green and gold format for its westward continuation into the city centre (where is a primary route), then it should also appear in a black and white format where it is a non-primary route (eastward continuation at J4 and exits from J5). This of course adds a further anomaly - we will be using colours to impart information, something which is expressly forbidden in MOS (colours may be used to supplement information that is already present).
A further anomaly in the same diagram is the use of the "chopsticks" emblem at junctions 6 and 10 to denote the M57 and M6 respectively. This is incorrect - this page from the Traffic Signs Regulations and General Directions (TSRGD) shows how the "chopsticks" should be used - they denote the transition point between sections of road where motorway regulations apply and sections where they do not apply. If you are leaving the M62 to join the M6, there is a non-motorway to motorway transition point, so there are no "chopsticks" (see here). On the other hand, signposts on the A3 where it joins the M25 shown here has the chopsticks signs. Regrettably, whoever prepared the images did not appear to be aware of this.
In short, if we are going to use in-line images, we need to do it properly or not at all. We should not be changing the meanings of the colours, nor, on the other hand should we be imparting information by the use of colour only. In short, don't use them. Martinvl (talk) 19:55, 10 March 2013 (UTC)
A few replies: 1) Where the A5080 is not a primary route, I pulled the graphic (|noshield#=y to do that) for that very reason. There is no differentiation between the file names of the yellow-on-green numbers and the black-on-white numbers, but that can be fixed. 2) You're half-wrong about the MOS forbidding colors as a means of imparting information. It's only forbidden when the color is the only difference. That is precisely why {{Jct}} provides an accompanying wikilink. 3) I have the Motorway font so I can prepare a set of motorway numbers without the chopsticks if that will make you feel better. –Fredddie™ 23:00, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

An experiment but now for reality

Okay, so there appears to be no consensus whatsoever for the UK RJL templates that User:Martinvl insists on creeping into articles (such as here and here) even after a clear message that he shouldn't do it from the discussion he's refused to return to on this very page. My reading of most, if not all of the discussions above is that rolling out such templates is at best premature, at worst completely disruptive and against the current consensus. So we need to focus on how to move forward. I think some of the US editors have some good ideas with tailoring some of the existing widely used junction templates, and I'd like to hear more here on what the best way forward you all think we can take.... The Rambling Man (talk) 21:22, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

  • I think a good way forward would be to look at the general format for tables that MOS:RJL requires. From left to right, it has columns for geographic locations, distances, the intersecting roads with their signed destinations, and notes. As has been discussed, there's no convincing argument that such a format won't work for the UK, so there's no good reason to continue to allow the different table format that was used previously.

    Inside the table, there's a general style for junctions in the destination column that uses "<marker graphic(s)> <roadway designation(s)/name(s)> en dash destination(s)", omitting pieces of information as needed. Again, I don't see a reason why this style can't be used in the UK. The rest is just implementation details that can be achieved by modifying the templates as needed. There's already the {{jct}}, that with desired modifications to its subtemplates, can be customized to serve the needs of the UK. The {{jctint}} family of templates has been customized for a variety of situations in the US and Canada in addition to other counties, meaning it can be extended to the UK as well. Imzadi 1979 → 21:43, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

As I see it, there are two outstanding issues, which look strikingly like the missing columns that RJL asks for.
  1. Location columns. To be honest, I have no idea how this is an issue. Why is it so hard to provide the reader where junctions are without having to use a map? At this point, I am inclined to use Metropolitan and non-metropolitan counties of England for our list of counties since it appears to actually be in use today (it was updated in 2009). Unitary authorities, such as Derby, can span both the county and location columns. This is perfectly acceptable. Locations should be the nearest city/town/hamlet/village within reason. If nothing is reasonably acceptable, the column may be left blank. This, too, is perfectly acceptable.
  2. Units. All that really matters is that we are consistent with what unit we use. That means using Google Maps or Via Michelin wouldn't be discouraged. I'm inclined to use miles here until we find a definitive source in km. –Fredddie™ 22:02, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
Freddie, are you propoding that we use the numbers as shown in this Google Map picture - if so, are you proposing that we use conversions or not? Martinvl (talk) 06:35, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
Replying to Fredddie's two points:
  1. Locations: Agreed that it should be easy to do, and that sounds like a good system to use.
  2. Units: Agreed as well. I would personally put the distance in miles first in a consistent fashion as that's what the driving public in the UK uses. If editors can locate a definitive source for the distances in km, say a document that logs the DLSs, then I'd use km as the cited measurement but still list that column second. If mileages are input based on Google Maps or Via Michelin, they should still be converted into km, and if they are input in km, they should be converted to miles, consistently. Imzadi 1979 → 06:49, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
Why are the UK editors so much against the use of location columns, but American editors in favour of using location columns. I think that it is because local government administrative units have no meaning to the UK public - unlike US counties (if I am to believe John Grisham), low level UK administrative districts do not have a court house. The police do not use local government districts for their administration, nor do the post office, nor are district boundaries used to define parliamentary constituencies. In every-day discussion, people are more likely to use a motorway junction number that a district council name. Maybe the Americans who are promoting the use of the location column should just step back and accept that maybe those of us who live in United Kingdom, know a little more about the United Kingdom than they do. Martinvl (talk) 07:09, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
So you're making the remarkable assertion that what works everywhere else in the world doesn't work for the UK? --Rschen7754 07:27, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
I think the message is not going through that this is not about government units or administration at all, but about geographical location. It does not matter whether the location listed has a government entity associated with it or not. Many times, US articles list townships in this column, which are fictitious entities used only for surveying, and unincorporated places or CDPs, the former of which is just an informal name applied to a locale (like Woody Chapel, Oklahoma, which is just the name given to a highway intersection and the surrounding vicinity), and the latter of which is an arbitrary box drawn by the Census bureau to facilitate Census taking. The purpose of the column is not to illustrate what government is responsible for that area. Who cares about that! What it is for is to allow the reader to say, "Okay, this junction is in Liverpool. I know where that is." Or if they don't, they can cross-reference that location with one they do know about to get a reasonable picture of where the junction is located. It just so happens that the boundaries of the responsible government is a convenient and unambiguous way to find a usable toponym for the area. But by no means is it the only way. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 07:35, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

In response to User:Rschen7754, let’s take the ceremonial county of Hampshire (where I live) as an example.

  • Administrative: The ceremonial county has three top-level administrative divisions – [[Hampshire County Council|County of Hampshire], Unitary authority of Southampton and Unitary authority of Portsmouth. The county of Hampshire is split into 11 districts. Some, but not all of which are further split into civil parishes (see List of civil parishes in Hampshire). The two unitary authorities as unparished.
  • Police: The Hampshire Constabulary covers the ceremonial county of Hampshire plus the Isle of Wight. It is split into three areas which do not respect the UA/ county boundaries. These three areas are further split into 11 districts covering the 11 Hampshire districts along with the two UA’s and the Isle of Wight.
  • Postal: – Hampshire is served by five different postal areas – BH (Bournemouth) which is shared with Dorset, PO (Portsmouth) which is shared with West Sussex), SO (Southampton) which lies wholly within Hampshire, GU (Guildford) which lies mainly in Surrey, RG (which lies mainly in Berkshire) . (see List of postcode areas in the United Kingdom).

This should show the complete muddle that we have in the UK as regards geographical areas - it is highly subjective. That is why I am fighting shy of including the columns – I cannot see a way of specifying what should be in the location column but nobody is listening – all that I have is a group of Americans who are trying to force a US-type model where it just does not fit. When the M62 article was originally written, it has a UK-style junction list. When it acquired a GA status, it has a US-style list, but that was soon reverted to a UK style list without any dissention. As far as I can see, no other UK motorway had a US-style junction list, probably because of the problem of definign what we wean by "geographical areas". Because of this muddle, geographical areas in the UK are often described in terms of the motorway junctions, rather than the other way round. Martinvl (talk) 08:53, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

This appears to have ignored the content of my post. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 09:01, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
(edit conflict) The hotel where I'm currently working is in the Village of Holiday City, Ohio, but also in Jefferson Township, Williams County, Ohio. Both are municipalities with their own overlapping governments. For instance, we must charge a 3% lodging tax that is remitted to the village and another 3% lodging tax that is remitted to the township; guests also pay the 7% state sales tax. For postal purposes, our mailing address is Montpelier, Ohio, since the post office in that village handles our mail. For policing, we have no local police as townships don't provide such a service, and this village does not either. We are patrolled by the sheriff's department for Williams County, Ohio; of course the Ohio Highway Patrol may also provide policing as well. Public schools for this area are handled by school districts centered on one of the neighboring communities. The districts for state representatives and members of Congress may not follow county or municipal boundaries. Thus, I reject the implication that you're attempting to make that the governance structure of the US is so simple and that of the UK is too complicated.
Scott mentioned that geographic locations listed can be "rounded" where reasonable, or omitted where there isn't a toponym that's appropriate to list. Since all land in the UK should be describable in terms of some type of county (or equivalent with unified authorities which are like the consolidated city-county or independent city in the US), the county column should not be hard to populate as well. So far, my my count there's been more than just Americans weighing in on this debate, as Evad37 is from Western Australia. Imzadi 1979 → 09:11, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
"Rounding" of geographical locations (as Imzadi1979 puts it) requires local knowledge, so who exactly is going to go through all the UK motorway articles and do the conversions? Most of the UK roads editors have become so antagonised by the on-going demands from the US-based road editors that the US-modle be followed that they have walked away from the project. In other words, shout as loudly as you like, it is not going to happen. How many UK roads still have blue/black headers - all of them apart from the ones that I have changed and if User:The Rambling Man is goping to stop me changing them, then nothing will happen. Martinvl (talk) 09:43, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
We would be willing to help if you'd be willing to assist with the local knowledge. I may be incorrect, but I believe The Rambling Man is also from the UK, and based on his interest in the discussion I'd hazard a guess he'd be willing to assist with the local knowledge too. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 09:48, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
So now we get to the real reason that you don't want to change the format: because it's the dreaded US style. WP:NODEADLINE, and editors from around the world are willing to help with the conversions. Speaking for myself, my passion is highways worldwide, and while I primarily edit California road articles (with 4 FAs, so I know what I'm doing), I am willing to offer my assistance. Or you can sit back and watch as the UK falls even further behind the United States, Ontario, Western Australia, and Croatian road articles. --Rschen7754 09:50, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
I've extended the offer on several previous occasions to assist in updating formats. I've produced 14 FA articles on highways centered in my home state, encompassing topics ranging from seasonal tourist drives, collections of city streets, county roads, major freeways and two-lane state highways. I've also produced almost 200 GAs on roads, with some in places as far away as Guam, and reviewed many dozens of articles from various jurisdictions globally for GA, A and FA. My offer still stands here. Imzadi 1979 → 09:56, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
Martinvl, you need to understand that I've reverted your changes which, as demonstrated in many of the sections you've abandoned above, have no consensus. We neede to build a consensus for a style here and then roll it out, but only once we have an agreed approach, not just your preference. The Rambling Man (talk) 10:43, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Try telling some people in Bolton that they are from Greater Manchester rather than Lancashire.
  • Try telling some people in Wolverhampton that they are in the West Midlands rather than Staffordshire.
  • It works the other way too, various northern villages in Worcestershire associate themselves more with the West Midlands, despite never being part of that county.
  • Most people in Birmingham have never heard of the West Midlands (in the context of a county) as it doesn't operate in the traditional way that a county does, yet don't consider themselves to be part of Warwichshire, most seem to think that Birmingham is a county in itself (which in reality isn't actually *too* far off the truth, even if not technically correct).
  • My address, fairly central to Manchester is commonly written with Lancashire, despite technically not being in Lancashire since 1974.
  • Yes, there are some simple examples such has Cornwall which have never really changed, however there is about a 50/50 split of simple/complicated examples.
  • Oh, and good luck working out what county is which in Wales, I've never met anyone that totally understands what's going on there ;-)

Counties in the UK are a mess that nobody particularly totally understands, and are best avoided because of the varying different systems using the county name. Jeni (talk) 10:04, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

We could drop the county column as a last resort if there is really no acceptable set of counties that satisfy the needs of answering "where is this junction". I think the only thing most of us really insist upon is just at least one geographical location column of some form or another. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 10:13, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
How about Regions of England, yes it's not commonly used at the moment but usage is increasing over time. That and the name of each region is descriptive enough to not *need* to know it's precise boundaries when reading an article.
That said, each region does cover a pretty large area, so would only really be useful for longer roads such as the M1, M4, M5, M6 etc. Jeni (talk) 10:25, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
Those could work as well as an option. The guideline already states now that if roadway only exists in a single geographic unit, say its only in one county in the US, to drop the column and provide a note above the table. Look at the junction list for M-553, and the companion list for M-554 in the same article. The M-553 table omits the county in favor of the note, and the M-554 table omits the location in favor of a more specific note. Imzadi 1979 → 12:32, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

It would be best to avoid the regions of England altogether for two reasons: First is that they are so broad that using them as the only location information is barely any better than no info at all. It would be like RJLs for roads in MA saying the junctions are in "New England". Correct, yes; helpful, not really. The regions also have much lower recognition than counties, amongst UK residents. Many Brits know Southampton is in Hampshire, but a much smaller proportion associate Southampton with South East England.

The UK counties are somewhat vague, however the guidance for writing about settlements suggests the basic info to describe a UK location: "Name of settlement, its present local government district / council area, present/ceremonial county, and constituent country." (Note - No use of English regions) WP:UKPLACE strongly prefers ceremonial counties to other forms in England, and says how to treat county-equivalents in the Wales, Scotland and NI, for the purposes of article naming.

I'd suggest the same approach for RJLs: Why should they be any different? That would mean ceremonial county (for England) and constituent country. Ceremonial counties are the ones that make most sense in most cases, and certainly the metropolitan and non-metropolitan counties should not be used as they don't associate UAs with the county they were carved out of. For instance, its useful to say Southampton is in Hampshire and Brighton in East Sussex. In some cases the historic counties might feel better, but the ceremonial counties have current, well-defined and precise boundaries, while the historic counties are a POV nightmare with less well-defined borders.--Nilfanion (talk) 13:23, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

I'm happy with ceremonial counties myself, I was more trying to avoid arguments with others! :-) What about Scotland and Wales? I'd suggest for Wales we use the counties as defined in Local government in Wales. Scotland I literally know nothing about, but a quick glance suggests Lieutenancy areas of Scotland? Jeni (talk) 14:58, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
Personally I cannot see the need for such a column and would be against the introduction of such on UK articles. Keith D (talk) 17:11, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
The column provides context to the reader, many of whom have never been to the UK and have no idea where an exit is. --Rschen7754 17:19, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
The destinations give the context rather than some, often false or contrived, location information that no one is interested in. Keith D (talk) 18:06, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
No, the destinations provide where the road leads to rather than where the junction is. As has been said many times this works in many other countries and I see no reason why it won't work here. --Rschen7754 18:08, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
I agree with Rschen here. To say M5 junction 8 is in Strensham, Worcestershire, is neither false nor contrived, and gives you an idea where it is. To say you turn off the M5 at junction 8 to get to Ross-on-Wye and South Wales doesn't give you any idea where it is.
The location of a junction is a piece of info worth mentioning IMO. Spaghetti Junction clearly states where the thing is, and doesn't even mention where the roads go to.--Nilfanion (talk) 22:21, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
But is Spaghetti Junction in Gravelly Hill, in Birmingham, in the West Midlands Metropolitan County or the West Midlands Region, what is the rationale for your choice and how should that rationaled be applied to rural as well as urban areas and do we need any variations for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland?
The answer to the first question it is in all of them. The one that should be used by default is the one which gives the most useful context to its general location, whether its rural or urban areas. That is why the (ceremonial) county is the default choice for disambiguation in article titles, why it gets mentioned in the lead section of English location articles and so on. In general, its the most useful single term to locate an English place whether its rural or urban. The national variations described at WP:UKPLACE should work just as well for RJLs as they do for article titles (Principal areas of Wales, Council areas of Scotland, Counties of Northern Ireland). Is there any reason to think that RJLs are so different that they need different default treatment from other UK articles?
For urban motorways, the county only may be inadequte. For example, saying junction 5 on the M60 is in Greater Manchester doesn't give you a clue where J5 is relative to the rest of the M60. But more specific info can be provided, either as a supplement to the default county info (if the county is sometimes insufficient), or as a replacement for it (if the county is redundant). Some variation is fine, as ultimately what is most appropriate depends on the specific case.--Nilfanion (talk) 23:27, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

RJLUK set of templates

RJLUK set of templates Since I first made it known that I was writing a set I have been rolling out a set of templates to help standardise the British RJLs. I have concentrated on the smaller motorways so as to cause minimum disruption while exercising all the features. I have been asked to get consensus as to what I am doing before I roll the templates out onto any further pages. In order not to get side-tracked onto single issues, I have created a number of headings together with my initial comments. Please replace "Comment 1" and "Comment 2”" in each section with your own comments and sign them. In order to get the maximum out of this exercise, it is best not to debate things.

General

Do the templates, in their minimum configuration generally convey the requirement for formatting British RJLs as per WP:RJL. By the term “minimum configuration”, I mean the layout as shown in M77 motorway. Among the innovations that I have introduced are up and down arrows on the heading.

  • Comment 1: When "up and down arrows" become an "innovation", I'll resign from Wikipedia. Your example contravenes MOS. Oh, and what does ↑ mean next to Eastbound? The Rambling Man (talk) 22:01, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Comment 2: What are all the colored squares at the bottom of the table telling us? 205.204.85.89 (talk) 21:56, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Comment 2.1: Nothing, that's because the MOS has been ignored. The Rambling Man (talk) 21:57, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Comment 2.2: It's supposed to be a legend. WP:COLOR asks us to not use colors to convey information without explaining it. The examples on the main RJL page show how they're used. –Fredddie™ 23:18, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Comment 2.2.1: As none of those colors, except motorway blue, appear in the table, it should be removed then. Cap-Saint-Martin (talk) 17:18, 8 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Comment 3: No, they don't. The example given lacks the distance column(s). Even if the entries in a column are blank, omitting the column will not prompt editors to fill in the missing details. The example also lacks a column or columns to indicate relative locations, which RJL really requires. Seriously, how hard could it be to list the geographic subdivisions through which a roadway passes in a column or two? For the US, since most highway articles are on roads in a single state, there are two columns which list which county (major subdivision of the state) and which "location"s (normally cities but also villages, towns, townships, etc as appropriate hence the generic heading name). In cases of a highway passing through two states, a state column can be added as well. Again, why can't something similar be done in the UK? Imzadi 1979 → 08:51, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

Facility for selection of standard headings

The template allows the editor to choose whether or not to include distances and/or coordinates as appropriate for the motorway in question. Is this appropriate, or should we have blank columns where this information is either not known on unavailable. At some time in the future I would like to compress the coordinates so that they take up less space.

  • Comment 1: Not sure why the UK lists should require anything other than a guideline from MOS to do this. We don't need bespoke templates to constrain us. The Rambling Man (talk) 21:50, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Comment 2: As I say above, a blank column will prompt an editor to insert the missing data, just as a redlink will hopefully prompt someone to start the missing article. Omitting the column makes it appear that the table is already complete when it isn't. Imzadi 1979 → 08:53, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

Automatic formatting of miles and kilometres

A template has been generated which enables either single or dual kilometre reading to be entered into the RJL. (It should be noted that official distances in the United Kingdom can be read from driver location signs (England only) or location marker posts (all of the UK). Please only discuss the concept of automatic conversion and formatting. As an example, please look at A308(M) motorway. The templates provide the facility to leave the columns blank, to enter two values (for the start and end of a junction) or to enter a dash and a value. The article M1 motorway has examples of blank entries (J29a), dual entries (most junction) and single entries (J1). Compare this to the way in which double entries were handled by another editor in the article M23 motorway

  • Comment 1: Your red herring. We should use reliable sources (i.e. not photos or in situ sources or self-published sources) to demonstrate this. Format is secondary. The repetitive "driver location sign" mantra does no-one any favours and is entirely unsourced. The Rambling Man (talk) 21:52, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Comment 2: What's an official distance and how does it differ from other types of distance? What sources are provided to allow readers to verify for themselves that the distances given are actually the locations of the junctions they are cited against, especially where two numbers are given? 205.204.85.89 (talk) 22:32, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Comment 3: When we find a comprehensive and reliable source for all UK roads, then we discuss which unit comes first. –Fredddie™ 23:21, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Comment 4: The km/miles column still appear to be the wrong way round, I presume you will be fixing this fairly soon? Jeni (talk) 13:04, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

Notes facility

The set of templates are currently configured to automatically generate standard notes in respect of the source of miles/kilometres and also the source of the carriageway identifier. As an additional feature, the editors can add their own notes. For example, the article M90 motorway has a note attached to J10, while A308(M) motorway shows the notes that are attached to distances and carriageway identifiers.

  • Comment 1: Woeful and per your own demonstration liable to failure. The Rambling Man (talk) 21:52, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Comment 2: It is very presumptuous to hard-code the sources and that the distances must be input in km. How does it handle distances otherwise sourced or given in miles? Wikipedia doesn't generally dictate where particular information is sourced from or limit its units. 205.204.85.89 (talk) 22:14, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Comment 3: No American article hard-codes notes like that. In fact, that option was discussed at one time to handle the display of the mi-to-km and km-to-mi conversions and explicitly rejected in favor of the conversion key in the table footer. (I'll note that at some point, once articles display the dual columns for mi and km, we do plan to propose retiring and removing the conversion key as unnecessary.) Any hard-coded notes are handled in plain text outside of footnotes to avoid interfering with how an individual article may format items. Any existing explanatory footnote that uses |group=n would interfere with the junction list. Imzadi 1979 → 08:57, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

Coordinates facility

User: Pigsonthewing added coordinate columns to a number of motorway articles. There was no consensus as to whether this should be done or not. I have retained the facility to include coordinates, though at some time in the future I would like to get some work done to make them less prominent (Latitude and longitude above each other? Display just the globe, but no coordinates). At the moment do we want to retain this facility?

  • Comment 1: Junction co-ords seem reasonably useful, of course we don't need a template for that. The Rambling Man (talk) 21:53, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Comment 2: Coords are good, but how are they sourced and what value does the template add here? 205.204.85.89 (talk) 22:34, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Comment 3: Just so we can learn from the past, certain people have been woefully unreceptive to making {{coord}} be "less prominent". You're welcome to try, but I think you'll be fighting that battle on your own. –Fredddie™ 23:25, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Comment 4: {{shc}} was an attempt to streamline the coordinates display by showing only the globe, however that concept never gained any acceptance, and the template is at TfD again. Instead, many roads editors active in generating GA-/A-/FA-Class articles have standardized on KML files instead to the exclusion of coordinates. Moving forward, I have no objection to including them in the notes column, but I do not see the need to include a mandated column for them at this time. Imzadi 1979 → 08:43, 8 March 2013 (UTC)
  • It's considered courtesy to notify editors when they're being discussed, but I have only just learned of this discussion, because I have been invited to the DRN discussion. I remain opposed to any initiative to remove or hide (such as behind an icon, or non-unique text) coordinates; or to preclude their inclusion. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:25, 29 March 2013 (UTC)
    • Yes, we know. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 16:12, 29 March 2013 (UTC)
      • Andy, when I published this proposal, I did not issue any specific invitations. If you feel afronted, please accept my applogies. AS regards the reformatting of the coordinate information, I had something like this:
54.1234 N2.3456 W
in mind - principally it takes up less space than the current system and it wraps between the two coordinates, not between the coordinate value and the coordiante direction. BTWQ, I must say that when trying to implement the template, I found the coordinates very useful - I could use them to zoom straight onto Google maps and check the direction signs from Google Streetmap - far more useful than having some location that I had never heard of. Martinvl (talk) 19:04, 29 March 2013 (UTC)

Change of road status

I have coded up, but not yet released an alternate way of signifying a change in road status. AN example can be seen in my area at User:Martinvl/M74. This template can also be used on the M25 motorway article and also the M8 motorway (Scotland) article. I believe that this is better than the band across the RJL.

  • Comment 1: Not required. The Rambling Man (talk) 21:54, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Comment 2: Not required; any change of status can be included in one of two ways. Looking at the exit list for U.S. Route 131, the overall highway transitions to and from a freeway. Those transition points can be noted with an entry containing a note that spans the table and give the milepost/distance for the point. The other method, if the transition corresponds to another junction such as with a concurrency terminus, is to include that information as a note for the junction. Imzadi 1979 → 08:38, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

Docmentation

Is the template documentation adequate? I have prefixed every template with the letters RJLUK = “Road Junction List United Kingdom”.

Anything left out

Are there any issues that should have been addressed, but have not been addressed. I am reluctant at this stage to write a template for each row of the RJL – it would be a mammoth piece of coding and I do not think that it would accomplish anything. Also, I have not addressed the issues of how we should lay out the contents of the exit boxes, especially the start and end boxes. This is an issue that does not directly affect the templates.

  • I do not see the need to have a common format with the US. The UK and the US are two different countries with different traditions - for example, it is common for an American to give both the name of the town and state where he lives, for example "Denver, Colorado" whereas a Briton will give one or the other depending on who he is talking to, for example "Kingston". We already distinguish between Kingston-upon-Thames and Kingston-upon-Hull, in everyday conversation (and on roadsigns), the former is called "Kingston" and the latter "Hull". Martinvl (talk) 14:11, 1 April 2013 (UTC)
1888 Map of the US - state/territory boundaries have hardly changed since then
I have been giving the matter of location columns some thought – I was able to contribute to Imzaldi’s merger of the articles Motorway and Freeway without any problems, yet we are having problems over the inclusion of the “location” column in road junction lists. In looking at the differences between the UK and US perceptions of local government, I noticed one very important fact – if you look at the 1888 map of the US you will see that the state boundaries are virtually as they are today - I am not qualified to comment on how static the county boundaries have been over the last 125 years or what changes have been made to local government structure.
In contrast, local government in the United Kingdom was overhauled in 1975 – a number of country boundaries were redrawn while sub-county local government was totally reorganised. There were further major changes in 1986, 1992 and 2010. As a result, local government areas, apart from the one that you live in, are meaningless to most people. Even the country boundaries are confusing – Middlesex ceased to exist as a county council in 1965, but the Post Office continued to use it in postal addresses until 1996, while the postal address of many localities does not reflect the county in which they are situated – for example the postal address of Blackwater, Hampshire is officially “Blackwater, Camberley, Surrey” (the reason being that letters to Blackwater are handled by the post office in Camberley and Camberley is in Surrey.
I contrast this further with the situation in France. The French local government structure was overhauled during the French Revolution and by Napoleon with a strict Department-Arrondissement hierarchy. The departments were numbered – for example Calvados was department number 14 – at one stage car registrations, telephone number and post codes all started with “14” – on holiday, I noticed that even the number on a milk carton of the hygiene certification centre started with “14”. When I contrasted this with the United Kingdom, I understood the difference in perception of local government.
I trust that this discourse will illustrate the differences between the United Kingdom and the United States in their perception of local area names and why I am opposed to including them in British road junction lists – they just clutter up the list without adding value. My own experience is that local government units are more likely to be identified by reference to a motorway junction than vice-versa – something that negates the value of using them to identify motorway junctions. However during the past month I have found the inclusion of coordinates very useful – they have enabled me to home in on a map and find the information that I want to find without being told by the editor what sort of information I should be looking for.
Martinvl (talk) 19:42, 1 April 2013 (UTC)
Please don't overcomplicate things. One thing to ignore is postal counties - which aren't used by Royal Mail now - and were only ever for the purpose of directing mail. The counties of England (and their equivalents elsewhere) are useful geographic context to a location, which is why they are given prominent mention in the lead of any geographic article. I hardly think they are "meaningless to most people". Most Brits know where Cornwall, Kent and Yorkshire are (Even if they don't know the exact borders), and telling them X is in Kent tells them X is roughly SE of London. And if they don't know just follow the link to Kent to find out.
In contrast, oordinates are a lot more precise and a lot less meaningful - you always need to look at maps to know anything about the location.
Locations (eg the county) should be added whenever context is useful. In the case of an RJL, I can see high value.--Nilfanion (talk) 11:54, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

Is it worth continuing this exercise

Finally, is this exercise on the right track, or should I just undo everything and leave it for somebody else to do?

  • Comment 1: No need at all for this. A decent manual of style update will be sufficient. The Rambling Man (talk) 21:55, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Comment 2: Potentially, but the presentation standards need to be agreed first, and the templates designed second. 205.204.85.89 (talk) 22:50, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
    • Comment 2.1: The presentation standards have been developed and put in use for years. They've been refined over time to accommodate minor updates for accessibility reasons, but the core format has remained largely unchanged. If anything, articles broken into national or regional groups have been somewhat consistently formatted in those regional or national groupings, but not consistent with the international standard embodied in MOS:RJL. (I will note that when M62 motorway was reviewed at FAC initially, the article corresponded to the MOS standard at the time, the "US-style from the then-WP:ELG but later changed to match the rest of the UK articles' formatting.) Imzadi 1979 → 09:07, 8 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Comment 3:

Martinvl (talk) 21:38, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

General comment

You probably should have looked for some comments from the various projects before embarking on this misguided labour. You have made several mistakes trying to implement your version, you have a strange idea as to what our readers would prefer to see (i.e. you think it should be a replica of the roadsigns, others don't at all) and you have unsourced information being used all over the place. Finally you have no grip on the overall Wikipedia MOS so your edits vary in their compliance with the various aspects of the guide. I'm thinking you've got a good heart but no real understanding of what's required here to benefit our readers. The Rambling Man (talk) 21:48, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

Fundamentally, I see no reason why the UK should be using an entirely different standard than what is used internationally. The {{jctint}} templates were redone in 2011 or 2012 to support all countries' road systems. There is nothing so fundamentally different about the UK's system as compared to the rest of the world. (And I've been to a small part of the UK - granted, it was just London and then the A2 to Dover. But still...) --Rschen7754 22:15, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

I agree with Rschen7754 on this point: What are the reasons that UK roads needs to be formatted differently? Back when I joined Wikipedia last year, before I'd even heard of the MOS:RJL, I tried to do a similar thing with formatting RJLs for roads in Western Australia. When no-one from the roads projects were in favour of them, with good reasons not to be, I stopped working on new table designs and started trying to build consensus for changes needed in MOS:RJL (and the various templates), such as allowing intersecting roads to have the name listed first, followed by the route allocation in parentheses. After the 2012 changes, there were no reasons not to use standard tables. - Evad37 (talk) 23:04, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
If you're interested in the backstory, see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Road junction lists/Archive 6#International changes and onward. Put simply, I've never really heard a rationale from the UK editors for why they have their own standard other than "we shouldn't have to conform to such an Amerocentric policy". —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 00:43, 8 March 2013 (UTC)
I agree with TRM, Scott and the others here. In short, Wikipedia's "house style" for formatting junction or exit list tables may have evolved out of the way the US did things, but it's evolved past those origins to be something that should be truly international. With the US, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Croatia and several other countries using tables that comply with this guideline, I think the time has come to jetisson the derivations for the UK and move forward under standard. Imzadi 1979 → 02:13, 8 March 2013 (UTC)
Yes, there's no good reason to deviate from a standard set of templates for the handful of roads which make up the UK motorway system. No good reason whatsoever. All we'll end up with is maintenance of twice as many templates, confusion over the intricacies of one template compared to another, and will ultimately undo what one of the concepts of MOS is trying to achieve, that of a uniform look-and-feel to pages with similar content. The Rambling Man (talk) 07:53, 8 March 2013 (UTC)
I know that there will be some pushback, but I think that we should move forward by unifying the format the rest of the way. As a first step, I'm going to propose that we remove the current UK example from the guideline page itself. There are efforts already underway to create templates in the {{jctint}} family that will support the UK, complete with additional customization for regional graphics and language variation while retaining the overall format. I will also note that {{jct}} and the jctint have been designed with accessibility concerns in mind: jctint generates row headers to comply with MOS:DTT in addition to providing conversions of the distance units, and the colored backgrounds in use have captions the popup on mouseover. Imzadi 1979 → 08:28, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

UK Road Junction Lists

The majority of editors have spoken out against the current “up/down” road junction lists that are used on UK motorways. User:Fredddie is working on a proposal for the UK layout. However, before we commit to any change, we need to sort out a number of details, taking note of the saying “The devil is in the detail”. I have reinstated the existing standard on the project page because, until we have agreed the details below, it will be premature to remove it.

Location columns

Fredddie has proposed a single “county” column. This raises the question “What is meant by the word county” with the follow-on question “Does a better word exist?” I refer readers to Subdivisions of England for a description. The situation is less complex in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Before any work is done to convert existing RJL to a new format, we have to agree which subdivisions will be used and draw up a set of rules which are equitable to everybody. A word of warning – in the past this has proved a major stumbling block.

  • Comment1: I'm not committed to any specific geographic location scheme so long as some scheme is put in place. Such a scheme should be worked out by UKRD members and not specified by MOS:RJL. I will defer to the UK editors so long as they institute something. Personally, I have a fondness for using ceremonial counties as one subdivision, and towns/cities (under a generic "location" heading), but again, whatever those from the UK decide is fine. Imzadi 1979 → 08:57, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
That is passing the buck. As I said, the devil is in the detail - this has aleady been discussed ad nauseum here. The result is that a large number of UK Roads editors have left the project - you could do well to read this thread. Moreover, if you take this attitude, then UK editors reworking the British RJLs is just not going to happen.
So this is basically "I don't want to compromise so I'm taking my ball and going home?" --Rschen7754 09:54, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
As I said, my personal preference is to use "Ceremonial counties" and "Locations" as the two columns, with the latter being understood to be whatever town or city (and yes I know of the difference between a "city" in the US and a "city" in the UK) works best. In the US, not every junction is within the boundaries of a city, town, village, township, etc, so that cell in the table is blank a lot too. As for your link, it doesn't load for me. However, I'm willing to to defer to others more interested in the debate to make a decision, so long as someone decides on something. Imzadi 1979 → 10:12, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
I looked at Fredddie’s proposal for UK RJLs and the very first entry had problems. He gave the location of the terminus as being in Knotty Ash. I decided to do a little research. Knotty Ash is a ward (electoral district) of Liverpool City Council (which Fredddie does not mention, though he does mention Merseyside). Liverpool City is actually part of the Liverpool City Region which encompasses not only Merseyside, but some of the outlying areas. Knotty Ash itself has no legal status other than as an elctoral district of Liverpool.
I did some more research and came across this site. I examined the map of the Knotty Ash ward and saw no M62 in it. I then examined the Yew Tree (ward) – again no M62, but the boundaries of the two wards did not appear to match up – in fact the M62 lies between the two wards, so it is incorrect to state that the M62 terminates in Knotty Ash. It appears to me that since nobody actually lives on the M62, it is excluded from the city council wards, bit would be described legally as “that part of the M62 lying within the City of Liverpool”. While I am not criticising Fredddie, (I appreciate that he has never left the confines of the United States), I am highlighting the problems that we face when trying to populate a "location" column. This is one of the reasons why, when we had this discussion previously, the UK editors did not like the attempts by non-UK editors trying to force a solution on them which, in the United Kingdom situation, was not fit for purpose.
Martinvl (talk) 13:31, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
In response to Rschen7754, if he hasn't noticed it, this is what virtually every other UK roads editor has already said. Martinvl (talk) 13:33, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
Before you criticize me any more, I am going off of a four-year-old version of the M62 article. If you don't like the counties selected, you should ask Mauls (talk · contribs), who was the primary contributor of the offending junction list. –Fredddie™ 13:50, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
In response to Martinvl: you need to do some more research. The ward of Knotty Ash is named after the place called Knotty Ash. Knotty Ash (the place) is an area of the metropolitan borough of Liverpool, and Liverpool (the metropolitan borough) is one of five such boroughs (the others being Knowsley, Sefton, St Helens and Wirral) making up the metropolitan county of Merseyside - one of the ceremonial counties of England. So Freddie's example is correct that the place called Knotty Ash is in the county of Merseyside. In fact, as everywhere in England is within one of those well defined ceremonial counties, the county column can easily be included in all the UK RJLs. Cap-Saint-Martin (talk) 22:13, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
Of course I checked the Wikipedia article for Knotty Ash. I also checked The Phillimore Atlas and Index of Parish Registers which lists all parishes as they existed in 1832. That reference showed ecclesiastical parished of Huyton and Prescot together with chapels at Farnworth, St Helens and Rainford. (Knotty Ash fell within the parish of Huyton. This satisfied me that there was no parish with that name in 1832. I also checked soem postcodes in that area. They are of the form ABC Road, Liverpool L14 9XX. In short, yes, it exists, but it is only known locally by that name and as a means of telling readers where the motorway terminates, coordinates do the job better. Martinvl (talk) 23:02, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
Real-Life Scenario™: Suppose you print off the junction list to take with you on the road. The paper map you have with you doesn't list coordinates. What use are coordinates now? Knotty Ash is on the map and it's in close proximity to the end of M62. To the offline user, the location column is far more useful than coordinates will ever be. –Fredddie™ 23:09, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

There's two points I should make regarding locations. 1) Michigan, like the other states, is subdivided into counties. Michigan has further subdivided itself into townships and cities, so a location can always be described as being within both a county and some "location". Not all states have further subdivisions, so Oklahoma State Highway 88 has blank locations, and that's 100% fine.

2) We could frame this as a game of sorts. If a person is located in the center of a junction/intersection/interchange and drops dead, what coroner or medical examiner would issue the death certificate, and what would the location be listed as? Or put another way, which local governments' taxes, ordinances or regulations would apply to that piece of property? Based on that answer, you have the start of a scheme for determining the locations to use. Imzadi 1979 → 14:19, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

Fredddie, I guessed that you were doing just that. I am not berating anybody, all that I am saying is that by including a "locations" column, you set yourself an impossible task. Let me tell yo a few things about the UK:
  • Read the article Postal code and you will see that there are six differetn formats for post codes (zip codes) in the UK - the US has two formats (99999 or 99999-9999 depending on whether your ZIP code is to post office level or to street level)
  • There is no single structure for Local government in England or for Subdivisions of England. Given this situation, it is a hopeless task to try and create one.
  • Vehicle registration plates of the United Kingdom are determined by the office that issues the registration plate - apart from exceptional circumstances they stay with a vehicle for life.
As you can see, there is no correlation between these various subdivisions. No wonder you could not get it right - nobody can get it right which is why UK editors do not even waste their time trying. Unfortunately I had to let you try it out for yourself otherwise you would not have believed me.
In response to Imzadi1979, everybody who lives in the vicinity of the terminus of the M62 pays local taxes to Liverpool City Council. Knotty Ash has no local council and if somebody dropped dead at the terminus to the M62, the death would be investigatged by the City of Liverpool Coroners Office. Martinvl (talk) 14:35, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
Upon reflection, I think that the "coords" column is of more use that the "location" column, if only for the simple reason that in many cases motorways junctions tend to be used as landmarks rather than the locality of the junction. Martinvl (talk) 14:41, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
Ok, you've answered part of my question. However, Ontario can have "Division" and "Location" when that province has been divided into:
  • Single-tier municipalities
  • Regional municipalities
  • Counties
  • Districts
of which some have separate cities/municipalities and others have just a single, unified government for the division. See Ontario Highway 401#Exit list for how this is done. Toronto fills the role of both the upper and lower tiers of government, so its cell spans both columns. That tells me that something similar can still be done for the UK. Imzadi 1979 → 14:45, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
That layout is exactly what I am trying to avoid. I shrunk my window to about 1000px (I have a 1920px screen) and all that I got was large swathes of white on the left and cramped columns on the right. No Sir, I do not want to create that sort of table. Martinvl (talk) 15:02, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
So, WP:IDONTLIKEIT. Got it. –Fredddie™ 15:04, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
(edit conflict) The location column is as wide as it is because Edwardsburgh/Cardinal doesn't wrap at the slash in the name. The width is going to vary based on the contents of the cells. Imzadi 1979 → 15:05, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
Fredddie, I gave a very good reason for not liking it which Imzadi1979 picked up. We are trying to present information. Half of the screen is cramped and difficult to read, the other half has swathes of white space. Obviously something is wrong. As Imzadi1979 picked up, the fault lies in having very long words (in this case two words joined by a slash) which cannot be broken into two. When I am populating tables I often check my result by expanding and conrtacting the screen looking for situatons that geenrate large amounts of white space. I hope that you have learnt something today (well two things - one being the need to manage white space and the other is not to expect everything in the United Kingdom to follow a logical pattern). Martinvl (talk) 16:27, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
BTW, have you read WP:WHITESPACE? Martinvl (talk) 16:38, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
And Ontario Highway 401 is a Featured Article. If the whitespace was as much of an issue, in the standards, that would have been brought up in the FAC reviews for correction. A point I should like to make here: there are 50 other FAs on individual highways (48 from the US and 2 from Ontario in Canada), and all but one of them use a similar style of junction/exit list, all produced by the same family of templates. (Ridge Route lacks a junction list.) There is only one FA from the UK, and its junction list followed that same style of table at the time it was promoted. This is how M62 motorway looked when it was promoted in 2007, and this is how it looked when a FAR was closed in 2009 to keep the article as an FA. Imzadi 1979 → 01:39, 10 March 2013 (UTC)
FAC reviewers have persistently declined to consider the issue of coordinates when reviewing road articles. That canard has been refuted more than once previously. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:48, 29 March 2013 (UTC)

So it's complicated. Oh well. Just find a way that we can include an entry that describes where is this junction, in a human-readable (i.e. not coord, which means nothing to most people without cross-referencing it with a map) format. The actual specifics of how this is determined probably don't matter to anyone here, as long as the column is present. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 18:01, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

The specifics are all-important otherwise we create a battlefield for edit-wars. This The example chosen by Fredddie (taken from an old version of the article) shows up the problems. He picked up The original article cited a ceremonial county of Merseyside as the ceremonial county from the original data for this motorway, an area that only acquired a legal meaning in 1972, although it was associated with a loosely defined area made famous by The Beatles. He then picked up the nameThe original article also cited Knotty Ash as the location, a location that has no legal status other than an electoral district. There are far too many junctions that are midway between two towns - the motorway designers planned things that way. I regard it as poor practice to set up a structure that encourages edit wars which is why, in the case of the UK, I would prefer not to have a "location" column. Martinvl (talk) 22:22, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
I. DID. NOT. CHOOSE. THEM. –Fredddie™ 22:30, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
Sorry if I worded the statement badly. Are you happy with the modified wording? Martinvl (talk) 22:47, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
Scott reiterates my point perfectly: the exact details of how you determine the locations to use won't matter to most of us here, as long as you determine something to use. Also, there is sometimes some degree of "geographic rounding" used to determine locations. I've used names of unincorporated communities for junction locations. Legally, those communities don't exist, but either they have a separate article, or they redirect to the appropriate township that is the legal location. The basis for choosing them was simple: the state map shows a dot on the map at the junction and labeled it with the name. Imzadi 1979 → 01:39, 10 March 2013 (UTC)
To be blunt, I don't understand why this is so hard for the UK, when we've had no difficulties in the US, Canada, Croatia, Australia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and even Antarctica in adding a locations column. --Rschen7754 02:44, 10 March 2013 (UTC)
I checked out a few Australian and Dutch roads. In the case of Australia, I looked at the article Highways in Australia which gave a list of major hightways. I then started working my way through those hightways in order. After I had visited Federal Highway (Australia), Hume Highway, Barton Highway, M80 Ring Road, Melbourne I coud not find any highways that had location columns (as opposed to exit lists). In terms of legal structures, the Netherlands listed provinces and municipalities (gemeente) which follow a strictrly hierarchical pattern and about half the gemeente were duplications of the exit list. Martinvl (talk) 08:28, 10 March 2013 (UTC)
Mitchell Freeway, which is a GA. Also Belize has location columns. --Rschen7754 08:30, 10 March 2013 (UTC)
There are several other Australian highways with standard RJL tables: Albany Highway, Graham Farmer Freeway, Great Eastern Highway Bypass, Great Northern Highway, Kwinana Freeway, Reid Highway, Roe Highway, Tonkin Highway - Evad37 (talk) 08:44, 10 March 2013 (UTC)
OK, so the road writers in Western Australia tend to use the locality-oriented model of RJL, writers in other parts of Australia tend to use the junction-oriented model of RJLs. (Note, I have not used the word standard). In short, there is no standard way of proiducing RJL's in Australia. RJLs of Dutch road in the English language version of Wikipedia are very different to those in the Dutch language version. Martinvl (talk) 09:59, 10 March 2013 (UTC)
We don't care/are not bound by nlwiki. Furthermore, RJL is the worldwide standard, and good luck trying to get any UK article through FAC if you don't want to follow the standard. --Rschen7754 10:03, 10 March 2013 (UTC)
Both of the formats are junction-oriented. The format espoused by MOS:RJL, excluding UK-specific derivations, add locations for additional reference and detail, while the UK format (copied in other areas of the world) omits them. You'll note that each line of the table is based on a single junction. Imzadi 1979 → 10:46, 10 March 2013 (UTC)
If the FAC process does not accept the styles used under consensus by article editors, then it is the FAC process and not those styles, that are at fault. Why on Earth should editors care about meeting such arbitrary criteria? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:11, 1 April 2013 (UTC)
The fact that there are RJLs in other parts of Australia which do not comply with MOS:RJL, MOS:ICON, WP:COLOUR, MOS:ALLCAPS, etc. is not really relevant to this discussion. You now have nine Australian examples of MOS:RJL-compliant tables showing the implementation of location columns, in addition to all the other countries Rschen7754 listed above. Surely something can be found that will work for UK roads. - Evad37 (talk) 13:54, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

The jct template

I looked at the documentation for the template. It seems to be highly automated. It appears to me that a large number of items need to be set up in advance- for example we have M9 motorway (Scotland) to reference to M9, M898 motorway to reference the M898 and also in Scotland we have A74(M) and M74 motorways to reference the M74 and the A74(M). In England we have M1 motorway, to reference the British M1 while Northern Ireland has the M1 motorway (Northern Ireland) to reference the Northern Irish M1. Are we going to have to go through an exercise to standardise the road names for this template to work – surely this is the tail wagging the dog.

Likewise we have a city Kingston upon Hull which we normally refer to as Hull, while Kingston upon Thames is referred to as Kingston. Moreover, whenever people hear of Staines-upon-Thames and say “Isn’t it ‘’just’’ Staines?” before they roll over laughing.

In looking at the documentation for I noticed that we need to set up a large number of ISO 3166-2 codes. Can these overlap with similar codes in other part of the world? (For example, can the Dutch use “NH” for “Noord Holland”, while the Americans use “NH” for “New Hampshire”). Where are these code set up and who will set them up?

  • Comment1: {{jct}} already recognizes and distinguishes between WA = Washington in the US or WA = Western Australia in Oz. WOSlinker (talk · contribs) and several others are great and working with the template and can set up whatever is needed.

    As for standardizing names, there isn't an issue there. For example, there are multiple Interstates numbered "375" in the US, but only one numbered "575". {{Jct}} uses the state, as defined by |state=, to disambiguate. That way is knows to link to Interstate 375 (Michigan) instead of Interstate 375 or Interstate 375 (Florida). The template will link to Interstate 575 (Georgia), but that which redirects to Interstate 575. There is also the |dab#= parameter to allow the template to distinguish between


    Bus. US 131 and


    Bus. US 131. (See also


    Bus. US 131 for a case where the disambiguation isn't specified.)

    Lastly, when it comes to destinations as you suggest, use |location1=[[Kingston upon Hull|Hull]] and similar as needed instead of using |city1=. Imzadi 1979 → 09:12, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

  • Comment2:You're right in that it's "set it and forget it", but we're always finding something to tweak. Currently, the template is set up to use |country=GBR, but we could set it up for Scotland (SCO) and Northern Ireland (NI) if we had to. –Fredddie™ 20:03, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

List of destinations

In the past few days User:The Rambling Man has voiced disquiet about the use of Google Maps to collect information in respect of RJLs. While researching this posting, I picked the Interstate 70 in Missouri article at random. On reading the citation list, I noticed that 13 of the 23 citations were form Google Maps. Will the American editors please confirm that this is normal? If this is not normal, I don’t know where to go in the UK – information at Kew is, by definition, 30 years old. Maybe TRM, being the only other Brit in this discussion to date knows of an alternative source

  • RJLs and route descriptions are not the same thing. It's best to look at our FAs such as Interstate 80 in Iowa - it uses a map, but uses government documents to get the mileages for the RJL table. --Rschen7754 08:31, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
  • In the 14 articles I've worked on and take through FAC successfully, I've used a mixture of source types. The Route description (RD) section will primarily be based on maps with additional source material from travel guides or other sources. I use the appropriate or more recent edition of the paper map printed annually by the Michigan Department of Transportation, the Rand McNally atlas page for Michigan and Google Maps' satellite view. MDOT doesn't show the national forest boundaries on its map while Rand McNally does, and the Google Maps' citation will provide satellite coverage for the descriptions of the physical environment. To fill out the details, I'll add in citations to the rail map of the state if needed for the name of a rail line, travel guides that list details about attractions and landmarks, etc.

    As for the RJL tables, those rely on MDOT's Physical Reference Finder Application, a specialized online map that gives detailed descriptions and measurements accurate to three decimal places. Other states have various types of log documents or maps that can be used for the detailed information in the RJL. Imzadi 1979 → 08:50, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

I was talking about gathering the information in the United Kingdom - unlike the Michigan State Government, the British Government does not make this information available excpet on a commercial basis. Martinvl (talk) 09:55, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
Google Maps is used in the United States for mileages sometimes, but it is an absolute last resort as it does not provide precise data. --Rschen7754 09:57, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
I've used Google to generate milepostings before. Case in point: M-553 was extended in 2005. The source we had at the time, the Control Section Atlas, dated to 2001 and did not reflect the extension. To fill out the table, I used Google Maps' driving directions to measure the length of the extension and added that to the length of the highway from the CSA. It worked until I found the PRFA and could measure the whole length on a single source. Sometimes you'll have to make do with the sources you can use. Imzadi 1979 → 10:15, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
I have used Google maps to source distance as a last resort only. It varies by state. Some states publish very detailed mileage logs (often to 3 decimal places) but for other states, mileage figures are very hard to come by. Dave (talk) 18:42, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
It also depends how the state publishes the data. Oklahoma, for instance, only publishes lengths of predetermined segments of highway called control sections. Unfortunately, junctions don't always fall at the ends of these segments, so we don't have mileage data for some junctions if we rely solely on the state. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 19:21, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

I'm sure who started this discussion, it seems unsigned. However, the initial poster said "Maybe TRM, being the only other Brit in this discussion to date knows of an alternative source". No, not at all. That's really not the point. Just because we don't have reliable sources, it doesn't mean we have to make do with second-best and start synthesising sources from a variety of dubious places. If we don't have decent sources, then we shouldn't be publishing "reliable" information. We should remove it, until such a time reliably sourced information exists for us. The use of Google Maps etc is fine for external sources which are interesting and engaging, but as we know, they tailor images for confidentiality. If we have to reduce the information we present in order to comply with WP:V and WP:RS, so be it. This is whole project is a marathon, not a sprint, there is no deadline. The Rambling Man (talk) 21:27, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

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